For King and Country (29 page)

‘What?’

Dr Campbell’s eyes danced, and his grin widened. ‘She tilted her head to one side, rather as you do, as a matter of fact, and she thought for a bit, and then she said: “About
twenty quid a night, Doc!” Ha, ha, ha, ha! I don’t know how I stopped myself laughing out loud.’

Sally’s eyebrows shot up, and she felt a flush rising to her cheeks. She felt hot all over, and her head was pounding. She had a sense of unreality but gave him a glazed smile, and heard
herself say, ‘That’s one for your collection then.’

‘Yes?’ Dr Campbell said, but his eyes were raised to somebody behind her. She turned to see Will, standing at the open door of the office gazing silently at them. He must have come
to fetch her to the lieutenant from Blyth. She tried to get to her feet to follow him.

‘Oh, Will . . .’

‘I say, Nurse Wilde, are you all right?’ Dr Campbell was looming over her, his face full of concern.

‘No,’ she whispered. ‘My head’s splitting. I’ll have to get some aspirin.’ But it wasn’t just her head that pained her, it was everything; she ached
everywhere.

A minute later, Dr Campbell was putting a thermometer under her tongue, and taking her pulse, with Will looking on, like a man condemned.

‘M
other, why did you light a fire?’ Sally asked, watching the firelight flickering in the centre of the surrounding gloom.

‘I’ve had a fire in here since we brought you home from the hospital. You’ve been delirious for the past three days.’

She must be on the point of death. Her fever, her headache, her closing throat and all the sensations of pain that racked her body told her so, and the bedroom fire confirmed it. Whoever had a
bedroom fire, unless somebody was dying? Her heart felt so heavy, heavy with the burden of Mrs Burdett’s fear and grief, laden with the weight of Will’s anger and misery. It was
impossible she would live to see the morning.

Poor Mrs Burdett. Poor Will. What would to happen to them now? He frightened her. He’d given up hope and would give himself up before long, and that would be the end of his mother. Sally
gazed into the fire and saw Old Death with his scythe writhing in the flames, waiting to cut off all their days.

She felt suffocated. She was too hot; she couldn’t breathe. She pushed the heavy blankets off and her mother reached for a towel to wipe her sweat-drenched skin before the moisture turned
to ice and made her shiver. She was dying and she couldn’t help it, and yet it seemed such cowardice, such a treacherous, feeble thing to die now, when he needed her more than ever.

‘Where’s Will?’ she asked.

Her mother touched her cheek. ‘Oh, Sally,’ she choked. ‘Will’s dead!’

‘Dead! So soon?’

‘Soon?’ her mother echoed. ‘He died in France, months ago. Do you not remember?’

‘Oh, yes. I’d forgotten.’ They hadn’t told her mother then, that Will was still alive. That was good. Most people didn’t know how to keep their mouths shut, even
people like her mother. The fewer who knew, the safer for him. She watched her mother sniffing back tears as she left the room.

She was alone. The light was failing and the night drawing in, and the blackness around the fire grew ominous and filled her with horror. It concealed so many lurking demons, and every one of
them intent on trapping them, her and Will. Frightful, malevolent spawn of the devil, all cunningly, patiently, setting their snares.

The light blazed in, hurting her eyes and blinding her, and for a moment she shut them tight and turned away, and then, shielding them with her hand, she slowly turned her head
to see Ginny silhouetted in the window, still holding Arthur’s old billiard cue she’d used to push the curtains back. She stood the cue in its resting place in the corner by the window,
and came to sit on the bed and stroke Sally’s hair.

‘How are you today, Sal?’

I can feel my life ebbing away, and I’m so short of breath I can hardly speak, Sally thought, and heaved a sigh. ‘I’m dying, Ginny,’ she said at last, and saw from the
look on Ginny’s face that it was true.

But she denied it. ‘You’re doing nothing of the sort, Sally man. We’re not going to let you.’

Sally squinted up and saw a flicker of fear in the depths of Ginny’s jet eyes. She can’t stop me, she thought. I’m dying, and Ginny won’t be able to stop it; nobody will.
She tried to sit up but her legs wouldn’t move. They were like lead, and the sensation was familiar. It broke her dream. She’d been running, running with Will, but her legs
wouldn’t move, and she’d slowed him down until . . . But her sister was getting too near, leaning right over her.

‘Keep away, Ginny.’

