The Furies (23 page)

Arriving back at the villa, she collected a mug of cocoa and plate of toast from the kitchen and then went to her bedroom. Opening the door, she saw Vera and Sylvia sitting at the table in the corner, the latter with an expectant look on her face.

‘Well?' Sylvia asked eagerly. ‘How did it go, Ellie? I'm dying to know.'

Elspeth sat down next to her, placing the toast on the table between them. ‘Oh, it was fine,' she said nonchalantly. She lifted the mug to her lips.

‘
Fine
?' Sylvia said, as Vera leant past her to pinch a piece of toast from the plate. ‘Is that all you've got to say?'

Elspeth took a drink of cocoa before replying. ‘Well, yes: it went well.' She picked up a piece of toast and took a bite.

‘Oh come on, Ellie,' said Sylvia. ‘Monica was saying that the quality of your and Captain Bayer's surgery was the best she had ever seen.'

Elspeth took her time to chew, swallow and take another sip of cocoa before replying. ‘Alright,' she finally said, holding the warmth of the mug to her chest. ‘It did go
very
well. And of course you were right about him, Sylvie. He's a very competent surgeon, but also a nice man and a delight to work with.'

‘More specifics, please: what was it like to operate with him?'

Elspeth paused to think about the question before she answered. ‘Well, when I've operated with men before, I've always felt slightly patronised: that by simple virtue of being a man, they must be somehow better than me, even if they have less clinical experience.' Sylvia nodded as she continued. ‘You know the sort of thing: an eyebrow raised here, a pout of the mouth there, giving their colleagues a knowing look whenever you come up with an interesting clinical observation. But there was none of that from Captain Bayer today; no arrogance or superiority, no hint of competition. It's the first time I've ever operated with a man who supported me in every way, a way that indicated respect and admiration for my abilities.'

‘Ugh,' Vera said, shaking her head in disgust. ‘Don't tell me that
you've
gone and fallen for him as well, Ellie?'

Elspeth smiled as Sylvia raised her eyebrows as if to say, ‘Well, have you?'

Elspeth sighed and then shook her head. ‘Don't be ridiculous, both of you.'

‘But there is something about him, isn't there?' said Sylvia.

But Elspeth just yawned, stretched her arms and stood up from the table. ‘I'm off to bed. The day is catching up with me and I have an early start tomorrow.'

***

The next morning Gabriel rose early and went to the ward, where Elspeth was already waiting for him. Accompanied by Aurelia and two of the VADs, they began a round on the post-op patients. The Serbian sergeant with the empyema was now breathing easily, and upon inspecting the water bottle by his bed, Gabriel saw that the end of the rubber tube had stopped bubbling, indicating that his lung had fully re-expanded. He carefully loosened the purse-string stitch around the drain – freeing both ends – while Elspeth took a firm grip of the tube. Then catching his eye she gave him a nod and yanked the tube out. Gabriel quickly pulled the ends of the purse-string suture tight around the defect and tied a surgical knot, while she leant over him with a pair of scissors to snip off the loose ends. Then Gabriel heard her give the VADs instructions to redress the wound and ask Aurelia to tell the soldier to begin mobilising.

A few beds further along, Luka was also in good spirits, flashing a grin at Gabriel from within the tangle of his beard. The wound on his abdomen looked healthy and dry, and Elspeth asked Gabriel to tell Luka that the operation was a success, saying the stitches would be removed in seven days, and that he should be well enough to leave hospital shortly after that. Then Gabriel pointed at Luka's eye-patch and motioned for him to lift it.

Luka raised the patch with one hand – his eye blinking at the unfamiliar brightness – and Gabriel leant forward to gently separate the eyelids.

‘Hm – looks much better.' He turned to Elspeth. ‘Perhaps you could ask one of the VADs to bathe the eye with warm dilute saline.' He turned back to Luka again. ‘You can keep the patch off from now on.'

The Chetnik appeared pleased and reached out to shake Gabriel's hand. Then he grinned at Elspeth before turning to Aurelia and exchanging words with her.

