A Forgotten Place

by Charles Todd

  “Then I’ll respect that, Hugh. We’ll say no more about the village.” And then I had to be honest in my turn. “I needed to be sure it was for the best.”

  “It is. I give you my word.” He turned back to his room, closing the door.

  I went to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea. As I waited for it to steep, I wondered how the British Empire could possibly have survived all these years if it hadn’t had tea to fall back on in times of great stress.

  Rachel came in just in time to begin our dinner. She seemed to have come to terms with whatever was on her mind, because though she was quiet, she was also very much more herself. The dogs, settling into their beds, snuffled and huffed, then curled up and went to sleep.

  I told her the rector had come to call on me. I thought it best—but kept my comment light, without overtones.

  She smiled. “He has few enough souls to save out here. Poor man. My mother liked him well enough, but my father found him a little tedious. I try to be polite.” She added almost as an afterthought, “I’ve lived in a wider world. I expect that’s why I see things a little differently. We had such a lovely rector in Swansea. He called several times after word came about Tom, and I don’t know how I’d have managed without him. It was Mr. Timson who told me to come home, and find my way again here. He was very wise. It helped. But then I lost my parents too . . .”

  She turned away, as if the pain was still too raw to talk about. After a moment, she said, “I saw Ellen this afternoon. She was standing in the road, staring out to sea. I had the oddest feeling she was crying. That isn’t like her at all. I can’t imagine her crying.”

  “I expect she’s worried about Oliver.”

  “Then why doesn’t she take him to hospital and be done with it? She has a motorcar. She could be there and back in a day, the way she drives.”

  I didn’t want to tell her what I’d told Hugh, that Ellen seemed to be more fearful about her house than about her friend.

  “Perhaps Oliver doesn’t want to appear in Casualty, badly beaten. He might not wish to answer questions about what happened.”

  She looked at me in surprise. “You’re saying it might become a police matter? I hadn’t thought about that.”

  “I don’t know. But a doctor might well ask questions and then report the matter. It was rather savage, that beating. Staff would find that hard to ignore.”

  Rachel, considering that for a moment, said, “I know these people. I can’t think why someone would want to attack a stranger.”

  Perhaps because he was a stranger? And not wanted here? But I only replied, “He wouldn’t recognize the man again. He says.”

  “Yes, there’s that,” she said thoughtfully. She went to open the kitchen door into the yard to put out the peelings from the vegetables she was adding to a stew. Lifting the lid of the bin, she was about to scrape the dish into it when a sound reached us.

  I didn’t need to be told what it was. A shot.

  Rachel listened, then said, “What was that?”

  “A shotgun,” I said, hurrying to the door. But there was only silence by the time I got there.

  “Who could be firing?” Rachel asked.

  “Do any of the farmers out here own a shotgun?”

  “Several of the farmers have them. My father’s is in the closet in Hugh’s room.”

  “Could you tell which direction it came from?” I asked.

  She shook her head, still standing there in the doorway, just in front of me. “No, I was too surprised.” She looked over her shoulder. “Should I call Hugh?”

  “I don’t know that he could do anything.” The sun had just set. It was already too dark to see much out there. “Besides, it wasn’t close by. Someone out to pot a hare?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I moved aside as she stepped back in, closing the door against the cold air.

  “How odd,” she said. But I could see that the shot had disturbed her.

  She mentioned it to Hugh when he came down to dinner.

  Looking up from washing his hands, he said, “You should have called me.”

  “There was only the one shot. We couldn’t tell where it was coming from. I didn’t want to disturb you over it.”

  But he was disturbed, I could see that.

  Covering it up, he dried his hands, then said, “I’ve finally found the problem with your accounts. You were off by about fifteen pounds.”

  Suddenly anxious, she said, “In my favor, or—”

  He smiled. “Yours.”

  Relieved, she returned the smile. “Thank you. I could never find it. Where was it?”

  “It was the lamp oil. You’d transposed two figures.”

  “Oh dear. I was never good with numbers,” she admitted, and turned to take the stew off the cooker while I poured the tea. “That was my father’s gift.”

  Her back was to us. I caught Hugh’s glance as he pointedly stared my way.

  It was a warning not to make too much of what we’d heard out there in the dark.

  No one came to fetch me, the only person here with any medical training, and so I had to assume that no one had been hurt by the shotgun. But I took that sound upstairs with me and stood at the window, looking out toward the black space that was the sea below our headland. I’d seen gulls and a handful of other seabirds, but no hares out here. Which of course didn’t mean that there were none. After all, the land toward The Worm was rather desolate and unfarmed, and anything might roam out there. Rachel’s sheep and the other villagers’ cattle stayed where the grass was better.

  I spared a thought for my mother, who must by now have heard from Matron. Or would that be tomorrow, Matron giving me the benefit of the doubt and waiting to see if I would arrive after all, with a satisfactory explanation for my tardiness?

  Impossible to know.

  I turned away from the window and undressed for bed.

