Dazzle Patterns Read online

  In the first light the soldiers arrived and began taking the still bodies away.

  Clare lay on the floor of the corridor all the next morning. She had finally fallen into something like sleep, when a medic roused her and took her to a kitchen. The medic turned over a sheet covering the kitchen table and eased her down onto it.

  Under one bare light bulb, the doctor, ruddy-faced, with breath that smelled rankly sweet, like the hay at the bottom of the silo in the spring, leaned over her. The whites of his eyes were sallow and heavily bloodshot. He clucked his tongue as he cut away the dressing.

  “I’m Dr. Cox,” he said. “I’m an eye surgeon. I am going to operate.”

  “What is enucleation?” Clare said.

  The surgeon pressed his lips together.

  “I’m going to see what I can do. We’ll talk about it after you wake up.” He turned to a nurse. “Chloroform, please.”

  3

  “GET UP TO THE COMMONS!” A man wearing a Red Cross band on his sleeve shouted to Fred and Geraldine as they left the hospital.

  The fishmonger was still there, leaning into the horse’s shoulder, wiping soot from the animal’s eyes with his scarf, rocking from foot to foot. He pulled his cap down snug, wiped frozen snot from his moustache with the back of his hand, and climbed up onto the bench cart while Fred and Geraldine lifted themselves back into the cart.

  People wove through piles of blackened debris. Bodies lay in contorted postures where the blast had thrown them. On the streets, children straggled, holding the hands of older brothers or sisters. The living moved quietly, as if they had lost their voices. One woman, still in her housecoat and slippers, carried a toddler. Soldiers helped as many as they could up onto the cart and waved them on to the Commons.

  Geraldine jumped down from the cart and ran to two children, sitting alone on a curb. “I know this family.” She scooped the smallest onto her hip and took the hand of the older girl, who was wearing what looked like her father’s boots.

  A cry rose from a shoebox at the side of the road. A baby, no more than a few months old, lay wrapped in thin blanket. It was red-faced from crying and pushing its clenched fists into its scalloped gums. Fred looked around. No mother or father, not a sign of a sibling who might have left the box there. He picked it up and climbed back onto the cart, cradling the box in his lap and blowing on the small fists to warm them.

  A man with deep gashes on his cheeks slumped in the cart. “It was the Germans,” he said. “It’s all part of their plan. Oh yes …” he continued, as if he was arguing with a phantom, “they’ve been planning this. They’re here now, watching us. Soon their ships will be coming …” The man’s eyes were wild and outraged and fixed on Fred.

  Fred lifted a little girl of four or five walking alone, holding a kitten, onto the cart. “What’s your name?” She said nothing, just gripped the kitten, her bare feet, filled with glass slivers, bleeding. When Fred tried to look at them, to pull the glass out, she squeezed the kitten so tightly it yowled.

  Thousands of people crowded the open Commons. Some stood in bare feet, staring down at the city below, where the smoke coiled from blackened ground, up through the shells of buildings. Some were wrapped in pieces of filthy blankets, dragged black tails after them. Others sat, knees pulled to their chests, rocking, eyes closed.

  When Fred was ten, his father took him on a business trip to Madrid and they’d visited the Prado. His father was intent on finding the Dürers there. They’d stood a long time looking at the famous self-portrait. Fred fidgeted. He’d wanted to walk on quickly, to escape the artist’s eyes, which seemed to follow him, skeptically, as if he’d already decided that any of Fred’s notions of himself, especially his dreams of becoming a glass artist, were foolish.

  On the way out of the museum his father stopped to examine a Dutch still life. Fred found himself drawn to a nearby painting, a fairy tale landscape filled with fantastical flowers and animals. But it was the human figures that transfixed him, eliciting the first sensations of an arousal he did not understand. In the bright panels naked men and women embraced, feeding each other strange fruits. His eyes devoured each erotic detail, the round buttocks of the men and their hands resting on the breasts of the women. And then Fred’s eyes lit on the far panel, the dark landscape of hell, a charred skyline of ruined and burning buildings, a foreground strewn with severed body parts, crowded with the tortured, the wounded, and the bleeding.

