by Charles Todd
He touched his chest with his fist. “So far I can breathe without difficulty. But it was a very near thing, I can tell you. No, don’t trouble, Sister,” he went on as I came forward. “A little soap and water—but Daisy could have a look at my tunic, if she would. Before the blood sets.”
Mrs. Ellis whisked him away to the kitchens, and on the way I heard her calling to her son. Ten minutes later, Roger and George went out to the motorcar, and I heard them drive off.
I had just gone up for a shawl to put around my shoulders when the motorcar returned. As I came into the hall, I could hear George apologizing again, this time to Roger. I caught the last words as they opened the door and came in quickly, shutting out the wind.
“ . . . but it was there, as certain as I am here before you.”
“Yes, all right. We’ll say nothing to Mother, shall we?” Roger was a little ahead of his friend, his face set. He walked on, leaving George to talk to me. I could see that the wound had been cleaned quite efficiently, but he sat down in one of the hall chairs like a man who had been shamed.
I was about to make an effort at conversation, when Henry came into the hall and said, “What’s this I hear about a tree in the road? Good Lord, man, look at your face! I didn’t see anything when I came through, and I couldn’t have been that far ahead of you.”
“I expect,” George said with an effort at lightness, “I mistook a ewe for a tree. There was a scattering of fleece across the road. But no blood. I think honors go to her.”
“Yes, well, how’s the motorcar?”
They went off discussing the left wing, and I remembered the scraped knuckles on George’s hand. He hadn’t got that from charging into a flock of sheep. It looked more like trying to deal with the tree. Whatever Roger Ellis tried to tell him.
He smiled as he passed me, but it didn’t reach his haunted eyes.
We gathered in the hall for drinks that evening, and I sat beside Gran, who was enjoying having her family around her, her bright eyes taking in what everyone was wearing and all that was said.
She turned to me at one point, saying, “This is a pale shadow of how we entertained in my day. My husband knew so many people. The house was always full, and we had the staff to cope with the guests. There are photographs somewhere. I’m sure we kept them.”
Dinner that night was rather ordinary fare, but no one seemed to mind, and there was a good wine from the cellars.
It wasn’t until we had all gathered again in the hall that George asked the question that everyone else had been too polite to bring up. “Whatever happened to your face, Lydia?”
I thought at first that he’d drunk too much port to remember his manners.
But then he added gently, “We can’t help but see the bruising and the black eye. I think you’ll be more comfortable if we stop trying to pretend we don’t notice.”
She turned beet red, and everyone stared, then looked quickly away.
Roger answered before she could. “Ran into one of the cupboard doors while looking for the wineglasses. The doctor says no harm done.”
Lydia smiled gratefully at him, and I wondered if he’d been prepared for questions, because the response had seemed so natural and unforced.
I’d watched her without seeming to, and I rather thought her condition was improving. There was no sign of either a headache or dizziness, and I had the feeling that she and Roger were trying to make amends for their quarrel. She seemed more comfortable with him, and once I saw her touch his hand while laughing over a story he’d told. It was possible that I could leave with Simon the next afternoon after all.
That buoyed my spirits.
The evening was ending on a pleasant note until there was one disruptive comment from George Hughes.
“I’d have thought the drawing room would be more comfortable on a night like this,” he said when a sudden gust of wind and rain roared down the chimney, sending woodsmoke billowing out of the great expanse of hearth, making us cough. “Besides, I miss the portrait. I always look forward to seeing it again.”
Gran said sharply, “George, you ought to be in your bed. As we all should. It’s growing late.”
He took out his watch, looked at the time, and put it away. “So it is.”
That was the signal for everyone to rise and murmur something about the tiring drive. I stayed in the hall until they had all gone up, and then followed. Roger passed me coming back to see to the fire, and I said good night.
He nodded, and went on his way without speaking.
