Ring out, Wild Bells, to the Wild Sky

DISCLAIMER: This is a fanfic based on the crime fiction of Dorothy L Sayers.  Set in 1943, a few years after she had stopped writing about the characters.

Harriet comes to the Radcliffe Infirmary to see an injured Lord Saint-George.

RATING: PG

PAIRING: Harriet/Saint-George, Harriet/Peter

DISTRIBUTION: Ask me first - but I’m going to say yes.

FEEDBACK: Yes, please - [email protected]

Harriet looked about her at the long bare ward in the Radcliffe Hospital.  Blackout curtains were tacked over the high windows, and pinned back only at the very bottom, where they let in a shaft of pale winter sunlight that fell straight to the floor beside each bed.  The shadows above and the dull green walls below lent the scene an especially gloomy aspect, while the hospital furniture and equipment around her took on a shadowy and sinister air.  Nurses hurried from bed to bed, like silent ghosts, bending over their charges briefly and then scuttling on, with just the occasional squeak of a shoe or a clatter of glass on tin to break the silence.

Her companion, a particularly starchy Sister with a very disapproving air, walked up to the bed on the right, and gave a sniff.  “Lady Peter Wimsey to see you.” She gave Harriet a hostile glare.  “Supper is at 6 o-clock sharp,” she said, ice in her tone, “so visiting hours finish at ten minutes before the hour. Exactly.”  And then she was gone in a rustle of starch.

Harriet’s eye fell on the bandaged figure in the bed and a sense of deja vu came over her.  But the last time they’d met like this the patient had been sporting only a sling, and a bandage covering one eye.  This time bandages covered the entire right hand side of his face and were secured by more bandages extending under his chin and up over his left ear, and back over his head, rather like a nun’s wimple.  All that was to be seen of him was the left side of his gently curved mouth, a bright blue eye, and one elegant upwardly swooping brow.

"Hullo, Gerald," she said pleasantly, "Back in Oxford and already making friends with the nurses, I see."

There was a chuckle from the bed.  “Ah, the coolness of Angel of Mercy there is not be laid at my door,” said Lord Saint-George lightly.  “M’mother was here yesterday, coming the Grande Dame and trying to carry me off to Denver.  Squashed the Sister, offended the Doctor, and scattered the junior staff in mere seconds, the poor blighters.  Took the Hospital Director to rout her in the end.”  He turned, bring his one eye to bear on her. "Jolly good of you to come rushing to my bed of pain, Aunt Harriet.  I’m sure you’ll soothe my fevered brow like anything."  He smiled, with the one side of his mouth that was uncovered.

“You’re a lucky lad,” said Harriet sedately, “I had been saving petrol coupons for a trip to Oxford for weeks.  I needed to look some items up in the Bodleian.”  She looked about her, at the slightly melancholy bouquet of flowers on the table, at the pile of magazines beside them - and at Saint-George’s long pale fingers, that were plucking nervously at the sheet covering him.  She sat on the bed, and took his hand in her own. “Well, the doctor tells me you’re going to live, which is a great relief for Peter of course, as well as for your mother and father.  He is hoping to pay you a visit but I don’t really know where he is at present, or when he’ll be back.  He telephones from all sorts of unexpected places.”

Saint-George curled his fingers in hers.  “Sorry to have alarmed him.  Got m’mother in quite a bate as well.  She was here blathering about the bally title, and the entail, and death duties.  Thinks England will fall when the final Wimsey breathes his last.  But I pointed out that there were no additional death duties if I died before the old man, and my Uncle Peter and Aunt Mary had been off fraternising with the middle classes," he indicated Harriet with a negligent wave of his free hand, "and breeding little Wimseys like mad, so that didn't wash, and the beast was baffled.”

Harriet smiled.  "I expect she was quite pleased to hear of your survival for non-dynastic reasons," she said gently, "She’s really rather fond of you, you know."

