We drove in silence all the long distance to Eastbourne.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN WE ARRIVED at the Grand Hotel, Simon passed the picnic basket to one of the staff, handed me down from the motorcar, and said as I prepared to go inside, “I’ll see what I can discover about Private Wilson. It may take several days.”
And then with a nod he was gone.
I watched him out of sight, knowing that he had left not for an hour or so but for days. There had been someone with me ever since I had reached England-my mother, my father, Simon. I felt suddenly alone, separated from those I loved. Separated by more than distance.
Turning, I went up to my room and sat down at the little white desk between the windows, intending to write my first letter requesting reinstatement at the Front.
And I found the words wouldn’t come.
Setting the sheets of hotel stationery to one side, I walked out to the balcony and for a while watched the sea, green and blue and, in the distance, almost black. There was a slight haze in the direction of the Seven Sisters, but toward Hastings and France the sky was clear. We were too far away to hear the guns. But I could imagine them. And imagine too the damage they were doing to flesh and bone.
It was difficult to go against my parents’ wishes. We had always been of the same mind about important things. I could understand their feelings. I doubted that they could understand mine. Or was I being selfish and willful, where wiser heads knew better? I told myself that it was the wounded and dying who should be weighed in the balance, not my own wishes.
In the end I put the letter-or what was to be the letter but was now only a blank sheet-in the desk drawer and went down to take my tea in the enclosed veranda. Some hours later I dined alone. I couldn’t have said afterward what I had chosen from the menu or how it had tasted.
There was a woman at the next table. She sat there, staring into space as if her mind were a thousand miles away, picking at her food as if it had no more flavor than mine had had. Fair and rather pretty in an elegant way, she appeared to be older than I was, and I put her age at thirty.
I hadn’t noticed her here before this, whether because she had sat somewhere else or because she’d just arrived.
The headwaiter came over as she pushed her plate aside and asked, “Is everything to your liking, Mrs. Campbell?”
“Yes, it was lovely, I’ve no appetite, I’m afraid.”
“Not bad news, I hope,” he ventured, frowning. “You weren’t yourself last evening either.”
Bad news was more common than good these days. Yet he’d asked as if he knew her from another visit and felt free to inquire.
She laughed, but not convincingly. “No, nothing to worry about. Perhaps the sea air will improve my spirits and my appetite.”
He cajoled her into trying the pudding, although it was clear to me that she wasn’t hungry enough to care. And she ate a little of it stoically, then signaled the waiter again, rose, and left the dining room.
The Grand Hotel had an excellent reputation. It catered to people like my parents, and they had had no qualms about leaving me here to dine alone. I was well looked after, and so it wasn’t surprising to see another woman alone.
I walked through great doors leading out to the veranda and stopped by one of the vases of fern for a few minutes to watch the waves roll in. I could sympathize in a way with Mrs. Campbell. I too needed to make a decision.
I was just on the point of turning to go up to my room when I overheard someone mention her name. There were two women sitting together just by the balustrade. They couldn’t see me for that fern, but I could just glimpse Mrs. Campbell, a shawl over her shoulders, walking down to the drive and moving on to one of the benches set out beneath specimen trees. It was the one where Simon and I’d sat that morning.
“There she is,” one of the women said in a low voice. “I told you I thought it was she.”
“Yes, you’re right. Shocking that she should show her face in such a place as this. Not after all the publicity surrounding the petition for divorce.”
“Unfaithful, he said.”
“Yes. But it couldn’t be proved, could it?”
“Sordid, all of it. I mean to say, he’s at war. You’d think she could put aside her personal feelings and remember that.”
I turned and went indoors. I remembered too vividly Lieutenant Banner at Forward Aid Station No. 3, dying of his wounds and saying in a whisper that held a world of despair because time had run out, “She won’t have to go through the divorce now, will she? She’ll be a widow instead. I’ve made it easy for him, whoever he is. He’ll step into my shoes without a qualm. But if he mistreats her, by God, I’ll come back and haunt him!”
I shivered as I remembered his vehemence, but it had cost him his last breath, and he was gone. I wondered sometimes if Mrs. Banner’s new husband had ever looked over his shoulder and listened for a footstep.
The thought followed me into sleep.
The next morning I took my pride and my courage in my hands and wrote the letter to London.
I put the direction on the envelope, took it to the front desk for stamps, and when they offered to put it in the post bag for me, I thanked them and said no.
For in spite of everything, I felt that I was betraying Simon.
I paced the veranda before lunch and after tea, and happened to see Mrs. Campbell leave the hotel, the manager himself seeing her into her hired car. Had the whispers been too much for her?
Two days later I scolded myself for my reluctance to post that envelope. My parents would be returning to Eastbourne shortly, and I would surely lose my nerve altogether once they were there to persuade me in person. I was on my way down to Reception to see to it personally when I met Simon himself just coming through the hotel door.
It had been raining somewhere along the road, for the shoulders of his coat were wet. His face was grim, and I suddenly had a premonition of bad news.
Nodding to me, he took my arm and said, “Shall we walk along the seafront? It won’t rain for another hour or more. You won’t need a coat.”
“Yes, I- Simon, what’s wrong?”
“Not here.”
And so it was we walked down to the water and stopped halfway to the pier, standing for a moment to watch dark clouds building far out to sea. Lightning was playing in them, bright flickers against a gunmetal sky. The air was oppressively warm, even though the wind was just picking up.
We were out of hearing of anyone. Simon, leaning his shoulders on the parapet of the seawall, seemed lost in thought.
My mind was running through a mental list of our acquaintance. Who was dead? Why couldn’t he find the courage to tell me?
“Please,” I said baldly. “Don’t-I’d rather you didn’t try to find the right words to break the news.”
He straightened and looked down at me, as if he hadn’t realized that I was there. “No, it isn’t bad news, Bess… it’s… I don’t quite know what to make of it.” He turned and led me to a bench. After we’d sat down, he said, busy with his driving gloves, “I inquired of London where Private Wilson could be reached. I thought perhaps you could write to him, even if you couldn’t return to France. My contact was reluctant to tell me anything at first, and I had to use your father’s authority to pry the information out of him. Which was odd in itself. But then I understood why. The Army isn’t eager to give out such information. It seems- I was told that Private Gerald Wilson, who was an orderly in the hospital where you were working when you fell ill-a man close to forty-one years of age, just as you’d described him to me-was found hanged in the shed where bodies were left to await burial. The doctor who declared him dead felt that his work had turned the man’s mind. Fearful of falling victim to influenza himself, he’d decided to
