Time and Time Again

36

STANTON’S CONDITION CONTINUED to deteriorate over the next two weeks, during which he lay in his hospital bed either unconscious or delirious and on the edge of death. There were brief moments of lucidity when he was aware of doctors and nurses nearby. He knew that he was dying and he knew that he was being drugged to help with the pain. He had an idea that this was clouding his brain. It seemed to him that there was something he needed to tell those doctors about. Something he wanted them to fetch for him but he could not remember what it was.

It was during one of these moments of tormented dream-like consciousness that he opened his eyes and saw Bernadette Burdette.

She was talking to him. Talking and talking and talking. He loved listening to her voice even if he knew he was only dreaming it.

She said that she was sure he could pull through …

Oi’m sure yez’ll pull troo.

And she said she would stay with him and keep talking to him until he did.

He felt overwhelmed with gratitude. He felt that he was weeping. Weeping in his dreams. He wondered where Cassie was. Why wasn’t she sitting beside his bed too? Why was he only dreaming of Bernadette?

Perhaps it was just because she was so much more talkative.

‘The whole awful thing where the mob tried to lynch Rosa Luxemburg made it into the British papers,’ he dreamt he heard her saying, ‘and of course they were particularly interested in the story that a mysterious, tall, blond and fiendishly dishy Englishman had come to her aid, who had then paid the price for his chivalry by being shot in the street. Well, Hugh darling, you can imagine that my ears pricked up at that. After all, wasn’t I thinking about my own mysterious Englishman in Berlin and whether I’d ever see him again? And of course it was you! They’d found your papers on you so they had your name and they even published photos. The one from your papers, and a grainy flash photo of you standing on the podium outside SDP headquarters. I couldn’t believe it! You do get about, don’t you?’

The story went on. He couldn’t decide whether he’d heard it all at once or in bits. He certainly felt he’d heard it often, it seemed terribly familiar.

‘They had all that information and yet it seemed no record could be found of you either in Berlin or in Britain! Well, there wouldn’t be, would there? Bearing in mind your, ahem, what shall I say? Profession. The papers were appealing for anyone who knew you to come forward. Of course I don’t really know you … except, well, only in a rather intimate manner that couldn’t possibly be of any help in identifying you. And anyway I thought that perhaps they wouldn’t identify you because, let’s face it, you are a’ – she dipped her voice to a hoarse whisper – ‘spy. And so I felt the best thing to do was to come to you and see if I could help. Maybe even get you home. But I’m afraid you’re pretty ill, Hugh, and, well … they don’t really think you should be moved. Oh dear, I’ve told you this story twenty times and now I suppose I shall have to tell you again because I feel sure that talking might help …’

Stanton didn’t mind. He loved hearing her voice and hoped that she would keep talking until he died, when he could go to Cassie and tell her about his Irish friend, although of course he wouldn’t tell her everything … And yet there was that thing he needed to tell someone … something that needed fetching … but he couldn’t remember.

Once more his consciousness reconnected with Bernadette’s voice; she was holding his hand now, telling him about Rosa Luxemburg.

‘She came again this morning to see how you were,’ Bernadette was saying. ‘So brave of her, the streets really aren’t safe for her just now. She has a gang of bodyguards who never leave her side. Hugh, I can’t believe you told her about me! I nearly died when she said that you’d mentioned an Irish Suffragette who admired her! That was so sweet that you remembered. And telling her you saved her because of me. She actually thanked me for sending you to her in her hour of greatest need. Rosa Luxemburg! You can’t believe what that means to a girl like me, Hugh. Rosa is the most important woman in politics, even more than Mrs P. She’s overcome so much and inspired us all …’

Bernadette was squeezing his hand, probably too hard considering his rapidly fading strength, but somehow the firm touch of her skin on his seemed to give him a moment’s clarity. He opened his eyes and saw her mouth moving, that small mouth that had fascinated him so … and the strands of strawberry hair framing her bright green eyes.

For a second he was back on the train to Zagreb, the first time he saw her. Should he offer her a Manhattan?

No. Get back. Get back to the present. With a huge effort he struggled to return his mind to the hospital. Something was telling him this wasn’t a hallucination, that she really was beside him. If only he could remember what he wanted to tell her. Remember that thing he needed. There was something he needed.

‘Bernie,’ he whispered. ‘Bernie!’

‘Hugh!’ she gasped. ‘You’re here!’

