The Foreshadowing (30 page)

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I am blind.

I am as blind as a book with no writing on the page.

2

Blind.

Slowly, everything came back to me.

But it was a slow and painful recovery, a memory that did not want to come to mind easily, and did so like a difficult birth.

It has all been a bitter joke.

The hours passed, dragged by. Finally, I could stand the waiting no longer, and crept to the top of my little hollow in the trees, and peered down on Death Valley. I can only guess at how many thousands of men were massing there.

It was a vast waiting room, the point at which men and horses and guns were all being gathered in readiness for some terrible battle at the front. I watched streams of horse-men below me, the Indian cavalry again. I almost smiled to see them. Teams of guns were ridden up as well, and thousands upon thousands of men, all milling about in the open, as if it was an expedition and not a war.

I strained my eyes, desperate to glimpse Tom, or Jack.

More than once I thought about going down myself, but I forced myself back into my hollow and lay looking at the sky. I was starving, but what did that matter? There were more important things afoot than hunger.

I thought about Jack more than Tom for some reason. I understood that deserters were shot, and I worried that I had got Jack into danger. What if he was accused of desertion? He had been missing for two days now.

I couldn’t bear the thought that I might be responsible for getting him shot because I had only been thinking about Tom.

And Tom. I now realized at last the misconception I had been living under. I’d wanted to mend everything by saving him, to make my family whole again—as whole as it could be, at least—but everything was in tatters.

I couldn’t take Tom away, or he’d be shot for desertion too. The only way men got away from the front was with a decent wound.

I clutched the revolver so tightly my fingers ached.

Then, without warning, there was a scrape behind me, and two men came over the lip of the hollow.

It was Tom, and behind him, Jack.

I dropped the gun on the coat and jumped up to meet Tom, and put my arms around him.

We stayed that way for ages.

I cried, and so did he.

Jack stepped back, then sat down on the ground.

“You haven’t got long” was all he said. He seemed nervous, agitated.

I looked at Tom, and at last I was pleased to see he seemed happy to see me.

“I can’t believe you got here,” he said, smiling.

“I’ve been nursing. In France,” I said. “But I was just trying to get to you.”

“You’re amazing,” he said. “It’s hard to . . . But you’re here, so it must be true.”

“How are you?” I asked.

Tom shook his head.

“All right,” he said. “I’m all right. Just tell Mother and Father that.”

I must have looked strangely at him.

“What is it?” he asked. “Are they all right?”

“I think so,” I said. “I don’t know. Tom, I ran away. They don’t know where I am. I did this for all of us, but if I ever get home they’ll probably never speak to me again.”

“Of course they will,” Tom said. “And you must go home. It’s wonderful to see you, Sasha, but you must get away from here. It’s dangerous, for so many reasons. I spoke to your friend Jack. He’s told me what you’ve done. He says he’ll help you get home.”

“Yes, Tom, but—”

“No, Sasha, no. I only came up here because Jack assured me you’d seen sense now.”

“You don’t know what I’ve seen,” I said, angrily.

“Alexandra, listen, you have to drop all this talk about seeing the future—”

“Why?” I cried. “Why don’t you believe me? Mother and Father wouldn’t believe me. Edgar wouldn’t believe me. I thought you would, Tom. I need you to. You have to.”

“It’s not that easy to understand.”

“Everyone thinks I’m a fool. Edgar died still thinking that. I can’t take it from you, too.”

“Edgar didn’t think that, I swear,” Tom said. “None of us do.”

“How do you know what Edgar thought?” I said, bitterly. “The last time we saw him he was miserable and silent. You weren’t even there. Then he went back to the war and was killed.”

“No, Sasha, I did see him.”

I looked sharply at Tom, incredulous.

“He came to see me in Manchester. He said he’d left Brighton a day early to come to see me. We talked like we’d never talked before. It made everything seem right again between us. I felt I understood him, and what he wanted to do. With the war. But he said it had changed him. It wasn’t what he was expecting. He said it terrified him. He told me to go on trying to be a doctor. That there was more use in that than fighting.”

