Light Over Water (14 page)

          Remick sighed. 
“Owen’s right.  We should get a telephone!  By the way, ask your teacher if she
needs any potatoes.  We’re going to have more than we’ll ever use.”

          He turned the buggy
around and left her standing there in the dark.  Her feet led her to the teacher’s
house where she saw the glow of a lamp in the kitchen.  A gust of wind rattled
a patch of dying sunflowers next to the house, sounding like dry chuckling. 
She rapped on the door and then leaned her head against the doorjamb.  Shortly
the door was pulled open to reveal her teacher, her kind face lambent with the
glow of the lantern.

          “Why Alison, my
dear.  Whatever are you doing here at this time of night?”

          “Can…may I come in?” 
The sight of Mrs. Reid released something in Alison and she felt herself on the
verge of hysteria.  She wanted to both laugh and cry at once.

          “Of course!”  Mary
reached for her and drew her in.  The kitchen was brightly lit and Mary eyed
Alison penetratingly.  “You must sit down, dear.  I’ll make some tea.”

          The room was warm and
quiet but for the softly ticking clock that sat on a shelf.  Surprised to see
that it was after eight, Alison sounded a tiny “oh”.  Mary turned around, saw
Alison peering fixedly at the clock and clucked her tongue.  She let the
teakettle boil, dipped tea leaves into the pot and began pouring the boiling
water over them.  She set the teapot on the table, returning to the cupboard
for teacups.  She brought over two delicate bone china cups painted with pink
roses.  Alison didn’t notice.  She clenched her arms across her chest, staring
at the floor.

          “Where are the
girls?” she finally asked.

          “All abed, over an
hour ago,” Mary replied.  “You may speak freely,” she urged.

          Alison’s lips
trembled and she struggled to maintain her composure.

          “Has something happened,
dear?  To Sam?”

          Alison shook her
head, but the mention of Sam caused the tears to fall.  She wiped them away
with a hand that was shaking.

          Mary’s features drew
together in distress and she urged, “Oh my dearest, what has happened, love?”

          Alison just hung her
head miserably.  Her throat felt like a rock was lodged in it and she couldn’t
force any words around it.  She desperately wanted to tell her teacher what had
happened, but how do you say such words, how do you give voice to such an act? 
Neither was she inclined to reveal what she saw as her part in it.  Staring at
the teacup without really seeing it, she asked the first question that came to
mind.  “What happened to him?  To your husband, I mean?”

          For a long moment
Mary gazed at the girl sitting opposite her.  She took in the tousled hair, the
stark paleness of her skin, the dirt and grass on her clothes, the bleakly
desperate look in her eyes that said to her, take me away from here, take me
out of this body, take me back in time.  “You know he died, my dear,” Mary said
carefully.  “When the Lusitania was blown up by a U-boat.”

          Alison met Mary’s
green eyes, then looked down again.  “I know.  But I don’t know how it was, how
you were, after.  Did you realize how different things would be?”

          Mary settled back in
her seat, pulling her sweater tighter across her chest as if reliving the cold
of that morning.  Her fair skin looked pale against her cloud of dark auburn
hair.  “Even now I have dreams.  Dreams of it happening over and over again.  I
wish I could control them, change the ending…at least in my sleep.  But,” she
lifted her chin, “that wouldn’t change real life.  We were going to his
mother’s funeral.  It was the first time we’d been back to Ireland in years. 
His poor mother passed on after a long illness.  We went as soon as we could,
even knowing the danger.

          We were so close to
land that morning.   We could see the green hills in the distance.  We thought
we were safe.  Then…oh, the noise of it!”  She shuddered once, looking grimly at
Alison.  “You don’t hear a noise like that without thinking about dying.

          We hurried up to the
deck where they were filling the lifeboats.  It was so crowded, so chaotic with
everyone rushing, the little children crying, people hurting each other to get on
the lifeboats.” 

