A Duty to the Dead (9 page)

I said, “Could you send Robert to Dr. Philips? I need something for a heavy fever, and something as well for a cough and congestion in the lungs.”

She turned to me, looking up the stairs with shadows on her face that seemed sinister in the low lamplight. “I was told he was dying. That medicines were of no use.”

“We need to make him comfortable to the end,” I pointed out.

After a moment’s hesitation, she said, “Robert will see to it.”

And an hour later, Timothy was at the door with a small box containing the medicines I’d requested. But he wouldn’t come into the room. It was as if he had no wish to see his brother.

It was a measure of the family’s feelings.

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I
LOST COUNT
of time. I had almost no rest, sitting up through the nights and again through the days, eating the meals that Susan brought up to me and working hard to make the poor wretch on the bed as comfortable as possible. I’d expected Dr. Philips to appear at some stage, or even the rector, but no one came, not even Peregrine’s mother.

But then she was his stepmother, wasn’t she? And this son had disgraced the family.

The only respite I had was a letter sent on to me by my father. It was from Elayne, one of the women with whom I shared the small flat in London. I recognized her sprawling hand at once. Tearing open the envelope, I was immediately lost in her words, so like her voice.

Smiling, I folded the sheets of blue paper and returned them to the envelope. Elayne, dear friend that she was, was tall and plain and had told me she thought she would never marry, like one of her favorite Jane Austen characters.

Just then, Peregrine twisted in the bed, choking on his own phlegm. Tossing my letter on the bedside table, I bent over the sick man, lifting him, turning him to slap his back, forcing him to eject the heavy plug.

That exhausted him, and I settled him again, adding an extra pillow under his head, to help him breathe.

Where was Dr. Philips?

I asked Susan the next time she brought my meal, but she shook her head and replied that she hadn’t been told he was expected.

Peregrine’s breathing filled the room, raucous and painful, my only companion, and there were times in those early days when I thought it had stopped altogether. And then he would cough and struggle to find air, and finally slip back into the steady, rough pattern as before.

Fighting to help him, I used all the skills I’d learned since entering my training. Hot water with the fumes of pungent oils that made my own eyes water, poultices on his chest, cool cloths for his head, aspirin to ease his fever. He soaked the bed time and again with a sour sweat, and I changed the sheets, setting them outside the door to be washed and brought back to me. With an invalid cup, less likely to spill, I fed him sweet tea and broths that Susan brought to me in Thermoses, although much of both wound up on the towel I put across his chest. Still, each time he swallowed a little, it gave him the strength to keep fighting.

It was easy to see why the asylum had despaired of him, without the staff to sit with him hour after hour, and fearful that the Grahams would accuse them of neglect in his death. How were they to know his family wanted no part of him?

Despite his thinness, Peregrine Graham was a strong man, and in the small hours of the morning of the fifth day, his fever broke.

He lay there in utter exhaustion, trying to breathe, still coughing when the breath was too deep, unable to care for himself or even speak. I considered what to feed him, but I didn’t think he could keep anything down, and that the effort of trying would be too much. The broths and the tea would have to do.

His eyes followed me about the room, and I wondered what was going through his mind. Was he aware that if he lived, he must return to the asylum? Would he have preferred to die? Still, people often clung stubbornly to life, willing themselves to live despite severe injuries or illnesses. Even though he’d appeared coherent in that brief moment on his arrival, Peregrine hadn’t spoken since, and it was possible that he didn’t completely understand his situation. Perhaps it would be a blessing if he didn’t.

It was not until late into the afternoon of the sixth day that he had the strength to whisper, “Are you Arthur’s wife?”

I turned quickly from the window where I’d been watching the light fade into the early winter dusk.

“No. But I knew your brother. I was with him when he died.”

His dark brows rose. “Arthur is dead? How?”

Had no one told him? Surely they had! Or was it that his mind couldn’t absorb family news? “In the war.”

“It isn’t over? The war?”

“No, sadly, it hasn’t finished.”

“What day is this? What year?”

