Louisa swung around. ‘What soldier, Pam? What do you mean?’
‘The young lieutenant with the dark hair.’ Pam leant forward and lowered her voice. ‘I saw you dancing with him, in the trees. So tall, and handsome as a prince. But now he’s gone back to war.’ She held out her palm in front of her face and blew, as if blowing away grains of sand. ‘And so she is sad. Because she loves him.’
Pam began to hum, and an invisible hand clutched at Louisa’s heart. Pam lifted her hands and held them out in front of her, as though she were dancing in a man’s arms. Then she began to twirl slowly away. And as she twirled she sang:
‘Peg of my heart I love you
We’ll never part, I love you
I always knew it would be you
Peg of my heart…’
As soon as she could get away, Louisa was hurtling down the spiral staircase of the abandoned wing, dust and rubble spilling down from her swift, careless feet. Pam had seen them together. Of course, Pam was madder than an entire box of Kerry’s tree frogs, but she had seen Robert all the same. How could she possibly know about him unless he, in some strange way, really existed? You couldn’t share the same delusions with someone, could you? Somehow Robert lived independently of Louisa, outside of her head. Maybe only for other crazy people, but still, there was an objectivity to him now which hadn’t been there before. If that didn’t exactly make it all scientifically possible, at least it lent him substance. She wasn’t entirely dreaming, and she clung to the knowledge like a raft on a roaring river.
Down the corridor she ran, past all the old bed frames and cabinets, the glassless windows, towards Robert’s room. Somehow she had to find him. It couldn’t end like this.
Then, out of nowhere, there came a man’s voice: ‘Hey, you! What are you doing here?’
Louisa lurched around, horrified. A workman in a bright yellow high-vis jacket and hard hat stood at the end of the corridor. He was holding a sledgehammer, about to strike a blow.
At his raised voice, another man appeared, his hair dyed bright blue. ‘What the hell…? Who are you? You can’t be in here.’
Louisa stared back at them, then started to run. No. She couldn’t be caught here; it would be the end of everything.
‘Hey!’ called the men. ‘Come back! It’s not safe!’ She heard the stamp of their heavy boots behind her. ‘She must be one of those nutters they’ve got locked up on the other side,’ one man yelled to the other. ‘How the hell did she get over here?’
Her heart was in her mouth. She had to shake them off. Weeks of roaming around the old hospital in both centuries had taught her the layout. She raced around one corner, then another. At the end of the next corridor she knew there was a doorway, hidden from view in an alcove. The doorway was still there, even if the door itself had long since rotted away. She hurtled down the stone stairs beyond it, and through a maze of dank cellars and storerooms. Smashing her way through a window that still had the remains of a pane of glass in it, she made her way outside, and ran around towards the back of the old wing. The steps up to Robert’s room were still there, brittle now and thick with moss and weeds, but mostly intact.
From around the corner she heard the men’s voices, moving closer with every second. She clambered up. A stone came loose and fell noisily onto the path. She stepped through the empty window frame into the room. The floor creaked ominously.
‘Take me back!’ she cried into the gloom. ‘For Christ’s sake, take me back!’ She went further in, turning to face each decayed wall in turn. ‘You took me to him, you made me love him – now show me how to go back! Show me! Please! I have to go back!’
But there was nothing. Through her sobs, she could hear the workmen moving ever closer.
‘Up here!’ one of them called, from just below.
Louisa ran for the door out onto landing, skirting around the hole in the middle of the floor, but her foot caught on a loose board and she stumbled. A fraction of an instant later, she felt the rotten floor begin to give way beneath her feet, just like the cliff had done. For one crazy moment she was suspended in mid-air. Then her body was filled with the most incredible pain, and everything went black.
CHAPTER TWENTY
London, February 1917
QUIET FOR THE WOUNDED, read the banner above Agar Street, next to the entrance to Charing Cross Hospital. Policemen directed all the heavy traffic away, and straw had been laid over the cobbles to muffle the sound of the carriages and hooves. Robert went in and stood at the front desk. He didn’t have to wait long; officers in uniform commanded attention and respect, those that wore the Military Cross especially.
‘This way, please, Captain,’ said an elderly lady volunteer, all polite smiles.
A VAD was kneeling at the foot of a stone staircase scrubbing the steps, her hands swollen and red. He caught the scent of carbolic and was somewhere else entirely. No. He shook away the memory, and its seductive tentacles. He was in Charing Cross Hospital, not Coldbrook Hall. And he was a visitor, not a patient. They came to a set of double doors.
‘You’ll find Private Brocklebank near the end on the right, Captain.’ The woman smiled, then disappeared. He felt horribly apprehensive. What was he going to find? Sickness, injuries changed people. What if he didn’t recognise Edgar? How unspeakably awful.
He started down the right side of the long ward, scanning the faces. There seemed to be hundreds of beds – four long rows, one each against either wall, then two along the middle, back to back. The cots were narrow and jammed together – but then of course these were beds for enlisted men, not officers. Most men lay quietly beneath their bedspreads, and he recognised that quiet acquiescence, the voluntary and happy surrender of one’s will to hospital process. He looked at the faces and yet tried not to look at them at the same time. Many heads were bandaged, several across both eyes, and there were cages protecting damaged limbs under almost every second bedcover.
A few men who were awake nodded as Robert passed, but no one attempted a salute – that would be ridiculous. He continued down, clutching the pink peonies he’d bought from a barrow on the way in and was now wishing he hadn’t. They’d been forced in some hothouse and were past their best.
And then there he was. There was a flash of mutual recognition and Edgar raised his hand in a fragile wave. Robert felt a jolt of deep emotion that he couldn’t name. Why had he worried? Of course he would always know Edgar. He went to his friend’s bedside, careful to go to the right side of the bed and not the left, to be next to his uninjured arm. The other was badly broken. He took off his cap and sat on the hard wooden chair, which creaked.
There was a cage over Edgar’s left leg, where it was missing from just below the knee. In her letter Violet had said the doctors had done their utmost to try to save it, but it was just too badly damaged. Edgar held out his hand and Robert took it. He’d wanted to greet his friend warmly and confidently, impart some kind of comfort, let Edgar know that everything would be all right – but found he couldn’t. He could only swallow hard and stare at Edgar’s desperately pale face and fight back his tears. Immediately, he despised himself. And instead it was Edgar who comforted him, who held his hand and waited.