Angels in the Gloom wwi-3 Read online

  Joseph knew what he was doing. He had done it also, making sure in the deeper parts of his mind that he was really home, that it all remained the same, whatever happened to the world away from here. Later, alone, he would probably touch those things, steeping his senses in their feel and their smell, to carry with him when he had to leave.

  “Last bets I heard were on conscription by the middle of the year,” Joseph said quietly.

  Archie was by the mantelpiece. He turned, glancing at the children, seeing their faces as they watched his every move and gesture. “Which way is your money?” he asked.

  “For it,” Joseph replied. “About sixpence.” He made himself smile. He knew the news was bad and he was reading in Archie’s eyes the things he would not say in front of anyone else. There was a tacit understanding that one never spoke of defeat, or even its possibility, in front of women or children.

  “Sounds about right,” Archie agreed.

  “I’m going to join up,” Tom announced. “Navy, of course. Sorry, Uncle Joseph, I don’t mean to be insulting. Of course the army’s good, too, but we’re naval, aren’t we Dad?”

  Archie’s face tightened, but he knew better than to argue, especially in front of anyone else. “Yes. But we’re officers, not ratings, so you’ll study properly first.”

  “But, Dad . . .” Tom started.

  Archie gave him a quick smile. “And you’ll obey the captain! You’ll not discuss it over tea!”

  Luke turned to see if Tom would obey.

  “Yes, sir,” Tom said reluctantly.

  It was a strange, unnatural evening. Everyone was overwrought emotionally, uncertain what to say. One moment they were silent, the next everyone speaking together.

  “Dad, what’s the worst battle you’ve ever seen?” Tom asked, his face tense, eyes unwavering.

  “Was it terrible?” Luke added immediately.

  Hannah drew in her breath, then changed her mind and said nothing. Her eyes also were on Archie, waiting.

  Even before he spoke, Joseph knew Archie was going to evade anything like the truth, just as he would have done himself. So far he had used his injuries to deflect any such discussion.

  Jenny sat next to her father, squashed up in the armchair. He had his arm around her with a gentleness that was intensely concentrated, as if in the softness of her hair and the angular grace of her young body, he touched the infinite value of life itself.

  “We’re patrolling most of the time,” he answered lightly. “We meet the odd U-boat, but the main German fleet has stayed in port so far, you know.” He smiled. “I think they’re scared of us.”

  Luke believed him. “Are they?” he said with pleasure. “Good, eh?”

  Tom was more doubtful. “But they sink a lot of our ships, Dad. We’d be winning if they didn’t. There are a couple of boys at school whose fathers went down.”

  Hannah looked quickly at Joseph, then at Archie. She needed truth, but she was afraid of it, afraid of the nightmares. She would be the one left at home to find the answers, the comfort, to make going on possible.

  “Not a lot of ships,” Archie replied, considering as he spoke. “It just seems like a lot because we hear about it, and it hurts. But most of the Grand Fleet is still here. We can’t persuade the Germans to come out of harbor and face us.”

  “But the U-boats do,” Tom persisted.

  “Oh, yes. They’re pretty nasty, but we’ve got a few tricks of our own, and getting more all the time. And don’t ask me what they are, because it’s secret stuff, and I don’t know all of it myself. Now tell me about school. I’m much more interested in that.”

  Tom gave up and dutifully answered the questions, but the enthusiasm was gone from his eyes. Half an hour later Luke and Jenny went to bed and Joseph walked alone down toward the orchard.

  He did not hear Tom’s footsteps on the grass and was startled when he spoke.

  “Sorry, Uncle Joseph,” Tom apologized, his voice laden with misery.

  Joseph turned and saw him. His young, smooth face was solemn, his eyes shadowed in the dappled light through the trees.

  “Why doesn’t Dad talk to me about anything real?” he asked quietly. “Is it because we are going to lose the war?”

  Joseph had been half waiting for the question, but now that it had come it was more difficult than he had expected.

