Fullepub 
Chapter 15: The Paradise of Fools
LONDON, ENGLAND, UNITED KINGDOM
March 1918
Laura, Pim, and Mary disembarked in Liverpool, turned their backs on the submarine-haunted Atlantic, and boarded a train to London. As soon as they wheezed to a halt at Euston, Mary charged off again, to see to her “bedsheets and potpourri,” as she called her donated supplies. Laura and Pim found themselves standing on the platform, temporarily abandoned.
Pim looked about with muted pleasure, taking in the mix of uniforms, the glass and the ironwork overhead. Laura wished she could see the station through Pim’s eyes. London felt like limbo to her, the glittering center of the modern world become merely the war’s antechamber. She was hoping that Mary would be quick, and that the hotel was not too far.
A train with blacked-out windows pulled up to the station, and people in uniforms began gathering on the platform, obviously waiting, exchanging the occasional low-voiced word. “Oh, it must be wounded soldiers,” said Pim. “The poor dears. Although I thought—I thought a hospital train would be bigger. Shouldn’t it be bigger?”
“Not exactly wounded. It’s the mad ones,” said Laura, after a hesitation. She inhaled cigarette smoke. “We might go and wait in the ticket office.”
Pim didn’t move. “Mad—soldiers? Because of the war?”
“Yes. Pim, the men won’t want to be seen like that. We should—”
It was too late—the door to the train gaped wide. Next moment, the men were being walked or carried out. The first one was wearing a straightjacket. He thrashed. The second was weeping, gray-faced. He stumbled off on his own feet, leaning on an orderly’s shoulder. The third couldn’t work his limbs at all; he shook like a fallen bird. The fourth was biting his fingers, his eyes like holes burned into his colorless skin. The fifth was talking, softly—quite rational in tone—except his face was covered in bandages and what he was saying was nonsense.
“The dead ones,” muttered the soldier. “At night, you know, you see them. In the dark. They come back in the dark. One of them smiled. He told me I’d never go home.” His voice rose suddenly, wheezing. “But I knew that, didn’t I? I knew it I knew it I—”
He was hustled off by orderlies.
Pim watched him go, standing very still. “But—why do they go mad?”
“I don’t know,” said Laura. She did, but it wasn’t something you said in words. It didn’t have words.
Pim said, in an odd, fragile voice, “But they— The war drove them mad? What was he saying? About—about the dead ones?”
“Madness,” said Laura, with finality. “It was madness. Come along.”
· · ·They were supposed to spend three days in London. Three days too long, in Laura’s opinion. “Patience, Iven,” said Mary, busily opening letters at the breakfast table in their hotel the next morning. “I have people to call on; there’s no telling when I’ll be in London next. Private field hospitals don’t run on donations alone. I need public and private goodwill. Why do you think they let me stay in business? I’m a newsmaking coup, a brave lady doing my bit. I’m off to the newspaper office this morning, soon as I’ve had my tea.”
Laura applied herself to her soft-boiled egg and toast. “Well, as long as the newspapers are satisfied,” she said.
“Exactly,” said Mary.
Pim had brought a Baedeker to breakfast and was paging through it, making notes, ignoring her toast. Mary said, “Shaw, do you think you’re here for summer holidays?”
Pim said, “Oh, Laura, do you want to see Trafalgar Square?”
“Why not?” said Laura. She’d never traveled for pleasure. “Is that the one with the lions?”
“Hopeless, both of you.” Mary slit open another letter. Gave a crow of satisfaction.
“What is it?” asked Pim.
Mary said, “Rejoice, ladies. I have procured us invitations to dinner.”
Pim shut the guidebook. “Yes? With whom?”
“At the house of a retired general, a good old creature called Munster, one of those who made his bones in India and South Africa. You may expect Turkey carpets, and statues on all sides, dubiously acquired.” Mary shook her head. “But there will be a full complement of new-arrived American officers—that’s why they’ve invited us, thinking the officers will appreciate ladies from their own side of the ocean. And—” Mary had clearly saved the best for last. “Gage himself will be there, of the Fifth Army, you know, much caressed at GHQ. He’s made a quick run to London, going back the same day we are. We’re fortunate to have caught him.” Mary rubbed her hands together. “I can easily see— Why, what is it, Laura?”
