A Duty to the Dead (5 page)

If you wish to make an impression, my dear, wear the blue gown.

As always, she was right. The blue gown suited this house very well.

There was a fire on the hearth of the room I was taken to, and warm water in the pitcher on the stand. I washed my face and hands, then changed my clothes. I was just tidying my hair when Susan came to collect me.

We went down to a dining room where only one end of the long table had been set. A woman was standing near it, waiting for me. Arthur’s mother.

She was not at all as I’d pictured her in my mind. Somehow the words “I did it for Mother’s sake” had prepared me for someone small and fragile and perhaps more than a little domineering.

Instead she was younger than I’d expected, and tall, with graying dark hair, blue eyes, and a confident carriage that spoke of years of managing her family on her own after her husband’s death. I looked for any resemblance to her son and decided it was in the height, the dark hair, the strong chin.

She greeted me with a warm smile of welcome, but I knew very well she’d been examining me even as I examined her.

“Hello, my dear! Robert tells me you came close to a nasty fall. Are you all right? Should I send for Dr. Philips?”

“No harm done,” I said lightly. “Thank you for asking.”

Her eyes were searching my face. “You knew Arthur well, did you?”

I’d met that look before, from mothers and sisters and wives wanting to know how their dear boy had gone to his death, wanting some crumb of comfort and love to fill the emptiness that lay ahead of them.

“He was very brave,” I said. “When he was wounded, he took it well. I often read to him and a few of the others, when I had time.
Or wrote letters for them. I wrote his last one to you. He couldn’t hold a pen, you see, and he wanted desperately to tell you how much he cared.”

“Yes, I’ve cherished that letter. A fine young man. I think in many ways he was my favorite. Though a mother shouldn’t say that, should she?”

“He was a man any mother could be proud of,” I answered with sincerity, though I had said it many times in many letters to women I would never meet.

“Yes. Yes, he was.” Remembering her manners, she said, “Please, sit here by me. Jonathan will be down before long. He’s here on convalescent leave.”

“Arthur told me he had three brothers. Are they all in the Army?”

Her face clouded. “Timothy isn’t serving—he wasn’t allowed to join the army, you know. He was born with a clubfoot, and although he walks very well, he was considered unsuitable. He feels rather cut up about that, with everyone else enlisting or already at the Front.”

“I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be! To tell you the truth, it’s one less worry for me. I’ve suffered enough with Arthur and Johnnie.”

Before she could tell me about the last son, Jonathan walked in. I knew him at once because of his wound. He was a paler version of Arthur, his hair a lighter brown, his eyes a less vibrant shade of blue.

He had a terrible scar across his face. Shrapnel, at a guess. It was still half covered by bandages, but I could see where the wound began high on his forehead near the hairline, and then the last thin line of it passing down his jaw and back to his chin. His mother made the introductions, and he shook my hand.

“Where were you wounded?” I asked before I thought. But I was used to talking to bandaged men, and more often than not they wanted it known where they had served.

“Mons,” he said shortly, and went to kiss his mother’s cheek. She turned to him with a softness that spoke of her love for him, and I glanced away. It was such a private moment, and touching.

Another man, leaning on his cane, came in at that moment. He was fairer than either of his brothers, with gray-blue eyes.

Again I was introduced, this time to Timothy, and he said at once, “Mother tells me you knew Arthur?”

“I was his nurse for some time, yes.”

He nodded. “We were grateful for your letter afterward. It’s hard to think of him dying so far away. We expect him to walk through the door any day, smiling, calling to one of us.”

They spoke of Arthur with such warmth, almost as if he were still alive.

It occurred to me that under different circumstances, I might have been brought here after the war, Arthur’s arm linked with mine as he presented me to his family. What would they have thought of me, then? Not as Florence Nightingale, who had nursed their brother, but as someone who mattered to him? Arthur had asked me to marry him, before he lost his leg. He’d been in high spirits after the doctor moved him from guarded to satisfactory condition, believing he’d heal now. I’d smiled and lightly given my usual response to impetuous proposals. “You must speak to my father first. He outranks you, you see.”

It hadn’t put him off, as I’d expected. On the contrary, he’d wanted to write to the Colonel directly, but nothing more had been said about that after the amputation.

Susan appeared with the first course as we were sitting down. As she served us, we talked about people we might know in common, about London, about the sinking of
Britannic.
I found myself thinking that this was a family like so many others in Britain tonight, trying to pretend that life was going on as it had before, despite the empty chair at the table and the shadow hanging over Jonathan’s future.

