In Distant Fields

by Charlotte Bingham

  ‘No, of course not.’

  They both stood up, in complete agreement as always, and left the room, quietly shutting the doors behind them, leaving their youngest daughter still hidden behind a chair planning how best to help poor Michael Bradley.

  * * *

  ‘Mary,’ Michael said out of the blue as Partita was sitting reading to him one summer evening. ‘Mary – is that you?’

  Before she could reply Partita was aware he was looking at her, but this time instead of looking through her or past her, he was looking directly at her and noticing her.

  ‘You’re there,’ he sighed. ‘Thank God. Thank God indeed.’

  ‘It isn’t Mary,’ Partita said cautiously. ‘I’m one of your nurses. My name is Partita.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for you, Mary,’ he sighed, ‘what would have happened to me?’

  ‘It’s all right, Michael. You’re perfectly safe now, and you’re in good hands. You’re here with us and we won’t let anyone harm you ever again.’

  ‘I knew that the moment I saw you,’ Michael said with a smile, his entire look changed from that of a lost and anguished man to that of someone redeemed. ‘I knew you were an angel. And where have you brought me? What is this wonderful place?’

  ‘This is our home, which is also a hospital, Michael. You were badly wounded so you were brought here, finally, to recover from your wounds.’

  ‘My wounds,’ he said quietly, looking down at his hands. ‘My wounds.’

  ‘Your hands have mended so well, Michael, seeing how badly damaged they were. They don’t open quite fully – ’ Partita showed him, taking one hand and gently stretching it as far open as she could – ‘there, but they are much, much better.’

  Michael studied his hands and fell silent again, the distant look returning to his eyes as he regarded his hands, and then once more the landscape beyond them both.

  ‘My God,’ he whispered. ‘Why have you forsaken us?’

  ‘He hasn’t, Michael,’ Partita reassured him. ‘Everything is fine. You’re going to be all right, and everything is going to be fine. Nobody has deserted anybody.’

  ‘I died, Mary,’ he said, now staring up at the sky. ‘I died and I have risen again. I have come back to life and it is all because of you. Of what you did. Because of you.’

  ‘How do you mean you died, Michael?’

  ‘I was dead when you found me.’

  ‘I didn’t find you,’ Partita said carefully, realising from what he had just said that he might be beginning to recover his senses. ‘Some kind lady found you and took care of you.’

  ‘Yes, Mary found me,’ Michael interrupted, now looking at Partita with what seemed to be full recognition. ‘She rescued me, and because of her I came back to life. I was dead, you see, Nurse. I saw the angel and I knew I was dead.’

  ‘Do you know where you are now?’

  Michael frowned. ‘Not, not perhaps as I should. In a hospital, to judge from the nurses’ uniforms. Although where that hospital is …’ He shook his head again. ‘I have no idea and it doesn’t really matter.’

  ‘I’m going to get Dr Watkins, Michael,’ Partita said, smiling at him as she rose. ‘He’s a very kind man and I know how much he wants to talk to you.’

  She actually went in search of Kitty, but when Kitty heard what Partita had in mind, she questioned her friend’s sanity.

  ‘Kitty!’ Partita protested in return. ‘Kitty, sometimes you are so – so – what is the word? Sometimes you are so ordinary!’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Tita. Thank you very much for – that is not a really nice thing to say. Besides, what is ordinary about common sense? You cannot expect to hide someone who is still in the army! I may be ordinary but sometimes you are well – completely mad!’

  ‘I overheard Papa and Mamma—’

  ‘I know what you overheard and it doesn’t make any difference. I’m sure that is not what your mother is thinking of doing. If Michael were to disappear then he would he classed as a deserter because he is still in the army, even though he is a patient here. He hasn’t been discharged – he’s still a soldier.’

  ‘Very well, Kitty. I understand. But you don’t seem to want to understand me. While Michael is still not in possession of his full senses – what do they call it? When the balance of his mind is disturbed, yes – he can’t be held responsible for his actions. So he disappears for a while and, since you say he’s coming back to his senses, by the time he reappears again he’ll be perfectly sane and they won’t need to lock him away! Don’t you see? If he’s come back fully to his senses then he’s safe, we’ll have saved him.’

