The movement had caused the wounds to reopen and he felt warm, fresh blood against his skin, a strange contrast to his cold, sodden clothing. The effort required just to haul himself up over the edge of the shell crater took all his strength and he lay still for a long time expecting a sniper’s bullet in his back.
An agonizing inch at a time, he dragged himself through the thick, black mud, propelling himself with his right hand and his left leg. As the first grey fingers of the new day lightened the sky, a bullet zinged past his ear, another slapping into the mud just short of his left leg. He raised his head and a wave of despair washed over him at the insurmountable distance between himself and the safety of the British lines.
Exhausted, he laid his head on his arm, unable to go any further and prepared to die. The next bullet or a trench mortar would finish him. He no longer cared.
He sensed rather than heard the presence of another human being. Opening his eyes, he looked into the dirty, unshaven face of his Company Sergeant Major who lay on his stomach directly in front of him.
“Well, sorr, are ye going to lie here all day?”
He could have wept at the sound of the familiar Irish lilt.
“Devlin! Oh God, Devlin, you fool.”
“We all thought you were done for, until Corporal Evans spots you moving. Now we couldn’t be leavin’ ye out here all by yerself, now could we?”
He felt Devlin’s hand on his uninjured shoulder. The touch of another human being overwhelmed him and he lowered his head.
“Sorr, what about the Captain...?”
Paul swallowed and looked up at Devlin again.
“He’s dead, Devlin.”
“Ah.” The sergeant let out a deep sigh. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
A grenade whistled overhead, exploding twenty yards from them, splattering them both with mud, followed by a fusillade of rifle bullets.
“Well, pleasant as it is to be passin’ the time o’ day with ye, I’ve a mind to a strong cup of tea and me own bivouac,” Devlin observed. “As I sees it, there’s only one way to get back to the lines and tha’s to make a run for it and you, me lad, are in no state for a quick sprint.”
Paul met his Sergeant’s eyes. “Do what you have to.”
“I’m not goin’ to be gentle about this, sorr...”
Those were the last words Paul remembered for a long time. They told him later that Devlin had thrown him across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes and sprinted as best he could through the mud back to the lines with the enemy bullets whistling around his head.
* * * *
Paul arrived back at Holdston in a heavy storm. It had been a rough crossing and he had missed the train connection at Liverpool. He felt drained and exhausted with both his bad leg and his shoulder giving him, what Sam referred to as ‘curry.’
Evelyn met him in the hall.
“Hello, Paul,” she said with a tight smile that instantly aroused his suspicion.
“Evelyn,” he acknowledged his aunt.
“You need to get out of those wet clothes, sir,” Sarah said, tutting as she took his hat and coat.
“Not until I’ve had a drink,” he said.
In the drawing room, he crossed to the decanters and poured himself a large, neat brandy. Clutching the glass as if it were a life preserver, he subsided into his uncle’s armchair and ran a hand through his dark, wet hair.
“How did it go?” Evelyn asked seeing to a glass of sherry for herself.
“It was a mess. Devlin hasn’t been able to work since the war so the family’s been subsisting on charity, the earnings of a seventeen year old boy and the pathetic pension the Government sees fit to reward its soldiers.”
He recounted the plight of the Devlin family. Evelyn listened in silence and when he had finished she said, “You didn’t commit your own money? Paul, you’re the one who keeps telling me we don’t have the money to keep ourselves let alone bail out every one of your soldiers.”
“I owe it to Devlin to see to his family, Evelyn. They are as much my responsibility as you are.”
Even as he spoke, Paul closed his eyes, trying to ignore the familiar tightening band around his eyes. Through the gathering mist, he sensed something wrong in his aunt’s demeanor.
Trying to focus his eyes, he asked, “Where’s Helen? Is she in bed already?”
The long pause before Evelyn gave a nervous cough, confirmed his suspicions.
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?” Paul straightened in the chair and stared at his aunt in disbelief. “Why?”
“She’s on some sort of tour of the continent,” Evelyn replied, looking down at her glass of sherry.
