Vintage Love (223 page)

The veteran nurse preserved her calm. She said, “I do need more young women. I have recently been asked to organize field hospitals near the battle front. I have not even enough nurses to take care of the patients here.”

Colonel Sanger fixed his monocle in his eyes. “You know the War Office feels you have still to prove yourself. They naturally have a healthy reluctance to broadening your authority.”

Captain Colin Hill went crimson at this remark of the Colonel. Turning to him, he said quietly, “I really must speak on behalf of these ladies and the magnificent work I’ve seen them do, sir!”

The Colonel scowled. “Indeed!”

“Yes, sir,” Colin went on. “I think our War Office is a disgrace! Everyone here realizes that. The French are doing a capable job of conducting their campaign and lamenting the blunders we’re making! We are letting our allies down and causing a wholesale massacre of young Englishmen.”

“How fortunate you are not on active duty, Captain,” the hateful Colonel drawled.

Colin clenched his fists and for a moment looked as if he might strike the smirking Colonel. The two young officers with the Colonel looked alarmed. Joy held her breath, and could see that Florence Nightingale was looking strained.

Then Colin relaxed a little and said, “Sir, I have asked to be allowed to return to my regiment as soon as I’m declared fit.”

Florence Nightingale spoke up, “And meanwhile he has been invaluable to us. We could not have managed without him. I trust you will remain with us for tea, Colonel? We usually serve it about this time.”

“Very well,” the Colonel said coldly. And while tea was being prepared, he went on to register other small complaints. Joy and Florence Nightingale served the men their tea and some cakes, and all sat to enjoy the simple treat.

Over her teacup Florence Nightingale said, “I believe you know my assistant, Lady Canby-Layton?”

The Colonel said coldly, “Yes. We have met.” And he gave her no attention for the balance of the tea. Yet she could feel that he still hated her and would undoubtedly wait for a suitable moment to make her grovel.

This was not lost on Colin. And when he came to her one evening shortly afterwards, he said, “Darling, I’m leaving to rejoin my regiment at the front.”

Tears filled her eyes and she protested, “You let that monster of a Sanger goad you into it!”

“Maybe. Don’t worry about me,” he said. “I’m much more worried about you.”

“About me?”

“Yes. I could tell the other morning he’s only waiting for a chance to harm you!”

“Surely he can’t be so vindictive in the midst of all this suffering and death,” Joy protested.

Colin shook his head grimly. “Don’t give him credit for a heart. You must be cautious! I won’t be here to protect you!”

She stared up at him. “I’m so frightened!”

He put his arms around her as they stood alone in the dark corridor, “Be brave! This war can’t last much longer! Not a slaughter like this! Even London will come to realize that.”

She pressed close to him. “When do you leave?”

“Some time tomorrow.”

Her eyes sought his, her pitiful face upturned. “For the first time I’m truly terrified!” She was trembling.

“Don’t!” he begged her. Then in a soft tone, he asked, “How about your room in an hour?”

“I’ll manage it somehow,” she promised.

And she did. They had the room to themselves for a long night of passionate lovemaking. All too soon, the dawn came and she had to leave for her morning rounds of the hospital wards. She left him getting into his uniform, his kiss still warm on her lips, and went out to face the ordeal of the wards of wounded and dying soldiers. And all she could think of as she went among them was that soon Colin might be occupying a bed in one of these wards. Colin crying out in pain!

It turned out to be their last time together before he marched off to war, a fine figure in his red, gold, and blue uniform.

Florence Nightingale was shocked at his going. She told Joy, “We shall miss your Captain Hill. Now we will be dealing directly with Colonel Sanger. That will not be easy!”

“I’m afraid not,” she agreed.

The veteran nurse looked at her from her desk. In her abrupt way, she said, “You and Captain Hill are in love, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she said it in a small voice.

Her superior offered one of her rare smiles, and leaned out to take her hand. “It was obvious. I realized it from the first. I’m sorry I’ve had to keep you so much apart in your personal lives.”

“We both understood.”

