“Good morning, sir!” Wil said cheerfully. He affected surprise and dawning concern. “Your driver not well?”
Cullingford looked at him coldly.
Wil gave the very slightest shrug. “You need someone?”
“How observant of you,” Cullingford answered. “I don’t believe you speak French.”
“No, sir, I don’t. But I’ve still got Miss Reavley with me, if you like? She knows the ropes, sir.”
“Indeed.” Cullingford took a deep breath. “Then you’d better send her. I have to be in Ploegsteert by eight o’ clock.”
“Yes, sir!” Wil saluted, forgetting the pastry, and turned on his heel to march over to Judith.
CHAPTER
NINE
It was still imperative to Joseph that he learn who had killed Eldon Prentice, even though no one seemed willing to help with anything but the barest information that was so obvious as to be useless. Edwin Corliss remained in military prison awaiting the final verdict on his appeal. Any application of the death sentence was referred all the way up to General Haig himself, regardless of the offense or the circumstances, but the feeling against Prentice for having pushed the issue where Sergeant Watkins would have let it go, prevented anyone now from caring greatly how Prentice himself had died.
There was also his behavior over Charlie Gee’s injuries, although that was less widely known. There was a searing pity for Charlie. Every man understood the horror of such mutilation, and their rage at Prentice’s insensitivity was a release from the fear that it could happen to them. But it was rage, nevertheless, and the medical and VAD staff also were disinclined to give any information to Joseph that might help him discover a truth they were perfectly happy to leave alone.
Still, Prentice had been murdered by one of the British soldiers or ambulance drivers of this division, and he was becoming increasingly afraid that it could have been Wil Sloan. He could not forget Wil’s uncontrolled, almost hysterical violence toward Prentice in the Casualty Clearing Station where he had brought Charlie Gee in, and Prentice had been so callous. If Joseph had not stopped him, he would have beaten Prentice senseless, perhaps even killed him there and then.
Could Prentice have been idiotic enough to have returned to the subject later, in Wil’s presence, and Wil had somehow followed him, or even taken him, out into no-man’s-land on the raid, perhaps on the pretext of looking for wounded? No one else seemed to have any explanation as to how Prentice had got there, or why.
The other alternative he could not escape was that it was one of Sam’s men who was a friend of Corliss.
“Leave it alone, Joe,” Sam said gravely. They were sitting in Joseph’s dugout, sharing stale bread from rations, and a tin of excellent pate that Matthew had sent in a parcel from Fortnum and Mason’s in London, along with various other delicacies. For dessert they would have some of the chocolate biscuits Sam’s brother sent whenever he could manage to.
“I can’t leave it,” Joseph said, swallowing the last mouthful. “He was murdered.”
Sam smiled lopsidedly. “Aren’t we all!” There was a bitter edge to his voice, the betrayal of a passion he rarely allowed to show through.
“Philosophically, perhaps,” Joseph looked directly at Sam, watching his dark eyes with their sharp intelligence. “But for the rest of us it will be cold, disease, accident, or the Germans, all of which are to be expected in war.”
“You left out drowning,” Sam reminded him. “That’s to be expected, too.”
“Not by having your head held under it.” Joseph heard his own voice crack. He despised Prentice, but it was a horrible thing to think of any man choking in that filthy water with the stench of corpses and rats and the lingering remains of the chlorine gas. He imagined the pressure on the back of his neck forcing him down until his lungs burst and darkness reached up and engulfed him.
Sam winced, as if it filled his mind as well. His face was tight, and the skin pale around his lips. “Don’t think about it, Joe,” he said quietly. “Whatever happened, whoever’s fault it was, they’ll probably be dead, too, before long. Leave it alone. Look after the living.”
“It’s the living I am looking after,” Joe replied. “The dead don’t need justice. They’ll get it anyway, if there’s a God. And if there isn’t, it hardly matters. It’s we who are left who need to keep the rules—for ourselves. At times it’s all we have.”
“You don’t know the rules, Joe,” Sam said quietly. “Not all of them.”
“I know murder is wrong.”
“Murder!” Sam said abruptly, jerking his head up, his eyes wide. “Jesus, Joe! I’ve seen men killed by snipers, shrapnel, mortars, explosives, bayonets, machine guns, and poison gas—do you want me to go on? I’ve skewered young Germans I’ve never even seen before, just because they were in front of me. And I’ve heard our own boys crying in their sleep because of the blood and grief and the guilt. I’ve seen them praying on their knees, because they know what they’ve done to other human beings, that could be ourselves in the mirror, except they’re German. Dozens of them—every day! What rules are there to protect them, or give them back their innocence, or their sanity?”
He stared at Joseph intently, his eyes unblinking, a deep sadness in them for a moment allowing his own vulnerability to show. “Granted it wasn’t a good thing to do, but hunting out whoever it was won’t make it any better now. Morale matters, and that’s your job. We have to survive. The men here need your help, not your judgment. We need to believe in each other, and that we can win.”
Joseph hesitated.
“Leave it, Joe,” Sam said again. “Belief can make the difference between winning, and not.”
“I know.” He stared at the ground. “We all need to have something to believe, or we can’t forget it all. I wish I were surer of what I believe. There aren’t many absolutes, but I’m supposed to know what they are.”
“Friendship,” Sam answered. “The best of yourself that you can give, laughter, keeping going when it’s hard, the ability to forget when you need to. Have another chocolate biscuit?” He held out the packet with the last one left.
Joseph hesitated, then took it. He knew it was meant.
The corporal with the mail arrived, and Joseph went as eagerly as anyone else to see if there was anything for him from home. There were three letters, one from Hannah with news of the village. He could feel her tension through the careful words, even though he knew she was trying to hide it.
The second was from Matthew, telling of having seen Judith, and having visited Shanley Corcoran, and what a pleasure it had been.
The only other letter was from Isobel Hughes. He was surprised she should write again but he opened it with pleasure.
It was a simple letter, quite frank and comfortable, telling him about the farm, how they were having to make do with young women on the land where they had had men before they joined up and went away. She mentioned some of their exploits, and disasters. She had a robust, self-deprecating turn of humor and he found himself laughing, the last thing he had expected to do.
She described the spring fair, the church fete, life as it had always been, but with sad and funny changes, little glimpses of personal courage, unexpectedly generous help.
He read it through twice, and then wrote back to her. Afterward, when it was sealed and posted, gone beyond his recalling, he thought he had told her too much. He had written of his difficulty in trying to convince men that there was a divine order above and beyond the chaos they could see, a reason for all the senseless devastation. He felt a hypocrite saying it when he could give no reason for believing it himself. He should not have said that to her. She had made him laugh for a moment, feel clean and sane in the joy of little things, and he had rewarded her by talking of vast problems of the soul, which she could do nothing about. They would weigh her down, intrude into her grief, which she was trying so hard to control.
She would almost certainly not write again, and he would have lost something that was good.
