The Foreshadowing (11 page)

It is Monday evening.

The weekend was a miserable affair. Mother was quiet almost all of the time, worrying about Edgar, and the one time she did speak it was of him.

“I wonder where Edgar will be for Christmas,” she said.

Not such a bad thing to say, but Father raised his voice, and told her to stop fretting about Edgar all the time. Then he went out.

That was Saturday morning, and as soon as he had gone, I took the chance to replace Edgar’s letter in Father’s desk before it was missed. That would only cause more trouble.

I tried to comfort Mother not by talking but by doing. I took her out shopping, but she stared at things in a listless way, and would barely speak to the shop assistants.

In Needham’s, Mother stopped by the glove counter.

Hoping to catch her interest, I asked her if she wanted new gloves for the winter.

She stared at the counter.

“Mother? Did you want something?”

Still she gazed down, saying nothing. I could see an assistant dithering, wondering whether to come over or not.

“Mother?”

“I wonder if Edgar’s hands are warm.”

I looked at the assistant and smiled, but shook my head to keep her away.

“I’m sure he’s fine,” I said.

“But it must be cold, and wet.”

“I’m sure the army kits them out well. Remember how smart he looked in his uniform? He’ll have everything he needs.”

“Do you think so, Sasha?”

Now at least she stopped looking at the gloves and looked at me, but the weight of the pain in her eyes was enough to break my heart.

“Yes,” I whispered. “I’m sure of it. Come away now. Let’s go to Hannington’s, see if they have your material.”

I nearly had to pull her out of the shop, but at last we were outside. It was raining by then, and we gave up. To be honest, I was relieved to go home.

I got changed to go to the hospital for a late-afternoon shift.

It was bitter, inhospitable weather as I made my way up to Seven Dials. The rain began to lash down as the hospital came in sight, so I ran for the entrance.

As I passed through the doors I felt better immediately. Better, almost happier in a way, despite everything that has happened here. I was glad of the warmth, and of the noise and the brightness. For a second I stopped and marveled at the commotion, people coming and going, nurses and orderlies at work, and I realized that I had come to like the place.

“Fox,” said one of the nurses as she passed, and smiled and nodded to me.

I smiled back and got to work.

It was a quiet shift, but there were two pieces of interesting news.

I could tell something was different on the ward as soon as I arrived.

“Have you heard?” one nurse said to me. “About Sister Maddox?”

“She’s gone!”

“She’s gone to France.”

“I know,” someone said. “We were as surprised as you are! Apparently she felt she wasn’t doing enough here. She got herself sent to France, to a hospital in Rouen.”

Maddox had seemed such a hard, uncaring woman. Maybe that’s not such an uncommon thing in the medical profession, but perhaps we were wrong about her. She didn’t tell anyone she was going, and left without a word to any of her staff. More and more nurses are making their way out to France to the big hospitals, in Paris, in Rouen, where Maddox has gone, or Boulogne, where Edgar was when he was injured. They have to volunteer, and then wait to be called up. I know Father’s responsible for passing the applications of nurses from our hospital.

I’ve overheard him talk about things in France. Yes. He’d say, “Always watching, always prying.” But that’s how I learn.

The existing French hospitals were soon overwhelmed at the start of the war, and many other buildings, like hotels and warehouses, have been put to use as makeshift hospitals. And all these hospitals need nurses, especially ones as experienced as Sister Maddox.

The other thing that I learned was even more of a shock.

On my way home, I saw a nurse I knew walking the same way as me on the other side of the road. We must have the same shift patterns, because I keep bumping into her. It was the nurse who had found me in the linen room with Evans.

I ducked my head and tried to pretend I hadn’t seen her. I tried to hurry, but she skipped across the road to walk beside me.

“Wait!” she said. “I want to tell you something. It’s about your friend. Evans. The Welshman?”

“Leave me alone.” I kept on walking.

“No,” she said. “No . . . listen. I thought you might like to know. He’s making sense again. I mean, he’s getting better.”

I slowed down, and looked sideways at her, to see if she was teasing.

“Whatever it was you did, it worked. All the nurses are talking about it, about how you made him better.”

I stopped.

“How do they know?” I asked. “Who told them?”

The girl blushed.