“That’s a sudden decision.” Paul knew his aunt well enough to recognize obfuscation. He narrowed his eyes and fixed his aunt with a questioning glare. “What did you say to her?”
“We...we had a bit of a row,” Evelyn raised her chin defiantly.
“A bit of a row? It would have taken more than a bit of a row to upset Helen so much that she felt compelled to leave the house,” Paul said.
Evelyn sniffed and looked away. “I was quite wrong about Helen. She is nothing more than a conniving little colonial gold digger who was only here to find some poor fool with a title just as she married Charlie.”
Paul stared at his aunt. “And what made you arrive at that conclusion?”
“It was obvious, Paul. Anyone who met her said the same thing.”
“No, most people who met her found her beautiful and charming. You mean Maude and a bunch of old bitches with nothing better to do than gossip?”
“Oh, Paul. Don’t be so blind. She set her cap for Tony Scarvell the moment she met him,” Evelyn said stiffly. “She has flirted quite outrageously with him.”
The lights had started to dance in front of Paul’s eyes. He ran a hand over them, forcing himself to focus. He didn’t have time to listen to Evelyn’s malicious tittle tattle. Any moment now, he would be on the floor.
“Where has she gone, Evelyn? When did she leave?”
“She left on Wednesday. I’m not sure where she’s gone but Sarah said something about a cousin in the north. The way she was so familiar with the servants...”
Paul stared at his aunt, speechless with anger.
He rose to his feet pulling himself up to his full height, towering over his aunt. “Evelyn, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. This is not you talking. Where has this small mindedness come from? It has to be Maude Scarvell.”
“I saw her kissing Tony. I saw her, Paul. I am quite convinced if she couldn’t get Tony she would have made a play for you.” Evelyn fumbled in her cardigan pocket producing her handkerchief.
Paul tried to focus, to comprehend what Evelyn had just said. “She kissed Tony?” he repeated slowly.
“Yes.” Evelyn wiped her eyes and added in a spiteful tone, “She is a disgrace to Charlie’s memory.”
The temperature in the room plummeted and the whispering began. Paul felt the blood drain from his face.
He closed his eyes. “You’ve no idea what you have done, Evelyn,” he said softly.
“I know exactly what I have done,” she defended herself. “I rid this house of a scheming interloper.”
With infinite weariness, he shook his head. “You have started something you will regret, Evelyn.”
“Paul, I did it for you.”
“No, you did it for you,” he looked up and gave her a pitying glance. “And you have driven away your only grandchild. Fine work, Evelyn.”
“You’re wrong,” Evelyn subsided into the chair, the tears coursing down her face.
“No I’m not, Evelyn, and you know it.” Paul ran a weary hand over his eyes. “From the day Helen arrived, you have resented her youth, her beauty and her spirit. She represented everything you had lost. Charlie loved her and you couldn’t accept that.”
“How dare you,” Evelyn screeched. “If Charlie hadn’t died, he would never have gone back to her.”
; “Of course he would. He had every intention of going back to Australia after the war. He loved Australia in a way he never loved Holdston.”
“He would never have left Holdston. It’s you who should have died, not Charlie.”
It was finally said, the words that he knew had festered in her heart for the last six years. Trembling like a leaf, she rose to her feet staring at him, wide-eyed with horror. “Paul, I...”
Paul’s mouth lifted in a dry, humorless smile. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear you say those words, Evelyn.”
He set his glass down and ran a hand over his eyes as the bright lights zigzagged and danced across his vision. At the door, he stopped and looked back at her, sitting as straight as an arrow in her high backed chair.
“Now perhaps we can stop pretending an affection for each other that neither of us feels and begin to live our own lives,” he said.
He shut the door behind him and stumbled upstairs. He made it to his bathroom and sank to his knees on the floor closing his eyes against the crushing pain in his head. He heard voices and sensed Sarah Pollard at his side, but if she was talking to him, he couldn’t hear her.
