Angels in the Gloom wwi-3

by Anne Perry

  He was standing at the telephone in the hall. Everyone else was in the kitchen. He could smell bread baking.

  “Yes,” he said, clearing his throat. “Yes. Of course I’ll go. I imagine they will let me in. Where is he?”

  There was a moment’s silence. “Don’t you know? Shanley said you did!”

  “No, I don’t. But I imagine I can find out. It may not be today, but I’ll go.”

  “Thank you.” She did not press him or ask him to swear or promise. She believed his word. It made him feel worse.

  It took him several telephone calls and a lot of waiting before finally someone in Admiral Hall’s office told him where Corcoran was, and gave him permission to visit because he was an ordained chaplain in the army. Corcoran would not be permitted a civilian lawyer, but he would be allowed a military one, and the military priest of his choice. Apparently that was Joseph. A car would pick him up the following afternoon, and return him afterward. He was to speak of it to no one, most particularly not to Orla Corcoran. Joseph gave his word; it was a condition of the visit. And he was to wear uniform so there could be no misunderstanding of his status.

  The countryside was glorious, dappled sunshine over the fields, hedges still white with blossom, trees billowing in the wind, their skirts flying. There were shire horses leaning into the harrow, necks bent. Clouds piled up, scudding away in long mare’s tails, like spindrift off the sea. For once he did not see it.

  It was a long journey and he lost sense of direction, except that it was generally toward London. It took over two hours. When he finally arrived at the building, he found it was an old prison made of stone and smelling as if it was always wet. It seemed to carry with it the darkness of old griefs, bitterness, and lost dreams.

  Joseph identified himself again, and was taken inside.

  “I have been told to allow you an hour, Chaplain, but it will only be this once,” the officer in charge told him. “I don’t know what he’s here for, but it’s very serious. You must give him nothing, and take nothing from him. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. I’ve seen military prisoners before,” Joseph replied miserably.

  “Maybe, but this one’s different. Sorry, Chaplain, but we’ve got to search you.”

  “Of course.” Joseph submitted obediently, then finally he was conducted along a narrow corridor. His footsteps, instead of echoing as he had expected, were eaten by the silence, as if he had not really passed that way at all.

  Corcoran was in an ordinary room, indistinguishable as a cell except for the fact that the window was above head height, and the glass was so thick that nothing was visible through it. The single door was made of steel with no features at all on the inside, no hinge, no handle.

  Corcoran himself was sitting on a bunk bed with a bare mattress.

  He looked up as the door closed and Joseph was left alone with him. He was an old man, his face withered, his skin without life. His eyes seemed smaller, more deeply sunken into his head.

  Joseph felt a wrenching pity inside him like a cramp in the stomach, and even a kind of revulsion. It would have been unimaginable a week ago. This was Shanley Corcoran! A man he had loved all his life, whose face and voice and whose laughter were woven into the best of all his memories. And he had killed Theo Blaine, not in anger or passion, not in defense of anything good, but because Blaine was going to achieve the glory of saving Britain, leaving Corcoran to be no more than a footnote on the pages of history.

  That glory in other men’s minds had mattered to him more than the project itself, more than Blaine’s life, and God forgive him, more than the lives of the sailors who would have used the device, whatever it was. Had he thought of them?

  Joseph stopped just inside the door, standing because there was nothing on which to sit. He had to say something, keep up the pretense.

  “What is it you know, Shanley?” he asked. He could not bring himself to say “how are you?” That would be absurd now, and dishonest. His state was painfully obvious, and Joseph could do nothing to help, even if he wished to, and he was not sure that he did, or what it was he felt now, except misery.

  Corcoran gave a bitter little laugh. “Is that all you care about, Joseph? After all these years, the sum of it is ‘what do you know?’ ”

  Joseph felt a stab of pity and disgust that almost made him sick. It was like a physical twisting of the stomach. “That’s why you sent for me,” he replied. “And incidentally, why they let me in.”

  “And the only reason you came?” There was accusation in Corcoran’s face.

