A Nightingale in Winter

by Margaret K Johnson

  Eleanor. If he did something foolish tonight, he might never see her again. But on the other hand, if he stayed snug and secure and ignorant at GHQ, he would never be able to live with himself. He knew this was the kind of dilemma he was likely to have to face again and again if they shared their lives together.

  No, not if. When. When they shared their lives together. Because a future that didn’t include her was now simply impossible to imagine.

  On duty at the casualty clearing station, Eleanor had no time to think about anything but work. All the beds in the two marquees that served as wards had been full well before lunchtime on the first day of the battle. By mid-afternoon, there were casualties lying on stretchers between the beds. Now, in the middle of the night, with ambulances still arriving, they had to use the ground in the passageways. There were no more stretchers left.

  “What the heck’s happened to those hospital trains we were promised?” asked a doctor. He was new to the Front, and if anything ever deserved to be called a baptism of fire, this was it. Very few of the medicines he wanted to prescribe were available, and the number of casualties was mind boggling—far too great for him to be in a position to spend much time with any of them.

  On and on they came, in ambulance after ambulance. All but the very seriously injured really needed to be taken to the Channel ports and on to England as soon as possible, except the few available hospital trains were already filled to capacity. More had been promised, but so far they’d failed to materialize, and it was getting increasingly difficult to move around the marquees to treat the patients.

  “Convoy in!”

  The doctor stood up and looked around despairingly. “They’ll have to go outside,” he told the sister in charge. “There’s simply no more space here until we get some of these casualties moved. What a fiasco!”

  Eleanor went out to help with the convoy and saw the first casualty to be laid on the bare earth. He was a young man of about twenty with one eye and part of his face blown away, and he was crying for his mother. But there was no time to comfort him. There was no time to do anything but the bare minimum for any of them, and to be thankful, as the ground outside became covered over with casualties, that the weather continued to be fine.

  And still they kept on coming.

  Once, hurrying to fetch more dressings from supplies, Eleanor ran into Kit on the same errand. Assigned to different marquees, they hadn’t seen each other since going on duty. Kit’s smile of greeting was wan; Eleanor had never seen her look so low. Her face was deathly pale with fatigue, as she knew her own was. There was no question of any of them getting any sleep.

  “What use is all of this, Eleanor?” Kit asked miserably, and Eleanor paused momentarily from counting out her dressings to look at her. “We make so little difference. They suffer so, and in some ways…”

  There was despair in her voice, and Eleanor reached out a hand to comfort her.

  “One boy asked me…” Kit’s voice cracked. “Oh, Eleanor, one boy asked me why High Command didn’t just shoot them all and have done with it, instead of sending them out to fight, and he…he’s right. It’s all gone wrong, hasn’t it? This was supposed to be the battle to end all battles.”

  The tears began to flow freely down Kit’s cheeks, and soon both of them were sobbing, holding each other and crying with exhaustion and grief. Eleanor held Kit’s trembling body close to her own. She’d never had such a close female friend before, not since her childhood anyway, and if it hadn’t been for the war, their paths would never have crossed.

  “We are of use, Kit,” she said now, drawing back a little to find a handkerchief to wipe away first her own, then her friend’s tears. “You must believe that. The world has gone mad, but we can’t afford to think about that. We simply have to do the best we can to mop up. Without us, and others like us, these men would all die. All of them.” When Kit was silent, Eleanor gave her a little squeeze. “I am right, aren’t I? You know I am.”

  Finally Kit sighed. “Yes, yes, I know. It’s just…Oh, Eleanor, when will it all end?”

  They soon parted, with Eleanor still worried about her friend. Later on, when Eleanor heard a woman screaming, she knew in her heart something had happened to her. By the time an anxious-looking VAD begun to hurry her way, Eleanor was already heading for the other marquee, where she picked her way through the sea of casualties as fast as she could.

  “He just lashed out at her!” the VAD was blathering. “There wasn’t anything I could do.”

