‘Go on, Stanley, go on to the hospital. I’m to take the horses up to the Front for the Artillery. Go on, son, and I’ll come for you as soon as I come down the line.’
Guided on by orderlies, the queue shuffled forward into a hushed, tented area. There were whispering, bustling voices. A nurse was snipping through Stanley’s uniform, unwinding his field dressing, cleaning his wound.
‘Pre-op tent,’ she said. Stanley’s boots were unlaced and he was lowered on to a bed.
His pain unravelled, and he slid away.
27 April 1918
Casualty Clearing Station, Crouay
Everything was quiet. The men around Stanley were sleeping. He’d been moved to an evacuation tent. He knew he had a sign above his bed, that it said ‘GAS CASE, MODERATE’. Pain pounded the front of his head. His every breath was quick and forced, every cough a knife wound. Nurse said his eyelids were swollen and sticky, the eyelashes burned away. Nurse’s voice was always tired and sad. She said they had beds for three hundred and fifty men, but there were thousands here, more wounded streaming in, that in corridors, in the spaces between beds, men lay unattended, dying.
How long had Stanley been here? He must go and find Soldier. Soldier would be hungry now, his wounds must be treated. Stanley mustn’t be evacuated, not till he’d found Soldier. When Nurse came round Stanley would ask for help but now he was too drugged, his limbs drowsy and leaden. He must let himself drift away.
‘Now, keep still. I’ll put some drops in your eyes. There, keep still.’
Twice a day the goggles on his eyes were removed.
‘Well done, now the other one. It’s been three days now and your arm’s healing ever so well. Today we’ll take the goggles off for good, put bandages on instead, and we’ll hope for the best.’
When Nurse came round again, she put him in fresh flannelette pyjamas. She gave him a bowl of milk and rice and told him that his lungs would recover, but said nothing about his eyes. Stanley didn’t want milk and rice. He wasn’t hungry unless it was for soft toast and honey, but the pyjamas felt cool against his burning skin.
‘Stay with me a little,’ he whispered. They were the first words he’d spoken since arriving here but he hadn’t tripped over them, they’d come out as he wanted them to. ‘Will you take my bandages off?’ Nurse was silent. ‘My dog is out there, Nurse, Dog number 2176. I must go and get him. Will you take the bandages off my eyes?’
Nurse didn’t answer, but she sat by Stanley for a while in silence, holding his hand in hers.
‘When will you take away the bandages so that I can see?’
Still Nurse didn’t answer. After a while she kissed his forehead and Stanley felt what may or may not have been a tear falling beside the kiss.
In the morning the Medical Orderly told Stanley that he was quite blind, that there was only a small chance of his eyes recovering.
‘How small?’ Stanley’s voice wobbled and frayed like a child’s. He didn’t hear the orderly’s answer, if there was one.
Outside shells were falling somewhere. Were they falling where Tom was? Where Soldier was? Where Da was? It was, thought Stanley, after all, easier not to see in such a world. He lay awake dreading the night which came and gave him back his day, for when he slept, he’d dream as though he had his sight again and he’d see only what he’d already seen, the breakneck run, the torn and sprawling limbs.
Nurse came and stood by him and put a good, cold sponge on his forehead. She told Stanley she was changing the sign above his bed, that it said ‘BLIGHTY’, that he’d be going home, and she sounded pleased for him.
‘Did they find him? Did they bring my dog back?’
Stanley felt the cold sponge on his forehead again, but heard no answer.
‘Dog number 2176. I have to find my dog—’
‘There, there . . . You’ll feel better in the morning.’
Home meant nothing without Soldier, without Da, without Tom. Stanley couldn’t leave France without Soldier. He’d come so far, but had caused nothing but harm. He’d led his own innocent dog into an inferno, his own elderly father into a world of senseless death.
On the third day his bandages were removed and replaced with a thin layer of gauze. Stanley opened his eyes. He saw shapes and shadows but he thought only of Soldier, of Da, of Tom. The wound on his arm was healing but he must try to keep it still. That afternoon, still as weak and blind as a newborn puppy, Stanley was moved, by hospital train, further from the Front, from Soldier, to the General Hospital at Etaples.
On her night-time round, a nurse called Queenie washed Stanley’s eyes and applied ointment.
‘There’s a brand new moon out there, just there, in the window above your head. You must turn your money and wish. Wish, Stanley, that you’re lucky and your eyes keep getting better.’
She went on down the ward, with a hopeful thought for each man. She reached the door and paused. Stanley could see movement – she’d be buttoning her coat perhaps? Queenie called out a cheery goodnight. There was another movement somewhere along the row of beds, between the door and Stanley. Someone was standing up on his bed, had begun to sing in a good baritone.
‘Come on now – altogether, boys.’
The whole ward joined in an enthusiastic chorus. Queenie helped her troubadour from his bed and – were they dancing? Stanley heard the soft patter of his bare feet, her shoes, on the boards, saw her dark coat, his pale pyjamas – they were! They were dancing, twirling up and down between the beds, as lightly as though they’d never seen a war. Stanley would never be able to do that, would never dance like that, with so light a heart.
The next night there was a concert. There was lemonade, biscuits, sweets, cigarettes. Queenie sat beside Stanley on an upturned crate. Catcalls, whistles and applause greeted each act. Stanley’s left arm was still bandaged so Queenie joined her left hand to Stanley’s right to make two to clap with. A group of men came on stage. Stanley could see them, see the shapes of them – it was true what Queenie said, that his eyes were getting better.
When the audience was finally silent, the men on stage began to sing, ‘Hush, here comes a whizz-bang . . .’
There was a pause, an expectant silence. Then the ear-piercing screech of an approaching shell, growing louder, mad confusion as men dived for cover under chairs, tables, crates. The screech curved away and died without an explosion. There was a loud, stagey whisper: ‘Where did that one go to, ’Erbert?’
Roaring with laughter, men crawled out, laughing at their own fear, laughing that they’d been so fooled by a recording.
Alone amidst the clattering of chairs and the relieved laughter, Stanley was numb with fear, glued to his chair, his knuckles white where they gripped his knees. He saw Soldier’s joyous, weightless gallop, his laughing jaws and narrowed, smiling eyes. He saw too a spume of earth erupting and the shattered, sprawling limbs.
Jagged convulsions rattled Stanley’s body. He whimpered helplessly. Queenie wrapped him in his blanket and led him from the room.
PART III
8 June 1918
St Dunstan’s Hostel for the Blinded, Regent’s Park, London
Stanley smelt fresh-cut grass. He heard breeze in the rustling acacia and he heard birdsong, but the birdsong and the breeze were muffled and dislocated, like distant memories from far beyond or below the din of a war, which screeched still in his ears.