Dead Man's Land (8 page)

Watson wanted to object that he liked to think he still had some sap left in him. But not only would it have been inappropriately forward, looking down at his blood-spattered shirt and jacket, he could see he probably looked positively desiccated. She was right, nobody would imagine him capable of mischief.

Sister Spence’s uniform, he noted, was immaculate, as was the interior of the bell tent, with its wardrobe trunk for her clothes, an improvised dressing table holding an ebonized mirror-and-brush set, and a wrought-iron washstand with jug and bowl and, on a lower level, two oblong aluminium hot-water bottles. The only incongruous note was struck by a leather
Pickelhaube
, the infamous spiked German helmet, which hung down next to the Coleman lantern in the centre of the tent.

‘A battlefield souvenir,’ Sister Spence said, noticing his interest. ‘I don’t agree with them, robbing bodies is a ghastly business, but it was donated by a grateful Tommy. They can be raffled back home and raise a pretty penny for the medical services. Helmets, medals and those nasty saw-edged bayonets, they fetch the most. And these hideous spiked ones are becoming rare now. Sit there.’ She pointed to a folding chair next to her camp bed and he lowered himself into it. He longed for Brindle to appear and pull his Latimers off; his feet were throbbing. A Turkish bath would be the thing. Whenever he felt old and rheumatic, he sought out Nevill’s on Northumberland Avenue. He could almost conjure the smell of steam in his nostrils.

The sister appeared to be clairvoyant. ‘You know, the monks at the monastery left us one very useful item. A brewery. Oh, don’t get your hopes up, not for producing beer. The wooden vats make for very handy washtubs these days. A good soak works wonders, even here. The orderlies should have hot water ready when you get up there.’

He nearly groaned with pleasure at the thought of scrubbing his skin almost raw. That and a pipe of Schippers, an indulgence he had denied himself at the request of Emily – she had always loathed the smell on her clothes and in her hair – and which he was now of a mind to resume. However, having no ready supply of his tobacco of choice, he would have to make do with one of his Bradley’s before he turned in.

‘And there’ll be food. As I said, no milk, but we have plenty of eggs. And bread. Here you are, Major.’

She handed over the drink. As he went to take it, he noted his shaking hand with some surprise. It felt as if it belonged to another man. Yet there it was at the end of his arm, agitating the chocolate in the tin mug, as bad as any delirium tremens he had ever seen. There was something else, too, a pressure building in his chest, and the sensation that only by screaming at the top of his lungs could he release it.

‘And this,’ said Sister Spence firmly.

It was a hefty tot of rum in a blue crystal liqueur glass, which he took from her and threw back, coughing as it caught in his throat. He felt the pressure behind his breastbone ease as the fiery alcohol coursed down to his stomach.

‘Better?’

He nodded. ‘You know, it wasn’t until I saw the hospital tents from the ship, rows of them along the clifftops, that I began to appreciate the scale of what is happening out here.’ It had been a continuous line, running, so he was told, all the way from Calais to Boulogne. ‘Then, when I saw the trenches from the air—’

Sister Spence interrupted him. ‘Personally, I think it helps if you try and block out what our Major Torrance calls “the bigger picture”. Oh, it’s all very well getting that if you are a general. But I feel we should concentrate on the case before you at any given moment, as if it is just a singular event. If you try and take in what is happening across Europe . . . it could drive a man quite mad. A lack of imagination can sometimes be a blessing.’

Watson thought he didn’t lack for imagination, but even so, he had trouble contemplating the vastness of the medical operation, about how one could multiply this one hospital by one hundred or one thousand, and the tally of young men wounded, maimed and killed that would be at the end of the equation. And Europe was just one theatre and one side of the conflict – there was the Eastern Front, the Dardanelles, Egypt and the Middle East, Africa . . . Perhaps it was the terrible mathematics of such slaughter that had been trying to force its way out of his chest earlier.

‘Don’t worry, Major. I have had word that our sister CCS is up and running after its attack. We’re full. And Major Torrance and Captain Symonds will be back presently, so we’ll be up to full strength with doctors. Tomorrow will be an easier day for all of us. Physically, I mean. More rum?’

He shook his head and sipped the chocolate. They could hear the sound of a badly tuned piano drifting in from a billet in the reserve line, somewhere close by. It took him a few moments to recognize the sombre first movement of Godin’s ‘
Valse Septembre’
before the wind shifted and the tune was gone. ‘Bad news?’ he asked.

She looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry? Was what bad news?’

‘The telegram. That paper has a very distinctive colour and texture. Was it bad news?’ He could see it on the table, next to the mail. It was still twisted like an over-sized sweet wrapper. She had waved and throttled it at the transfusion tent when she and Mrs Gregson had exchanged words. ‘It’s a Keeper of the Privy Purse telegram, isn’t it? Their Majesties regret . . . I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t intrude.’

It was bad form, but curiosity had the better of him. There had to be some explanation for her earlier behaviour.

Sister Spence turned her gaze on the telegram briefly, and her chin shook momentarily. ‘It’s about my brother. Suffered a relapse at a hospital outside Boulogne, the day before he was due to be shipped back to England.’

Watson closed his eyes for a second. It was an effort to open them again. The lids felt as if they had been coated with lead. Was he, after all, too old for this? Should he have listened to the nay-sayers? To Holmes?

‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

She gave a brief incline of the head and drank some of her beverage. ‘They are all somebody’s brother or son, Major. Or husband or sweetheart. Or father. Every last one. I’m not unique.’

‘But you are, in that you know what “relapse” means.’

A sigh. ‘You know about that, too, do you?’

‘It’s one piece of terminology that has stayed with me. I came across a case at Bailleul. He managed to get into the medical stores one night. He found the digitalis.’

She stared down into her mug and her features softened into a very different Sister Spence. ‘Henry had no genitals left. It sounds like some terrible music-hall song, doesn’t it?’ The voice was thin and fragile, hollowed out by grief. ‘They were blown clean off by some freak of ballistics that left the rest of him intact. He was twenty-two. Can you imagine? He would have thought his life over. Heaven knows where he got a pistol from, but I suspect they won’t enquire too deeply about that. I think “relapsed” is a little easier on the families at home than “suicide”, don’t you?’

‘At least while the war is on, I believe it to be a kindness, yes.’

She looked up at him, blinked away a film of moisture and fixed him with a hard stare. Her words recovered their brittle glaze. ‘Major, I may have been a little firmer than usual this afternoon . . . yesterday afternoon . . . because of the news about Henry. But that has no bearing on my attitude to your VADs. I won’t have them. I won’t have Canadian nurses either.’

‘Why ever not?’ He had come across some fine examples from the Dominion at hospitals both in England and Egypt.

Her face pinched up once more. ‘Dances, Major, dances. The Canadians are allowed to go cavorting with officers. To walk out with them. To attend tea parties and dances. It unsettles my girls. It’s bad for morale.’

‘You could always let your nurses have a cavort or two.’

She frowned at such flippancy. ‘I quote Matron-in-Charge Challenger: are we here to go dancing or save lives?’

Can’t one do both, he wondered, but the fight wasn’t in him. He felt woozy. Alcohol on an empty stomach, perhaps.

‘And a lot of these VADs hold dangerous political views. I don’t want them to poison the minds of my nurses.’

‘What sort of political views?’

‘Radical suffragettes.’ She said it with a sneer.

‘You don’t believe in suffrage?’

‘Your Mrs Gregson—’

Why did she keep using that possessive? ‘She isn’t mine.’

‘Mrs Gregson strikes me very much as the sort who would have all treated equally. Nurses and VADs. Do you really think a servant should have exactly the same vote as her mistress?’

Sister Spence was clearly a great believer in hierarchy and the natural order of things.

‘Actually, I do. Just as the valet’s opinion counts as much as his master’s views.’

She looked surprised. ‘How terribly modern of you.’

Watson smiled to himself. That’s not what Emily would have called him. Quite the opposite. But he had adopted some of her more progressive ideas. ‘I should be going, Sister. Thank you for the chocolate. Most welcome.’ He stood, a little unsteadily. ‘As was the rum.’

‘Good. I’m sorry if I was rude. You see where politics can get us? I meant no offence.’

‘None was taken.’

‘Can I offer a word of advice, Major? Medical advice. Just an observation.’

‘I am a newcomer hereabouts, Sister, advice would be most welcome.’

‘You have to concentrate on the viable ones. You can’t save them all.’

‘We tried to in Afghanistan.’

