The Fog of War Read online

  The Fog of War

  By A.L. Lester

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2021 A.L. Lester

  ISBN 9781646568376

  Cover Design: A.L. Lester

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  This story is inspired by the women who worked with the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in Europe during World War One, particularly Royaumont Abbey in France; and by their counterparts who ran the Endell Street Military Hospital in London.

  This book is dedicated to them.

  * * * *

  The Fog of War

  By A.L. Lester

  Part 1: Summer 1919

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Part 2: Winter 1919–20

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Part 3: Spring 1920

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Part 1: Summer 1919

  Chapter 1

  “Do not,” said Sylvia Marks to Marcus Wright, the blacksmith’s son, “even think about leaving this waiting room before I’ve looked at your arm properly.” She pinned him with a gimlet gaze. “It will take me ten minutes to finish what I am doing with Mrs Lord and then I will call for you. You will still be here. Do you understand? If I have to come and find you…” she gestured out of the front door, “…if I have to waste my time, coming to find you, I will be extremely cross. And Marcus, you do not want me to be extremely cross.”

  Marcus hunched his fifteen-year-old shoulders down into his chair in the face of her intimidating five-foot eight frame and looked at his feet. His mother jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow and he muttered, “Yes, Dr Marks. I’ll be here.”

  His mother met Sylvia’s eye and nodded.

  That was all right then. She really didn’t want to have to be rushing all over the village chasing down recalcitrant patients.

  She dived back across the black-and-white tiled hall into her surgery, where Mrs Lord was now dressed and shoving her hatpin back in through the back of her hat in front of the mirror. “All right, Mrs Lord?” she asked.

  “Yes, doctor. Thank you.” She took a seat beside Sylvia’s desk again as Sylvia seated herself in her chair. “Although I suppose it’s my husband I should be thanking,” she said, slightly glumly. “I was really hoping we were done with this.”

  Sylvia looked at her sympathetically. “Well, one often slips through on the change,” she said, pragmatically. “And you’re healthy enough and so is the baby, from what I can make out. Is this number four?”

  Mrs Lord nodded. “And the next youngest is leaving school in the summer,” she said. “Mr Lord has been trying to be careful, but it’s not always possible, is it, Doctor?” She took out her handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes. “Anyway. We’ll manage. We always do.” She visibly pulled herself together. “Can you give me a date? I honestly have no idea myself what with everything stopping and starting now.”

  “You’re about four months in, I think,” said Sylvia. “So perhaps October-time?” She refrained from making a joke about the long winter nights, the woman was too upset. Sylvia reached out and patted her hand, instead. “And I have a book you can borrow, if you like,” she said. “For after? It’s called Married Love. About pacing your babies.”

  Mrs Lord looked slightly shocked. “I’ve heard of that,” she said. “I’m not sure Mr Lord would approve.” She bit her lip. “Perhaps I can read it when he’s at work.”

  She looked at Sylvia as she stood and pulled on her coat and gathered her handbag. “Thank you, Dr Marks. I’m pleased to have a doctor in the village again. Your father was a good man and is missed. It’s a wonderful thing that you’ve come back to take over. The things you must have seen in France…” She trailed off.

  Sylvia nodded and stood to escort her to the door. “It’s good to be back, Mrs Lord. And it’s extremely good to be practising village medicine rather than dealing with battlefield wounds. Come and see me in a couple of months; or before, if you feel you need to.”

  She departed with a nod and Sylvia fixed Marcus Wright with a stare. “Come in then, Marcus. Let’s look at what you’ve done to yourself this time.”

  * * * *

  Sylvia slumped into her chair at the kitchen table and reached for the cup of tea Walter pushed across to her. “Thank you,” she said, burying her face in it. “What a morning.”

  “It was busy,” Walter agreed. “I can’t believe young Marcus has broken his arm. He’s always in the wars.”

  He topped her cup up from the teapot and pushed the plate of biscuits over to her. “Have another one,” he said. “You’re still too thin.” He took his own advice and then said thoughtfully, “Was it his father?”

  Sylvia looked at him sharply. “What makes you say that?” she asked.

  “Just a feeling,” Walter said, reaching for the sugar bowl and spooning an obscene amount into his tea. “Just a feeling. He didn’t say anything to me. I’ll see if I can get anything out of him when he comes back to have it set once the swelling’s gone down. Poor little bastard. His mother did all the talking.”

  Sylvia nodded. “She always does,” she said. “You may be right.”

  Walter nodded placidly. “I’m always right, Dr Marks, you know I am.” He dropped a lubricious wink across the table at her and she retaliated by throwing a biscuit at him. He snatched it out of the air and dipped it into his tea.

