Grace Hardie (28 page)

‘You're a quick learner, Grace. You've understood what I was suggesting and you're independent enough to reject my suggestion. Well, why not? The important thing is that whatever you do should bring you satisfaction. And you may soon feel that you're better off being free of someone who could write to you so cruelly.'

‘He didn't even write himself.' Grace was not ashamed to reveal how much she had been hurt. ‘I learned of his change of mind through his mother.'

‘Didn't write himself! But surely … Grace, dear, you wouldn't let me see the letter, I suppose.'

Grace pulled the letter out of the pocket of her working smock.

‘I never met Christopher,' said Midge after she had read it. ‘But when you described him I had the impression of a young man who was brave, not cowardly, and considerate of other people's feelings.'

‘I thought so too. But it isn't his fault that he can't speak to me face to face. For an officer serving at the front, a letter –'

‘But a letter that he didn't write himself! Have you given no thought to the reason for that? Only the most shameful coward would ask his mother to free him of some entanglement merely because he regretted it. There could be other reasons which would reflect more credit on him. Suppose he's sick or wounded. He might have spoken to his mother – or even sent a message through a friend – while in delirium. He might not even be aware now of what has happened. I wouldn't want to raise your hopes when I don't know the true state of affairs. But it seems to me that you have been very quick to take this letter at its face value.'

‘I was humiliated,' said Grace. ‘And upset. But in a way I'd expected this to happen, that he'd realize I wasn't good enough for him.'

‘Rubbish!' said her aunt brusquely. ‘Judging by this, he isn't good enough for you. But I do think you should give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure your mother would be willing to accompany you to his home, so that you can have a frank talk with his parents.'

‘I could do better than that,' said Grace slowly. Mr
Bailey had mentioned in the course of his visit that he was a telephone subscriber. There was no line to Greystones, but the shop had a receiver. Tomorrow morning, as soon as she arrived at work, she would make a call to Mrs Bailey and discover the truth of the matter.

The maid who answered Grace's telephone call at half past eight the next morning was unused to the instrument, treating it as though it were a speaking tube to be moved between mouth and ear. Each urgent question was followed by a long silence before the answer came faintly over the line. No, Mr and Mrs Bailey were not at home and no one knew when they would return. They were staying in London to be near the hospital.

‘Who is in hospital?' Grace asked, knowing what the answer must be.

‘Mr Christopher.'

‘What –?' But no; the nature of his injury was not something to enquire from a servant. Grace waited impatiently for details of the hospital to be fetched and dictated.

‘I have to go to London,' she said, bursting into Mr Witney's office. ‘I'm sorry to let you down. But a friend – no, my fiancé …' Emotion made her incoherent. The manager stood up and took her by the shoulders.

‘Steady,' he said. ‘Steady. Is Major Bailey wounded?'

Grace nodded. ‘Will you send a message to my mother, please? I don't know when I shall return. But I shall be with Mrs Bailey. And may I take some money from the till?'

Within a few moments she had caught a tram and within half an hour was sitting in a railway carriage. Paddington Station was noisy and smoky and confusing, but there were cabs waiting for passengers and she was quickly on her way to the military hospital.

The bustle here was as confusing as at the station, for porters were pushing patients on trolleys through a maze of corridors, while beneath the painted board which listed the wards was a haphazard collection of pencilled arrows to more makeshift arrangements. Grace eventually found the ward whose name the maid had given her, but was stopped by a VAD.

‘It's too early for visiting, I'm afraid. The doctors are doing their rounds.'

‘But I've come all the way from Oxford. I've only just heard … I must see him.'

‘Who?'

‘Major Christopher Bailey.'

The young nurse gave a comforting smile. ‘Major Bailey is out of danger. Nothing terrible will happen before visiting time. I'll show you where you can sit.'

The wait seemed interminable, but at last other people began to arrive in good time for the official visiting hour. Amongst them were Mr and Mrs Bailey, who looked startled as Grace rose to her feet, but then embraced her warmly.

