A Nightingale in Winter

by Margaret K Johnson

  “An accident of birth, that’s all it is, darlin’. Nothing more than that.”

  He smiled to himself, waiting for the memory to move on to their kiss and their bestial fucking in the alleyway. But it didn’t. Instead it went backward, moving from the soothing balm of Edie’s comfort to the incident that had made it so necessary.

  The cellar and its shadows.

  “You’ll see. In no time at all, we’ll be sipping a cup of char together,” Baines attempted to say with confidence, but his voice was shaking, and Leo knew he was speaking as much to convince himself then as to offer some comfort to Leo. For a weak moment, he wanted to turn and bury his face against Baines as if he were Edie, but instead, he closed his eyes and took a few sharp, whistling breaths until the moment of danger had passed.

  “Just so long as it tastes better than your tea usually does,” he quipped, and was rewarded by Baines’ smile.

  It had begun as a game for Leo really. A project. Pretend to befriend Baines and see what came of it. Only, somehow they were friends now, of a sort.

  There was no time left for further conversation now. Montague was blowing his whistle, and suddenly nothing felt real any longer. Leo was an actor making his debut in a play—a play that had been running for some time with a different cast. Dazedly, he shuffled along with the queue, following the man in front of him up the ladder to the parapet. Then, finally, he stepped out onto the stage of No Man’s Land.

  “Move, man! Move!” Montague bellowed as Leo hesitated for a perilous second. A sniper’s bullet whistled past his ear, the cry of agony behind him telling him it had found an alternative mark.

  Leo moved forward, and it seemed as though he were walking through treacle. A rushing sound in his ears deadened the sound of the shellfire. Beside him, Baines stumbled, righted himself, stumbled, righted himself again.

  A shell exploded to Leo’s left. He saw the remains of what had, moments before, been a man fly through the sky in several different directions. Watching it, Leo’s foot clipped the edge of a shell hole. He stumbled, and for an instant he teetered, thrown off balance by the weight of his pack. Then a hand clutched at his sleeve, jerking him back from the brink. Baines.

  Their eyes met for the briefest of moments. Baines looked half demented, his eyes almost popping from his skull.

  “Keep up on the left there!” Once again Montague’s bellow sounded out through the noise, but almost immediately another shell exploded, dividing the river of men. Baines went to the right, Leo to the left. He was disconcerted to find that the dullness in his ears and his mind had suddenly cleared. It was no longer dreamlike but all terrifyingly real.

  And he couldn’t see Baines.

  Then someone drove a red-hot poker across the side of his head, and he knew he’d been hit. He was falling, falling…and this time there was no Baines to drag him back.

  Leo was in the cellar again. It smelled different—earthy and sulfurous. But it was the cellar all right, closing in on him, full of leering faces. Someone called to him, a voice he didn’t recognize. Words he couldn’t understand.

  A door opened, spilling light down the cellar steps. His mother stood at the top, looking down at him, her voice strangely echoey. “I’ll tan your bleeding arse for you. Come here!”

  He cowered in the corner, and she started to come down the steps, shrieking at him furiously. “Get up here!” There was a roaring in his ears. She would beat him black and blue when she reached him. Her hand was already lifted. He could see the veins on her neck bulging out. Then suddenly he felt something cold beneath his fingers. A knife. He struck out with it, and she drew in a jagged breath, her expression turning to one of surprise as her blood pumped out along the blade, down the handle, and warmly onto his arm.

  “Kamarad…”

  She was dead, the eyes lifeless, the mouth slack and gaping. The voice with its strong, guttural accent made no sense at all.

  “Kamarad…”

  His mother’s lifeless face was fading; he was floating above it, then being sucked away from the cellar through the kitchen to the back yard. Edie was there with her arms held out to welcome him, and then all too soon she too was fading.

  “Bitte, Kamarad…”

  Leo opened his eyes and lay there for a moment, looking at the sky. It was pinkish in the encroaching dawn, but the pink was sullied by gray smoke. Then he remembered the battle. Going over the top. Shells exploding. Baines’ face, mad with terror. He’d been hit. Lifting a cautious hand to his head, he felt his fingers become sticky with blood as fire torched across his skull and down his neck, causing him to groan out loud.

