Chapter 3
CHAPTER
CHIMNEYS EXHALED RIBBONS of smoke.
It was early afternoon and the streets were full of motorcars and people making their way home for supper. Women pushed well-bundled babies in prams. Men in dark coats and hats hurried along the pavement, evening paper tucked beneath their arms.
Somewhere, behind a shutter, a cough broke loose and lingered.
I pulled my hat lower on my head, fighting against the wind.
The hem of my gray coat snapped like a restless flag.
I didn’t want to be late on my first day of volunteering at the hospital, so I rushed along, my lace-up boots striking the stones in a measured rhythm, but then I stopped. A crowd formed around the newsstand.
Men in heavy overcoats, women in plain wool, heads lowered, reading the afternoon’s headline. Coins clinked together like bones.
My gloved fingers adjusted the strap of my satchel, and I pretended not to read what I was already reading.
The Times, London—16 October 1914
H.M.S. THORNLEIGH—OVER 500 LIVES LOST
News has reached the Admiralty that His Majesty’s Ship Thornleigh, commanded by Captain Alistair M. Fenton, was struck yesterday afternoon by a torpedo from an enemy submarine while engaged in patrol duties off the coast of Aberdeen.
The vessel foundered within minutes. Rescue efforts by accompanying ships succeeded in saving only a small number of the crew. More than five hundred officers and men are feared lost.
Survivors speak of a sudden explosion, a great rush of water, and the ship listing heavily before slipping beneath the surface. Many had no time to don lifebelts.
The Admiralty expresses profound regret at this tragic loss of life and extends sympathy to the families of those who served.
No final signals were received before the ship went down.
Five hundred. I didn’t even want to imagine it. A blast. Then bodies all lost at sea.
“Died so far from home,” a woman whispered near the front of the line. “For what?”
The newsman nodded once. His fingers were blackened with ink, his eyes rimmed red. “Power,” he muttered, to no one and everyone. “Little boys and men playing at it.”
Boys. Men. Power
Boys and men, all seeking it. All wanting to wield control, at the cost of another.
And then, quietly, from somewhere deeper than thought, his voice rang in my head. Not aloud. Not here.
It had been years since I’d heard that sound so clearly.
You’ll never grow up. You’ll never grow old. You’ll never die.
What about me? I heard my younger self ask.
Forever, he answered. Sweet as poison. You and me. Together forever.
The world blurred, as if I were seeing everything standing behind a waterfall. The street. Faces. Motorcars.
“Paper, miss?” The newsman’s voice pulled me back into the cold.
London exhaled.
The omnibus engine sputtered. Boots clattered on the wet stone. People pressed close to the newsstand as though closeness to a stranger in this cold might offer some comfort from the horror in the ink.
Newspapers rustled in shaky hands. Every so often, a gasp emerged from someone who’d just read the headline.
“Thornleigh went down in minutes,” a man murmured, collar pulled high. “Hit by a U-boat. Straight through her side.”
“They died heroes!” someone shouted. A few others cheered.
A woman in a plum-colored hat spoke quietly. “My brother enlisted in August. Wrote to say it’d all be over by Christmas.” Her chin quivered. “They all say that.”
Someone behind her added, “Over a million men have signed up already. Clerks. Bakers. Can’t walk down the Strand without seeing khaki.”
“France. Belgium. Serbia. Russia.” An older man with thick spectacles shook his head, his voice faltered. “Madness. All of it. Now sending boys off to drown.”
“Miss? The paper?”
“No, thank you,” I said. “I’m going to the hospital. To volunteer. I don’t want to risk any of them seeing the news, in case they haven’t heard it yet.” I didn’t want to drag in bad news on my first day with them.
The newsman looked up, his large coat threadbare at the seams.
“A teacher, then?” he guessed. “A kind voice will be welcomed in the wards.”
I nodded. “I hope so.”
He hesitated. His eyes narrowed, as if for a moment there was a second of recognition. I’m sure he’d seen my face in print many years ago, before our stories were changed by someone else into innocent children’s tales.
As I turned again, the paper in his hand caught the wind. The headline twisted, warping as the sheet bent, letters slanting into a single word.
LOST.
Death was swirling all around us, closer than any of us had imagined. I wondered if that’s why memories were stirring up. And I wondered if that explained the birds and the blackboard today.
Even if he was close, I wanted to believe that he could not reach me. There were rules. Old ones. Older than him. Older than stories told to frighten children.
There were rules even he had to obey.
