Charles Todd - A Duty to the Dead

“He made me memorize the address as well.”

My father studied my face. I wanted to squirm, as I’d done as a child when I’d got caught in a mischief. He said, “It’s not wise to get close to a soldier, Bess. Ask your mother.”

I wanted to cry, but I forced myself to smile, for his sake. “Yes, so you’ve told me. A solicitor, a banker, a merchant prince. But never a soldier.”

But in my mind I could still see Arthur’s face. The worst of it was, I knew very well he’d have done everything in his power to carry out my last wishes. How could I have let him down?

Besides, I would probably have never known about that other girl, if he’d lived.

Somerset, Late December 1916

M Y ARM WASstubborn and refused to heal properly. By Christmas, I still couldn’t brush my hair with that hand, it was so weak.

Dr. Price fretted over it, threatening to send me to a specialist in London.

My mother urged me to go anyway, to see what could be done. “You’re lucky there’s been no infection, what with the cut. There will be a scar, I’m afraid. We’ll ask Nora for some lotion or ointment to make it look a little less angry.” The gash had gone deep, very deep. The scar was raised and ugly still.

“I’m not worried, Mother. Bones take their time, you know. Let’s wait another week.”

But it was the duty of mothers to fuss, and truth was, I was glad to be home for a bit, leaving decisions to others. My father, on the other hand, was after me to exercise my arm.

“They’ll not take you back again until it’s strong enough,” he warned me. “You can’t swim in this weather, worst luck, but we can have you sit by the bath and move your arm back and forth in warm water. That should help. It’s what they did for my leg in India.”

He’d broken it playing polo.

“I’ll try,” I promised, and did. I also had my own ways of keeping the arm working. Exercises I’d learned aboard Britannic, listening to doctors instruct wounded men.

“Muscles atrophy without use,” they’d explained. “Leave a limb in a cast too long, and it will be worthless. A baby could knock you over. But this-”

And men had done their best, crying sometimes from the pain or the frustration as they worked. I’d learned an entirely new vocabulary from my patients. Most of it unacceptable, even to tease my father.

I found myself thinking at one point that in coming home wounded, I’d somehow stepped back into the old pattern of parent and child. It was strange, after being responsible for life-and-death decisions in a hospital ward. I’d grown used to responsibility and consequences, to holding back my own emotions in order to give comfort to someone else, to handling recalcitrant patients or men so far gone in delirium they thought they were still fighting the Germans. Now I was tucked up in bed with a glass of warm milk, just as I’d been at seven when I had measles.

The truth dawned on me slowly: my mother and father missed the old Bess, and they were still recovering from the shock of Britannic going down. It must have been days before they had had news of me, whether I was alive or drowned. And so I drank the milk without complaint and let them heal too.

One day my father stopped by my chair in the small parlor where I was trying to read.

“Have you done anything more about your promise?”

“I wrote to Jonathan Graham. I asked to meet him, adding that it concerned his late brother.”

“You want to see this girl for yourself, I think. The one Arthur abandoned.” He was half teasing, half serious.

“Not at all,” I answered with more heat than I wanted to hear in my voice. “I must deliver my message in person. It’s what I was asked to do. Arthur told me over and over again-a letter was useless, I had to speak to Jonathan face-to-face.”

“Jonathan may be at the Front.”

“No, I’ve asked friends. Apparently he’s at home as well, convalescing.”

“Then go before your leave is up.”

“Yes. I shall.”

He said nothing more. But a week later he brought me a letter from the post and dropped it in my lap.

I took it up, dreading it, thinking it must be my orders.

My father said, “They’ve answered.”

And I turned over the envelope. The sloping handwriting was unfamiliar, but the return address I knew all too well.

Opening the letter, I scanned the contents quickly.

“It appears that Jonathan Graham is willing to see me.” To conceal my relief, I added dryly, “He’s probably bored to tears, or else he’s already got his orders to return to the Front. I’m to come at my convenience, and Thursday next will do very well.”

My father laughed, then added, “You aren’t ready to drive.”

My own motorcar, the one I’d fought my father for, was now in the stables, collecting dust, tucked safely out of range of the zeppelin raids on London.

Since the Colonel refused to sanction the purchase, I’d had to ask one of my male friends to advise me. I wanted the independence a motorcar could give me.

I hadn’t counted on it breaking down during my first visit home.

My father, I told you so written all over his face, had brought Simon Brandon with him to ferry me home while he consigned the offending motorcar to a nearby smithy. Simon Brandon was younger than my father by more than twenty years. He’d risen in the ranks to become the Colonel’s regimental sergeant major, and was nearly as domineering, but much easier to cajole. He treated my mother like the Princess Royal, and rumor had it that he was in love with her, because he’d never married. As usual, rumor had got it wrong.

“I can manage quite well,” I told my father now. “There were times when I drove ambulances in France, and anything at Gallipoli that needed being driven. Including an officer’s motorcar, when he lost his leg.”

“My dear, it’s the train or else I drive you.”

I didn’t want him going to Kent with me.

“Very well, the train, then.”

“I’ll see to it. Meanwhile, Simon’s invited you to luncheon.”

My father drove me to the station and saw me off with misgivings he kept to himself. My mother had scolded me, warning me against taking a chill, worried that the Grahams wouldn’t look after me properly, wanting to keep me home and safe for as long as possible. She didn’t see me off, claiming the press of getting my uniforms ready before my orders came. But I knew she was afraid of crying. If it had been left to her, I’d never be out of her sight again. It was a measure of how frightened she’d been.

She had said to my father once when she thought I was not within hearing, “With that arm broken, she would have drowned.” It had been a cry for comfort, but my father had answered her, “And she didn’t. Don’t make her timid, my dear. Courage will keep her safer than fear.”

My mother had said to me afterward, “Your father is a fool.”

When I asked her why, she’d shrugged. “Men generally are,” she’d retorted, and changed the subject.

I had found myself wanting to hug her, but I didn’t dare, knowing she would have wondered why, and probably guessed. She is good at reading hearts, my mother.

The train’s carriages were filled with eager young men on their way to war, leaning out their windows and talking excitedly to others boarding at each station. I looked at their faces and felt sad. The captain of artillery sitting next to me said under his breath, “Little do they know,” when a rousing cheer went up as we pulled out of the next small town.

We weren’t winning, and the killing would go on and on. That was the fate of trench warfare, of a stalemate neither we nor Germany could break.