She shook her head as she
remembered, her lips tightening.  “Some people acted with the utmost dignity
and courage, like my Ian.  Others were selfish cowards.  We got to our lifeboat
station.  They were loading it and Ian helped me climb in.  I can still feel
the strength of his hands on my waist as he helped me balance.  He said, ‘Don’t
move from there, Mary me love,’ and he turned back to help others.  I lost him
in the crowd.  Then there was another explosion, louder than the first.  The
ship was gone, in just minutes, fifteen minutes.”  She shook her head, gazing
at her husband’s picture sitting beside the clock.  “It only took a quarter of
an hour for my life to change.”

          Alison nodded at her
fleetingly.  “Did you have any idea that something bad was going to happen?”

          Mary shook her head. 
“None.  No clue, no premonition, no feelings.  We knew the dangers inherent in
traveling then, of course.  There were warnings in the papers, but we were so
close to home.  Even so, how does one prepare for catastrophe?  I just had to
go from there, go on with life, without Ian.  But I can say that the good Lord
helped me to cope.  I prayed very often in those first months after Ian died.”

          “But God didn’t
change what happened, did he?”

          “No.  No, he didn’t,
dear.”

          At those words,
Alison’s shoulders began to shake and she laid her head on her arms, knocking
the teacup onto the floor.  It broke into pieces as Alison sobbed out loud.

Chapter Twelve

The Gallant Fellows Under Arms

          “Eliot!  Hey, Sam
Eliot!”  Sam turned at the sound of his name being called from the opening of
the mess tent.  He stopped where he stood, looking with happy surprise at who
was calling to him.

          “Aubrey Newell? I
can’t believe it!   What are you doing here?”

          Aubrey eagerly met
him and shook his hand enthusiastically.  “You’re surprised, ain’t ya?”

         
“Of
course I’m surprised.”  He took in the Ambulance Corp uniform, still new and
clean.  “This is amazing!  Come over to my tent, if you have time.”

          “Sure I have time. My
supervisor said I could try to find you.  We got here from England a couple of
days ago and have been training ever since.  Just heard today what battalion
we’d be attached to and I remembered which one you were in.  I thought I might
be able to find you.”

          They arrived at the
large tent where Sam and his unit were bunked.  “We have three days before
we’re rotated back to the front.  Everyone tries to catch up on sleep when we
have the chance,” Sam said quietly.  “It’s just habit to be quiet.  Most of us
could sleep through a bombardment.” 

          They sat on a bunk
and Aubrey looked around interestedly.  “Kind of spare, hain’t it?” he noted.

          “We’re here for a few
days, and then other companies rotate in.  We don’t have much chance to make it
homey.”  Then eagerly he asked, “How long since you were home?  How’s my
family?  My dad?”

          “I left back in
November.  Tried to join up when I found out I have some little thing wrong
with my heart.  Ain’t that a caution?  Ya know,” he confided looking around to
make sure no one was listening, “I’m not seventeen.  I’m twenty-two.  I ran
from Canada to avoid the draft.  All that time I didn’t have nuthin’ to worry
about anyways.”

          His gaze slipped
sideways to touch on Sam with a guilty look.  “Seems like something changed in
me though.  I wanted to help.  Seems like I needed to come somehow.  So I got
in the Ambulance Corps, did my training in New York and been in England for
about a month.”

          “And my family?” Sam
urged.

          “Oh, they’re fine as
kine.  Your dad was gonna start Henry on the boat when I left.  I think your
sister’s getting ready to get married.”

          “How’s…everyone
else?”

          “That’s a great
place, Little Cove.  A bunch of ‘em have been helping take care of your little
brothers and sisters, especially the schoolteacher.  And one of those
fishermen, the Frenchie guy, he’s got his daughters working on his boat.  The
other ‘un came over here to translate or something.”

          “How’s Alison?  My
girlfriend?”

          Aubrey drew still. 
He stared at Sam fixedly for a moment, and then shook his head, questioning,
“Which one is she?”

          “The doctor’s
daughter. Alison!  She’s with my sisters all the time.  Dark hair, big blue
eyes.  Pretty as moonlight on the water.”  Sam smiled and shrugged a bit as he
said it.

          “Oh, yeah.  She helps
your sisters a lot.  She’s fine, I guess.”

          Sam’s shoulders
slumped.  Aubrey changed the subject, asking, “What’s it like, up on the
front?”

