The Summer Before the War (29 page)

They left the mansion in silence and did not speak until they parted ways outside a small public house where Daniel and other writers were fond of gathering. Hugh was anxious about leaving him alone, but Daniel insisted that he was fine and that Craigmore's sudden production of a fiancée was not a blow.

“Well, not beyond the obvious disappointment that she is, in fact, a complete horse,” said Daniel. For Daniel to be rude in so blunt a manner was telling of his anger and misery, but Hugh could only send him inside the smoke-filled pub to his friends and his whisky, because Hugh was already late for his own appointment.

“I'll come and find you when I'm done,” he said. “Try to be restrained.”

“I'll be communing with my fiancée, the goddess of the far Scottish isles,” said Daniel. “But I will attempt to remain upright, at least in my chair.”

In Sir Alex Ramsey's red-brick house, the gilded wallpaper smelled of dry glue and the thick Turkey carpet gave off an odor of old wool. No windows were open, and the still air seemed to have been already breathed by other people. The butler showed Hugh upstairs to his surgeon's private study. The inner sanctum was thick with pictures and antique bronzes. It held several comfortable club chairs and smelled of leather from a desk exposed to the afternoon sun in the bay window. “Come in, my boy,” said the surgeon, busy selecting a decanter from a loaded tray. “I've been waiting to give you the good news.” Without asking, he poured two glasses, adding the thick amber smell of brandy to the room.

“Please tell me they are dropping all drilling exercises as superfluous to our training,” said Hugh, perching on a stiff upholstered chair and trying not to fidget with his uniform. “I can't tell you how it would hearten our foes to see a hundred doctors stepping on each other's feet and waving their wooden guns in all the wrong directions.”

“I have heard we are not giving a good impression,” said the surgeon, passing him a glass. “That so much intelligence is somehow a barrier to simple rote maneuvers…does it suggest a withering of those brain parts not used for study, I wonder?”

“I think it might be more a correlation between lack of athleticism and choosing such a career,” said Hugh. “Or perhaps we just think too much about what it means to face left.”

“Stick with it, my boy, and in another six weeks or so you'll be in France,” said Sir Alex. “It is my great privilege to tell you that you have passed your final examinations. Congratulations, you'll go to the front as a full surgeon.” He raised his glass and drank it in a swallow.

“I am astonished,” said Hugh. “I didn't dare to hope I had done enough.”

“Top of the class, dear boy,” said his surgeon. “I detect more leniency than usual in the marks, since the examinations were brought forward by so many months, but you can be reassured that you would have passed in any year, as I expected.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Hugh. “That means a lot.”

“In the immediate future, while we plan for our hospital, we are being asked to distribute our surgeons so we have broad capabilities across the front, but I'm assured our group will be able to pick and choose their own patients, so do not let the administrators push you into the general cases. And watch out for the orthopedic chaps. Making quite a push for themselves; bit of an upstart bunch.”

“Yes, sir,” said Hugh.

“Pick the most useful cases and make sure you keep your own copy of all case notes,” he added. “Each case is only as useful to the future of the science as the notes we amass.”

“I understand,” said Hugh. “Meticulous notes.”

“An extra set is always a good idea,” said his surgeon. “The record that goes with the patient is always subject to getting lost in transit, especially if he dies.”

“I won't let you down, sir,” said Hugh as he stood to shake hands.

Sir Alex gave him a careful look and then cleared his throat in a way that signaled he had more to add.

“These are very trying times for all, my boy, but especially for the ladies we leave behind,” he said. For a moment Hugh entertained the horrible notion that Aunt Agatha had written to Sir Alex. “It is very hard for my daughter, who is much distressed at the imminent departure of so many young friends,” he added.

“I had no idea,” said Hugh. He had seen her briefly at the surgeon's first lecture, but she had been too busy with her flags and her feathers to do more than give him her most dazzling smile at his new uniform.

