by Louisa Young
My name is Riley.
‘All right,’ she said.
Then he wrote:
And I would have thought you’d have learnt by now not to pity.
She read it and flinched, and he was already regretting it when she grinned grimly, and said gaily, ‘Ninety-nine per cent there. Ninety-nine per cent no feeling at all, you’ll be glad to hear, just cheerful efficiency …’
He looked up at her. She looked at him. Their eyes met.
He wrote:
Sorry.
‘Mmm,’ she said. ‘So am I.’ She smiled and made a face – to change the mood, for God’s sake, change the mood. ‘So,’ she said. ‘Shall I read it?’ She wanted to, now. She was curious.
He gestured a helpless yes with his hand.
Rose read fluently, carefully, more or less without expression: ‘“My darling darling, Oh my dear, knowing that you are here, so close, and that I cannot come to you – oh god I think this is the cruellest thing of the war so far, such a stupid unnecessary little extra cruelty … as if the Chelsea can’t do without me, as if there – oh, it’s just that nursing these boys I don’t know has been enough for me till now, but now I know you are within my reach and need nursing and I am not there to help you – agh! Please dearest Riley let me know when I can come to you. I am going mad here, dropping things, not sleeping, not eating. Mad! Jean says she has never seen a girl so lovesick. It’s not just my mind – my body, my heart, my dreams, my digestive system! All shouting Riley, Riley, he’s in trouble, go to him … I can’t shut them up. My poor colleagues here are sick of the sight of me, and of the sound of your name. Apparently I am sleeptalking now! Shouting your name in the night, Jean says. And, she says, rolling over and hugging her!! Which I deny, because I will never ever roll over and hug anyone in the night but you, my darling—”’
A small fine blush rose in Rose
‘“But I can’t even start to think about that area, and you know why … But to be stuck here knowing some other girl will be nursing you …”’
Rose smiled and glanced at Riley. ‘“Say hello to her from me, tell her I say, ‘Look after him well, he is so beloved, take care of him.’ I hope she isn’t pretty …”’
Rose grinned.
‘… Not too pretty anyway – Riley I am imagining what might have happened to your darling face, you said on the card that it wasn’t serious, I wrote to your mother but haven’t heard back yet – my love you know I don’t care about it, don’t you? Even if you are going to look like a gargoyle for the rest of your life I don’t—”’
Riley touched her arm. He shook his head.
‘Are you sure?’ asked Rose.
He took the letter from her. Looked at it. Finished reading it. Folded it.
Very carefully, he tore it in half, and in half again.
‘Oh,’ said Rose.
He cast her a warning glance.
‘Oh,’ she said again, very quietly. ‘Oh, no.’
He closed his eyes.
*
Going about her business with her kidney basins and her Lysol, her squares of gauze and her cheerful demeanour, Rose kept thinking about the girl who had written the letter: a nursing VAD like Rose, a girl who was in love, so lively, so funny, so open. Rose hadn’t known a love letter might be like that. She’d always thought of a love affair as a matter between two opponents, like Peter and Julia, where poor Julia prances and dances in ever madder circles, desperate for his attention, unable to see that he has none to give, and he, ashamed, tries to hold her off without hurting her, but does … Poor Julia, who is no one when she is not desired; who is only beautiful, who has no other woman to be. I am better off than Julia, Rose realised, in a glancing shard of illumination. I really am.
… and so truthful! She had thought that in love truth was a weapon, and subterfuge was the norm, military intelligence in the battle for power, the hunt, resistance and pursuit, and the twisted inverted pursuit that went on before the war in which a girl like her, who nobody pursues, has to trap somebody into wanting her, or fail in her duty of being desired … Oh, thank God that was all over. She had never confided in a dance partner or a male friend in her life.
But that letter … it was more as if the two of them were on the same side. Two of them in the struggle together, and the rest of the world is the enemy. Not looking into each other’s eyes, but looking at the world through the same eyes. And rolling over in the night. Her skin shivered and prickled. For goodness’ sake, Rose! She shook the image away.
