The Silver Locket (33 page)

‘I can see some people.’ Rose had acquired a pair of field-glasses, and now she pointed to the headland on which the town of Archangel was built, to the huddled clusters of grey-brown wooden houses among the winter trees. A scattering of more substantial buildings – a post office, a hospital, a city hall, perhaps – loomed in the gloaming near the centre of the town, and they could see the gilded onion domes of a small wooden church.

Smoke coiled lazily from the crooked chimneys. In the scrubby gardens, people bundled up against the cold seemed to be pulling roots. Or maybe they were feeding pigs or chickens.

‘Let’s go up on deck,’ suggested Rose.

‘All right, said Elsie, looking doubtful. ‘If you think it’s safe?’

‘Why shouldn’t it be safe?’

‘I don’t know.’ Elsie shuddered, although the cabin was – as always – stifling. ‘Rose, I don’t like this place. Look at those awful woods.’

‘They’re only trees, for heaven’s sake,’ said Rose.

Muffled up in sheepskin greatcoats, thick serge skirts and sheepskin hats with ear flaps, Rose and Elsie leaned over the rail, watching as the crew dropped ropes and chains to men below. They gazed across the snowy landscape at the silver birches, at the forest – full of wolves and Bolsheviks?

They should be safe enough in Archangel, thought Rose. The docks and harbour had become an army camp, with tents and dozens of prefabricated wooden huts, with sentries stationed everywhere. The perimeter wasn’t fenced or wired, she noticed, but perhaps there wasn’t any need. The natural boundary was the forest.

Sister Harrison called a meeting of the nurses. ‘You may leave the ship in pairs,’ she said. ‘You may walk around the army camp. But you may not leave it, and the town itself is out of bounds. This whole district is alive with Reds.’

‘Why did we come here?’ whispered Elsie.

‘You may play hockey, if you wish,’ the sister went on crisply. ‘I’d recommend it, because the exercise will do you good. The men have marked out several pitches, and the brigadier tells me we may use them. Of course, there must be no contact with the men.’

‘I’m sure you’ll find a way to see him,’ murmured Elsie. ‘I expect he’ll come and look for you.’

‘Miss Dennison, did you wish to address the meeting?’ snapped Sister Harrison.

‘No, Sister Harrison,’ Elsie said.

‘Then have the goodness to attend when I am speaking, and stop whispering to your insubordinate friend.’

The weeks went by and Rose saw hardly anything of the army – just the men on sentry duty who stamped their dreary way round the perimeter of the camp, and the ones she treated on board ship.

From these few casualties, she learned patrols went deep into the frozen forest, staying there for weeks, looking for Reds. The actual front, where the White Russians and the remains of the Imperial Army were making their last stand against the Reds, was several hundred miles away.

There was lots of skirmishing in the forests. The beleaguered Whites were taking plenty of punishment from the Reds, the wounded soldiers said. The ammunition dumps were strongly guarded by British and Canadians, but still the Bolsheviks found ways to help their devious selves.

As time went on, a steady stream of wounded came out of the woods. Most of the men had gunshot wounds or frostbite. The wards for men and officers filled up. Lurid tales of what the Bolsheviks did to men they captured made Rose shudder.

‘I’m sure they make it up,’ she said, as Elsie shook and shivered. ‘You know how soldiers gossip. They all exaggerate, and most of them tell lies.’

But as more casualties came in, floated on great wooden barges down a channel in the River Dvina or brought overland on fur-lined sleighs, Rose began to understand why people feared the Reds, and why the local peasants who brought wood and game into the camp had terror in their eyes.

The nurses were used to seeing awful sights and dreadful wounds, but now they started seeing things they’d never seen before – men who had been deliberately mutilated, men who had been captured by the Bolsheviks and rescued, but only after they’d been tortured.

Several nurses started having nightmares, and hardened veterans of the Somme and of the Ypres Salient refused to leave the safety of the ship.

‘Did you hear about that poor young chap in Henley Ward?’ Elsie asked Rose, shuddering, as they sat down to supper one December evening.

‘You mean the one the Reds took hostage?’ Rose didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Yes, I heard,’ she said. ‘Elsie, would you pass the gravy, please?’