“She hides her feelings admirably behind such youthful effervescence,” said Sir Alex, sighing. “So like her late mother.” He picked up a heavy silver photograph frame from his desk and showed Hugh his late wife, who peered unsmiling in black dress and pearls, a Bible in one hand and a peacock somewhat improbably walking along the stone balustrade on which she leaned. While the photograph did not suggest a family history of effervescence, Hugh was touched by the showing of it. Sir Alex had never offered much in the way of personal anecdote.

“One sees the similar beauty,” said Hugh and was rewarded with a glimpse of some strong emotion smothered in a cough.

“Fact is, these are such extraordinary times,” said Sir Alex. “I just wanted to say that I will not stand in your way, my boy. We must not falter; we must not hesitate into the breach, as it were.” He subsided into an awkward silence, pulling at his moustache and turning away to the window so as to resolutely not look at Hugh. It occurred to Hugh that Sir Alex was talking about Lucy, that Sir Alex was giving his permission where none had yet been asked. That the great man would anticipate what was in Hugh's mind was not a surprise, but that he should offer support seemed an honor too great to be believed.

“Miss Ramsey's happiness must be the first concern of her friends,” offered Hugh.

“I told her as much,” said the surgeon. “I told her I will stand by her choice, regardless of rank or excellence, but to be frank, I have my concerns, Grange.”

“About me?” asked Hugh, surprised into bluntness.

“No, no, you'll do absolutely,” said Sir Alex. “One or two of the other chaps, let's just say, no good having a coronet if you've no head to put it on.”

“Am I to understand, sir, that you wish Miss Ramsey to marry as she pleases?” asked Hugh. His tone was drier than he intended, perhaps because he was less than happy to be told he might “do” given the difficulty of the times.

“It's not exactly a carte blanche,” said the surgeon. “But I will suggest prompt action on the part of any suitor so interested. Fact is, she won't go to Wales without an engagement notice sent out. She fears she'll be isolated and left on the shelf out in the country. Frankly, I'm at my wit's end to get her out of London.”

“There is surely no imminent threat to London,” said Hugh. He had a sudden image of Lucy, in her frothiest of frocks, sitting in a darkened Welsh parlor with an old aunt asleep over some knitting, her youth and freshness entombed and the rain beating at the windows. “It would be a hardship for her to be exiled.”

“There may not be Zeppelins coming up the Thames yet,” said the surgeon. “But London, in wartime, is a place of licentiousness and chaos. My dear wife refused to so much as sit on a public bench in the park, but yesterday my daughter rode on an omnibus and brought home to tea three young men she had coaxed to a recruiting office.”

“With your permission, it would be my honor to talk to her,” said Hugh. “And regardless of how she looks upon me, I give you my word that I will urge her to consider her safety.”

“Thank you,” said Sir Alex. “Her aunt lives in the heart of Cardiff, not some lonely crag on Snowdon. She will have plenty of suitable social life, and I can devote myself to our cause with a clear conscience.”

In the garden, Hugh found Lucy tucked into a chair in the small summerhouse. The chairs were covered in quilts, as if against the sort of autumnal chill that the calendar would suggest. But the weather was hot, and only the strong, peppery scent of asters signaled the changing season. As he approached, Lucy greeted him with both hands outstretched.

“You look very…smart,” he said as he bent to kiss each hand. She wore a blue serge skirt and jacket, trimmed with scarlet epaulettes and a red and white sash over her shoulder. Her hair was tucked under a jaunty cap sporting a flag of St. George pin. It was a fetching little uniform.

“I'm so glad you've come to see me at last,” she said. “Every inch the soldier and now a fully fledged surgeon too.”

“Your father told you,” he said.

“I wormed it out of him,” said Lucy. “I have learned to be very persistent these days.”

“Indeed,” he said.

“Do you like my uniform?” she asked, standing up and smoothing her narrow skirt. “My friends and I have started our own organization, the St. George Recruitment Brigade.”

“Do you need committees and bylaws to hand out feathers?” he asked.

“The newspaper took our photograph yesterday and published it under the headline ‘George's Girls!' Look, Hugh.” She presented him with a page cut from an illustrated paper which featured a large photograph of a dozen girls all hanging from the back of an omnibus and waving wildly at the camera.