  ‘Where exactly are you thinking of hiding him?’ Kitty wondered, less certain now that Partita had gone temporarily insane, since there was some logic to her argument. ‘And how would we feed and look after him?’

  ‘In a place this size? You think we can’t find a bolt-hole somewhere on the estate or in one of the villages? Or even in the house? There are even two or three decent priest holes here, and if they were good enough to conceal priests safely during the persecutions, they’ll be well up to hiding away one rather timid patient.’

  ‘Let’s see, shall we?’ Kitty stalled. ‘Let’s see how Michael gets on and what sort of plans they have in store for him before we go doing anything rash. If we were to get caught—’

  ‘There you go being ordinary again, Kitty. We’re pirates, remember? Pirates don’t get caught.’

  While Michael continued with his recovery, Bauders received more visitors in the shape of Peregrine and Pug, simultaneously home on leave from France. Pug was joyfully reunited with his adored Elizabeth, while Peregrine, having dutifully visited his mother and found her in no more of a giving vein than when last he saw her, took himself off as soon as he could to visit everyone at Bauders.

  ‘I’m astonished,’ he told Kitty as she showed him around the wards and the dayrooms, ‘not only at what you’re doing, but how you’re doing it.’

  ‘You didn’t think we were up to it, did you?’ Kitty teased him.

  ‘Of course I did. I just never imagined it being on such a scale – nor that Partita, of all people, should have stuck to it. Knowing the Mischief, I’d have thought she would have got bored of it all too soon, and taken off for London where, against all the odds, I understand there is still some sort of a Season.’

  ‘One should never underestimate Tita,’ Kitty said with some feeling. ‘I sense that you still think of her as a mischievous young girl. She is very different from that. The war has changed her, as it was bound to change us all, and as far as hard work goes, she leaves us all in her wake – and, of course, the men just adore her.’

  ‘Ah,’ Peregrine smiled. ‘Now I see why Tita has stuck to her guns, if she’s being followed everywhere by platoons of adoring men.’

  ‘That is mean-spirited, Peregrine,’ Kitty returned. ‘Not like you at all.’

  ‘Sorry, Matron.’

  ‘And that too is mean-spirited.’

  ‘Do you not think you might be being a trifle starchy, Matron?’ Peregrine looked sad.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Kitty said, feeling suddenly guilty. ‘It’s been very hectic these last few months, especially now they’re sending us even more patients.’

  ‘Of course,’ Peregrine agreed. ‘It’s just my high spirits – being back here. In one piece. Seeing everyone.’

  ‘Now you’re making me feel even worse. Here am I saying we’re feeling the push, when you’ve been fighting at the Front. I am so sorry, Peregrine. That was very thoughtless of me.’

  ‘You couldn’t ever be thoughtless, Kitty. Not you.’

  Seeing the look in his eyes, Kitty at once busied herself with what she had been doing prior to Peregrine’s arrival: rolling and pinning up bandages, and cleaning up the medical trolleys that were loaded with a startling array of medicines, instruments and dressings.

  ‘That one of Tita’s special charges?’ Peregrine wondered, noticing Partita sitting outside on the te
rrace, talking attentively to a good-looking dark-haired man seated in a chair by her side, realising with surprise that what he was watching had shot him through with a sudden feeling of jealousy. As he considered this, inevitably the higher part of his mind rejected such a notion as absurd, while the lower part of it made him realise that perhaps Kitty had been right in accusing him of never letting Partita grow up, at least not as far as he was concerned. ‘She seems to be paying him a lot of attention,’ he added, unable to stop himself from continuing to stare at the couple. ‘Quite a considerable amount, really, not like Tita at all.’

  ‘That’s because he’s a special patient,’ Kitty replied, without needing to look at Partita and Michael. ‘It’s a very interesting case history – but not one that we should talk about, Captain, because I want to hear all about you.’

