Mary Russell's War

by Laurie R. King

  My fault. Had I not tried to do my part for the War effort, had I not gone after a German spy, the three of us would be waving Papa off at the train station next week. Instead, we shall all board the train with him. It seems that he cannot trust his fourteen year-old daughter to stay out of trouble. Cannot trust his wife to keep control over said daughter. We shall go to Boston, to that fatuous woman, my grandmother, with her small dogs and her flowery hats and her too-warm house that smells of lavender.

  Papa had Micah help carry our trunks from the attic. Mama has begun to pack them, without knowing for how long she is packing. Papa wants to go down the Peninsula to the Lodge on Saturday, to retrieve some things we left there on our July holiday, and to close it up for the coming months. Even years. I would like to accompany him—would like the whole family to go, since it is a place where we have been happy, and which we may never see again. But Mama says we may not be sufficiently packed up by the week-end, and that we probably won’t have time.

  My fault, all of it.

  And in Europe, War continues to sink its teeth into civilisation.

  Uniforms of French Officers Good Targets

  Expert Declares Disproportionate Loss Due to Too Much Gold Braid

  and Lace on Clothes.

  **

  GERMAN AEROPLANE DROPS BOMBS ON PARIS

  Man’s Head Blown Off, Child is Crippled and Damage is Done to Buildings.

  **

  A Twelve-year-old boy has been fighting hard in the rifle pits in the public gardens at Belgrade. He is the pet of the full-grown soldiers and lives the same life as they do, and takes his full share of the sniping, as he is a first-class shot.

  In further news, a Christmas ship full of gifts is being put together for Europe. No one talks any more of the War being over before then.

  7 October

  [A newspaper clipping and two pieces of lined paper are here pinned to the pages of Mary Russell’s journal.]

  **

  Late Saturday night I received a telephone call from Mrs Long, housekeeper to my dear friend Judith Russell, to say that there had been a motorcar accident on the road south of San Francisco. At first, I could make little sense of her, other than something terrible had happened—the poor woman was weeping so, her English had all but left her. After a time, her husband Micah (the Russells’ gardener) came onto the line instead, and gave me the details.

  The shock of grief is a physical thing, a blow to every cell of the body at once. Three-fourths of a beloved family, gone—and the life of the surviving member uncertain. I have cancelled my appointments and am currently at the side of young Mary’s hospital bed, that when—when!—she wakes she will see a known face instead of strangers.

  She appears terribly injured. Her doctors cannot say how much internal bleeding there is, but what skin I can see between the gauze wrappings is either scraped or bruised. I watch her breaths go in, and out, and find my own breathing urging her on.

  **

  Dearest Mary, I am so very, very sorry. I have known your mother for thirteen years, since she returned to California the summer after you were born. She was my oldest friend, and my closest, and I cannot even begin to picture what life is going to be without her.

  Your father too I liked immensely, and admired unreservedly. A strong man, good to his bones, and utterly devoted to his wife and children.

  And your brother—but no, I cannot bear to think of that brilliant life cut short.

  My dear child, you have family, you have friends. It may not feel like it at first, when you wake, or indeed for a long time. But there are many of us who love you, both for the family taken from us, and for you in yourself. I will be there for as much and as long as you need me. Anything I can do to lighten your burden even the faintest scrap, you need only ask.

  But for now, please, dear child, do something for me: just keep breathing.

  Your friend,

  Leah Ginsberg

  13 October

  [In the handwriting of Dr Leah Ginsberg.]

  I write this entry in the journal of Miss Mary Russell, who is currently in no condition to do so herself. A journal records a life, and it should be kept.

  It is not ten days since the terrible accident that robbed Mary of her family and the world of three good people. Mary is in the hospital with a series of injuries resulting from her being thrown from the family automobile just before it went off a cliff south of San Francisco. The family’s housekeeper-cook, a Chinese woman named Mah Long, has asked me to help with various arrangements until Miss Russell is able to make decisions for herself.

  One thing I help Mrs Long do is take various items to the hospital for Mary’s comfort and reassurance. Inevitably, a cook thinks of food, and although Mary has to be coaxed to eat anything at all, she is slightly more amenable to tastes that are familiar to her. I, being a therapist of the mind, address the less concrete means of healing this young woman. Her own bedding, her bath-robe over the hospital gowns, familiar books and childhood toys (we all become children, under trauma.) When I found this journal in her bedroom, it seemed to me she might be interested in recording her thoughts, and I brought it along with the porcelain-headed doll and the worn stuffed rabbit she kept near her bed at home.

  As yet, in the four days the journal has sat beside her hospital bed, she has yet to touch it. So rather than allow it to sit abandoned, I have taken the responsibility to sit down with her pen and enter this Tuesday’s events, from another’s point of view.

  The journal up to now appears to have been largely taken up with the events of the European War (Mary: I have merely glanced over it, but not read it: privacy is a necessary part of any diary.) Today’s entry has no such headlines, although that war continues, inexorably. There is sufficient conflict here in this hospital room, for the present.

