House of Doors (2 page)

‘Nursing, though?' she pursued, just for the sake of it, just to appear calmly ordinary. As though her mind had never turned to thoughts, to hopes of death.

‘Oh, yes. Nursing, absolutely. And the chance to make a difference to the war, that too. I can say that much. It's more important work than you will find anywhere else.'

That stymied her, perhaps. It took her credibility away. Nevertheless, ‘And if I say no, if I go to the QAs anyway?'

‘You might find that they won't take you. Despite your impeccable credentials. You might find that there is no way to come closer to the war, except through me.' Just for that little moment, his eyes were stone hard, absolute.
No bombs, no bullets.
As though he knew her inner self entirely. Then he smiled again, and said it again. ‘Come to me. We'll give you a promotion, ward sister, how about that? You give us your best for six months, and if it doesn't suit, then I promise the QAs will swallow you up gladly and waft you away. You can have your pick of postings, as close as you like to the front. Just, promise to give us a fair try first.'

She had, apparently, promised. It felt now like a deal with the devil. No – even at the time, it had felt like making a deal with the devil. It wasn't charm, exactly, but he had something irresistible in his manner, or more deeply embedded in himself.

He had gone away with his hat on his head and the bust of Aesculapius under his arm. She rather thought he might have been whistling as he went.

And now she was here, chilled and stiff on Darlington station as night faded into dawn, waiting under the milk-stained sky for the milk train to take her forward in pursuit of a promise she had not wanted to make and would keep regardless. Six months. She could do that, yes. And then a different uniform, a posting, the war, that relentless pursuit of a bullet. Yes.

The milk train came and carried her through a succession of valleys, hills that grew steeper and darker against the day, bleak moors and tangled woods.

At last one more station, yet one more, and the kindly guard there to hand her case down to her, to be sure she got off where she was meant to.

She stood in a watery sunlight and eased her back and gazed about her, understanding how the town, such as it was, spread that way along the river –
eastward, Peter, yes, towards the risen sun
– while all the valley else looked entirely grim. Unlifted by light. She shivered, scolded herself for being fanciful and turned away from the view, turned her mind to practical matters. She'd need a cab, she supposed. She had written orders to say where she should report, but of course no map and no notion of how to find her way.

Here was the station forecourt, and of course no taxis. Only the one car waiting, a landaulet with the hood folded back and an officer drowsing in the driving seat. If the RAF had taken to moonlighting as cab drivers, she hadn't heard of it. She might have asked him whether there was any point her waiting, any chance at all of a cab's arriving; but he was at least half asleep, his back to the thin sun and his cap pulled low across his face. She really didn't like to disturb him. Especially when the answer was almost sure to be no. Petrol was short everywhere. She'd just go into town, ask directions and steel herself to walking. However far it might be, and however heavy her case.

Behind her the train was pulling out, giving a peremptory blast of its whistle at a level crossing. The sound was unexpectedly raucous, trapped here between the valley walls and echoing off the slab side of a mill. The man in the car startled, and sat up straight.

Ruth smiled, and thought she would still not bother him with pointless questions. She turned, hefted her case in her hand and began to walk the other way  . . . and was arrested by a sudden voice, cracked and hoarse but strong enough to carry.

‘I say, excuse me  . . .!'

Still expecting nothing, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. He was half out of the car, almost falling over himself in his hurry. A very young man, she diagnosed. As so many of them were.

Catching his balance, he was suddenly almost graceful as he came towards her. Not quite. There was something wrong: something in the way he held his right arm, awkwardly unmoving at his side. He didn't wear driving gloves, which any young man might not, but this particular young man, she thought, probably could not. One useless hand would leave the other necessarily bare, unless a friend helped out. Or he could use his teeth, perhaps, to draw a glove on, but  . . .

She was surprised, a little, that he could drive at all. That was all but drowned, though, in a far greater surprise. Here was her promised car after all, at the wrong time on the wrong day and quite unlooked for. And her driver – well. She would never have expected this.

