by Carla Kelly
“I’ll be on the landing pier,” she said, and turned on her heel, closing the door more quietly than Sir David.
Unnerved, he sewed up Junius Craighead, carefully covering him with a sheet. In the morning, the dead house attendants would prepare him for burial. For one small moment, Philemon wanted to crawl under the sheet, too.
He didn’t think she would be at the jetty, but she was, dangling her feet off the pier and leaning against the piling, looking so alone. He sat down beside her, still numb.
It was a long time before she spoke. “I wanted to kill him,” she whispered finally. “I told myself when James died that no one would ever grab me like that again, or shake a finger in my face. It’s a good thing I dropped the bistoury.” She turned to look at him. “What are you going to do with me?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Just this,” he said, putting his arm around her waist.
She sighed with relief, which soothed him as nothing else could have.
“I don’t get angry often,” she said, and it sounded apologetic. “Never, in fact. He should not have grabbed me.” She sobbed out loud. “No one should do that to a woman!”
The night was warm, but he felt himself go cold. She wasn’t speaking of Sir David. He kept his arm around her. “It’s almost pleasant here,” he said, after a long pause for both of them to collect themselves. “I’m surprised.”
She seemed to welcome the change of subject. “I thought if I came here tonight, I might not dread it so much when the jetty bell rings.”
She shivered, and he tightened his arm around her. At the same time, he realized it was all too much for her. She had enough to bear without tackling ward blocks full of wounded men, constant demands, no sleep, the dead and dying, endless war, and now an administrator who would be watching her every move. You cannot possibly want a man who would further complicate your life, he thought miserably.
“Laura, I think you should go to Torquay.” The words felt as if they were wrenched out of his stomach.
She shook her head vehemently, then turned to watch him. “Only if you do not want me around here anymore,” she said. “Only if you don’t really…”
She couldn’t say it. He could, though. “If I don’t really love you? Laura, that day will never come. I believe I’ve loved you since I saw you in Nana’s sitting room.”
“Even when I have more defects than any sane man would willingly shoulder?”
“Would a sane man live the life I’m living?” he asked, in turn. “Laura, you have every right to be furious with Sir David, with Sir James, with your father. It’s no crime to want to protect yourself.”
“Then why couldn’t I?”
It was the cry of the ages, and it clanged in his brain like a gong. What could he say? He had to try. “Women aren’t taught to fight back, not when people they know they should trust betray them. Or so I think.” He kissed her hair. “As for your defects, have you ever considered that maybe no one sees them but you?”
She looked at him in utter disbelief, and he could think of nothing to say. Gradually she relaxed against him. “I should trust you, shouldn’t I?” she asked at last. “I wish I did.”
Be light about this, he told himself. “No woman wants to marry an idiot,” he said. “Did you hear what I said to Sir David? I…I asked him if he had ever seen a post mortem before! What an arrogant ass I am.”
She looked at him seriously. “You’re talking about marriage, after I have told you what a bad bargain I am?”
“I love you! And I’ve just told you what a jackass I am. I’m not exactly an answer to a woman’s prayers.”
She couldn’t help but smile, which pleased him more than if she had flung her arms around his neck and knocked him backward in the grass—which sounded good, too.
“Do you think he has seen a post mortem before?”
“I have no idea,” he replied, laughing. “Do you love me?”
“I would like to.”
He helped her to her feet. “Here we are, two sillies, sitting on the landing pier at two in the morning while that Marine guard over there probably wonders if we are spies! Give me a kiss, Laura.”
He didn’t know if she would, but she did, holding his face in her hands and touching his lips lightly with hers. She did it again. He was in heaven. He walked her back to Block Four, ready to see her to the kitchen, when he heard someone calling him.
“Sounds like duty,” he told her, slipping his hand from around her waist. “It’s just twenty steps to the kitchen.”
“I can get there by myself.”
He could see her hesitate, too shy to say anything. He kissed her cheek and ran to the orderly.
Except for the lights kept burning on each floor, Building Four was dark. Her mind on Philemon, she hurried to the kitchen and stepped back with a gasp when a man rose up from a crouch by the door.
She had nothing in her hands for self-defense, but stood her ground, drawing herself up as tall as she could. “Who are you?” she demanded, in her frostiest voice, even as her knees practically knocked together.
“Billy from CWard. I’m hungry,” he said, coming closer.
Her lips tight together, Laura looked closer, disturbed to see the man who had been so rude to her, and whom Philemon had chided, as well.
“Breakfast is at six bells, Billy. You can wait.”
“Aw, mum!”
“Go on.”
He came closer, but she refused to budge. The seaman smiled, showing a jagged row of teeth. His breath was foul and she wondered why she had flinched at the sight of Junius Craighead. This living man was worse.
“Go back to bed, Billy, and I’ll overlook this.” She kept her voice low because she knew it would betray her in an undignified squeak if she talked louder. What she hadn’t expected was the intensity of it.
Apparently it impressed Billy. “I can’t make it up those stairs by meself,” he whined, defeated.
“Yes, you can,” she snapped. “You got here, didn’t you?”
