Band of Angel (56 page)

She walked up the ward, banging her leg rather painfully on a washstand. She could hear her heart beating and felt a sour sickness in her stomach.

“I’m going off now, miss,” said the orderly. “But if you see him tell him I brung you. Ash is my name.” He put the tray quickly in her hand and rushed off, green-faced. She stood there, dazed, half listening to a sudden commotion in the hall and doors banging. Some new patients were being carried into the ward. She could hear one crying and saying his leg had been broken and the cries becoming more anguished as the orderlies tried to bundle him faster than he could manage.

She waited for them to pass; her tray was heavy and awkward.

“You’re going to be popular.” The senior orderly gave a swooning look at the food.

He led her between the beds and told her who to feed. First, the chinless wonder from the Household Cavalry who had insisted, pathetically, on laying out some tattered bits of lace and a dented sword at the end of his bed, as if these scraps of uniform would give him the dignity his body lacked. She put his bowl of food beside the bed and tried to smile. The orderly said he was not expected to last the day.

“Here’s your next customer,” he told her, leading her to a high-ranking Russian officer who had been captured and put in the unhealthiest bed in the room, near the latrine. He had an ugly bayonet wound on his neck and a large bloody bandage where his ear had been. She was handing him food when she heard shouts from the hall outside. The door had opened again and a new patient half dropped from his stretcher.

“Don’t! Don’t! Don’t!” he was shouting.

The Russian refused to stop eating; he was groaning and begging her with big goggle eyes to stay. Then the orderly put his head around the calico curtain and said if she had another bowl to spare the new chap could do with it.

The Russian had fallen abruptly asleep, his mustache covered in sago. She cleaned him up, drew the curtain around his bed, and found the orderly again.

“Where is he?” she said. Her mouth was absolutely dry. “I was told to bring a dish of food for Mr. Deio Jones.”

“Haven’t the foggiest love,” he said cheerfully. “I’m new on this ward. I’ll go and see, but don’t move, else I’ll never find you again.”

She stood and waited; it took him ten minutes to get back.

“He’s over there.”

He pointed to a bed in a haze of grayish smoke near the fire. She walked up to it and stopped. There was a pair of bloodstained riding boots under the bed. A thin arm, bruised and ugly, lay outside the mound of bedclothes.

“Deio,” she whispered leaning over him. “Is it you?”

When he turned, she tried not to flinch. His face seemed almost entirely a beard, matted and disgusting with flecks of blood and mud in it. In the middle of the beard some black lips glistened.

“It’s Catherine,” she said. “I’ve brought you something to eat.”

She watched his eyelids squeeze tight shut and the corner of his mouth tremble.

“Oh God,” he said. “Catrin.”

While she stood there looking at him, another ambulance party came into the ward, carrying an unconscious man on a wooden hurdle.

“Easy now,” said one orderly. “Down he goes.”

“Is he a goner?”

“Dunno.”

The two of them bounced the hurdle up and down a few times to check. Deio glanced at them, shut his eyes, and seemed to pass out.

“Two down and one to go.” The older man winked in Catherine’s direction. He said his name was Jim and that she was a sight for sore eyes. She was so shocked she couldn’t move.

“I know this man,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“He’s been asking for someone called Catherine.”

“It’s me.”

“Are you his wife?

“No.” Tears were pouring down her face. “Who is the duty officer on this ward?”

“It’s Dr. Smetheren.” The orderly had a kind, beery face. “So, where’d’ you know him from? Scutari?” She waved his question away, fighting for control.

“A friend,” she said eventually, “from home.” She was surprised to hear her own voice. “I want to stay for a while and help him.”

The orderly was folding the blanket and putting it back on the stretcher.

“They often call out for someone.” He gave her a quick glance. “I didn’t pay it much mind.”

“How long has he been here?”

“Don’t have a clue, love.” He consulted a chart at the end of the bed. “Let’s have a look. All it says here is they found him in a ditch. He was in ward four and they moved him here today.”

