Dead Man's Embers (16 page)

Angela returns with good news. ‘The room is yours,' she says, ‘for two nights, which you'll probably need. Give me your bag and I'll take it along and put it in there.' And with that she vanishes again.

Her energy exhausts Non. Angela had been working until she came to meet her. And a nurse must be on her feet all day, running about. Non wishes her own heart—, but here she stops herself. Her father had taught her that to wish for the impossible was a waste of energy and effort, whether mental or physical. She puts her hand out to rest on the back of the armchair, to take her weight, to stop her from sliding to the floor.

‘Sit down before you drop.' Angela has bounced back into the room.

Like a jack-in-the-box, Non thinks. ‘Thank you,' she says. And she is truly grateful to sink into the one armchair, which is more
comfortable than it looks, before she disgraces herself by fainting away as she had done at home.

‘I'll put the kettle on,' Angela says, and she whips open the curtain at the foot of the bed to reveal a tiny kitchen. There is a small sink with a tap – running water! – and a narrow shelf along the wall next to it that seems to serve as a table, with a wide cupboard fastened to the wall above it.

‘You must be gasping for a cup of tea. I know I am.' Angela has an oil stove of some kind, which she lights before balancing the kettle on top of it. ‘I can make toast and a poached egg if that's all right for you. Eggs are one of the few things I can get plenty of. A friend of mine at the hospital comes from a country family and they send her so much food every week she can't eat it all herself.' Angela pauses. ‘Well, that's what she says, anyway. I think I could eat as much as anyone wanted to send me!'

Non is not hungry. But she says, ‘Thank you. That would be lovely.'

Angela rushes past her and kneels down to fiddle with the contraption in the fireplace. She applies a match to it to make it spring instantly into flames. As she jumps to her feet, she looks at Non's face. ‘Gas fire,' she says. ‘It's much too hot to have it on but we have to toast the bread. Will you do that?'

How easy, Non thinks. She supposes the fire can be put out just as quickly as soon as she has toasted the bread.

The kettle whistles on the stove and is replaced by a pan of water for poaching the eggs while Angela makes a pot of tea.

The ease with which the meal is produced is a revelation to Non. A stove like Angela's would save her lighting the range these hot days just to boil the kettle. She wonders where she could buy one to take home with her. Then she wonders why she is letting her mind wander to inconsequential matters when she
needs to concentrate on what she wants to find out from Angela.

They sit opposite one another at the small window table. It reminds Non of a little bamboo table in her father's house that he kept next to his armchair, and which was always piled high with books and papers. Angela had reverently removed the Bible and placed it on the bed. A believer, then. Angela eats her food quickly and neatly but Non struggles with the egg on toast, she is so very tired, though she could drink the whole potful of tea by herself.

‘I'm sorry,' Angela says after sniffing at the milk jug, ‘I think the milk's soured. It's hopeless in this weather. Well, we'll just have to have our tea black.'

Black tea. Non hopes Maggie Ellis is not nosing about too much at home, making trouble when she is not there to head her off. Some wars are never over.

Angela chatters as she eats, and Non is glad not to have to talk. She tells Non about her work at the University College Hospital, how her ward specialises in the treatment of heart conditions. Non is astonished to hear of so many soldiers developing heart problems in the War, and how brave those men are coming back in for treatment, some of them over and over, for other injuries they received during the War that will not heal. ‘But at least they're alive,' Angela says, ‘and where there's life there's hope, wouldn't you say?' She enthuses about the doctors and surgeons and their skill in restoring the men to a semblance of normality, but is less enthusiastic about the hospital matron. ‘Rules with a rod of iron,' she says. ‘But I suppose everything runs like clockwork because of her.' And then her face lights up and she tells Non about a friend from before the War who works there as a doctor. ‘He worked in the casualty-clearing hospitals all through the War,' she says. ‘He's brilliant. Dedicated.'

Non looks up from pushing her poached egg around her plate. ‘Oh, are you courting?' she asks, and instantly wishes she could bite out her tongue.