Oh, that poor girl. She could have no idea what she was letting herself in for. The families and sweethearts never did. Between pressuring him with hope, drowning him in sorrowful sympathy, suffocating him with help, being angry with him, coddling him, fearing him, avoiding him, proving so inadequate that he ends up having to help them – Jamison had written once, ‘The thing is, Rosy, they seem to think I know what to do about it all. They don’t realise I’m as lost as they are.’
Well. That poor girl. Good luck to her.
*
When Bethan Purefoy turned up, unannounced, Sister and Rose were both elsewhere, distracted by some new arrivals, gangrenous, with the mud of the Salient still on them. Riley’s mother slipped alone into the ward, which was silent but for the low, snuffly noises of men who don’t breathe as they used to. Standing by the door, looking around for Riley, for her boy, she saw first Jarvis, and his great nose.
That’s not right, she thought. Is that – that’s not even real …
But it was, so she started screaming, screaming and screaming, trying to silence herself, appalled at herself even as the sound came bellowing out, but incapable of stopping. Riley, who had been asleep, was woken; he saw his mother standing, shocked, her arms spread against the double doors, and the choked-up parts of the machinery of his voice instinctively, inaudibly, called out to her, a hideous croaky noise, Mum, Mamma!
She saw all the men of the ward, scarred, bandaged, swollen, sliced, shattered, festooned with pedicles: staring at her, this interloper, this pair of healthy, well-set eyes from the outside world, come in to tell them the truth – that they were terrifying, pitiable, horrible. She clapped her hand over her mouth, held it in place with the other over the top, but the screaming kept coming out, through her fingers, into their ears as they lay there, helpless.
She fell back through the double doors, still gasping and moaning as she collapsed against the wall in the corridor outside. The orderly was with her. Rose and another nurse came running. It had only taken a few seconds.
‘I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry,’ she was saying. ‘I’m sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry.’ Rose was incandescent with rage. Who had let her in? Who was she? Nobody goes into the wards without preparation, without accompaniment.
Bethan gathered herself. ‘I didn’t even see him,’ she said. ‘My son. I can’t … can I?’
Rose looked at her as if she were mad.
Sister, between tight teeth, said not. It would be … disruptive.
Yes, of course. Bethan saw that.
Instead she sat on a chair outside the entrance to the ward, and thought about him. She sat for almost an hour, white with shock. She said nothing. She didn’t know which of them was him.
*
Riley grew accustomed to the invisible painful absence, the lumpy lack of rightness that had replaced the lower half of his face. He had had the lecture on what a bad idea it was to grow accustomed to it. He knew all about that already. Hadn’t he grown accustomed to the bad before?
He got up. Major Gillies and Rose told him to, so he did. He wandered in the pretty gardens, reading the dark labels on the tree trunks: Judas, Japan, Jacaranda. He looked in on the officers further down the path of healing, reading the newspapers in the Long Gallery of the big house. His capacity for getting on with men had completely deserted him. He stared at their faces: wounds, dressings, scars, stitches. They looked a complete fucking mess. Some of them were chatting, planning a football ma
tch. He had a glance at the headlines: heavy fighting continues, Passchendaele, the season, Zonnebeke, push. At night he heard Fokkers overhead.
It’s all still going on. His conscious mind, not for the first time, swooped away from him, shrinking as it went into a tiny dot and hid under a clump of Michaelmas daisies.
He went back to the ward and lay in his trousers and shirt on the bed, staring at the ceiling.
Major Gillies came to see him.
‘Captain Purefoy,’ he said, ‘we need you to understand what’s going to happen. Can you listen to me now and take things in?’ Riley shifted his eyes across. He moved so slowly always. His eyes closed, a tiny sigh, the smallest nod.
‘You’re ready now for your first operation,’ Gillies went on. ‘We will reconstitute your wound as it originally was, so we can see how much skin and muscle is actually missing, and to get rid of any adhesions and scar tissue that have built up.’
Was he taking it in?
