A Rose In Flanders Fields (17 page)

Two days later Will came home.

Jack had gone back to London to be further de-briefed about the disappearance of Samuel Wingfield, and to give his evidence at Will’s trial, and Lizzy remained in hospital in Shrewford. Mother had insisted I come home while I waited for news, and I was glad to go, especially after the way we had parted. It was comforting to hear her express genuine relief that Will had been found, and while I realised it was more for my benefit than for his, she sat willingly to listen while I finally told her everything about the way we had found each other. By the end of my telling she had softened still further, and the sense of betrayal at the way I had excluded her had faded into the understanding I had recognised before.

It was those memories that led me to find her on the day of the court-martial. She was writing a letter, and slid it out of sight beneath her blotter as I came into her favourite room; the morning room.

‘Evangeline. Hello, my dear.’ She sounded extra bright and I eyed the blotter, wondering what she had been so eager to hide. But Will’s plight drove the questions from my mind, and I found myself unable to sit still in even the most comfortable of the room’s chairs long enough for conversation.

Mother watched me stalking the room, picking things up and replacing them, and repeatedly looking out of the window for the arrival a telegram. ‘Jack will put everything right,’ she said at last, quite gently. ‘He has influence in the military.’

‘Limited, he said so himself.’

‘But still more than most young men in Will’s position are lucky enough to have,’ she pointed out. ‘And how is Lizzy?’ I heard genuine concern in her voice, which shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did.

‘She appears to be gaining strength,’ I said. ‘Mary says she has asked to be moved out of the private room and onto the main ward, which is typical of her.’

‘She’s a courageous girl,’ Mother said. ‘I hope she will find a good position when she recovers.’

‘But you fired her!’

‘I had to, you know that. I just feel terrible that I wasn’t able to offer her work when she came out of prison. If I had, she wouldn’t have had to go to Shrewford for that interview in the first place.’

‘Mother, I think it’s time I told you –’

A discreet knock at the door cut my words off and Dodsworth the butler entered; the moment I saw the telegram in his hand my heart froze. He held it out to me, expressionless as usual, and I plucked it from his hand with trembling fingers.

W exonerated stop Returning Breckenhall on 14:15 tomorrow.

Mother saw the colour drain from my face and grew instantly alarmed, but I shook my head; it was relief that was making me feel faint now. I hadn’t realised how big a part of me had been convinced of the worst, but now Will would be coming home. I sat down before my shaking legs could pitch me to the floor, and, with a bemused kind of gratitude I heard Mother get out of her own chair and come around to put her arm around me. It wasn’t until she spoke that I remembered she had been through the worst herself. But she hadn’t had the happy ending that now lay within my reach, and her voice, hardly more than a whisper, was drenched in her own memories of that unspeakably terrible time when Uncle Jack had come to Oaklands with the news that had torn her life apart.

‘When he comes home, darling, don’t let him go again. Ever.’

Chapter Nine

He was thinner. That much I had expected. He was ghost-pale and I had expected that too, but what came as a shock was his reaction to me. The train chuffed quietly as it sat in Breckenhall Station, and as Will stepped down from the carriage he looked around at his companion and nodded. It seemed he remembered some things, after all, and I felt a rush of relief, but since I had been cautioned against moving to embrace him I remained behind the fence, and breathed slowly to get my thundering heart under control. The officer he was with, Jack’s friend Archie, placed a hand on Will’s back and guided him to the exit. I took barely any notice of him but felt deep gratitude, nevertheless, for his presence; he hadn’t known Will long, and, although merely performing a duty, there was patience and gentleness in his manner.

When they emerged from the station into the little parking area where I waited next to the car, Will caught sight of me. His eyes widened, not with the recognition of a man for his wife, but with the dismay and guilt of someone caught out, and he looked frantically around to make sure no one else had seen us together. His hands rose to cup his elbows, then dropped, then rose again, this time to run his hands through his hair – the movements were quick and nervous, and he seemed unaware of them.

The captain urged him forward but he wouldn’t take another step. There was nothing I could do, although his reluctance to even meet my eyes hurt terribly. There was a narrow cut along his jaw that was healing well, but it looked as though it had been made by something extremely sharp, and was perilously close to his throat. I shuddered at how close he had come.

