Stella does not mean to seem formidable or ungracious; Lily is a lovely woman. Stella has no way of knowing whether she was ever a lovely woman herself.
“The clothes in the wardrobe,” Stella says. “Did you have them made for me?”
“Yes, I did,” Lily says. “You must at least take those. They won’t fit anyone else.”
“I will do that, then. Thank you.”
Stella must find the Admiralty, and she does not want to waste another minute. But equally, she understands that she cannot refuse the woman who has taken such good care of her. “I will stay to eat,” she says. “But I should like to take a breath of fresh air first, if I may. Perhaps I could go out to your garden—the public garden in the center of the square.”
Lily opens a desk drawer and gives Stella the key.
Stella makes it as far as the nearest bench, the gate quivering behind her. Just inside the tall iron fence, a thinning box hedge echoes the garden’s rectangular shape. Pink town houses and a few cream-colored mansions surround the garden. Pollarded plane trees thrust upward from the ground, reminding her of arms with fists.
The air, though cool, is exhilarating. She admires a bed of late-blooming bronze roses, then later a tree, the leaves of which have done a delicate turn from pale green to gold. She hears a motorcar on an adjacent street, somewhere the rasp of coal down a chute.
“Good morning,” Dr. Bridge says as he approaches her from the gate. “I’ve just been home. I understand you plan to leave us.”
“Hello,” she says. “I am to stay to luncheon and then I must go. You and your wife have been more than generous.”
“Where exactly
will
you go?”
“I have an appointment at the Admiralty,” she says quietly.
“Indeed? You’ve said nothing about this. Well, not that I know of.”
As he is speaking, the gate clangs open again. Three children and their nanny enter. Though Stella can see Dr. Bridge speaking and even gesturing, suddenly she cannot hear his voice. Despite this, Stella feels calm as she watches the children, all under the age of ten, crisscross the lawn in a game she does not understand.
The nanny sits and waves at her charges, but she looks, with her drawn face and slouch, worn and frayed. From time to time, a girl disappears into the evergreen bushes, later to emerge triumphant. All the anxiety Stella has felt since arriving in London disappears, and it is as though she inhabits a cocoon of warmth and light.
It is only when the children go off with their nanny that sound startles Stella: shifting leaves, motorcars, horses’ hooves on pavement, men in conversation, a woman raising her voice. She does not question the disappearance and appearance of her hearing, since this is not the first time it has happened.
“I think we’d better go back to the house,” Dr. Bridge says, looking at her oddly.
A fire has been laid adjacent to a round walnut dining table. Stella notices that two places have been set. In a sapphire-blue day dress, Lily gestures for Stella to sit, but she is confused. Where is the third place?
“I have to return to the settlement house,” Lily says, answering Stella’s unspoken question.
“I hope they won’t keep you too long,” Dr. Bridge says. “For once I should be on time for dinner tonight.”
“Are you uncomfortable?” Dr. Bridge asks when Stella has settled into her chair. Like many surgeons Stella has known, he is a man to get straight to the point.
“Yes and no,” she answers as Streeter enters with bowls of what he announces is oxtail soup. “I am grateful for your hospitality. But I worry that I am using up your valuable time at the clinic.”
“The clinic is well staffed. We have patients suffering from intense though as yet undiagnosed head pain remaining for observation, while others, recovering from cranial surgery, recuperate.” The butler offers them both bread and butter. Dr. Bridge eats like a man who knows to the precise minute how much time he has left to finish his meal. Stella has seen this among men and women at the front.
“Yesterday,” he says, “I had a particularly challenging case. An officer with the British Expeditionary Force was sent to my clinic directly after his stay at the Royal Victoria Hospital. His lower mandible had been shot away, and some attempt at crude reconstruction had been made. I assume you have seen similar cases.”
He is trying to put them on an equal footing—professional to semiprofessional—another kindness Stella much appreciates, but his anecdote tightens her stomach. “I never saw the reconstruction,” she says, picking up her spoon.
“Where were you exactly?”
“Just before my leave, I was billeted at Marne with the French infantry. You were speaking of your patient?”
