Hero (5 page)

The story had hungry roots and fast-growing branches. In succeeding days I learned how I had shouted oaths at the Hun, dared him to come at me, even baring my chest—this last variation from an impressionable young nurse who hadn't stopped to weigh the many impracticalities of such an action from an officer burdened with rifle, pack, and buckled uniform.

What about the blood on my bayonet? Apparently it had come from one of the German snipers who had been hiding in the craters of no man's land before the day had dawned, or else runners sent out by the enemy command to view and report back on the state of the battle. Luckily no one asked the rank or the dress of the foe I had slain, an omission that fed a lingering suspicion that, beneath the talk of heroes, they knew it was dangerous to question events too closely.

I heard one startling elaboration from Flo, an insomniac nurse older than the rest. When she was off-duty, Flo liked to sit on the ward knitting, “keeping guard,” she used to say, over the sleeping soldiers. This night she had taken up a position in the aisle, quite close to my bed. When I awoke after a short sleep I could hear the rustle of wool and the rhythmic click of the needles. The noise, comforting to some, made me restless. I turned in the dim bluish haze to see her gazing at me, furrows on her brow, an odd concern in her heavy eyes. I stared back through the fuzzy half-light.

Flo had something of Sarah's mother about her, something of the same shape as she sat slightly round-shouldered, fingers working, a face that was at once aged, yet softened by age.

These were the lines of concern, not of anger. Where men became stern and thin-lipped over years, some women, it seemed, mellowed into a wistful, worried version of who they had once been. But Flo's wistfulness merely alarmed me. Why was she staring?

A dozen anxieties sprang to life. Had I talked in my sleep? Had she overheard the story of how I had murdered the son of a woman like herself? Or had she heard something from one of the other patients, something that brought everything else into question, made her realize I was not really a hero at all? I was a coward and a murderer.

I must have seemed startled because she rose, laid her knitting on her chair, and came towards me. Her hand reached for my head and I shrank violently into the bed.

“It's all right, all right,” she said softly. Her cold palm touched down upon my damp forehead, and I moaned like a child. I couldn't help it. “Do you know who I am? Simon, do you know me?”

Her use of my Christian name terrified me, as did her question. Nobody here called me Simon. Her eyes, already edged by grief and worry, seemed to take on another emotion. Mrs. Baxter's spirit had possessed her and she was accusing me. I moaned again and stretched away from her hand, twisting my neck until part of my face sank into the pillow. “It's all right, Simon, you're only dreaming.”

These words calmed me a little. I knew I wasn't dreaming. I could pinpoint every aspect of the moment I was in—the mild, soap-like scent of the motherly nurse, the prickle of coarse linen against my cheek as I pushed myself as deep into the bed as I could. But the question brought me back to how fear and guilt had almost undone me with Major Pickard. Guilt had a life of its own, I remembered. No conclusion could be trusted that was reached under its influence.

Nurse Flo's hand began to stroke my forehead, and when I had courage to look her full in the face, she was smiling her gently anxious smile. The expression was one I had seen in Mrs. Baxter's face, but Nurse Flo no longer looked so much like Mrs. Baxter; she was much thinner, her eyes small and dark while Mrs. Baxter's were large and pale.

She leaned over me for some time, softly whispering “only a dream.” The cadence of the words soothed me like an ancient prayer, more profound and more comforting than a thousand Our Fathers. “Only a dream” was the grandparent of all prayers, extending beyond circumstance. Pain, anxiety, guilt, retribution—only a dream. Blood, prison, gallows, disgrace— only a dream. Those three words held the wisdom of the ages. In the blue light of the ward, with the coughs and moans of the sick around me, it seemed the one comforting truth to hold onto: everything passes in the end, everything was a dream.

