Dead Man's Embers

by Mari Strachan

  ‘I don’t know,’ Non says. ‘But tell me what he was like when you treated him in France.’

  Angela draws her chair from under the table and sits down again. ‘He came to us twice at the clearing station, but only for a few days both times,’ she says. ‘But, like I said, he wasn’t like so many of the others. I remember him because he was quiet and respectful, but very sweet, you know. Yes, that’s the word, a very sweet man. I told him about losing Edward that first time he was in and he seemed to understand just how I felt. That’s why those letters were so odd.’

  ‘Twice?’ Non says. ‘I know he was in hospital for weeks with his ankle injury, because he wrote regularly then, to me and to his parents. I didn’t realise he was hospitalised later, too. What was that for?’

  ‘I’ve been trying to remember all this since I heard from you,’ Angela says. ‘But, you know, I can’t recall much detail. He would have gone on from us to the hospital that first time. Clearing stations were exactly that – we either sent the men on for more treatment or sent them back if they were fit enough after two or three days.’ She leans her elbow on the table and tucks her chin into her hand. ‘The second time he came in was when his section had been hit, and most of them had been injured, one or two rather badly, and they’d lost quite a few men. It was a shambles. I remember they brought bodies as well as the injured to us. He was quite dazed by it, withdrawn, but, you know, we saw a lot of that – the thousand-yard stare we called it – when they looked right through you. I remember him writing a letter to be sent to you if he . . . well, you know. He was awfully anxious about that, he wrote the letter over and over, as if he’d forgotten he’d already done it. He gave a letter to anyone who’d take it, to send on to you. That was very sweet, too, you know, but sad, terribly sad. There was one chap I remember because his name was Edward – though he was nothing like my Edward – well, he was in a very bad way himself, he made a big fuss about looking after the letter . . .’ Angela pauses and slowly shakes her head at . . . what? The madness of it all? Her memories of it? What might have been?

  Non feels a scream rise to her throat at this glimpse of what Davey had to endure. She clamps her hand over her mouth to stop the scream escaping.

  ‘But, you know . . .’ Angela uncups her chin from her palm. ‘They had to pull themselves together and go back. And I’m sure your husband’s injuries were minor because I don’t think he was there more than a couple of days that second time. He must have been patched up and sent back. And the next I heard of him was this bundle of letters I mentioned. And that was a funny thing, too, you know – every letter was sort of the same and he never seemed to notice that he wasn’t getting any letters back from me.’ She looks at Non with a little moue of helplessness. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’

  ‘And I don’t know what to ask,’ Non says. ‘Maybe something happened to him during the attack, but I don’t know what it would have been to cause him to invent this story.’ She stares at the table for a moment. She has learnt more than she expected but the revelations she had hoped for have not materialised. ‘Maybe I should go to bed, Angela, and be up early to catch the train home tomorrow. That’s where I should be – at home.’

  ‘I had a thought about tomorrow,’ Angela says. ‘I think it might be a good idea for you to come with me in the morning and meet some of my patients.’

  Angela may look like Grace, Non thinks, but she sounds just like Branwen when she had arranged some visit or chore for me. But as she is about to refuse, a thought occurs to her that makes her heart leap. ‘Do you think any of them would have known Davey?’ she says. Even as she asks she realises that it would be unlikely.

  ‘It might give you an idea of what it was like at the Front. What kind of terrible injuries some men would have suffered.’ Angela looks straight at her.

  Non considers this challenge. It would be a miracle, but if there is a chance, a slight chance, the minutest chance, that she might meet someone who knew Davey, she should go. ‘Thank you. I’ll do that, Angela. Will it be all right with your matron, do you think?’

  ‘She’s always glad to have people visit the men to chat to them or read to them,’ Angela says, ‘so we’ll pretend that’s what you’re doing.’

  More subterfuge, thinks Non. One of these times I shall forget who I am or what I am meant to be doing and put my foot in it. But it is a good idea. She smiles at Angela. She still looks like Grace. Is that why she had made such an impression on Davey? Do not dwell on it, she tells herself.

