The Flyer (28 page)

When he’d dressed again, William buried the old clothes in a shallow pit, and while he ate the eggs and bread he felt something in the pocket of his jacket. It was a tin containing cigarettes and a roll of money. He counted the notes, and then sat down and lit one of the cigarettes. While he smoked he thought about the money. It must be everything Helene had. He resolved that if he survived the war he would come back and find Helene one day, and somehow he would repay her for everything she’d done for him.

When he finished his cigarette he got up to go. It was much more difficult climbing up the bank than it had been getting down, and when he was halfway up William thought he should have walked along the stream and found an easier way. By then though, he decided he may as well carry on. As he neared the top he reached for a tree to haul himself up, but as he did his foot slipped and he lost his balance. For a moment he wavered, but then he began to slither backwards. He twisted around to try and regain his footing, but instead his momentum pitched him forward and he fell. There was nothing he could do other than try to slow his descent as he rolled and tumbled towards the stream. He grabbed for handholds, that tore his skin, and tried to dig his heels into the ground, but it was too slippery to get a hold, and then suddenly he slammed into the earth at the bottom. A sharp flash of agony knifed through his injured leg. He stifled a yell and lay on his back, breathing hard and looking up at the tops of the trees.

Ten minutes passed before William tried to move. He broke off a sapling that was strong enough to take his weight, and using it as a cane began to limp painfully along the edge of the stream until the bank gradually flattened to a shallow slope. After that it took him another hour to get back to the barn.

*****

Soon after William managed to climb up to the loft again, he heard the barn doors open. He cleared some hay aside and peered down through the cracks in the floorboards to see an old man moving about below. He was thin-faced with lank strands of grey hair clinging to a grizzled scalp. One arm hung uselessly at his side, the fingers of his hand frozen like a claw. He fetched a stool and set it down beside one of the cows, and then placed a pail beneath its udder and, resting his head against the animal’s flank, he began to squeeze milk into the pail with long, rhythmic squirts. As he milked the cows the old man mumbled to himself, a low muffled monologue of which William could only make out the occasional word or phrase, but which seemed to be an incessant grumble against the injustices he’d borne throughout his life. When he’d finished the milking, the old man collected eggs from the hay around the barn and left. A few minutes later he returned and led the cows and the horse outside, and William watched from the hayloft as the little procession plodded through a field toward the woods.

Later he saw an old woman came out of the house to throw scraps to the hens that had left the barn and were now pecking in the yard. She was heavy, her face set in a perpetual scowl. She spent part of the morning in a room beside what William assumed was the kitchen. The windows were open and he could see her washing clothes in a tub, and afterwards she put them through a heavy ringer and hung them on a line at the end of the yard. When she was finished she went to a small building at the end of the house, and though he could see her moving about he couldn’t tell what she was doing.

When Helene returned at midday, she crossed the yard and went into the house. When the old woman saw her she stopped what she was doing and hurried after her, though neither of them spoke. Half an hour later Helene came to the barn. William went to the edge of the loft, and when she looked up and saw him her eyes widened in surprise, though he had the feeling she was also pleased. She glanced over her shoulder to make sure there was nobody around and then quickly climbed the ladder.

‘Why didn’t you leave?’ she asked, keeping her voice to little more than a whisper.

‘I fell down the bank by the stream,’ he said.

‘Are you hurt?’

‘It’s my leg.’

‘Let me see.’

She felt the bruising while he gritted his teeth and sweat popped on his forehead.

‘Can you walk?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘Not very well.’

‘I will bring something that will help later.’

As she turned to go he held her arm. ‘Wait.’ He dug in his pocket and gave her back the roll of money he’d found earlier. ‘It looks as if I won’t need this.’

She hesitated, then took it. ‘I will come when it is dark.’

For the rest of the day William sat by the hay-doors, where he could see outside. He watched Helene go out into the fields carrying a basket, and later when she returned it was full of things he assumed she’d gathered from the hedgerows and woods. Later, he saw her cutting wood and carrying it inside, and afterwards he glimpsed her digging in a garden. She worked without seeming to stop. But what struck him most of all was that she never spoke to the old couple, nor they to her. In fact she went about her work almost as if they didn’t exist, though several times William saw the old woman scowl at Helene’s back and mutter something under her breath.

Late in the afternoon he heard the sound of engines, and soon afterwards a dozen Albatrosses passed by about half a mile away. They were losing height, and he thought they must be returning from a patrol to land at the aerodrome Helene had told him was nearby. Seeing them made William realise that, for now at least, the war was over for him, and he admitted to feeling a certain degree of relief.

