Silence for the Dead

by Simone St. James

  “It’s just a headache, that’s all. I’ve had it all day. A nuisance more than anything. But what about your brother saying you’re not a nurse? That was a strange thing for him to say.”

  I didn’t want to lie to her. And perhaps, just perhaps, she could have handled the truth. But I remembered her red-faced exclamation to Syd: She is too a nurse! You leave her alone! And I knew that if I spoke now, I’d make a liar out of her. Part of me couldn’t countenance it.

  “Matron hired me,” I hedged. “Do you think she would have hired a girl who wasn’t a nurse?”

  “Well, I know we’ve been desperate for girls,” Martha said thoughtfully, oblivious to how close she danced to the truth, “but even so, that doesn’t sound like something Matron would do.”

  “Of course,” I said. “My brother hasn’t seen me in five years. He doesn’t know the first thing about me.”

  She thought it over, looked relieved. “Then you’re well rid of him,” she said. “Good night.”

  Nina and I were silent after Martha left. Nina polished her spectacles. Finally I couldn’t stand it. “Wonderful,” I said to her. “Just wonderful. How long have you known?”

  “Since practically the first day,” she said without inflection. “You couldn’t fold a hospital bedsheet to save your life, Kitty, and it’s the first thing we all learn.”

  I sighed and lay back on my bed. Today was the day, it seemed, when my secrets went up in vapor. And the day I’d kissed Jack Yates. “Don’t blame Matron. Mr. Deighton hired me while Matron was away, and by the time she figured it out, I was already here and she was desperate. So she put me to work.”

  “It does explain why she had you clean that lav,” Nina said.

  I peered over at her. “You’re not angry? I thought you’d be livid.”

  She sat on the edge of her bed, her nightdress bulky and awkward. “It wasn’t my place to say anything,” she said. “Matron had sent you, after all. And you worked hard enough. And as for Martha, well, I may as well tell you. You’re not the only one lying to her.”

  This took a moment to sink in, and then I shot upright on the bed. “Your fiancé.”

  She flushed dull red and looked miserably guilty. “It was true at first—I swear it. Well, sort of. There was a fellow my mother thought I should marry. And she planned to have me meet him to see if we would suit. I told Martha I was engaged, because it was practically done. Almost. And I just wanted to be the engaged girl, you know?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Martha took to it—she was as excited as if it was happening to her. And the boy Mother had picked moved away without my ever meeting him, but by then it seemed so real. I found I liked making Martha happy. She’s got her faults—we all do—but she’s a good girl. She’s the best of us, really. So that was it. I’d rather lie to her and make her happy than let her down. I just couldn’t bear to let her down.”

  I lay back on my bed, thinking. “You had me fooled,” I said.

  “Kitty, I’m a horrible liar.”

  “No, no, you did all right. You floundered a little when she asked you about the dress, though. A good lie has to be convincing in the details.”

  “I guess I could take lessons.” But she was snickering—Nina, actually trying not to laugh—and I couldn’t get offended. “I’m turning the lamp out now.”

  I watched her do it, thinking sorrowfully of the book on my bedside table, and that I wouldn’t be able to read it. “What are you going to do?” I asked her. “Eventually she’s going to wonder why you don’t get married.”

  “Kitty,” she said from the dark space across from me, “I have no idea. And if you say anything, I’ll—”

  “Find me and skin me, yes.” I sat upright in bed again, staring into the dark. “Wait a minute. If you knew about me, then you knew I was lying about having clearance to go into Jack Yates’s room.”

  “Of course I knew it.”

  “And you let me go in there anyway and get caught. And get myself an incident report.”

  “I’m nice,” she said, “but I’m not that nice. Now for God’s sake go to sleep.”

  • • •

  I awoke before dawn again and dressed while Nina slept. I’d had no dreams this time, but a strange energy coursed through me. I recognized it as anticipation, though I could not have said of what. My muscles and my nerves seemed fluid, ready. There was no way I would sleep again.

