Tides of Honour (3 page)

She leaned forward and kissed his tear-soaked cheek.

“I miss him so much,” he whispered.

“As ye should, darlin'. He would've missed ye just as much. He loved ye well, my lad. He loved ye well.”

A while later, Mr. Mitchell came into the room. He still wore a smile reminiscent of his son's, but it was subdued in comparison. The twinkle in his eyes had faded since Danny'd last seen him, but when Mr. Mitchell's eyes met those of his wife, it sparked back.

“Danny, me boy,” he said. Danny stood and reached for a handshake. Mr. Mitchell stepped back in surprise. “Jaysus, Mary, and Joseph, Danny. Where'd you leave your leg, man?”

“France, sir,” Danny said.

Mr. Mitchell's eyes softened. He stepped closer and hugged Danny tightly against him, then he spoke into Danny's ear.

“We left a lot of t'ings in France, didn't we? Terrible trial for us all, t'at war. A terrible, terrible trial. Ah well. We'll be fine, though, given time. It's the turning of the tide, son. Nothin' to be done about it now.” He hesitated a moment, and Danny knew the pain he was trying to bite back. Knew it so well. “But oh, we're that glad to see ye back, my lad. Welcome home.”

FOUR

In the muted hour before
daylight, Danny sat at the kitchen table by the oil lamp, a steaming cup of tea warming the palms of his hands. How strange that everything around him was exactly the same as it had been and he was so entirely different. Same creaking board on the floor, same rust stain by the window latch, even the same melody humming through his mother's lips as she worked around the kitchen. He was the only stranger here.

He stared into the teacup, losing himself in the soft white swirls as they rose from the heat, condensed on his chin. Now that the brutal shock of being back at home was easing, gentler thoughts had begun to surface. Hints of hope blinking through the clouds. He let himself remember the twinkle of pretty eyes, the quick flash of a shy smile.
Audrey
. He'd lost his best friends, his leg, and any innocence he might have had as a boy, but he'd found Audrey. She had become the one fixed thing in his life, the buoy he clung to when the blackness of memories lapped at him, threatened to swallow him whole. He loved her—or at least he assumed it was love, since she'd become the most important thing to him. Sometimes he felt slightly guilty when he thought about her. Had God—or whatever it was his father
preached about at that pulpit—given her to Danny in exchange for what he'd lost?

It was five a.m., and his father, Johnny, and Thomas were out on the Atlantic, bringing in their catch. All but Danny. He could almost hear their conversations in his head, the hollow voices bouncing off the water as they toiled and teased, the simple, companionable way of men working hard. He envied his brothers the cold slice of the wind against their faces, the rise and fall of the deep swells, the occasional humps of whales gliding by in the summer months. He missed being one of the voices dropping into the fog.

Now he stayed home with his mother, along with the younger children. The little ones were all still asleep, oblivious to what would someday be their responsibility, but his mother clanged around in the kitchen, clearing up, getting the next meal ready to go. There was always something for her to do. She was a strong woman. He'd never once seen her look weak. No, that wasn't true. He'd seen it twice: when he'd headed off to war, and when he'd returned.

“How's your tea, Danny? Shall I top it up for you?”

He held up his empty cup, smiling. “Thanks.”

She took it and filled it, then brought her own over and sat across the table from him. Mother and son eyed each other nervously, then she dove in.

“How are you feeling, Danny?”

“I'm all right.”

“Do you want to talk about anything that happened over there?”

He frowned, his defensive wall rising automatically. “Like what?”

She blinked quickly, and he knew she'd noticed his swift reaction. Of course she had. She knew him so well. Her fingertips
tapped against the side of her teacup. “You don't have to tell me anything that hurts, Danny. I can only imagine what it was like—we've read the papers after all—and I don't particularly want to know how horrible it was. But was there anything that you enjoyed? Anything at all that made you smile out there? Was every moment terrible?”

“No,” he said carefully. “It wasn't all bad.” He caught himself doing the same thing with his fingers as she was doing, then purposefully set them flat on the table. “I made some good friends over there. Of course most of them died,” he said, raising one eyebrow, “but I hope a few are still alive.”

