The Surgeon’s Lady

by Carla Kelly

  As she dried herself, she gazed down at her husband, unshaven and gaunt, but obviously enjoying the most restful sleep of his life. I feel that way, too, she told herself, and all because we have spliced ourselves together. She wanted him again, but knew she could wait, at least until the room quit throbbing and the crowd dispersed.

  “Philemon, you are so funny,” she whispered. “And brilliant, and kind and a lover with no equal, I am sure. How did I ever get so fortunate?”

  Her good fortune only increased. Captain Brackett came to see his subordinate the next morning and told him on pain of death not to leave his bed. “Tie him down, if you have to, Mrs. Brittle,” he told her, as he thumped Philemon’s chest and listened for a long time. “He might need a poultice for his chest, but he can be the judge of that.”

  “Thankee, sor,” Philemon whined, in imitation of the invalids they both served. “Can I chaw tabackee? Have a tot of grog?”

  Brackett left the room laughing.

  “Roger my madam until we’re both bug-eyed and hollow?” Philemon called after him.

  Laura put her hand over his mouth. “He is not down the stairs yet! My God, he is laughing harder!” she protested, then forgot what else she planned to say when her husband’s hand went under her dress and stayed there until she started to breathe heavily and slid in bed beside him, dress and all.

  She knew what followed that week was a conspiracy from the chief surgeon down to the lowliest orderly at Stonehouse. If Owen didn’t drop by to check on his subordinate, then Philemon’s chief mate did; both pronounced him still unfit for duty. One afternoon she did find his chief mate perched on the bed, poring over his notes as her husband made suggestions. She could see he was tempted to get up and back in uniform, but cooler heads prevailed. Brian shook his head.

  “The chief said no, sir. Stay in bed a few days more.”

  “If I must,” Philemon said, then started to cough.

  He coughed until his mate left. With a wink, Philemon motioned her closer. “I thought he’d never leave,” he confided, as he unbuttoned her dress.

  Even when he was sitting up in bed, hungry, and starting to look bored, the conspiracy continued, to Laura’s delight. Owen refused to pronounce him well; Aitken clucked over him, and even Miss Peters dropped by to purse her lips in that forbidding way Laura remembered, and shake her head. “Don’t you move,” she ordered, and he looked meek and did not move.

  That afternoon when Laura was bare again, and pillowed against his chest, ready to drift into postcoital slumber, Philemon had the honesty to confess Miss Peters had told him the best way to get her to come to Stonehouse was to feign illness.

  “She knew you would come to nurse me,” he said, stroking her shoulder. “I swear on Bibles I was sick for real.”

  “I have no doubt of that,” she told him. “And now you’re better.” She wrapped her arms around her husband and kissed his chest. “Miss Peters hinted that Captain Brackett wants some time off before the spring campaigns begin.”

  He nodded. “I’m returning to work on Monday. Owen already asked for leave, and he’s planning to take Miss Peters with him to visit his son in Gloucester.” He pulled her closer. “He seemed embarrassed to tell me that, but I understand. His baby needs a mother, and his late wife had been ill with consumption for years. Only Owen’s excellent care pulled her through her confinement. We knew she could not last.”

  She could tell he had more to say. She closed her eyes when he ran his fingers through her hair. “What is it, my love?” she asked quietly.

  “Owen also told me what he heard from a surgeon through here a few days ago. Apparently Wellington is planning a spring campaign that will take him farther north into Spain.”

  “Good. This war must end. Perhaps he is the man to do it.”

  He raised up on one elbow. “Do you see what might happen, Laura?”

  Her heart plummeted into her stomach. “You will have to go to sea?”

  “No. I’m far more useful to the navy here. Come closer.”

  “It’s not possible.”

  He managed to pull her closer, as if he thought she would move away when he spoke. “Your father was in a Spanish prison just over the border, not so far from Oporto, which as you know, Wellington captured last summer.”

  “How could I forget? I think I still hear that jetty bell. So many wounded.”

