The Foreshadowing (21 page)

After my narrow escape with Sister McAndrew, I saw Hoodoo Jack passing the window of the dressing suite. I looked at Millie.

“Cover for me? Please?”

I begged her with my eyes not to question me.

“Don’t be long!” she called, but I hardly heard her.

Jack slipped into a room farther down the platform, and I followed him.

He was on his own, waiting to deliver a packet. He turned as I came in.

“You,” he said, without obvious meaning.

“You remember me?” I asked.

He grunted. “I’m mad, not stupid.”

There was silence.

Then I broke it.

“I see things, too,” I said. “I see when men are going to die.”

He looked at me with such disgust and hatred that I felt I might wither on the spot.

The door flew open.

It was a captain; beyond him I saw other officers sitting around a desk.

The captain glanced at me, but didn’t bother to ask why there was a nurse in his quarters. The place is a hospital of sorts, after all.

“That all?” he said to Hoodoo Jack.

“Sir.” He nodded, and handed over the packet.

The captain tried to take it from Jack, but he wouldn’t let go. His fingers had frozen around it. I saw Jack staring at the captain for a second, maybe two, no more.

“What are you doing, man?” snapped the captain, and Jack shook himself.

He muttered something under his breath, then, pulling himself together, saluted messily, turned, and left the room.

Without knowing what I was doing, I grabbed the captain by the arm.

“What on—?”

It was enough. I let my fingers slip from his tunic.

“Thank you,” I said, quietly, for I had seen all I needed.

I ran after Jack. I don’t want to think of him as Hoodoo Jack, though. Not now.

I caught up with him.

“You saw that?” I said.

“Go away, girl.”

“You saw it. I saw it too.”

He hesitated before answering.

“You saw nothing.”

“You saw what I saw. The captain. Lying dead in a shell hole, with the back of his head gone.”

“No!” He shouted at me now, so loudly that I could see people around us staring.

I hadn’t realized it, but we were already back outside the suite where I was supposed to be working. Millie stood in the doorway.

“Get in here,” she whispered at me. “For pity’s sake, before McAndrew comes back.”

Jack had gone.

I slunk in and got back to work.

Then—was it only an hour ago?—he came to me.

I’d finished my shift, and was walking out of the station to catch a lift in a truck to our billets up on the hill at Wimereux.

I heard the low growl of a motorcycle behind me. I turned and saw, yes, Jack, coming up behind me at no more than walking speed.

He drew level, and I stopped walking.

“Do you know when?” he asked. “When he’s going to die?”

He was talking about the captain, the captain whose arm I’d touched. Whose death I’d seen.

“I . . . I don’t know,” I said.

I was afraid that the slightest wrong move on my part would send him away, but he stayed.

“Tomorrow,” he said. “By this time tomorrow, he’ll be dead. Everything else will be just as you told me.”

It was enough to know that he believed me.

“Do you still want to talk?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I do.”

“Then get on, and we’ll find somewhere quiet.”

He nodded at the metal luggage rack behind his seat on the motorbike.

“No . . . ,” I said. “I can’t. We’re not allowed to . . . If anyone sees me, I’ll be sent home.”

“Fair enough,” he said, and pulled his goggles down over his eyes.

“No!” I shouted. “I’ll come. But let’s get away from here quickly.”

I got on, put my arms around his waist, and prayed to heaven and hell that no one would see me.

32

I don’t think of him as Hoodoo now. Not now I know he’s a person. A person just like me. Hoodoo is a name superstitious people gave him. A horrible label that helps them to think he’s a freak. Well, if he’s a freak, so am I.

I don’t know exactly where we went.

We rode out of Boulogne and into the rain. I had to pull my long skirts up to sit on the bike, and the seat was a tiny plate of metal.

“Hold tight!” he shouted from in front, and I clung to him as tightly as I could.

We rode through some ugly villages, heading inland, until we came to one slightly larger, but no less down-at-heel.

“No one will know us here,” he said.

Not for the first time it crossed my mind that what I was doing might be very unwise. But I had no choice.

He stopped outside a seedy-looking café. They call them estaminets. Inside it’s sort of a bar, but they cook basic food, too. I had heard of them but never been in one. It looked awful. There was a beaten old piano in one corner, but no one was playing it.

The place was busy, but not full.

“Don’t meet anyone’s eye,” Jack said. “And keep your coat done up. Nurses don’t come to places like this.”

He pulled me along to a table by a wall in the quietest corner.

A young girl came over. I tried not to look at her, but I couldn’t help it. She was very young, and very dirty, and when she spoke there were gaps in her teeth. She wiped her nose on the back of her hand and looked at Jack.

“Monsieur?”

“Du vin,”
he said. I didn’t dare open my mouth to protest, and I knew my English accent would give me away even if I spoke French.

The girl sloped off, and came back after an age with a jug of red wine and two glasses.