Angela has gone still. ‘No,' she says. ‘My fiancé was killed. He wasn't a soldier, he was a priest, went out to give comfort, he said. He didn't get any himself. That's why I went to nurse in the battlefields, like a lot of the other girls, to feel a bit nearer to him, to find out what happened. He was never found, you see.'

‘I'm sorry,' Non says, giving up altogether on the egg and toast and pushing her plate away. ‘But you sounded . . . well . . . fond of your friend.'

‘He's my friend because he was Edward's friend – they both began with medicine, but Edward said he was more interested in people's souls, he thought they were more important.' Angela gives a little shrug, as if to say she is not so sure herself.

Not reverently, then: perhaps the Bible was Edward's. Non glances towards it on the bed, as if it might tell her something that will get her out of this embarrassment.

‘Some girls are able to . . . forget, I suppose,' Angela says, ‘or put it behind them. I can't. It's as if it happened yesterday. And those girls, you know, there isn't anyone for them, is there? Why, I've even seen advertisements in magazines for husbands. Imagine!' She shakes her head. ‘How desperate they must be to find someone, anyone. But I could never replace Edward. Never.'

Non looks around the poky room. Why is Angela telling her all this? She does not know her. But she supposes she wants to ask Angela questions that are just as intimate. Suddenly Non is desperate to be home. What possessed her to think she could come here and somehow find the one thing that would make everything all right? What she has is more all right than what many people have, it seems. She lifts her teacup and gulps down her tears of
longing with the lukewarm tea, then sets the cup back in its saucer. ‘You're helping a lot of people at the hospital,' she says. ‘That must give you satisfaction.' What a tawdry word to use, she thinks, when what we all want is happiness, fulfilment, ecstasy.

Angela nods her head. ‘Yes, oh, yes,' she says. ‘All those poor young men, in and out of the hospital even now. But some find it so hard to help themselves, you know, they just won't try. At least your husband came home in one piece.'

Non wonders if she can hear accusation there. ‘His ankle bothers him at times,' she says. She pauses, wondering whether to carry on. It is what I came for, she reminds herself. ‘But it seems to be the memories that trouble him, Angela – it's as if his mind has been wounded. That was what I wanted to talk to you about.'

‘I'm not sure I know what you mean.' Angela jumps up from her chair and begins to stack their plates and cups and saucers with more clatter than is necessary.

‘I think you do, because I saw your last letter to Davey—'

‘That was my only letter to Davey,' Angela says, rattling the cutlery into a bundle on one of the plates. ‘I don't understand what made him think that we . . . well . . . you know. As if I would do such a thing. I treated him the way I treated everyone else. I mean, I know lots of the men got crushes on the nurses, because, you know, they're so glad to be out of the fighting and somewhere a bit civilised, and I suppose seeing a girl reminds them of their wives and sisters and so on, but . . . well, Davey was never actually like that, even, which is why I remember him.'

‘Let me tell you what he told me,' Non says. ‘When he came home Davey was changed from the Davey who went away. I know all that fighting would probably change anybody – but I couldn't understand why he was changed towards me. He said that he'd been unfaithful to me, and because of that he wasn't fit to be my
husband any more. It wasn't like Davey to do such a thing. I could hardly believe it. But he insisted he had, and I don't know why.' Non is becoming ever more concerned about why Davey should have told her such a story.

‘Well, I'm sure I don't know why,' Angela says.

She is standing sideways to Non at the table and her likeness to Grace in profile is uncanny. Non does not know what to make of it and it unnerves her so that her reply is sharper than she intends. ‘I'm not blaming you for anything, Angela. I'm asking for your help. I know this never happened, but I don't understand why Davey said it did. He seems really to believe what he told me.'

Angela purses her lips and stops clattering the dishes about. ‘He wrote me a lot of letters,' she says, ‘but I only got them recently, sent on in a bundle from my old address – I don't know where he got that. We never gave out our addresses, you know. And they were all about this . . . this liaison we were supposed to have had, so I just wrote back right away and told him it was a nonsense and to stop it. I can't imagine why he believed it. Maybe he dreamt it or something, d'you think?'