  “What next?” he asked.

  “Nothing ‘til evening surgery,” Sylvia said. “I need to go to the butcher. And see if I can get someone to help in the house. We’re not managing very well, really.” She gestured, taking in the cluttered, warm kitchen, and then extending her gesture to encompass the rest of Courtfield House.

  “I take offence at that,” Walter said. “The surgery is spotless.”

  “Yes, yes,” Sylvia said. “You’re an excellent nurse. But you’re not a housekeeper and neither am I. We need to g
et someone to come and clean. I don’t mind cooking. Pa had four servants and three gardeners before the war.”

  “Do you want four servants and three gardeners?” Walt asked.

  “Not especially. But I don’t want to live in a mess, either. It’s all right for you out there in the coach-house. You can please yourself. Although if you want to move into the main house or have someone come and clean out there, that’s fine too.”

  Walter flinched. “I’m quite happy where I am,” he said. “And it’s not big enough to need help to keep clean.”

  He was quite right. He lived in the old coachman’s room over what was now the garage rather than the coach-house. Sylvia had only been over a couple of times and he kept it with military precision, which wasn’t surprising, given he’d been in the army for twenty years.

  She nodded. “It’s all right,” she said. “Whatever you prefer. I’m not going to force anything on you. I’m rather enjoying having my privacy myself after four years on duty. I can’t imagine what all that time in barracks would have been like.”

  “It was all right,” he said. “Companionable, you know? But I’m enjoying having a corner of my own now.” He nabbed another biscuit. “Better for you if I’m out there, too. It’ll set the tongues wagging if you’ve got a man in the house. They’re already all agog at the idea of a woman doctor and a man as a nurse.”

  She sighed. “Well, we knew they would be. It’s not like they didn’t know I’d gone off to medical school and was working as a hospital doctor. Or that I was working on the battlefields. I came back to see Papa often enough.”

  Her father had been the village doctor since before Sylvia was born and had always encouraged her in her desire to emulate him. Her mother had died when she was very young and she’d rather brought herself up, nose in a reference book, interested in the natural world around her rather than romance novels or the Girl’s Own Paper.

  When Papa died in 1916, she knew she’d come back for good after the war. So when the fighting ended in November, she’d packed up her things at Royaumont and come straight home. Over the years of the war, she’d specialised in surgery on gas-gangrene and amputations and once the flow of wounded stopped coming in waves, she felt she could leave her existing patients in the hands of her colleagues. Walter had followed her home when he’d got his discharge.

  They’d opened up Papa’s surgery in the front rooms of the big house again and she’d launched straight into being Young Dr Marks at the age of thirty-four, ministering to people who remembered her as a baby.

  It wasn’t as hard as she thought it might be. Although some of the older gentleman farmers insisted on Walter examining them if they had a problem down there, which they both found hilarious.

  They were getting on fine. It was just the house…It was a big, old Queen Anne era house that had been in her family for generations. She loved it with a passion, but it had grown a personality of its own over the years. She was struggling to keep on top of the cleaning, let alone sorting out the muddle that fifteen years of her father telling the servants to leave his collection of clocks alone had caused. And it had been only irregularly cleaned and aired in the three years between his funeral and Sylvia and Walter arriving home.

  She sighed again and Walter patted her hand briefly. “It’ll sort itself out. There’s plenty of people looking for work. Just put the word out that you want some help,” he said.

  She pulled a face. “But then I’ll have to talk to people and make decisions and…and…” She faked a dramatic moan, hand across her forehead.

  He laughed at her. “You’ll manage, Dr Marks,” he said, picking up their teacups and taking them to the sink. You concentrate on the doctoring and let’s find someone else to look after the house.

  Chapter 2

  One of the gentlemen farmers she had most trouble with was Arthur Webber, although it wasn’t what Walter persisted in calling a trouser problem. It was more serious than that.

  He was a retired journalist who’d come back to the village to run the family farm when his brother joined up. He was a well-educated man, tutored by the old vicar, gone to Oxford, and then all over the world reporting for his paper. She remembered him from her childhood; older than her, and a presence in the village.

  By the time she came home, he’d gained a distinct reputation for eccentricity.

  “I’m worried about him, if the truth be told,” his housekeeper, her old friend Annie Beelock, told her when they met by chance in the Post Office. “He’s losing weight and he’s a funny colour. I can’t get him to come down to the surgery and see you though. He flat out says there’s nothing anyone can do for him. Could you drop up one day? Just say that you were passing?”

