A Rose In Flanders Fields (16 page)

‘No wonder they risked their lives to protect one another,’ I said. ‘I must tell her I’m pleased for them, she’ll be worried sick about telling me.’ But even as I spoke I felt yet more tears gathering, and they weren’t tears of happiness for the two of them, there was no pretending they were. Hollowed out with loneliness, I walked down the endless corridors, hiding in the crowds and drawing no attention as I let my mind reach out and find Will, bringing him close with memories of laughter and tenderness. I was a willing victim of the sweetest torture; allowing those memories to grow until they seemed real again, only to be snapped back to the here and now by a sudden noise, a shout, or a slamming door… and be swamped by emptiness once more.

By the time Lizzy was awake I had my emotions under control again, although I almost broke down at the sight of her: small, and almost childlike, her face as white as her pillow. We hugged carefully, and I told her how the officer had come to find me and I’d come right away, pretending to the Red Cross, who’d be asked to supply cover once again, that we were sisters. I saw her swallow hard, and knew what she was thinking.

‘We sort of are,’ she said. ‘Or maybe cousins, at least. Evie, I have to tell you something…’

‘I know about you and Jack,’ I said, and smiled, seeing her relief and the colour returning to her cheeks a little. ‘Mary and I have had quite a talk. I was shocked at first, of course, but I can’t think of two better suited people.’

‘Except you and Will,’ she pointed out, ‘and if fate smiles on us just a little longer we’ll soon find out where he is.’ My heart leapt and I felt my eyes widen. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Was she simply being optimistic? But I listened, hardly breathing, as she told what had happened immediately before she had burst into the room where Jack had been trying to stop Samuel from leaving.

‘I found a notebook in Samuel’s study. I kept going back to it, but I couldn’t work out why. All it seemed to be was household accounts. Then I noticed there were two butchers listed, and one was named Davies. Instead of an address though, all there was was numbers.’ She shifted on the bed and paled again, and I wanted to tell her to stop talking and rest, but I was shaking more and more, and if she stopped now I knew I would scream.

‘I put it in my pocket, then I heard a gunshot next door and thought Jack had been shot so I rushed in. I only remembered about the book a little while ago, and Jack’s gone to find it in with all my clothes.’

‘Oh, Lizzy! Do you think he’ll know what the numbers mean?’

‘He’s sure to, I only hope he finds the book, and that no one took it from me – it was all so confusing and frightening, neither of us would have noticed.’

Before I could speak again the door opened, and Uncle Jack came in. I leapt up and hugged him, and he glanced over at Lizzy.

She nodded. ‘I’ve told Evie about the book. Did you find it?’

He sat down on the bed and took her hand in his bandaged one, holding his good hand out to clasp mine too. ‘I know where he is,’ he said, and I tightened my grip.

‘Are you sure?’

‘The numbers are co-ordinates. Will is sheltering on a farm just to the north-west of a village called Montauban-de-Picardie in the north of France. He must have wandered south after the battle at Bazentin-le-Petit, missed the patrols by some miracle, and not regained his memory.’ He looked at me, clearly troubled. ‘He may never regain it, sweetheart. Are you prepared for that?’

But the words rushed over me, swept away in the knowledge that I would soon see him. ‘He’s still my husband,’ I said, ‘better to have to start over and win his heart again than to hear of him dead.’

‘I’ve sent Archie to the farm,’ Jack said. ‘He’s carrying a note from me, a photograph of you, and orders that Will must return with his escort or face a firing squad. We can’t risk losing him again now.’

He looked at Lizzy for a long moment and something seemed to pass between them, unspoken but clear. He stood up and took my hand and I smiled up at him, but something in his face made the smile fade.

‘What is it, Uncle Jack?’

‘Please – you’re too old to call me that now,’ he said. ‘And you may no longer want to in any case. I have to talk to you, and it must be now.’

I gave a little laugh, but it sounded hollow. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’

‘Not here,’ he said.

Uncle Jack quietly closed the door of the side ward behind us, but his expression told me how hard it was for him to leave Lizzy lying there. He looked back at the closed door and I could see the struggle not to go back in, in the tension of his shoulders and the clenching of his hands.

