CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
“Sleeves,” said Matron.
Martha, Nina, Boney, and I stood before her in a line. As one we held out our arms, clothed in the long sleeves we’d fastened on that morning, rows of starchy whiteness hanging parallel in the air.
Matron walked from one end of our short line to the other. Her brow was tensed, her gaze malevolent, a look that meant she was seeking something to criticize. It was another inspection, but this one was not in honor of the doctors.
We’d been hard at work since six that morning—even Nina, who had been given permission to finish night shift at two o’clock and get four hours’ rest. We had scrubbed, polished, straightened, hauled linens, dusted, aired every man’s room and changed his bed linens—all nineteen of them. My legs were shaking with exhaustion, but it didn’t seem quite as bad as when I’d first started. Perhaps I was getting stronger.
“This is an important day,” Matron announced to us, Henry V rallying his battle-worn troops. “This is visitors’ day. The day in which members of the outside world come to the inner confines of Portis House. The day in which we make an impression.”
Behind her, something clanged in the kitchen and someone cursed.
“I cannot express to you,” Matron continued, ignoring the sound, “the importance of our conduct today. There will be no breaks. No socializing. Any breach of the rules absolutely will not be tolerated.” I thought perhaps her gimlet gaze rested on me as she said this. “Sloppiness is inexcusable. Rudeness is inexcusable. You will speak to our visitors only when spoken to, and only in polite tones. The patients who do not have visitors may be unhappy and may misbehave. It is your duty to see that any such displays are kept from sight and sound of our visitors. If this is not followed, Mr. Deighton will hear of it. Do I make myself clear?”
We stood silent. I swallowed past a lump in my throat.
“You are experienced nurses,” Matron said. This time she did not look at me. “Be aware. Be vigilant. These men are our patients, but they are also insane. The insane can be crafty and mischievous, especially on days like these. The orderlies are also on extra guard. You know what to look for. Be sure you recognize it.”
“Yes, Matron,” said Boney.
“Very well. This is the list.” Matron took a piece of paper from her pocket, unfolded it, and read to us the list of men who were to have visitors that day. “Mr. Hodgkins. Mr. Derby. Mr. West. Mr. Creeton.” She folded the paper and put it away again.
“Thank goodness it’s Creeton this time,” Martha said to me in a low voice as we walked down the corridor after dismissal. “He’s always the worst to make trouble on visiting days.”
“I don’t quite understand Creeton,” I ventured. Creeton was, without exception, the patient I avoided as much as possible. “He doesn’t seem quite insane to me. Just angry.”
“You haven’t seen how angry he can be,” said Nina. “I heard that at the casualty clearing station they had him in, he shot at one of the doctors with a gun he stole from the Germans.”
“He what?”
“He missed,” Martha put in. “But he had a gun he’d taken from a dead soldier, and he shot it sure enough. I heard it from another nurse I know. She said he had a breakdown after his squadron was attacked with liquid fire.”
I’d heard of liquid fire, petrol sprayed through hoses and lit. It didn’t bear thinking about. “And his family hasn’t visited him in all this time?”
Nina shrugged. “Most of the families don’t. They’re too ashamed. Except for Mr. Derby—his fiancée comes every time.”
Derby was the patient who slept on the floor of his room, as if he were in a trench. If he had a fiancée, she was in for a bit of a surprise on their wedding night. “I hope they have a competent laundress,” I said, and I half meant it, but Martha stifled a giggle, and even Nina looked away quickly, as if to hide a smile.
Breakfast had finished, and the men waited in the common room. The French doors had been thrown open and a warm breeze came in, wafting on kind rays of sunshine and making the air fragrant. “The motorcars are coming,” Martha whispered to me, and she and Nina went to the great entry hall at the front of the house to greet the visitors as I stood duty over the men.
“We should be allowed suits,” Creeton complained loudly from his place on one of the sofas. He seemed to be speaking to no one, or to the room at large. “A suit for just one damned day. I have to see my own father while I’m wearing pajamas.”
