THE KING’S FIGHT

It might have been a century ago, but the soldiers who died then asked the same questions and made the same sacrifices...

“When the battle raged and the roar of the guns thundered like death in our ears, I got to thinking,” murmured Dickie Jones.

“You got to thinking?” prompted Miranda, gently stroking his brow and smiling like the angel she’d always been.

“I got to thinking...” His words came in a painful gasp, but then it would, what with the physical injuries that had lain him mere smidgens from the doors of Death for so long.

“Yes?” she asked, and it was the smile that got at him, her lips, their curve, their pink softness, the way she moistened them with the tip of her tongue.

“Why was I there?” he concluded.

A good question, she thought, why were any of you there?

“And did you get an answer?” asked Miranda.

He looked at her, and she read his silence in the eyes that had seen too much. He’d been at the Somme and he was one of the lucky ones because somehow they’d got him back home and coddled him in this hospital. Many of his comrades had been much less fortunate, and lay beneath the turves of foreign fields.

Or had they been the lucky ones? Was the normal perspective of life versus death reversed? Was it now serendipitous to die?

Of course, the war was over, but it still raged in her patient’s head, and she realised that.

The guns would blaze in there for ever.

“Why was I there?” he asked. “Why were they shooting at me? What had I done?”

She soothed his forehead again. He had spoken more words in that anguished moment than she had heard him utter all the time he’d been here, in her care.

“You were the enemy,” she whispered. “That’s why the bullets came your way.”

“But why?” he asked. “I didn’t … didn’t know them...”

“For the King,” she assured him. “You were there for King and Country. To do your bit like I’m doing my bit here, helping you back to health and strength.”

“Was the King there too?” he asked, struggling to understand. “Was he … dodging the shells?”

She giggled. What a musical sound! What a wonderful toxic musical sound! She must do it again and again, with laughter mixing with poison in a tinkling sound that went against all reason. All reality. All ricocheting missiles, lead and steel, fire and death. Yes, it went against death and reason.

“Kings don’t fight,” she told him quietly. “They send strong and brave young men to fight for them. Think what it would be like if Kings got killed in battle, or wounded to end up here with nurses like me whispering into their ears and washing their balls for them?”

Her eyes flashed meaningfully when she said the balls word. He blinked or flinched and tried to creep back into the echoing battle that raged inside his head.

But he was curious.

“Have you…?” he asked, his voice barely audible.

“Washed yours? Of course I have!”

Was she teasing? Or was it true?

“They’re over there, in that white dish, waiting to be taken to the furnace where they’ll make you warm tonight,” she said. “After all, they’ll be no good where you’re going. What good to a man in Heaven are the seeds of life on Earth?” She hadn’t intended to suggest mortality, but there, it was out, she knew his prognosis.

“And the King…?” he asked, confused.

“He’s in his palace with the biggest headache of them all … how to pay for the war now that it’s over, how to repay the debts he incurred, borrowing money from here, there and everywhere, and it’s giving him a headache trying to repay it, with interest too I shouldn’t wonder.”

“What debts?” She shouldn’t have mentioned his man-bits because now that he thought about it he could feel the dull ache they gave, like when they were knocked on the rugby field at school all those years ago, before he became a man, before he went to war, when games had been games and there were no guns.

“Guns and bombs cost money,” she told him, “And soldiers, with their pay. And so do nurses like me!”

“So why was I there if it all cost so much?”

It was the old question, the one that haunted him, and she found its repetition boring. How could she answer him? She didn’t know. She didn’t know why any of the young men she nursed down this road had been there, in France, in Belgium, shooting at Germans. Just that they had. It was their duty. That was it: their duty.

Come to think of it, she didn’t know why any of the German young men had been there either. Maybe it seemed a bit unfair… Was it their duty, too?

“In that white bowl?” he asked, feebly. “My…?”

“Balls,” she nodded. “You were wounded and to save your life the doctor had to make little sacrifices. He left it as long as he could, just in case your body healed down there where it was infected, but this morning, early… They’re in that bowl.”

“So it’s not just the King paying his bills?” gasped young Dickie. “I’ve had to pay too? What will my girl say?”

“You’ve got a girl?” she asked, surprised. He’d had no visitors, not during all the time he’d been there. And there could have been. Visitors were hardly ever turned away.

“Rosie,” he whispered, “I’ve got Rosie...”

“Is she pretty?” asked Miranda, changing the subject. Young men liked talking about their loves. It sometimes seemed to do them good.

Pretty as a picture, my Rosie...” he breathed, “with eyes like gemstones and a heart of gold.”

“She sounds nice,” commented Miranda.

“She didn’t want me to go,” he sighed. “She said the King should go instead.”

“Why the poor King?” asked Miranda, wiping his brow again. “Why should he have to go and fight?”

“It was his...” His voice was getting faint like she knew it must. She’d seen it before. Lots of times in lots of young men.

“It was his fight...” concluded Dickie.

“But he’s the King!” remonstrated Miranda. “Kings are too important to fight!”

“And I’m not...”

Then he sighed.

There never was such a sigh, not in his life, and never would be again. A brave young man only sighs like that once, and it takes everything with it.

“Poor lad,” whispered Miranda, “and not such a bad looker either! But he shouldn’t have said that about the King! He never should have said that!”

And she carefully covered the dead youth’s face with the sheet, and moved like an angel to the next bed.

© Peter Rogerson 20.06.17