The Foreshadowing

by Marcus Sedgwick

  I put his letter in my pocket because I knew it would irritate Father if I read it at the breakfast table.

  “Are you going to be at the hospital this afternoon?” Father said to me. “I would like you to have tea with me. Four o’clock?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised.

  So after I got back from Miss Garrett’s I changed into my uniform and made my way up to the hospital.

  I could tell Sister Maddox was not happy when I said I was to meet my father as soon as I reported for duty, but there wasn’t much she could do about it. He’s the doctor, after all, and she’s a sister. That’s how things work.

  When we got to Father’s office on the second floor, he wasn’t there.

  “Well, I suppose you’d better wait,” she said. “Since you’re his daughter I’m sure that will be fine.”

  I looked around. I wondered why I had never visited him here before, but then, there’s a lot I don’t know about my father. He doesn’t talk much about his work at home.

  I soon got bored with waiting, and went over to the window with its view across town and down to the sea. It was as if I could feel something tugging at me again. From France, across the waves. It was stronger this time, and I was scared. I didn’t want Father to see me like this.

  I sat down at his desk and flicked through the papers on his desk, then realized what I was doing and stopped.

  There was a book lying facedown on his desk. The Duality of the Mind by Arthur Wigan. It looked very old. It was next to a sheaf of papers, the top one of which was much more recent, dated 1908, and called “Memory of the Present and False Recognition,” by someone called Bergson. I had a struggle to understand what the title meant, but it took my mind away from the window.

  “Alexandra.”

  Father was at the door.

  I jumped up.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. Sometimes it’s hard to leave.”

  He seemed distracted, but came and sat in the chair I had vacated.

  “I’ve sent for some tea. . . .”

  “Were you doing rounds?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t do that kind of work here. I see . . . special cases.”

  I nodded, and smiled, trying to show I knew what he meant.

  He didn’t elaborate.

  “Where’s that confounded woman?” he said, looking out through the door. There was no sign of the tea.

  “What exactly do you do here?” I asked. He must have seen me looking at the papers on his desk.

  “I’m doing tests,” he said. “I’m involved with a group of doctors here. A lot of men are getting hurt in this war, badly hurt. But some of them aren’t hurt in their bodies at all. Do you see?”

  “I think so. Is that what they call shell-shock?”

  “Shell-shock. Shell-shock,” he said, spitting the words out. “Yes, that’s what people call it. The group I work with here, we’re doing tests to find out more about it. My colleagues are of the opinion that these men are as badly wounded as the fellows in the ward you work in.”

  “But you don’t agree?” I asked.

  “No, I do not.”

  He paused.

  “I have no doubt that there are some cases who have severe mental illness, but the vast majority do not. Those who are ill were probably prone to it before they went to war. And the country needs every fit man to do his duty. To fight. We cannot bear the weight of malingerers.

  “Where’s that tea?” he said again, then turned to me. “Well, look at you. My daughter is a nurse!”

  I smiled.

  “How is it? Are you sure it’s what you want to do?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure. But I had better be going. Sister Maddox . . .”

  He laughed, but without amusement.

  “Yes, I see. Off you go, then. I’m sorry about the tea, but if Maddox gives you one word of trouble you let me know.”

  “Yes, Father,” I said, and went back down to the wards.

  77

  I’ve been working. I’ve been happy. It was almost as if I’d dreamt about what the future held, rather than it having happened. And the memory of a nightmare is much less frightening than the nightmare itself.

  Then, yesterday, the nightmare came back.

  I was on the ward, making a bed. Without warning, everything seemed unreal. I felt detached, like that time in Miss Garrett’s lesson. My body felt like an empty shell.

  Slowly, I turned my head, straightening up as I did so. It seemed to take forever to make that simple movement.

  I realized that I had deliberately turned to look at a patient on the other side of the ward. He was talking to a nurse. I knew him. Shrapnel in the back of his head and shoulders.

  “You’ll be out of here soon,” the nurse was saying. “You can get back to your friends.”

  “Couldn’t you keep me here a little longer?” he said, joking with her. “The food’s so nice and the nurses so pretty!”

  She smiled.

  “Couldn’t do it if I wanted to!” she said. “Need your bed for someone else, won’t we?”

  Then everything slowed right down. He was speaking at a normal speed, but to me his words came out of his mouth so very, very slowly.

  “Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll be a good boy. Let you have the bed back!”

  I heard those words, but I heard others, too.

  Somehow I heard him say unspoken words.

  “And I’ll be dead in the morning anyway.”

  They came to me clearly, from across the ward. The nurse kept on teasing him, he joked back, and everything else was perfectly ordinary.

  I panicked.

  “I’ll be dead in the morning anyway.”

  I ran from the ward.

  I don’t think anyone saw me go, but as I got to the doors, I saw Sister turning into the corridor, coming my way.