  I pulled the handwritten pages out of The Odyssey, slid them into my pocket in the still-dark, picked up my boots, and crept from the room. This time I saw nothing when I sat on the staircase to tie my boots. I slipped out the kitchen door and looked around at the horizon, which was slowly turning an eerie pink as the sun began its ascent. I half looked for a figure standing on the rise, and at first I saw nothing; the dark was too impenetrable. Then I made it out, a lone figure stark against the horizon, and I held my breath.

  It wasn’t Jack. It wasn’t Maisey. And it wasn’t the strange figure of the woman I’d seen. It was a man, soft and pudgy, his patients’ whites flapping against his legs in the rising breeze.

  I climbed the rise, huffing. “Tom,” I said when I got to the top. “It’s early. What are you doing here?”

  He was looking out over the marshes, his face, as it so often was, clear of any emotion, any knowledge. He turned and glanced at me. “Oh, hello,” he said. “Are you the new nurse?”

  I sighed. “Yes.”

  “I’m trying to remember why I came out here,” he said matter-of- factly. Then he pointed at the pinkening horizon. “Over there. That means something’s coming.”

  I gazed at it. “Something?”

  “A storm,” he said. “A bad one.”

  That explained the stillness, the readiness in my veins.

  “I don’t know why I remember that and not anything else,” said Tom. “I know I’ve come out here before, just to this spot. To get away from the house. It’s bad in there some nights. The man comes, and he’s so terribly angry.”

  My heart slowed to a hard, measured throb. “The man?”

  “Oh, no one likes him, so I’ve come here before to get away. I always think I’m going to go home. I know exactly where it is. And then I walk out the door, and I stand here, and . . .” He looked around. “I don’t know where I would go from here. Do you?”

  “No,” I said softly.

  “It’s so confusing. I’d really like to go home. But this . . . this seems to be all there is.”

  We looked at the sunrise, watching the sky grow light. It was beautiful in its way, but I could believe what Tom had said. Something bad was coming.

  “Who is the man, Tom?” I asked. “The angry one.”

  But he only glanced at me and away again. “He’s dead. Horribly, horribly dead. But you won’t believe me. No one does.”

  “I believe you,” I said softly.

  “Then you’ll see him when he comes,” Tom replied. His brow creased and trouble crossed his features. “I think it’s going to be bad.”

  His brow smoothed again, and the memory of whatever he had seen, whatever he had heard, left his mind. He went inside to breakfast and left me watching the slow approach of the clouds, wondering exactly what was coming.

  PART THREE

  Nineteen Men

  So much is written about the war nowadays, and in proportion so little of it strikes a right and wholesome note—and yet it is so clear. It is nothing but an intimately personal tragedy to every British (and German) soldier concerned in the fighting part of it.

  —Private A. R. Williams, in a letter home,

  October 1916. Killed in action at Ypres,

  August 1917

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It is June 1919, and this is the account of my dreams I’ve been asked to write:

  At first I am sleeping and it is quiet. But I awa
ken and I know someone is there. In the corridor, I think. There’s pressure on my chest and I can’t breathe. Smell of smoke in the back of my throat that reminds me of the trenches, how it was there. That thick, smoky smell, rotten, wet.

  A prickling feeling comes over me then. All over me. It’s like fear, but of course I’m not afraid, there’s nothing to be afraid of, just the dark and we’ve all spent time in the dark. But I know he’s coming closer. I don’t know who he is but I know he’s coming, and a voice in my head says, “Coward, you are a coward.” I can’t move. It’s horrible. He grabs me with cold hands and I know I’m going to die and I wake.

  This dream is almost always the same, I don’t know why.

