A Rose In Flanders Fields (26 page)

‘Hey ho!’ a cheerful voice called out, and I looked around to see Oliver Maitland, leaning with one arm out of the window of the same car I had driven to France. His red curls, cut short for the military but still rebellious, peeked from under his cap and were caught in the wind that cut through the yard, it made him seem terribly young. We had become friendly over the past weeks and it cheered me no end to see him, despite the gnawing guilt.

‘Good morning,’ I called back. ‘What brings you here?’

‘Firstly I came to see if you were all right. I heard what happened.’

‘I’m fine, thanks.’ I waved my bandaged arm, and tried to ignore the throbbing that set up in the back of my mouth every time I closed my teeth too hard. I would get it looked at, just not yet. ‘All sorted, and right as rain. What about secondly?’

‘Secondly, Colonel Drewe has said you can use this little beauty for a few days, or until you get the chance to go back for the new bus, if that happens first.’

‘How very kind! Won’t he be needing it though?’

‘Not for a little while, he’s got some fearfully important meetings in Paris so he’ll be away for a day or two, I’ve just seen him onto the train. So, I’ll follow you to the CCS and you can load up for the hospital. Then we can both come back in this, you can drop me off, and there you go!’

‘That’s perfect,’ I said, relieved. At least I would be able to work, and bringing out sitters would free up space in the ambulances for more serious cases. ‘I’ll tell Anne she needn’t get all togged up for the great outdoors just yet, after all.’

‘Now, what news from Kitty?’ Oliver asked.‘Beastly girl never writes. How is she feeling now? Has she learned to milk a cow yet?’

‘She’s…improving,’ I said, hating the lie as I saw relief on his face. His cheery questions hadn’t really hidden the worry that went deeper than he cared to show. Again I struggled with my conscience, and as we drove back to the hospital he kept up a running patter of jokes and anecdotes, throwing Archie into a mercilessly stern light, and making Kitty seem quite the little minx – only he himself emerged from his tales with a blameless reputation, and I couldn’t help smiling, especially as it was so clear he was aware of what he was doing.

His chatter was designed to pass the journey in fun and friendship, and I allowed it to do so, finding comfort in the fact that I was still able to enjoy amusing company, and even contribute to it. We parted with smiles, and I drove away feeling better and more positive than I had done in a very long time. Then, arriving back at Number Twelve, I found a letter waiting from Kitty and my stomach instantly knotted tight; she would know, by now, if the sickness was what we’d suspected, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to find out. But I opened the letter, with shaking fingers, and sat down to read it.

Dear Evie.

Lizzy tells me she has not put the news in with her letter, as she thinks I should tell you myself. The truth has become apparent now, and I write to tell you that what you feared has proven to be the case. I groaned aloud, but at least she hadn’t laid it out in writing. I will just say that I have chosen to remain, for the time, with Mrs Parker. She is, as might be expected, a perfectly lovely lady and very calm.

Give Oliver a hug from me, won’t you? Tell him I’ll write soon. And say hullo to Archie for me too. Lizzy has said you feel somehow responsible for what happened. This is nonsense of course.

Kitty.

The throwaway comment stuck in my head, the insincerity of it came wafting off the paper like a bad smell. There was no ‘love’, or even ‘your friend’, on the signature and that was unlike her. That she resented my friendship with Archie didn’t help things; Lizzy would be as helpful as she could be, but I could see her getting quite snippy if Kitty kept up that particular and groundless grudge. The horrible smile of the driver hovered in front of my face. He must have known Kitty wouldn’t tell, that he would get away with it…that he would remain free to do it again, to any one of us. I had put the word about that everyone must take special care when out alone, but I couldn’t even hint that something had happened, without someone guessing to whom. And without explaining my reasons, the warning merely had the same kind of disciplinary overtones that the nurses were used to hearing – I had no authority, and so who would pay any attention to me? The solution was inescapable: I had to get Kitty to name her attacker, and there was only one person who might convince her.

I had to tell Oliver.

He managed to combine an errand at the hospital with my request to see him, and picked me up a little before lunch two days later. I’d worked the night before, and managed a couple of hours of thin sleep, but my mind would not shut down completely and even my dreams were filled with thoughts of what I had to do. I must have broken the news a dozen times, in a dozen different ways, before waking to the sound of his car outside and a churning nervousness in my stomach.

