Slowly, ringing replaced the silence. And then came the noise of falling pieces of rock and stone and slate and glass.
And screams. So many screams.
He couldn’t move. He tried, or might have tried, but the pain was a blinding white fire that blended with the screams and the shouts and the sirens and the continued crash of falling debris. Time shattered. And then the world went utterly black again.
SATURDAY, 30 MARCH 1918
Lily placed the last of the rolled bandages in the cupboard where they belonged, checked the clock on the wall, and reached a hand down to her pocket. Her camera was there, as always. She’d used it this morning to take a few snapshots of patients who would soon be released and a few more of soldiers bound to call Charing Cross Hospital home for weeks yet, but who were eager to send something home to wives or mothers.
It was a little thing. But it brought a smile to their faces. It brought one to hers, too, as she turned toward the office at the end of the fourth-floor ward, where she’d just seen Arabelle go. Lily followed with a loud enough step to warn her friend that she wasn’t alone.
Ara turned at her desk, which was stacked so high with papers that they looked about to topple, and grinned. “Come to do all my paperwork for me?”
Lily laughed and leaned into the doorframe. “Not a chance. You’re the one who agreed to take your old position back.”
Though she made a show of grumpiness—hands on hips and an admirable scowl—there was no covering the pleasure in Arabelle’s eyes. She loved her job here in the same way that Lily loved her work at the retouching desk at the OB. It must have broken her heart to resign a few weeks ago in the face of her fiancé’s supposed legal trouble, but the board of directors had been quick to offer her position back to her after his name had been cleared. And praise the Lord, she’d accepted. Lily enjoyed working under Ara the most.
“Had I realized no one was keeping up with it while I was gone, I may have reconsidered their apology.” Arabelle shrugged and pulled out her chair. “I imagine your shift is over?”
Lily nodded. “But I wanted to catch you before I left. Mama asked me to invite you and your fiancé to dinner at your earliest convenience. Perhaps next Saturday?”
The light in Ara’s eyes was bright as a flash now, and her smile pure joy. Not at the prospect of dinner, but at the words your fiancé. Ara had been engaged before, and it hadn’t ever made her glow like this. It had just been the status quo. But Major Phillip Camden had made something altogether new come to life in her. “That sounds lovely. I’ll ask Cam if the date is convenient.”
Lily darted a glance toward the framed photograph of Arabelle and Camden that proudly hung on Ara’s wall. It had been the first thing Ara had brought back in with her. Hanging the picture was more statement to the administrators than anything, Lily knew. A clear declaration that people were more important than any position.
She was glad to have provided Ara with the symbol. She’d taken it without Ara and Cam knowing it, weeks before their engagement. She’d wanted to do something to congratulate her friend on the promotion from nurse to ward matron, so she’d taken the snapshot of them smiling at each other and put them on a prettier background—London still, but in the springtime, with trees in bloom all around them and the sunlight at the perfect angle.
Mama never minded that sort of change to a photograph, one meant to better display the subjects. It was much like what she did in her paintings. It was, she would say, the use of art that she took issue with. Pleasing a friend—that was lovely. But deceiving someone, even if that someone was the enemy . . .
Lily shook off that thought and refocused on the framed picture. It made her heart happy to see it so boldly on display, no matter Arabelle’s purpose in hanging it. “If Saturday doesn’t work, just let us know when will. My mother is always happy to have dinner guests.”
Arabelle smiled and leaned against her desk. Her gaze, however, she kept leveled on Lily. “Lil . . . I haven’t had a chance yet to thank you. For what you did to help Cam.”
Lily glanced over her shoulder. There was no one about to overhear, as far as she could tell. Even so, it wouldn’t do to mix her two worlds. She slipped fully into the office and clicked the door shut. Her answering smile felt weak and shaky around the edges. “It was nothing, Ara. A simple task from the admiral. It took me but an hour.”
“Even so.” Arabelle was nothing if not discreet. She pitched her voice to a whisper. “Without your help—without everyone at the OB acting as you did—Cam could well be standing before a firing squad even now.”
Lily shook her head. “They’d never let that happen. They’re a family, and he’s one of them.”
“They are?” Ara had the most annoying habit of seeing the slightest hurts in a glance. And knowing just how to call someone on them. “You’re one of them too, are you not?”
Lily sighed and sank into one of the chairs in front of Ara’s desk. “I don’t know what I am. I’m there nearly every day, but only in the basement, where the admiral has set up my workroom. Once in a while I’ll have to run something up to his office, but no one really knows me. Usually all my communications are with Admiral Hall himself or Barclay Pearce. I believe you met him the other week?”
Her friend nodded. Tilted her head. “So you want to be more among them? You seemed a bit panicked when you saw me there. Or when I saw you there, perhaps.”
Yes, Ara was always far too adept at seeing the heart of a matter. Lily let her attention wander over the clutter of papers. “I love what I do there. And I’m so happy to do it—to get to do it. But if Mama found out . . .” She shook her head. “At the start of the war, Daddy approached her about creating propaganda—rather excited, I might add, about this new work he was helping to spearhead—and expecting her to be equally excited to take part with her talents. You’d have thought he’d asked her to sacrifice her pug to the war effort.”
“Your work with photographs isn’t exactly propaganda, though, is it?” Ara turned to study the photograph on her wall. “It isn’t meant to convince the masses of something the government wants them to believe.”
“Sometimes it is. It’s just that the masses aren’t usually English.” She paused. “I think Mama would say it’s even worse. Because at least with the posters and adverts, everyone knows it’s just an artist’s rendering. With photography, I’m rewriting the facts. Deliberately lying.”
Arabelle’s lips turned up. “It’s war, Lily. A nation must lie and spread disinformation to protect its secrets. I daresay your mother understands that.”
When it was a matter of mere intelligence—where troops were located, when an advance was planned—then yes, of course. But her mother had very strong opinions on the role of art in the world. And deception was not an approved use.
“Well, I can see I’ve not convinced you. And I promise I won’t say anything to your mother when we join you for dinner.” Arabelle smiled. “Your secrets are your own to guard, my friend.”
“Thank you.” She’d expected nothing less, really. As a nurse, Ara was well versed in discretion. But a bit of anxiety must have been clinging to her at the thought of having Arabelle and Camden, two of the only people who knew of her work for the Admiralty, at her table. Well, aside from Daddy and Admiral Hall, but they would certainly never let the truth slip out.