A Duty to the Dead (7 page)

I’d been sitting in that same uncomfortable chair for another half hour, wrestling with my own thoughts, when the outer door opened and a voice called tentatively up the stairs, “Where are you?”

I stepped to the door and answered quietly, “Who is it?”

“I’m Sally Booker’s mother.”

“We’re in here. The bedroom nearest the stairs.”

She came up, heels clicking on the treads, a small, gray-haired woman with lines of worry on her face. “Is he all right?”

She peered in the room, then sighed. “I don’t know what’s to become of him. He was the most wonderful young man. I was so happy when Sally married him. And now look at him.”

“He can’t help it,” I said, in defense of Booker.

“Yes, I know that. It doesn’t matter, does it? He’ll never be the same, and Sally is at her wit’s end. I feel so deeply for both of them.”

“Are there any children?”

“Yes, a boy. He’s away at his cousin’s, thank God.”

She took a deep breath, then said, “I’m Marion Denton.”

“I’m Elizabeth Crawford. I’m here to visit the Grahams. And Dr. Philips commandeered me to help.”

“Yes, that’s what Dr. Philips told us when he looked in to let us know how Ted was faring. Thank you for your help. I don’t know how we would have managed. The doctor said it was easier with a woman here. That surprised me. Sally isn’t able to cope with Ted in these moods.”

“She’s his wife,” I said simply. “That’s harder.”

“True.”

Ted coughed, and then moaned a little in his sleep.

“He doesn’t rest at night, you know. That’s the roughest time for him.”

“He lost his brother, I understand.”

“They were twins. I’m told it’s harder with twins.”

She came in to take the chair that Dr. Philips had occupied, and we sat in companionable silence for a time. Then she said, “How did you come to know the Grahams? Are you a relation?”

“No, I was a nursing sister on
Britannic,
when Arthur was brought onboard. I was with him when he died.”

“I was fond of Arthur. A very nice boy, who grew into a very nice young man. Timothy and Jonathan seemed to collect trouble the way a dog collects burrs. They’re closer in age, of course, and what one couldn’t think of, the other could. Their father died when they were very young. It isn’t surprising they ran a little wild. Mrs. Graham’s cousin did what he could to manage them, but they were headstrong. Of course they turned out well enough, I must say. I thought for a time that Sally might choose Johnnie or Tim. I didn’t know Peregrine well. The family always claimed he was a little slow. A little different. But I never saw it myself. Still, his tutor despaired of him, and he must know better than I.”

She turned to stare at the man on the bed. “So was Ted a nice boy. I was that fond of him, and he was a good husband to Sally. Look at
this house—he saw to it that she wanted for nothing. And now she can’t bear to come here, to him. She’s begged me to send him back to hospital, where they know what to do with his kind. Maybe it would be best after all if he used that shotgun. I don’t know what peace he’ll ever have.”

I was shocked. “He can’t help but relive his brother’s death. He feels the burden of responsibility. It’s not something one gets over easily.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it? His brother is dead. It’s time to move on and live for his wife and son.”

“It’s not that easy—” I repeated, trying to make her see that his memories were beyond Ted Booker’s control. But she had no experience of war or any other horrendous event that shocks the mind, and her callousness was in defense of her daughter. I might as well have been talking to the wall.

She turned to me. “What’s not easy about remembering your family? The boy is afraid of him, and Sally’s told me that when she promised to love him in sickness and in health, there was nothing said about madness.”

“It isn’t madness. Shell shock is an affliction of the brain.”

“I call it madness, to sit in a dark room and talk to the dead and threaten to use that shotgun. I tried taking it away once, but he came raging over to my house and demanded it back. And I was afraid to say no.”

“It takes time.”

“No, it doesn’t. He needs to brace up, like a man, and say good-bye to his brother and remember he’s still alive, with a family looking to him for love.”

I lost my patience. “You weren’t in the trenches with him, Mrs. Denton. You don’t know what it’s like when one mistake kills dozens of men right in front of your eyes, where a simple lapse in concentration means you’re hanging on the wire, dying, and no one can bring you back without dying beside you. You don’t smell the dead with
every breath and know that some of what’s nasty under your boots were your friends before they were blown to bits.”

