To Love a Traitor (12 page)

Chapter Fifteen

“Wake up, sleepyhead! It’s Christmas morning!”

George opened one bleary eye to find Matthew’s boyishly grinning face not six inches away. “Bah, humbug,” he muttered only half in jest, pulling the pillow over his head.

It was torn away from him without ceremony. “I hope I don’t have to turn up clanking in chains to convince you of the error of your ways. Come on, come on! It’s Christmas! Time to get up!”

As he punctuated his last sentence by pulling the blankets from George’s bed, George was left with little choice but to follow orders. Still protesting grumpily, he swung his feet to the floor and stood to stretch.

“I can see at least six inches of stomach when you do that,” Matthew said teasingly. “You’ve no idea how tempting it is to poke it.”

Rather embarrassed, George dropped his arms abruptly.

“There’s tea here, and warm water for shaving,” Matthew went on, apparently oblivious to George’s discomfort. “You slept through it all being brought in.”

Looking around, George saw that there was, indeed, a cup of tea waiting on his bedside table. “You shave first,” he offered not entirely altruistically, and settled back against his pillows to drink his tea. By the time Matthew had scraped off the morning’s beard, George felt he could have drawn a map of his friend’s back from memory—every dip, every curve, every mole or chicken-pox scar. Even Matthew’s ravaged right arm seemed familiar now, and oddly endearing.

Lost in reverie, George almost overturned his teacup when Matthew spun round with a now clean-shaven grin and announced that it was George’s turn at the mirror.

Once they had completed their morning ablutions and pulled on their clothes, they headed downstairs. The Connaughts, it seemed, were a family of early, cheerful risers. George and Matthew were the last to reach the breakfast table and were greeted with loud cries of “Merry Christmas!” and a pointed “Good afternoon!” (this last coming from Matthew’s younger brothers). Matthew took it all in exceedingly good spirit, pointing out that unlike certain lazy schoolboys, he and George were working men who had to be up at the crack of dawn all year and were therefore entitled to a lie-in. For his part, George took refuge in the teapot, thankfully still hot and almost half-full, although the weakness of the brew betrayed that it had been subject to a certain amount of topping-up.

“So, what have you got for us today, Father?” Matthew asked around his slice of toast and marmalade, the eggs and bacon having required more concentration than could allow for conversation. “A little fire and brimstone? Beasts coming out of the earth and sea, and the seven angels of the Lord blowing their trumpets?”

“I hardly think the book of Revelations would be appropriate for Christmas morning,” the Rector answered mildly. “You may call me an old stick-in-the-mud if you wish, and no doubt you shall, but I prefer to base my Christmas sermons on the Gospels.”

“Ah, but don’t you think it would shake us all up? Make us all think a little?”

“Really, Matthew,” his sister put in, “nobody wants to be made to
think
on Christmas Day!”

There was general laughter, but her words struck a chord with George, and he suddenly felt entirely unequal to attending church and particularly to taking the sacrament. “I’m awfully sorry,” he said, tamping down his sense of guilt at the lie to come with the reminder that he was, actually, sorry, “but I seem to have developed the most beastly headache. Would you mind terribly if I stayed at home?”

The Rector was instantly solicitous. “Not at all, my boy, not at all. Of course you must stay. Is there anything you require—Evelyn, my dear, what do we have for a headache?”

“I’d suggest lying down with a cold compress to the forehead,” she said briskly, “but perhaps all you really need, George, is a bit of a break from this awful crowd. You go and rest in your room, and I’ll get Cheevey to come and see to you.”

“Thank you—I’m dreadfully sorry to be such a nuisance.” George hoped his relief didn’t show as he stood to return to his room.

There was a chorus of “Not at all!” and “Don’t be silly!” from his hosts, but Matthew merely stood to accompany George upstairs.

“Are you really all right, George?” Matthew asked in anxious tones once they were out of earshot of the rest of the family. “I mean, aside from your head? I keep forgetting you’re not used to noise and people.”

George was grateful for the chance to be at least a little more honest with his friend. “Well, to tell the truth, it is a bit overwhelming—but I shall be fine after a bit of a lie down. You just go to church, and don’t worry about me. I’ll be perfectly all right by the time you come back.”

