For King and Country (17 page)

Her voice was icy. ‘You can forget that pantomime. This belongs to you, I think.’

‘You think right. When did you realize?’

That voice! The lilt of her own accent, so deep and so masculine, so thrilling to her ear, she would have known him from a million if only she’d heard him speak. She hesitated, and then
thrust the book into his hands. ‘You
can
talk, then.’

‘Aye, I can talk. I couldn’t at first, and lucky for me, an’ all. Lucky for me my brains came back before my voice did, or it might have been a bad job for me. So, as far as
everybody else is concerned, I’ve lost the power of speech and I’ve lost my memory. I know
nothing.
When did the penny drop, finally?’

‘When I went to see your mother. That’s when I realized.’

The green eye widened and lit up under its rich brown arch, and there was hope in his voice. ‘You’ve given her the letter, then?’

‘You must have had a bit of a struggle to write that, being left handed,’ said Sally. ‘But no, I haven’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I didn’t take it with me. I left the hospital still thinking you were Lieutenant Maxfield, who’d gone wrong in his mind because of a fracture to his skull and because
his wife in Australia had gone off with another man, and I thought Mrs Burdett had enough trouble without being saddled with somebody like that.’

‘So how did you . . .?’

‘Because she showed me your photo, and do you know what?’ Sally could hear her voice becoming shrill, and rapid. She took a deep breath to calm herself, and lowered it. ‘She
used the selfsame words you used yourself: “You couldn’t take a bad photo of Will if you tried.” That’s when the penny dropped.’

‘Nobody’ll ever say that again. Will they?’

They wouldn’t, but she turned away rather than confirm it.

‘No,’ he said. ‘I saw you when you took the dressing off, when I was terrified you’d recognize me and open your mouth, but there wasn’t much chance of that, was
there? I made you sick. No, nobody’ll ever call me “bonny lad” again. This is a face only a mother could love, and she will, an’ all. So did you tell her I’m
alive?’

‘No. I ought to give you up to the authorities by rights, you know that, don’t you?’

‘Do I?’

‘Do you know what the penalty is for shielding deserters?’

‘No, Sally, I don’t. I know what the penalty is for deserters, though. They get shot.’

Seeing him before her, hearing her own name on his lips and hearing him speak the fate that awaited him without a qualm in those deep, familiar accents was too much. Tears glistened in her eyes.
‘Why did you do it, Will? To let your own king and country down – how could you do such a cowardly thing?’

A deep, angry flush rose to his cheeks, and a frown darkened his brow. ‘Cowardly thing? It took more guts than anything I’ve ever done in my life. You mind one of those poems we used
to recite last thing on a Friday afternoon at school, when we were bairns? Well, it must have had a message for me, because I couldn’t get it out of my head:

‘You mind the one? Well, in the end I made my mind up I
would
be the captain of my soul, and nobody else. So I took my life back from my king and country and into my own hands,
and I’m not sorry. And I’d be far enough away now, if I hadn’t got a lump of shell casing in my face.’

‘Oh, God,’ she breathed, ‘this is terrible.’

‘King and country?’ he repeated. ‘They’ve no loyalty to us, we’re nothing but pawns in a bloody game, Sally man, and I wouldn’t care so much if it was a game
they were any good at playing, but they’re not; they waste men’s lives, as if they were cattle. “Backs to the wall?” Whose bloody backs? Not theirs! “Every position
must be held to the last man; there must be no retirement?” But they retire and bloody sharp about it, twenty miles behind the lines to some chateau where they can get sodden with whisky, and
leave us to the slaughter. They’ll keep their bloody upper lips stiff until they’ve done for every one of us.’

Sally was silent.

‘Nothing to say, then? No? Not that I’ve any quarrel with a lot of the junior officers, I haven’t, apart from they get far better rations and billets than us. But when it comes
to the fighting they’re as badly used as we are, if not worse. I’ve seen too many good men’s lives thrown away, all sorts of men, rich and poor, my own brother among
’em.’ He gave her a long hard stare, and then tilted his chin upwards in a gesture part challenge, part derision. ‘Anyway, you’re the last person on earth to sit in
judgement on me, Sally Wilde. You’re like all the rest, prattling and romanticizing something you know nothing about, thinking yourself such a little saint for ministering to the poor,
suffering soldiers. All you bloody civilians are heroes, every last one of you. Well, turn on me, turn me in if you want to, but don’t you dare call me a coward. You’re the reason I
went to France in the first place, you and your bloody white feather.’

