House of Doors

by Chaz Brenchley

‘Why not?’ Whyever not? was closer to the surface of her thoughts, close to her tongue but could still be swallowed back, not to be too sharp with her new friend. She could still – just – manage a question rather than a snarl. ‘I’m off duty now, I think. What’s so special about tonight?’

  ‘My dear, we are never off duty here. And Friday night is dancing, of course. Who doesn’t want to go dancing on a Friday night? And you’re new, everyone will want a turn with you. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is.’ She didn’t seem sorry at all, there was laughter in her eyes, in her voice. It might have been sympathetic, perhaps. ‘Did no one think to warn you? It’s a brutal exposition, but we do all have to go through it.’ And then, tugging Ruth out of the general way and going on more quietly, ‘What it is, other hospitals with patients like ours, they’ve found that it helps the men no end to go out of an evening now and then. To learn that girls will still dance with them, despite . . . despite everything. East Grinstead, elsewhere, the townsfolk have been extraordinary, by what we hear. But here of course the men can’t mix so readily, they’re more than patients and who knows what they’d say if they were drunk, if they were seduced into it? So the colonel wants them to dance, and Major Black won’t let them run away to town, so we have dancing of our own. And there aren’t enough of us girls, there never could be. So we’re all obliged. I am sorry –’ and perhaps she was after all, seeing how absolutely Ruth wanted to escape – ‘but you do not get to skip this. If you utterly hate it, trip over someone’s feet and make a fool of yourself. They’ll let you be after that, they have nice manners bred in their bone; but you honestly can’t refuse.’

  Well, she wouldn’t, then. Nor would she fake a clumsiness she didn’t own. But Ruth hadn’t danced with anyone since Peter – well, since Peter. She didn’t want, she hadn’t ever wanted to feel another man’s hands that way, to follow another man’s rhythms, to learn again – and again, and again – that the world was very full of men and none of them was Peter.

  She could do this, she would do this. She really didn’t want to.

  She stood with Judith against the wall and watched while patients and orderlies together cleared all the tables to the side of the hall.

  Of course young Tolchard was by the piano; of course he couldn’t play dances one-handed and the duets were a party trick, apparently, not standard issue. Someone else took the stool and left him standing, stranded almost. He had a pint, he could look busy enough with that. For a while, Ruth wondered – worried, almost – if it might fall to her to be the one who had to ask him to dance.

  She needn’t have worried. It would probably always prove a waste of effort, by definition, worrying about Tolchard. She had looked away for a minute, distracted by the first figures starting to turn and sway in a cheerful polka. Strauss, she rather thought, though she wouldn’t have liked to say which Strauss. Peter would have frowned at her for that: you either know, he would say, or you don’t know. There are facts, and then there’s guesswork.

  She still thought it was possible to know, absolutely, and to be wrong. It had been one of the arguments between them, in the days when they could still argue.

  At least she wouldn’t have to argue Tolchard out of his brown study. One of his friends had nudged him, or else his own good training had done the job. Another couple took the floor and that was him, she recognized his tow head from behind, so surely that she didn’t need to glance at the piano top to confirm his abandoned pint. He was dancing with one of the nurses. Local girls they were, by and large, while the senior staff was like her, fetched in from far away. No doubt Aesculapius had his reasons.

  If it was witchcraft she didn’t know whether it was his or hers, whether he read her mind or she summoned him with a thought; but his voice was suddenly in her ear, warm and soft as old worn leather. ‘Sister Taylor, will you dance?’

  It was, clearly, her duty. What she was here for. Not with Aesculapius, necessarily, his ego didn’t stand in need. But perhaps he held a droit de seigneur, perhaps all the men else were politely waiting. If she had to get over this before she could do that, give time to him before she could give it to those who needed her, before she could slip away at last, too long delayed – very well, then. Let it be now.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Shall we?’

  His hands, his body were slightly and so entirely wrong. He was a little too tall, a little too heavy. A little too dominant, that too. Peter used to lead with a charming hesitation, as though all he ever did was to suggest, perhaps, a move this way or that. The major was no less subtle, but much more assertive. He guided, she followed, that was that.