Dr. Bridge is not an unhandsome man, and she puts him in his late thirties. Though he is careful in his dress and his speech, she senses an ebullience kept tightly bound, as if he had reluctantly left his youth behind.
“When the patient arrived, his lower jaw was badly infected, and I could see that to save the man, the reconstruction would have to be cut away, the infected tissue abraded, and a recovery period endured before we could implant a better device for him. When the officer received this news, he had to be restrained. Having already survived one painful surgery, he was understandably unhappy at the notion of undoing that work, having to live with the misery of saliva constantly dripping from his open wound, and going through all that surgery again. Do these details upset you?”
“Not at all,” she says. “Though I am sympathetic.”
“The patient began to shout and flail, and I wondered for a moment if his mind hadn’t been permanently affected as well.”
“I have seen men whose minds have been severely affected by combat.”
“Have you?” Dr. Bridge asks, staring intently at Stella.
Streeter removes the bowls and sets down pear salads. As they wait for him to leave, Stella finds herself intrigued by a portrait on the wall of a woman who clearly is not Lily.
“My mother,” Dr. Bridge says, noting Stella’s gaze. “This was her house, which I inherited upon her death. It’s too big for us, really. We are lucky to have Streeter. He injured his leg early in the war, poor man. We have Iris, whom you’ve met, and Mrs. Ryan, our cook, and Mary Dodsworth, who is our chauffeur. Her husband, Robert, used to drive the Austin before he went to the front. We only use the motorcar when going any distance. In these times of scarcity, we lend it to friends who have necessary errands. Indeed…” He pauses. “I have often been called upon to tend to a wife or a father who has had the worst possible news.”
The car has been used for funerals. Stella hopes there has been a wedding or two as well.
The doctor sets his bowl aside. Stella picks up her fork. To her knowledge, she has never eaten pears, and she savors each slice. A faint smell of fish cooking in a pan drifts into the dining room.
“I signed up to go to France,” the doctor says, “but I was disqualified because of scoliosis and abysmal eyesight. The fact that my spine doesn’t bother me one bit or that my sight is easily corrected did not, I’m afraid, budge the board. ‘We need you here, too,’ they said by way of consolation.” The doctor looks off as if still angry.
“That must have been difficult for you,” Stella offers.
“And later, when it became clear that Englishmen were being slaughtered across the Channel and replacements were needed, I tried again, and again I was refused. I have contented myself with treating some of the most severe head wounds that return by hospital ship. I often deal with patients as soon as their trains pull into Waterloo.”
“You are doing important work,” Stella says.
“No more than any other man.” He looks at her. “Or woman.”
Stella feels a tingling in her feet.
Oh, please. God, no.
She holds her breath a moment, and the tingling subsides.
“You were going to leave us before I even came home?” Dr. Bridge inquires.
“It was not out of disrespect,” Stella says. “I felt it was time to be on my way. Your wife persuaded me to stay.”
He laughs. “She has amazing powers.” He smiles to indicate that these powers are benign and usually put to good purpose. “Why did you come from America to Europe, and how did you get here? Perhaps you’ve talked about this already with Lily.”
“Sometimes it all seems a blur,” she answers, half smiling, trying to make the answer seem as casual as possible. Lily
had
asked her the same question, early on in her stay, and Stella had been guarded then as well.
“You have a soft voice for someone of your height. You’re nearly as tall as I am. Six feet?”
“Do you always ask your guests such personal questions?” she asks, again feeling the tingling in her legs.
“Surgeons are rude. I’m sorry. I suppose we think we can get away with it.”
“You have seen dreadful cases.”
“As have you. Did you enjoy your war work, however exhausting?”
“I can’t believe anyone enjoys such work, but I did appreciate the obliteration of thought.”
“You were trying to blot out memories.”
She shakes her head quickly, a sign to desist, but he presses on.
“I can’t help but think,” he says, “that someone who tried to get to Europe during a war—a war in which her country wasn’t even involved—was either running away from something unpleasant in America or was searching in the most desperate, the most dangerous of ways for the obliteration of self that you speak of.”