Even before he lifted his head and met her eye to eye, letting the sun strike in under the peak of his cap. She would still never have expected this much just for her, a flying officer with the kind of car her brothers liked to jaunt about in before the war. Even so: his injuries suggested some kind of recuperative treatment; his uniform said he was still on active service, which would justify the hush-hush nature of her appointment here; and his determined chasing implied that he was here to pick up a female. All in all, she did think this was her car.

Then she saw his face, and all doubt fled away.

He blinked, which was a thoughtful, almost an effortful process, nothing natural; and said, ‘Miss Taylor?'

‘
Mrs
Taylor. But yes.' She had been Miss Elverson once. That seemed a long time ago. Then she had been Peter's, and he marked her with his name. Now she was no one's, but she kept that name like a banner. She wore that and his ring together, not to let him pass from the world entirely before she must, before she did. Until that bullet found her, she would be Mrs Peter Taylor. A promise was a promise, after all.

‘Of course. I'm sorry. Sister Taylor, I suppose you'll be, once you're settled and togged up. I like that better, I like to call pretty girls Sister  . . .'

He was, of course, just talking to cover the double awkwardness, his and hers.

She couldn't offer to shake hands unless she did it leftwards, as she used to with the Girl Guides, long and long ago. That might be awkward too, unless he'd been a Scout himself. She opted for sternness instead, the widow scolding the insouciant boy. ‘You really shouldn't talk nonsense. And yes, you should call me Sister, but not till I'm on duty. What should I call you? Flying Officer  . . .?'

‘Oh, Tolchard is my name, Michael Tolchard, but no one uses it. The fellows mostly call me Infant, but to the nurses I'm Bed Thirty-Four.' And then, heartbreakingly, ‘Please, you mustn't mind my face. I don't, so why should you?'

He must have been endearing once, with all the attractions of youth and charm and very likely money too. Blond, she was guessing, though the evidence was sparse: no eyebrows to speak of, and his hair hidden under that cap. Pale hairs on the back of his left hand, as he reached to take her case.

‘Don't do that,' she said sharply. ‘I can manage perfectly well.'

‘So can I,' he said. And did, lifting the case and turning back towards the car, perhaps deliberately giving her a moment longer to recover. Very well. Nice manners, and she would take advantage of them. She could curse Aesculapius for not telling her more, not warning her of this at least. Two minutes in Michael Tolchard's company and she already knew far more about her new job, but she would rather have been prepared.

Be Prepared
– that was the Girl Guides again. Some things clung. Perhaps she should have shaken his hand after all. Why did this boy make her feel so young, when in truth she was so very, very much older than him? Not only in years. Marriage and widowhood had accumulated layers of experience, enough to leave her drearily tired of life.

Tired until now. Now she was just exhausted, after a long wakeful night on a platform bench. Exhausted enough to make her foolish and gauche and over-thinking everything.

Michael Tolchard. Infant. Bed Thirty-Four. Very well. He was a patient, no more than that. Flying Officer Tolchard: a fighter pilot, surely, Spits or Hurricanes. She couldn't see him in a bomber crew. He'd have wanted the solo glory of a fighter, devil-may-care.

Wanted it and got it, of course. Gilded youth, he probably got everything he wanted. Until he chased one Messerschmitt too many, strayed too far from the squadron, took on a fight he couldn't hope to win. And so the dreadful screaming plunge to earth, the struggle with the cockpit canopy, at last the blessed tumble free and the snap of the 'chute to arrest his fall and perhaps for a moment he thought the nightmare was over. Until he realized that the smoke and the heat had come with him, came from him, his clothes and hair still afire.

Perhaps he tried to beat the flames out with his hand. His right hand, of course, the good one. That was not much more than a claw now. Not useful to him. He had to put her case down to open the boot left-handed, before he could lift the case again and swing it in.

‘Oh, just put it on the back seat,' she protested, too late. Surely he didn't mean to play chauffeur and make her ride behind him?