  “I don’t know,” he said simply. “I don’t think so, but of course it’s possible. We won’t give up, ever, but we might be beaten.”

  Tom looked startled. Joseph realized he should not have been so candid. Tom was only fourteen. Now he would have nightmares Hannah would not be able to comfort, and it was Joseph’s fault. How could he undo it?

  “I don’t think we’ll be beaten,” Tom said clearly. “We won’t let it happen. But Dad was just trying to protect us, wasn’t he? A lot of people are being killed. I heard in school today that Billy Arnold’s elder brother was killed. They heard yesterday. He was twenty. That’s only six years older than I am. Did you know him, Uncle Joseph? Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you like that. I’m sorry.”

  Joseph smiled. “People aren’t going to stop being killed just because I’m here on sick leave. And I knew him, but not very well. I don’t think we’ll be beaten either, actually. I just don’t want to tell you lies.”

  Tom was silent for a while. They stood side by side, watching the light fade beyond the elms.

  “Why won’t Dad tell me that?” Tom said at last, his voice thick with hurt. “Does he think I can’t take it?”

  “We all try to protect people we love,” Joseph answered. He watched as in the distance a shire horse walked gently over the slope of the rise, the light catching on its harness. It moved slowly, head low with weariness at the end of the day. “We don’t think about it. We just do it,” he added. “It’s natural.”

  “You don’t! Don’t you love me?” Tom asked.

  Deliberately, Joseph did not look at him. He knew there would be tears on his face, and it was better they were private.

  “Yes, I do, very much,” he answered. “But not in quite the same way. I’ve seen boys not much older than you in the trenches, and I know you can take a lot. However bad it is, not knowing is sometimes worse. At least that’s what I think. But your father may think differently.”

  “I suppose so. It seems like Jenny’s the only one he’s really pleased to see!” That last was raw with hurt. “Is that because she’s a girl?”

  “Probably. And too young to go and drive ambulances, like your aunt Judith.” The horse disappeared under the may blossom in the lane, and a flock of birds whirled up in the sky, startled.

  “Is that dangerous?” Tom asked.

  “Not most of the time, but it’s very hard work, and you see a lot of badly injured people.”

  “I wouldn’t like that.”

  “No, but it’s better to help them than stand around doing nothing much.”

  “What do you do, Uncle Joseph? You can’t pray all the time, people don’t want that, do they? Anyway, it doesn’t work, does it!”

  Joseph turned to look at him. There was pain and disillusion in his face, oddly naked in the warmth of the evening light. “What would you like God to do?” he asked.

  Tom drew in his breath. “Make it stop, of course.”

  “How?”

  Tom blinked. “Well . . . I don’t know. Can’t God do anything He wants to?”

  “He could force us, I suppose. But if you are made to do something, is it any good?” Joseph asked. “Is it worth anything, if you had no choice?”

  “Well . . . well, we’ve got no choice about fighting! We have to, or get beaten—and killed.”

  “I know. The only decision for us is whether we do it well or badly, whether we’re brave, and even at the worst times, remember what we believe, and the kind of people we want to be.”

  Tom bit his lip. “Is that what you pray for?”

  Joseph looked out over the fields again. There was nobody there anymore
, just an emptiness of plowed earth and fading sky.

  “Mostly. But I don’t spend a lot of time praying. Mostly I fetch and carry, dig the broken trenches along with everyone else, try to help the wounded, and write letters.”

  “Is that what you got the Military Cross for?” There was sharp pride in Tom’s voice now.

  “That sort of thing.” The sunset breeze smelled of the earth and in the distance the elms were little more than shadows against the sky.

  “I’m going into the navy as soon as I can,” Tom said as if challenging Joseph to argue.

  “Yes. I expected you would,” Joseph agreed.

  Tom let out a sigh of satisfaction and they stood together silently, but now it was comfortable.

