Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  Her father had been used to receiving many visitors from around the globe, visitors who had usually spent time aboard a ship to reach him. Until she travelled to Liverpool Non had always assumed she would have to cross the sea to visit a country where a language other than her own was spoken. She wonders, now, what those visitors had made of their home and their language; maybe they were not particularly aware of their surroundings, for they lived a life of the mind. But to her, today, it is strange not to hear a single word spoken in her own language. A foreign country. What will she find there?

  She is glad to have brought a basket of food with her from her sister’s house. She had invented an excuse, saying that she might stop in Machynlleth to walk around and catch a later train to continue her journey. It is a little worrying, the ease with which she lies. She delves into the basket for a chunk of the bread she packed and a piece of cheese she wrapped in damp muslin to keep it from sweating in the heat. The train she is on now is much hotter than the one she changed from, the little country train; she feels a pang of longing for it. These compartments are crammed with people, she had difficulty finding a place to sit, until a young man, still in uniform, gave up his window seat for her. People are even sitting in the corridors, she has seen them squatting on their bags and cases. She wonders why the railway company does not provide another carriage.

  She is ravenous the moment she begins to eat the bread and cheese; breakfast at Branwen’s house was a long time ago. She does not possess a watch, but she thinks she must be over halfway by now, so that is, say, four and a half hours or so after the train set off at half-past nine. It must be about two o’clock by now. The sun is still high in the sky, beating relentlessly down on the metal roofs of the carriages, but at least not blazing in through the window, which she really does not think she could bear. No one has spoken to her since the train left Crewe, not even a Good afternoon, though she has smiled and nodded at the other occupants of the carriage as they arrive and leave. She worries that perhaps the English are not a friendly people. What if Angela is not friendly, not forthcoming? But her letter had been friendly enough, short and to the point, to be sure, but friendly.

  It is with some dismay she notices that the clothes she wears are not as fashionable as those that most of the younger women who are travelling wear. So much of their legs showing; she would be the talk of the town if she dressed like that. But the freedom of not having to wear skirts down to her ankles appeals to her; she may shorten her skirts just a little when she returns home. She looks surreptitiously at two women about her age sitting diagonally across from her and sighs. It is not just skirt length – it is shoes, it is collars, and more than anything, it is hairstyle. She hopes she will not appear to be old-fashioned, she would not like Angela to think she is old-fashioned in her ways and her thinking just because of her clothes.

  She is being frivolous when she has matters to consider that are too serious for frivolity. She does not need to take Angela’s letter from her bag, she knows the words in it off by heart. And she had sent, this morning before catching the train, a telegram from the Post Office at Aberystwyth to let Angela know the time the train would pull into Euston. It was the only way to announce her imminent arrival. Everything needed doing in such a hurry, the time at her disposal was rapidly vanishing, and her sister and niece would soon genuinely need her help at the birth.

  She sips lemonade from the bottle her sister has pressed upon her, her sister who thought she was returning home until she was needed again. The drink is refreshing and the sweetness will give her back some of the energy the journey is dissipating. Non pushes away the feelings of guilt that assail her. She will not allow herself to think of what may be happening to Davey in the early mornings when she is not there. She is deceiving him and everyone else for a very good reason. She is not sure how she will explain to him what, she hopes, she is about to find out from a conversation with Angela, but she will have plenty of time to think about that on her journey home.

  The wheels sing over the rails in their familiar way. Non is glad of the window seat. At least now and then she is able to press her forehead against the coolness of the glass and watch the fields, the villages, the towns flash past, but they flash past so much more quickly than she is used to that it is difficult to capture their images. It makes her dizzy and she has to look away again. The carriage passes into shade as dark as the inside of a tunnel and then into sunshine so piercing that it makes her eyes ache. She closes them, she is already weary. The heat does not suit her, the press of people does not suit her. At home, everyone she knows has been complaining of the relentless heat. Will it ever cease?

