A Spear of Summer Grass - By Deanna Raybourn Page 0,39
stared at it, I realised what he had said.
“You mean someone did this on purpose?” I asked, gesturing to the scalp I was stitching closed.
“Sometimes men must fight one another,” he replied with a shrug.
I thought of the consequences of the fighting I had seen, the rivers of blood, the broken bones, the scarred lungs and shattered minds. “No, they mustn’t, Gideon. They just do.”
8
I finished up with the last patient just as the milk ran out. I went in the house and washed my hands and collapsed onto the bed. Dora found me there a moment later. She was carrying a plate of thin beef sandwiches.
“You ought to eat. But first you need to change your shirt. It’s a disgrace.” I looked down. Misha’s heavy silk was stained with blood and pus and oil and the powdered red ochre the Kikuyu rubbed into their hair. I sniffed at it.
“It’s a peculiar smell, don’t you think? But not completely unpleasant.”
“Don’t romanticise it. It’s foul.” She rummaged in the wardrobe searching for a fresh shirt. She threw it to me and carried the filthy one away between her fingertips.
I rolled away from the plate of sandwiches. My stomach was strong, but not quite strong enough to spend the morning as I had and still want luncheon. I had lost weight during the war, too. Too many operating theatres, too many torn limbs and broken bodies. As a volunteer nurse I shouldn’t have seen any of it. I should have been rolling bandages and reading aloud letters from home and pouring cups of tea. But war doesn’t care about “should haves.” One of the surgeons noticed that I had steadier nerves and better hands than most of the seasoned professionals. After that he’d made a point of requesting me. I think he thought he was doing me a favour. I was sick three times during my first operation—an amputation that took off a young infantryman’s leg and nearly cost him his life in lost blood. But every time I was sick I wiped my mouth and crept back until the surgeon put that whole leg into my hands and told me to get rid of it. It was heavy, that dead thing in my hands, and I could feel the weight of it still if I closed my eyes and put out my arms. I felt the weight of all of them, every young man who slipped under the ether and didn’t come back, every officer who put on a brave face but clutched my hand until the bones nearly broke. I remembered them all. And in the darkest nights, when the gin didn’t bring forgetfulness and the hour didn’t bring sleep, I counted them off like sheep, tumbling dead over fences in a beautiful green field dotted with poppies.
I woke with a start. I had drifted off thinking of the boys who had never come home again and I had dreamed of them. I was disoriented for a moment, and when I heard a man’s voice my heart began to race. It was a full minute before I remembered that Ryder was coming to collect me.
I dried my cheeks and brushed out my hair. For good measure I added a slick of crimson lipstick and tied on a silk scarf. I was feeling a little more like myself by the time I joined Ryder and Dora in the drawing room. It was absurd. Dora was plying him with cups of tea as if she were presiding over the tea table in a vicarage in Bournemouth while Ryder lounged in one of the easy chairs, looking like an overgrown panther. The teacup was ridiculously small in his hands, but he held it gently, and when he spoke to Dora his voice was low and courteous.
“Would you like to come, Miss Dora? Every settler ought to know the country.”
Dora flapped a hand, and seemed to pink up a little under his gaze. “Oh, I hardly think so! I’m not at all outdoorsy, you know, except for gardening. I do enjoy puttering, and it seems as if everything grows so well here. The hibiscus and gladioli are practically rioting, they’re so overgrown and the roses want some very serious pruning. I mean to have a look at what might be done to the patch between the house and the lake, if Delilah doesn’t mind.”
“She doesn’t,” I said from the doorway. I looked to Ryder. “You’re wasting your time. Dodo is too much a lady