Laura had dropped her carefully peeled egg. “Nothing,” she said, collecting herself. “It’s slippery. Go on, Mary.”
· · ·Mary tried to drag them out for new clothes, but Laura was immovable. “I’ll wear my uniform. We’re in a war, and I am, God save us, a heroine, with a limp to prove it. Thus does one sidestep all dictates of fashion.”
“All right,” Mary said reluctantly. “But you’ll wear a proper uniform. Not one of those field-modified things, hemmed to the knee.”
“Am I a savage?” said Laura. “I’ll look perfectly proper. I even have a medal.” It was true that most of her uniforms had been made over long ago. The standard nursing uniform was charming to look at. It was floor-length, with seven pieces including a starched detachable collar. Pristine detachable cuffs. Every nurse near the front line had taken one look and started surreptitiously hemming, quick as she could. But Laura had kept one uniform back, for occasions like this one. She put it on the evening of dinner, and when she came out to the shared lounge between their rooms, Mary said, “Maybe you were right. You’ll look better in uniform anyway. You have one of those faces. Authoritative. Evening clothes would just look frivolous. Shame you’re not taller. Now tell me what’s troubling you.” Pim had gone off to bathe.
Laura gave Mary an inquiring look.
“Do not even try to look innocent,” said Mary. “You looked like a thundercloud when I told you about this dinner. What is it?”
Laura said briefly, “The general—Gage—it was on his orders that we relocated to Brandhoek, in support.” A criminal place for a mobile hospital. Tucked up snug between a railroad siding and an ammunition dump, inevitably a target.
“I see,” Mary said, sounding unmoved.
Laura said, “I know. Put the hospital next to the munitions, and perhaps Fritz won’t bombard the latter. Or, if he does, and smashes the hospital in the bargain, then someone in a fedora comes out and takes pictures of the wrecked wards and weeping nurses. Sends the best ones straight to the papers. Another coup of wartime newsmaking.”
Mary said, “Yes, yes, all very nefarious. Can you keep your feelings to yourself at dinner? This is a great thing, Laura, this invitation. There will be donations from this.”
“I’m not going to pitch a fit and refuse to eat my peas, Mary. I’d rather not go. But I think you knew that.”
Mary said, coaxingly, “They won’t be rationing sugar.”
Laura laughed darkly. “Well, then, all is forgiven, I suppose.”
· · ·The retired eminence, Mary’s good old boy called Munster, lived in a soaring mansion in Mayfair. Laura, Mary, and Pim alighted from their taxi and were admitted into a lounge full of Benares brass, dark furniture, British and American uniforms. The room was monstrously hot.
Pim was pleased. “I’ve never met a general.” She was wearing black and looked heartbreaking. Every head in the room turned to mark her progress.
“They’re much like other folk,” said Laura. “Perhaps more self-important.” A bead of sweat rolled down her spine. The room was packed. Far too loud. It made her jittery. She made straight for the drinks cart, shot the nearest officer a smile. He mixed her a cocktail; she drank it off quick and got another, ignoring Mary’s disapproving look.
The general, Munster, matched his house. He was old, fussy, busy, his skin yellowed. His mustache was impeccable. He didn’t, Laura thought, look well. There was an odd flush on his cheeks, a glaze to his eyes, something strained in his bonhomie.
General Gage was far younger: not yet fifty, his accent faintly Irish and his manner quick and expansive. He circled the room with effortless charm. Laura could see why he was favored in General Headquarters, and in Whitehall; he was one of those people who listened with flattering attention, looked at you like nothing else mattered. He made the American officers—a rather stiff and dour bunch, very Methodist-looking—laugh uproariously, and then he circled round to Mary, Pim, and Laura.
His eyes fastened on Pim’s flawless face. “No one told me a trio of angels were come to grace our rough company.”
Laura tried not to look cynical. Pim appeared simultaneously flattered, delighted to make his acquaintance, and innocently unavailable. She’d probably practiced that expression in a mirror. Mary shook the general’s hand, smiling. Laura took a deep swallow of her cocktail. The lieutenant behind Gage was looking at Pim, visibly awestruck.