  Kitty took Peregrine by the arm and walked him through the house, away from the terrace and Partita. She knew it would be quite wrong to interrupt Partita when she was with Michael. Every little step of enlightenment meant so much, and they were both so sure that he was climbing slowly back to some sort of sanity, although, given what had happened to him, that did not seem necessarily the right word to use. Nevertheless, as she saw Peregrine giving both nurse and patient a backward glance, Kitty could not help feeling that it would do Peregrine good to see how seriously Partita took her work, how-involved she was with her patients.

  ‘Would you like to come and have a cuppa with the men?’ Kitty looked across at Peregrine, who was still glancing back, every few yards. ‘They would love to see you and hear about the way things are going.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s the very last thing they want to hear about, poor chaps. They’d probably far rather talk about sport or girls or something.’

  ‘I thought that, but when Almeric was home they couldn’t ask him enough about how it was going.’

  ‘Hell is what it is, Kitty. It’s no good dissembling, not now, especially not now that things are going so badly for us. In fact, if you read the official German communications they’re positively euphoric. You’d think it was all over, as far as they were concerned.’

  ‘But it isn’t, Peregrine, is it? Surely not?’

  Kitty stopped and looked at him anxiously, genuinely worried for the first time that there was a real possibility that the war could and might be lost.

  ‘It’s just a bad patch, Kitty,’ Peregrine reassured her, turning away from the true reality, which was that the war was taking such a toll, particularly on the young officers, that if it continued the rumour was they would literally run out of them. The latest casualty lists showed the loss of over two hundred officers in the battles that continued to rage around Ypres. On top of that, the much-vaunted Russians were in retreat, while the Germans, by their continued and universally condemned use of poison gas, were recapturing key positions, won at the cost of thousands of British lives. With all his heart Peregrine wished for the war to be over, but since he wished just as devoutly not to be on the losing side, he knew he and his brothers in arms must continue to fight until victory was assured, whenever that might be.

  ‘How is Almeric?’ Peregrine asked, switching the subject as Kitty led him to where the more mobile patients were taking their tea.

  ‘Have you heard from him recently?’

  ‘He’s a very good letter writer,’ Kitty replied, ‘I had a letter from him only yesterday, as it happens, in one of these new rather odd green envelopes.’

  ‘The ones where the writer has to attest there’s nothing except private and family matters in it, so as the censor doesn’t have to wade through details of what colour socks he wants, or how mother’s bunions are going on?’ Peregrine joked. ‘As a matter of fact the new envelopes are really rather a good notion. Means when you’re writing to girls you can say what you mean in a letter without feeling self-conscious.’

  ‘Are you writing to a lot of girls?’ Kitty teased.

  ‘Masses,’ Peregrine smiled. ‘Including you.’

  Pug went to visit no one other than his mother, who had tactfully vacated the cottage so that he and Bethy could be alone.

  They talked little about the war, and when they did, Pug typically made light of it, telling her anecdotes about life in the trenches rather than a blow-by-blow account in gory detail.

  ‘It’s really very amusing, Tommy at war,’ he told her. ‘I doubt if there are any other soldiers like them in the world. And you should see what they do to their trenches. Every trench has a name – like streets, just like in towns – High Street, East Street, George Street, that sort of thing. Then there’s Lucky Way, Wretched Way, Coffee Trench, Tea Trench – and others that are logical in quite another way, Petrol Lane leading to Oily Way, Scabbard Trench being ahead of Bayonet Alley. But it’s all very sensible because it means you can find your way around. Not that I’m in any danger at the moment of getting lost because we seem to be stuck entirely in the same place. No, no, I tell a lie. Last week we moved ten feet on – only to have to move ten feet back again a couple of days later when Jerry gave us a shove.’

  ‘What about your horses, Pug? You surely haven’t got your horses in the trenches with you?’ Elizabeth wondered.

  ‘I gave ’em both to a chum of mine – fellow officer who’d had two shot out from under him.’

  ‘And are they all right?’

  ‘The horses are fine, Bethy,’ Pug replied, sadness suddenly clouding his eyes. ‘But sadly my chum bought it – shot in the back by a sniper.’

  Peregrine accepted the Duchess’s invitation to stay for dinner, even though she had warned him it would be a really scratch affair, just two or three courses taken late when the main tasks of the day had been done.

