Free Lorimers at War by Anne Melville

and rubbed with paraffin and given new clothes before you may go near the other tents and if you leave the compound at any time after that, you may not come back.’
    Had she spoken in such a way to an Englishman he would not have been able to believe his ears, but Sergei saluted her now in a manner which was not a correct military gesture but was clearly intended to be admiring rather than mocking. The small incident was reassuring, re-emphasizing her discovery that if she was decisive enough about giving orders, even men would obey promptly.
    Sergei made himself so useful that there was no furthermention of the suggestion that he should leave with the children. During the next four months at least a hundred thousand Serbs died in the typhus epidemic, and in the whole of the country fewer than a hundred doctors remained alive. Some deaths took place in Kate’s hospital, for many patients arrived too ill to be saved. But her sanitary barriers proved effective and there were no cases of cross-infection. Even dysentery was kept at bay in spite of the lack of plumbing. She also found time to organize dispensary teams to go out to the villages so that when a second epidemic began – this time of diphtheria – its victims could be treated with serum in their own homes.
    Kate had been taught that typhus was a cold-weather disease and as the summer sun grew hotter it did indeed seem that the plague was coming to an end. Fewer new patients were brought to the hospital and, now that the sides of the tents could be tied up to let the breeze blow through, those who remained made a faster recovery. For the first time since her arrival there were moments – even half-hours – when Kate could feel herself off-duty. Sergei, quick to pick up a little English, insisted on teaching her Russian in return. Kate protested laughingly that of all the languages in the world Russian was the one least likely ever to be of use to her, but was disarmed by his sweeping assertion that to acquire useless knowledge was the mark of the civilized person. Her good ear for both languages and music enabled her quickly to acquire a conversational vocabulary. Learning to read and write was more difficult, but there was an attraction in finding a use for her previous study of the Cyrillic alphabet, and the unavailability of any other books gave her an incentive to master those which formed Sergei’s only luggage. Welcoming the necessity to clear her mind of medical problems for an hour or so, she enjoyed her lessons and made good progress. Like a dutiful schoolgirl she studied grammar and was rewarded by poetry.
    Sergei still acted as her orderly but by September had become a friend. So when a message arrived to say that Muriel was ill, Kate took him with her as she hurried to the town. Muriel had already diagnosed her own symptoms.
    â€˜It’s typhoid, not typhus,’ she murmured. ‘I don’t understand it. We’ve been boiling everything. All the milk, all the water, everything. And I was inoculated in England.’
    â€˜You’ll be all right,’ said Kate, although she was alarmed by her colleague’s appearance.
    â€˜Yes,’ said Muriel. ‘That’s only a matter of nursing. I didn’t send for you for that. It’s the hospital.’
    â€˜Leave that to me,’ Kate said. The organization of the tented camp was running so smoothly that the rest of her team could continue without her for a while. Putting Muriel in the care of a Scottish nurse, she set out to inspect her new territory.
    The building horrified her. She could see that efforts had been made to clean it and keep it clean, but the size and rough condition of the converted barracks made sterile conditions impossible. Typhus, which was dying out elsewhere, still lingered here, fastening on soldiers who at the time of their arrival had been wounded but not infected. She set to work with all the energy she had shown on her first