At some point William fell asleep. He woke up when the old man brought the animals back to the barn. By then the light had faded and it was raining. William watched the house as he had the night before, and some-time after the lights were extinguished he heard the creak of the barn doors and went to the top of the ladder to help Helene. She had brought more stew, made from vegetables and some sort of fatty meat, and when he’d finished eating they shared a cigarette and she poured wine into his mug.

‘It is one thing we have plenty of,’ she said and told him it was made from the grapes that grew on the vines in the garden.

‘Tell me about your husband’s parents,’ he said.

‘They do not like me.’

‘Why?’

‘Jean was their only child. I met him when I came to the town to work for a few months. I told you, I was a teacher.’

‘I thought you lived in Rouen.’

‘Yes. And afterwards I went back there. Jean followed me. He asked me to marry him. At first I refused because I did not want to live here. But Jean said he wanted to stay in Rouen. He did not want to live like his parents. He wanted to make furniture and open a shop where he would sell it. He was very good at making things.

‘When we got married, Albert and Edith would not come to the wedding. They said they could not leave the farm. I knew they blamed me for taking their son from them. They said that without him to help them they could not manage alone. Of course, Jean felt guilty for leaving them, but he hated it here. He said even if he had not met me he would not have stayed. For three years we were happy. Sometimes Jean went to visit his parents, but I never went with him. And then one year he asked me to come. Jean’s business was doing well and we were thinking of starting a family. He wanted to persuade his parents to come and live in Rouen, and he thought if I came they would change their minds about me. I was not so optimistic, but I agreed for Jean.’

‘And you were caught here when the war started?’

‘Yes. And now you see how it is with Edith and Albert. They blame me for everything. They think I took Jean away from them and that it is my fault he is dead. They hate me.’

‘But they let you live here?’

‘Only because they need me to do the work,’ Helene said dispiritedly.

‘Why do you stay?’ William asked. ‘I mean, I know you can’t get back to Rouen with the war on, but you could go and live in the town couldn’t you?’

‘What would I do? There is very little food, people must look after their own families.’

‘What about when the war is over?’

‘Then I will leave. Until then we are stuck with each other.’

And with him too, William thought. He had no choice other than to stay there, and yet how long could he remain without his presence being discovered?

‘You are worried about them,’ Helene guessed.

‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘What will they do if they find out I am here?’

‘You do not have to worry that they will betray you. They are afraid of the Germans, and anyway if they betray you then they betray me also. They do not like me, but they need me here. But it would be better if they did not know.’

‘What about the extra food?’

‘There is enough for us all. I have always done the cooking because I cannot stand the food Edith makes. And it is me who goes to the market. They will not notice.’

He wondered if Helene was right. He thought she was less certain than she pretended to be, and he remembered how she had reacted when he told her he was leaving, and now he understood that she had wanted him to stay. He imagined her life there, having nobody to talk to, knowing that Albert and Edith hated her. She was lonely, he thought.

Helene took something from her pocket wrapped in a cloth. ‘This will help your leg.’

‘What is it?’

‘A poultice. It is made from herbs.’

She pushed up his trouser leg and applied a thick, pungent, dark paste to his bruised skin, and then she bound the whole thing tightly with a strip of cloth.

‘I can stay for a little while if you would like?’ she said when she was finished.

‘Don’t you have to get up early to go to the market?’

‘It is not late. Usually after Edith and Albert have gone to bed I sit up by myself.’ She settled herself back into the hay. ‘Do you want to have another cigarette? We could share one if you like.’

He lit one and passed it to her.

‘Will you tell me about yourself?’ she asked.

‘What would you like to know?’

‘I don’t know. Where did you learn to speak French?’

‘At the school I went to. But it was a long time ago.’

‘Do all children in England learn French at school?’

‘No. Only at public schools, which is like a private school here.’

‘Ah. Then your family is rich?’

‘My parents are dead.’

‘I am sorry. Do you have brothers or sisters?’

‘No. Do you?’

‘Two sisters, yes. Both older. Are you married, William?’

‘No.’

‘But there is somebody you love in England? A girl?’

‘Why do you think that?’

‘Because you are nice-looking, and I think you are a good person. Why wouldn’t there be somebody?’

‘There isn’t,’ he said. ‘Where are your family?’

‘They are still in Rouen, as far as I know.’ She was silent for a moment and then said, ‘I am sorry. I should not ask you so many questions.’

