The Cartographer of No Man's Land: A Novel (39 page)

T
WENTY

May 17
^th
, 1917

No. 18 Canadian General Hospital

Saint-Junien, France

T
he garden walls were easily seven feet high and partially covered with ivy—as old as the walls themselves, with twisted trunks as thick as Angus’s arm and leaves as broad as his hand. His good hand. The dirt at his feet was loamy, soft with the smell of spring rain, and clean in its very blackness—nothing like the chalk mud that had defined his world. Miniature shoots of something were poking up three rows over. A brown hare streaked out from a thicket and reconnoitered with his companions at the new shoots, their noses pulsing. In a long-ago life, he might have tried to capture their interlude in the garden, and his own, in pastels. But the sanctuary of the garden only accentuated his dislocation.

At the sound of his name, he spun around, lurched forward and sank onto his knee. The nurse—“Brimmie,” she was called by the others, with her reddish-blond bangs peeking out of her headdress, the spray of freckles across her nose, her determined little mouth, brimming with orders and admonitions—gave the rabbits no heed as she approached in brisk little steps. “Lieutenant! Here you are! Time for your treatment.”

She offered her hand. He waved her off and rose awkwardly on his own and followed her across the lawn to the hospital. In the weeks since Vimy, he’d come to know how important the swing of the arms was to the swing of the legs, and had made the required adjustments to his gait. Balancing on a rolling deck would be impossible.

Under the shadows of the arched west entryway, a cool dampness, captive of centuries, penetrated his cotton shirt. Brimmie waited while he removed the rubber boots. Easy to slip on and off, those boots. He neither knew nor cared whose they were. Once ambulatory, he’d been issued a fresh uniform. He could dress himself, unlike some who had to endure the ministrations of the nurses, holding a sleeve or buttoning up a fly. He’d perfected a system for the kilt that involved holding the band between his waist and the weight of his arm, then swinging it around his hips. Leaning against a wall, he could button the waist and buckle the skirt with his left hand.

By rights, he should have been invalided back to England. But Dr. Boes, hoping to prove the condenser apparatus useful for treatment, had confessed he was loath to let him go. Electrotherapy, Boes called it, stimulating the muscles and nerves with electrical impulses, keeping them alive. Angus had heard men scream with it, including two mute soldiers who had found their voices when electrodes were placed down their throats by a consulting physician who’d come from England and gone back. Stimulating the nerves was a nice term for delivering shocks that made the muscles twitch. Angus did not feel the shocks often, but his muscles did twitch. Afterwards, he was drained.

He understood it was his arm that drew Boes—their separate patient, to be treated, observed, and discussed. It was fine with Angus. The closer he was to the Front, the more likely he’d get back to it. Make it right. It was all that kept him going. And Boes insisted that he’d seen miraculous things—men who regained function suddenly and quickly.

Boes was late. Angus stared with dull eyes at the familiar cotton pads and saline solution, at the fruitwood case of the metronome that timed the delivery of shocks, the tangle of wires and electrodes dangling over the table, and the machine to which they were connected. There were voices in the hallway.

“What’s his status, this MacGrath?” It was Colonel Cobb, the tall, stoop-shouldered physician-in-chief.

It was Boes who answered. “I believe he’s getting better overall.”

“On what do you place your belief? This is a medical practice, Boes, not a community of faith. He’s had a vigorous regimen of passive movement and massage, and electrotherapy. What’s your machine say?”

There was a pause. “It’s the muscles innervated by the ulnar that concern me. They respond to low levels of stimulation—less than
0
.
5
microfarads—yet he has no voluntary movement of his wrist.”

Angus looked down at his wrist and willed it to elevate his hand. Nothing. The padding would have prevented it anyway. But he
felt
nothing.

There was a rustling of papers. Cobb spoke. “Let’s see here. Bayonet lodged just below the brachial plexus.
Below
it. Lucky man. Blade removed on the field. Hemorrhage . . . infection . . . cleared. Surgery . . . bone splinters and fibrous mass compressing the nerves. Compressed, but not dissected—right?”

“No, the radial—”

“Yes, I see. Radial nerve sutured.”

“I’m convinced he’ll recover. As the physical wounds heal—”

“You’re convinced of many things, eh, Boes? Well, you listen to me—what does this add up to? Loss of sensation in the face of minimal atrophy? The lack of deformity? The failure of voluntary movement along the tracks of undamaged nerves? I suspect this is largely in his
mind
. Would you agree?”

“I’m saying that, if anything, it’s mixed—psychical
and
organic. The nerves were badly concussed.”

“It’s been six weeks. There should be more progress. What happened to the man?”

“It’s in the notes.”

“
What happened
, Boes,” Cobb sighed. “Not his injuries, their
circumstances
. A man’s mates are killed, he survives, and reacts to the slightest injury as if it were paretic. Often enough, if these boys are told a furlough is in the offing if and
only
if they can demonstrate voluntary movement, you’ll find they’re ready to take up their duty again.”

“He wants to recover,” Boes protested. “He’s an artist. Surely he wants to be able to use his hand again.”

“An artist? Ah, a sensitive sort . . .”

“He’s as anxious as the next man to get back to his unit, I swear to you.”

“Anxious? No one is anxious to get back to the Front. Have you ever been to the Front?”

“No sir. But I think I’ve seen enough of the results to inform me of its nature.”

“Do you, indeed? You make me laugh, Boes.”

“But if I may?”

“Yes?”

