We had been assigned to what in better times had been the servants’ bedrooms, made more habitable now with odd bits from the more fashionable rooms downstairs.
“We don’t have much time to ourselves,” Sister Harrison was saying as she looked around my quarters. “But the bed is quite comfortable, and you’ll be glad of that.”
“Matron told me that the majority of your patients are orthopedic cases, with a few surgical cases as well.”
“Yes, all officers, of course.” Officers and men of other ranks were not mixed in clinics. “It isn’t arduous work, there are enough of us to share it out. Some of the patients are difficult, others meek as lambs. But I must warn you about the Yank. He can be quite a handful.” Her smile told me that she liked the man in spite of that.
“An American?” I asked, surprised.
“He joined the Canadian Army when war broke out. Didn’t want to miss it, he said, while waiting for his own country to come into it. He’s quite popular with the men. Someone told me he had a pocket full of medals and should have been put in for a VC. But then he’s American, you see.”
Victoria Crosses were not handed out lightly.
She helped me unpack my uniforms, and as I went down to report for duty, my father was just leaving. I wondered if he’d been at his most charming in order to smooth my path here. That would be like him and explained why he chose to bring me to Longleigh House rather than send me off with Simon. Not that Simon couldn’t have smoothed my path as well, but rank had its privileges, and that was pointed out as Matron said, watching his motorcar disappear down the drive, “A fine man, your father.”
I took up my duties just after luncheon had been served, my first assignment reading to the men. It was difficult to keep them amused, anxious as they were to return to duty if they could. Broken legs, cracked ribs, shoulder injuries, back wounds, all of them the sort of thing that took time to heal, like it or not. And Sister Harrison was blunt about it.
“A new pretty face is just the thing,” she told me, handing me a Conan Doyle mystery. “And light fare. Nothing heavy-going, sad, or reminding them of the war.”
When I walked into what had once been the drawing room of the house, I found some forty patients there waiting for me. Their expectant faces told me that word had already made the rounds regarding a new Sister being assigned to the clinic.
A tall, fair man with a welcoming smile stepped forward, limping, to hold my chair for me, and as I sat down, I wondered if he was the American. He lacked the reserve I was accustomed to in British officers, his manner open and rather cheeky, I thought.
I read the story, and for the most part my audience was attentive. I saw two or three men gingerly stirring in their chairs as if in pain, and made a note of it. One fell asleep almost on the first page, which I took to mean he had been given medication before the midday meal. His face was slack, as if the relief from suffering was a blessing. The others applauded Mr. Holmes’s acumen in solving the case, and then it was time for exercises. Patients were divided into groups where the affected limb was strengthened.
I assisted the doctor in charge of one such group, helping men work on the muscles in damaged arms, clenching and unclenching their fists, gently encouraging their bodies to remember how to respond to lifting and carrying without dropping things, and to learn anew the skills to compensate for weakness and the pain they were still experiencing.
Next I made the rounds with the sister in charge of giving medicines. After that I walked with three men recovering from broken limbs, their canes tapping across the drive as we headed toward the park. We moved slowly, chatting as we went, and I learned that one had been wounded by shrapnel, another had had a bullet through his knee, and the third had broken his tibia in a fall down a shell hole, catching his boot in the loose earth, and bending his leg back in such a way that the bone snapped.
After dinner, where I fed several patients who hadn’t yet recovered their dexterity with fork and knife, I was asked to help change bandages for the night. For the most part, the wounds were healing well, although I could see Dr. Gaines’s concern over one patient whose wound was still draining.
“I don’t want to operate again,” he muttered to himself. “No, that wouldn’t be at all wise. Still…”
By the time I got to bed that first night, I was very tired and all too aware of the fact that I was not yet healed enough myself to keep up the pace. I wondered how I would have managed in France, where we were chronically short of staff and sometimes worked four-and-twenty hours without relief.
Still, I settled into my routine easily and soon discovered what Sister Harrison meant about the American.
He was polite, always there to open doors or carry heavy burdens, though his limp grew more pronounced when he did, and I scolded him for not taking proper care of his injury.
He smiled. “I’m bored to tears, Sister. And you shouldn’t be hauling those baskets of linens down to the laundry. There are orderlies to handle the heavy work.”
It was true, of course, but the orderlies were busy enough that I sometimes preferred not to wait for them.
“And I shall be blamed if you inflame that wound while being chivalrous.”
He grinned. “My mother,” he said, “taught me to treat the fairer sex with deference and courtesy. Whatever the cost.”
“Yes, well, she wouldn’t be best pleased with me, Captain, if your leg has to be amputated because you were being silly.”
But there was no discouraging him. “My leg,” he said loftily, “is healing better than expected. I’ll be back in France before the summer.”
His name, I soon learned, was Thomas Barclay. His father had made a fortune in railroads, especially running lines north through the state of Michigan, and then he had had the foresight to realize that a ferry could carry the new flood of holidaymakers across to Mackinac (pronounced, I was informed, Mackinaw) Island to the famous hotel there, or to the Upper Peninsula, which abutted on Canada. Railroads, shipping, even a monopoly on the horses used in lieu of lorries and even motorcars on the island had been quite lucrative, and a yearly regatta (which he claimed he’d won more than once) brought even more guests to the north. This explained to some extent his decision to join the Canadian forces, as did the fact that he and his father had often gone north across the border to hunt with friends living there.
Sister Harrison said one morning as she settled her cap over her sleekly brushed auburn hair, “You have made a conquest. The Yank follows you about like a forlorn puppy.”
“Have you looked at his leg? He refuses to let me see it. I’m rather worried about him.”
“Don’t be. Dr. Gaines gives him a tongue-lashing when he doesn’t take care of it properly. I think he rather likes making you fret over him. One way to be certain of your attention,” she added with a grin.
The next day was my free afternoon, and I had given some thought to my plans. It was not more than twenty miles to where Julia Carson lived in a village called Nether Thornton. Twenty miles was farther than even I could manage on a bicycle.
Dr. Gaines owned a motorcar, which he kept in an outbuilding on the grounds. I had been told this in passing by one of the officers, and I had seen it as well when he drove to London with a patient to consult a specialist.
I went to his office and asked respectfully if I could borrow the motorcar for a few hours, explaining that an officer in my father’s old regiment had been killed recently and that I should like to offer my condolences to his widow, having been unable to attend the memorial service.
He peered at me over the rims of his glasses. “Ah. You had the Spanish Influenza,” he said, as if that was how he remembered who I was.
“Yes, sir.”