FOUR
Instead, it seemed, she screamed.
At any rate, that elusive other door flew open and a light clicked on, and there was a shadow that resolved itself into a woman, a nurse, another sister striding in. And here was Ruth standing trembling in a cloakroom, her fists buried in a man’s overcoat where it hung from a hook on the wall, just one among a dozen others.
‘Oh,’ she gasped. ‘Oh, how stupid of me. I’m sorry, I’m not—’
I’m not making any sense today. Or I’m not coping, or I’m not up to this after all.
She was not, apparently, letting go of the overcoat. The weight of it, the smell of it, the way the thick fabric bunched between her fingers – of course it wasn’t Peter’s, it wasn’t even Air Force blue but still she stood here, still she gripped it, she must look half mad, but even so.
Even so, the newcomer had to walk across the flags and unpeel her fingers for her, because she simply couldn’t do it for herself.
‘You’re Sister Taylor, aren’t you? My name’s Judith, Judith Trease. You look quite done up. Come along, I’ll fix you a mug of cocoa in my room before bed.’
‘I’m sorry,’ again, ‘I’m making such a fool of myself.’ Fainting first and now this, some kind of hysterical reaction. ‘What you must think of me . . .’
‘Sister . . . what is your name, anyway? For I’m not calling you Sister Taylor all the time, unless the men are listening.’
‘Ruth.’
‘Ruth, good. Now listen to me. You were there for the unpleasantness, weren’t you, that flock of dead birds? And then the colonel took you down his surgical corridor, I know. He will do that, he believes in baptisms of fire, though it’s an unfortunate phrase in this place, and I’m sorry you heard me use it. Listen, no one comes through that unshaken. You cling to anything you can reach, girl, so long as you do it where the men can’t see you. We all have something, one way or another. Me, I shut myself away and crochet mittens for my cousin’s children. It gives me something to hope for; they’re too young for this war, and with luck they’ll never have to face one of their own . . .’
Somehow, passages and stairs had passed beneath their feet while the older woman talked. Here was Ruth’s own corridor, here her own room. Here she was still walking, going by.
Two doors down, here was her new friend’s room, much like her own. Judith’s room. She must remember that.
Some things it would be better to forget.
Not this: sitting on Judith’s bed, just waiting. Waiting while the cocoa boiled, waiting for the cold to ebb from her body, the bitter dread from her mind. By the time there was a warm mug to fold her fingers round, her hands had almost stopped shaking.
Her voice, too. She could shape an English sentence without choking, without shrilling, without breaking out in hysterics. She said, ‘I worry that I’m going mad, you see.’ There. It was out. What she dreaded, what this day was trying its utmost to confirm.
‘That hardly seems likely. Sanity is a prerequisite in nursing sisters. Having two feet on the ground is one of the qualities we look for here.’ Judith’s voice was quiet, and mildly amused. At least she wasn’t being robust about it. If Ruth looked up, she thought she might see the twitch of a smile.
She kept her eyes on the steam of the cocoa, on the dark skin slowly forming in the mug. She said, ‘It’s just, I keep seeing my husband. My dead husband. Since I came here.’ That wasn’t entirely true, nor entirely honest – it wasn’t all seeing, and there was the falling too, that sense of being drawn down in chase of him – but it seemed to cover the ground. If she didn’t mention what predated her arrival here, the wanting to die and the almost-resolve to put herself in situations where she might, where a bomb or a shell or a bullet could find her out. No need to mention that. That wasn’t a madness, it was a perfectly rational response to an intolerable life.
‘Lord, girl, you turn up here with no sleep and an empty belly, you faint across our doorway –’ she’d always known that word of that would get around – ‘and come round to find yourself in a fair imitation of hell – and if you haven’t read Dante, then I really don’t recommend him, not for the duration – and you’re surprised to find your own private sorrow rising up to meet you? I’d only be surprised if it didn’t. We’re all widows and orphans here, it’s policy, and I think we’re all haunted.’
