The Foreshadowing (4 page)

“What a fine daughter you have, now, Mrs. Fox!” he said, and Mother smiled, but I thought about their son. I looked away.

The sun shone and gulls cried overhead when suddenly, I saw a flash of color at our side. I looked round to see a young woman in a dark blue dress approaching us. She had two friends with her, girls a little older than me, also in expensive dresses. Before we even knew what was happening, the girl was talking to Tom.

She was very pretty, and at first Tom smiled as she pressed something into his hand.

Tom looked down at what she’d given him and his face fell. It was a white feather.

The girl muttered something and hurried off to rejoin her friends.

“But I’m not even eighteen yet,” Tom protested as she went.

We went home straightaway, and no one said a word.

94

When we got in there was an awful row.

Edgar didn’t even have to say anything. The look on his face was enough to tell Tom what he was thinking.

“The disgrace!” Father snorted. The white feather meant the girls thought Tom was a coward, shirking his duty in the war.

“But I’m not even eighteen,” Tom said, again and again. “Why didn’t any of you tell them that?”

“But it’s true!” Edgar said. “You don’t want to go to war. It doesn’t matter what age you are or aren’t. There’s a name for people like you!”

“Edgar!” Mother cried. “Stop it.”

Without realizing it, I held her hand.

“It’ll only get worse,” Father said, “the older you get. When people know. You have to do your bit.”

“Is that all you can ever say?” Tom shouted at Father. I shuddered. None of us has ever raised our voice to him, but strangely, Father let it pass.

“That’s all that counts,” he said.

“What?” asked Tom. “Going to war? Killing?”

“Not killing,” Edgar said. “Doing your bit. That’s all. Fighting for what’s right.”

“You haven’t even done any fighting,” Tom spat at Edgar.

That really upset him. He stormed over to Tom, and for a moment they looked like they did when they were young boys, Tom trying to stand up to Edgar, even though he is five years younger, and so much weaker.

“That’s not my fault,” Edgar shouted. “And when I get the chance, I’ll fight. I’m no coward!”

“Is that what you think I am?” Tom said angrily.

Maybe Edgar hadn’t meant that. I don’t think he did, but now the word was spoken, it seemed impossible he could take it back.

“Yes. Coward.”

Tom stood rigid, his face drained, his teeth clenched. He took a deep breath.

“All I want to do,” he said finally, “is to go to medical school. I’d rather save men here than kill them over there.”

He stepped past Edgar, and, avoiding Father’s eyes, made his way upstairs as calmly as he could.

93

When we were children, we fought about little things, and sometimes Tom and Edgar would fight because Edgar had been mean to me. It seemed deadly at the time, but we all grew up, and the years between Edgar and Tom and me began to tell. The two of them bickered instead of punched, and while Tom and I were still close as we got older, Edgar grew distant, and paid me no attention.

The argument over the white feather reminded me of all that. Except now we were fighting about something truly deadly.

That was six months ago, the Easter of 1915. Edgar went back to the war, and got his wish. He wrote to us that his battalion was being called up from reserve and would soon see real action. Mother is very worried, but tries not to show it. Father is proud.

Tom has gone, though not to the war but to Manchester to study medicine.

I miss him. My brother who is almost a twin to me, although there is a year between us.

But something good has happened. I don’t know why, but Father has finally agreed to let me spend some time on the wards at the Dyke Road hospital, to see if I want to go into nursing properly.

At last! This is my chance to show everyone that I can be useful, that I can help people.

Tomorrow, I will see what the future has in store for me.

92

“Sister Cave will take you round,” Father said. “Stick next to her. Don’t say anything unless she asks you a question, do everything she tells you to. And don’t get in anyone’s way.”

He walked away down the dimly lit corridor. Sister’s about my mother’s age, I suppose, and quite friendly, but I felt nervous. If anything were to go wrong Father would never let me come back.

We pushed through the half-glass doors and were in the ward.

“Wait here while I get the trolley,” Sister said.

Ahead of me I could see the beds, but it was nothing like a normal hospital ward. The building had been built as the new boys’ school only two years ago, but as soon as the war had started it had been commandeered as a military hospital. In this makeshift arrangement, the beds are crushed in tight together.