His mother's lips drew into a little bow, and she glanced down, drying her hands on the apron covering her lap. “Do they live around here?”

“Yeah. Halifax. There was Tommy Joyce, for one. He was a good guy. Quality. And Mick was my buddy over there. He's a newspaper man. Always telling stories.”

Her smile was heartbreaking. He could see his own pain in her eyes. “I'm glad you had friends,” she said.

“You had to have friends over there. Otherwise you'd lose your mind.” His voice was cold. He hated taking it out on her, but she was there. She had asked.

She nodded, and her gaze dropped to the tabletop.

“The best part of it was getting mail,” he told her, needing to fill the empty space between them. He was nervous about having this kind of conversation, opening up a raw wound all over again, but a part of him wanted to tell his mother everything, let it all spill onto the table so she could clean it up as she always did. “When you sent packages it was a terrific surprise, and hearing the news made such a difference to me over there.”

“I told your aunts and uncles to write to you. And Johnny did too, didn't he?”

“They all did. I really don't know what I would have done without those letters. It was some lonely out there. Oh, and . . .” He eyed his mother, teasing, daring her to ask.

“What?”

“Someone else wrote me letters.”

“Oh? Who was that?”

“Her name's Audrey. Audrey Poulin.”

His mother clapped her hands together and beamed at him. “You met a girl! Oh, Danny! I'm so happy for you! Tell me all about her!”

So he did. He explained how the soldiers had stopped to fix her wagon's broken wheel.

“Rain was coming, so Audrey invited us to sleep in their barn a few miles off. She and I struck up a conversation. Got to know each other pretty well.” Those eyes twinkling for him, the soft pucker of her lips drawing into a smile, then closing again just before he kissed her . . . “In the morning the battalion had to leave, but she gave me her picture and address, and we started writing. Mom?”

“Mm-hmm?”

He hesitated, imagining Audrey's face. It had blurred slightly in his memory after so long but still hovered there in spirit. He focused on the brown curls that framed her pale face, used them to coax back her sweet smile and the slow blink of her eyes.

“I fell in love with her. She's the most wonderful girl I've ever met. Beautiful and smart and unafraid. There I was in the darkest place on earth, and she was like the sun.” He beamed at his mother. “So I asked her to marry me.”

“Danny!” She leapt from her chair and was around the table before he knew it, her arms wrapped around him, her voice ringing with happiness. “Oh, my boy! My baby's getting married! So tell me more. Is she Canadian? Is she back here now? When will we meet her?”

He shook his head. “No, she's not Canadian.” He watched his mother's reaction closely. “She's from England.”

She tried valiantly not to react, but he saw the slight twitch of one eyebrow and steeled himself. He'd known this would be a little difficult. Not so much with his own family, but with the others in the area. Around here, everyone married neighbours.

“Well, that's nice,” she said. He could practically see her planning out how to explain this slight complication to Danny's father. Then she tightened her lips into a smile, making up her mind with a little nod. “And we will all be so happy to meet her. When will she come over?”

“I think in the spring. We need to raise the money for her transport first.”

“We'll have her here before you know it. Oh, Danny! How wonderful!”

“You're gonna love her. And she's gonna love you too.”

His mother rolled her eyes, primping her hair as if he were a mirror. “Do you really think so? Oh, I'll have to make sure everything is perfect for her.” Her smile warmed again, sweet as the bread rising in the oven. “But then again, she probably won't even notice what I do. She'll just be so happy to be with you it won't matter. Oh, Danny. I'm so happy for you. Your father will be thrilled.”

Daniel Sr., as far as Danny knew, didn't have an emotional bone in his body. The first week he'd been home, his father had said very little, but Danny sometimes caught him staring. His mother was trapped between the two men's stubborn senses of pride, and Danny could see it was hard on her. She gave her husband nudges, encouraging him to talk with his son, but Daniel Sr. was resistant, and Danny refused to make it easy on him. He was tired of the cold stares and the way his father turned away whenever he limped into the room. He was tired of hearing his
father ask Danny's brothers to do chores Danny used to do. He was tired of the silent scorn.