‘Why would—?’
‘I didn’t say it was a wise policy, did I? They do it because they think we’ll be as tough as they are, with the men. Nothing sentimental. They think because we’ve had it rough, they can depend on us to be rough ourselves. That doesn’t always follow, but they seem to have got it right, more or less, with us. We cope, at least.’
Judith, what is it that we cope with? What do they do here, that demands so much more than professional nursing?
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask. Perhaps she actually meant to. Her mouth was open, and she had the air. But then she listened to herself, and what she was saying was not that, no. It was confession still, again: ‘Only in the dark there, I thought I was holding him, I could smell him, exactly . . .’
After a moment, Judith said, ‘Did he use bay rum?’
‘Yes, yes, he did.’ Fresh from shaving, impossibly smooth and soft of cheek, and the lingering scent of his lotion clinging to his skin, clinging to hers after she had kissed him.
‘My dear, they all do, all these men. It’s a part of their uniform, they all need to smell the same. Which is why they all wear overcoats which all smell the same when they’re wet. That was Major Dorian’s I found you cuddling up to, in the cloakroom there.’
Oh, dear God. Was it? She’d seen him wearing it, of course, earlier. At the sing-song. And, yes, of course he used bay rum. She’d smelled it on him at their first encounter – but she smelled it on everyone these days. Every man, as Judith said. And accused them all, silently, for not being Peter.
No surprise, that it had been that particular man’s overcoat that ensnared her. Of course she was going to blame him, even if he wasn’t actually occupying it at the time. It was his fault that she was here, after all. So everything that happened to her here, that must be his fault too. By definition. Yes.
Whatever she made happen, though, now that she had come here, that would be her own responsibility. She didn’t need to be feeble, always pushed about by men. She could make her own decisions. Chase her own bullet.
Yes.
Choose her own friends, that too.
She sat with Judith on her bed there and sipped cocoa so hot it burned her lips, and talked a little about Morwood – shop talk, the house and how it worked as a hospital, Matron and how she kept it working – and a lot about childhood, friendship, discovery. Not at all about Peter, nor whatever secret adult sorrow Judith cherished, that had laid a path to draw her here. There would be time enough for that. Six months. That was time enough for anything.
And so goodnight, the slightly foolish formalities of parting with a near stranger when you’re only going two doors down; and one last gift as she was leaving.
‘You’ll need this until you learn your way around, learn where the switches are and how to find your way in the dark, this place is a maze.’
A heavy torch that Ruth took under protest and with gratitude. She peeled off her clothes and sank into a bed that only seemed this soft because she was this tired, and so to sleep.
And so to wake, sometime in the dark. She couldn’t remember where she had put her watch and wouldn’t be able to read it anyway, it wasn’t luminous, and it didn’t really matter anyway, what the time might be. What mattered was that she wasn’t sleepy, not at all. Of course not, after that long nap last afternoon. Her inner clock was out of all kilter.
Well, she was used to that. The regular sleeping patterns of her young life had been broken long ago. Night shifts and raids and anxiety and grief had all contributed in their turn. She had strategies for dealing with wakefulness, but they all depended on her being at home or els
e at work, where there was always something that needed doing.
Here, well. One thing she knew, that there was no point lying in bed and hoping to sleep again. Up, then. A robe across her shoulders, because the days might be warm but the nights apparently were chilly this far north, this far into the year. Last night she had shivered on Darlington station and blamed the cold stare of the stars. Tonight she shivered in her own room under a strange roof, and went to stare out of the window.
Something monstrous crawled across the sky, a great foreboding. More like spiderweb than smoke, she could still glimpse stars through the strands of it and it had purpose, she thought, there was a will behind it somewhere.
And of course it was only cloud-shadow, wisps of cloud on the wind, utterly meaningless. Meaningless and gone now. She could look down into the courtyard and see quite clearly, by brilliant starlight quite uninterrupted in its fall.
