More Miracle Than Bird

by Alice Miller

  He saw the officer’s body, and looked back at her.

  “Help me,” he said. Together, they lifted the boy’s body back on the mattress. She went to get a clean blanket, shook it out, and covered the body up to the neck. Pike reached up to close the boy’s eyes, with the confidence of someone who had done it before.

  She realised she had blood all down her uniform, and Pike was also covered in blood. She realised, with surprise, that she was weeping. Pike put his hand on her shoulder. She pointed towards his bed, to indicate he should return there, and she went over to the bell and rang it. It was a relief to hear it ring.

  She walked over to the trolley to wash her hands. She assembled what she needed in front of her: a jug, a basin. She thought she heard someone behind her, but when she turned, there was no one there. She upturned a bottle of water into the basin, felt the liquid chugging out of the glass. She washed her hands, dividing the world up into live and dead. Hands, live. But was water alive or dead? Once more she heard someone walking, but this time it was Mrs. Thwaite, looking down the two lines of beds.

  “What is it?” The ward seemed quiet, sedate, as though nothing had happened.

  “It’s the lieutenant,” Georgie said. “I left the trolley out.” She moved away from the bed and gestured to the blood down her uniform. Mrs. Thwaite inhaled sharply. She hurried over to the boy, and was silent. She crouched beside him for a moment, crossed herself, and then stood. She wheeled the bed out of the ward, into the storage room. The men were waking up but had caught the sombre mood. Georgie followed the matron out. Mrs. Thwaite pulled a screen around the bed.

  “I need to go and make a telephone call,” Mrs. Thwaite said. She pointed Georgie towards the stack of nurses’ uniforms and walked back out through the ward. Georgie took a clean uniform from the top of the stack and went out to the washroom. The uniform was too big for her, but she changed into it. Not knowing what else to do, she put her bloody uniform in the rubbish.

  Georgie was still in the washroom when Pike appeared. His feet were so much better, she realised, he walked naturally. Behind him, the morning light was coming through the windows.

  “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “I wanted to check on you.”

  His eyes looked at hers as if he were trying to skin her, trying to see underneath to her blood, bones, guts. How strange it was for him to look at her like this. She wondered how it was that she was looking at him. She could hear Mrs. Thwaite’s voice from down the hallway, and seeing she was coming this way, she pushed Pike, quickly, back towards the ward. He held her hands a moment, and obediently slipped back behind the curtain, disappearing only just as the matron entered the washroom.

  “Nurse,” the matron was calling. “I need to speak with you.”

  Mrs. Thwaite hadn’t seen Pike, who would be on his way back to his bed. Georgie began to roll up her sleeves, which were too long for her, and the matron walked over to the window and retracted the blind. She wondered how the officers would deal with the news of the first death on the ward. She supposed they were used to death. The morning light poured in now, and the sky was bright blue.

  Mrs. Thwaite turned back to Georgie. “A man is coming to take the body.”

  “I shouldn’t have left the trolley out.”

  “I should have stayed up myself,” Mrs. Thwaite said. “But there is something else.”

  “Yes?”

  “Your mother just called.”

  Georgie looked up.

  “She wishes to speak with you. She would like for you to call her back.”

  “Thank you.” But why would the matron deliver such a message personally? There was a notebook for recording these things. Georgie turned back towards the beds, but she was aware that Mrs. Thwaite was still standing there. “I wondered,” the matron said quietly. “What was your brother’s name?”

  Georgie turned.

  “Your brother who was killed. What was his name?”

  “Oh,” Georgie said. “Harold.”

  “Harold Hyde-Lees?”

  Georgie hesitated. “I mean . . .” Georgie reached her hand up to her face and rested her cheek in her hand for a moment, desperately trying to think, as Mrs. Thwaite was standing across from her.

  “Your brother is at Oxford.”

  “I’m sorry. It wasn’t my idea.”

  The matron was staring at her.

  “Mrs. Thwaite?”

  “We will not provide you with a reference.”

