Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

“Oh, my dear!” She hardly came to my chin, an elderly widow who had lived in this same house since her husband died in 1907. It had been converted into flats in 1914. She reached out and took my left hand. “You’ll be wanting the key, and with that arm, who’s to see to you? None of the others are here just now, you know. But I’ll be glad to come up and clean, cook a little, whatever it is you need.” She hesitated. “We heard that Britannic had gone down. Was it very bad?”

“We were so fortunate there were no wounded onboard,” I answered. “But for the rest of us it was a little wearing. Still, we were very lucky.” A response I’d given so often it was like a parrot repeating a lesson and not a part of me. Of my experience.

“Indeed.” Mrs. Hennessey peered into the hall. “Is that your father with you, dear?” She had strict rules about men coming up to the flat. If we wanted to say good-bye to any male over twelve and under sixty, it had to be done at the foot of the stairs, in plain view of anyone coming and going. Diana called it the cruelest blow to romance she’d ever encountered, but none of us had so far complained to Mrs. Hennessey’s face.

“Who else?” I asked with a smile. “There are no handsome young men left in London to meet my train. He’s dragging me home tomorrow, but I’ll have to stop over tonight.”

“Then here’s the key, my love, and if you need anything, just ask. I’ll be bringing up a bit of hot soup later. Tell your father I’ll keep an eye on you.”

I thanked her and let my father see me up the stairs to the flat under the eaves.

“A mercy it was a broken arm and not a broken limb,” he said as we reached the last landing. “I couldn’t have carried you another step.” He unlocked the door for me and stuck his head inside. “I’ll have dinner sent round to you. I expect the larder is empty.”

“Mrs. Hennessey is bringing me soup. That will do. There’s tea,” I said, glancing toward what we euphemistically called our kitchen. “I’d do anything for a cup.”

He laughed and came in, shedding his coat. He was not presently a serving officer, he’d retired in 1910, but they had found work for him at the War Office nonetheless. A tall, handsome man with iron gray hair, broad shoulders, and the obligatory crisp mustache, he wore his uniform with an air. We called him Colonel Sahib, my mother and I, behind his back.

He made tea quickly and efficiently while I pored over the mail collected in the basket on the table.

Three of the letters were for me, friends writing from the Front. I wasn’t in the mood to open them and set them aside. The war seemed too close as it was, the streets filled with soldiers, some of them wounded on leave, the drabness of late November feeling as if it reflected the drabness of another year of fighting. For a little while I just wanted to forget that somewhere bodies were being torn apart and people were dying. We could hear the guns as we disembarked in Dover, and I had no way of knowing whether it was our artillery or the Germans’.

Something of what I was feeling must have shown in my face.

My father misinterpreted it and said, “Yes, you’ve had a rough time of it, my dear. Best to think about something else for a bit. Your leave will be up soon enough.”

“Soon enough,” I echoed, and took the cup he brought me.

It was a souvenir from Brighton, with the Pavilion painted on it. I had never understood where Marianne, one of the nurses with whom I shared the flat, had found all of them, but the shelf in the tiny kitchen held plates from Victoria’s Jubilee, Edward VII’s coronation, and half the seaside towns in England. My father held a cup with Penzance on it.

He raised his eyebrows as he noticed that himself. “Good God, your mother would have an apoplexy. No decent dishes?”

“We do very well,” I answered him. “Didn’t you notice the teapot? It’s Georgian silver, I swear to you. And there are spoons in the drawer that are French, I’m told, and the sugar bowl is certainly Royal Worcester.”

He joined me at the table, stretching his long legs out before him. “Bess.”

I knew what he was about to ask.

“It wasn’t bad,” I said, trying to put a good face on all that had happened to me. “Frightening, yes, when we first hit the mine, and then when we had to abandon ship.” I didn’t mention the boats pulled into the screws. “And worrying, because there were so many who were hurt. The papers said we were lucky in the circumstances that only thirty died while over a thousand lived. But what about those thirty souls who never came home? Some are buried near Piraeus, in the British military cemetery there. Others were buried at sea or never made it out of the water at all. I think about them. On the whole, everyone behaved quite well. And it was daylight, and sunny, though the water was cold. That made an enormous difference to those who jumped.”

“Do you want to go back to duty?”

He was offering to pull strings and keep me at home to work with convalescents.

“Yes, I do. I make a difference, and that matters. There are men alive now because of my skills.” And one who died in spite of them…

I changed the subject quickly. “Do you know the Graham family? Ambrose Graham? In Kent.” Too abrupt-I’d intended to broach the subject casually. But his concern had rattled me.

He frowned. “Graham…Rings a bell somewhere.”

“He had something to do with racing, I think-a horse called Merlin the Wise.”

“Ah. One of the finest steeplechasers there ever was. That Graham. He died some years ago. His first wife was a cousin of Peter Neville’s. He lost her in childbirth, and Merlin had to be put down that same year. Neville wrote me that it turned his mind.” He finished his tea and sat back. “Any particular reason why I should remember the Grahams tonight?”

My father was nothing if not all-seeing. His subalterns and his Indian staff had walked in fear of him, believing him to have eyes everywhere. I knew better-it was a mind that never let even the tiniest detail escape his notice.

“Not especially.” I was fishing for words now, the right ones. “His son Arthur was one of my patients, you see.”

“Arthur? Was that the child’s name?”

“Arthur was a son of the second family. Ambrose Graham married again.”

“Ah. Go on.”

“At any rate, Arthur was healing quite nicely. Then his wound went septic almost overnight, and he-died,” I ended baldly.

“And you felt that somehow it was your fault. You must have been very tired and upset, my dear, to believe such a thing. Men do die from wounds. I’ve seen perfectly hardy souls taken off by the merest scratch while others survive against all odds. Even Florence Nightingale couldn’t have done more. You must accept that as part of the price of nursing.” His voice was unusually gentle.

“No. Not that. I mean, yes, I felt-it was appalling that he died, that we’d failed, although we’d done all that was humanly possible… There is something else. As he was dying, Arthur made me promise to give one of his brothers a message. He was insistent. I don’t think he would have died in peace if I hadn’t agreed.”

I could see Arthur’s face again, taut with suffering as he reached for my hand, intent on what he was saying, urgent to make me understand why I must carry out his wishes. He’d died two hours later, without speaking again. And I’d sat there by the bed, watching the fires of infection take him. It was I who’d closed his eyes. They had been blue, and not even the Mediterranean Sea could have matched them.

“What sort of message?” He knew soldiers, my father did, and his gaze was intent. “Something to do with his will? A last wish? Or more personal, something he’d left undone? A girl, perhaps?” When I hesitated, he added, “It’s been some time, I think, since you made your promise. Is that what’s worrying you, my dear? There were no wounded on Britannic’s last voyage.”