Outside the main gate he waited for a few minutes, making sure that no one else was going to appear and want to know what he was doing there. He ran behind a tree to take care of some personal business and then, feeling that now was as good a time as any, sprinted up the driveway as fast as his legs could carry him. Through the front doors of the hospital, a dog appeared and growled at him, and Alfie stopped dead. He was a bit afraid of dogs; he had been ever since he’d been three and Jack Tamorin from number twenty’s terrier had snapped at his hand while he was trying to feed it a bone. He watched, waiting to see what happened, but the dog seemed to lose interest in him and finally trotted back indoors and out of sight.
Who would bring a dog into a hospital? wondered Alfie. It didn’t seem very hygienic.
A window opened behind him, and he pressed himself against a wall as a young woman’s head leaned out and looked down the drive. He was so close to her that he could have reached up and touched her, but she didn’t glance down under the windowsill, just out toward the gates.
“There’s no one there, Bessie,” she said, turning back. “You’re seeing things, you are. You’ve gone barmy. You need your Henry back, that’s what you need.”
“Chance’d be a fine thing,” replied an unseen person from inside. “He was somewhere outside Antwerp, last I heard. I’ll be lucky if I see him again this side of Christmas.”
“It’ll all be over by Christmas,” said the first girl, closing the window again, and whatever the response was to that, Alfie didn’t hear. But he hoped it was suitably unimpressed.
He slipped around the corner of the building and down the path toward the gap in the hedge where the patients had been sitting outside in the sunshine the previous week, hoping that the young man with the lank dark hair who had grabbed his arm wouldn’t be there, but this part of the garden was empty today; all the men must be indoors. The table that had held the newspapers and apples was still there, a blackbird perched on top of it, its head darting around as it scanned the tabletop for crumbs. Alfie stepped out into the clearing beyond and discovered two men sitting in wheelchairs. They both looked perfectly peaceful but were not speaking to each other. The second man had his back turned, like Georgie had the previous week, so Alfie couldn’t make out his face.
“Hello there,” said the man closest to him, putting his book down on his lap and taking his spectacles off. “And who might you be?”
Alfie looked at him and hesitated; he didn’t want to get into any conversations with the men today but thought it best not to antagonize anyone in case they called for a doctor or nurse.
“Alfie Summerfield,” he said.
“I had a brother called Alfie,” said the man, smiling at him. “His number got called at Ypres. Damned difficult word to say, Ypres, don’t you think? It took me a long time to get it right.”
“Yes, sir,” said Alfie, stepping past him to make his way down to the man at the end.
“Don’t go,” said the man, and something in his voice, something pleading, made Alfie stop and look at him. He wasn’t really that old. No more than twenty-five. He didn’t look as if he’d suffered any injuries and seemed to have recently had a wash as he smelled of soap and his hair was fluffy. “What are you doing here anyway? We don’t get many boys your age around here. None at all, in fact.”
“I’m looking for my dad,” said Alfie.
“Is he a doctor?”
Alfie was about to say no, that he was a patient, but thought better of it. “Yes,” he said. “I thought he might be out here.”
“We only see the doctors indoors,” said the man. “The nurses come and look after us here. Good thing too—they’re a far prettier lot. But tell me, where were you?”
Alfie stared at him, uncertain what the question meant. “Where was I?” he asked.
“Yes, where were you? France or Belgium?”
Alfie frowned. “Neither,” he said.
The man leaned forward and frowned. “You’re not a conchie, are you?”
“No, sir.”
“Oh, all right then,” he said with a sigh, leaning back. “It hurts, doesn’t it?”
“What does?” asked Alfie.
“Don’t you hear it in your head? I do. Although it’s peaceful in the garden. I ask them to bring me out here, regardless of the weather. Can’t stand it inside. All that wailing and gnashing of teeth. It’s positively biblical at times.”
As if on cue, there was a loud bang from the house, something like a door slamming as the wind rushed through a hallway. Alfie spun around in that direction, and when he looked back at the man, his eyes were closed and he seemed to be counting slowly in his head.
“Dr. Ridgewell tells me to do this,” he said after a moment, opening his eyes and attempting a smile. “I’m quite all right, really. I’m being sent home on Monday. What day is today?”
“Monday,” said Alfie.
“Oh,” replied the man, considering this. “Then they must have got it wrong. It’s a difficult word to say, isn’t it? Ypres. But then, that’s the French for you. They don’t like to make things easy. I knew a girl in Paris, you know. Fine little thing. Worked in a bistro off the avenue de la Motte-Picquet. Thought about marrying her, but I know what my father would have said if I’d brought her home. Can’t stand the Continentals, you see. And he has money, so he assumes everyone wants some of it. Never cared for money much, myself. Easy to say, I suppose, when you have a lot of it.”
Alfie looked toward the man at the end of the garden, and, as if he felt the boy’s eyes on him, he turned around. It wasn’t his dad.
“I have to go,” said Alfie.
“Off on your rounds, are you? You’re young for a doctor, but I suppose we must all chip in at these times.”
Alfie nodded and stepped away. He hated it here. He hated this place and he hated these people. Being at this hospital was like stepping into the middle of a nightmare where nothing anyone said made any sense. The men were all confused, living partly in the present, partly in the past, and partly in some no-man’s-land that they marched across, trying to dodge bullets and failing, flailing, falling. He was doing the right thing getting his dad away from here, he was sure of it. He picked up the duffel bag and made his way through the hedge and over toward the hospital.
He stood outside now, dreading the idea of going back inside, but there was no way around it. He had hoped that he would discover Georgie out in the grounds and that they could make their escape together, but this hadn’t happened and he would have to go in search of him.
In one of those terrible wards.
He threw the duffel bag behind a potted plant and opened the door, poking his head inside. The coast was clear. There was a staircase halfway down the corridor and he looked up; it was at least three stories high, with rooms on the perimeter of every floor. His heart sank, wondering how on earth he would ever find his dad in so large a place.
In front of him was the nurses’ station where he had been discovered the last time, and he walked quickly toward it, pleased to see that there was no one there now. If the angry doctor found him again, he’d never believe his story about being the milkman’s son. He looked around, stepped behind the desk, and as he did so he saw Dr. Ridgewell, whose shoes he had shined twice now, emerging from one of the wards with another doctor, younger and nervous-looking, and he slipped down behind the counter, hoping that they wouldn’t come around to this side.