He felt helpless, but it was a relief not to be responsible for anyone’s pain except his own.
He was hot and shivering, the sweat trickling down his body, when they finally put him on the train. The rattle and jolt of it was dreadful, and he wanted to shout at the people who said how lucky he was to have “a Blighty one” that he would rather they left him alone where he was. It must still be March and the weather was erratic. Would the winds make the Channel crossing rough? He was too ill to cope with seasickness as well! He could not even turn over.
In the event he remembered very little of it, or of the train journey afterward. When he finally woke up to some kind of clarity, he was lying in a clean bed in a hospital ward. The sun shone through the windows, making bright, warm splashes on the wooden floor, and there were bedclothes around him. Clean sheets? He could feel the smoothness against his chin and smell the cotton. He heard a broad Cambridgeshire voice in the distance and found himself smiling. He was in England, and it was spring.
He kept his eyes open, afraid that if he closed them it would all disappear and he would be back in the mud again. A slight woman, perhaps in her fifties, bent over him and helped him up to drink a cup of tea. It was hot, and made with clean water, not the stale dregs he was used to. The woman was dressed in a starched white uniform. She told him her name was Gwen Neave. He looked at her hands around the cup as she held it to his lips. They were strong and sunburned.
During the next two or three days and nights she seemed to be there every time he needed her, always understanding what would ease him a little: the bed remade, pillows turned and plumped up, fresh water to drink, a cold cloth on his brow. She changed the dressings on the huge, raw wounds in his arm and leg without any expression on her face except a tightening of her lips when she knew it must be hurting him. She talked about the weather, the lengthening days, the first daffodils flowering bright yellow. She told him once, very briefly, that she had two sons in the navy, but nothing more, no mention of where they were or how she feared for them amid all the losses at sea. He admired her for that.
It was she who was there at the worst times in the small hours of the morning when he was racked with pain, biting his lips so he did not cry out. He thought of other men’s pain, younger than he, who had barely tasted life and were already robbed of it. He had no strength left to fight; he only wanted to escape to a place where the pain stopped.
“It will get better,” she promised him, her voice little more than a whisper so as not to disturb the men in the other beds.
He did not answer. The words meant nothing. Pain, helplessness, and the knowledge of death were the only realities.
“Do you want to give up?” she asked. He saw the smile in her eyes. “We all do, sometimes,” she went on. “Not many actually do, and you can’t. You’re the chaplain. You chose to pick up the cross, and now and again to help other people carry theirs. If somebody told you it wouldn’t be heavy, they were lying.”
Nobody had told him, he knew that. Others had survived worse than this. Just hang on.
It was a long, slow night. Other fears crowded his mind—of helplessness, endless nights when he was awake while the rest of the world slept. He would be dependent, with somebody else always having to look after him, too kind to say he was a burden, but growing to hate him for it. He did not drift into sleep until dawn. The next night was almost as bad.
“What day is it?” he asked, when finally it was light again.
“Twelfth of March,” the young nurse replied. “Nineteen sixteen,” she added with a smile. “Just in case you’ve forgotten. You’ve been here five days already.”
It was the morning after that when the same nurse told him cheerfully that he had a visitor. She whisked away the remnants of his breakfast and tidied him up quite unnecessarily, and a moment later he saw Matthew walking down the ward between the other beds. He looked tired and pale. His thick, fair hair was not quite short enough for the army, and he was wearing a Harris tweed jacket over an ordinary cotton shirt. He stopped by the bed. “You look awful,” he said with a smile. “But better than last time.”
Joseph blinked. “Last time? Last time I was home I was fine.”
“Last time I was here you weren’t even conscious,” Matthew replied ruefully. “I was very disappointed. I couldn’t even shout at you for being a fool. It’s the sort of thing Mother would have done.” His voice caught a little. “Tell you she’s so proud of you she’d burst, and then send you to bed with no dinner for frightening the life out of her.”
He was right. Were Alys Reavley still alive that is just what she would have done, then later send Mrs. Appleton upstairs with pudding on a tray, as if she were sneaking it up and Alys did not know. In one sentence Matthew had summed up everything that home meant, and the impossible loss of their parents, murdered at the end of June two years ago, the same day the Archduke and Duchess were assassinated in Sarajevo. The loss washed over Joseph again in stinging grief, and for a moment his throat ached too fiercely to reply.
Matthew blinked. “Actually for this she’d have had you down again, for hot pie and cream,” he said a little huskily. He fished in his jacket pocket and brought out something in his hand. It was a small case, of the sort in which good watches are presented. He opened it and held it up. It contained a silver cross on a purple and white ribbon.
“Military Cross,” he said, as if Joseph might not recognize it. “Kitchener would have given it to you himself— it’s good for morale, especially in hospitals. But he’s pretty occupied at the moment, so he let me bring it.”
It was the highest award given to officers for consistent acts of courage over a period of time.
“I’ve got the citation,” Matthew went on; he was smiling now, his eyes bright with pride. He took an envelope out, opened it up, and laid it on the table beside Joseph, then put the cross on top of it, still in its case. “For all the men you rescued and carried back from no-man’s-land.” He gave a tiny shrug. “It mentions Eldon Prentice,” he added quietly. “Actually there’s a posthumous M.C. for Sam Wetherall, too.” His voice dropped even lower. “I’m sorry, Joe.”
Joseph wanted to answer, but the words would not come. He remembered the death of war correspondent Eldon Prentice as if it had been a month ago, not a year. He could still taste the anger, everyone else’s, not just his own. The night Charlie Gee was wounded, Joseph could have killed Prentice himself. And he had never stopped missing Sam. He had never told Matthew the truth about that. “Thank you,” he said simply. There was no need for elaboration.
Matthew understood this as well. “I heard Tucky Nunn’s not doing too badly. He’ll be home for a while, but he’ll get better. In the end his wounds weren’t as severe as yours.”
Joseph nodded. “Doughy Ward got it,” he said quietly. “I’ll have to go and see his family, when I can. They’ll just have the five girls now. It will be a hardship for the old man. There’ll be no one to take over the bakery.”
“Maybe Mary will,” Matthew suggested. “She was always the equal of her father at the baking, and more imaginative. Susie could keep the books.” He sighed. “I know that’s not what matters. How’s everyone else? The people I know?”
Joseph smiled ruefully. “Much the same, or trying to be. Whoopy Teversham is still a clown, got a face like India rubber.”
Matthew rolled his eyes. “Last time I was here the Nunns and the Tevershams were still not speaking to each other.”
“Cully Teversham and Snowy Nunn are like brothers in the trenches,” Joseph said with a sudden ache in his throat, remembering them sitting together all night in the bitter cold, telling stories to keep up their courage, the tales getting wilder with each one. Two men half a mile away had frozen to death that night. They found their bodies when they brought the rations up the supply trenches the next morning.
Matthew said nothing.
“Thanks for the phonograph records.” Joseph changed the subject abruptly. “Especially the Caruso one. Was it really popular?”
“Of course it was,” Matthew said indignantly. “That, and Al Jolson singing ‘Where did Robinson Crusoe Go with Friday on Saturday Night?’ ”
They both laughed, and Joseph told him about other men from the village, but he spoke only of the pranks, the rivalries, the concert parties, and letters from home. He said nothing about the terrible injuries—Plugger Arnold dying of gangrene, or handsome Arthur Butterfield with his wavy hair, drowned in a bomb crater in no-man’s-land. He did not talk about the gas either, or how many men had been caught on the wire and hung there all night, riddled with shot, and no one could get to them.