  Without thinking, I ducked into the nearest door. Shutting it behind me, I found myself in the darkness of a linen room. There was one at the end of each ward, full of clean sheets and other bedding.

  I crouched in the darkness, wondering if Maddox had seen me, but though footsteps passed outside, the door did not open.

  My head was spinning. The feeling of detachment had gone, I was back in my body. I knew that from the way my heart was pounding inside my chest. For a long time, I leaned against a stack of blankets and shivered, trying to blot out the words the man hadn’t spoken.

  It was no good. They ran round and round in my mind, though l boxed my ears with my fists and shook my head from side to side.

  Then I thought I heard something.

  Something in the linen room with me.

  I stood up, and, fumbling for the light switch, turned on the small lamp in the ceiling.

  “Turn it off,” said a voice.

  It came from behind the shelves of sheets in the center of the room.

  I froze, too scared to do anything.

  “Turn it off,” said the voice, plaintively. “It hurts my eyes.”

  I turned if off. Then I realized how rash I was to turn the light off in a small storeroom with an unknown man in there with me.

  For I could tell it was a man’s voice, though it was small and feeble.

  “Who’s there?” I asked.

  There was no answer.

  “I’m not afraid,” I said. That seems a stupid thing to say, but it was all I could manage.

  “Who are you?” I said. “I’m not afraid.”

  “I am,” said the man. “I am.”

  76

  Unwittingly, I had said perhaps the one thing that got him to talk.

  “What are you afraid of?” I asked.

  “Everything,” he said, and there was such feeling behind that single word it made me shiver.

  I wondered what I should do. I felt like running out of the room, but I had always wanted to be a nurse, and if I ran from this chance to help someone, I would have failed.

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t like the light
on?” I asked.

  “No!” he said. “It hurts my eyes. It’s better in the dark.”

  It was obvious he was a patient.

  “Why does it hurt your eyes?” I asked.

  No response. I thought about what to say. There was something obvious, at least.

  “What’s your name?”

  He answered so quietly I couldn’t hear what he said.

  “Sorry?”

  “Evans,” he said. He paused. “David Evans.”

  I knew he was a soldier then, from the way he gave his surname first. The name was familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  “What are you doing in here, David?”

  “I come here,” he said. “Get away from the light, the people. That man.”

  Now I recognized his Welsh accent.

  “No one knows,” he continued. “Too busy to care, even if they notice. As long as I’m back before bedtime.”

  “Why don’t you like the light?” I asked again. I was going round in circles, but I couldn’t think what else to say.

  “It hurts. My eyes hurt. Flashes in the dark, all the time. It hurt my eyes. And now I’m here, and they still want to shine lights into my eyes, see? It hurts, so I come here.”

  “Who shines lights into your eyes?” I asked.

  “That man,” he said. “That doctor. Says he wants to look into my eyes, but it hurts, it hurts.”

  With a lurching feeling I realized he might be talking about Father. Then I knew why his name was familiar.

  Evans. He was the shell-shocked patient I’d seen on that very first day with Sister Cave. He was one of the soldiers my father had been doing his tests on.

  “They shine it in my eyes,” he said. “And they stick things to my head.”

  “What things?”

  “Wires,” he said, in a small voice. “They stick wires to my head and put electrics through it.”

  That was what he said. Electrics.

  “Why?” I said, though I knew I was asking the wrong person.

  “To make me better, they say, but it hurts, and everything goes weird.”

  “Weird? What do you mean?”

  I heard noises in the corridor outside. Voices calling, and footsteps. Running footsteps. But they went past the door to the linen room.

  “What do you mean?” I asked again.

  There was silence for a while. I decided to move closer to Evans, even though I couldn’t see him. My legs were starting to cramp, anyway. I stretched, and eased my way round the side of the stacks of blankets.

  “What are you doing?” came Evans’ voice.

  “Just coming closer,” I said. “I can’t hear you properly. Tell me about what happens. When they put the wires on your head.”

  “It hurts,” he said, “and it makes something strange happen. I feel like it’s all happened before.”

  “What? What’s happened before?”

  “Everything. The room, them, the wires, the pain. Like I’m going through it all over again. Living it again. Do you know what I mean?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think I do.”

  There was more commotion outside, coming from the ward.

  I felt torn, but I was supposed to be on duty. I had to see what was going on.

  “Stay here, David. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I opened the door and edged out. A couple of young doctors rushed past me into the ward and ran to one of the beds.

  With a shock I realized that it was the bed of the man with the shrapnel wounds.

  Of course it was him. I was disgusted with myself for even wondering who might be in trouble. I ought to have known better than to doubt myself. He said he’d be dead by the morning.

  Nurses crowded round, but as the doctors pushed through, I saw that there was a pool of blood collecting on the floor, dripping from the bed.

  He was already gone.

  “There you are!” said a voice.

  I spun round, but the voice was not directed at me.

  Evans stood in the open doorway of the linen room. An orderly had spotted him.