They stared at each other; Billy blinked first. Clutching his scrofulous arm as though begging for sympathy, he mounted the steps easily enough, stopping once to give her a look that would have toppled her if she hadn’t been leaning on the doorknob.
Inside the kitchen, she went to the knife drawer and stood there a long moment, just looking at the blades before she closed the drawer.
She went to her room, where she tugged her armchair in front of the door and huddled on her bed, knees close to her chin, until she heard four bells, and Pierre and the scullery maid moving around in the kitchen. She allowed herself to close her eyes, even if it was only for thirty minutes. She wanted to think about what Philemon had said to her, but all she saw when her eyes closed was that man rising up from the dark, coming toward her.
She knew it was insane, but she felt that same bath of fear that covered her when Sir James opened her door and came to her bed, terrifying her with his demands, reminding her all over again how friendless she was. It was as if nothing had changed.
She’s as tired as I am, Philemon told himself as he, Aitken and Laura finished their morning ward walk. I hope my declaration of love is not the cause of her discomfort. No, she is just tired.
He decided he would tell himself that, even as she gave him a wan smile and shook her head when he suggested they adjourn to the kitchen for tea, a ritual that was fast becoming his favorite luxury of the day—he had so few.
“It will only take a moment,” he said, trying to cajole her. He moved closer and she backed away, sending a chill down his spine.
“No! I have said I do not want any tea now,” she declared. She put her hand to her head in a gesture of distraction. “It is nothing, Lieutenant. I think I will check on Davey’s classroom.”
He looked around. No one else stood in the corridor, but she had called him Lieutenant anyway. Something had changed in the three hours since he had kissed her and said good-night; what, he didn’t know. He hadn’t time to delve into t
he matter, but he knew enough about human nature to know when someone preferred to be left alone.
“Very well, Mrs. Taunton,” he said formally. “Let me know if you need anything.”
To his further unease, her eyes immediately filled with tears. She said nothing, but fled up the stairs, her face stark. How do I read you? he thought miserably. I know how your body works, maybe better than you do, but I do not know how to reach your heart.
It was a disquieting thought, and he tried to drown it in work, which had never failed him before. It failed him now. How many times had he asked Aitken to repeat himself that afternoon, when his mate was explaining a simple procedure? And when Aitken finally asked him what the matter was, he had no answer.
The month passed in an odd way. He seldom bothered to glance at a calendar, but the air was crisper now, and he knew autumn was here. He was busy every minute and Laura Taunton was right there to help, not flinching from any misery he threw her way. He didn’t work her harder because he wished to increase her obvious turmoil, but simply because he needed her skills.
There was Napoleon, always Napoleon. Wellington’s steady march through Portugal and back into Spain meant more work for everyone, as simple as that. The sound of the jetty bell—a demand that could not be ignored—was becoming almost a daily occurrence. The sound reminded him how puny he was, how swept along he was by the fortunes of war. Whatever pride that had made him speak so arrogantly to Sir David was gone now.
Sir David Carew harassed him now with daily memos, urging more economy in his expenses on Block Four, even as he sent his loblolly boy around for free meals from Pierre’s kitchen. Philemon memoed back, reminding him that Lady Taunton was making up whatever difference there was to the budget, but the memos continued.
The administrator watched Laura all the time now, standing at his window overlooking the jetty as they worked to save lives. Philemon was forced to return her to mere hand-holding with the wounded at the wharf, to keep Sir David at bay. The ward block was a different matter; the administrator stayed away, and he could use Laura to the extent of her growing skill. She never complained.
Between Laura Taunton’s distance, overwork and administrative tomfoolery, Philemon Brittle was an unhappy man. His mood only worsened with the disturbing case of Gunner Alex Small in D Ward.
“There’s something else in his abdomen,” Philemon said one morning, announcing the obvious to his staff, who had already reached the same conclusion days ago, he was sure. “I’ve probed until I fear to do harm.”
Aitken rewarded him with a wry smile of understanding. Laura continued sitting beside the gunner, who was conscious and watching her for any sign of anxiety. Philemon was pleased with the way she revealed nothing about her own feelings. He had trained her well; more likely, hard duty as Lady Taunton had trained her even better.
As he watched, she touched the gunner’s inflamed skin, feeling his swollen abdomen gently, watching his face for distress as she pressed and released as he had taught her, trying to divine the place of trouble.
“If we could see into your body, Gunner,” she said, addressing her patient as though he was the only man in existence.
“Aye, mum, you’d see lots of grog, hardtack and old machine parts, for all we know,” he joked.
Philemon found her in D Ward several times a day for the next week, as Gunner Small began to drift in and out of consciousness. Late one evening, when the ward was quiet in sleep, he risked a casual hand on her shoulder. She did not lean against him as he craved, but she did incline her head in his direction.
“You cannot probe again?” she whispered.
“I dare not. I cannot do him harm.” He crouched by her stool. “If he is even slightly conscious, his abdominal muscles tense up when I insert a probe. I might as well drill through a brick wall.”
“If he is unconscious?”
“It is too brief.” He held up his hand. “I could wish for longer fingers, because I can’t feel anything with the probes.”