  I’m in bed, and my father comes. He’s not really my father (died in wales when I was four) and yet he is. His footsteps are terrible. He puts a hand on me, it’s icy cold, he leans over me and I feel his breath. Get up, get up, you coward, get up. I try to speak. He’s not my father, I want to tell him so. The man has a heavy mustache, I can’t see him but I know it, and my father was clean shaven. And yet he is my father and I’ve failed him.

  But his cold hands keep grabbing me, telling me to get up you coward, and I open my mouth to scream at him but I’ve got blood in my mouth, thick and warm, that taste of it in my throat, and I choke on it, and I wake.

  This dream is not the truth, my father was a good man.

  I am at the hosp. As I am always (that is portis house) but I am outside the bldg. Standing by isolation room on west side. You know that part of the house. I do not want to be there. Something v. Bad about to happen but cannot move. I am going to die, I feel it. V. Strange because I would not mind being dead normally (no more war in my head) but in the dream I am v. Afraid of it. More afraid than we were at the front. Impossible to explain really.

  Then I realize I am not going to die but am going to see something v. Bad and I close my eyes. Never closed my eyes in all the things I saw there but there you go. Then a voice comes. Kneel you coward, it says, but whether to me or to someone else I do not know. I wake v. Confused. There is a bad taste in my throat. It is like how I heard they executed some of those poor fellows but I never saw one (execution) myself so I don’t know why I dream of it.

  I hope this helps, sorry confusing but the lights are going out.

  I woke once and saw a man at the foot of my bed. He was young and pale and had no shirt on. He stared and stared at me. I told myself it was a nightmare but I didn’t wake. My throat hurt like I’d swallowed smoke. I thought someone was coming but I didn’t know who. I don’t know when I woke. I told the doctors but they said it was a manifestation of my unbalanced mind and I had to have mind over matter. I never said anything again but I know I can tell this to you, jack old chap, because you are one of us and a good fellow. I hope you have not had a similar dream as I would not wish it on anyone.

  You coward, you goddamned coward. That’s all I remember and lately I hear it when I’m awake too. Gunshots at night, it’s a rifle, the cracks make me scream and scream like I’m there again.

  He was in the mirrors sometimes. When I was awake. His face was there, cloudy, those skinny bare shoulders. I know my privileges will get revoked but I know what I saw. Yes I’m crazy but have you noticed they took out all the mirrors in this place?

  . . . I think “he’s coming, he’s coming” and I am going to die. But the worst thing is that I deserve it, because what am I? Who am I? What am I really, what is left of a man? It’s my soul that’s gone. I’m sorry about the screaming . . .

  “Kitty.”

  “Yes?”

  “Are you quite all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look like you’ve been weeping.”

  “No, of course not. I’m quite myself.”

  “Well, all right, if you’re certain. Put on your long sleeves. Mr. Deighton is arriving, and it’s time for inspection.”

  • • •

  Mr. Deighton was somewhere in his thirties, with hair of undistinguished brown and a large pair of reddish eyes with pouches drooping beneath them. He wore a three-piece suit and watch chain, the high collar and tie starched and stiff in the oppressive heat. He did not even remove his hat in deference to us but looked us over distantly, as if he’d been directed to look at a painting he found of no particular interest.

  I kept him in my sight right from the first. I studied him closely from the corner of my eye during inspection, trying to appear dull and deferential while looking him over. I watched his expression for quickness, for sparks of cunning and intelligence. I listened to his words and the tone of his voice for bad temper, for erudition and intelligence. I watched the rest of him to see how strong he was, how quick he might be. I watched the leather briefcase he carried in his right hand.

  I saw nothing. No sign of deviousness, or unctuousness, or evil that would indicate a man who played a very deep game. No marks of obvious ostentation or pride or money. Just a tired-looking man with a slightly weak chin and a well-made, but not too expensive, three-piece suit.