A couple of weeks after Danny got home, Daniel Sr. finally broached the subject. Danny's father had started to build a dinghy, so Danny took it over, deciding he could at least do that, figured maybe he'd feel a little more normal if he was being useful in some way. His father came down to help Danny get organized, and it was slow work, since Danny couldn't lift what he used to lift. He just didn't have the balance for it. But he was going to finish what his father had started, no matter how long it took. He always did. When they were done getting ready, they sat on a couple of stools and discovered Danny's mother had brought them each a lemonade. She'd set it on a table between them.

“That hits the spot,” Danny said. He set down his glass and glanced around, wanting a smoke to go with his drink. The tobacco can sat on the grass by his father's feet, so Danny leaned forward to grab a pinch, then he drizzled it down the centre of a small white paper he pulled from his pocket. He licked the edge and twisted the ends closed.

“Mm-hmm. Sure does,” his father replied, looking anywhere but at his son.

Daniel Sr. had never been a talkative man. He preferred to give sermons and turn away from unpleasant things. Like his crippled son. Danny let his father sit in the awkward quiet. He didn't offer anything.

The older man finally spoke while Danny lit the cigarette. “So, son. How are you finding being at home?”

Danny took a deep drag from the cigarette and a breeze wafted by, stirring the sparks from the tip. “I like being here just fine, sir.”

The pause was uncomfortable again, but Danny said nothing. It had taken his father a long time to work up to this. Too long, damn it. The old man hadn't gone to war. He could suffer a bit.

“I imagine it's much different from how you've been living the past couple of years.”

Danny nodded, his mind automatically going to the hungry, sucking trench mud that had swallowed his feet. Both feet. How he'd look down and see nothing below his thighs but sludge. He could still feel the frozen weights connected to those legs, hidden under that filth, and he wondered vaguely what had happened to the one he'd lost. They'd probably left it to rot in the mud. The thick, bloody mud that tripped men, holding them down until they drowned in it. After all, what difference did one man's leg make?

“Are you glad to be back?”

Danny looked at his father and wasn't sure how he felt. The man had no idea what Danny had seen, what he'd done. He had no images in his mind of death, blood, fire, screaming. All he saw was his son, who'd come home before a lot of other soldiers had.

When Danny spoke, his voice was shrapnel sharp. “You know I would have stayed if I wasn't hurt, right? You know I didn't just come running back with my tail between my legs. Or . . .” He chuckled without a trace of a smile in his eyes. “Pardon me. Behind my leg.”

Daniel Sr. met his son's eyes, and the two men stared at each other until something in his father's expression collapsed. His whole body seemed to sag just a little, and tears shone in his eyes like sunlight off the sea. Danny had never seen his father look like that. He looked much older than his forty-odd years.

“Is that what you thought, Danny?” His voice was almost a whisper.

It was too late to backtrack now. He'd said it, the words were out there, and goddammit, he'd meant them. “Doesn't matter. I'm back. I'll be just fine now.”

His dad hung his head and pressed swollen fingers to his face.
Hauling nets and battling the sea for so long had invited arthritis into the man's hands and knees; Danny's own hands often felt stiff from the beginnings of the same affliction. When Daniel Sr. looked up a moment later, the familiar posture had returned, his head held a little straighter, shoulders back. Danny sat up taller without even thinking about it. For just a moment, the men's eyes locked, and Danny was sure his father saw right through him. Then the older man blinked, and the contact returned to normal.

“I believe that, son,” Daniel Sr. said, showing no emotion at all. “You're strong. Always have been. You'll be just fine now,” he repeated.