“Are these ladies your volunteers, Mrs. Borden?” inquired the general.
“Yes, indeed,” said Mary. She introduced Pim and Laura and then launched into a discourse about her hospital, its rich backers, its interested journalists, its good work.
Gage listened courteously, but when Mary wound down, he said, “What brings a fine lady like yourself across the sea, Mrs. Shaw? I honor your patriotism, but surely your family could not spare you.”
Mary pressed her lips together. Pim said, “I am a widow, sir. I wanted to—to honor my son, James, who has passed.”
Laura expected Gage to make sympathetic noises. Instead, he frowned. “James? A James Shaw, is that right? A Canadian?”
What was that in Gage’s face? Not quite recognition. Unease? Pim said, “Yes, indeed, sir. Is there a chance—I mean, could you have known—”
The bell for dinner interrupted her.
“Yes—perhaps? I—we shall speak…after dinner,” said Gage. “Lovely to meet you, ladies.” He strode away.
“Maybe he knows something about Jimmy,” said Pim, with bright hope in her face.
Laura doubted it. He was probably just hungry. “Anything is possible. Come on, I want my supper.”
· · ·As they went in to dinner, Laura told herself, sternly, that there was no call to despise General Gage. It wasn’t his fault that he was well dressed and well fed, well mannered and effortlessly charming. That he commanded his army from a comfortable château, that for him losses were numbers in ledgers, a question of mathematics. That he would probably be created a peer after the war. It was just the way of things. She needed another drink.
As they were all sitting down at the dining table, a pleasant, rather silly voice at Laura’s elbow said, “I do remember you. It’s Iven, isn’t it?”
It was the lieutenant, the aide who’d stood behind General Gage and stared at Pim with such ardent admiration. He had unfortunate jug-handle ears, a slim, overbred face, and an exquisite cut to his clothes. His eyes were already moist with wine. Hastily, Laura searched her unreliable memory. But the only association that came with that face, vague as smoke, was nonsensical: asparagus.
“Yes, sir. My name is Laura Iven,” said Laura. “I was a nurse with the CAMC.”
The lieutenant saw her blankness, and said, with a disarmingly toothy smile, “Name’s Young. You don’t remember, I imagine. We met in ’15, you know. When Fritz—”
“Yes, I remember,” said Laura, suddenly recalling. Asparagus indeed, the poor man. “How do you do, sir?”
“Can’t complain,” said Young, heartily. “I’m on my uncle’s—I mean—the general’s staff now.” His eyes strayed sideways to Pim. “Is this your first time in London, Mrs. Shaw?”
Pim looked round and he immediately flushed up to his hairline. But Pim was unruffled. “Yes, it is. How nice to meet you. Laura and I were so pleased to be invited tonight.”
Young was still pink. “Pleasure’s mine.”
The conversation proceeded predictably. Young was delighted that they’d be at Couthove, and that Pim was afraid of horses. “Don’t worry,” he said, finishing his wine. A little swagger had come into his voice. “I could teach you to ride. You’ll be jumping gates in no time.” Self-importantly, he added, “My uncle and I are going back day after tomorrow. Can’t linger at home too long, not these days.”
“Oh,” said Pim, with flattering seriousness. “Is it very bad over there, sir?”
“Of course we’ll always protect you, Mrs. Shaw. But, well, you know, those rascally Bolsheviks—”
Laura applied herself to the soup course.
“—they weaseled Russia out of the war…”
Young had a good deal to say about the Bolsheviks. Now that Russia was out, Germany was going to reinforce their western front with all the men from the east. There were at least a million of them. But Mrs. Shaw was not to worry. Because a single Allied soldier was worth ten Germans.
Laura wasn’t so sanguine.
The soup was removed and roast chicken put down.
“Those Communists,” Young was saying, expansively. “Infected the populace with dreadful ideas. All people the same. That just means chaos. They won’t take orders, Communists. No discipline.”
