Bonds of Earth (7 page)

His aunt set her jaw. “You haven’t tried,” she said flatly.

“You’re right,” Seward returned, with equal sangfroid. “I haven’t.”

That statement brought Michael up short. It took a couple of moments before he recovered himself and remembered that his eyes were supposed to be on the garden, not on Seward’s pain-twisted face. When he did, he heard Seward’s aunt say softly, “Well. I’m sure you must have had your reasons, but there comes a time when we must buckle down and face the world.”

“Now why didn’t I think of that?” Seward sneered.

There was the sound of a chair scraping back. “I knew you wouldn’t react well to the news. But in time I’m sure you’ll see it’s for the best.” Another pause. “Thomas, I’d like a word with you in private.”

Michael looked up to see Abbott’s gaze darting furtively from Seward to his aunt. He must have received his answer, because he said clearly, “Of course, mum,” and followed her into the house the way she and Seward had come.

As for Seward himself, he sat at the table for a few moments, and then Michael heard him say, “Well, did you get all of that?”

Michael looked up and met that direct, uncompromising gaze, but before he could formulate an answer, Seward waved a hand at him. “Never mind, never mind. After all, it’s not as though I have any dignity left to preserve.”

With the aid of the cane, he pushed himself to a standing position and made his slow, hobbling way back to the house, Michael’s gaze riveted to his every step.

4

T
HE
next month was a flurry of activity and work as Seward’s aunt made good on her threat to improve the house and everything within it. Furniture was delivered, draperies and linens ordered, and an electric refrigerator—the new kind linked to a compressor installed in the basement—replaced the old icebox. Electrical wiring, ten years old, was deemed inadequate and new wiring was installed. Plumbers were brought in to update the bathroom fixtures; fresh cobblestones were installed in the driveway; cracks in the plaster were repaired throughout the house.

And every one of the hundred or so odd jobs that required a strong back rather than skill was relegated to Michael. Given new orders by Abbott, he cut his time in the garden so that he would have the opportunity to complete the various tasks that had been assigned him. He began by completing the cleaning of the interior of the house from top to bottom and ended with a repainting of the entire exterior that took him a full week. Along the way there was furniture to be moved, floors to be stripped and re-waxed, roofs to be patched—the list seemed endless. And throughout it all, he saw not a whisper of Seward in the house. Somehow, the man managed to avoid detection and yet remain a ghostly presence that prickled the hairs on the back of Michael’s neck.

By late May he was exhausted, though no more so than the Abbotts, who were showing the strain of the extra work far more than he. Despite Mary and Michael’s combined efforts, the old man had been involved in every step of the process, dealing with hired men and overseeing their efforts in accordance with Mrs. Anderson’s wishes. Michael tried to remind him the men knew their jobs and could probably be trusted to do them, but Abbott shrugged him off and told him, predictably, to mind his own business.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” Mary said one afternoon over coffee and cherry pie, in what felt like the first time they’d sat down all week, “but it’s no use. He won’t listen to me, either.”

A month ago he would have shrugged it off, but her words did nothing but fuel Michael’s anger. He was surprised to discover it bothered him to know that Abbott was ignoring his own health for the sake of what he perceived as his duty, but he reassured himself by reasoning that he was merely sympathizing with Sarah and Mary, who actually cared about the old bastard.

“At least the house is almost finished,” Mary sighed into the ensuing silence. “Soon things can go back to normal around here.”

Unfortunately, Mary’s prediction proved to be overly optimistic, for the moment the house was standing resplendent in its new, glossy coat of paint and its tastefully modernized interior, Seward’s aunt began the real transformation. It started with a seemingly never-ending stream of clothiers and haberdashers. One after another Michael saw them enter the house game and energetic, arms full of boxes and fabrics, and leave it dejected and battered. Watching them limp away with their tails tucked between their legs, Michael could not help feeling they should have at least been warned beforehand, although the outcome would still have been the same. Their opponent was fierce and battle-hardened, and he occupied an entrenched position that seemed impervious to attack.

Still, the parade continued for a full week, during which Abbott began to take on the appearance of a ghost himself. Never hearty, his already thin frame edged toward gaunt, and dark circles ringed his eyes.

“Sit down before you fall down,” Michael said gruffly one night, when Mary was about to hand him Seward’s supper. “I’ll take it to him.”

But Abbott merely shook his head stubbornly, too tired to lash out in words, and took the tray from Mary, who watched him go with worry in her gaze.

Sarah, who had fallen more and more silent as the weeks went past, despite Michael’s efforts to keep her spirits up, looked at each of them in turn, then stood and headed up the stairs. Mary opened her mouth to speak to her, then closed it again.

Cautiously, Michael laid a hand on her arm. “All right, then
you
go sit down,” he ordered gently. “I’ll clean up.” She looked up at him, startled, then nodded and moved to sit at the wide wooden table, settling into the chair with a small, soft sound.

He was halfway through the dishes when he glanced over and saw her blunt, sturdy fingers gripping her teacup with such force he was afraid it might shatter. He considered taking it from her but decided to leave her be. There were worse things, after all, than wrecking a teacup or two.

H
AVING
experienced a setback in remodeling his exterior, Seward’s aunt, bloodied but unbowed, next turned her attention to the inner man. And that was the point at which things deteriorated completely.

Michael was carefully pruning the newly leafed trees in the front yard that morning when he saw the car drive up and emit a small, sturdy woman in a nurse’s uniform. She carried a huge black grip and looked impossibly young, and Michael felt his heart sink.

By lunchtime she was sitting in the kitchen, her eyes red and puffy from crying, while Mary fussed over her and fumed at Seward. Her name was Emma, and she’d graduated from nursing school a month ago; this was her first job. She’d wanted to work in a maternity ward, but since no positions had been available, she’d accepted this one instead.

