Read Stella Bain Page 6


  She puts her hand on a drawing similar to the last one he saw, that of the man at the Admiralty. She looks up at Dr. Bridge. “I believe I’m getting closer to recovering my memory—day by day, even hour by hour. But in the interim, my frustration is growing. It was easier, I think, when I simply accepted that my past was gone. I was calmer then.”

  “But ill nevertheless.”

  “Yes.”

  “You feel better now?”

  She turns away and stares at a barren orange tree. “That would be hard to say.”

  “I have an idea,” he says. “Can you draw a self-portrait?”

  “Here? Now?”

  “Yes. I think it might be a good idea. Have you tried it before?”

  “No.”

  “Will you do it?”

  She hesitates. “I’ll have to fetch my pad and pencil.”

  “By all means,” he says, gesturing toward the stairs.

  When she returns, Stella sits near Dr. Bridge so that he can see as she draws. She opens her pad and selects from three pencils the one with the best point. “Streeter sharpens these for me,” she says.

  “Does he?”

  She draws a line and stops. “This is awkward,” she says. “Embarrassing. I do this only in private. I feel as though I’m about to undress myself.”

  “Pretend I’m a patient you’re trying to distract.”

  “Where are you wounded?” she asks.

  “I’ve been shot in the leg. It’s supposedly healing well, though I’m liable to whine with the pain. Also, I’m cranky.”

  She smiles. “Then I shall make you behave,” she says and begins to move her pencil.

  She draws herself inside a hospital camp. She sketches out her shape in uniform, her posture bent toward a wounded soldier. She leaves that to fill in the background: cots, soldiers, surgeons, nurses, canvas, and bandages. Men sleeping. Men receiving medicine. A man, clearly dead, his mouth open as if in a long yawn. There is a bucket for water; a glimpse into another tent, where surgery is being performed. She draws swiftly and with purpose, removing lines from time to time with her gum eraser. She applies shadow and light and gradations of what is meant to be color. She wants to convey the blue of the officers’ uniforms, the red crosses on the nurses’ bibs. She wishes to describe the texture of the canvas of the tent and to see through it a kind of daylight beyond.

  “My God,” Dr. Bridge says, startling her. “Any newspaper would employ you this very day. To be able to illustrate so well and with such detail! I feel as though I’m seeing something I’ve only been able to imagine. Really, Stella, this is remarkable.”

  When everything has been completed to her satisfaction, she fills in her uniform, the folds of the skirt, the texture of the fabric, her hands as they flow from the starched white cuffs, the roundness of the bib meant to hide the breasts, the folded cloth that becomes a cap.

  She pauses.

  “I can’t do it,” she says, her pencil stopped at a place that might be a chin.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. I see it all, everything. Except for my face. The pencil just quits.”

  “You can see your face in a mirror?”

  “Yes, but I can’t draw it.”

  “Rest a moment,” Dr. Bridge suggests. “Close your eyes. Try to see the face.”

  She lets the pencil drop into her lap, stretches her fingers, and then shakes her hand out. Only then does she ease her head back against the cushion. Above her, gray clouds spin about the dome. She closes her eyes. Her throat elongated, she feels vulnerable. She can hear Dr. Bridge breathing quietly beside her.

  After some minutes, she sits up. “It’s no good. It won’t come. I have no face to draw.”

  “You have a beautiful face,” he blurts out.

  She believes he meant the compliment as encouragement. Instead, it sounded like an unintended slip. Can a man possibly care for a woman who is not herself? A woman who, with any luck, might change into someone else? Can a woman who is not herself truly care for another?

  She gathers her materials and stands. “So you’ll take me to the Admiralty?” she asks quietly. She hands him the unfinished drawing.

  “We’ll go a week from today.”

