Shoulder the Sky Read online

  “How could he do that? He knew Eldon wasn’t a soldier!” Mrs. Prentice demanded accusingly. She was still seeking blame; it was so much easier to explode in anger than face the appalling void of grief.

  Judith swallowed. “Mr. Prentice was very keen to see things the other correspondents hadn’t and to gain his own experiences,” she answered. “He insisted that he be given a wider permission, and he used the general’s name to gain it. No one ever intended he should go ‘over the top’ with the raiding party.” She saw the anger harden in Mrs. Prentice’s face. “He was young and he was brave,” she added hastily. “He knew the risks, and he still chose to go.”

  Mrs. Prentice’s eyes filled with tears. “Thank you.” She took a shaky breath. “It was very good of you to come.”

  “General Cullingford asked me to, and it was no trouble at all,” Judith replied. “I’m so sorry for the reason.”

  Belinda smiled at her quickly, a flash of gratitude and understanding, then they turned to other subjects. It was late evening by the time Judith finally left.

  She arranged to meet Matthew for dinner the following evening, and waited for him in a restaurant crowded with people all talking earnestly. She heard snatches of news about the war, but much of the conversation was about the latest play, the political news in Westminster, speculation of changes—even exhibitions of art and science. Two young women were excited about a moving picture starring Charlie Chaplin and Marie Dressler.

  Ten minutes later she saw Matthew in the entrance. His uniform caught her eye before she recognized who he was. He was the same height as Joseph, but a little broader across the shoulders, and fair-haired. He had the same strong nose, and hint of humor around the mouth. He looked very tired, as if he also had been up too many nights and could not easily shake off the anxieties of knowing and caring more than he wanted to.

  It took him a moment to see her, then he smiled and strode over to her. She stood up, eager to hug him, and feel his arms around her. It was a moment’s break in a long loneliness. Friendship eased the heart and the mind, but there were times when the touch of arms around you healed an ache within that nothing else reached.

  “How are you?” he asked, although he was looking at her face for the answer, and whatever she said would make no difference.

  “I’m fine,” she said with a slightly wry smile. She, too, was looking at him, trying to weigh what was merely weariness in his eyes, or the deeper lines from nose to mouth. What she saw was an underlying fear that did not vanish with comfortable words or a long night’s sleep.

  “Have you seen Hannah lately?” she asked. “Her letters say a lot about what she’s doing, but not much about how she feels. I think that’s a sign that she doesn’t dare talk about it. Is it hard at home? Is everyone putting on a brave act, terrified it’ll crack if they look underneath?”

  “No, it’s not that bad.” He held her chair and she sat down again. He sat opposite her. “Some of us are afraid when we read the news because we tend to look between the lines, and dread what’s worse that they aren’t telling us. And of course pretty well everyone knows at least one person who’s lost a son or a brother.”

  The waiter appeared. The choice of food was still surprisingly wide and they ordered roast beef and vegetables and a full bottle of red wine. If there were shortages of anything it had been well disguised.

  “How is Joseph?” he said when they were alone again. There was a loneliness in the question, almost an urgency.

  Until this moment she had not been sure whether to tell him about Prentice or not, but now that he was here, his face, his voice, everything familiar about him reminding her of home, of the lost sweetness and safety of the past, the idea of not telling him was absurd. He would know she was lying, and fear something even worse than the truth. Also still gnawing at her mind was an anxiety that what Prentice had said about recruitment was true.

  “He has a pretty rotten job,” she said aloud. “Especially after the gas, trying to tell people that there’s a God who’s in control of everything, and He loves us. There’s not much evidence of it.”

  “I don’t think Joseph ever said God was in control,” Matthew pointed out, sipping his wine even before he had tasted the food. “He doesn’t control us, and we are the ones who’ve made the mess, not God. You’d better remind him of that.” There was wry laughter in his eyes, but pity as well, and the concern was not any less than before.

