Shoulder the Sky wwi-2

by Anne Perry

  Cullingford was right about what she had thought. She hated being put in the position of not knowing whether she should deny it or not. He was Prentice’s uncle, and had probably known him since he was born! He had to care, even if largely for his sister’s sake. She would love Hannah’s children, whatever they did. It was not a choice; she could not help it. But Prentice had still been an insensitive man who put his own advancement before basic decency in the face of human pain.

  “Yes, sir, I’m afraid I did.” The words were said from a depth of feeling, and she only thought afterward of how they might hurt him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Please do not keep saying you are sorry, Miss Reavley. It is growing tedious. And don’t treat me like an aged aunt. Your honesty is one of your better qualities—along with your ability to mend a car.”

  She was confused, uncertain how to react, and she felt ridiculous that it mattered so much to her.

  Then he smiled suddenly, which lit his face and took the tiredness from it. Images raced in her mind. What was he like away from war? What sort of man was he when circumstance did not force him into this hideous extremity of planning and executing death, having this unnatural power and answerability for the hope, morality, and survival of thousands of other men? What did he do when he was on leave? Did he like gardening, playing golf, walking? Did he have a dog, and did he love it, touch it with unbearable gentleness, as her father had? What music did he listen to? What books did he read? Who were his friends?

  “A penny for your thoughts, Miss Reavley?”

  Again she felt herself coloring. Thank God he could not know! “I wasn’t thinking of Mr. Prentice,” she answered.

  “No, neither was I,” he admitted. “If I had thought you were, I would probably have reduced it to a ha’penny.”

  She smiled back, and told him a half truth. “I was wondering what we would be doing if we were not here.” She knew the answer for herself. She would be living the same rather purposeless life she had before the war. She would take part in all the usual village events, feeling unnatural and inadequate at it, watching time slip by having done nothing that made more than superficial difference. She could be wondering if she would settle for marrying someone she was merely fond of, someone who would be predictable, kind to her, who would behave with honor, whom she would probably even like, but never love with all the passion she could feel. Would he be someone she could live with, but not someone she could not bear to live without?

  Cullingford fished in his pocket and put a penny on the dashboard.

  “I would probably be driving,” she said aloud, not meeting his eyes. “But not really going anywhere, just around the village, trying to do what my mother would have done. Do I have to find a penny for you to tell me what you would be doing, if there were no war?”

  “You have a penny,” he pointed out.

  “Somewhere, but I don’t know where.”

  “I paid you. That one is yours.”

  “Oh! Well, it’s yours again, then. What would you be doing?” She wanted intensely to know.

  “It’s nearly May. I would be walking down to the woods to see the bluebells,” he said without hesitation. “I would follow the path between the wild pear trees right into the middle of the flowers, where it all but disappears and you can hardly see where to put your feet without treading on them. It would be full of the sunlight and silence. I would stand there and let it sink into me until I was part of it.”

  She was seized with an overwhelming hunger to do all the same things, to do them with him, not to say anything, simply to be there.

  “It sounds like a lot more use than anything I would do,” she said quietly.

  “If you would try to pick up the pieces of the things that your mother used to do for others, is that not useful?” he asked. There was a startling gentleness in his voice. “Isn’t that what we do, when we miss someone almost beyond bearing?”

  She looked away from him; his eyes were too tender, too probing. “I hadn’t thought of it.” She choked on the words. “I suppose it is. I miss my father more. He would have gone walking, only he would have taken Henry, our dog.” She blinked rapidly. Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “I miss dogs—I miss dogs I could have as friends. You can’t do that here, they’re all messengers, or something. And I can’t bear caring about them, because I know how many of them get killed.”

  Ahead of them the traffic was moving again, and she eased the car into gear and started forward. “It’s bad enough to lose people. I can’t cope with it when it’s animals. Don’t tell me that’s stupid, and wrong. I know it is.”

