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smackenzieIt's still some time before they discharge him. But when he can finally leave, his father makes arrangements for follow-up appointments and any physical therapy Bradford might need, and then he is very carefully bundled into a taxi and driven home.
The house looks just as it did when he left for basic training so many months ago. The housekeeper is still there, although her daughter is making noises about going to work in one of the munitions factories, because the wages are better than what she gets in service. Bradford's mother goes not generally discuss the running of the household with him – or even with his father a lot of the time – but he can tell that she is not pleased by this turn of events.
His bedroom looks the same. His bed feels the same. But he has so gotten out of the habit of sleeping alone on a good mattress on a proper bed frame in a watertight, well-ventilated, properly-heated room that it takes much longer than he would have expected for him to fall asleep. He wants to blame the stiffness where his ribs are healing and his flesh is knitting together, but the fact is that he no longer knows what to do with feather pillows, clean sheets, and warm blankets.
Despite that, he sleeps well, once he finally reaches unconsciousness, and in the morning, after he wakes up, he has a good breakfast and a really excellent cup of tea sitting in the dining room, because he can.
Amelia is off to school and Bradford's father is off to work, and his mother wants to both spend time with him (and take care of him) and go on about her day. She has people to see and apparently a big Christmas charity event to organize. Bradford tells her to go, he'll be fine by himself, he has a few friends left in London he can try to contact if he wants company, he can always invite Cuthbertson's wife Victoria over, and besides, the army doctor told him to take it easy and rest.
"If you think it best," his mother says doubtfully. "Shall I come home for lunch? Perhaps I can bring you something, or I can ask Mrs Hendricks to make you something special."
"No, Mum, thank you," Bradford tells her. "I promise, I'll be fine."
She doesn't look convinced – and he doesn't remember his mother being this solicitous before he left for the front – but she does leave. And then Bradford is alone in the house except for Mrs Hendricks, the housekeeper, who is not a particularly good cook when it comes to anything besides breakfast and little sandwiches for tea. Neither she nor her daughter seem at all put out that Bradford is slouching around the house trying to ignore the fact that he's still not entirely recovered from being shot.
(The younger Miss Hendricks is a good cook – heaven only knows where she learned it from – but she is less and less interested in working in the house, and more and more interested in earning a better wage assembling bombs.)
Victoria Cuthbertson surprisingly pays Bradford a visit that afternoon, apologizing for not alerting him beforehand and also for not going to see him when he was in the hospital.
"I only heard from Teddy a few days ago that you had been hurt and that the army had sent you home," she says. "I don’t know why he didn't want to tell me sooner."
"He might not have known I was here. The battalion commander might have told him I had gone to a base hospital, for all I know." Cuthbertson is not the kind of man to keep a secret out of denial – as if Bradford would be fine as long as no one knew what had happened to him – and Bradford is willing to believe that the battalion was in such chaos that it was a while before anyone in charge knew exactly where he was.
But at the same time, that same army is organized enough to get men their mail at the front line on a regular schedule, so Bradford can also believe that Cuthbertson was told he was going home at about the same time he was being put on the train near the casualty clearing station, and for his own reasons, just didn't report the news to his wife.
But she's here now. Bradford wants to go sit outside in the garden, because the sun is shining and the sky is blue and there is no mud anywhere there shouldn't be, but when he suggests it, Mrs Hendricks appears to tell him no, it's too cold outside and half the garden furniture is in storage for the winter anyway.
So he and Victoria sit in the library and drink tea and eat biscuits and talk about things that aren’t the war for about an hour. He feels psychologically rested by the time she leaves, but Victoria Cuthbertson has been a calming presence for as long as he's known her. She tells him to come visit her when he feels up to leaving the house, and she promises that the children will behave for him.
"I have a better idea," she says, as Mrs Hendricks' daughter fetches her coat and hat. "My father is opening a new play at one of his theaters in a week. This one is a comedy. Would you be my escort for opening night? I know Teddy would be delighted that you were accompanying me, rather than I go by myself or take someone he doesn't like, and my father would no doubt be thrilled to have a captain of the British army sitting in his box."
Victoria's father owns several theaters and a cinema in and around London. Cuthbertson works for him as a manager for the largest and most important of the theaters.
"You don't have to answer me now," she continues, when Bradford doesn't say anything right away. "But let me know in a day or two. And you are always welcome to call on me. Teddy would be upset if I didn't see you."