  Still. The man could dance. They slipped into the music like a hand into a glove, contained but not restrained. There was a little skip in her tired feet, to say that it had been too long. This night might be duty, this dance might be professional courtesy or hierarchical responsibility or any one of a dozen other complicated things she had not unravelled yet, but there was a lesson here too, something of a revelation.

  She might, perhaps, go dancing again. For herself, for her pleasure. She might be able to do that.

  Soon, perhaps.

  Before six months were up. There must be dancing in the town, even if the men didn’t go there. She’d ask the girls, the nurses . . .

  Young men count beats, watch where they’re going, worry about the girl in their arms and the people around them: what she’s thinking, what everyone else is thinking, what he dare risk now or later. What she’ll think if he does, what she’ll say.

  Older men, experienced men, seem not to worry at all. Their tongues not bound up by all those strings of anxiety, they like to talk as they dance.

  He said, ‘Settling in, then?’

  ‘Not in the least.’ As he well knew, he must know. Any reasonable woman would take weeks to find her feet in an establishment like this. She’d give herself months, if she could afford it. ‘I wish you’d warned me.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, actually.’ She did like to be treated as a grown-up, given the facts and allowed to make a true decision.

  ‘Would you still have come?’

  ‘Yes, actually.’ She did think that was true. However unlikely.

  ‘I couldn’t have told you about Major Black and his . . . doings. Only that it was a hospital full of burned airmen. I thought that might cut a little close to the bone for you.’

  ‘It does. Regardless of Major Black.’ Major Black and you, she didn’t absolve him of anything that happened here. ‘Even so, I think I would have come. For six months.’ It wasn’t hope, exactly, she didn’t allow that; but a postponement of despair, a chance to think beyond the cloying grey hopelessness, a time and a place where she needn’t be yearning constantly for that bullet, waiting for the bomb to fall. She thought she might have come for that.

  Or for the pain of it, perhaps. All these hopeful, determined young men who had pulled their ripcords and fought their way through fire and hurt and despair to find some value in life restored. Even if it was temporary, a pint of beer and a dance with a pretty girl before they went off to death and glory, trained and prepared and almost eager. Perhaps she was a masochist, seeking out the pain determinedly, more and more, unsatisfied.

  They reminded her of herself, where they ought surely to remind her of her husband.

  Oh, Peter . . .

  Sometimes she blamed herself, of course she did. How not? She was apparently not enough to live for. That had to be her own fault, surely.

  She said, ‘Where is Major Black? Does he not dance?’ He was lean enough, fit enough, from what she’d seen of him. He had that killer grace that cats exhibit, movement under absolute control. Self-aware, self-satisfied. Sufficient. Dancing with him, she thought, would be an exercise in concealment, beauty without revelation. The opposite of art. But still, very likely beautiful.

  ‘Not he. He’ll be out with some of the men, not wanting to waste a moonlit night. Making them miss their dancing – well, that’
s probably an element of his training. The importance of sacrifice, teaching them to give up what’s unnecessary. Keeping them focused. Major Black is very strong on focus.’

  ‘Yes. I had rather gathered that. And you? Where do you stand?’

  ‘Oh, I’m with him all the way. Except on a night like this, obviously. He’s out there in the moonlight with a squadron of cold and disgruntled young men, and I’m in here dancing by lamplight with a warm and pretty girl. I believe I know who has the better of the night.’

  Ruth wasn’t sure which of them had the better of the conversation. That was the trouble with clever men – clever men in general, and this one in absolute particular – that you could never be quite certain that they weren’t actually that little bit more clever than you allowed for, that they weren’t dancing you into a corner. Unfolding all your secrets and privacies like envelopes, learning too much from the twitch of your eye and the touch of your guilty body beneath their firm, manipulative, analytical fingers.

  She might think that she had pumped him, but she shouldn’t be so sure.