  “I don’t know how wrong it is to love anything, or not to love it,” he replied, looking away from her and toward the traffic ahead. “I haven’t learned how to prevent it.” His voice shook a little. “With me it’s the horses.”

  A dozen answers streamed through her head, and none of them were what she wanted to say. There had been a depth of emotion in him that was far more powerful than the simple meaning of the words. She put all her attention to driving, forcing everything else out of her consciousness, because she could not cope with it.

  It was after they had returned to Poperinge, late in the evening, and extremely tired, that he spoke to her again. They were eating at their usual estaminet, Le Nid du Rat, in English the Rat’s Nest, a small, comfortable place with half a dozen tables. They had stew, consisting mostly of vegetables, and good bread. Today she was acutely aware of how much better it was than anything Joseph would have. She had seen something in his face that troubled her, a kind of blind, painful purpose deeper than simply the duty to tell Cullingford of Prentice’s death. He had suggested that he had been killed by someone who knew him, a British soldier, not a German one. If that was true then it was not an act of war, it was murder. And surely, after the past, Joseph of all people would not accept that unless he was forced to. There must be evidence he could not escape.

  Could it be Wil Sloan after all? How violent was his temper? Before driving Cullingford she had driven ambulances nearly all the winter, much of it with Wil. There were ways in which she knew him even better than she did her own brothers. She was familiar with the rhythm of his work, exactly how he liked his tea, how he curled over sideways when he slept, the patterns of his speech, how he hated the lice and would scratch himself raw, and then be ashamed of it. She knew precisely which jokes would make him laugh, and which would embarrass him.

  If Wil had been so appalled at Charlie Gee’s injuries that the horror had overwhelmed him, maybe frightened him out of control, could he have gone after Prentice, out to no-man’s-land, and pushed his head under the water? Perhaps they had quarreled about it again, and the misery had come back, the utter blinding helplessness of it. It would not be Prentice that Wil was lashing out at, just Prentice’s blind, uncaring face; Prentice as a symbol of all that hurt too much to bear.

  And if that were true, she would lie in her teeth to protect him. The law might require Wil to answer for it, justice did not, not to her.

  She looked up and met Cullingford’s eyes. He was watching her anxiously, and there was the same shadow in his gaze. But he did not know Wil Sloan. Who was he worried for? Or was it just the fear that someone had hated Prentice enough to kill him?

  “I imagine your brother does not speak lightly?” he said, ignoring his food. It was a question that demanded honesty, even though they both longed for comfort, anything except one more burden.

  “No,” she answered. She could feel her stomach hurt. How was she going to answer him if he asked about Wil? Suddenly her loyalties were torn in a way for which she was totally unprepared. Cullingford was authority. He could not turn a blind eye. She could, and must. But she would hate lying to him. “But I don’t think he knows anything,” she went on.

  His smile was sad, self-mocking, as if he understood her dilemma, and what she would do, and found a bitter humor in it. “Of course not,” he agreed. “Not yet. But he sees a cause of truth there
. He’s a priest. He is used to thinking of morality in absolutes, and letting God take care of the broken pieces.”

  Now she was really frightened. She wanted to ask him what he meant, as if she were a child and he the adult to explain it for her and make it right. But if she wanted him to see her as a woman, in moments away from duty as something like an equal, then she must also accept the loneliness and the decisions, and the blame.

  “Joseph will try to find out what happened,” she agreed. “And if someone is responsible, who it is.”

  “I see.” He picked up his fork, but he did not eat any more.

  “Are you afraid it is someone you know?” she asked.

  He looked up quickly. “Do you know?”

  “No. But that is what occurs to me.”

  “Hadrian?” There was a wealth of misery in his face, as if he himself were guilty of it.

  She smothered her surprise, turning her gasp into a cough. It had never occurred to her that Hadrian’s very clear dislike was anything more than a proficient soldier’s contempt for a man who did not understand the army or its rules and conventions, and had no genuine respect for its men.