  “Kamarad…” The urgent, unfamiliar voice was accompanied this time by a hand on his arm.

  Leo moved his head and saw a gray uniform. Instantly, complete consciousness returned, and he knew he was sharing a shell hole with a German.

  The man was slightly corpulent, his uniform straining slightly to accommodate him. About ten years older than Leo, he had a fleshy face with uninteresting features. A bank clerk, Leo decided. A family man.

  Cautiously, Leo pulled himself into a half sitting position. Pain shot through his head then receded enough for him to notice the German’s face was sunburnt, his drooping lips cracked. Even without this, the stench alone would have been sufficient for Leo to draw the conclusion that the injured man been in the shell hole for some time.

  “Bitte…” The German’s voice was weaker. He moved his face to indicate Leo’s pack, which had fallen to the ground when he’d plummeted into the shell hole. It was obvious the German was desperate for a drink of the water he knew would be in the pack, yet he made no move to search for the water bottle himself. A further glance instantly showed Leo why. The German’s legs were all but severed below the knee. Already there were flies buzzing around the putrid flesh.

  “Bitte, Kamarad…” the German pleaded again, and as he spoke, the sun suddenly came out through the smoke. Leo suddenly remembered why he was here. To experience the war in order to paint. To shake the gates of life in order to test the hinges and locks. Suddenly the mantra combined in his mind with the dream he’d just woken from, and Leo knew that what he wanted to experience more than anything else in the world was the taking of a human life.

  Back at base, Dirk hurried up to his room to get his impressions of the battle down on paper before they began to fade.

  The sounds of the battle still rang in his ears; the smells seemed to have penetrated his clothing as well as his consciousness. As he sat at his desk to attempt to describe the sights and the events that had so completely moved and appalled him, the smell of smoke and decay seemed to rise from his jacket to fill the room, as invasive and as stealthy as gas.

  After he’d finished, he sat back and rubbed his eyes, feeling exhausted. From the room below, he could hear the rumble of his friends’ voices and knew the other correspondents were probably waiting for him.

  He stood, reading over his copy, feeling intensely dissatisfied with what he’d written. There was no way on earth his words had succeeded in recreating the horror of what he’d seen, but maybe there was no way mere words could ever hope to do so.

  A voice called to him up the stairs. It was Beacham.

  “Hurry up, old boy!”

  Dirk ran a hand through his hair and went out onto the landing, clutching his imperfect copy. Beacham was half way up the stairs, a glass of sherry in one hand.

  “We thought you must be writing a novel,” he said. His voice was ever so slightly slurred. Clearly it was not his first sherry of the day.

  “Sorry,” Dirk said, knowing that the censors liked to collect in all their pieces at once.

  “So long as you’re finished now.”

  The other journalists were all gathered in the parlor. Entering the smoke-filled room, Dirk blinked, grappling with a feeling of total disorientation. Writing his account of the battle, it had almost been as if he were actually there.

  “What have you got, then?” Beacham asked. “
Bung it over, old boy, and then we can have luncheon.”

  Dirk licked his lips—a sign of nervousness rather than an anticipation of lunch—and handed his copy over. The censor, a man called Wright, took it from his hand with a bored expression that quickly changed to irritation as he counted how many pages there were.

  “I was right after all,” Beacham joked. “You were writing a novel!”

  There was a ripple of laughter, but Dirk hardly noticed. The censor was scowling now, his red pen hovering briefly before it came in for the kill. Over and over again. Until there was far more red on the page than black.

  The room went quiet. Dirk’s face turned as red as the censor’s ink. Someone giggled. Stifled it.

  The censor sighed—a heavy, weary sound. “We can’t allow this through,” came the final verdict, and Dirk flinched from the brutality of the rejection.

  “I’ll change it,” he said, eager to please. “Tell me what’s wrong, and I’ll change it straight away.”