He realised that he must have sounded evasive. ‘It’s alright,’ he told her. ‘I’m just not used to talking to anyone like this.’

‘Why not? Don’t you have friends in your squadron? Is that what it is called?’

‘Yes it is. And no, there isn’t anyone really. I don’t know why. I suppose since the war began I’ve kept to myself.’

‘Why?’

‘It just seemed easier that way. I think I decided I’d have more chance of surviving if I didn’t rely on anybody else.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Obviously I was wrong.’

‘Yes,’ she agreed, smiling back at him.

She began to tell him more about herself before she was married. She grew up in a large house outside the city. Her father’s work took him to all the local farms. They were not poor but they didn’t have much money. On Sundays, if the weather was fine, they would have picnics by the river, or sometimes her father would hire a boat.

William liked listening to the sound of her voice. There was a moon outside and the grey light that seeped through the boards cast her face in deep angular shadows. Eventually she said that she ought to go.

‘Goodnight, William.’

‘Goodnight.’

He heard her climb down the ladder and then the creak of the door, and when he looked outside saw her cross the yard. When he lay down in the hay to sleep he found himself trying to picture her husband, and imagined them at their wedding together, laughing and drinking wine, looking into one another’s eyes, and later when they were alone, the whispered intimacies of lovers.

And then, when he closed his eyes he thought of Elizabeth and wondered where she was.

CHAPTER 26

Elizabeth held the door open, but Christopher hesitated. His eyes were filled with dread.

‘Are you alright?’ she said.

‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry, it’s just …’

He didn’t finish whatever he meant to say. Instead he visibly gathered himself together. ‘Where is he?’

‘This way.’

She led him through the ward. It was late. She had brought him when most of the men would be sleeping, though perhaps it was a mistake. That first night, when they’d met again in the hospital garden, and she’d told him that William was at the hospital too, he wasn’t as surprised as she’d expected.

‘Do you know I’ve been dreading this moment for years. I always knew I’d run into him somewhere or other. I think I’m actually glad. Where is he?’

‘He’s in one of the wards. He’s very badly injured.’

‘But he’ll be alright won’t he?’

‘I don’t know. His plane crashed and caught fire. He was burned over most of his body.’

Christopher had paled visibly. ‘My God. I’ve often wondered about him, you know. I thought he must have joined the Flying Corps. But I always thought he would be alright. I don’t know why, really.’

The following day he’d asked to see him.

When they reached the pilot’s bed, Elizabeth stood aside and watched as Christopher approached. His face was cut by shadows accentuating his gaunt, hollowed appearance. She knew he had nightmares at night, beating at imaginary flames and crying out in terror. He woke drenched with sweat, the veins in his temples standing out like cords. It was the old horror of burning come back to haunt him, only now it was far worse. She thought that was partly why he wanted to see William, to face his own demons.

He turned to her. ‘Is he in pain?’

‘No.’

‘When he was brought here… after he crashed. What was he like then?’ Christopher asked. ‘Was he aware of what had happened?’

‘He was given morphine at the front,’ she said, understanding the reason for his morbid questions.

‘We’re all given revolvers, you know. In case we’re shot down on the other side. But a lot of chaps swear they’d use it on themselves rather than burn. I’ve often wondered if any of them do. Will he live?’

‘No,’ Elizabeth said quietly. ‘He’s dying.’

The plan to send him home had been abandoned. He wasn’t expected to last more than a few more days.

They went outside and stood in the shelter of a doorway, watching the rain falling steadily. The guns continued to pound at the front. They were saying the battle at Arras was a success, though in fact the Germans had already retreated to stronger positions before the attack began. In the air though, the British squadrons were being decimated. If Christopher hadn’t been wounded he would probably be dead, Elizabeth thought.

‘Did you ever see William again after we came back from France?’ Christopher asked.

‘No. I tried to find him, but it was hopeless. I had no idea where he might have gone. Then when the war started I thought he might have volunteered for the Flying Corps and so I asked a friend of my mothers’ for help. Her husband knew people at the war ministry.’

‘Did you find him?’

‘I learned that he was at a camp at Shoreham on Sea.’ She explained how she’d gone there and sent William a letter and had stayed for two days waiting for his reply which never came.

‘When I went back to London I decided I wanted to do something useful.’

‘So you became a nurse?’

‘Yes.’

And you never heard from William?’