At last Flo went back to her chair and repositioned it so she might sit and whisper to me at the same time. “I know about your story, Simon. I know what you've been through.” Small impulses of horror regrouped in my chest, forming a battalion of denial and shame. But then, quite unexpectedly and one by one, rifles dropped onto the earth. My heart became lighter, and everything slid into a kind of acceptance, a kind of relief. It was bound to happen. She knew my story—the real one, it seemed, from her tone and from the worried furrows on her brow as she watched me. She was sympathetic, warm, and kind. She would understand and not judge me, and the guilt that had been hammering inside my chest would escape at last.

My vision blurred and a warm tear spilled, running from the corner of my eye, along my temple, seeping into my bandage. Another rose to take its place and I could feel a torrent about to break. I began shaking; I couldn't help it. “I know about Lieutenant Charles Baxter, your friend,” she continued, touching my forehead again. “Another soldier saw you…” I had begun to shake harder, but I needed her to go on. I needed her sweet absolution, and I sensed she knew this. “He saw you take your friend in your arms and gently, very gently, lay him down upon the ground.”

Her words had missed something vital for my unburdening. I searched for a way to bring her back, to make her relate the story again, but with the details I most needed to hear.

“No, it's not right,” I sobbed.

But she ignored me, gently shaking her head, leaning in closer and clasping the hand she had eased from under my bedclothes. “So, despite that brave soldier's heart of yours,” she continued, “despite that lion-hearted courage, you were as tender as a lamb on the battlefield. Simon, such sensitivity and courage together is so rare in a man. Your girl back home will be proud of you. You mustn't worry about that.”

I said nothing for a while. My tears subsided, as did my shaking. Nurse Flo gave me one last adoring, motherly look, then took her chair to its previous position and continued to knit. The guilt that had been battering my chest for release was suddenly still, lodged into a new and permanent position. I could almost hear the crunch of a foundation stone being laid.

Who was the witness, I wondered? Was it Smith, with his grin, his pointed finger, and his shattered legs? I had assumed him dead, and he hadn't turned up here. But I had seen no other. How had Nurse Flo come to misunderstand so badly?

An image rose in my brain of Smith, fevered, dying perhaps, relaying the image of one soldier laying a comrade upon the bomb-encrusted ground carefully, reverentially. He would find a sardonic humour, no doubt, that he would expect his deathbed listener—Nurse Flo, or perhaps another nurse—to appreciate. But in his fever he would fail to pass on that one prescient detail. His words would fade out, or the phrase would be too muddled to make out: the reverential officer had killed the comrade himself.

For the next little while I was sullen rather than agitated. The medics who saw me talked vaguely of “various phases,” and “what was to be expected.” My body was healing against my will. They moved me to a ward where some of the soldiers were up and about and where there was daily talk of who might be shipped back to England to convalesce. Each week a bunch of the healthiest men were taken by van to a train bound for the coast. I recoiled at the idea that one day I would be one of them. This strange purgatory was home to me now. I wanted no other.

But my condition would not cease improving. The bandages around my head became lighter. Finally, they were removed. I was taught to use a wheelchair, then crutches. Like an automaton, I obeyed directives, believing that somehow I could avoid returning to England, that the war, still raging to the east, might engulf us in the night and burn us all to ashes as we slept. Where were the Zeppelins when you needed them?

Then it came, a moment I had been dreading, a premonition of that which was to come. A tight little bundle of letters, bound in yellowed string, landed on my bunk.

CHAPTER 6

A
ware of the hush in the ward—the static of envy—I pick up the three-letter bundle. I flip it one way, then the other, taking in the details of the three envelopes: the first violet with looping, blue script, the second pale pink, and the third thick, white, and wedged between the other two. A shiver runs through me. They have each been opened and read, of course.

An apologetic strip of tape re-closes each letter.

As I am one of the few to receive mail today, many sets of yearning eyes remain on me, so I slip the bundle into the pocket of my dressing gown and, with the same hand, draw forth my Woodbine and matches. I strike a flame at the second attempt; my hands are just beginning to tremble.

