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Unsettled Shores

By Kelsey Gietl

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June 14, 1917
London, England

London smelled of misery. The city always carried a putrid tang with the constant smog that covered its rooftops, but today it also carried the weight of crumbled buildings and bloodstained cobblestones. Of yesterday’s unexpected air raid and a war which, after over three years of scuffle, felt like it would never end.

Josie Harrington peddled her bicycle through Piccadilly Circus, the wheels’ constant clickity-clack keeping pace to the rhythm of her labored breaths. It wasn’t that she couldn’t manage the ride; she had ridden this same route every day for over a year. From Holborn through Piccadilly to each required stop, ending in Chiswick then making the return route before blackout was imposed.

No, today she simply couldn’t stomach the Great War’s destruction anymore, her lungs and emotions depleted from dust-filled streets, air raid whistles, and being once again thrust into remembering her father’s last words:

“Soon, Joselyn. This is only goodbye for a short while. Until then, send me your dear words and sweet treats, a stitched glove or two if you can spare the yarn. I shall write you all my love and letters, sporting tales of your heroic Pop fending off the Jerries!” A hug, a laugh, then her playful shove towards the railway car. A vigorous wave as he stood between two other soldiers half his age, one strong arm thrown over each of their young shoulders.

The sound of London now buzzed in her ears from flower sellers’ begs, motorcar engines, and passing pedestrian shouts. Masons salvaging bricks from a crumbled office building. A shopkeep snapping dust from a rug as though there were any way to actually rid the fibers of filth. The city itself as loud as the drone of airplane propellers passing overhead on an otherwise unobtrusive Wednesday morning.

Yesterday when she heard them, she had slid her bicycle to a halt, one hand angled over her eyes as she stared into a clear blue sky, searching. The Germans had only ever used Zeppelins to bomb London prior; no one suspected what was to come when the Gotha planes swooped out of the sky in broad daylight, releasing their destruction over the city. It all happened so quickly, Josie hadn’t even moved. She stood there, staring into the sky while everyone ran for the underground platforms and residence cellars, streaking in both directions. Their voices sounded a bit like laughter to her crazed mind, and she imagined her father tugging her along towards Piccadilly, wanting open space to see the airplanes.

After it was all over, she realized how disappointed he would have been to read her letter saying how she survived another air raid and didn’t see a single plane, nary even a wingtip. She had never seen the Zeppelins either, except in plastered warning posters. She was always in the wrong place at the wrong time, never where the action happened to be, always in safety. Not until the following day would she pedal her bicycle once again, clickety-clack, and see what misery the Germans left behind them. Yesterday’s raid felled 162, eighteen of them children from a single school.

Her father had gone to war to experience excitement. Josie remained home and wished she hadn’t seen so much.

She turned her bicycle onto the road into Chiswick, leaving behind most of the filthy air as the city’s confines eventually turned more rustic. The fresh air motivated her to push her legs harder, standing up on the pedals as the cobblestones transitioned to dirt. Finally, she slid her bicycle to a stop outside the front steps of Olmsted Manor, a peach-stoned four-story Tudor converted into a convalescent home for wounded soldiers. With its opulent sprawling gardens, visits to the manor made for a lovely distraction from the pressing reality of Josie’s other daily delivery stops. Even when she didn’t have a delivery for the home, she took delight sitting for a spell in its gardens. Often, she would join a recovering soldier for a welcome chat, both of them as eager for non-war related discussion as the other. As the days collected since her father had gone, she wondered if one afternoon she would arrive to find him sitting on one of those garden benches or, more likely, sprawled across a chaise lounge on the veranda, its sunshade flapping overhead, him basking in the moment like a nobleman on holiday.

The Olmsteds’ footman, Cartwright, opened the door, his position one of the few leftover from the pre-war days. Now what servants remained at the manor had dual purpose, serving the needs of their countrymen first and the needs of their household second. The Olmsteds had rearranged their personal quarters to accommodate the soldiers with their grown children also having taken roles to assist the war effort.

“Good afternoon, Miss Harrington,” the footman nodded, holding the door wide for her to pass. “Matron will be relieved to see you arrived safely. We worried after you did not appear yesterday.”

“Yes, thank you, Cartwright. I am quite well today.” Although she was not well in the slightest. She unpinned her hat and gave her flattened brunette curls a habitual fluff, knowing nothing would spruce them back up after her spin through so many dozen dust clouds on the London streets.