“And you’re the best there is,” she said softly.
He shook his head, but would never have denied what her praise meant to his starving heart. “Ask any physician. I’m just a surgeon.”
“You’re far more,” she said, touched his knee and left the ward.
He sat by the gunner until he had collected himself, then left his list of instructions with the orderly, and trudged to his quarters. He stared at his bed a long time, debating whether to strip or take off his shoes; he decided to strip. He put himself between the sheets with a sigh, too tired to extinguish his lamp.
He woke to footsteps on the stairs, which didn’t surprise him overmuch. During these days of emergency, he left his front door unlocked, so his mates and orderlies could pound upstairs and shake him awake. He lay there listening, and realized it was Laura Taunton.
She came up the stairs quietly, but with no speed, almost as though she didn’t want to be doing what she was doing. And what is that? he asked himself, wishing he had at least put on his nightshirt.
His door was open, but she knocked on it.
“Come in, Laura,” he said, hoping his voice wouldn’t squeak like an adolescent.
She stood in the middle of his room, carefully clothed in her dark dress and neat apron, with her hair in its cap.
“Hold up your hand.”
Mystified, he did as she asked, sitting up and tucking his sheet carefully around his bare body. She came closer and put her hand against his.
“My fingers are longer than yours.”
“I’ve told you that,” he said, not moving his palm from hers. “I don’t have surgeon’s hands.” He chuckled, trying to break the tension building inside him. “Would you be disappointed in me if I said that your hands were the first thing I noticed about you?”
“I would say you don’t know much about impressing ladies.”
He was relieved with her lighthearted answer. She kept her palm against his, and he felt her hand begin to tremble slightly.
“I want to probe Gunner Small. I have to try, because he is dying and I cannot bear it.”
He lowered his hand, looking at the tears sliding down her cheeks.
“Perhaps I can feel something in there you cannot. And if I can, perhaps I can reach just a half inch farther with a probe and retrieve it.”
“And if you cannot?” It seemed heartless to say, but she had to know what defeat might feel like. Heaven knew, he had experience with that.
“I will at least know we have tried everything we know to do.”
“You’ll have to work as fast as you can.”
He was all business now, even as he sat naked by the person he loved most in the world. “Wait for me downstairs.”
“No. Let us not give Sir David anything to look for if he’s watching out of some window! Dreadful man. I will meet you on D Ward.”
By the time he got to the ward, the orderly had already placed a screen around Small’s bed. Laura had put his instruments in hot water. She stood there, looking down at the gunner in what was an imitation of his own stance before beginning surgery, whether she realized it or not.
“Give us all the light you can,” Philemon told the orderly.
“Might you wait until morning?” the orderly asked, as he took the lamp from his own desk.
“We cannot.” He took the orderly by the arm. “If word gets out that Mrs. Taunton has been assisting me, we will be in trouble.” He glanced down at the gunner and listened for a moment to his labored breathing. “As it is, we may already be too late.”
“Aye, sir, I understand.”
While the orderly went in search of more light, Philemon took his longest probe from the water, dried it, and set it on a clean cloth. He took her hand.
“What am I feeling for?”
“I have no idea,” he replied honestly. “Could be a piece of bone from someone else’s body—he was standing next to the second lieutenant. More than likely it’s cloth from his own shirt.”
>
“Like Junius Craighead?”
He nodded. “The ball’s trajectory goes down. I’ve been thinking about this. You might want to stand on the other side of him and lean over him. I never did that, but it might be a better angle.”
She put her lips next to the gunner’s ear. “Alex, we’re going to try one more time. I’ll do my best not to hurt you.”
“I don’t think he can hear you,” Philemon said, touched by her concern.
The gunner muttered something and his eyelids flickered. “Well, I’m proved wrong,” Philemon said. “Laura, you’d wake the dead.”
Her eyes were troubled. “I never want to do that.”
While the orderly was setting up the lights, Philemon removed the bandage and pad, sniffing it. “No putrefaction yet, that I can tell,” he murmured. “I’ll take off the adhesive and widen the entry as much as I dare. Let me syringe out what I can of the exudations.”
He worked quickly as Laura watched, her lips tight. He could tell she was nerving herself. When he finished—the gunner barely groaned—and the area behind the screen was as light as possible, Laura walked to the other side of the bed.
“Roll him on his side,” she requested, and he obeyed, steadying the gunner.
“Just ease your finger down.”
“He’s resisting,” she muttered. Perspiration was already springing up on her forehead; he wiped it with his apron. She leaned farther over and pressed harder. Gunner Small groaned out loud and Philemon saw her tears. Then he noticed the gunner’s shoulders relaxing.
“Blessed syncope, my dearest,” Philemon said. “He’s unconscious. Work fast. Wiggle your finger around. Press in harder.”
“Nothing,” she gasped. “It’s such a jumble in there.”
“Try your middle one,” he ordered.
“Roll him back.”
She wiped her hand on her apron and eased in the other finger, bearing down as hard as she dared, leaning over the gunner. He watched her face, noting her frustration, then held his breath as her expression changed.