  “No.”

  “I know you had hopes of going to the Foreign Office. There is no question of that.”

  “Yes.” She looked down at her hands.

  “You are dismissed. Please leave the premises now, and clear out your dormitory by evening.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  PIKE

  Pike had stayed close to the curtain and heard the entire exchange before he crept back to bed. Everyone was distracted; Mrs. Thwaite was supervising Georgie as she collected her things, and escorting her out of the building. He didn’t get a chance to speak to her; he had planned to tell her everything, about how they were sending him back to the front, about how he adored her, about how, if he came back . . . but he had been thrown by the exchange he’d just overheard. To invent a dead brother—that was a horrible thing, bizarre. Who hadn’t lost something real in this war? How many men had he lost? Eleven, twelve? And Mrs. Thwaite herself had lost both her sons, for God’s sake. He supposed Georgie Hyde-Lees wasn’t who he’d thought she was. It seemed she was more the object of his invention. Perhaps it was Emma he’d loved all along; perhaps Hyde-Lees—Georgie—had been only a shield. Or all of it had simply been his own invention. Perhaps he loved no one at all.

  Still, by the afternoon he wished someone were there with him. It was better to have someone on your mind, on the edge of your vision, no matter who it was. They were coming down between the beds to load him into the car, to take him away. He was sitting on his bed, trying to take all his surroundings in, so he could recall them later. He stared down the room to the painting of Paris and Helen, which had been hung back up on the wall in its original position. He didn’t care what Hyde-Lees had said; to him, it was still beautiful, the pair of them waiting, enthralled, for the ship to take them away. Of course, the Trojan War would not have really been started by two lovers waiting like this, so patiently on the shore. There would have been violence, rape. Anxiety would have led to anger would have led to brutality. In reality, no one got the chance to wait patiently; people were wrenched around by circumstances out of their control. But he liked the story the painter was telling. Even though it would lead to the biggest war the world had ever seen, it still presented a story of something sweeter, something more romantic, than ever happened in life.

  “Second Lieutenant,” one of the men in uniform said.

  Pike rose and saluted.

  “Good to have you back,” the stranger said.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Someone had shifted all her things out into the corridor of the dormitory. Outside the door of what had been her room was a pile of unpacked clothes. She tried the door, but it had been locked.

  Embarrassed, she knelt down and started to fold the clothes and place them inside the empty suitcases that had been dumped beside them. She quickly hid away her undergarments. Now and again a girl would pass by and lower her eyes and pretend not to see her. She didn’t blame them for wanting to disassociate themselves from her disgrace. One woman hesitated beside her and said, “Excuse me?” but Georgie waved her on wordlessly. She couldn’t speak to anyone.

  In amongst her clothes, Georgie found the old telegram she had received. IT DOES NOT END WELL. So far it seemed accurate. She had seen the way Pike looked at her as she left the ward; he must have overheard them. Once she had finished filling the two suitcases, she carried them down the stairs. She kept her eyes on the ground.

  She had no choice but to go to the telephone and call Nelly to ask her to come and meet her.

 
; Down the phone line, Nelly’s voice sounded far away. Georgie said as little as possible. Nelly responded that she was rather busy with a lecture she was organising and she was getting ready to go down to the country, but if it was really urgent she supposed she might be able to come to meet her. Georgie replied stiffly that she would be grateful for that. She would not cry. She hung up the phone and tried to pull herself together. With the last of her money, she paid a boy to carry her suitcases across to a tea-shop. She sat in the tea-shop and waited for her mother to arrive.

  Although it was supposed to be nearly winter, it was an airless afternoon, as if the city were an enormous room they were all trapped in. A man sat nearby in a perfectly respectable grey suit, smelling of mothballs and sweat, as though he hadn’t changed his clothes in weeks. His smell made her swallow. She moved her chair. She ordered tea, although she knew she would not be able to pay for it until Nelly got there. She imagined a tube running down the centre of her body, through her head, down through her neck, stomach, and down to her bottom, and this tube was filled with gunk, and whorls of dust.