          Sam looked around at
his fellow soldiers.  Many were sleeping, others were writing letters or
reading.  “Half of our unit’s in the hospital, or dead.  I’m surprised the rest
of us aren’t mad.  It’s loud, it’s filthy.  The trenches are horrendous.  The
mud is everywhere.  The vermin eat the dead bodies.  These times I think are
all that keep us going.  That’s our chaplain over there.”  Sam pointed at Tom
Hudson who was reading on his cot.  “He’s a good guy.  Always looks out for
us.  I think he’s got angels guarding him.  Seems he can face a machine gun
barrage without flinching or getting hit.”

          Sam stood.  “Come
on.  I’d like you to meet him.”

          Aubrey hesitated. 
“What’s a chaplain?  Is that like a priest?”

          Sam nodded.  “Sort
of.  He’s just a regular guy though.”  They moved across the large tent.  Sam
saw that Chaplain Hudson was reading his Bible.  “’Scuse me, Chap.  I’d like
you to meet a friend of mine.”

          Tom Hudson stood and
grasped Aubrey’s hand.  Sam introduced them, explaining that Aubrey was a
friend from home who just arrived with the Ambulance Corps.  Aubrey smiled
nervously.  “Glad to know you, son.  Sam’s been kinda pining for news from
home.  Seems like a certain girl’s letters have not been as frequent as he’d
like.”  He grinned at Sam. Then he said to Aubrey, “Ambulance Corp is hard
work.  I’ll keep you in my prayers.”

          Aubrey’s eyes widened
slightly.  “Thanks,” he mumbled.  “I’d better get back now.  But I’ll be seeing
you around.”

          He left then.  Sam
went back to his bunk, still mystified as to why he’d gotten so few letters
from Alison in the last three months.  Admittedly the mail service was erratic,
especially as they moved around so much.  Tim Cooper had just received a letter
sent back in June, even while he’d gotten his latest ones two weeks after they
were posted.  His father wrote that all was well, and a letter from Esther
spoke of Alison.  But nothing had come from Alison herself.

          It made him all the
more mindful of her.  Her picture was always in his breast pocket and he kept a
letter on the go, posting them every couple of days or when he had the
opportunity.  It seemed the more tenuous his connection with her, the more
desperately he needed her.  He feared the hurt that his death would cause her
and anticipated their future together – dreaming of home and a family, of
getting back to Little Cove and never leaving.

          They had seen many
battles in the three months they’d been at the front.  Sam recalled the utter
numbing shock that first time at the front had been.  He saw things that night
that changed him fundamentally.  The enemy was no longer just a faceless evil;
rather it was real men behind real guns and bombs, trying to kill him.  The
reality of bullets, bombs and gas became frighteningly clear in their first
battle when within the space of a minute the soldier on his right dropped dead
with a bullet through his heart and not ten feet away three more men just
disappeared after a whiz bang hit them.  He saw men suffer traumatic
amputations, men with their insides spread on the mud beside them.  He saw men
who were simply scared to death, and men who were methodic and enthusiastic
killing machines.  In the chaos of battle it became very difficult to keep the
big picture in focus.  He did what he was ordered to do and focused on
surviving.

          His chaplain inspired
him.  Their sergeant led the battalion officially, but the men looked to Tom
for his persistent cheerfulness and an abandon that was baffling.  He insisted
that he wouldn’t die until it was his time, so he never wavered as they pushed
through the mud and the remains of their allies, through the stream of bullets
and bombs.  He helped those who had fallen, prayed for the wounded and the
dead.  Sam saw him everywhere and would follow him anywhere.

          It was Chaplain
Hudson’s confidence that drew Sam.  He spoke of God as a companion, or a
brother-in-arms, unlike the stern and somewhat remote God portrayed by Pastor
Whiting.  He prayed and sang constantly.  The boys teased him about it.  As he
shaved or read his Bible, his lips moved.  When he passed by, they caught
snatches of hymns drifting after him – “the blood of Jesus whispers peace
within” or “abide with me, fast falls the eventide.”  He took their teasing and
often turned it into an excuse to pray for them.