Shoulder the Sky wwi-2

by Anne Perry

  He did not believe that.

  “I think I am,” she replied. “That’s proof the Peacemaker killed him, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, I think so.” He reached out and put his hand over hers. “I’m sorry.”

  She sniffed and gulped. “I’ll have a good cry about it later. I don’t want to go to the party with a blotchy face.”

  “Of course not,” he agreed. “We’re all hiding some wound or other. Head up, eyes forward.”

  “How about you?” She turned to look at him. The tears brimmed over and slid down her cheeks, but she was searching to know if he was also hiding something too big and too heavy to bear.

  “I know who killed Prentice,” he answered, wondering why he told her. He had thought he was going to tell no one, but the decision he had made in the boat was now impossible to live with. He must face Sam, and he was almost certain what he was going to do about it. It would hurt bitterly, almost unendurably. But he had watched hundreds of men bear wounds they would have thought beyond any strength to survive, and yet they had done it with dignity; they were ordinary men, some of them little more than boys. Men sent their sons and brothers and friends into horror unimaginable, and did it without crying against fate. So could he. The loneliness afterward was the price for all of them.

  “Who was it?” she asked.

  He shook his head very slightly. “I’ll deal with it. Let’s go to the party. Put on our best faces, and pretend it’s fun.”

  She smiled at him, and reached over to kiss him on the cheek.

  The party was fun, in an absurd, dreamlike way. All the women wore beautiful gowns, but the colors were subdued. It was unseemly to wear reds and pinks, as if denying other people’s loss, and yet everyone was pretending to a laughter and an ease they could not feel. Diamonds glittered, hair was perfect in the latest style, swept back, totally without curls except for the most discreet, just one on the brow, or at the nape of the neck. More would be unacceptable. The men were either in black, or uniform. Even though it was a formal dinner, nothing was more honorable than khaki, and Joseph was looked at with respect verging on deference.

  The twenty guests were at one long table, so they might discuss information and ideas more easily. No attempt had been made to balance the numbers. There were fourteen men and six women. Their host was Dermot Sandwell, tall and lean, impossibly elegant in black and white, the light of the chandeliers gleaming on his fair hair.

  “Good evening, Miss Reavley, Captain Reavley,” he said warmly as they entered the room where the reception was held. “It was very good of you to come,” he said to Judith in particular. “You will speak on behalf of a body of women we admire intensely. You have a nobility and a courage second to none.”

  “We have men, too, Mr. Sandwell,” she reminded him. “Many of them are young Americans who came at their own expense, because they believe in what we are fighting for, and they care.”

  “Yes, I know. And we will do more to give you the supplies and the support that’s appropriate,” he promised. “That’s why we need you here, to tell us exactly what that is. It’s time to stop guessing, doubling up some actions and omitting others. There is so much goodwill in the civilian population, people willing to do anything they can to help, but it is desperately in need of organization.” He turned to Joseph. “I see you are a chaplain. Are you home on leave?”

  “Yes, sir, briefly,” Joseph answered. “I return in two days.”

  “Where to?”

  “Ypres.” There was no indiscretion in answering. Chaplains were often moved from one place to another, and a cabinet minister like Sandwell probably knew far more accurately than Joseph exactly which regiments were where, and what their numbers were.

  “Front line?” Sandwell asked.

  “Yes, sir. I think that’s where I should be.”

  “Were you there for the gas attack?” Sandwell’s face was bleak, almost pinched. Joseph could not help wondering if he had lost someone he knew and loved in it.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied, meeting the wide, blue eyes and seeing the imagination of horror in them, and perhaps guilt, because he knew, and still had no choice but to send more men to face something he did not experience himself. Joseph wished he could think of something to say that would at least show he understood. For ministers and generals to risk their own lives helped no one. Their burdens were different, but just as real. Quite suddenly he felt an almost suffocating sense of loss for Owen Cullingford, not for Judith’s sake, but simply because the man was gone, and he realized how much he had liked him. “Yes, I was there. It’s a new kind of war.”