  Now here it was, spread out before him, four hundred years later. As if the painting had willed this scene into being, as if the artist’s vision, once released, had formed, inevitably, a living expression of itself.

  “Mein Gott,” Fred whispered to himself. He climbed down from the cart, the small girl with the kitten in one arm and in the other, the baby in the shoebox, its tiny waving fists blackened from Fred’s hands.

  Fred was grateful his hands weren’t injured. When the explosion hit the force had rippled through the timbers, the floors, up through his feet. The building slamming into a mountain. Air knocked out of his chest. Windows blew in. Hot glass flew through the air. Men shouted. Two splintered doors sailed over Fred’s head. And then a dreadful settling silence. A cloud of dust rose from the floors and sifted from the open rafters, years of grime, dislodged, thickened the air. One of the men clawed at the back of his shirt, which had burst into flames. Fred had pushed him onto the earthen floor on his back, then grabbed a block, plunged it in the water barrel, and doused the man. Coughing, Fred had grabbed a shovel and jabbed at molten glass scattering the earthen shop, tossing it back into the furnace. Another glass-maker shoved his burnt hand into the barrel. Ernie Ryan, the fourth gaffer, had run straight away, out of one of the shattered windows, into the yard.

  They were lucky the factory wasn’t closer to the blast. The furnaces would have cracked and it would have burned to the ground.

  The cart pulled way.

  “Hey!” Someone clutched Fred’s shoulder. He twirled around, to find a young military cadet. “Are you uninjured? We need any able-bodied men to help get people to the hospitals and dressing stations,” he said. He was no more than a boy, growing his first thin, soft moustache. The cadet looked down at the girl and the box Fred was holding.

  Soldiers were handing blankets to a woman and three children huddled on the grass nearby. Fred kneeled by them. The woman, who had blood seeping out of a nightdress tied around her head, pulled close her children, a two-year-old boy in his pyjamas, a four-year-old boy covered in plaster dust, and a six-year-old girl, her coat inside out.

  “Can you please take care of them?” Fred set down the girl and the kitten, holding the box out. The baby had fallen asleep. The six-year-old girl peered into the box and took it from him. She cradled it in her lap, tucking it under her grey wool blanket. The woman wordlessly settled the small girl with the kitten in among her children, under the military blanket.

  FRED CLIMBED INTO a military van with the cadet and a burly soldier wearing a battle tunic. Fred shivered, noticing for the first time that he was still in his shirtsleeves. The soldier reached behind him, handed Fred a military coat, and shakily lit a cigarette. The van headed downhill and north, where the city was red with fires.

  The sky had become flat and white.

  As they drove into Richmond, houses disappeared. Nothing was left but piles of black rubble and deep puddles of standing water.

  “Big wave washed all the way up here after the blast.” The soldier flicked ash from the cigarette he was forgetting to smoke.

  The driver stopped the van and they jumped out to examine bodies, to search for any sign of life. Some were uninjured but appeared to have drowned. Some were beyond recognition.

  A man walked naked from the ruined sugar refinery. His skin was black and curling from him, as if he were covered in ivy. Fred looked away. The soldier caught his eye, stubbed out his cigarette under his boot, and pushed open the van door, motioning for Fred to follow. They laid the man on a blanket on the floo
r of the van. He was so badly burned that he appeared in shock, feeling no pain, and lay quietly talking to himself, staring at the roof of the van.

  In the middle of an open field they found a child of about twelve, lying alone and unconscious, as if her body had been thrown there, along with a ship’s compass and a train cart–sized piece of hull, in black-and-white dazzle pattern.

  A coatless woman leaned against the wall of a house clutching her arm. Fred held up her uninjured side. She was faint and collapsed onto him, covering his hands and apron with blood. When he helped her in the van his guts twisted. Her arm was almost severed at the elbow, bone and sinew exposed. He took off his belt and tied it around the woman’s upper arm to staunch the blood.

