For King and Country (27 page)

‘We will get that young man’s leg right, you know,’ he assured her.

‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘Anyhow, it’ll not be my fault if we don’t.’

He nodded, and there was a hint of reproach in his voice when he said, ‘I thought you might have asked me about my cousin.’

She looked swiftly up at him. ‘I thought he was doing all right.’

‘His recovery hasn’t been uneventful, I’m sorry to say. He’s had myocarditis.’

‘Myocarditis. Inflammation of the heart muscle. Oh, dear. That’s really bad, isn’t it?

‘It is. Bad enough to be fatal, in many cases.’

‘Poor little Kitten. But he’s not . . . He’s not going to die?’ She’d felt near to tears since Mary’s death, and now . . .

He put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, his eyes softening in sympathy. ‘What a tenderhearted girl you are! But no need for such concern. He will get better, just not as fast as
we’d hoped.’

She stepped back slightly, putting herself just out of reach of his consoling hand. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said and, seeing Will’s eye upon her as he returned to bed, she was
again gripped by that irrational idea that if Kitten died, then so would he.

There was no orderly on duty, so she wheeled the bedtime drinks trolley into the ward and left it, to speak to Night Sister before she started her ten o’clock medicine
round. The patients would have to help themselves, and each other. As she’d hoped, Maxfield and a couple of other patients were busy at the task on her return to the ward. With luck,
they’d collect the cups in as well, and free her to attend to the lieutenant with the botched amputation. They did, and by eleven-thirty almost everything was done, and the patients settled
for sleep. Just the water jugs to collect now, and all the fluid balance charts to tot up. Then everything on Sister Davies’ list would be done, and there would be nothing else to do but
filling in jobs, the interminable cleaning of cupboards, making of dressings and rolling of bandages.

She left the charts in the office and pushed the trolley full of water jugs into the kitchen where she stood at the sink washing them, hoping that Maxfield would follow her. A patient from
Blyth, and one from Benwell – they were coming from nearer and nearer. Clean, well-fed, and with all the sepsis gone from his facial wound, Maxfield was looking exactly like the old Will when
you looked at the right side of his face, and anybody who knew him would be certain to recognize him in spite of that ugly moustache. It was only a matter of time before they admitted someone from
Durham, maybe even from Annsdale itself, and then he’d be done for, and so would she.

His eye was closed when she went silently round after midnight with the water jugs and the new fluid balance charts. She nudged him, and kept her voice low. ‘Lieutenant
Maxfield?’

No scribbled note this time. Instead, he trapped her hand in his and kissed it, but when she walked pointedly to the top of the ward and into the treatment room he didn’t follow. She
cleaned and tidied the room, swabbed her trolley down, and got everything ready for the next wound irrigation. She did it at two. That would start a nice, regular routine for the Lieutenant from
Blyth: irrigations at two, six and ten, round the clock, until he went to theatre.

Job done, she went back into the ward and saw Maxfield out of bed, putting coal on the fire. She’d left her raggy old cardigan on one of the chairs beside it, and went to put it on and
pull it close around her.

He looked up. ‘Cold?’ The word was barely audible.

She nodded, murmuring, ‘Aye, it gets cold, the further you get away from the fire. The two new patients are local lads, you know. One’s from Benwell. The other lad, the worst one,
he’s from Blyth. Pity it’s not the other way round, it would be easier for his parents to get here. I’ll have to do his wound again at six. Maybes you won’t mind helping
with the tea, and the washing bowls.’

He nodded slightly, but nothing more, and sat down with his blind and wounded side facing her, with some of the purple scar visible round its smaller dressing. Did he understand the danger he
was in, she wondered? Would she have to spell it out for him? She pondered for a moment or two, and decided that she would. ‘There’ll be more and more local lads soon,’ she said.
‘The wards’ll be full of lads who live round here.’

Still no response. My God, she’d need a hammer and chisel to get the message into his thick skull? She sighed. Better leave it for now, and start on some of the filling in jobs, before the
work began again in earnest. She’d start by totting up the fluid balance charts, and she might as well do them beside the fire where it was warm, and she could keep an eye on the patients.
She went to the office to collect them, looked in on the patients in the single-bedded rooms, and when she returned to the main ward she was glad to see that Maxfield was in bed.