I told him. He frowned, as if he’d lost track of time.

“How did he die? Arthur?”

“Bravely. At peace.”

“You’re lying.”

Surprised, I said, “Why should I lie to you?”

“Kindness.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. It was a remarkably rational exchange. But I was saved from answering as Peregrine began to cough. I offered him a drink of water and said, “You must rest now. You’re a little better, but not out of the woods yet. Sleep, if you can.”

Obediently he closed his eyes and was quiet for some time. Then he said, still in that painful whisper, “Why was I brought here?”

“I don’t think there was anyone to take care of you where you were.”

“I want to die.”

“Well, I don’t think it’s up to you,” I said briskly. “Modern medicine can work wonders without your help.”

“I’d rather be dead.”

“No, you mustn’t say that,” I replied, coming to the bed to look down at him. “If God sees fit to spare you, then there’s a reason. Something you need to finish—” I stopped. For him all there was to finish was his life sentence in an asylum.

His mouth twisted. “Indeed.” There it was again, that logical comment, with its touch of irony.

But he slept after that, and when Susan came to the door with my dinner, asking how he was, I said only, “There’s no change. Still, if Mrs. Nichols could prepare a soup for me—nothing too heavy, chicken stock and rice to thicken it, and a little meat, minced fine, and perhaps a little wine too, I’ll see if he can keep it down. He’s frighteningly weak, we must do something.”

“There’s fresh bread as well, for sops,” she told me, and then left without asking to see the sick man.

Two hours later, she brought the soup in a covered bowl and half a loaf of bread wrapped in a linen cloth, handing them in at the door.

I was able to cajole Peregrine into trying a little, and it must have been to his liking because he took nearly a third of a cup. And
he kept it down, which I told myself was a good sign. Close to two o’clock, I brought him more, and again at six, finishing the container a little after eight the next morning.

I spent the night in my chair where I could watch him and hear the slightest sound, though by dawn, my cot beckoned, and I felt the stiffness across my shoulders and in my back. The chances of a relapse were very good, and I couldn’t risk that. But as the new day dawned, he was cool to the touch and resting well.

I rested myself that morning, realizing how hard a vigil it had been, and was grateful for the hot water that Susan brought with my breakfast so that I could wash my face and hands. It did very little to wake me fully.

My patient studied me in silence as I moved about the room, and I grew accustomed to finding those watchful eyes on me whenever Peregrine was awake.

“Why are you here?” he asked me late in the afternoon.

“To look after you.”

“No. Why are you
here?”

“I was with your brother when he died. There were messages he wanted me to carry for him.”

“Messages?”

“Personal ones. To his brother.”

“Do you carry such messages to the family of every soldier you nurse?”

I could feel myself flushing. “No. But in Arthur’s case, you see, he thought he was recovering. And then everything changed.”

He didn’t reply, and I thought perhaps he’d fallen asleep. If I’d had any doubts about his ability to understand his surroundings, they were erased now. He could think, he could reflect on what was said and draw coherent conclusions, and he spoke like a rational man. But madness had its rational moments, I reminded myself. What’s more, I had no knowledge of what he was like before entering the asylum. Or what help, if any, he was given there.

If his tutor had despaired of him, why was he able to use his brain so well now? And if he had been given treatment that produced this mental agility, why did he not know his brother had been killed, how the war was progressing, or what year it was? It was a contradiction I couldn’t quite fathom.

What he said next shocked me. “A pity it wasn’t Jonathan who died, rather than Arthur.” His eyes were still closed.

“You can’t mean that!” I said, thinking how cruel it was.

“I do. I’ve hated him for years. Ever since I can remember.”

I didn’t know quite what to say. And then I recalled that others had called Peregrine “different.” Perhaps that was why he disliked his brother so intensely—if Jonathan had been held up as an example of what Peregrine ought to have been, and failed to achieve, it would breed jealousy. Frankly, I wouldn’t have put it past Jonathan to tease Peregrine unmercifully. Not after what he’d said about Ted Booker.

Finally, I replied, “He’s your brother.”

