Chapter Text
Since the war had broken out, Dr Willard had treated many cases of shell-shock among many men. Some shouted, some were mute. Some couldn’t eat, some couldn’t stop drinking. Some couldn’t sleep, some seemed barely awake.
His current patient could best be described as Difficult.
Captain Stanhope had been in a different hospital, following a decent-sized bit of shrapnel lodging itself in his right forearm up at St Quentin earlier in the year, when he woke with a loud yell one night and threw a potted plant directly at the end of his bed. For an hour afterward, he said only the words ‘He can’t be here’ until they lost all meaning, and winced at the pain in his arm caused by the sudden movement. Apparently, the arm would never be properly right again, meaning Stanhope was, for the first time in his life, sitting on the side-lines as other people got things done, and this had done little to improve his already poor temper. In the six months since his arrival at the new hospital, he had gotten into eleven verbal altercations with his fellow patients, normally starting with ‘What the devil d’you think you’re looking at?!’. He had refused all visits except one from his father, which ended with the two men loudly calling each other swine. And Willard was fairly certain he was involved in the frequent alcohol-smuggling operations into the hospital, out of a dangerous combination of boredom and alcoholism.
“So you can see,” Stanhope was saying rather mildly, “Why it would be a terrible idea for me to go on a holiday, of all things, with Captain Alfred Bloody Trotter and his wife. I want to strangle him, for God’s sake, I’ve told you repeatedly.”
Willard was listening, barely.
“I see you’ve gotten around to having the sleeve of your coat mended, now that winter’s drawing on” he noted. “You do know you could have brought a new one, don’t you?”
“What for?” Stanhope was suddenly, just slightly, more confrontational “I like this coat; I’ve had it since the war began. It’s terribly comfortable. And besides…” Here he mumbled something that seemed to include the word ‘dashing’.
“Pardon?”
Stanhope fidgeted for a few seconds.
“…Oh, what the hell, I suppose it can’t hurt to show you, of all people” He fished around inside his top pocket and came up with a rather battered looking wallet, from which he handed Willard a well-thumbed picture. A very pretty-looking young woman beamed up at him.
“Her name’s Margaret Raleigh – Madge to her friends, and, well, me” And then the words came tumbling out “Did you ever have that feeling where you don’t really notice someone, and then all of a sudden, you know your life’s about to change, and you think, well, I say, your smile is very nice, and she says she thinks you have very blue eyes, and the next thing you know, you’re kissing under the apple tree? I think you can tell that I did, and I have to say, I would probably recommend the experience, only, well…I went off, of course, and she gave me that photo, and I looked at it a lot, and because I was a bloody prig back then, I showed it to everyone else in the company…and then one by one, they all died. So I still kept the picture, but I kept it to myself, and in a funny way, I got to thinking that if I never let anyone know about her, and I never let her know anything about them, that would keep everyone safe. And it’d keep it all neat and separate – I could be two people – I could be the hero she thinks I am – and the drunk mess I actually am.”
Here there was a long pause, during which Willard was reminded that Stanhope was twenty-two years old. The war didn’t show very much at all, except in the eyes, which were shadowed, and the left hand, which shook with the lack of alcohol, and the right arm, which was held slightly awkwardly and rarely moved. He was an old man in a young man’s face.
“I saw her brother die,” after a long gulp of air, “Three days after he came to my bloody company of all places – shot in the spine. I sat with him. He was a little kid. And after that, I stood up, and I walked outside, and for a moment, I was so happy when I got this –” here he gestured to his right arm “- because I thought, well, if this doesn’t kill me, I can still go down fighting. I can’t keep people alive, can’t stop drinking, can’t do a lot of things anymore…but if everyone at home – if she thought I’d been a good brave dead hero, I’d have done my job, wouldn’t I? Of course, I must have been giving out a funny sort of look, because almost as soon as I’d got to my feet again, up comes that swine Trotter and he punches me right in the face! Sorry skipper, but you’ve got a Blighty! I don’t particularly want to die anymore; there’s not much point if it doesn’t mean anything, but if I ever met that utter bastard, I would have words with him!”
