The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel (29 page)

—Stinks of piss, don’t he? Bloody awful.

—There’s worse smells out here. A little piss does wonders to a trench, cleans it better than Pears soap. I’d call it the eau de cologne of the Somme—

—Stinks of piss.

Five days later on the morning of November 10, 1916, Imogen Soames-Andersson descends the carpeted staircase at the house on Cavendish Square, taking certain of the steps two at a time. She is on her way to the Charing Cross Road to collect a volume of Laforgue’s poetry that she ordered in a French bookshop a month ago. She had forgotten the book until this morning, when she realized suddenly and with pleasure that it must be in the shop awaiting her. Imogen is engaged to meet a friend at ten o’clock, but she supposes she can collect the book and still make it on time.

The parlormaid stops her in the hallway with a letter.

The letter is from Messrs. Twyning & Hooper, Solicitors. Imogen tears it open hastily, assuming it relates to some business of her father’s.

Dear Madam,

I deeply regret to inform you that 2nd Lieut. A.E. Walsingham died from wounds received in action in France on 5 November, this news confirmed by a letter from Capt. W. Towse, adjutant of 1 Batt. Royal Berkshire Regt. I beg to offer you my sincere sympathy. It may be some slight consolation that Capt. Towse said ‘Lieut. Walsingham was a very brave and gallant soldier and one of our best officers.’

As Executor for Mr. Walsingham’s estate I am instructed to notify you in the event of his death. Would it be possible for you to call upon our offices on Bedford Row? There are certain particulars relating to the estate that I should like to discuss in person.

If there is anything I can do for you, I remain at your service.

Yours faithfully,

P. L. Twyning

Imogen hardly makes a sound. Standing in the hallway, she reads the letter twice, then goes up into her bedroom, tearing the sheet into smaller and smaller scraps of paper. She throws the scraps into the fireplace, where they flare and burn out in tiny flashes.

Imogen climbs into bed and then crawls back out, pulling the pillows and counterpane and duvet off and throwing them to the floor, crying out and muffling her cries, for no one must ever know what a fool she was, what a fool he had been. She walks to the lavatory and splashes water on her face, pacing the corridor in a haze, the parlormaid watching her from the landing downstairs as Imogen wipes her face with her sleeve, crying and whispering to herself, making strange bargains with forces she does not even believe in. For it could so easily be a mistake. A solicitor’s trick. A soldier with a similar name, a myopic clerk at the War Office—

Ten minutes later Imogen’s mother comes into the room and finds her daughter curled up on a pile of bedding on the floor.

—My Lord. What’s happened?

She takes Imogen by the shoulders, asking the question over and over. But Imogen will not even look at her.

On the same day Ashley Walsingham lies upon an iron-framed bed at No. 17 Stationary Hospital, Albert. He has been in the hospital for four days. Ashley has been awake very little of the time and only in dazed intervals. A searing pain travels up and down the length of his windpipe,
as though the sinews of his throat are continually being torn apart. He cannot swallow and yet he feels the need to swallow, an expanding shape in his throat that will soon strangle him. But when his throat muscles tighten and he nears the point of swallowing, the pain is too great and he has to stop. So Ashley lies in silence.

The hospital has been appropriated from a great house on the edge of town, a mansion in the provincial style. It was converted to a hospital in June, shortly before the Somme offensive. Ashley’s ward is in the long gallery, the largest room in the house. There is a high ceiling and ornate wood-paneled walls; a marble fireplace below a great mirror. The beds lie in neat rows, each patient swaddled in white sheets and bedspreads. The steel nightstands bear flowers in vases. Medical charts are clipped to the wall above each patient’s head. Ashley cannot see his own chart.

A red-haired nurse notices that his eyes are open. Her peaked white cap hovers in and out of his field of vision. The nurse looks very young, but she speaks with assurance, leaning close to him.

—I know you can’t speak, she says, and you oughtn’t try. If you need something, write it here.

The girl puts a pencil and a small pad of paper in his hands. Ashley sees that she is not a nurse but a VAD, a kind of volunteer nurse’s assistant. The girl wears a starched white apron with a paper collar, and beneath it a dark dress that comes nearly to her ankles. A bright red cross is centered on the bib of her apron. To Ashley she resembles the saintly Breton peasant women of Gauguin paintings. He closes his fingers around the pencil and writes slowly on the pad in shaky block capitals.
POSTCARD
.

He wakes again the following evening at dusk. Purplish light slants through the windows of the ward. The nurses’ stacked heels rap upon the checkered marble floor. Ashley lifts his arms from beneath the sheet and flashes of pain pulse through his body. He keeps still to stop the pain, studying the blue flannel sleeves of his pajama jacket. Delicately
he feels the wounds on his leg through the sheet. A series of erupting scabs along his right thigh, hardened and brittle. Already the wounds have nearly healed.

Ashley supposes he must not move his neck, so he holds his shoulders even while reaching out to the nightstand beside him. On the surface lie the pair of letters he keeps in his tunic breast pocket. Beside these is a brown field-service postcard and the stump of a red pencil. Gingerly and with great labor Ashley picks up the card and pencil. He crosses out sentences so that the desired message remains.

Ashley deliberates about the date for a moment before filling in the blank. The red-haired VAD sees him writing and comes to his bedside. She takes the postcard.

—To the return address on those letters?

She points to the pair of letters on the nightstand. Ashley picks up the pad of paper and writes slowly.

SAME ADDRESS. MORPHIA PLEASE.

The VAD shakes her head.

—I’ll have to ask the doctor.

Three days later on November 13, the maid enters the front parlor of the Soames-Andersson house on Cavendish Square carrying the brown postcard. But the parlor is empty. The maid turns and is halfway up the stairs when Eleanor comes through the front door, in her arms a packet full of magazines she has brought for Imogen.

—Hello Lizzie. I just passed the postman. Is that the second post?

The maid holds the card uncertainly. Eleanor starts up the stairs toward her.

—What is it? You know well enough you oughtn’t to be reading Papa’s mail. Even if it is only a postcard—

Eleanor seizes the card and waves it in the air.

—If you keep it up, Eleanor teases, I shall have to read yours.

Then Eleanor recognizes the seal and the inscription
FIELD SERVICE POSTCARD
. She reads the card and walks upstairs to a window in the guest bedroom, watching the postman cross the street and go around the wrought-iron fence. Eleanor thinks for a moment, tapping her finger on the card. The bedroom had once been hers and they had altered nothing except the damask curtains. But somehow it seemed different.

Eleanor walks down the hallway past Imogen’s room, a slit of light coming under the closed door, her sister probably in bed. Eleanor enters her mother’s bedroom, closing the door behind her. Her mother is at her desk writing a letter. Eleanor sets the postcard in front of her.

—My God. Has Imogen seen this?

—No. It just arrived.

—Then let us go tell her.

Eleanor shakes her head, kneeling beside her mother.

—But look at the address. I know the look of his writing, I’ve seen it often enough. That’s someone else’s writing. He may have sent it before he died—

—But it’s dated afterwards.

Eleanor takes her mother’s hand.

—I hope it’s true, Eleanor says. I do so hope it is. But imagine the effect on her if we say he is alive now and it turns out he isn’t. It would all begin anew, only worse. She could hardly be more delicate than she is now. The slightest breeze could topple her.

—But to keep it from her—

—Only until we’re certain.

She sighs, giving the card back to Eleanor.

—Shall you call his people then, or write to someone with the army?

—I shall do both.