The Soldier's Return

by Rose Meddon

  ‘Newly arrived, sir. Yes, sir.’

  ‘Excellent. Come on then, man. At the double.’

  The moment they left the room, Naomi sank heavily back onto her chair and, rushing to her side, Kate bent to grasp her hands.

  ‘Oh, Kate, whatever am I to do? This is exhausting.’

  ‘First,’ she said, kneeling down beside her, ‘we’ll go and talk to Nurse Hammond. Ned is right – with all the soldiers she’s nursed, she’s bound to have seen something like this before. Then, whatever she advises, we follow her instructions to the letter.’

  The sigh Naomi gave in response was a long and weary one. ‘The worst thing is that when, last night, he left and didn’t come back for a while, I felt relieved,’ she began to say, shaking her head in dismay. ‘How dreadful is that?’ When she then raised a hand to her face, and the sleeve of her blouse slid down her arm, Kate found herself staring at a reddish-purple welt just above her wrist. Unmistakeably, it was the shape of three long fingers.

  In her shock, she pulled away. ‘Did he do this?’ she whispered, her own hand trembling as she reached to catch hold of Naomi’s arm and take a closer look.

  Hanging her head, Naomi seemed reluctant to reply. Eventually, though, she gave the tiniest of nods. ‘But he didn’t mean to.’

  Didn’t mean to? To leave such bruises would have required considerable force, certainly more than was required to simply take hold of somebody. ‘Naomi, I think perhaps—’

  ‘It happened after he’d been thrashing about as though in the throes of a bad dream. You have to remember that is was dark. He awoke in a panic… and when I leaned over to ask what was wrong, I suppose he thought me someone else.’

  ‘Someone else?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Naomi said wearily. ‘The enemy or someone, I suppose. All I know is that in his state of terror, he made a grab for me and clutched at my arm. That’s all it was.’

  That’s all it was? Maybe. But how long before it was something other than her wrist that he grabbed? What if, in a state of confusion, he went for Naomi’s throat?

  ‘Then I think we should get another room made up for him,’ she said. ‘Along on the bachelors’ landing. That way, you’ll be able to sleep, safe from these night terrors of his.’

  ‘But he’s my husband, Kate. I shouldn’t be banishing him… certainly not over a few nightmares—’

  ‘But it’s not just the nightmares, is it?’ Kate said. ‘He’s hurt you. And he could do so again, lash out whether he means to or not. No, until we work out what’s wrong with him, and get him some treatment – or some medication, or whatever it turns out that he needs, you have to think of your own well-being. For Esme’s sake, you have to protect yourself.’

  ‘Protect myself? From my own husband? But Kate, that’s madness.’

  ‘The thing that would be madness,’ Kate said, ‘would be to let this happen again. Just think for a moment. He could have injured you real bad. Maybe worse. No, we’ll put him in another room. And then we need to get the doctor out to him.’

  Sitting there, deflated, Naomi gave a despairing shake of her head. ‘I don’t understand it, Kate. He used to be such a gentle man – not this… this… stranger. Do you know, last night, alone in the darkness after he had gone, I even found myself wondering what I would do were it to turn out that this war has changed him for good – what I would do if he is never the same again. And then I thought, what if, deep down, and all along, he has always had this streak in him – the same cruel streak Aubrey had – and all it needed was for this war to trigger it, bring it out of him, if you will. What if this is how he’s going to be from now on?’

  The same thought having gone through her own head, Kate sighed. ‘Naomi, look, why don’t we—’

  ‘If this is how he’s going to be, all I can think to do is throw myself upon the mercy of Mamma and Papa – see whether they will have me back at Clarence Square. If this is who he is now, then I see no alternative but to leave him.’

  Unable to think how to ease Naomi’s distress, Kate got up, went to the French windows, and scanned the gardens: Rowley and Mr Lawrence were standing right at the edge of the lawn, looking over the hedge and out to sea.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, turning back into the room and determining not to take no for an answer. ‘Like it or not, we owe it to Mr Lawrence to get him some help. And, since she would seem to be the only person we’ve got, we’re going to start with Nurse Hammond.’

