A Nightingale in Winter

by Margaret K Johnson

  He grinned, dispelling some of the tension. “Me too.” She smiled, and he added, “Want to know what treatment they gave me?”

  She looked up cautiously. “Did they give you a blood transfusion?”

  “They certainly did.” There was laughter in his voice. “Which no doubt you’d have been fascinated to watch. Of course, I wasn’t too aware of what was happening by then. I was pretty weak. I don’t remember very much about arriving at the hospital at all, in fact. But afterward, when I knew I’d had a transfusion, I got them to show me the equipment. You know, I couldn’t get over how simple it was. Just some tubing and a bottle. Very effective, though, as you can see.”

  Eleanor smiled, unsure what to say next. Over in the corner, the French had returned to their wrangling about the bill, and somehow the noise was reassuring, filling the spaces in the conversation between herself and Dirk.

  “The hospital looks like a nice place if you leave aside the dreaded Sister Palmer,” he said at last. “Historic. I almost expected to see some monks or nuns helping out with the patients. How come they’ve got some of the beds outside?”

  “It’s only for today, since it’s so hot. Matron feels a little sunshine is beneficial to recovery. Sister Palmer doesn’t like it.”

  Dirk pulled a face. “She wouldn’t. But I’m very glad to hear that those poor guys’ beds aren’t permanently based outdoors. I thought for a moment you’d run out of space inside.”

  Eleanor sighed, thinking of the constant stream of casualties. “Sometimes it really feels as if we will,” she said. “It’s so very busy.”

  “Tell me about your work,” he said. “Are you enjoying it, or are you too busy for that?”

  “Oh, no, I enjoy it very much,” she said, and then for some reason she found herself telling him about Lazare.

  “He sounds like quite a character.”

  She nodded. “He is.”

  “But, then, you’re good with difficult patients.”

  She knew he was teasing her. “You were fairly well behaved really,” she said, feeling confident enough now to smile at him properly.

  When she looked, though, she saw to her discomfort he wasn’t smiling back. Instead, he was looking at her searchingly, as if he wanted to reach out to her. It suddenly felt like she was back on The Sussex with his head cradled in her lap.

  “I owe you my life,” he said softly. “I will never forget that, Eleanor.”

  She flushed. “I was doing my job, that’s all.”

  “Perhaps,” he agreed, “but you did it well. And you put your own life at risk while doing so.”

  “No, not really,” she said, unwilling to be turned into some kind of hero. “The ship never did sink in the end.”

  “Please!” Dirk smiled slightly now. “Let me bestow my thanks. Patients who’ve come close to death have a need to do so. It’s a proven fact; I’m surprised nobody’s taught you that. It’s a part of the treatment to let them thank you.”

  Eleanor looked up again and was relieved to see that the intense expression was gone from his face. “All right,” she said. “If that’s the case, then I accept your thanks.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because we both know that if it’d been Sister Palmer on that ship instead of you, the outcome may well have been the same, but that time on the deck, waiting to be rescued…Well, it would have been very different.”

  She thought about the confidences they’d shared on that deck, and knew he was right. Both of them had revealed things they wouldn’t have revealed in other circumstances. But she wasn’t some kind of saint, and it wouldn’t take very many meetings between them for him to realize that fact. But then, there was no reason to suppose they would ever be meeting again. Dirk had come to say thank you, and now he’d said it.

  A quick glance at the clock on the wall informed her that she would need to start back for the abbey very soon, Kit or no Kit, if she didn’t want to get into trouble with Sister Palmer. What would she say to him when they parted? Good luck with your work? I hope you’ll stay safe? I hope you and your father manage to make things up some time?

  Dirk had caught her glance at the clock. “You have to get back, don’t you?” he said.

  “Yes,” she said. “Kit should be here any minute.”

  He nodded. “Before she comes, can I ask you something, Eleanor?” He was wearing that intense look again, and she licked her lips, suddenly nervous.

  “Yes,” she said. “All right.”