He was keyed up, his face tight, and the other men didn’t look much better. I was in charge of a powder keg, and I looked for the familiar form of Paulus, leaning on the wall outside the door in his usual position. He gave me a nod.
A hand touched my arm, and I looked down to see Tom Hodgkins looking up at me from his place in a chair. “Is someone coming today?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said. His name had been on the list. “Your family.”
Confusion crossed his face, and then his expression resolved itself. “I’d like to see my mum,” he said. “I think I’ve been away.”
I had no idea whether his mother was coming, so I simply said, “Perhaps you will.” This pleased him, and I looked around again. There was one face I did not see.
“Good morning,” said a voice behind me.
I turned my shoulders just enough to glimpse Jack standing a few feet away, holding a five-week-old newspaper as if it utterly engrossed him. He leaned one shoulder against the wall, hooked one foot behind the other, and did not look at me.
“Good morning,” I whispered back, and turned away.
“Creeton had a nightmare last night,” he said.
I glanced at Creeton again. He was staring tensely at nothing, waiting to pick a fight. He had thick hands with blond hairs on the backs, with thick fingers that could curl into beefy fists. I realized he reminded me of my father. Elementary, perhaps, and rather pedestrian, but there it was; you don’t normally see these things until they are right in front of you. I was glad I had Jack standing vigilant behind my shoulder, and I recalled he’d managed to position himself there the night before as well, as the men sat in the common room after supper. It must be intentional. He was either guarding me or watching me.
“Is it always like this?” I asked him. “Visiting day?”
“I don’t know,” he replied, “but I know it’s complicated. You want to see your family more than anything. It’s the thought of it that keeps you going day to day. You’d go to hell for it. But you don’t want your family to see you like this.”
“And what about you?” I said.
He turned a page in his newspaper. “I have no family. No one cares if I’m alive or dead, really. Including me.”
The voice held no bitterness, only a sort of blankness. This, then, was Jack in a pensive mood. “Perhaps you can get well,” I suggested.
“Perhaps I could get my pills back.”
“No. I told you, I destroyed them.”
“I was hoping you were lying.” He sighed. “It’s all right. I didn’t sleep too badly last night, considering I had to be up early to deliver my letters.”
My heart skipped. “So you did it, then.”
“Of course. But now I’ll be tired when you pull the stunt you’re planning.”
“I’m not planning anything.”
“Let me see.” He slowly turned another page. From the front hall I could hear a far-off murmur of voices. The visitors would be offered tea and refreshment before the visits began. “The Gersbachs are gone. We know there were no moving vans. If I were looking into it, as you are, I would conclude that their belongings must still be somewhere in Portis House. All that furniture, all that artwork from the walls—where did it go?”
I said nothing. I kept my gaze on Captain Mabry, who was looking blankly out the window. He had no visitors, either, of course. The thought made me feel hollow.
“If the furniture is still in the house,” Jack continued, “where could it be? The only answer must be the west wing, which is kept locked and uninhabited. Am I correct?”
I sighed.
“And the nurses,” he said slowly, “have the keys to the west wing.”
Damn him. “No, we don’t. I’m not sure who has them. Matron, I think. And Boney—Nurse Fellows.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw him glance up. “Boney?”
“Don’t ask.”
“All right, then. So you’ll have to lift the keys. I’m curious to see how you do it.”
Captain Mabry had looked down at an open book on his lap, but he never turned a page. “I’m not doing anything.”
“Tonight, then?”
“I’m not telling you.”
“Right. Tonight it is.” He paused for a moment, and his voice was deadly serious. “I mean it, Kitty. You’re not going into the west wing alone.”
“If you want to help so badly,” I said, “tell me what the men dream about.”
He paused in the act of stuffing the newspaper into his pocket. “Beg pardon?”
“I think the dreams are a clue,” I said, “but I don’t know how. I don’t know what they dream about exactly. None of them will tell me, because they think I’ll tell the doctors.”
He thought it over for only a second. “All right,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
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