The Somme Legacy: A Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mystery (Jayne Sinclair Genealogical Mysteries Book 2)

by M J Lee

'It's a bandage, Matron.'

  'And what's it doing on the floor?'

  'I'll pick it up.' As she did, more bandages tumbled from her arms. Matron stood over her, the starched white uniform leading to a perpetual scowl. 'Clarke, we are short of bandages and you see fit to discard them all over the hospital?'

  'No, Matron.'

  'You contradict me?'

  'No, Matron.' Rose immediately realised the trap she had fallen into. The Matron smiled. Not a nice smile, a mean smile, one of utter contempt for an amateur doing a professional's job.

  'When you have quite finished discarding precious bandages,' the accent was more pronounced now, Ulster at its most devout, 'please go to the new arrival in Room 112. He needs to be completely cleaned before the doctors see him.'

  'Yes, Matron.'

  'Well, what are you waiting for girl? The vote?'

  Rose picked up the bandages and scurried away before more retribution was visited upon her head. The matron knew she had been a suffragette before the war and seemed to think ill of her for it; as if fighting for the right to vote made her less of a woman in the matron's eyes.

  Rose had only been in the hospital for three weeks but already the Matron had made life difficult for her. She transferred from the Royal Herbert after nine months on the wards: a time when she learnt everything there was to know about bed pans and piss bottles, about cleaning toilets and men’s backsides, setting trays and setting bones.

  As soon as she had her 23rd birthday, she applied for a job in a hospital in France. Her first few weeks were difficult, but she realised it was going to be the same wherever she went. At least here, the men needed her, even if the women didn’t.

  Rose opened the door to the laundry. A cloud of steam and moisture immediately drenched her. Beads of sweat formed on her forehead beneath her cap. Terry was already there, stirring the vast copper pot with a long oar they had borrowed from one of the fishermen.

  Terry was Theresa and she suffered even more under the unforgiving gaze of Matron. Not because she was a former suffragette, but because she was a Catholic; a more heinous sin.

  Rose added her handful of soiled bandages to the already brimming pot. On its surface was a thick scab of crusty scum composed of blood, mud, dirt, pus, excrement and anything else the poor soldiers had managed to pick up in the trenches. Terry stirred the used bandages into the mixture, hardly disturbing the scum. 'Double, double, toil and trouble; fire burn and cauldron bubble,' she sang as she imitated Macbeth's witches.

  'Are you concocting an anti-Matron potion?'

  'No, not at all, but it keeps me going as I stir the pot.'

  'How long do you have left to go?'

  Terry wiped her sweat-dripping forehead with the back of her hand, fixing one dark, sodden curl back under her cap. 'Not long, just six more hours. Sure before you know, it will be time for tea.'

  Terry was perpetually happy; despite all the indignities heaped upon her by Matron, she continued to smile and do whatever she was told.

  'I have to push off, Room 112.' Rose indicated towards the door with her thumb.

  'Ye poor man's been screaming all morning with the pain. No more morphine the doctor said.'

  'The Matron really has it in for me. I've to blanket wash him.'

  Terry carried on stirring her pot of filth with the paddle. 'Ah, she's not a bad sort. Wants the best for the men.'

  'She's an old scheming harridan with the face like tomorrow and a body like the back end of a tram.'

  Terry quickly made the sign of the cross with her free hand. 'Please forgive her, Lord.'

  Rose left the laundry with Terry's prayers echoing in her head. She turned left down the long corridor past the small ward on the right. The hospital had once been a rich merchant's chateau and the money lavished on the fixtures and fittings was evident everywhere. Shame nobody appreciated them any more except Rose.

  She had made a few sketches of the plaster mouldings on the ceiling and the carvings above the doors, but usually she was so tired she just slept or lay on her bunk staring into the air.

  After turning a corner at the end of the corridor, she stood in front of the door to Room 112, took a deep breath and entered without knocking. The single rooms were saved for the worst cases; men who were the most badly injured. The patient was lying away from her, his face to the wall. At least he isn't screaming, she thought. That would come later when she had to clean his wounds of dirt and shit and pus.

