Lorimers at War (17 page)

He had become nothing but a helpless body, conscious now, but to be moved or forgotten in accordance with some plan which he could not understand or control. His stretcher was stacked into a bunk in a railway truck, was swung on to the deck of a ship by a crane, was carried off
to another train. From time to time he was offered a drink, a cigarette, or another injection of morphine, but he had no clear idea of how time was passing, except that the smell which he carried round with him grew more nauseous with every hour. No one had time to talk. Doctors and nurses, orderlies and stretcher bearers were all overworked, silent and grey from lack of sleep. It was as though he were on a conveyor belt so badly overloaded that it could only be kept moving if everyone concerned winched it by hand, knowing that if they were to stop for a moment the weight would be too great for any movement to start it again.

The recurrent injections muddled his mind while keeping the pain of his body more or less under control, but it was in a moment of comparative clarity that he found himself lying on the platform of a railway station. There was nothing to tell him where it was. He could only hope that he had reached London at last, that the apparently interminable journey was in fact near its end. Without warning he remembered a day almost two years earlier. He had broken the news of his enlistment to his mother on a station platform just like this one, and almost as crowded with stretchers. It was the day that Brinsley had left for France – and with the memory of that moment Robert recollected for the first time since the explosion of the shell what it was that he had been doing when he was hit. The horror of what he had seen had sealed the picture off from his mind, but now he saw Brinsley running through the smoke, saw his bright yellow curls spring up as they were freed from the flattening weight of the dislodged steel helmet, saw the jerk of his arms and shoulders as the bullet stopped him in his tracks. Remembering, too, the agonized twitching which had continued after his cousin fell to the ground, Robert began to vomit.

The feeling that he had been abandoned was so strong that it seemed a small miracle when he felt his face being
sponged. The woman who was bending over him was shabbily dressed and undernourished, but her eyes were full of sympathy. He muttered his thanks as soon as he could speak again and in return she told him that her own son had died of wounds. She met every hospital train now to give to strangers the kind of care which might have eased his pain.

‘Where am I? Is this London?' Even talking was an effort, but he did his best to speak clearly.

‘That's right, dear, London. Live in London, do you?'

‘I want someone to know where I am,' he told her. ‘Will you get in touch with my mother? Or my uncle. Anyone. Tell them where I'm being taken.'

She bent again to read the label which had been tied to his tunic, giving his destination as though he were a parcel. ‘Where shall I find them?' she asked.

‘What day of the week is it?'

‘Friday, dear. Friday morning.'

The battle, he remembered, had begun on a Saturday. But there was no time to wonder what had happened to the missing days. Painfully he groped for the linen bag which had been tied round his shoulder and which contained his papers and valuables. There was some money there. He pressed it all into her hand.

‘Take a cab to Glanville House in Park Lane,' he said. ‘Even if there are only servants there, they'll know where to telephone my mother in the country. Speak to her yourself if you can. But tell someone where I am. Robert Scott.'

‘Robert Scott,' she repeated. ‘All right, dear.' She sponged his face once more and left him.

A little at a time Robert's body, which had for so long been tensed against pain, began to relax. He had been taken from the battlefield where he was in danger of his life; he had survived the nightmare journey; and he had come to the country where strangers were friends. Very soon now he would see his mother again and then
everything would be all right. She would tighten her lips when she saw how dirty he was; she would bathe him and be gentle with him and heal his broken body and hold him tightly and warmly close to herself for the rest of his life. ‘Mother!' he murmured, closing his eyes in an attempt to prevent the tears from forcing their way out. ‘Mother! Mother!' Half delirious, he was still calling aloud for her when Lord Glanville arrived.

Robert's plaster was due to be cut away on the first Monday in December. He longed to escape from the heavy cast which had imprisoned him for so many months, and yet was a little frightened of what his release might reveal. On the Sunday morning he held his mother back for a moment when she stood up to leave after her usual breakfast-time chat.

‘Mother, am I going to be all right?'