  She has no idea what she expects Angela to be able to tell her. She is placing all her hopes on Angela, and that is probably wrong. It may be that Angela will not be able to help, that she meant precisely what she said in her letter. Non is suddenly not at all sure how well Angela knows Davey. She had nursed him for a long time according to the story Davey had told Non, but that might be as untrue as his story of an affair with Angela. The last line of Angela’s letter to Davey had been, You must stop this nonsense; it is insulting to me. Non is not comfortable with leaving so much to chance but cannot see what else she can do. She has to feel her way through this, much as blind old Aggie Hughes who lives next door to Lizzie German, has to feel her way around her house. Is she foolish to be doing this at all? It occurs to her that other people may not go to these extremes. Branwen would accuse her of being headstrong. She is uncomfortably aware that she is taking herself away from all she knows to journey towards something – a place? a people? a revelation? – that is utterly unknown to her.

  The train has slowed its journeying. She watches buildings glide by, growing taller and blacker, and suddenly the train enters a cavernous building with a roof made of glass and grime through which light struggles to enter; it is some kind of netherworld, full of smoke and steam, clatter and hissing and whistling, and over it all human voices clamour and call. Euston. She presses back into her seat as the other passengers stand up and walk into the corridor or take bags down from the overhead netting. She hears the cries of the guard as the train slows to a halt and people scramble and spill out of the train doors, pushing past one another. Non gathers her handbag and carpet bag together and makes her way down the step, over the gap full of rising steam, onto the station platform.

  People race past and away from her. How will she know Angela? A surge of panic makes her heart beat so fast she becomes breathless. She had better wait until most people have gone so that she can see who else is on the platform. And so she does. It does not take many minutes. Out of the misty smoke and steam a figure comes towards her. Non is puzzled by the familiarity of the form and face she sees. And then she realises, and she gasps, ‘Grace!’

  22

  Angela’s room is cosy. Poky would be an unkind word for it, though it is a smaller home than any Non has ever seen. But it is . . . modern, she supposes. She is having difficulty in reconciling the two ideas of pokiness and modernity; they seem to be the anti thesis of one another. Angela herself is negotiating for the use of the landlady’s spare bedroom for two nights, having ascertained that Non is able to pay for it.

  Non is still perturbed by Angela’s likeness to Grace. As Angela had raced her away from Euston, walking faster than Non was used to, under a gigantic archway with gates of black and gold and immense pillars, along streets crowded with people and traffic, through swirling dust from wheels and hooves, beneath the looming presence of houses blackened by soot and smoke that seemed taller than the castle at home, until they stopped at this shabby house in William Road, Non had sneaked glances at her profile. What can it mean, this likeness?

  She puts her carpet bag and handbag on the floor and surveys the room more closely. Angela had opened the sash window wide the moment they came in, but it has made little difference to the temperature. The small table with two kitchen chairs tucked under it by the window holds what looks like a Bible.
She does not like to pick it up and leaf through it, her usual response to any kind of book she comes across; it seems ill-mannered here. There is an armchair with a blanket thrown over it next to the fireplace. And in the fireplace a contraption that takes the place of a fire, possibly, though she cannot see how it will work. Along the wall opposite the window is a narrow bed, with cushions on it that are intended to make it look like a couch, but do not really disguise its true nature. And at the foot of the bed is an alcove with a curtain drawn across it; maybe a wardrobe, or shelves. There is nowhere to wash or cook, though Angela had mentioned that she has only the one room. Rents are outrageous, she had said. There is not much comfort here, Non thinks, seeing her own home in her mind’s eye, not for the body or the soul. Though some might count the Bible.

  Angela returns with good news. ‘The room is yours,’ she says, ‘for two nights, which you’ll probably need. Give me your bag and I’ll take it along and put it in there.’ And with that she vanishes again.

  Her energy exhausts Non. Angela had been working until she came to meet her. And a nurse must be on her feet all day, running about. Non wishes her own heart—, but here she stops herself. Her father had taught her that to wish for the impossible was a waste of energy and effort, whether mental or physical. She puts her hand out to rest on the back of the armchair, to take her weight, to stop her from sliding to the floor.