  Blessedly, the tune wound to an end, their feet lost the thread of rhythm and they fell apart into two separate unrevealing people, politely smattering applause at the pianist. And before she could even think of fumbling for an excuse, an alibi, a lie, she didn’t need one after all.

  Because here was Tolchard, Bed Thirty-Four in high fig, rampant in his youth and insolence: looking spruce in a clean uniform, his hair brushed as vigorously as the serge and so glossy it looked almost lacquered.

  ‘Beg pardon, sir, but I believe you’ve had your ration. My turn with Sister Taylor now.’

  ‘Importunate puppy.’ His superior officer growled at him but only because that was expected, part of the show, masculinity on display. In fact, Major Dorian had already stepped away, ceding possession. Neither of them troubled to consult Ruth. It didn’t matter; this was what she was here for, after all. She was a bone to be wrangled over, by young men much in need of wrangling. It hurt her heart to watch them at it, all around the floor. She could distract herself easily enough, though. There was the pleasure of dancing rediscovered, the pleasure of so much male company, the soft rub of flattery – a warm and pretty girl, Major Dorian had called her – like velvet on bare skin, to soften the scratch of uniform wool.

  And, more immediately, seeing these two face off like two grouse sparring at a lek, she could wonder about men and their hierarchies, where Major Dorian stood in the chain of command, whether he actually was Tolchard’s superior in any way that mattered. Likely not; he might have a voice in the younger man’s future – he might have the ultimate voice, indeed – but a psychiatrist was surely a step to the side, not in the direct line. This was Colonel Treadgold’s command, and Tolchard was his guinea pig. If by his own will or by military doctrine the boy belonged to anyone intermediate, that would surely be Major Black. She thought he had sold his soul at the crossroads, and had no wish or ambition to redeem it.

  She didn’t think it was healthy, quite – or at all – but she could recognize a fact when it slapped her in the face.

  Oddly, she seemed to be blushing as he turned away from Aesculapius, as those eyes of his found hers. It must be the heat in here, though she hadn’t thought a hallway with mounting stairs could get so warm. Perhaps it was the exercise. She hadn’t danced in so long . . .

  Dancing with Tolchard was an exercise in difference. His ruined hand was set firmly in his pocket, casual as ignorance, not to be seen or thought about. His face couldn’t be put away so easily, but they could overcome that. She was professionally used to wearing her own face like a mask, making believe that nothing she saw could affect her. Nurses need to be made of granite, or to seem so. If they crumble, they must do it from within.

  Stepping into the dance, though, into the flow of the music: that should have been easy, and was not. Trying to fit her body into the hold of a single arm unbalanced her. There must be a technique to it, one that she could learn from these girls around her, but watching wildly over his shoulder wasn’t enough. She couldn’t pick it up by sight, and improvisation had never been her gift. She needed teaching and practice, whatever she did.

  So there was that, her awkwardness married to his own graceless falter, that discomfort with his own body that she had seen in him from the start. In his head, she was sure, he was still what he always ought to have been, whole and unharmed, an expression of the human animal in delight. He was unaccustomed to the new demands, the new limits of his bone and muscle. He must be trying, she could see how much he tried. There was sweat on his fine-drawn face wherever it wasn’t marred by new skin or scars, and she thought the effort of it actually hurt him, and still they could neither one of them quite get it right.

  ‘Do you want to sit this out?’ she murmured. ‘Perhaps we should, I’m afraid I’m all left feet tonight . . .’

  He shook his head. He tried perhaps to set his lips in stubbornness, only these new lips of his were stubborn in their own way, disinclined to stiffen.

  ‘It’s not you, we both know that. And no, I don’t want to drop out. Unless I’m embarrassing you?’

  ‘Not that. No. Of course not.’

  ‘Well then, I’d sooner carry on. If you can bear it. I can learn this, I will learn this . . .’