She replied righteously, “Yes, that’s all very well, isn’t it? That’s in France, where such things happen. This is Kent, and he must learn the difference.”

It was useless. Instead of trying to persuade her, I suggested that she have a long talk with Dr. Philips to see what could be done to help Ted Booker cope.

“
He
doesn’t have any answers, except for the powders he gives Ted that make him like this—asleep and useless for hours at a time. How is he ever to earn a living and support a wife and child, I ask you!”

“Perhaps you and Sally ought to visit such a hospital yourselves, before deciding where your son-in-law belongs,” I suggested. I trained in one, and it was heart wrenching. But this woman could only see her daughter’s misery, and the anguish that drove Ted Booker into the past was as foreign to her as the monkey gods of India or the typhoons that killed thousands in the flat deltas below Calcutta.

The outer door opened, and Dr. Philips’s footsteps rang on the stairs. He came in, looked at the two of us sitting there in a huffy silence, and then crossed to the bed to examine Ted.

“Be careful he doesn’t choke,” he said. “He can’t fend for himself just now.”

“Yes, I’ll be careful.”

“Mrs. Graham is very upset with me. She wants you to come back to the house straightaway. ‘She’s a guest,’ she tells me. ‘And not here for your convenience.’”

“Surely you’ve found someone to sit for a while. He’s harmless, poor man, as he is.”

“Yes, I’ve found someone. But she’s nearly as frightened of Ted as his wife is. She needs the money, and so she’ll come.”

“What’s to become of him?”

“Back to hospital, I fear. Mrs. Denton here and her daughter have had enough. I can’t say that I blame them, but Booker is my patient, and I had hoped that in surroundings he knew from before the war, there was comfort.”

“What set him off this morning?”

It was Mrs. Denton who answered me. “It’s their birthday—his and his brother’s.”

I felt a wave of sadness. Poor man.

I went on, out of compassion, “I’ll sit with him a little longer, if you like.”

But the doctor answered with a shake of his head. “Mrs. Graham will nail my medical degree to the church door, if I leave you here a moment longer. Can you find your way back? Or do you need a guide?”

“No, I’ll be all right. Stay with your patient. Good-bye, Mrs. Denton. I hope that all will be well with your daughter’s marriage before very long.”

She thanked me, and I went down the stairs and into the street. The wind was at my back as I walked, and I looked at the houses on either side of the Bookers’. Arthur had told me that this was once iron-making country, and so it had prospered. But the trees that fed the furnaces had gone long ago, and now it was pasturage for sheep and fields of corn and hops that kept the villages flourishing.

I found myself thinking that the Grahams had secrets as painful as Ted Booker’s. It wasn’t surprising now that Arthur hadn’t told me about his brother. He’d have had to explain too much, and so it was easier to say nothing. Had Arthur and Peregrine been close as children? They were nearest in age. How had Mrs. Graham managed to tell her remaining sons why Peregrine was being sent away? Surely not the truth, not until they were older. I understood now my feeling when I met her, the feeling that she carried a heavy burden.

The church door was open as I came by, and for a moment I stepped inside out of the wind, not quite ready to return to the
Graham house. I stood in the nave and looked up at the stained-glass windows, shining in the bright sun, before walking a little way down the aisle. I didn’t want to go as far as Arthur’s memorial. I just needed the silence here, to wipe away the stress of dealing with Ted Booker and then listening to his mother-in-law wish him dead. She didn’t know how near she’d come this time to getting her wish.

Someone was moving over my head, the sound of a bench being dragged across the wooden floor, the rustle of papers, and I realized that whoever it was must be in the organ loft. Then, without warning, the stone walls filled up with the raw scrape of a saw biting into wood. It was so unexpected that I walked down the aisle and looked up at the loft. All I could see was a man bent over something, and then as the sawing stopped, hammering began. As he stood up, I could see his clerical collar and shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. He was looking down at his handiwork as if satisfied, and then he gathered up his tools, and moved toward the stairs. I strode quietly up the aisle and was out the door before he could encounter me in the nave.