  “I’d give anything not to have to send men to that!” Sandwell said quietly, his voice shaking. “God in heaven, what have we come to?” He took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Captain. You know better than I do what the reality is. Perhaps you would be kind enough after dinner, when we address the subject more seriously, to tell us anything you think might assist us to be of more help, and more support to our men?”

  “Anything I can,” Joseph agreed.

  They moved further into the room, side by side, acknowledging people, being introduced, making polite remarks. After a little while they separated, Judith to talk to one of the other women, Joseph to answer questions from a bishop and member of the House of Lords on conditions and supplies that might be helped by civilian donations.

  It was only as they were going in to dinner that he heard a voice he recognized with a stab of memory so sharp the sweat broke out on his skin and he felt cold the instant after.

  “Virtuous and no doubt commendable, but naive, Miss Reavley.”

  Joseph spun around and saw Richard Mason talking to Judith. They were standing a little apart from the stream of guests moving toward the dining room. He still looked tired, his skin, like Joseph’s own, chapped by the wind, eyes hollow, as if Andy’s death were with him all the time. Also he had been at Gallipoli longer, and was perhaps more profoundly shocked by it than Joseph, who was used to Ypres. His dark hair had been properly cut and was smoothed back off his brow, and the power in his face, the carefully suppressed emotion, was naked to any observer who had ever been racked by storms themselves, or known feelings that overwhelmed caution and self-preserving.

  “I have seen as many wounded men as you have, Mr. Mason!” Judith retorted icily. “Don’t patronize me.”

  His eyes widened slightly and there was reluctant admiration in them. It could have been for her spirit, or the fact that she drove an ambulance. Or it could simply have been that she was beautiful. Anger and grief had taken the bloom of innocence from her and refined the strength. Cullingford had awoken the woman in her, and scoured deep with loss, all in the same act. Perhaps Mason saw something of it in her, because another kind of certainty had gone from his eyes, and whether she was aware of it or not, it was she who had caused that.

  Without waiting for his reply, she turned and went through the doors to the dining room, leaving him to follow or not, as he wished.

  Joseph found himself smiling, even though he was overtaken by a wave of fierce and consuming protectiveness toward her, and a knowledge that he could never succeed; no one could protect Judith, or be protected from her.

  He followed after her, awed, proud, and a little frightened.

  As always, he could smell the sour stench of the Front before he heard the guns, or saw the lines of troops marching, the broken trees, the occasional crater beside the roads where heavy artillery shells had fallen. There was a terrible familiarity to it, like reentering an old nightmare, as if every time sleep touched you, you were drawn back into the same drowning reality.

  Like anyone else, he had to walk the last few miles. He was passed by Wil Sloan, driving an empty ambulance. He stopped, but not to offer a lift; it was forbidden and Joseph knew better than to hope.

  “How’s Judith?” Wil asked anxiously, sticking his head out of the side and trying to make himself smile. “I mean . . .” He stopped awkwardly, memory sharp in his eye
s.

  Joseph smiled. “Last time I saw her she was making mincemeat out of a top war correspondent,” he answered. “She looked gorgeous, in a long, blue gown, and she was going in to dinner at the Savoy.”

  Wil looked uncertain whether to believe him or not.

  “Actually,” Joseph amended, “that wasn’t the last time. I did take her to where she was staying after that.”

  Wil relaxed. “She’s going to be all right?”

  “In time,” Joseph told him. “We all will be, one way or another.” He stood back, waving him on, to avoid the embarrassment for Wil of having to explain why he couldn’t offer a lift, even to a chaplain.

  Wil smiled and gave a little salute, then slipped the ambulance into gear again and moved forward. Joseph watched him drive into the distance on the long, straight road with its shattered poplars and the ditches on either side. The fields were level, a few copses left. One or two houses were burned out. There was a column of smoke on the horizon.

  It was dusk and the heavy artillery was firing pretty steadily, sending up great gouts of dark, sepia-colored earth, when he reported to the colonel.

