Mary Russell's War

by Laurie R. King

  So what happened? Why keep the American version from me? Father usually at least glanced through the Magazine section: had he been too busy? Had Mother missed them as well? Did Mother wish me to participate in the same hardship as her English compatriots—and Father choose not to go against her?

  I was just beginning to stand on my feet, and now they have been swept out from under me. My mother deceived me, and my father sided with her. Perhaps even Levi knew. And now my Uncle Jack has decided to keep his distance from me.

  I am alone in the world. Time to grow up, I think.

  24 November

  The Valley of Fear is a murder mystery set in a moated house. At night, the owner puts up the drawbridge, yet someone gets in and kills him.

  England is an island. The moats around her, the seas and channels, only appear to protect her: “Forty Zeppelins Are Ready for Service,” say the papers, and “British Birdmen Raid Zeppelin Works.”

  Why is Mr Holmes so interested in a candle? Why does Mrs Douglas show so little reaction at her husband’s murder? Why have British warships seized a load of German toys? Why are the Mexicans shooting across the border at Americans? Why does Dr Ginsberg think I am hallucinating an uncle, just because my parents never told her about Jake?

  In the story, the dead man says, “I have been in the Valley of Fear. I am not out of it yet.”

  He speaks for me.

  1 December

  Last week, O irony, was Thanksgiving. Yesterday, I returned home for the first time. Dr Ginsberg went with me, and I admit that I was grateful for her company in the car that drove me through the city streets and up the hill. I was braced for the emptiness of the house, for cold air and darkness—and so I was shocked when the kitchen door came open before my hand and warmth washed down across my face.

  Our cook, Mah, had been to see me every few days, but invariably wearing Western style clothing and shoes that threatened to trip her at every incautious step. Here, she was in her usual trousers and tunic, and when she put her arms around me…

  It was difficult.

  A while later, I went upstairs with Dr Ginsberg. The bedrooms look very strange, with no flowers, no clutter, the beds stripped. Lifeless.

  I was there not to stay, but to see the place. Next week I will come back and we will pack my possessions to leave here, perhaps forever.

  Before then, perhaps I ought to have a conversation with Dr Ginsberg about how adults go about negotiating. It is a skill I imagine I am going to need, to keep from being trapped in various impossible situations.

  BRITISH MERCHANT SHIPS IN FEAR OF RAIDERS, say today’s headlines. And what of her passenger ships? Are they not in danger of attack? I believe there are laws against that kind of atrocity, but do they apply in time of War? And in any event, can a ship that rides beneath the water always tell the nature of the hull ahead of them?

  It doesn’t matter. I am decided. I shall go to Boston, to my grandparents, but I will not remain there. I belong in England.

  8 December

  At last, the wheels of my life give a sensation of moving, for the first time since I set out to hunt German spies back in October. What a very long time ago that seems. Such a young child she was.

  (I still feel that the authorities were very wrong to dismiss my accusations. Before I leave here, I shall post a stern but anonymous letter concerning the dangers. If I type it, on Father’s machine, that may add a degree of authority.)

  Letters arrive with regularity from Boston, my grandmother’s increasingly distraught pleas for me to board a train, with a hired nurse, before another day passes. She has taken to writing Dr. Ginsberg as well, although I imagine that the tone there is less pleading than peremptory. I have just sent a telegram to Grandmamma, saying that I plan to arrive some time between the 18th and the 21st, and that I shall cable again with further details. No doubt my unwillingness to consult with her as to the exact train I take, in which precise compartment, and wearing which hat will set off a positive blizzard of envelopes, both postal and telegraphic. However, unless I am willing to turn my life over to the woman, here is the time to stand firm and convey the message that I intend to take command of my own life.

  No: I shall pack my trunks, have another conversation with my parents’ lawyer—my lawyer, now—and make the final arrangements for closing up the house.

  My house.