“I believe you said that after a brief sojourn, men return ‘ready to take up their duty again.’ ”

“Ready to take up their duty, not
anxious to return
. I wonder about you, Boes. I do. As confident and well trained as you are. In a month or so, I’m up to the Front to inspect our field hospital situation, and I’m taking you with me so you have a better feel for how men develop these hysterical symptoms.”

“He’s quite sane, sir,” Boes insisted. “No twitching or hallucination. He’s quiet, very serious. But when he does speak, there’s a sincerity, an intensity. He’s been very engaged in his recovery. As the organic symptoms subside, I’m sure the rest will follow suit.”

“Alright. Continue your blasted nerve therapy. But my advice is pound it into his head that he does have capacity in the nerves and muscles
that are healthy
. And for God’s sake find out what happened to him. Only a coward of the lowest order would refuse to get better once he faces things. If he’s not better in four weeks, he’s to be invalided back to England.”

Angus stumbled back as Boes strode in.

“Four weeks, huh?” Angus said. “You up to it? Or shall we just assume I’m crazy or a coward or both and call it a day?”

“Steady now. That was meant to be private. I doubt you understood—it’s a very mixed situation. Here, sit down.”

“I understood.”

Boes cleared his throat, pulled a chair over and sat facing Angus. “Look, no one is saying you’re a coward. You had a lot of very real, physical damage.”

Angus cradled his arm and leaned away. “Not enough, apparently. If I’m supposed to be better than I am, I want to know.”

“It isn’t as simple as that. Suppose you let me be the doctor.”

“Suppose I let you be the honest doctor. How about you share the truth with me?”

“How about you do the same. What happened out there? If you heard what Cobb was saying, you know that’s the truth you need.”

Angus felt himself go cold. “You think I’m hiding something? Here’s the
truth.
I need to get back to my unit. I owe them. Owe
myself
. Do you understand honor? How do you think it feels to have escaped and left my men back there, slogging through it. I belong with them.”

Boes sat back. “Let’s get a hold of ourselves here.” Then in a softer tone said, “Tell me again the names of the men who were killed when you were injured. Let’s start there.”

Angus tipped his chair back against the wall. He hadn’t noticed the ceiling before—narrow-planked, dark wood with a soft patina.
He closed his eyes. “First Lieutenant Sam Publicover, Corporal Richard Burwell, Private Anton Voles, and Lance Corporal Lawrence . . .
Havers.”

“This fellow Havers—your voice broke.”

The chair came down with a thud.

Boes leaned forward. “Was Havers a good chum?”

“I didn’t know Havers. He wasn’t one of us.”

“Alright . . . you’ve mentioned this Publicover a lot. You once said he looked like your son. Is that part of it? Outside of their names, you never mention your family. Perhaps a leave could be arranged if—”

“Family leave
across the Atlantic?
” Angus said. “You’re grasping at straws. Junior officers in the CEF don’t get family leave. You know that.”

Boes gazed longingly at the condenser apparatus.

“Look, there’s a good chance I’m nuts, right? I must be because if I
could
move my wrist or my arm, I
would
. And I can’t. Get on with the machine,” Angus sighed. “And just so we understand each other, my family is not part of this story. To bring them into it would be to render them . . .”

“Render them what?”

“Unclean,” Angus said.

T
WENTY-ONE

June 30
^th
, 1917

Snag Harbor, Nova Scotia

F
og wrapped the gray dawn in a shroud. Simon set his mug in the sink. It would be a long sail over to Lunenburg if the fog didn’t burn off. Still, the muffled world suited him. The last time he’d been to Lunenburg was with his father. They’d gone to pick up new blocks for the
Lauralee
from Dauphinee’s, where rows of blocks, dripping with caramel-colored lacquer, filled every window and dangled overhead like taffy lollipops.

His father’s last letter lay on the table. Up and about, but still in the hospital; unable to move his arm, but “on the mend.” Simon could read between the lines. And there weren’t many lines to be read in the uneven, left-handed print. His mother had wept when the letter came, saying it was all a horrible mistake and that he was
supposed
to be in London drawing maps and that she never should have agreed to it, and that to have lost his right arm was to have lost too much. A few hours later, she’d pulled herself together. He
had
to get better. He
would
get better. And if he didn’t, they’d have to adjust. All of them.

Gone were the loose threads of her, the day-dreamy drift, the pressed-flower fairies, the shells strung together to clatter in the wind. Now it was deals sealed with a handshake, purposeful trips on Rooster, and a brimmed leather hat, that his Uncle Ebbin had won off an Australian, tied under her chin. And short hair. She’d chopped it off and looked like a dandelion gone to seed. And liked it that way.

“You just quit your moping and let her work,” Ida told him. “Better than thinking Ebbin’s alive. She may not know a lick about housekeeping—we all have our talents—but look at her now. Workmen’s boots, skirt hitched up. I’ve never seen the like. Tongues wagging, and she just sails right through it. She’s on her own path. Knows what she’s about. His Highness isn’t stopping her, you’ll notice. So don’t you think of it.”

After the night of the struggle over the gun, a bad chest and continuous cough had kept his grandfather housebound. His mother had hitched up Rooster, headed on over to Gold River and negotiated the sawmill deal herself. Got a better price than his grandfather expected and a better price on timber transport to boot. “Should have brought you on years ago,” his grandfather hacked out on her return. She offered a shy smile of triumph and said that the mill owners knew her as Duncan’s agent anyway through all the correspondence. Surprised H. E. MacGrath was a woman, suspicious at first, but came around when she began to negotiate. And without the slightest hesitation, she added that Duncan might want to think about the
Lauralee
. Scrap her or get her fixed up. She wasn’t earning a dime up on the cradle. Duncan sank into his chair and refused to answer.