Silence for the Dead

by Simone St. James

  Don’t look back, don’t look down.

  This is how I am going to die.

  “Leave,” I told him. “Get out. Now.”

  The corner of his mouth turned down again. “That’s not polite, not when we’ve just found each other again.”

  “I’m not going back, Syd.”

  “This is ridiculous. I thought—”

  “You thought I’d cringe. He thought I’d cringe. You were both wrong.” My voice was shaking, but I ignored it. “Now, leave.”

  He made no move, so I turned and left the room, taking my unsteady steps into the main hall. The circulation in my arms and legs had been cut off but for a painful pinpricking along the backs of my forearms. My knees had been replaced with half-frozen jelly. I hoped I’d get my body parts back when I watched Syd drive away.

  If I found my brother and I lost him again, was it better or worse than never finding him at all?

  “What is this?” Syd followed me into the hall. “I don’t believe it. You’d rather be in this place—a madhouse—than home, where you belong?”

  “Kitty?” It was Martha, approaching tentatively from the corridor. “Is everything all right?” Nina, who had come off night shift that morning, was with her.

  I opened my mouth, but Syd said, “Everything is quite all right, sister.”

  “She’s not a sister,” I said.

  “What is the matter with you? I’ve come to take you away from here. Father said you’d be difficult.”

  “Did he?” I said. Martha was looking uncertainly between us, and I hoped to God an orderly would come. “What else did he tell you, Syd? That we’d be reunited as a happy family? That I’d weep at his bedside like a girl in a melodrama? And you believed it?”

  “He said . . .” Syd took a breath. “He said he worried about you, that last year after I was gone. He said you might be . . . delusional.”

  The unfairness of it hit me so hard I could barely speak. “Just get out,” I managed. “Just leave.”

  “I’m not going. For God’s sake, Kitty, you’re ill. You don’t even know what’s real anymore. You’re as mad as the rest of them.”

  “I take exception to that,” someone said.

  I turned. Coming down the corridor behind Martha and Nina were patients, come to see the commotion—West in his wheelchair, and MacInnes, and Mabry. Others trickled in one by one behind them, crowding to see. And Jack, pushing his way forward through them. It was to be an utterly public humiliation, then. My chest burned, and I turned back to Syd.

  He’d gone pale, looking at the men. “Are you quite finished?” I said to him now.

  “Stay back,” he said to the men.

  Captain Mabry looked at him coolly. “I believe Nurse Weekes would like you to leave, old chap.”

  “I agree,” said West. His arms flexed massively as he grasped the wheels of his chair.

  “Stay back!” said Syd again. He gazed at the stumps of West’s legs sticking out from the seat of his chair in their pinned hospital trousers, and he looked almost sick. He’d fought in the war, and I realized he must have been seeing something in his mind I couldn’t see. “Don’t come any closer.”

  I had to defuse the situation somehow. “Syd—”

  “What is the meaning of this?”

  Matron came stomping down the main staircase, in the middle of all of us, her glasses bouncing on the chain on her chest and her face red with fury. Boney followed behind her, hurrying to keep up. Matron stopped five risers up and leaned over the banister, the better to loom over everyone.

  “Nurse Beachcombe,” she barked. “Nurse Shouldice. Why are these men not at morning exercise?”

  “Matron—”

  “Nurse Weekes, what are you doing? This is not part of the schedule. Who are you, sir? Where are the orderlies?” As she spoke the last sentence, Boney turned and fled, presumably in search of help.

  “Are you in charge here?” said Syd. “Thank God. My name is Sydney Weekes, and this is my sister. Our father is on his deathbed and I’ve come to take her home.”

  Matron didn’t even pause. “That is well, sir, but I have not given permission for Nurse Weekes to take leave.”

  If Matron had held out her hand like the Pope, I would have knelt and kissed it, religion be damned.

  “That is completely unreasonable,” Syd protested. “This is a family matter.”

