A Nightingale in Winter

by Margaret K Johnson

  “I don’t intend to try to find them,” she told him. “I just want to be sure I never accidentally go to the same country they live in.”

  The sneer intensified, and she wondered what she had ever done to make him hate her so.

  “You, go to Switzerland?” he said mockingly. “Why on earth should you do that?”

  “I intend to train to be a doctor,” she said. “And doctors are needed the world over.”

  There was a pile of blackened rubble where number sixty-three Victoria Walk should have been. The houses on either side were also badly damaged, though number sixty-five still showed signs of habitation.

  Looking at the charred mess of brickwork, Dirk felt weary and disappointed. It had taken days to get here, and he would have to turn right back again if he wanted to get back to Royaumont at the same time as Eleanor. He ought to have waited for her in France.

  “Can I help you?”

  A figure had crept silently from what remained of number sixty-five: a woman in the advanced stages of pregnancy, judging by her swollen belly. It was impossible to tell exactly how old she was since her face was so badly disfigured by burns. Dirk hid his repulsion as well as he could.

  “I was looking for Rose,” he said.

  The woman’s misshapen lips formed themselves into a bitter smile, and she nodded toward the remains of the burnt-out house. “Rose died in the fire.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, somehow managing to keep his gaze on her disfigured face.

  “Then you’d be the only person on this earth who would be!” she said, the venom in her voice causing him to forget all about her deformity. “Leo certainly wouldn’t be bothered she was dead, if he knew. He’d be glad. Rose was never much of a mother to him.”

  His mother. Rose had been Cartwright’s mother.

  “Was she the only one to die in the fire?” he asked, and instantly tears filled the woman’s eyes.

  “No. Mrs. Brigs from number sixty-seven died too. And…and my Charlie.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, wishing he hadn’t come here.

  “You weren’t to know,” she said, pulling herself together a little. “Why did you want Rose anyway?”

  But he didn’t want to tell her any longer.

  “Go on,” she insisted. “Why did you want Rose?”

  Finally, he hung his head. “To tell her…To tell her that her son…”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” she guessed when his voice tailed off. “He’s dead as well.”

  “Yes,” he said, looking up. “I’m afraid he is.” Suddenly, Dirk was back in that cell with Leo Cartwright, hearing him say something about making Rose pay for it. Dirk had thought he’d been talking about another rape, but now, with this new knowledge that Rose had been the man’s mother, he didn’t know what to think. And he wondered what had caused the fire.

  “Well,” the woman said with a long, shuddering sigh. “Then he’s finally at peace, isn’t he? Just so long as the Roman Catholics haven’t got it wrong and there really is a place called Hell.”

  Dirk looked at her, and saw the knowledge about Cartwright in her scarred face.

  “He was a bad un, Leo,” she confirmed. “Really bad. I always knew it, but he had something about him, at least with me. It wasn’t his fault he was the way he was; it was his past. Makes us what we are, doesn’t it? And no matter how we wriggle and jiggle about, we can never really get free.” She sighed. “The last time I saw him, I think I’d forgotten the truth of that. If I’d only been nicer to him, then perhaps…Perhaps my Charlie would be alive now.”

  She turned away toward the wreckage of her home. “Oh, well. Never any point in ‘if only’s,’ is there?”

  And then she was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Royaumont, December 20th, 1916

  “I KNEW SUDDENLY that my father had blocked out the truth about what happened as surely as I did myself. Even when my mother was alive, he and I were never close, and Reginald was the son he’d never had.”

  “So, he had to decide you were to blame?” said Hilda.

  They were sitting in the administration office drinking tea together, and Hilda was wearing a bloodstained tunic, having taken a short break from surgery in honor of Eleanor’s return.

  Eleanor nodded. She was tired from her journey, but Hilda looked bone weary. Eleanor guessed that her friend had been on duty for hours, and now she was anxious to get back to work herself. It was almost Christmas, and there was to be a big party for the patients. Everything must be done to make them as comfortable as possible beforehand.

  “I decided not to try to make him see the truth,” she said. “It just didn’t matter any longer. I shall never see him again, and the important thing was that I knew the truth myself.”

  There was an expression on Hilda’s face that Eleanor didn’t understand.

  “What is it?” she asked, suddenly worried. “Has something happened?”

  Hilda sighed. “I don’t want to have to tell you about it, I really don’t. It’s obvious to me, looking at you, that by having the most incredible courage to go back to the place where you were so dreadfully wronged, you’ve gained a new strength and a new freedom. You can’t believe how happy that makes me.”

