The Heart's War (21 page)

But that, too, was selfish and wrong of me to think.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow you access, miss,” the guard at the gate said. He looked miserable in the rain. Little droplets of water dripped from the ends of his moustache, and the oiled coat he wore didn’t really seem to keep him dry. He shifted the position of the long rifle on his back as though it was a source of great discomfort and dead weight.

“I haven’t walked all the way through the city to be turned back here, sir!” I said, letting the flames of my anger lick a little higher. “Let me through; I have business in there.”

“And what business is that?” the guard replied, wiping one soaked sleeve against the flood of water trying to make its way down his face.

“I’m a Canadian citizen, and I require passage back to Canada.”

“There’s a war on, miss. All the ships are tied up transporting…”

“Don’t tell me that! All I need is a little space on one of the ships going back across to Halifax…”

The guard rubbed at his eyes and hitched the rifle’s sling back up his shoulder. “I’m sorry, miss. But you’re stuck here. Just like the rest of us. Now, please, I’m sure there’s some other business you can attend to.”

My anger melted, then. I hadn’t anticipated being stopped so easily at the gate. I expected to at least be able to get inside, to present my case to a ship’s captain or officer.
Someone with the power to help.

I felt how I looked then: wretched and soaked to the bone. I’d tied my hair up as neatly as I could before leaving, but the walk over had dislodged a great deal of it. It stuck to my cheeks and neck.

A coldness swelled inside me, so deep I could feel it in my bones. And it wasn’t just because of the weather.

“Please, please, just let me in. I need to speak with someone. I need to get out of here…”

The guard started raising his voice to me, until he saw the state I was in. Instead, he bit back his first reply, the muscles of his jaw working. “I’m sorry, I really am. But I simply cannot allow you through this gate. I have orders.”

“I have nowhere to go.” Did I have to get down on my knees and beg?

The guard chewed the inside of his cheek, his eyes darting about. He was going to let me in. I just knew it!

“Connors! What’s the holdup over there?” the guard on the other side of the road yelled over.

“Nothing, sir!” the guard, Connors, replied. The exchange strengthened his resolve. “Miss, I am truly sorry. I feel for you, I do. But you cannot, and will not, be allowed inside. Now, would you please…”

I couldn’t stand the pity in his eyes any longer, so I turned around and started back the way I came. Though I didn’t know where the road might lead me. I should have known this would happen. But my stubbornness and desire to leave had outweighed my good senses.

The coins in my pocket might buy me another night or two somewhere, I figured. But then what?

That endless line of trucks and cars, and even a few carriages, continued on by me. All those men would need to be put up somewhere. All the rooms everywhere would be full.

I stopped, then, my feet unwilling to carry me forward any longer. It made no difference where I stopped, so why not right there beside the street, within sight of my way home?

“Stop!
Stop the truck!” someone yelled, the voice tickling at something in my memory.

The whole convoy came to a halt as the big vehicle squealed to a halt just ahead of me. A man in a small car right behind it stepped out, looking with disgust as the rain began wetting his uniform.

“What is the meaning of this? I demand you get this truck moving at once!”

A man hopped down from the back of the truck and marched straight over to the angry soldier.

“And I will demand that you get back into your car and shut up, sir!”

“Y…yes, Captain. I’m sorry, sir,” the formerly angry soldier said, tripping over himself on the way back to the car. He slammed the door shut hard enough to rock the vehicle and get the attention of the streams of soldiers well enough to make their way towards the promise of food and drink.

Rather than climbing back into his truck, the captain came over to me. I stared at the ground, watching the water dribble down my shoes. The toes of his polished boots came into my view.

“My God, Eleanor, is that you?” he put his hand on my shoulder.

I looked up into the face of Captain Lawrence Marsh. His cheeks had hollowed out some, and that haunted look I’d caught in his eyes on the trip to England had intensified.

My eyes stung, and a feeling something like relief warmed in my stomach. I threw my arms around his shoulders and buried my face against his chest. He stiffened, and a hiss of pain passed through his lips. I knew that I should let up, that he had to be injured in some way as well, but I couldn’t let go of him. I couldn’t release the one familiar thing that had returned to me.

But then he returned the hug, gently stroking the back of my head and whispering to me that it was all right.

It was ridiculous how comforting that felt. He seemed like the life preserver in the storm that was my life.

“Captain?” a man called from the truck.

“Just go on, corporal,” Lawrence said back to him.

The truck’s engine sputtered back to life, the gears grinding as the driver pulled away from the curb. The muffled sounds of the convoy coming back to life reached me.

“Come, Eleanor. We need to get you out of this weather,” Lawrence said, gently extricating
himself from my grip.

He wouldn’t let me say no to him draping his jacket over my shoulders. I only protested weakly, however.

Soon, we sat in a crowded pub. Lawrence used his rank to clear us a space near a crackling hearth. Even with his jacket on me, I shivered awfully, my teeth clicking together. That constant, drizzling rain soaked me right to the bone, it seemed.

The place was much like Jill’s. Long tables and benches took up much of the space, which, while worn, was comfortable and warm. Even I felt a bit of the good cheer in there from all the men happy to be away from the front.

Many of the men had taken to smoking their pipes or cigarettes, and a blue haze swirled, blocking out the ceiling. For once, I was happy that my nose was stuffed so that I couldn’t smell all that tobacco.

“Here,” Lawrence said, taking his seat beside me. He put down two steaming mugs.
“Coffee. Black.”

“Lawrence…” I started.

But he didn’t let me finish. In fact, he didn’t let me speak again until he saw that I drained half my mug. That coffee tasted fresh, with a bit of bitterness to it. Though the heat it left inside me was welcome. I pulled his jacket closer around my shoulders.