  It was even worse than Joseph had feared. The room was not hot, but it was airless, and he could feel the sweat running down his body. He could not ask him when the corruption had started, or if it had always been there. He played the farce. “Is there another spy in the Establishment, Shanley?” he asked.

  Corcoran looked up at him. “You know, I have not the faintest idea. There might be. It could even be one of the technicians or guards, for all I could say.” Now there was anger in him, as if he had been let down. “But I knew you wouldn’t come unless you thought there was some glory in it for you, some prize to take back to Admiral Hall.” His mouth twisted in a sour grimace. “You’re nothing like your father, Joseph. He knew the value of friendship, through fair weather or foul. He would never turn his back on a lifetime of loyalty, all the human passion and treasure of the past. But for all your pretense of religion, your self-righteousness going out to the trenches where you can pose the hero, you’re shallow as a puddle in the street.”

  It was ridiculous that it should hurt! It was grossly unfair, distorted by fear and, please God, by guilt as well, but still it left Joseph gasping with the pain of it. “Don’t use my father’s name in this,” he said between his teeth. “Most of the time I miss him with a constant emptiness. I keep thinking of things I want to ask him, things to tell him, or just to share. But I’m glad he doesn’t have to see you now. He would have found it unbearable because you’ve betrayed not only the future, but the past as well. Nothing looks the same as it used to. All my life I’ve thought that you, above all men, were honest. You’re not; you’re a liar to the soul. I just wondered if you had always been, and somehow we missed it!”

  Corcoran stood up, easily, the aches and stiffness forgotten. “You’re ignorant, Joseph, and with the arrogance of all people who think they speak for God and morality, you judge without understanding. I had no choice.” He stared at Joseph, his eyes burning with anger. “When I said I had no idea who the spy in the Establishment was, that was only half true. I don’t know who’s left now, who smashed the prototype and who could still be in touch with the Germans.” His voice rose a pitch. “Theo Blaine wasn’t nearly as clever as everyone thought he was, not anywhere near! Oh, he was bright!” He said it bitterly, as though it were somehow a condemnation. “Very advanced in his field, but there’s all the difference in the world between bright and genius. Like Icarus, he flew too close to the sun. Thought he could design a machine that would guide torpedoes and depth charges so they would hit their target every time. He said so!”

  Joseph’s mind swam. The idea was vast! It really would have changed the war forever. Whichever side had such a thing would destroy the other out of the sea. That was what Archie was testing now, and Matthew with him. Did they know the truth—that it was useless? Why in God’s name had Corcoran killed Blaine, if Blaine had not had the genius to do it?

  “It makes no sense,” he said aloud. “If he couldn’t finish it, why kill him?”

  “Now you doubt I did it?” Corcoran was raging. “Suddenly you’re sorry, and on my side again?”

  Joseph was staggered. Could he have been so immensely wrong? It was a moment’s wild, beautiful hope. But Blaine had certainly not torn his own throat out with a garden fork!

  “Because he couldn’t finish it, he was going to sell it to the Germans, you fool!” Corcoran spat. “Anything rather than admit he wasn’t up to it. That way we would never have known. I
t was his chance to cover himself. But maybe the Germans could have finished it, built on what we had! They have brilliant men.” He leaned farther forward. “Don’t you see, Joseph? I had to do it! I had no choice. Who could I tell? No one else in the country knew enough to understand whether I was right or not. The fate of the war depended on it. . . .”

  Joseph was stunned. Was it possible? It made hideous sense—a scientist who boasted of what he could achieve, who overrated his own ability, brilliant as it was, but not genius of that splendor. Then, when he was at his wit’s end, staring failure in the face, and his own humiliation, he sold it to the enemy rather than admit the truth. What fatal arrogance!

  “I tried to stop the spy as well,” Corcoran went on, his voice strengthening. “But I missed him. Blaine wouldn’t tell me, but I have no doubt now that it’s Morven.” He moved until he was almost close enough to Joseph to touch him. “You have to take it from here. I don’t know who to trust. Matthew’s at sea on Archie’s ship. He doesn’t trust Calder Shearing, he told me that himself. Hall won’t listen to me. You have to do it—for England—for the war. For everything we love and believe . . .”