  A small crowd was gathered around Kit. Eleanor pushed her way through and crouched down beside her unconscious friend, whose arm, lying at an unnatural angle, was clearly broken.

  “She was torturing me!” raved the soldier responsible for her injury. “I won’t be tortured, I won’t!”

  The dressing on his chest was caked with dried blood. Kit had obviously been attempting to remove it.

  “Thought he’d been captured by the Hun, poor man,” a nurse observed.

  “Poor Kit, you mean!” the hysterical VAD exclaimed, bursting into tears.

  But later, after Kit’s broken arm had been made comfortable, Eleanor wondered whether her friend might have been pleased that the incident had happened. She was to be shipped back to Blighty, and as Eleanor said goodbye to her, there was a look of peace in her face that hadn’t been there since Arthur’s death.

  Words were barely necessary. Both of them knew that Kit wouldn’t be returning to France. Kit gripped Eleanor’s hand tightly with her good hand and smiled. “Don’t worry about me, Eleanor,” she said. “When my arm’s healed, I shall persuade my friend Jane to come out of mourning and invite me to her aunt’s house in Hertfordshire.”

  Eleanor smiled at that, because she knew that Julian Montague also lived in Hertfordshire.

  “Send me an invitation to the wedding,” she joked, and Kit laughed.

  “An invitation? You and Jane shall be my bridesmaids!”

  When the moment of parting came, they both cried.

  “I shall miss you so much,” Eleanor said.

  “Oh, and I you!” Kit exclaimed, hugging her. “But I shall write to you just as soon as my arm allows me to.”

  But Eleanor knew in her heart of hearts that Kit being Kit, despite genuine affection and the very best of intentions, wouldn’t get round to writing very often. Right now she needed to rest and heal and grieve for her brother, but after she’d done that, she would bounce back. It was not in Kit’s nature to be morose for long. And once she started to throw herself back into life, she likely wouldn’t think so often of her friends in France. Which was how it should be.

  The train was almost ready to depart. They hugged each other one more time, then Kit got in.

  “We met at a station, didn’t we?” she said, her eyes bright. “And now we’re parting at one.”

  Eleanor smiled. “Yes. Look after yourself, Kit. Don’t marry Julian unless you really want to.”

  “I won’t.” Kit smiled back. “And as for you, promise me you won’t let Dirk slip through your fingers. If I do manage to snare a certain dashing lieutenant, we could have a double wedding.”

  Embarrassed, Eleanor nonetheless smiled for Kit’s benefit. As the train pulled away, they waved to each other until it disappeared from view.

  When the man in front of Leo was shot dead and fell into a shell hole, Leo threw himself into the same shell hole and pulled the man’s bleeding body on top of him, intent on sitting the battle out.

  The corpse was leaking blood freely and very soon the collar of Leo’s tunic was drenched. There was a gathering stickiness on his skin. All around him, the battle was still raging, and the sound level was phenomenal. Shells were exploding. Machine guns rattled. Soldier after soldier clumped by. And yet somehow, for Leo, it was curiously peaceful on the earth, covered by the dead man. He didn’t think about the possibility of a shell landing on his resting place and blowing him to pieces. He thought about very little at all. For the moment, it was enough tha
t he’d made a decision of sorts. Soon he would need to make another one if he was to escape with his life, but for now this was enough.

  Then, suddenly, his peace was shattered by someone falling into the shell hole with him.

  Leo stayed absolutely still. Seconds turned into minutes. But just when he was convinced that he was now sharing his precarious sanctuary with two corpses, there was the briefest of lulls in the shelling, enough time for him to detect a different sound.

  Breathing.

  In, out, in, out. Regular breathing with no apparent sign of pain or injury. Yet the intruder didn’t get up and go to rejoin the fray. Could he be hiding out the same as Leo?

