The Steady Running of the Hour: A Novel Read online

  The two men prop Ashley against a sandbag at the tiny aid post. He slumps down like a rag doll, the crust of dark blood hardened on his chin. The other soldier goes off to find his regiment. The battalion medical officer glances at Ashley and shakes his head.

  —I’ve no stretcher bearers left. They’re out in the mud, God knows where. Has he a good pulse?

  —I don’t know, sir.

  —What’s his name? He’s the one with the funny—

  —Mr. Walsingham.

  —That’s right.

  The medical officer squats beside Ashley and feels for his pulse at the neck.

  —Who dressed these wounds?

  —I did, sir.

  The officer glances back at Mayhew. He directs an RAMC orderly toward Ashley while he moves on to another case, a captain who has lost most of his face to a high-explosive shell. The captain is somehow still living. He had once been a country solicitor in a village called Emmbrook, but now his face is gone and someone has pulled a rubber sheet over him. The medical officer lifts the sheet and looks under it. He lowers the sheet.

  Mayhew watches the orderly tend to Ashley. The orderly unbuttons Ashley’s tunic and pulls out his identity disk, a reddish circle of vulcanized asbestos fiber with a length of cord passed through the disk’s eyelet and around Ashley’s neck. The orderly fills out a paper tag containing Ashley’s name, regiment and a description of his wounds. He ties the tag around Ashley’s arm. The orderly looks up at Mayhew.

  —What is it?

  Mayhew does not answer. Someone has given him a water flask and he drains it and hands it back. Mayhew spits into the mud. He slings his rifle over his shoulder and walks away.

  An hour before midnight the battalion colonel and his adjutant visit the aid station. Ashley has been spread out on a dirty stretcher beside the sandbags, his arms and legs akimbo. The captain with the missing face is laid beside him, the sheet still over his head. The colonel hovers over the captain and lifts the sheet. A glimmer of white teeth and eyeballs, the rest pinkish red. The colonel lowers the sheet. The two officers turn to Ashley’s body, the chest distinctly rising and falling in labored breaths. The RAMC orderly is giving a corporal an injection in the leg against septic poisoning.

  The colonel addresses the orderly.

  —Why is Mr. Walsingham lying here? Are there no bearers to take him?

  The corporal is occupied by his syringe and does not look toward the officers. He thinks they are asking about the faceless captain.

  —There aren’t nearly enough bearers, sir, the corporal says. Dr. Hall said he hasn’t a chance of surviving the night. We’ve given him a great dose of morphia—

  —He’s still breathing.

  —That may be, sir, but Dr. Hall gave him a great dose—

  —Very well.

  The adjutant draws a small notebook and pencil from his pocket. He adds the name Walsingham to his list.

  At three in the morning Ashley is finally taken from the regimental aid post. He is not awake to see the four men lift him and carry him away. He is not awake to see that the faceless captain is no longer breathing.

  Ashley revives only once in the night. He comes to as they are navigating a choked communication trench in the reserve lines. A wooden cart and a field gun have been swallowed by the mud, blocking the path. The stretcher bearers argue over whether to go left or right. One of the bearers holding the rear of the stretcher is a German prisoner and he becomes involved in the argument. The German is a senior NCO and he considers the English soldiers to be stupid.

  —Links, the German says. Links!

  —What’s he saying?

  —Fritz wants us to go left.

  —Fuck him.

  It is then that Ashley wakes with a fevered start, his throat and lungs drawing closed as though the strings of a corset are being pulled around his breath. He is suffocating.

  Ashley’s eyes come open. For a moment he does not breathe at all. He is seized, halted in one great spasm of airlessness. Above him it is cloudy and there is not even a star to look at, not even a bursting shell or flare, only a vast murky field of black. It seems a pointless end, hardly anything at all. Ashley gasps for air desperately and bubbles of frothing blood come to his mouth. He gurgles, a sound too soft to be heard.

  The bearers go right. They hump along at a crawl, their legs knee-deep in the mud, their footing sinking. The stretcher sways from side to side. It is all they can do to keep it above the mire. Ashley sucks another breath, just barely. The stretcher lopes on, the two bearers in front muttering to each other.