  “Surely he didn’t dislike him sufficiently to do that?” She tried to believe it, remembering the loathing in Hadrian’s eyes as he had watched Prentice leave when he had come to see Cullingford a few days ago. Cullingford had given him written permission to pass almost anywhere he wanted. It was a defeat for Hadrian, who had told him such a thing was impossible.

  A sane man did not kill for such a reason. Where was sanity here when a score of men could be killed in a night, for no worthwhile reason at all? Everything was exactly the same the day after, most times not a yard lost, nor gained. And it was all meaningless mud anyway, poisoned and violated beyond any conceivable use.

  Yet looking at Cullingford’s face, she saw the fear in his eyes was perfectly real—he believed Hadrian could be guilty, and it hurt him, with grief for the fact, and fear of what it would mean in the future.

  She made herself smile. “I don’t think so,” she said with a conviction she imitated from him, thinking of him assuring injured men, lying with supreme ease. “He’s too military to do anything so rash. He’d have had to leave his own post. He wouldn’t do that on the night of a raid.”

  He smiled back at her, forcing himself to relax as well, let go of it as an act of will. “No. It was a foolish thought.” He picked up his glass and sipped the rough wine. “I didn’t like Eldon, but his death is . . . painful. I cannot return to England for some time, with things as they are. My sister Abby is a widow, and she is going to find this very hard.”

  She became aware of how acutely it embarrassed him to admit to such emotions. “You would like me to take some message to her?” she asked, to save him having to.

  Then she was afraid she had presumed!

  He looked at her with luminous candor. “Please? You know what grief is like. You could speak to her without being sentimental, which she would hate. Loss needs honesty. Nerys, my wife, would not . . .” He stopped, unable to finish the sentence without committing a betrayal. “She does not know a great deal of the reality of war.” His hand fiddled with the small salt spoon on the table. “There is no need to harrow people with details of violence and suffering they cannot help. And certainly not of . . . of your brother’s suspicions. It would add . . . to Abby’s pain. She needs to think of Eldon as what he might have become, not what he was.”

  His words were very spare, little more than a sketch, but she saw in it an outline of loneliness that hurt too much to acknowledge. What part of his life did he share with Nerys if he could not tell her of the horror he saw, the fear, the overwhelming physical discomfort of the trenches; or the jokes, the friendship, the sacrifice and the sheer kindness as well? Now of all times, what was there left of meaning in the trivia of life, the things that floated past the windows of the soul but never touched the inner being, pictures without substance.

  “Of course I’ll go and see Mrs. Prentice,” she said quickly. “I can tell her as much or as little as you like. I can say I met him several times, and that he was dedicated to his job, and brave enough to do it without fear for his own safety. I can tell her what it is like here—or conceal it, as you think best.”

  “Thank you.” He broke a piece of bread off in his fingers and ate it slowly. He looked at her with intense gravity. “I shall leave it to your judgment what you say to her. I . . . I haven’t seen her much lately. I . . .” He gave a shrug so slight his shoulders did not even pull his uniform. “I should have given her more time, especially after Allen died.” He made no excuses.

  “I can go the day after tomorrow,” she offered. “If you give me the address and perhaps a letter to explain to her who I am, so she does not think I am simply intruding.”

  “Of course.”

  She thought he wanted to say more, but he was uncomfortable enough with asking her for help, and he was torn between loyalties. Everyone felt guilty for disliking the dead, especially when they were young, and the grief for them was something you ought to share, and couldn’t.

  “Thank you,” he said softly. “It will make a difference to her.”

  They finished the meal without speaking again, but it was companionable, as if understanding made further words redundant.

  Matthew closed the door behind him and looked at the four men sitting around the long, polished table. One of them was his own superior at the Secret Intelligence Service, Calder Shearing; another was the head of British Naval Intelligence, Admiral “Blinker” Hall, white-haired, fresh-faced, with the nervous habit that had given him his nickname. The third was Brand, a man with receding brown hair and nondescript features, an assistant to Hall.

