The Heart's War (20 page)

These last few days, I began finding Jill's ministrations grating. I hated the pity I saw in her eyes for me. Where first I'd found her stew delicious, I now loathed it.

In some ways, it actually felt good that I had only enough funds for the remainder of the week, even at the reduced rate Jill charged me.

So instead I walked past the boarding house. Since it was the afternoon, many of the employees of the various businesses in the area had their break for lunch. I
wove my way between or around gaggles of men in suits or overalls talking to one another, or groups of women doing the same.

More people spilled out of the trolley station across the street, their combined voices working to overcome to sound of engines and horses and bells.

That boy who'd been the harbinger of Jeff's death was at his corner again by the cafe, hawking the news of the day. I put his high voice out of my mind the best I could, though my fingers tightened on the white envelope I clutched.

I sat at my regular table. The slate-colored clouds roiling in the sky that day promised a drizzle of rain, so many of the other patrons found their seats inside or took their food and left. I had the area in front of the store practically to myself.

Tearing open one side of the envelope, I teased the letter out. It was folded over itself twice, and of a thick, expensive paper that I hadn't seen much of these last few years due to the chronic shortages and rationing of most goods.

At the top of the letter were the law firm's letterhead, and their King Street address. It had been typed neatly.

"Dear Miss Eleanor Winters,

I am writing to you as the executor of the estate of Mrs. Marie Beech."

I stopped reading there for a few moments. Surely this had to be some sort of mistake? It was Jeff who died, not Marie.
Though I found it strange that a young man like Jeff had taken the time and initiative to create a will. I continued, focusing on the words.

"Mrs. Marie Beech suffered a severe stroke and was taken to Grand River Hospital. She regained consciousness for a time before suffering a second, fatal stroke. In those final moments, she made a series of changes to her will.

These included provisions for my office to inform you of her death.

Mrs. Beech intended to leave the entirety of her estate to her surviving son, Jeffrey, and to you, his affianced. However, Mrs. Beech owes substantial debts to several creditors. Our initial assessment of her assets shows that there will be no balance remaining to transfer to you and Mr. Beech. Mrs. Beech’s house and possessions will be liquidated to settle her debts and, if possible, cover the cost of her burial.

I regret that you had to receive this news in this manner. I hope this letter finds you well in England.

John Messer, ESQ."

This had to be some sort of joke. I flipped the paper over, looking for additional notes on the back. I shook the envelope and tore it further, hoping to find some other slip of paper within.

My mind was too shocked to really come to grips with the news. Again, the impulse to laugh thrilled up my spine.

Was I some modern day Job? Was this all some sort of test of will? Or were those mystics right in that we came back to this Earth again and again, our immortal soul still bearing the marks and straining under the penance handed down for past wrongs?

If that were true, I must have truly been the worst example of humanity in history.

This time, I did not read the letter again. I learned from my previous actions that no matter how many times I ran my eyes over the words, they wouldn't change their shape.

The most I could do would be to destroy those words, as I'd done with the note informing me of Jeff's death. That little ball of paper still sat in my suitcase where I left it.

But it hadn't erased the message from my mind. I still had the knowledge gleaned from it.

So I slid the expensive paper back into the remains of the envelope, and then found a spot for that in my small clutch. It would go down in the suitcase, too.

The waiter came out to take my order, his grey and black hair slicked back and his mustache well trimmed.

But my appetite abandoned me, and even the promised warmth of their Earl Grey tea sounded unpleasant. I could hardly force my lips into a false smile for him as I declined.

From there, I got on a trolley which took me down to the harbor. The Mauretania floated at its mooring, the dazzling paint scheme failing to do more than register in my mind.

But this time I had no Captain Lawrence Marsh to use his influence to add me to a roster. I was rebuffed at the administrative office, and I could not speak to anyone of importance at the ship itself.

Defeated, I returned with my shoulders slumped to the boarding house.

Jill came in to see me around supper, bearing a tray with the now-loathed stew. The white rose she'd given me sat in a borrowed vase on top of my chest of drawers, its delicate, wilted petals dropped down onto the top of the chest in a rough circle.

I felt the urge to share with her this new news. I knew that she would offer me sympathy and play with my hair as I rested against her shoulder. But that was brief comfort only.

She would leave, and then I would be alone with myself again. Disowned by my mother, torn from my fiancé, and missing the support of my future mother-in-law, I was stuck in England with no money to stay where I was, and no way to get back to Canada.

Chapter 19

Giving into temptation, I set my head down on the pillow, swung my feet up onto the bed, and let the sweet oblivion of sleep take me. I hoped it would be dreamless.

A few days drifted by, the weak sunlight peeking in through the window to see me hardly ever rise from the mattress. My existence had become one of simple mechanics: awaken to find the trays of food left by Jill or her husband, eat the food and drink the tea without tasting any of it, use the facilities if my body required it, and then back to bed.

I didn’t even have the will to count how many times I repeated this process. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I should feel guilty for taking advantage of Jill’s kindness to such a degree. But that didn’t matter anymore. Nothing really mattered anymore.

The tasteless food was the first sign of my withdrawal from the world. My others senses followed suit. Color drained from my surroundings, vibrancy leaking away into some cold abyss. The sounds of carriages, of hawkers, of trolleys from outside my window all blurred into a dull and distant roar.