  ‘Sit down before you drop.’ Angela has bounced back into the room.

  Like a jack-in-the-box, Non thinks. ‘Thank you,’ she says. And she is truly grateful to sink into the one armchair, which is more comfortable than it looks, before she disgraces herself by fainting away as she had done at home.

  ‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Angela says, and she whips open the curtain at the foot of the bed to reveal a tiny kitchen. There is a small sink with a tap – running water! – and a narrow shelf along the wall next to it that seems to serve as a table, with a wide cupboard fastened to the wall above it.

  ‘You must be gasping for a cup of tea. I know I am.’ Angela has an oil stove of some kind, which she lights before balancing the kettle on top of it. ‘I can make toast and a poached egg if that’s all right for you. Eggs are one of the few things I can get plenty of. A friend of mine at the hospital comes from a country family and they send her so much food every week she can’t eat it all herself.’ Angela pauses. ‘Well, that’s what she says, anyway. I think I could eat as much as anyone wanted to send me!’

  Non is not hungry. But she says, ‘Thank you. That would be lovely.’

  Angela rushes past her and kneels down to fiddle with the contraption in the fireplace. She applies a match to it to make it spring instantly into flames. As she jumps to her feet, she looks at Non’s face. ‘Gas fire,’ she says. ‘It’s much too hot to have it on but we have to toast the bread. Will you do that?’

  How easy, Non thinks. She supposes the fire can be put out just as quickly as soon as she has toasted the bread.

  The kettle whistles on the stove and is replaced by a pan of water for poaching the eggs while Angela makes a pot of tea.

  The ease with which the meal is produced is a revelation to Non. A stove like Angela’s would save her lighting the range these hot days just to boil the kettle. She wonders where she could buy one to take home with her. Then she wonders why she is letting her mind wander to inconsequential matters when she needs to concentrate on what she wants to find out from Angela.

  They sit opposite one another at the small window table. It reminds Non of a little bamboo table in her father’s house that he kept next to his armchair, and which was always piled high with books and papers. Angela had reverently removed the Bible and placed it on the bed. A believer, then. Angela eats her food quickly and neatly but Non struggles with the egg on toast, she is so very tired, though she could drink the whole potful of tea by herself.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Angela says after sniffing at the milk jug, ‘I think the milk’s soured. It’s hopeless in this weather. Well, we’ll just have to have our tea black.’

  Black tea. Non hopes Maggie Ellis is not nosing about too much at home, making trouble when she is not there to head her off. Some wars are never over.

  Angela chatters as she eats, and Non is glad not to have to talk. She tells Non about her work at the University College Hospital, how her ward specialises in the treatment of heart conditions. Non is astonished to hear of so many soldiers developing heart problems in the War, and how brave those men are coming back in for treatment, some of them over and over, for other injuries they received during the War that will not heal. ‘But at least they’re alive,’ Angela says, ‘and where there’s life there’s hope, wouldn’t you say?’ She enthuses about the doctors and surgeons and their skill in restoring the men to a semblance of normality, but is less enthusiastic about the hospital matron. ‘Rules with a rod of iron,’ she says. ‘But I suppose everything runs like clockwork because of her.’ And then her face lights up and she tells Non about a friend from before the War who works there as a doctor. ‘He worked in the casualty-clearing hospitals all through the War,’ she says. ‘He’s brilliant. Dedicated.’

  Non looks up from pushing her poached egg around her plate. ‘Oh, are you courting?’ she asks, and instantly wishes she could bite out her tongue.

  Angela has gone still. ‘No,’ she says. ‘My fiancé was killed. He wasn’t a soldier, he was a priest, went out to give comfort, he said. He didn’t get any himself. That’s why I went to nurse in the battlefields, like a lot of the other girls, to feel a bit nearer to him, to find out what happened. He was never found, you see.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Non says, giving up altogether on the egg and toast and pushing her plate away. ‘But you sounded . . . well . . . fond of your friend.’