The door opened again, and I thought that the third son must be making his appearance at last, but it was an older man who stepped into the room and nodded to Mrs. Graham. He was tall, with broad shoulders and a barrel chest, a handsome man with thick fair hair that was graying. I realized all at once that this was Robert. I hadn’t seen him clearly in the dark, muffled as he was in scarves, his hat pulled down against the wind.

There was an air of impatience about him, and his manner was very different from that of the man in the cart.

Hardly a servant,
was my first thought. Yet he’d been sent to fetch me.

“If you need me, I’ll be in my room,” he said, and was gone.

Mrs. Graham turned to me. “I don’t know if Arthur told you about Robert. He’s a Douglas, a cousin on my father’s side. He was such a blessing to us when my husband died. There was no one to take my sons in hand, and Robert saw to it that they were given the opportunities my husband would have wished. Robert taught them to ride and to shoot and to be men.”

Arthur had said nothing at all about him. But I made polite noises, and she turned to another subject, the journey from Somerset.

I could see that I wouldn’t have an opportunity tonight to speak to Jonathan privately.
Tomorrow,
I thought,
would be best.
I had the feeling as the evening wore on that Arthur’s mother was anxious, as if she’d wanted me to come here and, now that I was under her roof, wasn’t certain how to entertain me. She was often silent as Jonathan and Timothy talked to me about the war, and I tried several times to change the subject for her sake.

We finished our meal and went into the parlor where the tea tray had been taken. After another hour or more of polite conversation, I excused myself, saying that the journey had been tiring, and went up to bed.

I carried with me the picture of a close family still grieving for their loss.

In the morning, Susan tapped lightly on my door and took me down to the dining room where breakfast was waiting.

Jonathan and Timothy must have come and gone, judging from two empty cups and saucers on the table. Mrs. Graham was just helping herself to a dish of eggs from the sideboard.

I filled my own plate and sat down, taking up my cup. Mornings aren’t my best time, and I let the tea flow through me, waking me up. Mrs. Graham was cheerful and the conversation general until we’d finished eating.

And then she said, setting her knife and fork across her plate, “You have a message, you said. From Arthur.”

I set down my knife and fork as well, though I hadn’t finished eating. “The message is for Jonathan, Mrs. Graham. Though Arthur sent you his dearest love.”

“Yes, I understand. But surely you could share it with me?”

“I’m—I’m not sure that was what Arthur wished me to do. But I think Jonathan should be the one to answer that.”

She was frowning at me, her back straight, her shoulders squared, as if bracing herself for an argument. And then she relaxed.

“Of course. You’re right, my dear. It’s just that I’m hungry for any crumb of comfort. You can’t imagine what it is like to know your child is buried at sea in a foreign place, and will never come home again. I haven’t been able to believe he’s gone forever. I tell myself, and then I slip into the habit of putting it out of my mind.”

I thought she was cajoling me. But I was saved from an answer when Jonathan came into the room and said, “Miss Crawford? If you’ve finished your breakfast, perhaps you’d like to see the memorial to Arthur in the church.”

“Yes,” I said—not too quickly, I fervently hoped. But my relief must have been plain on my face. “I would like that.”

“I’ll ask Susan to fetch your cloak, while you finish your toast.”

“Thank you.”

While Mrs. Graham watched with a mixture of frustration and worry, I drained my cup and rose to leave the room.

As I reached the door, she said, “Forgive me for pressing, won’t you?”

“Yes, of course, I’m sorry to have made you uncomfortable.”

And I was gone, hurrying to the hall, where Susan was just bringing down my cloak. Jonathan was standing there, his face unreadable, but one hand was clenching and unclenching, as if he dreaded what was to come.

I wondered fleetingly if he already knew about the girl…or was she merely a figment of my own runaway imagination? I was beginning to think she was. Certainly Susan, who must have been closer to forty than thirty, wasn’t a likely candidate for Arthur’s affections.

We went down the front steps and turned toward the churchyard. The wind had dropped, and the air was crisp. I said, as we walked, “I’m afraid I’ve upset your mother. But Arthur was still very much in command of his faculties when he asked me to speak directly to you. I don’t think he intended—” I broke off.

“We were close,” Jonathan said, but somehow I hadn’t got that impression from Arthur. He’d not spoken of his brothers except in passing. I knew very little about any of them.

