A Duty to the Dead by Charles Todd Page B

called him, but I expect in a war that’s useful.”
    I smiled. “Sometimes, yes.”
    The tea was ready, and she poured my cup, then her own.
    “I’m supposed to be having a nap,” I confided to her.
    “Yes, well, you’re young. Old bones feel the wind more. How did it happen you were with Mr. Arthur when he died?”
    “I volunteered as a nurse. I was assigned to Britannic until she was sunk by a mine. I didn’t want to drive omnibuses or till the land. My father had been in the army, you see, and I felt I had to do something for his sake. Nursing was much harder than I’d dreamed it was. Helping people, yes, I liked that, but watching them suffer and die was dreadful. I’m still not used to it.”
    Susan’s mother nodded. “I was midwife for a time. I just fell into it, because I was the eldest of seven, and my auntie had six, and there was never time to call the doctor to them. When a baby died, I felt guilty, as if I’d done something wrong. I still dream of it, from time to time. Not as much as before, but sometimes. Those wee little faces, so still and pale. No future for them, no love nor laughter nor happiness.”
    “I understand.”
    “I expect you do.”
    We talked for another quarter of an hour, and then I took my leave. She asked me to remember her to her daughter. “For she has no time for visiting just now, with the maids all gone. That’s why I was glad to see what I took for Susan coming down the road.”
    I promised and walked back to the house, coming in again through the kitchen and passing on to Susan her mother’s greetings.
    “My brother’s children are grown now, and she keeps house for him. But this is still her family as well. I expect she was as glad of news of Mr. Arthur as I was.”
    “Hardly happy news.”
    “No. Would you like some hot chocolate, Miss, I was just about to put the kettle on.”
    “Thank you, no.” I was awash with tea. “I’m going up to my room.”
    Susan grinned at me. “Mrs. Graham said you was sleeping. I didn’t tell her otherwise.”
    I got to my room without encountering anyone, and Susan brought me a pitcher of hot water shortly afterward. I sat down in a chair by the window, and the next thing I knew there was a tapping at my door.
    It was Mrs. Graham, inviting me down to the sitting room. I went with her, and we sat by the fire, talking about the war and any expectation that it would be over by the spring.
    “Will you be going back to sea?” she asked me at one point.
    “I expect to be assigned to another hospital ship, yes. But the decision isn’t mine. I might be sent to France.”
    “You’re a brave young woman,” she said thoughtfully. “I shouldn’t have cared to be sunk, as you were. It was in all the papers, you know. But what do you expect of the Hun?”
    “I’m sure the mine was intended for bigger game, not an empty hospital ship.”
    “Where did you live as a child? In Somerset?”
    “No, I traveled with my parents. We lived in India for a time, and then wherever my father was sent by the army. I had a few friends my own age, but most often I got to know the country through the servants.”
    She raised her eyebrows at that.
    I explained. “We had any number of servants in India. My ayah, what you would call a nanny, was particular about where I went and what I did. But sometimes the gardeners or the grooms would take me to market with them. Our cook was a man, and quite good. He would bargain ferociously, and he had a reputation for being a hard man to cheat.”
    “You enjoyed this way of life, did you? Among the heathen and their idols?”
    “I knew nothing else, you see. Since I was an only child, my parents preferred to keep me with them rather than to send me to England to be educated. I realize now how fortunate I was.”
    Jonathan came in at that point, and the subject was changed. He was fretting over his wound. It seemed to be irritated by the wind, and he’d stopped in at Dr. Philips’s, in the hope of