  Thankfully, it turned out that Nurse Hammond had indeed witnessed such behaviour before.

  ‘My dear,’ she said, pulling a chair from under the table at the window and gesturing to Naomi to sit down. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that your husband is suffering from a combination of frayed nerves and exhaustion. The term most often used to describe the condition is shellshock – although, more latterly, opinion would seem to be that in very few cases does it have anything to do with exposure to actual shelling.’

  To Kate, Naomi’s face seemed to be one of utter incomprehension. ‘Shellshock?’

  ‘For those of us who have never been to the front, the horror there is impossible to imagine.’

  ‘It’s true, Min,’ Ned interjected.

  ‘For days upon end,’ Nurse Hammond picked up again. ‘With no respite whatsoever, men on the front line are subjected to deafening noise and the most terrible of sights. But, hard though this will be for you to believe, it is the silence, when it does come, that they end up fearing the most. By contrast to the frantic noise, the stillness is eerie and unsettling and plays tricks on a man’s mind. Then there is the carnage – the blood, the wounded, the dying. And that’s without the narrow scrapes, the near misses, the constant terror and fear – the guilt, even, especially for an officer who has had to watch his men suffer, often unable to do anything for them. All that fear and terror, even the sustained courage and bravado, it builds up in a man and takes its toll. With no other outlet, the strain of it will eventually manifest itself as jumpiness, twitching, disorientation, delusions. Violence even.’

  Delusions, yes, Mr Lawrence was certainly plagued by those. ‘So, what do we do?’ Kate took the chance to ask, Nurse Hammond having, to her mind, described quite enough. Picturing such conditions and afflictions was the last thing Naomi needed.

  ‘I understand your husband has been sent home on medical leave,’ Nurse Hammond turned to Naomi to say.

  Naomi nodded. ‘Yes. A letter came from his regiment. Not that he has told me it says that. And, for my part, I’ve purposely avoided letting him know that I’ve seen it for fear of how he might react.’

  ‘Well, even an army doctor will tell you that there is no quick remedy to be had. Indeed, opinion is divided as to the appropriate course of action. Some say that removing the man from the front is the worst thing that can be done. Others disagree, citing rest as the best treatment. Others still, well, the barbarism of their methods is best not spoken of. To my mind, what your husband needs most – initially, at least – is a spell of proper sleep—’

  ‘But he won’t sleep,’ Naomi pointed out. ‘Or at least, he can’t. If last night is anything to go by, then it would seem that instead of sleeping, he tosses and turns and cries out. He gets up and wanders about. And in the darkness in the middle of the night…’ With this, Kate sent her a nod of encouragement. ‘I am left fearing for what he might – do.’

  ‘Sadly, it’s not uncommon for getting rest and sleep to be the last thing a man with such difficulties is prepared to try. More often than not he sees it as giving in, or as cowardice, or letting his men down. But I still suggest that we try, by whatever means, to get him to sleep. Nothing is worse for either the nerves or the mind than exhaustion.’

  ‘And then?’ she ventured. ‘If sleeping doesn’t help him?’

  ‘Well, what I was going to suggest anyway, Mrs Colborne, is that you ask Lieutenant Russell here to telephone the captain’s regiment. Though they won’t talk to you, they might talk to him. If he can relay det
ails of the captain’s behaviour and request that, without delay, your husband is seen by the regimental doctor, it would be a step in the right direction. That does mean, of course, that you will need a pretext for getting him there, should he not be willing to go of his own volition. But that is a bridge we need only consider once it is in sight. In the meantime, I do have a couple of things I use to sedate a badly wounded patient. I suggest we try one of those.’

  ‘But he isn’t wounded,’ Naomi pointed out.

  ‘But he is, Min.’

  ‘Your brother is right, Mrs Colborne,’ Nurse Hammond went on. ‘Captain Colborne might not have lost the use of a limb, nor be suffering the effect of, say, gas, but I assure you, he is wounded. The expression you’ll often hear used for such troubles is “wounded in mind.”’