‘Staff Nurse Pelham told me Captain Miller’s patched him up. But after what they did to him, I don’t think he’ll be able – I mean, he won’t have children. He won’t be a man.’

‘I’m amazed the Russians are so cruel. They’re far worse than the Germans.’ Rose gave up trying to eat her supper. She sat back and lit a cigarette, hoping it would calm her fraying nerves.

Christmas came and went without the usual concert parties, dressing up or any other festive mirth. The war was over, they had cause to celebrate, but nobody was in the mood for fun. They wanted to go home, to leave this ghastly country, get away.

But the seas had frozen. They were trapped until the spring.

Rose tried to find out where the Royal Dorsets had been sent. She finally discovered they and the Canadians had gone deep into the forest. As well as the ammunition dumps, they were guarding fords and levees on the River Dvina, shooting wolves and Reds, and living like wolves themselves on what they hunted, beast or man.

She wished she’d never asked for details. ‘They’re
not
eating Bolsheviks,’ she said, as she changed the dressing on a sergeant-major’s arm. ‘Wolves and bears, perhaps. But British people don’t eat other human beings.’

‘If there’s nothing else, they do.’ The sergeant-major shrugged. ‘A Red tastes just like pork, without the crackling. Of course, you don’t get apple sauce out there.’

One afternoon in January, as the sullen light was slowly dying, Staff Nurse Pelham came into the rest room where nurses not on duty read or sewed. ‘Miss Courtenay, Sister Marlow, Miss Devine?’ Rose saw she looked flustered and upset. ‘You’re needed down on Walton Ward. The Bolsheviks attacked a dump last night. The Canadians had the worst of it, but they got a few of our boys, too.’

As Rose and the other nurses hurried into the ward, an orderly was ticking off some names. As she passed him, she glanced at the list.

Lieutenant Fraser, KOYLI. Captain Morris, Berks and Bucks. Captain Denham, Second Lieutenant Lawson, Royal Dorsets.

It was as much as she could do to stand, for suddenly she was trembling and her legs were threatening to give way. What had they done to him, the murderous, filthy Bolsheviks? She grabbed the rail of a bunk, and held it while she swayed and tried to swallow rising bile.

‘Miss Courtenay, come along!’ Sister Harrison swept past, carrying swabs and dressings on a tray. ‘You and Sister Marlow can deal with Captain Morris and Lieutenant Fraser, while Miss Devine and I prepare the other two for theatre. What’s the matter, child?’

‘N-nothing, Sister Harrison.’ Behind the sister, Rose could see two bodies dressed in filthy, bloodstained khaki. Both lay motionless and silent. So were they unconscious, were they dead?

She forced herself to look away. She and the other nurse began to cut the tattered uniforms off the other soldiers, bracing themselves for horrors they might see.

‘I saw the name!’ Rose cried an hour later, as Elsie tried to reassure her, to suggest it might be someone else. But, failing that, to convince Rose it would be all right.

‘Very well, he’s wounded.’ Elsie put her arm round Rose’s shoulders. ‘But they got him out of it, he’s in theatre now, and Dr Miller is a brilliant surgeon. If anyone can do it, he’ll pull Captain Denham through.’

‘But will he have a life worth living?’ Rose glared at Elsie savagely. ‘You’ve seen what they do, those filthy butchers!’

‘Rose, don’t let yourself get carried away. Let’s wait and
 
see, all right?’

Alex knew he had been blinded. The darkness was so dense, so black, it couldn’t be just night, not even this enshrouding Arctic night.

They were unwrapping him, as if he were a parcel. He lay there and let them, didn’t murmur, didn’t cry out when they hurt him, for what would be the point? If he’d lost his sight it didn’t matter, nothing mattered any more.

It was a strange existence, being a soldier. One minute, you were out there on the battlefield, armed and powerful, killing people – or doing your best not to be killed. The next, you were lying on your back while people poked and prodded you, and you couldn’t do anything to stop them.

They unwrapped the dressings round his head. A male voice was murmuring something, but he couldn’t catch what he was saying, there was a roaring in his ears. Now he could see whiteness, brightness, and what he thought must be the sun, or an electric light.

