Silence for the Dead (15 page)

“You're talking blackmail,” he said softly.

“No. I've never blackmailed anyone in my life, and I don't intend to start. I'm talking about knowledge, Jack. In order to win, you just have to know more than your opponent does. I've told enough lies to know. I've been at a disadvantage since the day I came here. I need to get ahead. Digging up secrets may not be the means for my leaving. It may be the key for me to stay.”

There was a silence between us. I couldn't read Jack's face in the gloom, but he looked at me for a long moment, and when he spoke, his tone was almost admiring. “I can't tell if that's brave,” he said, “or just coldhearted.”

It stung, but I put on my best bravado. “Coldhearted or dead, Jack,” I said. “Everyone has to choose sometime.”

E
ven among the mad, life at Portis House had a routine. Meals were served at exact times; morning awakening and evening curfew were strictly observed. The time between was a simple rhythm of rest, exercise, walks in the garden, reading, napping, or just staring out the window. Many of the men seemed barely to notice one another. Very few appeared to be friends. Perhaps that was strange, but I understood it, as did the other nurses. A man fighting for his sanity had the energy only for the simple tasks of his daily life. Friendship was a luxury.

I had thought the routines pointless at first, but it didn't take me long to see they were not only valuable; they were very nearly the stuff of life. That a man's soup was ten minutes late could upset him; that it rained during the time of his usual walk could send him into a black despondence. As the patients traveled through their weary, sometimes painful days, we nurses and orderlies worked day and night in the background, our own routines never stopping. One man couldn't abide a single hair in his basin; another pulled his blankets to the floor every night and slept in the corner as if he were still in a trench, leaving us with bundled linens soaked in sweat.

Florence Nightingale had dealt with fevers, poultices, broken limbs, festering wounds. I wondered what she would have thought of the nurses on her ward tending to a man whose only illness was that he'd completely forgotten he'd been in a war at all.

I rotated back onto the day shift. There were no more nightmares on my watch; I counted linens. Jack Yates stayed in his room and I stayed out of it. I wrote a terse account of the assault by Archie and submitted it in my nightly report to Matron. I heard nothing about it, nor about discipline for breaking the rules about fraternizing with patients yet again.

After that first night, Archie was not in his room. When I was back on the day shift, Boney told me he was in the infirmary again.

“You may as well take his supper to him,” she said, handing me a tray and staring at the bruises on my neck in a way I'm sure she thought was discreet. “You'll have to see him sometime.”

“Is he in there because of me?”

She shrugged. “Matron's order. It's either that or the isolation room. He's been quiet, so he's in the infirmary.”

“Fine,” I said, and took the tray down the corridor toward the stairs. I didn't want her looking at my neck anymore.

Archie was curled on his side in bed, his thin body barely making an impression under the covers. His eyes were closed, though I knew he wasn't asleep; they stayed closed as I brought in the tray and set it on the bedside table.

“They've put your soup in a bowl again,” I said. “I've told them to put it in a mug, but they don't listen.”

There was a sound from the bed, and I turned to find him looking at me.

“Expected someone else, did you?” I said.

He stared at the marks on my neck, his expression one of stark horror. “Kit-Kitty—”

“Don't,” I said. I dumped his tea into the sink, rinsed the cup, and began to carefully transfer the soup. “Don't say it. Don't apologize. There's nothing to apologize for.”

I kept my eyes on the soup. I couldn't look at him. I could hear his breathing, heavy and harsh.

“I'm s-s—,” he tried.

I gritted my teeth, focused on not spilling the soup. “Archie, stop.”

“I'm so s-s—”

I turned my back and took the empty soup bowl to the sink. I would rinse it before I took it back to the kitchen. I may as well.

“Kitty,” he said again behind me. My vision blurred. I put the soup bowl down and put a hand to my mouth. I stood there for a long time, struggling to take one breath, and another. I recalled it again, the needle I'd jabbed into his arm, the scream he'd made.

It had happened to Maisey Ravell, too, and she'd run from him before he could say he was sorry. As if he were a dangerous monster. And, to all appearances, he was. Or he was just a man who had been through hell and was still there, a man who had spent weeks digging the rotting bodies of his comrades from the mud and still saw visions of it daily.