  And so would she; they could learn at least something together. His legs were fine, and he still had a musician’s sense of time. It was only the unbalance, the emptiness of his right hand side where there should have been an arm to lean into and was not. That was difficult for them both, and allowing for it – always a moment late and a sudden lurching recovery, the mind’s memory dragging behind the body’s knowledge – did keep throwing them constantly out of step with the music and with each other.

  Still. They persevered. There were compensations. For Ruth they weren’t all about the physical intimacy of a male body pressed close – closer than Aesculapius, because he was a young man and they were both having to try that little bit harder and he overcompensated – but largely, yes. He was a boy and working hard. It was never going to be about the conversation.

  Almost, she found herself leading. At least, encouraging him which way to go: a nudge of her hip, a duck of her head, little hints that he was sharp enough to pick up without protest, or else took on board subconsciously. She didn’t mind either way, so long as his fragile pride wasn’t injured. So long as they had space to move, to learn new ways of moving, to make their little errors and recovers without trampling anyone else’s toes.

  A quickstep, a foxtrot. A waltz. One after another, and nobody interrupted. Good manners or good politics should have led Ruth to another partner, and then another; but she was working suddenly, this was nursing too. The other men knew it, perhaps, and let them be.

  And so, one dance after another, they both grew accustomed to that lack in him, that absent bond between them. They learned to account for it, to discount it, to adjust. If his arm couldn’t take her weight, then hers must take his instead. And of course must never let it show. She was a nurse, she was strong; she had been a wife, she understood. She could do this. Good.

  He was a boy, he was quick, he could learn. Also good.

  They were doing well, better with every passing minute.

  Then the bomb went off.

  Flat and distant and not far enough. Loud enough to break through everything, the talk and the piano and the high closed doors; not enough to rattle the windows, but.

  These men had been in war, all of them. She had been in London through the Blitz. They could all make the calculation. Small and near, not big and far away. Close to the house, but probably not actually inside it.

  ‘The stables,’ someone said, into the silence that followed the sound of it. ‘Come on.’

  They had been in war, she was a nurse. Every woman here was a nurse. Of course they all went, bar those few whom Matron intercepted at the door. ‘You, you and you – come with me, please.’ Whatever it was, whatever they
came back with, she wouldn’t be unprepared.

  Ruth tried not to be superstitious, but she still had a bad feeling about this. She thought Matron was right, nursing would be needed. Nursing at least. Bombs didn’t just go off, not spontaneously. Even in places that stored weaponry and explosives.

  Places that used weaponry and explosives. There were armed men around her, she noticed, in the general rush. Pushing themselves to the front now, as people spilled out into the courtyard. Either they had been on guard already, or else they’d thought to arm themselves from caches she hadn’t placed yet. Either way, that was the male response, the military mind. They weren’t thinking about casualties.

  There was a fire in the stable block. They could see it clearly through the arch beneath the clock tower, that guttering yellow light that can never mean anything else.

  Someone was already calling for water, for buckets, for hoses. The male response, the military mind: something to be grateful for. It meant she could just go on, through the arch to the source of the fire.

  Someone seized her elbow, tried to stop her, ‘Sister, no . . .’

  The male response, the military mind. Sometimes it just needed to be stamped on.

  She said, ‘I am a nurse. Do you imagine there is no one hurt through there?’ As he hesitated, she shrugged him off and strode on.

  Through the shadows, and into the light.

  Not the first – and blessedly, someone was already seeing to the horses. Of course the fire had made them frantic. If others hadn’t been ahead of her, she might have felt obliged. As it was, she could do her more proper job: turn into the light, head towards the fire.

  Others were ahead of her there too. Doing their more proper job, fighting the flames. She took one glance in through the open stable door to see bales of straw ablaze and wooden partitions catching, men at work with blankets and buckets.

  She needn’t worry about any of that. There were men enough in there. And one out here, calling, beckoning. ‘Sister, if you would . . .’

  Of course she would. This was what she’d come for. Just the one victim, apparently, dragged ruthlessly out of the stable and laid on the bricks of the yard. One man kneeling over him, duty-bound until she got there, helpless to do anything but stay.