  —Leah Ginsberg

  20 October

  Dr Ginsberg has been tormenting me to write in this journal, as she has been urging me to weep, and to talk about the accident. My eyes remain dry, I have nothing to say, and I have considered having one of the nurses carry the journal to the hospital incinerator. I suspect that if I do so, a fresh volume will appear. The woman is relentless.

  I have now proven to the doctors of all stripes that I am still capable of setting pen to paper. That is all.

  October 27, 1914

  [On a sheet of stationery pinned to the pages of the journal:]

  Mary, because you seem worried about possible damage to your brain, as evidenced by your occasional lapses in memory, I am adding a page here as an aide memoire, that you may read it and reinforce your natural recollection of the facts. Yes, your brain sustained an injury, but the doctors and I all agree: you are healing, and there is no sign of permanent damage.

  Rest assured, dear Mary, that each morning I personally bring the wall calendar beside your bed up to date, drawing a line through the previous date, checking to be sure the day’s appointments and scheduled visitors are accurate. I promise you I will continue to do this until you no longer need my help. I further promise you that your brain will return to its customary sharp state as its physical trauma subsides. Your fretting about it only delays healing.

  Your family servants, Micah and Mah Long, visit on alternate afternoons, and bring you the food that you seem to find more appealing than the Western dishes offered by the hospital. Your friend Flo comes two or three days a week, and your father’s lawyer needs no more signatures at present. I mention those two people because you seem particularly concerned with them. Similarly, your concern over the post: I have sent brief replies to all the letters in the lidded box on the small table, and between the Longs and me, new letters reach you within a day of their arrival at your home. Similarly, I read you the day’s news and anything else of interest each morning, and again—yes, the headaches will lessen, as indeed they are beginning to do already, although it may not seem so to you.

  The other things that your mind has fixed upon are submarines, and your moth
er’s canary.

  About those two I can only reassure you that there is no indication that the Germans have send their under-water craft to our shores, and that I have taken your mother’s little pet home with me, where it sings to my large collection of artificial birds from around the world. I shall try to take a photograph of the little yellow thing perched atop the large black hawk carving you have admired in the past.

  Please, child: worry not, and get well. Next week you will be moving to a convalescent hospital, where I believe you will find things more comfortable and less troubling. Certainly it will be quieter.

  I will place this atop your journal when I come to your room this morning. Also, you will be pleased to hear, the October issue of The Strand arrived at your house, so I will bring it and see if you would like me to read you some of the new instalment of the Sherlock Holmes serial that you said you were anticipating.

  (Later that morning: I am not at all certain that “The Valley of Fear” is an appropriate piece of fiction to read to a convalescent girl, concerned as it is with a brutal murder. However, when I made to stop, you grew agitated, and so I continued. Perhaps the story will be less appealing by the time its November episode appears. At least it has no German spies!

  —Leah Ginsberg

  November 3, 1914

  [In Dr Ginsberg’s handwriting.]

  This past week saw a relapse in Mary’s state of mind. At first, I and her doctor both feared a return of the infections caused by the dirt in her injuries, and she did admit to headaches. However, when she showed no indication of fever, and she responded coherently to direct questions, I decided that these were not hallucinations, but agitation. As her body regains its strength, her mind is forced to deal with loss, and it is doing so in a manner typical of both Mary and her mother: ideas.

  It began when I was re-reading aloud last month’s episode of The Valley of Fear, and she began to mutter under her breath. (As noted before, I do not consider this a proper piece of fiction for a young woman in her condition.) At first I thought she was troubled by the story and I stopped reading, but she insisted I continue. At the second interruption, I had the good sense to ask her what was wrong.

  “This takes place before the final problem,” she said.

  “Which final problem?” I asked.

  “The story called ‘The Final Problem’. Surely that happens after this one? How could Watson have forgotten Moriarty in a few years?”

  This was a conundrum for which I could summon no reply, so I read on. Moments later, she said, “They’re in conversation. That’s slander, not libel.”

  Then after a bit, she protested at the series of numbers broken by the words DOUGLAS and BIRLSTONE: “Why bother with a cipher, if those names are freely given?”

  At that point I suggested we go on to the next tale in the magazine, but she would not have it, and subsided, with only the occasional protest at some sequence or point of disagreement with an earlier tale.

  This was irritation, not distress, and I took the return of intellect as a good sign. Less encouraging, however, was her sudden resumption of interest in a possible German spy ring in San Francisco, evident when I came in to find her hospital room half-buried in a month’s worth of back issues of the Chronicle, with articles circled and annotated.

  “German Shops in London Destroyed” said one. “Germans claim the right to land troops to create a foothold in Canada” another. However, she seemed less than concerned with the enormous loss of life in the lengthy battle going on near Ypres in Flanders. Instead, a theme of her interests emerged:

  Oct 26:

  That a European Government has commissioned an American girl to purchase firearms for its use along the battle front in Europe developed today, when it was learned that Miss Gladys A Lewis of Chicago is the mysterious “G. A. Lewis” who has been negotiating with the Standard Arms Manufacturing Company of Wilmington, Del. for all military rapid-fire guns that concern can make in the next two years, regardless of cost.