  I dreamed of the war that night. I was at one of the forward aid stations, and we were too close to the lines, because they’d fallen back to regroup after a German assault. Dr. Taylor was worried that the artillery would open up, to give the Germans something to think about while our side used the cover to re-form. There were cases we needed desperately to send back, but there was no chance an ambulance, much less a convoy, could reach us. I was frantically trying to keep one man alive, while Dr. Taylor and Sister Perkins worked with two others. And out of the darkness a line appeared of fresh wounded, making their way toward us. I must have tossed and turned as I worked on men in my dream, torn between duties to the living and the dying, knowing I didn’t have a hope of saving them all, none of us did, and in the end, when it was over and the ambulances had come at last and then gone, carrying the dead back among the living, I’d sat alone in my quarters and cried.

  And in the quarters next to mine, I heard the deeper sobs as Dr. Taylor wept, and then swore with such feeling that I put my hands over my ears. Not because of the words he used, but because of the anguish behind them.

  I woke with a start, my blankets on the floor, my pillow half off the bed, my hands and feet freezing.

  It came again. A quiet tap at my door.

  “Bess?” Hugh’s voice. “Are you all right?”

  “A nightmare,” I managed to say. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “Good night.”

  And I heard his crutches quietly cross the floor to his room, the door shutting softly.

  I rearranged my bedding, crawled back in, and reached my toes for the now lukewarm hot water bottle.

  Lying there, I tried to remember what had brought me out of my dream with such sharpness.

  It hadn’t been Hugh’s tap. I was nearly sure of that.

  A cry . . .

  Had I really heard it?

  Or had it been a part of my dream, the torment in Dr. Taylor’s voice?

  It was some time before I could fall back to sleep.

  Chapter 12

  I went for a walk arou
nd ten in the morning, moving aimlessly as if just out for the fresh air, although I was sorely tempted to stroll as far as the Marshall cottage. But I could see for myself that the motorcar was still there.

  Mr. Griffith, in his own well-placed cottage, seemed to watch everything that was passing his door—or his windows. What did he know about Oliver and the beating he’d endured?

  A lonely man with nothing better to occupy his time, I told myself, but it was rather unpleasant to think that he might know what had happened to Oliver and held his tongue. He didn’t appear to miss much.

  I took my time, watching a bird scrabble under some dead leaves for an insect, then stood for a moment to stare out at The Worm. It was dark green, mysterious, and rather too real in this light, for clouds had rolled in overnight. Sitting there, hunched, waiting through the centuries to frighten off anyone who might want to bring harm to this land. And yet the danger now was inland, not out at sea.

  By the time I reached the place where I could look down on the bay, where the wide expanse of water and sand and lacy surf were spread out in all their glory, I was drawn into the scene. Remembering the photograph of Rachel and her brother playing in the surf, I smiled. It was a place that should have children shouting and laughing, adults walking or sitting there. But except for the women I’d seen there—hardly strolling in summer warmth—as a rule it was bare. These people had little time for leisure, with a livelihood to pursue. And with the war raging, any holiday interest in the peninsula had been shut down. I didn’t know if those holidaymakers would ever return to this forgotten place.

  I was standing there, lost in my thoughts, when Mr. Griffith spoke.

  I jumped at the sound of his voice carrying over the wind. “You are drawn to the water.”

  “It’s beautiful, of course,” I agreed. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it, in all my travels.”

  “Travels? Oh yes? And where have you been?”

  He was scoffing.

  “India, with my father’s regiment. East Africa.”

  He was surprised, I could see that, when I turned to look at him.

  “Where in India?”

  “Mostly in the north, of course. But we tried to see a good bit of the country. Delhi, Agra, Madras, Goa, Bombay. Calcutta, when my father was called to a meeting there, but the city had a cholera outbreak soon after we arrived, and my mother and I were sent posthaste back to Delhi to wait for him.”

  I wasn’t sure Mr. Griffith even knew where all these places were, because he was frowning.

  “Surely you don’t remember much about your travels at that young age?”

  “Surprisingly, I do.”

  He raised dark eyebrows.

  “My parents saw to it that I learned about our travels.” I didn’t add that I’d had a governess who used them for lessons.

  “I’ll walk you back to the road,” he said then, preparing to turn away.

  “I’d rather stay for a while,” I said, smiling.

  “Suit yourself.” And he walked off abruptly.

  I stood there for another few minutes.

  It wasn’t until I was turning to go myself that I saw it.

  A dark patch at my feet.

  I caught myself in time to stop from staring. In the event anyone was watching.

  But that dark patch was surely blood.

  I hadn’t served in the trenches for four years without having seen blood in every possible stage. Fresh, splattered, pooled, black with flies, running across the operating room floor, or dried in a patch that no one had had time to clear up.

  I walked away from the spot, as if I hadn’t noticed it.

  Was that why Mr. Griffith had come to speak to me? Did he know that this was where Oliver was attacked? If so, he was waiting now to see how I reacted. I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing.

  In reality, as I was walking back up the incline I was remembering the sound of that shotgun firing, and a cry in the night. It was more likely that the patch of blood had something to do with that. It was that, not Oliver’s beating, that Mr. Griffith had been curious about.

