I held on to my patience. “I’ve been posted to Passchendaele. Ypres. I was to meet someone here to transfer me to that sector. But he hasn’t come.”
“On the contrary. He was here looking for you at six o’clock this morning.”
She lifted a sheet of paper from a basket to one side of her desk and read what someone had written there.
“ ‘Driver arrived for one Sister Crawford. He was informed that she was not staying with us, and he left. No message.’ ”
“Indeed!” I said, repressing the urge to look over my shoulder. “Who took that down, may I ask?”
“Nurse Saunders, I believe. She would have been on duty.”
“Would it be possible to speak to her? It’s rather important.”
“It is not possible. What are we to do with you, Sister Crawford? It would seem-and I must say your appearance rather bears it out-that you have mislaid your driver, rather than the other way around.”
I lost my temper. It had been a long night, I’d had a fright, dealt with the recalcitrant port authorities trying to release Captain Barclay, and now this woman was treating me as if I had spent the night carousing and found myself too late for my transport. I’d only come here for pen, paper, and an opportunity to write to my father.
I said coldly, “If you care to look into my movements, I suggest you send someone to the convent where I spent the night. The nuns there will be happy to confirm that I chose to stay with them rather than go to an hotel as a woman alone. Now, will you allow me to write my letters or not?”
“I think not, Sister.” She reached for paper and took up her pen. After a moment she considered what she had written and then said, “Your nursing service has very high standards, Sister Crawford. I am sending you to England for proper disciplining. One of our orderlies will escort you to the port, see you aboard the first available ship bound for Portsmouth, and hand this letter to the First Officer to be delivered to the proper authority as soon as you land at your destination. Do I make myself clear?” She was reaching for an envelope as she spoke, inserting the letter into it and sealing it.
I had to bite my tongue at the reprimand. I was getting what I wanted, actually, an opportunity to sail to England straightaway. Once there I could deal with these charges easily enough. And I could reach my father by telephone when I had landed, and set Captain Barclay free even sooner than I’d expected.
And then I had a brilliant notion.
I said, in as petulant a tone as I could muster, “It’s not fair that I have to be sent home. What about the orderly who got me into this trouble? The port authority is holding him, but is he being sent home in disgrace? I think not! You are a woman, Nurse Bailey. Do you think it right that he escapes scot-free? He’s in the Army Medical Services just as I am. Because he’s a man, should his dereliction of duty be seen in a lesser light than mine?”
I watched her eyes. They narrowed as I was finishing.
“I have no authority over the port officials.”
“The Major there would most likely honor any request coming from the American Base Hospital.”
She was tempted.
“At the very least, you could try,” I pleaded. “He’s quite handsome, Barclay is. I tried to withstand his advances, that’s why I went to the convent, but he followed me from the Hotel de Lille. Thank God he was stopped and asked for his papers! I don’t know what he would have done.”
She considered me for a moment, eyes narrowing again. Finally she rose from behind the desk, asked the direction of the convent, ordered me not to leave the room, and for good measure locked the door behind her as she went out.
I sat there fuming for over an hour. Had she believed any part of my story, or had I only succeeded in ruining my own reputation for no purpose? Time was passing, and I was locked in here.
Halfway through the long wait, I felt a spurt of horror. What if she’d gone in search of my driver instead? If he came here, promised to deliver me to Ypres as ordered, would she feel that I had learned my lesson and remand me into his care?
Surely not. He had gone long before this.
When I finally heard the key turn in the lock, I tried to make myself look frightened and contrite.
Nurse Bailey came in accompanied by a man dressed in the uniform of an orderly, but he was older, and I guessed-correctly as it turned out-that he was in charge.
I was told that he would escort me to the ship waiting on the river even now, and that he would deliver the letter Nurse Bailey had written to the First Officer, as she had intended from the start.
I didn’t protest when he took my arm and led me out of the small room, through the passages, and out the gate of the hospital.
We walked together to the port. I was escorted up the gangway and handed over to a young officer who looked at me as if I were carrying the plague. Disgust was writ large in his face, and whatever he’d been told, he’d believed every word of it. I was conducted to the quarters of one of the officers and once more locked inside.
After a while I heard the sounds of the ship weighing anchor, then moving with the tide as it prepared to follow the river to the sea.
I’d failed to get Captain Barclay freed, but I’d be in Portsmouth in a matter of hours.
My worry now was, could I reach my father once I got there? Or was he off on one of his mysterious forays and out of touch for days on end? What could Mother do in his stead? Was Simon even well enough to attend to this?
CHAPTER TEN
IT SEEMED TO take longer than usual to reach the mouth of the river. More often than not, unless I was assigned to duty with the wounded belowdecks, I stood at the rail, watching our passage downstream. Instead, here in this stuffy little cabin, I tried to picture it in my mind as a distraction.
Finally I could feel the swells as we left the river behind and met the Channel. That much closer to England. Somewhere in the narrow ship’s passage outside my door I heard someone begin to retch, and then the sound of feet rushing toward the companionway.
I was a good sailor, and I stood at the porthole, the lamp behind me turned off, and looked out at gray water meeting a gray sky. There was always a chance that we would encounter a German sub, and if the weather was good, the chances were doubled. But from my vantage point, there could have been half a hundred out there, and I’d have no way of guessing.
With a sigh, I closed the black curtains and sat down, not in the mood to relight the lamp. I was tired enough to sleep, but tempting as the bunk was, I wanted to stay alert if I could.
I’d just stifled a yawn when I heard the click of the key in the lock, and my door opened a very little.
I reached for the lamp, lit it, and stood there, waiting in its pool of light.
A familiar face peered around the edge. I recognized an officer I had sailed with before on a number of occasions.
“You aren’t about to throw the inkwell at me, are you?” Captain Garrison asked with a grin.
“I promise,” I said, and he stepped into the tiny cabin.
“I was just informed you were on board. Locked away like a common miscreant. What happened, Sister Crawford?”
“It’s a long story,” I told him wryly, “but I’ve transgressed, I’m told, and I’m being shipped home in disgrace to face my hour of judgment.”
He laughed outright. “Good God, Bess, did you take a shot at the First Lord of the Admiralty?”
“Nothing so grand. I was accused of fraternizing with an orderly and in consequence missing my transport to Ypres.” My hand went of its own accord to my pocket. What if I’d been searched and Simon’s little handgun had been discovered?
“I don’t believe it! Hang on-is that the other felon we have in irons belowdecks?”
“Unless he’s an American, I wouldn’t know.”