She could see men moving, shadows themselves, figures of darkness drifting silently towards this wing of the house. She might have seen something mystical in them too, her mind was so uncertain and they seemed so unearthly – except that they moved like broken ghosts, hints of damage that was all too physical and real. It was almost comforting that she could read their hurts at distance, in this ethereal light.
She was still shivering, despite the robe. And utterly wakeful, so she might as well dress. Might as well turn on a light to do that, though not until she had seen the last of the men vanish through the door, not until she had heard it slam. There was a comfort in that too, a guarantee of solid actual men, who needed doors to open and caused them to close again.
Never mind that that same door had defeated her. She needed to learn the way of it, that was all. In the dark, that especially. And find where the light switch was, that too.
Before she reached for her own light switch, there was still one thing to do. Virtue transplanted, a city habit that might actually be unnecessary here: she adjusted the blackout curtain, so that not a glimmer could be seen from outside. From above or below.
Dressed, she had no notion what she ought to do now. Not linger without purpose in her room, emphatically not that. She might go looking for a staffroom, perhaps. Or a library, anything that would offer a distraction. Or there must be a kitchen in this wing somewhere, she might hope for a gas ring and a kettle, there was nothing so distracting as a cup of tea . . .
And if all of that was only making excuses to herself, at least she didn’t have to admit it, even to herself. She held it ready in her mind, ready on her tongue in case of meeting anyone, and slipped out of the room. Left the light on and the door ajar, so that she could find her way back; took Judith’s torch, so that she could find her way through the rest of the house. Or at least see where she was going, which wasn’t quite the same thing.
Stole downstairs as quietly as she might, wishing for carpets on these bare treads or else for lighter shoes. Down one flight and another, using the torch in flashes and no more, mostly trusting for guidance to her hand on the wall and the sounds that drew her. Men’s voices, footsteps, the creaks and scrapes of furniture in use. The chink of crockery, the tap of silver against china. Sugar in your tea, Major Black?
Here was the hallway, and she didn’t need the torch; the light was on. The voices lay on the further side of that tall door that led through to the ballroom, Major Black’s domain. She had always known that, there had never been any question of it in her head. In daylight she had met the other face of Morwood; in darkness, of course it would be his. Even his name was an omen.
Even so, she was determined. She walked up to the door, and as her hand reached to the handle it swung open, and here came Flying Officer Tolchard, awkward with his one good hand working the door and an empty milk-jug cradled in the other elbow. Doubly awkward as his eyes met hers, as he made a sudden hushing gesture, don’t give yourself away.
She had done nothing wrong, she was clad decently in dressing gown and virtue. And yet she stood entirely still, saying nothing, letting him close that difficult door behind him, allowing him to shut her out. Again.
Himself, he was clad in black, as all those men below had been. It was some kind of exercise, and haven’t you done enough? but the question was impossible so long as he was young and breathing, so long as the war went on. What in the world he would do afterwards, she couldn’t imagine. She imagined that he gave it no thought at all. The war it was that kept him going, him and his brothers in arms.
He pulled a knit cap from his hair, which might mean anything or nothing but she chose to read it as an atavistic gesture, a charming little schoolboy moment, taking his cap off to a lady. The sideways duck of his head was incontrovertible: a message, an invitation, an instruction. Come with me. Quietly, now. She allowed that too after only a moment’s hesitation, only just long enough to pluck the jug from his elbow and carry it herself.
Across the hall and down another flight of stairs, she hadn’t been this way before, and here was the kitchen. Subterranean, in the tradition of great houses, with a mean run of windows high along one wall. Probably they looked out into a railed area of brick, sunk down behind the house. She hadn’t seen it, because she had always been falling or fumbling or staring skyward. Besides, those windows were all dutifully masked. No hint of light could have slipped out to nudge at her attention.
There was a lot of light, even at this time of night. This time of morning, she supposed, and of course the kitchen would be awake. Country house or hospital or barracks, whatever this was it would make an early start on the day, which required the kitchen to make an earlier one. Night manoeuvres might mean the kitchen never got to bed at all.
