The voice suited neither one. Its clarity was almost obscene, given how far it was from human. Birds, she thought, should not have voices; certainly should not gift them to men in their extremity.
‘Squadron Leader Jones,’ Matron introduced him, trying perhaps to quell him at the same time.
If so, it was a hopeless endeavour. ‘Tubby,’ he said, ‘people call me Tubby around here,’ and once perhaps it had not been ironic. Certainly the jacket he wore had been cut for a wider man. He looked almost gaunt within its loose folds as they fell around him. The sick burn fat, as do the sorrowful. She had been plump herself, once, it seemed an age ago. Blame the ration, and never worry. What did she need of flesh?
Besides, he was still talking, distraction, what she was here for: that dreadful voice, savage and precise. ‘No talking shop in the mess.’
‘Squadron Leader Jones.’ Matron was professionally sharp, conspicuously not calling him Tubby, and not actually repeating herself even though each word was the same. This was a conversation, unless it was a ritual dance, each step prefigured and familiar.
‘You can say what you like, Matron –’ even if that was just his name, apparently – ‘but rules are rules—’
‘And rules change, when you cross the border.’ That was his neighbour on the other side, another of these too-thin young men in ill-fitting uniform that might once have shown his frame to advantage. ‘We’ve been over this, Tubby.’ Over it and over it, Ruth was guessing. ‘This isn’t your mess, it’s Matron’s tea table. We don’t wear our own ranks in here.’ Which was true, she realized, and one of the things that jarred: bare epaulettes on all these uniform jackets. ‘And we don’t fetch our own rules either.’
‘Matron flings our ranks around willy-nilly.’
‘Not willy-nilly. Only to scold. Isn’t that right, Matey?’
‘I’ll thank you, Flying Officer Kaye, not to call me Matey.’ But she said it with a glimmer of humour around the purse of her mouth, and it raised a grin in him. He was lucky, he could still grin. His damage was elsewhere. Ruth couldn’t see it immediately, and she wasn’t going to peer, nor pry, no: but she was sure that it was there to be found. To be learned about. As and when. There were orderlies down the table, but orderlies had their own proper uniform, RAMC fatigues, familiar in any military hospital from here to Timbuctoo. Every military hospital Ruth was familiar with put their walking wounded in uniform too, uniform uniform, regulation and distinctive. Something was different, apparently, here.
No, everything was different, apparently, here. Driving out into the world, Tolchard had worn a normal uniform jacket, with insignia. So had his friends fetching cider for the colonel. She was starting to think that perhaps they had only a few such, which they shared between them on exeats. Here in the house, the patients wore their own old uniforms, but stripped of rank. That was only indicative of something that ran far deeper and mattered far more. Something that she kept glimpsing, but could not seize.
Something that she wanted to blame on Aesculapius, whether or not that was fair. She wasn’t stupid; she was fully aware that it wasn’t only the most obvious patients around this table who exhibited damage. If she were bolder, she might wonder what Matron’s secret was.
Though she’d never be bold enough to ask.
There were other questions, though, and she’d been invited to ask those. The uniforms were easy, were obvious; and there was her own uniform too, not regulation, she needed to ask what to do about that. She opened her mouth and was interrupted by a blast of singing that would have drowned out last orders in an East End pub, and she could barely hear herself as she said instead, ‘Beer, Matron? At teatime?’
In a hospital? – but she wasn’t of course going to add that. And didn’t need to, because it was absolutely inherent in her tone of voice, in her question.
Matron’s face was eloquent in its response, and actually more informative than what she said.
‘By special dispensation, yes. It’s supposed to be reserved for Major Black’s boys, except on special occasions, but of course they exploit the privilege. And their senior officers connive with them –’ her eyes finding out Aesculapius, Major Dorian, who had been away for the day and come in and not even shrugged off his overcoat before he joined the communal singing – ‘so of course everyone takes advantage, as soon as they can shuffle from the ward to the piano. That seems to be the major’s definition.’