Sam’s boots reverberated on the floor beneath him and his strong hands gathered him up and helped him to the bed. Sarah laid cold compresses across his eyes and pulled the curtains closed.
Alone again, he rolled over, hunching up against the blinding, nauseating pain. His hand slid beneath the pillows and his fingers closed over a piece of paper. He held it scrunched tight in his hand as he gave in to the twin demons of migraine and memories.
Somewhere in his nightmares, he heard a voice, Evelyn’s voice. Her hand on his shoulder, shaking him.
“Paul! Wake up. Please wake up. I’ve had a telegram.”
He groaned and shook off her hand.
“They found him, Paul. They’ve found Charlie.”
Chapter 18
“Tony?” Helen paused in removing her gloves as a man rose from the comfortable chair by the fireplace where he had apparently been plied with tea and cake by Cousin Ann, who sat beaming across from him. She waved at the door. “I saw the car. I can’t believe it’s you.” She moved toward him and caught his hand, smiling with genuine warmth into his genial face. “What brings you all the way up here?”
“I have to say, old girl, you were not easy to find,” he said. “The only address I had was the post office, but fortunately these hills don’t seem to be overrun with stray Australians so the good lady there was able to direct me.”
Helen detected a change in tone and a sudden serious cast to his face.
“Is everything all right?”
“Uncle Tony.” Alice, who had just entered the parlour behind her mother, saw him and leaped toward him in delight.
He caught her and returned her enthusiastic hug. “Hello, sprite! Can you excuse me? I need to talk to your mother for a few minutes.”
Alice released her arms and looked from Tony’s face to her mother’s. Her brow furrowed with concern.
“Come and help me find some eggs for our supper, Alice.” Cousin Ann rose stiffly to her feet and held out her hand.
Helen gave her daughter a reassuring smile. “And then get ready for luncheon.” She looked at Tony. “You will join us?”
Tony smiled. “Of course.”
They both waited until Alice and Ann had left the room, Ann closing the door behind her, leaving them alone together in the quiet parlour. The sonorous tick of the clock on the mantelpiece seemed to fill the room and Helen turned to Tony, her chest tight with anxiety.
“What’s the matter? What’s happened? Is it Paul? Evelyn?” Her fear grew with every word.
“No, they’re both fine,” Tony said. “It’s...” He paused. “It’s Charlie.”
Helen’s eyes widened. “Charlie?”
“They’ve found him, or at least they think it’s him. A telegram arrived at Holdston a few days ago.”
She felt her breath catch in her throat and she sank into the nearest chair.
“Are they sure?” she said at last.
“No, but the details fit. An officer of the Warwicks, captain rank found at the site of that last action. Paul’s left for Belgium to do the formal identification. I have to let him know I have found you.”
“Paul sent you to look for me?”
Tony nodded. “He thought you should be there, when they...inter him.”
Helen nodded her head. “Yes, yes, of course...” Her hands twisted in her lap. “How’s Paul?”
Tony shrugged. “Hard to tell.”
Helen balled her hand into her fist and pressed it to her mouth.
“When you get a telegram that says ‘missing in action,’ you always wonder,” Helen said. “You wonder if there’s any chance that one day...”
A tidal wave of emotion overwhelmed her and the tears she had never been able to properly shed for a husband she knew in her heart was dead, welled up. Tony took her in his arms, holding her, stroking her hair as if she were a small child.
As the tears subsided, she dabbed ineffectually at her swollen, reddened eyes with Tony’s pristine white monogrammed handkerchief and leaned against his shoulder as they sat looking into the empty grate of the fireplace.
“What do I have to do?” she croaked.
“I’ll telegram Paul to say I have found you and then if you can pack a few things, I can take you to meet up with him and Evelyn in Belgium.”
“You’ll come too?”
He nodded. “Of course. Charlie was my friend as well, don’t forget, Helen.”
She swallowed. “Alice will be wondering where we are.”
“How will you tell her?”
