I knew why, of course. Simon was right, twice I’d had close calls. Nurses did die at the Front. Of illness, of gunshot wounds from aircraft that made it behind the lines-I’d had experience of that myself-of shells gone astray. Nurse Edith Cavell had died before a German firing squad. There were no guarantees. But I could have just as easily died of the influenza in Somerset, never having set foot in France.
Yes, I was their only child. But how many mothers had lost their only sons? How many wives had grieved for their husbands? How many children had lost their fathers? I needed to go back. I needed to do what I could for the torn bodies that came to the forward aid stations or to the hospitals just behind the lines. I couldn’t sit out the rest of the war in what amounted to the comfort of a Somerset clinic. It was unimaginable.
Had my parents given Simon this onerous task of breaking the news to me, rather than face up to it themselves?
“They must have thought you very brave to take on this charge for them,” I said over my shoulder, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. It was almost as if Simon had betrayed me too.
“The Colonel and his lady had to leave for Somerset, Bess. Julia Carson particularly asked your father to deliver the eulogy.”
“It’s expecting too much,” I said, turning to him. In the sunlight, framed by the rolling green land of the Weald, he looked every inch the soldier. A tall, strong, very attractive man with more courage than most.
“Give it a try, Bess. You can save lives in a clinic, you know.”
“A handful. Compared to what’s happening in France. You’ve been to the Front, you know how they are dying.”
“I’ve seen it,” he said shortly. It was the first time he’d admitted that he’d been sent into the thick of the fighting for reasons he never spoke of.
He took a deep breath.
And I realized that for the first time in all the years he’d been close to my family that I was asking him to divide his loyalties. To go against my parents’ express wishes and help me do what they didn’t want me to do.