‘Will,’ I managed at last, and my voice broke on even that short word.

He looked at me, but his eyes skittered quickly away. ‘Miss Creswell.’

‘Mrs Davies,’ I corrected with a little smile, but my heart splintered and I smiled distractedly at the officer, through the tears that turned everything into a blur. ‘Captain Buchanan, I’m so grateful. It must have been awfully dangerous for you.’

‘Don’t give it another thought,’ he said, shaking my hand, and his voice was as warm and gentle as his touch. His Scots accent was not as thick as Mrs Cavendish’s, who hailed from Glasgow, but instead had a gentle Highlands tone. ‘I hope the day finds you well, Mrs Davies.’

‘Very, thank you. And please, call me Evie.’

‘And I’m Archie.’

I turned back to Will, who was looking around and seemed to relax the more he saw.

‘Do you remember this place?’ I said. I ached to touch him but he looked as though he would break away and run if I did.

‘Yes, Miss. I worked in town. Before.’

That word again. Only in Will’s case, “before” meant everything up until the moment he had joined up and left his old life behind. Before his orders arrived. Before we had married. All that had happened between then and his rescue was locked away. The naïve part of me had hoped the sight of me might, as Uncle Jack had warned, be enough to reach him, but now I could see the extent of his distress I wondered if anything ever could.

I looked at Archie, troubled, but he gave a slight shake of his head. ‘We can talk later,’ he said. ‘I think it’d be best just to take Will home for now.’

It occurred to me I hadn’t even wondered if Will would be happy coming back to Oaklands, but at least his belongings were still there, including all those years’ worth of exquisite sculptures. ‘Perhaps looking at some of your things might help with your memory,’ I said, and now, unable to hold back any longer I stepped forward and took his hand. He immediately pulled it away, but not before I’d felt his fingers tighten on mine, and I took heart from that instinctive response.

Standing so close to him, after these months of fearing him dead, I felt a physical pain at not being able to hold him, and see his eyes resting on mine with the spark of passion that had lit them almost since the day we had met. Instead I curled my fingers against the urge to reach out for his constantly moving hands again, and turned to Archie. ‘I do hope you can stay a while,’ I said, stiffly polite in the effort to control myself.

He nodded. ‘I’d like to help as much as I can, but I have to leave the day after tomorrow. I’ve already had to rely on Jack’s influence too much, and it’s not fair on the lads. Not to mention the COs resent it, and quite rightly.’

‘I understand, and thank you for everything.’ I glanced at Will again. ‘I think you’ve been of more help than you realise.’

I drove us back to Oaklands, and the journey, though short, was a strange one. Archie kept up polite conversation, and I answered his questions, but both of us were hopelessly aware of Will’s silence, and willing something to reach into that locked box in his mind and break it open. Nothing did.

I stopped the car outside the front door. ‘We don’t have a footman any more, I’m afraid,’ I said. ‘Would you mind bringing your own bag, Archie?’ I myself picked up the small bag Archie had packed for Will, it contained very little; most of his things were still in France.

Inside, Dodsworth was his usual, impeccably-mannered self, and nodded without comment to both Will and Archie before taking their bags upstairs. I led them both into the sitting room, relieved to find it empty; Mother was either in her bedroom or the morning room and it would give the three of us a chance to talk. Archie sat opposite me, but Will remained on his feet, his exhaustion not acute enough to overcome his embarrassment and discomfort.

‘Were you injured anywhere else, other than your jaw?’ I asked him.

He touched a hand to his head and shrugged. ‘A small wound. The nurses cleaned it up and said it would soon heal.’

‘Are you in pain?’ The way he looked at me answered louder than any words might have done. But it was not physical injury that was causing it; he was broken, confused and lost, and terrified he would remain that way for the rest of his life. ‘We’re going to help you,’ I said gently, and stood up. This time when I took his hand he didn’t pull away. He glanced past me at Archie, but he didn’t look as guilty as he had when we’d been out in the open and might have been seen by anyone. I was aware of Archie rising silently to his feet and slipping out of the room. For the first time in over a year, my husband and I were alone together. I had to try.