‘No! No. Dying,’ he whispered, struggling to master his fevered thoughts, ‘dying. Listen to me, Bernie. You have to do exactly what I say because I shan’t be able to say it again because I’m going to die. Go to my apartment. The key is in my jacket. Find my bags … remember my bags?’

For a moment he lost his focus as a vision rose before his eyes of Bernadette, her face illuminated by the ghostly luminosity of a computer screen, levelling his pistol at him in a Vienna hotel room. He struggled to push away the memory and stay on message but now he couldn’t recall what he’d been saying.

‘Yes, yes, Hugh, your bags,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you want from your bag.’

Her voice brought him back. That was it. He remembered what he needed.

‘The smaller one. Open it. Again, key in jacket,’ he said, struggling to form the words. ‘In the bag there’s a pouch marked with a red cross. In that pouch are boxes of little plastic needles.’

‘Plastic? Sorry, what?’

‘Like glass … clear tubes with needles … for injections … get them. Stick one in my guts and push the plunger every twelve hours. Hide it, don’t show them … just do it, Bernie, do it.’

There he’d done it. He’d remembered … he could sleep now.

But she was still squeezing his hand.

‘Hugh! Hugh!’

He heard her voice speaking urgently. Was it over? Was she back?

‘Have you done it?’ he asked, drifting away.

‘No! No! Hugh … where is your apartment? You didn’t say. Where is your damned apartment?’

‘Mitte …’ he whispered. ‘Mitte.’

Then he was gone. Deep down into an unconsciousness where Bernadette could not follow. He left her far behind him in the light. He was in the dark now.

In a tunnel. A bloody tunnel. Who would have thought the old cliché was true? A dark tunnel with light ahead … and, yes, inevitably there was someone standing in the light at the end of it.

It was Cassie, of course. Cassie and the children waiting for him.

In the light at the end of the tunnel.

Why was he surprised? It was just like those people on morning TV shows who talked about near-death experiences said it was.

Cassie was saying something to him. He wanted to shout back that he had given up smoking. But Cassie had an Irish accent. She was speaking with Bernadette’s voice. Why would that be? And what was she saying?

Mitte.

Why was Cassie saying Mitte? In Bernadette’s voice?

‘Mitte!’ Bernadette was saying. ‘Mitte! Have you any idea how many blooming apartment rental businesses there are in Mitte?’

He opened his eyes, experiencing suddenly a blessed and unfamiliar clarity. He blinked and blinked again to master his blurred vision and focused on the sweet face hovering nearby. The slightly freckled nose, the slightly uneven teeth. She was talking to him.

‘I visited fourteen before I found yours and each one I had to flutter my eyelids and pretend to be a poor helpless Irish colleen before they’d check their list of tenants. Still I got there in the end and I’ve been sneaking one of those funny things into your tummy ever since. I’ve had to tell them we’re engaged so they let me sit. And I pay, of course, money always talks …’

The sensation of not being delirious was very strange.

‘How long?’ he whispered.

She actually physically jumped. ‘My God!’ she said. ‘Is that you, Hugh? Are you back in the land of the living?’

‘How long, Bernie?’

‘Since you sent me to get your marvellous medicine?’ she replied. ‘Four days.’

He drifted away again for a little while and this time when he opened his eyes he felt that they would stay open. Bernadette had saved his life.

It took another week for him to get strong enough to leave and during that time Bernadette stayed with him through all of each day, leaving only in the evening. Of course, she was more intrigued about him than ever.

‘Hugh. What was that stuff in the funny little needles?’ she whispered many times. ‘The doctors are just stunned; they’d presumed the blood poisoning would kill you. I haven’t told them anything but it was damned hard shoving the things into you when they weren’t looking. I do think you owe me an explanation.’

‘It’s a new medicine, Bernie,’ he replied, ‘in its very early stages. They call it antibiotics,’ was all he could tell her.

But they had plenty else to talk about.

The situation in Germany was deteriorating by the day and as Stanton sat up in bed sipping soup and gathering strength, Bernadette brought him up to date on a country gone crazy.

‘They imposed martial law on the morning after the assassination,’ she explained, ‘plus a month of official mourning, so it was actually incredibly hard for me even to get into the country. The borders are pretty much closed now, certainly to Germans trying to get out, and there have been thousands of arrests, I mean it, tens of thousands, in fact. It’s pretty terrible. They’re basically using the excuse to destroy the political opposition. The army’s in control and thinks it’s got a mandate to deal with absolutely everybody it hates, which is pretty much everyone except themselves. The SPD has been banned and all the trade unions have been raided and shut down. Loads of their people are being sent away to God knows where, some sort of prison camps, it seems. There are troops and police absolutely everywhere, the whole city’s like an armed fortress. Also, for some reason they keep linking the Jews in with it all. The newspapers are convinced that socialism is a particularly Jewish idea, which I don’t follow at all, but anyway there have been lots of attacks.’

