Shoulder the Sky Read online

  Hadrian’s eyes widened.

  “Before anyone makes any suggestions, I’d like to know where the general was on the night Prentice died,” Joseph said firmly.

  “You can’t think he’d have anything to do with his death!” Hadrian’s voice rose close to falsetto. There was outrage in it, but it was fear that put it there, not indignation. Joseph was now quite certain that whatever pressure Prentice had used, it had been powerful and effective.

  “I don’t,” he said, trying to put more certainty into his voice than he felt. “But we need to be able to prove he had not, Major Hadrian.”

  “Yes.” Hadrian swallowed hard. “I was at school with Prentice, Captain Reavley. He was not pleasant, even then. He had a knack for . . . using people. I am not being overly unkind. If you doubt me, ask Major Wetherall. He was at Wellington College also, in my year. Prentice used to keep notes on people then, in his own kind of shorthand. Cryptic sort of stuff. I never learned how to decipher it, but Wetherall was pretty clever, and he worked it out. He told me the sort of thing it was.” Hadrian was stiff, his eyes fixed on Joseph’s. He was apprehensive, and yet he felt he needed Joseph’s cooperation. His anxiety was palpable in the air.

  Joseph did not want to know how Prentice had treated his uncle, unless it was absolutely necessary, partly because it concerned Judith. It was a situation that was making him increasingly unhappy. “I didn’t know that,” he said aloud. “Where was the general that night?”

  “The telephone lines were particularly bad,” Hadrian replied. “They seemed to be broken in all directions. You’d get someone, and then lose them again before you heard more than a couple of words. Finally around midnight they went altogether. There was nothing to do about it but go along in person. The general went north and east, I went west. You can ask the commanders concerned, they’ll all tell you where he was. Believe me, he was nowhere near Paradise Alley, which I understand is where Prentice was found?”

  “Yes, it was. Thank you, Major. You must have been Paradise Alley way then. Did you see Prentice?”

  Hadrian was unusually still. “No. I . . . I was held up. My car broke down. I had to jury-rig it—use a silk scarf on the fan belt. Took me the devil of a time. It’s not really my sort of skill. But no choice that time. No one else to ask.”

  “I see. Thank you, Major Hadrian.” Joseph was not certain if he believed him, but there was nothing further to be pursued here. There might be a way to find out if he had been where he said, but he did not know of it.

  He excused himself and was walking out of the building into the courtyard when the general’s car drove up with Judith at the wheel. They stopped a few yards away. It was already dusk and the shadows were long, half obscuring the outlines of figures. Judith turned off the engine and got out. She was very slender, the long, plain skirt of her VAD uniform accentuating the delicacy of her body, her slightly square shoulders. She moved with grace, intensely feminine. In the headlights her face had the subtlety of dreams in it, and the fire of emotion. She was looking at Cullingford as he got out as well and slammed the door. It was necessary, to make sure the catch held.

  He stopped for a moment. He said something, but Joseph was too far away to hear it, his voice was very low. But it was the look in his face that arrested the attention. He can surely have had no idea how naked it was; the tenderness in his eyes, his mouth, betrayed him utterly.

  Then he straightened his shoulders, turned and walked over toward the entrance, his easy gait masking tiredness with the long habit of discipline, and disappeared inside.

  Joseph moved forward into the pool of the headlights.

  She saw him only as a figure to begin with, then suddenly recognition lit her face. “Joseph!” She dropped the crank handle on the gravel and came toward him.

  He took her in his arms quickly and held her a moment. It was not perhaps strictly correct, but sometimes feeling was more important than etiquette. The touch of someone you loved, the instant of unspoken communication, was a balm to the raw need, a remembrance of the things that give reason and life to the man inside the shell. He could feel the strength and the softness of her, smell the soap on her skin and the engine oil on her hands. He was so angry with her for being less than she could have been, for twisting Cullingford’s emotions till he was vulnerable to Prentice, and for laying herself wide open to contempt, or worse, that the words choked in his throat.