To my dismay, my sleep did not remain dreamless. Yet I found I could do nothing but go back to sleep, my body drawn always to the small bed.

If my senses had dulled in waking life, they were razor sharp in my dreamscape. I could taste the mud of the battlefield, smell the rot of the muck as it splashed my face.

The blasts of the bombs exploding around me buffeted my small body back and forth, and the sounds of the bursts crashed on my ears such that I did not know why I wasn’t deafened.

Sometimes, I thought I saw Jeff. He was somewhere in front of me. For some reason, he always stood up straight. The bullets churning the mud around him never seemed to concern him, and the great clods of smoking earth thrown up by the artillery never gave him pause.

He would turn to face me, his uniform ripped to shreds, the muzzle of his rifle pointing lazily at the ground. Our eyes would meet.

Sometimes, I managed to call out to him before it happened. Before a shell whistled through the air and buried itself in the dirt at his feet. The bursting of that bomb, seeing the blast consume him, always woke me.

I awoke covered in cold sweat half a dozen times each day and night like that, the look of despair in his eyes haunting me in the waking world.

Then one day it was different.

***

I awoke with the thin covers gripped in my hands, my knuckles white with tension and my fingers aching from the pressure.

Rather than rolling onto my side and going back to sleep, I kicked the covers off. An awful, frustrated rage had flooded my body.
Rage and anger and despair and loss, all mingling and boiling inside me. And I didn’t want them there anymore.

Standing up, I looked down at myself in disgust. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d changed. I still wore that grey skirt and dark blouse from before. They were wrinkled terribly.

I tore them from my body in the small bathroom and cleaned myself. All my movements were sharp and quick. I wrenched the brush cruelly through my hair, not caring when it caught up in a knot and sent a shock of pain down through me. The pain was almost good; it kept me in the here and now. I shoved my body into a plain cotton dress and jerked my shoes onto my feet.

I could stand no more of this boarding house. No more of Jill and her kindness. No more of this terrible country and its awful war.

It had taken Jeff from me, and I would give it nothing more. One way or another, I intended to leave England and get back to Kitchener and whatever remained of my life there.

***

It was a drizzly day outside, and the walk down to the docks a long one. But I didn’t care. The coolness of the water against my skin refreshed me. My shoulders ached from carrying my luggage, but that was fine, too. It was good to feel something again.

My senses, newly returned, also felt newly sharpened. My nose twitched at the pungent smell of horse leavings on the cobblestones, and I could taste the salty tang of the ocean when I breathed.

People gave me strange looks as I marched down the street, lugging my luggage along. They were always old men or very young, or women. An entire generation of men seemed caught up in the war.

Thankfully, the worsening weather had most of their prying eyes fleeing to the shops and pubs along the street.

Patting the pocket of the jacket given me by Jill, I felt the few coins she’d given me. They clinked together, almost inaudible in the noises of the street.

It wouldn’t be enough to book passage, but it was a start.
Something to begin with. The anger seething inside me promised to show itself to the first apologetic officer or crewman who said there was no way to purchase a ticket.

As I drew closer to the naval yard, I noticed an increase in traffic.
Lots of men milling about in uniforms, long lines of trucks ferrying men away from the ships.

And there were many ships. I could see their tall smokestacks sticking up over the tops of the warehouses and administrative buildings, smell and taste the acrid black exhaust still belching from a few of them.

Another shipment of men from the colonies, come to give their lives in this pointless, all-consuming conflict, I figured.

That thought actually spurred some more energy into my flagging pace. More ships meant more opportunities to return home!

“So nice to see a pretty face again!”

I looked up in time to avoid the trio of soldiers, their arms all thrown over each other’s shoulders, making their way down the sidewalk. The man who’d spoken had a bandage covering his left eye, the gauze wrapped back behind his head.

The other two men were injured as well, I noticed. The one on my left walked with a hitch in his step, and the tall man on the right showed the corner of a large bandage poking up through his collar.

For just a second, I dared to hope. “Is the war over, then?” I said.

They came to a stop in front of me. “A pretty Canadian face? What luck!”

It was then I noticed the Red Ensign flags sewn onto the shoulders of their shirts.
Canadian soldiers. That just led me to thoughts of Jeff, which in turn placed a leaden ball at the bottom of my stomach. My fleeting good mood fled.

“War’s still on,” the man with the bandaged face said.

“Then why are you here?” I said, my manners shrinking away from me. I fought back the urge to feel guilty.

“Well, my friends and I have earned a ticket out of those trenches with our blood. As you might tell by looking at us…”

“Yeah, they finally got their act together over there enough to send us all back here,” the tall one said. A few strands of red hair poked out from underneath his cap.

“They’re bringing the wounded back to England?” I said.

“That’s the way of it. Now, unless you’re interested in joining us at that fine looking public house over there, I think we’ll be heading off for a few well-deserved drinks,” the man with the bandaged face said.

Starting back toward the main gate, through which trucks still spilled out onto the road, I did allow myself some guilt. I begrudged those men their luck, if you could call it that. They’d been wounded, and deserved their escape. But that was the key: they’d been wounded. They got to return home and laugh or commiserate about their injuries over drinks.

Jeff hadn’t been that lucky.

I knew it was wrong of me to think that way, but I wished it had been one of them, instead.
That I could somehow have him trade places.