‘Official attacks?’ Stanton asked.

‘No, not actually official, just the mob, but I can’t say as the police have been overzealous in intervening. The poor old Jews keep swearing undying loyalty to the Crown and trying to look even more conservative than the army but it’s not doing them any good. Honestly, I thought pogroms were a Russian problem. I didn’t think they could happen in a civilized country. And speaking of Russia, the Tsar seems to have gone completely mad too. He’s announced three months of mourning for his “beloved cousin Willy”. He’s closed the Duma, arrested most of the deputies, executed some of them, and the Cossacks are thundering about the country sabring every Jew and Democrat they can find. Between Tsar Nicholas and Kaiser Willy the Third, half of Europe seems to be under the control of paranoid murderous lunatics.’

‘Rosa Luxemburg predicted this,’ Stanton said.

‘Well, she was right.’

‘She believes the assassination was a reactionary plot to deal with the Left once and for all.’

‘Well, of course it is! Everybody with any sense at all has worked that out. What else could it possibly be?’ Bernadette said vehemently. ‘Why would any real Socialist have done this? This has got to be a plot. I’m not saying it was official but the army’s behind this for sure. Kaiser Bill just wasn’t war-like enough for them. It’s no coincidence they did him in while he was opening some tram lines. They gain so much from this and the Left loses everything.’

It really was a credible theory. A bloody sight more credible than the truth.

Stanton thought about Apis and the Black Hand. They were army officers but that hadn’t stopped them killing their own monarch for the greater good of Serbia. And of course military coups had been a major feature of his own twentieth century. History had almost lost count of the times army generals in RayBan sunglasses had bumped off legitimate heads of state.

‘It’ll calm down in the end,’ Stanton said.

‘I hope so.’

They were talking on the day Stanton was scheduled to leave hospital. His wound would still require care while it healed fully but the infection and blood poisoning had gone completely, to the utter astonishment of the doctors. From time to time they would put their heads round the door and shake them in disbelief.

‘It’s been wonderful of you to do all this, Bernie,’ Stanton said. ‘You know I would have died if you hadn’t come.’

‘Yes, I can see that,’ she said. ‘And if I hadn’t gone and got whatever it is you made me get.’

‘I can’t believe that you just dropped your life and came to find me … it’s very sweet.’

‘Well, I don’t know what life you think it is I’ve dropped, Hugh. I’m the original bored and pointless rich girl. Like most of my class, highly educated for absolutely nothing.’

‘But the struggle? Women’s rights? That’s what you were going back for. When we parted, in Vienna.’

‘I’m afraid that’s all gone a bit by the wayside at the moment. The Ulster Crisis has just taken over everything and most women have forgotten about sex solidarity in order to take sides on that. You’ve no idea how violent things have—’

‘Bernie,’ Stanton interrupted, reaching over and taking her hand, ‘when I was delirious and you were talking to me, you said a lot of stuff about yourself and your feelings …’

Suddenly he was aware that he didn’t want to talk about politics at all. The subject had never interested him very much. He wanted to talk about her.

‘Oh that,’ she said, reddening into one of her delightful blushes. ‘I was just sort of trying to keep you going really. Prattling away. It was probably a good thing you were delirious, otherwise you might have died of boredom before your little needles could get you better!’

He squeezed her hand a little more firmly.

‘I think I remember you telling me that you had been thinking about me and that you wanted to see me again. Was that just prattling?’

For a moment she looked away, staring nervously at the coverlet. Playing with it with her free hand. Then she looked Stanton in the eye.

‘Yes, well, perhaps I did say that but it’s all rubbish, isn’t it? What with all that emotional baggage you lug around inside that mysterious big locked bag of yours. And the way you shot off like a startled cat first thing in the morning in Vienna.’

Stanton tried to say something but she went on.

‘No, no, I didn’t mind. That was our agreement and you stuck to it and I had a lovely breakfast on our balcony before walking out with my head held high. So don’t worry, Mr Stanton, I haven’t come here expecting you to fall in love with me in exchange for playing nursemaid. To be honest I was happy just to be out of Ireland. It isn’t much fun at all at the moment, or Britain in general for that matter. I mean, it’s not like here, we’re not arresting whole classes of people, but there are still plenty of troops on the streets.’

