by Annie Murray
‘I wondered,’ she said, full of confusion which sent blushes to her cheeks, ‘whether . . . I mean, it’s . . . We’ve had some interesting conversations – begun some, anyway . . . But there’s never time. Would you like to . . . I mean, I could come and visit at some other time?’
He looked up at her with what seemed a stony expression in his eyes and she felt herself recoil. Her cheeks burned. It felt as if she had got everything wrong, as if this was quite the worst thing to say. He took a while to reply.
‘And why would you do that?’ There was a cold neutrality to his voice, as if he was trying not to sound angry or rude.
‘Well . . .’ She felt terrible now, as if she had said some tactless, wrong thing. ‘To talk. That’s all. I’m sorry. The classes are always rather busy . . . I just thought . . .’
He stared at her. ‘Are you pitying me – is that what it is?’
Why would she not pity him? She gazed at him, quite at sea, and could not answer.
And then, to her astonishment, he said, ‘Why would a goddess like you, the loveliest girl I have ever seen, want to come and see a man who is a . . . a physical wreck? It’s not just my legs, you know.’ He spoke with sullen harshness, as if intent on giving her every detail, every reason why she should feel repelled, that she had spoken with no idea what she was talking about. ‘I’ve other . . . wounds. Bit of a mess really.’
Still reeling from the compliment he had given her, she was moved by him, confused but compelled to honesty.
‘You needn’t think I’m any sort of perfect woman.’ She looked down, her blushes deepening. ‘You mustn’t think that. I’m not. Not at all. And all I meant was – it’s nice to have a conversation. I don’t get many good conversations.’
This seemed to disarm him. ‘No,’ he admitted, almost sulkily. Nor me.’
They were both silent for a moment and he sat and looked wretched, despite his proud words.
‘Look,’ she said, her mind calculating the arrangements of her life, her teaching hours, Hester. ‘There’s only one afternoon when I’m not teaching – Mondays. I could come then? Perhaps we could sit outside?’
‘Right, Mr Ratcliffe – ready to roll, are we?’ the black-haired orderly said, appearing in his jovial way.
‘All right,’ Stephen said to her formally, with no show of enthusiasm. ‘That would be nice – thank you.’
Forty-Four
That afternoon, as if by a miracle, in between hurling showers of rain the sun shone for a time, hot and strong.
Daisy walked beside the wheelchair as the orderly wheeled Stephen’s chair across the grounds. She had offered to push him herself, but the man had insisted.
‘The grass ain’t been cut for a while, with all this rain,’ he said. ‘I think you’d find it a job, miss.’
The swathe of lawn behind the hospital buildings was already scattered with a few convalescents and their visitors, all making the most of the sun’s rare appearance during that wet August. There were wheelchairs with chairs set beside them, a few who were seated on the ground on rugs, people turning their faces to the brightness.
As Daisy walked beside Stephen, she could sense the pain in him as the chair laboured across the grass. His hands gripped the arms and once or twice the orderly said, ‘Sorry, pal – doing the best I can,’ as Stephen’s body lurched in the seat, though he made not a sound of complaint.
Already she was aware of a melting sense of tenderness towards him. She felt for him: for his pain; for the passive place to which he had found himself condemned, unable to get to anywhere he wanted on his own; for the useless stumps of his legs sticking out in front of him under the rug; for his quiet suffering. He did not look round and seemed remote from her as she followed, carrying another rug to put on the ground.
A goddess like you, the loveliest girl I have ever seen . . . His words had been playing over in her head all that week, exciting, unsettling her. Is that what he felt? And what did she feel? She warned herself – just because someone admires you, you are not obliged to admire them back . . . But admire she did. More than admire. Was touched by, affected by.
‘This do?’ the orderly said, reaching a spot on the lawn close to a young tree. And they agreed it would.
The orderly bent to put the brake on the chair, though it was hardly necessary since it was difficult to get the thing to move anywhere.