The veteran nurse gave her hand a comforting squeeze. “I’m glad you don’t see me as a dragon with no sympathy for romance. That isn’t true. But my crusade comes first! Don’t worry too much about Colin. I’m sure he will return to us unharmed.”

“I hope so.”

Now Joy threw herself into her hospital duties with fierce dedication. It kept her from worrying, and the challenge was greater than before. The horror of the battles came to them in a procession of maimed and bleeding, hour after hour, day after day! The human wreckage poured in after the Russian cannons had decimated them. One of the younger nurses, a vicar’s daughter, went mad from the carnage and hung herself. This sent another shock through the brave little band and caused much talk among the command.

Were Florence Nightingale and her brigade of nurses showing themselves capable? This was the question the War Office could not decide. London was a long way off, and they had no contact with the weary nurses working heroically in wards crowded with the maimed.

Colonel Thomas Sanger had a nice indifference to all the bloodshed and suffering around him. His main concerns were the items lists and balance sheets. Ignoring the wounded and dying, he continued to criticize their bookkeeping!

Then Joy began to notice a subtle difference in his manner towards her. With Colin absent at the front the Colonel seemed to be taking a new and perhaps friendlier interest in her. One afternoon he met her in one of the corridors between the wards, and studying her through his monocle said, “My dear Lady Canby-Layton, why are you so opposed to me?”

Taken by surprise, she said, “I’m not aware that I am.”

He lifted a puffy hand. “Make no excuses. We got off to a bad start. But I would be a fool not to admit you are doing competent work here.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “I do hope you will badger Miss Nightingale less about small things which have no true bearing on what we’re trying to accomplish.”

He showed a hint of his old arrogant self. “You don’t understand! Proper records must be kept! I’m the officer who is responsible. Let me assure you most of the criticism of Miss Nightingale comes directly from the War Department in London. There is some high level person there opposed to her. I’m merely acting on my instructions.” And he bowed and went on his way.

The news that someone in the War Office back in London was trying to undermine Florence Nightingale’s work in the Crimea was upsetting. Joy was not certain the Colonel had spoken truthfully, yet it nagged at her. The gossip she’d heard about Colonel Sanger’s behaviour with some of the wives of his fellow officers had disgusted her. His reputation as a notorious womanizer was growing.

Then something happened which made her think the Colonel might have been telling her the truth after all. Florence Nightingale went above the Colonel’s head and directly contacted London, begging for more assistance. Her plea had been received coldly and nothing came of it.

Meanwhile the nightmare of the war went on! Joy often found herself working all day and then far into the night. The horror of it all seemed greater at night. She was in a tense mood from not having heard from Colin since he’d gone to join his regiment in battle. But she had been given assurance he was alive and well by a fellow officer who had been sent back with a leg wound.

The night was cold as she stood under the glare of several torchlights supervising the arrival of stretchers bearing the wounded. Somehow the stretcher-bearers remained stoic-faced as they delivered the victims of battle. Joy and her nurses moved among the moaning and the deathly still. Suffering and death had become constant companions for them.

Joy crossed the aisle to a doctor who was examining one of the new stretcher cases. He glanced at her and said, “Head injuries! Bone splinters near the brain! We’ll have to operate!”

The doctor then moved on to the next stretcher and lifted the blanket to study the patient. He dropped the blanket again and told her, “This fellow is dead!”

“I’ll have him removed, Doctor,” she said. She went to the stretcher and saw the soldier’s face was dirty and bloodied.

She stared at the face and it suddenly struck her that it was familiar. Then she knew! It was Rod! Rod, whom she’d tried to persuade to leave the army!

Tears flooded her eyes. She remembered their meeting in London, the brief time they had spent together, and their goodbye. How long ago it seemed! Before she’d married Ernest Layton! Now Rod lay still and cold in death, to be buried in a foreign land far from his native Surrey.

She bent and tenderly kissed the cold forehead. “Goodbye, Rod,” she said. Then her eyes still blurred with tears as she looked for orderlies to carry his body away.