‘A few months later I found out that he never received my letter. By then he was in France. For a long time I tried to forget. I told myself that he wouldn’t want to hear from me anyway. I imagined he hated me and I didn’t blame him. But as the war went on, and so many men were killed, and everybody began to realise that it wouldn’t all be over quickly, I couldn’t stop thinking that he might be killed and I would never get the chance to tell him that I was sorry. In the end I asked to come to France.’

‘You mean William was the reason you came here?’

‘Yes. At least in part. But I was too late.’

‘God, I’m so sorry, Liz. I had no idea. You must love him a great deal.’

‘I didn’t always know how much. But yes, I do.’

She couldn’t hold back her tears any longer. Despite everything, and though they hadn’t seen each other for so long, she still felt closer to Christopher than perhaps anyone. There was a part of her that was still the young, innocent girl she’d once been. He put his arms around her to comfort her, and she sensed his need for her too. They clung to one another. Beyond them the rain continued to fall like a veil of grey, keeping the bitter world at bay.

*****

The funeral was held at a village church outside Amiens. Ordinarily when men died they were buried in a cemetery close to the hospital, but Elizabeth asked for permission to make other arrangements. She wanted William buried somewhere she thought he would have liked. The graveyard was surrounded by a stone wall, and beyond it were fields, and a lane that ran through the village. The names of the dead on the gravestones were a record of the history of the village stretching back through generations. In the oldest part they were worn smooth and covered with moss, some of them broken, others leaning at a crooked angle. Centuries old oak and chestnut stood guard, and though the sky that day was grey and forbidding, in the summer to come they would provide leafy havens of shade. It reminded her of the churchyard in Scaldwell where William had once taken her.

As the coffin was lowered into the ground, the curate prayed, his words whipped away by the wind. Elizabeth and Christopher were the only mourners. When it was over, the curate shook their hands and offered his sympathies, then left them and hurried back towards the comfort of his church, his cassock flapping like the wings of the crows in the trees.

Elizabeth told herself that when the war was over she would come back every year to put fresh flowers on the grave. As they walked back to the gate she took Christopher’s arm. He used a cane and could only walk slowly.

‘I still think about Sophie a good deal you know,’ he said.

It was the first time he’d talked about her. The first time either of them had really broached what had happened.

‘When I think of the way I behaved, it seems almost impossible that it was only a few years ago,’ he continued. ‘I look back and it’s like remembering one’s distant childhood. I don’t mean that I’m trying to excuse my actions because of youth. Only that I don’t think I’m the same person that I was then. It’s the war I suppose. None of us are the same.’

Elizabeth thought she understood what he meant. Had she never become a nurse, never come to France, she would be a different person than she was now.

‘We shouldn’t have gone to Cannes, you and I,’ Christopher said.

‘No.’

‘At the time I believed it was for the best. I thought if I was gone, Sophie would accept things more easily. I even imagined I was being noble in a way because I thought it was unfair of me to hide her away somewhere and have her as my mistress but never give her the respectable marriage she wanted. But it was cowardice really. I see that now. I loved her. I should have married her and the hell with convention and position and all the rest of it. It seems so useless and unimportant against everything that’s happening here.’

He sounded bitter. Full of self-recrimination.

‘You shouldn’t take all the blame yourself,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I encouraged you to go to Cannes. I’m as much to blame for what happened to Sophie as anybody.’

He made a gesture, dismissing her claim. ‘I behaved abominably towards you too, didn’t I?’

She thought of their first night together on the train. The crushing humiliation she’d felt at their perfunctory lovemaking. But he wasn’t thinking of that. He meant when they returned to England and he left again, only leaving her a note.

‘It was all a terrible mistake,’ she said.

Margaret, the Canadian nurse, had driven them to the village in an ambulance. On the way back to Amiens she stopped at a café to let them out.

‘We’ll walk the rest of the way,’ Elizabeth said.

‘Okay. I’ll see you when you get back.’

They went inside and sat at a table in a corner. When the waiter came to take their order, Elizabeth asked for water as she was on duty later. Christopher asked for a large whisky.

‘Henry’s joined up, by the way,’ he said as he lit a cigarette. His drink arrived and he emptied half his glass in a single swallow. ‘He’s somewhere in Lincolnshire apparently, learning to fly.’

‘He always wanted you to teach him didn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ He drained his glass and signalled for another. ‘I thought about trying to talk him out of it, but I realised there was no point. He wouldn’t have listened to me. I suppose you’re surprised to hear me say something like that.’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘It’s not the done thing is it? We’re meant to put a brave face on it all. Do our duty for King and country and all that.’