  ‘He’s my friend because he was Edward’s friend – they both began with medicine, but Edward said he was more interested in people’s souls, he thought they were more important.’ Angela gives a little shrug, as if to say she is not so sure herself.

  Not reverently, then: perhaps the Bible was Edward’s. Non glances towards it on the bed, as if it might tell her something that will get her out of this embarrassment.

  ‘Some girls are able to . . . forget, I suppose,’ Angela says, ‘or put it behind them. I can’t. It’s as if it happened yesterday. And those girls, you know, there isn’t anyone for them, is there? Why, I’ve even seen advertisements in magazines for husbands. Imagine!’ She shakes her head. ‘How desperate they must be to find someone, anyone. But I could never replace Edward. Never.’

  Non looks around the poky room. Why is Angela telling her all this? She does not know her. But she supposes she wants to ask Angela questions that are just as intimate. Suddenly Non is desperate to be home. What possessed her to think she could come here and somehow find the one thing that would make everything all right? What she has is more all right than what many people have, it seems. She lifts her teacup and gulps down her tears of longing with the lukewarm tea, then sets the cup back in its saucer. ‘You’re helping a lot of people at the hospital,’ she says. ‘That must give you satisfaction.’ What a tawdry word to use, she thinks, when what we all want is happiness, fulfilment, ecstasy.

  Angela nods her head. ‘Yes, oh, yes,’ she says. ‘All those poor young men, in and out of the hospital even now. But some find it so hard to help themselves, you know, they just won’t try. At least your husband came home in one piece.’

  Non wonders if she can hear accusation there. ‘His ankle bothers him at times,’ she says. She pauses, wondering whether to carry on. It is what I came for, she reminds herself. ‘But it seems to be the memories that trouble him, Angela – it’s as if his mind has been wounded. That was what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  ‘I’m not sure I know what you mean.’ Angela jumps up from her chair and begins to stack their plates and cups and saucers with more clatter than is necessary.

  ‘I think you do, because I saw your last letter to Davey—’
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  ‘That was my only letter to Davey,’ Angela says, rattling the cutlery into a bundle on one of the plates. ‘I don’t understand what made him think that we . . . well . . . you know. As if I would do such a thing. I treated him the way I treated everyone else. I mean, I know lots of the men got crushes on the nurses, because, you know, they’re so glad to be out of the fighting and somewhere a bit civilised, and I suppose seeing a girl reminds them of their wives and sisters and so on, but . . . well, Davey was never actually like that, even, which is why I remember him.’

  ‘Let me tell you what he told me,’ Non says. ‘When he came home Davey was changed from the Davey who went away. I know all that fighting would probably change anybody – but I couldn’t understand why he was changed towards me. He said that he’d been unfaithful to me, and because of that he wasn’t fit to be my husband any more. It wasn’t like Davey to do such a thing. I could hardly believe it. But he insisted he had, and I don’t know why.’ Non is becoming ever more concerned about why Davey should have told her such a story.

  ‘Well, I’m sure I don’t know why,’ Angela says.

  She is standing sideways to Non at the table and her likeness to Grace in profile is uncanny. Non does not know what to make of it and it unnerves her so that her reply is sharper than she intends. ‘I’m not blaming you for anything, Angela. I’m asking for your help. I know this never happened, but I don’t understand why Davey said it did. He seems really to believe what he told me.’

  Angela purses her lips and stops clattering the dishes about. ‘He wrote me a lot of letters,’ she says, ‘but I only got them recently, sent on in a bundle from my old address – I don’t know where he got that. We never gave out our addresses, you know. And they were all about this . . . this liaison we were supposed to have had, so I just wrote back right away and told him it was a nonsense and to stop it. I can’t imagine why he believed it. Maybe he dreamt it or something, d’you think?’