“They’ve put your soup in a bowl again,” I said. “I’ve told them to put it in a mug, but they don’t listen.”
There was a sound from the bed, and I turned to find him looking at me.
“Expected someone else, did you?” I said.
He stared at the marks on my neck, his expression one of stark horror. “Kit-Kitty—”
“Don’t,” I said. I dumped his tea into the sink, rinsed the cup, and began to carefully transfer the soup. “Don’t say it. Don’t apologize. There’s nothing to apologize for.”
I kept my eyes on the soup. I couldn’t look at him. I could hear his breathing, heavy and harsh.
“I’m s-s—，” he tried.
I gritted my teeth, focused on not spilling the soup. “Archie, stop.”
“I’m so s-s—”
I turned my back and took the empty soup bowl to the sink. I would rinse it before I took it back to the kitchen. I may as well.
“Kitty,” he said again behind me. My vision blurred. I put the soup bowl down and put a hand to my mouth. I stood there for a long time, struggling to take one breath, and another. I recalled it again, the needle I’d jabbed into his arm, the scream he’d made.
It had happened to Maisey Ravell, too, and she’d run from him before he could say he was sorry. As if he were a dangerous monster. And, to all appearances, he was. Or he was just a man who had been through hell and was still there, a man who had spent weeks digging the rotting bodies of his comrades from the mud and still saw visions of it daily.
“Kitty. Pl-please—”
I turned around. His cheeks were wet, though he did not sob. I took a deep breath, took in a gulp of air that smelled of ammonia, musty old sweat, and the faint tang of vomit, the air that was the smell of this place. And then, the tray of supper forgotten, I walked over to the bed and got on it next to him, sitting up with my back against the brass bedstead. He rolled over and put one arm around my hips, his head in my lap. His shaking hand trembled in the folds of my apron.
“It wasn’t you,” I said to him.
He said nothing.
“I know it wasn’t,” I went on. “I knew it at the time, even as it was happening. It was never you. And still I gave you that needle.”
The arm on my hips hugged me a little tighter.
“Who is he?” I ventured. “Do you know?”
He flinched in my lap. I heard him take a breath, but he didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice was almost a whisper, but his stutter was gone.
“He comes in my dreams,” Archie said. “He tells me I’d be better off dead.”
I stayed silent in shock.
“I tell him no,” the man in my lap went on, a quiet confession. “Always no. But it’s wor—it’s worse and last—last night, I don’t know—it was—”
“Hush,” I said softly. “I understand. I do.”
“I’m sorry,” he managed a long moment later.
“No.” I put my hand on his back, between his narrow shoulder blades, a back that looked as diminished as a boy’s beneath his infirmary shirt. My cheeks were wet, too, now, but I did not sob. “It’s me that’s sorry,” I said through the thickness in my throat. “It’s me that’s bloody well sorry.”
We sat there for a long time, I on top of the covers, my boots on the bed. I, who had stayed away from men for four years. I sat there in bed with a strange man, his arm around me, his head in my lap. It was against every regulation in the world. I couldn’t seem to stop breaking rules, even when I tried.
Finally, he fell asleep. The soup was cold by then, but I didn’t have the heart to take it away. He’d need to eat something when he woke, even something cold. He was too thin as it was.
I slid out of bed and left him, closing the door behind me.
? ? ?
It was time for the men’s leisure hour after supper, and they had assembled in the common room, but as I approached I saw they had all stopped what they were doing. The chess players had turned away from their game; the readers had put the books and magazines down in their laps. Even the men who only stared absently out the window had turned, their gazes alert.
Matron stood in the center of the room. In the soft light of a summer evening she looked the same, her face set in its familiar hard lines under her mannish hair. The electricity was still on—it would not switch off until after curfew—and the lights cast pools of yellow that were slowly losing out to the dusky blue-gray of the long summer twilight out the tall windows and the terrace doors.
I stood in the doorway and registered, with the sudden clarity that sometimes floods the brain, the scene before me as a still tableau: Matron, the men turned to face her, their expressions expectant, the dwindling of a soft, decadent day in the windows. I took in the long shadows of the men playing across the high, bare walls, the cheap sparseness of the furniture arranged on the expensive floors, the smell of polish and men’s sweat and the faint smell of vinegar we used for cleaning. Every detail was as clear to me as a photograph.
Matron held up a sheaf of letters. “The mail has arrived.”
A murmur of excitement went up. We’d had a delivery that morning, hours before. But, of course, there had to be time for every letter to be opened, read, and vetted.
“Mr. Creeton,” Matron called. “Mr. Mabry.” One at a time, each man went forward to retrieve his letter. Those who weren’t called turned back to the window or picked up their book again, their faces carefully blank. I caught a glimpse of movement in the doorway behind me and saw the large bulk of Paulus Vries leaning in the corridor, his arms crossed and his gaze watchful. I wondered what scenes had taken place during previous distributions of mail.
“Nurse Weekes.”
Matron held out a letter to me, a thick, creamy, clean envelope. I stepped forward and took it from her. I turned it over, apprehension pinching my spine. It did not look official, and my father could not write.
The letter was from Maisey Ravell, a reply to the letter I’d written about her belongings. She wrote in a perfect, looping hand that matched her beautiful stationery, the ink utterly free of blots. It could have been a young lady’s polite letter to a friend, inquiring as to the health of her mother and asking her to tea.
Dear Kitty:
Meet me on Sunday just past the stand of trees by the west wing. There’s a clearing. You’ll see it when you enter the trees past the rise. I need to speak to you, and not just about my locket, though I will take it back if you have it. I will be there at two o’clock. Tell Matron you require an hour’s walk. The men will be at tea. She’s supposed to give you a half day off, but she never does, so make her grant this instead.
Perhaps you won’t come. You don’t even know me. But I’ve had time to think now, and you can help me. You must come. Don’t tell anyone. You must come.
Maisey Ravell
P.S. Thank you kindly for your letter.
Quickly, casually, I folded the letter and stuffed it deep in the pocket of my apron. The envelope had still been sealed; apparently the nurses were not subject to Matron’s review of their correspondence, something Maisey must have known.