  “D’you think I could write to you? I’d really like to keep in touch, and you see, I don’t know anybody but you and Kit in France now that Jimmy’s gone.”

  Letters from Dirk. What would they be like? She imagined herself receiving one and knew it would give her pleasure to receive it.

  “Please say yes, Eleanor,” he said, misinterpreting her silence. “It would mean a great deal to me.”

  At that moment, the café door opened, bringing in Kit with her newly styled hair. Eleanor spoke quickly, before her friend arrived at their table. “Yes,” she found herself saying to Dirk. “Yes, I should like that.”

  And they shared a smile.

  Shortly afterward, they parted company, with Kit entreating Dirk to return to visit them again just as soon as he was able to. After all the parting phrases she had thought of using when they were in the café together, in the end, there was no time to say anything much more than goodbye.

  But then, just as he was about to turn the corner and move out of sight, Eleanor called out, “Good luck!” and Dirk lifted his hand to give them one final wave.

  “Wasn’t it too perfect to see the dear man?” Kit said. “And looking so well—almost as if those horrors on The Sussex had never taken place at all. And fancy him taking Sister Palmer to task like that! I wish I could have been a fly on the wall, don’t you?”

  Would he write to her? Yes, she was sure he would. He was grateful to her for saving his life, after all. And that would be very pleasant, even if the letters began to fade off after he became absorbed in his work.

  “It has been a pleasant afternoon, hasn’t it?” Kit said. “Shame it has to come to an end.”

  But come to an end it did—the moment they got back to the Abbey. A convoy had just come in, and casualty after casualty was being unloaded from the ambulances filling the courtyard. There was nothing for it but to take their coats off and get stuck in.

  “At least Sister Palmer doesn’t seem to be around to yell at us,” Kit said.

  “She’s dealing with a crisis,” one of the other VADs told them, overhearing. “Suicide. That difficult one, Lazare. Somehow managed to crawl out of his bed and swallowed half the drugs from the medicine store.”

  Chapter Nine

  “NOT SO BLEEDIN’ DELICATE, Cartwright. This is the bleedin’ Hun we’re trying to get you ready for, not some tart with her drawers down.”

  “Sir.”

  Leo had been at the training camp in Surrey for a week, and it had been the longest week of his life. By night, he thought with nostalgia and regret of the sweet life he’d enjoyed in Paris, and by day, he drilled with the other men. This wasn’t what he’d wanted or imagined. He wasn’t experiencing horror or bravery, just brain-numbing boredom and banal ugliness. Gray parade ground, bleak brown barracks, and bovine herds of men eating together, washing together, even shitting together.

  Even if there had been the time or opportunity to paint, the only image that would have sprung to his mind would have been one of cattle. Or possibly sheep. Yes, a load of baaing sheep with hardly a brain cell amongst them. Dockers, laborers. The type of people he’d grown up with.

  Sergeant Hawkins had it in for Leo, possibly. Leo thought it was because he recognized a spark of intelligence, but strangely Leo preferred Hawkins to the men. At least he had some personality, even if it was a boorish one.

  “Now listen to me, you idle bunch of no-hopers,” he was saying now. “You needn’t think it’s a bleedin’ tea party out there. You don’t listen now
, and you don’t last very long out there, got it? Them medical posts are full of smart buggers like you as thought they knew best. That understood, Cartwright?”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Later, in the bunkhouse, Leo lay fully clothed, boots and all, on his bunk and smoked a cigarette, brooding with discontent. The boredom of the place was suffocating, and he wasn’t sleeping at all well. Oh, he got to sleep easily enough, but the nightmares that had plagued him periodically during his life had returned in full strength lately. It had gotten so that he almost didn’t want to try to go to sleep, and he knew he’d been a fool to go and see Rose. But it was too late now; he had gone, and he couldn’t turn the clock back.

  “Leo?”

  Starting from a half-doze, he looked up to see Tom Baines standing by his bed. Baines had been allocated the bunk above Leo’s, but beyond noting that, unlike the majority of men in the bunkhouse, Baines didn’t snore, Leo barely noticed him. He was a quiet, whippety sort of man with a receding hairline.