  What was happening to this small windswept village in the midst of nowhere?

  And no one had come for the Sister, who was the only medical help available.

  The violence seemed to be escalating. But what was driving it?

  The return of Ellen Marshall?

  If so, why attack Hugh?

  I should go down to that cottage, I told myself, and see if everyone is all right. If she herself needs medical help.

  On the other hand, what if the blood here had no connection with Ellen and the beating of the man who was with her?

  I kept walking.

  I’d just reached the road in front of Rachel’s house when someone called, “Sister? Please, Sister?”

  I turned. There was a woman coming up from the lane to the Down, struggling for breath as she tried to hurry. She had a bundle in her arms, and for a moment I thought it must be clothing.

  I went to meet her, and as I came closer I realized there was a small child in the blankets.

  “My baby,” the woman said as I reached her. Fighting for breath herself, she said, “She’s—oh, Sister, is it diphtheria?”

  The dread illness that carried off so many children.

  We’d seen all manner of things in France, from cholera to measles, and we’d lost men to these diseases.

  She all but shoved the child into my arms, and I could feel, through the blankets, that the little girl was burning with fever. My heart turned over with dread. What was I to do, if it was diphtheria?

  “I can’t examine her here in the open,” I said gently. “Let’s take her home, where it’s warm. And you must tell me what you’ve seen.”

  Hovering by my side as we walked back the way she’d come, she began haltingly to list the symptoms. A very sore throat, fever, chills. A general malaise.

  “Have you seen a rash?”

  Shaking her head vigorously, she replied, “No, Sister. But Jenny’s only been ill since this morning, and I looked at her throat, and I can’t help but think—” Breaking off, she turned from the main path to one leading to the houses along the upper level of the Down.

  It was little more than a cottage, but there was a larger barn out in the back along with several sheds. I heard a goat, and then half a dozen chickens were under our feet, expecting to be fed. The woman shooed them away, and as she reached the door, she flung it wide so that I could step in with my burden.

  There were two other children there, perhaps seven and nine, and both of them had a bad cough with congestion. They looked frightened as I came in carrying their sister, and I smiled at them.

  “Hallo.” But they stood back and wouldn’t answer. I didn’t know if they were children I’d seen on the beach with their mothers or not.

  Putting my bundle down on the nearest table, I began to unwind the blankets.

  The little girl—I put her age at four—was flushed with fever, but as I worked I saw no rash, and I couldn’t feel any swellings. When I got her to open her mouth, I could see how inflamed her throat was. Small wonder the mother was so frightened. But was it diphtheria? I asked to see the throats of the little boy and the older girl, and they too had inflammation, which was reassuring.

  Please God, the youngest child had just got a worse case of the same infection.

  Still, I gave Jenny a gentle but thorough going-over, and she stared at me all the while, her blue eyes too bright in her flushed face. I talked quietly to her as I worked, smiling. But I was worried. She was small and thin, and not very strong. If it was diphtheria, I wasn’t certain she would survive it.

  Quickly wrapping her again in one of the blankets, I told her mother to put her to bed but to keep an eye on her all evening and into the night, in the event she began to have breathing problems. “Very likely she will have trouble swallowing, and won’t want to eat. But a spoon dipped into tea with a little brandy in it can be brush
ed across her lips as often as possible, to help her throat and give her a little strength. As soon as she can swallow, that should be followed by broths, warm milk thinned with a little water at first, tea with milk. And after that, a potato broth, with other vegetables in it. Boiled eggs. She’ll need to regain lost weight.”

  The mother stared at me as if she was still waiting for me to tell her the worst, that her daughter might die.

  “Mrs. . . .”

  She seemed to come back to the present. “Burton.”

  “Mrs. Burton, your daughter will be all right, but you must be sure she eats.” I glanced at the other children, suddenly worried that there might not be any food in the house. But there were chickens, eggs—goat’s milk. And the little boy and his older sister were sturdy and healthy enough.

  It had been too overwhelming for Mrs. Burton. Her fear for the youngest child, the rush to find help, the knowledge that it might already be too late.

  I said gently, “She needs your help. You must be strong for her.”

  “Yes—yes, I do understand,” she said then.

  I looked around the room. It was furnished well enough, but the style was that of an older generation, as it was in Rachel’s house. On the mantelpiece in pride of place was a silver cup, tarnished now. I could just make out a coat of arms on the side facing the room. It was a rather ornate coat of arms. I didn’t think it was that of the Burtons. Some Norman ancestor?

  A door opened somewhere in the house and I could hear footsteps coming toward the front room.

  Mrs. Burton froze, then seemed to shrink into herself. The children stared at her, and tried to make themselves small.

  A man stepped through the doorway and stopped in midstride, glaring at me. He was rather burly, with dark hair and hazel eyes. I thought he might have been one of the men I’d seen moving the body of the dead soldier up from the strand and thence down to Ellen’s cottage.

  Mrs. Burton said uncertainly, “It’s Jenny. Daniel, I thought it was the diphtheria.” Her voice was pleading.

  “I told you to have nothing to do with the likes of her,” he retorted, turning toward his wife.