  Nelly took a long time to get there. For a while, Georgie feared her mother would not come at all; could they arrest her, she wondered, for not being able to pay for a cup of tea? Georgie had not told Nelly the whole story; how could she? She hadn’t mentioned her dismissal, only said that she was finding the hospital too much.

  When she arrived, Nelly kissed her daughter’s cheek. As she joined her at the table and noticed her suitcases, she radiated I told you so but did not say it. She poured the tea so slowly, it was as if she were tickling Georgie’s brain with a feather. Georgie tightened her fingers around the handle of her cup.

  “In my house,” Nelly said as she lowered the milk jug, “you will need to abide by my rules.”

  Georgie nodded.

  “No mediums. No poets. You can stay with us in Montpelier Square and we will go down to the country together. We will get you that position at the Foreign Office and you can commute.” She finished pouring with a flourish. Everything had gone her way. But the very mention of the Foreign Office made Georgie place her teacup too heavily in its saucer. She could not get that job now, not without a reference, not with Mrs. Thwaite ready to tell everyone she was a liar. And back in Sussex, Nelly would not let her go to mediums or to see Willy. Whom could she go to for help?

  The first person who came to her mind was Nora Radcliffe. Could Georgie go to her one last time, before she went to her mother’s? She watched her mother dip the teaspoon into the tea, agitate it, and remove it. Her actions were meticulous, almost proud.

  “We have decided to go down to Sussex on Monday,” Nelly said, having deemed the tea appropriate to drink, “given the circumstances. It’s all arranged.”

  “Why?”

  “Darling, you can’t have failed to notice. The raids are getting worse.”

  Georgie shook her head. There had been the usual sirens, but Georgie had stopped listening for them, and it had been a long time since she had picked up a newspaper.

  “Hundreds of civilians have been killed,” Nelly said, sipping her tea and gazing at her daughter.

  Georgie considered her. “Really?”

  Nelly looked at her sadly, pitying her. She pointed at a newspaper on a nearby table, and as Georgie reached over to take it, Nelly gave her a look as if to say, Do you believe me now? Georgie skimmed the article. They had just had the worst air raid of the war, it said. She glanced at the date and remembered that Willy’s At Home was tomorrow night. Couldn’t she delay her departure, go to the Radcliffes’ now, find a way to stay overnight in London, and make it to the party tomorrow? Wouldn’t that mean she could then clarify things with Miss Radcliffe, and straighten things out with Willy for good? Once she had sorted out her affairs, she would be ready to go and stay with her mother, even if that meant she had to go down to the country. For the moment, she could leave her suitcases with Nelly.

  “I’ve just realised,” Georgie said, replacing the newspaper on the table, “I’ll have to stay somewhere else tonight.”

  “Where?”

  “With Dorothy,” she said smoothly. And why not? “She is going to help me finish my translation. I’ll come down to Sussex on the train. Perhaps you can have your boy take my cases.” She gazed down into her tea, the deep brown surface rippling slightly as a hansom cab clattered by outside.

  “I came all the way over here.” Nelly was annoyed, but Georgie didn’t feel like apologising. You could have been nicer to me, she thought. You could have let me do what I wanted.

  “I’m grateful,” she said instead. She drank a slug of tea, and another. “I wonder also if I might borrow a little money. I will pay you back, of course.”

  Nelly silently withdrew a pound note from her purse and placed it on the table. Georgie picked it up. They both looked out the window towards the empty street and said nothing. After a minute, Georgie took the opportunity to excuse herself, kissed her mother on the cheek, and stood up quickly. She left her empty teacup on the table.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Out on the porch of the Radcliffes’ house, two men were wheeling a large wooden bookcase towards the steps, preparing to carry it inside. Effie Radcliffe was watching the men when she turned and noticed Georgie.

  “What on earth are you doing here?”

  “I’m here to see Miss Radcliffe.”

