Members of the nearby British air force squadron visited, including a pilot Glenda knew from North Africa who arrived one evening in a jeep with two friends and a bottle of grappa, insisting the nurses come to an Officers’ Club dance.
Returning from her rounds, Juliet found Glenda on her back, studiously penning a black web of fishnet stockings across her legs.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” Juliet laughed.
“Want me to do yours?”
“I’m not going.”
“A little roll in the olive grove could do you good. It gets my circulation going, and that, sugar, does wonders for the complexion.”
Juliet bent to unlace her shoes. “You’re forgetting my special patient.”
“Private Cyclops?” Glenda pointed her toes and examined her handiwork. “He won’t know if you’re gone.”
“Mother Hen will.”
“Then we’ll sneak a chum back for you! One for you and one for me! Share alike for Victory.” Glenda scissored her legs. “Just give me some guidelines. Tall and dark? Short and athletic? Freckled? Bookish, I bet.”
“Hunchbacked and pockmarked,” said Juliet. “With a speech impediment.”
“Hell, that’s my first husband. Come on, I’m offering you my extraordinary powers of discernment.”
“Thank you, but it’s unnecessary.”
Glenda flipped onto her stomach and narrowed her eyes. “Sugar, you’re not inexperienced, are you? ’Cause if that’s the problem, Glenda here can talk you through it. I know very little about most things of worldly consequence, but I’m encyclopedic in the boy department.”
Juliet had not, in fact, kissed anyone since her failed attempt with Beau Conroy years earlier. Just as she began looking at boys with greater interest, most in Charlesport had shipped overseas. And by the time she’d arrived in Naples, the soldiers there were endlessly claiming they were “pissing fire.” She’d tired of handing out condoms and brochures on syphilis. One more short-arm exam and she’d have joined a convent. (Short arm was army slang for the male organ, though most men, as they sat half-naked before her on the hospital beds, trying to mask their shame with wisecracks, claimed short arm was a misnomer, suggesting that for medical and historical accuracy, Juliet should note their manhood as long arm.) It was, Juliet realized, an unfortunate introduction to the male anatomy.
“I’ve sort of got someone back home . . .” Juliet fibbed.
Shrugging, Glenda stood to smooth out her dress. Glenda wasn’t exactly beautiful—there was a thinness to her lips that made her seem old, and a slight crook at the bridge of her nose; one eye even seemed slightly smaller than the other—but she gave the dazzling impression of glamour.
“This pilot,” said Juliet, “is he your sweetheart?”
“Oh, I got more sweethearts than I can count. None of them worth a horseshoe, though. As my momma likes to say, they are phi-landerers. You know what that means? It’s from Latin. Latin for stickin’ your hand in too many cookie jars.” She hopped into one of her pumps and was about to duck through the canvas, when she turned back thoughtfully. “Look, Juliet, you got a real nice face, you know. Don’t be fussing about that there birthmark. It makes you distinct, distinguished. The first time you walked in here, I thought, That there is a special gal. You should be out there dating. They got ten boys here for every girl, and half these boys are missing essential parts! They aren’t exactly in a position to be picky.”
Glenda exited at the onset of Juliet’s blush. Since Juliet entered nursing school, no one had mentioned her birthmark (nurses and doctors were wonderfully delicate about such matters), and the absence of mirrors in the hospitals had allowed her to forget it. But the sudden recollection of the attribute that had for so long compromised her self-confidence stung her: she was an army nurse, she was serving on the front lines in Italy, but to plain sight she still seemed the same odd-looking girl she’d been back in Charlesport.
Juliet felt different, though. Inside her resided a new, unflappable sense of triumph; after all, she’d worked tirelessly to get her nursing degree in under twelve months; she’d studied enough Italian to ensure a posting to Italy; she’d endured five grueling weeks of Basic Training and eight blazing, seasick days aboard the HMS Mayflower to arrive in Naples. She was now closer to her brother’s last known steps than she’d ever imagined possible. I’ve been tested and I succeeded, thought Juliet, and nothing—not even the blemish on her face that she’d so long wished away—could take that from her. Was it too much to hope that this whole experience would transform her in a way others would find attractive? All she had ever wanted was to come across as a person of substance. Perhaps Glenda was right; maybe the boys here wouldn’t make a scene over her birthmark as Beau Conroy had. Plenty of nurses were heavyset, even mannish, and they didn’t seem the least bit shy about prancing off to dances.
