Fic: A Little space to Weep, Part 3

[cat-13145.livejournal.com]

Title: A Little Space to Weep
Chapter: Three: The Vertran 
Pairing:  Wooster/OMC, Jeeves/Wooster in later chapters
Summary: There are some things Bertie can't talk about with Jeeves. Or what happened after Sir Roderick came to lunch
Rating: PG13?
Warnings: Reference to attempted suicide, homophobia, bad attitudes towards women, mental ill health, trenches and character death (OC)
Disclaimer: I wish I was talented enough to have created Jeeves and Wooster. But I'm not, they belong to P.G. Wodehouse's estate. There is also some Shakespeare in there, which I also don't own.
Edit: Now Betaed by erynn999.
Author's Note: The injury mentioned is my attempt to explain why despite being told Bertie was a decent tennis player, we never see or hear about him playing any sport in the books. (if I'm Wrong, please correct me)
Chapter One
Chapter Two

 

Chapter 3

 

I woke up and couldn’t for the life of me think where I was. All I was certain of was it wasn’t home.

 

Getting to my feet, and pulling on a dressing grown (a brown camel coloured affair, not mine) on, I stepped outside, nearly colliding with nurse.

 

It took a moment or t. for me to realise that it was Caroline and I wasn’t back there. I don’t mind admitting it gave me a fair start.

 

“Good morning Bertie.” She said, fiddling with hairpins behind that great headdress of hers. “I was just about to leave you a note. William was called out to a patient, urgently, and I’m on the early shift. Seemed a good idea just to let you sleep.” She frowned. “My god, Bertie you look dreadful.”

 

I managed a laugh, “Just missing the grease paint old thing. Slept like a log honestly.”

 

If anything Caroline looked more worried.

 

“Just give me a minute to get dressed and I’ll be out of your hair. Are there any cabs about?”

 

Caroline was still frowning. “Why don’t you walk with me? St. Jude's is on the way to your flat and it’ll be easier to pick up a cab there.”

 

But I had no desire to spend any longer in remembrances of the past. “I’ll get one from here, please.”

 

Caroline’s eyes were still worried, but she nodded. “All right, Bertie, I’ll call you one.” I thanked her and prepared to step back in. “Bertie,” she called after me, and I turned. Her face was more worried than ever, and as I turned she was chewing on her lip, almost identical to the way Curly did when he was called upon and hadn’t done the reading. “You do know we’re friends, right?” she asked, sounding slightly scared. “And nothing can change that?”

 

I wondered if she thought that my reaction was to her and was worried about it.

 

“Of course, old thing.” I said, forcing myself to smile as I stepped back into the room.

 

*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/***/*//*/*/*/

 

I passed the rest of the day in a state of restlessness, unable to settle at anything.

 

I read a though pages of the latest Poirot, before dismissing it for a Rex West, before getting up and banging out a few bars on the piano, chain smoking the whole time.

 

Jeeves drifted in and out of the room, evidently completely baffled by the young master’s behaviour. At two o’clock, I took pity on him and headed off to the Drones.

 

Not that it helped matters. The infernal racket, normally ignorable, seemed to scratch against my nerves like a tomcat, and I couldn’t help looking at everyone differently.

 

I saw Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, the brightest mind of our year, easily expected to take his double first in languages from Oxford, and then settle down to an equally brilliant career in the foreign office, having a joke explained to him by Catsmeat.

 

I saw Oofy Prosser sitting in the armchair and my blood fair boiled at the sight of him, sitting there like a plump turkey. Alive and wealthy when far better men than him, heroes as opposed to war profiteers, were starving on streets.

 

 

*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*

 

“Goodbye sir.” Blood bubbled over Private Vicker’s lips and I wiped it away again. Poor chap wasn’t that far from the end and we both knew it. “God bless the king. Tell my Annie--” He coughed and more blood bubbled up to be wiped away. “Tell my Annie my last thoughts were of her.”

 

I nodded, softly and his head fell back as his breathing slowed. A peaceful death, at least. No need to lie to the family, to that poor girl. I lowered his body down on to the ground, wishing for a handkerchief or something to cover him with, and walked slowly back towards the edge of the trench.

 

My hand had stopped hurting, the pain sinking away to a dull numbness that was gradually spreading up my arm. In the distance, I could hear the shriek of shells, the explosions of mines, hear the cries of the men, but it all felt very far away.

 

Hornsby lay less than a hundred yards away from the hole in which I now stood. He had been calling for me, for his mother (dead when he was a baby), for Caroline, but had slowly slipped to just calling my name and now was just making whimpering noises that couldn’t be described as human.