‘What I’d really like, Fred,’ Stephen said to him, ‘is to sit on the grass.’ He spoke quietly, in a confidential way as if he was embarrassed that Daisy should hear.
‘The grass?’ The man straightened up with a slight air of impatience. ‘But it’s soaking wet, pal.’
‘We can put the rug down,’ Daisy said. ‘And my coat.’ She could see at once that both of them on the grass together would make them more equal. All she could think of was trying to please him, to make things better. ‘I can help.’
‘Oh, no – yer all right, miss.’ Fred spread the grey blanket and almost nonchalantly scooped Stephen up from under the arms and deposited him on the grass, covering him with the blanket again. She saw Stephen wince, but then a small smile of satisfaction came to his lips as he settled on the rug, leaning back on his hands.
‘Won’t be quite so much fun getting you up again, Mr Ratcliffe, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.’
‘Thanks, Fred,’ Stephen said abruptly. ‘Appreciate it.’
‘All right, pal – see yer later,’ Fred said, taking off back to the hospital.
Daisy stood awkwardly for a second, feeling the sun pressing on her back. It was so warm that the grass was lightly steaming. Stephen sat upright, legs out in front and he reminded her pitifully for a second of Hester when she first learned to sit up, rooted to one place by her inability to move.
He patted the place beside him on the rug. ‘Coming down?’ He didn’t turn his head.
She laid her coat down on top of the rug and sat beside him. There was almost a guilty feeling as she stretched out her legs, whole legs, in front of her. But then they were side by side, for the first time at the same height and looking out at the grass and trees. A bee flew past. She heard a scattering of laughter on the breeze.
Stephen breathed in deep. ‘It’s so good to get out of that blasted chair.’ He reached out and stroked the grass.
‘It’s a lovely day,’ she said. This seemed so obvious a thing to say, but she hesitated in the silence which followed, not knowing what they might and might not talk about. ‘I suppose,’ she said haltingly, ‘you’ll be able to . . . I mean, there are artificial legs you can have?’
‘Peg legs? Oh, yes. We’re working on it. The stumps are healed pretty well now, though I’ve had to have a number of ops. It’s hard when you’ve lost both – I suppose I’ll always need sticks or something in the long run, if I can get used to the new legs. But first of all they’ve been dealing with – well, the other bit of trouble.’
He glanced round at her and seeing her attentive face, said, ‘I expect you’re wondering. People find it so hard to ask for some reason. I was in the First Norfolks – joined up in 1915. I sort of thought I should. Over there in East Anglia you can hear it, you know – the sound of it comes right across. I bet it’s loud and clear, now they’ve started off again in Belgium. Ypres again.’ He shook his head and was silent for a moment.
‘It was last September, Morval – on the Somme. They say I’m a bit of a living miracle. Should have been dead long ago.’
‘Oh?’ Daisy said, intrigued. ‘Why? I mean why apart from . . . sorry – that was a silly question.’
‘Well, obviously I was in a war and I got hit.’ He spoke with a bitter kind of humour. ‘But it wasn’t just my legs. A bit of stuff went into my belly – well, I say belly. About here . . .’ He gestured towards the lower right side of his body.
‘A bullet?’
‘No – some other bit of rubbish. They got me to a CCS pretty soon – but the thing is, apparently I owe my life to something called the “
omentum majus”.’
Stephen looked into her puzzled eyes. Suddenly he laughed, a boyish, delighted laugh which lit up his face. It was a beautiful face. Something in her already soft towards him deepened, the way everything had been changing little by little since she met him.
‘One of life’s miracles,’ he said. ‘There’s a thing in the body, apparently, like a kind of skirt – or raincoat . . .’
Daisy laughed now at the absurd sound of this.
‘One of the medics explained it to me. It sort of hangs from your stomach and floats round your innards – sort of folds itself round them. Anyway, one of the things it can do, apparently, is wrap itself about something it doesn’t like the look of – like a spider wrapping up a fly – something like a spot of trauma or an infection. I had both, I think – a lump of stuff getting infected . . . I mean, I can’t remember much about any of this, I was out of it. But the “O.M.”, as he called it, isolated the thing inside me by wrapping it up and they were able to get it out while I was still in France. It’s made a mess of me down there – I seem to be a bit off kilter. But it’s healing. I’ve been lucky beyond anything you could ask, really. Most lads I saw who got hit in the belly – well, that was that.’