  He kissed her shoulder. “I know, Laura, your father must have been spirited away to a different prison, because he wasn’t found when the British army liberated that area. The farther Wellington maneuvers in Spain, the more likely that Lord Ratliffe will be found and returned.”

  She froze, then felt her heart beating faster. “I don’t want to see him. Not ever. My God, Philemon, he schemed to leave Nana in prison in his place, when he had promised to be a guaranty for a prisoner exchange! What kind of unnatural parent is that?”

  She tried to move, but Philemon held her there. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Holding you until you calm down,” he told her, with just an edge of command in his voice. “I’ll never let him hurt you—God’s oath, Laura—but there is a strong possibility that he will disembark here, and you must prepare yourself.”

  “I won’t see him,” she insisted, shaking her head.

  “You might have to do something else, something that sounds so hard and yet is so necessary, if you truly want to be free of him.”

  She couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  “You might have to forgive him.”

  She sucked in her breath. “How can you even suggest such a thing, after all he has done to me, and not only me, but what he tried to do to Nana? I thought you loved me.”

  Her words hung on the air like a bad odor, but Philemon did not flinch.

  “It’s because I love you.”

  “I wish I understood that!” she said, unable to stop her tears.

  “So do I.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Philemon returned to work on Monday, after a strange weekend of silence from his wife. She denied him nothing in bed, but there was a distance in her eyes that told him he had spoken too soon. He could tell she was trying not to worry about seeing her father, but in quiet moments when he pretended to sleep, he watched her stare at the ceiling.

  Even when she slept, she was restless, her eyes moving behind her closed lids in that way he had noticed in men shattered by combat or storm at sea. He berated himself for not noticing that sooner, the way she could look through a wall and not see it. He did it himself, but he had seen too much pain on sea and land. Maybe he had teased himself into not seeing it in his beloved wife, because he knew in his heart that no woman should face what men faced.

  The only cure he knew was time and love, two staples in short supply in a naval hospital, but pray God, not in his own home. He cursed the war that sent him off to the wards and the work he loved, when he knew acutely how much damage remained to be repaired in his madam, that time-honored term married naval officers used.

  Once he walked through the double doors of Building Four, he knew there would not be a spare moment to think about his wife. He did have a moment’s pleasure, late in the afternoon watch, when Oliver Worthy strolled onto Ward C.

  After a quick glance to make sure his fingers were not gruesome, he shook hands with his brother-in-law, who looked well-fed but not good-humored. Why should he be happy? Philemon asked himself as they stepped onto the landing, that place for conversation. He has probably just left his wife and baby and is heading back to the war.

  “What do you think of Rachel Worthy?” Philemon asked.

  “Are you referring to the princess who must be fed and changed and coddled?” he joked. “I never saw a bonnier baby.” His eyes expressed all he could not say. “Thank you for being there.”

  “All in a day’s work,” Philemon replied, pleased. “I give Nana most of the credit. She was a trouper.”

  “I wish I had been there.”

  “So
do we all.”

  His invitation to dinner was accepted with alacrity, although Oliver admitted he had already visited Laura and given her the same answer. “By the way, your father accepted, too. He is visiting with Laura now.”

  Philemon felt his eyes well up this time. “Thank you for taking care of him.”

  “He takes care of all of us on the Tangier.” Oliver straightened up. “I am keeping you from work, but brother, do we have even the smallest inkling how lucky we are?”

  “We do, Oliver. We do.”

  The orderly was calling him. Philemon nodded to his brother-in-law and returned to the ward.

  Dinner was an unalloyed delight. Laura had put aside her own qualms and had obviously been captivated by his father. A long embrace with Dan Brittle and he felt like a boy again, looking up to the man he most respected, let alone loved. Although, he told himself over coffee, Oliver ran him a close second.

  Laura had started the discussion. “Oliver, you must hear of something Philemon has in mind.”

  “It’s too soon to talk of it,” he protested, but not much, especially when she put her hand on his arm and skewered him with the kindness in her eyes.