I went once to the room over the hall to look for Lydia—George had been given the guest room where she’d spent last night—but she wasn’t there. Smiling to myself, I slipped quietly back to my own bed.
The next day went fairly well, the sun coming out in the early morning hours and staying with us most of the afternoon before slipping again behind dark clouds.
We went to St. Mary’s Church in Wych Gate in a convoy of motorcars at two o’clock in the afternoon. The track meandered and turned back on itself, and then followed a line of trees.
I could see the church now, the tower tall as the tallest tree, the red brick vivid amongst the bare branches. There was a high iron gate in the wall that surrounded the churchyard, and no sign of a Rectory. We passed the main entrance and turned into a broad grassy space just beyond. To one side I could see a smaller gate letting into the churchyard, and on the far side, I could hear the sound of water splashing over stone as the motors were cut off. A path, almost lost in the tangled growth under the trees, must lead to a nearby stream, in spate after all the rain.
As we got down and walked through the open gate, the first thing that met my eye was a grave in the shadow of the church, bordered by white marble. On the mounded earth inside the border a white marble child knelt, as if about to play with the small white marble kitten standing just in front of her. She wore a pretty frock with a lace collar, a sash at the waist, and on her feet were shoes with a square buckle, just visible at the edge of her skirts. The dress itself was incised with tiny flowers, the folds beautifully arranged. The marble face had almost the look of life, it was so finely carved, a smile just touching the parted lips and reflected in the eyes. I knew, having seen the portrait, that this was where Juliana was buried.
It was moving to see how lovingly she had been remembered. As if to keep her with the living, even if only in cold stone.
I was walking with Mrs. Ellis, and she bent to brush a leaf from her daughter’s marble skirt. “My husband designed the monument,” she said to me. “He couldn’t bear the idea of a stone like all the rest. Not for Juliana. And I keep flowers here most of the year. Pansies in the spring, asters in the autumn.” She paused for a moment by her daughter’s memorial, and then moved on to a newer grave, still raw and ugly. “We wanted to bury her at Vixen Hill, but the rector at the time—Mr. Pembrey—persuaded us that here would be best. But it seems so far away. So lonely. As if we’ve abandoned her here and gone on with our lives. Never mind, I’m just fanciful today.”
Alan Ellis’s stone was plain, with his name, rank, and the dates of his birth and death. But there was a relief chiseled into the curved top of a ship in full sail.
Eleanor touched it gently. “It was what he asked for,” she said to Gran. “And it’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
The elder Mrs. Ellis said, “Yes. Alan always had an eye for such things.”
There were a number of other people present. Among others, I saw Dr. Tilton and was introduced to his wife, Mary, and then to the rector, Mr. Smyth and his sister, Janet. When we had all gathered and settled ourselves on the benches set beside the grave, Mr. Smyth conducted a very moving service, recalling Alan Ellis as he’d known him as a boy, the connection between him and the sea, and how courageously he’d faced the knowledge that he was dying.
“His faith was strong. He had made peace with God before he was rescued from the cold and turbulent sea, and he never lost that deep feeling that he was in the hands of his Lo
rd.”
He went on to speak to the family individually, to the widow first, and next to the two Mrs. Ellises, mother and grandmother, then moved on to the surviving brother and sister.
Mr. Smyth was a short, balding man, his tortoiseshell glasses catching the last of the daylight as clouds spread across the weak winter sun. His eloquence surprised me until I learned later that Eleanor had written much of it. She sat there, her face hidden by her heavy black veil, one hand holding tightly to her brother’s, listening to the words and the prayers, seeming not to feel the cold.
I realized it was her farewell to her husband. That the stone on his grave was a final duty that she had taken on herself.
This was not a usual service. I couldn’t recall ever having attended another dedication of a memorial stone by gathering of family and friends. But it was impressive, and I could see that to the family it was offering much needed solace.
