“I don’t know.”
A handsome face, even with its injuries. A full head of hair has been mussed about, as in a wind. The jawline is strong, the half lip full. The good eye and cheekbone suggest strength and steadiness.
“There are parts of the face missing,” Dr. Bridge says.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Why this face?”
“It was quite clear to me in my mind. I’ve done another.”
The same man in profile. Grime in the wrinkles of his neck. Most distinctive is the shape of the head, with its almost Egyptian curve at the back.
“How I would have liked to have drawings of heads like these before I performed operations on the men I’ve treated,” the doctor says. “But what a waste of your talents that would have been.”
Stella cannot think of any better use for them.
“The man you’ve drawn here: is this someone you seek at the Admiralty?”
Dr. Bridge moves slightly away, and Stella turns to him. “I can’t picture at all the man or woman I seek at the Admiralty. It’s not a memory or a dream, merely a strong urge to go there.”
“I’m sorry you haven’t had better luck. Do you intend to continue, knowing how unlikely it is you’ll encounter this person?”
She can feel herself blushing. “I’m certain that if I could get inside the building, I would find what I’m looking for.”
“I may be able to help you with that,” Dr. Bridge offers. “I’ll go with you. There’s an old friend of mine there, an officer. I’m sure he’ll leave our names with the guard. Perhaps after Christmas week? I might have done this sooner for you, but I was hoping that you would let the concept of the Admiralty go and try to solve your problems through our discussions. But when I saw how our walk in the garden caused such a stir, I reconsidered.”
Stella is amazed.
“We shouldn’t be too hopeful about the visit,” Dr. Bridge warns.
Two days later, after several pleasantries, Dr. Bridge asks to see the drawings again. He stops at the face. “I’m wondering if you connect this man with the garden.”
The comment surprises her. “No.”
“In sequence, you went straight from the garden to the man. In the last picture in the series of the garden, the flowers are trampled, and you yourself suggested France. Is there a link between tangled flowers and the face?”
Stella closes her eyes. “There must be,” she says. “But I can’t see anything apart from the obvious. Soldiers often ruined flowers in France. The landscape has been devastated. Perhaps he is a soldier?”
“Or maybe something at that house, in that garden, was ruined, causing you to make the link between the garden and France.”
“I have another drawing,” she says, wanting to change the subject.
He takes the paper from her and sets it on top of the others. “I take it this is the OAB? The Admiralty?”
“The side entrance.”
“You couldn’t finish the man coming out the door.”
Stella shakes her head.
“Is this the person you hope to meet?”
“Possibly.”
“It’s interesting he’s not in uniform.”
A uniform never occurred to Stella. The faceless man is tall and well dressed.
“You’ve written ‘Unfinished’ over the drawing,” Dr. Bridge says.
“I was frustrated.”
She has drawn the lines of masonry, the wrought-iron gate, and the figure of the guard who stands just outside the entrance. The frame of the drawing encompasses the doorway and the immediate environs. She has depicted the back end of a motorcar waiting at the right-hand side of the page. Stella has filled in the rest of the sketch with lines that show depth, shadow, and texture.
When the drawing was true, the pencil moved with ease. When she began to stray from authenticity, the marks had to be erased.
“It’s as if the drawing were trying to tell you something,” Dr. Bridge says, lightly tapping the sketch with the backs of his fingernails.
“Maybe,” she says. “When the drawing was almost completed, I put the tip of my pencil to the paper and waited. I tried to erase all preconceptions. It was a man and not a woman I sought—I was sure of this. I made soft circles with my pencil, hoping the touch of lead on paper would open a door in my mind. But the frustration built again.”
Stella has drawn trousers, one knee bent as it descends a step. The angle of the knee and of the body suggest haste. Of course, she thinks now. It is raining. The man has no overcoat or umbrella.
She has perfected the tailoring of his suit coat. His arms are full of folders, like those of a schoolboy hurrying home. The figure is not that of a boy, however, but of a man, slim but not emaciated.
“The neck and face of the man descending the steps seemed to vanish from the drawing as if—
poof!
—by magic,” she explains. “But I’ve never seen that man in any doorway of any city.”
“I wonder if that’s true,” Dr. Bridge ventures.