 

It was strange how calm I felt.

 

I was alone here, surrounded by the dead bodies of my men. The man I loved was lying on the wire out there, dying and I couldn’t get to him, because you would need two hands to get out of his hole. My hand had been slashed by shrapnel, so even if I escaped this, I would almost certainly either die or loose the hand to blood poisoning.

 

I knew all this, and...accepted it completely calmly, some part of me insisting that it wasn’t real. That this couldn’t be happening.

 

*/*/*/*/*/**/*/

 

“Alright, Bertie?” I jumped out of a brown study as Claude laid a hand on my shoulder. “You look...” He trailed off, trying to come up with a way to describe how I looked, without actually mentioning what had happened.

 

“Fine. Absolutely spiffing in fact.” Claude was wearing his old Eton tie, almost undone though it wasn’t warm outside. Suddenly, I couldn’t bear it. “Must dash old thing. Got to see a man about a bear.”

 

I sprinted from the club and stood for a couple of minutes on the street, breathing deeply, trying to regain my balance.

 

Curly always wanted to be a teacher. All the family money was owned by his grandmother and he was quite honest that he didn’t fancy being dependent on her for the rest of his life. He planned to get his degree and then go teach Classics somewhere.

 

He would have been good at it too, one of those masters who inspires you because of their own passion for the subject. He was the only reason Claude and Eustace ever even got into Oxford, coming down the summer before their exams and some how or other managing to stuff enough knowledge into both their heads that they passed.

 

That was the summer before the war, a time I tried to avoid thinking about with even more vigour than the conflict its self. It’s strange how that works. That’s its more painful to remember the good times than the bloody awful, what?

 

The quickest way back to the flat was through the park, but in this mood, I didn’t dare go there.

 

They used to take us out to park nearby, from the hospital, when the weather was fine. I think some chappie even painted it, men in their “hospital blues” sitting or lying on the grass. Except me.

 

Every time they tried it, I started to scream, as soon as we were in the grassy area. If we went down by the boating pond, I screamed. The cricket pitch, the bowling green, all had the same effect.

 

As I was cato-something at the time, the situation caused more than a few raised eyebrows and suggestions that I should be forced down there, to see if I could be forced back to the land of the living.

 

In the end, it was argued that it was too distressing for the other patients and the passersby and it was stopped, though I don’t remember that.

 

I don’t remember much after Hornsby died.

 

I’m told that I was relieved by a Major Reinke, who found me surrounded by the dead bodies of my men, and a live sergeant from another battalion, a Sergeant...Reeves or Geeves, the major’s handwriting wasn’t too clear in the diary, and he was dead by the time anyone thought it might be important to find out what happened. Mustard gas.

 

Rivers did do his best to find the sergeant, but with an uncertain surname and no regiment listed, it was hopeless.

 

At any rate, a couple of major Reinke’s men who had survived said that I was shell-shocked, but coherent, able to answer questions when they were asked and so on. Just apparently unaware or unaccepting of the situation.

 

I was also coherent in the ambulance on the way back from the front, and I do actually remember some of that. One of the ambulance chappies had been a painter before the war, and I’d actually seen some of his stuff in London. We talked about art and painting, while his partner swore and cursed the potholes in the roads, the Germans and anything else that came to mind.

 

Apparently, it was when I was handed at the ambulance depot over to another set of ambulance chappies, that things started to go wrong. I wasn’t in any pain at the time, which seemed to cause a lot of worry in spite of my protests. In fact, the one of the chappies who’d brought me down at the front, the one driving, wanted to keep going, arguing that getting me to le hospital was an urgent whatsit, but his partner managed to convince him that I was still conscious and might just be doing the stiff upper lip. Beyond that, they didn’t have enough fuel for the round trip.

 

So I was bundled off one ambulance and on to another one, with three other chappies. That was when the problem started. I was still answering questions I was asked all right, but I kept slipping, muttering pieces of poetry. I think I remember some of that, as there was a lot of swearing and talk of blood poisoning.

 

Somehow or other I was lucky. Or unlucky, it all depends on how you look at it really. By some miracle, the wound was free of infection, though it was worse than was originally thought.

 

The surgeon chap who worked on me was a marvel. He saved the hand, so that even though some things, like gripping a tennis racket or a cricket bat, are still beyond me, the extension isn’t completely useless.

 

The problem was however, that Bertram was. Nothing seemed to provoke a reaction from me, from the surgeon prodding at my wound, to the nurses twittering over my head. Nothing produced a reaction, until some kind dear thought I might enjoy the sunshine.