Which major, and his definition of what? Who is Major Black, if he’s not the surgeon and not the psychiatrist? What goes on behind those doors there, in the central block of the house?
Her mind was abuzz with questions, her tongue tripped over them. She was too slow with any. The squadron leader squawked across the table: ‘Matron, you know we love you and fear you and would do anything to please you—’
‘Just so long as I don’t come between you and your beer, am I right?’
‘Of course. But I’m drinking tea today, just so that I can sit with you.’
‘Young man, you are drinking tea today because your friends have heard your singing voice and they won’t let you join in. How naive do you imagine that I am?’
He smiled down at his plate, glanced sidewise at her, didn’t answer. She snorted, and turned back to Ruth.
Who managed, if not quite a question, at least a step towards one.
‘I don’t believe I’ve met Major Black yet.’
‘No, likely not. He doesn’t trouble himself much with the nursing staff. He’s not interested until a boy’s ready to leave my side.’
Any hospital was an exercise in territory and hierarchies, just as the military was. Even so, this place was beginning to remind Ruth of nothing so much as a boys’ boarding school. At least as far as she understood them, from the stories of Kipling and Tom Brown’s Schooldays and what Peter had told her of his own.
Matron kept her patients as long as she could, and then handed them over – reluctantly – to this Major Black, for whatever purposes he had in mind. With Major Dorian’s clear consent, indeed, with his collusion. There was more to it than beer and a sing-song. She glowered at the piano troupe, and found herself once again eye to eye with Aesculapius, across that gulf; and blushed, and turned her head away, back to Matron’s bird-bright gaze.
‘When may I see the wards?’ It was nothing but defiance, to declare her proper loyalty. I belong on your side.
‘After tea. You can join the colonel on his rounds, meet your patients at last.’ Mine, her voice declared, until I have to let them go. ‘No more than that, mind, I’m not having you on the duty roster until tomorrow. You’ve come a long way, and that little sleep won’t be enough to set you up for the work you have ahead. Especially if you don’t eat. You haven’t touched your cake. I won’t let you lift a hand, you know, until I’m satisfied that you’re ready.’
Ruth gazed down in mild startlement at the slab of dense sticky gingerbread set before her. ‘I, I’m sorry, Matron. You know, I can’t quite remember the last time I saw a cake like this?’
In truth she had lost the habit of cake, almost the habit of eating. Except what was necessary, enough to keep her going from one day to the next, not to be a nuisance or make an exhibit of herself.
She thought the little tyrant on her right was not fooled for a moment. What she heard was a snort, and, ‘Well, it’ll do you no good looking at it. I want to see a clean plate, my girl,’ for all the world as though she was herself back at school again, a gawky adolescent with too much else on her mind to worry about the minor things like keeping body and soul together.
‘Yes, Matron.’ Meekly, not to be a nuisance. Picking up her fork.
THREE
In the end, because she wouldn’t – wouldn’t – catch his eye again, Aesculapius came to her.
‘Well, Sister Taylor? Settling in?’
‘Yes, sir. Thank you.’
‘Well. Take your time, don’t rush things. It’ll all be a little strange for a while.’
The
sharpness of her answer surprised herself, perhaps, more than it did him. ‘I’m here to work, sir, not to take things easy.’ I’m not a convalescent. Not one of your patients. No.
‘Of course. Nevertheless. Tompkins, if you’re done with that chair . . .?’
The orderly sitting at her other hand had conspicuously not finished his tea, but the major’s word had him draining his cup in one throat-aching swallow and running off with a wedge of cake still clenched in one hand, trailing apologies as he went.
Major Dorian chuckled, and annexed the vacated chair. ‘You’re thinking that wasn’t kind,’ he observed, uncannily accurate. ‘Tompkins is a lingerer. If he’s late on duty one more time, he’ll go down in his sergeant’s report as a malingerer. He needs chivvying. It’s kinder in the long run, to be a little unkind now and then.’
‘He’s afraid of you.’
‘Yes. Yes, he probably is. Most people here are, a little.’ He considered this, as though it were simply another datum; and added, ‘You’re not.’