  In the sitting room Hannah was glad to be alone with Archie. There was only one lamp on and the gathering darkness outside cast long shadows, leaving the glow like an island of warmth, picking out the familiar shapes of chairs, books, pictures on the wall.

  Time was infinitely precious. She might never have a better chance than this to ask him about the things she needed to know.

  She thought of Paul Compton, the friends who knew him, and the wife who did not. Where could she begin?

  “I wish you could tell us something about your ship,” she started. “Tom is longing to know.”

  “He already knows all about destroyers,” Archie answered, looking a little beyond her. “He can tell you length, tonnage, size, and number of guns, range, and complement of men.”

  “I don’t mean that!” She tried to keep the loneliness out of her voice, and the anger that he seemed to be willfully misunderstanding her. “That doesn’t tell him what it feels like! Anybody can read the facts out of a book. He wants to know it from you. I do! What is your day like? What do you care about? What does it taste like? What’s funny? What’s horrible?”

  He smiled, his face wrinkling in the old laughter lines she remembered. “It tastes pretty much the same as at boarding school,” he replied wryly, passing it off as a joke, still keeping her from the pain. “Bit staler, and it smells like salt, engine oil, old rooms with windows that have never been opened.”

  She swallowed. She was touching reality at last, even if obliquely. “And in battle?”

  His face changed so subtly she could not have named the difference, something in the tautness of the skin across the planes of his cheek, the line of his lips. “It smells of smoke, cordite, burnt rubber, and the sweat of fear,” he answered. “I’m on leave, Hannah. I don’t want to spend it talking about war. I want to be at home. Tell me what you’re doing. Tell me about the children.”

  The door to his inner self was closed and locked. She knew from the set of his face and the way his eyes avoided hers that he would not allow her into that part of him where fear or pain were real, or any of his passionate and vulnerable self. They were alone together in the familiar room with the light fading outside, the last birds circling in the sky, everything exactly as it had always been. They could talk of their children, and nothing could be dearer or of more meaning, yet it would be only the often-used words, so predictable as to add nothing. The gulf between them was infinite. She could have said the same things to a stranger.

  When Joseph came back in from the garden, Tom went to bed and a short while afterward she followed, weary but wide awake, ridiculously close to tears. But she must not weep, or when would she stop, and how could she explain it to anyone?

  Joseph sat across the room from Archie and saw his tired, closed-in face. Archie was in command of a destroyer in the most desperate and crushing war England had known. There were no great victories like Nelson’s a century ago, just the slow erosion of sudden attack, and loss. It was his job never to show fear or doubt, regardless of what he felt, or the greater weight of what he knew. He protected his men from the demons of the mind as well as the violence of the seas. Hannah would not understand that any more than she could understand the blood-soaked trenches of Flanders. Why should she? Her own responsibilities were enough.

  The next day was quiet. Archie took Henry for a walk in the early evening. Joseph could understand if the sheer silence of the countryside offered him a kind of healing that nothing else could, and perhaps he needed a time of solitude away from the questions and the unceasing hunger for his company. The dog was a happy and undemanding friendship.

  Joseph knew that he could no longer put off writing to Isobel. He went into his father’s study to do it. He had never taken it as his own, and was grateful that Archie had not even placed anything of his there either.

  He opened the door and went in. It was clean; there was no dust on the polished surfaces, but it had a forsaken feel which was surely more than just his knowledge that John Reavley would never come back to it again. The Bonnington seascape still hung where it always had, its gray-green water almost luminous, its lines small and delicate.

  Joseph stood for only a moment before sitting down at the desk and pulling out paper and opening the inkwell. He could not even know if his advice was right or not, but he must have the courage to give it. Indecision was a choice as well. Better to be in error than to take the coward’s way of silence.Dear Isobel,Thank you for your letter. I was delighted to hear from you. I am recovering rather more slowly than I wish, and so I expect to be here for several more weeks.

