The Fog of War

by A. L. Lester

  “Bed,” Sylvia said as she hauled herself to her feet. “You’re right, it’ll all be less daunting in the morning.”

  Chapter 12

  It did look more manageable in the morning, whatever Sylvia’s fears the previous night. She’d been so tired—she was out of the habit of midnight emergencies. She’d fallen asleep the moment she’d rolled back into her cold sheets, still feeling the imprint of Lucy’s cheek against her hair, and wondering about that soft kiss.

  They were all three of them sitting at the kitchen table reassuring Marcus that they wouldn’t let his father take him back, when they were interrupted by the boy’s mother.

  “Is Marcus here, Dr Marks?” she asked without preface, as Sylvia opened the heavy front door to her knock.

  The roses round the door bobbed in the early morning sun as Sylvia looked at her consideringly. The woman had a bruised cheek and was clearly very unhappy. She looked as if she hadn’t slept. Sylvia decided to go with the truth.

  “Yes, as it happens,” she said. “Do you want to come in?”

  Mrs Wright nodded and stepped inside. She was moving as carefully as Marcus was this morning and she looked like she hadn’t slept.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Is he all right? I…” She swallowed. “I couldn’t do anything for him last night. I really couldn’t.”

  Sylvia nodded. “He told us what happened,” she said. “Come along in,” she continued, gesturing down the passage toward the back of the house. “What you’re going to do now is more important than what happened last night, I think.”

  She ushered her along into the kitchen.

  Marcus shot to his feet as she stopped in the doorway, Sylvia behind her. Over her shoulder, Sylvia could see Walter get to his feet as well.

  “Mum!” Marcus said, moving toward her, arms outstretched. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine, love. Are you?” She took his hands.

  Marcus shot Sylvia a look. “Yes, Dr Marks looked after me. What about you? Do you need her to look at you?”

  Mrs Wright shook her head. “No love, no. I’m fine,” she repeated.

  That was a lie from the way she was moving.

  His mother put a hand to Marcus’ cheek and turned his face to the light so that she could see his stitches properly. “Is that all?” she said. “Is there anything else?”

  “That’s more than enough, I’d have thought, Mrs Wright,” Lucy said in a hard voice, getting to her feet to stand beside Walter.

  Marcus drew his mother toward the table. “Sit down, Mum. You don’t look very good, honestly.”

  They were a pair. His bruising was bad, although he looked a great deal better after a decent wash and a night’s sleep somewhere he didn’t have to keep half an eye open all the time. Walter had helped him keep the stitches and cast dry in the bathroom.

  Mrs Wright stepped closer to the table and Marcus pulled out a chair for her and helped her sit down. Walter and Lucy stayed standing, hovering over Marcus protectively and Sylvia busied herself getting another teacup and pouring out a cup of tea. Tea was an essential part of medical care, in her professional opinion.

  She slid two sugars into it and stirred it well before passing it over. Mrs Wright took it almost absently and lifted the cup to her lips automatically. Then she seemed to realise what she was doing and gulped it down without stopping.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I needed that.”

  Sylvia glared at Walter from her place by the range where she was waiting for the kettle to reboil and he subsided back into his chair in a reluctant fashion.

  Lucy, however, stayed standing. “How could you let this go on?” she asked the woman in a furious voice. “How could you let him keep doing that to Marcus? Beating him like that? He broke his arm, for goodness’ sake!”

  Mrs Wright blinked at her and looked as if she might cry. “It’s not like that,” she said, at the same time Marcus made an unhappy noise.

  Sylvia poured her another cup of tea and pushed the sugar bowl toward her. Marcus was sitting beside her, holding her hand.

  “Tell us what it is like then,” she said, gently, shooting Lucy a warning look. Lucy sat down again slowly, looking as if she was literally biting her tongue.

  “If she tries to stop him, it only makes it worse, for both of us,” Marcus said in a small voice.

  Mrs Wright made a small, sad noise of agreement. “It’s mostly only when he’s been drinking,” she said. She took a mouthful of her fresh cup of tea. “It’s happening more, though. Isn’t it?” She turned to her son for confirmation.