  “You look rough, Reavley,” Fyfe observed. “Leave doesn’t agree with you. Feeling all right?” He asked it casually, but there was a genuine anxiety in his face.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, sir. I ran an errand to Gallipoli. Bit of bother on the way back.”

  Fyfe raised his eyebrows. “Bother?”

  “Yes, sir. Ship I was in got stopped by a German U-boat. They let us off before they sank it, but rather more rowing than I care for.”

  “Are you fit to be here? You look stiff!”

  “Yes, sir, but not too much.” Deliberately Joseph used the words he had heard from so many wounded men. “I’m a lot better than many of those who are fighting.”

  Fyfe gave the ghost of a smile. “True. Glad to have you back. Morale needs you. Lost one or two good men since you’ve been gone.”

  Joseph nodded. He did not want to know who they were yet. “Do you know where Major Wetherall was moved to, sir? I need to see him.”

  The colonel looked surprised, then curious. He looked at Joseph’s face, and read absolute refusal to speak. “I don’t know where he went, but he’s back. Been here a few days. He’s probably in the same dugout as before. Are you going to tell me what it’s about?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I see. I suppose your calling allows you to do that.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go on, then. If you go to the front line, take care. It’s going to be a rough night.”

  “Is anyone going over on a raid?” He gulped. It was too soon. Far too soon. Yet what difference did it make? Whenever it was, it would come, and then that would be the end. The sweetness and the burden of friendship ached inside him like a physical pain. It would serve nothing to delay it.

  “Are you sure you’re all right, Reavley?” Fyfe repeated.

  “Yes, sir.”

  The colonel nodded and made a small gesture with his hand. “Glad you’re back. The men need you. Young Rattray was wounded. Not too bad.”

  “Yes, sir. Is he still here?”

  “Hospital in Armentières.”

  “Thank you. Good night, sir.”

  “Good night, Reavley.”

  Outside in the dark he walked over the mud to the beginning of the supply trench and down the steps. It must have been raining again because there was water under the duckboards and he heard the rats’ feet scuttling and the heavy plop and splash of their bodies as they slid off.

  He made his way west toward Sam’s dugout. He half hoped he would not be there. It would delay what he had to do. He passed the Old Kent Road and turned along Paradise Alley. Now and then a star shell flared up, lighting the trenches ahead and then he heard the stutter of machine guns. He recognized the pattern.

  He went down the familiar slope and called out.

  Sam came to the door, pushing the sacking curtain back, his face in the glare alive with pleasure to see Joseph.

  “Come in! Have some hot brandy and mud! I’ve got chocolate biscuits.” He held the curtain open and stepped back.

  Joseph almost refused. What if he put it off another day? He knew the answer. He would make it worse, that’s all. He would have behaved like a coward, and Sam did not deserve that.

  He went down the step into the small, cramped space he knew so well. The pictures were the same, the books, the windup gramophone, a few records he had heard a dozen times, and the red blanket on Sam’s bed. The hurricane lantern was lit, warm yellow, touching everything with a golden edge.

  “You look like hell,” Sam said cheerfully. “I heard about Cullingford. That’s a damn shame. He was a good man. Is your sister going to be all right?”

  “In time.” Joseph sat down on the pile of boxes that had always served as a visitor’s chair.

  Sam was heating up tea in a Dixie can. He added a generous dash of brandy, then pulled open a box of chocolate biscuits. There were five left. He gave three to Joseph and took two himself. “And your brother?” he asked.

  “Fine. I went to Gallipoli on an errand for him.”

  Sam’s eyebrows shot up. “Gallipoli? No wonder you look like that. They say it’s worse than here.”

  “No, it isn’t. But it’s as bad.” Joseph had to be honest. “Well, maybe the chaos is worse. They don’t seem to have thought before they ordered the attack. Poor devils didn’t even know there were cliffs there.”

  Sam swore quietly, not with rage, but with pity at the waste of it.