I shook my head, struggling to understand.

“And he talked about you, so much. I know he was difficult with you, but he was proud of you, too. He loved you, Sasha. He really did.”

I just stared at Tom.

“It’s the truth. Then he went back to the war and he was killed, as you say. When I heard, I wanted to die too, and I couldn’t think of any easier way to do it than to come out here. Do you understand? And I’m going to stay here until either I’m dead, or the war is over.”

I felt utterly empty. I thought back to when Tom had changed his mind about the war, after Edgar died. Edgar had told him to go on with his training, but what had Tom said that day in the kitchen? Mother had begged him to go on being a doctor, and what had he said?

There’s no use in it.

So he’d come to fight or die, instead. I would lose both brothers. I saw that now.

Tom turned to go. He hesitated, then came toward me, and put his arms around me. As he was breaking away he suddenly froze as he looked at my eyes. He saw something.

“God, no . . .”

Then he shook his head, pulling away, shaking his head as if to clear his vision.

“I’m so tired, I can’t . . . I have to go now, Sasha. You understand that, don’t you?”

And I had.

I had understood that he had to go, I really did. I knew there was nothing I could do, that he couldn’t walk away from it all.

Unless he was wounded.

I think it was the weeks and days and hours of seeing and hurting and fearing and believing in Tom’s death.

That was what made me walk to the greatcoat, and pick up the revolver.

It happened as slowly as it had in my dreams. But this time I saw everything.

I saw Jack’s head turn, to see what I was doing. He began to stand, but I had already picked up the gun and pointed it at Tom.

Jack called out.

“No!”

Tom turned.

I pulled the trigger. The gun seemed to explode in my hand, and I felt a kick to my arm. I had tried to aim at Tom’s legs, so I wouldn’t hurt him too badly, but the force of the recoil sent the gun flying up.

A moment later, Tom lay bleeding on the ground, the trees above him still shaking from the gunshot.

“Oh, Sasha,” Tom said. “What have you done?”

Blood began to pour from between his fingers as he held them to his chest.

Time stood still.

1

So, weeks have passed, and that moment is behind me now, but it leaves behind an awful fact: that it was I who shot Tom.

First, it is true that without Jack, Tom would have died.

As we stood in the hollow, and the reality of what I’d done broke through, I began to shake with fear. Those final moments are unbearable to think of.

Almost as soon as I shot Tom, a flight of shells began to twitter overhead. They landed nearby, with a soft plop into the ground, and no loud explosion.

I didn’t understand, but Jack did.

“Gas,” he said. “Oh, God.”

Tom was barely conscious.

But somehow, we got him down from the hollow, and that’s when I took the gas. I was lagging behind as Jack carried Tom toward the camp.

Suddenly gas was in my eyes, and my lungs, and though I was sure I was full of it, I must have had only a taste. Nonetheless, I was struggling to breathe properly. I staggered and fell well behind Jack. Another shell burst somewhere near me, not gas but explosive this time, and that’s when I stopped seeing.

Amidst the chaos from the gas attack, Jack found some stretcher bearers and got Tom to the field dressing station. I stumbled along by myself, then felt Jack’s hand. He had come back for me.

I heard voices.

“Poor lad, got a whiff,” someone said.

“We’ll sort him out.”

It took me a while to understand they were talking about me. I must have looked so awful they really did think I was a boy. Jack told me later that I was a complete mess. My eyes were watering, my skin was gray. I was covered in mud from head to toe and coughing up great chunks of mucus and fluid from my lungs.

No wonder they didn’t see the girl underneath it all.

We got away.

I didn’t see Tom again. Jack says he was packed straight off to the ambulance train, and given his Blighty ticket with a good chance of making it. He had a nice clean bullet wound, not some terrible jagged mess from a piece of shrapnel.

I really believe he’ll be all right. The visions have stopped.