‘No.’ In honesty, she was afraid of very little now. Except her dreams, some nights, perhaps. There might have been a reason why she didn’t stretch out on a bench at Darlington station and try to sleep.
Here she seemed to have waking dreams; Peter was everywhere.
Well, but what did she expect, coming to a hospital full of pilots?
They didn’t tell me . . .
No, because something here was top secret, something more than a hospital full of pilots. Aesculapius must have known, she thought, how Peter died, he must have seen her file. He must have known how she would feel coming here, or what else was a psychiatrist for, what use was he?
He must, surely, have known; and yet he had approved her anyway.
Ruthless. It had been her first impression, and she saw no cause to change it now.
Ruthless, but . . .
Ruthless but careful, that would do for now. He would use whatever came to hand, use it and use it but not – she thought – damage what he might need later. A man who looked after his tools. He said, ‘They tell me that you fainted on the doorstep.’
As I stepped across your threshold, Aesculapius. Make of that what you will. She herself wanted to make nothing of it, she wanted it to mean nothing that she had seen Peter in the door’s wood, falling.
Of course they had told him, though. She had been carried to his own office, laid out on his couch. Perhaps he thought that she belonged there. One more patient to be analysed, one more skull to examine from the inside.
She said, ‘Yes. I’m sorry, it was stupid of me. No food in far too long, and a wakeful night. Not even nurses can run forever without refuelling. As Matron has been reminding me,’ with a firm turn of her head to draw in that redoubtable woman, and a forkful of cake to busy herself with.
‘Hmm,’ he said, utterly unfooled. Unpersuaded. ‘Well, if it happens again – despite Cook’s generosity, which is unbounded, and Matron’s watchfulness, which is legendary – come to see me. Don’t try to carry on regardless. The work here will take it out of you in any case, as much as you have to give. If you start with something missing, you’ll end up taking harm, and I won’t have that.’
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ she said. And then, a little belatedly, ‘Sir.’
‘To be sure,’ he said. And then, after a wicked pause that just matched hers, ‘Oh, to be so sure . . .’
He left her feeling small and young, diminished. It wasn’t fair – it wasn’t kind, no – when she had worked so hard to be the other thing, mature. Complete. Done with the world now, ready to move on.
Unexpectedly done with her plate too. She’d been afraid that the gingerbread would sit like lead in her stomach if she managed to swallow it at all, but she had seldom been more wrong. It melted somehow on the tongue and filled her with a warm benevolence, a sense of well-being that was almost frightening, it was so utterly unfamiliar.
She looked to Matron for consent to leave the table, and saw a looming figure behind her, Colonel Treadgold. His the voice she might have missed from the sing-song around the piano, if she’d only been paying attention and thinking straight. His bluff manner and mustachioed splendour made him a natural, surely. A bass baritone, most likely, laying down the path that the lighter tenors walked. And quaffing beer – no, cider, he was a cider man, but quaffing with the best, surely . . .
No, again. Something else to remember: he was on duty. So was she, now. Ward round, and he was here to collect her.
‘Ordinarily,’ he said, ‘staff cross the courtyard from one wing to the other, coming on and off duty. Rain or shine. Tonight you have a special dispensation; you’re with me, and so we may trespass in Major Black’s domain. Besides –’ in a pantomime whisper – ‘he isn’t here just now, he’s stood his team down till tonight, so the coast should be clear.’
‘Colonel . . .’
‘Hmm?’
‘Who is Major Black?’ And what’s he up to, and why do you all tiptoe around him, why does he get first claim on anything? This is a hospital, and you’re senior surgeon. And a colonel. You outrank him every way you can.
‘Ah, you’ll meet the major soon enough. Let that happen in its own good time.’ No need to dash to damnation, he seemed to be saying. Which was no answer at all, and only left her the more frustrated.
Which he knew, of course. She thought the moustache was hiding a smile as he opened a tall door and ushered her through.
