House of Doors (6 page)

No hospital she knew would tolerate such a racket from its staff, no matron of her acquaintance would condone it for a moment. And that was beer that she was smelling, impossible and unmistakable, a heady tang that caught her throat with memory and yearning.
Beer  . . .!

She would have hesitated, even in full sight on the threshold there, only the orderly just barged straight in and she seemed to be caught in his wake, to have no alternative but to follow.

In the passage, that weight of sound had overflowed her like a wave released. In the doorway it would have been a wall, that solid, it would have stopped her entirely if the trolley hadn't broken through ahead of her.

She felt it none the less, every brick of it, every separate voice. Her head dropped just a little, her shoulders hunched, as though she were walking into a wind. One step, two steps—

Then she realized. And stopped dead, right there, two paces into the room; and straightened her spine, squared her shoulders like a soldier on parade, lifted her head and looked about her.

This was a hallway, seemingly, or should have been. An open area between the servants' wing and what must be the main family rooms, with a stairway leading up – the East Staircase, she supposed they would call that – and doors in all directions.

They couldn't conceivably be short of space in this enormous house, and yet they had chosen to lay this hallway with trestle tables and eat their meals here. She would have called it the staff canteen, except that some of these men were very clearly not staff. The rowdy ones, for example: some in uniform of one description or another, uniform and dressings, some in dressing gowns and slippers. Those were surely patients.

She might have called it a dining hall, then, set aside for walking wounded – and she might have been casting about already for a glimpse of Bed Thirty-Four, young Lochinvar, young Tolchard – except that some of these, men and women both, most certainly were staff. There was Matron herself, presiding at one of the tables. Presiding over dressing gowns and uniforms together, all mixed ad hoc; and some of those uniforms were nurses, some orderlies, some officers. Ruth was confused already, even before her eyes were drawn again to the rowdy congregation around the piano.

A piano, standing at the heart of all this noise. And a congregation, a
singing
congregation, half of them with pint mugs in their hands. Doing that thing that men do, wrapping their hands around the body of the glass rather than use the handle.

The other half couldn't manage to hold theirs, by the handle or otherwise. Their drinks were lined up on the piano top, with paper straws.

Two men shared a bench at the piano. She could barely see through the packed bodies, but they weren't playing a four-handed melody. She thought perhaps they played one hand each.

She thought she knew where Bed Thirty-Four might be found, if she cared to push her way through the crowd.

There was no question of that. Among the singing congregation, one voice in the multitude, a man in an overcoat between the dressing gowns and the blue serge: that was Aesculapius.
Major Dorian
, she reminded herself sternly. Already she thought he had noticed her. Indeed, he was tilting his mug towards her in a greeting, in a toast.

She ignored him magnificently, stalking over to Matron's table to ask where she should sit.

‘Why, here today, Sister. With me,' and the short woman reached out to touch an empty chair on her left. ‘Another day, you'll take a table of your own; another again, you'll move around. You'll find us  . . . not so much informal as irregular. In many ways. One day you may even join the choir,' with a nod towards the piano, where those two invisible hands were breaking down catastrophically over
Greensleeves
in waltz time. ‘Today, though, I thought you'd likely have questions, and I'm your best hope of an answer.'

Meaning
I want a closer look at you, young woman, I want to see what Aesculapius has sent me.
Ruth wasn't fooled for a moment.

Still, she did indeed have a flood of questions, all dammed up. Better to loose them than turn inward once again, towards that sucking void at the heart of her. Far better, so long as Major Dorian had his eye on her. Beer or no beer.

She opened her mouth, then, to ask the first of them, and—

‘No shop!' It was a curious parrot-squawk of a cry, rather terrible, and it came from the man sitting opposite her. Half the skin of his face was drawn pale and sheer, like greasy silk, in brutal contrast to the vivid colour of the other half. She thought one eye was glass. It was as though he wore a demi-mask, as though he could be two men in one, depending which way he was facing.

