“It was an unseemly scene.” Boney looked prim and outraged as usual.
“What were we supposed to do?” said Nina. “Stand there while he carted her off? You heard Matron. She didn’t even have leave.”
“But the patients!” said Boney. “You left them unsupervised! And look what happened! Complete chaos. And where were the orderlies?”
“I’d like to ask them that myself,” said Nina. “We could have used them.”
“I think they were trying to keep the patients from getting into the corridor,” said Martha.
“Matron,” Boney appealed. “Please tell me there will be an incident report.”
Matron looked tired. For the first time since I’d known her, she almost sagged, as if she was carrying a heavy burden. “This day,” she said, “has been most trying.”
“If there’s an incident report,” said Nina, “it should be fair. It should say that Kitty’s brother wanted to take her without leave and wouldn’t go when we requested it. It should say that he struck her in front of everyone.”
“That isn’t relevant to the situation,” said Boney. “Rules were broken.”
“It was relevant!” Martha said. “We all saw it!”
“Enough.” Matron raised a hand, and they all fell silent. I still couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what I could say.
Matron sighed. “As it happens, Mr. Deighton is due tomorrow for one of his visits. I will write a report about this situation—and what goes in it will be entirely up to me, as is the rule—and I will give it to him to evaluate. The fact is, this happened on my watch, and there may be consequences even for me. That means I cannot evaluate this incident myself.” She looked around at us. “That is all I can do.”
I stared at her, my heart accelerating in my chest. She was saying I’d gotten everyone into trouble, even herself. Well, she had no idea. No one was going to be dismissed. Not now, not ever. I’d made a vow to Martha, and I intended to keep it.
“This meeting is adjourned,” said Matron. “Nurse Beachcombe, you are excused for rest at supper as you are due to start night shift tonight. For the rest of us, let’s salvage this day.”
? ? ?
I felt painfully visible all afternoon, as if I had a brand on my chest. The men, however, had apparently found their little rebellion quite satisfying, and when they were released from their rooms for luncheon, they were well behaved. A few of them gave me brief, half-formed smiles or quiet nods, but most of them went back to their own preoccupations. And yet I knew, of course, that in rooms where I wasn’t present, among the patients and the staff alike, my scene with Syd was the talk of the day.
The men were sent to afternoon rest after tea, and I was sent on rounds. I took advantage when no one was looking and slipped into Jack’s room. He was sitting on his window seat, barefoot again.
“Kitty,” he said when he saw me.
“I don’t have much time,” I told him. “I came to thank you. And to get a moment of privacy. I’d rather not hide in the lav again.”
He got up and came toward me, looking at my face. “I can see the mark,” he said. “I’d like to go at him again.”
I shrugged, my heart skipping. “It will fade.” I looked up at him. “You’re not being punished in isolation.”
“No, I’ve been banished to my room for the rest of the day. I think it’s the best thing Matron could think of. She must be off her game.”
I shook my head. “Jack, he recognized you.”
“I noticed.”
“I haven’t seen my brother since before he left for the war. I don’t know him, not really. I don’t know what he’ll do.”
“Tell the newspapers, probably.” He leaned closer, looking at my cheek. “You told me it was your father you were running from.”
“It was.”
“You look a little cheerful about it.”
“I don’t know,” I said, the words coming in a rush. “I don’t know. I feel so light somehow, Jack. I’m humiliated and afraid, and yet a part of me feels like I’m going to fly away on one of those hot-air balloons. I was so used to running and hiding. But I think now it was an anchor weighing me down. Do you think that’s even possible?”
“What happened?” he asked, instead of answering me. “What has changed?”
I ran a hand over one of my cheeks, hot with emotion, wanting to feel myself, wanting to be here inside my own skin for the first time. “He’s dying, Jack. My father is dying. That’s what Syd came for.”
Jack’s blue eyes puzzled over this for a moment, and then he understood. “He thought you would go home for a tearful reunion?”
“He was sure of it.” I watched his expression cloud over. “I don’t care,” I confessed. “I’m a bad person for being happy about him dying, and I’ll probably go to hell, and I don’t care. He’ll be dead and he won’t be able to hurt me anymore.”
Jack listened to this carefully, as he always listened to me. Beneath his shirt I could see the lines of his collarbones, the warm hollow where they met at the base of his throat. If I leaned forward I would feel him breathing, feel his chest rise and fall. He looked down at me for a long moment, watching me look at him. “This seems like a good time to give you your gift,” he said.
“Gift?”
He walked to his bedside table—I didn’t want to look, but I noticed his bed was mussed, as if he’d been lying on it, and I pushed the picture from my mind—and took up a book. He turned and handed it to me. “It isn’t much, but you did ask for it.”
It was a battered copy of Homer’s Odyssey, taken from the library shelf in the common room. I’d never asked him for a book. “What is this for?”
“Open it.”
I did, and I saw pieces of letter paper between the pages, perhaps a dozen of them. I examined them.
“It was the best way,” Jack said as he watched me. “These uniforms don’t have pockets, and I can’t leave papers around or they’ll be confiscated. So instead I appear to be rereading The Odyssey at bedtime.”
The papers were all handwritten, each one in a different writing. “What are these?”
“Our dreams,” he replied.
I looked up at him, remembering I’d asked him to find out what the men dreamed about. “You got them to write down their dreams?”
“Almost all of them. Tom claims he doesn’t dream, or in any case he doesn’t remember them. MacInnes is a slow writer, so he’s still working on his. And Creeton told me to go fuck myself.”
“How did you do this?” I stared in disbelief at the pages. “I didn’t see anyone writing.”
“We all get paper allotments to write letters every week, but no one uses it. What can we say in a letter, after all? ‘Dear Mum, all well, still barking mad. Sorry.’ They read them all anyway, so why bother? As for the writing, afternoon rest or the loo are just about the only times. There’s no light to write by at night. And the nurses”—he grinned—“usually check on us during afternoon rest.”