  Wounded in mind. How on earth did you treat a wounded mind, Kate wondered? You couldn’t apply a bandage to it or a splint. And, presumably, you couldn’t exercise it to speed up its recovery like you could a broken limb. So, what the devil did you do – keep the man drugged? Cart him away and lock him up?

  Watching Nurse Hammond pull from her pocket a tiny key to unlock her medicine chest, Kate gave a long sigh. This condition of Mr Lawrence’s didn’t sound good at all. And he had always been such a nice man, too. Many more outbursts from him, though, and Naomi could be forgiven for wishing he hadn’t made it back from the front at all – that instead, he had been taken quickly and unexpectedly from them like poor Luke.

  Dear Luke. At least he was no longer troubled by any earthly concern. Unlike poor Mr Lawrence, at least he was at peace. And, for that, she would perhaps one day be grateful.

  Chapter Eleven

  Recoveries

  ‘I wonder how Mr Lawrence is faring?’

  It was after luncheon one afternoon, almost a week after the arrival of Mr Lawrence and, when Kate had announced that she was going to take Esme out into the garden so that she might let off some steam, Rowley had offered to keep them company. Now, with the little girl charging ahead of them, the breeze flapping at the hem of her dress and buffeting her bonnet on her head, the two adults walked companionably, their conversation relaxed.

  Earlier that morning, accompanied by Naomi, Lawrence had left for his regiment in Wiltshire. By some stroke of good fortune, Ned had eventually managed to speak to someone there who had been sympathetic to Lawrence’s plight, resulting in him jumping the queue for an interview with a panel of the regiment’s medical staff. Together, Naomi and Ned had then concocted a story about him being called for an assessment of his fitness to return to duty. The news had pleased Lawrence, a degree of calmness subsequently coming over him. He hadn’t even taken issue with the fact that Naomi was going with him, ostensibly simply for an outing – a two-night stay in a pleasant country hotel supposedly a welcome break. As a result, those left behind at Woodicombe also came to feel a certain calm, the constant need to be on alert receding with the departure of the station taxi.

  ‘I should very much hope that he is receiving a sympathetic hearing,’ Rowley replied to Kate’s question. ‘Some view shellshock as nothing more than malingering, and deal with it harshly. But Captain Colborne doesn’t seem the type for that sort of behaviour. He seems a decent chap.’

  ‘He is,’ Kate replied, glancing up to where, some distance ahead of them, Esme was bent low, examining something in the grass. ‘Don’t pick it up, lovey,’ she called towards her. ‘Whatever it is, leave it be, there’s a good girl. No,’ she went on, ‘Mr Lawrence is as sincere a man as I have ever met.’

  ‘War shows no respect for character,’ Rowley observed. ‘It will take anyone – good, bad, ugly. Sincere or otherwise.’

  Reflecting upon his remark, Kate sighed. ‘It has certainly changed a lot of lives. Only the other night I was thinking how none of the three men sent from this family to go an’ fight will have been left untouched by it – one way or another.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Same goes for you,’ she said as the realization dawned. ‘What will happen to you now – once you’re fully better, I mean?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘I should very much like to continue flying.’

  ‘Truly? Even after what happened to you?’

  He laughed. ‘Despite that, yes. Until you go up there it’s hard to comprehend but you see, there really is no feeling quite like it. The engine splutters to life, the prop whizzes round, you hare along over the grass and then, with no say in the matter, you’re off the ground, gaining height and looking down upon everything from above, the wind whistling about you. Sadly, though, I doubt I shall be allowed back up again. For a start, the Royal Air Force has some very different ideas to those prevailing when I joined the RFC. Not only that, but the war itself has moved on. It requires something different now.’

  ‘I suppose it won’t be long before you have to return somewhere, though.’ Unexpectedly, the idea of him leaving Woodicombe made her stomach twist: yet another wrench to deal with. By now she would have thought to be more practised at it – more used to having the things and the people around her constantly shifting.

  ‘I am expecting to hear any day now, yes. In fact, I’m rather surprised that I haven’t done so already. But Mother has been sending on my post, and I’ve yet to receive any orders.’

