Surely the moonlight would catch the white line of the chalk cliffs of Dover soon?
What if Mrs. Prentice was like the general? She could picture his face very clearly, every expression, as if she had known him for years, whereas actually it was only a couple of months. Would Mrs. Prentice have the same gravity, and the sudden smile, and eyes that looked into your thoughts, and so seldom betrayed their own, but when they did it was as overwhelming as touch?
She heard the soldiers laughing, and then footsteps as one of them came closer. She turned, happy to be distracted.
“You a nurse, miss?” he asked.
“No, I’m an ambulance driver.” Driving the general was not really her job, and they did not need to know about it. Anyway, she would rather not hear their opinion of him, even in their tone of voice on this dark, windy deck where faces were only pale blurs against the summer night.
There was a moment’s appreciative silence, then they praised her, teased her and roared with laughter, exuberant with the joy of going home, to see family again, wondering what would have changed, saying anything to break the tension.
The boat landed around dawn and she went straight to the railway station for the London train. It was crowded, noisy, slow, like all troop trains, but by nine o’clock she was in London, broad sunshine already warming the pavements.
It was busier and shabbier than she had remembered. There were more cars and fewer horses. She refused to think of the dead horses around Ypres, limbs shattered, carcasses sometimes split wide open, but in spite of her will to blank it out, she remembered Cullingford’s eyes when he saw them. In his cavalry days his life had depended on a good horse, and the trust never died.
She bought a newspaper and looked at it quickly, mostly just the headlines, and a few of the lead articles. The war news was first, of course. Most of it concerned the Western Front or the Dardanelles, but there was a little about East Africa.
The facts were there, at least some of them, but it was the words that fascinated her, the talk of courage, honor, and sacrifice, soldiers fighting for the right. And of course implicit all through was the conviction of ultimate victory. Casualties were given—they had to be—but it was nothing like the reality she knew. No one wrote of terror and dirt and pain. It was as if they had gone smiling into the night, clean and dignified.
It was probably necessary. Too much truth and one would scream oneself into paralysis and be no use to anyone. The only way to go on was to think whatever you had to, believe whatever you could, and take it five minutes at a time, then the next, and the next, help what you could reach.
She did not go immediately to the Prentice house. First she needed to find a hotel and take a bath, a luxury she had not enjoyed for a long time. She filled the tub as high as she dared, then climbed in and sank up to her chin in the steaming water. She let her mind become totally empty, thinking of nothing at all but the smooth, rippling heat over her skin. She put in soap bubbles and let them seep through her fingers and fall in dollops on her body, stretching her legs up, then down again. It was a big tub, an expensive bathroom, and she drowned her senses in every exquisite moment of it.
When the water was cooling she stepped out, wrapped herself in the big towel, and lay on the bed. She intended to dry off, then put on clean underwear and go to sleep. However, she drifted into a delicious haze, and woke with a start to find two hours had elapsed, and it was midafternoon. She was ravenously hungry.
She had already unpacked her dress and hung it up for the steam to get rid of some of the creases. She had bought it last leave. Like everything else in fashion, it was somber blues—no one wore bright colors—but it was very well cut, and had the full skirt to midcalf, then the slender skirt beneath to the ankle. The jacket was short, nipped to the waist, high at the neck, and had buttons all the way down the front. She looked at herself in the glass, and thought it was really very flattering.
Consequently, it was nearly five o’clock when the taxi dropped her in Hampstead and she walked up the path to the quiet house with the blinds drawn in the now familiar sign of mourning. She felt self-conscious, intrusive, guilty for being here at all when she had not liked Prentice. If she had not had General Cullingford’s letter in her hand, which she had promised him she would deliver, she would have turned and gone back to the hotel. The only thing harder would be to tell him that she had failed. He might not blame her, he might even understand, but it would destroy a trust between them that she would not willingly live without.
She knocked on the door.
After several minutes it was opened by a girl of about sixteen in a long, black dress and a plain apron and cap. Her face was pale and her eyes pink-rimmed. “Yes, miss?” she said without interest.
“I am sorry to intrude,” Judith said, “but I have a letter for Mrs. Prentice. My name is Judith Reavley, and I am General Cullingford’s driver in Belgium. Would you ask Mrs. Prentice if I may see her, please?”
The girl hesitated. The message obviously confused her.
“Please?” Judith repeated. “I promised the general that I would deliver it in person.”
“Yes, miss. If you come in, I’ll go an’ ask ’er.” She pulled the door wide and led Judith across the hall into a sparse morning room. The mirrors were turned to the wall, the blinds drawn down even though it was still daylight, and there was black crepe on the mantelshelf. She left Judith there and went to find Mrs. Prentice.
Judith looked around, trying to imagine Eldon Prentice here. But this was not a room for the family; it was the formal place guests waited, or people came to write letters, or perhaps receive business callers. There was nothing personal.
She wondered what Cullingford’s home was like. Was it comfortable, full of the physical things that spoke of his life: books, paintings, perhaps ornaments, pieces that had memories? Were there gardening gloves, or fishing rods, boots, binoculars for watching birds, a stick for long walks, hats for different occasions? Had he a dog, like Henry, that her father had loved so much?
The door opened and Mrs. Prentice stood in the entrance. Judith knew it was she because there was a likeness to Cullingford. It was not in her features; hers were less defined by experience, gentler and without the underlying fervor. It was the way her hair grew off her brow that was the same, a certain stillness about her, and something in her eyes. Now she was tired and the pain in her was desperately clear to see.
“Miss Reavley?” she said hesitantly. The intonation in her voice was like Cullingford’s also.
“Thank you for seeing me, Mrs. Prentice,” Judith answered, smiling very slightly. She was so used to death it no longer embarrassed her and the words came easily. “I know this is not a time you will wish for visitors, but I have a letter from General Cullingford. He also felt you might like to speak with me, because I knew Mr. Prentice a little. Sometimes it helps, at others it doesn’t. I lost both my parents in July last year, and I don’t always know whether I want to talk about them or not. At times I get angry when people are trying to be tactful, and skirt around it all the time as if they never existed.”
“I’m so sorry,” Mrs. Prentice said quietly. “That sounds awful. Both your father and your mother?” Her eyes were full of sympathy, and for an instant her own loss was forgotten.
“It was a road accident.” There was no need to tell her it was murder, like her son’s. She did not need to know that either. Judith smiled deliberately. “I’m really an ambulance driver, a lot of the time well behind the lines, but when General Cullingford’s driver was injured I happened to be there, and he needed to go urgently to meet with the French, and I’m quite good at languages.”
“You must be very brave. How is Owen?” The shadow was there in her eyes again, her own pain back, overwhelming her.
Judith knew she should answer with a good deal of the truth; it would make the other lies easier to believe. “He’s quite well, I think,” she said frankly. “But I can’t imagine that he would complain about anything unless it were very serious.” She saw the fleeting acknowledgment in Mrs. Prentice’s face. “Of course he carries a terrible responsibility. He knows far more of what is really happening than an ordinary soldier would, and has some very hard decisions to make, and then the consequences to live with.” That was more than she had intended to say, but a reserve in the other woman had prompted her to defend him. Had his own family any idea at all of the burden he carried? Did he, like a lot of men, write calm, trivial letters home, telling them what they wanted to hear, protecting them from reality? He had implied as much about his wife, was it true of his sister as well? Was there no one with whom he could trust his inner self, the true, unguarded part?
“I imagine it is very hard,” Mrs. Prentice replied, but there was no thought in her voice. She was being polite. “Have you come very far? Would you like a cup of tea?”