  ‘I think it’s wonderful what you’re all doing here,’ he told Circe as they finally prepared to go in to dinner. ‘I was talking to some of the men and you should hear how they sing your praises. They can’t believe how lucky they are to be at Bauders.’

  ‘It is our privilege to serve them, Peregrine, but, with all due respect, it’s very hard to think of our guests as being lucky,’ Circe replied, ‘We’re the ones who are lucky, to have men such as they to fight on our behalf. The good luck is all on our side to have that, and to have them here to recuperate. It’s taught us all so much.’

  ‘They’re not going to want to leave here.’

  ‘We don’t want them to leave, but that is something we cannot fight. The great thing is it is never mentioned, on either side. If it was, Perry, it would be almost insupportable. But they know, and we know, that as long as the enemy is trying to break down our front doors then, if fit and strong again, they must return to the fight. Tell me,’ Circe continued, accepting the arm Peregrine was offering her, ‘I haven’t heard a word about your sister, other than the fact that she has been working and training as a nurse.’

  ‘She had hoped to work for one of the repatriation schemes. I don’t know if you’ve heard about them?’

  ‘I certainly have. I know Maude Milborne is working for the French one, she being a fluent French speaker.’

  ‘Livia hoped she could do the same,’ Peregrine nodded, ‘also being fluent in French, but she was told you have to be twenty-five, I think it is. Anyway, they told her she was too young and so she’s off to join the French Red Cross.’

  ‘Good for her. And Valentine?’

  ‘Apparently Valentine is a pacifist,’ Peregrine replied carefully. ‘He doesn’t think it right to fight this war – for him, anyway. And now he’s off somewhere doing errands for his father.’

  ‘Yes, I understood as much in a letter which I received from Julia. Well, it’s a free country, and that, after all, is one of the main reasons why we are fighting this war – so that people like Valentine can hold those sort of opinions.’

  ‘Precisely, Duchess.’ Peregrine agreed as they approached the table. ‘I just wonder what might happen if they introduce conscription, as rumour has it they will. It will be a bit difficult for Valentine, as it is becom
ing for everyone who is not yet in uniform. People spit at you in the streets, you know, or kick you if you climb into their railway carriages dressed only in civilian clothes. There is so much anger about now.’

  ‘Why should they want more men?’ Partita wondered, having overheard the end of the conversation as they all took their places at table. ‘Everyone says the one thing we’re not short of is fighting men.’

  ‘I’m not a politician, Partita.’ Peregrine held out the Duchess’s chair for her and she sat down. ‘All I know is we’ve lost nearly half a million men, dead, wounded or missing, and the stream of volunteers for Kitchener’s Army, so-called, seems to be drying up.’

  ‘Because I suppose what everyone thought at the beginning hasn’t come to pass,’ Kitty observed. ‘That it would be all over in weeks.’

  Everyone stared at her for a few seconds, and as they did, Kitty found herself colouring. She had sounded angrier than she should have, and she knew it. Worse, she had sounded bitter.

  It did not seem possible but there was worse to come when the news broke that the Lusitania, one of Cunard’s most prestigious transatlantic liners, was sunk by a German U-boat off the south coast of Ireland, with the rumoured loss of over a thousand lives.

  ‘A passenger ship?’ Partita exclaimed, breaking the silence that seemed to have fallen over the whole castle after they had learned the news. ‘They’ve sunk an innocent passenger ship? Why? Why? Why?’

  ‘I simply could not begin to answer that,’ Circe replied, trying to come to terms with the implications of what was in reality an atrocity. ‘Except that it would seem nothing is either sacred or safe any more.’

  ‘Well said, Mamma,’ Partita agreed. ‘Nothing is sacred or safe. You are right.’

  ‘All I know is – from what I read in the papers – as the ship was about to leave,’ Peregrine stated, ‘I understand the German Embassy printed a warning in the New York Times – I think it was – saying that any ship that strayed into what’s called the European War Zone would be a legitimate target for their submarines.’

  ‘How can that possibly be?’ Circe returned, standing up and starting to pace up and down as she realised that any number of her American relatives and friends could have been on board the luxury liner. ‘A passenger ship, carrying only civilians? How can they possibly call that a legitimate target?’