“You're going to be famous,” said Hugh. Such a photograph required several minutes of keeping still, so the waving was somewhat artificial. “That poor girl in the back has no arms,” he added.

“Maisie forgot to keep still, and so she actually waved and her arms got all blurry,” said Lucy, peering at the photograph over his shoulder.

“And is it possible you're all wearing paint?”

“Don't be stuffy, Hugh. Everyone knows you need a little theatrical paint for a professional photograph,” she said. “The important thing is that with such attention we can make a real contribution to the war effort.”

“Still, I can't imagine your father is too happy,” said Hugh.

“I haven't shown him,” she admitted. She folded up the newspaper page and tucked it in her pocket. “Now that we have helped him recruit his hundred medical men, he can't expect me to just stop,” she continued. “The country needs all available men, and we are just the girls to get the job done.”

“Just because we're at war doesn't mean we should disregard propriety,” said Hugh. “I'm sure your father is only concerned about your reputation.”

“Why do you chaps insist on keeping the war all to yourselves?” asked Lucy. “We girls are not just going to sit home and knit while you go off on your adventures.”

“War is hardly an adventure,” said Hugh.

As he spoke, she glared. “Exactly my point,” she said. “In a time of national peril, all must be allowed to chip in.”

“I'm sorry,” he added. “Your father and I share the urge to protect you.”

“Sounding like one's father is not the most attractive trait in a young man,” she said.

“I am an idiot,” he said, beating his forehead with a fist in mock despair as she laughed at him. “Tell me your adventures?” he added, hoping with all his heart to hear nothing but the most banal of activities.

Touring London in a hired and decorated omnibus seemed to be the group's main activity. They had been invited to appear at the Albert Hall and gone to a recruiting dinner in Whitehall, but the omnibus seemed to thrill Lucy the most.

“And next month there is to be a garden party at the Palace, and we will provide an honor guard at the door and then join the party, each carrying a spray of tea roses.” She sighed.

“It sounds very exciting,” he said, resisting the urge to ask where they would find tea roses in October.

“You can't imagine how much more exciting it is to actually do something in the world that matters,” she said, looking quite serious and clasping her hands together for emphasis. “So much more gratifying than the endless copying of case files, answering correspondence like some paid girl, or having to dust my father's consulting room because he doesn't trust the housemaid.” She looked so sad that Hugh was moved to clasp her hands in his. A ray of late-afternoon sun, dipping between rooftops, tipped her hair in rosy gold, and her breath escaped from plump lips pink with health and youth. Hugh could feel her hands tremble under his and see her little jacket fill with her sharp intake of breath.

“I had no idea you were unhappy,” he said.

“Until I marry, I must do my duty to my father,” she said. “But I trust you, Hugh, and I confess that I long to escape the very smell of the consulting room.”

“You deserve your adventures,” he said. “You deserve everything.” She lowered her thick lashes to her cheeks and blushed, and they sat in what Hugh hoped was an understanding silence as he tried to find words for a formal declaration.

“You know I have promised my father that were I to become engaged to be married, I would be content to go to Wales and stay with my aunt,” she said, her voice soft.

“It would be a relief to both of us to know you are safe in the bosom of family,” said Hugh.

“But next month is the royal garden party,” she said. She made a small pout with her distracting lips. “You will understand my difficulty?” she added.

“As a bride-to-be, surely you would have other concerns to attend to,” said Hugh, smiling. “I wish to ask you…” he began.

“No, no, do not ask me, Hugh,” she said, withdrawing her hands to wave them at him as if she were shooing away a small dog. “I do not wish to say no, and yet were I betrayed into saying yes, I would have to go away. Let us have an understanding without words, without promises.”

“What kind of understanding?” he asked. “And what will I tell your father?”

“I ask only for a few months, Hugh,” she said. “Then you will have everything you wanted. One day all this can be yours.” She waved her hand at the house to which she had just expressed a decided aversion.