‘Why, are we not going fetch him in, like? Will nobody give us a bit hand to fetch him in?’ the one-pip TG from Benwell suddenly shouted as she passed.

‘Fetch who in?’ Sally stopped to ask, and then realized he was still asleep.

‘The corporal! listen, man . . . listen . . . he’s screaming his bloody head off!’

‘No. No,’ said Sally, firmly. ‘He’s not screaming now. He’s gone to sleep.’

‘Dead.’

‘No, not dead,’ Sally said. ‘He’s had some morphine. He’ll be all right.’

‘All right . . .’

The lie seemed to do the trick and the second lieutenant turned over, his slumbers calmed. Sally shuddered and pulled her old cardigan round her, and then determinedly casting his nightmare out
of her mind, she sank into the comfy armchair. The ward was quiet now, and it was cosy by the fire. She settled to the simple arithmetic on the charts, to the making of swabs and rolling of
bandages – and began to reflect on the glib lies she’d told the Australian corporal. She smiled, too exhausted by this time to feel the terror that ought to have gone with the
remembrance.

Three o’clock came and the patients were all asleep, the siren sounds of their gentle, rhythmic breathing luring her to join them. Despite all her efforts to keep them open, her leaden
eyelids drooped and fell. Her head felt so heavy . . . she ached for sleep. She would just rest her head against the back of the chair for a moment until . . . the bandage fell from her hand and
unrolled itself unheeded along the parquet floor.

‘Why . . . bring him in . . . not? Cannot stand . . . screaming, man . . . give us a hand?’ Agonized supplications from the lad from Benwell at last penetrated the
murk of her fatigue. ‘Listen! Can you not hear? I cannot stand . . .’

‘Shut up, shut up, shut
up
!’ someone shouted, and she opened her eyes to see gentle Raynor clumsily hurl a slipper at the tortured dreamer. She pulled herself up and with
her mind still numbed by tiredness she moved towards them to soothe Raynor, and rescue the phantom corporal once more.

Peace restored, she went to the kitchen and turned the cold tap full on, shivering as she cupped her hands under it and doused her face again and again and again. When she looked up, Maxfield
was beside her, handing her a towel. ‘Half dead for lack of sleep,’ he said. ‘There isn’t a soldier in the British Army doesn’t know what that’s like.’

She took it from him and slowly rubbed her face. ‘I suppose not. I’m glad I don’t have to pass any empty beds. The pillows look so tempting I think I’d get in.’

He stood closer. ‘You can get in mine and welcome. I’ll keep you warm, an’ all.’

‘No thanks.’

‘You would rather get in with Dr Campbell.’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘You like him, though.’

‘He’s a very good doctor.’

‘You like him. I saw you in the corridor with him on the day the Armistice was declared, and Sister Davies had to put a stop to what he was doing, but you didn’t seem to mind it, you
were laughing all over your face.’

‘I was looking for you.’

‘Aye, well, you found him. And he’s very interested in you.’

‘If he is, I don’t know why,’ she said, and thought, another lie. It’s becoming a habit.

‘You’ve an eye for a good-looking feller.’

‘No, I haven’t!’

‘Yes, you
have.
’

‘Stop talking, Will, and go to bed. It’s past three o’clock, and you should be asleep.’

‘I haven’t slept a wink all night. How can I, with you in the ward? And anyway, I don’t go to bed when I’m told, like a good, obedient little probationer.’

‘No you don’t, although I’d have thought you might want to make things a bit easier for me, especially tonight.’

‘
After all I’ve done for you
! Is that what you mean? Because you snatched me from the jaws of death, disguised as an Australian corporal? Well, I’m very grateful, and
I’d have been even more grateful before I got a good look at my face. Now I’m not so sure. Maybes you shouldn’t have bothered. When Nurse Crump told me he was coming I just
thought, oh well, that’s the end of it, then; we’ve all got to die sooner or later, so maybe the sooner the better.’

‘That’s a wicked thing to say.’