‘There weren’t as many,’ she said coldly. ‘Nor were the injuries anything like as heinous, I’ll wager. Staff Nurse Jennings told me about the poor chap with half a face. I went to see him. There was no possibility on God’s earth he could have survived. And I think you knew that. It goes against all our training and ethics—’

‘He’s dead? Lovat?’

‘I am afraid so.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘In the mortuary tent awaiting burial, I would imagine. Why?’

‘He’s evidence.’

‘Of?’

He explained his suspicions about the wound and the smell of garlic. That something abominable was being used to inflict such disfiguring wounds. Wounds that would always prove fatal.

‘You’ll have to take that up with Brigade. There are channels for such information.’

‘I thought as much. I’m now beginning to wonder if I imagined it.’

Nonsense.

He yawned and determined to ignore the bogus inner voice.

‘Good night, Sister. Sleep well.’

‘I will, once I have read some more of these,’ she tapped the stack of letters, ‘and suffered yet more very bad poetry indeed. Sometimes I think I should leave the war-sensitive material in and scribble out the doggerel. It would be a blessing for the recipients.’

He managed a tired smile. ‘Good night,’ he repeated and was half out into the chill night air before he turned and asked: ‘Where is Brigade for this section of the line?’

‘Plug Street. Or Ploegsteert, to be more correct. At a place called Somerset House. Not its real name, of course.’

‘No,’ he agreed. The naming of every inch of the country with familiar landmarks was just another example of homesick men trying to make sense of a world gone mad. ‘Sleep well.’

As he pulled at the tape to let the tent flap fall closed, Watson saw Sister Spence reaching for the telegram concerning her brother, no doubt hoping that in the past few hours the words had magically rearranged themselves into a less devastating message.

Staff Nurse Jennings put a brave face on having to share with the new arrivals. She had wondered if Sister Spence had engineered it deliberately, but in fact, being the only nurse with a bell tent all to herself, and a large one at that, it was the logical solution to the problem of the unexpected VADs.

‘This is me,’ she explained, after she had lit the lamp. ‘So if you want to choose one of those two . . . Sheets might be a little damp, I am afraid. If I’d known you were coming . . .’

Miss Pippery hesitated, waiting for Mrs Gregson to make her selection, but she simply placed her valise on the nearest of the cots. ‘This will be fine.’

‘We aren’t staying more than a week,’ said Miss Pippery. ‘We’ll be out of your hair then.’

‘So you’ll be here for the top brass?’

‘What top brass?’

‘Field Marshal Haig and entourage. A surprise visit next Friday. Except they told us about it a week ago. They want it to be a nice surprise. With no surprises.’

‘Lots of extra scrubbing?’

Jennings sighed. ‘And painting. Lord, it’s getting cold. Look, there are two hot-water bottles over there. And hot water at the wash station. It might help take the chill off the beds.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Miss Pippery brightly, picking up the ceramic cylinders. ‘And shall I get you one?’

Jennings shook her head. ‘I don’t think I’ve got the energy to undress fully.’

Miss Pippery left and Jennings took off her cape and began to unbutton her dress. ‘She’s nice.’

Mrs Gregson nodded.

‘And your Dr Watson.’

‘Yes, he’s sweet,’ Mrs Gregson agreed.

Jennings frowned. ‘He’s a little more than that. I mean, he’s a very good doctor, too. Worked like a man half his age tonight.’

‘Hh-mm.’ Mrs Gregson was only half listening. She was busy admiring the slight body that had emerged from under the rough dress and petticoats. ‘How on earth do you stay so slim?’ she asked.

Jennings looked down at her embarrassing layers of grey, overwashed underwear. ‘By never stopping moving? Skipping every other meal? Being too exhausted to eat? And thank you for being tactful. Skinny is what you meant.’

‘You think so?’ Mrs Gregson had pulled down the top of her own dress and she flexed her right arm and squeezed the muscle with her left hand. ‘No, this is what I am talking about. Nothing but beds to make and bodies to shift. I’ve developed arms like Bombardier Billy Wells. The boxer,’ she added, when Jennings looked blank. ‘Look at yours.’

The nurse pinched the flesh of her own arm, which was as thin as a child’s in comparison. ‘Under-nourished, my mother would say.’

‘Svelte is the word you are looking for.’ She yawned. ‘Excuse me.’