  “And this is a medical facility,” said Matron, “with professional staff. Applications for leave are taken through the proper channels.”

  “Matron,” shouted one of the men from the corridor. “She don’t want to go!”

  Syd turned to the room at large. “This girl is delusional!” he proclaimed. “She is a liar. She’s not even a nurse!”

  “She is too a nurse!” Martha’s cheeks were bright red with outrage. “You just leave her alone!”

  “Syd, for God’s sake!” I said.

  “Look what you’ve done, Kitty,” he said to me. “You’ve caused a scene. Enough of this foolishness. You’re just like Mother, aren’t you? Father said so. It’s time to leave.”

  I stepped closer to him, looked him in the eye. “I said I’m not leaving.”

  It was quick—the space of a second, and yet in my eye it was slow, so slow. It had started minutes before, really, and my mind, which knew the timing so well, had half expected it. And it wasn’t much of a hit, not really, just a little slap with the flat of his hand, stinging and very loud. My head rocked back and I took a step, and for a second my ears rang and I didn’t see everything that went on behind me. But I heard shouts and voices. And then someone yelled, “Go get him, Jack!” and Jack Yates vaulted out of the corridor and straight at my brother.

  He didn’t even look angry, just determined, like an athlete doing a sprint. But Paulus Vries had arrived, he had longer legs, and he was surprisingly fast for such a big man. He caught Jack just as he reached Syd, who fell back toward the door.

  Paulus grabbed Jack’s upper arms from behind, a hard grip that stopped Jack in his tracks. Syd’s face was blanched with shock, but he looked past the terrifying madman’s uniform at Jack’s face, and recognition trickled through. “You’re Jack Yates,” he said.

  Jack didn’t struggle against Paulus; he only leaned forward a little, as Paulus’s huge hands held him back, and spoke in a calm, taunting voice that barely contained the anger underneath. “How are you feeling, Weekes?” he said. “A little peaked since you got back? You seem prone to violence to me.” He watched my brother’s expression fall. “It happened to a lot of us. We have a room for patients like you, if you’d like. It’s locked. And very, very dark.”

  “I’m not like you lot,” Syd said. “I’m not.”

  Only someone watching Jack’s face as closely as I was would have seen the flinch. It was gone in a second. “Stay a while and find out,” he said.

  Syd gripped the handle of the door, as if by reflex. His knuckles were white. He looked at Jack and swallowed. Then he looked at me, one last time, and his gaze turned hard. He pushed the door open and left without another word.

  Paulus sighed, his hands still on Jack’s arms, though I could see his grip had relaxed. “You didn’t have to scare him, Yates.”

  “No,” Jack agreed. “I didn’t. But it was fun.”

  “That’s enough, everyone,” Matron shouted from her place on the stairs. “I want every patient in his room immediately. Morning exercise is canceled.”

  Jack looked at me. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I said softly.

  “Are you certain?” said Paulus. He’d let Jack go. Their scuffle may have been partly serious, but it had been a little fiction, really, between the two of them, to scare off my brother. I nodded, unable to trust my voice.

  “Move it, Yates,” Paulus said mildly. He turned back to me. “If you
need ice, get it now. I have a feeling Matron is about to call a meeting.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “That,” said Boney, “was unacceptable. Unacceptable.”

  “It isn’t Kitty’s fault,” Martha protested. “She didn’t invite him.”

  We were sitting around the small table in the kitchen, all of the nurses. Matron had called us here, just as Paulus had predicted, but so far she had said almost nothing.

  “It was an unseemly scene.” Boney looked prim and outraged as usual.

  “What were we supposed to do?” said Nina. “Stand there while he carted her off? You heard Matron. She didn’t even have leave.”

  “But the patients!” said Boney. “You left them unsupervised! And look what happened! Complete chaos. And where were the orderlies?”

  “I’d like to ask them that myself,” said Nina. “We could have used them.”

  “I think they were trying to keep the patients from getting into the corridor,” said Martha.