‘I won’t get it, hinny, never bother. We had the three-day ’flu last spring, me and me mam. We’ll be all right. Our Emma’s keeping away though, because of the
bairns. And Kath the same. The school’s shut because of the ’flu.’

‘Where’s me mam?’

‘Out, to get some messages. There’s nothing in the house; she’s run out of everything. I’ve come to keep an eye on you until she gets back.’

‘Ah,’ said Sally, and wondered why that would be, unless she was at her last gasp. Her body felt as dead as her legs, her chest hurt, but worse was the shortness of breath, and a
fierce thirst.

‘You’ve been in bed six days, Sally man. Mrs Burdett wants to come and see you, as soon as you start to pick up a bit,’ Ginny told her.

‘Why then, she’d better come now,’ said Sally, ‘or she’ll be too late.’

But an hour later, just as her mother and Ginny were helping her to sit up she had a curious sensation, like a wave washing through her, sweeping sickness and pain before it, and away.

‘I thought my time had come,’ she told her mother and Ginny as she sat in the tin bath in front of the kitchen fire, holding a flannel to her face while her mother
rinsed her hair with the jug.

‘You’re not the only one,’ her mother said. ‘I walked into the bedroom yesterday afternoon, and I got the fright of my life. The way you were staring into that fire, I
thought you’d gone. I’d just lifted my hand to close your eyelids when I saw them flicker, and your lips moved. I was never as relieved in all my born days.’

And that’s a mother’s love, Sally thought, watching and tending, loving unto death, and beyond it. Pity Mary’s mother, pity any mother whose child is ill, or hurt, or
hunted.

‘Mrs Burdett’s been asking after you. She wanted to come and see you, but I wouldn’t let her, in case she caught it,’ said Ginny. ‘And our Arthur might come by a
bit later on.’

‘Our Arthur?’

‘Aye. He’s been home since the day before yesterday, and he’s grinding ginger because he reckons he should have been demobbed, but he’s got to go back.’

‘Poor Arthur,’ Sally said. ‘What day is it?’

‘Monday.’

Monday! Sally’s face fell. ‘Why, I’ve been at home a whole week, then,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to get back to the hospital. We’re short staffed.’
Anything could have happened to Will in a week, and the sooner she saw Mrs Burdett the better.

‘You’re going nowhere near the hospital yet. You’re not fit.’ Ginny told her, politely turning away while Sally struggled to pull herself out of the bath and into the
towel her mother was holding out for her.

It took her all her strength to stand. Ginny was right, she wasn’t fit. She was glad to get back into bed, between fresh sheets and sit there combing her hair for a while, glorying in her
cleanliness. After a week of sweating and shivering in bed, it felt grand.

Mrs Burdett sat as far away from Sally as she could, and remain in the same room. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t want to catch the ’flu. I need to keep my job.
As long as Will’s there, anyway.’

‘Why, I don’t want to give it to you, Mrs Burdett,’ said Sally. ‘Have you seen him? How is he?’

There was a long pause, and then a doubtful, ‘All right.’ Soon followed by a sharper, ‘As all right as he ever will be from now on, I suppose.’

‘How’s his arm? Is it healed yet?’

‘No. He says they’re still picking bits of bone out of it. He says if it weren’t for trying to get that right, he’d have been off weeks ago.’

‘Where to?’

‘Staffordshire. I’ve written to Dad. We’re both going there, to start afresh, where people don’t know us so well. Where people aren’t as likely to start putting two
and two together,’ Mrs Burdett said, and added, sharper still, ‘I saw you with your doctor friend, in the park. He looks a bonny lad, from what I could see of him.’

‘Hm,’ said Sally, not willing to get into any discussion about ‘her doctor friend’, because Mrs Burdett sounded like somebody who was grinding an axe.

‘Hm,’ Mrs Burdett repeated. ‘It was all different before Will went to war though, wasn’t it? You wouldn’t have thrown him over so easily then! He always had a
string of lasses chasing him, and he’d brought a few of them home. Any one of them would have been glad to be his wife, but you – you were the only one he was interested in. I knew it
was different with you, it was serious, and he thought you liked him. Still, we can all see he’s not the same lad now as he was then, and now you don’t like him any more. Now his looks
have gone, you’ve got a new one. Off with the old love, and on with the new.’

‘Mrs Burdett,’ said Sally, ‘why did you come to see me?’