Juliet lay back and imagined the Officers’ Club. She envisioned ivory tablecloths, yellow wildflowers in empty wine bottles, lipsticked nurses sipping champagne from tin cups. A makeshift band would be playing—maybe a pilot with a saxophone who loved Glenn Miller—and in a swirl of cigarette smoke a group of clean-shaven officers would pull the nurses by their fingertips onto the dance floor. Juliet eventually drifted off, awakened by the sharp white glare of a flashlight. In the semidarkness, Glenda blinked forcefully, as though to orient herself, releasing a deep-throated moan. “What . . . a . . . night.”
Her mouth, smeared with lipstick, looked bee-stung; her platinum curls had wilted. She flung her hands behind her back and struggled so noisily and strenuously with the zipper on her dress, it seemed she was fighting handcuffs. In final surrender, with the dress half off her shoulders, she plunged her fingers into a vat of cold cream and worked it sloppily into her face.
“How was it?” Juliet asked tentatively.
Glenda flicked off her flashlight and let her head thump into her pillow. “Sug,” she sighed, “wake me when the war’s over.”
In the morning the world was bright and green and frenzied. Supply trucks rolled noisily into the encampment and crews of ward men unloaded crates of surgical supplies. Cigarette packets were distributed; the bugle sounded for mail call. The clank of the weekly crate of Coca-Cola bottles elicited wild applause.
The sky was cloudless; the day blazed.
In the shade of the Recovery Tent, Juliet was reviewing the medicine schedule. She stood at the nursing station, flipping through the clipboard, when she felt the dark weight of someone staring at her. In the entrance of the tent stood a man she suspected to be Captain Brilling, the commander of C Company. A few minutes earlier, she had heard his arrival announced over the megaphone. Three thick lines traversed his leathery forehead; a gray mustache topped his lips, which were thin and dry and seemed to be working over a deep annoyance.
“You’re in charge?” he asked.
“Well, I’m the senior nurse on duty at the moment.” And that was only because Mother Hen had briefly gone to the quartermaster to complain about the gauze that had arrived. “But I think you’ll recognize most of your men. And for the ones with head bandages, you can check their tags. . . . Everyone is doing pretty well.”
“All the beds are full?”
“Yes, but a lot of the patients should be up and walking in no time.”
“Walking? I need them climbing, kicking, fighting.” He made a fist, and Juliet noticed the heft of his hand; a large gold ring shone from his forefinger. “The Krauts have dug in like moles. It took half my men to get them out of that godforsaken town and now they’ve dug into the next.” His dark eyes roamed the cots. “Where’s the Nervous Nellie?”
“Private Barnaby is—”
“Christopher Barnaby.”
“He’s been discharged?”
The captain stepped toward Juliet with such slow deliberation that his very lack of speed felt menacing. Juliet noticed a thin scar across the left side of his face, from the corner of his mouth to his ear. Not a speckled scar from shra
pnel, or the clean entrance wound of a bullet; this scar had been carved at close contact. He would have seen the blade traveling his face. Once, when she was a child, she had willed herself to imagine the face of a convict, because she and Tuck had heard a report of a man escaping from a nearby jail; this was the closest Juliet had ever come to seeing an embodiment of her childhood terror.
“He’s in the far bed on the right side,” she said timidly. “But he’s sedated. And the doctors aren’t certain he’ll be able to speak.”
Captain Brilling remained entirely still, as though challenging her to say more. Juliet could smell his perspiration, could hear his unnervingly long breaths. Finally, he crossed the ward in the direction of Barnaby. From all sides of the tent, men looked up from playing cards and sheets of V-mail, muttering, drowsily and morphine slurred, one hesitant, affection-filled word: “Captain.”
Juliet slipped out, entirely against protocol, and ran to the Sterilizing Tent. “Glenda, get Mother Hen. The commander of C Company is here to see Private Barnaby.”