  “Matron,” Boney appealed. “Please tell me there will be an incident report.”

  Matron looked tired. For the first time since I’d known her, she almost sagged, as if she was carrying a heavy burden. “This day,” she said, “has been most trying.”

  “If there’s an incident report,” said Nina, “it should be fair. It should say that Kitty’s brother wanted to take her without leave and wouldn’t go when we requested it. It should say that he struck her in front of everyone.”

  “That isn’t relevant to the situation,” said Boney. “Rules were broken.”

  “It was relevant!” Martha said. “We all saw it!”

  “Enough.” Matron raised a hand, and they all fell silent. I still couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what I could say.

  Matron sighed. “As it happens, Mr. Deighton is due tomorrow for one of his visits. I will write a report about this situation—and what goes in it will be entirely up to me, as is the rule—and I will give it to him to evaluate. The fact is, this happened on my watch, and there may be consequences even for me. That means I cannot evaluate this incident myself.” She looked around at us. “That is all I can do.”

  I stared at her, my heart accelerating in my chest. She was saying I’d gotten everyone into trouble, even herself. Well, she had no idea. No one was going to be dismissed. Not now, not ever. I’d made a vow to Martha, and I intended to keep it.

  “This meeting is adjourned,” said Matron. “Nurse Beachcombe, you are excused for rest at supper as you are due to start night shift tonight. For the rest of us, let’s salvage this day.”

  • • •

  I felt painfully visible all afternoon, as if I had a brand on my chest. The men, however, had apparently found their little rebellion quite satisfying, and when they were released from their rooms for luncheon, they were well behaved. A few of them gave me brief, half-formed smiles or quiet nods, but most of them went back to their own preoccupations. And yet I knew, of course, that in rooms where I wasn’t present, among the patients and the staff alike, my scene with Syd was the talk of the day.

  The men were sent to afternoon rest after tea, and I was sent on rounds. I took advantage when no one was looking and slipped into Jack’s room. He was sitting on his window seat, barefoot again.

  “Kitty,” he said when he saw me.

  “I don’t have much time,” I told him. “I came to thank you. And to get a moment of privacy. I’d rather not hide in the lav again.”

  He got up and came toward me, looking at my face. “I can see the mark,” he said. “I’d like to go at him again.”

  I shrugged, my heart skipping. “It will fade.” I looked up at him. “You’re not being punished in isolation.”

  “No, I’ve been banished to my room for the rest of the day. I think it’s the best thing Matron could think of. She must be off her game.”

  I shook my head. “Jack, he recognized you.”

  “I noticed.”

  “I haven’t seen my brother since before he left for the war. I don’t know him, not really. I don’t know what he’ll do.”

  “Tell the newspapers, probably.” He leaned closer, looking at my cheek. “You told me it was your father you were running from.”

  “It was.”

  “You look a little cheerful about it.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, the words coming in a rush. “I don’t know. I feel so light somehow, Jack. I’m humiliated and afraid, and yet a part of me feels like I’m going to fly away on one of those hot-air balloons. I was so used to running and hiding. But I think now it was an anchor weighing me down. Do you think that’s even possible?”

  “What happened?” he asked, instead of answering me. “What has changed?”

  I ran a hand over one of my cheeks, hot with emotion, wanting to feel myself, wanting to be here inside my own skin for the first time. “He’s dying, Jack. My father is dying. That’s what Syd came for.”

  Jack’s blue eyes puzzled over this for a moment, and then he understood. “He thought you would go home for a tearful reunion?”

  “He was sure of it.” I watched his expression cloud over. “I don’t care,” I confessed. “I’m a bad person for being happy about him dying, and I’ll probably go to hell, and I don’t care. He’ll be dead and he won’t be able to hurt me anymore.”

  Jack listened to this carefully, as he always listened to me. Beneath his shirt I could see the lines of his collarbones, the warm hollow where they met at the base of his throat. If I leaned forward I would feel him breathing, feel his chest rise and fall. He looked down at me for a long moment, watching me look at him. “This seems like a good time to give you your gift,” he said.