As the cloud of blue smoke rises from my bunk, a cough from the ward's opposite corner echoes under the high ceiling. I sense that interest is sliding from me at last, finding refuge in other comforts either vicarious or postdated. Some patients begin flicking through the magazines that litter the beds. Some light up their own pipes and cigarettes. Others reread last week's, or last month's, letters. I turn to the wall—mine is thankfully the last bed in the row—and blindly finger the letters in my pocket.

I already know the authors.

The violet envelope is from Charles's mother. Although her blue reservoir pen has spelled out my regiment, rank, and name in a hand shakier than I recall from her cheerful party invitations, the handwriting is clearly hers. The noose of each
l
, the curve of each
s
, plays upon my heart like a fencer's sword. The more wavering the stroke, the more drawn-out the torture; the less expert the punishment, the greater the suspense. What I crave is the coup de grâce. I'm terrified now of the changes that have come upon Mrs. Baxter since I last saw her. I know it is my own handiwork.

The thick white letter tucked in the middle is from my father. Basildon Bond always makes the shortest of missives seem more substantial, and that's why he uses it. Some men distrust words, some sentiment. My father distrusts both. I realize the message in my pocket must have been monumentally difficult for him to write. I wonder how few or how many sentences he has trusted to his pen.

The pale pink letter is from Sarah. Quite a number of these kept my candle flickering through the endless nights in the dugout. Something tumultuous moves in my chest as I think of those days. The lantern of her compassion was my guide then, my promise of a future dawn. Now a glimpse of that light would scald my eyes to blindness; a whisper of encouragement would damn me to the pit.

With my hand still in my pocket, I ease the string from the bundle. My heart pounds, but blindly I tug the first letter free. Like picking a scab from an itching wound, I can't help it. I have to dig it out. I have to see the words whose phantom premonitions already burn in my imagination.

I shift on my left elbow and bring the envelope close to my eyes. The strip of tape falls on the blanket like a piece of dead skin. I take out the letter and snap it open—an action of unexpected vigour, a necessary falsehood to hoodwink my terror:

My dear Simon,

How can I express the mix of emotions, the tumult of loss and
gratitude we feel over our beloved Charles, and for you, his dear friend
from whom he sought, and found, such kindness, such valour, and
such wisdom?

How much we have asked from our young men, and how readily,
how selflessly, have they given. To lose Charles, our jolly, silly, but
oh-so-thoroughly good-natured boy, is a pain almost beyond endurance.

I say “almost,” dear Simon, because there is one lasting image
passed down to us by a kind friend of yours and ours, Major Pickard,
which goes some way to mitigate the bitter tears Sarah and I have
shed since the news.

I turn over the sheet in trembling fingers, heart still pounding like waves upon a beach.

It is a memory of grace and kindness on the battlefield, of one
young soldier embracing another, and laying him down gently upon
the earth, a tender-hearted last act towards a true brother-in-arms.

What a comfort it is to us that you, his dearest friend, should have
been with him in the last moments of his precious life!

I must not go on. We are very concerned for your own recovery, of
which, happily, we have every reason to feel assured. This assurance
is a blessing indeed, not only to your dear father and Sarah, but to all
of us who weep for the fallen, and who pray for those who might be
saved.

God bless,

Natasha Baxter

A tear lands upon the signature, bloating the
B
of Baxter, then scoops up the ink into a pale blue channel. This runs slowly to the side of the page and drops onto my blanket. The tear, I realize with a small jolt, is not shed from guilt; there are moments of late when guilt has become a distant stranger. Just as the smouldering fuel behind the hearth-grate crumbles, losing its original nature, turning, regardless of how it began—wood, coal, paper—to the same grey dust, so has my guilt disintegrated into the dry powder of alienation. Guilt is indistinguishable from fear, shame, nerves, and grief. I cry now, not because Mrs. Baxter's beliefs are mistaken, but because they might have been true, because the story is so touching, and so charming, much like those I heard and believed in before the war. My tears are for the lost son and for the valiant, yet tender, young man who ministered him in his last moments.

I fold the letter, the sentiment still tugging at my sleeve, slip it into my dressing gown pocket, and draw forth the next. This will be the easiest to read.