  ‘I’ve got a seven o’clock start,’ Angela says. ‘I’ll give you an early call. Good thing I asked old Mrs Wishart if you could have the room for two nights.’

  ‘Shall I help you wash up?’ Non asks. ‘And may I have a cup of water? I have some drops I have to take in water before bed and in the morning.’ She rummages in her bag and draws out the bottle. Your lifeblood, Rhiannon, she hears her father say.

  Angela squints at the bottle. ‘What are they for?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, my heart condition – that’s why I’m so exhausted – my heart beats too fast and too erratically. My father said I was born with it. These are made from a very old recipe he used—’ She gasps as Angela whisks the bottle from her hand.

  Angela pulls the stopper out of the bottle and sniffs at it. ‘Good Lord, what is it?’ Her face puckers up at the smell.

  ‘May Lily – Lily of the Valley,’ Non says. ‘It’s not too bad if I swallow it quickly.’

  Angela sniffs again at the open bottle. ‘What a stink! Treatment has moved on since the Middle Ages, you know. What happens if you don’t take this . . . stuff?’ She pushes the stopper back into place.

  Middle Ages! Non snatches her bottle of lifeblood from Angela and tucks it into her skirt pocket. ‘Father said it kept death at bay,’ she says. ‘So I suppose I would die.’ She takes her plate and cup and saucer over to the little sink and rinses them under the tap. She fills the cup with water, picks up her handbag from the floor and says to Angela who is watching her, ‘Will you show me my room, please?’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ Angela says. ‘But . . . there may be more modern remedies, you know. Is your father a doctor?’

  ‘He was a herbalist, a famous one,’ Non says. ‘He showed me how to make these drops because he knew I would have to take them all my life. He died when I was ten.’

  ‘Hmmm . . .’ Angela says. She taps her foot on the floor, studying Non. ‘I’ve had another thought about tomorrow. My friend, Edward’s friend, the one I told you about, he’s one of the cardiac specialists. I’m sure he’d be interested in taking a look at you.’

  Taking a look at me! Non thinks. Angela’s thoughts on her behalf are too reminiscent of Branwen’s attempts to make her conform to some standard of which she is unaware.

  ‘I’ll call you in plenty of time to have a piece of toast and cup of tea before setting off. Can’t have you passing out on me on the way there.’ Angela smiles at her.

  ‘Thank you,’ Non says, although she is not sure what it is she is thanking Angela for. Just go to bed, she tells herself.

  ‘And don’t worry,’ Angela says. ‘You know, Davey showed me your photograph when he was in the clearing station with his ankle injury. That’s how I recognised you at Euston. You haven’t changed. He carried it in the pocket over his heart. He said he thought you’d put a spell on him.’

  23

  The smell sickens Non as she and Angela enter the hospital. Disinfectant, and underlying it another pervasive, elusive smell that she cannot quite catch long enough to recognise; sweet, but definitely unpleasant. She decides to breathe through her mouth.

  The walk here has tired her; she is stumbling as she follows Angela up the ornate stairs. She has never before been in a hospital, she has never been in a building this big. Angela had told her the hospital was large, and fairly new – built just after the turn of the century – so Non had not expected to see a place straight out of another of her father’s fairy tales, with turret
s and pointed roofs where only fluttering pennants were missing, and tiny windows through which maidens might lower their long hair for their suitors to climb, and walls built of rosy brick that had not yet attracted much grime from the smoke and smogs of London. Is it any wonder that at times she thinks she lives in a dream?

  She had been awake off and on during the night, falling into periods of drowsing after being wide awake, her mind active, trying to work all that Angela had told her into some kind of sensible explanation of what was wrong with Davey, and trying not to dwell on what he had told Angela about her. I have put a spell on him, she had thought. In the small hours it was difficult to forget that it was only a few days since Gwydion told her that Owen had said she was an enchantress; she knew she had to speak to Owen, to tidy away that part of her past. But she could not think about him when she was here, in London, trying to find help for Davey. And all the time what she really wanted was to go home. She did not want to make the visit Angela had promised for the morning. But she felt obliged to Angela, who had been generous to her, and there was always a possibility that she might learn something.

