The Foreshadowing (10 page)

How can all the people I love so much have such different views on things? But then, there are so many contradictions. I love Father, but the way he runs our house is old-fashioned and cruel. And the way he treats Mother. If he had his way, I’d be married to some rich idiot, and never do what I want to do. But I still love him, and so does Mother, I suppose. And Tom and Father may have different views, but they both want to help people. So do I.

In fact, there’s someone I badly want to help right now, and who can maybe help me too.

73

It wasn’t hard to find Evans, even though the one place he never seems to be is in his bed. I’m glad of that in a way, because the ward for patients like him is not a pleasant place. It’s on the top floor of the hospital, and even on the floor below you can hear the cries and shouts of the men.

You can dress a wound, put iodine on it, give morphia for the pain, amputate a gangrenous limb. But what can you do for the mind, when it is damaged? I don’t quite know what Father is doing with his colleagues, but I admire them for even trying to help. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

But I did know where I would find Evans. He has the run of the hospital, it seems. He’s less trouble than many of the patients on his ward—some are violent and noisy, or need their sheets changed often, or need hand-feeding. Evans is docile, so they don’t always bother trying to find him. He comes back when the ward is dark anyway.

I didn’t know which linen room he’d be in, but it wasn’t the one he’d been in before. I took the chance when everything was quiet to hunt through the other wards. If anyone stopped me, I would just say I was fetching more blankets.

As soon as I put my head round the door of the fourth storeroom, I knew he was there. I went inside and closed the door.

“I won’t turn the light on,” I said.

“Who is it?” came his voice.

“Alexandra, we spoke the other day. Do you remember?”

There was no reply.

“Yes,” he said, eventually, his voice dull.

“There’s nothing to be—”

“What happened to him?” he asked, interrupting me. “Did he die?”

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “A wound they didn’t know about. Ruptured his lungs.”

We were silent for a while. I wondered how long I could be away without being missed.

“May I come closer?” I asked.

I was apprehensive. I was scared, and not because I was afraid of him. He wouldn’t harm me, I knew that. No, I was afraid of myself, of what I might feel about him, for I feel sorry for Evans, I want him to be all right.

I moved close to him in the dark, feeling my way around the room.

“May I ask you something?” I said. I felt my knee touch him, and drew back. “It’s about what you told me, about when they put electricity into you.”

“Oh,” he said, in a voice of such unhappiness that I wanted to cry.

“What does it do to you? Would you tell me again?”

There was silence.

“No,” he said.

Then the door opened, and the light came on.

Evans tried to scramble away, knocking over a pile of blankets as he did so.

“Who’s there?”

A nurse stepped into view and jumped when she saw us.

“What on earth—”

It was the girl who’d shown me around on my first day.

“I was just looking for Evans . . . ,” I said. “I was trying—”

“I don’t want to know what you were doing in here. With him,” she said. Evans tried to make for the door, but she stood in his way. He stopped and waited, squinting against the light.

“No,” I said, “I was just trying to find him.”

The nurse put her head on one side.

“Is that what you call it? Well, you’ve found him now. For heaven’s sake.”

She turned to Evans.

“You go back to your ward and stay there for once.”

Without a word, he slunk out the door.

“And you . . . ,” she said, turning back to me. “If Sister found you in here with a man, you’d be out of here and never let back. What were you thinking of?”

“Please,” I said. “Please believe me. I wanted to talk to him, that’s all. About what they’re doing to him.”

She sighed.

“Any other girl in this hospital I might not believe. But you. I don’t think you even know why what you’ve done is so wrong.”

“I only want to know what they’re doing to him. He says it hurts.”

She looked surprised now.

“He doesn’t say anything that isn’t nonsense.”

“He makes sense to me,” I said. “He says when they put the wires to his head, he sees things as if they’ve already happened.”

“He says what?”

Her voice had softened.

“Yes,” I said, encouraged. “Why do you think that is? What are they trying to do?”

“They’re trying to make him better,” she said.