The mails came with maddening slowness. Joy managed to get a copy of the
London Times
, and was pleased to find the work of Florence Nightingale praised in its columns. But the other news of the war was grim. Correspondents wrote of the decline and decay of the great expedition. They suggested that England was on the verge of ruin, and the national reputation had been destroyed.

The letters she received were also depressing. James wrote that the government under Lord Aberdeen was doomed, but there was none capable of taking its place. The country was shocked by the number of casualties and the flood of wounded returning.

Florence Nightingale received a letter with some encouragement from the War Office. She told Joy, “They have agreed to allow me to enlist as many as two hundred nurses. So we’ll finally be able to set up field hospitals near the battle front.”

“So badly needed,” she agreed.

The older woman sighed. “Yes. Yet, there is a vagueness to this letter which troubles me. Also, several important questions which I asked remained unanswered. I do not understand it.”

Joy made no comment but she decided this was probably because of the unknown enemy whom Florence Nightingale had made in the War Office. This feeling was underlined when she had a chance encounter with the bovine Colonel Sanger later that same afternoon.

The Colonel halted and told her, “I’m glad we’ve met. I have had some documents arrive in the mail from the War Office in London. I cannot show them to Miss Nightingale. But I think she should know about them. They prove what I’ve been insisting. She is not in favor there.”

“What do you plan to do about this?” she asked.

He gazed at her through his monocle. “I’m going to risk turning the documents over to you and allow you to inform Miss Nightingale of their contents. It will give her a chance to defend herself.”

She said suspiciously, “This is most generous of you.”

“I’m not as unfeeling as you would like to believe.”

“Is this not liable to place you in a difficult position?” she asked.

The moon-face showed a wry smile. “Not unless you betray me. I do not expect you will since I’m trying to help your superior.”

She was caught in a fever of doubt. She knew what he was saying could well be true. He also might be playing another of his miserable tricks on her. She decided she could not risk turning down his offer of cooperation.

She asked, “When can I see the documents?”

“Come to my quarters tonight at nine,” the Colonel said. “Be sure no one sees you. And don’t mention this to Miss Nightingale yet.”

“I’ll be there.”

“We must be discreet,” was his final warning.

All the rest of the afternoon and evening she worried. But she had promised to go through with the plan. After dinner she made her way cautiously along the dark, silent corridors to the upper floor headquarters of Colonel Sanger.

She hesitated before the door, trembling. Then she knocked. After a moment the Colonel answered the door and said softly, “Come in! You mustn’t be seen here!”

It was not until she was inside that she saw he was wearing a dressing gown. And her heart began to pound as he closed the door and turned the key in its lock.

Uneasily, she said, “Please let me see those papers. I must get back to the hospital ward.”

The Colonel nodded. “I understand. Come with me. They are in the next room.”

She followed him and found herself in what was clearly a bedroom with a rumpled, unmade bed. He regarded her with a smile. “Forgive the state of my room. I was resting when you arrived.”

Tautly, she said, “Please, the letters!”

“Yes, the letters,” he echoed her. “The brown envelope on the bedside table contains them. Look at them for yourself.”

She thought he was behaving oddly in not handing the envelope to her. But she went over and picked it up. She opened it to find it stuffed with newspaper clippings. At this she turned to receive another shock. To her horror the paunchy Colonel had taken off his robe and was standing before her naked!

“No!” she cried and dropping the envelope darted for the door.

He intercepted her, and breathing heavily clasped her to him. “I’ve been waiting for this! Tonight is my night!”

She beat at him with her fists and screamed, “Let me go!”

The Colonel struggled with her, gasping, “Damn it, give in! You’re no innocent virgin!”

She clawed at his eyes and he let out an oath and released his hold on her for a second. It was enough. She eluded his grasp and made for the door again. But once more he caught her and now he began literally tearing the clothes off her! In a short time all her upper body was exposed!

Joy fought on, clawing and kicking. Wailing, “Let me be!”

“Vixen,” he gasped breathlessly, and he began a new tactic. He began to deliberately pound her with his fists. He struck hammer-like blows to her face and body. A particularly nasty punch in her face stunned her. He carried her to the bed and ripped off the rest of her clothing.