‘I’ve never heard of anything like that before,’ she said. ‘It’s a kind of miracle.’
‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘And even though I’m alive and kicking . . . Well, maybe not kicking . . .’
Their eyes met and when she saw the rueful laughter in his, she allowed herself to laugh as well.
‘At least they won’t send me back. I know they’re desperate but I don’t think a soldier with neither leg to stand on is even a glint in any of the generals’ eyes yet.’
He turned to her then. ‘It feels nicer than I can tell you just to have a conversation outside of there, with . . . well, with someone who’s not another patient, or a nurse for that matter, although they’re very good.’
‘It’s a pity you’re so far from home,’ she said.
‘In some ways.’ He looked ahead of him. ‘But if they’d sent me somewhere else I wouldn’t have met Miss Tallis, would I? Will you tell me about yourself, Miss . . . ?’
‘Daisy,’ she said. Panic filled her suddenly. How could she tell him – about Hester? Or . . . She thought with a rush of guilt about Den. What was Den, exactly? How could she tell him the truth about anything when all she could think of now was him, Stephen Ratcliffe, this sensitive, wounded man beside her who she found occupying her thoughts more and more? It was as if he had become one of the only things that mattered.
‘Well,’ she tried. ‘I think I mentioned – my family have a silversmith’s business in Chain Street, in Hockley, very near the middle of Birmingham.’
‘Your mother was a silversmith as well?’
‘Yes.’ Daisy flushed with pleasure. ‘She died when I was four – having my baby sister. The baby died as well. My mother was called Florence Tallis. She was a . . . They say she was very, very good. I’ve got a few of her pieces. And I was going to . . .’
She stopped abruptly. Going to be good. Going to win every prize, going to prove to my father that I was as good as her, better, I was going to make him proud. But then . . .
It didn’t come spilling out – couldn’t. How could she tell Stephen about James Carson or Hester or any of it? He most likely saw her as an innocent, virtuous girl, when the truth was so much more shameful. And why was she even here with this man? Why did he disturb her feelings so and why did she let him when it was all so hopeless?
He looked at her, waiting for her to finish. But Daisy couldn’t. She lowered her head, full of confusion, caught between the truth which could not be told and lies which could not be told either.
She could feel him waiting for her to finish.
‘Going to what?’ he said gently.
‘Oh – nothing.’ She looked up again, forcing a smile. ‘Just going to follow in her footsteps. I am – trying to. But that’s all about me really. I’m just – well, I’m just from here. Why don’t you tell me some more about you?’
She was a little late getting to Handsworth that evening. The few hours of sunshine had vanished and clouds were beginning to gather ominously to the west. Clara opened the door looking harassed and weary and Daisy immediately felt contrite.
‘I’m sorry I’m late, Clara – hello, Hessie!’ Her daughter, grizzling with tiredness, came and wrapped her arm round Daisy’s legs. ‘I got a bit held up.’
‘I thought this was the day you didn’t teach?’ Clara said rather sharply.
‘It is. I just went to see someone – one of the patients,’ Daisy said. ‘Come on, Hessie – stop that now.’ She picked her daughter up, guilty for her lateness. ‘We’ll go home and see Nana, shall we?’
Hester nodded tearfully and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
Clara peered at her. ‘She’s been a good girl, haven’t you, Hess? She was perfectly all right until she saw you. Hey, Daisy – you’re looking like the cat that’s got the cream. What’s happened?’
Daisy’s cheeks flamed. She longed to pour out her feelings to Clara, that she had met a man who made her feel like no man ever had before – and yet was so injured that how would his life be possible? Getting him back into the wheelchair alone had taken two of them and anyway what about Den, who thought she was going to marry him . . . And this was what she felt – yet it was all impossible to put into words.