“Kitty. Pl-please—”

I turned around. His cheeks were wet, though he did not sob. I took a deep breath, took in a gulp of air that smelled of ammonia, musty old sweat, and the faint tang of vomit, the air that was the smell of this place. And then, the tray of supper forgotten, I walked over to the bed and got on it next to him, sitting up with my back against the brass bedstead. He rolled over and put one arm around my hips, his head in my lap. His shaking hand trembled in the folds of my apron.

“It wasn't you,” I said to him.

He said nothing.

“I know it wasn't,” I went on. “I knew it at the time, even as it was happening. It was never you. And still I gave you that needle.”

The arm on my hips hugged me a little tighter.

“Who is he?” I ventured. “Do you know?”

He flinched in my lap. I heard him take a breath, but he didn't answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice was almost a whisper, but his stutter was gone.

“He comes in my dreams,” Archie said. “He tells me I'd be better off dead.”

I stayed silent in shock.

“I tell him no,” the man in my lap went on, a quiet confession. “Always no. But it's wor—it's worse and last—last night, I don't know—it was—”

“Hush,” I said softly. “I understand. I do.”

“I'm sorry,” he managed a long moment later.

“No.” I put my hand on his back, between his narrow shoulder blades, a back that looked as diminished as a boy's beneath his infirmary shirt. My cheeks were wet, too, now, but I did not sob. “It's me that's sorry,” I said through the thickness in my throat. “It's me that's bloody well sorry.”

We sat there for a long time, I on top of the covers, my boots on the bed. I, who had stayed away from men for four years. I sat there in bed with a strange man, his arm around me, his head in my lap. It was against every regulation in the world. I couldn't seem to stop breaking rules, even when I tried.

Finally, he fell asleep. The soup was cold by then, but I didn't have the heart to take it away. He'd need to eat something when he woke, even something cold. He was too thin as it was.

I slid out of bed and left him, closing the door behind me.

•   •   •

I
t was time for the men's leisure hour after supper, and they had assembled in the common room, but as I approached I saw they had all stopped what they were doing. The chess players had turned away from their game; the readers had put the books and magazines down in their laps. Even the men who only stared absently out the window had turned, their gazes alert.

Matron stood in the center of the room. In the soft light of a summer evening she looked the same, her face set in its familiar hard lines under her mannish hair. The electricity was still on—it would not switch off until after curfew—and the lights cast pools of yellow that were slowly losing out to the dusky blue-gray of the long summer twilight out the tall windows and the terrace doors.

I stood in the doorway and registered, with the sudden clarity that sometimes floods the brain, the scene before me as a still tableau: Matron, the men turned to face her, their expressions expectant, the dwindling of a soft, decadent day in the windows. I took in the long shadows of the men playing across the high, bare walls, the cheap sparseness of the furniture arranged on the expensive floors, the smell of polish and men's sweat and the faint smell of vinegar we used for cleaning. Every detail was as clear to me as a photograph.

Matron held up a sheaf of letters. “The mail has arrived.”

A murmur of excitement went up. We'd had a delivery that morning, hours before. But, of course, there had to be time for every letter to be opened, read, and vetted.

“Mr. Creeton,” Matron called. “Mr. Mabry.” One at a time, each man went forward to retrieve his letter. Those who weren't called turned back to the window or picked up their book again, their faces carefully blank. I caught a glimpse of movement in the doorway behind me and saw the large bulk of Paulus Vries leaning in the corridor, his arms crossed and his gaze watchful. I wondered what scenes had taken place during previous distributions of mail.

“Nurse Weekes.”

Matron held out a letter to me, a thick, creamy, clean envelope. I stepped forward and took it from her. I turned it over, apprehension pinching my spine. It did not look official, and my father could not write.

The letter was from Maisey Ravell, a reply to the letter I'd written about her belongings. She wrote in a perfect, looping hand that matched her beautiful stationery, the ink utterly free of blots. It could have been a young lady's polite letter to a friend, inquiring as to the health of her mother and asking her to tea.

Dear Kitty:

Meet me on Sunday just past the stand of trees by the west wing. There's a clearing. You'll see it when you enter the trees past the rise. I need to speak to you, and not just about my locket, though I will take it back if you have it. I will be there at two o'clock. Tell Matron you require an hour's walk. The men will be at tea. She's supposed to give you a half day off, but she never does, so make her grant this instead.