‘Then, we let that heal, scar-free and clean. We’ll be able to see what needs to be replaced, and we’ll work out a precise design for your specific wounds. It’ll probably be a double-pedicled bridge flap. I will take a flap from your scalp,’ he said, ‘and bring it under the chin on pedicles, which will lie here,’ he gestured gently, ‘down your cheek, over the healthy skin. I will apply the flap over a reconstructed jawbone to be made of vulcanite, which will be attached with pegs and wire to the sections of jaw that you still have. Then, later, we can replace that with an osteochondral graft – a piece of rib. Or what we might do is grow the bone-graft in place, in two halves under your scalp, and move it all down together. I haven’t decided yet. There’s plenty of time. Both methods are good.’
Riley listened closely, staring at the ceiling. It was all fascinating. How extraordinary. It seemed physically impossible, unfeasible, inadvisable, revolting, miraculous and a million miles away. It was fucking mad.
‘This type of flap makes for nice clear, clean healing,’ Gillies continued. ‘And as it’s from your scalp it’ll even have hair on. I do my best to make sure it grows in the right direction.’
They’re going to open up my wound all over again. They’re going to peel my head and wrap the skin around where my chin used to be and slide in a bit of my rib to be my jaw. And, logic says, I should be grateful.
Are they really allowed to do this to people? I suppose they can do what they want. We’re half dead anyway. They haven’t quite managed to kill us so they’ll just chop us to bits instead.
‘It’s a very good method. You’ll get double the blood supply to your graft. It does look a bit like handles, for a while. Well, you’ve seen how it looks. It’ll be like what Lance Corporal Davies had …’ Gillies tried not to think about Jamison. Poor Jamison.
Riley thought: It doesn’t matter anyway. He had made his mind up.
Later, Riley handed Rose a note he had written.
*
Major Gillies took it out over lunch.
Dear Major Gillies,
I appreciate everything you and your staff are trying to do for me but I cannot honestly play the role you have given me. For reasons which don’t reflect on you, there is no point in undertaking these operations, and I decline them. Thank you, all the same, for your efforts and good intentions.
Capt. R. Purefoy
Gillies swore, very quietly. He hated it when they did this. It made it so much more difficult. He pushed himself up in his chair and went to see Purefoy.
‘Captain,’ he said, standing above the bed.
Purefoy looked up, his laconic, hooded look. Yes, I am down here, and you are up there, and I cannot speak, and you can save me, and you are a hero, and I am a piece of detritus, a leftover, half a man, a piece of turd. An ort, as Ainsworth would have said.
‘You’re having the operation. It’s an order. Understood?’
Purefoy blinked.
‘You are needed in France. You can’t go without a jaw. This is a military hospital. Understood?’
Purefoy blinked again.
Gillies knew perfectly well that Captain Purefoy was going nowhere, and certainly not to France.
‘And I also order you to put some vim and vigour into your attitude to your recovery, soldier, and none of this lead-swinging.’
Lead-swinging! Here I am with half a face and they still think we’re swinging the lead … What does a man have to do to be taken seriously?
‘You have to put your trust in me,’ he said. ‘As an officer. What else can you do? Go home and lock yourself in the attic? Would your mother like that?’
Riley felt a very strong urge to punch him. If I do, I’ll be court-martialled. Will they shoot me? Can I pull off suicide by firing squad? You’d think there would be plenty of ways to die in a hospital, but perhaps that would be the cleanest, and no one’s fault but my own.
He stared. I know what you’re trying to do. I’m not falling for it. I can make my own decision about this and you must respect it.
‘Captain Purefoy,’ said Gillies. He perched on the edge of the bed beside this blank-eyed man, making an angle of confidentiality and understanding. ‘You’re taking morphia. It soothes a man’s pain, but it also makes him tired and miserable. Don’t listen to the morphia.’ He leant in, and spoke quietly. ‘Yours is a healable condition, if you believe it to be. Men can think themselves into the grave. Please don’t do that.’
Riley blinked. Think himself dead! Now there’s a novel method. Perhaps he should try it.