  He pushed her away. “You shouldn’t have done it, Judith!” he said hoarsely. “If it was someone else, I could excuse them that they might not have known any better! But you do!”

  “Done what?” Her expression was defensive, but she could not make innocence believable. She tried, but an inner honesty belied it. “What are you talking about?”

  He held her at arm’s length. “That doesn’t become you, but if you want it spelled out, you should not have coerced Wil Sloan into helping you get Stallabrass so drunk he lost his job, and you were waiting right there in the wings to take it back again. Do you imagine nobody knows what you are doing? They’re laughing at the poor fool all around Belgium! He can’t get a letter without the men making jokes about the wretched postmistress he’s in love with!”

  She bit her lip. “I didn’t know. . . .”

  “You didn’t care!” he said furiously, the words pouring out now. “You didn’t think about Stallabrass, he was simply in your way, and you didn’t think about Wil Sloan. You knew he was your friend and would do anything he could to help you. You used him. God knows what you thought you were doing to Cullingford! This war is not for your entertainment, or to make it easier for you to have an impossible romance.”

  She was scalded by guilt, perhaps not so much for what she had done, but for the ideas and dreams of what she could do, might do, if opportunity were given her. She had not rebuffed Cullingford and it seemed she had no reservoir of virtue within to draw on, to restrain whatever hunger or need raged inside her.

  Instead she picked on the least important detail. “I did not coerce Wil!” she said hotly. “It was his idea!”

  “That’s a shabby excuse, Judith,” he told her bitterly. “He’s your friend, and he did it to please you. If you have a passion to do something wrong, at least have the grace to stand by it. Don’t duck behind someone else’s skirts.”

  The accusation must have cut her like a whiplash, perhaps because part of it was true or because it was he who made it. “I am not hiding!” she said fiercely. “I was there with Wil! And Stallabrass drank because he wanted to! It’s not my job to baby him!”

  “It’s your job to look after anyone who needs it,” he replied without compromise. “You took advantage of Wil’s friendship, of Stallabrass’s ignorance, and of Cullingford’s attraction to you, because you want something that isn’t yours. Is Cullingford the sort of man who can have a love affair with another woman, and walk away from it without guilt, without knowing he had betrayed his wife, and more important than that, the best in himself?” he demanded. “And if he is, is he a man whose attention you want? What for? To prove you can get it?”

  “I drive him!” She was raising her voice, possibly without realizing it, anger and guilt harsh in her. “That’s all! You’ve got a rotten, vicious imagination, and as my brother, who’s known me all my life, it makes me sick and disgusted that that’s what you think of me. You think you can step into Father’s shoes? You’re not fit to stand on the same piece of ground!” She took a gasping breath and pushed further away from him. “Go and preach morality to your poor, bloody wounded who can’t escape from you—because I can! And I will!” She turned her back, leaving him alone on the gravel in the encroaching night, weary, angry, and disappointed.

  But he could not afford to let it go. He still had no proof that Cullingford had not connived at Prentice’s death, directly or indirectly. The last few minutes had shown how intensely vulnerable he was.

  Joseph strode after Judith and caught up with her at the side door to the château. She must have hear
d his feet on the gravel because she swung around to face him. In the fast graying light he saw the tears in her eyes, but he knew it was anger as much as pain.

  “What is it now?” she said between her teeth.

  He glanced around to make certain there was no one else within the sound of their voices. There was no point in trying to be diplomatic with her, he had already made that impossible.

  “Cullingford gave Prentice written permission to go wherever he wanted to, even onto the front lines,” he said grimly. “No other war correspondent is allowed to do that. It meant none of us would arrest him and send him back, no matter what he did.”

  Her eyes blazed at him, her face was set in lines of defiance, but she said nothing, forcing him to continue.

  “Prentice must have used pressure on him to force him into that,” he said grimly. “Because of you.”

