The Paris Peacemakers by Flora Johnston

Author:Flora Johnston
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2024-07-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Erskine, Scotland

Sir William had offered to collect him from Bishopton station but Rob chose to walk. It was further than he anticipated. Now, as he reached the stone gates and realised that a long tree-lined driveway still stretched out ahead of him, he almost regretted that decision. Almost, but not quite.

He laid down his bag in order to rest for a moment or two. It had rained overnight here, but now the air was still, warm and laden with the fragrance of a thousand trees and flowers spreading out around him. He breathed in slowly, as if the pure air might somehow cleanse all that had been foul inside him for the last five years. He had been back in Scotland for less than a fortnight, and felt like a stranger in a landscape that had once been his own. Some things had changed and caught him unawares: a new shop where he expected a pub; an old oak tree blown down by the wind; a whole tenement block demolished with an ostentatious modern house rising in its place. Yet it was the pieces of his old life that had remained the same that bewildered him most. Surely nothing could be untouched. Everything within him shrieked out in protest at a country that carried on oblivious to the hellish destruction that had become his entire world.

He spent a week in the gloomy rooms of his Edinburgh childhood home. A week was enough. His father was proud of him. His father loved him. His father was relieved he had come through relatively unscathed. But they no longer fitted together with any sort of ease. The old man was set in his ways and had a housekeeper to care for his needs. Rob sat opposite him in the silent drawing room of an evening with a glass of whisky and a book, and found he couldn’t breathe.

The easy camaraderie of the mess tugged at his sleeve.

But it was only ever going to be a temporary visit to the old man. Edinburgh held nothing for him now. He had spent these past few months of uneasy peace dealing with diminishing cases and seeing to the logistics of closing down the hospital, and had put his plans in place. The war might have ended, but its catastrophic consequences had just moved location. And so now he found himself at the end of the long driveway of a grand and secluded estate on the banks of the River Clyde. A couple of years ago, thanks to the generosity of some Glasgow dignitaries, this mansion house had been transformed into the Princess Louise Scottish Hospital for Limbless Sailors and Soldiers. He had corresponded from France with its founder, the brilliant pioneering surgeon Sir William Macewen, and had agreed to come and work here for a month in the first instance, with the hope that he would stay for as long as he was needed.

Rob picked up his bag again, heaving it over his shoulder, and began the walk up the drive.

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