“I came from Dunkirk last night,” Judith said. “I got to Dover this morning, and took the train up to London. I’d love a cup of tea, thank you.”
“But—you must have eaten, surely?” It was a refuge in the practical, something uncomplicated to do.
“Oh yes, I ate at the hotel, thank you, but tea would be lovely,” Judith accepted. She must give her the chance to ask questions, or simply to remember her son with someone who had known him.
Mrs. Prentice led the way into the drawing room. It had yellow-flowered wallpaper and windows looking out onto a lawn, and the last tulips in bloom beyond. The scent of lilac drifted in on the breeze. It caught Judith with a sudden ache of absurdity. It was all so normal, so terribly English, clipped lawns, the perfume of flowers, tea in the afternoon, as if life were the same as it always had been. And inside the void of loss was irreparable.
Mrs. Prentice rang for the maid, and requested tea. Twenty minutes later it came, with cucumber and egg and cress sandwiches and slices of Madeira cake.
“My daughter Belinda will be terribly sorry to have missed you,” Mrs. Prentice said, pouring the tea and passing the cup across. “She and Eldon were closer than they sometimes appeared to be. She has found his . . . his death, very hard.” It was difficult for her to say the words. Judith could see that she was deliberately forcing herself to, as if she had not been able until now.
“I have brothers,” Judith tried to help her. “We disagree sometimes, but it’s only on the surface.”
“Yes, of course it is,” Mrs. Prentice responded instantly. “I know what you mean. So often we just don’t get around to saying what matters most. We suppose that people know, and perhaps they don’t.”
Judith wondered if she was thinking of Prentice and his sister, or of herself and Cullingford. Certainly Cullingford did not know. He wanted to reach out to his sister, and was aware with a sense of loss that she would not welcome it. But it was too delicate to touch now.
“Mr. Prentice was very brave,” she said aloud. “I think we all knew that of him.”
Mrs. Prentice smiled, blinking hard. “It’s ridiculous now, I suppose, but we never thought being a war correspondent was a dangerous job. I imagined him talking to injured men, perhaps seeing ambulances, doctors, hearing from others what the actual battle was like. I thought Owen would look after him!” Without any warning the anger was there, the lashing out against unmanageable pain.
“He couldn’t do that!” Judith retorted instantly, remembering passionately, against her will, Cullingford’s anger at Prentice, and Prentice forcing him to write a pass for him to go wherever he wanted. “All our correspondents are ordered not to go to the forward lines, but Mr. Prentice wanted to see what it was like for himself, and he disobeyed.” She heard her own anger harsh in her voice and tried to curb it. She was not the one bereaved. “He . . . he wanted to feel it, not just be told.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Prentice’s anger was mastered again. “It’s just that I know Owen didn’t really approve of him. They used to be close, when Eldon was younger, but then they grew apart. Eldon didn’t have much respect for the army command, and he wasn’t always tactful how he said so.” She was defending a wound too raw to touch. “But he was very clever, you know? He had a brilliant mind. He would have been a great writer.” Her eyes were challenging, daring Judith to deny it, as if through her she were reaching Cullingford, too, forcing him to acknowledge her son, to give him now what he had withheld before, as if it could matter.
“That’s one of the worst things about war,” Judith replied, her throat tight with pity, aching inside herself. “It is so often the best who are killed. I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Prentice blinked away tears. Outside there was a blackbird singing as the light softened toward evening. “You are very kind to give up part of your precious leave to come here.” Her voice was husky, fighting for control. Now she needed to talk of other things, hold the agony at bay until she could find the strength again.
“I know how it hurts when someone is gone,” Judith said gently. “And no one will talk to you about them. People are afraid of hurting you, and embarrassed in case you break down.”
Mrs. Prentice laughed very slightly. “You are right. Would you . . . would you stay to dinner, and meet Belinda? I know it is an imposition, but it would mean a great deal to her, and to me.”
“Of course. Thank you. I was only going back to the hotel and I would probably have eaten alone.”
“Don’t you know anyone in London?”
“My brother Matthew, but he didn’t know I was coming. I expect I’ll see him tomorrow.”
“You must be relieved he is not in the army.”
“He is, sort of, but stationed in London.”
“You said you had two brothers, or did I misunderstand you?”
“I have. Joseph is at the Front, not far from where I am. He’s a chaplain.”
“I thought chaplains stayed well to the rear, with the injured, advising people, comforting them and conducting services. Eldon said church attendance was compulsory.”
“Yes, it is. But Joseph spends most of his time in the trenches.”
“Eldon would have admired that.” She said it with wistful pleasure.
Judith thought of how Joseph had despised Prentice, and was compelled by honor, not desire, to find out who had killed him. There were too many people who had wanted to, and in spite of himself he sympathized with them, but she must not say that here. She must walk a subtle, razor line between truth and evasion that concealed it.
She glanced around the room with its quiet memories, things of good quality, a little shabby with use. There were several photographs, images of a time only a year or two ago, and yet seeming now to be another age. Several were of Prentice, one of an older man. There was one of Cullingford, holding a horse by the head, its long face close to his. He looked happy. To judge by the unlined smoothness of his features it must have been nine or ten years ago.
Judith looked away quickly. Even in that small black-and-white image there was an intensity of feeling that shook her. This was part of his life she could not touch, except in imagination. He belonged to someone else—with whom he could share nothing of the torment of emotion that tore them apart, blistered with pain, removed them from the ordinary and changed them forever.
A group picture caught her eye: Cullingford smiling with a woman beside him. She had a gentle face and curling hair, a little darker than his, perhaps auburn from the soft freckles on her face, but it was impossible to tell. Prentice was beside them, and to his right a tall girl with startling, direct eyes that looked to be unusually light colored. Prentice was holding an oar in his left hand, upright like a spear, and he was wearing a straw boater hat.
Judith moved her gaze quickly, not wanting to see. It was absurd, but the sight of Cullingford with someone who was almost certainly his wife, reminded her of the reality of life outside the war, life the way it ought to be, and that she had no part in it with him. She belonged to battle, extreme hardship, not the way they longed for life to be again.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck seven. Beyond the windows a slight breeze stirred the leaves of a silver birch tree. At home in St. Giles there would have been starlings in the sky, swirling up behind the elms and swinging wide out over the fields. But that was in the past. It belonged in dreams, preserved where it was safe and the present could not touch it.
Twenty minutes later Prentice’s younger sister, Belinda, came home from the volunteer work she had been doing making up parcels to send to soldiers at the Front. She resembled Prentice also, but she was darker, her face had the same intelligence and eagerness, but it was softened by a kind of inner calm he had not possessed.
When Judith was introduced her weariness vanished. “You’re actually at the Front?” she said with fierce admiration, her eyes alight. “There with our men?”
Judith felt a mixture of pride and embarrassment. “I’m not actually in the trenches, although I know pretty much what they’re like. We don’t go further forward than the Casualty Clearing Stations where they bring the wounded back for us to collect.”
Belinda’s shoulders were tight, her face tense with her imagination. She had not yet sat down. “Is it very dreadful? I used to think of it as heroic, but Eldon said it isn’t, it’s filthy and degrading, and lots of the men are blown to bits without ever having a chance. He said that if we here at home had any idea what it was like, no one would join up to go there, because it’s for nothing. It would be quicker to catch a bus to the local abattoir along with the cattle.” She was searching Judith’s face, hungry for an answer. It was easy to imagine the quarrels they had had over it, her dreams, his anger. Now she was left with nothing but confusion, and no one to help her resolve the truths she needed to know for herself, not only to help her grief, but to continue now.
There might be someone else she loved out there in the trenches; if there was not now, there would be.