  As time ticked on, the desire to open his eyes was overwhelming. But he dared not. The man, whoever he was, was clearly conscious, and Leo had the oddest of feelings that he was staring at him, despite the covering of the corpse. That if he opened his eyes, the intruder’s gaze would be fixed on his, and his cover would be blown. The man was so close, Leo fancied he could smell him, and he was instantly convinced the intruder was Baines. The sound of his breathing was the same; God knew he’d lain there listening to the man in the darkness often enough when he couldn’t sleep himself.

  Baines or not, it was getting more and more difficult to stay still. The corpse was heavy on him, and now his clothing was saturated with blood. This made him think of another time recently when there had been a lot of blood.

  Drip, drip. Slap, slap.

  From grease-coated chair to rug.

  The glittering depths of Rose’s dead eyes.

  He was suffocating. In his mind, the corpse covering him became Rose’s body. And just when he knew he couldn’t keep his eyes closed a minute longer, the pressure on his chest was eased. The corpse was being lifted off him.

  He held his breath, heart racing beneath his bloodstained tunic. But no hand reached to feel for a pulse or to examine his body for injuries. There was only an excruciating waiting and the knowledge that he would have to breathe very, very soon.

  The intruder scrabbled out of the shell hole, leaving the corpse by Leo’s side. Leo sucked in a great draught of fume-laden air, cautiously opening his eyes.

  That had been close.

  He lay there for a while, recovering. Then, reaching into his bag for the regulation field dressing they all carried, he slapped it onto his blood stained neck and settled down again, to wait until the battle had cooled down enough for him to crawl out of the shell hole. He would mingle with the injured, and on the way to the dressing station, he would disappear into the bushes. His days of fighting were over.

  Eleanor was so exhausted after almost forty-eight hours without rest that it was difficult to absorb properly what anyone was saying to her. There was no conversation as such, of course—no one had any time for that—but when one of the sisters had to repeat an instruction three times before Eleanor could comprehend it, the woman took the time to look at Eleanor properly.

  “How long is it since you got any sleep, nurse?”

  Eleanor’s fatigue-fuddled mind refused to work it out. “I can’t remember, Sister.”

  “Far too long for you to be of much use to use here, I suspect.” Sister sighed. “Go on, get along with you. I don’t want to see you back here until eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  Eleanor didn’t argue. “Yes, Sister. Thank you, Sister.”

  As she walked wearily from the marquee, there wasn’t a part of her that didn’t ache. She longed to wash herself from top to toe but doubted she would stay awake long enough to do so. Already as she walked, her eyes were closing and her hand was at her collar, ready to soften its cruelty to her throat as soon as she reached the privacy of her tent.

  Two VADs were talking outside the marquee. Eleanor sleepwalked past them without registering who they were. A fragment of their conversation drifted toward her.

  “I don’t know,” one of them said. “He wasn’t even a stranger.”

  No, a part of Eleanor’s mind thought, he wasn’t. He wasn’t even a stranger.

  The VADs continued with their conversation, a rather banal conversation about a visitor to the hospital, but for Eleanor it was as if the world had stopped.

  “Get about your duties please, ladies,” Sister bristled, coming out of the marquee, and the VADs scurried off.

  “Nurse? What’s wrong? Why haven’t you gone to your quarters?”

  Eleanor had to force herself to speak, every syllable an effort. “I…I’m just going.” And she took her hand down from her throat and brought it down to her side, placing one leg in front of the other until the distance to her tent had been covered. When she got there, she was shaking.

  He wasn’t even a stranger. He wasn’t even a stranger. The phrase ricocheted around her mind as she sat down on the regulation canvas stool. She was more afraid than she’d been even on The Sussex, when she hadn’t known whether the ship was going to sink or not. A window in her mind was opening—a window she’d locked and bolted years ago. It was this that she’d run from.

  Memory—her father’s desire to force her to remember the events of the past. Eleanor began to rock back and forth, her arms creeping up around her body in a futile parody of comfort. Her eyes hot and tearless, she whispered a name. “Dirk. Dirk.”