The voice suited neither one. Its clarity was almost obscene, given how far it was from human. Birds, she thought, should not have voices; certainly should not gift them to men in their extremity.

‘Squadron Leader Jones,' Matron introduced him, trying perhaps to quell him at the same time.

If so, it was a hopeless endeavour. ‘Tubby,' he said, ‘people call me Tubby around here,' and once perhaps it had not been ironic. Certainly the jacket he wore had been cut for a wider man. He looked almost gaunt within its loose folds as they fell around him. The sick burn fat, as do the sorrowful. She had been plump herself, once, it seemed an age ago.
Blame the ration, and never worry.
What did she need of flesh?

Besides, he was still talking, distraction, what she was here for: that dreadful voice, savage and precise. ‘No talking shop in the mess.'

‘Squadron Leader Jones.' Matron was professionally sharp, conspicuously not calling him Tubby, and not actually repeating herself even though each word was the same. This was a conversation, unless it was a ritual dance, each step prefigured and familiar.

‘You can say what you like, Matron –' even if that was just his name, apparently – ‘but rules are rules—'

‘And rules change, when you cross the border.' That was his neighbour on the other side, another of these too-thin young men in ill-fitting uniform that might once have shown his frame to advantage. ‘We've been over this, Tubby.' Over it and over it, Ruth was guessing. ‘This isn't your mess, it's Matron's tea table. We don't wear our own ranks in here.' Which was true, she realized, and one of the things that jarred: bare epaulettes on all these uniform jackets. ‘And we don't fetch our own rules either.'

‘Matron flings our ranks around willy-nilly.'

‘Not willy-nilly. Only to scold. Isn't that right, Matey?'

‘I'll thank you, Flying Officer Kaye, not to call me Matey.' But she said it with a glimmer of humour around the purse of her mouth, and it raised a grin in him. He was lucky, he could still grin. His damage was elsewhere. Ruth couldn't see it immediately, and she wasn't going to peer, nor pry, no: but she was sure that it was there to be found. To be learned about. As and when. There were orderlies down the table, but orderlies had their own proper uniform, RAMC fatigues, familiar in any military hospital from here to Timbuctoo. Every military hospital Ruth was familiar with put their walking wounded in uniform too,
uniform
uniform, regulation and distinctive. Something was different, apparently, here.

No,
everything
was different, apparently, here. Driving out into the world, Tolchard had worn a normal uniform jacket, with insignia. So had his friends fetching cider for the colonel. She was starting to think that perhaps they had only a few such, which they shared between them on exeats. Here in the house, the patients wore their own old uniforms, but stripped of rank. That was only indicative of something that ran far deeper and mattered far more. Something that she kept glimpsing, but could not seize.

Something that she wanted to blame on Aesculapius, whether or not that was fair. She wasn't stupid; she was fully aware that it wasn't only the most obvious patients around this table who exhibited damage. If she were bolder, she might wonder what Matron's secret was.

Though she'd never be bold enough to ask.

There were other questions, though, and she'd been invited to ask those. The uniforms were easy, were obvious; and there was her own uniform too, not regulation, she needed to ask what to do about that. She opened her mouth and was interrupted by a blast of singing that would have drowned out last orders in an East End pub, and she could barely hear herself as she said instead, ‘
Beer
, Matron? At teatime?'

In a hospital?
– but she wasn't of course going to add that. And didn't need to, because it was absolutely inherent in her tone of voice, in her question.

Matron's face was eloquent in its response, and actually more informative than what she said.

‘By special dispensation, yes. It's supposed to be reserved for Major Black's boys, except on special occasions, but of course they exploit the privilege. And their senior officers connive with them –' her eyes finding out Aesculapius, Major Dorian, who had been away for the day and come in and not even shrugged off his overcoat before he joined the communal singing – ‘so of course everyone takes advantage, as soon as they can shuffle from the ward to the piano. That seems to be the major's definition.'

