“Joseph?” Hannah sounded uncertain. She was afraid he was too ill to be disturbed, perhaps even still in danger. Her face lit with relief when she saw him smile and she moved toward him. “How are you? Is there anything I can bring you?” She held a big bunch of daffodils from the garden, like cradled sunshine. He could smell them even above the hospital odors of carbolic, blood, washed linen, and the warmth of bodies.
“They’re beautiful,” he said, clearing his throat. “Thank you.”
She put them on the small table near him. “Do you want to sit up a little?” she asked, seeing him struggle to be more comfortable. In answer to her own question she helped him forward and plumped up the pillows, leaving him more upright. She was wearing a blouse and a blue linen skirt that ended only halfway down her calf, as the fashion was now. He did not like it as much as the longer, fuller, ground-sweeping skirts of recent years, but he could see that it was more practical. War changed a lot of things. She looked pretty, and she smelled of something warm and delicate, but he could also see the weariness in her face and around her eyes.
“How are the children?” he asked.
“They’re well.” Her words were simple and said with assurance, probably the answer she gave everyone, but the truth in her eyes was far more complex.
“Tell me about them,” he pressed. “How is Tom doing at school? What is his ambition?”
A shadow crossed her face. She tried to make light of it. “At the moment, like most fourteen-year-old boys, he wants to join the war. He’s always following soldiers around when there’s anyone on leave in the village.” She gave a tiny laugh, barely a sound at all. “He’s afraid it will be over before he has a chance. Of course he has no real idea what it’s like.”
He wondered how much she knew. Her husband, Archie, was a commander in the Royal Navy. Such a life was probably beyond the imagination of anyone who lived on the land. He had only the dimmest idea himself. But he knew the life of a soldier intimately. “He’s too young,” he said aloud, knowing as he did so that there were boys, even on the front lines, who were not much older. He had seen the bodies of one or two. But there was no need for Hannah to know that.
“Do you think it will be over by next year?” she asked.
“Or the one after,” he answered, with no idea if that were true.
She relaxed. “Yes, of course. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can bring you? Are they feeding you properly? It’s still quite easy to get most things, although that might change if the U-boats get any worse. There’s nothing much in the garden yet, it’s too early. And of course Albert’s not with us anymore, so it’s gone a bit wild.”
He heard a wealth of loss in her voice. At the front they tended to think everything at home was caught in a motionless amber just as they remembered it. Sometimes it was only the thread of memory linking that order of life to the madness of war that gave the fighting any purpose. Perhaps on the front they were as blind to life at home as the people at home were to the reality in the trenches? He had not really thought of that before.
He looked at his sister’s anxious face. “The food’s not bad at all,” he said at last. “Maybe they’re giving us the best. But when I heal a bit more, I’ll be home anyway.”
She smiled suddenly, alight with pleasure. “That’ll be wonderful. It’ll be quite a while before you can go back, I should think.” She was sorry for his wounds, but they kept him in England, safe and alive. She did not know where Archie was, nor Judith. No matter how busy she was during the day, there was still too much time alone when fear crowded in, and helplessness. She could only imagine, and wait.
Seeing her loneliness far more than she realized, he felt an intense tenderness for her. “Thank you,” he said with a depth that surprised him.
It happened sooner than he expected. More wounded arrived. His bed was needed and he was past immediate danger. Gwen Neave helped him to dress in trousers, with a shirt and jacket over one shoulder and around his bandaged arm. He was taken to the door in a wheelchair and, feeling unsteady, helped into the ambulance to be driven home to Selborne St. Giles. He was startled to find that he was exhausted by the time the doors were opened again. He was assisted out onto the gravel driveway where Hannah was waiting for him.
She held his arm as he negotiated the steps, leaning heavily on his crutch, the ambulance driver on his other side. He hardly had time to notice that the front garden was overgrown. The daffodils were bright; leaves were bursting open everywhere; the yellow forsythia was in bloom, uncut since last year; and there were clumps of primroses that should have been divided and spread.
The door opened and he saw Tom was kneeling on the floor in the hall, holding the dog by his collar as he wriggled and barked with excitement. Henry was a golden retriever, eternally enthusiastic, and his exuberance would have knocked Joseph off his feet.
Tom grinned a little uncertainly. “Hello, Uncle Joseph. I daren’t let him go, but he’s pleased to see you. How are you?”
“Getting better very quickly, thank you,” Joseph replied. He did not feel that was true, but he wanted it to be. He was light-headed and so weak it frightened him. It was an effort to stand, even with help.
Tom looked relieved, but he still hung on to Henry, who was lunging forward in eagerness to welcome Joseph.
The two younger children were at the top of the stairs, standing close together. Jenny was ten, fair, with brown eyes like her mother. Luke, seven, was as dark as Archie. They stared at Joseph almost without blinking. He wasn’t really Uncle Joseph anymore; he was a soldier, a real one. More than that, he was a hero. Both their mother and Mrs. Appleton had said so.
Joseph climbed the stairs, hesitating on every step, assisted by the driver. He spoke to Luke and Jenny as he passed, but briefly. He was longing to get back to bed again and lie down, so the familiar hall and stairs would stop swaying and he would not make a spectacle of himself by collapsing in front of everyone. It would be so embarrassing trying to get up again, and needing to be lifted.
Hannah helped him to undress, anxious and repeatedly fussing over him. She helped him into the bed, propped the crutch where he could reach it, then left. She returned a few minutes later with a cup of tea. He found it shook in his hand when he took it, and she had to hold it for him.
He thanked her and was glad when she left him alone. It was strange to be at home again in his own room with his books, pictures, and other belongings that reminded him so sharply and intrusively of the past. There were photographs of himself and Harry Beecher hiking in Northumberland. The memory and the loss of his late friend still hurt Joseph. There were also books and papers from his time as a professor of Bible studies at St. John’s, even of his youth before his marriage, when this house had been the center of life for all of them.
His parents were no longer here, but when he lay awake in the night with the light on to read, he heard Hannah’s footsteps on the landing. For an instant it was his mother’s face he expected around the door to check if he was all right.
“Sorry,” he apologized before she could ask. “My days and nights are a bit muddled.” It was pain that was keeping him awake, but there was nothing she could do to help it, so there was no purpose in telling her. She looked tired, and, with her hair loose, younger than she did in the daytime. She was far more like her mother than Judith was, not only in appearance but in nature. All he could ever remember her wanting was to marry and have children, care for them, and be as good a part of the village as Alys had been—trusted, admired, and above all liked.
But everything was changing, moving much too quickly, as if a seventh wave had accumulated and drowned the shore.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she said anxiously. “Or cocoa? I’ve got milk. It might help you sleep.”
“Yes, please,” he said, as much for her as for himself. “Cocoa.”
She returned ten minutes later with two cups on a tray, and sat in the chair beside the bed sipping her own, having assured herself that he could manage his.
He started speaking to fill the silence. “How is Mr. Arnold?”
Her face pinched a little. “He took Plugger’s death pretty hard.” He was a widower, but she knew Joseph would not have forgotten that. “He spends most of his time down at the forge doing odd jobs, cleaning up, taking people’s horses back and forth. Mostly for the army, and to keep busy, I think.”
“And Mrs. Gee?” Memory of Charlie Gee’s death still twisted inside him. When he was well enough, he planned to go see these neighbors and friends. He knew how much it mattered to them to hear firsthand news. They wanted to ask questions, even if they were afraid of the answers. Mrs. Gee’s other son, Barshey, was still at the front, and most of the other young men she knew as well. Everyone had friends or relations in the trenches;