“But it hurts him. Why are they doing it?”

“He’s your father, why don’t you ask him?”

“Please,” I said. “You don’t understand. I need to know. Things have been happening to me that I . . .”

“What things?”

I hesitated, but couldn’t help myself.

“I see things,” I said. “I see things before they happen.”

She took a step backward, and flicked off the light.

“I think you’d better get back to work,” she said, her voice sharp and thin. “Don’t you?”

72

When I got home there was pandemonium in the house. I could hear Mother in the kitchen, almost wailing at Father.

They stopped talking the moment I came in.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Mother hurried past me, her hand to her mouth.

I saw a letter on the table.

“What is it?”

Father put up his hand.

“Edgar’s been wounded. Don’t worry,” he added. “He’s fine.”

“Father?”

“Yes, he’s fine. He couldn’t write that if he wasn’t, could he?”

“What happened?”

“Not sure,” he said, shaking his head. “But it’s just a scratch. He spent a few days in hospital in Boulogne, in the middle of November. He’s back with his battalion now. Fighting fit!”

“But what happened?”

“That’s enough, Alexandra! Do you not realize you upset your mother with all your questions?”

That seemed unfair. Mother was already upset before I got home, and had already left the room. But I knew not to say anything more while Father was in that kind of mood.

I looked at the letter. Edgar’s letter from France, lying on the kitchen table. I wanted to read it, but Father picked it up and left the room.

I followed him, and as he went into his study I made my way upstairs, pausing just long enough to see him put the letter in the drawer of his writing desk. Then I found Molly and asked her to bring me something to eat in my room. I went up to bed.

71

Molly brought me soup and some bread. I ate it slowly, thoughtfully, thinking things through.

My eyes fell on Miss Garrett’s book. I hadn’t looked at it for ages. I picked it up and flicked through it. Cassandra. Her name leapt out at me from page after page. Daughter of King Priam of Troy. She was given the gift of prophecy by Apollo, but because she refused to sleep with him in return, he cursed her gift, making sure that no one would ever believe her. She ended her life telling of the doom of Troy, but still no one believed her. It didn’t matter in the end, because everything she saw happened anyway, including her own death. Taken captive by Agamemnon, spirited away from Troy to Argos, she was slain by Agamemnon’s jealous wife.

Perhaps she went crazy waiting for someone to believe her at last, to take notice of her, to let her help.

And did she gaze out on a view of the sea like I do? Maybe she did, dreading the conflict that was to come across the water. Did she feel alone, as I do? Maybe she looked at her reflection, trying to see what was different about her, trying to understand her gift.

A gift, or a curse? I knew which I thought it was. The book trembled in my hand. I shut it before my tears ruined something which I’d promised to take good care of.

After Mother and Father had gone to bed I went back down to the study. On Father’s desk is a green-shaded reading lamp. I put the lamp on and began to open the small drawers in the back of the desk.

Edgar’s letter was easy to find. I could smell it almost before I saw it. It smelled of cold air, of damp, of earth, of smoke. It was only a few weeks old and yet looked as though it had seen more history than most of us will see in our whole lives.

I have the letter in front of me now.

At the top, in Edgar’s handwriting, it says:
No. 14 Stationary
Hospital, Boulogne. 13th November.

It’s taken over three weeks for the letter to get here. It’s very short. He must have been exhausted while he was in hospital, and unable to write much.

Dear Family,

I am well, but I must tell you I have received a small injury
which has put me in hospital. Don’t worry, though, it is
nothing serious. A shell exploded near our dugout, and I
took a small piece in my chest. I will be back in action soon.

I send you my best wishes,

Your Edgar

I thought I might feel something from the letter, that I might see something while holding it, but nothing happened. And I had had no inkling of Edgar’s injury, though it happened weeks ago. I had not suspected a thing. So this curse I have cannot even be relied upon to be consistent. To actually be of some use.

But I wonder why the letter smells of the battlefield, when it was written from hospital. Maybe I can sense something of Edgar from it, after all.

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