  Eleanor’s heart swelled. “I do feel strong,” she said. “Father could tell that, I think, and he hated it. But the wonderful thing was that I didn’t mind what he thought any longer. And since that was the case, he simply lost all the power he’d always had over me. He was just a lonely, embittered old man.” Eleanor frowned, her attention returning to the present. “But tell me, Hilda, please. I can tell something’s happened. What is it?”

  Hilda pursed her lips as she reached into her desk drawer to pull out a letter. Eleanor recognized the bold, black handwriting immediately. It was Dirk’s.

  “If I had any sense at all, I’d have burnt this,” Hilda said.

  Eleanor took the envelope and stared at it.

  “But somehow I couldn’t do it. It would have been wrong. And besides, I don’t dislike the young man. I only wish I did.”

  Eleanor was still looking at the envelope. She felt weak, every scrap of her newfound strength having drained away. A part of her mind registered that the letter hadn’t been posted, but hand-delivered. “Is he…? He’s alive?” she said, her voice breaking. “He’s been here?”

  “Yes. He’s here now, in fact, waiting on the seat near the forest for you.” She leaned forward to touch Eleanor’s hand. “I told him it would be cold, but he said he didn’t mind. The man’s in love with you, or at least he’s convinced himself he is. But you don’t have to go out there, Eleanor. You don’t have to meet him. You didn’t ask him to come here, disturbing your hard-won peace like this.”

  “But where’s he been all these months?” Eleanor asked, still staring at the letter.

  Hilda broke off, sighing. “You’d better let him tell you himself. Read the letter, and then make up your mind whether to see him or not. It has to be your decision, and I need to get back to theater anyway.” Hilda began to walk away, then turned back. “He said to tell you that if you didn’t come by midnight, he would know you’d decided…Well, just that he’d know.” She continued to the door. “I’ll see you later, my dear.”

  Eleanor was still looking at the letter. “Yes,” she said distractedly. “Yes, all right.”

  Alone, she walked over to the window and looked out in the direction of the forest. It was six o’clock and quite dark; nothing could be seen of the trees at all. But Dirk was out there in the cold blackness, had been for a long time, and would wait there for her until midnight.

  He was here. He was alive!

  Eleanor remembered standing in the forest with him and how she had decided she wanted everything life had to offer her.

  She wanted to run out there to him right away.

  But then she thought of her friend’s expression, and Eleanor knew she had to take the time to read what Dirk had written to her first
of all.

  There was a seat at Hilda’s desk. Eleanor pulled it across the floor to the window. Then she tore open the letter with impatient fingers and began to read.

  My dear Eleanor,

  I would like to begin this letter by confessing my feelings for you, but I am painfully aware that such a declaration in itself will not be sufficient. So, I will begin instead by confessing that I made a terrible, foolish mistake. Eleanor, I am so sorry I have been distant for so many months. The truth is, I came to see you at Casualty Clearing Station Number Six and found you in another man’s arms. That man was Leo Cartwright, who you may not be aware, has since been shot by a firing squad for desertion. Eleanor, I am completely ashamed to say that I jumped to the worst possible conclusions when I saw you in his embrace. I believed…Oh, Eleanor, I don’t know what I believed. Simply that you did not care for me as I believed you did, I suppose. Hilda has told me that you were ill soon after this, and that she has helped you to recover. I am so desperately sorry I was not able to have been of some help, due to my foolishness.

  From the very first moment I met you on The Sussex, I knew you were kind and courageous, and it is this that allows me to have a little hope. Hope that you will meet with me, listen to me. Hope that you will find the courage to follow the instincts of your heart. I have been a fool, but I hope you will be able to find it in your heart to forgive me. I want so much to make up for the wasted time we might have been together.

  Remember the forest, Eleanor, and our magical walk here together when we came to visit Royaumont in spring. Those first tentative kisses we shared. I know Hilda thinks you will have to give up your dreams of working in medicine if you marry me, but she does us both an injustice by believing that. You are far too committed to your work to abandon it, and I would never expect you to give it up if you did not wish to do so. I want you to become qualified if that is what you wish—only I want you to do it with my support and my encouragement.

  We cannot know how much longer this war will last, and I hope and pray that my country will soon decide to join forces with the Allies. If this happens, it will be my duty to fight, and I shall do so proudly, because I now believe it is the only honest way for me to serve. As a journalist, I can do little good.

  Please, Eleanor, come to meet me. Let me show you that these are not just so many words. I am waiting, you know where, and now I shall say it.

  I love you.