Looking around at the faces in the half circle, I could see that Gran, shielded by the silk veil, was staring into space, her mind on the words but her eyes on what must have been her own husband’s marker. Mrs. Ellis, from behind her own veil, was lost in thought, perhaps remembering the little boy who had become a man. Margaret was weeping quietly.
The men had no such defense from the public gaze. Roger, standing closest to the stone, put his hand out to it, then quickly withdrew it, as if reluctant to touch it. George Hughes kept his eyes on Roger’s face, and I was surprised to see speculation in his gaze. Henry, his arm around his wife’s shoulders, looked down at the stone as if envisioning his own. The tic at the corner of his left eye had grown worse.
And then the service ended with a benediction, and we began the slow progress back to the motorcars waiting for us at the side of the churchyard.
I saw George Hughes pause briefly as he passed and put his hand on the cold marble head of Juliana’s memorial. It was a lingering caress, as one might touch the head of a beloved child. Then he was offering his arm to Mrs. Ellis, and I thought that she took it gratefully. Mr. Smyth was helping Gran, while Roger held out a hand to Lydia. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it.
I looked back as the gate was closing behind us and saw the last of the light touch the stone we’d just dedicated. It picked out Alan’s last name for an instant and then was gone.
Janet Smyth took my arm and said, “You’re a friend of Lydia’s. I’m glad. She needs to have friends around her when Roger goes back to France. I hope you’ll be able to stay until Christmas.”
“My own family is expecting me next week,” I said. “And then I must return to France.”
She said, “Oh, you’re a nursing sister, then.”
“Yes.”
“I do admire your courage! When the war began, I considered nursing, but my brother dissuaded me. He felt that I didn’t have the constitution for it.”
She was sturdily built, and I thought to myself that she could have made a very useful nurse, strong enough to deal with delirious men and those too ill to shift for themselves. But perhaps she meant the mental stamina. I knew all too well the cost of that.
We walked on together, arm in arm, and she was saying about the heath, “It’s a dreary place, but I’ve come to love it.”
Surprised, I said, “You weren’t born here?”
“Oh, no, only the Ellises. And of course George Hughes. His family lived not far from Vixen Hill. They moved to London a few years after little Juliana died. Such a tragedy. But you must know all about that.”
As we crossed the grassy dell together, Janet Smyth added, “I’ll see you this evening.”
I nodded and went to accompany Mrs. Ellis on the drive back to Vixen Hill. Mrs. Ellis sighed. “I think Alan would have been pleased.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It was a very lovely service.”
“I wasn’t prepared,” she said. “For the end. He seemed to be stronger. I let myself believe. And then he was gone, and there was so much I’d left unsaid. That’s a terrible feeling.”
“Sometimes things don’t actually need to be said,” I suggested.
In the front seat, Margaret said under her breath to her husband, “I don’t see why he had to die.”
Her husband replied, “Frostbite, and then gangrene, my love. The sea is very cold and very cruel in winter.”
I saw her shake her head, but she didn’t say anything more.
For dinner I wore the pale green gown that my father particularly liked, with the rope of pearls that had been given to me when I was twelve by the maharani who was a friend of my mother’s. After weeks in uniforms with stiff collars and starched aprons, I felt rather underdressed.
In the hall, George Hughes sat in the shadows cast by the lamps, his face unreadable. But I thought as I watched that he was drinking more than was wise. Roger cast several glances in his direction but said nothing. Janet Smyth tried to talk to him, but his answers were terse. I heard her quietly telling her brother that he was still grieving for Alan, but somehow I thought not. I saw him look at his knuckles a time or two, as if to reassure himself that what had happened on the road wasn’t merely his imagination.
I wondered if the tree he’d seen was actually just one of the logs that the Lanyon family had been delivering to Vixen Hill. And they’d come back to reclaim it.
After a lovely dinner, we took our tea in the drawing room in front of the fire, gathering under Juliana’s smiling portrait. I thought, George will be pleased.