Just before Christmas and before the Bridges are to leave for Lily’s family’s place in Greenwich, they give Stella a present during dinner. Inside a beautifully wrapped box is an abundance of good sketching paper, a series of pencils of different sizes, several erasers, and—the highlight of the gift—a set of watercolors. Though she cannot remember ever having celebrated Christmas, Stella is touched by their generosity. “I shall try a watercolor of your lovely drawing room as my present to you,” she offers.
“You have a wonderful talent,” Lily states. “Simply allowing you the space and time to pursue it is gift enough for August and me. Don’t you agree, August?”
“I do indeed.”
Stella would like to know who actually purchased the supplies. Lily? Dr. Bridge? The two of them together?
Invited to accompany them to Greenwich, Stella decides instead to stay home on the grounds that she would feel uncomfortable among strangers at such an intimate family affair. Lily and Dr. Bridge protest, but in the end, they leave Stella on her own with Mrs. Ryan and Streeter, who presents Stella with a roast beef dinner on Christmas Day.
“Oh, but this is too much,” she blurts before realizing how much work it was for Mrs. Ryan to make the meal, and that both she and Streeter have taken time away from their own holidays to be with her. “But I shall happily try,” she says, looking up and smiling.
A heavy snow falls while the Bridges are gone. Because Stella doesn’t remember ever having seen snow and is keen to go out into it, she asks Streeter if he has any rubber boots she might wear. He finds her a pair that are too big, but she is pleased to have them. During the storm, she makes her way to the gate of the garden in the middle of Bryanston Square. How silent it is! She forges a path to the rose crescent and marvels at the shapes the snow has made on the dead blooms. She would like to know where the garden she drew was located. She gazes again at the snow-blurred houses that surround the garden. The only indication they are inhabited is the smoke rising from the chimneys. She thinks of Dr. Bridge in Greenwich. What do families do on a holiday when they are all together? Is Dr. Bridge an entirely different man in such a situation?
After the Christmas holiday, Dr. Bridge and Stella once again find themselves in the orangery.
“Living with memory loss has meant a life of frustration,” Stella says. “How did the soldiers I met in the hospital camp survive memory loss? Did they go mad, as I sometimes think I will? Occasionally, in my room, I want to lash out and hit something with all my strength. Again and again.”
She puts her hand on a drawing similar to the last one he saw, that of the man at the Admiralty. She looks up at Dr. Bridge. “I believe I’m getting closer to recovering my memory—day by day, even hour by hour. But in the interim, my frustration is growing. It was easier, I think, when I simply accepted that my past was gone. I was calmer then.”
“But ill nevertheless.”
“Yes.”
“You feel better now?”
She turns away and stares at a barren orange tree. “That would be hard to say.”
“I have an idea,” he says. “Can you draw a self-portrait?”
“Here? Now?”
“Yes. I think it might be a good idea. Have you tried it before?”
“No.”
“Will you do it?”
She hesitates. “I’ll have to fetch my pad and pencil.”
“By all means,” he says, gesturing toward the stairs.
When she returns, Stella sits near Dr. Bridge so that he can see as she draws. She opens her pad and selects from three pencils the one with the best point. “Streeter sharpens these for me,” she says.
“Does he?”
She draws a line and stops. “This is awkward,” she says. “Embarrassing. I do this only in private. I feel as though I’m about to undress myself.”
“Pretend I’m a patient you’re trying to distract.”
“Where are you wounded?” she asks.
“I’ve been shot in the leg. It’s supposedly healing well, though I’m liable to whine with the pain. Also, I’m cranky.”
She smiles. “Then I shall make you behave,” she says and begins to move her pencil.
She draws herself inside a hospital camp. She sketches out her shape in uniform, her posture bent toward a wounded soldier. She leaves that to fill in the background: cots, soldiers, surgeons, nurses, canvas, and bandages. Men sleeping. Men receiving medicine. A man, clearly dead, his mouth open as if in a long yawn. There is a bucket for water; a glimpse into another tent, where surgery is being performed. She draws swiftly and with purpose, removing lines from time to time with her gum eraser. She applies shadow and light and gradations of what is meant to be color. She wants to convey the blue of the officers’ uniforms, the red crosses on the nurses’ bibs. She wishes to describe the texture of the canvas of the tent and to see through it a kind of daylight beyond.