Laura had a patient once, an Austrian prisoner, who’d fought on the Eastern Front. Lots of soldiers there, he’d said. Lots of Russians. But not enough of anything else. They send men out with one rifle among two, and tell the second man to pick it up after the first one’s killed…
Laura took more chicken.
“Why, even the French—” Young swallowed the rest. He’d spoken into one of those strange silences that occur even in the loudest of parties. Nearly the whole table had heard. Munster and Gage, and a handful of other officers, instantly fixed him with a hard eye.
Young flushed. “Our greatest allies,” he added feebly, and then asked Pim, “Do you like the chicken?”
Pim murmured something polite. Laura cut up her second helping. Recalled the rumors that had spread from billets to estaminets during the long, bloody days of the summer before: The French won’t go up. They won’t fight. They’re singing “The Internationale” in their dugouts. Say they won’t attack, say they’re tired of dying. Calling for the working class to rise.
Mutiny—that was the word, the rumor, that people had hardly dared to whisper. If Germany had known, that would have been it. They’d have broken the line.
Laura kept on doggedly chewing. A million Germans coming, the French wavering, and the Americans only beginning to trickle onto the battlefield. If they lost, all the stationary architecture of the back area would be crushed under advancing feet, and she’d never find out what happened to Freddie, would spend her whole life wondering…
A well-bred girl in evening clothes, who volunteered at London hospitals, was trying to revive the flagging conversation. She turned to Laura. “My patients tell me such funny things. Ghost stories and folktales, so interesting. Perhaps you’ve heard some good stories yourself, Miss Iven? One man said he’d seen his captain, who’d passed away years ago, tipping his hat to him through a window. Another said he met a man selling wine who’d grant you wishes. And another told me about the wild men. Have you heard of the wild men?”
“An invention of the newspapers, Annie,” Munster put in repressively. A certain family resemblance there. Niece? Granddaughter? Munster mopped his face. Laura noted that his color was worse, thought perhaps she ought to tell his wife to call a doctor after supper.
“Oh?” said the girl innocently. “Because a patient of mine told me he’d certainly seen them. He was on a salvage party near Fresnes, and he said all the men were afraid to leave their camp at night, for fear of the screams and the rifle shots coming from No Man’s Land. It was the wild men making the noise, he said. Frenchmen, Germans, Italians—all soldiers who had deserted—they lived together and they’d come out at night to scrounge food and fight for entertainment. Once, my patient said, he and his mates even put out a trap for the wild men—some food and whiskey in a basket. No one touched it, but the next morning they found a note inside that said, ‘Nothing doing!’ ”
Annie laughed innocently. A few of the Americans joined her. Pim had tilted her head toward the exchange. Laura sighed internally. A much-cherished fantasy, that there was a brotherhood of free men waiting for those who deserted. But she could see Gage starting to fume, so she said, “Once I had a patient come in who’d gone over the top ten days before. He was only just getting his wound seen to, he said, because he’d spent a week in a shell hole, drinking rainwater and calling for help. He said it as though it was quite ordinary, too. There’s your voices from No Man’s Land. Soldiers who can’t get back.” Her mind presented her with an image of her brother, trapped in a shell hole. She shook it away.
The girl looked chagrined.
Munster broke in, raising his glass. “Shall we have a toast, then? To the end of the war. To the kaiser’s ruin. To the army, gentlemen.”
There were murmurs of affirmation, and everyone drank. A babble of fresh conversation broke out. But Laura set her glass down abruptly. The color had receded from Munster’s face. Laura was on her feet and moving just as he slumped over sideways in his chair.
“He’s taken ill,” she said, to a volley of questions, the back of her hand on his forehead, the other finding the pulse in his thick neck. “Very ill.” The skin of his cheek and throat was hot enough to scorch. He ought to have been upstairs in bed. Not sitting at a table with you lot, drinking. And whatever he has, it’s probably catching.
Laura listened to the patient, didn’t like what she heard. At least she had experience with fluid in lungs. Phosgene casualties generally came to her half-drowning. “Get him to a sofa. Prop him up. Here, help me,” she said to the men hovering. “He cannot get his breath if he’s bent over.” Laura wrenched open the buttons on his collar. “Someone fetch a doctor.”