  She waits for Angela to change into her uniform, glad to lean against the wall of the corridor for a while, to catch her breath, to steady her heart. After Angela joins her, looking austere in her uniform despite the beauty of her face, they both enter a long ward, its two rows of iron beds reflected in the glossy linoleum beneath them as if they are standing in water. A long, well-polished table in the middle of the room has two nurses sitting at it. They wear the same stiff headdress as Angela, and are so busy writing they do not even look up from their work. A bouquet of flowers in a tall glass vase in the centre of the table is already wilting, leaves and flowers bowing down over the sides of the vase until they are almost touching the table.

  But it is the occupants of the beds, or of the chairs beside them, who catch Non’s attention. Every bed or chair holds someone lying or sitting and looking towards the door to the ward where she stands with Angela. She had not expected to see so many bandaged limbs and heads in a ward that deals with diseases of the heart. What on earth is she doing here? This has nothing to do with Davey. Why has Angela brought her? She turns to her.

  ‘Smile,’ Angela says. ‘Walk around, talk to the patients, be pleasant, ask them if they want you to read to them. Make yourself useful. But, whatever else you do, don’t forget to smile. Keep it light, keep it bright – that’s our motto here.’

  All at once Non hates Angela. More than she hates Catherine Davies. It surges through her like a tide, the hatred. She forces herself to smile and walks forward.

  Angela claps her hands for attention. ‘I’ve a visitor for you today, chaps. Non Davies is staying with me and I’ve brought her along for an hour or two. Anyone who has a letter they want read to them, or written, or just wants a chat with a pretty face – here’s your chance.’

  Cheers greet her announcement, but Non notices that not all the patients join in. She resolves to talk with some of the men who are not cheering. This is the kind of place that is a hell for her, with her gift – which Angela would dismiss as something from the Middle Ages again. Though Non would cut out her tongue before she would mention it to anyone, let alone Angela.

  She walks down one side of the ward. She has already lost sight of who was cheering and who was not. Most of the men have a newspaper or book they are actually reading for themselves, she sees, and look up from their reading to nod and smile at her as she walks past. So who was Angela thinking of when she mentioned reading letters? She walks past a bed where a man with a ban -daged stump instead of his right arm is writing awkwardly in a notebook with his left hand. But he is managing to do it, she thinks.

  At the next bed she stops. Her heart contracts. A young man who looks no older than Gwydion sits staring at the row of beds opposite, his face expressionless. He could be one of Osian’s carvings. She wants to put her hand out to see if she can feel warmth and life in him. She smiles, but he does not respond.

  The man with the missing arm says, ‘He’s blind. From the gas.’

  So young, thinks Non, so young. She blinks back the tears that start in her eyes, and moves to the side of the bed.

  ‘Oi, Johnny, where’s yer manners?’ the one-armed man calls out. ‘Pretty lady standing here by yer bed!’

  Johnny moves his head as if searching for her.

  ‘I’m here, beside your bed,’ she says.

  He turns towards her at the sound of her voice and smiles. How can he smile so sweetly after what has happened to him?

  ‘I’m Johnny,’ he says, putting his hand out in her direction.

  ‘And I’m Non,’ she replies, holding his hand. ‘Shall I sit for a while with you?’

  ‘You’re not from round here,’ Johnny says. ‘I like the way you talk. We had a Welsh bloke with us when this happened to me.’ He points at his eyes. ‘He talked just like you, all soft, like. Jones, his name was. He led me out.’

  Non sits in the chair at his bedside, still holding his hand. ‘Where are you from, Johnny?’

  ‘Northampton way before the War,’ he says. ‘Don’t know any more. Nowhere, really.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll be able to go back when you’re better,’ Non says.

  ‘No. No point in going back to the shoe factory if I can’t see to do the lasting. And me family’s got enough to worry about without worrying about me.’

  ‘Oh, Johnny, I’m sure they wouldn’t think about it like that.’

