Crimson (5 page)

They had met long ago, during the First World War, on a drizzling autumn day in 1918. That day was to have terrible consequences for Buzz, although to eighteen-year old Elinor it had been just another of those endless, stinking, exhausting everyday scenes in a casualty clearing station near the front line.

On that November evening, an ambulance convoy had just arrived at casualty reception. Grey-blanketed stretchers were everywhere, many on the floor. The filthy, exhausted men on the stretchers wore muddy, torn khaki; their bandages were dirty and bloodstained.

“Hey, Nurse!” Hearing the high-pitched nasal voice, Elinor turned. She realized, to her surprise, that the lanky ambulance driver with dark cropped hair was a woman.

“I’ve just driven in a diphtheria case,” the driver said.

“He’s in a bad way. Should be seen immediately. He’s also got a smashed left patella and a fracture of the left tibia. Get a surgeon, will you?”

A tired young surgeon took one look at the ginger-haired soldier struggling to breathe and said, “Tracheotomy. Get him on the table fast, Nurse. No time to scrub up.” He gestured to the small side room, which contained an emergency operating table.

Lying on the table, the young patient gasped for breath as the membrane in his throat started to strangle him.

I The surgeon nodded at Elinor.

“You take his head!” Then he turned to the ambulance driver.

“Do you think you can hold him down?” She nodded. As Elinor held the injured man’s head firmly to the sandbag pillow, the weary surgeon lifted a sharp scalpel from the tray on the trolley. Elinor saw his hand shake.

The surgeon glanced at Elinor and hesitated. If he accidentally slit the jugular vein, the patient would die.

Elinor prayed silently.

“Please God, let him get it right.”, The doctor still hesitated, his shaking right hand revealing his exhaustion.

The patient’s gasps changed to a gurgle. Elinor thought, If he doesn’t cut now, this lad is going to die anyway.

The surgeon leaned over the ginger head and with the scalpel made a swift incision.

Immediately a crimson stream flowed from the patient’s neck.

Elinor kept her eyes on the dying man because she did not want to look at the surgeon. Wearily he said, “Clean up, Nurse, and move him out of here. I’d better get back.”

After the surgeon had left, Elinor looked at the lanky girl; her face was white as her dark eyes stared down at the young man who had just died.

“Did you know him?” Elinor asked gently.

Slowly, with chattering teeth, the girl said, “We was going to be married, Ginger and me.” Later, in Elinor’s Nissen hut, the women shared a tin mug of milk less cocoa. Elinor knew that the white-faced girl, who had not yet shed a tear, must be suffering from shock: she was moving in a daze but chattering as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Poor Ginger was one of my stretcher-bearers. They’ll let his mother think he died a hero’s death for King and country, not that he tripped over someone’s boot in a pench, fell off the duckboard, was Accidentally shot in the k by some trigger-happy idiot, then left out in the open too long, and afterwards killed by a mistake.”

“The surgeon’s only human. We all make mistakes,” Elinor said wearily.

“I know I do.”

The girl sighed.

“This whole ruddy war’s a mistake.”

“What’s your nam eT Elinor asked.

“Buzz Mam.”

“That sounds more American than English.”

“You’re right. I was christened Doris. Some doughboys gave me the nickname ‘cause I always seem to be the first one in the know. Simply a matter of keeping your ears open and talking to the walking wounded before they’re handed over to you nurses to sort out the mess. Cor, what a rotten job you nurses have!”

“Your job doesn’t look so hot to me.”

“I was ruddy lucky to get accepted as an ambulance driver,” Buzz said.

“Generally, the War Office don’t take working-class girls from Tooting; they take nice gels with private means, because we’re all volunteers and practically unpaid.”

“Then how did you wangle it? Elinor asked.

“I was working as a housemaid in Wimbledon nice family, indoor staff of nine and our Miss Ruth was determined to volunteer. So the mistress made me go along as well. I was supposed to look after Miss Ruth. There wasn’t half a bit of string-pulling, I can tell you! Of course, I had to say I was twenty-three, not eighteen. Miss Ruth wasn’t a bad sort but she wasn’t used to this sort of life. Before we’d been here three weeks, she got pneumonia with complications, nearly died, and had to be sent back to Blighty. The commandant puts up with my lack of breeding as I heard her call it because I understand how an engine works, and there ain’t many ladies as does.”