Munster was taken off to a quiet sofa and propped up. Brandy and water revived him a little. Laura didn’t like his high fever, though. It had come on so quickly.
“What is this?” said the doctor, when he came. “This man should be lying down.”
“He’s got fluid in his lungs,” said Laura.
“Don’t lecture me on my own profession, miss,” said the doctor, bending toward the patient. “I’ll see to him now.”
Laura opened her mouth, saw Mary in the doorway, closed it again, and crossed the room to her. She was tired. “Where’s Pim?” Laura wanted to go back to the hotel and get off her leg.
“Gage got hold of her in the confusion. Took her off to the library.” Mary was nursing a glass of port.
“Do we need to mount a rescue?”
“No,” said Mary. “I know Pim looks terribly unworldly—and is, in a lot of ways—but she’s had men at her since she was a girl—it’s that hair.” Mary’s tone was affectionate. “Anyway, she can handle Gage.”
“Five minutes,” said Laura, eyes on the door to the library, “and then we’re mounting that rescue and leaving. And try not to breathe my air for a day or two. Munster was sick.”
“Iven, did you really need to—” Laura didn’t hear the rest of the question. Pim had reentered on Gage’s arm, and for an instant, standing in the lamplight from the hall, Pim’s face looked blank. Shocked.
Laura hurried across the room. Young was already there, quite drunk, paying Pim compliments, bowing over her hand. Gage did likewise, smiling with immense Irish charm, a particular tenderness. Pim smiled at them both, unruffled. Laura must have imagined the distress. Perhaps it was a trick of the uncertain light.
· · ·Laura couldn’t sleep that night. She lay awake and imagined herself staying in London after all, perhaps as a nurse to a private family. A new life, one less troubled by memory. She recalled when Lucy Jeffries had been pulled out of one of the casualty clearing stations to tend to the king of England, after he’d sprained his back reviewing the troops. Lucy had spent six months in an English country house, eating her head off at royal expense, and got a medal at the end of it. Laura could do something like that. A country manor. Perhaps an older gentleman, an incurable hypochondriac. Yet the black current still had her, as much as it had in Halifax. Her face was turned eastward.
Pim was awake too; Laura could hear the whisper of her plaited hair as she turned her head on the pillow. “What do you think of the general?” Laura asked. “He hauled you off to the library so suddenly.” Pim hadn’t said a word about her interlude with Gage.
Pim’s answer was mild. “Oh, he was very charming. He’s been in Halifax once, you know. Had an excellent dinner there, he said. Fried cod.”
“He called you to the library to talk of Halifax? Pim—was he importunate?”
“Gage?” Pim sounded embarrassed. “Oh, no, of course not, Laura. A perfect gentleman. Where did you meet Lieutenant Young?”
Laura let Pim change the subject. “At a party, I suppose. We had a surprising number. In aerodromes and divisional headquarters and cafés. Quite desperate affairs, some of them. But he’s famous for the asparagus.”
“Asparagus?”
Laura laughed a little. “His unit was ordered up the line while he was on leave. In ’15, it was. He was shopping at a greenmarket in Oise and missed their departure. Came back to billets and found his unit gone. The whole crew. Didn’t faze him, though. He took his servant and his basket of cress and asparagus, ordered a taxi, and set off for the Front.”
Pim said, “Goodness. And then?”
“Are you all right?” Laura asked.
“I— Yes, of course. Too much cream in the soup. Do go on.”
Laura craned her neck to look across the room. But she couldn’t make out Pim’s face in the darkness. She wished she hadn’t started the story. “Well, all this happened—bad luck—on the day Fritz first tried gas. At Ypres. Young was just driving up, tucked in his cab, properly civilized, when the gassed men started running back. Bit of a shock for him.”
The story had been funny when someone had first told it in the mess. The absurd contrast: men staggering toward the rear, faces turning blue, clawing at their own throats, while the taxi driver stared, and the white-gloved officer in back clutched his fresh vegetables. They could laugh at anything, in their hospital mess. Told in London, to Penelope Shaw, it seemed less funny.