Audrey Poulin

Spring 1916

FIVE

Audrey hadn't seen many soldiers
up close before. Not back here, in this quiet piece of land that never did anything. She'd seen the battalions from a distance, even heard explosions when the wind blew the right way. When she spotted a dozen or so men marching along the road, she knew they were headed off to war, just like Laurent, her cousin. Just like him, they marched with their backs straight, heads held high, their minds and hearts full of blind courage. And just like him they were unconcerned, apparently, with family left behind. Just like Laurent, very few of them, she expected, would ever come marching back.

She leaned over the broken wheel of her wagon and feigned interest in it, taking the opportunity to study these new men out of the corner of her eye as they drew near. Of course they would stop. What man wouldn't stop to help a woman in need? Then again, they were marching with purpose. Maybe they weren't allowed . . .

The officer up front gave her a little bow. “
Bonjour! Est-ce que nous
—”

It was painful, listening to him stumble through the language. She smiled gently. “I can speak English, monsieur, if it would be easier.”

He beamed at her. “Well, that's great. For both of us. Now, may I offer some assistance?”

English. Such a relief to hear English spoken again after all this time. It wasn't
English
English, but at least the words were the same. Audrey glanced at her grandmère, who looked quickly away, hiding inside the folds of her black shawl. Céleste Poulin was from the old world, and she didn't trust anyone. Especially these days. Audrey took a deep breath. After living such a secluded life for the past ten years, she had to summon the courage to actually speak to a stranger. But she had no choice. She stepped forward, clenching her thick green skirt for reassurance. “We would be most obliged, sir. My grandmère and I, we were coming from town and hit a bump.” She gestured toward the wagon, hitched to their tired grey mare. The nag's sorry head drooped in the shadow of a tree, and Audrey felt strangely mortified by its ragged appearance. “The wheel came off.”

She was distracted by the movements of two soldiers behind the officer. One was grinning directly at her, waggling his eyebrows with suggestion. Another was staring at her as well, but his expression was less aggressive. He appeared to be making an attempt to shut the other fellow up. Audrey smoothed down her skirt, feeling flustered. The second man was uncommonly handsome, an oddity in these parts—in her life, actually.

“Oh! Well,” the officer said, giving a gallant bow, “we'd be happy to help.” He turned toward the men. “Baker! Joyce! MacDonald!” he called.

The second soldier, the one she couldn't seem to peel her eyes from, set his cap on straight, then trotted toward the wagon with two others beside him. It appeared none of the men were strangers to fixing simple mechanical problems like this, so Audrey stood back to admire their handiwork. One went to retrieve the wheel, lying on its side on the road, while the other two leaned down and assessed the situation.

“Thank you so much, sirs,” Audrey said.

The handsome soldier pushed his cap back and looked up at her, and in her mind she reached for her artist's palette. His eyes were the deepest shade of blue, a vivid, lush blue that made something in Audrey's chest take flight.

For a moment she forgot where she was, and her imaginary brush swirled a handful of crushed blue wildflowers and vinegar together, then she thickened the dye with yolk. She'd add in just enough charcoal, since she saw deep water, not flowers in the soldier's eyes. Mr. Black—
Richard
to her mother—had taught her that, how she must see the colour she wanted first, then study what she had already before adding a sprinkle of darkness or light. Never too much at once. The first time she'd made blue with Richard Black, she'd been small, maybe six. His big, stained hands had closed over hers like weathered gloves, showing her how to use a pestle and mortar, helping her make dust from ashes, then magically turn her dye from sky in the morning to sky at night. She'd watched the colour transform as she stirred, then she'd looked up at him in wonder, seeing the same colour reflected in his eyes. It always fascinated her that his last name was Black when everything she saw in him was vivid, breathing colour.

At night Audrey curled up between her mother and Richard, safe and loved, listening to him sing some old song to her.

“D'ye ken John Peel with his coat so gay?

D'ye ken John Peel at the break of day?

D'ye ken John Peel when he's far far away with his

hounds and his horn in the morning?”

Then his big hand would move to her mother's cheek, those blue eyes would hold her mother's. “
Ma chèrie,
Pascale,” he'd say softly to her, but she'd shake her head.

“Only English, Richard,” Pascale said, looking pointedly at Audrey. “Teach us English.”

