Free Dead Man's Land by Robert Ryan

one could multiply this one hospital by one hundred or one thousand, and the tally of young men wounded, maimed and killed that would be at the end of the equation. And Europe was just one theatre and one side of the conflict – there was the Eastern Front, the Dardanelles, Egypt and the Middle East, Africa . . . Perhaps it was the terrible mathematics of such slaughter that had been trying to force its way out of his chest earlier.
    ‘Don’t worry, Major. I have had word that our sister CCS is up and running after its attack. We’re full. And Major Torrance and Captain Symonds will be back presently, so we’ll be up to full strength with doctors. Tomorrow will be an easier day for all of us. Physically, I mean. More rum?’
    He shook his head and sipped the chocolate. They could hear the sound of a badly tuned piano drifting in from a billet in the reserve line, somewhere close by. It took him a few moments to recognize the sombre first movement of Godin’s ‘
Valse Septembre’
before the wind shifted and the tune was gone. ‘Bad news?’ he asked.
    She looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry? Was what bad news?’
    ‘The telegram. That paper has a very distinctive colour and texture. Was it bad news?’ He could see it on the table, next to the mail. It was still twisted like an over-sized sweet wrapper. She had waved and throttled it at the transfusion tent when she and Mrs Gregson had exchanged words. ‘It’s a Keeper of the Privy Purse telegram, isn’t it? Their Majesties regret . . . I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t intrude.’
    It was bad form, but curiosity had the better of him. There had to be some explanation for her earlier behaviour.
    Sister Spence turned her gaze on the telegram briefly, and her chin shook momentarily. ‘It’s about my brother. Suffered a relapse at a hospital outside Boulogne, the day before he was due to be shipped back to England.’
    Watson closed his eyes for a second. It was an effort to open them again. The lids felt as if they had been coated with lead. Was he, after all, too old for this? Should he have listened to the nay-sayers? To Holmes?
    ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.
    She gave a brief incline of the head and drank some of her beverage. ‘They are all somebody’s brother or son, Major. Or husband or sweetheart. Or father. Every last one. I’m not unique.’
    ‘But you are, in that you know what “relapse” means.’
    A sigh. ‘You know about that, too, do you?’
    ‘It’s one piece of terminology that has stayed with me. I came across a case at Bailleul. He managed to get into the medical stores one night. He found the digitalis.’
    She stared down into her mug and her features softened into a very different Sister Spence. ‘Henry had no genitals left. It sounds like some terrible music-hall song, doesn’t it?’ The voice was thin and fragile, hollowed out by grief. ‘They were blown clean off by some freak of ballistics that left the rest of him intact. He was twenty-two. Can you imagine? He would have thought his life over. Heaven knows where he got a pistol from, but I suspect they won’t enquire too deeply about that. I think “relapsed” is a little easier on the families at home than “suicide”, don’t you?’
    ‘At least while the war is on, I believe it to be a kindness, yes.’
    She looked up at him, blinked away a film of moisture and fixed him with a hard stare. Her words recovered their brittle glaze. ‘Major, I may have been a little firmer than usual this afternoon . . . yesterday afternoon . . . because of the news about Henry. But that has no bearing on my attitude to your VADs. I won’t have them. I won’t have Canadian nurses either.’
    ‘Why ever not?’ He had come across some fine examples from the Dominion at hospitals both in England and Egypt.
    Her face pinched up once more. ‘Dances, Major, dances. The Canadians are allowed to go cavorting with officers. To walk out with them. To attend tea parties and dances. It unsettles