An angry flush suffused Mrs Burdett’s face, and a thick vein bulged in her forehead. She jumped to her feet and with her fists clenched by her sides rapidly moved a few steps closer. Sally
flinched, almost expecting a blow.

‘Because he said you called him a coward!’ she exploded. ‘I can tell you he’s
not.
He’s never done a cowardly thing in his life, so get that straight. None
of my lads have.’

Sally stared at her, and kept quiet.

‘He deserted,’ Mrs Burdett began, and then stopped, moved to the open door and looked out onto the landing before quietly closing the door. All fear of influenza apparently gone, she
stood right over Sally, eyes burning. ‘He deserted because I told him to,’ she said, her voice low and urgent, ‘in the same heartbroken letter I sent telling him about our Henry
getting killed. Three lads! I’d lost three! That’s more sacrifice for king and country than any mother should have to make, and I thought they’d taken more than enough from me! I
got my first buff envelope after the first of July 1916, when just about every family in the village got a one as well. “Dear Mrs Burdett, it is my painful duty!” Not as painful for
them as it was for me, by a long shot! And I had to go two better than everybody else, they kept coming to my house until I had three, until I only had Will left. I told him so, and I told him to
get out of it, before it was too late, before Lloyd George and Haig, and all the rest of the warmongers got him killed as well, and lost me all my sons. And now look what’s happened! The
war’s over, and my family’s done more than its fair share, but my poor lad’ll have to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder, hiding from the police, scared that
somebody might recognize him and give him up.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Sally whispered.

‘Sorry!’ Mrs Burdett’s eyes were wild, her face a mixture of fear and fury. ‘But some people might say he got what he deserved.’

‘I don’t know anybody who’d say that,’ Sally said.

‘I thought
you
might.’

‘Well, I wouldn’t,’ Sally said. ‘And I don’t know anybody who would.’

‘Liar! You talk as if you were born yesterday. They’re not far to seek, people like that. Your Arthur’s wife would say it for one. She’s just the sort, and the
postmistress.’

‘Mrs Burdett,’ said Sally. ‘I would never give Will away, and I’ll do anything I can to help him.’

Mrs Burdett stared at her for a moment and then put both hands to her face and began to howl. She turned away from Sally, went back to her chair and sat down, fishing in her pocket for a
handkerchief to dab her face and calm herself. ‘If I’d known the war would be over so soon I’d never have put the idea in his head, and then he might be home by now,’ she
sniffed, her nose reddening and her voice thick. ‘If I hadn’t done that, he might be all right today.’

‘Or he might be dead,’ Sally said. ‘Or worse injured. And what’s the use of thinking about what might have happened, anyhow? We have to get on with what we’re faced
with, and make the best of it. Only be careful about talking about him, Mrs Burdett. If we got caught, if I got sent to prison for helping him, it would just about kill my mother.’

Mrs Burdett gave her a look of scorn. ‘All you think about is your own skin, and your mother doesn’t know how lucky she is.’

Sally didn’t want an argument; she wanted her visitor gone. She wanted to be left to her own thoughts, to let what she had learned sink deep into her being, to feel the gladness of it.
‘Didn’t you hear me, Mrs Burdett? I said I’ll do anything I can to help him, and I mean it. And my mother’s well aware how lucky she is.’

After her visitor had gone, Sally lay back on her pillows, her feelings in turmoil, her head spinning. ‘You were the only one he was interested in . . . it was serious.’ So he had
loved her, after all. And it wasn’t cowardice that drove him to desert, but that letter from his mother. She ought to have guessed it might have been something of the sort. At school
he’d always been the leader of the pack, and the rest of them hadn’t followed him because he was a coward, they’d followed him because he was the brightest and bravest among
them.

Shame on women, she thought, that such things mattered to them, that they could blame a man for an all too natural love of his life. What was it Curran had said? ‘Judge not, that ye be not
judged?’ But she’d judged Will, and misjudged him, too, and had been so lacking in courage herself she had actually contemplated turning her back on him in his hour of need. Shame on
her for such treachery, for being so quick to judge. By rights, she ought to hang her head in shame.

She did no such thing. ‘Oh ye of little faith,’ she murmured, and gave heartfelt thanks for the chance to make amends. She could have loved Will even with feet of clay, and would
have done – but what a relief it was, what a weight lifted off her, to know he was a worthy idol, after all.