For King and Country (10 page)

‘I used to play the banjo myself, when I had two arms,’ Raynor said, tapping his feet in time to the music. ‘I fancied myself another Ollie Oakley at one time, and I gave them
many a tune in the mess, classical banjo, you know. I’ve got a J.E. Dallas five string, a really high quality instrument, just about the best you can get.’ He tilted his chin in the
direction of the gramophone, and said, ‘But then I got a passion for ragtime, and I wished I’d got a four string instead. Or rather, I should say I
had
a banjo. It was supposed
to have been sent back from France with the rest of my stuff, but it’s never arrived. Everything seems to go west there, one way or another. I suppose it hardly matters now.’

The strains of ragtime music usually drifted into the ward during visiting time, when those ambulant officers who had no visitors wandered off into the day room to lounge about and converse with
each other, or play a hand of cards. Raynor always joined them, but Maxfield, never; and Sally thought it an awful pity. The laughter and camaraderie might have taken him out of himself a bit and
done him the world of good, but he held himself aloof. Why was that, she wondered? Maybe because he couldn’t talk, or maybe it was because he was the only Australian on the ward, and
didn’t feel at home among the British. Maybe he just couldn’t be bothered, or the others couldn’t be bothered to try to make conversation with him.

She took her seat at the table near the coal fire with Nurse Crump, and sat listening to the low hum of the visitors’ conversation whilst folding squares of gauze into dressings, counting
them into piles of ten, then putting them into bags and packing them into a steel drum to be sterilized.

‘Have you noticed,’ Crump said, nudging Sally and glancing towards Maxfield, ‘how he’s on the qui vive all the time? And he always seems to be watching you. That eye
seems to follow you everywhere you go. It reminds me of a bloodshot gooseberry. Maybe he fancies you.’

Inwardly Sally shuddered, and Sister’s words flashed into her mind. None of that, Nurse. ‘Rubbish. But he got a horrible shock this morning, when he saw the mess his face is
in,’ she said. ‘And just look, he’s making the sheets dirty with his newspaper again. I’ll go and have a word.’

He watched her approach, and when she stood beside him pointed to the margin of his newspaper. Beside a column rejoicing in the capture of Mont Saint Quentin by Australian troops he’d
written, ‘I’m hideous’. She read the words out loud, and after a moment or two looked him in the eye. ‘You mean your wound’s hideous.’

He took the paper from her and underscored the words, then wrote beneath ‘same thing’.

‘No it’s not,’ Sally protested. ‘Are people only their faces, then? Are we nothing more than what’s on the outside, what people can see?’

He shook his head, then nodded it, then shrugged his shoulders and lay back against his pillows, staring at the ceiling, shutting himself off from her. Sally folded the newspaper and put it in
his locker, replaced the chair and went back to her task of making gauze dressings, forgetting to say anything about the newsprint on the sheet, but thinking suddenly of her own image in the
brasso-smeared door of the oven.

‘. . . and he’d written “I’m hideous”,’ Sally concluded. ‘Not “my wound looks hideous –
I’m
hideous”.’

Curran and Armstrong were both sitting on her bed, and she on the bedroom chair facing them, all in their nightgowns and sipping a last, steaming cup of cocoa before bed.

‘Well he is hideous,’ said Curran. ‘Sure, you said so yourself.’

‘No, I didn’t. I said his face was a mess. I didn’t say anything about him, himself.’

Armstrong looked thoughtful. ‘I catch your drift,’ she said, ‘but he’s right, isn’t he? I mean, as far as the world’s concerned, “I’m
hideous” and “I have a hideous face” come to the selfsame thing.’

‘As far as the
world’s
concerned,’ Sally conceded, ‘I suppose they do. But it’s a bad job if the
person
concerned thinks that. The face is
something different to the person underneath, surely?’

‘Not for long,’ Armstrong said, ‘and certainly not for women. Whatever people see in your face is what they see in you, and it affects how you see yourself. My sister, just for
one example. My word, people are a lot softer on her than they are on me, and I’m certain it’s because she’s better looking. I’ve had to learn to be more of a fighter.
Pretty girl, plain girl, ugly girl. Your face decides whether any man’ll ever want you for a wife, for a start. Nobody picks an ugly girl.’

‘But you’re not ugly, Armstrong.’

‘I’m not beautiful, either. I’m twenty-two years old, and if I were a beauty, I’d be married by this time. Your face, well, it fixes your life’s path. It’s
your destiny.’

