“Yes, I do need it,” she argued. “Either I belong to you, or I don’t. If you shut me out, even if you’re right and I don’t have the strength or the courage to bear it, then . . .”
“I didn’t say that!” he protested, turning to look at her angrily.
She ignored him. “You meant it. And when Tom’s confused and hurt, when you’re not here, I have to try and explain to him why you won’t trust any of us.”
“It’s not trust!” He was frustrated by her refusal to understand. “It’s to protect you from the nightmares I have! Can’t you see that? What’s the matter with you, Hannah?”
“Do you think Judith needs protecting?” she asked, controlling her feelings with an effort. This was the time when she must be strong. She had asked for the truth; there was no place for emotional manipulation.
Archie was startled. “Judith? That’s different. She’s . . .” He stopped.
“What?” she demanded, keeping her voice level with intense difficulty. “What is she that you think I’m not? Tell me!”
Archie stared at her. His eyes were so tired they were red-rimmed. She knew he was sleeping little.
“What is it?” she insisted. “You’re not protecting me. You’re shutting me out. I need to know you! Don’t you trust me to love you, even if you’re afraid sometimes?” The words were irretrievable. Her stomach churned with fear.
He looked startled. “No, of course not!” He stopped. “Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what to think,” she answered. “Do you imagine I expect you to be perfect? I don’t. I never did. That isn’t love; it’s vanity! And lack of faith in us! You really believe I’m not strong enough to hear about what you have to live through?”
He leaned forward, intensely earnest. “I don’t want you to have to think about it, Hannah. Did you tell me how it felt to give birth? I heard you screaming, but I couldn’t share it.”
She took a deep breath. “Then let me hear you scream sometimes,” she begged. “Or at least know what it’s for. I know you might get killed. I do know that! Then I’ll lose you, and for the children’s sake, I’ll have to go on by myself. And they’ll have to go on, too. But I want to have the real you now! I want to know what I will have lost.”
He turned away from her. “You don’t understand what you’re asking. Joseph doesn’t tell you what it’s like in Flanders.”
“I’m not married to Joseph.” That answer was simple, and it made all the difference in the world. “But I would listen if he did, if it helped him.”
“And if he didn’t want to tell you?” he asked, still not looking at her. “What if I would rather have you just as you are, not knowing, not changed by it, not part of that life?”
That hurt. Joseph had refused to tell her. She felt the sting of it like a hand slap. She had difficulty controlling the tears coming to her eyes. “I’m shut out, as I am from you, and I will have to live with it,” she said quietly. “I will be alone. Perhaps you have other people you want to share yourself with.”
“Hannah! That’s not . . .” He sat down slowly on the bedroom chair, lowering his head so she could not see his face. “If you had any idea what it’s like, you wouldn’t say that.”
“I don’t have any idea because you don’t tell me!” she retorted. She couldn’t and wouldn’t go back now. “I only have my imagination and my own nightmares. Is it any worse than reality?”
He was speaking quietly now, almost as if in a way she had beaten him. “Yes, it is! You’ve never been as cold in your life as it is at sea. Your eyelashes freeze, the tears on your face are ice. It hurts to breathe. Your bones hurt with it. Land could be only a hundred miles away, but it might as well be beyond existence.”
He lifted his head to look at her. “There’s nothing but you and the ocean, and the enemy. He might come over the horizon, a black silhouette against the sky, or he might heave up out of the water right in front of you. More likely you won’t know anything at all until the torpedo hits, and the deck under your feet erupts in fire and twisted metal and blood.”
It was not the words—she had heard them before. It was the horror in his face, because he was letting himself relive it now. It was in his voice, his hands clenched on his knees, scars showing white against the wind- burned brown of his skin. A part of her wished she had not started this.
“Do you hate it all the time?” She did not want to know the answer, but she had to ask.
He was surprised.
“No, of course I don’t. There’s laughter, and friendship. Some of the jokes are even funny. There’s immense courage.” He looked away from her again to hide the nakedness inside him. “Heroism you can’t bear. Men who keep going in blinding pain, dying . . . Hannah, you don’t want to hear this. You’ve never seen a human being blown to pieces, or worse, torn open and bleeding to death, but still conscious and knowing what’s happening to him. That was the way Billy Harwood died. I can still see his face when I close my eyes.” He gasped. “There was blood everywhere. We did everything we could, but we couldn’t stop it. There was just too much. You haven’t seen fire in a gun turret when there’s nowhere to escape to and they have to stand there and burn to death, and we watch them. A child shouts in the street, and I hear that again—men like torches in the night.”
Very slowly she moved closer to him and knelt down. She could see there were tears on his face. He was right; she did not want to know this. Her imagination would build enough for her to have nightmares, waking or sleeping, from now on, but she had to.
This was not the man she had first loved, who had gone to sea with pride and enjoyment in it, ambitious to succeed. This man was older, at once stronger and more vulnerable, a stranger in her husband’s skin, whom she wanted passionately to know. She needed to start again, assuming nothing. She reached out her hand and slid it over his very gently.
“We sank an enemy ship a couple of weeks ago,” he went on. His voice was shaking, and Hannah could feel the locked muscles making his legs tremble, even though he was sitting.
“It was at dusk. It was a good maneuver; partly luck, but mostly skill. We’d been shadowing each other for days. He fought hard, but we had the first shot and it damaged him badly.” He was looking beyond her, into his own vision. “The water was gray like lead, pitted dark by wind and rain. We fought for nearly two hours. We took some bad hits ourselves. Lost a dozen men, killed and wounded. The man next to me lost both his legs. Surgeon tried to save him, but it was too much.”
He took a deep breath, searching her face, trying to read her emotions, what she thought of him, how much she was frightened or sickened.
She wished she could think of something wise or generous to say, but her mind was empty of everything but the numb misery of it. He must not see the fear in her, the longing to deny it all.
“We sank him just after sundown,” he went on, saying the words slowly and carefully. “We hit his magazine, and he went down with all hands. That’s the thing I dread more than anything else—being carried down inside, the water rushing in and I’m trapped, going down all the way into the darkness, with the sea above me, forever.” His breath was ragged.
“They went down,” he said quietly. “All of them. We didn’t save a soul. There was no triumph, no victory, just silence. I lay awake all night seeing it again and again. When it comes to it, they were seamen, as we are. We probably would have liked them, if we’d met a few years ago, before all this.” He was looking at her again, waiting for the confusion at his feelings, the revulsion for what he had done.
She blanked her mind. She must not show it, not even a glimmer, whatever it cost. There must be something to say, and she must think of it quickly.
“You’re right; it isn’t easy,” she agreed. “It’s horrible. But we don’t have a choice. We go forward together, or we go forward alone. I don’t want to be ashamed of myself because I refused to look. But don’t tell Tom too much, just a little, if he asks. Tell him some of your men were killed. He’ll understand that was hard to take. Please don’t leave him out altogether. He loves you so much.”
His voice caught and there were tears on his cheek. “I know.”
She smiled, blinking hard. “So do I.” Please God, she would have the strength to go on meaning that, if it got worse, if she woke up with the horror of her imagination night after night when he was not there beside her. She would remember all the laughter, the hope, the tenderness between them, and picture the dark, icy water suffocating the life out of him as he struggled and beat against it, and was crushed and plunged to the bottom of the sea, to places no human being ever imagined. Her heart would go with him. At least she would not be cut off, separate and unknowing.
“Hannah!” His voice cut through her thoughts.