‘You’re frightening me,’ I told him, and immediately wished I hadn’t. The face he turned to me was strained and suddenly looked old, and there was an unmistakeable shine in his dark blue eyes as he drew me to a bench and sat down beside me.

‘I’ve not been truthful with you,’ he began, ‘and it’s time to put that right.’ I didn’t speak, sensed it was better to let him find his way through his tangled thoughts to what he was trying to say, and eventually he took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and began to talk, haltingly at first, then with gathering speed.

‘I work for the government, as you know, but what I’ve never told you, and probably shouldn’t be telling you now, is that the branch I work for is what was called the Secret Intelligence Service. I was approached shortly after returning from Africa, and recruited to the service, and that’s why I’m rarely home.’

‘Is that where you’ve been since Lizzy was sent down?’

‘In a manner of speaking. I was a political prisoner in Serbia.’

‘But what –’

‘Hush, Evie, please. I have to get this out now or I might never find the courage again.’

I subsided, my stomach churning with fear, and he carried on.

‘Before that, when I was in Africa, I was given a mission. There was a spy in the ranks. Someone who was passing our secrets to the Boers, giving them opportunities to fortify their defences, and worse, to attack our own least-defended lines. I identified him, and, as I already knew about him and was something of a crack shot, I was given the task of…well, of silencing him before he could pass information on our position. You must understand, I didn’t volunteer, but neither did I shirk in this; if the information got through, we would lose hundreds of men, there was no question.’

‘Of course there wasn’t!’ I wanted to say something else, to absolve him of the guilt he clearly felt at having to kill a man in cold blood, but his face forbade it and I fell back into silence. He described how he’d had to wait until the spy had been face-to-face with the Boer Kommandant before taking the shot, and that it had been quick and clean, over in an instant. He seemed particularly intent that I should understand that, and then he turned to me and, in a voice filled with the agony of the duty he’d been forced to fulfil, he ripped my heart in two.

‘It was your father, Evie.’

I sat in stunned silence, while his words rattled around in my head, and the pain that caught my chest gradually loosened enough for me to breathe. The two of us remained side by side without looking at each other, without speaking, with a past that I could never have imagined in my darkest nightmares forming a wall between us.

Eventually he reached a hand out to me, but I pulled mine away, and saw his fingers curl into a white-knuckled fist which he withdrew and replaced on his thigh. He seemed a stranger to me just then, and it was going to take time to absorb this awful new truth.

Part of that truth was that I barely remembered my father. What I did remember of him was a stern face, not unloving, but neither affectionate. Images flashed through my head of my earliest memories of Uncle Jack; his endless patience, his laughter, his friendship with parents Lawrence and I saw too little of, unless he was visiting. He seemed to soften them, somehow, and whenever he came to stay the house came alive, Mother and Father were more tolerant, quicker to smile and to gather us all together as a family.

When he had brought news of Father’s honourable death in service, he had been grief-stricken, that much was clearly true. He told us he’d promised Father he would take care of us should something happen, and he had. But that something had happened by his own hand! How could he have lied to us all like that? I’d only been eight, but I still remembered his white, pain-filled face, and Mother’s awful scream – the way he had held her while Lawrence and I looked at each other in mystified dismay at the sudden uproar in the house. And I remembered Uncle Jack sitting us both down in the morning room after Mother had been taken upstairs to bed, and telling us our father would not be coming home again.

‘You said he was a hero,’ I said now, sounding more like that eight year-old than ever.

‘I was at least able to get that much agreed with the Service,’ Jack said. ‘I couldn’t see what good it would do to destroy your family.’

My voice broke. ‘You did destroy it.’

He drew a ragged breath, and I looked around at him. He was nodding. ‘I’m so sorry.’

I turned away again and thought back to what he’d said, how I’d agreed without question that he’d done the right thing, before I’d known to whom he’d done it. Did that make me a hypocrite?

‘Why did he do it?’ I had to know how culpable Father had been.

‘He was recruited very young, by Samuel Wingfield. The tragedy was that he truly believed what he was told, that our government was corrupt and must be stopped, that our cause was the wrong one.’

‘So he chose his path.’

He hesitated. ‘I loved your father, Evie. He was my closest friend, you know that. He was an innocent though, and a little weak. Vulnerable, and Wingfield saw that.’

‘Vulnerable or not, he chose to betray and kill those he fought with. Friends. Including you.’

