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y, even from the earliest times she could recall. It had been James with whom she had had adventures and secrets. But James had been killed in the Crimea.
“I’m sorry,” Mary said quietly, her voice cutting across Hester’s thoughts. “I have said something that distressed you.” It was not a question but an observation.
Hester was startled. She had not thought Mary was more than peripherally aware of her, certainly not enough to notice her feelings.
“Perhaps resurrectionists were not the most sensitive of subjects to raise,” Mary said ruefully.
“Not at all,” Hester assured her. “I was thinking of the two children together, and remembering my younger brother. My elder brother was always a little pompous, but James was fun.”
“You speak of him in the past. Is he—gone?” Mary’s voice was suddenly gentle, as if she knew bereavement only too well.
“Yes, in the Crimea,” Hester replied.
“I’m so sorry. To say I know how you feel would be ridiculous, but I have some idea. I had a brother killed at Waterloo.” She said the word carefully, rolling it off her tongue as if it held some mystic quality. To many of Hester’s age that would have been incomprehensible, but she had heard too many soldiers speak of it for it not to give her a shiver through the flesh. It had been the greatest land battle in Europe, the end of an empire, the ruin of dreams, the beginning of the modern age. Men of all nations had fought to exhaustion till the fields were strewn with the wounded and the dead, the armies of Europe, as Lord Byron had said, “in one red burial blent.”
She looked up and smiled at Mary, so she would know Hester understood at least something of its immensity.
“I was in Brussels then,” Mary said with a wry turn of her lips. “My husband was in the army, a major in the Royal Scots Greys….”
Hester did not hear the rest of what she said. The clanking of the train wheels over the tracks drowned out a word here and there, and her mind was filled with a picture of the man in the portrait, with his fair sweep of hair and the face which at once had such emotion and ambiguous power and vulnerability. It was easy to imagine him, tall, straight-backed, wildly elegant in uniform, dancing the night away in some Brussels ballroom, knowing all the while that in the morning he would ride out to a battle to decide the rise or fall of nations and from which thousands would not return and more thousands would come home blind or maimed. And then she thought of the painting she had seen of the charge of the Royal Scots Greys at Waterloo, the light on the white horses plunging through the heat of battle, manes flying, scarlet riders bent forward, the dust and gun smoke clouding the rest, darkening the scene behind them.
“He must have been a very fine man,” she said impulsively.
Mary looked surprised. “Hamish?” She sighed gently. “Oh yes, yes he was. It seems like another world, so very long ago, Waterloo. I hadn’t thought of it in years.”
“He came through the battle all right?” Hester was not afraid to ask because she knew he had died only eight years before, and Waterloo was forty-two years in the past.
“He had a few cuts and bruises, but nothing worth calling a wound,” Mary replied. “Hector had a musket ball in his shoulder and a saber cut on his leg, but he healed quickly enough.”
“Hector?” Why should she be surprised? Forty-two years ago Hector Farraline might have been a very different man from the drunkard he was now.
The look in Mary’s eyes was far away, sad and sweet and full of memory. “Oh yes, Hector was a captain. He was a better soldier than Hamish, but being the younger brother, his father only bought a captain’s commission for him. He hadn’t Hamish’s grace, or his charm. And when the war was over, it was Hamish who had the imagination and the ambition. It was he who started the Farraline printing company.” There was no need to add that, being the elder, he would have inherited whatever money there might have been. That was something everyone knew.
“He must have been a great loss,” Hester said aloud.
The light died out of Mary’s face and her expression became formal, as if receiving condolences in a long-practiced fashion. “Yes, naturally,” she replied. “Thank you for saying so.” She sat more uprightly in her seat. “But we have talked about the far distant past too much already. I should like to hear something of your experiences. Did you ever meet Miss Nightingale? One reads so much about her these days. I swear, she seems more revered in some quarters than the Queen herself. Is she really so very remarkable?”
For nearly half an hour Hester recalled her experiences as vividly as she could. She told Mary of pain and waste, the stupidity and the constant fear, the biting cold of winter and the hunger and exhaustion of siege. Mary listened attentively, interrupting only to ask for greater detail, often merely nodding assent. Hester described the heat and sparkle of summer, the white boats on the bay, the glamour of officers and their wives, the gold braid in the sun, the boredom, the companionship, the laughter and the times when she dared not weep or she might never stop. And then at Mary’s request, with sharp memory, with laughter and anecdote she recounted much of the individual people she had admired or despised, loved or loathed, and all the time Mary sat with total attention, her clear eyes on Hester’s face, while the train rattled and jolted, slowed for inclines, and then gathered speed again. They were completely islanded in a world of lamplight and rhythmic clanking and swaying through the darkness, the countryside beyond the windows invisible. They were warmly wrapped in rugs, their feet almost touching on the stone footwarmer.
Once the train stopped altogether and they both alighted into the chill night air, not so much to stretch their legs, although that was welcome, but to avail themselves of the conveniences at the station.
Back in the train again, whistle blowing, steam billowing as the engine gathered impetus, they rewrapped themselves in the rugs, and Mary requested that Hester continue her account.
Hester obliged.
She had not intended to, but she found herself now speaking with vehemence about the ideals which had burned so deeply in her when she first returned, her passion to begin reforming the outdated hospital wards in England with their closed practices.
Mary smiled wistfully. “If you tell me you succeeded, I shall begin to disbelieve you.”
“And so you should. I am afraid I was dismissed for arrogance and acting without orders.” She had not meant to reveal that. It was hardly conducive to confidence in a patient, but Mary was already far more than that, and the words were out before she considered it.
Mary laughed, a rich sound filled with delight.
“Bravo. If we all acted only upon orders, we should still not have invented the wheel. What have you done about it?”
“Done?”
Mary put her head a little to one side, her face full of quizzical doubt.