  People staggered down the streets, now hemmed with fires, with livid cuts on their faces and hands. The soldier examined them to decide whether they should get in the van. Others were left to wend their way to help.

  They unloaded at Camp Hill Hospital. The last person left to carry was the burned man. Fred found him, cold and motionless, eyes open.

  “Carry him to that cart!” a medic told Fred and the cadet, waving in the direction of one waiting at the hospital doors. Its cargo was piled high. A few arms and legs, blackened with soot, stuck out from the covering tarp.

  Fred returned to the van and leaned heavily on the door, out of sight of the soldier and cadet, who were talking with an officer. It had started to snow. He forced cold air deep into his lungs. The soldier discovered him there a few minutes later. “Ready to go?” he said, offering him a cigarette. He took it, leaning towards the soldier’s match. It was the first cigarette he had smoked since he was a boy in Germany.

  All day the van skidded through the streets, now thickening with snow, stopping to examine collapsed houses, to listen for the cries of those trapped under walls or ceilings. After a few hours soldiers told the crowds on the Commons to go home. There was nothing to be done. Fred watched as they wandered like sleepwalkers back to ruined houses and hopefully on to relatives, friends, or makeshift shelters.

  Just after midnight, Fred said to the soldier, lighting yet another cigarette, “What’s your name?”

  “Murray,” the man crouched by the van said. “Corporal Clyde Murray.” He stood and extended his hand. Fred held out his then withdrew it as they both looked at their bloody palms. Swaying on their feet, sharing the soldier’s cigarette, they waited to hear where they were to go next.

  Uncovered bodies lay side by side on the ground in front of the hospital. Fred could only look at their feet. Once, when he and the soldier bent to pick up a woman dusted with snow, she moaned. She wore nothing but a man’s coat. Fred and the soldier rushed her, blue with cold, into the hospital, where a medic threw a blanket on her as he ran past.

  At one of the dressing stations, women made sandwiches out of supplies brought from one of the food warehouses. Fred and the other men sat on the floor washing the stale bread down with lukewarm tea. He thought of a boy they had taken to the school. He’d lain on his side in the cart, dark-haired, his face, fine-featured, perfect. But when they picked him up, Fred saw that one side of his skull was crushed. A marble fell out of his pocket and Fred had picked it up — an oxblood with a ghost core — a real beauty — from Germany.

  Fred drifted off, his sandwich half-eaten, into that trip to Madrid with his father. The marbles he drew from his pockets to hold up against the light of the train window, while his father dozed, his paper open on his waistcoat.

  4

  CLARE AWOKE TO her heart striking her chest. Her head ached. All she could see was darkness.

  She turned her head. A glimmer of light resolved. She stared at it until it became a bright edge — a window. She could feel the cold air sinking into the room. Why was the window open?

  She lifted her hand to her face. A dressing covered her left eye. Its terrible pain was gone.

  Someone moaned in a nearby bed. She tried to look around the room but her head was a stone she couldn’t lift from the pillow. So cold. She was still wearing her wool dress and stockings. Something lay over her legs. Clare reached for it. Someone had thrown a coat over her. She pulled it up. Navy blue. Geraldine’s coat.

  She fell back into a restless slumber from which she awoke to the sound of a woman sobbing and a nurse coaxing her to leave, You’re upsetting the other patients. Clare willed herself to ebb back into sleep. Maybe she would wake to the world the way it was.

  A DARK SILHOUETTE stood between her and the light at the window’s edge.

  “How are you feeling?”

  The surgeon. She could smell his breath.

  “Cold,” she said.

  “They’ve tarpapered the windows. But they’ve run out of blankets.” He leaned closer and she held her breath. “And your eye?”

  She raised her hand again to the dressing. A wave of nausea, the bloody shard of glass. She swallowed hard. “I have a headache but the terrible pain is gone.”

  “The headache is probably the chloroform. And the eye, well … it shouldn’t give you too much pain now. A nurse will be by eventually to change the dressing. If the wound looks fine you can go. We badly need beds.”

  Two men in dirty street clothes carried a stretcher; on it a still figure, face entirely wrapped in bandages.