After that, the two young women met often in Elinoes hut.,- Efiaorw.wintrigued” by Buzz’s brusque attitude, her lai of concern over what other people thought of her, her contempt for anyone in command and her carefully hidden warmth and kindness.

just as she had comforted Buzz when Ginger died, Elinor was comforted, two months later, by Buzz, who found. her crying quietly on her narrow, hard bed in the Nissen hut.

What’ supT Buzz asked.

Without a word, Elinor handed her the letter.

“Dear Nell,” Buzz read.

“This is a hard thing to tell you but your dear mother passed away. She been ill six month with tubercerloosis but would not let me write you. Last Sunday about five she quietly slipped away and we buried herWensday. I nursed her well as I could. She had Doc Mackenzie and drugs but it was too late. On Saturday she says to me, Listen Marius, I feel better. It does not matter I am thin. You can fatten me like a Christmas goose now I am healthy again. She had a decent buriel, with Casket, Hurse and Grave at St. Mary to the far left of the porch. My poor girl was in her wedding dress she was all skin and bone. She was very dear to me although I’did not tell her often. Your grieving father Marius F Dove.” Eventually Elinor gulped, “At least this means I’ll never have to see him again.” Buzz and Elinor had now been close friends for forty-seven years, and so far as Elinor was concerned, Buzz had only one failing: she had never liked Billy.

Once again Elinor turned her head to look at the photograph of Billy beside her bed. She thought back to the humiliation she had suffered from his relatives” disdain, though in the end it had been she who restored the fortune of Billy’s family. Elinor was now the star more socially acceptable than they had ever been. And she certainly wouldn’t make the same financial mistake that they had.

I Now, in the warmth of the Riviera, within the splendour of her castle, Elinor looked up at Buzz and said in a faint but determined voice, “I must be sure that those girls are safe for life … I want them to have a happy life, with no burdens … I want them to have what you and I missed: more time time to enjoy life, time to think. More time for their children than I had for Edward.” Buzz said soothingly, “You did the best you could at the time, Nell, and that’s as much as any person can be expected to do. Maybe it was lucky you only had one kid.” Buzz knew better than to express her opinion on why this was so.

Elinor whispered, “I want to see Adam now.”

“I’ll not have you talk business when you’re barely able to talk at all,” Buzz said.

“We’ll wait till you beat me at Scrabble.” Before Elinor’s stroke, they had played one game a day, always at five o’clock. At the end of the previous year, the score had been Elinor 36 games, Buzz 329.

“Buzz, this is urgent. I haven’t made a will.” Buzz turned to the bed.

“That’s not urgent, you old fool. Important, but not urgent. You’ll just have to wait! I’m not letting that Adam in before the doctor okays it, and that’s flat! I’m off to make you a dish of mashed bananas and cream. You can eat it with a teaspoon. I know what you like, Nell.” Elinor smiled. She had spent her LIFE looking after other people and now it felt strange, but pleasant, to lie with her eyes closed while other people glided around her, murmuring and making the decisions for her.

MONDAY, 19 JULY 1965

Two weeks later, seated on one of the silver-grey sofas in front of Elinor’s bedroom fireplace, Adam quickly sorted out his papers, then placed them on the low table before him. Buzz had warned him that he had only a few minutes.

Elinor’s voice was still weak and she remained able to talk only out of the right side of her mouth.

“I’m sorry I didn’t do this earlier, Adam,” she said.

“There’s no hurry.” The lawyer had been well briefed by Buzz.

“We might as well settle it now, though, if you feel up to it.” With difficulty, Elinor lifted her head.

“Put those papers down, Adam. Come and sit by me.”

As Adam moved to the bedside, he glanced towards the photographs clustered on Elinor’s table. One was a group photo of First World War pilots, their faces flushed with victory. He found it sad that one of those jaunty, carefree young men had turned into his careful, punctual father a pillar of the local community, respected in the legal world; a man who had never been allowed by his wife to forget that he had married the boss’s daughter and had better live up to it. He had done so, concealing his feelings, hiding them behind a carefully organized life in a comfortable country mansion not far from London.

