Shoulder the Sky (45 page)

Now was the time to change the subject and look at the photographs. He turned to them and regarded them quite openly. "It's a wonderful gift, to be able to have memories kept like this," he observed. "Happier times caught and held for us. Is this Henley?"

He heard Judith draw in her breath.

Belinda followed her gaze. "Yes. It was a good time. The last before last, I think."

"A pretty young woman. Were she and Eldon close?"

Belinda looked at it more closely. "I don't think so. I remember I liked her; she was fun."

"Perhaps we should leave." Judith was standing close behind them. She was facing Belinda. "I know why you wanted to talk, but I think it's too soon. There'll be other times."

"I'll stay up for you?" Belinda said, her eyes eager. There was fierce, shy admiration in them.

"It'll be the middle of the night," Judith said wryly. "Are you sure that's still all right?"

"Of course! I couldn't leave you to find your own way." Then she blushed. "And I'd love to talk with you a little bit more, before you go back to see your sister."

"If I may, I'd love to," Judith agreed. "London's got to be more fun than Cambridge anyway!" She meant it as a joke, and after a second's hesitation Belinda smiled.

She accompanied them to the door, and bade them good night, hoping they would enjoy themselves. Judith hesitated before getting into the car on the passenger side, and Joseph closed the door firmly and went around to crank the engine and start up.

"No!" he said with a smile as he pulled out on to the road. "You are not driving. I don't care how much better you are at it."

She laughed, but it was hollow.

He glanced at her. There was a sadness in her face that was more marked now that she was away from the Prentice house, and the need to pretend. The shadows were more obvious by the light of the passing streetlamps.

"Are you all right?" he asked softly, not because the question had any meaning, simply to let her know he was aware.

"No," she said huskily. "Now I'm sure it was my fault the general was killed. That photograph at Henley is almost the same as the one I saw, and told General Cullingford about, but it's not exactly." She was looking away from him. "There was an older woman there I expect it was his wife and it's a different girl."

"Are you certain?" The implication was frightening. It seemed that the Peacemaker had reached this far, in this minute detail. The original girl was indeed someone so close to him he could be identified from knowing who she was, and he had realized how Cullingford knew, and not only had he killed Cullingford, and probably Gustavus Tempany, but he had also substituted another picture for the one with her in it. The only other alternative was that it was all coincidence. Cullingford had been on a wild-goose chase, and died at the hands of some street thief with a knife. Tempany's death the same day was just one of those extraordinary chances of timing.

Joseph did not believe that.

"I think I am," she replied. "That's proof the Peacemaker killed him, isn't it?"

"Yes, I think so." He reached out and put his hand over hers. "I'm sorry."

She sniffed and gulped. "I'll have a good cry about it later. I don't want to go to the party with a blotchy face."

"Of course not," he agreed. "We're all hiding some wound or other. Head up, eyes forward."

"How about you?" She turned to look at him. The tears brimmed over and slid down her cheeks, but she was searching to know if he was also hiding something too big and too heavy to bear.

"I know who killed Prentice," he answered, wondering why he told her. He had thought he was going to tell no one, but the decision he had made in the boat was now impossible to live with. He must face Sam, and he was almost certain what he was going to do about it. It would hurt bitterly, almost unendurably. But he had watched hundreds of men bear wounds they would have thought beyond any strength to survive, and yet they had done it with dignity; they were ordinary men, some of them little more than boys. Men sent their sons and brothers and friends into horror unimaginable, and did it without crying against fate. So could he. The loneliness afterwards was the price for all of them.

"Who was it?" she asked.

He shook his head very slightly. "I'll deal with it. Let's go to the party. Put on our best faces, and pretend it's fun."

She smiled at him, and reached over to kiss him on the cheek.

The party was fun, in an absurd, dreamlike way. All the women wore beautiful gowns, but the colours were subdued. It was unseemly to wear reds and pinks, as if denying other people's loss, and yet everyone was pretending to a laughter and an ease they could not feel. Diamonds glittered, hair was perfect in the latest style, swept back, totally without curls except for the most discreet, just one on the brow, or at the nape of the neck. More would be unacceptable. The men were either in black, or in uniform. Even though it was a formal dinner, nothing was more honourable than khaki, and Joseph was looked at with respect verging on deference.

The twenty guests were at one long table, so they might discuss information and ideas more easily. No attempt had been made to balance the numbers. There were fourteen men and six women. Their host was Dermot Sandwell, tall and lean, impossibly elegant in black and white, the light of the chandeliers gleaming on his fair hair.

"Good evening, Miss Reavley, Captain Reavley," he said warmly as they entered the room where the reception was held. "It was very good of you to come," he said to Judith in particular. "You will speak on behalf of a body of women we admire intensely. You have a nobility and a courage second to none."

"We have men too, Mr. Sandwell," she reminded him. "Many of them are young Americans who came at their own expense, because they believe in what we are fighting for, and they care."

"Yes, I know. And we will do more to give you the supplies and the support that's appropriate," he promised. "That's why we need you here, to tell us exactly what that is. It's time to stop guessing, doubling up some actions and omitting others. There is so much goodwill in the civilian population, people willing to do anything they can to help, but it is desperately in need of organization."

He turned to Joseph. "I see you are a Chaplain. Are you home on leave?"

"Yes sir, briefly," Joseph answered. "I return in two days."

"Where to?"

"Ypres." There was no indiscretion in answering. Chaplains were often moved from one place to another, and a cabinet minister like Sandwell probably knew far more accurately than Joseph exactly which regiments were where, and what their numbers were.

"Front line?" Sandwell asked.

"Yes, sir. I think that's where I should be."