Stanton had wanted to continue talking about her. To tell her that she was wrong and that he had been thinking about her every day since Vienna. But this news took him back completely.

‘Troops? On the streets? In Britain?’

‘Goodness, of course you don’t know, do you? We’ve been so busy talking about Germany I’d forgotten to say what’s been going on at home. It’s all happened in the last few days. Ever since Mr Churchill was killed.’

For a moment Stanton actually choked on his soup.

‘Churchill?’ he spluttered. ‘Killed? In 1914?’

‘Of course in 1914, what other year would it be? It was the most terrible thing. He was addressing a public meeting about Home Rule. His usual line, saying that it was treason for the Tories to threaten to support the army in resisting the law by force. Which, of course, it damn well would be. And then somebody shot him dead.’

‘Somebody?’

‘An Ulsterman, a Unionist. The man didn’t try to hide. He was proud of it. Said it was Mr Churchill who was the traitor for trying to break up the United Kingdom and that he was a patriot defending the King’s realm. You can imagine that the country’s in uproar and not all on Mr Churchill’s side either. I can tell you a lot of people are calling the murderer a hero. Meanwhile Ireland’s gone berserk. Bombs. Riots. Armed Republicans openly on the streets in Dublin.’

Stanton felt cold. He actually felt tears welling up in his eyes.

‘Hugh? Are you all right? You’re shaking. I mean, I know it’s dreadful news but there are plenty of people calling for calm too …’

Stanton lay back on his pillow and stared at the ceiling.

‘Bernie, you don’t understand. Churchill was essential. He saved us—’

‘Saved us? From what? He’d got the fleet up to speed certainly, but fat lot of good that’ll do anyone since everyone’s far too busy tearing apart their own country to fight anybody else’s. Look, I liked him myself, he was brave over Ireland and by no means the worst man in government on Suffrage, but he was just a Cabinet minister. What do you mean, he saved us?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Stanton replied, pulling himself together. ‘I just think he might have been destined for even greater things, that’s all. Who knows, it may be that great things won’t be required.’

‘I’m afraid I think they will be. Everyone in the whole country is at each other’s throats. Carson’s men have taken control in Belfast with their hundred thousand rifles and the army’s refusing to go in and sort them out. This isn’t the men, mind, it’s the generals! I think the way the military is acting here in Germany is giving them ideas. Some regiments have actually issued statements saying they won’t enforce Irish Home Rule whatever the law says. It seems to be only the King’s personal intervention that’s stopped them marching on Westminster. So you can imagine that nobody’s bothering much about women’s votes at present. Quite frankly, it’s beginning to look like there might not even be a parliament for women to vote for. So you see I was really quite happy to give it all up for a bit and come here and play Florence Nightingale. There’s more to life than politics, eh? I mean, one does have to have a life, after all. Well, I do … but perhaps you don’t want one. Or do you?’

‘Yes, Bernie,’ he said, now taking her hand in both of his. ‘I do want to have a life. I want it very much.’

The following day Stanton settled his bill, thanked the doctors, who were still shaking their heads in wonder, and left the hospital. With Bernadette’s help, he made his way down the massive steps of the hospital and into a taxi.

On entering his apartment he had expected to find empty bottles and rotten bread and cheese on the table where he had left his supper on the night of the Kaiser’s death. Instead the place had been cleaned; fresh food had been put on the shelf and fresh flowers on the table. The bed had been made with clean sheets and the window opened to air.

‘Surprise!’ Bernadette said. ‘Slightly against my principles to clean up after a man but since you still have a bullet hole in your stomach I thought I’d make an exception.’

Glancing across the room Stanton noticed bags in the corner that weren’t his. Bags he’d last seen in a hotel room in Vienna.

Those bags must have been empty because all of Bernadette’s clothes were on hangers in the cupboard.

‘Bit presumptuous?’ she asked.

‘No, not at all,’ he assured her.

‘Well, you’re obviously going to need a nurse for a bit while that wound heals properly so I thought it might as well be me. But, honestly, I can pack up and go again just as easily if you—’

He turned to her, took her in his arms and kissed her.

‘Come to bed,’ he breathed through the kisses that she was returning.

‘What about your stomach? The wound?’ she gasped.

‘I’ll risk it.’

‘For heaven’s sake, don’t burst your stitches. You just lie flat on your back and let me make all the effort.’