  **

  Oct 28:

  DEATH OF GERMAN SPIES CAUGHT IN FRANCE

  How They Were Found Out Though Disguised in Red Cross Uniforms.

  and:

  British Seize Germans on an American Tug

  **

  Oct 29

  1,500,000 MEN IN ENGLAND TO GO TO WAR

  and:

  Russians Execute German Girl Spy

  Death Follows Discovery That Young Woman’s Clothes

  Were Lined With Plans of Forts.

  **

  Oct 31

  Two Empires Plan to Seize Our Ports

  Roosevelt Sounds Note of Warning

  “I have seen deliberate plans prepared to take both San Francisco and New York and hold them for ransoms that would cripple our country and give finds to the enemy for carrying on war.”

  **

  Nov 3

  SAN FRANCISCO ANSWERS CRY OF BELGIUM

  Mass Meeting Called for Next Friday to Launch Plan to Send Food.

  Spies, the building threat to her mother’s homeland, and a reference to her mother’s war work of raising funds for her embattled country.

  At that point, I agreed with her attendants that a mild dose of bromide would be a relief for everyone.

  —Dr. Leah Ginsberg

  10 November

  I have been neglecting this Journal in recent weeks. It seemed beyond pointless. However, it begins to appear that my life will continue, and Dr. Ginsberg feels that some weekly notation might be of use in the restoration of normal thought. What is there to say? My family is dead. I, however, am alive. And following the increasing number of visitors and letters who insist that I have a future, I admit that plans for it must be made.

  I am no longer in the hospital, but lodged now in a building that from the outside looks like a private residence. With me here are four other unfortunates who have 1) survived their injuries and 2) lack the resources for returning to a family’s care. The staff gently prod us until we move our bodies about the grounds, gently pester us until we have eaten food from our plates, and gently persist in finding things that might restore an interest in our surroundings. All this meek compassion and soft-hearted torment makes me want to curse aloud and throw furniture at the window (as if I could lift it.)

  However, they are right, my life will be in limbo until I begin to cope with the mounting demands. Hence, I have agreed to see one or two visitors a day, and to work my way through the intimidating pile of condolence letters.

  The visitors have proven trying, although fortunately my attending nurses here remain in hearing, and intervene to send the more emotional guests on their way, with many sympathetic pats. But the letters are if anything more difficult, since most were written immediately the news reached the writer, when the shock was raw and no thought of lessening the impact of their words on the survivor had yet occurred to them.

  There is an old woman assigned to help patients with their correspondence, and it would appear that she has seen it all before. After a few days, despite making little impact on the depth of the pile, I began to feel as if the entire world were mourning the loss of my family. Following that break-down, my elderly helper took to reading the letters first, putting some aside for later consideration.

  I felt ashamed at this cowardice, but my strength is limited.

  Then today, after she left me for my period of afternoon rest (normally I fall asleep like a small child) I found my eyes resting on the small pile she had set aside. They rebuked me, this collection of letters from those who had loved my mother and father. So after a time, I got up and brought them back to bed to read.

  And there it was, the one I had been wondering about, the one I had been hoping for since the day I woke in my hospital bed, the only one that really mattered. The words were few, but the bold strokes of his pen might have been dipped in blood, for the agony they imparted:

  Mary, Mary, my favoritest Mary. Oh, child, my heart has been ripped from its chest. If I’d thoug
ht it would not merely compound your grief, you would have woken to find me at your bedside.

  But it is your choice: if you want me there, however briefly, I will come. You know how to reach me.

  The note was not signed, but there was no need. However, as if I might have lost my mind—or, as if he knew that sometimes another person read my letters to me—the paper was folded around two playing cards: an eight of hearts, and a jack of spades.

  No: I did not need him to come and stand beside my bed, especially knowing—or, suspecting—that the “grief” to which he referred would be his immediate arrest for some crime or another.

  It was enough to know that Uncle Jake[4] was thinking of me.

  17 November

  How do I write about this? My tumbling thoughts were just beginning to settle down, my mind was starting to feel as if it were moving in a forward direction again for the first time since the accident, when….

  How can I go on, knowing the deceit of my own parents? Why would Mother have led me astray? Why would Father not have raised an objection?

  It began when the November Strand arrived at the end of last week. When Dr Ginsberg brought the post, the magazine was included, and as my headaches have lessened considerably, I did not need her to read to me this third instalment of The Valley of Fear.

  So I thanked her, and picked it up—at which point she reached into her shopping bag and pulled out half a dozen of the Sunday Magazines from my father’s New York newspaper. “Would you like to read the rest of it?” she asked me.

  “The rest of what?” I naturally enquired.

  That was when she revealed my parents’ inexplicable behaviour: this story, so teasingly stretched out by the English Strand monthly magazine, has all the time been delivered in generous weekly (rather than monthly) dollops to Mr. Conan Doyle’s American audience! Worse, my father knew about this, having seen not one but two issues: both the papers from September 20 and from September 27 would have contained Sunday Magazines with portions of The Valley of Fear. And he knew I was looking forward to this tale, since we had just been talking about the (considerably smaller) portion in the September issue of Mother’s Strand.