He smiled cynically, and when his drink arrived he emptied his glass without even looking at it. When he lit another cigarette Elizabeth saw that his fingers trembled slightly.

‘I met a pilot from William’s squadron,’ she said. ‘His name was Stringer. He told me that William wasn’t very popular. Apparently he was very critical of the Flying Corps brass.’

‘Was he? Yes, I can imagine him being like that. Good for him. They are bloody fools you know! My squadron was losing men faster than they could be replaced before I came here. The new chaps were lucky if they lasted two weeks. Did you know they won’t let us have parachutes?’ He snorted with bitter derision. ‘They think it would encourage us to abandon our planes unnecessarily, and so men are condemned to burn to death.’

He was angry and disillusioned, and she guessed he hadn’t told anyone how he felt before. He cursed the generals as much as he did the German Albatross jastas, and she let him get it out of his system.

‘Thanks,’ he said eventually.

‘What for?’

‘For listening. I know I’m not the only who thinks this way, but of course nobody says anything. That’s why you told me about William isn’t it?’

‘I always thought you were alike in many ways,’ she said.

‘Yes, I suppose we were. I’m sorry everything went wrong you know. I thought a lot of William.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘I’m glad that we’ve met again, Liz.’

‘I’m glad too, Christopher.’

‘I wouldn’t like to think I might ever lose you again.’

‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘We’ll always have each other.’

‘I don’t mean just as friends, Liz,’ he said quietly.

She didn’t answer.

‘Look, I know this isn’t the right time to be saying any of this. I know you’re terribly upset, but I could be leaving again soon and who knows if I’ll ever get another chance.’

‘It’s alright, I’m not upset,’ she told him. ‘I thought I would be, but I think I’ve cried all my tears. When William was first brought here I think I always knew deep down that he wouldn’t survive.’

‘You always talk as if it you’re certain it was him. Are you really?’

‘I don’t think it matters.’

‘No, I suppose not. And that’s what I’m trying to get at. I know you loved William just as I loved Sophie, but they’re gone now. We can’t change that can we? But we’re here, Liz, we’re alive.’ He reached across the table and took her hand. ‘I love you. I want you to marry me when this war is over.’

‘Once, I would have given anything to hear you say that,’ Elizabeth said. ‘It was all I dreamed of, for you to think of me like any other woman. To love me like any other woman.’

He released her hand, hurt evident in his expression. ‘But you don’t feel that way now?’

‘I don’t know how I feel. I love you because I’ve always loved you. But perhaps we ought to accept that what we feel for one another is a different kind of love.’

‘Is it? Perhaps we were simply too young before. We’ve both made mistakes, but that doesn’t mean we should make those same mistakes again. It should make us all the more determined to recognise that it isn’t too late for us.’

But she couldn’t give him an answer then. She asked for time to think, and he said that of course, he understood.

That night two men in Elizabeth’s care died. One of them was a captain from Staffordshire, a burly man of forty whose moustache was as red as his hair. He died without a sound. Though he’d been awake when Elizabeth made her first rounds, when she returned two hours later he was gone. The other was a young subaltern who had lost both his legs. She had seen other men with similar injuries. His legs were blown off high above the knee, and it was a miracle he’d survived the initial shock and loss of blood. She sat with him and talked to him about anything that came into her head. They wanted to listen to her talk about England, about things they knew, and they wanted to listen to a woman’s voice, feel the touch of her hand. One minute he was watching her with frightened unblinking eyes, and when she looked again the life had gone out of them.

After her shift ended, Elizabeth went to Christopher’s ward. His bedclothes were knotted about his body and his brow was damp from sweat. He muttered in his sleep, and now and then tossed fitfully. After she’d straightened his bed she drew up a chair and sat beside him. She held his hand and spoke quietly to him. The anguished look he wore gradually eased, and the lines in his brow were smoothed and he seemed to sleep peacefully.

Christopher’s wounds were healing and it wouldn’t be long before he was returned to duty. She knew he was afraid, though he would never admit it. She thought about everything he’d said. She thought he needed her, that she represented the hope of a future. If she gave him that, she was glad. She remembered something her mother used to say about notions of romantic love having nothing to do with marriage. Perhaps she was right. She did love Christopher. Not the same way she’d loved William, but it was love nevertheless. She wanted him to live. Suddenly she saw them as they could be one day, married and living at Pitsford House together. She believed that they could be happy.