  “How long until it’s healed?” she said.

  “If there’s no infection it will heal quickly, a couple of weeks. You will have to wear a patch to protect it once the dressing comes off for good.”

  “How long will I need a patch?”

  The surgeon shifted uneasily. “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how soon you can get a prosthesis.”

  “Prosthesis?” Her mouth went dry.

  “We had to remove the eye,” he said. “You’re one of the lucky ones. Many lost both eyes. Children especially, watching the fire in the harbour.” His voice was slurred with fatigue. “The nurse will answer any more questions. I have to get back to the operating room.”

  FOOTSTEPS APPROACHED Clare’s bed. “Can I have a drink of water, nurse?” Clare turned her head to find Geraldine’s slight form standing at the foot of her bed, shaking snow off her hat.

  “Don’t look at me that way,” Clare said.

  “What way?” Strands coiled from Geraldine’s unpinned hair.

  “Pityingly.” Clare turned her face to the wall.

  Geraldine moved around to the side of the bed. “You’re lucky. The wounded soldiers have given up their beds. There are people lying all over the filthy floors. It was two ships, they say. They collided.” She tucked her hair behind her ears. “One was full of something, explosives.” She leaned her elbows on the mattress. “Clare, the sights and sounds are enough to set one foolish. I’ve been at the Victoria Hospital all night, helping with the children, washing and bandaging up the most terrible gashes.”

  “That’s what the surgeon said,” Clare said.

  “What?”

  “That I’m lucky.” She turned away again from Geraldine. “They took my eye out.” Her tears wet the dressing, trickled down her cheek, soaking the thin pillow.

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Geraldine whispered. She leaned over Clare. “I’ll get word to your family, your mom. The wire service is up again.”

  Her family. Her mother would take to her bed with worry.

  “What about Leo?” Geraldine said. “Surely the troops have heard. I’ll see if I can send a message. Where is he?”

  “How would I know?” Clare said. “They never tell us anything.” She turned back, grabbed Geraldine’s arm. “I don’t want to tell him. Please go. I’m tired.” Her head was a throbbing wound.

  “What if I sent it to the regiment?” Geraldine said. “I know you had a letter with you, I could find the address there.” Geraldine reached for Clare’s bloody smock, crumpled at the foot of the bed. She drew out the letter.

  “Give it to me.” Clare lifted her head and reached for the letter. Geraldine held i
t beyond her reach for a moment and then handed it to her, sighing.

  Clare stuffed the letter under her pillow and laid her pounding head back down.

  “I’m a monster.” Clare turned away from Geraldine again, blocking her out, her vision whittled to the bare wall.

  “Clare! What on earth do you mean?”

  “Leo will be repulsed.”

  Geraldine grabbed her cold hand. “Leo loves you. He’ll be so relieved you survived.”

  “Sure, at first,” Clare said.

  “I’m sure Leo’s seen a lot worse.”

  “He’s not marrying it.”

  “Sometimes a man appreciates a woman who can turn a blind eye,” Geraldine said, smiling. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like my coat back. Somehow I’ve ended up in yours. The house is still standing, though all the windows are gone of course. I don’t think there’s a single window left in the city.” Geraldine was buttoning up her own coat, grimacing at the mud and blood streaking it, absently trying to brush it off.

  “The others?” Clare said. She was so tired.

  Geraldine went still. “There will be plenty of time to talk about that when you’re better.”

  Clare closed her eye.

  As Geraldine turned to leave Clare said to the wall, “I was going to see him.”

  “Well, you can still see him with one eye,” Geraldine said.

  “No, I mean, I was actually going. To England. To work for the Red Cross. It was almost settled.”

  “When?” Geraldine said.

  “As soon as I could find passage.”

  “Don’t think about that now. You have to get better.”

  “Better?” Clare snorted. “Better than what?”

  AFTER GERALDINE LEFT, Clare pulled the letter out from under the pillow. She turned it over and held it up to catch the dim light from the window.

  Royal Canadian Regiment

  7th Infantry Brigade

  October 11, 1917, France

  My Dearest Clare