  “Come on, then,” he said, leading Evans away. I could see now that he was a tall, strong young man, at least in body. He looked back at me imploringly, as if I were to blame for his capture.

  “Complete case, that one,” said a nurse next to me. “Shell-shock. Hasn’t spoken a word of sensible English since he got here.”

  I must have looked puzzled.

  “Honestly,” she said. “Only talks in gibberish. Not a word anyone can understand.”

  But that can’t be right. Evans was a frightened, hurt and timid man, yet I had understood every word he said.

  75

  In the confusion, no one spotted that I wasn’t on the ward when I should have been. I couldn’t have done anything to help. Just because I knew it was going to happen doesn’t mean I could have stopped it.

  I didn’t know when he would die, or how.

  I feel betrayed now, betrayed by my own emotions.

  There’s a word for what I have been feeling.

  Premonitions. Each one has been more clear, more categorical than the last, and they refuse to be ignored.

  Although I hadn’t foreseen anyone’s death for a long time, there had been no deaths on the ward since I joined. Until yesterday.

  It’s not that surprising.

  Most men leave the hospital alive, but that’s not always much to do with us. Of course, it’s a good hospital, and we do our best to see the patients get the help they need, but that’s not what I mean. A doctor told me that if a soldier gets hurt at the front, and if he manages to survive being pulled off the battlefield, and the journey back to the base hospital, and the ship home, then he’s probably going to survive anyway. If he’s badly hurt, he’ll be dead before he gets six miles from the front.

  So we don’t actually see many deaths, and I am glad of that. But it allows you to think that maybe things aren’t as bad as they must really be.

  Then yesterday came my clearest premonition. I heard a man tell me he was going to die, and minutes later, he was dead.

  Were it not for the fact that it is happening to me, I would not believe it. Why do I only see deaths, and not good things? Why do I not see everyone’s deaths? As I walk past people in the street, why am I not witnessing all their endings?

  A thought strikes me. What if I see something about someone I love, someone in my family? What if I see something about myself?

  And if I really can see the future, then what does it mean? Is there any sense in our lives if everything is already out there, just waiting to happen?

  For if that were so, then life would be a horrible monster indeed, with no chance of escape from fate, from destiny.

  It would be like reading a book you know very well, but reading it backward, from the final chapter down to chapter one, so that the end is already known to you.

  74

  Tom’s letter.

  I forgot all about it till last night as I sat in bed thinking about everything that had happened. I had been late getting home, and Mother fussed over me.

  “How are you getting on?” she asked. “At the hospital?”

  I forced a smile.

  “Fine.”

  Father wasn’t home yet, so she can’t have known what had happened on the ward. But he wouldn’t mention it anyway. Why should he mention a patient’s dying? It was only to me that it had a terrible significance.

  “Just fine?” she said. “Sasha?”

  I wanted to shout at her, shake her with words if not with force, and tell her she had to believe what was happening to me. It would be the only way she could help me. I stared into the fire, struggling to think what was best to say. But I knew.

  “Yes, Mother,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”

  I even smiled as I left the room to go up to bed, and she smiled back.

  “All right, dear. Sleep well.”

  She knows things aren’t right with me, but I won’t talk to her about
it again. She didn’t believe me when I tried to before. When did she lose the desire to have a life? I know she cares. I know she loves me. But not enough to cross Father. Not enough to be on my side when it really matters.

  I will never let myself become like that, let my spirit be crushed as I see has happened to her.

  And yet I long for her to make everything all right again, as if I am still her little girl. I long to be a child again, and not to know the things I do.

  Then I saw Tom’s letter poking out of the pocket of my dress.

  It’s a long letter, about life as a medical student. He says the feeling that we are at war is no different in Manchester, people there are just the same. He stays in a lot, in his digs, when he isn’t studying, because he’s got into too many arguments about not going to fight.

  He thinks the chances of completing his training are small, and says that everyone around the college thinks conscription is on its way. He’s already had to comply with compulsory registration.

  Now there’s this new scheme going on. Have you read about it? They’re trying to get all men to say they’ll fight if called upon, but they’ve said they won’t ask a married man to fight until the supply of single ones has run out. So there’s plenty of married men signing up, looking as though they’re doing their bit, but thinking they won’t ever have to. And then, of course, when they are needed, they’ll get no support from the friends and family of the poor single men who are already dying in France. It’s a clever ruse by the government, but quite dishonest.

  Tom sounds very political, and I don’t understand it all. If Father saw what he’d written, I don’t think he’d ever let him back in the house.

  How can all the people I love so much have such different views on things? But then, there are so many contradictions. I love Father, but the way he runs our house is old-fashioned and cruel. And the way he treats Mother. If he had his way, I’d be married to some rich idiot, and never do what I want to do. But I still love him, and so does Mother, I suppose. And Tom and Father may have different views, but they both want to help people. So do I.

  In fact, there’s someone I badly want to help right now, and who can maybe help me too.