Chapter Fifteen
I was alone on the German ward. It was not uncommon at the beginning of a night shift, when Alison or the sister was needed elsewhere and Dr Henning was yet to be delivered. An hour or two between rounds when a caretaker was all they needed.
It was dark outside and approaching midnight.
Most of the men were asleep or sedated so I turned off the overhead lights and stirred the soup I was warming on top of the stove.
Spring had sprung with unusual enthusiasm, so we only had one burning – Alison insisted on it, despite the shortage of coal.
When the soup was warmed I took the bowl to bed four.
He was still. I approached slowly, hoping not to rouse his demons, but they sensed motion and began to contort their host. His face twitched, his head jerked, his limbs began their grotesque dance. I sat beside his bed and he offered a resigned smile that was quickly snatched away.
It took ten minutes for his dancing limbs to tire but I was determined not to rush him. This was our third attempt and he was hungry.
‘Bereit?’ I said.
He nodded and I raised the spoon. When he opened his mouth I noticed another missing tooth, the third to fall out since arriving on the ward. Eating was so difficult, he’d become malnourished.
He clamped his mouth over the spoon and I angled it out so the contents would be his to keep.
When he swallowed I offered another spoonful, then another.
He sat on his hands and there was little more than a small tick of movement in his head.
But then something broke our rhythm – a word of praise, perhaps, a feeling of optimism.
His knees flew up and his hands were released from where they’d been anchored.
I think of it now and imagine strings attached to all of his joints, his demon the puppeteer.
I’d been ready with the next spoonful and was leaning forward with the bowl of soup, still full.
I wore it, of course – a thorough soaking.
It permeated my apron, my uniform. I felt it damp on my chest and saw it pooling in my lap.
There was a mouthful left in the bowl so I waited for his limbs to settle and offered it to him, but he was exhausted.
In the storeroom, I removed my apron and added it to the laundry bag. Then I removed my uniform and corset. The top of my chemise was soaked through, also the front of my drawers. I went to the locker – there was a spare uniform but no underclothes. I lifted the chemise over my head.
The door of the ward opened then closed. The Redcap called out, his voice gruff and familiar.
‘I’ll be just a minute,’ I shouted.
‘I haven’t got a minute,’ he shouted back. And again the door of the ward opened and closed.
If the storeroom door had been shut, the rest would not have happened. The doctor would have knocked and I would have told him to wait. But the storeroom door was open and he just walked in.
I was at the trough and I turned, my chemise in one hand, the other quickly covering my breasts. He stood on the threshold. A prisoner still. PG29.
My fingers were damp, and I remember the feeling of a soapy sud tracing a line from my breast, over my ribs and into the curve of my waist. I think of it now as an outline in pencil and I can feel the tickle of it.
I had an urge to wipe it away, but I couldn’t.
I expected him to retreat and when he didn’t, I expected him to advance.
Ambiguity. The scene had gone awry and we didn’t know what to do. Though is that true? We knew what should have happened, what would have been expected – the door had been open and he had walked in. I should have told him to leave. He should have left. Neither of us did as we should.
Though I think he tried. His body moved as if to turn, but then his chest rose on a deep breath and he closed his eyes.
When they open, I thought, he will see more clearly.
But when he opened his eyes, all clarity had gone and his face, usually so passive, was not.
I could read it, and the surface of my skin tightened.
I felt my edges for the first time in a while.
Leave, I should have said, but I was selfish.
I moved slowly, deliberately, as if he were a wild creature and I didn’t want to scare him.
I no longer tried to cover myself. I hung the chemise on the edge of the trough then removed my drawers.
I stood in nothing more than the thick black stockings we all wore and I felt the movement of his eyes, defining my shape for the two of us – the slight bend in my back, the curves of hip and thigh, the angles of my arm bent at elbow and wrist, my belly, my breasts.
I soaped the places where the drawers were soiled and rubbed until there was a lather.