‘What did he say?' Elspeth asked her when they had finished speaking.

‘He thanks you for what you have done,' Aurelia replied. ‘And he again mentioned the sworn virgin he knows from his Cheta. He said she's one of the bravest Chetnik fighters he knows, but that you're one of the best surgeons he's met.'

Gabriel saw Elspeth flush with pride as Luka extended his hand to her. ‘Good luck,
Virginesh
,' Luka said to her in pidgin German.

Gabriel smiled when he saw Elspeth wince from the firmness of the big Serbian's grip, and as they left Luka's bedside he turned to her. ‘Congratulations. I think you've just convinced a Chetnik that a woman can be as good a surgeon as a man.'

‘Hm,' Elspeth said with a wry smile as she shook her cramped fingers. ‘I think if I'd shaken his hand for much longer, I might never practise surgery again.'

***

After their round finished, they went upstairs to the operating theatre to begin the day's list. There were fewer patients – most of the work on the Valjevo transfers had been done yesterday – so their last case was finished by early afternoon. However, Huber told them that three more cases were expected later, and Elspeth told Gabriel to have a break. ‘I'll come for you when they arrive,' she told him.

As Gabriel walked back to the Austrian orderlies' quarters, he decided he ought to familiarise himself with the layout of the hospital. And it was only now, as he strolled along the corridor, that he realised that the building must have once been a high school. And then he stumbled upon the library.

The room was no bigger than any of the other classrooms, one side piled from floor to ceiling with empty desks and chairs, the other side full of books; some stacked on their original shelving while others lay in a scattered heap on the floor. Many of the books had their covers ripped away, their pages shredded like large pieces of confetti, torn apart, he supposed, for use as kindling. It had been a while since he had seen a book and he had an urge to read something.

He wandered into the room and started to look at the intact books on the shelves, tilting his head as he scanned through the titles on their spines. But disappointingly all the words were in Serbian; so he began to rummage through the books strewn on the floor. With mounting excitement he realised they must be a collection of foreign texts, because the first book he picked up was in Greek, and the next was in Russian. He dug deeper into the pile and with a thrill saw Goethe's
Faust
, but half its pages were torn or missing. Then he saw
Hamlet
and next to it
Titus
Andronicus
; with delight he realised he had found a collection of Shakespeare's plays.

After checking through more than twenty books, he found to his disappointment that most were so damaged as to render them undecipherable. But delving further into the pile he discovered two undamaged copies:
Macbeth
and
Romeo and Juliet
. If he was going to be here for some time, he thought, it would do him good to practise his English. As they were both slim volumes he slipped one tome into each pocket of his jacket and then went back to the orderlies' quarters. The room was empty and so he stretched out on his bed and began to read.

He had been reading for no more than an hour when he heard a noise and lowered the book to see Elspeth standing in the doorway watching him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed, sat up and smiled at her.

‘What are you reading?' she said, pointing at the volume in his hands as she walked into the room.

He looked down. ‘This? Oh, it's
Macbeth
.' He stood and gave her the book. ‘I found it in the school library. I need to practise my English. I hope it is permitted?'

She flipped through the pages. ‘I don't see why not.' Then she shrugged her shoulders and handed it back to him. ‘Actually you may as well, because we're so short of fuel for the braziers that the VADs have been using some of the books as firelighters.'

‘I thought as much. Well, in that case, I'm pleased I saved it from the flames.'

‘You have a liking for Shakespeare?'

‘Doesn't everybody? Even we Austrians appreciate him.'

‘I would have thought that you would be more interested in the German playwrights, like Schiller and Goethe.'

‘There are some Austrian playwrights as well, you know.'

‘Oh? I don't know any.'

‘Our most famous is Franz Grillparzer.' She frowned, and then shook her head as he continued. ‘He wrote
Sappho
, about the poetess of ancient Greece who threw herself from the high cliffs of Lesbos when she found out her love for the youth Phaon was unrequited, and that he preferred her maid Melitta, instead of her.'

‘Sappho? As in Sapphic love?