  “We had a young war correspondent up at the Front,” she went on, watching him as she spoke. “Pretty rotten fellow, actually. Arrogant, intrusive, no sensitivity at all. He was General Cullingford’s nephew. He’s the one in charge of our stretch. . . .”

  “I know.” Matthew smiled.

  She felt herself color a little, and went on quickly. “He persuaded the general to give him written permission to go all sorts of places other correspondents couldn’t, including right into the front-line trenches.”

  Matthew was only mildly interested. “How on earth did he do that? I’d have thought Cullingford would have more sense, family or not.” There was a thread of contempt in his voice.

  Judith was stung by it. “Prentice didn’t give him any choice. He was a total swine, actually. Major Hadrian, the general’s ADC, was at school with him, and says he’s an awful little worm. And actually I’ve just been to see his mother and sister, because he was killed, and took a letter to them from the general. Mrs. Prentice is his sister. Matthew, Prentice was saying that recruitment of men is dishonest, and if they had any idea of what it was really like on the front line, no one would go. Is that true? Are we losing heart at home?”

  He heard the panic in her voice, but he did not answer with platitudes. “No. In some places there’s even a renewed resolve, after the gas attack at Ypres. But I’m not sure if it’ll last. Casualties are heavy, and people are beginning to realize that it isn’t going to be over anything like as soon as they used to believe. Kitchener’s right, we’re in for a very long haul.”

  “Will we make it?”

  He smiled, but he did not answer her.

  “It’s about morale, isn’t it? If we think we’ll lose, then we will.”

  “Pretty much,” he agreed.

  She looked away from him and concentrated on her food for a while. She could imagine the recruiting station if they heard the sort of things Prentice had apparently told Belinda.

  “That isn’t all,” she said at last, her voice subdued, catching in her throat. “Prentice isn’t just dead—someone murdered him.” She ignored his response. “It wasn’t obvious. He went over the top—nobody knows what made him do such a stupid thing, or what he went for, except bravado, but Joseph was the one who found his body in no-man’s-land, and brought him back.”

  Matthew was appalled. His knife slipped out of his fingers onto his plate with a clatter. “What the hell was Joseph doing out there? He’s a chaplain, for God’s sake!”

  “I know.” Now at least she was on sure ground, filled with one moral certainty, and a hot, sweet pride. “But he takes that as part of his job—searching for people and bringing them back. Sometimes they’re alive, but it matters to recover even dead bodies.” She saw the reflection in his face of her own emotions. “But Prentice hadn’t been shot, he’d been drowned in one of the craters still full of water. And Joseph worked out that there were no Germans anywhere near them at the time. It had to have been one of our own men. He was pretty rotten to a few people. . . .”

  “Enough to kill over?” He was incredulous.

  She looked away. “Lots of people are dying, every day. Unless you really care about someone personally, you have to get used to it, or you’d go mad. This is . . . different.”

  He reached out his hand as if to touch her, then changed his mind. It was not something he did naturally; this was born of a sudden, urgent understanding. “Are you afraid it could be the general?” he said very gently.

  Lies would not do. “I don’t know,” she admitted, looking up at hi
m. “And even if he didn’t, I’m not sure he wouldn’t be blamed for it. Not everyone likes generals.”

  He laughed outright: a short, bitter bark of sound. He did not need words to encompass the confusion of anger and fear, torn loyalties felt by the vast mass of people who knew only what they read, and the pain of losses, the day-and-night struggle between pride and terror for those they loved trapped and fighting in a horror they could only imagine. It was natural to blame someone.

  He refilled his glass again, and she felt another flicker of worry brush her, as if someone had opened an outside door onto the cold again. “Matthew, have you learned anything more about the Peacemaker?” she asked, taking the bottle from him and adding a little to her own glass, even though she had barely touched it. “I wish we could be more help to you. We’re doing nothing. . . .”

  “There’s nothing you can do,” he said quickly, his face softening. “It’s enough that you do your own job.”

  She searched his face, his eyes. “You know something, don’t you,” she pressed. The darkness, the tension in him frightened her. “Do you know who it is, Matthew?”