  As soon as it was quiet, Leo left the shell hole and crawled on his belly back in the direction of the British front line.

  He wasn’t alone. No Man’s Land was littered with khaki maggots crawling back from the jaws of death. The others, being genuinely injured, were slower than he was. One nearby casualty appealed to Leo for help. Leo ignored him, continuing on his way. He had saved Montague; that was enough heroism for one war.

  As he neared the trench, Leo took care to slow down and stagger in the way somebody injured would do. His act must have been convincing, because the officer in charge refused to hear of him joining the ranks of the walking wounded. Before he knew it, he was lying on a stretcher being borne toward a casualty clearing station.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I MUST SAY, you don’t look very refreshed, nurse.”

  Reporting for duty the next morning, Eleanor avoided meeting the sister’s eyes. She was still exhausted, having barely slept all night. Now that she’d started to remember, she couldn’t seem to stop. Bit by bit and piece-by-piece, the memories were invading her mind until she was desperate for the release of demanding work.

  “I’m all right, thank you, Sister,” she said.

  “Very well.” The sister, who’d had very little sleep herself, took Eleanor at her word and went about her business, leaving Eleanor to do the same.

  The fragments of memory, when they came, were frighteningly real—almost as if the events were happening there and then. As she was helping a patient to drink, Eleanor saw her stepmother, Charlotte, just as vividly as if she were standing in front of her, her normally pretty mouth contorted with fury.

  “You sneaking, lying, little whore!” she spat—words Eleanor hadn’t even expected her stepmother to even know, let alone ever use with her.

  Somewhere in the room, a clock was ticking. The same clock her father routinely wound up every Saturday morning. The cat had one of its back legs raised in mid-wash. The smell of her stepmother’s scent was mingling with that other smell. Mildew and rank earth and sweat.

  “Nurse! You’re drowning the patient!”

  Eleanor came to when Sister pried the cup from her hand. The patient she’d been dealing with was coughing and spluttering. Eleanor realized she’d been pouring and pouring the drink down his throat without pausing for him to swallow, sending it spilling all over his face and onto the bedclothes.

  “What is it, nurse?” Sister asked in an irritable whisper. “Are you still tired?”

  “No,” Eleanor said, “I…I’m all right.”

  But ten minutes later, she was bending over another patient, holding his head as she checked a neck dressing, when his eyes opened, and his mouth formed itself into a grotesque s
mile. “Come on, Eleanor,” he said. “It’s perfectly natural. You know it’s what you want.”

  Eleanor dropped the soldier’s head so suddenly, he screamed in an agony that had Sister running over.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  “She’s trying to kill me!”

  “Nurse?”

  “He said…” But the words dried up, and Eleanor realized the patient had probably said nothing at all.

  Sister was looking at her worriedly. Finally, she sighed. “I’m relieving you from duty temporarily, nurse,” Sister said. “I suggest you go and see the doctor. And get some more rest.”

  “Yes, Sister.” Eleanor walked away, bewildered, picking a path through the litter of casualties in the marquee until she emerged outdoors. She hovered in front of the sea of soldiers lying on the ground, not knowing what to do. She didn’t want to be alone in her tent with her memories, and if she went to the doctor, what could she tell him? It would sound mad. They would send her back to England.

  “Miss Martin?”

  It was the priest, Edwards.

  “Miss Martin? You look ill. Here, let me help you.”

  “You disgust me,” her stepmother had said. “You’re unnatural, and you disgust me. Hiding behind that ladylike façade when all the time you’re nothing but a wicked whore.”

  “Here, sit down. Do you feel faint?”

  “After all we’ve done for you, this is how you repay us.”

  “Do you want me to fetch the doctor?”

  “But, Charlotte…”

  “Miss Martin? Shall I fetch the doctor?”

  “No…”

  “Oh, get away from me. Go on! Get out of my sight and take your disgusting explanations with you.”

  “If you won’t have the doctor, please tell me what’s wrong.”