  Also, have two or three more conversations with Dr. Ginsberg. I find that, as my strength returns, my recollection of events is becoming oddly vague, as if my brain will only permit me one or the other: health or memories. It is worrying. I have dreams in which my mother’s face is obscured by a grey, mist-like veil. Last night, I shot bolt upright in my bed (which hurt) because I could not recall which of his two mechanical pencils Levi had with him when the car went off the cliff. I did not fall asleep again for the longest time—but, why should it matter in the least which pencil he took? I can only think that some part of my brain is protesting at the obscuring effects of scar tissue (actual or psychological). Since I cannot permit my own mind to rebel against me, I shall ask Dr. Ginsberg to help me retrieve the clarity of those events.

  Other than this peculiar mental quirk, my injuries are beginning to fade. I can even raise my arm enough to brush my own hair, at last. Dr. Ginsberg will take me into the shops this afternoon, since all my shoes pinch and my winter coat is now childishly short. She says that we need not go into the City of Paris, that the Emporium has perfectly adequate clothing. Which is good, since I believe merely walking in the door of Mother’s favourite shop, particularly at this season of the year (Mother, perversely, adored Christmas) would reduce me to tears.

  So, my trunk lies packed in the house, ready for the final tucking-in of objects—apart from one troubling absence. Someone has stolen the mezuzah from the front door! Who would want that? In any event, I have retrieved the one that graced Mother’s door into the garden, and packed that. After a last survey of the house tomorrow (during which I shall type the letter concerning the German embassy’s spies) the trunk will be locked up and taken to the train station in Oakland, and I can say my good-byes to San Francisco.

  I need only wait for the arrival of the December Strand before setting off across the country. I am alone now, and alone is how I shall go forward.

  In the meantime, my eyes seem to linger over these final issues of the San Francisco Chronicle, although the reading makes for distressing news indeed.

  WOMEN VICTIMS OF COSSACK OUTRAGE

  Most Fiendish Atrocity in Galicia

  **

  French Youths May Fight

  300,000 Under 18 to Prepare

  **

  FIERCE BATTLES FOUGHT IN FLANDERS TRENCHES

  The reporter’s “utter surprise at the absence of movement and lack of noise. Within one’s range of vision with a strong glass are probably concealed 100,000 men…”

  **

  Commercializing Santa Claus Is Something New

  It’s Positively the Very Latest Idea in Christmas Celebrations

  14 December

  My commitment to writing a journal entry on the weekly anniversary of the start of War (it began on a Tuesday) is being put aside this week, for it looks as if my usual writing time tomorrow will be taken up with other things. That is because today—a Monday—my issue of the December Strand arrived. I can now leave on the next train east.

  I do not, in fact, know why I so badly wanted to wait for this magazine. It is reading matter for the train, yes, but more than that, the story feels like a last, and rapidly dwindling, series of gifts arriving from my mother. Silly, but true. In any event, I have written to The Strand’s subscriptions department asking them to send future issues to the London house. And if the letter goes down on its Atlantic passage, or is lost in the chaos of wartime London, so be it: I can always buy a copy, once in England.

  My grandmother is not yet aware that my time in Boston will be so brief. It is a battle I shall fight when I am faced with it. In the mea
ntime, I find I am looking forward to this cross-country voyage, where no-one knows who I am, what I represent, where I am going. My fellow passengers will know nothing but what I choose to tell them. With my hair up (I have been practicing, with Dr Ginsberg’s help—although she does not know why) I will even look like a woman rather than a girl. I could invent an identity—any identity at all—and none of the other travellers would be the wiser.