We opened the iron gate and walked through it into the churchyard, my boots crunching in the cold, dead grass. Above us the golden stone of the church apse led the eye upward to the pinnacles gracing the top. Against the blue-gray sky, they stood out like sentinels.

The church door was not locked, and we went inside, where the cold stone seemed to hold on to the stormy chill of last night. I pulled my cloak around me as Jonathan led me to the brass plaque that had been set in the wall between two windows. The stained glass spilled color onto the floor at my feet, and I looked up to the figures of saints high above my head before I could bring myself to look directly at Arthur’s memorial.

He was gone.

There was a finality to that as I read the name and dates engraved
into the brass. Beneath them were the words
Beloved son and brother
in graceful script.

I very much wanted to reach out and touch it. But not with Jonathan there.

I had not been at the service when his body was committed to the sea. I had been standing in the operating theater fighting to save another life. I had felt the ship slow, then resume her speed, and not allowed myself to think why.

I swallowed my tears and said as steadily as I could, “He would have been pleased.”

“Yes.”

We turned away without another word and walked back into the sunlight. Standing in the shadows of the west door, Jonathan said, “I expect I’ll be as ready now as I ever will be. What was it Arthur entrusted to you to say to me?”

I
TURNED AWAY
, looking at the gleaming white walls of the rectory in their black framework, the tiny panes of glass set into the windows like small diamonds glittering in the morning sun.

“Go on.” There was impatience beneath the urging.

I took several seconds to think. To wonder if I’d done the right thing in coming here. The message seemed different suddenly. Futile, and somehow infringing on something I didn’t understand.

I tried to set the stage, so that Jonathan Graham could see what I had seen. “He had finished his medicines, and he took my hand, pulling me closer. I thought at first that he was having difficulty seeing me, but it was only to drop his voice so that no one else could hear him. He asked me if I’d carry a message to his brother for him. It was very brief, I had no difficulty remembering it. ‘Tell Jonathan I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right.’ And afterward, he made me promise to deliver the message to you in person.”

He was watching me, his gaze intent.

“Tell Jonathan I lied. I did it for Mother’s sake. But it has to be set right.”

“Yes, exactly as he told me.”

“And what did you make of his request?”

I could feel my face flushing. I could hardly say what had gone
through my mind over the weeks that had passed. It would have sounded presumptuous even to hint at it. I answered only, “I don’t know, Lieutenant Graham. I’d hoped you would.”

“And he didn’t explain to you what it was he was trying to convey?”

“No. To be frank, I don’t think he would have said anything at all, if he hadn’t realized he was dying. But something was preying on his mind, I could see that. And it was disturbing enough for him to try to do something about it while he could still speak.”

“Then why not write it in your letter?”

“I don’t know,” I said again. “It was almost as if—” I stopped.

“As if what?”

“It was almost as if
he
hadn’t wanted to put it in writing. He was insistent that I come to you personally.”

“But Arthur has been dead some months. If it were a pressing matter, surely it would have been better to come here at once?”

I prevaricated. “You were in France, Lieutenant Graham. And there were my duties as well. And this—” I indicated my arm.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking.” He continued to stare at me, but his mind was elsewhere. Then he said again, “And that’s all of the message? You’re quite sure?”

“Yes. I’ve given it word for word.”

“Thank you, Miss Crawford. It was kind of you to carry out my brother’s wishes. But I think you liked him, a little. Is that true?”

“He was a very likable man,” I answered honestly. “Very popular with the men and with the nursing staff.”

“And he said nothing about this matter until he was—dying?”

“To my knowledge, no. None of the other nurses told me anything about promises.”

“But then you didn’t tell them, either, did you.”

“No.”

“Why do you think he chose you?”

I knew I was pink again. “Because I took the time to be with him
during his last hours. I assure you, he wasn’t the only one I watched over or read to—or wrote letters for. It’s hard to explain, Lieutenant Graham, but when you are sitting by a wounded man and he’s telling you what to say to his mother or his wife or his sweetheart, there’s an intimacy that can’t be avoided. I have had men say things to me that were terribly personal, messages to their wives that they would never have shared in any other circumstance.” I paused. “It’s almost as if I’m not there, they’re simply talking aloud. But I hear these things and try not to listen at the same time. If you understand what I’m saying.”

Jonathan Graham nodded. “Yes, I’ve asked the nursing sisters to write letters for me, when the bandaging covered my eyes.” After a moment he roused himself from whatever thoughts were distracting him, and said again, “Thank you. It was a great kindness. I hope you’ll consider staying the weekend. I think my mother would be grateful if you could.”