Back at the tent, Juliet saw the captain standing over Barnaby, studying his cocoon of bandages. He waved his hand in front of Barnaby’s mouth; he snapped his fingers beside his ear. He shook Barnaby’s leg. Finally, from his side holster the captain pulled a pistol and held it just above Barnaby’s face; he cocked and released the weapon several times. “So you like the sound of this? This sound brings you comfort?”
When Brilling noticed the uneasy stares of the other patients, he reholstered his pistol. “Men, five miles north of here, forty-three men in our company lie in the cold ground.” He twisted the ring on his finger. “I planted the crosses myself this morning. Forty-three. Men who died fighting for their country, and for you. This Nellie”—the captain kicked Barnaby’s cot—“couldn’t even fire on the enemy. He fired on himself. But when he wakes up, mark my words: If he wants a bullet, we’ll give him a whole goddamned firing squad.”
He spat sharply on Barnaby’s head, and several patients, including the Senator, turned away.
“Captain, step back from that patient.” Mother Hen bore down on Brilling from across the tent, holding her clipboard like a shield.
He studied her lapels. “A silver star, Nurse?”
“Anzio,” said Mother Hen, and the word hung in the air above the patients, some who had been there, many who had lost friends there, and for a moment Brilling was silent. Anzio, Cassino, Salerno—the names conjured up smoky heaps of bone and earth. Brilling and Mother Hen stood face-to-face, and her proximity seemed to unsettle him.
“Then you know how criminal such actions are,” he said.
“War is the criminal. We’re all its victims. We treat everyone, even enemy soldiers, with mercy. Now come.”
The weakened men, limp in their beds, gazed at Mother Hen with dazzled gratitude. In the middle of nowhere, here was a woman who would protect them no matter what gory messes they made of themselves—she was their proxy mother. And while their love for the captain was evident in their faces, it was the love a child has for a stringent father, fearful and irregular.
Juliet heard the slap of tent flaps opening and turned to see Major Decker, followed by a tall, broad-shouldered man. The man carried a black leather bag and stepped awkwardly into the tent. He was unremarkable but for his height; his face was long and plain and pale, the face of a bank teller. He tapped his gold-rimmed glasses into place and offered Juliet his hand. “Dr. Henry Willard. What’s the situation?”
Juliet did not sense the doctor wanted personal impressions. “Captain Brilling came to see Private Barnaby,” she answered simply. “A conflict of sorts has ensued.”
Willard turned to Major Decker. “The attempted suicide, correct?”
As Dr. Willard crossed the ward, Juliet saw that he was not merely awkward in his gait—his right foot seemed to drag slightly against the ground. He approached Mother Hen and Captain Brilling, and the three stood at the far end of the tent beside Barnaby’s bed under the rapt gaze of the entire tent.
“Captain Henry Willard,” the doctor announced. “I’ll be looking after this patient now.”
“Dr. Willard, I know about your work at Monte Cassino.” Mother Hen reverentially pumped his hand. “You’ve done great things for our boys. I’m honored to have you with our hospital.”
“Ah, the fancy head doctor.” Brilling patted the doctor’s shoulder with slow, deliberate condescension. “Well, hypnotize, anesthetize, take his cowardly pea brain apart and put it back together again. Still, this man will be court-martialed as soon as he’s fit.”
“Captain Brilling, I just traveled a hundred miles over some very unpleasant terrain to determine if my patient was ever fit. The mind can bleed, just like the body.”
“Willard, you want to hold this kid and tell him it’s all okay and cradle him close to your psychiatric bosom? Excellent. Then come to a dugout in the deep of night and explain to the four soldiers there, they’re about to get their heads blasted off because their forward scout decided not to do his job. If we don’t stop this kind of idiocy, we will lose this war.”
“I couldn’t agree more. We merely have different strategies for ending what you call idiocy, and what we medical professionals call battle fatigue.” Dr. Willard knelt to open his black bag and then, with a stethoscope in hand, sidestepped in front of the captain. He hooked the rubber-tipped horseshoe into his ears and leaned close to Barnaby, pressing the disk on his chest.
“Alert me as soon as this man can stand trial,” Brilling instructed Mother Hen. “He’s not going to prance around this hospital like it’s some goddamned Hilton; he’s going to division stockade.”
