ONE
WINTER 1916
Georgie was waiting outside in the empty hallway, aware that she was early, but at the sound of a scream she pushed the heavy door open.
She stopped in the doorway and did not cover her ears.
She had entered an enormous room with a high ceiling and long scarlet curtains, and a parquet floor lined with white beds filled with men. One of the men was sitting up, his eyes shut, mouth wide.
No one else in the room seemed to hear him. One man was reading a newspaper, one sipping a glass of water. They had not noticed her come in, either. She could not say how long she stood in the doorway, but at some point the screaming stopped. The man reading the newspaper flipped over to the next page. For a moment, the silence was worse. She moved out of the doorway.
“You’ll get used to it,” someone said near her. A low voice, from the bed nearest the door, where a young man was watching her. His feet were exposed below the sheet, and his toes were purple and red, rotted open, raw. All his toenails black. She tried not to stare. He noticed and smiled.
“Trench foot. You’ll get used to that too.”
Georgie looked away. Other men in the room were noticing her now, and she could feel their eyes on her.
The young man was reaching forward to drape the sheet over his raw feet, wincing as the cotton brushed his toes.
“The matron’ll be along any moment. She’s a good sort.”
Georgie concentrated on keeping her face entirely neutral. The truth was, she’d walked here in a haze of self-congratulations. She thought she’d come up with a masterful plan: by getting a job at the hospital, she’d escaped her mother; she had her own—yes, modest, but her own—room provided for her; and she was in London where Dorothy Shakespear and Willy Yeats were, where she could see them as often as she wished. Not only that, but—this was always somewhat of an afterthought—she would be helping with the war. She didn’t believe in the war, but it wasn’t the soldiers’ fault that they’d been gulped down by it.
But how was it that during those weeks of training, of making beds and mopping floors, she hadn’t imagined that the ward would be like this—these lines of anonymous white-sheeted beds filled with half-oblivious, damaged creatures? One of the best small hospitals, they had said. For officers only. Not a single death. Had she expected the men not to scream, not to have grotesque, rotting feet? Had she expected them to nod to her as she dutifully changed their pillowcases?
“Hyde-Lees. You’re early.” Stated without emotion. The matron, Mrs. Thwaite, had arrived on the ward. She had the sort of gaze that took everything in at once—travelling, assessing, judging. Her eyes swept over Georgie.
“We are very protective of our officers,” she said, as she started to walk down the centre of the room to the far end, with the expectation that Georgie would follow. The matron demonstrated the sort of posture that made you question your own.
“I’ve heard very good things,” Georgie managed to say.
“Of course. Our officers are first priority and last priority. If you neglect them in any way, we cannot be expected to keep you on.”
Georgie nervously eyed the men. Willy had not been impressed to hear she was working at a war hospital. “You’re giving up all that time?” he’d said. She had responded stiffly that she preferred to think of it as giving time, rather than giving up time, but he was not convinced. Never mind. In time he would figure out why she was really here.
“Colonel Fraser,” the matron was saying, walking down the line of beds, gesturing sharply to each man as they went past. This man was sleeping with his lips turned inwards, as though he were trying to suck his face in through his mouth. “Captain Christie” had curled his hand over the stained yellow bandage that covered his eye. “Captain Emery-May” was covered from head to toe with a blanket. “Lieutenant Gray,” staring at the wall, his face pale orange with dry scales, was the young man who had been screaming. They kept on towards the door. “Second Lieutenant Pike” was the man with the rotting feet, and on the other side of the room, an older man, “Major Hammond.” Although this last man was asleep, the matron pinched the edge of the white bedsheet, gently lifting it, to reveal the wound down the major’s side.
It was a test for Georgie. The wound resembled a crude dotted map of Norway, long, lumpy, filled with blood, tissue, and ooze, and interspersed with fine white stitches, where, the matron reported, the doctor had extracted the shrapnel. It was clear to Georgie that these words were fictions; extract was far too clean a word when you were talking of meat and bone. As Georgie looked down, the major shifted in his sleep, and his wound winced—a sac of mustard-coloured pus drooped, threatened to fall on the sheet. Georgie did not take her eyes from it, clenching her fist hard against her hip.
Mrs. Thwaite turned to Georgie and offered a cool smile.
“All right, Hyde-Lees?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “You can begin with the floors: start in the upstairs hallway, then the stairs, back through the kitchen. Upstairs there is one bed that needs to be stripped and made. Then mop the ward.” She pointed to a mop and an empty bucket with a rope handle, and headed out to the other room.
Georgie took the bucket and went straight to the basin. She tried not to picture the man’s skin, the bubbled texture where tissue and blood mixed. She took the bucket upstairs and mopped as if it were a noble pursuit, as if she herself were fighting a war.
When she returned after mopping the entire upstairs, there were no other hospital staff on the ward. She slid the mop along the floor, ignoring the new twinge in her back. She couldn’t imagine doing this again tomorrow. She was trying to concentrate only on the mop and not think of anything else. Still, she was wondering how she could manage to get out of this, how she could slink away with no one noticing. But when she glanced at the clock, she saw her shift was almost over.
“First day’s the worst,” Second Lieutenant Pike called to her. She stopped beside his bed. Unlike the others, he was unshaven. From here she could see the individual hairs of his stubble. His skin stretched as he smiled. She held the mop in one hand.
“It’s not so bad,” she said.
“Come on, it’s horrid. Divine plan’s gone a bit awry, I reckon.”
“I’m not the best person to talk to about divine plans.”
“Why, you don’t believe in them? Me neither. Why make these feet just to mangle them?”
The matron had come back into the room. Georgie exhaled, glanced at the clock once more, and returned the mop to the bucket. The matron was coming towards her.
“Hyde-Lees,” she said, “what are you doing?”
“My shift is over, ma’am.”
“And I suppose that means you are free to prostrate yourself over the second lieutenant?”
Georgie took a step back. “I beg your pardon?”
“In my hospital, you may not lean over the men. You may not dangle over them.”
“I did nothing of the sort.”
Second Lieutenant Pike had overheard them. “It was my fault. I was chittering.”
Across the room, Major Hammond laughed.
“Oh come on, Matron. She’s sweet on our Tom! Plenty of rotten fish in the sea, but none—like—Pike.” Some of the men who had woken from the noise, or were already awake, were laughing. Someone gave a low whistle.