Mr. Derby’s fiancée was a pretty black-haired girl in a well-tailored suit of pastel green with a high lace collar who arrived alongside Derby’s mother. Martha put them in the garden, where the women sat on either side of the patient on one of the garden benches, patting him with their gloved hands and discreetly wiping the perspiration of the rapidly sweltering day from their faces. For his part, Derby pulled out a piece of paper and shyly read the girl a poem he’d written, smiling when both women gently praised it.
Nina wheeled Mr. West onto the terrace. There his parents came and sat with him, his father in a suit and formal derby hat, his mother in flowing pink as if dressed for church. Both parents looked not much older than West himself, as if they’d been adolescent when he was born. The three of them sat silent, not catching one another’s eyes, presumably pretending West hadn’t lost both his legs and his fiancée.
Tom Hodgkins’s visitor was not his mother but his cousin. She was a stout woman of twenty-five, dressed in a suit and high-collared blouse and a hat with a feather on it, carrying a handbag as hefty as a brick. “I didn’t even know he was here,” she told Boney. “My mother is his aunt, his last living relative except me, and she never said. When I found out, she said she was too ashamed. Ashamed! I don’t care what he is—he’s blood. I got married last year and we have plenty of room. I’ve come to see him for myself. Blood shouldn’t be in a hospital like a piece of nasty laundry.”
I fought the urge to kiss her. “He doesn’t remember anything,” I said. “And he might think you’re his mum.”
“Well, bless him—I’m the spitting image of her, so if it makes him happy, it doesn’t matter much to me,” she said as Boney led her away.
That left me with Creeton.
Creeton’s father was visibly mortified, his face red under his heavy whiskers, his eyes flitting uneasily about the room. When he glimpsed the other patients, he looked away, pained, as if every man was disgustingly naked. He cast a single, horrified glance at the bruises on my neck and looked resolutely away again. His wife trailed behind him, hard faced and grim, with the locked posture and determined jaw of a woman attending a funeral. It was not going to be an affectionate reunion.
I put them in the small parlor near the front hall. It had been emptied like the other rooms and now contained a table and three ratty chairs, the window looking out at the dry, mildewed statue of Mary on the front drive. I brought Creeton, who was visibly sweating, into the room and left as quickly as I could, stationing myself outside the door and partway down the corridor. Staff instructions had been clear: We were to give the men privacy for their visits while staying close enough to interfere if there were signs of trouble. I could hear voices from the parlor, but no words.
Boney came down the corridor toward me, tailed by Roger. “Is everything under control here?” she asked, her voice lowered.
“It seems to be.”
She nodded, then sighed, crossing her arms. “Visiting day is always the worst. We’ve never had one go so smoothly.”
“Someone always ends up crying,” Roger piped in. “Or we have to sedate ’em.”
“It’s very difficult,” said Boney. “A shame.”
I looked at her. Something about visiting day had put her in a softer mood. She didn’t seem in her usual hurry to get away from me, so I said, “I’d like some advice, if you don’t mind.”
A thin veil of suspicion came over her gaze. “What is it?”
“Matron told me the men might try to deceive me. In order to escape.”
“Of course they will,” she answered instantly.
“I’m starting to see that. And it made me think that I need to know better what to guard against. If a patient wanted to escape, he’d need to steal things first, wouldn’t he? Are the men’s belongings locked up?”
“It depends,” she said. “When a man comes here, most of his belongings are kept in a locker downstairs. Money and valuables are kept in a safe in Matron’s office. Only Matron and Mr. Deighton have the combination.”
“What about keys?” I said. “I worry a patient could steal a set of keys, you know, and escape.”
“I’d like to see a single one of them try,” Roger snorted.
Boney ignored him. “Kitty, these are madmen, not criminal geniuses. A patient who stole my keys would get into the linens and the store closets. Then what would he do?”
Not Boney, then. “What about the narcotics? Or the west wing?”
“Yes, I suppose he could get into the narcotics, though I don’t see how they would help him escape. As for the west wing, I suppose he’d have to get hold of an orderly’s keys.” She frowned at Roger. “No one wants to get into the mouse droppings and dust sheets, as far as I’m aware. If he’s terribly determined, he’s welcome to try.”
“Nothing there,” Roger agreed. He picked idly at his fingernails. “Can’t say I’ve ever used my key, or wanted to.”
Boney pressed her lips together, as she always did when about to recite a rule. “We’re not to go there at all. The air is bad from disuse, I hear, and there are structural problems with the roof and the walls. It’s a hazard.”
They moved off. I bit my lip, calculating how to get the orderlies’ keys. Because Jack had been right, of course: I planned to go into the west wing, and I planned to do it tonight.
I was alone in the corridor, and I wished I wasn’t. I didn’t want to be there, staring at the water stains in the ceiling or the cracks in the tiles. Time ticked by. The day was stifling, but it seemed dank and somehow cold in there. My stockings itched, and a bead of cold sweat ran down my back.
“Nurse?”
I jumped. When I turned, my eyes must have been wild, for Creeton’s father looked taken aback. He was standing in the doorway of the small parlor, already halfway out the door.
“We wish to leave now,” he said.
It wasn’t time; the families were given an hour with the men, and barely half that had passed. No one had given me instructions on what to do. “I see,” I said evasively, buying time. I approached the doorway and looked into the room.
Creeton sat on the parlor chair, his eyes downcast. I had never liked him, but something about the way he sat there, the look on his face, set off alarms deep in my spine. “Are you certain?” I asked the parents. “Visiting hour is not yet over. Perhaps you would prefer—”
“We would like to leave,” Creeton’s father said again. “Please show us out.”
Creeton had flushed dark red. The tension in the room was horrible, unbearable. There had been some kind of ugly scene. I wished I hadn’t witnessed any of it, hadn’t seen his embarrassment. He would not look at me. His hands rested on his thighs. I remembered those hands on me, grabbing me.
There was no orderly anywhere, so I would have to leave Creeton alone while I escorted his parents to the door. I leaned a little closer to my patient. “Will you be all right?” I asked him.
He turned a look on me that burned with such utter hatred that I took a step back. Then he looked away.
There was nothing for it. I led Creeton’s parents from the room and down the corridor. Not even Creeton’s mother looked at him as she left.
“Do you have children, Nurse?” Creeton’s father asked me as we walked.
“No, sir,” I replied.
“Children can be a great joy,” he lectured me, choosing this moment to be talkative. “We had a daughter first. She’s married now. The day my son was born was different, though. I believed I’d have a legacy.”
“Yes, sir.” We’d reached the front hall and I hurried my steps.
“My son,” Creeton’s father said from behind me, “has been a disappointment. He’s never had any strength, any nerve to him. I tried to instill it, but some children can’t be taught. And now this.” We’d come to the front doors, and he looked around the hall in utter distaste. “He went to war to serve his King and country, and he came back not even half a man. No man at all. I’ll never have my legacy now.” He put his hand on the door latch, preparing to leave, and suddenly I knew what words he would speak next. I opened my mouth to stop them, not wanting to hear it, not about Creeton or anyone, not from a father. “It would have been better if he’d died,” he said to me, and turned away.
The words seemed to echo off the walls. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I watched Creeton’s parents leave and walk out into the hot sunshine as cold air crept down the back of my neck, chilled the back of my dress. “Dead is never better,” I said to their backs. “Never. The war taught us that.” But they didn’t hear and they kept walking.
Creeton’s face, the hate in his eyes.