“We’ll keep you fully apprised of Private Barnaby’s recovery, per regulation. Now”—taking Brilling’s elbow, Mother Hen eased him back across the tent—“wouldn’t you like to visit the rest of your men?”
Slowly, one by one, the patients mustered the courage to converse with their formidable leader:
“How are ya, Cap’n?”
“Heard we finally took the town.”
“I swear I’m gonna get right back up there soon as I’m fixed up.”
“Break me outta this cast and I’ll get back in the lines.”
Juliet noticed that as the captain made his way along the beds, a few men stayed silent. The Senator lifted a magazine and began to read intently.
As Captain Brilling surveyed the men frozen in casts, the men squinting through head bandages, despair washed over his face. He drew his thick hands together as though in prayer—suddenly an entirely different man, Juliet thought, from the one who’d spat on Barnaby. This man looked heroic, and utterly tired.
“Men,” he said. “My brave men.”
By lunch that day, the Officers’ Mess buzzed with the tale of Mother Hen’s row with Captain Brilling.
“If I had to be in a hospital, I’d wanna be one of Mother Hen’s patients,” Glenda said to Juliet across the table. “She’d wrestle a bull to the ground before she’d let anyone touch one of her charges.”
“She really got a silver star at Anzio?” asked Juliet.
“Buried three of her own. Gals just like us. She stayed in the tent with her patients, the ones who couldn’t move, while bombs were dropping, and the tent got blasted.”
Juliet smiled. “Is that true in the way her hitting Captain Brilling with a clipboard is true?” Glenda had been happily embellishing the story with each retelling.
“Oh, sugar. It’s the gist of the thing that matters. Sometimes a little embellishment gets the point across better. Ooh, look, that head doctor is coming. Quick. Give me the lowdown.”
“Lowdown?”
“Wedding ring?”
“I didn’t notice.”
“Sugar, you oughtta be dishonorably discharged from the nursing sisterhood! Haven’t you heard of recon? All the other white coats in this hospital are hitched. Anyway, what did you notice?”
“Well, he’s very tall.”
Glenda impatie
ntly drummed her fingernails on the table.
“They say he’s been running a battle-fatigue hospital near the coast with the Eighth Army,” Juliet offered. “And Mother Hen mentioned his work at Monte Cassino. I think he’s here to study neuropsychotic patients and get them back into battle.”
“Bingo,” she whispered, wiggling her fingers as she peered over Juliet’s shoulder. “No ring.” Glenda did nothing so obvious as powdering her nose or fixing her hair, but as Dr. Willard approached, Glenda’s eyebrows arched with delighted astonishment. “Why, it’s the famous Dr.Willard.” She smiled coyly.
“Good afternoon, ladies.” Dr. Willard paused uncertainly beside their table, stiffly holding his tray.
“Well, Doctor, don’t stand there like a sniper target,” said Glenda, sliding over on the bench. “Join us!”
“I’m not intruding?”
“Not at all. We’re all done discussing lingerie and menstrual cycles. I’m joking! Please, we’d love your company.” She extended her hand, palm down, as though he should kiss it. “I’m Glenda La Bouvier. But just call me Glenda Texas. Or the Yellow Rose. There are two other Glendas here, and the one thing I cannot tolerate is being confused with someone else.” Juliet had noticed that Glenda was always announcing a different “one thing” she couldn’t tolerate.
Dr. Willard nodded hello to Juliet as he settled opposite her, then gazed blankly at the steaming contents of his mess kit.
“Spice it up,” whispered Glenda, pulling a small red bottle from her pocket. “Tabasco. Around here, this stuff is more valuable than single malt.”
“Ingenious.” He studiously tapped out three drops, and Juliet detected wisps of gray crowning his hair. How old was he? His sheer height created the impression of authority, which she associated with adulthood. But there was a smoothness to his face that made him seem younger than the other doctors in the hospital.
“You’re Private Barnaby’s nurse?”
He had fixed his stare on Juliet. “I’m Juliet Dufresne,” she said, realizing immediately that it was not the question he had asked.
The Secret of Raven Point: A Novel Page 7