It was all very quiet. I don’t know what I’d been expecting but I was surprised that there wasn’t more noise. I took a couple of steps forward, and noticed another room opposite the one Sister had gone into.

The door was open. Something made me take another step and I saw a man in pajamas sitting on a wooden chair. He was young, but had thinning hair.

He gazed intently ahead, but when I came closer, I saw nothing but a blank white wall.

I jumped as I heard a clatter behind me, and turned to see Sister wheeling the trolley toward me.

“Right, Alexandra. Or should I be calling you Nurse now?”

I smiled and looked back at the man in the white room, a question on my lips.

Sister came over. “Him? Mental case.”

She said it loud enough for him to hear, but he showed no sign of having done so.

“Nothing we can do for him.”

She emphasized the word
we.

“Doesn’t he do anything?” I asked. “Say anything?”

“Occasionally,” she said. “But it’s all nonsense.”

“What’s his name?”

She looked at a chart by the door.

“Evans,” she said. “David. Welsh. Heaven knows how he ended up here.”

She moved off with the trolley, and I followed.

We went from bed to bed, and Sister dispensed medication. She gave morphia to those in pain, but for many there was nothing to do.

Then came a moment I had been dreading.

“We need to change this dressing,” Sister said.

I looked down at the man in the bed. He was at least twice my age, and I felt my lip tremble. He was only half awake, but as Sister pulled back his sheets, he hissed in pain and his eyes shot open.

“We’ll be as fast as we can,” Sister told him, and he nodded. His face showed no expression at all.

The wound was in his thigh, and Sister deftly cut off the old dressing and dropped it into a metal bin underneath the trolley.

“Good,” she said. “No need to inflict iodine on you today.”

She smiled at the man, then turned to me.

“Pass me that one,” she said.

I handed her the clean dressing, and she bandaged his thigh again. She moved so rapidly I barely had time to realize how disgusting the wound was, how there was no muscle where there should have been.

Everything was going well, and I felt proud of myself, though still nervous.

Then we came to the last bed.

The man who lay there was younger than all the others.

Sister smiled.

“Not much to do here either,” she said. “He’s nearly better. Gas case. His eyes and lungs were damaged, but he’s on the mend. Be back in France before he knows it.”

“Where’s Nurse Gallagher today, then, Sister?” the man asked.

“You’ve got me today. And this is Alexandra. She’s a special visitor, I’m showing her the ropes. You can be my guinea pig.

“Lungs,” Sister said. “And look. Take a close look at his eyes. Can you see the inflammation of the tear ducts?”

I leaned right up to the man and peered into his eyes.

“Of course, it was much worse, nearly better now.”

That was the last thing I heard Sister saying.

I looked into the man’s eyes, but I didn’t see inflamed tear ducts. I saw an empty bed. I saw death.

I think I began to shake, and then I heard the man speak.

“My God,” he said. “My God. Her eyes!”

He tried to back away from me, squirming in the bed.

“Her eyes!” he shouted again, and other people began to call out from their beds.

Then he began to cough and choke.

“What does he mean?” I asked. “What’s wrong with—”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Sister said quickly, “but you’d better go home. I’ll tell your father.”

“No!” I cried.

“Don’t worry, it’s not your fault. Go on.”

She turned to soothe the man, who still lay hacking and coughing in bed.

As I went I took a last look, and saw him staring back at me. I was too far away to hear him, but I could read his lips.

“Her eyes!”

It’s late now and I’m in bed.

I didn’t have long to wait until Father arrived home. He came up to my room.

“I heard there was some trouble,” he said, standing in the doorway.

“It wasn’t anything to do with me,” I began, but he held up his hand.

“I didn’t say it was. The hospital is full of damaged men, Alexandra. Sometimes it’s not their bodies that are damaged.”

I nodded.

“Is he all right?” I asked.

“Physically, yes. He’ll be home in a week.”

I said nothing. Nothing of what I’ve been thinking.

Father took a step into the room.

“You did well today,” he said.

“That man, you’re sure he’s going to be all right?”

“Absolutely,” Father said. “But you must understand. If you want to be a nurse, you’ll see plenty more men who won’t be.”

I’ve tried to sleep, but I can’t.

Father says the man is all right, Sister said so too, but I know that he’s about to die.

I know it.