‘How did you know?' asked Mrs Bailey.

‘Your maid told me. I telephoned. That letter – I couldn't believe it.'

‘He dictated it and made me promise to send it,' said Mrs Bailey, as the two women sat down on the bench to wait. ‘I didn't want to – but I didn't want to upset him by refusing, either. I understand how he felt, but I'm so glad you've come, dear. Even if, later on, you want to do as he suggests and be free again, he'll be stronger by then and better able to accept it. It can do nothing but good for him to have your support now. He's bound to find the next few months hard.'

‘What's happened?' asked Grace. ‘I don't know any details, except that he's here.'

‘His tank was hit,' Mr Bailey told her. ‘Buckled up so that they could only get out one at a time. Christopher was the last to leave. He's badly burned; very badly. All up one side of his body and face. Since it didn't kill him within the first few days, it won't kill him now, they say, although he'll be scarred. But besides that …'

‘It's his eyes, you see,' Mrs Bailey explained. ‘There's a piece of metal. A bit of shell, or of the tank itself. He's had one operation already. It didn't do any good. They're going to try again when he's stronger. But they're afraid he may never recover his sight.'

It was one of those occasions when a group of people who have been chattering amongst themselves fall silent at exactly the same moment, so that Mrs Bailey's last words were heard by everyone in the waiting room. A dozen pairs of sympathetic eyes rested on Grace as she trembled with the shock of the statement. A bell rang and she looked at Christopher's mother. ‘May I?'

‘Of course, dear. Tell him that we're here, but we won't come till you've had some time to yourselves. You'll find that he can talk quite normally. He's in the fifth bed on the right.'

As if I wouldn't recognize him, thought Grace as she walked up the centre of the ward. It was only when she came close to his bed that she understood the warning which Mrs Bailey had been trying to give her.

The man in the bed was almost completely covered with bandages. They encircled the top of his head, as far down as the middle of the nose, and passed beneath the chin in order to cover one ear and cheek, leaving only his mouth and a small area of the other cheek exposed. He was propped by pillows into a half-sitting position, with both arms on top of the sheet in front of him. One arm was also covered in bandages but the other, nearer to Grace, was undamaged. Its smooth skin seemed to be that of a young
man to whom nothing terrible had ever happened. Grace stretched out a finger and gently stroked that arm. The bandaged face turned towards her.

‘Mother?'

‘No. It's me. Grace.'

The sound which emerged from Christopher's lips was a mixture of a gasp and a sob, followed by a stammered protest that he had asked his mother to write a letter for him.

‘And so she did.' Grace sat down at the side of the bed and took Christopher's good hand in her own. ‘And very unhappy it made me. It was cruel not to let her explain the reason.'

‘I was afraid you'd just be sorry for me.' Astonishingly, as he recovered from his shock, his voice was as light and cheerful as at their first meeting, although he hardly moved his lips as he spoke. ‘Very reasonable, too. I'm sorry for myself. But then you might feel that you ought to hang on, and that
wouldn't
be reasonable. I'm not the same man as the one who asked you to marry him.'

‘Then the new man had better ask me again – or else the old one may find himself being sued for breach of promise.' Grace tried to keep her voice as light as his.

‘But seriously –'

‘Don't let's be serious in that sort of way. Your parents will be along in a moment. I need the time to tell you how much I love you while nobody's listening.'

‘Oh Grace! Darling Grace! All the same, seriously though. When these bandages come off they're going to reveal something like Frankenstein's monster. Maybe you could get used to that; I don't know. But a blind man – that's a different matter. Someone who's going to be dependent on other people for the rest of his life.'

‘Nonsense,' said Grace.

‘No, not nonsense at all. I don't know whether I shall
ever be able to earn a living. And I don't know how long I can go on pretending to be cheerful about it. When I look at the future, I don't like it much. As long as the war goes on, people will be sympathetic to all the chaps who've lost arms or legs or eyes. But as time passes everyone will forget the reasons for the wounds. We shall just be cripples or blind men – a bit of a nuisance to have around.'