  She drew the curtains and turned on the lamp beside the bed.

  No light.

  The chateau had been modernised just before the war but many of the lights either worked sporadically or not at all. Each room had an oil lamp to compensate. She lit it.

  There was no reaction from her patient, he just stayed where he was; facing the wall, his head buried into the once white sheets as if hiding himself in their cleanliness.

  Rose poured water into the washstand in the corner, adding two rolls of dry cotton cloth and placing the carbolic lotion beside the bowl. The liquid would sting but at least it ensured the wound was clean. Afterwards, she would bipp the wound, coating it with bismuth iodoform paraffin paste.

  Most of the soldiers had had their wounds dressed at the casualty clearing station before being moved to the hospital, but this was often done quickly and clumsily. It was their first job to change the dressing.

  Rose took the bowl and its water over to the table beside the bed and placed it under the light. 'I'm going to have to clean your wound and the rest of your body before the doctors come on their rounds.' She took a length of cloth and squeezed all the water out of it. 'It may hurt at times, but I'll try to be as gentle as I can. Please realise I must do this. It's important your wound is clean.'

  It was a speech she had given many times since she had joined the VAD. Too many times.

  The soldier didn't answer. Was he asleep?

  She touched his shoulder and felt him flinch beneath her fingers. 'I'm sorry, it has to be done.' She began to roll the sheet off his body, folding it back to the bottom of the bed.

  He didn't move.

  Beneath the sheet he was completely naked, his bony shoulders jutting through a thin white skin. Patches of mud and soil stuck to the body from the neckline downwards as if they had somehow seeped through the uniform and embraced the raw human beneath.

  From the bottom of his ribs to the top of his left thigh, a large pad of cotton was taped, hiding his hips. The cotton was no longer white but had transformed into a camouflaged pattern of deep red in the centre, surrounded by a light green, spreading into a dirty mud-coloured brown sludge.

  Incongruously, a large red thumbprint sealed the edge of the tape where it joined the skin. It was almost as if the surgeon at the casualty clearing station had signed his work.

  She began to slowly lift the tape where it had stuck, prising it from the skin. She let the man take a deep intake of breath, waiting for the pain that was sure to come. She removed the other tape at the corner and peeled back the dirty pad. The inside, where the gauze had touched the skin, was covered in globules of dark red blood, green pus and a thick, white snot-like slime.

  The patient groaned as the cold air touched the open wound. The surgeon had done the best he could to clean out the shrapnel and bits of metal buried in the open flesh. Rose could see the curve of muscle as it reached over the hip, the flesh inside, chopped and shredded. The skin had vanished, no doubt cut away by the surgeon. She wondered if the wound was deep and if shrapnel fragments still lay beneath the tortured flesh.

  'This may hurt a little,’ she said as gently as she could.

  She took up the damp cloth and dabbed at the edge of the skin were it met the wound, cleaning away dried blood and bits of crusted flesh. He flinched as soon as the cloth touched his skin, but then relaxed, giving himself up to his fate like a sacrificial victim at some awful pagan rite.

  Rose carried on speaking as she cleaned the outside of the wound. At first, she thought it was to co
mfort the injured, but later, she realised it was actually to comfort herself. To give her brain something to do, rather than focus on the pain of the individual beneath her.

  'My name's Rose, by the way. We'll be seeing a lot of each other.' She cleaned the edge of the wound itself now. The patient flinched away from the cloth, mumbling something in answer to her.

  'What was that?' She took the cloth and dunked it in the water, squeezing it out like she had done before.

  'I knew a R-R-Rose once,' the patient mumbled.

  'Did it have prickly thorns?' She dabbed the wound directly. The patient jerked his legs and let out a howl of pain. 'Sorry, I have to do it. If you lie still, it will all be over soon, I promise.'

  The man mumbled something again.