“Now please, Eleanor, tell me what it is you’re doing here. Not that I am not glad to see you again, and happy to know that you crossed the Atlantic safely. But what is this?” he said, holding his hand out and gesturing the question to me.

“I wanted to try and book passage back to Halifax.”

Lawrence leaned forward, taking one of my hands in both of his. The ruddy glow from the fire gave his face more color, but he still looked gaunt. I suppressed my curiosity as to what might have caused that over there on the front. “I thought you were waiting for gallant Jeffrey? Surely you don’t mean to say you’ve spent all this time over here only to leave like this? That would be such a tragedy, and I’ve been laboring under
the impression that this is a love story.”

I looked at him, wondering how he couldn’t know. But that was stupid. How could he possibly know about my Jeff?

Seeing my expression, he gave my hands another squeeze. “Tell me, what is it?”

I tried to speak, but the words didn’t come out. Frowning, I tried again. Something blocked my throat, and pressure built behind my eyes again. I didn’t understand. Hadn’t I come to some sort of grips with Jeff’s death? Was I still so upset that I couldn’t tell anyone that he was gone?

So I forced the words up and out. “Jeff… Jeffrey’s dead. At Passchendaele.”

“Dead?”
Lawrence said, sitting back. He looked genuinely shocked and confused. Though, I noted with annoyance, he didn’t seem upset. “Are you certain?”

He actually wanted proof?

I picked up my luggage from where he’d put it and rummaged through one suitcase, my fingers questing for that ball of paper I knew lay at the bottom. I found it and offered it to him.

Lawrence unfolded it against the finished surface of the table. It looked much the same as when I’d thrown it into the suitcase. The ink had run, and creases crisscrossed the text. Was it even still legible?

Lawrence squinted down at it, frowning all the while. I wondered if he needed spectacles. I doubt he wore them if he did, since they might ruin the dashing lines of his face.

Finishing, he shook his head and chuckled. When he offered me the note, I snatched it out of his hand.

“Are you mocking me?” I said, upset both at his lack of tact and at the prospect of me having to ask him for help crossing the Atlantic again.

“What? No. No.
Of course not, Eleanor. I’m sorry, my laughter must appear quite sadistic to you. But let me assure you that it is not out of malice that I laughed.”

“Then why?”

He leaned in close. “Irony, my dear.”

“Explain yourself,” I said, my teeth clenched.

He slid my mug of coffee closer. “Finish your drink and dry off some more. I’ll see if this joint has a telephone and have a car brought around.”

“Why? Where are you taking me?”

Lawrence gave me a grin that reminded me of the man I’d met back in Canada. His eyes looked mischievous. A charming man, through and through. I couldn’t help but feel my spirits lifted, if only slightly.

“Allow me this bit of mystery. I’m a selfish man, as you know,” h
e said, grinning all the while.

***

“Really, Lawrence, where are we going?” I said from the back seat of the Model T in Ford’s favorite color: black.

Lawrence sat beside me. He examined me from the corner of his eye, and he kept fighting back against a small smile that curled his lips.

In front, an army private steered us through the maze of streets deeper into the city, away from the port. He’d looked thoroughly intimidated and overwhelmed by Lawrence, who’d quashed all of his questions about requisitioning military transport for a soaked civilian.

The rain running in rivulets down the glass smeared my view of the street, but from what I could see, we were in a part of the city I never visited.

“Army personnel have been granted quarters a frustrating distance from port, my dear,” Lawrence said.

“So why are we going to see more army boys?” I said. Something about this situation got my hackles up. Did Lawrence plan on parading me around his barracks for some reason? Glancing at the street, I thought about stepping out at the next stop, but then I would be in the same boat as before Lawrence came to me, with only a little bit of money and no way home.

I decided to simply grin and bear it. Let Lawrence have a bit of fun; maybe it would earn me a spot as a laundry girl on one of the ships going back to Halifax.

“I, too, was at Passchendaele,” Lawrence said. He rubbed gently at his side, flinching at the touch. “A piece of shrapnel from a nearby artillery blast ricocheted into my trench and caught me along the ribs…” he traced a line on his body. “It’s still quite tender, and promises to be my most prominent trophy from this war.”

“That’s just awful,” I said. His story reminded me of my nightmares, of watching Jeff blasted to oblivion in the middle of a muddy, stinking field.

But apparently, Lawrence wasn’t finished. “When my men came to me, they thought me dead. So much blood on and around me, you see. I’ve heard of a number of such cases, where a man was mistaken for dead and gone. It has also been known that overzealous clerks send out notifications of death before that fact has been established. I just cannot bring myself to imagine the anguish of my mother and sisters if I’d been
so unlucky as that.”

By his tone, he wanted to convey some subtext to me, some allegory. However, I couldn’t grasp it, since my mind constantly bombarded me with images from my nightmares.

“Truly terrible, yes,” I agreed, letting the irritation through in my voice. “Now, will you please tell me the reason for this trip?”

“Do you remember our time aboard the train? When I said how proud I would be to have a brave young man like Jeffrey under my command?”

“That, among other things,” I replied, hoping the tone of my voice conveyed that I also remembered his attempt at seduction.

Lawrence preoccupied his fingers toying with the buttons on his jacket. “Indeed. But they weren’t idle words, Eleanor. I did have Jeffrey transferred to my command.
A fine young man, just as brave as I imagined. Though, perhaps, not so dashing as other men who have wanted to hold you close.”

That did get my attention. “You knew Jeff? Were you there when he… when he…” but I couldn’t get the rest of that question out.

Lawrence forestalled me with a raised hand. “No, I… Driver, turn right here!... I was not. For reasons that will become apparent to you very shortly. Private! Pull up beside that house there. No, not this one. The one I’m pointing at, can’t you see my finger?”