‘All the more reason for you to make a life for yourself in a safe home, surrounded by people who love you.'

‘But even that may not be much fun, not when it's all there's ever going to be. Sooner or later, I suspect, one's temper will crack. Frustration will be taken out on the people nearest to hand. I don't want to involve you in that. All the same, I'm very sorry that I hurt you. I didn't consider properly what you might think.'

‘What I thought was that you'd realized for the first time how plain and dull I was.'

‘Don't be ridiculous! There's nothing I want more … But … oh, damn it all! I didn't have the courage to hear you say that you wanted to call it off. That's why I had to say it myself. And it was the right thing to do, though it was a mistake not to give the reason. I'm not prepared to let you tie yourself to a blind man by a promise you once made to someone quite different.'

‘You talk as though it's certain that you won't be able to see,' said Grace. ‘But your father said there was a chance –'

‘He thinks it will cheer me up to hear that. But hope is something I can't cope with. I tell myself that I'm blind. I haven't come to terms with it in a practical way yet, but I'm beginning to accept it as a fact. If I start hanging on to the idea that there may be a happy ending after all and then there isn't – well, I don't think I could take the disappointment.'

He was silent for a moment and then spoke again.

‘It's having to be passive that makes it hard. If I run a race and do my best and come second, that's disappointing in a way; but hoping that a doctor will perform a miracle and then finding that he can't – that's a harder sort of disappointment. Can you understand that?'

Grace nodded, and then remembered that he could not see the gesture. ‘Yes. But it's different for me.'

‘I don't think it is. Whether you realize it or not, you're going to be hoping for that happy ending. We must go back to where we were before I asked you to marry me. I want you to know that I love you. I want to feel that you still care for me. But for the rest, we must see what the future holds before we decide how to come to terms with it.' His hand turned to grip hers firmly and to raise it to his lips. ‘We're not engaged to be married any longer, Grace. But I do love you – more than ever now. Don't be in any doubt about that.'

Mr and Mrs Bailey were walking down the ward, conversing to give warning of their approach. Christopher turned his bandaged head towards them.

‘I've ordered Grace not to regard herself as engaged to me,' he said after they sat down at the bedside. ‘You can't imagine how frustrating it is for an officer who's spent three years giving commands to everyone in sight to find himself suddenly being bullied by every doctor and nurse who passes by. Grace is all that's left of my private army and she's jolly well got to do what she's told.'

Mrs Bailey gave an understanding smile. Grace, for her part, hesitated, still wishing to argue but realizing that she could not win the debate. This was not how she had expected the conversation to go – and yet, she told herself, they were only talking about forms of words. In love as well as in health Christopher was afraid to hope. But he still loved her and still wanted her to love him. She had
only to wait, and for her at least there would be a happy ending.

On the journey home it occurred to her how much she would disappoint Aunt Midge by turning her back on independence. But she had no wish to take charge of The House of Hardie. Nothing would please her better than to live as Mrs Christopher Bailey.

Christopher's convalescence extended over many months. His burns healed only slowly and, as the bandages were a little at a time removed from all but his head, they revealed a body which had become alarmingly thin. It was decided that before there could be any further operation on his eyes, he must build up his strength. So in the summer of 1918 he was transferred from London to the south coast.

‘Does hospital blue suit me?' he asked Grace cheerfully when she visited him in the convalescent hospital for the first time. ‘I feel a terrible fraud. This place was a hotel before the army commandeered it, and it still feels like one. My medical treatment consists of eating healthy meals and breathing healthy air and sleeping on a comfortable bed and generally being fattened up.'

‘That's good. Means that the doctors have plans for you.' In Philip's case, the damage to his lungs had been so great that nothing a surgeon could do would ever restore them to normal, and this was the reason for his early discharge. As long as Christopher was kept within the army's medical system, it must mean that there was hope for his sight.