‘I don't know,' Non says. ‘But tell me what he was like when you treated him in France.'

Angela draws her chair from under the table and sits down again. ‘He came to us twice at the clearing station, but only for a few days both times,' she says. ‘But, like I said, he wasn't like so many of the others. I remember him because he was quiet and respectful, but very sweet, you know. Yes, that's the word, a very sweet man. I told him about losing Edward that first time he was in and he seemed to understand just how I felt. That's why those letters were so odd.'

‘Twice?' Non says. ‘I know he was in hospital for weeks with
his ankle injury, because he wrote regularly then, to me and to his parents. I didn't realise he was hospitalised later, too. What was that for?'

‘I've been trying to remember all this since I heard from you,' Angela says. ‘But, you know, I can't recall much detail. He would have gone on from us to the hospital that first time. Clearing stations were exactly that – we either sent the men on for more treatment or sent them back if they were fit enough after two or three days.' She leans her elbow on the table and tucks her chin into her hand. ‘The second time he came in was when his section had been hit, and most of them had been injured, one or two rather badly, and they'd lost quite a few men. It was a shambles. I remember they brought bodies as well as the injured to us. He was quite dazed by it, withdrawn, but, you know, we saw a lot of that – the thousand-yard stare we called it – when they looked right through you. I remember him writing a letter to be sent to you if he . . . well, you know. He was awfully anxious about that, he wrote the letter over and over, as if he'd forgotten he'd already done it. He gave a letter to anyone who'd take it, to send on to you. That was very sweet, too, you know, but sad, terribly sad. There was one chap I remember because his name was Edward – though he was nothing like my Edward – well, he was in a very bad way himself, he made a big fuss about looking after the letter . . .' Angela pauses and slowly shakes her head at . . . what? The madness of it all? Her memories of it? What might have been?

Non feels a scream rise to her throat at this glimpse of what Davey had to endure. She clamps her hand over her mouth to stop the scream escaping.

‘But, you know . . .' Angela uncups her chin from her palm. ‘They had to pull themselves together and go back. And I'm sure your husband's injuries were minor because I don't think he was
there more than a couple of days that second time. He must have been patched up and sent back. And the next I heard of him was this bundle of letters I mentioned. And that was a funny thing, too, you know – every letter was sort of the same and he never seemed to notice that he wasn't getting any letters back from me.' She looks at Non with a little moue of helplessness. ‘I don't know what else to say.'

‘And I don't know what to ask,' Non says. ‘Maybe something happened to him during the attack, but I don't know what it would have been to cause him to invent this story.' She stares at the table for a moment. She has learnt more than she expected but the revelations she had hoped for have not materialised. ‘Maybe I should go to bed, Angela, and be up early to catch the train home tomorrow. That's where I should be – at home.'

‘I had a thought about tomorrow,' Angela says. ‘I think it might be a good idea for you to come with me in the morning and meet some of my patients.'

Angela may look like Grace, Non thinks, but she sounds just like Branwen when she had arranged some visit or chore for me. But as she is about to refuse, a thought occurs to her that makes her heart leap. ‘Do you think any of them would have known Davey?' she says. Even as she asks she realises that it would be unlikely.

‘It might give you an idea of what it was like at the Front. What kind of terrible injuries some men would have suffered.' Angela looks straight at her.

Non considers this challenge. It would be a miracle, but if there is a chance, a slight chance, the minutest chance, that she might meet someone who knew Davey, she should go. ‘Thank you. I'll do that, Angela. Will it be all right with your matron, do you think?'

‘She's always glad to have people visit the men to chat to them or read to them,' Angela says, ‘so we'll pretend that's what you're doing.'

More subterfuge, thinks Non. One of these times I shall forget who I am or what I am meant to be doing and put my foot in it. But it is a good idea. She smiles at Angela. She still looks like Grace. Is that why she had made such an impression on Davey? Do not dwell on it, she tells herself.