  “We are not expecting you.”

  “It will only take a moment.” Georgie walked on the other side of the men with the bookcase and through the doorway. Effie Radcliffe followed her into the foyer.

  “Excuse me,” Effie Radcliffe said. She was wearing one of those dresses many of the women were wearing at the moment, baggy and drop-waisted, and in a particular shade of milk chocolate that, while en vogue, looked good on no one. “You can’t just walk right into our house.”

  “It’s important,” Georgie said. She was trying to keep her voice calm, light, when every part of her body felt like it was straining to keep itself together, to cling to the semblance of respectability. “I’d watch those delivery men. The small one looked like he might topple over. Is that bookshelf of any value?”

  “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Is she up here?” Georgie pointed up the stairs.

  Effie Radcliffe fluttered her arms helplessly. She was not going to grab Georgie, but she appeared to be uncertain what else she could do. “Rogers!”

  “I’ll only be a moment,” Georgie said, and as the butler came out to see what his mistress wanted, she ran up the stairs two at a time and walked down to the end of the hall, where the door was slightly open and mumbled a little against the doorframe in the breeze. She opened the door, and there was Nora Radcliffe, sitting at a desk in the middle of a lot of open books, the skin between her eyebrows knotted.

  The girl leapt up from her chair when she saw Georgie. She gathered up some papers as if to hide them away, but in so doing she knocked another stack of papers towards Georgie, who knelt down and picked them up and, without looking at them, passed them back.

  “I need your help,” Georgie said.

  “Mine?” Nora Radcliffe took the papers and wedged them under a book, while Georgie pointed to a leather chair in the corner, from which she wouldn’t be able to see the contents of the desk, which appeared to be making Nora nervous. “May I?”

  “Of course.” The girl dragged her own chair away from the desk. She pressed her dress down with her fingers and glanced at the door. She seemed desperate.

  “I’m not here to try and trip you up,” she said, trying not to notice Nora Radcliffe’s nervousness. “I just thought you might know more about something that’s been worrying me. You see, I got this telegram, and this phone call, and I don’t know—”

  At that moment the door opened, and Effie Radcliffe stood there, triumphant, with the butler behind her. “Remove that woman,” she said, pointing, as if she were straight out of an amateur theatre production.

 
; “Mother,” Nora said, “it’s all right. She’s just here to ask a question.”

  “I don’t care. She can’t come into our house uninvited. Before long we’d have every madman and his daughter—”

  “She is my friend,” Nora said.

  “I don’t care if she’s your uncle. We did not invite her in.”

  The butler hovered nervously, clearly wondering how he was going to evict a lady who appeared to have no intention of leaving.

  “Please,” Georgie said. She stood up from her chair and took out her purse, from which she retrieved the pound note. She held it out in front of her. “I realise this kind of—consultation—comes at a price.”

  “Well, I never,” Effie Radcliffe said. “She thinks she can buy us off.” She snatched the note and backed away from the door, and while she did not shut it, she could be heard retreating down the hallway. Nora stood up and returned the door to its earlier position, not quite closed, shuddering with the breeze. “I am so sorry,” she said. “She means well, but she doesn’t understand—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “You were speaking of a telegram.”

  “Yes. Unsigned. And a telephone call. All warning me to keep away from someone.”

  “Who?”

  “They don’t specify. Someone who is lying to me.”

  “Oh?”

  “A man,” she added. “I thought they must be about a recent experience, about somebody who lied to me, but it doesn’t fit. I wondered if you could help.”

  Nora walked over to the window. “Honestly I am having trouble hearing anything of use,” she said. “All the dead from the war are getting louder. I can only hear a rush of sound, hardly any individual voices—and when I do hear an individual voice, it’s almost always a soldier, who doesn’t seem to know he’s dead, calling out a name, over and over. Often they just call Mother.”

  “Have you heard anything from Mr. Yeats?”

  “You mean Mr. Smith?” Nora smiled. “He is all over the place, Mr. Smith.”