Winds of Eden (8 page)

Lansing Memorial Mission, Basra, Friday 31st December 1915

‘It's not Harry, Angela. It's his brother Michael.' Charles had reluctantly submitted to being pushed in the chair. ‘He's in civvies because he's a war correspondent. Mrs Angela Smythe, meet Michael Downe, and Captain Tom Mason, a doctor like his brother John. Michael, Tom, this is your brothers' and my very good friend, Mrs Angela Smythe.'

‘You're so like Harry.' Tears started in the corners of Angela's eyes. ‘I can see your resemblance to your brother, Captain Mason, but it's not as startling as Mr Downe's to Harry. Please come in, we'll be having lunch shortly, you must join us.'

Chapter Eight

Train, London Paddington to the West Country, Friday 31st December 1915

Helen, Clarissa, and Georgiana found an empty first-class carriage out of London Paddington and spread their bags, coats and hats over the bench seats to discourage anyone else from entering. Georgiana sat next to the window. Not that there was much to see. The day was as grey and despondent as her mood. Rain was falling, not in a torrent, but in a steady icy drizzle that clouded the glass and misted the scenery.

Dressed in mourning, all three were shattered by grief. They were travelling to Clyneswood and the estate chapel where John and Harry's memorial service would be held that afternoon. The day before, they'd attended the memorial service for Clarissa's brother Stephen in Brighton. The emotional strain of coping with their grief as well as that of others, and the knowledge that they would never see their loved ones in life again, had taken its toll. Even the well-meaning ‘last letters' from regimental officers had hurt more than helped.

Clarissa's eyes were red and there were dark circles beneath them in stark contrast to the pallor of her cheeks. Georgiana was as pale, her eyes as haunted, but there was a defiant tilt to her chin.

‘Please, don't keep telling me to accept Harry's death, Helen, because I won't. I'm his twin. That's much more than a sister. Since nursery days I've always known whenever something good or bad is happening to Harry. Whether I'm with him or not, I've felt it here.' She laid her hand on her chest. ‘So I'd know, absolutely know, if he was dead and he's not.'

‘You told me you felt something was happening to Harry early in December,' Helen reminded her. ‘You said you didn't sleep for nights …'

‘I didn't,' Georgiana was fierce in her assertion. ‘But whatever it was he survived.'

‘What I can't stand is this absolute void – this nothingness,' Clarissa asserted. ‘I have to look at a photograph of Stephen to remember what he was like, yet we grew up together. Spent every day together until we went to separate schools. As children, all he did was torment me. When we grew up he delighted in teasing me. Then he joined the army and went to India and Basra. He used to write regularly before the war. Once the fighting started, he stopped. Every time I saw my mother she complained she never heard from him … and now … now he's gone.'

Georgiana laid her hand over Clarissa's.

‘Elizabeth Wells, the medium, visited me. She said she could contact Stephen …'

‘Steer clear of Elizabeth Wells and her spiritualist groups, Clary,' Helen warned. ‘She preys on the vulnerable and tells them what they want to hear. Not the truth.'

‘But if she really can communicate with loved ones who've passed over to the other side …'

‘Have you any idea what the “other side” is like?' Helen interrupted.

‘No.'

‘Neither have I. I'm not even sure it exists, but, if does,' Helen moved closer to Clarissa and wrapped her arm around her shoulders, ‘and the dead are able to contact us, I believe they'd do it in more direct ways than knocking on tables in a roomful of strangers, or spelling out words with a moving glass.'

‘You're always so down-to-earth, Helen.'

‘Not always.' Helen thought of John. How she'd prayed that he'd send her a sign from beyond the grave that ‘something' – some spirit – some essence – survived death. But there'd only been the cold realisation that death was a one-way door that opened on to bleak, blank eternity.

Clarissa started talking again. ‘I sent for a form to join the Queen Alexandra Imperial Nursing Corps. I know they're looking for nurses to go to Mesopotamia because Fanny Gould told me they were when I bumped into her three weeks ago in a Lyons tea shop. She joined them when war broke out. She'd just finished a tour of duty on the Western Front and was waiting for new orders. She knew Stephen was in Mesopotamia and asked me what he thought of the place. She said she might be there soon because she and a few of the people she'd been working with had been issued with summer kit.'