Her cheeks turned to whey. ‘White feather? What are you talking about? I never gave a white feather to any man.’

He turned to face her, his green eye glittering, his face flushed. ‘No, you left it with the doctor’s wife,’ he said, and though low, his voice was full of fury against her.
‘Do you know what Knox said the other day? “Of course, the people who are weally to be pitied are all these poor gels who’ll have to go thwough life without husbands to look after
them.” The lunatic! He can’t have been in the same bloody war as me. The people who are
really
to be pitied are the lads who lie out on the battlefields dying in agony, and the
poor bloody stretcher-bearers who end up the same way, trying to bring them in. They’re the people I’ll save my sympathy for. Lucky I daren’t open my mouth, or I’d have told
him the women of England have got what they deserved. They sent their hopes of marriage and bairns away in droves with their white feathers, and now they deserve to be barren and alone for the rest
of their miserable lives. Lay white feathers on their shrivelled old spinsters’ graves, I say.’

Shocked to the core she looked at him and wondered if this hateful torrent was really coming from Will Burdett, the lad she’d grown up with, the laughing idol of all the school. No. This
was a man, much older, much harsher, disillusioned and ugly, and sitting in judgement on her and the rest of womankind.

‘It might not be the ones who deserve it who end up barren and alone, though, Will,’ she protested. ‘Did you not hear what I said? I had nothing to do with any white
feather.’

He seemed not to have heard her. His mouth quivered, but his voice was low and steady as he went on, ‘I’m not going the right way about this, am I? I hate having to beg you for
anything, but just keep your mouth shut a bit longer, will you, Nurse Wilde? For my mother’s sake, if not for mine. You’re in no danger, really you’re not. I’ve been here
two months without being found out, and I’m not likely to be, in an Australian uniform. Thank God Maxfield’s wife ditched him. There was never a man more relieved than me when I got
that letter, because it means there’s not likely to be any more, and I’ve blackened the faithless Australian bitch enough to convince everybody in the hospital, I think.’

‘Who is Lieutenant Maxfield?’ Sally asked. ‘Where is he?’

‘Dead and buried, or dead at any rate, or I wouldn’t have his uniform. And I’ve a good chance of getting away with it now – unless you give me away. Just let me get this
bloody arm right and I’ll be off. You’ll never have to be bothered with me again.’

‘Be off? Be off where? Where can you go, with . . .?’

She startled at the sound of the door. It opened, to reveal Home Sister. ‘It’s time you were in bed, Nurse.’

‘Yes, Sister. I was just coming, Sister,’ and with as natural an air as she could muster, Sally turned to Will and said: ‘Good night, Lieutenant Maxfield. I’m sure your
prayers will be answered.’

Home Sister followed her out, and walked with her in silence to the nurses’ home until they reached the foot of the stairs. Then very quietly, she said, ‘You know we must act
in
loco parentis
, don’t you, Nurse? That means we have to protect you as carefully as your parents would, and it’s a grave responsibility. I’m sorry to say it, but the
Australians have got a very bad reputation. Would your mother like to think of you being alone with one at ten o’clock at night?’

‘But I was in the chapel, Sister!’

In tones that would brook no opposition, Home Sister warned her: ‘Even in the chapel, Nurse, if you find yourself unchaperoned, you must leave – at once.’

‘You and your bloody white feather . . .’ Again and again the words came back to mind, and he’d seemed so convinced of the truth of them he wouldn’t
even hear her denials. In a state of shock Sally sat on her bed, staring at the wall. Was that why she’d heard no more from him after he’d called for the book, why he’d joined up,
why he’d never written to her? And if he thought she was responsible for giving him that white feather, he probably blamed her for everything that had happened to him in France as well:
blamed her for his arm with infection so deep in the bone he might face amputation in the end; blamed her for his shattered face – and was blaming her even now; and it had made him cruel and
bitter, ugly in his heart. ‘You left it with that doctor’s wife . . .’ What had Mrs Lowery said to him? She must have told him that that feather came from her, Sally. What a
filthy thing to do, but what a wonderful revenge for her. Hell hath no fury . . .