He waited patiently outside while I hurriedly washed, and boiled water for the Dewar bottle – it was another bitterly cold day, and a drink of hot tea would be welcome later. Then he drove to Furnes, where he carried out his business at the hospital before driving on again a few miles. Apart from my trips home, this was the farthest I’d been from the fighting front, but the dull crump of the guns still punctuated the conversation and it was impossible, even here, to put the war to the back of our minds.

‘Adinkerke,’ Oliver said, pointing. The town lay to our left, close to the French border, and I felt an unexpectedly sharp pain as I thought about Will, just over two hours away, and Lawrence, only a little further. I’d often thought about transferring to France, nearer them both, but it seemed easier to be at a distance, where I was not frantically searching among the muddied, bloodied, and all-too often unrecognisable faces of the men that passed through my hands on their way to an unknown fate. At least here I was able to give all my attention to the men who needed me.

Oliver glanced across and, noticing my expression, tried to lighten it. ‘We’re quite close to the coast here, fancy a swim?’

I squinted out at the rolling grey clouds and pulled my coat closer around me. ‘Sounds lovely. You go first.’

He grinned, and pulled the car to a stop in a field gateway, and turned to face me. ‘Right then, Madame Davies, what was it you wanted to talk to me about? Your wire was intriguing, I must say. I assume this has something to do with Kitty. Has she decided to stay in England?’

To give myself time to organise my thoughts I pulled the Dewar bottle from my bag and poured two mugs of tea. I could sense his curiosity becoming impatience, but I had to word it carefully. ‘I have something important to tell you,’ I said at last, ‘and I want you to promise you’ll listen all the way through before you say anything.’

‘Go on,’ The friendly, quizzical expression faded slightly into wariness, and I wondered, fleetingly, if I should just make up something else. But the time for lies had passed. ‘It
is
about Kitty. She’s all right,’ I held up my hand as he opened his mouth, and he subsided, his face pale, and my carefully rehearsed words deserted me. ‘What we told you, about her being ill, that wasn’t true. Not entirely.’

Oliver tensed further. ‘Out with it! What’s happened? She’s got the courage of a charging elephant, that one, it can’t be the war that’s seen her off.’

‘No, it’s not. She…I was, well, she was driving alone one night and stopped to help someone she thought, at the time, might have been drunk. Because of his eyes, she said. He wasn’t drunk though, he’d planned the whole thing to catch her. Oli, she was terribly brave and fought back, but –’

‘Stop!’ His hand crashed against the steering wheel. He lowered his head, and I could see the struggle as he fought to contain his fury. Eventually he took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then he looked at me, and his eyes were cold. ‘Who was it?’

‘I can’t be sure, she wouldn’t say. But I do have a suspicion.’

‘Tell me!’

My hands were shaking, gloved though they were, and I put my cup on the dashboard and wrapped them together. ‘I think it might have been the driver who brought you and Archie and the colonel over that day.’

‘I know the one. Ratty-looking bloke. Hardly ever speaks.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Not sure, but I’ll damned well find out.’ He bit his lip and looked at me with reddened, worried eyes. ‘Is she all right, really? I mean…I assume this is the real reason she’s stayed in England. Is she too scared to return?’

‘Perhaps I’ve understated it so you could absorb it better,’ I said, and cleared my throat. ‘It was…the worst kind of attack.’ He flinched, and I hurried on, ‘I’m so sorry, Oli, I didn’t know whether I should tell you.’

‘Of course you should have! And before now.’

‘Archie said –’

‘
Archie said!
She’s my sister!
My
sister, not his.’

I didn’t say anything, and the atmosphere inside the car was heavy with my helplessness and his silent anguish. The distant crack of gunfire sounded louder in the stillness of the car, and a gust of wind blew a splatter of icy rain across the windscreen. Otherwise the only sound was Oliver’s harsh breathing, and the squeak of the leather under us as we shifted in our seats.

‘I need your help,’ I said quietly.

He was still pale, his hair looked redder than ever in contrast. He ran a hand through it, and I saw the hand was shaking as badly as mine. ‘My help? What can I do?’

‘You’re the only person who might be able to persuade Kitty to tell the truth. To identify him so he can’t do it again.’