“I doubt it.”

I smiled. I had heard children quarrel in much the same vein. But then those dark eyes flicked open, and he seemed to pin me there in my chair. “I was separated from my brothers at an early age. There was little love lost between us.”

“Do you know why you were kept away from them?”

He turned his head to look out the window, agitated. “I always believed it was because my father died.”

I had the feeling that this wasn’t a safe subject for conversation. Until now, Peregrine had made good sense. Sometimes madness turned on small grievances, and I didn’t wish to provoke him into violence.

“That must have been a difficult time for you. You must have been little more than a child—” I’d meant it as conciliatory, but he didn’t take it that way.

“Later I wondered if she killed him or if she persuaded Robert to do it for her.”

That was surely a madman speaking—

There was a tap at the door, startling both of us. We turned toward it, as if expecting—what? After the briefest hesitation, I went to open it. It was Susan with another covered jar of soup.

I took the jar from her and set it on the hearth. By the time I’d spooned half a cup of it into his bowl, Peregrine seemed to have forgotten what we were talking about. I wasn’t about to bring it up again. He drank the soup without comment, and lay back against his pillows, tired enough to sleep.

I went back to my chair. I hadn’t been trained in the field of various forms of madness. We’d been more concerned with the destruction of the body, by illness or weaponry. I wished I could ask Dr. Philips for his opinion.

And now I was uneasy in this sickroom, where I hadn’t been before.

But I needn’t have worried. That was the only time my patient broached the subject of his brothers or his father’s death.

Later that evening as I sat by the fire, Peregrine cried out. It was so sudden I nearly leapt out of my skin. But when I turned toward the bed, he was lying there asleep, one arm flung out and his body half twisted to one side. I realized that he was dreaming. I heard him say, his voice muffled, “Please—,” and again, as if pleading, “
Please
—.” After that, he was quiet and didn’t rouse again until it was time for his soup at ten o’clock.

It was while Peregrine was finishing the cup that Timothy came to the door, knocking tentatively, to ask about his brother. But when I opened it, he stepped back, as if afraid he might find himself looking into the room beyond.

It occurred to me that the family had expected that my nursing skills were not up to saving Peregrine Graham, and they were now wondering why I hadn’t appeared with the sad news of his death. They had made no effort to send Dr. Philips to the patient. I wondered if they would have, if I’d sent down to ask for his help.

“I’m cautiously optimistic,” I responded to his question. “It’s too early to say what the outcome may be.”

It was a habit I’d fallen into, working with the wounded. Orders were to find them fit again as quickly as possible and send them back to the fighting—men were in short supply, malingerers not tolerated. I often sought to keep a man who was exhausted, still weak, or pretending he was healed when I knew very well he was not. It made no sense to me to send someone back to die his first day. And I wasn’t convinced that
this
patient was well enough for the long, cold ride back to that tall, forbidding house behind its high walls. As well, the building clouds at dusk had spoken of snow, and I had seen the winter birds huddled in the bare trees, out of the wind, a sign of foul weather.

Timothy nodded, thanked me, and quickly walked away.

Peregrine, who had overheard the brief conversation, said with some bitterness, “I expect they’re eager to see the back of me. Or else he’s afraid I must be well enough now to overpower you and run amok in the house.”

“We shan’t worry about that until you can overpower your soupspoon,” I retorted. For his hands shook with the palsy of weakness as he tried to drink or feed himself.

When he didn’t reply, I said, “Mr. Graham. Would you wish to see the doctor or the rector? I’ll ask for them on your behalf, if you like.”

The answer was emphatically no.

“I don’t think they are the same men you remember,” I told him. “Your mother made some mention of newcomers.”

He remained adamant.

“Would you like for me to read to you? I’m sure I can find a book that might interest you.”

He shook his head, drifting into sleep almost as soon as I took away his bowl and cup.

I debated leaving him for a while and going to my own room. I hadn’t had a change of clothes for days, and a bath would have been
heaven. But I was afraid to leave him alone. I didn’t want to address the reasons why.