  Encouraged, he told Oliver and his father about his idea to maintain a satellite hospital in Oporto. “Maybe even farther north, when that region of Spain is ours again,” he added. “We could save so many of the seamen who now are tended aboard ships where there is little room and less time to provide more than rudimentary care.”

  Oliver leaned forward, interested. Philemon’s father sat back, proud.

  “We have such hospitals already in other parts of the world. Why not one near the Bay of Biscay, and perhaps another in the Mediterranean? Why not make them flexible enough to disband, when the danger is past? Or near?”

  “Why not, indeed?” Oliver answered. “And you would be in charge.”

  “Someone would,” he said modestly. “That’s not why I’m suggesting it. Oh, you know that. For every Davey Dabney or Alexander Small where we get lucky, there are countless seamen less fortunate. I want to shorten the butcher’s bill.”

  Oliver nodded. “You’re busy. Laura, perhaps you could outline Phil’s main idea, provide statistics, and send me three copies? I can read it and forward it to Admiralty House, with a copy to the Sick and Hurt Board. I know any number of captains and an admiral or two who would add their endorsements to such a plan.”

  Philemon couldn’t convince anyone to spend the night. His father, also coming off leave in Torquay, was headed back to the Tangier. Oliver said his life would be as short as a leaf in a hot furnace if he did not sleep at the Mulberry Inn and tell Gran and Pete everything about Princess Rachel.

  “She’s a game goer,” his father told him as Philemon walked the sailing master to the gates of Stonehouse. “Your mother said I would be impressed, and I am, son. Take good care of her.”

  I aim to, he thought, as he went upstairs, after extinguishing the lights below and bidding Aunt Walters good-night. Laura was already in bed. Wordlessly, they made love.

  “Forgive me for being such a trial,” she whispered, as she still lay on him.

  She seemed disinclined to move, so he pulled the coverlet over them both and they slept, until he woke her later with an urge for more love. Even more gratifying was another round after the sun was up. He was still asleep, but she was stroking him, which filled his whole body with delight because it was solely her idea and she was not shy to act upon it. One ghost gone, perhaps? he thought, when they finished and she sat up and stretched, prepared to meet the day on little sleep but a wealth of good cheer.

  He watched her wash and dress, admiring the bones of her back and the flesh of her buttocks, so smooth and so his. I know her inside and out, he thought. I just wish I knew her mind.

  Next morning, Philemon had no trouble convincing Laura to tackle his paperwork, especially since Miss Peters had recommended it before she and Owen Brackett left for Gloucester. Maybe she was still a little afraid of her dresser, and feared to cross her.

  “What about Sir David?” she asked timidly. “Do I dare say anything?”

  “I already have, Mrs. Brittle,” Peters said. “I told him you would handle everything for Ward Block Four and he should not cut up stiff about it.” She unbent enough to smile at her former mistress. “Even he is a little afraid of me!”

  The dining room became her office. The month passed quickly as she sorted and organized, and devised a system of records and reckoning that no one could argue with because it was so efficient. Afraid to take it to Sir David by herself, she allowed Miss Peters—Brackett now—returned from Gloucester and quietly married, to accompany her to the admin building.

  What could he do? Everything was organized and in place, from victual budgets and all receipts, to post mortem notes, to records of surgical procedures and items of discharge. Sir David could only nod and accept it, then swallow his pride and ask her straight out if she could organize all his surgeons and mates as effectively. She could, and did. They never spoke more than necessary, but at least she had the courage to go to the administration building by herself.

  Sir David even unbent so far as to suggest she set up an office in admin. She assured him her dining table would do. No need for him to know how easily distracted Philemon could make her when he came home during his odd hours and she was happy to follow him upstairs. There wasn’t any way she could do that in admin.

  Philemon never spoke to her again of forgiveness, but the thought remained like a bolus lodged in her throat. When no word came of her father’s whereabouts, she began to hope he had died somewhere in Spain. She resolved not to think of him.