  He would not yet tell her that he was considering not returning at all; somehow it was not a thought he wished her to know of. Of course if he followed it through, then he would tell her in the future. He had considered describing the slow, sweet fragrance of the spring, longing to share it with her, but it seemed a luxury out of place with the urgency of her question.I am sorry to learn of the young soldier you write about. I have seen that look on men’s faces. We call it “the thousand-yard stare.” It happens to men who have seen more terrible things than the mind can bear. Some of them are very young. I wish I knew of a way to reach the agony and ease it, touch with healing what is broken inside, but I have not found it. All I know for certain is that I cannot bring myself to blame anyone that is so terribly wounded, and through no fault of their own. I would be no man’s judge in what I can barely understand, even though I have heard the incessant, beating noise myself, and seen the mud and the death. Who knows what hell another man walks through?But others may think very differently. Their own losses, or their anger, fear, and ignorance may make them wish for a violent resolution that they feel represents justice. In any decision you make, please never forget this, and take the greatest care.

  Then he went on to speak of his own village, the garden, the orchard, and the fields. He hoped he had made his advice plain enough that she would understand. He dared not be clearer. There was always the possibility the letter would be censored, and greater clarity would in itself prevent her from doing anything but turning in the young soldier.

  He could not tell her even that he had indecision in his mind. He sat alone in the study and stared at the small, exquisite painting of the sea. And he prayed.

  The following morning Joseph was barely dressed when Hannah knocked hard and peremptorily on his bedroom door, calling his name.

  “Come in,” he said, alarm too swift for irritation. “What is it?”

  She stood in the doorway, her face pale. “The vicar is here to see you,” she said breathlessly. “He looks absolutely terrible, and he says it can’t wait. He won’t even sit down. I’m sorry, but you’d better come. He looks beside himself, but he won’t tell me anything at all. Joseph, do you think the Germans have landed?”

  “No, of course not,” he answered suddenly, moving toward the door. “The vicar wouldn’t be the only one to know. Where’s Archie?”

  She swallowed. “He’s still asleep. Should I waken him?”

  “No! No. I’ll go and see what he wants.” He was annoyed at the disturbance. “It might be nothing much. He panics rather easily. But just in case it’s someone in the village lost a son or brother and can’t cope, you’d better keep the children busy. W
e don’t need them frightened.”

  “If it is, you’d better tell me who . . . in case I can help.” Her face was even whiter, her voice husky.

  “I will.” He moved to go past her onto the landing.

  “Here.” She reached out to retie his sling where it was roughly done. “It needs to be taut or it won’t support your arm.”

  He stood obediently while she redid it, then went down to the sitting room with a feeling of sickness in his stomach. He realized how good it had been not to have to face death, maiming, grief, not to be the one who had to be first there and try to deal with the pain of it and make sense to the people left.

  Hallam Kerr was standing in the middle of the room, his body rigid, his hair wet and sticking up in spikes. His face was pale. Joseph was used to the signs of shock, but it still caught him by surprise.

  Kerr took a swaying step toward him. “Thank God you’re here!” he gasped. “Something terrible has happened! Ghastly!” His breath caught in his throat, his chest heaving. “I simply don’t know where to begin. . . .”

  “You had better sit down and tell me,” Joseph said firmly. He closed the door. “What has happened?”

  Kerr stood rigidly, flapping his hands as if trying to grasp something that eluded him. “There’s been a murder, right here in the village!” His voice was high pitched and unnatural. “Theo Blaine from the Establishment! Found dead in his own garden. He was a scientist! One of their best, I believe. Who would do such a thing? What’s happening to us?”

  Joseph was appalled. He had thought nothing violent could shock him anymore, but this did. A scientist! One of Shanley Corcoran’s men. Fear chilled him to the pit of his stomach. Did the Germans know about the invention? Was this their way of stopping Britain from winning, even from surviving? No. He was being hysterical. There could be any number of reasons.

  He sat down slowly. Kerr could remain standing if he wanted to. “How did it happen?” he asked. “Who is responsible?”