"It would be my pleasure," Bradford tells her, and means it. He likes Victoria. She's kind and intelligent and willing to ignore the war if he is, but he thinks that if he did want to talk about it, she would be interested in what he had to say. She is an educated woman who wishes to stay informed, and he appreciates that.
She kisses him on both cheeks, making him feel oddly French, and takes her leave. Bradford goes back into the library, finds several books on Egypt that he had acquired when he was at university and which he hadn't thought his father would have kept, and sits down to read. But he can't concentrate – he keeps hearing things in the quiet house, things that aren't Mrs Hendricks or her daughter going about their daily duties – and picks up and puts down several more books before giving up altogether and going up to his room to try and nap.
He doesn't even realize he's fallen asleep until Amelia shakes him awake for dinner.
That night he dreams he's back at the front, standing just inside the barbed wire and directing men over the parapet. Men are falling all around him although he can't hear the machine guns and can't see any mortars or shells. Soon he and one of his platoon commanders are the only ones standing. There are dead men all around them, caught on the barbed wire, lying on the ground, filling the trench like a river of human beings. He recognizes their faces, although in the dream he can't rememer their names.
"We did the best we could, Sergeant," Bradford tells the platoon commander. "Go see Craig and get that looked at." He gestures to the platoon commander's arm, pointing out flesh stripped from the bone and blood dripping on the ground and mixing with the muddy puddles.
"You too, sir."
And Bradford looks down at himself to see a gaping hole in his side. His ribs are showing, white in the flat light of the French sun. He can practically see right through himself. He looks up to say something and the platoon commander has turned into Armstrong, half his chest blown out and one arm gone at the shoulder.
"You shouldn't have told my mother I was dead," he says, but the voice doesn't belong to Armstrong, but to Davies.
Bradford wakes himself up. He's sweating and shaking and guilty, still, for leaving Armstrong to die in the Somme. He no doubt saved Davies' life by digging him out from under the collapsed trench wall, but that can't make up for the men who died under his command.
His men. Boys, some of them. How are they getting on without him? How will he get on without them?
He wants to go back to the front. He hasn't even been home that long and already he wants to leave.
He can't go back to sleep, so he gets out of bed, wraps his dressing-gown around himself, and tiptoes quietly downstairs to get himself a drink. He pours some whiskey into a glass, downs it, coughs as it burns his throat, pours some more, drinks that, takes the glass into the kitchen, and goes upstairs and climbs back into bed.
Tomorrow he will leave the house. He has a friend from school, Leslie Pryce, who is blind in one eye thanks to an accident when he was young that involved a cricket ball and a short-tempered boy who was a year older and had a very strong arm for his age. Pryce's eye kept him out of active service, so he is working for the war effort in an office in London. He's an engineer, and a good one, and the RAF has put him on a team working with fighter planes.
Bradford will go see him. Maybe they'll go out for dinner, have a drink, talk about the war. Bradford won't feel like he's been put somewhere he no longer belongs.
The next day he discovers that he does feel a bit more at home walking around London, so maybe all he needed was a brisk walk and some fresh air in the city he has lived in his whole life. He takes a bus to Pryce's office so he can relish the cold, damp London air on his face. He walks up the stairs to sit on the crowded top deck and is surprised to be offered a seat by a middle-aged man in a worn but clean overcoat.
"Thank you, but I can stand," Bradford says, oddly uncomfortable. He's wearing his uniform partly because he's been told he might be given a white feather and called a coward in public as an able-bodied man in civilian clothes, partly because he thinks it might get him in to see Pryce faster, and partly because he's so used to wearing it. He can accept deference from men in uniform in France, but not from civilians in London. He doesn't think what he does is that deserving of respect yet. He hasn't brought all his men home.
"I lost a son in the Boer War," the man explains. "I'd fight in this one if I could. Take my seat, Captain. You shouldn't have to stand."
Does he know I'm only home because I was wounded? Bradford wonders. His injuries still ache some. But then the bus jerks to a stop and he stumbles and almost falls, and thinks Maybe I should sit.
The middle-aged man is already standing. Bradford sits in the vacated seat, feeling grateful and invalided at the same time.