  Letters from Edinburgh provided needed diversion for them both. Deep in pharmacopoeia studies, Davey wrote that even the renowned Niall McTavish had looked at his neck and allowed that perhaps Lt. Brittle had learned something during his tenure at the university.

  “High praise,” Philemon told her with some satisfaction, when he read the letter to her in bed. “Don’t look so doubtful! There was a backstairs rumor that the only compliment McTavish ever paid his wife was when she managed to satisfy them both in twenty seconds flat. Economy is everrra-thing, lass, when you are a Scot with a second-hand watch.”

  “Philemon!” she exclaimed, shocked.

  “That is medical school. Our amusements were—are—minimal.” He looked at the letter again. “Davey is doing well.” He patted her bare rump. “That was the best money you ever spent, my love.”

  “I can do it again,” she assured him.

  “In twenty seconds flat? Ow! Have a care with the jewels, dearest!”

  In all the paper-shifting, she found time early to organize her husband’s ideas about a satellite naval hospital in the theater of war. Some evenings she nabbed him long enough to sit down and describe it in more detail, and give her a rudimentary list of supplies she could convert to budget items. More often than not, those sessions ended with her on his lap. She still blushed to think about the time they never even got upstairs. Amazing what two people of like mind could do on a dining room chair. And thank goodness Aunt Walters had gone to Torquay to visit her sister-in-law.

  The report, in triplicate, went to Oliver on the Tangier, who wrote a note to say he had forwarded the copies, with his endorsement, to Admiralty, Sick and Hurt, and the admiral of the Channel Fleet. “And now we wait,” Oliver concluded.

  Nothing else waited. The season of campaigning began with ferocity as Wellington moved inland again, up from the Torres Vedras lines, and unleashed himself and his lieutenants on Masséna this time, that Old Fox, the marshal Napoleon trusted. Beresford, Craufurd, Daddy Hill, Picton and the marquess himself pounded, followed, harried and attacked, and so did their Spanish and Portuguese allies. She and Philemon both listened in amazement to Oliver’s stories of guerilla warfare, led by patriots nicknamed The Garrotte, The Needle and The Lash.

  The Tangier and its counterpart, Captain Virgil Denison’s sloop of war Goldfi
nch, darted in and out of Plymouth. When the captains sailing under Admiralty Orders could not afford time-eating trips to London, the semaphore arms of the telegraphs up the coast moved from dawn to dusk.

  She saw more of Nana and Rachel, simply because Nana, over Oliver’s feeble objections, moved her little family back to the Mulberry, the better to glimpse her husband on his speedy trips in and out of Plymouth. A day spent in her sister’s company, playing with her charming niece, was balm to Laura’s soul, second only to love in Philemon’s arms. He never failed her in any way.

  She asked him timidly one afternoon if maybe he should just sleep when he came home during his odd hours. “I prefer both,” he told her, his lips on her breast. She did not argue with him again.

  When the jetty bell seemed to ring day and night, she had returned to the landing to help. There were literally days when she did not see Philemon or Owen Brackett, or any of the mates, except as they hurried the wounded and dying into the overflowing buildings at Stonehouse. There was even talk of setting up tents in the large courtyard, until the army regimental hospitals began to take more of their wounded sooner. Sir David had seen her there. After a long look, then a sigh that she could practically hear over the moans of the wounded, the administrator had shrugged his shoulders and returned to his own patients. Even he came to the jetty now.

  By July she knew she was carrying Philemon’s child. Her first instinct was to shout the news to the rooftops in utter bliss because she had never been happier. How strange that in the middle of the wracking trauma that was her life at Stonehouse, she could wake up each morning in her husband’s arms (when he was there), and know that their baby was peacefully growing inside her, immune to war and danger.

  She wanted to tell Philemon, but she wanted it to be the right time, and not when he came home, fell asleep upright at the dinner table or paced the sitting room, well-thumbed medical text in hand. There had to be a good time, and she intended to wait for it.