  The rain spits sideways in great gusts as Mary Dodsworth brings the motorcar around. Dr. Bridge’s black umbrella, with which he hopes to shield Stella on the way from the house to the vehicle, blows inside out the moment he opens it. Dr. Bridge and Stella run for the car and duck inside, their outer garments beaded up with water. Dr. Bridge has made arrangements with a rear admiral he knows for a noon appointment at the Admiralty. Between them, it has been decided that Albion Tillman will keep Dr. Bridge and Stella waiting in an area through which most personnel pass either going to or coming from the canteen during the lunch hour. The delay will be tedious, but it is, after all, the point of the excursion: Stella will have an opportunity to scan the passersby for the man she seeks.

  Stella has her uniform on, the white bib over the blue dress, her hair fixed neatly under the white cloth that ties in the back to make a cap.

  “You remind me of the Miss Bain I met when you came to us. But now you have regained your health. Are you sure the uniform is wise? Someone may query you as to your posting.”

  “I’ll be taken more seriously in my quest to find my ‘brother,’ who went to sea to participate in the Battle of Jutland and from whom I’ve heard nothing.”

  “Tillman knows this is a false request.”

  “Yes, but we may encounter an underling. I’ve found that, for a woman, a uniform enhances her status.”

  “For a man as well,” Dr. Bridge says beside her, and she imagines he may be nursing that old wound. They journey along George Street, through Baker Street, to Oxford Street, none of them marked with a signpost.

  Is it possible that in a matter of hours she will find the man she is looking for?

  When Mary Dodsworth gives Dr. Bridge’s name at the Admiralty gate, the Austin is allowed to pass through. Stella sucks in a long breath as they reach the courtyard. Already this is farther than she has ever been.

  Despite an attempt to appear normal, she stumbles when Dr. Bridge helps her out of the vehicle.

  “Steady now,” he says in a quiet voice. “You’re distressed at the mystery surrounding your brother’s disappearance, but you’re not afraid to be here. In fact, the opposite. You demand information.”

  “Yes, of course,” she says, but something more complicated than fear grips her.

  Inside the stately lobby, now defaced with handwritten signs and temporary desks, boots ring out with authority on the marble floor as men in uniform come and go. Dr. Bridge and Stella visit reception and inquire about an appointment with Rear Admiral Albion Tillman. The receptionist, a woman in a Wren uniform, makes the call and tells them that there will be a slight wait. Would they care to take one of the benches against the marble wall? She will alert them when Tillman becomes available.

  Stella and Dr. Bridge settle themselves to wait at least an hour, as prearranged. She notices other civilians on benches, one or two of whom appear to be in severe distress. She makes a mental note to stop as she and Dr. Bridge pass by the front gate to hand a coin to a beggar.

  She does not know what she is looking for, but hopes she will know it when she finds it. Conversation with Dr. Bridge is all but impossible, not only because she is riveted to each face passing by but also because even whispers can be heard in the echoing chamber. When she and Dr. Bridge are both staring at an individual, that person stares at them in return, which, she supposes, is all right, since the person may recognize Stella before she recognizes him.

  When, after an hour, Dr. Bridge’s name is called, he stands. Stella is now confronted with an inescapable fact: her time spent searching for a face is over. An escort comes forward to take them to Tillman’s office. They follow the junior officer, Stella leading, Dr. Bridge behind.

  Albion Tillman, an overweight man in his forties, a
man who sports a curved gray mustache and many medals, stands when they enter. Dr. Bridge thanks him for seeing them.

  “What’s this all about, then?” the officer asks when they are seated and introductions made. “I don’t think you mentioned that Miss Bain would be in uniform still.” He turns to Stella. “Are you returning to France soon?”

  “No, sir, I am not. I put it on because I thought that if we encountered anyone else here, I might be taken more seriously.”

  Though he is amiable enough with Dr. Bridge, Tillman has a stern visage. Stella worries that the high-ranking officer might say that her being in uniform is unethical. Perhaps there is even a regulation concerning the matter. She finds she is holding her breath.

  “Yes, quite right,” Tillman says. “Some of the men here see a civilian woman and assume she’s one of the bereaved who’ve come to ask for our help. And you would be surprised at how much the men who have seen action dislike civilians.”