  He did not pay Matron particular attention. He arrived after breakfast and took a brief cup of tea in the front parlor with Matron and Boney. Nurses’ inspection came next. Then we were dismissed to our duties. I had arranged it so that my duties took me close to the corridor to Matron’s office, where I could see that she was closeted with Mr. Deighton for some thirty minutes, alone, without even Boney in the room. And that is it, I thought. It’s done.

  They mustn’t have discussed the incident from the day before, because when he emerged his face was as impassive as ever, the pouched eyes still holding their distant expression. Matron, behind him, looked grim and more tired even than she had earlier, as if something had drained her. If she had handed over the incident reports, I thought, then she had possibly just handed him her own doom as Matron. Even so, she didn’t look well, and I wondered whether perhaps she had a headache.

  I was just figuring what my next move should be, my mind traveling the possibilities, when I passed the head of the corridor and heard him say, “Matron, I would like to have a tour of the building.”

  “Of course. I would be delighted,” she said, sounding not delighted at all.

  “No, no. I would not want to take you from your duties. One of the nurses will do.”

  And there I was, lingering. I had nothing in my hands and was on my way to nowhere in particular, but Matron didn’t seem to notice. “Nurse Weekes,” she called to me, sounding relieved. “Please give Mr. Deighton a tour, if you would.”

  “What would you like to see, sir?” I asked him when we were alone. “The patients are at morning exercise. They’ve been behaving very well today.”

  For the first time an expression crossed his face, one of such startlement it was almost horror. “The patients? No. No, I do not wish to see the patients.”

  “Oh, no, sir?” I asked sweetly. I could never resist. “They’re your customers, after all. Wouldn’t you like to see how they’re treated here?”

  He looked at me as if I’d started barking like a dog. “That won’t be necessary. Not at all. I will start downstairs.”

  We began in the kitchen, where Nathan and the kitchen boys gave us surprised looks. We did not tour the gardens—the patients were there, of course—but looked at the laundry and the storage rooms before coming back upstairs and going through the empty dining room and common room. “Has anyone reported this crumbling masonry here?” he would say randomly to me, or, “Nurse, this stair seems crooked. Please make a note.” And I, quite obviously carrying no means of making notes, would say to his back, “Yes, sir.”

  It went on and on. I stuck to him as he toured every section of the main floor, dictating notes to me along the way. I stuck to him as we climbed the stairs and started down the corridors of the men’s bedrooms. Here he questioned me about supplies, meals, medications, and any sundries the men
received, like newspapers—everything, of course, except for the health of the men themselves. He grilled me, spoke down to me, but he never did the one thing I wanted him to do: He never set down his briefcase.

  As we approached the lav, he stopped and turned to me. “Nurse, please excuse me for a moment.” I nodded, hopeful; any other man would have left his briefcase before using the facilities. But Mr. Deighton walked through the bathroom door, briefcase in hand. Time was running out. I let out a groan of frustration.

  “Are you all right, Nurse Weekes?”

  I turned. Captain Mabry stood in the corridor at the top of the staircase, regarding me calmly from behind his spectacles.

  “Captain,” I said. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to be at exercise.”

  “I came to get my book,” he replied. “I’ve been given permission to read on the veranda. Are you supervising the lav?”

  “I’m giving Mr. Deighton a tour.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “He’s in there now.”

  A look of alarm crossed Mabry’s face as he whispered back. “Ah. I do hope the pipes behave. The lav can be . . . a little upsetting.”

  “I know.”

  He blinked at me. “You don’t look very happy.”

  “I’m fine.”

  He looked closer. “You are up to something. What might it be?”

  I opened my mouth to tell him, and then I remembered his revoked access to his wife and children. “It’s nothing, really. You needn’t get involved. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Well,” he said. “Now I really must know.”

  I sighed. I could tell him, I supposed, without getting him in trouble. “You don’t know how to get a man’s briefcase out of his hands, do you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Mr. Deighton. In his briefcase are the incident reports, including Matron’s report about yesterday. I’d hoped he’d put it down before going in there, but he didn’t.”