Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

Eileen recognized me and said, shakily, “Well, we’re alive. It counts, doesn’t it?”

I smiled. “I should say it does.”

“I made such a fool of myself, didn’t I?” she added after a moment.

“I don’t think there’s any way we can predict how we’ll behave in an emergency until we’re there,” I answered judiciously.

“You didn’t panic.”

“My ancestors were battle-hardened soldiers. I wouldn’t dare panic,” I said lightly. “They’d rise up from their graves in horror.”

That brought a flicker of amusement, quickly gone. “I’ve never been hurt before. Not like this. It’s odd, you know. To be one of the wounded.”

“I was just thinking the same thing myself, not half an hour ago.”

“I’m not enjoying the experience.” There was a pause. “Will I lose my legs, do you think? Dr. Menzies wouldn’t answer me when I asked.”

“I doubt it. He’s always been the cautious one, you know.”

“Yes.” But I didn’t think she believed me.

One of the island women brought us cold water to drink, which was pure bliss, and then a little later gave us bread baked only that morning, with a small dish of almonds and olives. I was surprised to find I was hungry, and I dipped little chunks of bread into the water, sharing it with Eileen, insisting that she must keep up her strength, even if she didn’t feel like eating. Another woman brought us fruit, and gesturing with a smile, mimicked biting into it.

“Will I lose my legs?” Eileen asked again, as if she’d forgotten she’d spoken to me before about it. Looking at her, I could see she was groggy, and perhaps a little feverish.

“There will be scars,” I said, avoiding the question. “But who will see them? Here, have a little more of this orange. It will help ward off scurvy.” But she barely noticed my little joke.

Just then I realized that Lieutenant Browning had arrived, bringing in one of the last boats, and he began to take charge almost at once. I thought he was actually speaking Greek, but it was French, and he’d found someone among the local people who could translate for him. I smiled, thinking that it was just the sort of thing he would do, find a way to cope.

At some point in the afternoon he came over to speak to me, asking how I was.

No one had had time to set my arm, and I said nothing about it, although he could see my purpling hand, and the swelling. By that time Eileen had been taken to someone’s home where it was cooler, and I was sitting with one of the engineers, who’d broken his leg jumping into the water, listening to his tale of another sinking before the war.

Lieutenant Browning came back shortly with Dr. Brighton, and although I protested that it could wait, my arm was cleaned and braced and wrapped, and I was given a stronger sling. It looked suspiciously like a part of someone’s tablecloth. But there was no morphine to help, because we didn’t have enough.

I slept for a time after that, in spite of the pain. It was beginning to put my teeth on edge. And so my sleep was restless at best and my dreams were filled with mines and explosions and fear.

In late afternoon, two more warships came in, and I was among those taken to Piraeus. Crowds of people had come down to the grimy little port to watch us disembark, as if word had run before us like wildfire. A number of us were put up in one of the small hotels near the harbor. It was called the Athena, and the staff was very kind. Margaret shared my room and helped me undress and bathe and dress again. She also cut my meat (it tasted suspiciously like goat) and broke my bread. Four times I was taken to hospital for my arm to be seen and treated and rebound. I could tell no one liked the look of it, but there was no infection, and I thought perhaps the bone was beginning to knit. Pulling Eileen into the boat, I’d managed to turn a simple fracture into a compound one, and it appeared for a time that I’d need surgery. Thank God the doctors were wrong.

Several days after our arrival, someone came to tell us the final death toll: thirty men. It was astonishing, and I put the good news into a letter home, written with my left hand and barely legible.

The question now was how to get us back to England. And how soon.

A S IT HAPPENED,I arrived in England before my latest letter, traveling aboard a smaller hospital ship where I was given light duties, from reading to patients to sitting with the surgical cases. It was an odd experience to stand aside while other nursing sisters did what I could do with my eyes shut, but I also had the opportunity to observe techniques or oversee the skills of new probationers, who were still struggling to remember all they’d been taught.

My father met my train at Victoria Station and tut-tutted over the bandaged arm strapped to my side under my cloak. He reached into the carriage for my valise, saying gruffly, “Well, it could have been worse, Bess. Britannic was in all the newspapers, you know, and speculation has been rife that she was torpedoed. They’ll be giving you a campaign ribbon next. Captain Bartlett is already in London, facing an inquiry.” As we made our way through the throngs of people-most of them families greeting soldiers or saying good-bye to them-he added over the uproar of the next train pulling out, “I told you to stay out of harm’s way!”

“Yes, well,” I said dryly, “I was trying. The mine had different ideas.”

“Damned efficient Germans.” He studied my face. “Still in pain?”

“A little,” I lied. The train from Dover to London had been crowded, and my arm had been jostled in spite of the sling and every care.

He tried to shield me from the bustle of people coming and going. “Let’s get you out of here, then.”

We threaded our way through the valises and trunks and people cluttering the platform, and he handed in my ticket for me. Then we were outside, in the street, and London was cold, wet, and rainy. A far cry from the warmth of Greece. All the same, I was so thankful to be home. The journey from Athens to Malta to Dover had been long and arduous, and somehow a ship no longer seemed to be a haven. We had spotted submarines on three different occasions, but they had been after more important prey.

My father was saying, “My dear, there’s not a hotel to be had anywhere. We’ll have to make do.”

“There’s the flat for me. What about you?”

“I’ll stay at my club. Tomorrow the train leaves at some ungodly hour, seven, I think. We’ll have to be down again by six-thirty.”

“Wake me up at five-thirty, if you will. It takes me longer to dress.”

He was trying to conceal how worried he was about me, but he said only, “Growing conceited about your looks, are you?”

“Quite vain,” I retorted. It was an old argument. Richard Crawford, career officer in the Army that he was, had wanted a son to follow in his boots. Instead he’d got a strong-willed and determined daughter. We had battled ever since I was three.

He waved to a cab that was waiting down the line, and it pulled up for us. “In you go. At least you haven’t a great deal of luggage to worry about. That’s a blessing. But your mother has already bethought herself of that. The house is full of female things, and she’ll expect you to make a fuss over all of them.”

“I shall.” The war wasn’t over for me, whatever Mama might hope. I’d have to find myself new uniforms, or have them made up.

We stopped at the flat I shared with four other nursing sisters, and I made a clumsy dash through the rain for the door. My father, at my heels, got there first and opened it for me.

Mrs. Hennessey, in the ground-floor flat, answered my knock and was on the point of sweeping me into a copious embrace when she glimpsed the strapped arm.