‘Do you understand we’re married?’

He nodded. ‘Archie told me. So how is it that I can’t remember?’ The sudden wretchedness in his voice brought tears to the back of my throat. ‘I know we were…that we used to meet. That we loved each other.’

I shouldn’t push him, yet I couldn’t help it. ‘Do you love me still?’ But it was too much. He dropped my hand, and pain sliced through me. ‘Will?’

I wished I had managed to choke that question back, but it was too late, and he turned away, his arms folded tight across his chest. ‘I
know
I love you,’ he said with quiet desperation, ‘and that I’ve loved you beyond reason since we met, but I can’t…’ his voice dropped until it was barely a whisper, ‘I can’t seem to
feel
it.’

‘It will come back, I know it. It has to, one day,’ I managed, trying to convince myself as much as him.

He looked back at me and his eyes glistened. ‘I could take hold of you now, and swear to never leave your side again. I could do it, and you would want to believe it, but it would just be words, to make things easier for us both. No matter how much I would wish it, it wouldn’t have come from my heart.’ He shook his head, bewildered. ‘I don’t understand it, Evie.’

‘Well, you called me Evie, that’s a good start,’ I said, and was rewarded by his first, faint smile. ‘Come on up to the room, and try to get some rest before dinner.’

‘I don’t think I can eat dinner.’

‘Then sleep. You need it.’ I held out my hand, and although he didn’t take it, he followed me out into the hall, looking around him with cautious, guilty interest, as if he were still the tradesman and he’d taken a wrong turn.

He hesitated at the foot of the main staircase, but I waited patiently, and eventually he gave me an apologetic half-smile and nodded for me to lead the way to the room Mother had set aside for us. Once inside he looked at the bed, carefully made up by Peters, and with two sets of night-clothes folded neatly on the pillow.

He cleared his throat, and his hands fussed mindlessly with his buttons for a moment before falling away. ‘I’m not sure about…I don’t –’

‘It’s all right,’ I lied. Part of me had hoped the forced intimacy of sharing a bed might re-ignite some feeling, even if we simply lay side by side and talked. But he wouldn’t so much as remove his jacket in front of me. ‘I’ll sleep in my old room,’ I said, and tried to smile but felt my mouth trembling. ‘Will, listen to me: we’re going to find you again.’

‘I hope so,’ he said, and his eyes met mine at last, and stayed there. In them I read hope and despair in equal measure. I reached up to touch his face, and he didn’t move away but neither did he relax or touch mine in return.

‘Sleep now,’ I said, ‘no one will disturb you, I promise.’

Archie smiled a greeting as I went down for dinner, and for the first time I had the opportunity to look at him properly. His hair was thick and very dark, almost black, and he had quite arresting grey eyes; his height and build might have made him seem imposing, but that gentleness was still evident, and I realised it had not simply been brought into play for Will’s sake after all. There was something familiar in the lines of his face, too, that I couldn’t place, but Boxy and I had met many of the officers stationed nearby, often fleetingly during duties or in the town, so perhaps that was where I’d seen him.

Then I remembered: he had been the one to tell me about Lizzy. He had introduced himself then, and I had steeled myself for the worst news about Will – but the shock of hearing it was Lizzy who lay close to death had been so intense it had wiped away everything else. I had probably been unforgiveably rude to him, but I honestly couldn’t remember. I apologised now, just in case, but he brushed it away.

‘You were upset and frightened. Really, don’t give it a thought, your manners were unimpeachable.’

I doubted it, given the circumstances, but I smiled with gratitude and took my place opposite him, and next to Mother, who had sat at the head since Father died.

During the meal we talked of Will, of course, and while he lay upstairs, hopefully sleeping away some of the terror and exhaustion, we learned how Archie had found the farm from Uncle Jack’s co-ordinates.

‘It was a shabby wee place, but dry, and the farmer’s wife had been bringing some kind of food out to him whenever she could, although it wasn’t really enough. They couldn’t bring him into the house; if they were caught, by either side, harbouring a deserter…’ He caught my stricken expression and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Evie, but that’s the way they’d have looked at it.’