“My God,” Dr. Bridge says, startling her. “Any newspaper would employ you this very day. To be able to illustrate so well and with such detail! I feel as though I’m seeing something I’ve only been able to imagine. Really, Stella, this is remarkable.”
When everything has been completed to her satisfaction, she fills in her uniform, the folds of the skirt, the texture of the fabric, her hands as they flow from the starched white cuffs, the roundness of the bib meant to hide the breasts, the folded cloth that becomes a cap.
She pauses.
“I can’t do it,” she says, her pencil stopped at a place that might be a chin.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I see it all, everything. Except for my face. The pencil just quits.”
“You can see your face in a mirror?”
“Yes, but I can’t draw it.”
“Rest a moment,” Dr. Bridge suggests. “Close your eyes. Try to see the face.”
She lets the pencil drop into her lap, stretches her fingers, and then shakes her hand out. Only then does she ease her head back against the cushion. Above her, gray clouds spin about the dome. She closes her eyes. Her throat elongated, she feels vulnerable. She can hear Dr. Bridge breathing quietly beside her.
After some minutes, she sits up. “It’s no good. It won’t come. I have no face to draw.”
“You have a beautiful face,” he blurts out.
She believes he meant the compliment as encouragement. Instead, it sounded like an unintended slip. Can a man possibly care for a woman who is not herself? A woman who, with any luck, might change into someone else? Can a woman who is not herself truly care for another?
She gathers her materials and stands. “So you’ll take me to the Admiralty?” she asks quietly. She hands him the unfinished drawing.
“We’ll go a week from today.”
T
he rain spits sideways in great gusts as Mary Dodsworth brings the motorcar around. Dr. Bridge’s black umbrella, with which he hopes to shield Stella on the way from the house to the vehicle, blows inside out the moment he opens it. Dr. Bridge and Stella run for the car and duck inside, their outer garments beaded up with water. Dr. Bridge has made arrangements with a rear admiral he knows for a noon appointment at the Admiralty. Between them, it has been decided that Albion Tillman will keep Dr. Bridge and Stella waiting in an area through which most personnel pass either going to or coming from the canteen during the lunch hour. The delay will be tedious, but it is, after all, the point of the excursion: Stella will have an opportunity to scan the passersby for the man she seeks.
Stella has her uniform on, the white bib over the blue dress, her hair fixed neatly under the white cloth that ties in the back to make a cap.
“You remind me of the Miss Bain I met when you came to us. But now you have regained your health. Are you sure the uniform is wise? Someone may query you as to your posting.”
“I’ll be taken more seriously in my quest to find my ‘brother,’ who went to sea to participate in the Battle of Jutland and from whom I’ve heard nothing.”
“Tillman knows this is a false request.”
“Yes, but we may encounter an underling. I’ve found that, for a woman, a uniform enhances her status.”
“For a man as well,” Dr. Bridge says beside her, and she imagines he may be nursing that old wound. They journey along George Street, through Baker Street, to Oxford Street, none of them marked with a signpost.
Is it possible that in a matter of hours she will find the man she is looking for?
When Mary Dodsworth gives Dr. Bridge’s name at the Admiralty gate, the Austin is allowed to pass through. Stella sucks in a long breath as they reach the courtyard. Already this is farther than she has ever been.
Despite an attempt to appear normal, she stumbles when Dr. Bridge helps her out of the vehicle.
“Steady now,” he says in a quiet voice. “You’re distressed at the mystery surrounding your brother’s disappearance, but you’re not afraid to be here. In fact, the opposite. You demand information.”
“Yes, of course,” she says, but something more complicated than fear grips her.
Inside the stately lobby, now defaced with handwritten signs and temporary desks, boots ring out with authority on the marble floor as men in uniform come and go. Dr. Bridge and Stella visit reception and inquire about an appointment with Rear Admiral Albion Tillman. The receptionist, a woman in a Wren uniform, makes the call and tells them that there will be a slight wait. Would they care to take one of the benches against the marble wall? She will alert them when Tillman becomes available.