  He remains silent. She looks searchingly at him. She is glad that she can see no physical illness in him – whatever is wrong with his heart must be curable – but his mind is a scribble to her, like Osian’s or Davey’s.

  ‘What do the doctors here say?’ she says. ‘What do they think they can do for your sight?’

  Johnny pulls his hand from her grasp. ‘They say there’s nothing wrong with me eyes,’ he says. ‘They say it’s all in me head. They say I can see if I want to.’

  Non is horrified to see tears running down his face. She looks around for Angela. The one-armed man is watching, as if he is curious to see what she does.

  ‘But I do want to see, and I just can’t. I can’t. They don’t know what it were like, them doctors.’ Johnny is convulsed with his crying now.

  One of the nurses at the central table looks up from her work, comes over to Non and motions her to leave the bedside. Non whispers goodbye to Johnny who is wracked by sobs and curled up like a foetus on his bed.

  ‘Happens all the time, poor bugger,’ the one-armed man says. ‘Bet it don’t do his dicky heart no good.’

  Non tries to smile at him, but fails, and carries on walking until she is at the far end of the ward, then she takes a deep breath and turns around and walks down the other side.

  A man with his eyes bandaged calls out to her. ‘Missus, is that you going past?’

  She walks to the side of his bed. ‘What can I do for you?’ she asks.

  The man in the next bed laughs, and says something Non does not catch.

  ‘Don’t you take no notice of him, missus,’ the man who called to her says. ‘’E’s ignorant. I got a letter yesterday, missus, and nobody’s ’ad time to read it to me.’ He scrabbles about on the surface of his bedside cupboard until he finds an envelope and waves it in her direction. ‘’Ere it is. Will you read it, missus?’

  Non opens the letter and looks at the signature. ‘It’s from Edith,’ she says.

  ‘The wife,’ the man says.

  Non scans the letter. How unkind . . . how can his wife write to him like this when he is helpless in here? She cannot read this letter out to him. Especially if he, too, has a dicky heart.

  ‘Go on, then,’ the man says, settling down against his pillows as if he is about to listen to a story.

  Non reads aloud, ‘Dear Fred.’

  ‘That’s me,’ he says, nodding and smiling.

  Non begins to improvise. ‘Dear Fred, how are you? We are all well here and looking fo
rward to having you home. We think about you. Love from Edith.’

  Fred sits bolt upright. ‘Edith said that?’ he says. ‘It don’t sound like Edith. Something must be wrong. Drat, I’ll be fretting till the next un comes now.’ He kneads the letter Non has pushed back into his hand, as if he might read it through his fingertips.

  ‘I’m sorry, Fred,’ she says.

  ‘Not your fault, missus,’ he says, still worrying at the letter.

  Non pats his hand and walks away, back into the central aisle and as quickly as she can towards the ward doors. She does not want to be here, she wants to go home.

  Ahead of her is Angela, coming back into the ward. Angela nods to indicate a bed near the door where a man lies flat on his back staring up at the ceiling. She mimes that she wants Non to talk to him.

  Non does not want to do this. She shakes her head at Angela but Angela nods vigorously at her and indicates that she should smile. Non grits her teeth until they squeak in her mouth. She stands alongside the man’s bed and smiles down at him. ‘Hello, I’m Non,’ she says. ‘Is there anything I can do for you? Shall I read to you?’ She indicates the books sitting in a pile on the bedside table.

  He shakes his head. A smell seeps from under the bedclothes that cover him. It is the sickening sweetness Non could smell under the disinfectant when she first came into the hospital.

  ‘You can’t do anything for me unless you can make miracles happen,’ he says. ‘Can you do that . . . Non?’

  ‘No miracles, I’m afraid,’ Non says. If she could, she would have performed them by now and she would not be in this terrible, stinking place. She is instantly ashamed of her thoughts.

  ‘Wishing you were a hundred miles away?’ the man asks. ‘Sorry about the stink, by the way. That’s the gangrene. Eating away at my leg. The docs have to keep chopping bits off it.’