No suggestion of servants’ quarters now, suddenly everything had changed scale. She stepped into darkness and couldn’t sense walls or ceiling, anything, until he touched a light switch by the door.
‘Oh. Goodness . . .’
Electric chandeliers glowed into life, high overhead.
Shuttered and stripped, silent and empty of life, this was still a magnificent space. The wide parquet floor was sprung beneath her feet; every window bay held an upholstered seat beneath the barred shutters; above the chandeliers, the ceiling was an arch of glory, a masterpiece of plasterwork and colour.
‘It’s a ballroom, surely?’
‘It was a ballroom, of course. Not for a while now, not for a long time. It wasn’t we who killed the dancing. Perhaps it will be a ballroom again, but that is out of my stars. For now – well, as you see.’
Major Black’s domain. Yes. She saw, and didn’t quite understand what she was seeing. Trestle tables collapsed and set aside against the long wall, they might be used for anything. Stacked chairs explained themselves. The gouges in the floor, the ruined varnish – well, heedless military occupation, of course they wouldn’t trouble with the varnish, any more than they trimmed the hedges.
Ammunition boxes, stacked beside the chairs. Again, they might hold anything. She didn’t want to think of this beautiful room being used as a rifle range. The sandbags piled up against the far end, though – and the sand that had spilled out of them, all across the floor there – did make her wonder. Did make her sniff the air, and frown, and, ‘Surely they don’t . . .?’
‘Oh, they do. Indoors, outdoors. Popguns and worse. Night and day. You’ll grow used to having your sleep disturbed. Oh, but you’ve been in London, of course. You’ll be used to that already.’
I’m a nurse, Colonel dear. I have been a wife in wartime. I am very, very used to that already. It wasn’t only shooting that went on in here. There were tailors’ dummies marked with arrows that had little or nothing to do with tailoring. Punch here, she guessed, to disable, here to silence, here to kill. There were man-sized silhouettes painted on the walls and pierced with many gashes in the plaster: St Sebastian in effigy, except that she thought that the damage probably had more to do with flung knives than arrows.
She did wonder what the owner of the house might have to say about such wanton vandalism, when he reclaimed it after the war. Assuming that he did so, assuming that he survived and England too, that it wouldn’t be the Nazis who were next to requisition his property.
She followed the colonel from
one room to the next, and found herself apparently in a world that contravened her own assumptions, that tracked her own thoughts. Here were Nazi uniforms racked and ready, for when those invaders came.
If that was the ballroom they had just traversed, this must be the supper room, smaller and less stately, still grand. Repurposed now as a robing room for German officers: regular army grey and SS black, summer and winter weights, overcoats in wool and leather, boots on shelves and a library in Gothic black letter print to browse through while they waited for a fitting.
They did, all too obviously, wait here for a fitting. There were chairs and footstools, coffee tables, signs of use. Shoehorns on long handles – boot horns, she supposed. Tailor’s chalk and pincushions.
Ruth blinked, and realized it had been a while since she’d done that.
Realized she’d been standing, staring, quite a while now.
Lifted her eyes to his, ready to apologize; saw his smile, his quick shake of the head.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘and don’t ask. Mum’s the word, yes?’
She nodded mutely, followed obediently.
Out of the supper room, and here was another, grander hallway. Here was the front door at last, with its two leaves and heavy bolts; here was the main stairway, dividing overhead and sweeping down in two mirror-image curves that met again in the last flight. Like a swan’s wings, she thought, grace and power embodied in a line.
Here was a racket, all unexpected, footsteps thundering overhead and voices raised in an incoherent whooping.
Here was something stranger, a shadow that flickered in and out of vision as she lifted her eyes, a shadow that seemed to turn and tumble in that great open space overhead, between the light and her, oh, Peter . . .
She might have thought he was coming down to find her, only that he wouldn’t make so much damn noise about it.
It was hardly possible to be sure of anything, but she was sure of this at least, that he wouldn’t have screamed as he fell. Not her Peter. As long as he wasn’t burning, as long as the fall had put the fires out.
House of Doors Page 5