The Girl on the Beach: A Bess Crawford Short Story

by Charles Todd

  Lucy said, “They’re chronically short of nurses. That’s in our favor.”

  “I’d rather not be sent to Egypt,” Margaret put in. “I hear hospi tals there are appalling.”

  Most of us understood appalling conditions. We’d worked in them, more often than not. “Egypt is no worse than the others,” I said.

  Fishing boats out of Kea began to appear over the empty horizon. A cheer went up. After what seemed to be an eternity, the first one arrived on the scene, and then others, spread out behind it. Watch ing them move past us, I realized that there were people bobbing in the water, even though from our position we couldn’t see them, and the boats went first to pull them out. But there wasn’t much space on the little craft, and so they couldn’t manage taking any of us from the lifeboats.

  While we were watching them turn back for Kea, wondering how long it would be before we saw them again, HMS Scourge steamed into view and began to pick up survivors.

  Our boat wasn’t one of them. But Scourge was followed soon enough by HMS Heroic, which seemed to tower over us as she came up.

  The worst of the wounded, including Eileen, were sent by motor launch to Korissia, the port on Kea. We were taken aboard, climbing the ladder if we could or waiting our turn on the sling if not.

  From Heroic’s deck, I watched our progress in, the mountainous interior growing higher, the numerous small coves and bays giving the shore a ragged outline. What sort of medical care would we find here? I wished I had two good arms. It rankled that I was a burden. There were enough injured without me.

  “We’re forty nautical miles from Piraeus,” one of the officers said reassuringly, as if he’d read my thoughts. “You’ll be all right.”

  The doctors and nurses already landed there had begun working frantically to save the most critical cases, making use of whatever they could collect among themselves to bind up the severest wounds, some including loss of limbs. Supplies were being offloaded from the naval vessels now, and that was a blessing. I was a little unsteady when I got to shore but went directly to do what I could to help. Then someone noticed my swollen hand, discovered it came from a broken arm, and ordered me to step aside.

  “We’ve enough nurses,” Dr. Paterson told me. “I’ll see to you di rectly. Meanwhile, there’s a little shade over there. And Eileen could use the company. She’s awake now. We’ve given her something for her pain, thanks to Heroic.”

  Silently cursing my uselessness, I did as I was told, pausing to speak to a pair of ratings lying on blankets and to the nurse with the bandaged head before sitting down by the Irish girl.

  Eileen recognized me and said, shakily, “Well, we’re alive. It counts, doesn’t it?”

  I smiled. “I should say it does.”

  “I made such a fool of myself, didn’t I?” she added after a mo ment.

  “I don’t think there’s any way we can predict how we’ll behave in an emergency until we’re there,” I answered judiciously.

  “You didn’t panic.”

  “My ancestors were battlehardened soldiers. I wouldn’t dare panic,” I said lightly. “They’d rise up from their graves in horror.”

  That brought a flicker of amusement, quickly gone. “I’ve never been hurt before. Not like this. It’s odd, you know. To be one of the wounded.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing myself, not half an hour ago.”

  “I’m not enjoying the experience.” There was a pause. “Will I lose my legs, do you think? Dr. Menzies wouldn’t answer me when I asked.”

  “I doubt it. He’s always been the cautious one, you know.” “Yes.” But I didn’t think she believed me.

  One of the island women brought us cold water to drink, which was pure bliss, and then a little later gave us bread baked only that morning, with a small dish of almonds and olives. I was surprised to find I was hungry, and I dipped little chunks of bread into the water, sharing it with Eileen, insisting that she must keep up her strength, even if she didn’t feel like eating. Another woman brought us fruit, and gesturing with a smile, mimicked biting into it.

  “Will I lose my legs?” Eileen asked again, as if she’d forgotten she’d spoken to me before about it. Looking at her, I could see she was groggy, and perhaps a little feverish.

  “There will be scars,” I said, avoiding the question. “But who will see them? Here, have a little more of this orange. It will help ward off scurvy.” But she barely noticed my little joke.

