Harvest of War (16 page)

‘Don't talk rubbish,' Tom said. ‘As if I would. And you're not finished. We're going to get you out.'

‘We?'

‘There are two more of my chaps out there somewhere. They'll be with us any moment.'

As if in mockery of his words, the moon came out from behind the cloud and the sniper's rifle cracked again. There was no cry of pain and whether anyone had been hit or not Tom had no way of telling.

He dragged his useless legs closer to Ralph. ‘Where are you hit?'

‘In the guts. There's no point in doing anything. I'm bleeding out.'

Tom dragged a packet of field dressings out of his knapsack. ‘You're not giving up as long as I'm with you.'

Ralph's tunic and trousers were ripped across his stomach and when Tom peeled back the ragged edges he revealed a long gash, through which parts of Ralph's intestines were protruding. He unpacked the largest of the dressings and pressed it over the wound. Then, with a struggle, he managed to pass a bandage under Ralph's body and secure it tightly over the dressing; but very quickly both dressing and bandage were dark with blood.

‘I told you. It's no good,' Ralph murmured faintly.

‘Hold on!' Tom responded. ‘Jamieson will be here in a minute with a stretcher.'

Tom was beginning to feel an icy chill seeping up from somewhere in the lower part of his body. He knew now that he had not just been ‘winded'. Something was seriously wrong. It was impossible to move Ralph on his own. All he could do was wait.

After a long silence Ralph whispered, ‘Put your arms round me, old friend. I'm chilled to the marrow.'

With difficulty Tom manoeuvred himself nearer and got one arm under Ralph's neck and pulled him close. He felt Ralph burrow his head into his shoulder and laid his cheek against the once-bright hair, now clogged with mud.

‘That's better,' Ralph breathed. Then, after another silence, he lifted his head towards Tom's face. ‘It was always you, you know. You were the one I really wanted. But I never dared tell you.'

A lunar landscape of missed opportunities spread itself before Tom's imagination. ‘But it was the same for me. I wanted you, too, but I was afraid to say so.'

Ralph did not respond for a moment. Then he muttered, ‘What a pair of bloody fools!'

‘Yes,' Tom agreed, on a sigh. ‘Indeed.'

‘Too late now,' Ralph said.

‘Yes, too late now.'

There was another silence. Then Ralph said, ‘It doesn't matter. I wanted you to know. I love you, Tom. I've always loved you. That's all that matters now.'

Tom drew a long breath. ‘And I've always loved you. You're right, that's all that really matters.'

This time the silence went on. The moon went behind a cloud again, allowing the stars to shine more brightly. Above the rim of the crater Orion bestrode the heavens and it crossed Tom's mind that he had always intended to find out more about the constellations. Too late for that as well, he reflected. It was clear that Jamieson was not going to appear with the stretcher. Another poor bastard gone down, Tom thought. He wondered if there was such a thing as the afterlife and decided that, if there was, there was a good chance that he and Ralph would enter it together.
In death they were not divided.
Where did that come from? It would make a good epitaph. He wondered if there was any chance that they might be buried in a common grave and hoped that someone would write that on the tombstone. Leo might, if she ever found the place. Leo understood . . .

The moon came out again, lower in the sky now. Somewhere a bird whistled tentatively, as if testing the air for signs of dawn. At some point Tom realized that Ralph was no longer breathing. He closed his eyes and waited for his own moment to arrive.

Leo was busier than she would ever have believed possible. Her fund-raising activities had caught the public imagination and after the initial lecture she found herself being asked to speak at venues up and down the country. With Victoria at her side she travelled to Manchester and Leeds, to Bath and Tunbridge Wells and Oxford. Mabel Stobart lent her influence to promote the campaign and the money rolled in. Soon the hallway at Sussex Gardens was stacked with crates of jam and sugar and packing cases full of hand-knitted socks and balaclava helmets. One morning towards the end of October, in a pause in her travels, Leo looked them over and turned to Victoria.

‘Vita, this is crazy. It will be winter soon and that is when all this stuff is going to be needed. There's no point in us turning up with it next spring. We need to get it out there as soon as possible.'

