Promise Me This (38 page)

Connie turned her head from side to side and rolled her shoulders to her ears, listening appreciatively to the gentle cracking sounds her body made.
Thank You, Lord, that I have this bone-weary body—my neck, my back, my shoulders and arms—to feel this pain. Thank You for the strain in my legs and for varicose veins and for my aching arches—thank You that I have two legs and two feet!

Long night shifts in the mortal-wound ward of London General effected more thanksgiving in Connie than all her years of Sundays spent in church.

Connie climbed the stairs to her room, threw her woolen cape and starched cap over the vanity stool, and collapsed across her bed. She did not bother to remove her black shoes or stockings or to wash her face. She did not care that she had crumpled her once-white collar, cuffs, and apron. The entire uniform was stained with blood and vomit; it would have to be washed and blued.

“Will you be wanting tea, miss?” Tilly’s bright voice spoke through the doorway. But Connie was too tired to form the words to reply. Tea could wait until she had slept—for hours, if only her mother would leave her alone and not fuss about the lateness of her working schedule or the state of her hair or hands or the dark circles beneath her eyes—all of which was as much the uniform of a VAD as was her clothing.

Thank You that Mother and Father are out. I don’t think I could stand another round of interrogation.

“Miss?”

“Not now, Tilly. Please, just let me sleep.”

“Yes, miss, as you say.” Tilly pulled the door closed and Connie fell immediately asleep.

It seemed no time at all had passed when Tilly tapped again on her bedchamber door. “Begging your pardon, Miss Constance. . . . Miss Constance?”

Connie turned over in bed, pulling the pillow over her ears.
Perhaps if I don’t answer, she’ll go away!
But it was no use.

“Miss Constance?” Tilly stood by the bed, anxiously wringing her hands.

“What is it, Tilly?”

“A visitor, miss—and Mr. and Mrs. Sprague have gone out.”

“I am not up to seeing anyone. Ask whoever it is to leave their card. Tell them I’ve worked through the night at hospital.”

“But, miss—”

“There’s a war on, Tilly! I’m certain they will understand.”

“I tried to tell him to go away and come again tomorrow, when the mister and missus are here, but he says he’s come for Miss Annie—all the way from America—and says he won’t leave till he’s talked with Mr. or Mrs. Sprague. Whatever shall I tell him, miss?” she asked. “I don’t know what I’m to say.”

Connie stared at the ceiling.
It can’t be.
“Did he give his name?”

“Michael Dunnagan, miss.”

Connie sprang from her bed, then stopped abruptly in the center of the room, desperate to clear her head. She needed a moment to think, but Tilly kept standing there, infernally wringing her hands.

Connie crept through her door, knelt by the upstairs banister, and peeked, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fabled Irish waif turned American gardener and the author of the silver-tongued letters that she had teased Annie about for months.

Why Annie had not written the dashing young Irishman that she’d left the Sprague household, Connie could hardly imagine. What she would tell Michael about Annie’s whereabouts, she could imagine less.

At that moment the dark-haired stranger turned and found Connie staring through the rails of the banister. Connie felt her face flame to the roots of her unkempt hair. Undone by the blue lights in the bright eyes that stared through her, she stood, lifted her chin, and walked down the stairs with as much dignity as she could retrieve in her crooked stockings and a stained and crumpled VAD uniform.

All Michael saw was another Englishwoman in uniform. Every humiliation, every limitation of his poor Belfast childhood cast a wide divide between his spit-polished brogans and the now-familiar and chastising uniform of this highborn lady—even though she looked rather like she had been to the war herself.

The young woman stopped short on the bottom step, tilted her head, placed her hand on her hip, and quipped, “Not who you’re looking for, Mr. Dunnagan?”

Michael stammered apologies. “No, mum! I mean, I beg your pardon, mum. I’m looking for Annie Allen.”

The haughty line of the woman’s mouth melted into a lopsided smile. “No doubt.” She stepped down and reached out her hand to him. “I am Connie Sprague, Annie’s friend.”

Michael inclined his head and took Connie’s hand. “How do you do, miss? I’m Michael Dunnagan, from New—”

“Jersey!” Connie finished. “Annie told us all about you.”

“She’s here, then?” Hope sprang, a thing alive, in Michael’s face. “Annie’s here!”

“No,” Connie countered. “You did know that? This is not some horrid surprise, is it?”

“No, Miss Sprague, I mean—”

“Please, call me Connie. I’m as good as Annie’s sister.”

“Thank you, Miss—Connie,” Michael stammered, not used to speaking to young women, especially young Englishwomen. “I wrote Miss Annie in the early summer, telling her I was coming—that I was hoping to come in the new year. She was expecting me; she said that Mr. and Mrs. Sprague were expecting me.”

“But Father wrote Annie’s aunt that she’s gone—I am quite certain.”

“Yes, mum. But we thought—Aunt Maggie and I thought—that I should come and talk with Annie, that I should urge her to come home with me.”

“Urge her to cross the Atlantic? Now? You can’t be serious!” Connie shook her head. “You’ve come all this way—by ship—when it’s not safe to travel.” She hesitated. “Oh, you should not have come!”

Michael stood firm.

“No, I don’t mean you should not have come to England, but you should have waited; you should have written Father directly before you came.” Connie frowned, clearly flustered and short for words. “I don’t know how to tell you this, Michael.” She stopped again. “Annie left—just before her birthday. We’ve heard no word from her since . . .”

