Maisie Dobbs (34 page)

n a bright sunny day The Retreat seemed truly to live up to its name, a place that would afford one sweet respite from the cares of the world. As she drew up to the Gothic cast-iron gate with a pillar of rough stone at either side, Maisie could see through the railings to the sun-drenched farm beyond. The road leading from the entrance to the front of the house was dusty, causing a rippled haze of heat to work its way up toward a blue sky dotted with only a few lintlike clouds.

In the distance she could see a large medieval country farmhouse fronted by apple orchards. A high brick wall restricted further inspection of The Retreat, but as she regarded the subject of her investigation and imagination, she noticed in front of her the pink and red blooms of roses that had grown furiously upward on the other side of the wall, and now seemed to be clambering toward her, to freedom. Each bloom nodded up and down in the breeze, and in that moment the wave of roses reminded Maisie of the men who scrambled from a mud-soaked hell of trenches over the top and into battle. Bleeding from their wounds, millions of young men had died on the sodden ground and barbed wire of no-man's land.

Maisie closed and opened her eyes again quickly, to extinguish the images that presented themselves so readily in her mind's eye and had been haunting her since she had torn at the weeds on Don's grave at Nether Green Cemetery. She reminded herself that she could not afford to be distracted or influenced by her memories.

Maisie was leaning back against the MG's door, looking up at the gates, when a man walked through a smaller pedestrian entrance built into the wall. "Can I help you, Ma'am?"

"Oh yes indeed. Is this The Retreat?"

"Yes it is. And what might your business be here today?"

Maisie smiled at the man and approached him. He was tall and thin, with hair that seemed to be gray before its time. She was about to reply when she saw the long, livid scar running from his forehead across his nose and down to his jaw There was no left eye where the left eye should have been, not even a glass one. The socket was laid bare, defiantly. And as Maisie looked into the right eye of the disfigured man, she saw that he dared her to turn away. She met the man's gaze directly.

"I have written but have received no reply, so I decided to visit without an appointment. It's about my brother. I understand that he might stay here, at The Retreat, until he is healed."

And remembering how Celia Davenham so delicately touched her own face when speaking ofVincent's wounds, Maisie brought her fingers to her left cheek, mirroring the unseen pain of the wounded man before her. He visibly took a deep breath, and waited a second before replying. "You've come to the right place, Ma'am. Wait here and I'll be back in ten minutes. Mr.... er ... Major Jenkins is who you need to see, and I'll have to get permission"

Maisie nodded, smiled, and said she would be glad to wait. He hurried back through the pedestrian entrance and, taking a bicycle that had been leaning on the other side of the wall, raced along the driveway toward the house. Maisie squinted to watch as the man, now a speck in the distance, stood the bicycle by a door at the side of the house, then ran inside. Five minutes later the speck came running out of the door, took up the bicycle, and grew larger in her vision as he neared the front gate once more.

"You can come in to meet with Major Jenkins, Ma'am. I'll open the gate for you. Drive slowly to the front of the house, and park your motor by the big fallen tree on the gravel there. Major Jenkins is waiting for you."

"Thank you, Mr...

Maisie held her head to one side, seeking a name.

"Archie, Ma'am."

"Thank you, Mr. Archie. Thank you"

"Actually, it's just Archie, Ma'am. We don't use surnames here"

"Oh, I see. Thank you, Archie. Is 'Jenkins' the major's Christian name?"

The man's face reddened, except for the scar, which became pale as the surrounding skin heated.

"No. 'Jenkins' is the major's surname."

"Ah," said Maisie, "I see"

Maisie started the MG and drove to the gravel by the fallen tree as instructed. As she applied the handbrake, the door of the car was opened by a man who wore beige jodhpurs, a white shirt, and tall leather riding boots, and carried a baton.

"Miss Dobbs, I understand. I'm Major Jenkins."

Maisie took the hand offered to balance her as she got out of the car. Jenkins was of average height and build, with dark brown hair, brown eyes, and pale skin that did not seem to match his hair and eye coloring. His hair was so neatly swept back that ridges left by his comb reminded Maisie of a freshly ploughed field. She quickly regarded his face, looking for the scars of war, but there were none. None that were visible.

"Thank you, Major Jenkins. No doubt Archie told you why I am here. Perhaps you could tell me more about The Retreat."

"Indeed. Do come to my office, and we'll have tea and a talk about what we are trying to do here."

Jenkins sat in the Queen Anne chair opposite Maisie, who was seated in an identical chair. Tea had been brought earlier by Richard, another man who seemed not yet to be thirty, who had worked hard to mouth words of greeting to Maisie, his shell-blasted jawbone moving awkwardly as he made an enormous effort to physically frame the voice that came forth from his throat.

For her part Maisie did not draw back from the men at The Retreat, although she was sure she was not seeing those with the more devastating wounds. She had seen such wounds when freshly shattered bone and skin still clung to the men's faces, and scars were the best outcome to be hoped for.

"I read about it, in fact," said Jenkins, "then went over to France to have a look for myself. It seemed that these French chappies had a cracking good idea-provide a place of refuge for the men whose faces were altered, or taken, by war. It was certainly not the easiest thing to get going especially as, just after the war, many of the men here had such terrible injuries"

"What happened to them?"