Cartwright led her through the entryway, past the open atrium where several patients were seated around circular playing tables. Each glanced over as she passed, with several offering a nod or a smile which she returned in kind. Others’ gazes merely traced the room’s corners, unfocused eyes lost in memory. Between throw rugs, Josie’s worn shoe soles landed hollowly against the marble tiles until the footman opened a door and directed her inside.

What once served as the manor’s luxurious ballroom was now lined with rows of wrought iron beds, each covered in starched white sheets between which lay wounded soldiers in varying states of medical duress. Five voluntary aids, including the matron in charge, fluttered about the room checking vitals, rewrapping bandages, and distributing medication. Some of the patients were able to sit up and read, one or two even smoked a cigarette, but the majority lay beneath their covers, either asleep, staring blankly at the ceiling, or muttering softly to themselves.

It was not a room Josie would have stepped foot in without the war’s assistance, nor one she liked to linger in for too long. Nevertheless, she visited whether Matron was there or not. Visited every room in the manor in fact. Just in case her father appeared in one of those beds. After all these months, she still searched for him, even knowing he wouldn’t be there. His British Expeditionary Force identification tags were threaded on a chain beneath her blouse, yet she still liked to imagine the joyous reunion that would never be.

Matron met Josie halfway across the room, the older woman’s hands clasped tightly against her white apron-clad bosom and concern etched in every wrinkled feature. She released a sigh before quickly crossing herself, her starched veil fluttering with her fevered movements. “Oh, thank goodness, my dear,” she cried. “We were all so very worried yesterday when you did not arrive. So terribly afraid you were caught in the thick of it. To see you here now…” She shook her clasped hands as though offering thankful prayers. “Why, I must say, I am so very relieved.”

“Yes, I’ve arrived no worse for wear.” Josie returned a reluctant smile. It was more difficult to lie to Matron than to Cartwright. Matron found it far easier to see through Josie’s emotions and tended to mollycoddle as a result. She wondered if her own mother hadn’t passed so soon in life if she would have been as perceptive.

Matron continued to examine her with silent interrogation, so Josie decided to complete her assignment and escape to the gardens while there was still opportunity.

“I have today’s delivery.” She reached into her shoulder bag, searching for the twine-tied stack of envelopes she knew were buried there. Normally the letters for Olmsted Manor were all that remained in her pack, making them easy to locate, but today she had bypassed all her other stops in favor of leaving the city as quickly as possible. She would deliver the others on the return, but that meant she now had to sort through her bag to locate the correct ones. “One moment. I know they’re here somewhere.”

“Hush, child. Not yet.”

“Oh, yes, forgive me,” she said as her hand landed on the correct bundle. She had nearly forgotten the most important part of their delivery process. “I suppose I was so flustered I forgot to say, Victores in—”

“I said hush!” Matron snatched Josie’s wrist, shaking the packet of letters back into the bag. “We have an audience.”

Josie followed Matron’s line of sight to a patient bedded two rows over near the window, his eyes watching them intently rather than the pleasant view of the garden. Clearly a young man still, probably no more than thirty, he was wrapped in bandages of one form or another practically from head to toe. Casting braced his right leg and swathes of white linen packaged his right hand, sitting limply at his side. His chest rose and fell in anxious breaths while his unbandaged hand lay splayed upon it, as though counting each breath to ensure another followed. The upper half of his head lay hidden behind a bandage so concealing, she couldn’t tell what color his hair might be or if he even had any. What parts of his face that weren’t bandaged were riddled in various states of bruising.

“Who is that soldier?” she asked Matron. Her wrist still lay in the older woman’s grip but was no longer attempting to shake her off.

Matron gently released her, smoothing her apron and meticulously adjusting her puffed armbands. “I’m not certain of his name. We haven’t heard a word from him since he arrived. I only know what was passed from his rescuers.” She lowered her voice, edging closer until her shoulder pressed Josie’s. “He’s one of the special extracts they said, caught on the wrong side of the French front line. Trapped in an air raid in Le Clé, had a church topple right on top of him. They managed to get him out, but the journey over—tended to by farmers then bouncing in that wagon and the rocking waves from Calais—about did him in. We think he’ll make it, the question is what shape he’ll be in if he does. He certainly won’t be able to return to the front. It’s a hard blow for some of these men to receive. They feel as though they’re not valid anymore. Yet, the things they have seen over there…”

Josie knew some of the things Matron spoke of, horrors the soldiers mentioned in the manor’s confidence. She thought of the letters from her father, tucked away in her stocking drawer. In between lines of black censorship, his words crippled her in bed, knees drawn up beneath the quilts as she imagined bullets pelting off the dirt like hailstones mere inches from her father’s helmet. Both his arms cocked upright, the rifle butt pressed tight against his shoulder while he took out one Jerry after another. She remembered watching his brigade march through the streets, that same rifle propped against his shoulder, the smile he tossed her as bright as the sunlight glinting off the weapon’s barrel. Although neither a rifle, a helmet, nor a world of good intentions had saved him in the end.

