‘Come on, my love – up we come.’
He shook his head, tried to smile. ‘Can’t.’
‘Of course you can. Here – take this.’ She thrust the crutch at him, then slid an arm about his waist and hauled him, wincing and pale as death, upright. ‘Only a little way—’ If she had been a man she believed he would have refused, preferring to stay to be blown to pieces or captured than sustain the ordeal of the agonizing hundred yards between him and the train. But ready to face anything rather than to give way to such cowardice in front of a woman, he allowed her to half-drag him to where an orderly took him from her and loaded him on to the train as unceremoniously as a sack of potatoes. Nurses were everywhere, ushering their charges like busy and competent sheepdogs, turning not a hair as shells landed around them and in the not too far distance machine-gun fire chattered menacingly. She could see no sign of Hannah.
She made several more trips with wounded men, the last gripping hands with two blinded soldiers who, having waited patiently for someone to come for them, walked through the emptying compound as serenely brave as if they had been strolling on a golf course in the peaceful parklands of the Home Counties.
‘Sally! What the devil are you doing here?’ As she turned from seeing her charges safe on to the train she all but walked into a tin-hatted Fiona, and behind her Mercy, her arms full of bags and boxes.
The train had begun to move. The last few trucks were moving into line behind the field ambulances. A motorcycle roared. ‘I’ll have to move the car—’ Sally shouted above the noise.
Fiona grabbed her arm. ‘Jolly good! You’ve got the car? Bring it over to the barn. Mercy had the one good idea of her life – why leave the supplies to the Boche? There are drugs over there – we can’t afford to lose them – we can load most of them into the car—’ And she was gone, disappearing into the dusty haze as a line of trucks rumbled out of the compound.
As Sally, heart thumping, manoeuvred her car out of the way and closer to the stone barn which, reroofed with corrugated iron, was used as a store, the barrage began in earnest. Debris sprayed in a fearsome fountain, its centre a bloom of blood-red flame as a shell landed just a hundred yards outside the compound. Every instinct told her to turn the car and get out on to the road, back – back from the advancing enemy, back from the rain of death that was splitting from the sky.
‘Right, here we are.’ Grinning all over her blackened face, Fiona appeared at her side, dumping an armful of small boxes into the capacious back seat of the car.
‘Where’s Hannah?’
‘She’s on the train – gone – it’s all right, she’s safe. There are just a few more of these – Mercy’s bringing them.’
They both turned at the same time to watch the door of the barn; both saw the figure that appeared silhouetted against the sudden inferno flare of flame within it.
‘Mercy!’ Fiona was running almost before the explosion happened. Sally, throwing herself down, felt the blast rock the ground beneath her. When she lifted her head it was to see that Fiona was up again, and running; running like a madwoman towards the spot where the tangle of limbs and torn flesh that had been Mercy Meredith lay like a discarded toy. Sally staggered to her feet. The barn was a roaring furnace, the old timbers devoured by the curling petals of flame, the tin roof crashing in a towering cascade of sparks. Another shell landed, and another. In the distance men were shouting, and the guns cracked. The stone wall of the barn shivered and rocked. Fiona was on her knees beside Mercy’s wrecked remains.
‘Fiona! Look out!’
Fiona began to tug at the body.
Without thought Sally flew to her, running as she had never run before, the heat from the blaze scorching her face. ‘Fiona!’ She grabbed the other girl’s arm, not looking at the horror that lay on the ground beside her. ‘Come on! Get out! The wall’s coming down!’
Fighting her, Fiona bent to the body again. ‘We can’t leave her here!’
‘Fiona – she’s dead! Leave her! The wall’’ Dragging and pulling at the other girl, shrieking like a maniac, Sally hauled her away, had almost got her clear when, caught by the blast of another explosion, the great wall collapsed, the stone shrieking and splintering as it fell. Fiona sprawled forward, caught by the blast. Sally felt a sharp pain like the sting of a wasp on her face as a sliver of flying stone caught her and cut to the cheekbone.
‘You all right, miss?’ There were figures then, hurrying through the smoke, anxious hands to lift her to her feet.