“I’m surprised the girl survived,” Michael murmured, speaking quietly with Mary by the stove while Emma sat at the table spooning Mary’s corn chowder into her mouth with a shell-shocked air. Seward’s aunt couldn’t have selected a less suitable candidate to handle her strong-willed nephew, though perhaps she’d been hoping the beauty of the young woman would cause him to magically forget the horror that had destroyed his body. She had only the most perfunctory training in physical therapy and no experience at all with war veterans.

“This has to stop,” Mary whispered. “Thomas is as pale as death, Sarah is as quiet as she was when she first came to us, and I’m at my wit’s end. That boy has to be made to see reason.”

“If he doesn’t want to regain his health, no power on Earth will convince him to apply himself,” Michael said grimly.

Mary frowned. “Then what can we do?”

“If I knew the answer to that,” Michael sighed, “I wouldn’t be here right now.”

T
HOMAS
drove Emma to the train station that afternoon, and over the course of the following two weeks, he ferried three other nurses back and forth from the house. Two of them lasted barely longer than Emma, though the third made a valiant attempt, staying a full four days before giving up. Elizabeth was, Michael learned, a highly trained nursing sister from England, and she had considerable experience with convalescing patients. Her looks, Michael noted with some amusement, were best described as plain. Apparently Seward’s aunt had finally abandoned her attempt to appeal to her nephew’s aesthetic sense.

“I thought a bit of time in the country would do me good, but they’re not paying well enough to put up with his cheek,” Elizabeth told him as they strolled through the garden. “He needs an alienist before he needs a nurse.”

“Did his aunt tell you anything about his injury?” Michael asked.

She eyed him speculatively, silently. Of course, it was not her habit to share her patients’ medical histories with the gardener. Michael hesitated for a moment, reluctant to bring her into his confidence; then, his dusty conscience reminding him of his promise to Sarah, he took a deep breath and spoke. “I was in my first year of medical school when the war broke out. Before that I was trained as a rubber. I joined the ambulance corps and was at the front until 1917, then returned to England and spent the remainder of the war working in an American convalescent hospital, where I implemented physical therapy routines for the men.”

Elizabeth came to a halt and stared at him. “Bloody hell,” she said quietly, “I thought you looked familiar. I was stationed in a base hospital near Ypres in 1916. Were you—”

Michael nodded. “It’s a small world, isn’t it?” He didn’t bother to tell her he didn’t remember her. At the front, one had soon learned not to look too closely at faces. Each face you recognized was one that could be missed.

“Too small,” she agreed. She looked away, contemplating the nearest flowerbed, and after a moment Michael joined her in her study of his work. Satisfied that the danger of frost had passed, he’d transplanted the annuals yesterday. Neat rows of snapdragons and pansies stretched out in front of them, the buds just beginning to sprout.

“Damn,” Elizabeth murmured, arms wrapping around herself despite the warmth of the day. “Even flowerbeds remind me of cemeteries now.”

Michael led her away gently, and they walked slowly toward the back of the property. Once they were safely in the wilder terrain, he saw some of the tension leave her body. “I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” Michael admonished her gently. “I know how it feels to have everything you touch seem tainted.”

Elizabeth stared at him. “That’s it. That’s exactly it.” She waved a hand to indicate the garden beyond the woods. “If I’m not being too forward, has this—working at something so completely different—helped you?” she asked.

“Not precisely,” Michael hedged, thinking of Sarah’s haunted eyes and Seward’s broken body. “Though I suppose I was hoping it would at least be restful.”

Elizabeth sighed. “I don’t think you’ll get much rest with that one under the same roof.” Sobering, she said, “Why do you want to know about him?”

“I made a promise,” Michael admitted, spreading his hands. “And like it or not, I have to do what I can to keep it.”

Elizabeth raised an eyebrow at him. “Do you believe in fate?” she asked.

Michael’s gut clenched unpleasantly. “No.”

“Good thing,” she told him firmly. “Because if he’s your fate, you might as well jump in the river now and have it over with.” She watched him for a moment longer before nodding. “All right. I have notes I made from the conference with his doctor. I’ll leave them for you.”

Michael thanked her graciously, although he knew what he was feeling was as far from gratitude as was possible.

T
HERE
is little privacy or safety to be had in the trenches, and when Michael is moving among them, he is working, so the chances for the brief, furtive couplings that some men find between bombardments and gas attacks and assaults are limited. Even if there were opportunity, he has to admit he would not be tempted, because the last thing he wants is to defile his desires with the stench of desperation and death. Instead he stores them away and unpacks them during his periodic leaves in Paris, where there is always a willing partner for the evening if you know where to look.

Michael knows where to look, even before he can understand the language, because the world in which he moves is fluent in silences. The only significant difference from New York is that the entire city seems to be the Bowery or Greenwich Village, secrets kept in the open for everyone to see but not see, a wink and a nod the rule rather than the exception. He likes it there, likes the freedom and the spirit of the place, and every three or four months, he can spend a few days scrubbing the dirt and blood from his skin and enjoying the company of men who don’t reek of gangrene and Belgian mud, men whose bodies are fine and firm and whole.

If he concentrates, he can almost forget there’s a war by the time his leave is up.

Later on in the war, when Paris is living under the threat of the German long gun and the terror of the Zeppelins, its luster dulls sufficiently that it is no longer enough to rob Michael of his memories, even for a moment. When he comes buried deep in a sweet, rounded ass, vision filling with starry pinpoints as his blood flees his brain, he can no longer lose himself entirely in the comforting amnesia wrought by pleasure. The stench of death does not leave his nostrils, and the vision of sightless eyes and orphaned limbs rises up before him, suffocating his desire.