“Good old George!” Matthew said, flinging his arm around George’s shoulders. “Now, I’ll get the girl to bring you some coffee—honestly, it’s the best thing for a headache.”

He left George at the door of their room, and George trudged in alone, his shoulders feeling curiously empty and cold now they were bereft of his friend’s arm. Kicking off his shoes, he lay down on top of the bedclothes. Now that he was alone and all was quiet, he realised he did have rather a headache, which he supposed was only just recompense for his prevarication.

Closing his eyes, George found himself drifting off into that curious half-sleeping, half-waking state that often comes from trying to sleep at an unaccustomed time. Quite convinced that he would sink no deeper into sleep, he was startled to awaken with a jump as Matthew burst into the room.

“George! How are you feeling now? Oh Lord, I woke you up, didn’t I? I’m awfully sorry. Shall I go away again?”

“No—no.” George struggled to collect his wits. “I think I must have been more tired than I realised, that’s all. I feel fine now.” He sat up to prove his point and realised he did indeed feel an awful lot better.

“It’s all that studying you’ve been doing, isn’t it? You should take it a little easier, you know,” Matthew scolded him.

George agreed that he would, while privately thinking it was more likely to have been caused by his lack of sleep the previous night. “You know, I could do with that cup of coffee now. The girl must have decided not to disturb me.”

“Come on downstairs, then, and I’ll join you in a cup.” Matthew smiled. “Father was in fine form this morning; I shall have to re-enact for you the high points of his sermon. There was a rather amusing story about a Christmas goose that didn’t want to be eaten, so ran away—but ended up taking refuge in a fox’s den, with predictable results.”

“And was there a religious element to this story?” George asked as they descended.

“Oh yes!” Matthew frowned. “At least, I’m certain there must have been. Perhaps Agnes will recall it.” He raised his voice. “Aggie…?”

Later, sitting around the large Christmas tree with a room full of Connaughts, all eager to delight one another with their no doubt carefully chosen gifts, George felt something of an outsider. He had, of course, brought a gift for his hostess, which he’d presented to her upon his arrival—a bottle of a rather decent Chablis he couldn’t, in all honesty, really afford these days. He’d also bought and wrapped something for Matthew, simply because he couldn’t bear not to. But he had no real expectation of receiving anything in return.

He was rather surprised, therefore, to find himself handed a prettily wrapped parcel. “Go on, open it,” Matthew urged, leaving George in little doubt as to whom it was from. “It’s from Agnes,” Matthew then added, throwing George’s assumptions into disarray.

The gift proved to be a soft, hand-knitted scarf. “Matthew wrote me that you’d sacrificed your scarf in an act of heroism,” Agnes explained with a smile.

For an awful moment, George thought she was mocking him. Then he realised she must be talking about his rescue of Marmaduke. “Oh! Well, it was hardly heroic, you know. But my scarf has been looking rather sorry for itself since our encounter with the tree.”

“And now this one,” Matthew insisted, sitting so far forward in his chair he was in very real danger of falling off. George began to worry lest the whole family be about to present him with gifts he had no way of returning, but Matthew’s “It’s from me”, allayed his fears a little. Surely Matthew would have left his own gift until last? Tearing open the rather untidy and ill-tied brown paper, George blinked as he found a handsome Waterman pen. “I know this can’t be the same as the one that was your brother’s,” Matthew said, “but I hope it’ll go some way to making up the loss. It’s inscribed, look—‘To GJ from MC’—you see?”

George was absurdly touched. “I don’t know what to say. Thank you.” Feeling his face must surely be glowing as brightly as the coals in the grate, George produced a small package of his own, which he handed to Matthew. “I’m afraid this really isn’t very much by comparison,” he apologised.

Undeterred, Matthew eagerly untied the parcel, which George had made certain to fasten with a bow rather than a knot, and unwrapped the paper. His eyebrows rose as he saw the contents. “
The Adventure of the Eleven Cuff Buttons
?”

“It’s a sort of parody of Sherlock Holmes,” George said, adding apologetically, “It was written by an American.”