  Just then I realized that Lieutenant Browning had arrived, bring ing in one of the last boats, and he began to take charge almost at once. I thought he was actually speaking Greek, but it was French, and he’d found someone among the local people who could trans late for him. I smiled, thinking that it was just the sort of thing he would do, find a way to cope.

  At some point in the afternoon he came over to speak to me, ask ing how I was.

  No one had had time to set my arm, and I said nothing about it, although he could see my purpling hand, and the swelling. By that time Eileen had been taken to someone’s home where it was cooler, and I was sitting with one of the engineers, who’d broken his leg jumping into the water, listening to his tale of another sinking be fore the war.

  Lieutenant Browning came back shortly with Dr. Brighton, and although I protested that it could wait, my arm was cleaned and braced and wrapped, and I was given a stronger sling. It looked sus piciously like a part of someone’s tablecloth. But there was no mor phine to help, because we didn’t have enough.

  I slept for a time after that, in spite of the pain. It was beginning to put my teeth on edge. And so my sleep was restless at best and my dreams were filled with mines and explosions and fear.

  In late afternoon, two more warships came in, and I was among those taken to Piraeus. Crowds of people had come down to the grimy little port to watch us disembark, as if word had run before us like wildfire. A number of us were put up in one of the small ho tels near the harbor. It was called the Athena, and the staff was very kind. Margaret shared my room and helped me undress and bathe and dress again. She also cut my meat (it tasted suspiciously like goat) and broke my bread. Four times I was taken to hospital for my arm to be seen and treated and rebound. I could tell no one liked the look of it, but there was no infection, and I thought perhaps the bone was beginning to knit. Pulling Eileen into the boat, I’d managed to turn a simple fracture into a compound one, and it appeared for a time that I’d need surgery. Thank God the doctors were wrong.

  Several days after our arrival, someone came to tell us the final death toll: thirty men. It was astonishing, and I put the good news into a letter home, written with my left hand and barely legible.

  The question now was how to get us back to England. And how soon.

  An Impartial Witness Excerpt

  An Impartial Witness

  CHARLES TODD

  Chapter One

  Early Summer, 1917

  AS MY TRAIN pulled into London, I looked out at the early summer rain and was glad to see the dreary day had followed me from Hampshire. It suited my mood.

  I had only thirty-six hours here. And I intended to spend them in bed, catching up on lost sleep. The journey from France with the latest convoy of wounded had been trying. Six of us had brought home seventeen gas cases and one severe burn victim, a pilot. They required constant care, and two were at a critical stage where their lungs filled with fluid and sent them into paroxysms of coughing that left them too weak to struggle for the next breath. My hands ached from pounding them on the back, forcing them to spit up the fluid and draw in the air they so desperately needed. The burn victim, swathed in bandages that had to be changed almost every hour, was frightful to see, his skin still raw and weeping, his eyes his only recognizable feature. I knew and he knew that in spite of all his doctors could do, it would never be enough. The face he’d once had was gone, and in its place would be something that frightened children and made women flinch. I’d been warned to keep a suicide watch, but he had a fr
amed photograph of his wife pinned to his tunic, and it was what kept him alive, not our care.

  It had been a relief to turn our patients over to the efficient clinic staff, who swept them into fresh beds and took over their care in our place. The other nurses were already on their way back to Portsmouth while I, as sister in charge, signed the papers noting eighteen patients delivered still living, none delivered dead, and went to find a cup of tea in the kitchen before the next train left for London. The kitchen was busy and so I stood looking out the windows of the staff sitting room as I drank my tea. The green lawns of the country-house-turned-clinic led the eye to the rolling Hampshire landscape beyond, misty with the rain. So different from the black, battle-scarred French countryside I’d just left. Here it was peaceful, and disturbed by nothing louder than birdsong or the lowing of cattle. It had been hard to tear myself away when the driver arrived to convey me to the railway station.