“But has he been seen to?”

“They must have done something, but he doesn’t look very special. I’ll help if I can.”

She winced. The orderly had large, beefy hands. He went away and came back again with some gray lint, some brownish water in a bowl, iodine, and a pair of scissors. He put one of his big hands on top of Deio’s head, and began with the other to dab away impulsively with his cloth.

“Let me do it . . . please! Please.
Stop!
 . . .” She felt at that moment as though she could have shouted and screamed or gibbered quite easily.

“All right then.” Jim was not offended. “Calm down. Your hands will be gentler than mine. I’ll undress him from the other end, then if they find us you won’t be accused of straying off the path of virtue, unless of course we meet in the middle.”

Another saucy wink. His lack of sensitivity was almost a comfort.

“Deio,” she whispered. “Deio.” She brought her face close to his eyes. His eyelashes were singed, the lids blackened and puckered with frostbite. There were shreds of flesh in his beard.

“Stay still. Stay still! I’m going to try and clean you up.”

She took a deep breath and clasped her hands together, they were trembling violently.

“Still as you can,” she whispered. “I’ll try not to hurt you.”

As she cut away the hard dirty clumps of beard around his mouth, some brightly colored bits of skin came away in her hands. Someone had been blown up beside him.

He was breathing with his mouth half open, his gums pale with shock, his pulse weak. She heard the splatter of blood on the floor as the orderly took off his socks, then they took off his breeches, which were stiff with dirt and blood.

No, no, no, no,
part of her protested inwardly as the orderly wrinkled his nose and held the breeches as far away from himself as he possibly could. He said he would be back in a tick with some clean clothes, if any could be found.

“Why haven’t they undressed him before?” she said.

“There’s over a hundred in ward four waiting for a bed,” he said. “He was one of the lucky ones.”

“How bad is it?” she said, almost inaudibly.

He said, in a tactless boom, he wouldn’t really know until they’d got him properly cleaned up. That everything was still there—two legs, two feet, all the other bits and pieces (another appalling wink), but there was some mucky stuff in the middle, perhaps a bayonet wound, and his feet were nasty.

“Thank you for helping,” she said.

“Think nothing of it. Nice for him to wake up and see a friend.”

“To see a friend . . . to see a friend . . .” As she tried to untangle the grizzled beard from the bright pieces of skin, the words buzzed senselessly in her head.

“Catrin.” He opened his eyes, but they swam in his head and went blank as though he had died. “What are you doing?” he whispered.

“Cleaning you up, Deio,” she said in as normal a voice as she
could manage, “You’ve been hurt—try and lie still! I’m almost finished. There! One more bit.”

“I don’t want it.” If he hadn’t been so weak he would have jumped out of bed.

“You’ll be all right. Not as bad as we thought.”

“I know.” Now that the mud had gone his lips were swollen, berry-colored. “The man next to me was blown to bits.”

Looking down at him she felt nothing but a desperate sorrow.

“Poor Deio.”

He didn’t answer.

He opened his eyes briefly again; the slight cast in his eye, always more pronounced when he was tired or in pain, began to wander. He was looking at her so strangely.

“You have a gash on your chin,” she said. “I . . . I was trying to clean it off and put some iodine on it.”

Her voice sounded meek and uncertain, as if the very sight of him took her back to a time when she doubted almost everything she did and wanted.

He lay still for a moment, and then felt below his bedclothes with his hands.

“Oh my God, Catrin,” he said, in the same faraway voice. “I don’t know.”

“Don’t know what, Deio?”

He looked at her. “I don’t know,” he said, his eyes glittering back at her, unreadable, lost, and full of fever.

“Did you undress me?” He closed his eyes and cursed. “Breeches; everything?”

“Breeches and everything!” She tried to do her auntie Gwynneth voice but it didn’t come off and he was too ill.

“No, Deio, the orderly did that.”

“Ouch.” A stab of pain hurt him.

“Let me see where you’re hurt, please.”