  “I am sorry to have come under false pretenses,” Stella says.

  “Have you had any luck?” Tillman asks, looking at both of them.

  “I’m afraid not,” Dr. Bridge answers as Stella lowers her head, embarrassed by her odd search and dismayed by the results.

  “To lose one’s memory must be as painful as losing a limb,” Tillman says. “More, I should imagine. Are you sure that you will find the person you are looking for here?”

  “It is not a certainty.”

  The room is smaller than Stella imagined. The combination of a high ceiling and the closeness of the walls makes her feel as though she were caught in a box, and a musty one at that. Or perhaps it is Tillman’s bulk that causes the chamber to lose its scale. The smell of wet wool is pervasive.

  “Any sight or sound that helps us is worth following up,” Dr. Bridge comments.

  “Yes, just so,” agrees Tillman, who seems as puzzled as he was before Dr. Bridge’s explanation. “I imagine you want to keep this particular meeting as brief as possible. I wish you luck, Miss Bain, in your difficult endeavor. We should all pray for a swift end to this terrible war.” And with that, Tillman abruptly stands again, dismissing them both.

  Stella’s steps are slow as they leave the rear admiral’s office with the escort, who has waited for them. The junior officer must think the meeting amazingly brief. Or perhaps such pro forma interviews are common. The escort leaves them at the reception desk.

  “I think we should like to sit a minute,” Dr. Bridge explains to the woman in the cubicle. “We have received difficult news today.”

  “Of course,” the Wren says, glancing at Stella.

  Noticing the heavier foot traffic inside the hall, Dr. Bridge guides Stella to a bench similar to the one they were on before. “I’ll wait with you until you are ready to go.”

  “Thank you,” she says.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  “Yes.” She pauses. “No. Nothing is normal. How can it be? I don’t yet know who I am. I may discover, when I know my identity, that I’m not a good person at all. I fear that I’m not. I seek my identity, and yet I’m afraid of it. But I’m more afraid of never knowing.”

  Stella speculates about how the two of them look to the hallway full of uniformed men and women: a civilian man, well dressed but perhaps betraying his eagerness to leave the building, and a woman in a pristine VAD uniform with her shoulders slumped and her eyes seeming to look more inward than outward.

  “Actually, I’m ready to go now,” she says, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “Are you sure?” Dr. Bridge asks.

  “Yes, quite sure.”

  The two repeat the exercise several times in the early weeks of 1917. On each occasion, Dr. Bridge telephones Albion Tillman in advance to make the request. Sometimes, for their “meetings,” they do not meet with Tillman at all, but rather sit with the junior officer in an anteroom. Once, a Wren makes them tea and puts them in a waiting area. On each day that they go, Dr. Bridge and Stella wait in the hall an hour at lunchtime and then spend a few minutes back on a bench before they leave. Stella knows she cannot ask Dr. Bridge to waste any more time at this charade. He has been exceptionally generous, given that he does not believe she will be successful here.

  “This has been a fool’s errand,” Stella insists at the end of the fifth visit. “It has been extremely kind of you to have arranged these meetings. But I thought, when I realized how our request must have appeared to that poor exhausted Wren, that I was addled in my thinking. Not only that, but being in uniform again and being in this place has given me the idea that I should return to France.”

  “Nonsense!” Dr. Bridge exclaims. Heads turn. In a lower voice, he adds that they will talk about this when they get back to Bryanston Square.

  Stella stands. She turns her head away from the passing crowd, the constant murmuring of voices. Yes, she must return to France. What possible good is she doing here in London? Dr. Bridge will disapprove. VADs are needed at home, too, he will tell her—as someone once told him about doctors.

  As they near the double doors, Dr. Bridge steps forward to open one. Behind her, Stella can hear the smart rap of boots on marble.

  “Etna?”

  Stella stops and gentles herself into a still posture. She considers the name.

  “Etna Bliss?”