“Vous mangez quelque chose?”
she asked, but Jack waved her away, which was a pity, because I would very much have liked something to eat, even if it was the ropy stuff I could see on other people’s plates. Especially if I was going to have to drink wine.

Jack poured us each a glass and I glanced at the other people in the room. Locals, I guessed, all old men, and a couple of boys; the sort with something wrong with them, or else they’d have been away fighting. There were soldiers at another table, but they took no notice of us. I didn’t want to know what they might be thinking.

“How long?” Jack said.

“I never understand what you ask me,” I said, trying a smile. He didn’t smile back.

“How long have you been seeing things?”

I shrugged. I thought about Clare. But that was so long ago, and it had only happened once, then.

“Almost a year, maybe,” I said. “How about you?”

“Pretty much from the start. Since I got here.”

He emptied his glass, and refilled it straightaway.

I took a sip of mine, to show I could if I wanted. It was vile stuff, but that didn’t stop Jack.

“It was nothing at first. Just a tingling. Like an itch from a mosquito bite. So faint you might be imagining it.”

“You were a captain then?”

“Who told you that? No, I was never a captain. I turned down a commission, because I wanted to be one of the men. We’re all out here to fight, and I didn’t see why I should be safer than the boys just because of my background.

“I was a corporal then. But even corporals aren’t supposed to indulge in that sort of thing. Superstitions. Of course, we lads in the trenches, we live by them. And die, too.

“We all have our little routines, for good luck. Which sock goes on first, maybe. Or something from a dead mate, a watch, perhaps, that sort of thing. And it’s bad luck to say something good without grabbing a bit of wood right away. The ones that are left alive think that just goes to show that their superstitions are working, and the ones that are dead can’t argue back that theirs aren’t.”

It was clear he wanted to talk now.

“So what happened, then?” I asked. “When did it start to change?”

He finished another glass of wine, and I began to doubt that there was any chance of getting back to Boulogne safely.

“The itch became a scratch one day.”

He tipped the jug up, drained it, then waved it in the air. The young girl brought a full one over.

She eyed us curiously, and I looked away. I drank some more—it seemed to help.

“All of a sudden,” he said, “the itch was a scratch. It scratched me so hard that I jumped to my feet. And shouted.”

“What did you shout?”

“ ‘Williams has got it.’ And the other lads in the trench looked at me as if I was a madman. ‘Sit down,’ they said. ‘Nerves getting to you?’ they asked. ‘Happens to us all,’ someone said. And then, five minutes later, the news came down the line. ‘Lieutenant Williams is dead. Got his spine ripped out by a nose cap.’ And that was that.

“I stood there, feeling sorry for the lieutenant. But it was no shock to me, you see, because I’d known it was going to happen. The lads stared at each other. I noticed that, straightaway. They looked at each other, but none of them would look at me. And that was just the first time. . . .”

“What happened?”

He didn’t answer, but gazed at his wine, as if it were a looking glass.

“I’m sorry,” I said, after a while, to fill the silence.

“It’s all right,” he said. “What about you? How does it happen for you?”

I told him how it had started slowly, like his itch. How it was coming clearer each time. I told him about the hospital, back at home in Brighton. I told him that people had seen things in my eyes, though I didn’t know what.

I told him about Clare, and then I told him about Edgar.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“My real name’s Alexandra,” I said. I could see no point in lying to him.

“Alexandra,” he said, carefully. He seemed to be thinking. “And no one believes a word you say?”

I shook my head. I knew that if I tried to speak, I would start crying and maybe never stop.

“ ‘And soon you too will stand aside, to murmur in pity that my
words were true.’ ”

He was quoting at me, and I knew where from. Miss Garrett’s book had not been wasted after all.

My heart was racing. He knew about Cassandra.

“And now?” he said.

Now, I thought. Yes, what now?

“Let me put it another way,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

I hadn’t told him about Tom.

“There’s someone I have to find. I’ve seen his death.”

“Your boyfriend?” he said, without sympathy.

“My brother. My other brother.”

He laughed at me then, and I didn’t like it.

“Do you believe it hasn’t happened yet?”

I nodded.

“I know it,” I said.

“And what are you going to do?” he asked. “You, a girl, against the whole of the German army, and the British one, too? You’re going to have to defeat them both to get him out of here!”

He cursed bitterly, and drank his wine.

I pushed mine away. I felt like throwing it in his face.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I saw his death. I know it hasn’t come yet. I’m going to try to find him. I’m going to tell him what I’ve seen, and I’m going to get him out of here. And no, I haven’t the faintest idea how!”

I broke off.

People were staring at us. At me.

Jack looked at me, but more gently than before.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’s all right. . . .”

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but you don’t understand. There’s nothing you can do.”

“No,” I said, “I’ll find a way—”

“No,” he said. “You don’t understand. If you’ve seen his death, then that’s it. It’s going to happen. You’ve seen the future. You can’t change it.”

His words cut me badly. I suppose I had known this deep down all along, but had tried to not let it surface. Now it was out in the open, and I couldn’t ignore it.