*
Riley had not found the strength to escape his weakness. He could not imagine that there was any place in the world for him. He could not imagine a world in which there could be any place for what he had become. He was not convinced there would be a world at all.
He accepted eggflip and morphia.
He did not have the power to resist what they wanted to do to him. They sailed like galleons on the brilliancy of their capabilities. They had power, belief, hope and goodness, generosity, talent, application, determination. He had killed people. They would do what they had to do. He would stare out of the window. Gillies kept talking about trust: mutual trust being a bulwark against disaster. Riley had no conception of trust. He had no choice about anything, and no feelings.
When the time came and they wheeled him in and laid him out, and gave him the ether oil up the backside, he stared into nothing.
Rose watched as the anaesthesia seemed to make no difference to his expression. Previously, she had watched the anaesthetist holding up a mask to a face while it was being cut and stitched, on a man sitting up vertical so as not to suffocate on his tongue and his blood. The two doctors had swapped between anaesthetic and surgery, and she’d seen surgeons half passing out from leaked chloroform vapour, knees giving way. She had seen the insufflation method, which ended up blowing blood all over everyone; there had been a tracheal angle-piece made from a .303 cartridge case, ether blown through a funnel, that green rubber tube they came up with going into the trachea, like a worm going into a hole … The methods were getting better.
Rectal ether oil had its problems too: it was too light at the beginning and too heavy at the end; it would probably give him pneumonia, and she would have to clean the oil out of his backside so it didn’t continue to absorb, re-anaesthetising him. But at least the surgeon would stay conscious.
They set him up, laid him out, and with their knives released the tangled, lumpen, distorted misplaced healing of his face. Liberated from the scars, his flesh fell away in wings and shards and scraps: they cleaned it and tended it and loosely bound it up again, so it could heal free, and become the fabric for the next stage of the campaign.
Chapter Twenty
Sidcup, November 1917
Nadine walked from the station, trying to control her breath. Turn left, up the hill – there was a bus stop but that would involve waiting and she couldn’t do it: her feet wouldn’t stop.
The bus came to a halt just by her, and her feet walked themselve
s on to it.
Why hadn’t he written? Why hadn’t he told her anything more?
Not serious.
She’d seen so many wounds. Wounded men in their hospital blues walking about; limps, crutches, bandages, slings. She’d seen them arrive at the hospital straight off the train, stinking of infection, emaciated, dirty, bloodstained, temporary splints falling off, bones sticking out.
Her stomach was cramping as she walked up to the entrance to ask after him. She didn’t even see the face of the woman she spoke to.
‘Purefoy,’ she said, ‘Purefoy, ah, yes … Follow round to the left and down the hill. Ask for Sister.’
It floated over her head.
Down the hill, enquire.
‘Captain Purefoy? Yes, one moment, please …’
She sat in the corridor, knee jittering. Passing staff observed her uniform and one smiled. She didn’t notice. She lit a cigarette. She was so utterly happy.
A youngish woman approached her – tall, dark, same uniform as her, nursing member VAD. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked, her head craning round a little. She was strong-looking, not pretty, fine eyes, overworked, firm. Good hands, Nadine thought. Good hands for him to be in.
She jumped up. ‘I’ve come to see Captain Purefoy.’ Words of joy.
‘Miss …?’ asked the VAD.
‘Waveney,’ said Nadine.
‘I’m Rose Locke. I help look after Captain Purefoy. Um – Miss Waveney … ’
It was her, Rose thought. No question. ‘I’m afraid Sister is busy, but I can …’ She wished Nadine had said she was coming, or that Riley had – oh, she just wished she’d known, so she could have prepared. Well. It wasn’t the first time, wouldn’t be the last. It might be good for him to have a visitor. Shake him up a bit.
‘Come this way. Do sit down. Now … Captain Purefoy has recently had an operation, the first of several that will be necessary … Are you acquainted with the nature of his injuries?’ At least in France you don’t have to deal with the relatives, Rose thought. Handing out misery like sweeties.
At the same time, Rose couldn’t take her eyes off her. This girl and Riley … rolling over in the night … Stop it, Rose.