‘More likely to listen to Archie. She’s sweet on him, you know.’ Oliver looked at me closely, no doubt sharing the belief with his sister that Archie and I were in some way connected beyond friendship.

‘She doesn’t want him to know,’ I said.

‘Of course.’ Oliver kept his eyes on me and I flinched under their sharp, green gaze. ‘She’s pregnant. That’s what you’re telling me, isn’t it?’

There was a faint note of hope in his voice, and in the set of his eyebrows, that he had misunderstood. But I nodded and the hope faded. He looked back out of the windscreen and chewed at his lip. ‘You think I can get through to her?’

‘If anyone can.’

‘Not you? You’re her closest friend. She trusts you with her life.’

‘Not any more.’ It hurt to say it, and now I risked angering him all over again. ‘It was my fault she was put in the way of danger.’

His tone sharpened. ‘How so?’

‘Remember the time you and the colonel arranged for me to take this car to see Will? That was the night it happened.’ His face twisted, and I reached out to touch his arm but he jerked away. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said, longing for him to turn to me with kindness and forgiveness, and tell me I was being foolish. But he didn’t.

‘You scurried off to patch up some quarrel, and left my little sister to fend for herself,’ he said in a tight voice. ‘Quite apart from what happened, she should
never
have been allowed to drive alone at night.’

‘We all do it!’ I heard the protest in my voice and wished I didn’t sound so defensive; I knew I was to blame, so why did it hurt so much to have it confirmed?

‘She’d been here four months, Evie!’

This was too much, even taking into account my own guilt, and my voice rose to match his shout. ‘Most of us do it the first bloody
night
! If she’d joined the regular corps she’d have been driving that road at night, alone and with a loaded bus, before she’d had her first cup of tea!’

‘Well, she didn’t join them! She came to
you
. And you let her down.’

Oliver shoved open his door and got out, heedless of the rising wind that sliced through even the heaviest of coats, and threw his drink away into the grass. I got out too, it felt as if I should bear at least the physical discomfort alongside him.

‘Oli –’

‘Don’t call me that. That’s for friends.’

Stricken, I somehow edged my voice with steel. ‘Captain Maitland!’ He flinched, and I sensed the approach was the right one and pursued it. ‘You’re an officer in the British army, and one of your men attacked a vulnerable girl while she was doing her duty to help your men. What do you intend to do about it?’

The silence seemed to go on forever but I held my tongue, and my breath. I’d done all I could. At last Oliver turned to me, and I saw then that he was close to tears. ‘Evie, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t blame you.’

‘You should,’ I said, taking a step closer, my voice softening again. ‘I do, and so does Kitty. But I blame that driver more, and he’s the one who needs to be brought to justice. We need you for that.’

He nodded. ‘I may have a day or so saved. I’ll talk to the acting CO, and see if I can bring some more forward, enough to go back to England.’ He looked at me with a haunted expression. ‘Thank you for trying to make this as right as it can be.’

‘I owe it to her.’

‘You weren’t to know,’ Oliver said. ‘I know you feel badly about it, but you’re right; she’s not the only girl driving alone at night. It’s just…she’s my little sister, and the others aren’t.’ I nodded. It occurred to me that I had no idea if Will had ever worried about me like this; I don’t know if I wished it or not.

‘I understand, Oli. And thank you.’ My hair was being tugged by the wind, and a fresh splatter of rain stung my cold face, but relief that he had apparently accepted our friendship again gave me the courage to smile hesitantly. ‘Can we get back into the car? I’ve brought a picnic but I’m blowed if I’ll sit on the grass and eat it.’

He managed an answering smile, though a strained one, and nodded, and we climbed gratefully back into the relative warmth of the car. To break the faintly awkward silence I delved into my bag and withdrew the bread I’d wrapped in the waxed paper that had accompanied my last parcel from home. I gave some to Oliver, then took out a jar and a spoon.

‘Honey from Dark River Farm,’ I said. ‘Lizzy sent it. Would you like some?’

In answer he held out his piece of bread and I put a dollop of thick, comb-encrusted honey onto it and spread it with the back of the spoon. I needed to get him talking, to break this tense, fragile barrier completely, and help him relax enough to absorb the reality of what had happened. I raised a piece of bread to my own mouth, but then and lowered it with regret. I really must get that tooth seen to. Instead of biting, I tore a piece off.