She refocused on the wounded soldier and pressed a hand to where her father’s identification tags lay beneath her blouse. She splayed her fingers perfectly positioned to match the stranger’s and felt her own breath move in then out. Her father would never come home. This man might not either. What family would he leave behind?

“Do you believe he’ll survive?” she asked.

“There’s a chance,” said Matron. “He’s healing relatively well considering what he’s been through, but the body is influenced by the mind. He doesn’t yet know the extent of his injuries. He still has his hand, but I’m afraid the fingers were too badly damaged. He’ll keep them, but they’ll never work as they should. As for his leg … well, that’s to be seen. He needs something to live for or he may not live at all.”

Josie hesitated as the soldier’s eyes once again tried to hold hers. His bandaged hand raised ever so slowly, then outward as though reaching for her, before returning to its lifeless position on the bed sheets. With a grimace, he finally turned his head away. Josie didn’t.

Matron released a low sigh. “That’s the most response we’ve seen since he arrived.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Nearly two weeks.”

Josie turned to her in surprise, breaking the young man’s spell. “Not a word in all that time? Not even a simple hand gesture?”

Matron shook her head. “Not a one. When he arrived, he was barely even conscious.”

Weaving around the rows of beds, past men blinded from mustard gas or with missing limbs, Josie lowered herself to sit on the end of the soldier’s mattress and settled her shoulder bag in her lap. “Good morning, sir. The summer sun is lovely, isn’t it?”

Tilting his chin, he examined her with that same focused stare, analyzing, as though trying to reach into her mind and extract information. They had trained her not to reveal anything, not to give any indication that she was more than a simple courier. She focused on keeping her expression a blank slate, although her eyes analyzed him as much as he studied her.

Who was this soldier? What made him such a “special extract” as Matron had called him? Caught on the wrong side of the front line, she said. How had he arrived there?

It wasn’t her place to ask those things. That was part of her training too. Deliver, but don’t ask. She had done it a hundred times. A thousand times. Why did he make it so difficult to obey this time? He hadn’t even said a word.

He attempted to clench his fingers into fists and winced as his right hand refused to cooperate within its wrappings. Instead, he lifted the damaged hand to his chest and folded his good hand over it. He looked from her to the bag on her lap, the one which held dozens of letters still requiring special delivery. There was no way he could know about those though.

His good hand lowered from his chest, reached across … and she lifted the bag out of reach. She set it on the floor behind her where he couldn’t see. His hand lingered in midair, fingers outstretched, waiting for something. Did he want her to take it? That would be quite improper. But what exactly was considered propriety in a time of war? He had lost his brigade, his hand, and perhaps more in one day. She had lost any sense of normalcy the day the prime minister declared conflict with Germany.

Still, she let the soldier’s hand linger there between them, didn’t take it, yet didn’t move away. Her own sat primly folded in her lap, right there atop her pressed wool skirt, grey and somber like the endless war and dust particles floating through the city streets. She had been taught not to trust anyone too easily. Wasn’t that what her father cautioned her in one of his final letters before the Somme? Anyone could betray another, any man, woman, or child. War had taken even a lighthearted man like Hunter Harrington and made him think twice about the world. That was why she took this job. To prove she wasn’t like everyone else. That she could be selfless. To help the families whose fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons might still have a chance to come home.

“I’m Joselyn,” she said softly. “Josie actually. Josie Harrington.”

Slowly his lips parted. “Peter Müller. From Iowa.”

She forced back the edge of a smile. His accent sounded American. The way he said his name was not. Her father always said America had been built on the dreams of immigrants. “Traitorous rebels too,” he would say with a laugh, “but you mark my words, sweet Joselyn, those same rebellious dreamers will return one day to save us all.”

Finally, perhaps one had.

Slowly, she unfolded her fingers, one by one. Allowed him to rest his palm atop hers. Their fingers didn’t fold over one another, just remained palm to palm, the back of her hand cooled by the bed’s white sheets. Her bag of letters lay on the floor, waiting for one more message. His message.

“Tell me your story, Peter,” she said. “Help me send you home.”

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