stories he told of working his way across half of America on the railroads in order to get passage to England for the war. She also knew he had had to leave his hometown in the Midwest in an indecent hurry after losing his temper once before.
Cullingford was right about what she had thought. She hated being put in the position of not knowing whether she should deny it or not. He was Prentice’s uncle, and had probably known him since he was born! He had to care, even if largely for his sister’s sake. She would love Hannah’s children, whatever they did. It was not a choice; she could not help it. But Prentice had still been an insensitive man who put his own advancement before basic decency in the face of human pain.
“Yes, sir, I’m afraid I did.” The words were said from a depth of feeling, and she only thought afterward of how they might hurt him. “I’m sorry.”
“Please do not keep saying you are sorry, Miss Reavley. It is growing tedious. And don’t treat me like an aged aunt. Your honesty is one of your better qualities—along with your ability to mend a car.”
She was confused, uncertain how to react, and she felt ridiculous that it mattered so much to her.
Then he smiled suddenly, which lit his face and took the tiredness from it. Images raced in her mind. What was he like away from war? What sort of man was he when circumstance did not force him into this hideous extremity of planning and executing death, having this unnatural power and answerability for the hope, morality, and survival of thousands of other men? What did he do when he was on leave? Did he like gardening, playing golf, walking? Did he have a dog, and did he love it, touch it with unbearable gentleness, as her father had? What music did he listen to? What books did he read? Who were his friends?
“A penny for your thoughts, Miss Reavley?”
Again she felt herself coloring. Thank God he could not know! “I wasn’t thinking of Mr. Prentice,” she answered.
“No, neither was I,” he admitted. “If I had thought you were, I would probably have reduced it to a ha’penny.”
She smiled back, and told him a half truth. “I was wondering what we would be doing if we were not here.” She knew the answer for herself. She would be living the same rather purposeless life she had before the war. She would take part in all the usual village events, feeling unnatural and inadequate at it, watching time slip by having done nothing that made more than superficial difference. She could be wondering if she would settle for marrying someone she was merely fond of, someone who would be predictable, kind to her, who would behave with honor, whom she would probably even like, but never love with all the passion she could feel. Would he be someone she could live with, but not someone she could not bear to live without?
Cullingford fished in his pocket and put a penny on the dashboard.
“I would probably be driving,” she said aloud, not meeting his eyes. “But not really going anywhere, just around the village, trying to do what my mother would have done. Do I have to find a penny for you to tell me what you would be doing, if there were no war?”
“You have a penny,” he pointed out.
“Somewhere, but I don’t know where.”
“I paid you. That one is yours.”
“Oh! Well, it’s yours again, then. What would you be doing?” She wanted intensely to know.
“It’s nearly May. I would be walking down to the woods to see the bluebells,” he said without hesitation. “I would follow the path between the wild pear trees right into the middle of the flowers, where it all but disappears and you can hardly see where to put your feet without treading on them. It would be full of the sunlight and silence. I would stand there and let it sink into me until I was part of it.”
She was seized with an overwhelming hunger to do all the same things, to do them with him, not to say anything, simply to be there.
“It sounds like a lot more use than anything I would do,” she said quietly.
“If you would try to pick up the pieces of the things that your mother used to do for others, is that not useful?” he asked. There was a startling gentleness in his voice. “Isn’t that what we do, when we miss someone almost beyond bearing?”
She looked away from him; his eyes were too tender, too probing. “I hadn’t thought of it.” She choked on the words. “I suppose it is. I miss my father more. He would have gone walking, only he would have taken Henry, our dog.” She blinked rapidly. Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. “I miss dogs—I miss dogs I could have as friends. You can’t do that here, they’re all messengers, or something. And I can’t bear caring about them, because I know how many of them get killed.”
Ahead of them the traffic was moving again, and she eased the car into gear and started forward. “It’s bad enough to lose people. I can’t cope with it when it’s animals. Don’t tell me that’s stupid, and wrong. I know it is.”
“I don’t know how wrong it is to love anything, or not to love it,” he replied, looking away from her and toward the traffic ahead. “I haven’t learned how to prevent it.” His voice shook a little. “With me it’s the horses.”
A dozen answers streamed through her head, and none of them were what she wanted to say. There had been a depth of emotion in him that was far more powerful than the simple meaning of the words. She put all her attention to driving, forcing everything else out of her consciousness, because she could not cope with it.
It was after they had returned to Poperinge, late in the evening, and extremely tired, that he spoke to her again. They were eating at their usual estaminet, Le Nid du Rat, in English the Rat’s Nest, a small, comfortable place with half a dozen tables. They had stew, consisting mostly of vegetables, and good bread. Today she was acutely aware of how much better it was than anything Joseph would have. She had seen something in his face that troubled her, a kind of blind, painful purpose deeper than simply the duty to tell Cullingford of Prentice’s death. He had suggested that he had been killed by someone who knew him, a British soldier, not a German one. If that was true then it was not an act of war, it was murder. And surely, after the past, Joseph of all people would not accept that unless he was forced to. There must be evidence he could not escape.
Could it be Wil Sloan after all? How violent was his temper? Before driving Cullingford she had driven ambulances nearly all the winter, much of it with Wil. There were ways in which she knew him even better than she did her own brothers. She was familiar with the rhythm of his work, exactly how he liked his tea, how he curled over sideways when he slept, the patterns of his speech, how he hated the lice and would scratch himself raw, and then be ashamed of it. She knew precisely which jokes would make him laugh, and which would embarrass him.
If Wil had been so appalled at Charlie Gee’s injuries that the horror had overwhelmed him, maybe frightened him out of control, could he have gone after Prentice, out to no-man’s-land, and pushed his head under the water? Perhaps they had quarreled about it again, and the misery had come back, the utter blinding helplessness of it. It would not be Prentice that Wil was lashing out at, just Prentice’s blind, uncaring face; Prentice as a symbol of all that hurt too much to bear.
And if that were true, she would lie in her teeth to protect him. The law might require Wil to answer for it, justice did not, not to her.
She looked up and met Cullingford’s eyes. He was watching her anxiously, and there was the same shadow in his gaze. But he did not know Wil Sloan. Who was he worried for? Or was it just the fear that someone had hated Prentice enough to kill him?
“I imagine your brother does not speak lightly?” he said, ignoring his food. It was a question that demanded honesty, even though they both longed for comfort, anything except one more burden.
“No,” she answered. She could feel her stomach hurt. How was she going to answer him if he asked about Wil? Suddenly her loyalties were torn in a way for which she was totally unprepared. Cullingford was authority. He could not turn a blind eye. She could, and must. But she would hate lying to him. “But I don’t think he knows anything,” she went on.
His smile was sad, self-mocking, as if he understood her dilemma, and what she would do, and found a bitter humor in it. “Of course not,” he agreed. “Not yet. But he sees a cause of truth there. He’s a priest. He is used to thinking of morality in absolutes, and letting God take care of the broken pieces.”
Now she was really frightened. She wanted to ask him what he meant, as if she were a child and he the adult to explain it for her and make it right. But if she wanted him to see her as a woman, in moments away from duty as something like an equal, then she must also accept the loneliness and the decisions, and the blame.