  “No. I think it could be Ivor Chetwin, but I need a lot more proof.”

  “Ivor Chetwin? But . . . but doesn’t he work in Intelligence?” She was horrified, the betrayal could reach anywhere. “Matthew, please—”

  “I am careful,” he said quickly. “And I don’t know that it is him. It could be lots of people. I’ve been working on how he contacted Sebastian to tell him what to do. It isn’t the sort of thing you say in a letter, or explain over the telephone. It had to have been a fairly lengthy and persuasive conversation, in person somewhere. And it has to have been that afternoon. There wasn’t any other time.”

  “Well, where did Sebastian go?” she reasoned. “Can’t we find out?”

  “I’m trying to.”

  “Be careful! We don’t know who the Peacemaker is, but he knows us! Don’t forget that! He’ll be expecting you to come after him.” She gulped, suddenly aware of how frightened she was. “Matthew . . .”

  “I’m being careful,” he repeated. “Don’t gulp like that, you’ll give yourself indigestion. If I’m paying for you to eat roast beef instead of corned beef and army biscuits, I’d rather you didn’t ruin it by making yourself ill!”

  She forced herself to smile, impatient with him, frustrated, aching to protect him and thoroughly afraid. “I’m going home tomorrow. I’d like to see Hannah for a day or so.”

  “Good idea. Rest for a while, at least. Now eat that before it’s cold. Judith . . .”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell Hannah anything about all this—or the journalist getting killed. She doesn’t need to know. She has enough to do looking after three children, and the losses in the village. Trying to help everyone keep up hope, and not be sick every time the postman arrives, dreading the telegram. They feel so helpless. That’s a kind of suffering in itself.”

  “I know. I won’t tell her anything I don’t have to,” she promised. “I’ll be quite happy not to talk about it, believe me.”

  But it was not as easy as she had expected. She took the train to Cambridge, and then a taxi to St. Giles. The village still looked just as it always had, until she noticed the blinds half drawn in the Nunns’ house, and another house a few doors down. There were no errand boys, no children playing by the pond. An old man walked slowly on the grass, a black band around his arm. She saw Bessie Gee carrying a basket of shopping, and looked away because she could not face her. It was cowardly and she knew it, but she was not prepared to see what she must be feeling, not yet, anyway.

  The taxi stopped at her own door. She paid the driver and got out. She had to ring the bell and wait until Hannah came.

  “Just for a couple of days,” Judith said with a smile. It was absurd, but she was overcome with emotion to be on the familiar step. It looked smaller, shabbier than she remembered, and impossibly precious. It was peopled with memories of sounds and smells of the past so strong they were the fabric of all life that had formed her, the woven threads of who she was. This is where she had loved, and grieved, where she had been safest, and in most danger.

  “Of course!” Hannah said, her face lighting with pleasure so the anxieties of the moment slipped away. “It’s wonderful to see you! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I haven’t got any decent food in!”

  Judith hugged her and they clung together fiercely for minutes. “I don’t care!” she said, laughing at the triviality of it. “Anything’s got to be better than army rations!”

  “Are they awful?” Hannah said with sudden concern.

  Judith remembered her promise to Matthew. “No, not bad,” she claimed quickly. “I don’t look starved, do I?”

  Hannah’s children came home from school, pleased to see her and a little shy, now that she was certainly part of the war. The conflict was not real to them, and yet it was the backdrop and the measuring stick of everything that happened.

  “Do you think it’ll go on long enough for me to join the navy, Aunt Judith?” Tom asked with a shadow of concern in his soft face. He was thirteen, his voice breaking, but no suggestion of down on his cheek yet. He was frightened in case he missed his chance of all that he thought of that was heroic, and the test and goal of manhood.

  For a moment Judith could see nothing but the men she knew who had been blown to pieces, men like Charlie Gee—who had been boys like Tom only a few short years ago.