‘Yes. Why?'

‘I would have thought she would have been more interested in her maid than the youth.'

He smiled. ‘Well either way she was unhappy about it. And like all good tragedies it finishes with her coming to a grisly end – same as this.' He waved the copy of Macbeth in front of her.

She looked past him and he turned to see her staring at the copy of
Romeo and Juliet
, which lay at the foot of his bed. He reached down to pick it up. It was a slim book, cloth-bound in grey moleskin, the title and author in gold lettering on the front cover. As he handed it to her he saw an expression of amusement appear on her face.

‘I see you have a liking for tragedy
and
romance,' she said, rubbing her fingertips over the velvety surface.

He grinned. ‘You mustn't read any significance into the title: that and the
Macbeth
were the only two undamaged books I could find. But yes, I do like Shakespeare's romantic plays.'

‘Hm,' she said, making a face as she leafed through the pages. ‘I've always thought the plot absurd: he kills himself because he believes her dead, and then she kills herself too.' She closed the book and gave it back to him. ‘In real life, Romeo would quickly have gotten over his grief and married Juliet's best friend.'

He laughed. ‘Well, that tells me what an emotionally controlled person you are, Dr Stewart. The point of the story being that the depth of their passion overcomes their instincts to survive.'

‘Well I prefer my women characters stronger, more rational.'

‘Do any particular ones come to mind?'

She furrowed her brow. ‘Well, I suppose Wanda from
Venus in Furs
would be one.'

Gabriel was astonished. ‘Sacher-Masoch's heroine? I'm surprised you've read his book.'

‘It was required reading as a medical student for our psychiatry lectures on deviancy,' she said with another smile. ‘Masoch's Austrian, isn't he?' He nodded as she carried on. ‘Well, everybody thinks the book is about Masoch's sexual predilections – his masochism – but at the end of the book he writes that the real moral of the story is that a woman can only become a man's true companion when she has the same rights as he, and is his equal in education and work.'

Ah, Gabriel thought: women's equality. It's interesting what you can learn about a person from the books they read. ‘If I'm honest,' he said, ‘I haven't thought much about women's rights before—'

‘Why would you?' she interrupted. He saw her slight frame tense with passion. ‘Most men haven't, because it doesn't impact on them. That's why British women have taken to public protest, even risking imprisonment so that men
do
think about the issues.'

‘I was going to say, that although I had not thought about it before, seeing the quality of your work has convinced me that equality for women is a right and proper end.' He saw her relax. ‘So in Scotland, do your women receive the same educational rights as men?'

‘Some. A few universities will permit women to attend lectures, but many still do not allow us to sit for a degree.'

‘It's no different in Austria, maybe even worse: it was only seven years ago that all males in Austria became entitled to a vote. Even now, without the right social connections it's difficult for a man to progress in his chosen career. The only way I could train as a surgeon was to win a place at medical school on a military scholarship. And of course I knew that one day I might be called upon to go to war, that I might witness battle injuries and death, but…' He paused as a sudden flashback of the young Serbian woman with braided ribbons swinging from a gallows appeared in his mind. He turned away for a moment to shake his head and try to clear the image. When he turned back to her again he saw that she was looking at him with concern.

‘You've seen some bad things?'

The unexpectedly gentle tenor of her words took him by surprise. He didn't want to talk about the things he'd seen and so he said nothing, but gave a slow nod. For several seconds a comfortable silence stretched between them. After a while, as if she knew what he was feeling, her voice suddenly brightened.

‘Oh, I almost forgot,' she said cheerfully. ‘We need to go down to triage. Huber says the patients have arrived.'

‘Of course,' Gabriel said, trying to muster enthusiasm although secretly disappointed their private time together had come to an end. ‘Please lead the way.'

She led him downstairs to the triage room, where Gabriel saw three patients lying on stretchers on the floor. Two of the wounded wore Serbian grey, but the third was in the pale blue of an Austrian private. Two orderlies stood waiting with razors and a jug of paraffin; one of them was Huber and he looked pleased at Gabriel's appearance.