mother and sister, because he was killed, and took a letter to them from the general. Mrs. Prentice is his sister. Matthew, Prentice was saying that recruitment of men is dishonest, and if they had any idea of what it was really like on the front line, no one would go. Is that true? Are we losing heart at home?”
He heard the panic in her voice, but he did not answer with platitudes. “No. In some places there’s even a renewed resolve, after the gas attack at Ypres. But I’m not sure if it’ll last. Casualties are heavy, and people are beginning to realize that it isn’t going to be over anything like as soon as they used to believe. Kitchener’s right, we’re in for a very long haul.”
“Will we make it?”
He smiled, but he did not answer her.
“It’s about morale, isn’t it? If we think we’ll lose, then we will.”
“Pretty much,” he agreed.
She looked away from him and concentrated on her food for a while. She could imagine the recruiting station if they heard the sort of things Prentice had apparently told Belinda.
“That isn’t all,” she said at last, her voice subdued, catching in her throat. “Prentice isn’t just dead—someone murdered him.” She ignored his response. “It wasn’t obvious. He went over the top—nobody knows what made him do such a stupid thing, or what he went for, except bravado, but Joseph was the one who found his body in no- man’s-land, and brought him back.”
Matthew was appalled. His knife slipped out of his fingers onto his plate with a clatter. “What the hell was Joseph doing out there? He’s a chaplain, for God’s sake!”
“I know.” Now at least she was on sure ground, filled with one moral certainty, and a hot, sweet pride. “But he takes that as part of his job—searching for people and bringing them back. Sometimes they’re alive, but it matters to recover even dead bodies.” She saw the reflection in his face of her own emotions. “But Prentice hadn’t been shot, he’d been drowned in one of the craters still full of water. And Joseph worked out that there were no Germans anywhere near them at the time. It had to have been one of our own men. He was pretty rotten to a few people. . . .”
“Enough to kill over?” He was incredulous.
She looked away. “Lots of people are dying, every day. Unless you really care about someone personally, you have to get used to it, or you’d go mad. This is . . . different.”
He reached out his hand as if to touch her, then changed his mind. It was not something he did naturally; this was born of a sudden, urgent understanding. “Are you afraid it could be the general?” he said very gently.
Lies would not do. “I don’t know,” she admitted, looking up at him. “And even if he didn’t, I’m not sure he wouldn’t be blamed for it. Not everyone likes generals.”
He laughed outright: a short, bitter bark of sound. He did not need words to encompass the confusion of anger and fear, torn loyalties felt by the vast mass of people who knew only what they read, and the pain of losses, the day-and-night struggle between pride and terror for those they loved trapped and fighting in a horror they could only imagine. It was natural to blame someone.
He refilled his glass again, and she felt another flicker of worry brush her, as if someone had opened an outside door onto the cold again. “Matthew, have you learned anything more about the Peacemaker?” she asked, taking the bottle from him and adding a little to her own glass, even though she had barely touched it. “I wish we could be more help to you. We’re doing nothing. . . .”
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said quickly, his face softening. “It’s enough that you do your own job.”
She searched his face, his eyes. “You know something, don’t you,” she pressed. The darkness, the tension in him frightened her. “Do you know who it is, Matthew?”
“No. I think it could be Ivor Chetwin, but I need a lot more proof.”
“Ivor Chetwin? But . . . but doesn’t he work in Intelligence?” She was horrified, the betrayal could reach anywhere. “Matthew, please—”
“I am careful,” he said quickly. “And I don’t know that it is him. It could be lots of people. I’ve been working on how he contacted Sebastian to tell him what to do. It isn’t the sort of thing you say in a letter, or explain over the telephone. It had to have been a fairly lengthy and persuasive conversation, in person somewhere. And it has to have been that afternoon. There wasn’t any other time.”
“Well, where did Sebastian go?” she reasoned. “Can’t we find out?”
“I’m trying to.”
“Be careful! We don’t know who the Peacemaker is, but he knows us! Don’t forget that! He’ll be expecting you to come after him.” She gulped, suddenly aware of how frightened she was. “Matthew . . .”
“I’m being careful,” he repeated. “Don’t gulp like that, you’ll give yourself indigestion. If I’m paying for you to eat roast beef instead of corned beef and army biscuits, I’d rather you didn’t ruin it by making yourself ill!”
She forced herself to smile, impatient with him, frustrated, aching to protect him and thoroughly afraid. “I’m going home tomorrow. I’d like to see Hannah for a day or so.”
“Good idea. Rest for a while, at least. Now eat that before it’s cold. Judith . . .”
“What?”
“Don’t tell Hannah anything about all this—or the journalist getting killed. She doesn’t need to know. She has enough to do looking after three children, and the losses in the village. Trying to help everyone keep up hope, and not be sick every time the postman arrives, dreading the telegram. They feel so helpless. That’s a kind of suffering in itself.”
“I know. I won’t tell her anything I don’t have to,” she promised. “I’ll be quite happy not to talk about it, believe me.”
But it was not as easy as she had expected. She took the train to Cambridge, and then a taxi to St. Giles. The village still looked just as it always had, until she noticed the blinds half drawn in the Nunns’ house, and another house a few doors down. There were no errand boys, no children playing by the pond. An old man walked slowly on the grass, a black band around his arm. She saw Bessie Gee carrying a basket of shopping, and looked away because she could not face her. It was cowardly and she knew it, but she was not prepared to see what she must be feeling, not yet, anyway.
The taxi stopped at her own door. She paid the driver and got out. She had to ring the bell and wait until Hannah came.
“Just for a couple of days,” Judith said with a smile. It was absurd, but she was overcome with emotion to be on the familiar step. It looked smaller, shabbier than she remembered, and impossibly precious. It was peopled with memories of sounds and smells of the past so strong they were the fabric of all life that had formed her, the woven threads of who she was. This is where she had loved, and grieved, where she had been safest, and in most danger.
“Of course!” Hannah said, her face lighting with pleasure so the anxieties of the moment slipped away. “It’s wonderful to see you! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? I haven’t got any decent food in!”
Judith hugged her and they clung together fiercely for minutes. “I don’t care!” she said, laughing at the triviality of it. “Anything’s got to be better than army rations!”
“Are they awful?” Hannah said with sudden concern.
Judith remembered her promise to Matthew. “No, not bad,” she claimed quickly. “I don’t look starved, do I?”
Hannah’s children came home from school, pleased to see her and a little shy, now that she was certainly part of the war. The conflict was not real to them, and yet it was the backdrop and the measuring stick of everything that happened.
“Do you think it’ll go on long enough for me to join the navy, Aunt Judith?” Tom asked with a shadow of concern in his soft face. He was thirteen, his voice breaking, but no suggestion of down on his cheek yet. He was frightened in case he missed his chance of all that he thought of that was heroic, and the test and goal of manhood.
For a moment Judith could see nothing but the men she knew who had been blown to pieces, men like Charlie Gee—who had been boys like Tom only a few short years ago.
“I don’t know,” she answered, refusing to look at Hannah. “I don’t think anybody knows at the moment. We just do our best. Take it a day at a time. Your job’s here right now. A good soldier or sailor does the job he’s given. Doesn’t argue with his commander to pick and choose.”