‘My face is my fortune, sir, she said,’ Sally mused. ‘But is it me? If I’ve got an ugly face, am I ugly all through, like a stick of Blackpool Rock has
“Blackpool” all through? But that idea only applies to women, surely? Men aren’t despised if they’re not handsome, are they?’

‘You should know the answer to that one yourself,’ said Curran. ‘You never stopped going on about David Jones, and his beautiful eyes, and his bonny hair . . . Sorry. I
shouldn’t have mentioned him, but it’s true. You’ve an eye for a handsome face yourself.’

‘Oh,’ Sally sighed, remembering her last sight of David. Except it hadn’t been David. David was fled, gone to some mysterious place where she couldn’t reach him, beyond
help, and beyond suffering.

Not Maxfield, though, he wasn’t beyond pain. The image of him shrinking from her in the bathroom, shielding his face from her hit her then. And of the two of them, he was the more to be
pitied. After a moment she asked: ‘Do you ever feel so much a part of them that you are them, that it’s all happening to you too?’

‘Sure, and what’s the girl going on about now?’ asked Curran.

‘Sympathize with them so much, I mean,’ said Sally. ‘Do you ever feel what’s happening to them as if it’s happening to you? You know, sweating when they’re
having their dressings done, being as scared as they are when they go down to theatre, and glad when they’re back, and all right? Things like that?’

‘I do not,’ said Curran, heaving herself up and moving towards the door. ‘How could I carry on with it, if I did? Come on, Armstrong, it’s nearly half-past ten.
Let’s get to bed before Home Sister plunges the corridor into darkness, and we have to grope our way back.’

Armstrong followed her, and, hesitating in the doorway turned to Sally, beaker in hand. ‘I know what you mean, and I do feel for them to a degree, but certainly not as if it’s
happening to me.’

‘I do,’ said Sally, and watched them shuffle along the corridor for a little way before she closed the door and turned to the mirror to put curling pins into the front of her hair.
An ordinary pale little face with its nose a little too large, its two hazel eyes looked out at her, and she suddenly wondered how it would feel to see one of those eyes gone, and half of her face
mashed to a bloody pulp. She shuddered, wishing she could stop such imaginings, could stop feeling for some of the men as she did. But their wounds wounded her, she was helpless to prevent it, and
her deepest desire was to deliver them from that seventh hell of suffering that held them.

But it was beyond her power, and now Home Sister was calling them to put the lights out. ‘Oh, God!’ Sally tutted in irritation and took a last look in the mirror, suddenly grateful
for her unremarkable features. She turned the light out, and then it struck her. Oh, God. Had Maxfield really said ‘Oh, God,’ or had she imagined it? She mused on it as she groped to
put the last of the pins in and then got into bed, but before she could decide, she was asleep.

T
hank God for a day’s respite, though, to get away from that chamber of horrors and be reminded that there was another world, Sally thought,
as the train carried her homeward. The wheat harvest had been a good one, the best for sixty years some said and stooks of corn stood in the fields, bathed in the golden light of the late
afternoon. In Sally’s eyes they bore proud testimony to England’s durability, and her heart swelled with pride. It was beautiful, and she would have liked to enjoy the panorama in
peace, left to her own thoughts.

It was not to be. A girl whose family had once lived in Annsdale Colliery and was going back there to visit a relative had plonked herself down in the next seat. ‘Why, aye, we’ve
done all right since we moved to Newcastle,’ she said, in answer to Sally’s polite enquiries. ‘Me dad’s got an overman’s job, and now, what with the army taking the
hospitals over, me mam can get a bit extra with taking lodgers in. The patients’ visitors, you know. They come from miles away, a lot of them.’

‘Why, that’s all right for your mam, then,’ said Sally.

‘Oh, aye, they’re good company an’ all, the visitors, most of ’em. We had an Australian, a month or two ago. I asked him what had happened to his “mate”, they
call ’em “mate” you know, and he laughed, and said he was on one of the dermatology wards.’

‘Oh.’ Not wanting to encourage her, Sally said nothing more. But Elinor didn’t know when to shut up. Innoculated with a gramophone needle, that lass, and she’d been the
same since they were at school together.

