January 8th, 1918
London, England

Give me a hand o' thine

Appreciatively, Jem glances around the dining room of the Kingsley hotel.

"And they really let you stay here every time you're in London?" he asks, eyeing the centrepiece with some interest.

"Either here or at the Thackeray, right around the corner. I've stayed there as well, but so far, I've only ever been passing through," I explain, taking another spoonful of my dessert, the culmination of a rather nice lunch.

Both hotels are in Bloomsbury, right next to the British Museum, which I still haven't set foot in, probably to my disgrace. Much more importantly, though, it's only a brisk 30-minute-walk down Oxford Street to Ken's hospital. It would be even faster using the tube, but I can walk just fine, thank you very much!

"And the army is paying for it?" Jem continues his cross-examination. His voice sounds incredulous.

I shrug. "Yes, the army is paying. The invoices get sent there directly, so we don't even have to pay in advance. Every nursing sister with the CAMC who is spending time in London can stay at either hotel at any given time. More than that, we are strongly encouraged to do so."

It's a comfortable arrangement, having the hotel invoices sent directly to the army. The army pays travelling and hotel costs for all our journeys during which no military transport or lodging can be provided. We can always rely on having a certain standard met – as officers, we always travel First Class, for example – but normally, we have to pay ourselves initially, and have the money refunded later on, which is impractical. The special rule regarding these two London hotels therefore makes things quite a bit easier, much as it surprises Jem.

"Look," I continue and point my dessert spoon at him, "If they could, the brass hats would tether us to our hospitals. If we must leave them, they want to know exactly where we are at all times. We get a cushy hotel and three meals a day paid for by the army so that we stay there. You have to pay for your lodgings in advance, but at least you can choose them for yourself. Just because you're a man. So there are two sides to this, really."

For a moment Jem considers me, then he shakes his head, murmuring, "You sound like Di."

"In that case, many thanks for the compliment," I shoot back and can see the corners of his mouth twitch up. I quickly take the last spoonful of my dessert and push my chair back.

Jem, who eats faster than anyone else I've ever met and has never liked sitting still for any stretch of time, is already on his feet. He waves at the waitress, who's been busying herself in our vicinity for quite a while already, unashamedly making eyes at him.

It only takes a few minutes until we're at the entrance of the hotel, swaddled into our coats to stave off the January cold.

"Where to?" I enquire, wrapping the scarf tighter around my neck. It's not as cold as it was last winter, but it's certainly cold enough.

"I need new gloves, if you don't mind," Jem answers, shoving his worn-looking gloves at me as if to prove a point.

I nod briskly. "Selfridge's it is, then," I announce. Truth to be told, I hardly know my way around London any better than I did in 1916, but I've passed Selfridge's, the big department store on Oxford Street, twice a day on my walks in the past week.

There's a slight grin on Jem's lips, but he doesn't protest. Instead, he offers me his arm and we set off in the direction of Oxford Street. The moment we have reached it, a newspaper boy waves at us, holding this day's issue, but Jem shakes his head and the boy turns towards an elegantly dressed man behind us instead.

"Any interesting news in the papers today?" I query as we stroll along the street.

Jem raises his shoulders in a shrug. "The cursed Russians are still negotiating for a separate peace," he replies, not without bitterness, "and the thrice cursed Germans have sunk a British hospital ship in the Channel. The Rewa. Most of the passengers and crew made it off alive, though."

„Thrice cursed Germans," I murmur.

The Rewa isn't the first hospital ship to have been torpedoed by German U-boats, and more have been sunk by sea mines. This is also how the Britannic, sister ship to the unfortunate Titanic, found her end in the Mediterranean last year. It's a war crime to sink a hospital ship, but since when have the Germans ever cared about that?

"News from Halifax?" I want to know next.

It's been about a month since a cargo ship loaded with explosives collided with another ship in the Halifax harbour. The following explosion, they say, was one of hitherto unknown proportions. Parts of the city were destroyed and there's talk of a thousand dead and many more injured. The war produces many more casualties in a day, of course, but it's different, somehow. Halifax is home. It should have been safe.

Jem shakes his head. "No news. The investigations are still underway."