  Now as the train came to a smooth stop and the man sitting opposite me opened our compartment door, I smelled London, that acrid mixture of wet clothing, coal smoke, and damp that I had come to know so well. My fellow passenger smiled as he handed down my valise, and I thanked him before setting out across the crowded platform.

  As I threaded my way through throngs of families seeing their loved ones off to God knew where, I caught snatches of hurried, last-minute conversations.

  “You will be careful, won’t you?”

  “Mother will expect you to write every day—”

  “I love you, my boy. You’re in my heart always.”

  “Did you remember to pack your books?”

  “I’m so proud of you, son. So proud—”

  A pair of Highland officers stepped aside to allow me to pass, and I found myself facing a couple who were oblivious to my approach and blocking my way to the exit.

  She was standing with her head bent and slightly turned toward her companion, her hat brim shielding her face. But even at a distance of several yards, I could tell that she was crying, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs. The man, an officer in a Wiltshire regiment, seemed not to know how to console her. He stood with his hands at his sides, clenching and unclenching them, an expression of long-suffering on his face. I thought he must be returning to the Front and had lived through this scene before. She clutched an umbrella under her right arm while her left was holding to his as if it were a lifeline.

  Her distress stopped me in my tracks for a moment. Watching them, I wondered at his reluctance to touch her and at the same time I was struck by the air of desperation about her. I’d seen this same desperation in men who had lost limbs or were blinded, a refusal to accept a bitter truth that was destroying them emotionally.

  But there was nothing I could do. Rescuing kittens and dogs was one thing, marching up to complete strangers and asking what was wrong was something else.

  Still, I felt a surge of pity, and my training was to comfort, not ignore, as her companion was doing.

  I was about to walk around them when a whistle blew and she lifted her head to cast an anguished glance at the train, as if afraid it was on the point of departing.

  I had the shock of my life.

  I’d seen her before. There was no doubt about it.

  Hers was the face in the photograph that the pilot, Lieutenant Evanson, had kept by his side like a talisman during his treatment in France and in all the long journey home. His wife, he’d said. There was no doubt about that either.

  I couldn’t be mistaken. I’d seen that photograph too many times as I worked with him, I’d seen it that very morning, in fact, when I’d changed his bandages one last time. She was looking up at the officer now, her eyes pleading with him. I couldn’t be sure who was leaving whom. But just then the engine’s wheels began to move and the officer—I couldn’t see his rank, he was wearing a trench coat against the rain—bent swiftly to say something to her, kissed her briefly, and then hurried toward the train.

  She lifted a hand as if to stop him then let it drop. He swung himself into the nearest compartment, shut the door, and didn’t look back. She stood there, forlornly watching him until he was out of sight.

  It had all happened rather quickly, and I had no idea who this man might be, but I had the distinct impression that she never expected to see him again. Women sometimes had dreams or premonitions about loved ones, more a reflection of their own fears than true foreboding. They usually hid these well as they sent their men off to fight. But perhaps hers had been particularly vivid and she couldn’t help herself. It would explain his restraint and her desolation.

  Before I could move on, she turned and literally dashed toward the exit. I tried to follow, but I lost her in the crush. By the time I reached the street, she was in a sea of black umbrellas as people made their way toward the line of cabs waiting there.

  I gave up my search after several minutes, and found a cab of my own to take me to the flat. I wasn’t sure what I’d have done if I’d caught up with Mrs. Evanson, but I’d have felt better knowing she’d taken a cab rather than tried to walk off her low spirits in this chill rain.

  Mrs. Hennessey opened her door as I came into the hall, smiling up at me in welcome. From her own ground-floor flat she watched us come and go, took in our mail when we weren’t there, brought us soup when we were ill, and generally kept an eye on us without in any way intruding.

  “Bess, my dear! And just look how wet you are.”

  She embraced me with warmth, then added, “You’ve just missed Elayne. She left this morning. Mary is in London, but staying with her brother’s family, and there’s been no word from Diana since she went back last week. Is there anything you need? I must say, you do look tired. How long will you be here?”