"Frankly, for some it was just too much-bad enough having the wounds in the first place, but being young and having the girls turn away, not being able to go out without people staring, that sort of thing. To tell you the truth, we lost some-but of course we were their last chance of a bearable life anyway."

Jenkins leaned forward to offer Maisie a biscuit, which she declined with a wave of her hand. He nodded and set the plate down on the tray again.

"Of course, for most of our guests, being here helps. The men have no fear of sitting out in the sun, enjoying life outside. The physical work is good for them. Makes them feel better about themselves. No sitting around in bath chairs and blankets here. We go into Sevenoaks to the pictures occasionally-it's dark in the picture house, no one can see"

"And how long does a patient stay here?"

"Not `patient,' Miss Dobbs. `Guest' We call them guests"

"What about the first names only, Major Jenkins?"

"Ah yes. Reminds them of better times, before they became pawns in the game of war. Millions of khaki ants clambering over the hill and into oblivion. The familiarity of using Christian names only is in stark contrast to the discipline of the battlefield, of this terrible experience. Relinquishing the surname reminds them of what's really important. Which is who they are inside, here" He held his hand to the place just below his rib cage to indicate the center of his body. "Inside. Who they are inside. The war took so much away."

Maisie nodded accord and sipped her tea. Maurice had always encouraged judicious use of both words and silence.

"Now then.Your brother?"

"Yes, Billy. He wasn't injured facially, Major Jenkins. But he walks with some difficulty, and has been so very ... very ... unwell. Yes, unwell, since the war."

"Commission?"

"Commission, Major Jenkins?"

"Yes, is he a captain, a second lieutenant?"

"Oh. Actually, Billy was a soldier, a corporal when he was injured"

"Where?"

"The Battle of Messines"

"Oh God. Poor man"

"Yes. Billy saw more than enough. But then they all saw more than enough, didn't they, Major Jenkins? Major Jenkins, why is Billy's rank important?"

"Oh, it's not important, really. Just enables me get a sense of what he might have experienced"

"And how might that have been different for Billy than for, let's say yourself, Major?"

"It's just that we have found that men have different experiences of recovery."

"Are you a doctor?"

"No, Miss Dobbs. Simply a man who wanted to do some good for the men who gave their identity for the good of the country and returned to a people who would rather see their heroes walking tall or at best limping, than reflecting the scars caused by our leaders' illconceived decisions"

Maisie took another sip of tea and nodded. It was a fair comment.

She left The Retreat thirty minutes later after a tour of the premises. She had been escorted to her car by Jenkins, who watched as she made her way to the gate at a very sedate five miles per hour, the gravel crackling under the tires like sporadic gunfire.

Archie waited for her, touched his forehead in a partial salute as she approached, and leaned down toward her open window as she drew alongside him.

"So, what do you think? Will your brother be joining us, Ma'am?"

"Yes.Yes I think so, Archie. I believe it would do him a power of good"

"Righty-o. We'll look forward to seeing him, then. Hold on while I open the gate"

Maisie waved as she pulled out onto the road, the roses once again nodding in the breeze as Archie waved her on her way.

While she hadn't flinched or drawn back from his wounds, Maisie felt the discomfort of Archie's injury. The sun shone through the windshield of the MG, its heat and brightness causing her eyes to smart and a sharp pain to move from the socket of her left eye to a place on her forehead. The body empathizing with another's pain, thought Maisie. The subconscious mind alerting her to Archie's agony, though she had been successful in appearing to ignore the scar and empty eye socket.

Maisie didn't go far. Stopping once again in Westerham, she sat on a bench in the old churchyard, took the notebook out of her handbag, and began to write an account of her visit.

A walk through the grounds of The Retreat accompanied by Major Jenkins had revealed very little to her that she did not already know, only now she was familiar with the extent of the house, where the "guest" rooms were, and how the farm worked.

There were twenty-five guests living in the main house and an old oasthouse, no longer used for drying hops-Kent's most famous harvest. Though converted to living quarters years before, the oasthouse still bore the strong peppery aroma of warm hops.

The youngest man she met must have been thirty, which meant that he had been shipped to France at about age seventeen. The eldest was no more than forty years of age. Questioning Jenkins, Maisie had learned that although the guests were free to come and go at will, most remained, comfortable in the freedom from stares The Retreat afforded them.

Though the farm was to a large extent self-sufficient, each guest entrusted his personal savings to The Retreat, to draw upon for expenses beyond those of day-to-day living, and to contribute to the cost of helpers. If the farm's produce was bringing in a tidy sum, and providing much of the food, the pooled savings must have earned interest and amounted to a pretty penny in someone's bank account. The thought troubled Maisie.

The needs of the guests seemed to be few. There was no doctor on staff to provide for the physical care of those living with such terrible wounds, and no seasoned professional used to dealing with the emotional needs of those traumatized by war. Some of the men still wore the tin masks that had been provided for them when first recovering from their wounds. But the fine glaze used on tin molded to fit a face ten years younger now provided little respite from the mirror's reflection.

Maisie questioned Jenkins's approach. True, it seemed a benevolent idea, and she knew how successful the "holiday camps" had been in France, providing a resting place for wounded men struggling to return to peacetime life. But ifThe Retreat had been inspired initially by the success of an idea born of compassion, what fuel drove the engine now? The war was almost eleven years past. Then again, those who lived with its memory were still very much alive.