Michael nodded.

But Connie rushed on. “And—oh, this is beastly—we don’t know what has become of her.”

Michael felt a great chasm in the floor open wide, though his brogans remained planted to the tiles. “Mr. Sprague wrote that he has seen her and that she is well,” he argued.

“Yes, that was so—originally.”

“Originally?”

“Father thinks that Miss Hargrave may have in some way coerced Annie to leave her house.”

“Then where—?”

“To leave London.”

Michael felt the world spinning. He looked down and found Connie’s hand on his arm, guiding him into a drawing room off the foyer, pushing him gently to a chair. From a great distance he heard her talking about her father and Annie’s aunt Eleanor.

He tried to concentrate on Connie’s details of the birthday conference and the plan to set up hospital and convalescent wards in Hargrave House, and of Eleanor Hargrave’s insistence that Annie run the entire operation, despite her youth and inexperience. He’d heard all of that before from Mr. Sprague’s letters.

“But Annie has disappeared.”

Michael reflexively reached for a mass of his own dark curls and pulled hard, as if that could make the entire crazy picture right itself. “She can’t—”

“She’s simply gone missing.” Connie’s hands spread wide. She stood and began to pace. “Her aunt Eleanor was true to her word about fixing up the house. The moment Annie moved in, so did a lorry full of workmen—as if they’d been waiting in the wings. They worked night and day, and no expense was spared; they finished the hospital renovations in less than a fortnight.

“Two days later a team of doctors and nurses arrived and then the first group of patients—all BEF casualties and convalescents at first, just as her aunt had promised.” Connie sat down. “Only, gradually, the cases became more and more severe. Men whose faces or limbs or both had been blown away, gangrene victims needing amputations, gas victims—everything! They should never have been placed in a private home, even if it is a hospital ward, even if they have one of the best surgeons anywhere!”

Michael sucked in his breath, remembering the half men—more breathing corpses than wounded men—carried from the ships on stretchers, lining the docks of Southampton.

“Our hospitals are overflowing, so large private homes are in demand. But Annie is too young to manage such a hospital. She was run off her feet from morning till night—and the most gruesome cases you could ever imagine. Father had seen Annie, though he was not permitted to speak to her. He said she’s lost weight—and she had none to lose. After the incoming cases grew so much worse, her nerves frayed. She began having nightmares.”

Michael blinked hard, about to speak, but Connie rushed on.

“She could not bear it. I know because I forced myself through the back door one day. She had refused to see me. She did not answer my letters. She would not take my telephone calls.” Connie leaned forward. “I was terribly frightened for her. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“But you saw her?”

“I did.” Connie frowned. “She looked as though she had aged ten years and could barely keep on her feet. She told me what I’ve told you and said that, if she could get away, she would meet me in two days at her brother’s grave in Bunhill Fields cemetery.” She seemed to realize that might sound odd to a stranger. “She would often go there, to sit and—”

But Michael waved her explanation away. “Owen’s grave.” The image formed a clamp round his heart, but he was not unfamiliar with Annie’s ways. “And then you saw her? What did she say? Did she say why she—?”

“That’s just it—she never came. I waited for two hours, in case she’d had trouble getting away. But she did not come, and she sent no word.” Connie sat back. “So I went to the house again, and Jamison, her old butler and friend, answered the kitchen door.”

“And so?”

“And so, Jamison said that she had gone—left just hours before, in the middle of the night—and that Miss Hargrave would only say that she’s gone to do her duty and that he was to speak of it to no one.”

“Her duty?” Michael nearly pleaded. “What does that mean?”

But Connie was already shaking her head, tears trickling down her cheeks. “I’ve no idea, Michael. I’ve no idea. But I’m terribly frightened for her. This was a week ago, and no one has heard anything from her. It is not in character for Annie. She isn’t brave in the sense of running off for new adventures. She loves the tried and true. She loves being home and settled.” Connie leaned forward again. “She was mad with joy that you were coming to London. She wanted nothing more in all the world than to go to you and her aunt Maggie in America. She was desperate for the war to end so she could do just that. She would never have run off on her own.”

“The police—the constable—” Michael stammered, unable to make his mouth do his will.

“Father has tried everything—everyone, everywhere—to find what has happened. He’s at Hargrave House now, since early this morning, with the magistrate and an investigator, demanding an explanation.”

Michael stood, not knowing what to say, to think, to do, frantic to do something.

The front door opened and closed. Connie sprang to her feet. “Father!”

The slump-shouldered man standing in the foyer looked far older than the man Annie had described in her letters, and Michael wondered if there was some mistake.

“What did the witch say, Father?” Connie demanded. “What did you learn?”

Mr. Sprague, gray faced and weary, glanced up. He did not seem to see the stricken young man standing behind his daughter. “She’s dead. Eleanor Hargrave is dead.”

“I don’t care about Eleanor Hargrave! Father, where is Annie?” Connie begged. “Did she tell what has happened to Annie!”

“France,” Mr. Sprague replied quietly, his voice ragged and hollow. “She has gone to the front . . . to nurse in France.”

Pale-faced nurses, sick from the sea-tossed ship’s zigzagging attempts to avoid German torpedoes, held tight their cloaks and kits against the fierce February wind as they made their way along the docks in Boulogne.

Already Annie knew to avoid Matron Artrip—a younger, vigorous form of her aunt Eleanor and a veritable sergeant major all rolled into sister’s garb.