Saint-George was silent for a moment.  "Well, I'm quite fond of the old battle-axe m'self, of course," he said at last, "though never so fond as when I'm at least a hundred miles away from her.  Still, to Denver I must go it seems.  Can’t take up a hospital bed, when there’s a place for me at home.  Looking on the bright side, Ma spends a lot of her time in London now, terrorisin’ the newspapers.  I’d have gone yesterday, but volo, non valeo."

And indeed, he did not look fit to travel anywhere. Harriet squeezed his hand.  “I was thinking about that time in Oxford, and all that ugly business at Shrewsbury only this morning,” she said after a moment.  “It all seems so very long time ago and so insignificant now.  And yet, at the time I hardly even thought about what was going on the world, even though Peter was tangled up in it even then.” She looked down at Saint-George.  “And you of course were dashing about being the young man about town, without a care in the world.  Well, until you pranged your beautiful motorcar.”

"Pranged a beautiful aircraft this time,” said Saint-George gloomily.  “And I was a dashed young fool in those days.  Can't imagine how you managed to put up with me.  Or how anyone did, really."  His free hand began to pluck at the sheets again.

“Well I was pretty foolish too, and quite old enough to know better.” Harriet thought to back to that prickly defensive self who had wandered through Oxford, so caught up in her own hurts and resentments, so blind to everything else.

“I didn’t think so,” said Saint-George, “Thought it was a damn shame Uncle Peter had already snapped you up.  I rather fancied someone sensible - and deuced attractive of course," he added quickly, "Someone to keep me on the rails.” He paused, looking away from Harriet into space for a moment, “I was rather hoping that this War might finally be the making of me.  And now here I am.  I’ve made some widows and orphans, my eye’s gone and half my bally face is burned off, and I expect I’ll get a shiny medal, but it doesn’t make one feel a jot more manly, I assure you.”

“Well, if you’ve learned that, then you’re a wiser man than you give yourself credit for, Gerry,” said Harriet softly.

Lord Saint-George’s mouth twitched.  “Maybe so,” he said, “but I’d take my eye back, and unlearn the lesson if I could.”  He blinked for a moment.  “Now talk prettily to me, Aunt Harriet, or I’ll be goin’ all morbid on you.”

"Oh," said Harriet, vaguely.  "Well, I'm staying at Talboys of course, to keep the boys out of the bombing.  We've got American airmen billeted on us, as your mother no doubt told you.  Nice boys on the whole, and not at all inclined to vandalise the furniture, or ravish the local maidens as was generally expected - which has led to disappointment in some quarters.  They do tend to leave wads of chewing gum about the place, though.  There was an incident with the hall carpet..." 

She kept up a gentle stream of talk, watching as Saint-George's eye blinked, and closed, and the hand plucking at his sheets relaxed.  The part of his face left bare of the bandage was reddened from the flash of the explosion, and one or two tiny burns pocked the skin, but it was basically smooth - unmarked so far by time or pain - though that was set to change.  He looked, in fact, remarkably like her own boys, when she tucked them up in bed and kissed them each goodnight.

She bent forward, on a impulse, and brushed back St George's slightly frazzled lock of hair, and placed a firm kiss on the uncovered side of his mouth.

She felt a presence behind her and turned.  Hair still the pale yellow of ripe barley, but now threaded with the silver of winter, slim shoulders perfectly tailored, that achingly familiar beaky profile.  Peter stood beside the bed, hands in pockets, his head slightly turned to take in both herself and Saint-George, his expression one of amiable idiocy.  But he looked tired, thought Harriet, nerves stretched thin, strain etched on his features.  She smiled up at him.  "Peter."

"In the flesh."  Peter rocked back and forth on his heels a little.  "So how is the young scapegrace?"

"Better than he was before I came, I think," said Harriet thoughtfully.

"Well, who wouldn't be," said Peter agreeably, "after a kiss from you."