Stella scoots her chair away from the table and puts her hands on her thighs. She clenches her jaw. Dr. Bridge looks bewildered and stands, but she waves him off with a sudden harsh movement of her hand.
She bends and rubs her legs through the cloth of her skirt, from the tops of her thighs down to her ankles, along the sides of her calves, and up to her thighs again. She is aware that these gestures might be seen as improper, but she is in too much pain to care. Unable to control herself, she utters small, gruff cries. The doctor stands beside her with his hands open.
The pain is unspeakable, and she cannot assuage it no matter how hard she tries. She rubs her legs with increasing frequency and finds it mortifying to be acting in this way in the dining room of a man she barely knows. If she could manage it, she would stand and run out of the house.
“Miss Bain, what is it?”
She is unable to speak for fear of uttering an ugly sound.
“Is the pain terrible? Would morphine help?”
Stella shakes her head.
After a time—fifteen minutes or forty—Stella unclenches her jaw. Her arms tremble, as if she were cold. She wants to be anywhere but in this dining room. The doctor holds her water glass to her lips. After she has taken a sip, she hunches over herself.
“What happened to you just then?” Dr. Bridge asks. That he of all people should have seen the attack is unbearable to Stella, because she knows he will not let it go. But there is no use denying what was perfectly visible. “My legs hurt,” she says plainly.
“Do they now?”
“No, the pain is gone.”
“Completely gone?”
“Yes.”
“Can you describe it?”
For a few minutes, Stella remains silent, and he does not interrupt that silence.
“I have recurring pain in my legs,” Stella says finally, “as well as a deafness that is quite real when it happens.” She pauses. “Just then it felt as though someone were running a wheel with pins up and down my legs, only the pins were digging deep into my bones.”
“I’m so sorry,” he says.
She takes a handkerchief from her cuff and blots her face, knowing that her scalp is wet. She has another long sip of water. “I’m embarrassed.”
“No need to be. No need at all. It was, I could see, completely beyond your control. The pain looked ghastly. Have you ever broken your legs? Bad fractures can result in lifelong intermittent pain.”
She considers how much to tell him. “Seven months ago, I was found unconscious with shrapnel in my feet. The shrapnel was removed, but I had very little infection. It would be tempting to think that was the cause, but most of the time, I haven’t any pain and am perfectly able to walk.”
“Your feet don’t hurt?”
“They did immediately after the surgery to remove the shrapnel, but they healed well.”
“Forgive me for my direct questions,” the doctor says. “It’s mystifying. Do you suffer from arthritis?”
She laughs, feeling giddy as she always does after the cessation of pain. “You think I’m that old?”
“No,” he answers, coloring. “Arthritis can affect the very young, as you know. Do episodes such as the one that just occurred happen often?”
“I don’t know what ‘often’ means.”
“Once a day? Once a month?”
“It has no schedule.”
The tops of her thighs are sore from the rubbing, and she wants nothing more than to lie down. She thinks of excusing herself and going straight up to the room she so recently left.
Dr. Bridge resumes his seat and rests his chin on his hand. The sunlight through the window glints off his spectacles. She is a puzzle to him, one he thinks he ought to be able to solve. She is a puzzle to herself.
“I thought you went deaf in the garden.”
“Yes.”
The doctor appears to ponder that episode. His roving eyes convey his desire to understand. “Have these occurrences increased in frequency?”
She thinks a minute. “Yes, I suppose they have.”
He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Think back to the moment when you first had the pains in your legs or felt yourself going deaf.”
Stella does not like the memory. “I was driving an ambulance from near the front to the hospital camp. I had a sudden and severe pain in my legs, so much so that I had to stop the ambulance, which I had been told never to do. Getting the wounded to the camp was urgent. I didn’t know what had happened or how long the duration of the pain would be. At first, I thought I had been hit.”
“With a bullet or shrapnel.”
“Yes. But when I finally made it back to our camp, I examined myself and could find no blood or wound.”
Dr. Bridge considers her answer. “Did you tell anyone about the pain?”