The soft lines of his face would ease even further, then he'd quietly sing,

“Oh, promise me that someday you and I

Will take our love together to some sky

Where we may be alone and faith renew,

And find the hollows where those flowers grew,

Those first sweet violets of early spring,

Which come in whispers, thrill us both, and sing

Of love unspeakable that is to be;

Oh, promise me! Oh, promise me!”

Then, one day, Richard was gone. At first Audrey had been confident they'd see him again, that he'd simply gone off seeking the solitude Audrey herself needed at times. But his blue, blue eyes, his unkempt black hair and matching beard never returned. Eventually another man came and took Pascale's hand, stepped into the place where Richard's shoes had been. And another after him. Pascale was never without a partner for long, but Richard was the only one who stayed with Audrey. The sadness that came to her mother's eyes every time Audrey asked about Richard made it too painful to press her further, but the question had never gone away.
Is he my father? Is he the reason I see colours and lines and shading everywhere I look?

“Baker,” one of the soldiers grunted, rolling the heavy wooden wheel ahead of him. Audrey's thoughts went back to the men on the road. “Eyes in your head, man.”

The man at whom she'd been staring earlier jerked his gaze away, and she was delighted to see a warm flush rise up his neck and into his cheeks. He muttered something to the other soldier,
who chuckled, but something about his tone assured her that it wasn't rudely meant.

With a groan, the men heaved up the axle. Two more came to help, squatting under the wagon and pushing up with their shoulders. They were strong men, but the sun was hot and they were sweating by the time the wheel was on. As they stood to go, the sunlight blinked out, blocked by a storm cloud, and a sudden gust flipped up the men's woolen coattails. Rain was on its way, and from the look of the clouds, it didn't plan on settling into a mild shower.

“Yep,” an older soldier from the group muttered. He was squinting up at the sky, assessing. “Soon then.”

The soldiers walked back to their place on the road, and Audrey panicked. The man they'd called Baker was the last to go, but she wanted him to stay longer. How could she possibly meet a man like this, then lose him just as quickly? She glanced at her grandmère, trying to disguise her desperation.

“Peut-on dormir dans la grange ce
soir?”
she whispered.
“Il va pleurir.”

The old woman narrowed her eyes, dark with suspicion as always.

“Que ferait le Seigneur Jésus Christ? Aurait-il
les faire dormir sous la pluie?”
Audrey asked, playing the card Céleste couldn't fight. It didn't seem like too much to ask. They would come to no harm having a dozen men sleep in the barn, after all. The old woman nodded once, looking annoyed, and relief surged through Audrey. She turned to the officer in charge.

“Sir,” she said, “it looks as if it shall rain tonight.”

“Yep,” repeated the man on the road.

She saw Baker glare at the weatherman, then he looked back at Audrey, apparently wanting to hear what she had to say. She imagined that—considering all the time these men spent
together—they must miss simple conversation with other people. She could think of a million things to talk about with Baker. Anything to break up the monotony of her life.

“We have a barn two miles along this road,” she informed the officer, tucking a light brown curl under her green head scarf. The rest of her hair she let bounce around her shoulders, but this one was getting in her eyes, bothering her. Especially now that the wind was picking up. “There is plenty of shelter for you and your men to spend the night, if you'd like.”

The officer's neat black eyebrows lifted. “Oh. Well, I wouldn't want to impose, mademoiselle . . .” He left the sentence unfinished until she picked it up.

“Oh, it's ‘miss.' My grandmère is French, not me. I am Audrey Poulin. I'm from Sussex,” she said, feeling heat race into her cheeks. How wonderful it felt to be able to speak her own language again! “And I assure you, sir, that it would be no imposition at all. It is the least we can do to thank you.”

The officer looked back at his men, and Audrey couldn't miss the hope in their expressions. They looked so tired. So worn down. She felt an urge to clean them, feed them, make them laugh.

“The loft has fresh hay,” she assured them. “And we have extra blankets.”