Harriet smiled, "Thank you," she said.  There had been a time, she knew, when a comment like that would have set her picking away at the surface to find the hidden double meaning, and the implied reproof.  But a few years of practice had taught her how to take Peter's remarks with grace.

She slipped her hand from Saint-George’s grip, then stood and walked over to her husband, and wrapped her arms round him.  "It's good to see you," she said simply, burrowing her head against his neck and smelling the familiar scent of aftershave, and tweed, and Peter.  She lifted her head and kissed him, felt his arms tighten around her.

"Sure you wouldn't rather be kissing young George?" he said lightly.  Bright blue eyes, now set in a fine network of wrinkles, looked in to her own, expression unreadable. 

"Quite sure - and I'd prove it to you," she said, "except I wouldn't wish to shock the nurses."  Her expression brightened, "Oh!  The car!  I'm sure the Ministry has given you a nice big car."

Peter laughed.  "They have," he said cheerfully, "but they've also given me a very small teenage girl from the ATS to drive it.  The poor little brute is sitting out there now reading a novel that seems to have been bound in some kind of rag."  He leant forward and kissed Harriet more deeply.  "But I've got a 48 hour pass," he said with undiminished cheerfulness, "so I'm sure you'll get a chance to make your point.”  He picked up the magazine and water glass from beside Saint-George’s bed, and struck a pose.

“Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough,

A flask of wine, a book of verse-and thou

Beside me singing in the Wilderness-

And Wilderness is Paradise enow." 

Harriet laughed. “You’ve heard my singing, my dear Peter, so it must be love.”  She thought about the house, now home to herself, her three boys, her sister-in-law Mary and her three offspring, their combined staff, and of course, to six American airmen.  Finding some privacy there, even beneath a bough, might prove harder than Peter thought.  Besides, it was rather chilly outside at this time of year.  But still, she could find a way. ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments’ she thought cheerfully - and spent a brief second wondering about the practicalities of the potting shed.  She blinked back to the present to find Peter regarding her speculatively, and gave him her best bland smile.

“That expression looks dashed promising.” Peter looked across at Saint-George. "But I suppose I ought to have a word with this young blighter, now that I've taken the trouble to get here."

Harriet looked at her watch.  "They'll be waking him in a few moments, for his supper,” she said. “I shall get your little ATS a cup of tea, and you can cut up Gerry’s Spam and boiled potatoes for him.”

Peter blinked, “My Lord, what we all must suffer for our country.” 

Harriet nodded. “To think I’d never heard of Spam a year ago,” she said lightly. She gestured to the sleeping Saint-George, “He’d appreciate a chat with you I think; he’s been learning some hard lessons lately.  There’s a dragon who will try to turf you out, but I’m sure you’re a match for her.”  She set off briskly down the length of the ward.

“Hic in capite draconis ardet perpetuo Sol," said Peter gravely.  As he spoke the sickly shaft of light that fell upon the bed faded.  He laughed, and sat down, just as the Sister came looming up at him from the darkness, moving at a near run.

“The sun sets and she appears,” murmured Peter, standing again and turning politely to face the approaching figure.

But the Sister was not concerned with visiting hours. “I’ve just heard, on the radio, she said breathlessly.  “We’ve won a great battle in Egypt, and they’re ringing the church bells tomorrow!”  She clasped her hands, “Oh, let us hope this is the start of great things!” and she rushed on, to spread her news further.

Peter pushed his hands into his jacket pockets,  “Let us hope so indeed,” he said and then he sat again, and began leafing gently through the Spectator, blond head inclined toward his nephew.

The End

Note: This story is set in November 1942, and the battle referred to at the end is El Alamein, when church bells were indeed rung throughout England in celebration.  Some of the information about what Sayers’ characters are doing in the War comes from ‘The Wimsey Papers’, which were published in ‘The Spectator’ during 1939-1940.  Events from 1940 onwards are imagined by me.

The title is from 'In Memoriam' by Alfred Tennyson.

The End

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