  “I don’t know,” she answered, refusing to look at Hannah. “I don’t think anybody knows at the moment. We just do our best. Take it a day at a time. Your job’s here right now. A good soldier or sailor does the job he’s given. Doesn’t argue with his commander to pick and choose.”

  He stared at her solemnly, trying to work out whether she was treating him like a child or a man.

  She gave him time, without pushing either way.

  “Yes,” he nodded, accepting. “But I will join the Royal Navy when I can.”

  “Good,” she said lying in her teeth, and still avoiding Hannah’s gaze. “As an officer, I hope?”

  He grinned suddenly. “You mean concentrate on my schoolwork and do all the exams and everything,” he said knowingly.

  “Something like that,” she agreed.

  After the children had gone to bed, Judith and Hannah walked up the garden in the dusk. Appleton had gone to work on the land. Food was more important than flowers. Mrs. Appleton had gone with him, over in Cherry Hinton direction. Not far away, but too far to come back here to cook or clean. The weeds were high in the spring warmth and the long daylight hours.

  “I can’t keep it up,” Hannah said, looking at it miserably. “Even the raspberries are overgrown. The children help a bit, but it isn’t enough. There’s always so much to do. There are fifteen families in the village now who’ve lost someone, either on the Western Front, or at sea. We heard about Billy Abbot just yesterday. His ship went down in the North Atlantic, with all hands.”

  Judith said nothing. She knew Hannah was thinking about Archie, but neither of them wanted to say so. There were some things it was better not to put into words, the silence helped to keep at least the surface of control. There was work that had to be done, children who needed to feel at least some faith in survival. As long as you did not give in to terror, neither would they. You had to be busy, to smile, if you must cry, then cry alone. Perhaps the women with children were lucky. They gave you a reason to force yourself to be your best, always. The act became a habit.

  It was Hannah who broached the subject of the Peacemaker.

  “Matthew won’t tell me anything about his search for the man who killed Mother and Father,” she said as they stood at the end of the lawn and looked west toward the last echoes of light in the sky. “Has he given up?”

  “No.” Now a lie seemed like a betrayal, and she was not in a mind to be able to deal in the loneliness of deceit. “He’s trying to find out who Sebastian Allard spoke to the
evening before.”

  “Why? Oh . . . you mean the Peacemaker . . . what a ridiculous name for him! The murderer must have told him what to do?”

  “Probably not himself,” Judith replied. “He wouldn’t risk that. He has to be someone well known, very highly placed, and someone Father knew already, and trusted. He will have sent someone else to persuade Sebastian what to do. It couldn’t have been easy. You don’t just walk up to someone and say ‘By the way, I’d like you to murder one of my friends tomorrow. It has to be tomorrow because the whole thing has become rather urgent. Will you do that for me?’ You’d have to give him all sorts of reasons, and persuade him. Sebastian was a passionate pacifist. It will have taken some time to argue him into believing it was the only way to preserve peace in Europe.”

  Hannah was silent for several minutes. The last shreds of light from the west, no more than a luminescence in the air, caught her cheekbones and brow and the curve of her mouth, softening the anxiety and making her look as young as she had a year ago.

  “I talk to Nan Fardell quite a bit. Her husband’s in the navy, too. She lives in Haslingfield.” She hesitated a moment. “Nan said she saw Sebastian in Madingley the afternoon before . . . he was with a girl. They seemed to be very close, talking earnestly, having an argument, which they made up before they parted.” Hannah frowned. “She mentioned it because she knew he was engaged and she thought it was a bit shabby. She assumed he was trying to break it off with this girl, and she wouldn’t let him, so he gave in, and apparently they parted in agreement. Nan said she was rather beautiful, nearly as tall as he was. I expect the Peacemaker’s a man, but does the person who gave Sebastian his instructions have to be a man as well?” She turned to Judith. “He doesn’t, does he? Lots of idealists who really get things done are women. They were in the past, and they are now. What about Beatrice Webb, or even more, Rosa Luxemburg? Nan said this woman was very unusual, she had remarkable eyes, pale blue and very bright.”