  There was no news for Rowley the next day, either. And for her part Kate found that she was glad. She realized now that she had missed their afternoon strolls, the pattern of which had been interrupted by the abysmally poor weather and Mr Lawrence’s illness. But, now that they had resumed, she was reminded of how interesting Rowley was, and how being in his company brought her a degree of calm.

  It was while they were out walking that particular afternoon that they saw the station taxi pulling in through the gates, bringing Naomi and Mr Lawrence back from Wiltshire. Cutting short their stroll, they hastened to meet them.

  ‘How did you fare?’ Kate whispered to Naomi as the two of them embraced.

  ‘Not too badly,’ Naomi whispered back. ‘Come up and help me unpack and I’ll tell you.’

  And so, with Rowley drawing Lawrence into conversation about their journey, Kate followed Naomi upstairs. ‘I’ve never known you travel so light,’ she observed when they reached Naomi’s room and, unfastening Naomi’s travelling bag, she reached inside.

  ‘Needs must. It was only the two nights.’

  ‘Was your hotel nice?’ she asked, removing the purses containing Naomi’s toiletries and cosmetics and putting them on top of the chest of drawers.

  ‘It was. Small and quaint. Quiet. Of course, I had to make sure to slip the sleeping draft into Lawrence’s drink both evenings – couldn’t have him pacing about in the middle of the night, shouting and ranting and bothering the other guests.’

  ‘No, of course. So, what’s going to happen to him then?’ Getting up from the floor, she took Naomi’s mackintosh from the back of the chair and gave it a good shake. ‘I’ll try sponging this mark. It looks like smuts from the train.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No matter.’

  ‘Well, obviously, I wasn’t party to his actual examination – I was taken away to wait in an office while that was taking place. But, when it was over, and Lawrence popped his head round the door to tell me he had to go and sign some papers, I slipped out and, as luck would have it, came across a doctor.’

  ‘And you were able to speak to him?’

  ‘I was. At first, he refused to talk to me. But I begged him, explaining that we have a small child in our care and that, at times, I fear for her well-being.’

  Unpacking Naomi’s shoes, Kate set them aside to clean later. ‘And?’

  ‘And he said that the panel will now write to Lawrence to inform him of their decision.’

  ‘Their decision about what?’

  ‘About what they’re going to do with him vis-à-vis returning to duty. But this doctor did say that in his personal opinion, Lawrence is no longer fit to command a company of men – and that
, in the longer term, he might be better suited to a job in some sort of administrative capacity.’

  ‘So he won’t have to go back and fight?’

  ‘It would seem not.’

  ‘And what about his… well, his moods? Can they do anything for those?’

  ‘On the train coming back,’ Naomi said, lowering her voice, ‘Lawrence actually started to talk to me. He told me that the panel are minded to recommend him for some new form of treatment, and showed me some papers they’d given him, setting out some details. Apparently, in Exeter – of all places – there is a sort of hospital called Priory Glen, where a doctor is trying out a new approach to cure what he calls “war neurosis”. Lawrence said that at first, he didn’t like the sound of it, thinking it might be a lunatic asylum in disguise. But then, when he listened to what was involved, and read the details, he changed his mind.’

  Lifting from the bag Naomi’s little jewellery pouch, Kate took it across to the dressing table, where she proceeded to put the items back in her box. ‘So, what do they do there then – in this place in Exeter?’

  ‘It would seem that they fill the men’s days with gentle but meaningful activity such as growing vegetables and walking. They give them a nourishing diet and plenty of exercise. They encourage the men to talk about their experience and the things that keep returning to bother them – to haunt them, if you will.’

  ‘I see.’ To Kate, it didn’t sound like any more of a treatment than Mr Lawrence could get right there at Woodicombe if he was so inclined.

  ‘The other thing this doctor does, is persuade the men that they can recover – gently bullies them into getting better, is how Lawrence described it.’

  ‘And it works?’ To Kate, it seemed unlikely.

  ‘Apparently, some soldiers have been cured in less than seven days. But most stay for between two and four weeks.’

  ‘And Mr Lawrence is keen to do this – go there to stay and be treated.’