"Were you there for the gas attack?" Sandwell's face was bleak, almost pinched. Joseph could not help wondering if he had lost someone he knew and loved in it.

"Yes, sir," he replied, meeting the wide, blue eyes and seeing the imagination of horror in them, and perhaps guilt, because he knew, and still had no choice but to send more men to face something he did not experience himself. Joseph wished he could think of something to say that would at least show he understood.

For ministers and generals to risk their own lives helped no one. Their burdens were different, but just as real. Quite suddenly he felt an almost suffocating sense of loss for Owen Cullingford, not for Judith's sake, but simply because the man was gone, and he, realized how much he had liked him. "Yes, I was there. It's a new kind of war."

"I'd give anything not to have to send men to that!" Sandwell said quietly, his voice shaking. "God in heaven, what have we come to?" He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry, Captain. You know better than I do what the reality is. Perhaps you would be kind enough after dinner, when we address the subject more seriously, to tell us anything you think might assist us to be of more help, and more support to our men?"

"Anything I can," Joseph agreed.

They moved further into the room, side by side, acknowledging people, being introduced, making polite remarks. After a little while they separated, Judith to talk to one of the other women, Joseph to answer questions from a bishop and member of the House of Lords on conditions and supplies that might be helped by civilian donations.

It was only as they were going in to dinner that he heard a voice he recognized with a stab of memory so sharp the sweat broke out on his skin and he felt cold the instant after.

"Virtuous and no doubt commendable, but naive, Miss Reav-ley."

Joseph sun around and saw Richard Mason talking to Judith. They were standing a little apart from the stream of guests moving towards the dining room. He still looked tired, his skin, like Joseph's own, chapped by the wind, eyes hollow, as if Andy's death were with him all the time. Also he had been at Gallipoli longer, and was perhaps more profoundly shocked by it than Joseph, who was used to Ypres. His dark hair had been properly cut and was smoothed back off his brow, and the power in his face, the carefully suppressed emotion, was naked to any observer who had ever been racked by storms themselves, or known feelings that overwhelmed caution and self-preservation.

"I have seen as many wounded men as you have, Mr. Mason!"

Judith retorted icily. "Don't patronize me."

His eyes widened slightly and there was reluctant admiration in them. It could have been for her spirit, or the fact that she drove an ambulance. Or it could simply have been that she was beautiful. Anger and grief had taken the bloom of innocence from her and refined the strength. Cullingford had awoken the woman in her, and scoured deep with loss, all in the same act. Perhaps Mason saw something of it in her, because another kind of certainty had gone from his eyes, and whether she was aware of it or not, it was she who had caused that.

Without waiting for his reply, she turned and went through the doors to the dining room, leaving him to follow or not, as he wished.

Joseph found himself smiling, even though he was overtaken by a wave of fierce and consuming protectiveness towards her, and a knowledge that he could never succeed; no one could protect Judith, or be protected from her.

He followed after her, awed, proud, and a little frightened.

As always, he could smell the sour stench of the Front before he heard the guns, or saw the lines of troops marching, the broken trees, the occasional crater beside the roads where heavy artillery shells had fallen. There was a terrible familiarity to it, like re-entering an old nightmare, as if every time sleep touched you, you were drawn back into the same drowning reality.

Like anyone else, he had to walk the last few miles. He was passed by Wil Sloan, driving an empty ambulance. He stopped, but not to offer a lift; it was forbidden and Joseph knew better than to hope.

"How's Judith?" Wil asked anxiously, sticking his head out of the side and trying to make himself smile. "I mean .. ." He stopped awkwardly, memory sharp in his eyes.

Joseph smiled. "Last time I saw her she was making mincemeat out of a top war correspondent," he answered. "She looked gorgeous, in a long, blue gown, and she was going in to dinner at the Savoy."

Wil looked uncertain whether to believe him or not.

"Actually," Joseph amended, 'that wasn't the last time. I did take her to where she was staying after that."

Wil relaxed. "She's going to be all right?"

"In time," Joseph told him. "We all will be, one way or another." He stood back, waving him on, to avoid the embarrassment for Wil of having to explain why he couldn't offer a lift, even to a chaplain.

Wil smiled and gave a little salute, then slipped the ambulance into gear again and moved forward. Joseph watched him drive into the distance on the long, straight road with its shattered poplars and the ditches on either side. The fields were level, a few copses left. One or two houses were burned out. There was a column of smoke on the horizon.

It was dusk and the heavy artillery was firing pretty steadily, sending up great gouts of dark, sepia-coloured earth, when he reported to the colonel.

"You look rough, Reavley," Fyfe observed. "Leave doesn't agree with you. Feeling all right?" He asked it casually, but there was a genuine anxiety in his face.

"Yes, sir."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, sir. I ran an errand to Gallipoli. Bit of bother on the way back."

Fyfe raised his eyebrows. "Bother?"

"Yes, sir. Ship I was in got stopped by a German U-boat. They let us off before they sank it, but rather more rowing than I care for."

"Are you fit to be here? You look stiff!"

"Yes, sir, I am, but not too much." Deliberately Joseph used the words he had heard from so many wounded. "I'm a lot better than many of those who are fighting."

Fyfe gave the ghost of a smile. "True. Glad to have you back. Morale needs you. Lost one or two good men since you've been gone."

Joseph nodded. He did not want to know who they were yet. "Do you know where Major Wetherall was moved to, sir? I need to see him."

The colonel looked surprised, then curious. He studied Joseph's face, and read absolute refusal to speak. "I don't know where he went, but he's back. Been here a few days. He's probably in the same dugout as before. Are you going to tell me what it's about?"