  —Stinks of piss, don’t he? Bloody awful.

  —There’s worse smells out here. A little piss does wonders to a trench, cleans it better than Pears soap. I’d call it the eau de cologne of the Somme—

  —Stinks of piss.

  Five days later on the morning of November 10, 1916, Imogen Soames-Andersson descends the carpeted staircase at the house on Cavendish Square, taking certain of the steps two at a time. She is on her way to the Charing Cross Road to collect a volume of Laforgue’s poetry that she ordered in a French bookshop a month ago. She had forgotten the book until this morning, when she realized suddenly and with pleasure that it must be in the shop awaiting her. Imogen is engaged to meet a friend at ten o’clock, but she supposes she can collect the book and still make it on time.

  The parlormaid stops her in the hallway with a letter.

  The letter is from Messrs. Twyning & Hooper, Solicitors. Imogen tears it open hastily, assuming it relates to some business of her father’s.

  Dear Madam,

  I deeply regret to inform you that 2nd Lieut. A.E. Walsingham died from wounds received in action in France on 5 November, this news confirmed by a letter from Capt. W. Towse, adjutant of 1 Batt. Royal Berkshire Regt. I beg to offer you my sincere sympathy. It may be some slight consolation that Capt. Towse said ‘Lieut. Walsingham was a very brave and gallant soldier and one of our best officers.’

  As Executor for Mr. Walsingham’s estate I am instructed to notify you in the event of his death. Would it be possible for you to call upon our offices on Bedford Row? There are certain particulars relating to the estate that I should like to discuss in person.

  If there is anything I can do for you, I remain at your service.

  Yours faithfully,

  P. L. Twyning

  Imogen hardly makes a sound. Standing in the hallway, she reads the letter twice, then goes up into her bedroom, tearing the sheet into smaller and smaller scraps of paper. She throws the scraps into the fireplace, where they flare and burn out in tiny flashes.

  Imogen climbs into bed and then crawls back out, pulling the pillows and counterpane and duvet off and throwing them to the floor, crying out and muffling her cries, for no one must ever know what a fool she was, what a fool he had been. She walks to the lavatory and splashes water on her face, pacing the corridor in a haze, the parlormaid watching her from the landing downstairs as Imogen wipes her face with her sleeve, crying and whispering to herself, making strange bargains with forces she does not even believe in. For it could so easily be a mistake. A solicitor’s trick. A soldier with a similar name, a myopic clerk at the War Office—

  Ten minutes later Imogen’s mother comes into the room and finds her daughter curled up on a pile of bedding on the floor.

  —My Lord. What’s happened?

  She takes Imogen by the shoulders, asking the question over and over. But Imogen will not even look at her.

  On the same day Ashley Walsingham lies upon an iron-framed bed at No. 17 Stationary Hospital, Albert. He has been in the hospital for four days. Ashley has been awake very little of the time and only in dazed intervals. A searing pain travels up and down the length of his windpipe, as though the sinews of his throat are continually being torn apart. He cannot swallow and yet he feels the need to swallow, an expanding shape in his throat that will soon strangle him. But when his throat muscles tighten and he nears the point of swallowing, the pain
is too great and he has to stop. So Ashley lies in silence.

  The hospital has been appropriated from a great house on the edge of town, a mansion in the provincial style. It was converted to a hospital in June, shortly before the Somme offensive. Ashley’s ward is in the long gallery, the largest room in the house. There is a high ceiling and ornate wood-paneled walls; a marble fireplace below a great mirror. The beds lie in neat rows, each patient swaddled in white sheets and bedspreads. The steel nightstands bear flowers in vases. Medical charts are clipped to the wall above each patient’s head. Ashley cannot see his own chart.

  A red-haired nurse notices that his eyes are open. Her peaked white cap hovers in and out of his field of vision. The nurse looks very young, but she speaks with assurance, leaning close to him.

  —I know you can’t speak, she says, and you oughtn’t try. If you need something, write it here.

