Stella Bain (5 page)

“Do you?” he asks.

“You want to make me well.”

“But with words, Miss Bain.”

“Please call me Stella.”

“Thank you. I’d invite you to call me August, but given the circumstances, I should remain as Dr. Bridge.”

Stella ponders this. “Well, then, Dr. Bridge, I have something that I must tell you. This is difficult.”

“I imagine every bit of this is hard for you.”

“I’m convinced I did something unforgivable in my past life.”

Dr. Bridge tilts his head. “Why do you say that?”

“I feel it.”

“I see.”

“It’s a powerful feeling.”

“You have guilt?”

“Yes, and something else. There’s a kind of horror attached. Well, it’s both more and less than horror—a sick feeling, a feeling of revulsion.”

“Close your eyes now and try to relax. Does any sort of association with that feeling come to mind?”

Stella does as she has been asked. But inside her, there is only a black void.

“You lost your memory in early March,” Dr. Bridge states. “You say you were injured. You’d been under bombardment?”

“Yes, several times.”

“Your mind seems quite nimble and sharp. Your head was examined at Marne?”

“I’m told it was. I’m surprised you didn’t send me to a hospital,” Stella says.

“Would you have gone?”

She shakes her head. “I’m not a shirker. If it weren’t for my desire to visit the Admiralty, I’d still be in France.”

“I believe you.”

“You’re fascinated by my case, aren’t you?” she asks.

“Yes, I suppose I am,” Dr. Bridge says, crossing his legs. “From a professional point of view, it’s deeply intriguing to treat a woman who has been under bombardment, but my goal is to make you healthier, as is the goal of any physician.”

“Dr. Bridge, I want to know who I am. What if Stella Bain really is my name?”

He gazes at her as if contemplating whether to speak. “I have reservations. After your arrival here, my wife and I made inquiries at the War Office and the Red Cross as to a Stella Bain, VAD. I’ve been in touch with the American embassy, too. We’ve received no positive reply.”

“I’m sometimes confused,” she confesses. “When I first told you and Lily my name, I had a fleeting thought that Stella Bain might not be accurate.”

“I plan to contact the field hospital in Marne. It may be more difficult, French bureaucracy being what it is. There may be no record of your joining that field hospital because you weren’t there officially or because, for reasons unknown, no attempt was made to discover where you actually belonged. I imagine as soon as they found out you drove an ambulance, they might not have wanted to send you away. Do you intend to keep going to the Admiralty?”

That afternoon, Lily had accompanied Stella to the Admiralty in the green-and-tan Austin Mary Dodsworth drove. Lily had explained that she was happy to wait for Stella across the street for as long as Stella liked. But Stella asked Lily to leave her at the gate and then park some distance away, as she did not want to be observed in her frustrating quest. Stella had no better luck at the Admiralty than she had during her first visit.

“Yes, I do,” Stella says.

Over the next several days, the Bridges and Stella settle into a routine. When Stella is not sketching, she often travels to the settlement house with Lily. There, she draws for children. In the afternoons, she tries to make it to the Admiralty, even though each visit seems a mere repetition of the first. Occasionally, Stella takes her meals with Lily and Dr. Bridge, but more often, she has a tray in her room. When Stella and Lily speak, the sessions in the orangery are never mentioned.

A
t their next meeting, a week later, Stella announces to Dr. Bridge that she has been drawing. “I purchased paper and a pencil on the afternoon after I left your house. I meant to write a note to you and Lily, but when I returned here, I began to draw instead. I used to sketch in France.”

“I wondered what was in that packet,” he says.

Unwanted heat rises to her face. “I was up hours last night.”

Dr. Bridge opens his mouth to speak, but Stella cuts him off.

“I know, I know, I need rest. But I did sleep late this morning.”

“May I see what you have?”

“The drawings are…I’m not sure how to phrase it…somewhat sinister, and this bothers me. I thought maybe you could help me with them.”

Stella walks the packet over to Dr. Bridge and then returns to her spot on the divan. She glances everywhere but at him.

“I’m speechless,” he says after he has studied the three drawings. “Do you have any idea, any idea at all, how good these are? They amaze me. You must—
you must
—have been an artist in your previous life.”