“Don’t worry,” she said, hurriedly, “It’s just nurses’ gossip. Your father . . . I mean, the doctors won’t take any notice of that, they’ll think it was what they did to him that worked.”

“Maybe it was,” I said.

She shrugged.

“Anyway,” she said, “I just thought you’d like to know.”

“Thank you,” I said, and I meant it.

69

Last night I dreamt about the raven again.

It was a vivid dream, so lifelike that when I woke in the middle of the night, my heart racing, it seemed real.

I was flying. Flying high above a darkening landscape, and without any reason I knew I was above the plains outside the city of Troy. Was I seeing what Cassandra had seen?

The sun was setting. In truth, I knew that for the people on the ground far below me the sun had already set, but looking down from on high, I could still see the last cusp of the red sun slipping beneath the far horizon. It flickered once more like the embers of coal in a fire, then went out. Night came and wrapped the earth in its dusky wings. Darkness flooded across the landscape from the west, but somehow I could see clearly.

I whirled and soared like a bird of prey, and some distance away I could see the walls of the great city, the top of which bristled with feather-laden spear tips. But my attention was drawn to the fields beneath me, from where I felt a terrible pull of death, as if the departing souls of the slaughtered men were trying to take me with them.

I resisted.

I resisted and tried to pull up into the sky and soar again, but I could not. I began to plummet toward the earth as I realized it was impossible that I should be flying anyway.

The ground hurtled toward me, but somehow with infinite slowness, so that I had time to gaze at the horrors that unfolded there. All around was carnage, and bloodied bodies. Broken chariots and splintered shields were strewn across the plains as if cast there by a god’s hand. Here and there a few men still wearily tried to put an end to each other, but this was a battle that was already dead itself.

I landed, and in mild surprise saw that I had survived the fall, and landed on my feet, my legs merely jarred from the impact.

It was then that I saw the raven. It was a huge bird, and at first I could only marvel at its beauty. The blackness of its feathers was perfect; a glistening, oily blackness set off by the charcoal gray of its beak. It fixed an eye on me and put its head on one side, and only then did I see what it was standing on, what it had been feeding on.

I thought I was going to be sick, but I couldn’t look away. And then the bird spoke to me.

It spoke with the voice of the dead upon which it was feeding.

“You!” it said. “You alone saw the horror of war, and wept when we did not believe you.”

I woke.

68

Thomas has come home.

It’s so wonderful that when he walked through the front door I threw my arms around him to hide the tears in my eyes.

He laughed, and pushed me away.

“Sasha!” he cried, and everyone laughed, even Father, though there was nothing really to laugh at.

“You’ve grown,” Mother declared.

Tom sighed.

“Don’t be silly,” Father said. “He hasn’t grown. You shrank him in your memory.”

I think Father might be right about that, but Mother was right too. There was something different about Tom. He wasn’t any taller, but he was older. He had aged by more than the few months he’d been away.

Father stepped forward and put out his hand. Tom looked at it for a moment and then shook it.

It was the first time that they’ve ever done this, and I immediately knew what it meant. Father considers Thomas to be a man, and as I watched I smiled inside for what I hope it means.

67

Tom and I have been catching up today, swapping stories of hospital life.

We chatted as we helped Mother make Christmas pudding, rather late this year. This is one job she likes to do herself, and not leave to Cook. She bustled around the kitchen, getting Molly to fetch ingredients for her. She was busy, she seemed happy, and I saw that she smiled, listening to us talk as she stirred in a bottle of brown ale and a bottle of stout.

Father came home later and we had supper. It was quiet at first, and I felt nervous for some reason.

Father looked at Tom, a forkful of food in one hand.

“So, how are your studies, Tom?”

Tom’s face lit up.

“Everything’s going well,” he said. “There’s only a few of us, really, because lots of boys deferred entry to go to . . .”

He stopped.

Father nodded.

“Go on,” Mother said. “Tell us about Manchester.”

Tom shrugged.

“It’s well enough,” he said. “It’s not as nice as Brighton, but the people are friendly. Well, most of them.”

I could tell he was thinking of the white feathers he’s been given. I knew more about that than Mother or Father because he knows it upsets them, though in different ways.

Tom talked for a bit as we ate. Then Father put his knife and fork down and looked at Tom.

“I’m sure that any son of mine could make a fine doctor,” he said. “But I think you may not have the chance to find out for a while.”