  Rose dabbed the wound. He flinched a little, but otherwise stayed still. His breath became shallower and he gritted his teeth, repeating the phrase to the wall. 'No thorns. No thorns. No thorns. No thorns.'

  Rose cleaned the wound as quickly as she could. The chorus of 'No thorns, no thorns, no thorns,' repeated until it suddenly stopped.

  The patient had passed out from the pain. She finished cleaning the wound, using the soiled water to wipe the man's legs and bottom. She wished she could have used fresh water but she had to work quickly now, while he was unconscious, while he couldn't feel anything. She reached between his testicles and wiped his penis and lower belly. If anybody had told her a year ago she would be washing a man, she would have laughed in their face. But war, and time, change everybody.

  She poured some fresh water out of the jug onto a clean cloth. She turned the patient over on to his back, careful to make sure the wound didn't touch the bottom sheet. She wiped the thin bony chest, ribs poking through the pale skin, and moved up to the neck and face.

  She stopped.

  The cloth fell from her fingers and her hand went to her mouth.

  Beneath her, his head resting against the pillow, lay David Russell.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  No.11 General Hospital, Boulogne, France. October 19, 1915.

  David recovered quickly from his wounds. Soon, he and Rose were spending most afternoons sitting out on the lawn, basking in the warm rays of late summer.

  'It isn't like that, you know,' David announced one afternoon after Rose had finished reading him the front page of the Times.

  'What isn't?'

  'War, the fighting.'

  'I didn't think it was.'

  'Those reporters spend their lives in Paris, filing their reports from some dining room in the Hotel de Crillon.'

  'What is it like?'

  He spoke softly. 'Dark and horrible, but strangely exciting. There's time where one forgets everything and everybody, plunging into the struggle without a thought of the past, present or the future.'

  'Sometimes, I felt the same way when I was breaking windows for the WSPU. As if it were another person doing it, not me.'

  David stared down at his hands lying in his lap. Rose wondered if his side were hurting him again. He still had shards of shrapnel buried beneath his skin. The doctors said it was pointless removing them all, just let the body get used to them.

  'I did write, you know,' he said eventually.

  She had been expecting this conversation for a long time. Now, it had finally arrived, like a train slowly chugging into a station. 'Did you?'

  'I was sent out with the BEF on one of the first ships to leave England. I wrote to you after our last meeting in Holloway, and again from France, before the fighting started.'

  'I'd already been released by then. Asquith decided to let us go, after Mrs Pankhurst promised no more political action until after the war had finished. It seemed more important to win the war.'

  'I wrote to your father's shop, after the first fighting at Mons. Glad to be alive, so many of the regulars died.'

  Rose closed her eyes and bowed her head. 'He passed away in September. Couldn't understand the war, couldn't understand why people were fighting. He was German you know.'

  David raised his head. 'But his name was Clarke.'

  'He changed it when he came to England. Wanted to blend in more. His original name was Hans Schreiber. It amused him to be called Hans Clarke.'

  'I'm sorry.'

  'It was for the best. He had been lost since Mother died. She was his rock, his strength. Without her, he was just another little boy.' She took a deep breath. 'I moved to Worthing to be with one of my mother's sisters and then joined the VAD. They didn't seem to mind I'd been in prison.'

  She stood up. 'Shall I push you around the garden? If Matron sees me sitting here, she'll think I'm bunking off.'

  He released the brake on his wheelchair. 'When will I be able to walk again?'

  It was time to break the news to him. 'Soon, I should imagine. The doctors say your hip is mending well. It's just a question of time, so they're sending you back to England to recuperate.'

  They stopped in the middle of the path. 'I'm going home?'

  'Well, not home exactly. To a place called Tylney Hall. A good place to rebuild your muscles, they tell me.'

  'And what about us?'

  'What about us?'

  'I'm not letting you go this time, Rose. Not again.'

  'I have to stay here in Boulogne. The army…'

  'Then I'll stay too.'

  'Your movement orders have already come through. You are to leave tomorrow.'