  “What is it?” he asked irritably.

  Baines cleared his throat. “Your cigarette. Looks as if it could set the bed on fire.”

  Leo looked and saw it was true. The butt end was dangerously close to the rough, gray sheets. Grunting his thanks, he put it out and lay back again, closing his eyes, fully expecting Baines to depart.

  “He hates you, doesn’t he. Hawkins?” Baines was saying. “Picks on you.”

  “I can deal with it.” Leo kept his eyes closed, expecting his tone of voice to discourage any further discussion.

  But Baines didn’t take the hint. “You’re telling me! It don’t seem to put you out at all. If it was me, he was on at, he’d probably have me blubbing by now.”

  Leo could well believe it.

  “My brother was like you,” Baines went on, warming to his subject. “Cocky as anything, and nothing upset him.” He paused to look at his boots. “Killed last Christmas, he was.”

  Ah.

  Leo looked properly at Baines for the first time. “And you two were close?” he asked.

  Baines hung his head. “Yeah.”

  “You must miss him.”

  “I do. Sometimes I forget for a minute. That he’s gone, I mean. Then I remember, and I miss him all over again.”

  Leo thought Baines might burst into tears any moment. Clearly he was in need of a friend.

  “Come on,” he said, swinging his legs off the bed and standing up. “Let’s go and see what evil concoction they’ve come up with for us in the cookhouse.”

  Baines looked stunned. “You mean eat together?” he asked, beginning to smile. “All right.” He trotted off happily after Leo, his short little legs struggling to keep up with Leo’s long strides.

  Baa, thought Leo, deliberately walking faster than usual. Baa bloody baa.

  Still, tomorrow they were leaving the training camp and traveling to France, and you never knew when a lapdog such as Baines might come in handy. And in the meantime, the man would make a model of sorts. Leo was itching to do some drawing again.

  Later that afternoon, there was a rare respite period, and while other soldiers polished their boots, played cards, or just slept in the sunshine with their backs against a wall, Leo drew. Until the arrival of an officer.

  Leo was aware of the man’s arrival straight away, but pretended he was not, wanting to complete his drawing. But then the officer came over to the haystack where Leo and Baines were seated, and Baines leapt to his feet with a hasty salute.

  “As you were, man, as you were,” the officer said.

  “Yes, sir!” said Baines, remaining standing. Reluctantly, Leo got to his feet also, shifting his gaze to the officer without making much effort to hide his resentment at being disturbed in a rare period of off-duty time.

  The officer was looking at him with an expression of dislike. “Let me see,” he ordered, holding out his hand for Leo’s sketchpad.

  Leo hesitated for a moment before handing it over, then stood, watching for the officer’s reaction. The drawing was of a flock of sheep; at least, at first glance that was what it was. The officer looked more closely, and Leo’s mouth twitched as he saw the man’s realization that the sheep were, in fact, part sheep, part human, one of them sporting Captain Blenkinsop’s luxuriant moustache. Leo knew it was only a matter of time before the officer’s scowl increased still further, for Leo had drawn himself in the center of the group—not as a sheep, but as a man, with Baines as one of the most brainless looking of all the sheep, gazing adoringly up at what was clearly his master.

  “What are your names?” the officer barked.

  “Baines, sir,” said Baines.

  “Cartwright, sir,” Leo replied, meeting the officer’s eyes steadily.

  “And I am Lieutenant Montague, your new commanding officer,” said the officer. “And I will not tolerate such disgusting, insubordinate sketches in my platoon.” With that, he tore Leo’s drawing from the sketchpad, handed the pad back to Leo, and then carefully ripped the drawing in two. “Is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Leo with dislike.

  “If you fancy yourself as a war artist, I suggest you choose your subject matter rather more carefully,” Lieutenant Montague continued. “We are a unit—a fighting force. This is not a cabaret; those are real guns you can hear out there.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Leo.