She pulled back the bedclothes, took a deep breath and looked. There was a diagonal cut above his belly button, about seven inches long and still pulsing blood. His rib cage was hugely swollen; judging from the shallow breaths he took, it might be broken.

“You need a doctor, Deio.”

“Um.”

He gazed blearily at her—the skin around his eyes looked so painful.

“I can’t take all this in, Catherine,” he mumbled, “it’s too funny.”

He looked like a cornered animal. All she felt was terror of him dying that made her limbs feel heavy and her heart pound. They were in a black boat together, in a black sea, about to disappear over the edge of the world forever.

It had stopped snowing and the sky was full of pearly brightness as she ran back toward the kitchen, her shoes crackling on the snow, her coat flapping. She was panting with fear; she knew now how quickly you could die in a place like this and what Deio’s best chance of life was, but the solution seemed so risky.

She had to tell someone; she knew that now, so she went down to the kitchen, sank into a chair, and told Betsy everything—or almost everything. It felt like defilement mentioning Cavendish and Deio in the same breath, but she had to.

Betsy stopped mashing her potatoes and did something unexpected: she took Catherine in her arms and hugged her. She looked at her as though she was her own, and said she’d guessed at a secret and was glad it was out because it was no sin. It had happened once or twice before at the hospital, she said, a nurse recognizing a man she knew.

“How wonderful it must be to see a familiar face when you are ill.” Her plain, mannish face lit up at this thought. “Especially a girl as pretty as you.”

She put a dollop of potato on a plate and carved a few slivers from the ham joint.

“So that’s for your young man tonight.”

“I don’t know if he can eat it.” Betsy’s optimism was making her heart sink. “His mouth and tongue seem very swollen. He’s so ill.”

“Take it,” said Betsy. “Show it to him, it will give him hope; pass it on if he can’t eat it.”

“And he’s in a very strange state of mind,” she blurted out.
“It felt like it was the last thing in the world he wanted, seeing me there.”

“Oh, good God, what nonsense!” said Betsy. “If he hadn’t wanted you, he wouldn’t have called out for you—it’s shock, or fever.”

“In books and things, you might think it was romantic,” said Catherine. “It wasn’t.”

“Oh, romance be buggered,” said Betsy with her usual vigor. “This is a war and men can be awful silly babies about things like that, especially those who like their women to be ladies. They’ve never seen nurses at war before, and maybe it does feel all wrong, but he’ll come round, Cath. Wash his clothes, slip him a few tidbits, he’ll soon find you useful.”

“Useful?” Catherine felt a moment of confusion. “Do you mean like a servant?”

“Now don’t you dare talk to me like that.” Betsy almost smacked her with her spoon. “You’ll never keep a sweetheart if you talk like that, and when the war’s over, which they say it will be soon, you’ll want to go home and do what’s natural for a woman. So don’t stand around talking rubbish to me, that meat’s getting cold. Take it up to him nice and hot, and if he can’t eat it like that, cut it up small.”

Walking back to his ward she tried hard not to think, she was too tired and it was all too confusing. All she knew was that he had to stay alive.

Betsy arranged time off, and for the next four days she was able to be with him in the ward. She fed him scraps of food; held water up to his swollen lips, and when he would let her, tried to brush some of the burrs and mud out of his hair, which was still surprisingly glossy as if this part of him refused to die. He drifted in and out of consciousness. Sometimes, waking and seeing her there his eyes lit up, and other times he muttered angrily as if she was responsible for this ordeal. While she watched and waited, she fed on him: his hair; the beautiful brown hands; the points of his teeth; the simple, marvelous fact of him being there and still alive.

Sitting with him, she quietly accepted her happiness and her helplessness. What if there was in the end no decision she could
make, if love, this kind of love, formed when you were young and undefended had its own momentum and terrible power. You were innocent and thoughtless when it took root, and now here it was: something as simple and natural as a tree, and here it would stay, whatever she tried to do or think about it.