Chapter Nine
Nine
How strange, now, that I thought of him this way, in the language of conflict and conquerors.
It might have been that time and place, but I have to admit it was how I had lived my life – always aware of the challenge and the ground I wanted to control.
I’d always been alert to opportunity, and more than capable of exploiting it.
Helen was an exception, of course. With her I had never felt more vulnerable. It was like standing naked on a dark stage, terrified that when the lights came up you would be seen, but fearing, too, that the stalls might be empty.
Dr Henning had asked for a sterile syringe and an ampoule of morphia. I’d drawn it up to save him the trouble. When I approached the bed he turned and bumped me, knocking it from my hand. He swore, in German, and then reprimanded me.
‘Careless,’ he said, and his face, which until then had seemed a little youthful for my taste, grew older.
The lines, which passivity had hidden, revealed themselves.
For a moment he was a doctor, like any other, and if we’d been on a different ward I would have bent down, picked up the syringe then escaped to the storeroom to prepare another.
But we were on the German ward and beneath his white coat was PG29. I’d seen him on his knees.
‘You or me,’ I said.
‘Pardon?’ His frown was transforming. How hard must it be for this man to remain passive? I wondered. His anger was exciting and I did not shrink.
‘Careless,’ I said. ‘You or me?’
‘You, of course.’
He was forgetting himself, where he was, who he was.
‘Of course,’ I said, sarcastic. We were less than a foot from each other and I could smell the ferment of long shifts and fatigue, and the sharp note of his sudden anger.
It made my heart race, I remember that. A little fear can be arousing and I wanted something to happen.
Something I might feel. I braced for it, but the lines on his face softened and he looked more tired than ever.
‘But also me,’ he said with a sigh. ‘I was also careless.’
He was remembering himself, where he was, who he was in that place. Nothing was going to happen.
I bent then, disappointed, and collected the syringe from the floor beside the bed. I did not rush and his clogged feet did not move away. He was watching me, I knew, but even now I couldn’t tell you what he was thinking.
‘I am not as awake as I need to be,’ he said.
‘You are human, then?’
He scoffed. ‘Not human, a Hun, a dog.’ So he remembered this too, being on his knees.
‘I’ve never thought those things.’
‘Are you sure?’
I had tried out all the labels that others applied but none quite fit. ‘Yes, I’m sure.’
He took a breath, deep and controlled. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I have been rude. I am very tired.’
‘Then rest,’ I said. ‘At the desk. Put your head down for a while, I’ll wake you if I need to.’
He shook his head.
‘You’re not as important as you think, Dr Henning. I manage quite well when you’re not here.’
I turned from him before he could reply. I went to the storeroom and replaced the dropped syringe with another. I took a new ampoule of morphia. When I returned Dr Henning hadn’t moved.
‘I’ll prepare it,’ I said.
He nodded, then watched as I broke the neck of the ampoule, drew up the drug, tapped and pushed on the plunger until a drop formed, like a tear, on the tip of the needle. He took the syringe and injected the morphia into the boy’s thigh.
We busied ourselves until the pain on the boy’s face eased. Then I took a pillow from an empty bed and placed it on the desk. ‘Dr Henning,’ I said.
He looked towards me.
‘Rest.’ I pulled out the chair, but he didn’t move.
‘You are no good to these men exhausted,’ I said. ‘And frankly you are a bit unpleasant. Rest.’
He nodded then, and it was like a surrender. He sat in the chair and placed his hand on the pillow, as if testing for a trap. I took the patient notes from bed four and put them by his elbow.
‘If Matron pops in, I’ll drop something. It will wake you and distract her – you’ll have just enough time to put that pillow under the desk and pretend you’ve been writing up notes.’
‘She will think you careless.’
‘It’s a well-established fact.’
He slept. For an hour his breath pushed past his lips in little puffs and I wondered how annoying it would be if I were trying to sleep beside him.
When he woke, he was slightly bewildered but in a better mood.
‘They are all still with us?’ he asked.
‘Each and every one.’
‘Thank you,’ he said.
‘You are welcome, doctor.’
I had gained ground.
‘Where are you from?’ I asked. I had made a pot of tea and we were sharing it at the nurses’ desk.
‘Leipzig.’
‘And you worked in a hospital there?’
He nodded.
‘Is your family still there?’
He looked into his teacup. ‘I do not think it helps for us to talk like this.’
‘I do not think it hurts for us to talk like this.’
He looked up. ‘Your matron would disagree.’
‘Yes, she would.’
He put his teacup down.
‘Aren’t you at least curious?’ I said.
‘Curious?’
‘To know something about me?’
‘It would not help.’
‘You keep saying that.’
He didn’t respond.
‘I tell people I live in Oxford, though it’s not true. My brother and I have lived all over England, but Oxford is where the telegram will go if we get bombed.’
He flinched.
‘Why not, we’re not that far from the front.’
‘It is a hospital. Many hospitals,’ he said. ‘There is the red cross on the roof.’
‘It is also a training camp, with a railway and munitions.’
‘They would not.’
‘You know them better than I do.’
I waited, but he said no more.
‘You’re not just a little curious?’ I said.
He sighed, then asked obediently, ‘Why will the telegram go to Oxford?’
‘To be specific, it will go to a narrowboat on the Oxford Canal.’
I looked at him, expectantly.
‘That is where your brother lives?’
‘No, he lives in a trench like all good English men.’
‘And all good German men,’ he said.
I waited for more.
‘And who lives on the narrowboat?’
‘Two girls, that’s how I think of them, but they’re women now. Twins, identical. You have to be an expert to tell them apart.’
‘And you are an expert?’
An unsolicited question. A conversation, I wrote later in the journal.
‘Of course.’
‘They are your daughters?’ he asked, and I remembered his son, Clemens, thirteen. Was he thinking we had something in common?
‘Not my daughters,’ I said. ‘They are the daughters of my…’ What did I call Helen then? ‘Of my friend. My dearest friend.’
Despite himself he asked another question. ‘And your friend, where is she?’
Remember the details, Helen had said, and so I am.
Where is she? he asked, like anyone would.
I had led him there but suddenly wished I hadn’t.
I felt naked on that darkened stage and the light was coming up.
There was a simple response and a complicated one.
I’d loved her, I missed her, I still wanted her.
I would have tied myself to her without complaint.
I had never tied myself to anything, but I would have found a way.
Had she known that? Did I tell her? In the end, I didn’t have to and a small part of me was relieved. I’ve always lived with the shame of it.
He is right, I wrote in the journal. It will help no one if he knows me and I know him.
‘She died,’ I said. Then I got up and cleared away the teapot and the cups.