FOURTEEN
Brindle was weeping. He sat on the bed in the transfusion tent, head in hands, his body shaking with grief. Water was streaming off his hair and dripping onto the floor, his clothes were mud-stained and rain-soaked, showing he had been out in the squall that was spitting its last.
Watson, now back in uniform, had entered the ward just in time to hear him emit a terrible wail. Miss Pippery was trying to feed the inconsolable man a mug of hot, sweet tea. Both nurses had some kind of over-smock covering their uniform that appeared to be covered in blobs of dried paint.
‘What’s happening here, Mrs Gregson?’ Watson demanded.
‘We found him round the back of the greenhouse we were meant to paint.’
‘Paint?’ Watson tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice. ‘But—’
‘Ask Sister Spence. It seems poor Brindle here recognized one of the bodies he had to bury. We brought him here to calm down. I suppose we should get rid . . .’ she forced the smock over her headdress, ‘. . . of these things.’ Miss Pippery followed suit.
When Brindle looked up his eyes were crazed by an unsettling intensity. It was the stare of the madhouse. ‘He should not be buried in a mass grave. I told them that. Cornelius deserved better than that.’ He put his unnaturally long fingers over his face.
Watson moved across and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You knew Cornelius Lovat?’
He managed to nod between sobs.
‘Look, Brindle, he couldn’t have lived like that. Not with those injuries.’
Again the head came up. ‘You don’t understand. I could have made him a mask. A beautiful mask.’ He mimed an act of creation with his hands. ‘I knew every inch of his face. They make new ones in London, don’t they? At Wandsworth. New faces made of the thinnest copper. I would have done my finest work. He could have been handsome again.’
Watson squeezed his shoulder. The man wasn’t listening. The tissue damage was simply too extensive for him to have lived. Sister Spence had been absolutely correct about that. ‘How did you know him?’
‘From St Martins. He was in the year ahead of me.’
‘You’re a sculptor?’ Mrs Gregson surmised.
‘And Cornelius was a painter. A fine one.’
Watson, to his shame, realized he knew very little about the orderly who had been assigned to him. Many of the drivers and dogsbodies, the stretcher-bearers and the gravediggers, were pacifists of one stripe or another, willing to help win the war, unwilling to kill. But now he looked at those fingers again, tracing a human visage in thin air, he appreciated this man had an artist’s hands. He hadn’t been looking at what was right under his nose. A cardinal sin. He half expected to hear a nagging voice in his ear, telling how he was looking but not observing.
Brindle began to sob once more. Watson released his grip. He kneeled down and whispered a few words in the man’s ear before standing. It wasn’t much, but he hoped it helped.
‘Miss Pippery. Your convictions are showing. If Sister Spence sees that she’ll try and nail you to it,’ Mrs Gregson pointed at her friend’s neck. The gold cross had escaped and was hanging down the front of her VAD shift. Miss Pippery tucked it away. They weren’t allowed to display external signs of their own beliefs in front of the men. It might be a clue to their personality. And they weren’t meant to have one of those.
‘Right,’ said Mrs Gregson, ‘let’s get him out of those wet things and into pyjamas. Then hot-water bottles.’
‘And a bromide sedative,’ suggested Watson. ‘If you will, Miss Pippery?’
But Miss Pippery’s gaze had slipped past him, to something over his shoulder. He turned to see two RAMC-uniformed officers had entered the tent behind him.
‘Major Watson? George Torrance.’ The CO of the Casualty Clearing Station extended a hand. He was shorter than Watson, with a flushed face, a tightly groomed oblong on his upper lip and a generous stomach pushing against his tunic buttons. ‘Good to meet you. May I introduce my adjutant, Captain Symonds.’ The junior officer and Watson also shook hands. ‘Sister tells me you did sterling work last night. It was kind of you to muck in.’
‘I think Sister Spence and your CCS would have managed quite well without me. It’s a tight ship.’
Torrance smiled under his close-clipped toothbrush moustache. The man might be carrying a few extra pounds, but he was immaculately pressed and turned out. He looked as if he steam-ironed not only his uniform, underwear and his hair but Captain Symonds, too. His voice, though, was abrasive, part honk and part bark. Watson could see why sick men would struggle from their beds for his inspections. ‘You’ve met Caspar Myles, I assume?’
‘I have run into Dr Myles.’ Watson had tried not to bristle, but he clearly gave himself away somehow.
‘I know, I know, somewhat unorthodox. But a fine surgeon. He came to us by accident and, well, we’ve managed to hold on to him.’
‘We are very much looking forward to hearing about the new transfusion methods,’ interrupted Captain Symonds.
‘And it would be my pleasure to show you.’
‘Excellent,’ said Torrance. ‘And perhaps a demonstration for Field Marshal Haig when he comes? Show him we aren’t still in the dark ages at the CCSs. I’m sure we have plenty of subjects—’
‘Perhaps we could discuss this later, Major Torrance? I’m going up to Brigade at Somerset House.’ Watson looked at his watch. Half the morning had gone. He cast a glance at Brindle, now being tucked into bed by Mrs Gregson, while Miss Pippery prepared the sleeping draught. Brindle had offered no resistance to Mrs Gregson; his limbs looked to be made of India rubber. The man was clearly going to be useless for some time. ‘However, I seem to have mislaid my driver.’
Although Watson was quite capable of operating a motor car, it gave him no pleasure, and it certainly wasn’t the done thing for an officer to turn up at Brigade behind the wheel of his own vehicle.
‘Don’t worry, Major Watson. I’ve had enough of whitewash for one day. If it’s only a ride to Brigade you need,’ Mrs Gregson pulled off her VAD headdress and a riot of auburn hair sprang free. ‘I’ll drive you there.’