He returns the salute of a group of soldiers who have stopped to let us pass. They are Convalescent Blues – soldiers that have been wounded and are not fully recovered yet. Their collective name comes from the uniform-like clothes they are obligated to wear, both in the hospital and outside of it. These are blue, pyjama-like suits with a white shirt and a red necktie, manufactured in standard sizes and, because of that, often ill-fitting. The soldiers despise this convalescent uniform, but it has the one advantage that it reliably identifies them as convalescents – and for someone who has been wounded in the service for King and Country, many people are happy to buy the odd drink. In contrast, it's no easy feat for a man in civvies – civilian clothes, that is – to cross the street unencumbered after three and a half years of war. The blue convalescent uniforms therefore do have their advantages, horrible as they may look.

Officers, naturally, are exempt from wearing them. They wear silk pyjamas when in hospital and get an allowance to buy themselves clothes to wear during their time spent convalescing. To save them from being jeered at while wearing mufti – soldier speak for civilian clothes – they get a white armband with a red crown, identifying them as convalescent officers in public. The majority of the officers I know have preferred to put on proper uniform as soon as possible, though.

"Have we heard if anybody we know was in it? The explosion, I mean," I ask, and I'm a little surprised myself how calm my voice sounds.

Thankfully, Jem shakes his head. "No one. I had a letter from Faith the day before yesterday. Two of her old classmates from Redmond were in Halifax at the time of the explosion, but they're alright."

"Good," I say and mean it. "What else does Faith write about?"

But if Jem answers, I never hear a thing.

The moment the words have left my mouth, I feel my body tense up. I can see Jem's lips move, but I hear nothing of what he says. My breath stops at first, then continues, quick and shallow. Blood rushes in my ears, drowning out every other sound.

Every sound but one.

Ritsch ratsch.

I am vaguely aware of Jem's lips stilling in their movement. His quizzical expression gives way to one of worry. All around us, people are moving, shapeless figures, hastening past. There's a weight around my chest, tightening. It's hard to breathe.

Ritsch ratsch.

I squeeze my eyes shut, press my hands against my ears, try to block out the sound. But it's in my mind, it's always in my mind. I shake my head, trying to shake it out, but it stays, relentless.

Ritsch ratsch.

Someone – Jem? – pulls at my arm, pulls me away. I stumble after him. I can't see, can't think. In my head there's only this horrible, screeching sound, growing louder and ever louder, until I think my head must explode from it, until I can't take it anymore, until –

Until it suddenly stops.

Silence.

Heavenly, merciful silence.

"Rilla?" Jem's voice reaches me, as if from far away. It sounds worried, scared even.

Jem and scared?

Cautiously, I open one eye, then the other. We are standing in a small side street, just the two of us. It appears safe. Very slowly, hesitantly, I lower my hands, listening carefully, prepared to press them back over my ears at any moment.

Voices, footsteps. The sound of an automobile on the main street. Somewhere, a crying child. A dog barks. From one of the houses, the sound of a piano wafts down to us.

"That piano needs to be tuned," I remark. It's the first thing that comes to my mind.

For a moment, Jem stares at me, aghast. Then he closes his eyes. Several long seconds pass. Finally, a deep sigh and he's back to looking at me. "You scared me back there!" There's worry in his voice, but also a sliver of accusation.

"I'm sorry," I apologise. It's what you do, isn't it?

Only very slowly do I regain the feel of my body. As if I have left it for a short time and need to return to it still. I feel as if I have run for miles. My breath is short and hurried. My heart beats in my throat. My head swims.

"What was that?" Jem demands to know. He appears alarmed and for a second I think he'd like to shake me. Apparently, I've truly upset him.

"Nothing, I…" I take a deep breath, start again, "There was this – this saw. I'm not good with… I'm not good with them. Hearing them, I mean. Saws."

Jem's brow furrows as he looks down at me. "Which…?"

"Please don't tell me there was no saw!" I interrupt him. My voice is as hysterical as I suddenly feel.

For if there was no saw than that would mean that I'm imagining them now, even unprovoked. And that would mean…

My heart is beating faster once more.

"There was a construction site on the other side of the road," Jem replies slowly. "I don't remember hearing a saw, but maybe your hearing is just better than mine?"

My heart slows down again. I take a deep breath.

A pause stretches between us.