  He nodded. “I don’t think I can come back, Mum,” he said. “I’m making it worse for you when you try to stop him having a go at me. It’ll be better for both of us if I go away.”

  She shook her head. “No,” she said.

  Lucy made a growling noise and Sylvia shot her a look again, warning her to keep quiet.

  “No,” Mrs Wright repeated. “He’s sleeping it off. I packed bags for both of us and I telephoned from the Post Office. We’re leaving, the both of us. We can get the nine o’clock bus from the village down to Taunton and then the train over to Wellington. I’ve arranged it with my sister, Mrs Jenkins. We’re going to stay with them for a while. Mr Jenkins is a carpenter. You can work with him. I can help Emma with the babies…” She glanced at Lucy, as if she were the one who needed persuading. “She had twins not long ago and she’s expecting another one.”

  Lucy nodded, hackles visibly going down. “Will he come after you?” she asked.

  Mrs Wright shook her head sadly. “I don’t know. Maybe? But enough’s enough. And my other sister is married to a good man too, so there’s two of them to send him packing if he does turn up. It’ll take him a while to work out where we’ve gone, I expect. I collected up all my letters and such with their addresses on them, so he won’t know where to write or telephone to ask, anyway.”

  “Well, that’s good. That’s excellent,” Lucy said. “And you, Marcus, is that what you want, too?” Her voice was gentler now.

  Marcus nodded. “Yes, Miss. That’ll work. Mum’ll be out of it too. We can sort the rest out as we go.” He patted his mother’s hand and then put his good arm carefully around her. “We’ll manage, won’t we, Mum?”

  Sylvia turned back to the range and busied herself filling the teapot. Lucy had things well in hand.

  She turned back as Lucy was saying, “I’ll go and bring the car round to the front now and we can run you over. Can’t we, Sylvia? It’ll be much quicker, and you won’t have to wait for the bus and worry about him seeing you in the village.”

  Sylvia made a noise of agreement that was lost under Mrs Wright saying, “Are you sure, Miss? That would be wonderful, thank you. It was worrying me. I left the bags stacked by the side of the house…he won’t wake for another hour or so, I don’t expect, but it would be nice to be away clear.”

  She wiped her eyes angrily and turned to Marcus. “I’m so sorry, lad. I should have got us away years ago.”

  He shook his head. “It’s fine, Mum. We’re going now. We’ll be fine.” He turned to Lucy. “Now, Miss?”

  Lucy nodded, standing up. “I’ll go and get the car. Are you coming, Sylvia?”

  Sylvia nodded. “Yes, I’ll come,” she said. “You’ll get lost coming home, otherwise.”

  Lucy pulled a face at her. “I’ll go and get the Austin, then,” she said. “Come and start it for me, Walter?”

  Walter stood up beside her and pulled an amused face as he glanced over at Sylvia. “Yes, Miss Hall-Bridges,” he said, smiling at her. “Let’s go.”

  Sylvia shepherded her charges down the passage to the front door as Lucy brought the car round, and they all slid inside. She sat in the front, the Wrights in the back. It was a mostly quiet journey apart from Sylvia and Mrs Wright giving Lucy directions.

  Lucy’s hands were competent on the wheel and the gearstick. On the way back, Sylvia kept her silence, but she found herself unable to look
away from those careful hands.

  “What?” Lucy asked finally, glancing across as her as they hit a straight piece of road. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing,” said Sylvia. “Nothing’s wrong at all. It’s just…I’ve never seen this side of you. I thought you were going to bite her head off at one point, before you realised she was leaving.”

  “Oh!” said Lucy. “I don’t like to see people unhappy,” she said after a moment’s thought. “Or hurting. That’s all. For a moment there, I thought she was going to make him go back. I was getting ready to stand up to her.”

  “I could see,” Sylvia said. “It was…it was something new. Something I’d never seen you do before.”

  Lucy shot her a sideways smile before returning her concentration to the road.