  “If I catch you drawing anything as subversive as this again, I’ll report it. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir!” said Leo, watching as Lieutenant Montague pocketed the pieces of torn drawing and walked away. Perhaps he would report Leo to Captain Blenkinsop. Well, if he did, he did. A man couldn’t be court-martialed for drawing a picture.

  Chapter Ten

  DIRK DID WRITE TO ELEANOR as he’d promised to, but it turned out to be a very different letter from the one he’d anticipated writing.

  Leaving the girls, he boarded another train to take him nearer still to the thick of the action, spending the night in another cheap pension. In the morning, he came to an arrangement with the landlady to leave most of his belongings there for a few days while he headed off on foot toward the sound of a bombardment, taking with him only his notebook and pencils in his overcoat pocket.

  It was his intention specifically to talk to some of the troops themselves; he didn’t want to write stories merely as an outside observer or from an officer’s perspective. The problem was, his French left a good deal to be desired, and he wasn’t entirely sure whether the troops based around here would be French or English—he had a feeling this was roughly the point where the two armies met. Being able to make himself understood when he asked for a room for the night was not quite in the same league as grasping nuances of emotion and opinion. Facts were, of course, essential, but for him they weren’t enough.

  After walking for about three miles, Dirk was beginning to feel thirsty. He wished he’d had the foresight to bring some provisions in a knapsack. The bombardment sounded much louder now, but he had a feeling it was probably still some distance away. Still, it was strangely pleasant, walking along, despite the awe-inspiring din of the bombardment. Wild flowers he couldn’t begin to name were coming out, and every now and then when the sound of the shelling became momentarily quieter, he could hear birds singing. He was excited to be here, in France, with the responsibility of reporting to people back home what was really happening.

  He thought of Jimmy, imagining them strolling along side by side, with Jimmy sharing a wisecrack or two. How different everything would have been had Jimmy not died. He was still thinking about his friend when he rounded a corner and almost cannoned into a battery of soldiers. Their uniforms were unmistakably French, and when they saw him, a command was barked out, and they came to a halt. Two hundred pairs of eyes looked his way.

  The commanding officer was a rather rotund man with a waxed moustache and dark brown eyes that were distinctly unfriendly. “What are you doing here?” he demanded to know in French.

  Dirk ga
ve a clench-teethed smile and did his best to summon up the French words he needed. “I’m an American war correspondent on my way to the Front to report on what’s happening.”

  The hostile eyes looked him up and down while the lips arranged themselves into a sneer. “Tiens,” he said. “A journalist, not a spy! How disappointing, eh, men? A little execution by the roadside would have been amusing.”

  The comment was met by a murmur of consent amongst the ranks. Dirk began to feel distinctly uneasy. “Now just a minute…” he started to say, forgetting to speak French in his rising panic, but it soon became clear that the captain didn’t appear to be in the mood to listen.

  “You will accompany us,” he stated, and ordered his men to move off. When Dirk hesitated, it took only the merest movement of the captain’s head to send two large Frenchmen in his direction. Dirk decided to accompany them.

  “Listen, you can’t do this to me,” he argued, but neither the captain nor the two burly guards were interested in his protests.

  Great, Dirk thought, trudging along with his hundred-strong armed guard. They were headed back the way he’d just come from—and before he’d even had a glimpse of the front line.

  Still, perhaps he could turn the situation to his advantage and get some interviews with the men when they finally stopped? They looked weary, and he guessed they’d just come from the Front. Surely they’d be bound to have tales to tell him if he could only understand what they said well enough. He must be very careful not to upset the captain though; he looked like the kind of man who would normally shoot first and ask questions later. The question was, what did the man intend to do with him?

  Dirk was soon to find out. After about a mile or so, the company turned off up a side road and soon came to a farm. The captain barked out an indecipherable command, and half the company proceeded to continue along the lane toward another farm in the distance. Dirk guessed that the two farms must be billets.

  He’d hardly had the chance to think the thought before the captain issued another command, and the two burly Frenchmen who’d been singled out to be his guards took him by the shoulders and began to bundle him along toward a small barn.