Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [2]
In the event he remembered very little of it, or of the train journey afterward. When he finally woke up to some kind of clarity, he was lying in a clean bed in a hospital ward. The sun shone through the windows, making bright, warm splashes on the wooden floor, and there were bedclothes around him. Clean sheets? He could feel the smoothness against his chin and smell the cotton. He heard a broad Cambridgeshire voice in the distance and found himself smiling. He was in England, and it was spring.
He kept his eyes open, afraid that if he closed them it would all disappear and he would be back in the mud again. A slight woman, perhaps in her fifties, bent over him and helped him up to drink a cup of tea. It was hot, and made with clean water, not the stale dregs he was used to. The woman was dressed in a starched white uniform. She told him her name was Gwen Neave. He looked at her hands around the cup as she held it to his lips. They were strong and sunburned.
During the next two or three days and nights she seemed to be there every time he needed her, always understanding what would ease him a little: the bed remade, pillows turned and plumped up, fresh water to drink, a cold cloth on his brow. She changed the dressings on the huge, raw wounds in his arm and leg without any expression on her face except a tightening of her lips when she knew it must be hurting him. She talked about the weather, the lengthening days, the first daffodils flowering bright yellow. She told him once, very briefly, that she had two sons in the navy, but nothing more, no mention of where they were or how she feared for them amid all the losses at sea. He admired her for that.
It was she who was there at the worst times in the small hours of the morning when he was racked with pain, biting his lips so he did not cry out. He thought of other men’s pain, younger than he, who had barely tasted life and were already robbed of it. He had no strength left to fight; he only wanted to escape to a place where the pain stopped.
“It will get better,” she promised him, her voice little more than a whisper so as not to disturb the men in the other beds.
He did not answer. The words meant nothing. Pain, helplessness, and the knowledge of death were the only realities.
“Do you want to give up?” she asked. He saw the smile in her eyes. “We all do, sometimes,” she went on. “Not many actually do, and you can’t. You’re the chaplain. You chose to pick up the cross, and now and again to help other people carry theirs. If somebody told you it wouldn’t be heavy, they were lying.”
Nobody had told him, he knew that. Others had survived worse than this. Just hang on.
It was a long, slow night. Other fears crowded his mind—of helplessness, endless nights when he was awake while the rest of the world slept. He would be dependent, with somebody else always having to look after him, too kind to say he was a burden, but growing to hate him for it. He did not drift into sleep until dawn. The next night was almost as bad.
“What day is it?” he asked, when finally it was light again.
“Twelfth of March,” the young nurse replied. “Nineteen sixteen,” she added with a smile. “Just in case you’ve forgotten. You’ve been here five days already.”
It was the morning after that when the same nurse told him cheerfully that he had a visitor. She whisked away the remnants of his breakfast and tidied him up quite unnecessarily, and a moment later he saw Matthew walking down the ward between the other beds. He looked tired and pale. His thick, fair hair was not quite short enough for the army, and he was wearing a Harris tweed jacket over an ordinary cotton shirt. He stopped