‘She's just as likely to be posted to Egypt, East Africa, or India,' Helen pointed out. ‘Even if you did join the QAINC, Clary, and were by some miracle sent to Mesopotamia, what do you think you could do there?'

‘Look for Stephen's grave. As the telegram said he died of wounds there must be one.'

‘Given the number of casualties at the Battle of Ctesiphon, he was probably buried in a mass grave,' Helen warned.

‘Even so, there'd have to be a marker,' Clarissa countered, refusing to think of the alternative. ‘Anyway, it's all rather academic. My father absolutely refuses to allow me to carry on nursing. He insists I have to return home to run the house and care for Mother.'

‘Your parents have a cook and a maid. I saw them.'

‘And a housekeeper,' Clarissa added.

‘Georgie told me that your father was pressurizing you to give up your career. It amazes me how parents can be so selfish as to deny their daughter her vocation, particularly when that daughter has worked so hard to achieve success. Doubly so in wartime with the shortage of labour and every hospital in the country stretched to the limit, because so many staff are in the services.'

‘My mother's nerves have never been strong. With Stephen gone there's only me and my sister, Penny, and she can't help my parents because she's expecting her second baby in April.'

‘She's the one you introduced us to at Stephen's memorial service, whose husband is a teacher?' Helen checked.

‘Yes.'

‘Do they live near your parents?'

‘About a mile away.'

‘Then my advice to you is: do what you want, Clary, not what your father and mother demand. They have three servants, they don't need another. Join the QAINC. You're over twenty-one, you're a damned good nurse, and you could save a lot of lives wherever you're sent, be it Mesopotamia or elsewhere.'

‘It's easy for you to say that, Helen,' Clarissa protested. ‘You've no family …'

‘Whatever gave you that idea?' Helen broke in.

‘You never talk about them.'

‘If I don't talk about them it's for a reason. My parents consider a female doctor in the family a disgrace. Fortunately my grandmother left me enough money to finance my training at the London School of Medicine for women.'

Clarissa was shocked. ‘Don't you miss your family?'

‘As much as they miss me,' Helen replied ambiguously. ‘I keep in touch with one of my brothers. Although we're both doctors, he's the success story of the family. I'm the one they never speak of. You want to nurse in the army, Clarissa, do it.' Helen looked at Georgiana. ‘You're remarkably quiet. No words of wisdom on following your calling?'

‘Other than there comes a time in everyone's life when they have to do what they think best, irrespective of what others say, no. I admire you for wanting to go to Mesopotamia, Clarissa. I hope you find Stephen's grave.'

‘Thank you.'

Helen studied Georgiana. ‘You're trying to work out how you can travel to Mesopotamia to look for Harry, aren't you?'

‘Yes.'

‘Think, Georgie, how on earth are you going to get there? The military may accept nurses behind the lines, but they'll never accept a female doctor.'

‘I'm not expecting them to.'

‘You'll never get a berth on a boat.'

‘Never is a word you taught me to ignore, Helen.' Georgiana looked out of the window at the sodden winter fields and dripping hedgerows. Clarissa wasn't the only one who knew the army was recruiting nurses for Mesopotamia. She'd applied to join the QAINC an hour after she received the telegram from her father to tell her Harry had been posted missing, presumed killed.

Her godfather, General Reid, would be at the memorial service. He'd been appointed to a senior position in War Office. She'd decided to ask him to pull strings to get her accepted by the corps and find her a berth on the first boat to Basra. She'd never canvassed him for anything before. Once he saw just how intent she was on going to Mesopotamia he could hardly refuse to help her find Harry.

Could he?

Lansing Memorial Mission, Basra, Friday 31st December 1915

‘More cabinet pudding, Captain Mason? Mr Downe?' Mrs Butler attracted the attention of the maid who carried the dish to the opposite end of the table where Michael and Tom were sitting.

‘No thank you, Mrs Butler, I couldn't eat another thing,' Michael refused. ‘That was a marvellous meal. I can see why my brother and John visited every time they were in Basra. Wonderful company, good conversation, excellent food, splendid surroundings – it feels as though we've landed in an oasis of civilisation after our voyage. It must have seemed like heaven to them after soldiering in the desert.'

‘You have the same pleasing manners as Harry, Mr Downe.'

‘If you called my brother Harry, you must call me Michael.'

Tom shook his head as the maid proffered him the dish. ‘I agree with Michael, Mrs Butler. After what we've been eating the last month, this meal is nectar. It was kind of you to invite us to lunch.'