‘But –’

‘No! No more, not now. I need time to think, and I don’t know how I feel, not really. But Will’s the important one now.’

I slumped against him, drained, and felt him twitch in pain. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly, moving away, but he pulled me closer again. ‘It’s all right, it’s nothing compared to what…to…’ He couldn’t finish, I heard the way his voice caught the words and refused to let them out.

‘Maybe not, but it’s worse than you’ve been telling her, isn’t it?’

‘It’s all right,’ he repeated. And that’s all he would say, but when we began to walk I noticed how his hand crept beneath his coat, and the way his breathing sharpened when he moved too quickly. Every muscle was taut, and his face reflected the deep, bruising ache that had not had time to subside. He must have been struggling so hard not to worry Lizzy, and he was still doing it, but with me it wasn’t necessary and I wished I could make him understand that.

He misinterpreted my worried expression, and took my hand as we walked down the corridor. ‘Archie should be ready to bring Will across by tomorrow.’ He hesitated, then said, ‘They’ll have to go straight to London.’

A fresh band of terror tightened around my chest. ‘You mean he’s still being court-martialled?’

‘I’m afraid he’ll have to be.’ His face was drawn, and now it wasn’t simply his pain that caused it. There was a dark apprehension there too. ‘All I can do is make sure they hear his evidence.’ Seeing my face he went on quickly, ‘But it will make a difference, Evie, believe me.’

‘And what evidence will that be?’

‘He’ll be thoroughly checked by a medical officer, evaluated by his commanding officer, and I’ll draft a supportive statement as a government official.’ Uncle Jack looked uncomfortable for a moment. ‘It’s probably best if you don’t see him until after it’s all over.’

I stopped, appalled. ‘
What?
’

‘It’s for his own good, love,’ Jack said. ‘If Will is suffering from some kind of amnesia, as we think he is, that will help his case. But if he sees you it might all come back to him. He won’t be able to give a convincing performance, and if they think he’s lying he’ll be found guilty.’

‘But it was true!’

‘They won’t know that. All they’ll see is a young man who left his unit, and hid on a farm, scavenging for food. A soldier who clearly remembers everything, but is pretending he doesn’t.’ He drew me around to face him. ‘Evie, promise me you won’t try to see him?’

My heart turned over, but his words made a horrible sort of sense at least. ‘I promise.’ It was no more than a whisper, but he let out the breath he’d been holding.

‘Good girl,’ he said, and hugged me. We walked in silence for a while, everything that had happened twisting and turning in our minds, and I found the other bright part, quite apart from Will’s safety, that had come out of this strange, cold day.

‘I’m so happy for you and Lizzy,’ I said quietly, and saw him tense, then relax.

‘Are you sure? I’m so much older, and she’s such a sweet, trusting girl. You must be wondering what on earth she sees in me.’

I smiled, feeling my own tension fade a little. ‘I think those are your worries, Uncle Jack, not mine.’ looked at him and saw that, beneath the tiredness and the pain, pushing it away, there was contentment – just to be talking about Lizzy was clearly all the medicine he needed at the moment. But, despite how deeply I loved him, she was my closest friend and he had put her at risk. It wasn’t something that sat easily with me.

‘I’ve made my promise, now you make one.’

‘Anything,’ he said.

I looked at him seriously. ‘Promise me you won’t put her in any more danger.’

His eyes rested on mine and I saw complete honesty there. ‘I promise you I would die before letting any more harm come to her. Just the thought of what happened, what might have happened…’ He broke off, but I needed no further convincing; his hand shook, a mixture of exhaustion and emotion, and he let go of mine, but he kept looking at me and I believed him. His own injuries might heal quickly, but Lizzy’s would hurt him for the rest of his life.

‘Tell me more about Will,’ he said, fighting to sound normal. ‘I only knew him as the butcher’s boy, and you know I didn’t get any of your letters. So, tell me how you met. All of it.’

So I did: while he struggled to regain control, while Lizzy slept somewhere behind us, while Will was, maybe at this very moment, being brought out into the sunlight by Jack’s friend ready for his journey home, I talked of warmer, brighter times, and about hope and determination. And when I talked about two racing hearts, and the added excitement at the impropriety of their meeting, Jack smiled at last, and I could see the memories echoed in his own.