I
HAD MISSED
luncheon and was beginning to wish Dr. Philips’s culinary skills had extended to more than making a cup of tea. But Susan met me at the door with the news that Mrs. Graham had asked her to set my meal aside.

“Mrs. Nichols—she’s our cook—has gone to have a little nap. Come along into the kitchen. It’s warmer there,” she urged, and I followed her.

As she took my plate out of the warming oven, she went on shyly, “I’ve been wanting a chance to ask you about Mr. Arthur. How it was at the end. I’ve not got over his dying. It doesn’t seem real to me, somehow. I think of him away fighting, as I always did, and then must remind myself that he’s not.”

I told her what I’d told the Grahams, and she listened with tears in her eyes. “He never gave up hope,” I ended, “and everyone who knew him was saddened by his death. He was as popular a patient as he was an officer, and it was some time before the staff got over what had happened.” I could feel my own throat tightening. “I don’t believe he suffered,” I lied, for Susan’s sake. “And he was unconscious for the last hours. That was a kindness.”

She nodded, turning her back to me. I saw her lift the corner of her apron and wipe her eyes. She busied herself about my meal until she was sure her voice was steady, then said huskily, “Thank you
for telling me. I didn’t feel right asking Mrs. Graham. She took his death hard.”

She set a bowl of soup before me, thick with barley, and then slices of chicken with potatoes and swede. After the tension of dealing with Ted Booker, I was hungrier than I’d imagined, and Susan watched me eat with pleasure.

“Nice to see someone enjoying their food,” she said with a smile. “They never say much, above-stairs. I try to please, but it’s hard to find the meat and vegetables they’re used to. The war and all. I’m at my wit’s end, sometimes.”

“How long have you worked here?”

“Since I was sixteen. I came with my mother, and after she left to live with my brother, I took over as housekeeper, more or less. They don’t call me that, but they might as well give me the title. I do the work.”

“Were there others in service here, before the war?”

Her face clouded a bit, but she said, “Half a dozen. Except for Mrs. Nichols—and she was too old to consider war work—the women left one by one as the men went off to fight. The footman died on the Somme, and we lost the coachman soon after. You’ve only to walk in the churchyard to see how bad it’s been for us.”

“Yes, I noticed the graves.”

“And that’s only them that died at home.”

As I was finishing my pudding, there were footsteps on the stairs, and Mrs. Graham came into the kitchen, frowning. “My dear! I didn’t intend for you to be served here. Susan, what were you thinking?”

Susan went red in the face, and I said quickly, “The kitchen was warm, and I didn’t wish to put her out. It’s my fault, truly.”

As I’d finished my meal, she carried me off to the sitting room, apologizing again for Dr. Philips’s demands on my time and skills. “He has no sense of what is right. You didn’t come here to deal with Ted Booker. A tragedy, I’m sure, but not ours. I don’t know what your parents will think of me, letting such a thing happen.”

“They will understand. I’m trained to help. It would have been difficult for me to say no.” To change the subject, I asked about the rector and the work he was doing in the church.

“It’s the war,” she said with a sigh, as if that explained everything. “Our sexton lost an arm at Ypres, but he can still carry out most of his duties, and so he was given his old position back. But the church needs constant upkeep, and when no one is looking, the rector, Mr. Montgomery, sees to it. There were protests at first, but he reminded us that Christ was a carpenter. And I must say, he’s got quite good at what he does, and it has saved church funds time and again. But it isn’t right, somehow. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but this making do at every turn is trying.”

I said, “Of course his own duties come first, but it must give him a sense of satisfaction to know that the fabric of the church isn’t suffering from the war.”

She tilted her head as she considered that. “I hadn’t looked at it quite that way. But I’m sure you’re right. He was on a ladder, inspecting the stained-glass windows last week, when I went to see to the flowers, and he said the saints were taking the war in stride. I see now that he was pleased. I’d taken his remarks to be rather—irreverent.”

She got up to poke at the fire, though it didn’t need it.

“Perhaps I ought to ask Robert to speak to him. To offer help, if he’ll accept it. Robert has been my right hand for so many years I don’t know how I could have survived without him.” There was a warmth in her voice that conveyed the closeness of that relationship. “He was always my favorite cousin, you know, and the only one who stepped forward in my time of need. I was so young when my husband died, and the responsibility was overwhelming. The estate to run, my sons to care for. I hardly knew where to begin. And all these years later, Arthur’s loss to endure.”