The sight of frail Elinor, so recently close to death, nearly caused Adam to momentarily” lose his composure. Her fragility, her pale face, the smell of the sick room, stirred his sense of loss. His father had died, very slowly, from lung cancer. What Adam most regretted losing was what he had never had: the father-and-son companionship that other chaps casually enjoyed. Of course, there had been little chance of spending time with his old man when Adam was a child and confined to the nursery by a mother who had preferred bridge to motherhood. Adam also wished that when he was growing up he’d been more understanding of his father’s behaviour. The old man hadn’t really been as harsh and demanding as he seemed. Adam grew to understand that he’d only wanted his elder son to get the best out of life. And when Adam was articled to the family law firm, he knew, Dad had been careful to have ng to do with him in the office because he hadn’t k a, to appear to favour him over the other clerks.

had always known that was the reason, but it had hurt at the time.

Elinor noticed Adam’s glance at the photograph and whispered, “I still miss your dear father. Joe looked after my affairs so well, especially after Billy died.”

Adam smiled reassuringly.

“I’m here to help you, just as Father would have done. Simply tell me what you want and I’ll arrange it. I have a list of your assets here. Perhaps you would like to tell me which people you might … want to have something … at some time in the future, and then I’ll draw up a … document for you to consider.” Noting Elinor’s silence, Adam wondered if her mind worked more slowly now. He said, “Do you want to leave any money to your family in America?” She reflected briefly on her brother, and again considered whether he might still be alive, with children of his own. She remembered the jealousy she had felt at her father’s obvious love for Paul, “and her pain because of his lack of interest in ‘her. She had always felt guilty for being a girl and therefore not strong enough to carry out the perennial chores on the farm in Minnesota. Her childhood had been spent in terror of her father’s rages and his ability to reduce her to a cowering, bewildered creature. How she had dreaded his anger, which always seemed to be directed at her. How she had hoped for just once some sign that he loved her; instead, the only love she ever felt came from her mother, a sad, broken creature. Elinor remembered her relief at finally breaking away from her family and their hold on her.

She shook her head slowly.

“No. They never did anything for me. And I haven’t heard from them since 1932, when my brother had to sell the farm. I inherited nothing and I owe him nothing. So I think the simplest thing would be to divide everything between the three girls and Buzz..

Adam looked worried.

“The simplest thing is not always the wisest,” he said gently.

“The girls must be protected from possible exploitation, embezzlement, and theft. You’ve always protected those three lucky sisters from harsh reality, from the jungle of life.” He hesitated.

“Perhaps they should now also be protected from … themselves … unless you truly believe that they will always look after the money carefully and prudently, taking no risks and resisting the temptation of extravagance.” Elinor considered Adam’s words of caution. She didn’t care to think of her girls as wasteful, but there were warning signs. Fleetingly she thought back to Annabel’s eighteenth birthday, when, exuberantly, the girl had jumped into the terrace fountain and ruined her pink Hartnell ball gown Miranda clearly took dangerous risks in an already highrisk business, and she seemed to think nothing of hiring a helicopter, at heaven knows what cost, simply to travel to London for a few hours. Why did Miranda waste money in this way?

Adam said, “Of course I know that Clare, as the eldest, has always been very responsible, but I am concerned lest she be persuaded to be, shall we say, over charitable Clare seems to think that it’s her responsibility to look after the entire world.” Elinor understood that Adam was warning her that her hard-earned fortune might well go down the drain with amazing speed.

“The girls must be prepared,” Adam went on, “to spend considerable amount of time doing their financial homework and discussing their business affairs with stockbrokers, accountants, lawyers, and other professional advisers.” Elinor considered what he had said.

“Well, you already look after Miranda’s affairs, don’t you, Adam? And the other two have husbands to handle that sort of thing.”

Adam looked slightly embarrassed.

“I feel I should perps play devil’s advocate and point out do forgive me that Clare’s husband is a film producer: some of his films have been successful but not all of them. I’m sure that, should he persuade Clare to invest your money in his movies, e would expect them to be successful … but such risky investment can be hugely expensive, as well as dangerous., Inwardly Elinor shuddered though her rigid body stayed still.