‘I take your point,' Victoria said. ‘The next question is, how do we get it there? There's no way we can lug this lot on and off trains, and anyway, now there's no Orient Express there isn't any direct rail route.'

‘No, it'll have to go by sea,' Leo agreed, ‘so the sooner we get it shipped the better.'

Over the next days they haunted the offices of various shipping agents but without success. Merchant shipping was in short supply, owing to the depredations of the German U-boat fleet, and most of it had been diverted to the vital North Atlantic route. No one was going to Salonika. Finally, a sympathetic Italian ship owner agreed to convey the stores as far as Naples and promised that once there his agent would see them trans-shipped on to a vessel going to Athens. Beyond that he could not guarantee anything.

‘There's nothing for it,' Leo said. ‘We shall have to go to Athens and wait for it. I'm sure we can find someone there who will take it on the last leg.'

‘So how do we get there?' Victoria asked. ‘I presume you don't intend to travel on the ship with it.'

‘No, that would just be a waste of time. We need to leave just soon enough to be sure we can be there when it arrives.'

‘Well, one thing is for sure,' Victoria said, ‘we are not driving this time!'

Leo laughed. ‘No, I wasn't going to suggest that. We shall have to go by train. I wonder what the best route is.'

‘Tell you what: Stobart brought her people back from Albania, didn't she? Let's ask her how they did it.'

Mabel Stobart was able to supply the answer immediately. ‘You need to get to Paris. From there you can get a through train to Rome. Then another train down to Brindisi. Of course, you won't be doing the short hop across the Adriatic to Albania, but I'm sure there will be ships going from there to Athens.'

So it was agreed and they began to plan their journey. Leo felt a thrill of excitement that she had not known for many months. Common sense told her that in the current situation she could do no more towards finding her daughter from Salonika than she could from London, but she could not banish the feeling that once there she would be in a position to take advantage of any move forward on that front – perhaps even persuade the generals to make a fresh attempt to liberate Lavci.

Then, one morning, the telegraph boy rang the bell.

Victoria found Leo sitting on a crate in the hall with the telegram still in her hand. ‘Leo! What is it?' She crossed to sit beside her and took the telegram from her. ‘“Regret to inform you your brother Major R.J. Malham Brown is missing in action, believed killed.” Oh, Leo! I am so sorry, my dear.'

Leo sighed deeply. ‘How many times have we had to say that? Is there no end to the killing?'

‘It must come, sooner or later.'

‘Not soon enough for Ralph.' She ran her hand over her eyes. ‘I can't believe he's dead, Vita. Not Ralph! He was so vital, so indestructible. I can still see him before he went off to the front, shining and eager and . . .' She broke off, struggling for control. ‘Do you know, I haven't seen him since that night when we waved them off at the very beginning of the war?'

‘Surely . . .? Not once since then?'

‘No. By the time he got his first leave I was on my way to Serbia. And since I've been back he hasn't been able to get away.'

‘Oh, that's . . . that's very sad.'

Leo looked at her. ‘You never liked him much, did you?'

Victoria averted her eyes. ‘Not at first, perhaps. But you remember I told you we met in London, after he was wounded? I thought he was much . . . well, we got on quite well . . . that is, up to a point . . .'

Leo blew her nose. ‘Well, that's the end of the Malham Browns. Now it looks as if neither of us will leave anything behind for the next generation.'

Victoria got up and moved away. ‘Don't, Leo! Please don't talk like that.' There was a harshness in her tone that surprised Leo. She added, more gently, ‘You don't know that. We'll find your daughter, one day.'

‘Will we?' Leo was absorbed by the sense of lost possibilities. ‘What a pity he didn't marry before he left. He was always on at me and Tom to name the day, but I never thought of pressing him to do the same.'

‘There was never any question of that, was there?' Victoria said. ‘I don't remember him ever having a girlfriend.'

‘Oh, there were always girls flirting with him. But as far as I know he was never serious about any of them.'

‘That's what I thought,' Victoria murmured. ‘But didn't you ever wonder . . .'

Leo looked up suddenly. ‘Tom! You don't suppose, do you . . .'

