‘What’s happened?’ asked Grace. ‘I don’t know any details, except that he’s here.’
‘His tank was hit,’ Mr Bailey told her. ‘Buckled up so that they could only get out one at a time. Christopher was the last to leave. He’s badly burned; very badly. All up one side of his body and face. Since it didn’t kill him within the first few days, it won’t kill him now, they say, although he’ll be scarred. But besides that …’
‘It’s his eyes, you see,’ Mrs Bailey explained. ‘There’s a piece of metal. A bit of shell, or of the tank itself. He’s had one operation already. It didn’t do any good. They’re going to try again when he’s stronger. But they’re afraid he may never recover his sight.’
It was one of those occasions when a group of people who have been chattering amongst themselves fall silent at exactly the same moment, so that Mrs Bailey’s last words were heard by everyone in the waiting room. A dozen pairs of sympathetic eyes rested on Grace as she trembled with the shock of the statement. A bell rang and she looked at Christopher’s mother. ‘May I?’
‘Of course, dear. Tell him that we’re here, but we won’t come till you’ve had some time to yourselves. You’ll find that he can talk quite normally. He’s in the fifth bed on the right.’
As if I wouldn’t recognize him, thought Grace as she walked up the centre of the ward. It was only when she came close to his bed that she understood the warning which Mrs Bailey had been trying to give her.
The man in the bed was almost completely covered with bandages. They encircled the top of his head, as far down as the middle of the nose, and passed beneath the chin in order to cover one ear and cheek, leaving only his mouth and a small area of the other cheek exposed. He was propped by pillows into a half-sitting position, with both arms on top of the sheet in front of him. One arm was also covered in bandages but the other, nearer to Grace, was undamaged. Its smooth skin seemed to be that of a young man to whom nothing terrible had ever happened. Grace stretched out a finger and gently stroked that arm. The bandaged face turned towards her.
‘Mother?’
‘No. It’s me. Grace.’
The sound which emerged from Christopher’s lips was a mixture of a gasp and a sob, followed by a stammered protest that he had asked his mother to write a letter for him.
‘And so she did.’ Grace sat down at the side of the bed and took Christopher’s good hand in her own. ‘And very unhappy it made me. It was cruel not to let her explain the reason.’
‘I was afraid you’d just be sorry for me.’ Astonishingly, as he recovered from his shock, his voice was as light and cheerful as at their first meeting, although he hardly moved his lips as he spoke. ‘Very reasonable, too. I’m sorry for myself. But then you might feel that you ought to hang on, and that wouldn’t be reasonable. I’m not the same man as the one who asked you to marry him.’
‘Then the new man had better ask me again – or else the old one may find himself being sued for breach of promise.’ Grace tried to keep her voice as light as his.
‘But seriously –’
‘Don’t let’s be serious in that sort of way. Your parents will be along in a moment. I need the time to tell you how much I love you while nobody’s listening.’
‘Oh Grace! Darling Grace! All the same, seriously though. When these bandages come off they’re going to reveal something like Frankenstein’s monster. Maybe you could get used to that; I don’t know. But a blind man – that’s a different matter. Someone who’s going to be dependent on other people for the rest of his life.’
‘Nonsense,’ said Grace.
‘No, not nonsense at all. I don’t know whether I shall ever be able to earn a living. And I don’t know how long I can go on pretending to be cheerful about it. When I look at the future, I don’t like it much. As long as the war goes on, people will be sympathetic to all the chaps who’ve lost arms or legs or eyes. But as time passes everyone will forget the reasons for the wounds. We shall just be cripples or blind men – a bit of a nuisance to have around.’
‘All the more reason for you to make a life for yourself in a safe home, surrounded by people who love you.’
‘But even that may not be much fun, not when it’s all there’s ever going to be. Sooner or later, I suspect, one’s temper will crack. Frustration will be taken out on the people nearest to hand. I don’t want to involve you in that. All the same, I’m very sorry that I hurt you. I didn’t consider properly what you might think.’
‘What I thought was that you’d realized for the first time how plain and dull I was.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous! There’s nothing I want more … But … oh, damn it all! I didn’t have the courage to hear you say that you wanted to call it off. That’s why I had to say it myself. And it was the right thing to do, though it was a mistake not to give the reason. I’m not prepared to let you tie yourself to a blind man by a promise you once made to someone quite different.’
‘You talk as though it’s certain that you won’t be able to see,’ said Grace. ‘But your father said there was a chance –’
‘He thinks it will cheer me up to hear that. But hope is something I can’t cope with. I tell myself that I’m blind. I haven’t come to terms with it in a practical way yet, but I’m beginning to accept it as a fact. If I start hanging on to the idea that there may be a happy ending after all and then there isn’t – well, I don’t think I could take the disappointment.’
He was silent for a moment and then spoke again.
‘It’s having to be passive that makes it hard. If I run a race and do my best and come second, that’s disappointing in a way; but hoping that a doctor will perform a miracle and then finding that he can’t – that’s a harder sort of disappointment. Can you understand that?’
Grace nodded, and then remembered that he could not see the gesture. ‘Yes. But it’s different for me.’