Stella flushes with pleasure at his response, but then shakes her head to indicate that she is as perplexed as he.

“May we discuss these?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“May I move closer to you?”

“Yes, of course.”

Dr. Bridge sits next to Stella and sets the drawings on his knees. She is aware of his scent: a mixture of laundry starch and his own not unpleasant body odor. His proximity makes her nervous.

He studies the first drawing. It is of a room, a beautiful room, though not in the best condition. The plaster is chipped in places, and the sink is old. There are floral studies on the walls between the many windows. A plate of pears rests on a table.

“What does this room mean to you?” he asks.

“I feel it’s a room I’ve been in. I’m aware of the room as an oasis. For a time, I’m happy there.”

“What do you do in this room?”

“Do? I don’t really know. Read? Sew? Draw? Polish the windows?”

“Simple pursuits.”

“Yes.”

“Is anyone in the room with you?”

“No,” she answers. “The point is that I’m alone. I’m honest there. I can think. I feel replenished. The room is my secret and my haven.”

“Outside the room,” Dr. Bridge says, “you have drawn a kind of forest, which, as you suggested, seems rather menacing, or sinister, as you put it. I have never seen such trees, though they do remind me of misshapen trunks at the edge of a cliff or on a moor—no line is straight.”

“Whatever is outside the house is evil.”

“You set out to draw this particular room? Were you remembering something?”

“No, not a memory. It just came.”

“What’s the menace, precisely?” he asks in a gentle tone. She notes that her hands are shaking, and she has the distinct sense that the doctor would cover them if he could.

“I have no idea.”

“You said you felt honest in that room, and you could think.”

“Yes,” she says, drawing a breath.

“Can you explain what you mean?”

“It’s a sense that I can tell the truth in that room.”

“To whom?”

She presses her lips together, thinking. “To myself, I suppose. There’s no one else there.”

“Do you think the room represents the interior of your mind?” he asks. “A place meant to be an oasis, a secret place where you once thought you could not be violated?”

“Or might it represent the way the war has violated me and all of us?” she counters. “That would explain the menace outside the room.”

“Yes, that’s possible.”

But Stella can see that Dr. Bridge is not convinced.

“This is of a house, too,” he says of the second drawing. “Is it the same as in the first? The woods behind it are similar.”

“It’s not the same house.”

“A man is lying on a blanket. There’s a picnic basket. Lovely food. Peaches and figs, it looks like.”

Stella nods.

“The man has a telescope near him.”

“Yes.”

“Are you in this scene as well?” Dr. Bridge asks.

“I don’t know. But the drawing makes me happy. I feel safer there than I did in the first. Possibly because of the man.”

“You don’t remember this man?”

“No. He might simply be a figment of my imagination.”

“I’m fascinated by the telescope,” the doctor says.

“I can’t explain that.”

“But still you have the menacing trees.”

“I have a sense that he is not supposed to be there. Or maybe I’m not supposed to be there.”

“And that’s it? Does the drawing suggest anything else?”

Stella closes her eyes once again. She shakes her head.

Dr. Bridge tucks that drawing behind the others. When Stella sees the next drawing, she reaches over and puts both hands on top of it. “I didn’t mean—” she says.

Dr. Bridge stares at her face. “You didn’t mean to show it to me?”

“I didn’t mean to draw it. I didn’t intend for anyone to see it.”

She begins to crumple the drawing, but he stops her hands. “Please, may I?”

She allows him to take the sketch from her.

A man on a bed, rumpled sheets covering his face. He is half undressed, and there seems to have been a struggle. A lamp is knocked over, and a mirror is broken.

“This makes me sick to look at,” Stella confesses.

“Is the man dead?”

“I don’t know.”

Dr. Bridge shifts his position so that he can see Stella’s face. “This can’t be the same man as in the previous drawing.”

“No.”

“Is this man at the heart of your guilt and dread?”

“I don’t know,” she says. She has no idea what caused her to make this drawing. “It’s terrible, isn’t it?”

