My brother, Sydney, had enlisted in the first weeks of war and had never sent home a single postcard. The first few months after he’d gone were the worst of my life; then I’d left home myself, and the war had sunk into a miserable background din, and I was certain he was dead. I had enough problems of my own to worry about what happened in France anymore.
Or so I had told myself.
But these men had been there. They had experienced something so otherworldly, so catastrophically horrible, that I would never know what they saw when they closed their eyes at night. Or what they heard when a plate banged on a table. They’d washed off the mud and the blood and been sent home, unlike Syd, and it had been so bad they couldn’t cope with it. They’d ended up here. Something sounded in me, deep down like a bell being struck in the depths of the ocean, something that saddened and frightened me and made me exhausted in the same way one is exhausted after vigorously, repeatedly vomiting up one’s supper.
Mabry hadn’t seen his children because of me. You are not their friend.
“I hope that was instructive,” Dr. Thornton said to me as the last few men filed from the room. “Have you any questions, Nurse?”
“No, Doctor.”
“Come now,” Dr. Oliver chimed in. “There must be something?”
I turned to them. “It just seems . . . it just seems that it isn’t actually treatment the men get. Medical treatment, I mean. They’re just . . . motivated to behave.” Like in a prison.
Dr. Thornton nodded. “You’ve come from casualty cases, so the confusion is understandable. Mental cases are very different, Nurse Weekes, especially cases of shell shock. Did you think we could give them a bandage, perhaps, or a pill, and cure them?”
“These men,” said Dr. Oliver, “need to learn.”
I looked from one man to the other. “What about Jack Yates? Does he need to learn?”
“Ah,” Thornton said. “That went better than expected, did it not? Perhaps I should explain. Patient Sixteen came to us with instructions from the highest level of government—the highest, I repeat—that his stay here was to remain confidential. I don’t think anyone will trust a madman’s account, but it’s good to be certain. You’ve been given great trust today. I hope you can keep it.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why the secrecy?”
Thornton leaned in so he could not possibly be overheard by anyone except Dr. Oliver. “Mr. Yates was a great hero to this country. To know that he has fallen to this . . .” He gestured around the room. “To know that he has fallen to such a low level would, I think, be detrimental to morale.”
My head throbbed with pain. “But the war is over.”
“Our great country is involved in many operations the world over,” he replied, “and will continue to be. The will of the people behind government is important. If it were to be known that Jack Yates had become a coward . . .”
I choked, any anger I’d ever felt at Jack evaporating. “Jack Yates is not a coward.”
Dr. Oliver patted my hand. “You’re a loyal lady, and we admire you for it. But you must understand that there is nothing lower for a man than this, than to come here. To be one of . . . these.”
“Nothing lower,” Dr. Thornton agreed.
I followed them to the corridor, the two of them conferring quietly together. I waited for them to finish their conversation, for them to dismiss me at last. There was a single crack in the wall, hairline thin, making its way down from the ceiling. Outside, the sun struggled to break through a thick cotton layer of cloud. I had the sudden desire to walk out the door and keep walking, walking, breathing the warm, damp air.
Why had none of the men admitted to having nightmares?
“Doctors.” Matron approached us, only slightly reddened from her climb up the stairs from the lower reaches of the house. “You are finished, I see.”
“Yes,” Dr. Oliver replied. “We are ready for the weekly debriefing.”
“Certainly.” She looked at me in a signal of clear dismissal, for which I could have kissed her feet. “Thank you, Nurse Weekes.”
“Actually,” Dr. Thornton said, “I’d like Nurse Weekes to accompany us to the debriefing. I believe it could be beneficial to her training.”
Matron was already flushed, so I couldn’t tell whether her color deepened. “That won’t be possible.”
“I do believe I have Mr. Deighton’s authority, Matron, in matters of protocol.”
“You do, of course. What I meant is that Nurse Weekes can’t be spared just now. She goes on night shift as of tonight and is scheduled to take some rest before her shift begins.”
That stunned me out of my exhausted reverie, but before I could open my mouth, Matron had turned her gimlet stare on me. “Come with me, Nurse Weekes.”
We stood at the foot of the servants’ stairs before she spoke again. “I’ll send Nurse Beachcombe to you when I can. She’ll tell you what’s required on night shift. You’re to report at eleven, after the others have gone off duty.”
“This is it, isn’t it?” I said, childish in my outrage. “This is my punishment. The incident report wasn’t good enough for you. Why don’t you just sack me and have done with it? Or is it because you’re so understaffed?”
Matron sighed. “Please go now and prepare for night shift.”
“What was it?” I said to her. “What made you hate me so? Was it the fact that I was requested by the doctors without your clearance? Or was it that I actually cleaned that disgusting lav?”
She looked at me for a long moment. I knew nothing of Matron; I didn’t know where she came from, or whether she had a family or friends, or even what her first name was. I realized as I looked into her hard, square face with its blunt fringe of hair that this opaqueness was utterly deliberate on her part. If she had her way, I would learn no more about her than I could learn from the statue of Mary on the front lawn. For a second she seemed about to say something; then she changed her mind, her eyes glittering as she looked at me.
“You have a great deal to learn, Nurse Weekes,” she said.
I turned to stomp up the stairs, but she gripped my arm. “Dr. Thornton left his notebook in the common room. Please fetch it; then, for God’s sake, go.”
I fetched the notebook, the fine leather smooth and heavy in my hand. I was in such a storm of emotion that I had nearly left the empty common room again before I realized what I was holding.
I remembered Dr. Thornton scribbling diligently all afternoon, his pen scratching. I felt queasy, not with unease at what I was about to do, but with a horrible, creeping suspicion. I opened the notebook.
There was a page of names, the names of our patients. Beside each was a thick black check mark.
And the rest of the pages—four in all—were covered in inky doodles, of clumsy giraffes and splotchy elephants, a dog sitting on his hind legs begging, a cat with long whiskers. A hillside dotted with trees and houses.
I snapped the book shut, and I did not notice that my hands were shaking.
? ? ?
There was no point in undressing, as I’d only have a few hours to sleep, so I dropped onto my narrow bed in the nursery, untying my boots and letting them fall to the floor. I lay on top of the thin quilt fully clothed and rubbed my eyes.