I wondered where she was going with this unexpected confession of vulnerability. She was a strong woman, I’d felt that from the beginning. I should have guessed what her purpose was.

Turning from the fire, she came to sit by me. “Jonathan has spoken to me. Are you sure Arthur didn’t tell you the circumstances surrounding his message?”

“Absolutely. He entrusted me with that, and nothing more.” I didn’t add that my imagination had been busy filling in the blanks.

“Yes, well, it’s rather a mystery. Was he perhaps being given morphine? Or was he out of his head with fever?”

“He’d been given something for pain, but he knew what he was saying. I think he died more comfortably, knowing his duty was done.”

“Duty. That’s an odd way of putting it.” She sighed. “I really don’t know what to make of it.”

I found myself wondering if that was true and she was intentionally blinding herself to what Arthur wanted. On the other hand, I couldn’t help the growing suspicion that she was probing to discover how much I knew about the matter. It was hard to judge what lay behind her sad smile as she stared into the fire, and I was feeling rather uncomfortable.

What surprised me was that Jonathan had confided in his mother. Had she importuned him until he had given in?

I couldn’t stop myself from commenting, “Perhaps he expected Jonathan to understand. The message was meant for him, after all.”

“I did it for Mother’s sake….”
She repeated the middle of it, as if trying to work it out. “But what was that?”

“Sometimes it’s a girl….”

Her eyes flicked to my face.

“What makes you think such a thing?”

“I’ve sat with many wounded men, Mrs. Graham. And some of them were in love when they went off to war. But their family or the girl’s family refused to let them marry. That sometimes weighed heavily on their minds, at the end. They often wanted the girl to know that they regretted not marrying her.”

“My sons haven’t been involved with any young women.” Her voice was harsh. I’d met that resistance before. Mothers who believed that their sons had formed no attachments because they were too young…I knew better, I’d written passionate letters to sweethearts from men barely old enough to enlist.

“I didn’t mean to suggest—we were speaking of what men at war talk about at the end. When they know they’re dying.”

She smiled. “That was pompous of me, my dear. Certainly there was no one in Owlhurst for whom Arthur and Jonathan had feelings, and it was natural to assume….” There was a brief hesitation. “Of course there’s Sally Denton. Timothy was quite taken with her for a time. But I can’t believe it was a serious attachment.”

“Then perhaps it was something left undone, something that he’d expected to set right when he came home again.”

“Undone? No, surely not. Typical of Arthur, he’d put everything in order before he sailed. Well. I expect we’ll never know what was in his mind. You must be tired, my dear, after your experiences with Dr. Philips’s patient, and I’ve selfishly kept you sitting here talking. Would you like to go up and lie down for a while?”

I wouldn’t, but it was a dismissal, as if she preferred to be alone with her thoughts, and I was very happy to escape this conversation. I said, “Yes, that’s very kind of you. If you don’t mind…”

“Not at all.” She put out her hand to take mine. “I can’t tell you how happy it has made me to have you here.”

I closed the sitting room door behind me and walked toward the stairs. Timothy was standing in the shadows of the hall, and he turned as he heard me approach.

“How is Booker?” he asked.

“Resting quietly when I left.”

“What a nightmare it must be. Is there nothing to be done for him?”

“I’m afraid not. Somehow he must find the will and determination to let go of the past. And often even that isn’t enough. His wife
is afraid of him, which doesn’t help matters. They say time…” I let my voice trail off. We didn’t know enough about shell shock to offer hope. But I didn’t want to admit that.

“We were friends before the war. I’ve seen little of him since he came back.”

“Perhaps he needs his old friends,” I suggested tentatively. “To take his mind off his brother.”

“What do I know about war?” Timothy asked bitterly. “It’s not something I could share with him, is it? The experience of the trenches, the fear of dying when you go over the top.”

“It isn’t war he needs to talk about, you see. It’s ordinary things, the life that was.”

“I’d have married Sally, if she hadn’t chosen Ted. There’s that as well.”

Men and their wretched self-importance.

