At some point in the afternoon he came over to speak to me, asking how I was.
No one had had time to set my arm, and I said nothing about it, although he could see my purpling hand, and the swelling. By that time Eileen had been taken to someone’s home where it was cooler, and I was sitting with one of the engineers, who’d broken his leg jumping into the water, listening to his tale of another sinking before the war.
Lieutenant Browning came back shortly with Dr. Brighton, and although I protested that it could wait, my arm was cleaned and braced and wrapped, and I was given a stronger sling. It looked suspiciously like a part of someone’s tablecloth. But there was no morphine to help, because we didn’t have enough.
I slept for a time after that, in spite of the pain. It was beginning to put my teeth on edge. And so my sleep was restless at best and my dreams were filled with mines and explosions and fear.
In late afternoon, two more warships came in, and I was among those taken to Piraeus. Crowds of people had come down to the grimy little port to watch us disembark, as if word had run before us like wildfire. A number of us were put up in one of the small hotels near the harbor. It was called the Athena, and the staff was very kind. Margaret shared my room and helped me undress and bathe and dress again. She also cut my meat (it tasted suspiciously like goat) and broke my bread. Four times I was taken to hospital for my arm to be seen and treated and rebound. I could tell no one liked the look of it, but there was no infection, and I thought perhaps the bone was beginning to knit. Pulling Eileen into the boat, I’d managed to turn a simple fracture into a compound one, and it appeared for a time that I’d need surgery. Thank God the doctors were wrong.
Several days after our arrival, someone came to tell us the final death toll: thirty men. It was astonishing, and I put the good news into a letter home, written with my left hand and barely legible.
The question now was how to get us back to England. And how soon.
CHAPTER TWO
AS IT HAPPENED, I arrived in England before my latest letter, traveling aboard a smaller hospital ship where I was given light duties, from reading to patients to sitting with the surgical cases. It was an odd experience to stand aside while other nursing sisters did what I could do with my eyes shut, but I also had the opportunity to observe techniques or oversee the skills of new probationers, who were still struggling to remember all they’d been taught.
My father met my train at Victoria Station and tut-tutted over the bandaged arm strapped to my side under my cloak. He reached into the carriage for my valise, saying gruffly, “Well, it could have been worse, Bess.
“Yes, well,” I said dryly, “I was trying. The mine had different ideas.”
“Damned efficient Germans.” He studied my face. “Still in pain?”
“A little,” I lied. The train from Dover to London had been crowded, and my arm had been jostled in spite of the sling and every care.
He tried to shield me from the bustle of people coming and going. “Let’s get you out of here, then.”
We threaded our way through the valises and trunks and people cluttering the platform, and he handed in my ticket for me. Then we were outside, in the street, and London was cold, wet, and rainy. A far cry from the warmth of Greece. All the same, I was so thankful to be home. The journey from Athens to Malta to Dover had been long and arduous, and somehow a ship no longer seemed to be a haven. We had spotted submarines on three different occasions, but they had been after more important prey.
My father was saying, “My dear, there’s not a hotel to be had anywhere. We’ll have to make do.”
“There’s the flat for me. What about you?”
“I’ll stay at my club. Tomorrow the train leaves at some ungodly hour, seven, I think. We’ll have to be down again by six-thirty.”
“Wake me up at five-thirty, if you will. It takes me longer to dress.”
He was trying to conceal how worried he was about me, but he said only, “Growing conceited about your looks, are you?”
“Quite vain,” I retorted. It was an old argument. Richard Crawford, career officer in the Army that he was, had wanted a son to follow in his boots. Instead he’d got a strong-willed and determined daughter. We had battled ever since I was three.
He waved to a cab that was waiting down the line, and it pulled up for us. “In you go. At least you haven’t a great deal of luggage to worry about. That’s a blessing. But your mother has already bethought herself of that. The house is full of female things, and she’ll expect you to make a fuss over all of them.”
“I shall.” The war wasn’t over for me, whatever Mama might hope. I’d have to find myself new uniforms, or have them made up.
We stopped at the flat I shared with four other nursing sisters, and I made a clumsy dash through the rain for the door. My father, at my heels, got there first and opened it for me.
Mrs. Hennessey, in the ground-floor flat, answered my knock and was on the point of sweeping me into a copious embrace when she glimpsed the strapped arm.
“Oh, my dear!” She hardly came to my chin, an elderly widow who had lived in this same house since her husband died in 1907. It had been converted into flats in 1914. She reached out and took my left hand. “You’ll be wanting the key, and with that arm, who’s to see to you? None of the others are here just now, you know. But I’ll be glad to come up and clean, cook a little, whatever it is you need.” She hesitated. “We heard that Britannic had gone down. Was it very bad?”
“We were so fortunate there were no wounded onboard,” I answered. “But for the rest of us it was a little wearing. Still, we were very lucky.” A response I’d given so often it was like a parrot repeating a lesson and not a part of
“Indeed.” Mrs. Hennessey peered into the hall. “Is that your father with you, dear?” She had strict rules about men coming up to the flat. If we wanted to say good-bye to any male over twelve and under sixty, it had to be done at the foot of the stairs, in plain view of anyone coming and going. Diana called it the cruelest blow to romance she’d ever encountered, but none of us had so far complained to Mrs. Hennessey’s face.
“Who else?” I asked with a smile. “There are no handsome young men left in London to meet my train. He’s dragging me home tomorrow, but I’ll have to stop over tonight.”
“Then here’s the key, my love, and if you need anything, just ask. I’ll be bringing up a bit of hot soup later. Tell your father I’ll keep an eye on you.”
I thanked her and let my father see me up the stairs to the flat under the eaves.
“A mercy it was a broken arm and not a broken limb,” he said as we reached the last landing. “I couldn’t have carried you another step.” He unlocked the door for me and stuck his head inside. “I’ll have dinner sent round to you. I expect the larder is empty.”
“Mrs. Hennessey is bringing me soup. That will do. There’s tea,” I said, glancing toward what we euphemistically called our kitchen. “I’d do anything for a cup.”
He laughed and came in, shedding his coat. He was not presently a serving officer, he’d retired in 1910, but they had found work for him at the War Office nonetheless. A tall, handsome man with iron gray hair, broad shoulders, and the obligatory crisp mustache, he wore his uniform with an air. We called him Colonel Sahib, my mother and I, behind his back.
He made tea quickly and efficiently while I pored over the mail collected in the basket on the table.
Three of the letters were for me, friends writing from the Front. I wasn’t in the mood to open them and set them aside. The war seemed too close as it was, the streets filled with soldiers, some of them wounded on leave, the drabness of late November feeling as if it reflected the drabness of another year of fighting. For a little while I just wanted to forget that somewhere bodies were being torn apart and people were dying. We could hear the guns as we disembarked in Dover, and I had no way of knowing whether it was our artillery or the Germans’.