Forty-Five
In the classes she treated him no differently from anyone else. Stephen worked away quietly, but every so often he would look up and if their eyes met, it affected her like a jolt, sending her pulse to a gallop. She would give him a faint smile and look away, afraid that the other lads would notice.
She was aware of his presence every second of the time, like a glow, a fire, forever attracting her attention so that her senses were alert to any movement from him. She remembered the time when Mr Carson had paid her attention, how she had also been aware that he was watching, waiting. But this was different. It felt right and full of tenderness.
The next Monday she visited him, and the next. It rained and rained and they were not able to sit out on the grass again. Instead they sat at a table in a room in the hospital, facing each other, which at first made it harder to talk. But Stephen told her more about his life in Framlingham, about his parents and younger sister Catherine.
‘She’s a good girl,’ he said, with a hint of wistfulness. ‘She’s nearly twenty now, but her health is not good. She fell ill when she was – I don’t know – fourteen, I think. She’s never fully recovered.’
‘What’s the matter with her?’ Daisy asked. Her own health had always been so robust that she could hardly imagine being ill for so long. But she did remember Margaret telling her that she had had a similar period of illness in her younger years.
‘I don’t know,’ Stephen said, frowning, almost as if he had hardly thought about it before. ‘I suppose the truth is we all just got used to it a long time ago. Cath runs out of energy – gets ill easily.’ He shrugged. ‘Nothing you can quite put your finger on – she’s just delicate. She used not to be.’
He smiled and Daisy felt herself fall deeper. When his face lit up like that, he was such a good-looking man.
‘When Cath and I were young we were great playmates. We used to go and play round the castle – lovely grassy slopes you could run and tumble up and down. She’d roll right from the top to the bottom, laughing all the way down.’ He looked at the window beyond Daisy, his eyes sad for a moment. ‘And Ma and Pa took us up to the coast at Holkham a time or two. Sand dunes and – oh, it’s lovely up there. You should see it!’
‘I’d love to,’ Daisy said. ‘I’ve never seen the sea.’
But, her heart sinking a little, she realized how different his life had been from hers. She could scarcely imagine this quiet place, the rolling dunes he described facing the North Sea, the cold east wind in the winter, his father’s work as a local baker.
> ‘It sounds lovely,’ she said, not quite sure whether it did.
‘It is, in its way – but very quiet.’ He smiled. ‘Too quiet, some might say. Although I’d settle for somewhere peaceful now.’
There was a silence. The rain drummed down outside and the lower portions of the long panes were blurred by cuticles of condensation.
‘It’s like Noah’s flood,’ Stephen said. After a moment he added, ‘Over there as well.’
News of the fighting – Ypres again – reached them every day. The heavens had opened across northern Europe. They seldom talked about the war, the Front, but now she said, ‘Are your . . . are the Norfolks there?’
‘I’m not sure – but very likely,’ he said. He stared ahead of him again, his expression sombre. ‘I don’t know how many of ’em I’d know now.’
This statement said so much in so little that Daisy was silenced. Tell me, she wanted to say. And at the same time, wondered if she did want to know. The lads did not talk about how it was – their maimed bodies spoke of terrible things – but mostly, in a crowd, they joked and kept things light and on the surface.
Each time she saw Stephen and sat talking with him, the atmosphere between them grew more intense with feelings that neither seemed able to express. All week, all she could think of was being back with him again, of seeing his lovely face, topped by the dark, curling hair. Sometimes, seeing his long, sensitive fingers restlessly tapping the table as they so often did, as if he was longing to move, to be off and away, it was all she could do not to reach out and take his hand in hers, to still it, cradle it. Each night now, she thought of him, imagining lying in his arms. She was troubled by the thought of what had happened to him. It was impossible not to wonder about his injuries and the loss of his legs, as if she needed to see and come to terms with it. To know the worst. But above all what she felt was love. Tender, longing love – the need to hold him, care for him and be held in return.