‘Not at all. As Major Reid knows, your brothers were good friends to us and the Mission. We knew Harry better than Major Mason only because he spent more time in Basra. He was generous with his contributions and supportive of our work.'

‘Although there were times when my wife and I were afraid to ask quite where Harry found some of the things he donated to our cause,' Reverend Butler qualified.

‘Harry knew some very odd people who could lay their hands on even odder things,' Charles added.

‘One of the best gifts he brought us was twelve boxes of Kay's soap shortly after the Turks retreated from the town. At the time you couldn't buy soap at any price simply because it wasn't available.'

‘The Turks took all the soap with them when they left?' Michael was amused by the thought.

‘As there was none to be found they must have. Angela,' Mrs Butler turned to her as she carried a tray into the room. ‘Did Maud eat her lunch?'

‘Most of it.' Angela had left the dining room after pudding had been served, to take Maud her dessert. ‘I told Maud you'd like to see her, Captain Mason. She's free now. I can take you to her if you've finished your meal.'

‘Thank you.' Tom crumpled his napkin and left it on his plate as he rose from the table.

‘We have to hurry back to the hospital, Captain Mason. If we don't see you again before you leave Basra, good luck upstream,' Theo offered Tom his hand.

Tom shook it. ‘It was good to meet you. Thank you for enlightening me about the tropical diseases I can expect to encounter.'

‘This is a vicious country. After three years I'm still not sure what's worse, the pestilential heat of summer, the flies, the floods or the cold nights of winter.' Theo lowered his voice. ‘Try not to tire, Maud. She's had a difficult time adjusting to motherhood. It's not a week since the birth and she's not strong, physically or mentally.'

‘I won't keep her long.' Tom turned to his host and Dr Picard. ‘Thank you for the conversation and the insights into this country. I'm sure they'll be very useful.'

‘Our pleasure.' The men left.

‘I'll keep the coffee warm for your return, Captain Mason, unless you'd prefer to drink it with Mrs Mason,' Mrs Butler offered.

‘I'd like to join you, Mrs Butler.'

Angela led Tom through the hall down a corridor and knocked on a door.

‘Come in.'

The voice was feminine, soft, low, and educated. Tom tried not to like it. Angela opened the door and stepped back.

‘You're not staying?' Tom was surprised.

‘Maud said she'd prefer to see you alone but to observe propriety the nursemaid will remain in the room. She doesn't speak English.'

Tom hesitated but he couldn't think of anything else to call his brother's wife. ‘If that's what Mrs Mason wants.' He stepped inside and glanced around. The room was small, simply furnished, how he'd imagined a nun's cell would look, although he'd never been in one.

A plain wooden bed faced out from the back wall. A washstand stood to the right, a bedside cabinet to the left. Next to the cabinet was a wardrobe. A travelling trunk had been pushed against the footboard of the bed. Two upright chairs were set either side of a desk in front of the window that also did duty as a table, judging by a jug of water and bowl of fruit. A cot and upholstered chair completed the furniture. The walls were whitewashed brick, the floor plain wood.

A young woman in a drab grey wool dress and white apron was sitting in the upholstered chair. A middle-aged native woman attired in black, who Tom presumed was the nursemaid, was seated in an alcove that jutted into the garden. She was darning a pile of socks. The cot was next to her, not Maud. He glanced inside. All he could see was a small pink nose and above it a shock of the palest blonde hair.

‘Please, sit down, Captain Mason.'

Tom picked up one of the upright chairs, swung it away from the desk and placed it at the furthest point in the room from Maud's chair that space permitted.

The breath caught in Maud's throat and tears started in her eyes. John had done the self-same thing the only time he'd visited her at the mission. It had been the last time she'd seen him before Colonel Allan had arrived to tell her that her husband had died in Kut.

Neither she nor Tom said anything for a few moments. All Tom had heard about Maud before Charles had broken the news of her infidelity was an off-hand comment Charles had made when he'd returned from India before leaving for the Western Front.

‘John's wife is very pretty.'

Plainly dressed, her fair hair screwed into a knot at the nape of her neck, with a thin face and figure and pale blue eyes, Maud didn't strike him as pretty. Not when Tom compared her to Clarissa Amey's exotic dark-eyed beauty. In fact Maud looked so colourless and nondescript he wondered why his brother had been attracted to her.