  Joseph could not turn back now. “I found a war correspondent out there. Outstanding writer, not a novice like Prentice.”

  Sam’s eyes were wide. “And?”

  “And he intended to write it up exactly as he saw it, no excuses, nothing softened,” Joseph replied.

  Now Sam was motionless, his body stiff, his hands clenched around his mug of tea. “You say he intended to. He changed his mind?”

  Joseph looked at him carefully. He could see the fear in his eyes, but he knew beyond any question that it was not for himself but for Joseph, for what he might have done that he could not live with. How well Sam knew him! And accepted him.

  “I tried to persuade him not to in Gallipoli, and I failed,” he answered. “He left and I caught up with him on board a ship from Gibraltar. We were sunk by the Germans, and ended up in the same lifeboat.”

  Sam continued to stare at him, waiting.

  “I tried again to persuade him,” Joseph said. “There was another man with us, a crewman, wounded, and one who died. Mason and I were rowing the boat, trying to keep it into the wind as long as we could. And when we couldn’t hold it any longer, we turned and ran before the storm.” He took a deep breath. He had to say it now. “When Mason said he would publish his story, I stopped rowing. I sat in the stern and watched him struggle with both oars. I’d have let him go down, all of us, the crewman as well, rather than have him publish it.”

  “But he changed his mind,” Sam said softly. “He must have, or you wouldn’t be here. And you believe him?”

  “Yes.” He saw the doubt in Sam’s face. “Not because of what he said. We got becalmed in a fog. A ship came by, destroyer, I think. Mason stood up to hail it. Andy yelled at him not to, but it was too late. Mason didn’t listen. The wash of the destroyer caught us and Mason overbalanced and went into the water. Andy went after him.” He found it hard to say, even now. “I had the oars. I turned the boat and went back. Got Mason out, but we lost Andy.” His throat was aching and his voice was barely audible. “That . . . that’s what changed Mason, not really anything I said. Andy was typical Tommy, his brother’s keeper. . . .”

  Sam nodded. He did not need to speak. Suddenly the dugout seemed very small and close.

  “Sam . . . I know you killed Prentice,” Joseph said in the silence. “And I know why. Mason told me what he was doing, because he didn’t know he
was dead. He said it was all in his schoolboy code—but you could read that, couldn’t you!” He did not wait for an answer—it was in Sam’s eyes. “I don’t know whether I would have done the same or not. A fortnight ago I’d have said no. Now I’m not certain. I couldn’t kill Mason with my own hands, but that’s an equivocation. I was willing to stand back and let him die, which comes to the same thing. And I liked him. We tended the wounded together on the beach at Gallipoli. He was a decent man, not an arrogant, self-serving bastard like Prentice.”

  “But . . .?” Sam’s voice was hoarse, his eyes full of inner pain.

  He did not deserve to have to listen to Joseph excusing himself, talking about Prentice’s murder, as if that would make what he said any easier.

  “But you killed him,” Joseph said. “There are other men here, young men who are offering their lives to save what they believe in, a decency they trust, who know he was killed by one of us. I wish to God I’d covered it some way, but I didn’t, and now it can’t go unanswered.”

  Sam looked crumpled, hurt more than he knew how to deal with. “Are you going to turn me in?”

  “No,” Joseph said softly. “I can’t do that. I can’t even tell you that you were wrong, only that the army will see it that way. They have to.” He had tried to think of the words ever since he had decided what to do the night he had visited Mrs. Prentice, but it was no easier. “Next time there’s a big raid, like later tonight, you can go over the top with the others.” His voice cracked, but he could not stop. “Find someone dead who looks near enough like you, or whose body is beyond recognition, and change identity tags with him.” He was shivering. “You’ll live, and Sam Wetherall will be missing in action.” He wanted to say he was sorry, that he would have done anything he knew how, but none of it would help. He wanted to close his eyes, not look at Sam’s face, but he could not do that either. “If I can work it out, so will others. Before that . . . please . . . go . . . “

  Sam did not speak for several moments. He stared at Joseph, searching.