“I don’t wish to impose—”

“It’s no imposition. She would take it as a great favor.”

We walked on, the wintry sun trying to peer through the bare trees.

“Have you been to Owlhurst before, Miss Crawford?”

“No, it’s my first visit to this part of Kent.”

“We were once famous for our owls. On the far side of the churchyard there’s what’s left of the great expanse of wood that covered much of Kent in the distant past, an almost impenetrable forest. When my parents were first married, I’m told they could walk through it of an evening and count two or three species of owl calling in the dusk. I daresay they’re still there, those owls. I like to think of the continuity of life here. It helps, a little, in the trenches.”

“I remember Arthur saying something about them. He could never find where they nested.”

Jonathan smiled. “That was Arthur for you. Always trying to get to the bottom of things. My mother will tell you he was a very clever
child, interested in science but with a leaning toward the law. I expect he’d have become a solicitor but for the war.”

I said nothing. Arthur had told me that he had turned away from the law as a profession. I tried to remember his words.

“There’s evil in goodness and goodness in evil,”
he’d said.
“I’ve seen too much of the evil in the law to be comfortable with it.”

“What would you like to do, then, when the war is over?”

“I think I’d like to grow coffee in East Africa. Somewhere new where I could start over.”

“Why should you wish to start over?”

“Because there would be no memories of the past infringing on the present.”

I’d thought he meant memories of the war. Now I wondered.

“Lieutenant Graham, I’d like very much to ask you a question. Though you needn’t answer if you don’t wish to.”

“Of course. What is it?”

“Can you right this wrong for your brother? Is it in your power?”

“Why should you doubt me?” His voice was cold.

“It isn’t doubting you so much as wanting to believe that his faith in both of us wasn’t misplaced. I saw his distress. This was on his conscience, if you will. He was helpless to rectify what lay in the past. But he thought you might be able to do that for him. I’d like to leave here with the feeling that Arthur will rest easier now.”

“Your sense of duty does you credit, Miss Crawford. You can rely on me to see to it that Arthur’s last wishes are treated with the greatest respect.”

“Indeed. Thank you, Lieutenant.”

We made our way back to the house in silence, and I tried to tell myself that I had faithfully kept my promise. There was, after all, nothing more I could do or say. And if Arthur had trusted his brother, I must believe he knew he could.

Then why did I have this feeling that treating Arthur’s last wishes with the greatest respect wasn’t the same as promising to carry them out?

I could almost hear the Colonel Sahib’s voice: Walk away,
Bess. If Arthur had wanted more from you, he’d have told you more.

The question really was, would
Arthur
have felt satisfied?

Well, to be fair, it was possible that Jonathan Graham knew what it was Arthur wanted but not how to go about it. After all, he’d had only a matter of minutes to digest my message.

Who are you to talk?
my conscience demanded.
After leaving your duty to the eleventh hour. What would you have done, my lass, if Lieutenant Graham had died of his own wounds?

I sighed as we walked through the door and would have liked to go directly to my room for a bit.

But Mrs. Graham was standing there waiting for us, as if she’d watched our progress from a window, and she rushed me into the sitting room the instant I’d handed my cloak over to Susan.

“You must be freezing, my child. Come and sit by the fire. Would you like something warm to drink?”

“No, I’m fine, Mrs. Graham, thank you.”

“You saw the memorial?”

“It was—touching,” I said, trying to think how to answer.

“Yes. I think he’d have been glad of it.”

Jonathan had gone to some other part of the house, and I wondered if he would tell his mother any or all of that message. Or what he would tell her. I was just grateful now that she hadn’t brought up the subject again.

After lunch, she asked if I’d care to walk around the village. “For the sun is stronger now, and it will be more comfortable.”

It was the last thing I wanted. The cold, after the Mediterranean Sea, was penetrating. My arm preferred to sit by the fire. But I smiled and said that I would, and she sent me up for my coat.

Muffled once more in scarf and gloves, I followed her down the lane and into the churchyard. I thought at first she was going to take me back to see the memorial.

Instead we walked a little way among the gravestones, and I could admire the lovely mellowed stone of the church above us. Its
air of age was comforting, like an anchor—or a rock—that spoke of centuries past and centuries to come.

Neither of us mentioned the raw graves marking where men had come home to die. Arthur might have been among them, if his leg had waited another few weeks to turn septic.