  Dirk

  There were no nightingales, no rustling leaves. No moon either. Dirk had to hunch over a match to look at his pocket watch, his fingers clumsy with cold.

  Seven o’clock.

  Images flashed through his mind as he leaned against a tree, the collar of his overcoat turned up against the cold. His mother and father, dressed in their Sunday best, standing side by side on the platform to wave his train off to New York, their grim faces still bearing the traces of the bitter argument he’d had with them the previous day. Jimmy, the first time they’d ever met, his crooked smile and the slap on the back he’d given him. “Stick with me, buddy. I’ll show you around town.” Soldiers, face after weary face as they trooped in from the battlefield. He’d often tried to imagine what it was like, going over the top into No Man’s Land. Now, tonight, he felt he knew.

  Eleanor.

  She would be with him always, no matter what she decided tonight. The first person he’d seen after he regained consciousness on The Sussex. Her warmth willing him back to life. Her anxiousness about her patients. Her shy jokes. Dressed in rich red velvet, her blond hair spilling over her shoulders and onto his hands as he held her close.

  Somewhere nearby, a twig snapped. Dirk’s heart stopped, and he shook with the terror that it might not be her. Summoning all his self-control, he stood silently for a moment longer, listening.

  Another twig broke, and then she was there, walking toward him through the darkness.

  As Dirk lit a match, she saw his expression was troubled. There was a vulnerability there Eleanor hadn’t seen before, not even when he’d spoken to her of Jimmy’s death or his mother and father concealing the true circumstances of his birth. She had so often thought of him as dead these past six months—either that or hideously mutilated like the soldiers whose dressings she changed on a daily basis. She’d imagined him lying on the earth, bleeding from some shrapnel wound, with no one to listen to his final words as the light faded away from his eyes. Or shot in the back. Arrested. But never had she imagined that his silence toward her had been the result of his voluntary choice, because of a misunderstanding.

  Eleanor knew she ought to feel angry at his lack of faith, the way Hilda was angry, but, though her mind registered the fact, the signal wasn’t strong enough to make a connection with her heart. A fierce, rising joy that Dirk was both alive and physically unharmed was blocking everything else out. He was here, in their wood, almost within touching distance, and he wanted to be with her. He loved her. And besides, if she’d stumbled across him in the arms of another woman, wouldn’t she have responded in the same way he had done? Perhaps neither of them was very secure when it came to matters of love. He knew nothing about Reginald, and he wasn’t to know that she had been reliving the nightmare of her stepbrother’s attack.

  Dirk was getting slowly to his feet. “Eleanor,” he said, his voice not more than a whisper. “You came.”

  He held out his hands to her, and she crossed the remaining space to take them. “Yes,” she replied simply. “Of course I came.”

  She heard him draw in a shuddering breath, and then he pulled her close, enfolding her in his arms. Just for a moment, Eleanor thought of being in Leo Cartwright’s relentless embrace, her hands trapped against his chest, but the unpleasantness of that moment had no place in the wonderful reality of being close to Dirk, and she moved so that her arms were free to return his embrace.

  “I am so very sorry I doubted you,” he whispered, and her hands moved up to touch the softness of his hair. “I must have been crazy to think that you would—”

  “Shh,” she said, pulling his head down so that were gazing deep into each other’s eyes. “Shh. I’ve spent too long allowing the past to have a hold on my life. Let’s not allow that any longer.”

  “Thank you,” he said tremulously, and he bent to kiss her.

  Eleanor knew she would have to tell him about Reginald and the attack. To keep such a thing secret would mean that Dirk would never fully know her. And if they were to move on to a shared future together, then he needed to know her.

  “Will you marry me, Eleanor?” he asked, moving his mouth minutely from hers so he could speak.

  She smiled at him through the darkness. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Yes.”

  And as he held her hands and they laughed together out of pure happiness, Eleanor was sure she heard a nightingale singing somewhere in the depths of the forest.

  THE END

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Ann Warner, Becky Bell, Karen Haslem for their feedback and encouragement and to Sarah Gooderson for proofreading and support. Also to Lyn MacDonald, author of The Roses in Norman’s Land, which provided me with a huge amount of information and inspiration and to the staff at Imperial War Museum in London.

  About the Author

  Margaret K Johnson began writing fiction after finishing at Art College to support her career as an artist. Writing quickly replaces painting as her major passion, and these days her canvasses lay neglected in her studio. She is the author of women’s fiction, romance, and may fiction books in different genres for people learning to speak English. Margaret has an MA in creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and lives in Norwich, UK with her partner and son.

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