“His faith was strong. He had made peace with God before he was rescued from the cold and turbulent sea, and he never lost that deep feeling that he was in the hands of his Lord.”
He went on to speak to the family individually, to the widow first, and next to the two Mrs. Ellises, mother and grandmother, then moved on to the surviving brother and sister.
Mr. Smyth was a short, balding man, his tortoiseshell glasses catching the last of the daylight as clouds spread across the weak winter sun. His eloquence surprised me until I learned later that Eleanor had written much of it. She sat there, her face hidden by her heavy black veil, one hand holding tightly to her brother’s, listening to the words and the prayers, seeming not to feel the cold.
I realized it was her farewell to her husband. That the stone on his grave was a final duty that she had taken on herself.
This was not a usual service. I couldn’t recall ever having attended another dedication of a memorial stone by gathering of family and friends. But it was impressive, and I could see that to the family it was offering much needed solace.
Looking around at the faces in the half circle, I could see that Gran, shielded by the silk veil, was staring into space, her mind on the words but her eyes on what must have been her own husband’s marker. Mrs. Ellis, from behind her own veil, was lost in thought, perhaps remembering the little boy who had become a man. Margaret was weeping quietly.
The men had no such defense from the public gaze. Roger, standing closest to the stone, put his hand out to it, then quickly withdrew it, as if reluctant to touch it. George Hughes kept his eyes on Roger’s face, and I was surprised to see speculation in his gaze. Henry, his arm around his wife’s shoulders, looked down at the stone as if envisioning his own. The tic at the corner of his left eye had grown worse.
And then the service ended with a benediction, and we began the slow progress back to the motorcars waiting for us at the side of the churchyard.
I saw George Hughes pause briefly as he passed and put his hand on the cold marble head of Juliana’s memorial. It was a lingering caress, as one might touch the head of a beloved child. Then he was offering his arm to Mrs. Ellis, and I thought that she took it gratefully. Mr. Smyth was helping Gran, while Roger held out a hand to Lydia. After a moment’s hesitation, she took it.
I looked back as the gate was closing behind us and saw the last of the light touch the stone we’d just dedicated. It picked out Alan’s last name for an instant and then was gone.
Janet Smyth took my arm and said, “You’re a friend of Lydia’s. I’m glad. She needs to have friends around her when Roger goes back to France. I hope you’ll be able to stay until Christmas.”
“My own family is expecting me next week,” I said. “And then I must return to France.”
She said, “Oh, you’re a nursing sister, then.”
“Yes.”
“I do admire your courage! When the war began, I considered nursing, but my brother dissuaded me. He felt that I didn’t have the constitution for it.”
She was sturdily built, and I thought to myself that she could have made a very useful nurse, strong enough to deal with delirious men and those too ill to shift for themselves. But perhaps she meant the mental stamina. I knew all too well the cost of that.
We walked on together, arm in arm, and she was saying about the heath, “It’s a dreary place, but I’ve come to love it.”
Surprised, I said, “You weren’t born here?”
“Oh, no, only the Ellises. And of course George Hughes. His family lived not far from Vixen Hill. They moved to London a few years after little Juliana died. Such a tragedy. But you must know all about that.”
As we crossed the grassy dell together, Janet Smyth added, “I’ll see you this evening.”
I nodded and went to accompany Mrs. Ellis on the drive back to Vixen Hill. Mrs. Ellis sighed. “I think Alan would have been pleased.”
“Yes,” I agreed. “It was a very lovely service.”
“I wasn’t prepared,” she said. “For the end. He seemed to be stronger. I let myself believe. And then he was gone, and there was so much I’d left unsaid. That’s a terrible feeling.”
“Sometimes things don’t actually need to be said,” I suggested.
In the front seat, Margaret said under her breath to her husband, “I don’t see why he had to die.”
Her husband replied, “Frostbite, and then gangrene, my love. The sea is very cold and very cruel in winter.”
I saw her shake her head, but she didn’t say anything more.
For dinner I wore the pale green gown that my father particularly liked, with the rope of pearls that had been given to me when I was twelve by the maharani who was a friend of my mother’s. After weeks in uniforms with stiff collars and starched aprons, I felt rather underdressed.
In the hall, George Hughes sat in the shadows cast by the lamps, his face unreadable. But I thought as I watched that he was drinking more than was wise. Roger cast several glances in his direction but said nothing. Janet Smyth tried to talk to him, but his answers were terse. I heard her quietly telling her brother that he was still grieving for Alan, but somehow I thought not. I saw him look at his knuckles a time or two, as if to reassure himself that what had happened on the road wasn’t merely his imagination.
I wondered if the tree he’d seen was actually just one of the logs that the Lanyon family had been delivering to Vixen Hill. And they’d come back to reclaim it.
After a lovely dinner, we took our tea in the drawing room in front of the fire, gathering under Juliana’s smiling portrait. I thought,
When the men had finished their port and come to join us, George sat down across from me. His eyes were heavy, and I thought perhaps he was half asleep. Then he turned to me and asked, “You’re a nursing sister?”
“Yes.”
“God bless,” he said fervently. “You have no idea how much good you do.”
Gran looked up at that. “What did your father have to say about your decision to go into nursing?”
I knew she’d been wanting to ask me just that. In her day, women of good families didn’t nurse the ill and dying. Only the poorest of women, and even streetwalkers, were thought fit for such an occupation. Florence Nightingale had changed public opinion during the Crimean War about the role nurses could play in saving lives, but it was still not considered a proper profession until the death tolls in the present war made women of every class come forward to do what they could.
I smiled a little as I remembered my father’s opinion.
“If you wash out, don’t let it fret you. There are other ways to serve. Just remember that.” Whether he expected me to fail to qualify I didn’t know, but he was right, it was harder work than I’d ever expected it to be, and I’d had to face things that it would have been easier not to face, ever. I’d reminded myself every night when I went to bed that soldiers in the field were already enduring unspeakable conditions, and if I were truly my father’s daughter, I would stick to my guns and not retreat. In the end, I qualified, and felt a surge of pride that I hadn’t anticipated. This was my accomplishment. Being the Colonel’s daughter hadn’t smoothed my path, hadn’t made it less disgusting to take away bedpans and trays of bloody cloths or mop up vomit and other bodily fluids from the floor, or clean patients who were riddled with disease or covered in pus from suppurating wounds, hadn’t made the smells less nauseating, hadn’t stopped the sights from invading my dreams, or taught my poor stomach to accept food again after the most harrowing of amputations. It had only steeled my determination. Now I could look back on my training with a better understanding of what it was designed to forge in those of us who survived it. And I could measure just how far I had come.
But I answered her differently. “My father knew how much it meant to me to do my duty. And to his eternal credit, he didn’t stand in my way.”
“Indeed.” It was her only comment and could be interpreted in several ways.
Henry asked where I’d served, and I told him:
I said, “We had a good captain and a good crew. Most of us survived.”
We spoke of other things, and some little time later, I saw George lean over to say something to Roger. It was