“And yet you went out of your way to ensure Mr Trotter got an MC.”
“Well of course I did,” said Stanhope, as though this was perfectly obvious, “He’d done a bloody good job – shown real initiative, which I didn’t think him capable of. The fact that he did it by punching me in the face is completely irrelevant. But the point still stands: I do not want to see Trotter again. I do not want to see his wife. I do not want to see my father, or my mother, or – or Miss Raleigh ever again. I don’t. I don’t.”
Two months later found Stanhope sitting in a train carriage bound for the Lake District with Mr and Mrs Trotter. Dr Willard, the complete and absolute swine, had personally recommended the Turnmouth Arms, recently brought by a Mr Singh and his wife, because of the good walks and fresh winter air. Mrs Trotter had immediately agreed to this, as in her opinion, her husband was getting rather fat.
“He was much thinner before he went out – could put my arms round him, whereas now they just sort of end up in thin air. Have another sandwich, Mr Stanhope.”
Trotter, with his feet up on the opposite seat, was indignant.
“That’s because I’ve seen you burn soup, Ellie. I’ve become accustomed to an ‘igher standard of living in those bloody trenches. I’m a man of the world now.”
“You look like you’ve eaten it.” Mrs Trotter responded with a grin, “Still, I didn’t marry you for your good looks, Alf.”
“That’s a filthy lie, Trotter, and you know it.” Stanhope couldn’t resist joining in, “Every day I knew you you’d complain about Mason’s cooking.”
“Can’t believe it – betrayed, by my fellow soldier! As if you were any better with how much you went on about how you hated apricots.”
Laughing, Stanhope realised he had genuinely missed this, needling Trotter, getting teased in return. It didn’t feel as horrible as he was expecting, it felt just as it had done before…back in the trenches. He needed another drink. He left the carriage, banging the door behind him.
The view from the corridor window was impressively melancholy; in the late December evening the whole valley was covered in some rather atmospheric mist. It was the perfect place for a good bit of brooding, and Stanhope knew it. Cold, remote, lonely, no-one to ask you how you were feeling, no-one to let down, no loud noises, plenty of friendly pubs…he could live here forever…no-one would know who he was. He opened the window; he wanted to feel the night air, it was so lovely and cold, it was…
“Erm…excuse me? Excuse me? Sir?...Captain?”
Stanhope turned toward the offending voice. It belonged to a young woman in slightly dowdy clothes, the textbook definition of the Plain Friend. She was shifting about on her feet.
“I was wondering if you could close the window? It’s rather cold. Thank you.” This was accompanied by a tightening of her scarf, as though she thought he wouldn’t understand the word ‘cold’.
This was ridiculous – he couldn’t hold a conversation with people without being reminded of the war; he couldn’t brood out of a window without an annoying girl asking him to close it. Stanhope slammed the window shut and walked bitterly along the corridor, searching for a place he could drink in peace. If there was one thing he could say about his coat, it made for one hell of a dramatic exit.
Frances Renfrew watched the man leave, then turned back to her own compartment, carrying several items from the food cart. War hero or not, she decided, that was a rather rude young man. Still, she’d never see him again. One of the best things about no longer living at home, she decided, was not being made to talk to Nice Young Men About Her Age, and hopefully this would continue on the holiday. She found the compartment, entered, and cheerfully held up the food and drink for the only other occupant.
Madge Raleigh beamed back.
“Oh, thank you so much for the lemonade, I haven’t had any in simply ages!” Madge took a sip, and her face wrinkled in disgust, “Oh God, that’s vile – that’s the sourest taste ever! It tastes like…wasps! I’d ask you to try it, but…”
“Oh, you’re right! Sweet Jesus, that’s foul! You’ve definitely got the reservations?”
“Twin room at the Turnmouth Arms, don’t worry. Perfect for two nice young school chums having a quiet, post-war Christmas. I deserve a break from the dear parentals, and you deserve a break from looking for work in the winter months. What could possibly go wrong? Apart from being stranded in the middle of nowhere, I mean.”
The train rattled on.