‘My friend – she’s hurt I think—’
Fiona was sitting, white faced, teeth gritted against pain. Bright blood stained the arm and shoulder of her nurse’s uniform. ‘Bandages and a splint if you’ve got one about you,’ she said perfectly coolly. ‘The arm’s broken, and the shoulder doesn’t feel too good.’
‘We’re going to have to get out of here, miss – excuse me – if you don’t mind?’ Quickly and efficiently the orderly was tearing up Fiona’s own apron. ‘Johnny – go find something to splint the arm – and jump to it lad, Fritz is almost here.’
Sally put a hand to her face, stared in puzzlement at the blood that smeared it. ‘I’ll get the car.’
‘You sure you’re all right, miss? You look a bit gruesome.’
‘No. I’m fine. See to Fiona. I’ll get the car.’ The strangest calm had descended upon her. Without hurrying she walked to where the car stood. The sounds of battle were very close. The last of the trucks was pulling out of the compound.
‘Here we are, miss.’ The orderly, a large man with a neat moustache and a cheerful smile supported the bandaged Fiona to the passenger door and helped her in. ‘Will you be all right?’
‘Yes, thanks. I’ll follow the trucks.’
The man slammed the door, sketched a quick salute and stepped back. Sally moved the big car smoothly to the end of the procession. In silence they bumped across the shell-pocked surface of the road. The early October evening was darkening; the sky was a wonder of light and colour as the barrage boomed about them. Behind them the great empty tents stood, ripped and torn by the bombardment. Tracer bullets seared the air. An aeroplane buzzed in the shell-burst sky. Sally drove as carefully as she could, aware that Fiona’s teeth were clamped into her lower lip and that every time they lurched across a rut or crater she caught her breath in pain.
It was a long time before either of them spoke.
‘Well, old girl – it seems highly likely that you just saved my life,’ Fiona said. Behind them the sounds of violence were fading a little.
Sally smiled a little, eyes straining into the gathering darkness at the rocking tail lights of the lorry ahead. ‘You’d have done the same for me.’ She glanced at the white-faced girl beside her. ‘You’d have done the same for Mercy if she hadn’t been killed in the blast.’
There was a small silence. Then, ‘Poor bloody Mercy,’ Fiona said, the feeling in her voice as telling as prayer. ‘She’s not going to see Eastbourne again, is she?’
They finished the journey in silence.
III
Sally got her leave. She was shamefaced about using the spectacularly nasty-looking wound on her face as a lever, but not, in her determination, shamefaced enough to resist the temptation. The avuncular Colonel Foster was a committed if unknowing ally. ‘A week, my dear girl. I wish I could have made it longer – really, Commander Lady Marston is quite a tartar!’
‘A week is fine, sir. Thank you.’
It took two precious days to get to London; but her arrival at the Bear was worth the waiting. Bron stared, taken so open-mouthed that Sally laughed outright.
‘It’s me, Bron – it’s Sal!’
‘Well, I never! Well I never did! An’ whatever have they done to you – oh, your poor face!’
‘It’s nothing. A nasty scratch. Oh, Bron – aren’t you going to say “Hello”?’
They fell into each other’s arms, laughing and talking all at once. When Charlotte came across them, very cool and contained in
grey silk, her newly bobbed hair crisp about her head, it was like a shower of rain in the sunshine, damping the flying dust of their chatter. ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘Sally, isn’t it?’
It had not occurred to Sally until that moment that the uniform in which she stood had seen better – or certainly cleaner – days. One of the two tunics she owned had been spoiled by blood the day of the evacuation of the Clearing Station; the one she wore now had been on her back every day for three weeks. ‘Yes,’ she said carefully, appalled at the antagonism that flared in her at the sight of this woman who was married to Ben, ‘it’s Sally.’
She saw the faint flinch of distaste in the other woman’s eyes at the scabbed wound on her cheek; noticed with caustic amusement that she did not refer to it. ‘Well, for heaven’s sake,’ Charlotte said lightly, ‘shouldn’t you come in? You’re causing something of a draught standing there with the door open.’