  “Gift?”

  He walked to his bedside table—I didn’t want to look, but I noticed his bed was mussed, as if he’d been lying on it, and I pushed the picture from my mind—and took up a book. He turned and handed it to me. “It isn’t much, but you did ask for it.”

  It was a battered copy of Homer’s Odyssey, taken from the library shelf in the common room. I’d never asked him for a book. “What is this for?”

  “Open it.”

  I did, and I saw pieces of letter paper between the pages, perhaps a dozen of them. I examined them.

  “It was the best way,” Jack said as he watched me. “These uniforms don’t have pockets, and I can’t leave papers around or they’ll be confiscated. So instead I appear to be rereading The Odyssey at bedtime.”

  The papers were all handwritten, each one in a different writing. “What are these?”

  “Our dreams,” he replied.

  I looked up at him, remembering I’d asked him to find out what the men dreamed about. “You got them to write down their dreams?”

  “Almost all of them. Tom claims he doesn’t dream, or in any case he doesn’t remember them. MacInnes is a slow writer, so he’s still working on his. And Creeton told me to go fuck myself.”

  “How did you do this?” I stared in disbelief at the pages. “I didn’t see anyone writing.”

  “We all get paper allotments to write letters every week, but no one uses it. What can we say in a letter, after all? ‘Dear Mum, all well, still barking mad. Sorry.’ They read them all anyway, so why bother? As for the writing, afternoon rest or the loo are just about the only times. There’s no light to write by at night. And the nurses”—he grinned—“usually check on us during afternoon rest.”

  I riffled through the papers. “What about your dreams?” I asked softly. “Are they in here, too?”

  “They have to be, or it wouldn’t be fair. Would it?”

  “No.”

  “Then you’ll have to guess which one is mine. We didn’t sign them.”

  I folded the pages and put them in the pocket of my apron. I still felt curiously weightless and free, and I smiled up at him. “Thank yo
u.”

  He blinked. “If it will make you smile like that, I’ll hide in the loo and write a novel.”

  And just like that, the moment changed. I’d wanted to touch him since the moment I’d walked through the door and seen him, but now he was looking at me, that deep blue gaze on me, and I wouldn’t get a chance again. I put my hand on the back of his neck, rose up, and kissed him.

  I’d never kissed a man before. Part of me thought it might be a quick thing, a chaste peck, but his mouth was warm and soft, and I lingered. Then he put his hand on my jaw and kissed me back, swift and hungry, as if he meant it. He didn’t touch me but for his hand, didn’t pull me to him, but he held me close and kissed me a second time, this time softer, but so hungry he bit my lip as we pulled apart, and his eyes when I looked into them had lost all their politeness.

  “That was for being Brave Jack,” I said, my voice a husky breath.

  “I’d brave all the fires of hell,” he said, “to see you naked.”

  I was shocked, but the elated part of my brain flew even higher. I wouldn’t have minded the nakedness going the other way, but I didn’t know how to say it, not really. Instead I put my palm on his chest, feeling the hard, steady beat of his heart, just as I had imagined it, and said, “I have to go.”

  He put his hand over mine, that fine, graceful hand, and pulled it from his chest. He turned my arm, bent, and pressed a kiss to the inside of my wrist, hot and lingering, as I ran my tongue along the spot on my lip he’d bitten. “Good night, Kitty,” he said.

  I took one unsteady step back, and then another. “Good night,” I said shakily, and I left the room.

  • • •

  “What did he mean, Kitty,” Martha said that evening, “when he said you’re not a nurse?”

  I was getting ready for bed, putting The Odyssey on my bedside table, and I stopped. In her corner, Nina didn’t even pause as she undid her apron.

  I looked at Martha. She was preparing for night shift after her short sleep, tucking up her hair. “Are you all right?” I said. “You look exhausted.”