‘Oh, aye. It sounds as if you know what that means, an’ all! I had no idea, until I heard him telling me dad his mate had got one of the filth diseases, and he’d done it on
purpose, because he was fed up with the war. He said: “He paid a woman in France five francs to give him it, so he could get away from the firing line.” My dad said he was a mad bugger;
he’d got something he’d never get rid of, and then the Australian said: “If you’d had a taste of the trenches, mate, you wouldn’t be so sure about that. Quite a few
blokes took her on. Some of them thought it was a joke!” He said there was a whole workhouse down south had been converted to a VD hospital for Australians, and they’d christened it the
“First Australian Dermatological Hospital”. Later on, me dad comes up to me, and he says: “Did you hear that? They’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces before
they’ve finished, when they’re blind and paralyzed.” I said: “Why, no, Dad, I didn’t hear anything,” and he said: ‘Never mind, Elinor, but I’m
warning you. You keep away from them soldiers in the workhouse infirmary, because if I find out you’ve had anything to do with ’em I’ll bloody kill you. In fact keep away from the
bloody lot. Have nothing to do with any of’em. They’re not clean.”’

‘Poor things,’ Sally murmured.

‘You’re not going to tell me you feel sorry for them, are you? Why, they’ve brought it on theirsels, man!’

Sally shrugged. ‘I suppose they have, in a way, and in another way, they haven’t. They’ve got no homes to go back to when they get leave, have they, so they’re more open
to temptation, like.’

‘They’ve got more money than the English lads, an’ all,’ Elinor said, her eyes hungry. ‘They get four times as much. My dad says they’ve always got money to
go out and get beer, and go out and get women an’ all, I suppose.’

‘There you are then. More money, and miles of ocean away from home. So it’s the war that brought it on them, isn’t it? It’s the war that drove them to it. And we really
don’t know what it’s like over there in France, Elinor, so we shouldn’t judge, should we?’

‘Ee, you are a funny one, Sally. And are you going to have to nurse them, like?’

‘I expect they’ll have the orderlies looking after them.’

‘Well, I feel sorry for you if you have to, the dirty things. You should have come to work in the laundry, like me. Then you’d be working under Board of Trade regulations and
you’d never have to work on Saturday afternoons or Sundays, and you’d have two evenings a week off as well, instead of working all the hours God sends.’

The table was set, and a small fire was glowing in the range when she got home. ‘It’s not that cold yet, and what with the coal shortage, I don’t use any more
than I have to,’ her mother said, lifting the stew pot from the oven with a thick cloth and setting it on the table, where its brown glaze gleamed in the light of the fire and gas mantle.
‘I managed to get a ham shank from the butcher, though, and I’ve had it simmering in the oven all day with some split peas. I threw a few carrots in after I’d stripped the meat
from the bone, near the end.’ She lifted the lid, releasing both steam and a mouthwatering aroma, and began to ladle the broth into bowls. ‘Come and get it down you, it’ll soon
warm you up. I’ve got some potatoes baking as well, and there’s a dab of butter to go on them.’

Sally took off her coat, and sat down. ‘By, it smells lovely, Mam. I hadn’t realized how hungry I am.’

She ate gratefully, and in silence. After several attempts at conversation, her mother gave up, and when the meal was finished, asked, ‘What’s the matter, Sally? I’ve been
looking forward to seeing you and hearing your news for days, and you haven’t got a word for the cat.’

Sally pushed her plate away. ‘Sorry, Mam. Only I’ve seen some things lately . . .’

‘I know,’ her mother jumped in. ‘I’ve heard about some of them. Horrible things. I know I’ve got two lads in France, but you can talk to me about them, you know, if
you want to. I’ll understand.’

‘That’s just it, I don’t. I don’t want to talk about it,’ she said. ‘I want to get away from it.’

‘What did I tell you? I said nursing would never be any good to you. You’ve never been strong . . .’

‘It’s not nursing that’s supposed to be any good to me, Mam,’ Sally cut in, ‘it’s me that’s supposed to be some good to nursing.’

The kitchen was chilly in spite of the fire. She rose abruptly from the table and went upstairs to find her old cardigan – the warm, comforting grey one, darned at the elbows and fraying
at the cuffs, that she only ever wore in the house because, although she couldn’t bear to part with it, really it was only fit for the rag bag. Her room was dark and smelled of polish when
she went in to fumble in the drawer for it. She found it at last and hugged it tightly to her for a moment as if it were an old friend, then slipped it on and went downstairs to help her mother
with the washing up.