The kitchen, or the cook. He couldn’t actually be sole proprietor, she didn’t know how the military organized their kitchens but there must be a squad of cooks and undercooks and orderlies. Still, he was here alone for now, and Tolchard called him Cook as though he were the only one, or the only one who counted. Aesculapius had done the same thing, she remembered. So had Colonel Treadgold. The colonel had called him a genius, indeed.
She had herself blessed his spirit, the unknown essence of the man, absorbing soup.
Now here he was, kneading great ramparts of dough on a table that might have served for a ship’s deck. He was thinner than she might have looked for, a man in his middle years but somehow not in uniform, no hint of khaki beneath his whites.
Thin but strong in that stubborn enduring way, the kind who would work and work. He looked like he could knead his dough all day, and she knew how much work that was. Tolchard at her side was saying, ‘Cook, could you find a wet and a wad for one soul who’s been up too long and another who’s up too early?’
‘Your tea’s waiting for you upstairs.’ It was meant to be repressive, perhaps, to chase them out of his domain, but she wasn’t convinced. His voice had a hint of indulgence in it already.
Which Tolchard had clearly spotted too, or else simply expected, depended on, taken for granted as he had done all his life. Unintimidated, he was drawing out a chair for her at the other end of the table, out of the cook’s way, a grandstand view of the heart of the matter; he was saying, ‘I can’t take Sister Taylor among the men, she’d be appalled.’
‘Young man,’ it was her turn to be repressive, ‘I am quite able to go among the men without your escort. It is, in fact, my job. And I’ve been doing it long enough –’ and under conditions appalling enough, though she wasn’t going to say so – ‘that nothing you men could say or do is likely to appal me.’
‘Well, no,’ he confessed, disarming as ever, ‘what I meant of course is that they’d be appalled to find a woman suddenly among them when they want to be all coarse and expletive, like proper soldiers. The major gave us a hard time out there tonight, and they need to let off steam. You’d make them swallow it instead. It doesn’t do any good, swallowing steam.’
He would know, he and his cohorts. Even if he meant it metaphorically, the actual image rose up, in her head and she thoug
ht his own. He blinked, at least, that awkward conscious gesture that ought simply to be self-conscious; and carried on regardless, because that was what he did. ‘Be an angel, Cook, let us squat down here with you for half an hour. Then Sister will be on duty and I’ll be off, and we’ll both be out of your hair before your people come in for the day.’
In honesty, they were already squatting. Her traitorous legs had sat her in that chair, and he had perched himself cheerfully on the table edge beside.
In honesty, the cook was already making allowance and more, pulling off a couple of handfuls of dough and working them into neat little twists. Setting those on a baking tray and brushing them with egg – real egg! – and scattering sugar over, snatching up a dish towel and releasing a furnace-blast of superheated air as he opened a door on the vast range and slid the tray inside.
Everything was out of scale down here, Ruth thought. Or else it was their own fault, they weren’t big enough to match their surroundings. The cook played within his kitchen like a child. It should have been a pastiche, like a one-man orchestra, where the joke is the only achievement. But he filled a tiny-seeming pot from an enormous kettle that steamed perpetually on the stove top, and it poured out good thick army tea. There was fresh milk and sugar, and ten minutes later there were those twists, finger-scorching hot and steamily delicious, with butter and plum jam if the bread itself wasn’t enough. For her, it was. For Tolchard, of course, not. He expected miracles, and would always want to add sweetness.
Sweetness and wisdom, in that odd combination beloved of the young. They ate, they drank, he talked. He took her silence for the interrogation that it was, the open invitation to explain. Why he had been sidling through the dark on night exercises, he and his companions; why Major Black could seem to outrank the colonel in his calls upon the house and its facilities, its men.
Why everyone had been leaving it to everyone else to explain this to her, until here, now, a not-quite-private conversation in a kitchen corner, at the end of his day and the start of hers.
House of Doors Page 8
