Corcoran’s eyes widened. “Must?”
“He murdered Blaine. He’ll kill you, Shanley, the moment he thinks he doesn’t need you. And possibly Iliffe, too, if he gets in his way. Or Lucas, for that matter. But I’m not going to lose you.”
Corcoran’s face was soft, his eyes gentle. “My dear Joseph, it is not about me, or about you. It is about England, and the war. Morven will not harm anyone until he has the final answers. I am safe until then.”
“And you are sure you will judge that correctly?” Joseph challenged. “To the hour? To the minute?”
“Are you returning to Ypres, Joseph?”
“Don’t evade the subject.”
“I’m not. Are you going?”
“Yes.” He was surprised that he did not even hesitate. “Yes, I am.”
“And might you be killed?” Corcoran asked.
“Yes,” Joseph said quietly. “But more probably not. I won’t run any unnecessary risks.”
Corcoran smiled for the first time. “Rubbish! You will go out into no-man’s-land just as you have always done. And if you die Hannah will mourn for you, and her children will, and Matthew, and Judith. And so shall I. But I shan’t tell you that you cannot go. You must do your duty as you see it, Joseph. And so must I. But it matters to me immensely that you cared enough to come and try to prevent me. The fact that it is utterly wrong, and against all you believe yourself, is a mark of your affection I shall not forget. Now please allow me to wish you good night, before I become too tired to keep my feelings under control, and embarrass us both.”
Joseph was defeated and he knew it. Corcoran’s argument was unanswerable. There was nothing for him to do but say good night and go out to find Archie. He did so with a heavy heart, but as much grace as he could manage.
Archie was due to leave on the early train next day. There was no more time left for Hannah to waste. It was late. They were both tired, but if she missed her chance to ask for the truth now, there might be no other time. When he left, she would miss him in every way: his voice, his touch, his laughter, the light in his face, the smell of his skin. But more important, this might be her last chance of knowing the man inside the shell, the thing that was unique and eternal.
She sat on the bed and watched him move his small case to where he could pack it in the morning. She must speak now. Tomorrow he could avoid her; the children might interrupt; there would be any number of reasons and excuses.
“Abby called to see me a few weeks ago,” she began. “You know Paul was killed in France.”
He looked up. “If you told me, I’d forgotten. I’m sorry. How was she?” There was pity in his face and a kind of crumpled sadness, as if he were seeing Abby in her, or perhaps her in Abby.
“Full of regret,” she answered. She hated doing this! It was not too late to leave it, not try to force him to tell her. Let him have a last evening at home in peace. Leave the war until tomorrow.
He did not understand. “Regret? You mean grief?”
She steeled herself. “No, I did mean regret. There was so much she didn’t know about him, about his life, what he cared about, what he felt. Now it’s too late.”
“You never know all that people care about,” he said, pushing the case away behind the wardrobe back where he could not see it.
She forced herself to continue.
“A friend of his came by and told her all sorts of things about him,” she said. “In France, what a good officer he was, what a good friend. That was when she realized that this man knew her husband far better than she did.”
“I’m sorry. But there’s nothing you can do to help her. There’s no point in thinking about it.”
Was he misunderstanding her on purpose?
“No. But I can help myself!”
There was a closed look in his face, touched with anger. “What are you talking about? No, don’t bother explaining. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me,” she insisted. She was sitting still in the bed. He was less than a couple of yards away, and it could have been miles. “You never tell me what your life is like at sea. I don’t know anything about the men you serve with, who you like, who you don’t, or why.” She gulped and went on, speaking too quickly now, and aware of it. “I don’t know what you do every day, but far more than that, I don’t know what hurts you, or frightens you, or makes you laugh.” She could see the surprise in his eyes, and the defense already. “Archie, I need to know!” she insisted. “I want to! Please—it isn’t really a kindness to shut me out. I know you’re doing it to protect me, and probably because you don’t want to talk about it anyway. You want to keep a place where war can’t intrude, somewhere clean and separate.”
He was staring at her. “For God’s sake, Hannah! Can’t we just have a pleasant evening? I have to go tomorrow.”
“I need to know!” she said with rising desperation. She knew she was angering him, risking pushing him further away. They might even part with a quarrel! That would be unbearable. It could be for the last time. That thought beat in her mind, almost choking the words, her throat was so tight. “When you’re gone it’s as if you disappear!” she said hoarsely. “I know a part of you so well it’s as if we’d always been together, but there’s a whole world, terribly important, that I’m shut out of as if I couldn’t understand and don’t belong. But at the moment it’s the biggest part of you. It’s what you spend your life doing. It’s what makes you who you are, what you believe, what makes you real. I need to know it, Archie!”
“I can’t tell you,” he said with patience that obviously cost him a tremendous effort, almost more than he possessed. “It’s ugly, Hannah. It would give you nightmares and your imagination would torture you. You can’t help! Just . . .”
“I’m not trying to help you!” Her voice was rising in spite of her effort to keep it under control. “Can’t you see that I’m trying to help myself! And if I have to, help Tom. What if something happens to you, and Tom asks me what you were like? What am I going to say? I don’t know? He never told me? Do you think that will satisfy him, when his father’s gone and he can’t ask? Do you think it will satisfy me? We need to know, Archie. Maybe it will hurt, but that’s better than a lifetime of hating myself because I didn’t have the courage to face it.”
“Tell you what?” he said wearily, sitting on the floor and crossing his legs as if he had given up. “What it feels like to live in a few square feet that’s never still, even when the sea’s calm? Do you want me to tell you how cold it is? The wind off the North Atlantic whips the skin from your flesh. How tired you get when you’ve only had a couple of hours’ sleep, and day and night blend into each other till you can’t think, can’t feel, can’t eat, and you feel sick? You know what it’s like to be exhausted. You’ve experienced it yourself with sick children, up every half hour, or more.”
“It’s not the same,” she said, wondering if it was.
“At sea you stare out at the ocean till you’re blind,” he went on, almost as if ignoring her. “You know every wave could hide a torpedo. One moment you are standing on the deck, pitching and sliding, and the next you’re deafened by the noise of tearing metal, and you know you could be pounded, broken, and suffocated by icy waters, dragged down into the darkness and never come up again. You imagine your lungs bursting, and pain obliterating everything else.”
She sat frozen, her muscles locked and aching.
He went on, his voice was softer, cut across with grief. “Shall I tell you about fire at sea? Or what it’s like to see a gun turret hit, and bodies of men you know cut to pieces, blood everywhere, human arms and legs lying on the deck? Or would it be enough if I just stick to the long days and nights of monotony while you wait, and wonder, cold, tired, eating sea rations, trying to work out how you’ll deal with the attack when it comes, how you’ll keep the men together, keep heart in them—be worthy of their trust in you that somehow you can get them out of it? And how you’ll live with it if you fail?”
She blinked. “It’s horrible,” she whispered. “I don’t even know how to imagine it. But if that’s your life, then shutting me out of it would be even worse . . . maybe not straightaway, not now, but in time it would. It hurts to be shut out. A different kind of hurt, but a real one.”
“You don’t need it, Hannah!” He stood up easily, moving with grace in spite of his inner tiredness. The leave had not been long enough. But he had told her only about life at sea, and little enough of that. He had not told her about himself.