Perhaps you won't come. You don't even know me. But I've had time to think now, and you can help me. You must come. Don't tell anyone. You must come.

 

Maisey Ravell

P.S. Thank you kindly for your letter.

 

Quickly, casually, I folded the letter and stuffed it deep in the pocket of my apron. The envelope had still been sealed; apparently the nurses were not subject to Matron's review of their correspondence, something Maisey must have known.

What did it mean, that I could help her? I was in no position to help anyone, but maybe she could help me. I'd have to find out.

There had been a wave of murmured excitement when the letters were distributed, which quieted down. And then, as I was thinking about making an escape, utter silence circled the room in a ripple. Every man fell still, looking at the door behind my shoulder, and I felt the heat of awareness on the back of my neck.

I turned and saw Jack Yates in the doorway. He wore the sleeves of his hospital-issue shirt rolled up to his elbows. He paused, and the merest flicker of uncertainty crossed his features; then he continued into the room, walking into the light with the easy saunter that was his natural gait, crossing the open space in front of Matron—who stared at him, her eyebrows nearly shot up to her hairline—as if he had not been in seclusion for six months.

Even the men poring over their much anticipated letters had looked up, and every eye followed him across the room.

So much for Dr. Thornton's rules,
I thought.

I looked back at Matron warily, wondering when the thunder would descend, but she had schooled her face back to its usual inscrutable expression. For the merest second I thought I saw a twinkle of pleasure in her eye. Was it possible Matron was amused—even happy—that Jack had done away with an entire set of rules, just by walking through a door? It was progress, wasn't it? It meant he wanted to get well. But the twinkle disappeared, if it had ever existed. She simply said in her usual voice, “Mr. Yates. It's kind of you to join us.”

He nodded to her. “Evening, Matron. Is there a newspaper about?”

“There is,” she said, “but I believe Mr. Somersham currently has it in his possession.”

Somersham, sitting at the end of a sofa, held out his blacked-out checkerboard newspaper. “Oh, no, I'm quite finished. You can have it.”

“Are you certain?” asked Jack.

“Yes, sir.”

Jack accepted the paper from him and nodded. And just like that, the fiction that none of these men knew the identity of their fellow patient went up in vapor.

Jack had not looked at me. I took the opportunity to stare at him, since everyone else was already at it. I had seen him so often in the dark, in the gloom of lamplit shadows. I had nearly forgotten the effect of Jack Yates in the light, head to toe. He was hard to look away from.

He read the masthead of the newspaper. “This is from April,” he said.

“You are aware of the hospital's policy about newspapers,” said Matron.

“All right,” said Jack, “I admit I don't quite know what day it is, but April seems some time ago.”

“Current events—”

“Are harmful,” he said. He looked her in the eye. “Right. A man just wants the racing news. That's all I'm saying.”

“I'd bloody love the racing news!” came a voice from the corner.

“Me, too,” said another.

“Don't worry, old man.” This was Creeton, sitting in one of the chairs, one leg crossed over the other knee and grinning a grin that didn't reach his angry eyes. “If there's anything about you in there, we'll cut it out and save it in a little scrapbook.”

“Shut it, Creeton,” said MacInnes. “The man's right as far as I'm concerned. I'd like to hear about the latest plays myself.”

Jack folded the ancient newspaper and tossed it easily on a nearby table. “A newspaper would be good,” he said, ignoring Creeton, “but a gramophone would be better.”

There was a murmur of excited agreement at that. Even Tom perked up. “We could play symphonies!” he exclaimed.

In the doorway behind my shoulder, Paulus straightened, as slow as a cat. Matron's posture had gone poker stiff. “You will not,” she said loudly, “be getting a gramophone.”

“I want a gramophone!” someone said.

“So do I,” said Jack. He pivoted, looked around the room, his gaze passing over me unseeing. My heart pounded in my chest. The energy he produced, just by standing there, was dangerous, so dangerous, like playing with a lit fuse. And it was only a few madmen in the middle of nowhere. But this was
it
, just the faint breath of it, just the edge of a shadow of Brave Jack. The men had all turned to him. And I knew Brave Jack was
in there
, just as I'd always suspected.