  The fourth man was dark-eyed, dark-haired, of medium height, and at present he looked so tired his skin had a withered, almost parchmentlike quality, shadowed around the sockets of his eyes and pinched near his mouth. The humor that was usually so clear in his expression was gone, as if stripped from him by shock.

  “Come in, Reavley,” Shearing directed. “Sit down. You know everyone here.”

  “Good morning, sir,” Matthew answered, acknowledging Admiral Hall. He glanced around the table. “Kittredge not here yet?” The answer was obvious, but he was looking for an explanation. He looked again at the dark man with the ravaged face. He was wearing civilian clothing, a shirt that looked crumpled and an old Harris tweed jacket, too warm for the time of year.

  “Kittredge is not coming,” Shearing told him. “This is a closed meeting.”

  Matthew was startled. Kittredge was one of three other men recruited to the SIS at the beginning of the war as a cryptographer. Before that he had been an academic at Cambridge. Language and codes were his specialties. Matthew took his seat in the place indicated, and waited for them to begin. He knew what he was here for; the fourth man, Ivor Chetwin, had just returned from Mexico. The United States and its neighbors were Matthew’s field of responsibility in SIS.

  Of course Shearing did not know that Ivor Chetwin had once been a close friend of John Reavley, until profound differences over the morality of espionage work had divided them. It had driven John Reavley into the dislike and distrust of all intelligence work that had lasted until the evening he had telephoned Matthew to tell him of the Peacemaker’s document given him by Reisenburg. He had been murdered the next day. It was only Chetwin’s brilliance at gaining information, and his undoubted personal courage, that made it bearable to Matthew that they should work together.

  Admiral Hall seemed to be in charge of the meeting. He was courteous to Shearing, but he deferred to no one. At the beginning of the war, on the night of August 5, 1914, Britain had sent out a ship that had picked up the transatlantic telephone cable, so all communication between Europe to America since then had had to be made by radio. Germany had routed its messages to its diplomatic staff in the United States and Mexico through various neutral countries, particularly Sweden. Naturally, it had used co
de.

  That code had been captured by British Naval Intelligence, and the fact that it had been broken was one of the most closely guarded secrets. Any action based solely upon information gained that way would betray to the Germans that their diplomatic exchanges were known, and the code would instantly be changed. All its value to Britain would be lost. Secrecy was vital. The German assumption that their codes could never be broken also helped!

  “The situation,” Hall prompted Chetwin.

  “Even worse than the reports,” Chetwin replied, his voice gravelly with exhaustion from weeks of fitful sleep, poor food, and the constant harassment of moving from place to place, only a step ahead of suspicion and arrest. “The whole of Mexico is in chaos,” he went on. He spoke slowly, almost without emotion, as if it were exhausted out of him. “Zapata and Pancho Villa have gone crazy. They’re dancing in the presidential palace like so many apes. They have no control over anything. Armed men roam the countryside looting and killing. They steal cattle, grain, horses, anything that can be moved. Bodies swing from the trees like rotten fruit.”

  No one interrupted him.

  He ran his hand, neat and strong, over his brow. “There’s nothing left to eat. Villages have been razed to the ground, roads and bridges have been torn up. There’s death everywhere, like a pall over the earth. The cities are crawling with typhus and black pox, and there are more firing squads than queues for food.”

  “The Germans?” Hall reminded him.

  Chetwin sighed. “Pouring in guns and money.”

  They all knew what that meant. If the Mexican armies crossed the Rio Grande the United States would mobilize all its forces to defend itself. There would be nothing left of men, munitions, or passion to consider what was happening in the rest of the world.

  “How close?” Shearing asked.

  Chetwin shook his head. “Not close enough,” he answered the question they had not asked. “I told Washington everything I could, short of giving them our decoded messages. They’ve got explanations for half of it, and don’t believe the rest. Nothing will persuade them that Germany is seriously behind the arming of Mexico, or the projected building of a Japanese naval base on their Pacific coast.”