  Chapter 13

  Sylvia was preoccupied, Lucy thought as she turned her eyes back to the road and concentrated on controlling the heavy car on the twisting turns of the lanes. It wasn’t just events of the last couple of days. There was something more going on.

  Of course, she hadn’t expected her to be the same as in France. Had she? Royaumont-Sylvia had been wonderful of course…clever, competent, and sharp-witted. But tired and strained and grieving for her lost friend, too, by the time Lucy had got to know her better in the last couple of years of the war.

  Lucy had expected the exhaustion and strain and some of the grief to have eased a little now for Bradfield-Sylvia, nine months after they’d both come home. After the years of living under that sort of pressure it wasn’t going to lift all at once as if someone waved a magic wand. But some sort of relaxing…surely that should have happened by now?

  Instead, Sylvia seemed coiled up like a spring, and often preoccupied. Sometimes she didn’t answer when Walter or Lucy tried to attract her attention, staring off into space as if she were working out some kind of complex mathematical equation. And then contrastingly, sometimes she seemed to let it all go and just shut down. Last night had been a case in point. She’d almost fallen asleep against Lucy’s shoulder in the kitchen after they put Marcus to bed. Perhaps she’d just been tired.

  But she seemed so sad.

  Perhaps it was something quite simple…she could be thinking about her patients. Or perhaps Lucy coming to stay had woken memories she’d thought she’d put to sleep? Coming to Bradfield had done that for Lucy. The three of them had spent quite a few evenings tucked into the comfortable chairs in the sitting room reminiscing about France. Sylvia had had so much more responsibility than Lucy. It must be hard to throw off that mantle and settle into an ordinary life.

  Not that Sylvia’s life was that ordinary, Lucy thought, shooting her a sidelong glance when she could afford to on a straight piece of road. Women doctors were still rare…and thought to be inferior in some ways, still, only suited to looking after women’s problems and babies. A woman being the doctor in a village was quite something. She remembered a tale she’d heard at the hospital about Dr Inglis being told to go home by the War Office when she first went to offer the services of the Women’s Hospital. That was why they’d worked under the auspices of the French rather than the British. A plague on those old men and their outdated ideas of what women could and couldn’t do, anyway.

  She only realised she’d made a snorting noise aloud when she caught Sylvia glancing at her from the passenger seat.

  “What?” Sylvia asked.

  “Just thinking,” Lucy said. “About how stupid men are. And unpleasant, some of them.”

  Sylvia laughed. “There must be a context for that. You know plenty of perfectly intelligent and pleasant chaps! And plenty of unpleasant women, I’m sure.”

  Lucy shot her a sideways smile. “Just…thinking about how the War Office sent Dr Inglis home. They threw away her help because of her sex. And we all went on to do the work despite that.” She sighed. “Do you think it’s going to get any easier?” She bit her lip and stopped talking as they came up to a particularly twisty bend in the road.

  “I think so,” Sylvia said after a moment. “They’re going to have to sort out giving us the vote in some way before long, I think. Partly because of the excellent work so many women did in the war—over there or at home. There’s going to be changes. No going back, after the last four years.”

  “Men like Wright are still going to do what he’s been doing, though,” Lucy said. “There’s no way to stop it, is there? ‘Specially not if it’s like Marcus said and the police won’t do anything to help…” She trailed off. “And his poor wife,” she said, after a moment. “I don’t see how anyone can treat people like that. It’s just not right. Especially the people you’re supposed to love.”

  She glanced at Sylvia again, looking for reassurance. “Do you? I don’t understand it at all.”

  Sylvia wasn’t looking at her. She was staring out of the car window at some cows in a field next to the road.

  “Love’s a complicated thing,” she replied, finally. Her hands were folded in her lap. It was a warm day, and she didn’t have gloves on. “People do terrible things in the name of love. Wonderful things, too. But terrible things. All you can do is your best, every single day, to look after the people you care about.”