  Joseph looked at him. It hung in the balance, all the past love, the memories sweet and close, the desperate hunger to believe, like clinging to a dream as the shreds of it slip into waking.

  But honesty forced itself on him. Corcoran was lying. It was there in the details, the pattern that shifted with each retelling of the story, always to lay the fault on someone else. He remembered Lizzie’s words about Blaine’s skills, and that Morven’s were not the same, but Corcoran’s were. And now he could see it in Corcoran’s eyes, the sheen on his skin. It was the same terror of dying that he saw in the trenches, but out there, for all the horror and pity, it was in a way clean.

  He turned away, sick to his heart. “You’re lying, Shanley,” he said quietly. “Blaine might have finished it. It was you who stopped him so you could do it yourself and take the fame in history, the glory of saving your country. But you were willing to let the country lose rather than have Blaine crowned in your place.”

  “You don’t know that!” Corcoran shouted at him. “There’s nothing to prove it, except your word! You could be wrong. . . .”

  Joseph turned back. He hated meeting Corcoran’s eyes and seeing the terror and the self-pity in them, but to look away now could be a cowardice he would never be able to mend. “No, I’m not wrong. You didn’t kill Blaine to save the project; you killed him to prevent him from eclipsing you. You have to be the center, all eyes on you.”

  “Don’t testify!” Corcoran’s voice cracked. “You don’t have to! You are my priest. You can’t be compelled to!” His face was slick with sweat now and he was trembling. “Your father wouldn’t have done. He understood friendship, the supreme loyalty.”

  Joseph thought of all the arguments in his mind. He thought of Archie at sea, and of Gwen Neave’s sons, and the loss and the grief still to come. Whatever betrayal he felt for himself, he owed them better than to run away now. He turned and walked to the door. He reached it and banged with both fists.

  The guard came and let him out. Only when he was outside in the sun and in the wind of the courtyard did he realize that his face was wet with tears, and his throat ached so violently that he could not speak.

  It was the first day of June, warm and still. A few clouds drifted like bright ships across the sky, sails wide to catch the sun. In the orchard the blossom was over, the fruit setting. The garden was dizzy with color and perfume.

  Joseph was in his shirtsleeves, working with pleasure. It was good to feel his fingers in the earth pulling the thick, lush weeds, and to move with only a slight awareness of an ache, no pain, no fear of pulling on a muscle or tearing open the healing flesh. He could not stay much longer, only until he had testified for Admiral Hall, and then all this would be forfeited again and become just a treasure in the mind.

  Hannah came out of the back door toward him, her face pale, her voice breathless.

  “Joseph, there’s been an enormous battle in the North Sea, off Jutland. Our whole Grand Fleet against the German High Seas Fleet. They don’t know what’s happened yet. They don’t even know if we’ve won or lost, but lots of ships have been sunk on both sides.” She stared at him, eyes wide.

  What should he say? Hope? Cling onto the belief in good until the last possible moment? And if it was smashed, if Archie and Matthew were among the thousands lost, what then? Did trying to prepare yourself ever do any good? Was the blow any less?

  No. It always hurt impossibly, unbelievably. Would it have been easier to bear, quicker to recover from if he had imagined his parents’ deaths, or anyone’s? Would he have missed Sam’s friendship any less, been able not to lie awake in his dugout in the mud of Ypres and not wonder if Sam was still alive, imagine hearing his laughter, or what he could have said to this, or that?

  He touched Hannah gently, both hands on her shoulders, but softly; the slightest pulling away would have released her. “Far more will come home than have been lost,” he said. “Think of them and don’t face anything else unless we have to.”

  She controlled her fear with an effort so intense he could not only see it in her face but feel the power of it through her body. She blinked several times. “Thank you for not telling me to have faith in God.” She smiled a little twistedly. “I want a brother, not a priest.”

  “Have faith in God, too,” he answered. “But don’t blame Him for anything that goes wrong, or imagine that He ever said it wouldn’t. If He promised you that Archie and Matthew would come back, then they will. But I don’t think He did. I think He said we would have all that we need, not all that we want.”