 

Aunt Dahlia when she was informed of this gave a yell that I believe could be heard in 12 counties and arrived in London to collect me. I was promptly whisked to Brinkley court, where things did not improve.

 

After two weeks, Aunt Dahlia was forced to admit that fresh air and English cooking wasn’t going to solve the problem with Bertram in this case. I don’t know all the details, but Seppings still looks pained whenever I visit, and always leaves a small Woolworths oil lamp burning in the Wooster room in one of Uncle Tom’s silver cases.

 

So I was sent to Cranborn. I don’t know how much you know about it, so I’ll just say it was a jolly sort of place, where chaps whose nerves had been destroyed by the shells could go and some chaps like Rivers would try and put them back together. Most were viewed as hopeless cases, nearly all cationic; if that’s the word I want.

 

I met Caroline almost on the minute I arrived. The sister was carrying on at her about something she’d done or hadn’t done, as the case maybe, and I was being wheeled through the corridors.

 

“Bertie?” She ran away from Sister, kneeling down beside the wheelchair. “Bertie? What happened?”

 

She hadn’t got the letter yet. It had been sent, but to her grandmother, who hadn’t considered it worth contacting her only granddaughter to tell her her twin was dead.

 

She shouldn’t have heard it from me, but I looked into those blue eyes so like Curly's, and said, very softly, “He’s dead.”

 

She just sat there for a moment, before pulling up against her. “Oh, Bertie!” she muttered.

 

I reached the flat and flung myself on to the sofa, hugging myself and trying to fight off the memory of those dark days. I knew who I was, I knew who Caroline was, and I knew Hornsby was dead. The rest I had no idea of. Didn’t even know there was a war on, if you catch my drift.

 

Then Rivers was put in charge of my case. He noted that I had been unresponsive and cato-whatsit until I saw Caroline. Then I had spoken and remembered her and Curly. He suggested that Caroline try talking to me; see what other memories she could prompt.

 

How he talked Caroline into co-operating, I don’t know, but it was cruel.

 

When I look back, and remember all those days talking about chappies I remember from school or from Oxford, and Caroline just nodding gently and occasionally offering her own stories, her eyes shining, and all the while most of them were dead.

 

Then the nightmares started. At first, they were unreachable horrors that I could describe, but that left me screaming and babbling wide-eyed with terror. Then they started to crystallise into the trenches.

 

Rivers was debriefing Caroline after every session, trying to gauge, I think that’s the word, my progress, but I wasn’t aware of that. All I was aware of was I couldn’t tell her about that. So that night, I—

 

“Sir?” A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped about a foot in the air. Jeeves was standing there, bearing down at me. “Are you all right sir?”

 

It was dark. I hadn’t even realised it. How long had I been sitting there? I couldn’t say. Jeeves was staring at me, a worried look in his eyes.

 

“I’m fine Jeeves.” I forced the smile. “Just got a bit lost in thought. Unfamiliar territory what?” Even to my ears, my voice was far too high pitched, the laugh too force and hysterical. I coughed and tried again “Suppose I’d better be toddling off to bed what?”

 

“Very good sir.” Jeeves sounded uncertain. “Would you like me to bring you a tray?”

 

“Tray?”

 

“Yes sir.” Jeeves’s eyebrows had risen. “It is nearly nine o’clock sir, and you have not eaten.”

 

The mere thought of food made my stomach turn. “No thank you, Jeeves. I’m not hungry.”

 

 

Comments

[erynn999.livejournal.com]

It's great to see the third chapter of this! Well done!

[saylee.livejournal.com]

It's good to see more of this! I'm looking forward to seeing where this is going.

I'm such a spoiler.

[gunitneko.livejournal.com]

The Sergeant was Jeeves wasn't it?

[waseom.livejournal.com]

*is on edge of seat* I don't know why, but I feel like something awful is going to happen! Poor Bertie!

I can't wait for more--this story's so good. Awesome update!

[baskervwatson.livejournal.com]

D: D: D: D: D: *uber sad face*

I'm so hooked T-T Please post the next one up soon, this is tearing at my heartstrings!

[sex-in-spats.livejournal.com]

Yes! I have a soft spot in my heart for war fics in Jooster, so do continue. I've been enjoying this very much so far.

Re: I'm such a spoiler.

[cat-13145.livejournal.com]

I refuse to say anything to give away the plot, you're just going to have to wait and see.

[cat-13145.livejournal.com]

No where good, I'm afraid. I will try for a happy ending, I promise.