His eyes flashed a smile at her, across his shoulder. He had good eyes despite the swollen horror of the lids above, still showing the marks of their stitches. He had probably learned, probably had to learn not to try to smile any other way. It was a surprise to her – in this hour of surprises, but at least this was a
professional
surprise – that he could talk so clearly, with such a brutal slashing mockery of a mouth. His voice was damaged, to be sure, and that would be from smoke and flame inhaled as he struggled to breathe in the blazing fury of his plane, as he struggled to escape; but the sounds were clear despite the scarred throat behind them and the stiff clumsy semblance of lips he had to shape them with.

He said, ‘I would, but we're picking up a couple more fellows on the way home. I hope you don't mind?'

‘Not at all. Of course not. In truth, I never expected to be met. When I missed the train last night  . . .'

He shrugged. ‘Happens all the time. Or else the bally thing's cancelled, and people are stranded anyway. If we're expecting a person and they don't show up, someone always comes down to meet the milk train. Couldn't leave you to walk, we're in the next valley. There's no other way to get there, no bus, and it's a dreadful trek with luggage. And if a car's coming in early, there's always someone wanting a lift for this or that, so I get to play bus driver. It's usually me.' He opened the passenger door for her, saw her settled, walked around the long sleek bonnet to the driver's side. ‘The car's rigged for me, d'you see? What with the hand and so forth. Deuced clever, but it's awkward for anyone who doesn't know the system. Easier to drive with one hand than two, actually. And I can make myself understood, at least, better than some of the chaps. Though I do still scare the horses. And the nurses,' he added with a sidelong glance.

‘Oh no, young man,' Ruth said, ‘you don't scare me. Startled me, I confess it, I wasn't expecting  . . .'

‘Frankenstein's monster? All sewn together, out of dribs and drabs?'

‘You're no monster.' Though very possibly he had been as a child. Spoiled rotten, she speculated, his mother's own precious white-haired boy; redeemed perhaps by that charm that clings to the fortunate, and ultimately saved by war, by the need for sacrifice. He had given too much, she thought. And wondered what his mother thought of him now. Whether she came to visit, or only wrote.

Ruth scolded herself for leaping to conclusions in all directions at once. She took a grip internally, and scolded him aloud. ‘As I said, it was the car I wasn't expecting. Don't take everything personally, you can't afford it and neither can I. You're not the only patient in the hospital. In fact, you don't seem much in need of a hospital bed at all.'

‘The nurses do complain I'm never in it. I'm down for more ops, though, so I take advantage while I can. I'm a sort of guinea pig, do you see? What with the face and the hand, Colonel Treadgold gets to try all sorts of new techniques on me. I'm his lucky mascot; everything works, everything takes. It's a bit of a bind, to be honest.'

‘Oh? How's that?'

He only shook his head. Perhaps driving took more concentration now than the carefree skills of yore. She let the question by – for now – and watched with a species of wonder how he worked the heavy car. The gearstick had been removed entirely; there was only a handbrake between the two front seats. She could hear the car's motor growl and shift from one gear to another, none the less. At last she understood that he was achieving that with a kind of wand that emerged from the steering column, that he could knock up or down with the same hand that held the wheel while his feet danced between the pedals. She couldn't begin to imagine how much work and thought must have gone into this car, rebuilding it from the engine outward. Peter would have known immediately, instinctively – but she didn't want to think about Peter. Particularly she didn't want to start this new job with her mind focused on the past, past losses, the only loss that could ever matter. It would seem dishonest. She had promised six months, after all.

The car nosed its way through narrow streets to a cobbled marketplace. Tolchard sounded the opening bars of a tarantella on the horn, and two figures appeared from the doorway of a small hotel. They carried a crate between them; she wondered if she was being made the excuse for a smuggling expedition, contraband beer fetched in under the cloak of fetching her. Did she need to play strict Sister Taylor before she'd even reported for duty?

Apparently not. Tolchard was too sharp for his own good, or else her face was too revealing. He said, ‘That'll keep the old man happy. The colonel's Devon-born, and he does miss his cider. Mrs Melcher has it shipped up specially. He'll offer you a glass tonight, but do say no. Unless you can't stomach beer under any circumstances, I mean.'