  Stella half turns toward the voice. A ginger-haired officer has spoken to her. She sways slightly. Dr. Bridge guides her to a bench. She has a memory. She knows the man’s name.

  “Samuel.”

  As Dr. Bridge makes her sit, Stella feels each new memory as an electric shock.

  The officer, in Canadian uniform, kneels directly in front of Stella.

  “Etna,” he says again. “Etna Bliss.”

  The name no longer a question.

  She digs her fingernails into Dr. Bridge’s wrist.

  “What is it?” he asks, bewildered by the exchange.

  “I have children,” she says.

  Thrupp, New Hampshire, 1896–1915

  An abandoned house, once white with pride, left alone to age. A man sets a blanket on the grass. He is older than she, thirty to her twenty.

  “My astrophysicist,” she wants to say aloud, laughing at herself. What does she know of lunar distances, solar flares, orbiting planets, colliding bodies?

  She sits, then lies, upon the blanket. He tilts his head, a sentry alert to toneless insects, noisy sparrows. Hard knots of thread press against the back of her cotton dress. His arm is rusty with fine red hairs.

  He is engaged to another.

  She is engaged to another.

  In a different century, they would be stoned to death.

  He kisses her face, his skin skimming the surface of hers. Her body floats upward into his.

  He says he has never been so happy. When he tells her of his love, she says that hers is greater. They laugh, and delirium presses them together.

  A partial undressing, a milky gleam upon a thigh, this mundane place unique. She cannot do again what she is doing for the first time.

  She runs through the streets of town, mad with disbelief. She squanders everything she has of character to confront her lover. Houses laugh at her, or smirk.

  Breathless, she arrives at the forbidding family facade from which she will soon be barred. She stands in the foyer and cannot believe in the mask that has fallen over her lover’s face. From a corner, a mother appears and watches.

  “I go to Toronto tomorrow to be married,” her lover says, his eyes and face unknown to her. She wants to beg, go down on her knees, but she catches sight of a brother, younger and impressionable, who gazes at her with wonder from another room.

  When her lover shuts the family door behind her, she stands on the wooden steps. The houses are smug now, politely looking aside.

  Years later, passion merely a faded photograph, she faces another man in another room, a stolid Dutchman she will never love. But pity blossoms and ensnares her and causes her to make a grave mist
ake. She has failed to count the nights of her future. She has never known the anguish of an unhappy marriage bed. She has not imagined that a house can become a fortress, a prison.

  Her husband wants to possess her fully, but she holds something in reserve. Something indefinable, her own, that he can never touch.

  She has children, beautiful babies. They make a playhouse of the prison. Together, they wait for squirrels beneath the trees; together they shake the bushes, hoping for birds. They plant a garden, the crooked rows soon blistered with colorful blooms. They walk through leaves and snow. They play innocent games of castles and battles, of magic and buried treasure. Their gentle footsteps do not disturb the earth.

  She becomes a child with them at dusk, when bat loops make them dizzy. Her children hide with her in tree trunks. They fashion nests in her hair; she makes cakes with sticky frosting. She teaches them their lessons, then sends them off to school. She is happy in that house only when her children are safe within its walls.

  A room, a cottage, the plaster chipped in places. Her own, with floral studies on the walls. She is honest in that room, and she can think. She has a sink, a plate of yellow pears. She reads, she sews, she draws. A woven rug covers a scrubbed floor. Her windows are precious jewels that she polishes.

  Here she is replenished. The cottage is her secret and her haven.

  When it is taken away from her, she empties out to silence.

  A party, Champagne bubbles, a flute that slips from her fingers. The younger brother from years ago, her lover’s sibling in another room, now grown but unmistakable. Unwittingly, a rival for a post her academic husband believes is his. The man she married seethes, becomes a twisted creature with a selfish agenda. The younger brother—merely decent, merely kind—wins the post despite his desire to disappear. To her, he offers simple friendship, nothing more. He remembers her face as she stood in that family foyer so many years ago and tells her that it has always been the standard by which he has measured love.