‘True, though. Normal men like women; there’s an infirmary full of cases of venereal disease in this city alone to prove it. I’m a normal man, but I doubt there’s any
woman will like me back, not with this,’ he said, pointing to his broken face. ‘The best I can expect is to live half a life, rotting away out of everybody’s sight in the back of
a photographer’s shop in Staffordshire. And unless you manage to get Dr Campbell up the aisle, which I doubt, the best that can happen to you is to live half a life here, letting them treat
you like an overgrown kid, and call it your
vocation.
’

‘I wanted to help you, Will, and I stuck
my
neck in a noose to save
yours
, but you’re so wrapped up in yourself you’ve no thought for anybody else, not even
your own mother. I’m fed up with you. You’re a pain in the neck.’

‘A pain in the neck!’ he snorted. ‘You know, Sal, life’s a bloody jest. It’s nothing but a sickening farce. I went to war because I wouldn’t have a lass I was
over heels in love with making out I was a coward, and now, when it’s too late and I come back like this, I find out she never did give me that white feather in the first place. It took days
for that to sink in. Now, when I’ve got no face, no name, no job, no marrers, no brothers and no home I dare go back to, she calls me “a pain in the neck”.’

‘I don’t believe you were ever over heels in love with me, Will. You weren’t the sort to fall over heels in love; you were the sort to make other people fall over heels in love
with you. And you’ve still got your mother.’

‘Aye, I’ve got my mother, and she’d have been better off never born, the way I look at her now. She’d be better off if she’d never had any of us, either.’

‘Why, maybe there
is
something to be said for being a shrivelled spinster, then,’ Sally gibed.

‘No, there isn’t,’ he contradicted himself. ‘There’s nothing to be said for it. God made women to be wives and mothers. They were never intended to live lonely
lives with nobody to love, and men weren’t, either. I don’t know how anybody can stand the thought of going through life like that. I know I can’t.’

She shivered, and reached for the kettle. Standing arguing in the kitchen like this, it would be a wonder if they hadn’t been overheard. ‘What time is it?’

‘Nearly four o’clock.’

‘You’d better get back to bed then, and stop making a lot of rattle that somebody might hear, unless you
want
them to catch you. Night Sister’ll be coming before long,
to do the morning round.’

‘All right, I’m going. But you think you’ve got me taped and you haven’t, and that’s where
you’re
a pain in the neck. I
am
the sort to fall
over heels in love. I’ve done it plenty of times.’

Only it never lasted very long, she thought, watching him pad out of the kitchen. Awake now, and cold, she willed the kettle to hurry up and boil so she could have a cup of tea and put her feet
up by the fire and enjoy it while she had the chance, because the next frantic stretch of work would start in an hour, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength for it.

I
t seemed strange to sink exhausted into her lovely bed the following morning, to close her eyes and rest her aching limbs, her work done, just as
everybody else was starting theirs. She yawned and snuggled further down in the bed, picturing them all haring round the wards while she lay idle. It was nice. Very, very nice . . . A picture of
the Australian corporal wiping his tears on his sleeve floated into her mind. ‘He never let his mates down, poor bastard . . .’ He never let his mates down . . . she wondered fleetingly
if as much could be said for Will.

She slept like the dead, and waking at about six o’clock looked out of the window. There was a full moon, enough light to see by, and it would be over two hours before she had to be on
duty again. There were plenty of people about, so she decided to get dressed and go for a brisk walk on the Leazes.

‘Two minds with but a single thought, Nurse Wilde. What a coincidence!’ Dr Campbell exclaimed.

‘Not really. I come out for a stroll quite often. It’s nice to get a breath of fresh air now and again.’

‘Quite. Your man from Blyth was the last on the list today. We’ve bipped the stump and put a dressing on that should last a week, so you should have an easier night if you’re
on that ward tonight.’

‘I suppose it’ll give him an easier night, as well.’

‘It will. And how often is “quite often”, Nurse Wilde? I’ve never seen you here before.’

‘Why, no. Maybe not
quite
often, but whenever I get the chance. I used to go up to Jesmond Dene sometimes in the summer, before August when the big push started and we got so many
casualties. It’s lovely up there.’

‘But now it’s the middle of winter. Aren’t you frightened to wander about on your own, in the dark?’

‘Not really. It’s so peaceful, under the stars. You wouldn’t think there was anything wrong with the world.’

‘Well, perhaps there isn’t now the war’s over.’