‘You're almost all right already.' But Margaret recognized his anxiety and came back to sit beside the bed for a moment longer.

‘Normal, I mean. Back to what I was before. Nobody's ever told me exactly what damage was done, you know.'

‘The damage was to the bone.' With the professional air of a qualified doctor, Margaret touched her own hip and thigh to indicate the areas which had needed repair. ‘Obviously, the flesh was badly torn as well, and the surgeon had to get out all the shell splinters and broken bits of bone before he could set what was left and allow the healing process to begin. The reason why he's kept you still for so long is to give the breaks the best possible chance to knit. He thinks, and so do I, that yes, you'll be back to normal. One leg perhaps fractionally shorter than
the other, but hardly enough to notice. An extra half-inch on the sole of your left shoe and you won't even limp. We caught you in time, thank God, to prevent the gangrene from getting a hold. You're bound to be very stiff and weak at first, though, Robert. You must be prepared for that. You won't simply be able to stand up and walk tomorrow. You'll have to take things slowly. Do exercises. As a matter of fact, I'm going to experiment on you.'

Startled, he looked to see whether she was joking, and was not entirely reassured when she laughed.

‘You're
going to be all right, but we've had a lot of men through our hands who aren't. They're alive, but not whole. And very depressed, as you can imagine. I mean, suppose you're used to earning your living as a train driver and suddenly you're blind. What do you do?'

‘Alexa has a blind piano tuner,' Robert remembered.

‘There aren't enough pianos in England to keep the new generation of blind men busy,' said Margaret. ‘I've been trying to think of new possibilities. It started as a search for some sort of therapy – to keep the men occupied while they were still here, to take their minds off the future. And then I thought, it ought to be therapy for the future as well. I've had a friend down here who's helped me work something out. He specializes in muscular diseases. He has evolved a training. Half a dozen of our long-stay patients have gone through it already, and now they're teaching the next batch. To massage muscles which have gone out of use for a while, or have been strained or injured.' Robert felt her firm fingers kneading his arm for a moment as she demonstrated what she meant. It invariably surprised him that his mother, who had always been small and by now was young no longer, should have such strong hands. ‘As soon as you're out of this suit of armour, I shall send one of them in to pummel you until you're ready to go riding with Frisca again. She can't wait to get you out of bed,
you know. You won't have a moment's peace after tomorrow.'

‘I'm afraid I'm just about to give her a nasty shock,' Robert told her. His mother had so often teased him about the devotion which his lively little cousin felt for him that he knew she would understand at once. And she did: he could feel the sudden tension in the atmosphere as she waited for him to speak the words. ‘I have actually become quite fond of Jennifer,' he said.

It could hardly come as a great surprise to her. When he had first been brought to Blaize after a series of operations in London, it was Jennifer who had made it possible for him to find a place in the overcrowded hospital by giving up her leave to nurse him in his own room for the first two critical weeks; and since then she had spent almost all her free time caring for him. Robert knew that his mother would have noticed. He did not expect her to pretend surprise, but had hoped that she might look pleased. Instead, the thoughtful expression with which she received the news came as a disappointment. ‘You don't mind, do you?' he asked.

‘I'm a little anxious, perhaps,' Margaret said. ‘Jennifer only knows you as a soldier and you only know her as a nurse. But those are temporary roles for each of you. When the war is over –'

‘Will the war ever be over?' demanded Robert. ‘And shall I still be alive when it is? I can't stretch my mind to think of the future, Mother, not when it's as far away as that. I can imagine tomorrow. I can just about believe in next month. That's all. I want to be happy now, not one day. I could be happy with Jennifer.'

‘Yes,' agreed his mother. ‘Yes, of course, I'm sorry if I sounded doubtful, darling. The mothers of only sons are notorious for being possessive. But that was nothing to do with Jennifer. She's a very gentle, conscientious, loving girl. She worries too much, but the best cure for that is happiness, and I'm sure you'll be able to find it together. Have you asked her yet?'