Her reunion with Philippa was something she had alternately avidly anticipated and dreaded according to her mood. She need not have worried. The little girl, dark-haired, soft-eyed, heartbreakingly like her father, hesitated for only a moment in the doorway, whilst Marie-Clare, her face alight with pleasure, whispered in her ear. Then, ‘Mama! Mama!’ the child cried, and launched herself across the room into Sally’s arms.
Sally whirled the small, warm bundle into the air, eyes clenched against tears.
‘Mama – tell me about France!’ Incredibly, Philippa’s words were attractively tinged with a very un-English accent. Sally laughed towards Marie-Clare, who spread wide, not too apologetic hands. ‘We pray for you every night,’ the child said, ‘and Marie-Clare reads your letters. Oh, Mama!’ The small arms clung, the small, smooth face pressed tightly against Sally’s uninjured cheek.
‘Thank you,’ she said later to Marie-Clare, ‘I was very afraid that – that she might have forgotten me. It would be my own fault if she had, I know.’
Marie-Clare, slender and composed, the two-year-old Louise slumbering in her lap, shook her head. ‘Rest assured, Sal-lee.’ Still, for all her command of her new language, she made two pronounced syllables of the name, ‘My charge of Flippy is a charge of love; for her, oh, yes, most certainly and above all for her – but for you also.’ The quiet eyes were warm. ‘How could I let her forget you?’
Toby was another matter entirely. ‘Well—’ his smile was by no means unpleasant – but neither was it the mischievous, gleaming thing that had conspired so often with her in the past. Nor was she prepared for the size of him, the easy, handsome confidence, ‘behold the conquering heroine—’
‘Don’t be daft.’ She lifted her face to his, received the briefest of salutes. ‘Very dashing,’ he said, indicating the still-raw scar on her face. ‘How did that happen?’
‘I—’ She stood helpless. To someone who had been there, or some fiery place like it, to one who had been on any part of that endless Western Front for the past two years a few brief words would have sufficed; but how to explain to one who did not – could not – know? Suddenly she understood with flawless and painful clarity the damaging predicament of which she had so often heard; the isolation of a man, home from the war, unable to share his experiences with those he loved, allowing them to fester sleepless within him – glad in the end to go back, back to the comrades who understood. ‘It was a shell. A piece of stone caught me. It isn’t as bad as it looks.’
The smile became markedly less warm. ‘That wasn’t the way Hannah told it.’
‘Hannah?’
‘She wrote. Told us all the gory details.’
‘She probably exaggerated.’ As she said it she knew how badly she was handling him.
He shrugged. ‘Yes. She probably did.’
‘Toby – I heard that you’d registered to join the army next spring?’
‘Oh?’ The cool, fair eyebrows were questioning.
She shrugged a little, cursing herself. She had not intended to confront him so. ‘The Patten grapevine. It works, even in France.’ Her laugh was nervy, false. She saw the look in his eyes and cursed herself further.
‘Then – yes. I’ve registered. I’m hoping to get a commission.’
‘You aren’t old enough.’ The words were sharp, authoritarian. They made him, she saw with more than a little disquiet, smile.
‘We don’t know that.’
She took a breath. ‘I know – I know that we don’t know exactly how old you are – but you aren’t eighteen – I’d swear to it.’
‘Swear away.’ His voice was even, his eyes cool.
She fought temper and trepidation in about equal parts. ‘Toby, please, listen to me. You don’t know what you’re doing – you don’t know what it’s like over there!’
‘And I never will unless I go.’
She fought for control; how many times had they flared at each other, fought like tigers, forgotten it in minutes? But this was too important, and the boy she faced was not the dirty-faced urchin she had known. ‘Do you know why you’re so likely to get a commission?’
He waited.
‘Because the young men that took their commissions so eagerly two years ago – a year ago – yesterday! – are dead. That’s why.’
The silence lengthened.
She raised fingers to her damaged cheek, rubbed at it distractedly; saw his eyes follow the movement avidly and snatched her hand away. ‘Toby – give yourself a chance – you aren’t old enough yet.’
‘And if I wait?’ he asked very reasonably. ‘It might all be over before I can get there?’