“If Ted Booker shoots himself, there may be another chance for the two of you.”

That shocked him, and he looked at me with surprise and distaste. “I don’t want her that way.”

“Well, think about Ted Booker in his dark world, will you? An effort on your part to save her husband’s sanity will be a gift to her. If you loved her, you’d want to do that.”

He swore under his breath.

“I wasn’t trying to distress you. But I just spent several hours watching a man who wants to die. There are too many dead, Mr. Graham, and I’m heartily sick of bodies to be buried.”

I turned to walk away, and he called to me, “Did you see through Arthur as easily as you see through me?”

“I don’t know that there was anything to see through. He was dying, and that tends to sweep away the trivia of living. He wanted something done, and that’s why I came, because it was so important to him.”

“Were you in love with him? Most of the girls were. He was the pick of the Grahams, you know. Better than all of us.”

I answered carefully. “I liked your brother very much. Perhaps more than I should, but I watched him believe in his future, and then I watched him give up all hope. That made me feel something for him, compassion, pity, affection. Sometimes you see briefly into someone’s heart, and it becomes a bond between you that goes beyond friendship. But not as far as passion.”

“You’re blunt.”

I smiled. “Am I? It’s my training, I suppose.”

And this time I walked on. He didn’t stop me from going.

My intent was to go up to my room, but the house seemed airless, suffocating. I went to the kitchen instead and begged Susan for a cloak from the entry pegs, and walked out again.

This time I didn’t turn in the direction of the rectory but went down the lane on which the Graham house stood. It ran for a short distance, then split, and I took the left fork. The houses here were comfortable, but not as fine as the Grahams’. At the end of this lane, where another crossed it, I found myself in a row of small cottages, some of them very old but well kept up.

I had walked almost to the end of these when a door opened and someone called, “Susan, is that you?”

I turned to see an elderly woman peering out at me, squinting to make out who I was. It was then that I realized that Susan must have lent me her cloak.

“No, I’m afraid not,” I answered. “I’m staying at the house and borrowed her coat to walk a bit.”

“Then you must be half frozen. Come in to the fire, do, and I’ll make you a cup of tea.”

I debated accepting, but she was holding the door open for me, and I turned up the path with a word of thanks as I gave her my name.

“Mine’s West, Matty West.” She shut the door behind me and shivered. “I think it’s colder this winter than last. Though it’s probably my bones a year older.”

Leading the way into the kitchen, she pointed to the kettle on the
boil. “It’s nearly ready. Sit down and warm yourself. I’ll see to the pot.”

As she bustled about, she said, “You’re at the house, you say? I didn’t think they were taking on more servants at present.”

“Actually I came because I knew Arthur Graham and was with him when he died.”

She stopped, her hands holding the saucers. “You knew Mr. Arthur? Oh, my dear, tell me he died peacefully!”

“Yes, it was very peaceful,” I replied. “Did you know him well?”

“I was housekeeper there while the boys were young. Then my son lost his wife and I came to keep house for him and his children.”

“Oh. You’re Susan’s mother.” When I’d been told she’d gone to live with her son, I’d assumed distance, as in Dorset or Hampshire. Not in Owlhurst.

“Indeed I am.” She went on setting cup into saucer, finding a spoon and the jug of milk. “He was my favorite of the lads, though Mr. Peregrine was the eldest, you know. Mr. Peregrine was—different. I was never sure why. His father blustered and tried to make out that the boy was bright, nothing wrong, but his tutor said it was a shame about him. It must have been true. I put it down to his mother dying so young. But then he never knew her, did he? When his father married again, he was still hardly more than a baby.”

“They never speak of Peregrine,” I ventured. “Is he dead?” I felt guilty for lying, but my curiosity got the better of my conscience.

“As good as. I remember him well—happy and busy and strong, he was.”

“Where is he now?”

She looked away. “It’s not my place to tell you, Miss. He got himself into some trouble, and was taken away. Mrs. Graham sobbed and cried, and the doctor feared for her. But I thought it was no more than an act. She never loved Mr. Peregrine the way she loved
the others. If she had to lose one of the boys, it would have been Mr. Peregrine she’d have sacrificed.”