And then the man gets off the bus at the next stop, so it becomes entirely irrelevant that he wanted to give up his seat to a soldier in uniform.
words: 1965
total words: 40,811
note: i'm guessing it's about the middle of december now. i gave bradford a couple weeks to be in the hospital, altho i don't really know how long they would've kept him. we seem to have passed the obsessive-about-accurate-details part of the nanonovel. :D
The house looks just as it did when he left for basic training so many months ago. The housekeeper is still there, although her daughter is making noises about going to work in one of the munitions factories, because the wages are better than what she gets in service. Bradford's mother goes not generally discuss the running of the household with him – or even with his father a lot of the time – but he can tell that she is not pleased by this turn of events.
His bedroom looks the same. His bed feels the same. But he has so gotten out of the habit of sleeping alone on a good mattress on a proper bed frame in a watertight, well-ventilated, properly-heated room that it takes much longer than he would have expected for him to fall asleep. He wants to blame the stiffness where his ribs are healing and his flesh is knitting together, but the fact is that he no longer knows what to do with feather pillows, clean sheets, and warm blankets.
Despite that, he sleeps well, once he finally reaches unconsciousness, and in the morning, after he wakes up, he has a good breakfast and a really excellent cup of tea sitting in the dining room, because he can.
Amelia is off to school and Bradford's father is off to work, and his mother wants to both spend time with him (and take care of him) and go on about her day. She has people to see and apparently a big Christmas charity event to organize. Bradford tells her to go, he'll be fine by himself, he has a few friends left in London he can try to contact if he wants company, he can always invite Cuthbertson's wife Victoria over, and besides, the army doctor told him to take it easy and rest.
"If you think it best," his mother says doubtfully. "Shall I come home for lunch? Perhaps I can bring you something, or I can ask Mrs Hendricks to make you something special."
"No, Mum, thank you," Bradford tells her. "I promise, I'll be fine."
She doesn't look convinced – and he doesn't remember his mother being this solicitous before he left for the front – but she does leave. And then Bradford is alone in the house except for Mrs Hendricks, the housekeeper, who is not a particularly good cook when it comes to anything besides breakfast and little sandwiches for tea. Neither she nor her daughter seem at all put out that Bradford is slouching around the house trying to ignore the fact that he's still not entirely recovered from being shot.
(The younger Miss Hendricks is a good cook – heaven only knows where she learned it from – but she is less and less interested in working in the house, and more and more interested in earning a better wage assembling bombs.)
Victoria Cuthbertson surprisingly pays Bradford a visit that afternoon, apologizing for not alerting him beforehand and also for not going to see him when he was in the hospital.
"I only heard from Teddy a few days ago that you had been hurt and that the army had sent you home," she says. "I don’t know why he didn't want to tell me sooner."
"He might not have known I was here. The battalion commander might have told him I had gone to a base hospital, for all I know." Cuthbertson is not the kind of man to keep a secret out of denial – as if Bradford would be fine as long as no one knew what had happened to him – and Bradford is willing to believe that the battalion was in such chaos that it was a while before anyone in charge knew exactly where he was.
But at the same time, that same army is organized enough to get men their mail at the front line on a regular schedule, so Bradford can also believe that Cuthbertson was told he was going home at about the same time he was being put on the train near the casualty clearing station, and for his own reasons, just didn't report the news to his wife.
But she's here now. Bradford wants to go sit outside in the garden, because the sun is shining and the sky is blue and there is no mud anywhere there shouldn't be, but when he suggests it, Mrs Hendricks appears to tell him no, it's too cold outside and half the garden furniture is in storage for the winter anyway.
So he and Victoria sit in the library and drink tea and eat biscuits and talk about things that aren’t the war for about an hour. He feels psychologically rested by the time she leaves, but Victoria Cuthbertson has been a calming presence for as long as he's known her. She tells him to come visit her when he feels up to leaving the house, and she promises that the children will behave for him.
"I have a better idea," she says, as Mrs Hendricks' daughter fetches her coat and hat. "My father is opening a new play at one of his theaters in a week. This one is a comedy. Would you be my escort for opening night? I know Teddy would be delighted that you were accompanying me, rather than I go by myself or take someone he doesn't like, and my father would no doubt be thrilled to have a captain of the British army sitting in his box."
Victoria's father owns several theaters and a cinema in and around London. Cuthbertson works for him as a manager for the largest and most important of the theaters.
"You don't have to answer me now," she continues, when Bradford doesn't say anything right away. "But let me know in a day or two. And you are always welcome to call on me. Teddy would be upset if I didn't see you."