  Sylvia agreed.

  When she finally spoke to him, eccentric didn’t begin to cover it.

  “I don’t want you here,” he’d said, as Annie showed her into the sitting room.

  He was in an armchair beside the fire, at the centre of a muddle of books and papers spilling off the table, onto the chair seats, and thence the floor.

  “There’s nothing you can do for me, Dr Marks. You’re wasting your time.” He looked over his half-moons at Annie. “And you, I told you I didn’t want her. Show her out again.”

  “And so you did, Arthur Webber. But here she is, and you’ll talk to her the once, just to keep me happy.” Her voice was stern. “I’m worried about you. You’re fading away. And you’re not yourself half the time.” Her glare was as stern as her voice. “So, you’ll talk to her and let her have a look at you and then I’ll stop pestering you.” She ended abruptly, smoothed down her apron, pivoted, and headed for the door. “I’ll make a cup of tea in the kitchen when you’re done with him,” she threw over her shoulder at Sylvia. “Don’t take no for an answer.”

  Sylvia stood and looked at him. He looked back and sighed.

  “You’d better sit down,” he said. “Over there.” He gestured to the book-covered settee. “Excuse me not getting up. I get tired, that’s all.”

  She nodded. “Tell me what’s going on,” she commanded. “How do you feel? Why’s Annie worried?”

  He stared at her for a moment.

  “Honestly?” he said. “I’ll tell you. But you won’t believe me.”

  “Try me,” she said, crossing her ankles and folding her hands in her lap. “Try me and see.”

  He looked at her seriously for a moment before he began to speak and by the time he’d finished, she was considering telephoning the asylum for advice.

  He’d convinced himself that creatures were coming to get him through some sort of otherworldly portal and that if he could open the portal himself, he’d become a powerful magician and create a weapon to bring the war to an end. The fact that the war was already over seemed to have passed him by.

  “Mr Webber…” she said. She was at a loss for words. What a sad end to a man who had left the village brimming with potential and enthusiasm to right the wrongs of the world.

  “Mr Webber…how long have you known about this? How long have you been researching this?”

  He looked at her shrewdly. “You don’t believe me,” he said. “I told you you wouldn’t.”

  She looked back at him steadily. “Would you believe you?” she countered.

  He made a dismissive snorting sound. “No, I wouldn’t,” he said. “But here we are. I know what I know. And you can choose to accept it or not, as you please.” He waved a hand around him. “I’ve got the books and papers to prove it if you want to have a look. I’ve been collecting them and studying them for years.”

  She raised a brow at him. “Have you now,” she said. “And does anyone else know about this, other than the people in the books?”

  “They’re not people in the books, my good woman.”

  She bristled at him and he backtracked. “They’re not people in the books, Dr Marks. They’re not story books. They’re reference books. Notebooks. Experimental notes.” He glared at her. “This is a serious scie
ntific study!”

  She raised both brows at him this time. “And that’s what’s making you sick?” she asked.

  He huffed and pulled a face. “Yes!” he said. And then more quietly. “The work is draining me. The energy…it comes from the world around us. And another world, where these creatures live. They come when you use the power. But it’s worth it…the things I’ve seen, Dr Marks! You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve seen and done!”

  Well. He was clearly raving. But he didn’t seem to be a danger to anyone else…or even himself. She would telephone down to the mental hospital at Cotford and speak to one of the psychiatrists when she got home and see what they said, but she thought he was stable enough to be left here at home, particularly with Annie Beelock coming in every day to keep house.

  He wouldn’t let her examine him. He looked pale, yellowish, and far too thin. Probably liver problems, or a cancerous growth of some kind. But she couldn’t diagnose without looking at him physically.

  He didn’t want Walter near him either.

  At least Sylvia had made him speak to her, that was something. And she could drop in every few days—he seemed grateful for someone to talk to. A cancer or similar illness could make you wander in your mind sometimes. It was probably that. If he wouldn’t let her look him over, all she could do was keep an eye on him.

  The Asylum Officer from Cotford was reassuring. “Hallucinations?” he queried. “Yes, yes. We have a few of those.” She heard him take a drink. “What sort?”

  “He thinks he can do magic,” she said, sinking down in the telephone chair in the hallway of the house. “He’s got a very well-formed, well thought out, logical framework that seems internally consistent.”

  “How interesting.” The psychiatrist paused. “That sounds very similar to a chap we have down here.”

  “Really? In what way?”

  “Convinced there are monsters coming for him because he can do magic, that sort of thing.”

  “Ah, that is interesting. How peculiar! Is he dangerous? To himself or anyone else?”