"I still have no idea what happened back there," Jem points out finally. He seems calmer now, his words chosen more carefully.

I turn my head, look down the side street. A big black bird lands on a rubbish bin. A few meters to its left lies a ragged grey cat. As it sees the bird, its tail starts moving, whipping from side to side.

"I did three stints in the operating theatre," I finally answer, if rather haltingly. "At first, it was interesting. Awful, yes, and sad, but also very interesting. I was learning so much. After a while, it became more of a routine. That was alright as well. Everything was fine until… until Passchendaele. There were days when half of our operations were amputations. A leg here, two arms there. It wasn't nice. So much for operations being a form of art! We didn't have time for art. It was off, off, off, as fast as possible. Whether it was pretty or not, no one cared. Whether the patients wanted it, no one asked."

I turn my head slowly, look back at Jem. He appears subdued.

"And after a while, I couldn't get the sound of the bone saw out of my head anymore. Daytime, night-time, it never stopped sawing in my head," I continue quietly. "And then, one day, I stood in the theatre and looked at a pile of legs and… in that moment, I was this close to –"

This close to what?

To not being able to bear it anymore?

To breaking?

I'm aware of Jem's eyes on me, so worried, and try to reach for a smile, but none will come.

My hands, I notice, are shaking. I hold them out in front of me, spread my fingers, but the shaking doesn't subside. My arms, too, are shaking, I realize, somewhat to my surprise. I look down. It's not just my arms and hands. My whole body is shaking.

A second later, Jem has pulled me close to him. My face is against his shoulder, his arms hold me tight. I press my nose deeper into the coarseness of his uniform, squeezing my eyes shut. He keeps me there, for several minutes, until the shaking gradually lessens.

Finally, Jem breaks the silence. "I'm no surgeon, as you well know. What you have seen in those theatres, I can only share in from afar. But we received patients coming down from the fights around Passchendaele in autumn. They didn't talk much, but there was something in their face that I haven't seen very often yet, and in this intensity, only once before.

I lean back a little, so I can look at him. His arms loosen their hold, but don't release me yet. "If you want to talk about Heaven, you must ask Walter," I tell him, "But if you want the coordinates of Hell, ask me."

"That bad," Jem replies. It's not even a question.

"Worse," I amend. Then, more pensively, I add, "Though… I guess even Passchendaele is just one of several Hells. L'Enfer must be Verdun. And the Somme, the new Styx."

Jem purses his lips. "And Gallipoli lies on its shore," he says quietly.

Of course. Gallipoli and the Dardanelles, as far away as they have always been to the rest of us, were terribly close to Jem for a very long time. The Dardanelles, where they threw hundreds of thousands of soldiers against rocky cliffs, the capture of which was maybe never possible at all. They say that most of the soldiers never reached the shore but were killed while still in the sea. Those who survived had to duck down in the shadow of the cliffs, on a small sliver of beach, always under threat from the Ottomans lying in waiting above their heads. The wounded still had to survive the evacuation to Lemnos. Lemnos, that inhospitable, waterless Greek island where Jem spent the latter half of 1915.

Silence falls between us. I let my head sink forward, lay my cheek against Jem's shoulder. His chin settles on the top of my head.

"I understand now why you had to prevent them from taking Ken's leg," Jem remarks after a while. "That was your trauma as much as it was his, wasn't it?"

I don't answer, let the words sink in instead.

Might he be right? Is this the reason for why I so desperately worked to save his leg? Because I wouldn't have been able to stand it? Because I, only days away from Passchendaele and that pile of legs, would have been unable to bear it if Ken, of all people, had shared in that fate?

The thought is new. But it rings true.

"You've done a lot for him," Jem says. There's no judgement in his voice. He's just pointing it out as fact.

I raise my shoulders, let them fall again. "I guess I did," I concur, albeit hesitatingly. "I argued and begged for him, I slept on the floor next to his bed for days. But if I'm being truthful… he helped me just as much. When I came to Arques I was… broken, somehow. Just pieces that didn't fit together anymore. Pieces that I couldn't make fit together.

"And he did?" Jem asks quietly.