Robert shook his head. ‘I wanted to tell you first. And to be sure that – that I'd be all right. After tomorrow, you know. But I think she guesses. And I think I know what she'll say.'

There were no doubts in his mind at all, in fact. Only a determination not to allow Jennifer to sacrifice her life to someone who might prove to be a cripple, or worse, had restrained him. But he had kissed her, and she had come close enough for him to kiss her again. He knew enough about her shyness and the careful way in which she had been brought up to be sure that she would not have allowed that unless she intended to accept his offer as soon as he made it. He was sorry that his mother had felt unable to show more enthusiasm, but he loved her enough to be charitable. She had given the reason herself. She was a widow, and he was her only son. She would realize soon enough that she would be gaining an affectionate daughter by the marriage. He smiled up at her and was rewarded by her kiss, and the familiar feeling of her fingers riffling through his hair. Then – even on a Sunday – it was time for her to return to her duties.

As Margaret left her son's bedroom she was angry with herself for allowing her feelings to show. Robert had been right to guess that she felt little enthusiasm for the thought of Nurse Jennifer Blakeney as a daughter-in-law. Everything she had said about the girl's good qualities was true enough, but it was also true that Jennifer was too tense and anxious, seeming to live on the edge of her nerves and to be easily unbalanced by the need to make choices. It was not the recipe for the sort of carefree married life which two young people ought to be able to enjoy – but then, who could be carefree nowadays? To
be free of anxiety in 1916 was to be callous or simply unintelligent. Margaret reprimanded herself for falling into the same trap that she had seen waiting for Robert. Jennifer had not settled easily to the strain of a nursing life, but it was a temporary life. In her own home, with her own loving husband and children, she would be a different person, calm and contented. And Robert would be happy. They were all agreed on that, that Robert should be happy.

She was intending to spend an hour in her office before making her round of the wards, but was caught on the way by one of the village girls who seemed nowadays to have taken the place of the under-footmen.

‘If you please, Doctor, her ladyship asked me to tell you that Mr Lorimer of Bristol is waiting to see you in the library!'

Margaret went there at once, wondering what could have brought her nephew to Blaize without even a warning by telephone. For a moment, as she hurried along the corridors, she was frightened lest something should have happened to her brother Ralph. Arthur, whose ships still plied – although less regularly now – between Jamaica and Bristol, might well have been the first to hear of any accident.

But the emotion which was causing Arthur to pace up and down the room was one of irritation, not mourning, whilst Alexa looked merely perplexed as she waited for information. Ralph was, however, at the root of the trouble. Arthur was hardly able to go through the politenesses of greeting his aunt before he thrust a letter into her hands.

‘This is from Uncle Ralph!' he exclaimed. ‘Without a word of warning! Without it apparently occurring to him for a moment that we in England have far greater duties than anything he can imagine out there. How can he expect any of us to shoulder his responsibilities for him at a moment's notice? Really, it's too inconsiderate. Read it, Aunt Margaret. See what it says.'

Alexa came to stand beside Margaret as she frowned over the almost illegible scrawl. Remembering how neat her brother's tiny handwriting used to be, Margaret could hardly believe that he was responsible for this.

‘He was drunk when he wrote it,' said a voice from beside the door. Margaret looked up in astonishment. She had not realized that anyone else was in the room. An eleven-year-old boy was sitting on the floor with one leg in front of him, the other at an awkward angle. He had been tugging at the threads of Lord Glanville's Turkish carpet and now, as a spider scurried away towards the corner of the room, he slapped his hand over it and began to pull off each leg in turn with an expressionless face. Instinctively Margaret moved to stop him. But then, disentangling her mind from the puzzle of the unreadable letter and the brusqueness of the boy's comment, she realized who he was.

‘You must be Grant, then.' She left the letter to Alexa and opened her arms to welcome the youngest child of Lydia, her best friend and Ralph, her favourite brother. ‘And I'm your Aunt Margaret. We haven't seen each other since you were about six weeks old. I don't expect you remember that.'