  I laughed. “Thirty-six hours. Thirty-five now. And yes, I’m tired. And I’m glad to have the flat to myself. I want only to sleep.”

  “And you must do just that. I’ll see that you have a nice tea. You look thin to me, Bess Crawford, and what would your mother say to that?”

  “We sometimes miss meals,” I admitted. “You won’t tell Mama, will you?”

  For some time I’d had a sneaking suspicion that my mother and Mrs. Hennessey had entered into a conspiracy to keep me safe. Choosing nursing as my contribution to the war effort hadn’t been met with the greatest enthusiasm at home. The Colonel Sahib, my father, had no sons to follow in his footsteps, and while I believed he was secretly quite proud of me, he was also well aware that war had an ugly face, and nursing sisters saw the worst of what war cost.

  Mrs. Hennessey said, “Which reminds me, Sergeant-Major Brandon stopped here last week. He took Diana to dinner before she left.”

  I felt a flicker of jealousy. Simon usually came to dine with me when he was in London. He’d served with my father in all our postings around the Empire, and now lived near us in Somerset when he wasn’t doing whatever hush-hush work he and my father never talked about. No longer in active service, their experience was still invaluable, and the War Office sent for them often, sometimes for weeks at a time. My mother and I had tried to guess what they were doing, but I had a feeling we were well off the mark.

  Simon had always been a part of my life. He’d picked me up at six when I fell off my first pony, he’d taught me tactics when I was tired of being a girl and bored with petticoats, he’d interceded with the Colonel Sahib when I was in disgrace. He’d listened to my secrets and comforted me when I was in the throes of first love and couldn’t tell Mama, and he’d stood on the dock when my packet had sailed for England that last time and promised me I’d return to India some day, when the time was right. Half confessor, half godfather, half friend, half elder brother—Simon had no business taking my flatmates to dinner. Besides, Diana was in love with someone else.

  Mrs. Hennessey finally let me go, and I went up the stairs. I was just plumping my pillow when she came in with a cup of tea. I think I was asleep before I’d finished half of it.

  Twenty-four hours later, I was back
in France. The next two weeks were a blur, broken bodies and long hours. Then one afternoon Sister James came in with a box that had just arrived from her family. Martha was two years my senior, plump, levelheaded, and a very experienced nursing sister. I’d learned a great deal from her, and we had become close friends as well as colleagues.

  We had just finished an extra shift, and were tired and on edge from the German shelling that had gone on for hours. Although we were out of range, here behind the lines, the ground shook with the pounding until our heads were aching and our nerves frayed. It was usually a sign of an attack to come, and an ambulance had been sent back to the depot for fresh supplies to see us through. Harry, the driver, had also found time to walk across the camp to ask if there was any mail for our sector. Arriving at the hospital, he’d looked up Sister James and presented her with her package before unloading his cargo.

  “I think Harry is half in love with you,” I said as she let me feel the weight of the box. Hefty enough for sharing. I smiled, looking forward to seeing what was inside. It was a much needed distraction. “You seem to receive your post before anyone else.”

  Sister James laughed, then winced as another miniature earthquake shook the beds we were sitting on. Our only lamp had fallen over earlier in the day when the shelling began, but blessedly was still intact. A jar of tea hadn’t fared as well. There was a crack down one side. And my mirror had come off the wall, fortunately landing on my spare pair of boots before tumbling to the floor.

  The beds danced again, and Sister James said, “If this doesn’t stop, we’ll get no rest this night.”

  “Never mind the guns,” I said, handing her my scissors to cut the string. “Open the box. There may be something perishable in it that we ought to eat at once.”

  “Chocolate,” she said, “if it hasn’t melted in this heat.”

  She managed to get the box open, and the first thing we saw was a small jug of honey from the hives on the James’s home farm, swathed in a scarf her little sister had knitted, never mind that it was summer. Under that was a tin of fruit and another of milk for our tea. I wondered how her family could bear to part with such treasures, knowing as I did how scarce these were at home.