Which major, and his definition of what? Who is Major Black, if he's not the surgeon and not the psychiatrist? What goes on behind those doors there, in the central block of the house?

Her mind was abuzz with questions, her tongue tripped over them. She was too slow with any. The squadron leader squawked across the table: ‘Matron, you know we love you and fear you and would do anything to please you—'

‘Just so long as I don't come between you and your beer, am I right?'

‘Of course. But I'm drinking tea today, just so that I can sit with you.'

‘Young man, you are drinking tea today because your friends have heard your singing voice and they won't let you join in. How naive do you imagine that I am?'

He smiled down at his plate, glanced sidewise at her, didn't answer. She snorted, and turned back to Ruth.

Who managed, if not quite a question, at least a step towards one.

‘I don't believe I've met Major Black yet.'

‘No, likely not. He doesn't trouble himself much with the nursing staff. He's not interested until a boy's ready to leave my side.'

Any hospital was an exercise in territory and hierarchies, just as the military was. Even so, this place was beginning to remind Ruth of nothing so much as a boys' boarding school. At least as far as she understood them, from the stories of Kipling and
Tom Brown's Schooldays
and what Peter had told her of his own.

Matron kept her patients as long as she could, and then handed them over – reluctantly – to this Major Black, for whatever purposes he had in mind. With Major Dorian's clear consent, indeed, with his collusion. There was more to it than beer and a sing-song. She glowered at the piano troupe, and found herself once again eye to eye with Aesculapius, across that gulf; and blushed, and turned her head away, back to Matron's bird-bright gaze.

‘When may I see the wards?' It was nothing but defiance, to declare her proper loyalty.
I belong on your side.

‘After tea. You can join the colonel on his rounds, meet your patients at last.'
Mine
, her voice declared,
until I have to let them go.
‘No more than that, mind, I'm not having you on the duty roster until tomorrow. You've come a long way, and that little sleep won't be enough to set you up for the work you have ahead. Especially if you don't eat. You haven't touched your cake. I won't let you lift a hand, you know, until I'm satisfied that you're ready.'

Ruth gazed down in mild startlement at the slab of dense sticky gingerbread set before her. ‘I, I'm sorry, Matron. You know, I can't quite remember the last time I saw a cake like this?'

In truth she had lost the habit of cake, almost the habit of eating. Except what was necessary, enough to keep her going from one day to the next, not to be a nuisance or make an exhibit of herself.

She thought the little tyrant on her right was not fooled for a moment. What she heard was a snort, and, ‘Well, it'll do you no good looking at it. I want to see a clean plate, my girl,' for all the world as though she was herself back at school again, a gawky adolescent with too much else on her mind to worry about the minor things like keeping body and soul together.

‘Yes, Matron.' Meekly, not to be a nuisance. Picking up her fork.

THREE

I
n the end, because she wouldn't –
wouldn't
– catch his eye again, Aesculapius came to her.

‘Well, Sister Taylor? Settling in?'

‘Yes, sir. Thank you.'

‘Well. Take your time, don't rush things. It'll all be a little strange for a while.'

The sharpness of her answer surprised herself, perhaps, more than it did him. ‘I'm here to work, sir, not to take things easy.'
I'm not a convalescent. Not one of your patients. No.

‘Of course. Nevertheless. Tompkins, if you're done with that chair  . . .?'

The orderly sitting at her other hand had conspicuously not finished his tea, but the major's word had him draining his cup in one throat-aching swallow and running off with a wedge of cake still clenched in one hand, trailing apologies as he went.

Major Dorian chuckled, and annexed the vacated chair. ‘You're thinking that wasn't kind,' he observed, uncannily accurate. ‘Tompkins is a lingerer. If he's late on duty one more time, he'll go down in his sergeant's report as a malingerer. He needs chivvying. It's kinder in the long run, to be a little unkind now and then.'

‘He's afraid of you.'

‘Yes. Yes, he probably is. Most people here are, a little.' He considered this, as though it were simply another datum; and added, ‘You're not.'