‘I don’t think it is. Whether you realize it or not, you’re going to be hoping for that happy ending. We must go back to where we were before I asked you to marry me. I want you to know that I love you. I want to feel that you still care for me. But for the rest, we must see what the future holds before we decide how to come to terms with it.’ His hand turned to grip hers firmly and to raise it to his lips. ‘We’re not engaged to be married any longer, Grace. But I do love you – more than ever now. Don’t be in any doubt about that.’
Mr and Mrs Bailey were walking down the ward, conversing to give warning of their approach. Christopher turned his bandaged head towards them.
‘I’ve ordered Grace not to regard herself as engaged to me,’ he said after they sat down at the bedside. ‘You can’t imagine how frustrating it is for an officer who’s spent three years giving commands to everyone in sight to find himself suddenly being bullied by every doctor and nurse who passes by. Grace is all that’s left of my private army and she’s jolly well got to do what she’s told.’
Mrs Bailey gave an understanding smile. Grace, for her part, hesitated, still wishing to argue but realizing that she could not win the debate. This was not how she had expected the conversation to go – and yet, she told herself, they were only talking about forms of words. In love as well as in health Christopher was afraid to hope. But he still loved her and still wanted her to love him. She had only to wait, and for her at least there would be a happy ending.
On the journey home it occurred to her how much she would disappoint Aunt Midge by turning her back on independence. But she had no wish to take charge of The House of Hardie. Nothing would please her better than to live as Mrs Christopher Bailey.
Chapter Five
Christopher’s convalescence extended over many months. His burns healed only slowly and, as the bandages were a little at a time removed from all but his head, they revealed a body which had become alarmingly thin. It was decided that before there could be any further operation on his eyes, he must build up his strength. So in the summer of 1918 he was transferred from London to the south coast.<
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‘Does hospital blue suit me?’ he asked Grace cheerfully when she visited him in the convalescent hospital for the first time. ‘I feel a terrible fraud. This place was a hotel before the army commandeered it, and it still feels like one. My medical treatment consists of eating healthy meals and breathing healthy air and sleeping on a comfortable bed and generally being fattened up.’
‘That’s good. Means that the doctors have plans for you.’ In Philip’s case, the damage to his lungs had been so great that nothing a surgeon could do would ever restore them to normal, and this was the reason for his early discharge. As long as Christopher was kept within the army’s medical system, it must mean that there was hope for his sight.
In the meantime, as they walked together along the promenade with his hand resting on her arm, she learned how to indicate unobtrusively when they were approaching a step or obstacle. Although she could not be glad that he needed her help, she was pleased to be able to give it.
They never discussed the future. How could he plan the rest of his life until he knew whether he would live it in darkness? Their conversation, when she was not reading to him, was little more than badinage; and as autumn approached this became more and more difficult to sustain. Christopher, beneath the jokes, was anxious; and Grace was tired.
On top of her full-time work in the shop and the long journeys needed for each Sunday visit, she had volunteered to help in the garden. By this stage of the war food was short. The Hardies were lucky in having enough land to grow their own vegetables and fruit; but one by one the under-gardeners and journeymen had left to fight, leaving the indispensable Frith to manage the extensive acreage with only a succession of boys just out of school.
Grace, glad to spend some time each evening in the open air, willingly helped to thin vegetables or gather fruit, but at the end of every long day she went to bed exhausted. Her twenty-first birthday passed without celebration except for some family presents. With the war going so badly no one, least of all Grace herself, was in the mood for parties. She waited as anxiously as Christopher for the moment when he would be moved back to the London hospital for surgery.
That time came in September and was followed by a month of suspense. Tests were done. There was an exploratory operation, a period of rest, and then the major operation on which everything would depend.
At the time of Grace’s first visit after that his eyes were still bandaged and the result not yet known. He was under orders to lie without moving his head. As she sat down, resting her hand on his, she could feel the tension he was under – and yet he could still speak in his familiar light-hearted way.
‘I’ve learned a way of talking without moving my muscles,’ he told her, hardly opening his lips. ‘Terribly hard. Like a ventriloquist. You just try talking without moving your eyebrows or cheeks. If you make me laugh, you’ll be evicted at once. And I’m prepared to bet anything you like that there isn’t a looking glass in the room. If the first thing I see when they take off the bandage is my own face, my screams of terror will probably tear apart whatever they’ve sewn up.’
‘You’ve got a good side and a bad side,’ Grace said honestly. ‘Like an actor. Jay says every actor knows which side he likes to be photographed from.’ Jay had just left school and, while awaiting his call-up papers, had joined a concert party which gave performances in convalescent hospitals and leave camps. ‘And even the bad side is far better now.’
Although the burned skin was still puckered and scarred, it had lost some of its first unpleasant shiny redness. In time, no doubt, the thick wavy hair which had been shaved for the operation would be allowed to grow and partly conceal his damaged ear; whilst the eye for which there had never been any hope could be covered by a patch. ‘I’m looking at the bad side at this moment,’ she said, ‘and ‘I’m not screaming.’