  The censor screwed the top back onto his red pen and thrust the fought-for pages back in Dirk’s direction. “More a question of what’s right with it than what’s wrong,” he said, tapping the red markings he’d made with the end of his pen.

  Dumbfounded, Dirk’s hand automatically reached out to take the pages. The censor pocketed his pen and got to his feet, then seemed to make a deliberate effort to be kind. “Don’t take it too badly, sir. All these gentlemen were much the same when they first got out here—far too much emotion in their writing. I’m sure they’ll be good enough to school you in the way we do things here.”

  His departure was followed by an awkward silence. Dirk stood there staring down at his rejected copy until Beacham’s hand clapped him on his shoulder.

  “He’s right you know, old man. We were all the same when we got here. Full of fervor and passion and puffed up ideas of what we could say to change the world.”

  Dirk looked at his roommate uncomprehendingly. “But I only wanted to tell the truth,” he said, and saw a flicker of cynicism pass over Beacham’s face.

  “The truth is the very last thing you can tell, old man,” he said. “This is war.”

  “Kamarad!” As badly injured as the German was, his eyes bulged with fear as Leo drew out the knife. Foam collected around the man’s thin bristly lips as he wailed and uselessly tried to inch himself out of danger on his shattered legs.

  Leo held the knife up threateningly while carefully observing every nuance of the Hun’s reaction. The tiniest movement of the blade toward him increased the volume of his cries. It was almost musical.

  Leo’s body was rigid. The desire to reach into his trousers to give himself relief was overwhelming. He started to give in to it, swapping the knife to his free hand, but the Hun misunderstood his sudden movement and gave a squeal of terror, somehow managing to claw his way upward toward the top of the shell hole.

  The next minute, his lifeless body had crumpled back into the mud, the victim of a sniper, head and shoulders lying heavily across Leo’s legs.

  Leo’s arousal instantly vanished. He sat there watching the blood well up from the neat bullet hole through the top of the Hun’s bald head. The knife slipped from his grasp, landing in the mud. The Hun continued to stare at him, and as Leo watched, a trickle of blood began to flow from the corner of the thin, stretched lips.

  He hadn’t killed the Hun himself, but his death had come as a direct result of Leo’s actions. If he hadn’t drawn his knife, the Hun wouldn’t have attempted to escape. It was almost as good as murder.

  Leo was sweating and trembling, his breath coming in snatches. Suddenly, he was overwhelmed by the need to express his feelings in his sketchbook. He kicked the German’s body away and reached for his pack. His injured head throbbed as he bent over to undo the straps, but at last he had what he wanted—a sketchbook and a pencil. Finding a fresh page, he began to draw with dark strokes, oblivious to the sounds of the continuing battle.

  Working quickly, Leo produced drawing after drawing, each one becoming less of a representation of the German’s death and more of an expression of feeling, until he began to long for oil paint and the extra dimension of color. His fingers were desperately clawing in the mud of the shell hole, and he began to smear the mud onto the paper as if it was paint, his pencil worrying it like a brush.

  After a long while, he paused to stare critically at the results of his labors, reaching up absently with his mud-caked hand to scratch his head as he did so. The resulting pain caused him to suck in a whistle of agonized breath, but the next moment he was leaning over his sketchpad, allowing his blood to drip onto the paper. Working the blood like paint, he lifted his fingers to encourage more blood from his wound.

  After that, it was a natural progression to make use of the congealed blood of the Hun.

  The post arrived after luncheon. Dirk, who’d scarcely tasted the little he’d eaten, was surprised when Beacham held out a letter to him.

  “A feminine hand, if I’m not very much mistaken,” Beacham said brightly. “Should cheer you up.”

  Eleanor!

  Dirk snatched the letter and took it straight upstairs to read, oblivious to Beacham’s curiosity. Once in his room, he closed the door behind him and tore the envelope open. Then he sat down on the bed, his eyes feverishly scanning Eleanor’s words.

