I met Dr. Gaines as I was walking back to the house. He’d come in search of me, and he said as I approached, “There you are. Matron tells me your orders have been cut.”
“Yes, thank you, Dr. Gaines, it was very kind of you.”
“Nonsense. You’re a good nurse. Now come inside and we’ll unwrap that leg and have a look. Tell me what you think.”
He was being polite, of course. But I went with him and the Lieutenant’s leg was looking much better. We cleansed it again and put on fresh bandages. Dr. Gaines nodded to the owner of the leg, who had been watching us with such anxiety that my heart went out to him. A Yorkshireman, he said little, but his eyes spoke for him. “You’ll keep it, Lieutenant, and live to fight another day. If you follow instructions for the next few weeks.”
We made rounds, looking at Captain Scott’s damaged shoulder, Lieutenant Fraser’s badly fractured hand, Major Donovan’s shrapnel-shattered hip, and a dozen more cases the doctors were watching closely. When we’d finished, I was released from duty and allowed to go up to my room.
Halfway to the stairs, I encountered the American. He said without preamble, “You’re leaving.”
“You shouldn’t be listening at doors,” I informed him. “You seldom hear the truth.”
“It’s something in your face,” he said. “Never mind, I’ll be back in France before you know it. Keep watch for me.”
“Captain. Don’t be silly. You’ll lose that leg if you aren’t more careful. How many times does Dr. Gaines have to warn you?”
“I know. I have an incentive now to take my exercises seriously. And,” he added with a gleam in his eye, “Simon Brandon will still be in England.”
Without waiting for me to reply, he hobbled away.
Dr. Gaines himself drove me home when the time came. I was rather surprised by that, but then I remembered what I had told him about going back to France. I expect he felt that his presence would in some fashion soften the blow for my parents.
I hadn’t called to warn my parents that I was coming. I saw my mother’s face as she opened the door and found us standing there. The succession of emotions touched my heart. Surprise. Fear. Anger. Resignation. They were all there. I presented Dr. Gaines, and she took us to the drawing room, rather than to her sitting room, a measure of her feelings. But she was politeness itself, apologizing for the fact that the Colonel Sahib was away at the moment, asking the doctor about the clinic, and carefully channeling the conversation away from the reason for my being there.
Finally, when there was nothing else to be said, Dr. Gaines cleared his throat and told my mother precisely what had happened and why.
She didn’t argue with him. Instead she thanked him with apparent sincerity and asked if he’d care to stay for dinner.
“Alas, no, I have my evening rounds, and I shall be late for them as it is. But thank you for your kindness.” He turned to me and wished me well. “Write to us if you will. I know that Matron, the staff, and the patients who know you will be delighted to hear how you are faring. And one patient in particular who asked me only this morning to find a reason to keep you at Longleigh House.”
I smiled in return. “I shall,” I promised. And with that, and a last glance at my mother, he was gone.
She closed the door behind him and said, “Well. As I have always said, things have a way of working out.”
“I didn’t ask Dr. Gaines to intercede,” I assured her.
“Darling, I know. And he made that quite clear, so that there would be no doubt in our minds.” She put her arm around my shoulders and pulled me close for a moment. “Love sometimes sees the future crookedly. It tries to convince us we know what’s best. When the call came from France-it was that Australian of yours. Sergeant Larimore. I don’t quite know how he learned that you might be dying, but he felt someone would wish to be with you at the end-I couldn’t quite think what to do. Your father was in London, he wouldn’t be home for another four-and-twenty hours, and I didn’t have the proper papers to allow me to go to France on my own. Simon had just landed in Dover, and so we sent him to you. I don’t know what mountains he and your father moved to make it possible for him to go at once. When he got word to us that you would live, it was a miracle. As if God had granted us a reprieve at the last possible moment when all hope had gone. It took some time to recover from that shock. Perhaps we were wrong to want to keep you safe in England, but we too had to heal.”
I hadn’t known all this. I had assumed that ill as I was, and being the Colonel’s only child, I’d been sent back to England to recover properly.
I had attended Sergeant Larimore in the winter, when he was wounded, and because of him I had learned firsthand how swiftly word could travel at the Front. I felt a rush of gratitude for what he’d done.
It was a measure of my parents’ fear that no one had told me until now. As if it would bring back for them what must have been long, terrifying hours of not knowing.
If I had been in France and was told that one of my parents was dying, I would have felt much the same helplessness. And so I could understand. Indeed, there had been a fortnight when I had had no news and feared the worst.
“We must consider what to have for dinner,” she said bracingly, changing the subject before we were both brought to tears. “I was planning to dine alone, and now here you are. Let’s talk to Cook and see what’s possible.”
I left Somerset before my father came back from whatever mission had taken him away this time. My mother made the best of what she must have considered to be a bad bargain and sent me off with freshly ironed uniforms, a packet of sandwiches, and her love, as she’d always done.
When I reached Portsmouth after a long and wearing journey on the train, shunted from siding to siding as troop trains hurtled through, given precedence, I was walking through the dark and crowded port to find my own transport when I saw a tall figure in uniform making his way toward me.
It was my father, calling to me as he recognized me, enveloping me in an embrace that expressed, more than anything, his belief that he wouldn’t be in time.
“There you are!” he said. “I’ve moved heaven and earth-and more to the point, the War Office-to get here before you sailed, and I thought I’d missed you in spite of everything.”
“How did you know?” I asked. “Did Mother reach you?”
“Someone from the Canadian Army reached me. He told me where to find you.”
That ridiculous American, I thought, hoping to stop me from leaving by summoning my father to meet me here.
But I was wrong about his motives.
My father was saying, “God knows how he found out where I was. I am most grateful he did. Of course I shall most likely be sent to the Tower for leaving London so precipitously. He must know people in very high places. Perhaps he will also arrange my pardon.”
I laughed, as I was intended to do. “I never told him that you were away. I wasn’t aware of it myself until Mother told me.”
“You know him, then, do you? This Canadian?”
“It’s a long story. And he’s an American serving with the Canadian forces. I can’t think why he should even guess where or how to find you.”
Somewhere down the quay a blast of a ship’s horn, muffled but still loud in the damp night air, reminded me that I hadn’t yet located my transport.
“Look, there isn’t much time. Simon told me about Vincent Carson. I don’t want you involved with this business, Bess. Leave it to us. I have ways of finding out what we need to know about this Colonel of his. And if I can track down his grave, I can ask to have the body exhumed in the hope of discovering the cause of death. Are you quite certain that his journal wasn’t there when you found him?”