But maybe she’d been deluding herself, thought Sally. Maybe she’d never meant any more to Will than any of the other girls he’d walked out with, just a bit of fun and nothing
more. Maybe, but he’d written to her every day for a week; he’d travelled all the way to Darlington to see her; he’d told her she’d stolen his heart, and he’d seemed
so genuine.

‘Oh, Will,’ she sniffed, and wiped the tears from her cheeks with her hands. Really, she’d better find a handkerchief, and she’d better stop calling him Will, even to
herself. From now on he had to be Lieutenant Maxfield, even when she was in her own room, in her own head, in her own dreams, otherwise she might end up making the mistake that would send him to a
firing squad. All she had to do was keep her mouth shut and say nothing, and know nothing, and he’d find his own solution, that’s what Ginny had said, and he’d said much the same.
Nothing else was asked of her. She opened a drawer, began to rifle through it, and then there was the call for lights out. Damn.

She dried her face on the corner of her apron, then undressed in the dark and got into bed. He must have deserted just before the start of the Battle of Amiens, or just after. ‘Don’t
call me a coward,’ he’d said, but what else did you call a man who deserted his country and his comrades during a battle, if not a coward?

The image of that letter he’d given her loomed into her mind. It was lying in her drawer in this very room, at this very moment, waiting to jump out and proclaim to the world that she was
aiding and abetting a deserter. If only she were rid of it! She thought for a moment of sticking a stamp on it and dropping it into the post box, but if she did that the postmistress might look at
the postmark, and recognize her handwriting, and start asking why she was writing to Mrs Burdett. What a mess! What a tangle! But she’d have that incriminating envelope out of her hands as
fast as she could. She’d be first into the nurses’ sitting room after the next meal, or the last to leave, and she’d throw it in the grate, and watch it shrivel in the flames.

She shivered. The bed was icy, and she’d been too late to fill her hot-water bottle. She drew her knees up to her chin, wrapped her feet in her nightie and closed her eyes, willing sleep
to come and knowing it would not. After what seemed an age she fell into an uneasy doze, to be chased all night by phantoms of policemen and magistrates and irate majors, laughed at by Mata Hari,
that beautiful spy who’d been shot by the French, and sneered at by the Lowerys who were blaming her for everything – and how she rued the day she ever set foot in their house. But
worst of all were Will Burdett and his mother: she with her eyes dark-circled and full of reproach, he with his murdered face, taut and angry, and fearful despite his brave words.

Funny, though. That ruined face had made her shudder while it belonged to a stranger. Now it was Will’s it seemed less to fear and more to cry for, in some mysterious way.

‘He’s obsessed with food,’ Sister Harding said. ‘He eats all his own, and he’s got to be watched, because I’ve seen him stealing off the
other children’s plates as well.’ She stared intently at Sally and Curran, as if challenging them to say they hadn’t noticed.

Little Louise, in agony with Still’s disease; Joshua, strapped to his sloping bed and blue-tinged because of his heart defect; Mary, swollen with Bright’s disease; Ernest, ill with
Hodgkin’s disease, none had any appetite to speak of, and neither had the other children on the ward the probationers called ‘kids’ medical’. They would all be a lot harder
to cure than Alfie, who needed only nourishment – and that seemed to be Sister Harding’s principal objection to him.

‘He doesn’t really steal it, Sister. He just eats what they leave,’ Sally ventured.

‘Steals. He’s not given the food, he takes it. What’s more, it’s not hygienic for one patient to eat food that’s been put in front of another. It’s not to be
encouraged, Nurse. That child’s got no business to be here at all. The sooner the doctor comes to discharge him the better. See that he doesn’t take any more of the other
children’s food.’

‘Yes, Sister.’

‘This is a sin,’ Sally said, scraping an uneaten potted meat sandwich from Louise’s plate into the pig bin in the kitchen. ‘There’s nothing the
matter with this; none of the kids are infectious, and to let good food go for pigswill when another child could eat it, it’s a sin. In fact, I’m not going to do it.’ She put the
plate in the sink, then gathered onto one plate all the untouched food from the other children, covered it with a bowl, and put it in the cupboard.