“Because I know Matron,” I said. I held up a finger. “First, she would take the keeping of the patients’ personal belongings very seriously. Second, she would keep them meticulously organized, labeled, and stored somewhere locked. But not in her office, because she does not need to access them every day. So in a closet nearby. And she would keep the key herself, without giving a copy to Boney, because she would see it as her responsibility alone. Each man’s things will have an itemized and dated list included. I’ll wager it now.”
He was watching my face. He always knew what I was thinking. “She’ll be all right,” he told me gently. “You’ll see.”
“Yes, well.” I swallowed my worry.
“There was nothing in those papers about you, you know.”
I looked up at him. “What?”
“The envelope you gave me. The incident reports you asked me to read for you. I did. And there was nothing in there about you.”
“What are you talking about? My brother—”
“Is not mentioned. There is an incident report stating that a visitor arrived on a day not set for visiting and created a commotion. It says the nurses tried to eject him and the patients became disturbed. That was her word, ‘disturbed.’ It states that the orderlies were late in arriving, and by the time the visitor was shown off the grounds, the patients were very upset. She claims full responsibility for the incident. Kitty, you’re never mentioned at all, and neither are the other nurses.”
“What about the other incident reports?” I said. “The one in which I went to your room without clearance. And the second time, the night Roger told on me. And the night when Archie attacked me.”
“There’s one about the attack. I suppose she had to write that one. But it’s brief and carefully worded. Matron seems to be an expert in writing a report that doesn’t give much away. I have to admire it.”
“And the others?”
Jack shook his head. “Nothing. Just those two reports. Nothing else.”
My stubborn brain wouldn’t take it in. “That can’t be right, Jack. She told me she was writing incident reports. She told me Mr. Deighton would read them, and there was nothing she could do. Are you saying she was lying?” My face felt hot and tingling. “Oh, my God. She was trying to frighten me all along. She never meant to have me dismissed. When I see her again, I’ll kill her myself. I’ve barely slept, I was so worried.”
Jack’s voice was thoughtful. “I’m starting to think, perhaps, that Matron puts on quite a good show of being frightening. But a show is what it is.”
“She’s practical,” I replied. “She can’t afford to lose a nurse, that’s all. It certainly wasn’t out of affection for me.”
“You may be wrong about that,” Jack said.
I shook my head. I know her, I was about to say again, but then I remembered that Matron had had a husband, and a son, and I had never guessed. Perhaps I didn’t know her as well as I’d thought.
“Fine,” I said finally. “We’ll leave it. But I know I’m right about this closet.”
I was. One of the keys worked, and the door swung open to reveal neatly kept shelves. There were a few small suitcases, and boxes tied with string; there were also a few parcels wrapped simply in brown paper. I realized that these were the belongings each man had come here with, the things of his own life he had surrendered. Some men had come with suitcases, others with a box of beloved items. And some men had come with nothing.
Each item had a paper tag attached to it, with Matron’s large, looped handwriting. SOMERSHAM, WILLIAM. D.O.B.: 16 APRIL 1898. ADMITTANCE DATE: 7 JANUARY 1919.
I studied the tags one by one. Jack was silent next to me, looking over my shoulder. It seemed he couldn’t find words for those few long moments, as if the sight of that closet had temporarily robbed him. I finally put a hand on the brown paper parcel with his name on it.
I slid it off the shelf, held it in my hands for a moment. It weighed nearly nothing; Jack had come here, it seemed, with the clothes on his back and little else. I turned to him, the small parcel between us, and the ceremonial pose of it, I with an item in both my hands, presenting it to him, struck me with deep truth.
I raised my eyes and looked into his. I could not fathom what I saw there, could not truly understand what this moment would mean to a person who had suffered what he had. He didn’t speak; it seemed he couldn’t. And yet he put his hand on the parcel and took it from me, and then he ducked down and kissed me swiftly on the lips, his touch telling me more than words ever could.
He stood back and untied the string. The paper fell open to reveal a folded shirt and trousers, a pair of suspenders, a watch, a wallet, a wool jacket. When Jack Yates had checked into Portis House, wishing to kill himself, he had not even worn a tie.
He let out a sigh, a great whoosh of air as if a weight had been lifted from him. He picked a piece of paper from the top of the stack of folded clothes and held it up to me with a half smile. “You should have wagered money,” he said.
It was Matron’s list of items in the parcel, of course. I smiled back at him.
Jack released the parcel and it dropped to the floor. I blinked in surprise, but before I could recover, he grabbed the bottom hem of his hospital top and wrenched it off over his head in one quick movement. I was left gaping at his bare chest, unexpected and utterly fascinating.
“What are you doing?” I managed.
“These are my clothes,” he said simply. He sounded almost happy. He kicked off his shoes. “I’m putting them on.”
“Right here?”
“Come, now.” He looked up at me and grinned fully, watching my reaction. Too late, I realized he was distracting me as he yanked the drawstring of his hospital trousers and dropped them to the floor. “You’re a nurse,” he said. “Surely at some point you’ve seen one of us in the altogether?”
I stood there like a ninny. He wasn’t in the altogether—he wore drawers, of course, and at the moment he showed no signs of removing them. But he wore nothing else. I should turn my back, I thought stupidly, but I did no such thing. His body was lean, the flat muscles sliding under the skin hypnotic. He had small whorls of hair on his chest, a shade lighter than the hair on his head. His hips were narrow, his legs long and strong, smaller whorls of hair on his thighs and farther down. I stared.
He bent and picked up his trousers, the knobs of his spine moving under the flawless skin of his back. He shook the trousers out and stepped into them, and I felt a short stab of disappointment that I couldn’t look at his legs anymore. He fastened the trouser buttons, the movement strangely intimate. He was enjoying the fact that I was looking at him. There was something in my gaze, I realized, something I had not consciously put there, that he was soaking up like a sponge.
He picked up the shirt next and slipped it over his head, and I could see the tufts of hair under his arms as he raised them, the soft, firm undersides of his biceps, the play of skin over his ribs. Then the fabric fell and he tucked the shirt into the trousers as I felt the slow pulse of my heart at the base of my throat.
He attached the suspenders next, slid them over his shoulders. The trousers were a little roomy on him now, but not much; even before he’d come here and gone on a hospital diet, he’d been slim. I saw him now as if through a glass; I could see the patient he’d been, and the man he was, at the same time. They had always been the same person, at least to me.
He put his shoes and socks on and straightened, looked at me.
“How do you feel?” I asked.
He rolled his shoulders, one and then the other, then both at the same time, the movement making the fabric of his shirt play over his skin. Then he stilled and looked at me, his expression dark. “Come here.”
I took a step closer, knowing only that I wanted to be nearer, to be as close as I could. He put his arm around my waist and pulled me to him, flush against him. Then he kissed me again.
This kiss was different. He held me tight, and even through layers of fabric I could feel every sinew of him, the beat of his heart and the heat of his hands on my back. I put my arms around his neck and touched his hair with my fingertips. His hips were flush against mine. He teased my mouth open and I let him, the taste of him, mixed with the smell of his skin, overwhelming me. He had kissed me before with need, and the need was still there, but it was tempered with passion that made me ache, made me rise up and open to him as much as he would let me.