When the men had finished their port and come to join us, George sat down across from me. His eyes were heavy, and I thought perhaps he was half asleep. Then he turned to me and asked, “You’re a nursing sister?”
“Yes.”
“God bless,” he said fervently. “You have no idea how much good you do.”
Gran looked up at that. “What did your father have to say about your decision to go into nursing?”
I knew she’d been wanting to ask me just that. In her day, women of good families didn’t nurse the ill and dying. Only the poorest of women, and even streetwalkers, were thought fit for such an occupation. Florence Nightingale had changed public opinion during the Crimean War about the role nurses could play in saving lives, but it was still not considered a proper profession until the death tolls in the present war made women of every class come forward to do what they could.
I smiled a little as I remembered my father’s opinion.
“If you wash out, don’t let it fret you. There are other ways to serve. Just remember that.” Whether he expected me to fail to qualify I didn’t know, but he was right, it was harder work than I’d ever expected it to be, and I’d had to face things that it would have been easier not to face, ever. I’d reminded myself every night when I went to bed that soldiers in the field were already enduring unspeakable conditions, and if I were truly my father’s daughter, I would stick to my guns and not retreat. In the end, I qualified, and felt a surge of pride that I hadn’t anticipated. This was my accomplishment. Being the Colonel’s daughter hadn’t smoothed my path, hadn’t made it less disgusting to take away bedpans and trays of bloody cloths or mop up vomit and other bodily fluids from the floor, or clean patients who were riddled with disease or covered in pus from suppurating wounds, hadn’t made the smells less nauseating, hadn’t stopped the sights from invading my dreams, or taught my poor stomach to accept food again after the most harrowing of amputations. It had only steeled my determination. Now I could look back on my training with a better understanding of what it was designed to forge in those of us who survived it. And I could measure just how far I had come.
But I answered her differently. “My father knew how much it meant to me to do my duty. And to his eternal credit, he didn’t stand in my way.”
“Indeed.” It was her only comment and could be interpreted in several ways.
Henry asked where I’d served, and I told him: Britannic, France, the Near East. He said, “You were on Britannic when she went down? Yes? That must have been harrowing.”
I said, “We had a good captain and a good crew. Most of us survived.”
We spoke of other things, and some little time later, I saw George lean over to say something to Roger. It was meant to be private, a quiet aside. Instead it happened to fall into one of those lulls that come at the end of an evening, when conversation is nearly at a standstill and people are about to take their leave and go home. Which meant we all heard him as clearly as if he had shouted the words from the rooftop.
“—daughter is the spitting image of Juliana. Did you realize that? For God’s sake, tell me, has she been found?”
Chapter Five
We could have heard a pin drop twenty miles away, the silence that followed his words was so profound.
Roger sat as if nailed to his chair for all of several seconds. George had the grace to look embarrassed. The rest of us were sitting there with our mouths open. I shut mine smartly, prepared for anything. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Lydia’s expression: shock mixed with horror. She turned toward her husband, waiting for him to reply.
Whose daughter? That was the question in everyone’s mind. If she was the image of Juliana, then she must be Roger’s. Or Alan’s. And why was it necessary to find her?
Finally Roger said, “You’re drunk and maudlin, George. You should call it a night.”
Dr. Tilton stood, setting his teacup on the table beside him. “I’ll see him to bed, shall I? His usual room? Good.”
Roger Ellis stirred. His words to George had been clipped, the only outward sign of whatever emotion he was suppressing—anger, disgust, surprise. It was impossible to tell what he was feeling, but his eyes were so intensely blue that if they could have sparked, they would have. Turning to me, he said, “Miss Crawford, I hesitate to ask such a favor of a guest, but if you could assist Dr. Tilton, I’d be grateful.”
“By all means,” I answered, rising and praying that George wouldn’t vomit all over my pale green dress. He looked now as if he could be sick at any moment, his face gray. Or was that shame as his careless words finally sank in and he realized what he had done?