‘Suppose what?'

‘Do you think he might have been killed, too?'

‘Of course not. Why should you think that?'

‘Tom was in the same company and I know he would have tried to stick as close to Ralph as possible. So if Ralph was hit . . .'

‘There's no reason to assume that Tom was too.'

‘But I wouldn't know, would I? Any telegram would go to his mother, and I doubt very much whether she would think to get in touch with me. I'm not sure she even knows we're supposed to be engaged.'

‘I'm sure Tom will have thought of that. He will have made some arrangement. Anyway, no news is good news.' Victoria put her hand on Leo's shoulder and shook it gently. ‘Come on, old thing! Don't make things worse than they are.'

Leo sighed again and got up. ‘You're right. We just have to get on with what we can do for the living. Let's finish packing these crates.'

Two days later a letter arrived for Leo from Frobisher and Weatherby, Solicitors.

Dear Miss Malham Brown,

We are solicitors acting for Sir Thomas Devenish, Bart. Pursuant to his instructions, I have to inform you, with regret, that Sir Thomas has been wounded in action. The wound, we understand, is serious but not fatal and Sir Thomas is being returned to England for treatment. He is expected to arrive at the Charing Cross Hospital sometime in the next day or two . . .

‘Serious but not fatal!' Leo held the letter out to Victoria. ‘Oh, thank God! Thank God!'

A phone call to the hospital elicited the information that they had no Lt Devenish registered at that time, but were expecting a hospital train that evening. First thing the next morning Leo was at the reception desk, among a crowd of other relatives. A harassed clerk told her that Lt Devenish had been brought in the previous evening, but when she hurried up to the ward a sister, whose starched apron was already smudged with blood, informed her curtly that visiting hours were from 2.30 p.m. to four o'clock; and anyway, Lt Devenish was going to be operated on that morning.

‘Are you a relative?'

‘I'm his fiancée.' She had never realized how useful that spurious title might be.

‘You can come back this afternoon if you like. But I don't expect he will be conscious enough to speak to you.'

‘Can I ask how badly he is wounded?'

‘A bullet is lodged at the base of his spine. We will not know how serious the damage is until after the operation.'

‘Can't I see him, just for a moment, before he goes to theatre?'

‘No, I'm sorry. If I let you on the ward I should have to let all the other visitors on and then we should never get through the work. I'll tell him you were here. That's the best I can do. What name shall I say?'

‘Leo. Just Leo.'

At 2.30 p.m. Leo was back at the hospital, in company with a crowd of mothers and wives carrying bunches of flowers and bags of grapes.

A different sister glanced down a list of patients and said doubtfully, ‘Lieutenant Devenish is back from theatre, but I think you'll find he's still very woozy. You can sit with him if you like but he may not know you're there.'

Leo walked down the ward, between the long rows of beds with their tightly drawn white bedcovers, in an atmosphere that was at once familiar and alien. The men lying in the beds reminded her of Lozengrad and Adrianople. She had seen similar wounds there; similar expressions on their faces of pain or long-suffering courage. But the smells and squalor of Adrianople were missing, replaced by immaculate cleanliness, and the atmosphere of cheerful banter she recalled from Lozengrad had been replaced by a sense of military discipline which hushed the voices of patients and visitors alike. It was impossible to imagine these men sitting up to shout ‘Mellie Chissimas!'

The screens were drawn round Tom's bed and on passing through them she was shocked by his appearance. His face was as white as the pillow, the skin drawn tight over his skull so that his nose and cheekbones looked razor sharp, and the whites of his eyes showed between half-closed lids. She had seen men close to death look like this. She leaned over him and stroked his cheek.

‘Tom? It's Leo. You're in hospital. You've been hurt, but you're going to be all right.'

The eyelids fluttered and the cracked lips moved soundlessly. She understood what he wanted. An enamel mug of water stood on the locker by the bed and she slid an arm under his neck and raised his head so that he could take a sip.

‘No more now. You can have more later.'

She watched him struggling back to consciousness, saw the signs of mounting nausea and supported him while he vomited, then wiped his lips with her handkerchief. His eyes were fully open now.