‘Call me if you need me, Nurse,’ the male voice said crisply. ‘Captain Denham, can you hear me? Your chaps got you out of it, you’re going to be all right. You’ve got a head wound and concussion. Your vision will be blurred for several days, but in a week or so you should see normally again. The bullet wound in your leg looks rather nasty, but will heal.’

Then he was aware that someone in a nurse’s uniform was leaning over him. Someone who smelled of soap and Lysol, but whose human, personal scent he knew. He thought he must be dreaming. He stared and tried to focus, but in vain.

‘Alex, can you speak?’ asked Rose.

‘Yes, I can speak.’ He would have given anything in the world to see her face, but it was still a blank, white shape. ‘Rose, this is a vile country, full of vile people!’

‘Yes, I know,’ she said. ‘But don’t worry about it now. Just go to sleep.’

‘I can’t sleep!’ He thought he’d never sleep again. ‘That poor sod they caught, they crucified. We found him hanging from a tree.’

Then he felt a needle stab his arm, and everything dissolved into a mist.

Rose wasn’t usually on Walton Ward, but four days after Alex had come in, she got herself transferred.

‘You’re looking better now,’ she told him, as she changed the dressing on his leg one dull, grey morning. ‘How’s your vision these days?’

‘It’s almost back to normal, except that I see two of everything.’

‘How many fingers am I holding up?’

‘God, I don’t know.’ He frowned, then grinned. ‘But there are two of you. Two Roses, twins – now there’s a ghastly thought.’

‘I see they’re giving you too much morphine.’ Rose put the used dressing in the bucket. ‘Captain Miller says you’re very lucky. They didn’t crack your skull, and the bullet in your leg just missed the bone. I was afraid of gangrene, but although your calf is quite a mess, the wound looks pink and healthy.’

‘So I won’t lose my leg?’

‘Of course you won’t.’ Rose reached for a bottle. ‘Now, Captain Denham,’ she said softly, as she swabbed the wound with Lysol, ‘tell me you’re sorry I came.’

‘I wish you were anywhere but here in stinking Russia. What’s that stuff you’re putting on my leg? Jesus Christ, it stings!’

‘Captain Denham, please don’t use offensive language in the hearing of the nursing staff.’

‘I’m very sorry, Sister.’ She felt him watching her as she bound up the wound, and it was like being bathed in sunshine. ‘You will come back and see me?’

‘Yes, of course.’ She walked off down the ward, her heart as light as gossamer. Alex might be sick, but he was safe.

Three weeks later, he was almost better. He could see properly again, and get about on crutches. Weak and obviously in pain, he still needed morphine. But he didn’t have the greenish pallor he’d had when first brought in, bleeding from a head wound and shot through the leg, when he and his company had been ambushed by Reds.

There was hardly any contact with the outside world. Letters from England came infrequently, brought by the Royal Navy ice-breakers that patrolled the frozen Barents Sea.

‘They’ve still got that awful influenza back at home.’ Rose was helping Alex dress, and noticing how thin he was, how wasted. It would, she thought with satisfaction, be several months before he was passed fit, and by then they all might be in England once again. ‘Celia’s been quite ill, apparently.’

‘So has Chloe,’ said Alex.

‘How do you know?’

‘Henry wrote to me before we left.’

‘I hope she’ll be all right.’ Rose met Alex’s gaze. ‘I don’t want to hear of anybody sick or dying. There’s already been too much of that.’

Alex shrugged and fumbled with his buttons. ‘But some people seem to have charmed lives. Celia’s bloody brother’s still unscathed.’

‘Yes, he’s become quite famous.’ Rose helped Alex step into his shoes. ‘I was on a men’s ward yesterday, and they were discussing Mr Easton, how he’s come through the war without a scratch, and now it seems the Bolsheviks can’t touch him.’

As Alex gained more strength, he started fretting and talking about going out again.

Convalescing men were sent to walk around the decks, and get some gentle exercise, but Alex paced the decks all day. One afternoon Rose found him sitting muffled in a coat, watching the sky. ‘I’m going to ask to be discharged tomorrow,’ he began.