Matthew flicked through a couple of pages and laughed. “‘Hemlock Holmes had pulled back his left cuff, baring his tattooed but muscular wrist, just ready to take his fifth shot in the arm since breakfast’,” he read aloud, grinning. “I think I’m going to like this.” He then, to George’s discomfort, turned to the flyleaf. “‘To Matthew, Christmas 1920, with best wishes, George’. Thank you!” He looked so entirely delighted with the small gift that George felt himself becoming quite red.

Had they been alone, George would have made some comment about hoping it would be less likely than the original to induce nightmares, but that seemed entirely too intimate for the company that was assembled, so he merely muttered, “I hope you enjoy it,” and commenced a close examination of the engraving on his pen.

The rest of Christmas Day proceeded with more cosy jollity, frequently punctuated by the ring of the doorbell to herald yet another gift for the rector from his fond parishioners who had then, of course, to be invited in for a drink. By suppertime, George was feeling a little exhausted by all the good cheer, and he and Matthew retired early to their room.

Matthew flung himself on his bed with an exaggerated sigh. “Lord! I never thought I’d miss the peace and quiet of Mrs. Mac’s. I’m quite certain my family wasn’t so loud this time last year.”

“I hope it wasn’t because they were suffering with that wretched flu.”

“No, thank God, we were spared that. Even though Father would insist upon visiting those in the parish who weren’t so lucky. That was a beastly time, especially coming so soon after the war. I remember there was a nasty little man who used to go down to Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park and spout a lot of rot about it being God’s vengeance upon us for giving women the vote, would you believe it? But clearly the Almighty has a sense of humour, as the last I heard, the wretch had come down with the flu himself and quite lost his voice.”

George chuckled. “I’d say he was lucky he didn’t find himself facing an angry crowd of suffragettes hurling insults or worse.”

“Oh, he did, he did. I should never have bothered going down there to listen to him if it weren’t for the hope of seeing a rotten egg going his way.” Matthew sent George a mischievous look. “Of course, I should never have dreamed of slinging something myself. Mother would have been horrified if, say, one day I’d happened to find myself with a bag of tomatoes that were really way past their best, and if one or two of them might have accidentally found themselves flying through the air to hit him right on the nose…”

George laughed, but then sobered. “You know, when I think about what the suffragettes were prepared to endure for their cause, I’m almost surprised women weren’t allowed to fight in the war.”

“Lord, yes—that would have put the fear of God into the Hun, seeing a skirted battalion marching toward them!”

George’s mood was still sombre. “Do you know what they used to do to the suffragettes before the war, when they went on hunger strike? Force-feeding them was so unpopular, the authorities would wait until the poor women became weak and then release them. And when they recovered, they were dragged back to serve out their sentence again. They called it the cat-and-mouse treatment.”

Matthew nodded, all merriment vanished. “Yes, I read about that in the papers. I should hate to think of it happening to anyone I cared about.”

George was silent a moment, his chest tight. “They did something similar with us, you know. The C.O.s, I mean. We’d refuse to serve, so they’d court-martial us and send us to prison, and when we’d served our sentence, they’d send us back to the army and the whole thing would begin again. It was as if we were being played with, as a cat plays with a mouse—letting it go and then dragging it back again for more torment.” George grimaced. “Of course, they’d have a good go at us each time before sending us back to quod.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, you know. They’d harangue us, shout at us, force us to run around the parade grounds until we dropped. That sort of thing. Some of the men were badly beaten. I was lucky. Only got a week of crucifixion.” He suppressed a shudder at the memory of being roped to a barbed-wire fence, standing out there in the wind and weather for hours at a time, unable even to turn his head without causing the barbs to pierce his skin. The cold, bad as it was to a frame weakened by a prison diet, hadn’t been the worst thing. No, that had been the humiliation—the jeers of the soldiers and the sneering of the N.C.O.s. Being called
conchie
and
shirker
and
coward
.

“They gave you Field Punishment Number One?” Matthew sat up straight on his bed. “I never thought such things happened to civilians.”

“Ah, but we weren’t civilians, were we? Not in their eyes.
All unmarried men between the ages of nineteen and forty-one deemed to have enlisted
, remember? So it was martial law for us, and we were to be grateful they hadn’t just lined us all up against a wall and shot us.” George couldn’t seem to stop the upswell of emotion, as if it had been dammed up in him these last few years and had now burst its banks. Somehow it was all the worse for Matthew’s sympathy.