  I shall spend this afternoon with Dr Ginsberg—but not for one of her hypnosis sessions. (Which, incidentally, have not been terribly successful. Rather than restore my memories of the accident, as I had hoped, or bring a catharsis of tears, as was her ill-hidden wish, hypnosis seems to have made the events even more distant. Nonetheless, merely attempting clarity seems to have restored a degree of peace to my mind. So much so, I wondered briefly whether the good Doctor had manipulated my emotions, implanting a suggestion of happiness...? But I decided that, even if that is so, I may not need to know of it, quite yet. I can always write and ask her, later on.) Rather, today will be our social farewell. She has become my family here (gently, unobtrusively—in comparison with the rather pushy attempts by Flo’s mother) and I shall, frankly, miss her. I have a gift for her, wrapped in green paper though she does not celebrate Christmas: a small bird sculpture for her collection, to keep company with Mother’s canary.

  In the meantime, my trunk awaits me in Oakland. Tickets are purchased, my new travelling outfit is hanging in the corner, my rooms in this temporary home cleared of possessions. I anticipate another argument over the need of a nurse to accompany me—one of many coming arguments over which I shall prevail, through logic and an icy, calm stubbornness.

  Another thing I shall miss is the San Francisco Chronicle, with its blend of news and nonsense, petty local concerns beside earth-shaking events. I doubt I will find the London papers so blithely willing to forget War.

  ZEPPELIN CRUISER FLEET NEARLY READY FOR RAID

  Giant Armed Air Craft to Make Attack on England Soon, Is Report

  **

  NEW PHASE OF THE HORRORS OF WAR

  Many Soldiers Go Mad During Terrific Battles and Suffer Torture.

  **

  GIRLS THWART BOLD EFFORT AT ROBBERY

  DAUGHTERS AS HEROINES

  18 and 15 year old daughters coolly faced the revolvers and practically “shooed” them from the house.

  **

  In the Falklands, the cruiser that visited my War Journal back in the summer has finally met her match:

  SHORE BATTERIES FIRE 200 SHOTS AT BOATS

  German Cruiser Nuernberg Caught and Destroyed by British Warships, and Dresden is Cornered in Magellan.

  And in a move of pseudo-sympathy I cannot but feel is typical of those with no stake in the matter:

  CARNEGIE OPPOSES WAR TRUCE FOR CHRISTMAS

  Declares it Would Be Immoral to Stop Fighting and Then Begin it Again

  22 December

  Boston is cold. I have not seen snow for years, but here it covers the rooftops, muffles the sounds, clots the shoes of the walker. The cold penetrates the houses, so that despite the festivities of the season, regardless of the cooking smells and shiny ornaments and tentative but growing collection of wrapped gifts, my grandparents remain formal, distant.

  But that is not entirely fair. They too have lost family. When I stand before them, a troublesome girl who is their son’s only survivor, it must be painful. It is certainly uncomfortable. And so where another would extend arms and embrace me, these two are polite and uncertain.

  Not that I wish to be embraced. I am no longer a child, and giving myself over to a warm hug might melt my resolve: to be away from here by the new year. To be heading across an ocean for home.

  The small section of The Valley of Fear contained in the Strand magazine that I waited for in San Francisco was hardly adequate to keep me entertained as I crossed this vast nation. In it, Dr Watson comes across a laughing new widow, then finds Mr Holmes most cheerful and “débonnaire” over breakfast, and submits to a lengthy diatribe concerning the murder case (much of which is, to my mind, rather dubious—although it was good to see them in agreement at last.) There is an intriguing passage, when Holmes reflects that were he ever to marry, he hoped to inspire feelings in his wife that would prevent her from being so easily escorted away from his dead body. I had noticed that oddity at my first read of the opening scenes—but his musings opened an unexpected door: imagine Sherlock Holmes with a grieving wife!

  However, none of these is what truly caught at my imagination. Instead, my eye kept being pulled to the brief line describing where this conversation took place: “sitting in the ingle-nook of an old village inn.”