Dr. Bridge lays a hand on her shoulder. Gradually, she begins to feel calmer. “It’s only a drawing, Miss Bain. Stella. It can’t hurt you.”

“But it does.”

“Then we will leave this. We’ll have to look at these drawings again, but I think not now.”

A
t their next meeting, in late November, Dr. Bridge begins by talking of her sketches. “Your drawings may be your best links to the past. The difficulty with them is that they can resemble a thing that happened in real life, or they can be an invention of the mind.”

“How will I ever know?” Stella asks.

“Well, you may not, and perhaps I won’t, either. It’s not simply the drawings themselves but the way they make you feel that might give us clues. The brain reacts in mysterious ways. As a cranial surgeon, I have had patients come through surgery entirely normal, yet on closer inspection I find that a man cannot identify individual letters on a page. Or that another is unreasonably angry, presenting a very different personality from the one he had before surgery. Or that yet another cannot actually speak his own name, though he can write it. These patients would seem to be fine otherwise.”

A squall of rain sweeps across the glass dome, and Stella glances up. Nervously, she tucks her handkerchief farther into the cuff of her tea-colored dress. If she were not concerned about her money running out, she would buy material and sew another dress for herself.

“Is there any possibility that either of the two men in the drawings is the person you seek at the Admiralty?”

Stella’s forehead is dotted with perspiration. “I don’t know. My search for someone at the Admiralty feels entirely urgent. It’s something I
must
do, not something I necessarily
wish
to do. It’s complicated, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

She rises and glides to the top of the stairs and stretches her arms behind her. For a bizarre moment, she thinks she might throw herself down the steps. She takes hold of the newel post and turns.

“So far you’ve been asking questions,” she says. “And I’ve been trying to answer them.”

“Yes, that’s true. But as we progress, I hope that it will be you who will be doing most of the talking. The purest form of analysis, according to Sigmund Freud, is one in which the physician speaks not at all. You’re familiar with Dr. Freud?”

“No.”

“He is an Austrian neurologist who has developed a new theory of psychological treatment. But I believe Freud is talking about deep-seated neuroses and a period of many months, if not years, of therapy. We don’t have that kind of time. You have a much more pressing concern if you are to live your life as a fully conscious being.”

“I can’t imagine what kind of life that would be,” she says. “I feel as though I’m floating in a world in which I have no part. It’s an extraordinary sensation, as if this were merely a dream, and at any moment I might wake up.” She pauses. “What does Lily think of this? Of what we are doing? Of my continued presence in your house?”

Dr. Bridge leans back. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No, of course not.”

He removes a square silver cigarette case from inside his pocket, a case that clicks open at a touch. A matching lighter appears. Dr. Bridge selects a cigarette and lights it, then breathes in deeply. In France, the surgeons could do this one-handed.

“Lily has deep reservoirs of generosity and kindness,” he says. “I believe she sees you as someone who needs help. She knows, however, that it is my assistance you need at this moment. As for our private conversations—yours and mine—I believe that’s why she chose the orangery. We can’t shut the door, for there isn’t one, and yet no one, unless he or she happens to be sitting on the stairs right below us, can hear us. We’re in the open, but not. This was her idea, and I readily agreed.”

“While I was convalescing, Lily took my uniform dress to a seamstress to be used as a template for two new dresses for me. I thought that was very kind.”

Dr. Bridge laughs. “I think it was more of a necessity than a kindness.”

Overhead, Stella notes, the squall has ended. “Do you think, Dr. Bridge, that you and I might take a walk in the garden?”

He seems a bit discomfited. “That would be unorthodox.”

“This entire quest is unorthodox.”

“All right, then. Yes. I’ll let Lily know, and I’ll meet you in the front hall.”

The garden, with its canopy of wet light in the trees, strikes Stella as splendid. She wonders if Dr. Bridge is as distracted by the glistening beauty as she is. She knows so little of the man, and yet she is beginning to form a picture: dedicated, cautious, loving toward his wife, and not without a little humor. After he closes the gate, they are showered with droplets from leaves that shake overhead. “Oh, this is lovely,” she says, and then turns her face to Dr. Bridge. “Are you happily married?”