Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

He held up his wrists, bandaged now. “I couldn’t do it. Not even for Harry.”

“Then I’m proud of you. Something deep inside prevented you, and that means in time you’ll heal. The living must go on living, or we fail the dead.”

“It wasn’t that. I heard my brother crying out to me. As clearly as I hear you now. He stopped me, I didn’t stop myself.”

I digested that, then said, “Which proves I was right. There was some reason for you to live.”

“It shook me to the core.”

I could see that it had. “Of course it did.” I pulled up the only chair in the small room and sat down by the bed. “I expect he watches over you. And always will.”

He stared at me. “I told myself it was proof of my madness.”

“I’d say, rather, proof of your sanity. Why did you send for me?”

“Because none of them has been to war. You’ve come close.” He frowned. “I thought I’d seen you in France. When Harry was taken to the dressing station.”

“It was dark, you were very upset. We look alike in our uniforms.”

“That’s true…” He hesitated. “Will you tell the doctor that I won’t try again? He won’t believe me. My mother-in-law is set on sending me back to the clinic. I want to stay here.”

“Dr. Philips has already given you one chance. And Mrs. Denton is sick with worry for her daughter. Wouldn’t you be in her shoes?”

“I tried to make her understand about Harry,” he said defensively.

“Oh, don’t be silly, Lieutenant. If you had a daughter and she’d married a soldier who seems bent on breaking her heart if he doesn’t frighten her to death first, what would you do?”

He gave me a twisted smile. “I’d try to knock some sense into the bas-” He broke off. “Beg pardon, Sister.”

“That’s precisely what Sally’s mother feels.”

“Tell them I’m sorry. Tell them to give me one more chance. I won’t let them down.” His eyes pleaded, and I tried to judge whether he meant it at this moment but would succumb to his nightmares again.

There was no way of telling. “I’ll speak to Dr. Philips.”

“I can’t help that the trenches come back-”

“That’s not your fault,” I agreed. “This”-I gestured to his surroundings, the bandages and the straps holding him down-“ this is your doing.”

He shut his eyes, and I could see tears beneath the lids. Men don’t like to be seen crying. I turned and quietly left him alone.

I wasn’t sure Dr. Philips believed me when I told him that Ted Booker had promised not to do anything rash again. I could read the skepticism in his face. After all, I was a nurse, and he was the medical man.

Walking back to the Graham house, I was overtaken by the rector-he called to me, introducing himself in the same breath.

“Miss Crawford? I say, I’m Christopher Montgomery, the rector.”

I turned to meet him as he caught me up.

He was a man of middle height, with light blue eyes and fair skin. I put his age at forty, perhaps forty-five.

“I understand you were with Arthur Graham when he died.”

“Yes, I was. I came to Owlhurst with messages for his family. We nearly met before, Rector. I was in the church the other day, when you were repairing something in the organ loft.”

He smiled ruefully. “I must have been making a terrible racket. But the bench was wobbly, according to my organist, Mr. Lessing, and I took it upon myself to find a solution. Thankfully, all four legs of the bench were even when I finished.”

I laughed. “I’m sure they were.”

“I saw you leaving the surgery just now.”

“I was looking in on Lieutenant Booker.”

“Yes, I sat with him earlier. A sad case. I don’t understand what shell shock does to the mind, but I can see very clearly how much he’s suffering. I was a chaplain in the first months of 1915. They sent me home because I had a very bad case of trench foot. Embarrassing, to say the least. But I’ve thought for some time that it might have also been my reluctance to convince men that God intended for them to die for King and Country.”

“There are worse cases than Mr. Booker’s.”

He shook his head. “That’s beyond my ability to imagine.”

We had turned to walk together toward the church gate, where I would take the shortcut to the Graham house.

The rector said after a moment, “I wanted to ask you about Peregrine Graham.”

I was immediately on my guard. It wouldn’t do to gossip about the Grahams behind their backs.

“It came to my ears that he’d been brought home and is not expected to live. Is it true?”

“He’s much improved, I’m happy to say. Someone came for him only this morning.”

“Yes, the neighbors were quick to inform me that the ambulance had returned, but they couldn’t tell me whether it took him away alive or dead. I tried to call one morning, but was turned away. They told me Peregrine had no wish to see me.”

I hadn’t known that he’d called. I said, trying to be judicious, “I don’t think he was really well enough for a visitor.”

“It was kind of you to help the family in their hour of need.”

It hadn’t been kindness, it had been necessity. “I was glad I was here to step in,” I answered instead.

“Where have you served?”

I told him, trying to keep my voice neutral-an experience, but stiff upper lip and all that.

We were halfway across the churchyard now.

He stopped. “It must have been a very nerve-racking experience. I can’t imagine coming so close to drowning. And how is your arm? I see you aren’t keeping it in a sling.”

“Much improved.” I smiled. “Friends at the Front are exhausted from deciphering the letters I wrote with my left hand. It will do much for fighting morale when I am legible again.”

The rector chuckled. Then he said, going back again to Peregrine, “I’ve always been of two minds about Mrs. Graham’s son, and what he did.”

“I didn’t know that you were here, er-at the time.”

“I was not. But my predecessor kept journals for his own guidance, and left them to me for mine. I have read the pertinent passages. He writes that Peregrine had been taken away quietly. He seemed to be comfortable with the decision, he felt that the family had suffered enough. I wonder if that was fair to Peregrine.”

“Would prison have been better? Surely not, if there were doctors at the asylum who could work with him.”

“As to that, I can’t say. My predecessor-Craig was his name-spoke of a damaged mind, and the fact that the poor soul had never successfully been educated. That would have been taken into account, certainly.”

I knew my surprise showed in my face. “Is that what he wrote?”

“He felt Peregrine Graham had the mind of a child.”

Hardly the man I’d just dealt with!

“Was that the generally accepted view? Or just Mr. Craig’s?”

“I can only tell you his given opinion. Apparently the boy had been having some difficulties while his father was alive. The tutor complained he was slow to learn, unable to concentrate on his lessons. But when his father died, the boy’s mind broke with his grief. And so they kept him close to home after that. At any rate, I thought, while Peregrine was ill, I could offer him Christian solace before he returned to that place. I went to Barton’s-the asylum-soon after I took up the living here, but they told me he wasn’t allowed visitors. I was astonished. I thought the family would have-but I was told he was allowed to see no one.”

“Were these the terms of his confinement?”

“That’s possible, of course. Ted Booker told Mr. Craig that one day he was passing the asylum, and there was Peregrine, sitting on a bench under a tree, manacled to it. This was some years ago, well before the war. Booker could see him through the gate, and called to him. Peregrine turned his head away. Booker was shocked by his appearance, and said something to Arthur about it. The rector reported in his journal that Booker was the only person to have seen him since he was taken there.”