and things, and lice. Can’t get rid of the lice. They shaved every day, but not enough water to wash any more than their faces.” Her voice was rising and getting faster. “Miles told me you can smell the stench of the front line long before you get there. Paul never said that.”
Hannah waited.
“Miles said he’d never liked anyone more than he liked Paul.” Abby did not even try to stop her tears now. “His men trusted him, he said. He was hard. He had to be. But he was always fair. He agonized over decisions he made which could have been wrong. Miles told me about once when he had to send almost twenty men over the top, and he knew they had hardly any chance of coming back, but he couldn’t say that to them. It haunted him afterward, that he had to tell them only part of the truth, so it amounted to a lie.”
She swallowed hard. “They knew that, and they knew what he felt, and why he couldn’t do anything else, but he still had nightmares about it. He’d wake up white-faced, with his body aching. I try to imagine him there alone in a tiny, cramped dugout—thinking about looking men in the eyes and ordering them out to be killed while he stays behind. And they still loved him!”
“I expect they knew he had no choice,” Hannah spoke at last.
“That’s the point, Hannah!” Abby cried, her voice almost strangled with emotion. “They knew him! They really knew him—they understood! I didn’t! To me he wasn’t that man at all. I never saw that kind of honor in him, that kind of laughter, or pain. I just knew him as he was at home, and that was so little. And now it’s too late. I never will. . . . I can’t even tell Sandy what his father was really like.” She closed her eyes. “It’s all gone, slipped away, and I didn’t grasp it when I could. I was too busy with my own life. I didn’t look.”
“You couldn’t have known what he was like in France,” Hannah said gently. “None of us at home know what it’s like for them.”
Abby jerked her head up. “But I didn’t want to!” she hissed. “Don’t you understand? I knew it was terrible out there. I can read the casualty figures. I’ve seen the drawings and the photographs in the newspapers. I didn’t want to hear the details—the sounds and smells, how cold it was or how wet, how filthy, how hungry they were.” She gasped in her breath. “And now some man I never even met before arrives and tells me what Paul was really like. And I listen to him and try to remember every word, because that’s all I’ll ever have.” She leaned forward and bowed her head in her arms across the table and sobbed, racked with a regret for which there was no healing.
With a fearful clarity Hannah knew exactly what she meant. If Archie never came home, how much would she know about what his life was really like? What would she understand of the joy or the pain he felt, how he weighed his decisions, what guilt kept him up all night? Who was he, inside the carefully painted shell? Why did she not know? What would she tell her children of their father, if he was one of those who died?
She wanted to say something comforting to Abby, but this was not the time for salvaging tiny pieces. She needed to face the emptiness and recognize it now; then perhaps it would not have to be done again. This time she was quite certain it was right to take Abby in her arms and simply hold her until she had wept out her strength.
Afterward she took her to the bathroom and left her to wash her face and straighten her clothes. She made no mention of what either of them had said, as if they had quietly agreed that it had not really happened.
“Thank you,” Abby said, almost under her breath, as she stood by the front door to leave. “The apple pie was lovely. You . . . I hope you don’t mind my saying so, but you are very like your mother.” And with that ultimate compliment, she walked out into the darkness, leaving Hannah with a tumult of emotions.
She went back inside and found Tom in his pajamas on the stairs. He looked worried. “You all right, Mum?” he said anxiously.
“A friend came by and she was upset,” she said.
“Why?” he asked, coming down the last few steps. “Has someone she loved been killed?”
“Yes. A little while ago now, but she just needed to talk about it a bit. Not everyone wants to listen.”
He smiled. “I’m glad you did that for her.” He turned to go back up again, then stopped. “Uncle Joseph’s still awake, Mum. I’ve seen his light go on and off a few times. I think maybe he can’t sleep either.”
“Thank you. I’ll take him a cup of cocoa, or something. Good night.”
“Good night, Mum.”
Hannah did not tell Joseph about Abby Compton’s visit other than simply that she had called. But she could not extinguish Abby’s words from her mind.
She could just as easily have been the one to realize in a single dreadful hour that she had turned her back on the chance to share the reality of all that love might be. It could still become her, if she did not confront Archie soon and face the things she did not want to know, and it seemed he did not want to tell her. But if she stayed shut out where it was safe, when she was ready to come in it might be too late. She would be excluded forever, as Abby was.
She was frightened that she would not have the courage to press him against his will. It would be so much easier to accept denial. She did not know what to ask, when to insist and when to keep silent. If she said something stupid, insensitive, or without understanding, she would never be able to take it back and pretend it hadn’t happened. Perhaps it was already too late?
Why couldn’t life have remained as it used to be? She had understood the problems then: love affairs that went wrong, childbirth and sometimes loss, quarrels, disloyalties, sickness, fractious children, long nights up watching the ill. Perhaps there had always been loneliness, but the long, quiet grayness of separation, not the searing scarlet of grief. But it had all been on a smaller scale, in homes and schools, churches and village greens; not on battlefields and in warships. It did not contain enough horror to drive people mad and divide men from women by gulfs they did not know how to cross. But there was no point in thinking further about it now.
Arranging the flowers in church the day before a service was one of the duties her mother had performed, and it would give her a sense of comfort to do it herself, as if at least some things had not changed. Before she left she checked on Joseph.
“Don’t try to make tea yourself,” she told him, looking at his arm. “Jenny’s around and she can do it, if you stay in the kitchen with her. I won’t be long.”
He smiled patiently, and she realized she was fussing. “It’s important,” she explained, hugging the daffodils she had picked, stems wrapped so they did not bleed onto her clothes.
“Of course it is,” he agreed. “Daffodils always seem brave and beautiful, like a promise that things will get better. It doesn’t matter what winter’s like, spring will come, eventually.”
All kinds of thoughts crowded her mind about those who would not see it, but he knew that better than she, and it was maudlin to say so.
Was this a time to ask him about some of the things he had experienced, but never spoke of? When, if ever, would it be easier?
“Joseph . . .”
He looked up.
She plunged in. “You never say much about Ypres, what it’s like, how you feel, even the good things. . . .”
His face tightened, almost indefensibly, but she saw it. “I’d like to understand,” she said quietly.
“One day,” he replied, looking away from her.
It was an evasion. She knew from his eyes and the line of his mouth that there would always be a reason why not. She turned quickly and went out of the door.
She walked along the village street in bright sunshine, but against a surprisingly cold wind. April was a deceitful month, full of brief glory, and promises it did not keep.
Inside the old Saxon church with its stained-glass windows and silent stones, the wooden pews were dark with age. Under each were hand-stitched hassocks to kneel on, donated by village women down the generations, some as long ago as the Napoleonic Wars. She began to get out the vases and fill them with water from the outside tap and carry them back in one at a time.
Mrs. Gee came into the vestry, red-eyed and shivering against the cold. She brought some blue irises, just a handful. Every time Hannah saw her she thought of Charlie Gee, who had died in Ypres last year. Mrs. Gee did not know how horribly he had been maimed. Neither did Hannah, but she had seen the shadow of it in Joseph’s face every time his name was mentioned. The anger and the grief still haunted him more than for others dead.