  The letter was disappointing at first, beginning with almost schoolgirl politeness, inquiring about his health and his experiences at the hands of the French, as well as commenting about his work. But when Eleanor did finally begin to write about herself, it was to tell him about her new work in the operating theater. As he read her words, Dirk found himself smiling at her detailed accounts of operations she’d witnessed. She was passionate about her subject, and he was deeply touched that she felt able to share her interest with him. But then he came to a section in the letter that had him frowning.

  The doctor is French of course, and speaks very little English. My French is fairly elementary, but we manage to communicate fairly well. He is an excellent doctor, though inclined to be a little bad tempered at times. I cannot blame him, however, since he works such very long hours. I know he misses his wife and family a good deal.

  Kit’s brother, Arthur, came to visit us last week and took us to tea. He is very like Kit, and there was much laughter between them. They are very close.

  Dirk was relieved to learn that the man Eleanor was now working so closely with had a wife and a family and was therefore unlikely to make advances toward Eleanor.

  He wasn’t so pleased, though, when he read on about Kit’s visiting brother. He frowned, picturing Kit: attractive, outgoing, charming. Arthur was likely the same, and Dirk didn’t like the idea of Eleanor taking tea with such a man at all.

  There were a few more sentences in the letter about Kit and about hospital life, but Dirk didn’t read them with great attention. His mind was too busy with the unpalatable prospect of Arthur Ballantine applying his charm across the tea table.

  The door opened behind him.

  “Everything all right, old man?” Beacham asked as he entered, bringing with him the smell of brandy and cigar smoke.

  Dirk folded up Eleanor’s letter and replaced it in the envelope. Everything was not all right at all. He hadn’t yet managed to file a story to his newspaper, and Eleanor was miles away from him, surrounded by attractive men. What was to stop her responding to one of them?

  “Loreson?”

  “Yes, yes, I’m all right.”

  “Sure? You look somewhat—”

  “Beacham,” he asked, “d’you know anyone with a motorbike?”

  Beacham looked taken aback. “Er…I’m not sure. That is, I have seen one about, but I’m not sure who it belongs to. Rodgers might know…But look here, what’s all this about? Where are you off to?”

  Dirk was already halfway out the door. “No time to explain now. Must catch Rodgers.”

  Ten minutes later, Dirk had located the owner of the motorbike
and, after successful negotiations, was on his way.

  Hours later, almost convinced he was crazy, he finally drew near to the abbey. He was tired and saddle-sore, and there were no guarantees that he would even be able to see Eleanor. If she were on duty, he could hardly drag her out of a life-saving operation. But he had to try to see her. He wanted so badly to talk to her, to really get to know her—everything there was to know about her. And if she were on duty, he would wait to see her, even if that meant waiting all night.

  An ambulance was ahead of him now, following the winding roadway to the abbey, and he came to a halt behind it as the drivers got out and opened up the back. His arrival attracted the attention of the staff waiting to help with the casualties. A figure detached itself from the group.

  “Dirk! Goodness, it is you. How perfectly wonderful!”

  He smiled, stretching his cramped body, his aching shoulders protesting at having been kept hunched over the handlebars for so long.

  “Hi, Kit.”

  They smiled at each other, then a familiar voice bellowed at Kit. “Miss Ballantine! Come back here this instant!”

  “Whoops.” Kit grinned as she backed away from him. “Goodness, it’s hours until I get off duty. What rotten luck.”

  He spoke quickly. “And Eleanor?”

  “Oh, she’s just come off duty, lucky blighter. Probably snatching a bite to eat in the refectory. Not that they’ll let you go down there—”

  “Miss Ballantine!” Sister Palmer was bearing down on them.

  “Bye,” Kit said and got on with her work.

  Dirk returned to his motorbike before the dreaded Sister Palmer could apprehend him. He started it up and he rode off into the gloom, only to stop again around a sharp bend. Then he hid the bike in some bushes and made his way slowly back toward the front of the abbey to wait in the shadows for the rest of the casualties to be taken from the ambulance. After the ambulance had driven off and all the staff had gone inside, he waited a little longer, just to be on the safe side. He was just about to creep nearer when a door opened, discharging two nurses and a pool of light.