“An inestimable virtue at this time of year.”
My dish was full. I went to my usual chair, to the left of Corporal Pritchard, two seats down. Four nurses sat at the other end of the table, hunched over their plates, eating swiftly, each movement straining with suppressed excitement. The other nurses, I supposed, were on duty in the ward. Mrs. DeForest had worked out a careful system of shifts, based on scientific principles of human efficiency.
“I understand your patients are housed in a barn, Captain?” she said.
Corporal Pritchard set down his fork, lifted his head, and answered for his captain. “Indeed they are, ma’am. A regular French barnyard. Smells like the devil.”
Mrs. DeForest turned to me. “Is this true, Miss Fortescue?”
“I think the corporal—that is, the building was a barn. Before the war. But it’s perfectly clean now, just like a regular kind of hospital. Everything sanitary, as far as I could see.”
Corporal Pritchard shook his head, very mournful. He was a thin, hollow-cheeked man with an oversized nose and a gaze of perpetual hunger, and mournfulness just about hung on his face as if he’d given birth to it, millimeter by millimeter, through his nostrils. I thought he was around thirty years old, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe the war made boys look older, and he was really eighteen. “It’s the summer that’s the trouble, miss. Them pigs running about. But we don’t like to complain.”
At the word pigs, I pressed my coffee cup to my lips and glanced at Captain Fitzwilliam, who concentrated on his toast. The clock ticked, the air yawned. The soft thump of busy feet approached and receded. Mrs. DeForest looked at me, at Captain Fitzwilliam. At Corporal Pritchard.
“Pigs, Corporal?”
“Just in summer.”
“Hmm.” The fingertips tapped. The brow furrowed. The gaze returned to Captain Fitzwilliam, but not the head itself. She had a way of doing that, looking at you sideways. “A barn,” she said.
The captain spoke cheerfully. “You see, Mrs. DeForest, the Royal Army Medical Corps established this particular clearing station in the early days, when we were dashing about digging trenches, and nobody had the least idea we’d still be churning over the same ground two years later. There wasn’t time to build any of your fine modern compounds of huts and wards, according to all those marvelous diagrams prepared beforehand by our diligent staff. Luckily—well, for the men, at least—it’s only temporary accommodation. Until they’re well enough to go back up the line, you know, or else bad enough to continue on to the base hospitals, or even Blighty itself. Well, the really fortunate blokes, anyway, too ripped up to be any use to Haig.”
Mrs. DeForest smacked the table with the flat of her palm. “There. Do you see, Miss Fortescue? This is why we came to France. This makes it all worthwhile. Barns! Barns, if you will!”
I wanted to tell her that this wasn’t why I came to France, not really. That the barn wasn’t all that bad, and the British Army seemed, after two and a half years of war, to be taking care of its wounded in a pretty resourceful manner, given the circumstances. I thought of Captain Fitzwilliam’s keen face, and the competent way he shot an order in its proper direction, hitting the mark bang on the nose, before turning to me and smiling, smiling, as if he’d been playing at darts. But how could you say that to Mrs. DeForest, the president of the Eighth New York Chapter of the American Red Cross, who never got out of bed except to rescue some lesser creature from an awful fate? How could you admit to a variety of motives, not all of them noble?
Captain Fitzwilliam saved me. “You’re an angel of mercy, Mrs. DeForest, and on behalf of the entire British nation, I thank you for your service. That’s a splendid cut of ham, by the way. Splendid.”
She snatched his plate, darted to the sideboard, and heaped on the slices of pink French ham, one after another. How she came by the ham in the middle of the beleaguered Western Front, I never understood. She was just that kind of person. She could pluck priceless haunches of jambon from thin air. She set the plate back before the captain and resumed her seat.
“So you’ll be sending more? Patients?”
“As many as we possibly can.”
“And you’ll tell your colonel how well we’ve cared for your men, isn’t that right? The many advantages of the château?” She lifted the coffeepot and dangled the spout above his cup. “More coffee?”
He nudged the saucer forward.
“My dear Mrs. DeForest. Advantages it is.”
IN FACT, AS I WALKED down the ward on my way to the entrance, I thought the men were maybe a little too well cared for. The zeal of eight Red Cross nurses had left them cocooned in immaculate white sheets, immobile, a little stunned, like flies in the web of an especially greedy spider. The sisters were serving hot breakfast by the spoonful—whether or not the patient was capable of lifting a spoon—and as each man opened his mouth he seemed to be uttering a silent cry for escape.
“It’s a bleeding palace,” muttered Corporal Pritchard, who walked at my side. If you looked carefully, you could actually see the bulge in his stomach where the breakfast lay. Like a massive, self-satisfied tumor hanging from his ribs.
“A château.”
“Like that what them staff officers got.” At either end of the hall, just as Mrs. DeForest promised, two fires burned up the DeForest fortune at a magisterial rate of combustion. A wind-up gramophone played tinny Mozart between the two central windows.
“Your headquarters, you mean? In a château?”
“Yes, miss. A great big one, they say, but that’s just to be expected, innit? The staff sacrificing their youth and health, day and night, for our sake. It’s only right they should have a nice posh castle to lay their weary heads in.” He stood back politely to allow me through the doorway. I liked the way he spoke, the peculiar accent (youf an’ elf) and the natural sarcasm. Outside, on the gravel drive, Hunka Tin stood waiting. I had spent the hour before breakfast in the makeshift garage—the former stables, actually, except all the horses were long gone—while Mrs. DeForest did her calisthenics, and now the Ford looked as bright as new, almost. Mud washed away and engine tuned. Tires all repaired and axles checked. I hadn’t replaced that fuel line, however. Hoped I wouldn’t regret the omission.
“Blimey,” said the corporal, “you ain’t half got a good mechanic.”
“Actually, I’m the mechanic.”
“You, miss?”
The air was bitter, and the engine would be cold. I went around front, released the choke, and turned the engine. “My father had a Model T for years, and my sister and I kept it running for him. He thought we should be self-reliant. Could you switch the ignition for me?”
When the engine was puttering at an easy, patient pace, the corporal slid from the seat and made room for me. “Your chariot, m’lady,” he said. Courtly bow.
“Where’s your captain?”
“Making his regards, I think.”
“His regards?”
He nodded at the steps. “To herself.”
“Oh. Of course.”
“Now, don’t you think anything of that, miss. It’s only what he does.”
“Think anything of what?”
The corporal nudged the brim of his hat and reached into his pocket. He lit a cheap, brown-wrapped cigarette and walked away, a few polite