  'So quick. How long have you known?'

  'A couple of days.'

  He bit his bottom lip. 'What are we going to do, Rose?'

  'What we've always done. Make do and mend.'

  'I don't want to do it any more. I want to marry you.'

  'And what about your family?'

  He laughed. 'They'll have to stand in line. I'm marrying you first.'

  She didn't laugh. 'You know what I mean.'

  He took her hand. 'One thing this war has taught me, Rose, is there are no second chances. This is the only life we have to live. And I would like to live mine with you.'

  She withdrew her hand, running it down the side of her face and pushing a stray lock of hair into her cap. She knelt down in front of his wheelchair. 'David, this war has changed me too. There's no past, no future, just now, here together, me and you.'

  'Let's get married, Rose?'

  She nodded. 'I'd love to be your wife, for now and for ever.'

  He leant forward and kissed her on the lips.

  As he did, they heard the creak of the patio doors opening.

  She stood up quickly. ‘I'm being transferred back to England in February, let's arrange it all then. In the meantime, there is so much to do before you leave.' She began to push his wheelchair back towards the chateau.

  He reached up behind his head and touched her hand. 'I'll write to you every day until we see each other again.'

  Up ahead, at the patio doors, Rose could see Matron standing with her arms folded across her chest. 'I'd be much happier if you could think of a few words to say to the matron.'

  He took his hand away. 'Don't worry, it's time for the famous Russell charm. An effect that can soothe even the most savage beast.'

  'You don't know Matron.'

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Gretna Green, Scotland. March 31, 2016.

  The drive was long from Manchester to Gretna Green, but the M6 was relatively free of traffic. Even more luckily there was just one lane closure, north of Lancaster. Jayne had picked up Mark from outside his home at eight in the morning. He was ready and waiting, standing outside the house. As he opened the car door, the curtains flickered and the shadow of his father appeared behind them.

  He placed his overnight bag on the back seat and sat down next to her. 'We should leave pretty quickly.'

  'Why?'

  'My father asked to come at the last minute. Wanted to see for himself. I think he wants to gloat if we don't find anything.'

  Jayne put the BMW in gear and pulled away from the house.

  'Nice
car,’ said Mark.

  'The reward to myself for a successful investigation a couple of months ago. A little treat…'

  'More than a treat, I would say.' He looked around the car, admiring the comfort of the leather upholstery and the sleek German minimalism of the dashboard.

  Jayne decided to find out more about him. 'You still live with your father?'

  'I moved back two years ago when my marriage ended. She stayed in the house.'

  'Any kids?'

  'Two. Ten and eight, both girls.'

  'Must be difficult.'

  'It is. Even harder now her new man has moved in with them.'

  'How are the kids handling it?'

  He took a deep breath. 'On the surface, okay, but you never know what's happening beneath the obsession with Boy Bands and Barbies.'

  She laughed. 'You see still see them?'

  'Every day. They go to the school where I teach.'

  'Isn't it awkward?'

  'Not really. I can spend time with them after work when I'm Daddy again. In school, I'm Mr Russell. No kids yourself?'

  Jayne swung the car onto the M60 before answering. 'No. I never felt grown up enough to have kids. What with the job and everything.'

  'You were in the police?'

  'Joined at 16 and worked my way up to Detective Inspector. Would never have risen any further though. Wasn't part of the club, so I took early retirement a few years ago.' She thought back to Dave again, his body lying in her arms, a hole in the middle of his chest. He'd been retired early too.

  Should she tell Mark the truth? No, it was nobody's business but hers.

  They lapsed into silence, the quiet roar of the engine the only sound as she raced northwards past Bolton.

  Jayne thought of Paul. What was he doing now? Were they finally over? Done and dusted? Twelve years of marriage finished in just four minutes? She supposed she made her choice when she decided to go to Scotland.

  Enough. Enough. Enough.

  She’d had enough of thinking and worrying about her marriage. Her job and this client were the most important things right now. This is what she needed to concentrate on.