  She gulped. She wanted to say something, anything to defend herself, and Cullingford, but there was nothing. The helplessness burned in her eyes. “He was a bastard!” she said between her teeth. “Is that what you want me to say? You can stand there and be as holy as you like, Joseph, you can blame us all, and feel self-righteous and superior. You can make me feel as rotten and as frightened as you know how to, and you’re good at it. I can’t stop you. But what good does it do? Prentice is dead. You say people are laughing at Stallabrass, and . . . and talking about General Cullingford. Have you come to call me a scarlet woman—which I’m not! Or have you actually got something useful to say?”

  He felt as if she had slapped him. His flesh should have been stinging hot. It was startling how deeply words could injure.

  “Eldon Prentice was murdered by one of our own men,” he replied in a low, grim voice. “I despised him for lots of reasons, for Edwin Corliss, for Charlie Gee, and for his moral pressure on General Cullingford. But none of those things, repulsive as they are, make his murder acceptable. I need to know who did it, to protect those who didn’t, if nothing else.”

  Her voice was husky, her face was paler. “Are you thinking the general did it? He wouldn’t! Prentice was thoroughly rotten, but Cullingford wouldn’t do that, no matter what it cost. You can’t think . . .”

  “No I don’t, but that doesn’t matter, Judith. It’s what we can prove.”

  “If anybody killed Prentice over his moral blackmail, it would be Hadrian,” she answered almost under her breath. “General Cullingford was far to the north and east of where you were, and that’s easy enough to prove. I know it myself.”

  “Of course. No one thinks he crept out in the mud and shell holes himself, in order to push Prentice’s head under the water,” he replied. “I asked Hadrian. He was in the right area. He said he had a breakdown that he fixed with a silk scarf.”

  She must have heard the doubt in his voice. “You don’t believe him!” she challenged.

  “Do you?” he asked.

  She hesitated too long, and realized it. “I don’t know. He could have.”

  “But you have no way of knowing,” he reasoned.

  “Yes, I have,” she said immediately. “It won’t be difficult to ask the other men who drove the cars if he brought one back with a silk scarf in place of a broken belt. If there was one, somebody’ll know. Then you can check everywhere he says he was, and see if it’s true. You can, Joseph! Cars are too precious around here. We know what happens to each one. Do it!” Her face was keen now, she was leaning a little toward him. “If you really are trying to prove who’s innocent as much as who’s guilty, you can find out about Hadrian.” There was challenge in her voice, and fear in case she was wrong. She was still angry, frightened and deeply hurt that Joseph blamed her, and was forcing her to blame herself.

  “I’ll find out,” he replied. “But it doesn’t change anything else. If Prentice gained permission to go forward from Cullingford, by blackmailing him over you, it was you who made that possible.”

  “There are times, Joseph, when you are insufferably pompous!” She almost choked on her words, spitting them at him, her fists clenched. “We were all devastated when Eleanor died. It was terrible. She was lovely, and you didn’t deserve to lose her. But you’ve run away from feeling anything since then. You’ve become cold, detached, full of brains and emptyhearted. I’m not always right, but I’m not a coward! I’m not afraid to feel!” And without waiting either to look at him and see what pain she had caused, she swiveled round and stormed into the hallway of the building and through the far door, letting it slam after her.

  He walked back outside into the darkness of the fast-falling night, numb inside from the weight of what she had said. She was wrong to stay with Cullingford when she knew he was in love with her, whatever his loneliness or the depth of his need for at least one contact of compassion, laughter, human tenderness, the hunger above all things not to be alone, even if it was only for an hour. An hour led to a day, a week, the ache for a lifetime.

  He had meant to speak to her wisely, as their father would have done, in such a way that she would have seen her mistake for herself, and wanted to change it as much as he wanted her to. He had meant to come closer to her, so that in the wrench of giving it up, she would at least know that she had his support, and she was not alone either literally or emotionally.

  Instead he had driven her so far away he had placed a barrier between them that he had no idea how to surmount.

  But one thing he could do was trace the car Hadrian had used on the night of Prentice’s death, and see if it had broken down as he had said, and he had indeed used a silk scarf to jury-rig it until he got back to Poperinge. He could also check to see if anyone else had seen him at the various points of his journey. It might prove that he could not have been in no-man’s-land at the same time as Prentice.