I rinsed them and wrung them and squeezed out as much water as I could.
Then I put them back on and shivered as the cold damp clung.
He watched. Curious or entranced – shocked, perhaps. His face, I recall, looked sad.
I remembered the gold cross hung around his neck. But he didn’t.
I remembered the gold ring on his right hand. But he didn’t.
I could have reminded him, but I didn’t.
I took the chemise from the edge of the trough and pulled it over my head, and he watched.
I put on my corset, brought it together at the front and eased each hook into its eye. I attached the stays to my stockings, front and back. I felt my shape begin to conform.
He did not stop watching.
I straightened and he blinked, as you do when tears begin to prick, but he did not look away. I turned and stood with my back to him, my hands holding the corset in place at my waist. I waited.
How long did I wait? From this distance it feels an eternity. I remember a sudden embarrassment, a feeling I had misjudged, misread. I imagined he had recalled the cross and the ring, that he had turned and quietly left the storeroom.
Then a sound. A step forward or back, I was not sure. Then another step, and I knew.
I shivered again, and it might have been the drawers and chemise, still damp, or the stillness of my limbs, but it was neither.
My skin had become aware and was wanting.
He took another step and I breathed a shaky breath.
I turned my head, just enough so he could see the side of my face.
I nodded. The air shifted and I could smell him. I closed my eyes.
Then I felt the laces being pulled and the corset tightening around my torso.
It was like an embrace. I think of it now, all these years later, and the air leaves my lungs.
When the laces were tied, he took a white coat from the linen shelf and left. He didn’t wait for me to turn.
It was a long night and we did not speak a word beyond the needs of our patients. I began to wonder what had happened. Then, as morning light crept into the ward, there was this:
‘What are those birds, do you think?’
He was at the desk, writing up patient notes, and I was checking on one patient or another. I looked over, but I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right.
‘Those birds,’ he said again. ‘They have sung their song every morning this week.’
‘They have?’
‘You have not noticed?’
I hadn’t. Why hadn’t I?
‘No,’ I said, but I listened then, and it was joyful, like children in a playground.
He smiled and nodded. ‘You will now,’ he said. ‘From now on, you will notice.’
And I did. Even now, I long for winter to end and spring to begin so I can listen to their dawn chorus and remember him.
It was familiar, the sound of these birds, and I thought of summer mornings on the Oxford Canal, the same birds feeding off insects in the hedgerows and on the surface of the water. I walked the length of the ward and opened the door.
I stepped out and into the middle of Isolation Road so I could see the birds more clearly.
The sky was yawning, I wrote later. An error, perhaps, made when writing the words used the last of my energy.
Or perhaps it was deliberate. Yawning, I think now; a slow waking, the pink dawn like an eyelid lifting.
It was the only time of day that nature could be heard in that place, before the bugle and the boots.
The sound of a breeze was like breathing and the sound of the birds was like peace.
They flew every which way. Small darting things that reminded me of slips of paper on a whirling wind.
Then someone was beside me and I thought it was him, though he rarely stepped beyond the ward.
I thought about how he had not moved away and my hand reached towards where his might be.
But it was the street cleaner, bright eyes and dark skin, looking up at the birds as I was.
He nodded, as he always did when he saw me on the road.
‘Do you know what they are?’ I asked. It was the first time we’d spoken.
‘Swifts,’ he said, his voice deep and heavily accented by a land I could barely imagine. ‘But maybe swallows,’ he added.
I laughed and he bowed his head. I was afraid I’d embarrassed him.
‘No one can tell them apart,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said. ‘But do we need to?’
‘I think they might be swallows,’ I said to Dr Henning, when I returned to the ward. ‘The first I’ve seen this year. Or maybe they’re swifts. I’ve never known how to tell the difference.’
He smiled. ‘Neither have I.’
He didn’t look away.
‘My name is Tilda,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘I am Hugo.’
He told me his name and I thought, not a doctor, not a Hun, just a man, like any other.