  “All we need for what?” she asked, her voice trembling.

  “To realize the best in ourselves,” he answered. “To practice pity and honor until they become part of us, and the courage to care to the last strength we have, to give everything.”

  She frowned, “Do I want all that? Wouldn’t ‘pretty good’ do? Does it have to be ‘perfect’?”

  He smiled, widely, a warm, genuine laughter inside him. “Well, decide what you don’t want, and tell God you’ll do without it. Maybe He’ll listen. I have no idea.”

  “You still think He’s there?” she said perfectly seriously. “Will you think that if they’re gone?” She wanted an answer, the gravity was there in her eyes.

  “It’s still the best option I know,” he answered her. “Can you think of anywhere else, any other star to follow?”

  She thought for a moment. “No. I suppose the alternative is just to stop trying. Sit down. There are times when that seems a lot less trouble.”

  “You have to be pretty certain you like it where you are to do that!” He let go of her and touched her face, brushing a stray hair off her cheek. “Personally, I think this is a sod of a place, and I have to believe there’s a better one, fairer to those who hadn’t much of a chance here.”

  She swallowed and nodded. “I’ll make lunch. There’s nothing to do but wait. Please don’t go out, Joseph.”

  “Out? Don’t you think I care as much as you do?”

  “Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

  It seemed an endless afternoon, every minute creeping by. Time after time Joseph drew in breath to say something, and then found he did not mean it, or it was pointless anyway, only making more obvious the fears that crowded his mind. He looked at Hannah and she smiled, making a little grimace. Then she returned to her ironing, going over and over the same sheet until she was in danger of scorching it.

  The news came in the early evening. The Cormorant was among those ships lost. Joseph and Hannah stood together in the sitting room, holding each other, numb, minds whirling over an abyss of grief, struggling uselessly not to be sucked into it.

  Not just Archie gone, but Matthew as well. They would never know how: blown apart, burned to death, thrown into the sea to struggle in the water until their strength was gone, or worst of all, imp
risoned in the ship itself as it plunged downward into the darkness of the bottom of the ocean until it was crushed and the sides caved in and the water suffocated them.

  The loss was overwhelming, unbearable. Time stopped. The sun lowered in the sky and darkness came. The children went to bed and neither Joseph nor Hannah found any words even to begin telling them what had happened.

  “There’s been a big battle at sea,” Hannah said, her voice oddly flat and steady. “We don’t know how everybody is yet.” It was a lie. She needed the time. Perhaps she needed to grieve alone and do her first, terrible weeping before she gathered strength to share it with them.

  Joseph too needed time. He hurt for Hannah, and he hurt bitterly for himself. He had always loved Matthew, but it stunned him how intensely Matthew was inextricably woven into the fabric of his life. It was as if John Reavley had died again, a large piece of him gone in a new and heart-numbing way. He had not expected that Matthew could be in any danger, even going to sea to test the prototype. The loss was too vast to take into his mind. Matthew could not be gone!

  Was it like this for everyone? The world falling apart, reason and joy disintegrating into an all-engulfing darkness?

  And that created the need for another decision. Could he go back to the trenches now and leave Hannah and the children alone?

  He found her in front of the looking glass in her bedroom. She had an old dressing wrap on and her hair down around her shoulders. Her face was bleached of all color, every shred of blood drained away, but she looked quite composed. She just moved slowly, as if afraid her coordination would not keep her from knocking into things, or perhaps even falling over.

  She looked exactly as he felt. He understood completely.

  “I won’t be going back to Ypres,” he said quietly. “I expect you know that anyway, but I thought I’d tell you, just in case.”

  She nodded. “We’ll tell Judith . . . but not yet. I’m . . . I’m not ready.” She looked at him curiously, her face crumpled. “Joseph, how does everybody do it, how do they keep on, how do they live? Everything I’ve said to other women who’ve lost husbands or sons is idiotic!” She frowned in amazement. “How did I dare? Were they kind to me, or just too beaten and numb to care about anything else?”