Roger only knew a few of the rules, the ones he shared with me, but he was sure there were others. Everything Roger had told me lived in my journal, between its worn covers and ink-blotted pages. In the lines I’d written as a girl trying to survive that place.
Some words in my journal weren’t just warnings. They were instructions. And they might be exactly what I’d need to stay alive.
The air in the hospital was thick with grief.
A nurse sat at the front desk, typing away quickly. Golden curls peeked out from beneath her cap.
She didn’t look up when I said hello. She didn’t even look up when I said good afternoon.
I glanced down at my boots, the edges covered in grime from the city streets.
“It’s my first day,” I forced myself to say, barely able to hear myself above the machine’s percussion.
“Uniforms, second door on the left,” she said, eyes fixed on the page in front of her.
“I’m not a nurse,” I said.
The clacking stopped. The ribbon wheel spun once, then faltered. She peered over her wire rims. Her nostrils flared. “What are you, then?”
My fingers searched for the weight of the books in my satchel. Comfort. I pictured each of them: Alice, Treasure Island, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, tucked close to my journal.
“I’m a volunteer,” I said. “Here to read to the soldiers.”
It had been Beatrice’s idea. Her letter arrived one dreary morning.
They need voices, Wendy. Gentle ones. Someone to remind them the world still tells stories that have happy endings.
She’d arranged everything. I agreed without hesitation, because I believed my presence could make a difference.
Perhaps there was an edge of guilt to it too.
The thought of those injured men made me think of my own boys from long ago.
If I could not bring my boys back, then maybe I could keep others from vanishing.
For an instant, I saw their faces again. Round cheeks. Eyes always set in the direction of adventure. I had once sworn to protect them all.
I failed.
The woman’s mouth pressed into a thin line. “One came in this morning missing an arm and a leg. For three days he lay buried beneath a pile of bodies. What fairy tale will keep him from screaming at night?”
Her words struck something buried inside of me. I knew the small violences of a childhood gone wrong. Scrapes, cuts, gashes. I knew deeper wounds too, ones that demanded bandages tied in haste, tourniquets pulled tight to keep the bleeding, fevers and chills and rattled bones.
And I knew the stillness of a small hand in my own that would never grow any larger.
I folded my arms around my waist, digging into my coat to keep myself from coming undone.
“A story doesn’t sew flesh,” I said quietly. “But it reminds us of what it means to live.”
The woman’s expression softened. Barely. Then the typewriter began again, its teeth biting into the stillness between us.
She paused, lifted the telephone receiver, and pressed a hand over the mouthpiece. “Who are you here to see?”
“Beatrice,” I said.
Her gaze swept over me. Deliberate and unimpressed. “Of course it’s Beatrice,” she mumbled.
She removed her hand and spoke into the line, her tone flat. “Beatrice to the front.” She set the receiver down and returned to the typewriter.
Beatrice burst through the doorway, a sparkling warmth shining in a cold room. Arms outstretched, eyes shimmering. Her bright red curls cascaded from beneath her nurse’s cap.
“Finally,” she sang. “My beautiful darling.”
She folded me into her arms. Her scent, rosewater and lavender, pulled me back into childhood. The world had changed, but she still smelled like slow summer days gathering bluebells and sneaking into the pantry to stuff our pockets with Rosie’s tea biscuits.
“Just look at you,” she said, holding me at arm’s length. “Lovely as ever. The boys are going to love you.”
She flashed a smile at the secretary. Beatrice was always all sweet on the surface and a fire beneath. “Margaret, did you know Wendy’s going to be a famous writer one day?”
“Beatrice,” I said, signaling her to please not embarrass me on my first day.
She continued, basking in Margaret’s frown. “My darling Wendy here used to keep us up half the night at Marigold House. Stories of dragons, silver tears, moons made of sugar, and boys who could—”
“Beatrice!”
The typewriter whirred to a stop. Margaret cleared her throat. This was certainly a woman who had forgotten long ago how to laugh.
Out, her eyes said.
Beatrice yanked my arm. “Move, before we get sentenced to laundry duty.”
We dashed into the corridor, our muffled laughter ricocheting off tiled walls. For a moment, we were girls again.
In those days at Marigold House, Beatrice had been my greatest healer. Her laughter, her rebellion against conformity, hair pins and pinafores, etiquette and manners. She was the proof that life after what had happened was possible.
As girls we’d race across the lawn. Climb trees in trousers we’d swiped from the boys. All of it. All of her. She taught me that what adults said, what others thought, those were all barriers to our own happiness.