  The girl puts a pencil and a small pad of paper in his hands. Ashley sees that she is not a nurse but a VAD, a kind of volunteer nurse’s assistant. The girl wears a starched white apron with a paper collar, and beneath it a dark dress that comes nearly to her ankles. A bright red cross is centered on the bib of her apron. To Ashley she resembles the saintly Breton peasant women of Gauguin paintings. He closes his fingers around the pencil and writes slowly on the pad in shaky block capitals. POSTCARD.

  He wakes again the following evening at dusk. Purplish light slants through the windows of the ward. The nurses’ stacked heels rap upon the checkered marble floor. Ashley lifts his arms from beneath the sheet and flashes of pain pulse through his body. He keeps still to stop the pain, studying the blue flannel sleeves of his pajama jacket. Delicately he feels the wounds on his leg through the sheet. A series of erupting scabs along his right thigh, hardened and brittle. Already the wounds have nearly healed.

  Ashley supposes he must not move his neck, so he holds his shoulders even while reaching out to the nightstand beside him. On the surface lie the pair of letters he keeps in his tunic breast pocket. Beside these is a brown field-service postcard and the stump of a red pencil. Gingerly and with great labor Ashley picks up the card and pencil. He crosses out sentences so that the desired message remains.

  * * *

  * * *

  I am quite well.

  I have been admitted into hospital.

  sick

  and am going on well.

  wounded

  and hope to be discharged soon.

  I am being sent down to the base.

  letter dated ___________

  I have received your

  telegram ___________

  parcel ___________

  Letter follows at first opportunity.

  I have received no letter from you

  lately.

  for a long time.

  Signature only.

  Date

  * * *

  * * *

  Ashley deliberates about the date for a moment before filling in the blank. The red-haired VAD sees him writing and comes to his bedside. She takes the postcard.

  —To the return address on those letters?

  She points to the pair of letters on the nightstand. Ashley picks up the pad of paper and writes slowly.

  SAME ADDRESS. MORPHIA PLEASE.

  The VAD shakes her head.

  —I’ll have to ask the doctor.

  Three days later on November 13, the maid enters the front parlor of the Soames-Andersson house on Cavendish Square carrying the brown postcard. But the parlor is empty. The maid turns and is halfway up the stairs when Eleanor comes through the front door, in her arms a packet full of magazines she has brought for Imogen.

  —Hello Lizzie. I just passed the postman. Is that the second post?

  The maid holds the card uncertainly. Eleanor starts up the stairs toward her.

  —What is it? You know well enough you oughtn’t to be reading Papa’s mail. Even if it is only a postcard—

  Eleanor seizes the card and waves it in the air.

  —If you keep it up, Eleanor teases, I shall have to read yours.

  Then Eleanor recognizes the seal and the inscription FIELD SERVICE POSTCARD. She reads the card and walks upstairs to a window in the guest bedroom, watching the postman cross the street and go around the wrought-iron fence. Eleanor thinks for a moment, tapping her finger on the card. The bedroom had once been hers and they had altered nothing except the damask curtains. But somehow it seemed different.

  Eleanor walks down the hallway past Imogen’s room, a slit of light coming under the closed door, her sister probably in bed. Eleanor enters her mother’s bedroom, closing the door behind her. Her mother is at her desk writing a letter. Eleanor sets the postcard in front of her.

  —My God. Has Imogen seen this?

  —No. It just arrived.

  —Then let us go tell her.

  Eleanor shakes her head, kneeling beside her mother.

  —But look at the address. I know the look of his writing, I’ve seen it often enough. That’s someone else’s writing. He may have sent it before he died—

  —But it’s dated afterwards.

  Eleanor takes her mother’s hand.

  —I hope it’s true, Eleanor says. I do so hope it is. But imagine the effect on her if we say he is alive now and it turns out he isn’t. It would all begin anew, only worse. She could hardly be more delicate than she is now. The slightest breeze could topple her.

  —But to keep it from her—

  —Only until we’re certain.

  She sighs, giving the card back to Eleanor.