  Her voice was quiet as she continued. “I don’t understand people like Wright, either. But I understand people like Mrs Wright. Holding on to a hope that things will be fine. That something might change and the things that are hurting you will stop. You hold on and hold on. And you get to the point where you realise they’re never going to stop, so you try and let go. And then something changes, a tiny thing, and it gives you hope again, so you can’t let go after all.”

  She fell silent.

  Lucy trusted to the luck of the road and shot her a proper look. She was blinking furiously.

  “Sylvia…” she said.

  Sylvia shook her head. “Don’t,” she said. “I’m fine. It’s fine.”

  Lucy risked taking a hand off the wheel and placed it carefully over Sylvia’s where they were still folded in her lap. She didn’t say anything else, but she squeezed Sylvia’s fingers gently before she had to put both hands back on the wheel.

  “Do you want to talk about it?” she said. “I know something’s been worrying you.”

  Sylvia shook her head. “No,” she said. “It’s nothing. I just…I’m glad we got them away, that’s all. We could have sent the boy up to Tim and Flora, but it would have caused ructions in the village. This way they’re far enough away that if Wright wants to make a fuss, he’ll have to do it in Wellington, and it won’t be my problem. Mrs Wright’s got backup over there. She hasn’t here. She’s not well liked in the village…partly because he hasn’t let her make friends with the other women. You’d have thought people would realise. But no-one really pays much attention to what goes on behind closed doors.”

  She broke off, biting her lip. And then she shot Lucy a sideways look of her own. “Of course, that can be an advantage, too,” she said, smiling and clearly trying to lighten the mood.

  Lucy smiled back at her. “Of course,” she said. “You and your scandalous household, the lady doctor and the gentleman nurse.”

  Sylvia gave a tiny laugh. It was forced, but it was there. Lucy’s heart gave a little thump-thump in her chest. She didn’t like Sylvia this miserable. There was something going on with her and Lucy would find out what it was and put it right.

  In the meantime, she’d dedicate herself to getting Sylvia to laugh properly, as much as she could. Sylvia was a wonderful person, and she deserved all the laughter in her life that Lucy could bring.

  Part 2: Winter 1919–20

  Chapter 14

  Sylvia waved Walt and Lucy off to London at the station in Taunton three days before Christmas and turned the nose of the Austin back toward home. She was looking forward to a few days’ solitude, puttering around and only doing the bare minimum. She thought she’d probably go to church on Christmas morning. It would be nice to see her fellow villagers and catch up on any new
gossip.

  Apart from that though, she would curl up in front of the fire, indulge her not-so-secret love of novels, and thoroughly enjoy some time by herself. Lucy living at Bradfield made everything perfect. She was kind and happy and interesting and made Sylvia laugh aloud several times a day.

  It felt like she and Walt and Lucy had created a tiny little family of siblings, bonded through shared experience. And the four months Lucy had been living with them had revealed a wicked sense of humour, a work-ethic to equal Sylvia’s own, and endless compassion for those she met in her daily life.

  Sylvia was halfway to happy. Knowing Lucy would already be in the kitchen ineptly burning toast for breakfast when she arrived downstairs every morning made her heart lift in a way it hadn’t done for ages. They still hadn’t found anyone to help with the house on a permanent basis, although Lucy had found some women from the village who were coming in a couple of days a week to sort through the clutter and clean behind the sideboards and under the beds; so, they were still taking turns at the cooking.

  It was a bit hit and miss. Walter could do roasts, sausages, chops, and vegetables that needed peeling and had discovered a surprising hand with cake and biscuits. Sylvia could manage stew and shepherd’s pie and rice pudding. Lucy could make…anything that didn’t require actually heating things. Salad. She’d excelled at salad over the late summer and autumn. Tomatoes. Lettuce. Cucumber. But anything that needed the oven or the hot plate was…not a skill she possessed.

  She was better at toast now than she had been to begin with. But…Sylvia grinned to herself as she pulled into the village…it was still an adventure every morning to wait and see whether she’d become distracted and set things on fire. And the day she’d tried to make a fruit cake, forgotten about it, and left it in the oven overnight was something burned, literally, into the memories of everyone who’d been waiting in the hall for the doctor’s attention that morning.