Helen sighed. “I don’t know how much grief she will feel for a father she never knew. I suppose I shall just tell her as it is. She can stay here with Ann. I don’t think it would be right to take her. Maybe later...when...”
Alice received the news with silence. For a long time, she sat still, looking beyond both adults to the high, wild mountains beyond the windows. She rose to her feet, crossed to her mother and threw her arms around her neck. The maturity of her action, indicating that her mother needed comfort, not her, started the floodgates afresh and after a lunch she barely touched, Helen, wrung out like a dishrag, curled up in a ball on her bed and slept, leaving Tony to make the arrangements for their journey.
* * * *
“They won’t let me bring him home!” Evelyn wailed as Helen entered Evelyn’s suite at the Hotel Metropole in Brussels. The woman, who had all but driven her daughter-in-law from her home, now fell weeping into her arms.
Tony heaved a sigh. “Evelyn, I’m sure Paul has explained this to you. Under the charter of the War Graves Commission, he must be buried where he fell.”
“I want him in the family vault where he belongs.”
“Even if it were permitted to bring him home, I think he belongs here,” Helen said, trying to maintain a hold on her own emotions.
Evelyn looked up at her and opened her mouth but Helen preempted her. “I am his wife, Evelyn. It is my decision.”
Evelyn subsided on to a chair, her chest heaving with the effort of controlling her emotion.
Helen knelt down beside her and took her hand. There was so much she wanted to say to the mother of the man she had loved but their last, angry confrontation still lay between them like a yawning gulf.
“Where’s Paul?” she asked gently
Evelyn snuffled into her handkerchief. “He went to Ypres to make the formal identification. He said he’d be back by tonight.”
Paul did not return until after supper. He walked out of the rain into the hotel foyer where the little party sat waiting for him. Helen and Tony rose as one to meet him. Evelyn didn’t move.
His appearance shocked Helen. The dark circles under his eyes, and heavy lines of strain written on his face, made her wonder if he had slept at all since the news had reached him.
“Helen, I didn’t expect you here s
o soon.”
“Is it him?” Helen asked between stiff lips.
He nodded and took her hands in his. He looked into her eyes and she read the question there.
“It’s all right,” she said. “I’m not going to make a scene. I’ve shed all the tears I can for the moment.”
Evelyn gave a strangled cry. Paul released Helen and caught his aunt as she fell into his arms, her sobs muffled against his sodden coat.
Helen pried Evelyn away and put her arms around her shoulders.
“Let me take you to your room,” she said.
Evelyn nodded and leaning heavily against Helen allowed her to lead her into the lift and upstairs to the bedroom. As Helen ran a bath, Evelyn just sat on the edge of the bed, as if incapable of moving. Helen paused in the doorway to the bathroom and looked at the broken woman. She wondered how she could penetrate the wall Evelyn had built around herself.
Kneeling down in front of her mother-in-law, she undid her shoes.
“You’ll feel so much better after a bath.”
“Don’t treat me like a child, Helen,” Evelyn said with a trace of her old spirit.
Helen rose to her feet, holding Evelyn’s shoes. “I didn’t mean to patronize you.” She set the shoes down on the ground. “I’ll leave you to it. Would you like me to have some hot chocolate sent up?”
Evelyn caught her hand and looking up at Helen, her face softened. “Helen,” she said. “I know you loved Charlie and he loved you. The things I said before...”
“...are forgotten,” Helen said. “Do you want me to stay?”
Evelyn shook her head. “I want to be alone.”
When Helen returned to the men, she found they had ordered brandy. A third glass stood on the table. Helen picked it up and took a sip.
“How is she?” Tony asked.
Helen shrugged and glanced at Paul. The look that passed between them said more than words. Evelyn would not be all right.
Paul fumbled in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out an envelope. He emptied the contents on to the table. Tunic buttons, badges of rank, a regimental symbol and, blackened and almost unrecognizable, a gold locket. With trembling fingers, Helen picked the last object up and felt the tears rising again.
Gather the Bones Page 19