“If you're sure it's no trouble,” Captain Johnston said. He frowned skeptically at the sky, then flashed a wide smile from under his thick black moustache. “We'd be in your debt.”

The soldier named Baker blew out his breath, then caught himself, but Audrey noticed. Even if no one else did, she did.

“Not at all, sir,” she said, smiling at Baker and letting her eyes dance for him. “We are more than happy to help.”

The ancient horse was painfully slow. Audrey feared she might die of embarrassment as she chirped it forward, tickling the reins against its swayed back. Her grandmère sat beside her
up front, muttering antique obscenities into her scarf about Englishmen, accusing Audrey of who knew what with her eyes. Audrey had learned to take it all in stride these past ten years. The old woman's blood had always been thick with suspicion. In the past Audrey had wondered which had come first: her grandmère's constant bitterness or her mother's escape to England so long before. Every time her grandmère cast eyes on her, she knew the old woman was reminded of Audrey's wild-hearted mother and her ill-fated dash to freedom.

The soldiers marched beside them, dutifully quiet, the only sounds in the air being the shuffling of tired leather soles and the crunching of hooves and wagon wheels over pebbles. The gallant captain moved ahead to lead the horse around holes in the old road, and while Audrey knew she could have done it on her own, she was glad not to have to bother. She was tired of the horse. Of the wagon. Of the muttered black criticism constantly dribbling in her direction. Of the dead farmland that produced nothing anymore but misery now that there was no one left to work it.

Once upon a time Audrey had laughed out loud and danced, though other children her age had passed through her days like clouds. Her mother and Richard Black had been her best friends, and the lively musicians with whom they'd spent Audrey's early years had been more like playmates than adults. She'd never stepped foot into an actual school. Her friends had taught her how to speak English, and she'd learned to read by peering over Richard's shoulder when he read out loud from old books, regaling her with wild tales of adventure. Cold nights huddled together around a fire often consisted of individualized history lessons, when the friends remembered when things were different, when their parents and grandparents had done such and such. There was never any talk of Audrey learning mathematics, for
none of them had a coin to add to another. But she learned music and song and art, and she'd known both friendship and love.

Even as her mother lay dying, she knew a kind of love. She sat by her mother's bedside for hours at a time, and at night her little back curled against her mother's chest. The tender fingers playing in Audrey's hair thinned, their caresses became vague. When her mother's beautiful, weak voice seemed to tremble more than form actual words, Audrey took over, telling the nighttime stories she knew so well. Her mother would sigh at the familiar tales, her warm breath tickling Audrey's neck just under her ear. The breaths tickled more slowly as sleep claimed her, and the twig-like fingers stilled in Audrey's light brown tangles. And still Audrey told the stories, needing to hear the endings said out loud.

She knew her mother was dying, though all the playmates denied it during the daylight.
Your mother will dance forever! Your mother will never leave you!
they said, and in her need for any kind of love, she forgave them all their lies. It ended up that none of them were quite loving enough to take her under their wing permanently after she became an orphan, but they did their duty by bringing the ten-year-old to her grandparents' farm.

Back then, life hadn't been as drudging or as dark. Her grandpère had run an active farm, and he'd spent a good deal of time teaching Audrey how to tend the animals while staying out of his wife's way. Young local men came to work when it was time for harvest, helping in the fields, and Audrey tested her fledgling flirting skills on a couple, though they only smiled and left her alone. Once in a while her bossy cousin Laurent came to visit for a few weeks. He was five years her senior, and despite Audrey's arguments, he casually fell into the role of her big brother until it was time for him to leave again.

Laurent wasn't like her friends in England. He was serious and quiet, and his upper lip tightened to near invisibility
whenever he was forced to hold in arguments. He never fought with their grandparents, and he quietly informed Audrey that it was not her place to argue with them either. She must do as she was told, he said, and when she complained that their grandmère was a wicked, evil woman, he quieted her with one sharp look. He wasn't fun—he rarely laughed—but he was her mother's brother's son, and Audrey occasionally saw a flash of her mother in his one dimple.