  Such an evocative phrase! Not that I, a minor—and a female—would be allowed to settle into such a portion of an inn. (Unless I were dressed as a man, that is. The thought occurred to me this morning, as I struggled to pin up my hair before the glass of the swaying train car, to give myself the greater appearance of maturity and thus avoid those questions of where my parents were: If I were to hide the length of it under an oversized cap—or even a bowler, like the picture of Irene Adler wishing Mr Holmes a good night—few would know it was there at all. At present, of course, I would merely look like a boy instead of a man, causing the innkeeper to throw me out due to age rather than sex. Still, in a few years when I have wrinkles, I shall have to try it.)

  That ingle-nook calls to me, as I sit in my frigid Boston bedroom with snow whispering down the window. It gives me a point to lock on to, pulling me back to my mother’s home. No doubt my father sat in similar ingle-nooks, in one or another Sussex village. Not London: Sussex is my home. Yes.

  There was another portion of that Strand episode that made me even more grateful than the ingle-nook’s evocation of home: humour.

  I laughed—yes, laughed out loud, in my snug quarters on the rattling train, for the first time since October—when I read the part where Holmes returns late at night to the inn’s room he and Watson are sharing, and—I shall copy the passage directly, allowing me to chuckle again whenever I come across this:

  I was already asleep when I was partly awakened by his entrance.

  “Well, Holmes,” I murmured, “have you found out anything?”

  He stood beside me in silence, his candle in his hand. Then the tall lean figure inclined towards me.

  ‘I say, Watson,’ he whispered, ‘would you be afraid to sleep in the same room as a lunatic, a man with softening of the brain, an idiot whose mind has lost its grip?’

  ‘Not in the least,’ I answered in astonishment.

  ‘Ah, that’s lucky,’ he said, and not another word would he utter that night.

  29 December

  Two days left in this ghastly year. Four days left for me to be fourteen.

  On the third day, I shall slip away.

  In the past week, the idea of dressing up as a man in an English ingle-nook has kept coming back to me, to the point of fixation. On Christmas afternoon, I found myself standing before the looking glass, a child in plaits. A child. With a twist of my arm, I gathered those plaits together at the top of my head, and there before me stood a young lady. Hair down: a child; hair up: the assured young adult seen by my fellow passengers on the train. A child, then with a change of hair and attitude, a person who might well travel all on her own.

  I must be quit of Boston. This is no place for me, and my well-meaning, barely educated, humourless, and conventional grandparents in their over-heated house will either smother me, or drive me mad. And since they will never approve my leaving, never give their permission for me to sail the dangerous Atlantic, leaving is a thing for me alone, to take into my own hands.

  In disguise.

  Today I shall dress in clothing more suitable to a woman ten years older than I. I shall go to my father’s bank to obtain some funds. Because I cannot be certain they will give me enough, I will take my mother’s emeralds in my pocket, to sell at a pawn-broker’s.

  Once I have
money, I will have a ticket. And once I have a ticket, I shall be on the ship to Southampton.

  New Year’s Day. I tell myself it is a good omen. I tell myself that next year will be less awful. I tell myself a German sub-marine boat will not see our hull, and we shall put in to Southampton without harm.

  5 January 1915

  I ought to be ashamed at the exhilaration I feel, walking the decks of this ship. The Atlantic heaves and shoves, concealing German Unterseeboots—U-boats, they call them now—and icebergs and deep darkness. The wind howls, while my fellow passengers speak in low voices, as if the sound might be heard beyond the hull. Despite the hazards lying out here in the deep, one of our engines lies idle so as to save fuel, though it prolongs our crossing by half a day.

  I may be the only person on board to whom this was good news. The longer the crossing, the greater the delay in facing London and all she holds.

  Were I in fact the twenty years (twenty-two? -five?) I appear to my fellow passengers, I would entertain the idea of staying in Southampton. Finding employment, perhaps—I understand many women now work in England, from constabulary duties to munitions factories. I could even enlist for driving an ambulance on the Front! I would be good at that, I am sure.

  However, I cannot be certain of my ability to maintain an appearance of age. Plus that, simply disappearing from the world would not only inflict pain on what is left of my family, it would also be the act of a coward.