“I have no way to get to you,” Joseph protested.
“Lizzie Blaine will come for you,” Corcoran replied. “She has a friend to visit a mile or so away from us, and will be happy to do it.”
So Joseph accepted. He wrapped the pewter goblet carefully, making it as tidy and elegant as he could, and took it with him. He was excited at the thought of Corcoran’s pleasure when he saw it.
Lizzie arrived at exactly the time she had said, and he got into the car. It was a utilitarian Model T Ford that reminded him sharply of the one Judith had driven with such reckless pleasure before the war. He mentioned it to her as they set off.
“Your sister?” she said with interest. “Is she the one who drives an ambulance in Flanders now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve thought of that. I should try to do something really useful. Take my mind off myself for a while.” She said it with a small, rueful gesture. “What sort of qualifications would I need?”
“Are you sure it’s what you want?” he asked, looking sideways at her face, as she stared through the windscreen intent on the road ahead. She was not a pretty woman but there was a kind of individuality and intelligence in her that he liked. Her nose was a little crooked and too long for beauty. Her eyes were very clear blue, in spite of her dark hair. She looked less numb than she had when he first met her, the day of her husband’s death, but she must still be suffering a bitter bereavement. It was simply that the pain had settled deeper and she had managed some fragile mask to hide the surface.
Was she also feeling passionately betrayed? Was that why she wanted now to go to France and lose herself in the war? That was not a good reason to go. Injured men needed someone who wanted to live, whose mind was free to give wholly to the job of getting them back to hospitals, and help.
They turned off the village street onto the road toward Madingley. The fields were hazed with green and an old man, shoulders bent, led weary horses along the lane to the Nunns’ farm.
“You should think about it a little longer,” Joseph advised. “Wait at least until you have had a chance to heal a little from your loss. You are still shocked now.”
“You think it will get better?” Lizzie said wryly, glancing at him for an instant, then back at the road. “Are all the ambulance drivers in France calm and comfortable inside? None of those girls have lost husbands, brothers, or fiances?” She swerved around a pothole in the road. “Haven’t you lost people you cared about? Did they send you home?”
Of course it was preposterous. You cared about the men you were with. No one who had not been there could understand the friendships in the trenches, the sharing of everything: food, body warmth, dreams, letters from home, jokes, terror, secrets you would have told no one else, perhaps even life’s blood. The bond was unique, fierce, and lifelong. There were ways in which no one else would ever be so close, memories that locked you together beyond words.
He thought of Sam Wetherall, and for a moment a pain of loss engulfed him like a fire burning out everything else. It was as if it had been only yesterday that they had sat in the dugout together and talked about Eldon Prentice, and shared the last of Sam’s chocolate biscuits. He could still smell the Flanders earth, slick, wet clay, and the latrines, and the odor of death that got into everything.
“No, they don’t send us home,” he answered her. “And sometimes when we’ve lost someone particularly close, or made mistakes, got too tired to think, someone else pays for it. But we don’t deliberately start out too bruised to care.”
She smiled faintly. “You’re very blunt.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I prefer it that way. That policeman doesn’t seem to have any idea yet who killed Theo, you know.”
“He will, but it could take time.”
A weasel ran across the road, sleek and bright. She braked a little, then accelerated again. “You knew him before, didn’t you.” That was more of a statement than a question.
He was surprised. “Yes. A friend of mine was murdered, just before the war.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”
“Yes, it was. But Perth’s a good man.”
She was driving with unconscious skill, as if she loved the feel of the control and the power. It sat easily with her; there was no rushing, no arrogance. Her hands were relaxed on the wheel. She would be a good ambulance driver, if she was not too angry and too hurt to give herself to it.
“I knew he was having an affair with Penny Lucas,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure how. I’m not even sure if it was partly my fault.”
His mind wheeled around thoughts of Hannah, and Judith, and then other people he had known; love, envy, loneliness, the need to know beyond question that you mattered to someone. Relationships were complicated, full of hungers so intense they overrode all wisdom and understanding of morality and loss.
He should have been gentler with Hannah. What had crippled his imagination so badly that he had allowed himself to be angry with her? “How could it be your fault?” he asked.
Lizzie kept her eyes on the road. “I don’t know. Sometimes I wish life could be as it used to, but part of me is excited by the changes, the new possibilities opening up. I’ve always just waited on Theo.” Her face was motionless in the evening sunlight. “He was truly brilliant, you know, perhaps one of the best scientists we’ve ever had. It’s not just me who’s lost him, it’s Britain, maybe the whole world. But in a way now I can be me.” A wobbly smile touched her lips. “I’ve got to. I no longer have him to look after anymore.” She blinked back sudden tears. “What I mean is, perhaps I wasn’t doing it so well anyway.”
He believed her. She was filled with regret, and her determination was a balance between fear and hope, and a mask for the pain too deep to face.
Had she loved Theo enough to be passionately jealous? He did not want to consider even the possibility. But he had been wrong before. Other people he had cared about, loved, and known far better than he knew her, had had the courage, the violence, and the moment’s unreasoning fire inside them to be blinded to the values of eternity and see only the need of the moment—and kill.
There was death and bereavement all around them. Casualty lists were posted every day. How easy was it to think of France, only twenty miles across the Channel, and keep sanity untainted here?
“Wait until Perth has solved it and you’ve had a little time to get your strength and make a firm decision,” he said to her.
She smiled and took a deep breath, reaching for a handkerchief in her pocket. She was too busy trying to master herself to repeat her thanks.
They were almost at the Corcorans’ house and they did not speak again until arranging what time she should return to take him home.
The visit was just what Joseph needed: the warmth of welcome, the familiar rooms with their memories of the past, old pictures, old books, chairs that were long worn into the shape that held his body. The French doors were open to birdsong in the garden, even though the air was growing cooler. There was a comfort about it all that put mistakes in perspective.
Corcoran was delighted with the goblet. He held it up to let the light play on its satin surface. The beauty of the gift captivated him, but far more than that was the fact that Joseph had chosen it and given it to him. He set it in the middle of the dinner table and his eyes kept going toward it.
Over dinner with Corcoran’s wife, Orla, they talked of matters other than war and tragedy: timeless ideas and the beauty of poetry, music, and fine art that outlasted the storms of history.
Afterward, Orla excused herself, and Joseph and Corcoran sat alone in the twilight. At last they turned to the matters of the present.
“You must have known Theo Blaine quite well,” Joseph said almost casually. “Did you like him?”
Corcoran looked surprised. “Actually I did. He had a very pure enthusiasm it was impossible not to like.”
“Was he really one of the best scientists in England?”
A slight shadow passed over Corcoran’s face, hardly more than a change in his eyes. “Yes, I have no doubt he was, or at least he could have been. He had some distance yet to mature and realize his full potential. Certainly he was remarkable. But don’t worry, Joseph. We will finish our project even without him. He is not indispensable.”
