As Georgie left them to it, she could see the matron signalling to her from the doorway. She looked back at the unmade bed as she walked over to the matron, preparing for a reprimand as she rubbed her bloody collar once more. But when she reached Mrs. Thwaite, she saw that the matron was, astonishingly, smiling. Her gaze travelled up Georgie’s uniform and skimmed over the bloodstain on her collar to meet her eyes.
“I’m afraid Sanderson is ill, and we’re very short-staffed. I wondered if you might stay on for the night shift.”
“Of course,” said Georgie.
After the visitors had left and the night shift commenced, Georgie started to dig her nails into her palms to keep herself awake. The ward was silent and she was the only person on duty—armed with a bell, which could summon the matron, who was sleeping upstairs.
Georgie eyed the clock at the back of the room. One of the gold hands twitched. Standing for such a long time—they were forbidden to sit—meant already Georgie’s back and feet ached with a cool, pulsing pain. She was exhausted. She started to pace the room. On her break she’d received a message from her mother, checking in with her and asking if they could meet soon. This was good news; that Nelly was writing to her indicated there was a chance she might consider restoring Georgie’s allowance. It also meant Georgie might be able to go and stay with her at the house at Montpelier Square for a weekend. She had to admit that she already missed being able to have a proper cup of tea whenever she wanted, and having a maid to fix her breakfast and manage her laundry (and she needed someone to get rid of this bloodstain on her collar). And she missed living in a house where you didn’t have to tolerate the banging and thumping and giggling and chattering of the girls in the rooms on either side. Nelly had not wanted her to take the job at the hospital, and they had quarrelled. If she really wanted to help with the war, Nelly argued, she should wait for a position at the Foreign Office instead. But although the Foreign Office would doubtless have been better suited to her, Georgie wasn’t prepared to wait.
She avoided looking towards the bed of Major Hammond, who seemed to her to be near death. A part of her thought that if she didn’t look too closely at death, perhaps she might escape it.
“Will you sit awhile?” It was Second Lieutenant Pike again, with his ruined feet sticking out the end of his bed. He gestured to a chair that, some hours ago, the imperious blonde lady had occupied.
“I’m not allowed.”
“A pity.” Unlike the other men, many of whom slept all day and all night, Pike did not seem to need to rest. She hadn’t yet seen him close his eyes. She was debating about whether or not she should sit down anyway, given how tired she was, when there was a scream across the room. Then another. Strained, sharp screams. It was as though a small, howling creature were trying to burrow its way out of a body. Georgie hurried over. It was the same young officer from the first day, the blond one with the scaly face whose name Georgie had already forgotten. He began to arch his back and fall back down on the bed, arch and fall. She stood by him a moment before reaching for his wrists, but he shook her off, arms flailing in the air, scratching at nothing.
“You’re all right,” Georgie said, reaching for him again. He grabbed at a handful of her hair and pulled, yanking several strands out of the follicle.
“Mary!” he yelled, his breath hot. He had streams of snot and tears running down his face, and his cheeks were bright orange, from the gas. The bald patches of his scalp were wet.
“I’m not Mary,” she said. “I’m the nurse.”
He reached his arms up to her neck, as if he wanted to strangle her, and she stepped out of the way.
“I didn’t bring your Gospel, Mary,” the man said, his eyes wide. “I left it in your stupid head.”
He lunged up and caught her wrist. Georgie leaned down and, with her other hand, slapped the boy’s face across the cheek. The boy dropped her hand and whimpered. He thumped his own windpipe with his fist, making a deep thud, like wood dropping on bone.
She rushed across the room to ring the bell, and after a few minutes, footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs. Mrs. Thwaite, with a coat over her dressing gown, arrived in the room as the boy’s eyes flew open again, and the matron rushed over to him immediately, speaking softly and stroking his hair, moving closer until she was holding his head in her arms like a lover: “You’re safe here, you’re in London, everything is all right, I’ve got you, you’re safe, I promise.” After some time, the boy fell limp, his eyes half closed, his arms resting loosely on either side of his body. Mrs. Thwaite said nothing to Georgie. She disentangled herself from the boy, looked around the ward once, left the room again, and could be heard going slowly back upstairs. Other officers were stirring; one was signalling for water. Georgie’s uniform was wet with sweat. She felt sick now, as if she were waiting for someone else to wake, some other blurry horror to float into the room.
“Please, take a seat. Just sit down.” From his bed, Second Lieutenant Pike spoke softly. The red-brown tufts of his hair were curved up like the horns of an owl. His eyes were unblinking and calm in the light from the weak electric lamp. It seemed to her at that moment as if he were offering her something of great worth, something she should remember. She walked to the chair beside his bed and sank down into it.
FOUR
WINTER 1914
Georgie and Dorothy had settled into a rhythm before the war, even for Georgie’s final year of school, taking regular holidays to the Continent—renting a little apartment with Olivia or another chaperone, and talking and drinking and smoking and painting, and meeting with whoever was passing through. In London they went to soirées and lectures and occasionally séances, and they gave false hope to the young men who wanted to marry Dorothy. Since her father’s death, Georgie had become more interested in séances, as if perhaps her father might use one to check in with her, to offer her a scrap of advice or reassurance. Although Dorothy had tried to get invitations to the occult order she’d heard about through one of her admirers, no invitation had ever arrived, and Dorothy seemed to have forgotten about it. But at one of Olivia’s soirées, Georgie thought to ask W. B. Yeats.
W. B. was Nelly’s age, in his late forties, and although he was a tall man, he bent over slightly to be closer to his audience. After she’d had a few glasses of wine, Georgie caught him when the woman he was speaking to excused herself to use the lavatory. As the woman left to go down the hall, Georgie stepped in front of him, and with a bravery she didn’t know she had, she said,
“Dorothy and I want to join the Order.”
W. B. stood up straighter and considered her. “Why?”
Georgie had rehearsed a scholarly answer, with reference to William Blake, Dante, and Swedenborg, which she thought would impress him. But standing there, she realised this answer was all wrong. She was speaking to a man, not a famous figure. He wanted something unprepared, something bare. His eyebrows were raised as he waited for her response, and the wrinkles of his forehead were like those curved lines blown into sand dunes.
“I’ll do anything,” she said, “to speak to the dead.” She glanced up to see Nelly approaching them, about to cut in on their conversation, and to stop that happening she hastily excused herself, turning her back on her mother and slipping off into another group of strangers.