  —Shall you call his people then, or write to someone with the army?

  —I shall do both.

  On the evening of November 17 the Soames-Andersson daughters sit in the parlor awaiting dinner. The last rays of daylight project among the lace curtains, illuminating an overgrown fern potted in the window. Eleanor reclines on a purple divan reading back issues of The Burlington Magazine. Imogen is playing the piano. There is sheet music spread before her but she plays from memory, the piece slow and pensive, the notes tumbling forth at uneven cadences.

  Eleanor glances up from the magazine, raising her voice above the music.

  —Really. You’re going to send us all over the edge.

  Imogen does not answer. She continues playing as her sister pages through the magazine, Imogen’s eyes on a stuffed pheasant diving from its wooden setting on the wall. Eleanor flings the magazine down and comes to the piano bench, putting a hand on her sister’s shoulder. Imogen stops playing, her fingers still poised on the ivory keys.

  —The doctor, Imogen whispers, agreed that I ought to play.

  —Not this sort of thing. It’s melancholy.

  —I don’t find it melancholy.

  —Naturally you don’t. But you must make certain efforts right now.

  Imogen plays on. Eleanor throws her hands up in the air.

  —Imogen, if you don’t want me here, I’m happy enough to go home. I want to help, but I can’t see how listening to two hours of funeral marches—

  There is a soft rapping on the door. The sisters turn to see the maid on the threshold. She has been polishing windows and is wearing her chamois work gloves. An envelope is in her hand.

  —A telegram—

  Eleanor plucks it from the maid’s hand.

  —For Miss Imogen, the maid continues.

  Eleanor clutches the envelope uncertainly, but Imogen snatches it from her and tears it open, stepping away from her sister as she reads. Imogen looks at Eleanor and back at the telegram. Then she dashes up the stairs to her bedroom, Eleanor in pursuit, calling after her. Imogen locks the door behind her. She sinks into the chair beside the door without removing her eyes from the telegram. Eleanor is knocking on the door and calling Imogen’s name. Imogen reads the message again.

  17 NO 16

  IMOGEN SOAMES ANDERSSON

  18 CAVENDISH SQ LONDON W

  WOUNDED BUT RECOVERING NUMBER 17 HOSPITAL ALBERT

&nb
sp; IGNORE ALL INDICATIONS CONTRARY LETTER FOLLOWS

  INDESTRUCTIBLY YOURS ASHLEY

  A LESSON

  Mireille and I have never touched. Not in Paris, not in three days together in a remote house in the countryside; not a hug, not even a handshake. She smiles at me in the morning and never fails to say bonne nuit before we go to bed. She treats me with care and consideration, but often this seems formal, as if I’m a guest to her rather than a friend.

  Mireille is never bored. When things turn slow, she picks up the pen and draws, or puts on her coat and goes for a walk without a moment’s notice. When she leaves in the afternoon I stay at the dining table, studying a map I bought in Amiens and marking the locations mentioned in Ashley’s letters: the hospital in Albert, the convalescent ward at Étaples. I take out my notebook.

  Sept 6

  Picardie

  This is where it all went to pieces. But I can’t figure out why.

  Ashley was wounded Nov 5, 1916. Imogen must have come to the front sometime between then and Nov 24. After that, Ashley’s letters are different—she has stopped replying.

  What brought Imogen to Picardie in the middle of a war? Where did they meet? What caused the final break?

  I look back at the map, staring at the web of roads and villages and hoping for some kind of revelation. Across the table are Mireille’s pencils and spiral-bound sketchbook. I walk over and look down at the green cover. Then I flip it back.

  The sketches are all captioned, mostly in English. The City Is Sleeping. A drawing of the rooftops of apartment buildings, probably in Paris, layers of chimneys stretching out to the horizon. I feel guilty, but too curious to stop. I turn the page. Young and Fearless. A drawing of what looks like Claire and another girl, seated in high-backed chairs, looking straight at the viewer. Un Américain en France. A sketch of me, sleeping on the train with my jacket rolled up against the window and a book in my lap.