‘And would that be such a bad thing?’
‘Yes, it bloody would.’ The words were still even, very reasonable, but the blue eyes sparked. ‘You’re all out there – Peter, Ben – even Ralph’s come home with a medal, God help us all! – you – Hannah!’
‘It isn’t what you think. It isn’t fun. It isn’t heroics. It’s bloody murder. It’s fear, and it’s killing, and it’s muddy trenches and foul food and choking gas—’ She stopped, jolted by the look on his face, realizing with sudden awful clarity that she was, so far as he was concerned, arguing not her own case but his.
‘I’m going,’ he said. ‘And I don’t think you can stop me. I don’t actually know why you want to.’
She opened her mouth, but he would not let her speak.
‘You left me for Philippe – and now you’ve left me for the war – what right do you have to tell me what to do?’ For the first time he let open antagonism show, not the hot resentment of childhood, she noticed with sinking heart, but the cool and considered judgement of a young mind matured in intolerance and misunderstanding.
‘That isn’t fair,’ she said.
‘Life isn’t fair.’ The small, taunting smile dared her to remember how often she had used those words to a hot-tempered child.
They looked at each other for a long, silent moment. Then ‘Would you like some tea?’ Toby asked lightly and very politely. ‘You’ve probably heard that Mrs Briggs has left us – gone back to the country to nurse a crippled nephew I believe – but Bron really makes an excellent cup of char—’
* * *
‘I’m sorry to say it, Sal,’ Bron said a couple of days later, eyes and voice sympathetic as she busied herself at the big black range, ‘but I doubt if you’ll get the better of young master Toby once he’s made his mind up. Not even Doctor Will or Miss Charlotte can do that. Never known such a one for his own way—’
‘He won’t even talk about it now,’ Sally admitted gloomily. ‘We had a bit of a row yesterday. And now he’s avoiding me. Oh, Bron,’ her voice was soft, ‘we used to be so close.’
Bron turned. ‘True. Yes, that I remember. I mind when you were ill – when you first came – and the lad wouldn’t leave the door.’
‘He’s changed so.’
‘Ah, Sally my love,’ Bron’s voice was quiet, affectionate, half amused, ‘it isn’t just the lad that’s changed, mind – now is it?’
Sally, her eyes on the diamond pattern o
f the scrubbed tiled floor shook her head. ‘I suppose not.’
Bron looked at her. ‘A demon he was when you left to marry,’ she said quietly.
Sally’s head came up sharply. ‘But Bron – what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t take him with me.’
‘Of course not. We all knew that. I’m just thinking that perhaps the lad himself didn’t see it that way. You were all he had.’
‘No! Not by that time – he had everyone here.’
‘Not the same, cariad, not the same. It’s not your fault, mind – it’s not anyone’s fault – but it seems to me our Toby’s learned to do without anyone. What he wants he sets out to get for himself. An’ I wouldn’t want to be the one to stand in his way, either, for all he can be such a charmer.’
Sally sighed, hitched herself on to the kitchen table, one leg swinging. ‘You may be right,’ she half smiled, an edge of bitterness in it, ‘—and so may he. Perhaps to be free of other people is the best way to be.’
‘Ah, now – you don’t mean that—’ Bron stopped. When she spoke again her musical Welsh voice had sharpened perceptibly. ‘Well now, look what the cat’s brought in. Slumming are we, Kate Buckley?’
Sally turned. Kate leaned in the doorway, smartly dressed in brown and beige, her small hat stylishly tilted, her matching parasol sloped against her shoulder in the manner of a soldier with a rifle. She laughed outright at Bron’s waspish tone. ‘You said it, not me. Hello there, Sal. How’s tricks?’
‘Pretty good. You?’
The handsome face sparkled with faintly malicious curiosity, ‘Just fine. Been playing pirates?’
‘What? Oh – this?’ Sally touched the healing gash on her cheek, grinned a little. ‘Old war wound.’
‘Very becoming I’m sure.’ Kate turned to Bron. ‘Well, my Taffy friend – dust off your best bib and tucker – you’re invited to a wedding—’
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 48