‘But women are braver than men; everyone knows that. Oh dear, I nearly smiled then, and I mustn’t. Grace, they’re taking the bandages off on Wednesday. The room has to stay dark for a time after that. But by next weekend we should have some idea … My parents will be here on Saturday. Will you come on Sunday again?’
‘Of course I will.’ Grace’s hand tightened on his as she looked down in a pity which there was no need to conceal. She understood how terrifying this week of waiting must be, and was overwhelmed by a desire to care for him. ‘And Christopher, whatever happens, I shall be with you. To be your eyes if you need me.’
Christopher’s lips moved no more than they had earlier, so that it came as a shock to hear the sudden bitterness which he managed to project in his voice.
‘Can you be my eyes when I take my hunter over a hedge? Or point my gun when the grouse come over?’ He made an effort to soften the effect of his questions by producing a laugh from the back of his throat. ‘But we’ve promised, haven’t we, that we’re not going to talk about that. I’ll look forward to seeing you on Sunday. I’ll look forward to seeing you.’
‘Yes, of course.’ She was as frightened as he was when she said goodbye, and spent sleepless hours that week trying to see into the future. Her heart was in her mouth when, the next Sunday, she asked the ward sister how Major Bailey was.
‘Coming along nicely. We’ll have him out of solitary confinement and back in the ward tomorrow.’
‘Coming along nicely!’ But they said that, or something like that, every time. Cheerful news was part of the treatment rather than a statement of the truth. Grace opened Christopher’s door.
Last time, whilst he was still bandaged, the room had been flooded with autumn sunshine. Today the window was curtained and dim. Grace stepped forward and Christopher turned his head slowly towards her. The silence seemed to last for ever. Then he smiled.
‘I spy, with my one little eye, Miss Grace Hardie,’ he said. ‘Wearing, if I’m not mistaken, a most becoming grey dress with a white collar.’
Grace found herself sobbing with relief. ‘Christopher, is it really all right!’
‘Only half all right. I’ve had a chance to look at myself for the first time.’
‘That’s not important. Not important at all.’
‘If you really mean that, then I have advance permission from Sister to let myself be kissed. Very gently, because I’m still fragile.’
She kissed first his good cheek and then his scarred one. It had been the truth when she said that his appearance was unimportant. For a little while she felt too emotional to talk coherently, but listened instead while Christopher outlined his plans.
‘Two more weeks here,’ he said. ‘Then the doctors reckon they can get rid of me at last. My parents came yesterday to discuss what we should do. We’re all going up to Scotland to stay with my grandparents. Good air and good food up there, they say. I’m expected to go for long walks to get my muscles into shape after all these months of lying around. And I want to find out whether a one-eyed man can still shoot straight. We shall stay there for Christmas and then come home for the new year. My mother will be writing to ask you to stay as soon as we get back. We mean to have a New Year’s Eve party, and I thought it would be nice if I could use the occasion to announce my engagement.’
‘I seem to remember that you broke off your engagement.’ Grace spoke primly, but her eyes were sparkling. ‘Before you start making announcements, you’ll have to find someone to propose marriage to again, won’t you?’
‘I suppose you’re right. I think I could slot it in at about eleven o’clock on New Year’s Eve. Would you be kind enough to keep that hour free, Miss Hardie, and meet me in the conservatory as the clock strikes eleven?’
‘I’ll enter it in my diary,’ Grace agreed solemnly, and then burst out laughing. ‘Oh Christopher, I’m so happy! How shall I ever be able to wait for the year to be over?’
Chapter Six
The end of hostilities in November 1918 was celebrated in London with bonfires and dancing and inebriation, but at Greystones only with tears of relief and exhaustion. The past four years had cost the Hardie
s dear, ending Frank’s life and wrecking Philip’s and Kenneth’s. But at least the Armistice had come in time to save Jay from conscription; while David had no further fear of being snatched from his desk in the War Office as medical standards were lowered.
The coming of peace did nothing to resolve one uncertainty. Since the war started there had been no news of the head of the household. Grace could understand how reluctant her mother must be to give up hope. It came as a shock, all the same, when in the middle of the Christmas celebrations Lucy made an announcement.
‘I’m going to China.’
For a moment they were all silenced by amazement. Midge had only time to venture a mild ‘Lucy, dear …’ before David sprang to his feet.
‘You can’t be serious, Mother. It’s impossible.’
‘Not impossible at all. You forget that I’ve made the journey once already.’
‘But so many years ago! And you had Father as a companion then. For a woman to travel thousands of miles into a barbarous country, without even knowing where to look –’
‘I don’t propose to travel alone. That’s to say, I shall make the voyage to Shanghai unaccompanied; but on a British ship, where I shall be perfectly safe. I shall ask Kenneth to meet me at Shanghai. The ship he’s working on at the moment is in Far Eastern waters, and he only signs on for one voyage at a time. I’m sure he’ll escort me on the overland journey.’
This statement caused a different kind of surprise. Except for Grace’s secret glimpse of him at Greystones, the younger members of the family had had no contact with their brother since his desertion from the army. They had assumed that he must have escaped abroad, but this was the first intimation that he had been in touch with their mother. Grace and Jay began to ask questions about him, but were waved aside as David pressed his objections.
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