  He had almost completed his task when he spoke to the nurse, Marie O’Day, the following afternoon. It seemed incontrovertible that Hadrian had been where he had said, and Cullingford had certainly been ten or twelve miles in the opposite direction.

  “It was a bad night,” Marie told him. “I saw Prentice, but he was alone. Why are you asking about him, Captain Reavley? What is it you need to know? He’s dead. Nobody liked him, and you know why. You were here when he did that to Charlie Gee, poor boy.” Her face twisted with grief at the memory. “It’s nobody’s fault he went over the top. Nobody else made him go!”

  “Nobody suggested it?” he pressed. “You don’t know who gave him the idea?”

  “Even if somebody egged him on, he didn’t have to do it!” she pointed out.

  “Did they?”

  “No. He’d already made up his mind when he reached us.” It was a statement of fact and there was no wavering, no overemphasis in her as if she were urging a lie.

  “Reached you from where?” he asked curiously. “Where had he come from?”

  “I don’t know,” she admitted. “To the east a little. He was full of himself, said he’d already been right as far as the German wire, and he wanted to go again.”

  “Been as far as the German wire?” Joseph was incredulous. Had Prentice really been to another regiment, and gone over the top on a raid with them, and now he wanted to do it again, here? “Are you certain?”

  “Oh, yes.” Her face was full of contempt. “He was bragging about it. Said it was exciting and dangerous, a taste of the real war he could write something about that would grab everybody’s attention. He wanted to add going over in a raid to what he already had! Maybe kill some Germans himself, then he could write as an actual soldier and tell people what it was really like, the feel of it, the smell of bodies, the rats, everything as it is, so they’d know.” Her face pinched. “Maybe it’s wicked of me, Captain Reavley, and you being a godly man, but I’m glad he didn’t live to do that.”

  He was startled. He had not thought of correspondents writing so graphically. “Yes, I’m glad, too, Mrs. O’ Day. Perhaps I’m not as godly as you think. Thank you for your help.” He left her taking the mugs back inside, a tall, sad figure in
a gray dress soiled with blood, busy with the small duties of habit and comfort.

  He spoke later to Lucy Crowther, assistant to Marie O’Day. She was rolling bandages on the table in the first-aid station. Her dark hair was tied back severely and her knuckles were clenched and she avoided his eyes. “Yes. He was boasting that he was going over with the men,” she answered his question.

  “For the second time,” he said.

  She looked up at him. “No. He’d never been over before.”

  “He told Mrs. O’Day that he’s been right up to the German wire!”

  “Oh, that!” she said dismissively. “Any fool can do that, once the sappers have dug the tunnel!”

  “You mean underground!” Again his belief was stretched to snapping.

  Her face was twisted with contempt. “Yes, of course. You didn’t think he went on top, did you?”

  “He was back here from eastward somewhere,” he asked, trying to piece it together in his mind.

  “That’s right. The sappers were working along at Hill Sixty. Major Wetherall and his men. Prentice went that way with them.”

  “Prentice went with Major Wetherall?”

  “Yes.” She finished the last bandage. “I don’t know how Major Wetherall could stand him, but he can’t have minded or he’d have got rid of him,” she said. “Sappers don’t have to put up with anybody they don’t want to. It’s pretty dangerous, with explosions, cave-ins, water, and all that.” There was admiration in her now, an utterly different tone in her voice, a softness.

  Joseph found himself smiling. He knew that what Sam did was dangerous, and vital. If a shell landed anywhere along the tunnel, they could be buried alive, crushed by falling earth, or perhaps worse, imprisoned and left to suffocate. And there was the moral hell of getting so close to the German trenches that you could hear the men talking to each other, the laughter and jokes, the occasional singing, all the daily sounds of life far from home and in intense danger. You could sense the comradeship, the grief for loss, the pain, the loneliness, the whisper of fear or guilt, the hundreds of small details that showed they were men exactly like yourselves, and most of them nineteen or twenty years old as well.