I frown, deep in though. "I don't know if he fully realized it. But it helped that… that he was there. You see, in Flanders, I almost lost my belief that there was any sense in what we were doing. Ken was – my project, if you will. I could concentrate on him and forget about the rest. And when we did it, when we helped him recover… part of that belief came back then."

Jem makes a thoughtful sound. "And what would have happened if he hadn't recovered?" he asks.

"I tied my – my wholeness to… well, to him staying whole." I grimace at the unintended pun. "If he wouldn't have made it…"

I let the end of my sentence hang, stretching out and filling the air between us. We both know what it would have done to me.

"You love him, don't you?" Jem's voice is very calm. Still, I'm glad I don't have to look him in the eye.

Still, there's only the one answer. "I do."

A moment of hesitation, then –

"Strange thought," Jem remarks, but he sounds more pensive than unkind. "I mean, sure, Walter prepared me for it yesterday, but… five years ago, if anyone had tried to tell me that you and Ken Ford…" He trails off.

"He's changed." My voice has a warning edge to it.

Jem laughs softly, swaying me from side to side to indicate peacefulness. "So have you," he points out. "Five years ago, I would have warned you against that relationship. Now… I think you can hold your own against him, now."

"And that, in your opinion, is the secret to a successful marriage, yes?" I enquire pointedly.

"So he's going to marry you?" Jem counters. He's visibly alert now. I guess he's been trying to weave in that question for a while now.

I roll my eyes at him. "We will marry each other. How's that sound to you?"

I can feel him laugh.

"So you're going to hang up your nurse's veil soon?" he asks. I think the question is meant rhetorically.

"No," I answer, "I'll continue working."

Jem leans away from me, putting both hands on my shoulders to move me backwards, so we can look each other in the eye. There's surprise in his, even a certain skepticism.

Instinctively, I tilt my chin forward.

"You do realize that there are no married nurses with the CAMC?" Jem enquires cautiously.

Polly appears in front of my inner eye. Polly, who gave up her work to marry her doctor last month, only to send him off to France mere days later. He's been posted to a Field Ambulance there. And she is stuck in England, with nothing else to do but to wait until this war is over and returns him to her.

"Which is why we won't get married until after the war," I explain to Jem. My voice doesn't sound as sure as I would like.

He blinks at me, puzzled. "Does Ken know that?"

Admittedly, he has hit a sore spot there. So far, we've only touched upon the subject of marriage very cautiously, but I'm pretty sure that Ken wants to marry sooner rather than later. Understandably, maybe – he has already lost one fiancée to time. And yet –

"It's not his decision alone," I inform Jem, a little more sharply than intended, "And it's not your decision at all."

Jem raises both hands, probably in an attempt to placate me. "Hey, calm down," he counters quickly. "I just thought… would you like to hear a bit of brotherly advice?"

That I nod at all is only down to the fact that he asked beforehand.

He takes a moment to collect himself, but when he speaks, his voice is imploring. "Ken is going to be back at the front in autumn. Maybe earlier, knowing him. I can tell you that with some certainty. Maybe the war will be over by then. Maybe it's going to take another three and a half years. No one can tell you that. And with all due respect to your sense of duty, Rilla, but… you have to realize that you might be waiting a long time for that wedding. Which would probably be alright if you could be certain of it happening. But once he's back in France, nothing is certain anymore. If you marry and he dies, you will have that at least. If you wait for the war to end and he doesn't survive, you'll have nothing. Now, look at me and tell me that you won't regret that for the rest of your life!"

I don't look at him. Instead I turn away, walk a couple of steps down the street. The grey cat eyes me warily. The black bird is long gone.

"Rilla?" comes Jem's voice from behind.

Very slowly, I turn back to him. "Since when have you been so wise?" I ask, raising both eyebrows. I aim to sound blithe but don't quite succeed.

„I have been spending too much time with Walter – he's a bad influence. You, on the other hand, are evading the question," Jem shoots back with typical quick-wittedness.

I sigh, frustrated. "I know, I know. It's just that… it's not… it's not so easy. But how about this: I'll think about it, alright?"

And I know that I truly will.

The title of this chapter is taken from the song 'Auld land syne' from 1788 (lyrics taken from a poem by Robert Burns (itself probably inspired by an earlier song by James Watson), music as per a Scottish folk song (possibly 'The Miller's wedding')).