In the sea there were no markers for the dead. No place in the deep to mourn, no place to leave flowers. Just degrees of latitude and longitude on a chart.

Mrs. Graham nodded toward the rectory. “We have a new rector now. And a new doctor. Times are changing. But then nothing stays the same forever, does it? Even one’s children grow up and go off to die.”

“You’re worried for Jonathan,” I said.

“Dr. Philips tells me the bandages will be off in another fortnight. After that, it will be a matter of days before his orders come.” I could hear the pain in her voice and for once was thankful that my own mother had not had a son.

“They’re in desperate need of men,” I said.

It was not what she wanted to hear.

She gave me a sharp glance and didn’t answer. We walked on down the street, where brick houses lined the road. One of them, set back a little, was covered in what would be honeysuckle and roses in summer. Their bare branches arched across the front of the house, trembling in the wind.

Mrs. Graham caught the direction of my interest and said, “That’s the doctor’s surgery. And just down there is the house that Arthur would have had, if he’d lived. It’s part of our property, going to the eldest son on his marriage. There’s a caretaker now, one of my school friends who fled London at the start of the war. She was that certain the Kaiser would sail up the Thames before she could pack her boxes.”

It was a handsome house, with a front garden set off by a low wall and a cat curled on the doorstep, waiting to be let in. I smiled
without realizing it, and she said, “Yes, the cat goes with the house. It or its ancestors have always lived there. Arthur was fond of cats, did you know?”

But he hadn’t said anything to me about cats or dogs. I would have replied, if anyone had asked me, that we’d spoken of everything under the sun. I realized now that “everything” hadn’t included his childhood or his family. How much had I told him about the Colonel? I couldn’t remember…. We’d lived in the present. It turned out to be all there was, though he’d wanted a future.

At the next corner, where a row of shops began, we paused. “Did you know this was once a famous smuggling area? Goods were brought up from the coast and hidden wherever the Hawkhurst Gang believed they were safe. There’s a hotel now where the inn stood—it provided the horses and wagons for the smuggled goods, and the story has come down that an underground passage ran between The Rose and Thorn and the church. We couldn’t find Arthur and his brothers one afternoon—he must have been twelve or thirteen at the time. We finally discovered them in the church, searching for the secret door to the tunnel. I had to explain to them that nearly every village with a smuggling past has such stories of underground passages. They were sorely disappointed.”

I smiled as we turned back the way we’d come. “It was probably a story the smugglers themselves invented to keep Customs officials busy searching in the wrong places.”

A little silence fell. I could sense that Mrs. Graham was on the point of asking me about what I’d told Jonathan, and I was bracing myself to meet her pleas. I was grateful when a young man came out of one of the other houses we’d just passed and called a greeting to her, heavy with relief.

“Just the person I was after. Could I borrow your Susan, Mrs. Graham? I’ve got an emergency on my hands, and Betsy is with Mrs. Booth, awaiting the baby.” He caught up with us, nearly out of breath and flushed with worry.

“Certainly not,” Mrs. Graham answered him. “We have a guest at present, and Susan is indispensable.” She turned to me, her face stiff with disapproval. “Miss Crawford, this rude young man is Dr. Philips.”

“My pleasure, Miss Crawford. And my apologies. But I’m shorthanded, and there’s little time for polite exchanges—”

I interrupted him. “I’m a trained nurse,” I said. “Can I help in any way?”

The doctor stopped short. “Are you indeed? Oh, thank God. Will you come with me?” He hesitated. “You aren’t put off by swearing, are you?”

“Not at all.”

“Then I must take her, Mrs. Graham, and return her to you later in the day. Forgive me, but it’s urgent.”

Mrs. Graham wanted no part of this arrangement. She said, “Dr. Philips. Miss Crawford will not accompany you. You may have Susan—under protest—but you must make certain she’s back in time to serve our luncheon.”

He glanced at me and then said, “Miss Crawford volunteered, I believe. I’ll have her back to you, no harm done, as soon as possible. Come along, there’s no time to waste.”

“Dr. Philips—” Mrs. Graham was indignant.

“It’s quite all right, Mrs. Graham. I have a duty to help. Forgive me, but I must go.” I could see the anger in her eyes. I’d disappointed her in some way, but there was nothing I could do about it now. “Dr. Philips?”

He touched his nonexistent hat to her, then took my arm and led me away, his strides twice the length of mine.