Master Georgie by Beryl Bainbridge Page A

told that it would be weeks, possibly months, before the desired footwear arrived.
    Conditions at the hospital, he informed me, were disgraceful. There were too few sappers to put the place to rights and he gathered the authorities did not or would not recognise the urgency. Attempts had been made to improve the ventilation by removing planks in the roof, but the place was miserably dirty and provided a veritable Valhalla for fleas, cockroaches and rats. Nor were there sufficient medical supplies. On his first afternoon, he dealt with a man who, following a drunken fall from a horse, had broken his lower jaw. There being nothing else available in the way of splints he was forced to use the pasteboard covers of a book - The Wide, Wide World - to set the injury. Until whitewashed throughout the building remained uninhabitable, and it was his firm diagnosis that a man would die there quicker than in camp. He scratched ferociously all night long and robbed me of sleep.
    I myself cut a sorry figure following the thoughtless handing over of the clothes I stood up in, much stiffened by my romp through the mud, to a washerwoman. Result -’I spent a whole day, naked and wrapped in a grimy horse-blanket, waiting for her return. She never did, and to add to my sartorial troubles the ship that carried our trunks failed to arrive, having reportedly caught fire a mile out of Scutari. Myrtle went off and, finding a seller of second-hand clothing, kindly purchased on my behalf a clerical suit styled in a fashion last favoured by my grandfather. She also brought back a top hat, somewhat moth-eaten at the crown. I wore it, ridicule being preferable to sunstroke. She herself donned a long robe, such as worn by Turkish women, in which, almost indecently at ease, she glided about the camp.
    It is curious how quickly one adapts to living in the open. Astonishing too, how used one becomes to hands black as pitch and a beard lively with grease. There is nothing more guaranteed to reduce a man to the essentials than to live beneath the sky.
    I admit I didn’t know who I was any more - my bearings had gone astray along with my trousers. I observed, and wrote down my impressions - by day, to the infernal buzzing of flies; by night, to the barking of dogs and the muffled cries of those disturbed by dreams of home...and worse.
    Deep down I was lost, my mind out of kilter. Often, drifting into sleep I silently recited those lines of Hesiod - They by each others’ hands inglorious fell, In horrid darkness plunged, the house of hell . I fear it was the tough mutton we consumed at sunset, rather than intellect, that dictated my thoughts.
     

 
     
    Plate 4. August 1854
     
    CONCERT PARTY
    AT VARNA
     
     
     
     
     

 
     
     
     
    This is the most beautiful spot and I cannot understand why so many fall sick. Possibly it’s the abundance of fruit to be had for the picking - cherries and strawberries grow wild in the meadows beyond the tents. I have never felt more healthy in my life.
    On our arrival Georgie instructed Dr Potter to buy me a pony. She’s white with a black patch on her rump; if startled, a blue vein stands out on her forehead. Docile animals are very like children. When I stroke her neck, the skin soft as velvet -
    Georgie has never seen me ride, being always too busy, but yesterday he promised to come with me up into the hills above the lake. An hour before we were due to depart he went missing. He was in the hospital tent, of course, itemising medicines and jotting things down in a ledger. He has no assistant and complains of the amount of reports he has to submit to the office of the Inspector General. He could have said he was sad not to accompany me, but he didn’t. He simply shouted over his shoulder, ‘You go, Myrtle. I can’t possibly get away.’
    Dr Potter would have come with me if I’d let him, in spite of being an indifferent horseman and against exercise. I’m fond of him, but used to living mostly in his head he’s