"It would be my pleasure," Bradford tells her, and means it. He likes Victoria. She's kind and intelligent and willing to ignore the war if he is, but he thinks that if he did want to talk about it, she would be interested in what he had to say. She is an educated woman who wishes to stay informed, and he appreciates that.
She kisses him on both cheeks, making him feel oddly French, and takes her leave. Bradford goes back into the library, finds several books on Egypt that he had acquired when he was at university and which he hadn't thought his father would have kept, and sits down to read. But he can't concentrate – he keeps hearing things in the quiet house, things that aren't Mrs Hendricks or her daughter going about their daily duties – and picks up and puts down several more books before giving up altogether and going up to his room to try and nap.
He doesn't even realize he's fallen asleep until Amelia shakes him awake for dinner.
That night he dreams he's back at the front, standing just inside the barbed wire and directing men over the parapet. Men are falling all around him although he can't hear the machine guns and can't see any mortars or shells. Soon he and one of his platoon commanders are the only ones standing. There are dead men all around them, caught on the barbed wire, lying on the ground, filling the trench like a river of human beings. He recognizes their faces, although in the dream he can't rememer their names.
"We did the best we could, Sergeant," Bradford tells the platoon commander. "Go see Craig and get that looked at." He gestures to the platoon commander's arm, pointing out flesh stripped from the bone and blood dripping on the ground and mixing with the muddy puddles.
"You too, sir."
And Bradford looks down at himself to see a gaping hole in his side. His ribs are showing, white in the flat light of the French sun. He can practically see right through himself. He looks up to say something and the platoon commander has turned into Armstrong, half his chest blown out and one arm gone at the shoulder.
"You shouldn't have told my mother I was dead," he says, but the voice doesn't belong to Armstrong, but to Davies.
Bradford wakes himself up. He's sweating and shaking and guilty, still, for leaving Armstrong to die in the Somme. He no doubt saved Davies' life by digging him out from under the collapsed trench wall, but that can't make up for the men who died under his command.
His men. Boys, some of them. How are they getting on without him? How will he get on without them?
He wants to go back to the front. He hasn't even been home that long and already he wants to leave.
He can't go back to sleep, so he gets out of bed, wraps his dressing-gown around himself, and tiptoes quietly downstairs to get himself a drink. He pours some whiskey into a glass, downs it, coughs as it burns his throat, pours some more, drinks that, takes the glass into the kitchen, and goes upstairs and climbs back into bed.
Tomorrow he will leave the house. He has a friend from school, Leslie Pryce, who is blind in one eye thanks to an accident when he was young that involved a cricket ball and a short-tempered boy who was a year older and had a very strong arm for his age. Pryce's eye kept him out of active service, so he is working for the war effort in an office in London. He's an engineer, and a good one, and the RAF has put him on a team working with fighter planes.
Bradford will go see him. Maybe they'll go out for dinner, have a drink, talk about the war. Bradford won't feel like he's been put somewhere he no longer belongs.
The next day he discovers that he does feel a bit more at home walking around London, so maybe all he needed was a brisk walk and some fresh air in the city he has lived in his whole life. He takes a bus to Pryce's office so he can relish the cold, damp London air on his face. He walks up the stairs to sit on the crowded top deck and is surprised to be offered a seat by a middle-aged man in a worn but clean overcoat.
"Thank you, but I can stand," Bradford says, oddly uncomfortable. He's wearing his uniform partly because he's been told he might be given a white feather and called a coward in public as an able-bodied man in civilian clothes, partly because he thinks it might get him in to see Pryce faster, and partly because he's so used to wearing it. He can accept deference from men in uniform in France, but not from civilians in London. He doesn't think what he does is that deserving of respect yet. He hasn't brought all his men home.
"I lost a son in the Boer War," the man explains. "I'd fight in this one if I could. Take my seat, Captain. You shouldn't have to stand."
Does he know I'm only home because I was wounded? Bradford wonders. His injuries still ache some. But then the bus jerks to a stop and he stumbles and almost falls, and thinks Maybe I should sit.
The middle-aged man is already standing. Bradford sits in the vacated seat, feeling grateful and invalided at the same time.
And then the man gets off the bus at the next stop, so it becomes entirely irrelevant that he wanted to give up his seat to a soldier in uniform.
words: 1965
total words: 40,811
note: i'm guessing it's about the middle of december now. i gave bradford a couple weeks to be in the hospital, altho i don't really know how long they would've kept him. we seem to have passed the obsessive-about-accurate-details part of the nanonovel. :D
