Daughters of War (24 page)

Sophie hugged her impulsively. ‘Of course there will – and Iannis and I will be glad to have your company for a little longer.’

Back in her tent Leo sat for a long time on the edge of her bed, staring at the ground. Had she been a fool? She was stuck here now, with no real function and who could say when the next train might arrive? Sophie and Iannis were kind, but no substitute for Victoria. Then it came to her. With Victoria gone and her help no longer needed in the hospital tent, she was free to accept the position Sasha Malkovic had offered her. Not on a permanent basis, of course, but perhaps part-time. As long as she continued to live in her own tent, in the Bulgarian camp where she was known as a woman and able to use the facilities provided for the female nurses, it should be possible to maintain the deception. It was a risk, of course. A mad gamble. But after all, what could happen if she was discovered? She would be dismissed, but that was all. It was a gamble worth taking, and for a few days or weeks she could keep her dream alive.

Seventeen

Tom Devenish took a sip of gritty coffee and raised his face to the winter sun. He had been in Athens for almost a month and was feeling perfectly healthy. In fact, he felt better than he had done for a long time. The last month had been pure enjoyment, as he wandered round Athens with his sketch pad, wondering why on earth he had set his face against foreign travel until now. Now he was contemplating his next move. He had almost decided to go to Delphi and then across the Gulf of Corinth to Patras, from where he could take a boat to Italy. He would do what he had dreamed of in the hospital, and take his time making his way home via Venice and Florence and then through France. There was no hurry. Leo would be safe at home now and he had admitted to himself long ago that he was not in love with her, nor she with him. The best thing he could do, for both of them, was to keep out of the way. She would find plenty of suitors once he was off the scene.

It meant, of course, that he would not see Ralph for a long time. Already they had been apart for a longer period than at any time since they had first met at the age of twelve. At school they had been inseparable, often staying in each other’s homes during the holidays, and later, when Tom was up at Oxford and Ralph in the army, they had still managed to meet regularly. When Ralph had suggested that Tom would be an ideal husband for Leo the idea had seemed wonderful at first, and for months Tom had allowed himself to entertain a dream in which the three of them all lived together. He knew that what he really wanted was something quite different but he had closed his mind to it as too shameful to consider. Now, after so many weeks away from Ralph, he was beginning to feel like a recovering alcoholic, aware of a vacancy at the centre of his being but also experiencing an unfamiliar sense of freedom.

The waiter came out onto the terrace, carrying a newspaper and a letter. His usually bland face was animated and he waved the paper under Tom’s nose.

‘See,
kirie
? It is as I told you. The truce has broken down. Those treacherous Turks are attacking on Gallipoli.’

Tom waved the paper away. He had had enough of wars and it was no longer his concern. Besides, he had recognized the handwriting on the envelope and had felt at once the old, familiar tingle of pleasure and excitement. ‘You know I can’t read Greek, Dimitrios. Is that a letter for me?’

‘
Ne, kirie.
For you, from England.’ He presented the letter with a flourish, gathered up Tom’s cup and went back inside.

Tom slit the envelope. He had telegraphed to Ralph to let him know where he was, but this was the first reply that had reached him. He read:

Tom lowered the letter and thumped the table in irritation. ‘Nip back’ – typical of Ralph! As if it was as simple as walking round the corner. He read on:

Tom put the letter back in the envelope and sat gazing unseeingly at the Parthenon, which seemed to float against the pale blue of the sky above him. So, that was the end of his dream of a Grand Tour. He must go back to Salonika, if not for Ralph’s sake then for Leo’s. Even if he had rejected the idea of marriage he still had an obligation towards her. He was not in love with her but he was very fond of her and her safety mattered as much to him as it did to her brother. Ralph would never forgive him if he failed in this duty, but he did not relish the prospect of explaining to him that he intended to renege on the intended marriage. With a sigh, he got up and went inside to prepare for his departure.

It took him the best part of a week to reach his destination and his first act was to call on Reggie Vincent, the British military attaché.

‘Good lord,’ Vincent exclaimed, ‘I thought you’d be back in England by now. What are you doing back in this godforsaken hole?’

Tom cleared his throat. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely honest with you when we first met. I told you I was out here in order to make sketches for the newspapers. It’s true that I had been drawing battleground scenes and some of them have been published by papers back home. But that wasn’t my principal reason for being here. When I tell you that it touches upon the honour of a lady, you will understand why I was less than frank. The fact is, I am engaged, or about to be engaged, to a young lady called Leonora Malham Brown. She is a very independently minded girl, and she took it into her head to run off without telling anyone to join something called The Women’s Sick and Wounded Convoy in Bulgaria.’

‘I’ve heard of them,’ Vincent interrupted. ‘Done sterling work, by all accounts. But I think they’ve gone home now.’

‘So I understand,’ Tom said. ‘But Leo isn’t with them. It seems she and a friend are driving and were intending to come here to find a ship to take them and the car home. Have you, by any chance, heard of two young English women looking for passage on a boat heading for France or Italy?’

‘Good God! What an amazing coincidence!’ Vincent exclaimed. ‘I had a girl in here a couple of days ago, asking me to help her find exactly that.’

‘Oh, thank God!’ Tom felt almost weak with relief. ‘A tall girl with reddish hair?’

‘No, ’fraid not. This one was dark.’

‘Oh, well that would be Victoria, Leo’s friend. Did you find them a ship?’

‘Well, I did. But here’s the thing. According to what the girl said, she was on her own.’

‘On her own!’

‘That’s what she said.’

‘When did her ship sail? Is there any chance she is still here?’

‘Wait a minute, I wrote it down somewhere. Yes, here it is. She sails today. Oh God! What’s the time?’ He looked at the clock on the wall and rose, grabbing his cap. ‘Come on. We might just catch her.’

Tom followed him down to the docks. He would have been completely at a loss in the general hubbub and confusion but Vincent led him through it at a run, brushing aside hawkers and beggars and dodging donkey carts and piles of crates. They reached the right pier just as a Greek-registered cargo ship was casting off and on the deck Tom saw a battered and mud-covered car. Beside it stood a young woman in what he recognized as FANY uniform.

‘Victoria!’ Tom bawled at the top of his lungs.

He saw her turn, searching the dock for the source of the voice. Then she saw him.

‘Tom Devenish! What are you doing here?’

‘Where’s Leo?’ he yelled.

The ship was drawing away from the quay and Victoria’s voice only just carried to him. ‘She’s at Adrianople. At the Red Cross hospital. She’s nursing typhus patients.’

‘Why isn’t she with you?’

If she heard him her reply was drowned by the noise of the ship’s engines. Tom turned to Vincent. ‘Is there any chance of stopping the ship? Or could we get on board somehow?’

‘Not a hope,’ Vincent replied. ‘Even if we could persuade the customs chaps that there was a good reason to detain her, she would be miles away before we got through all the red tape.’

Tom stood panting for a moment, then he said, ‘Where’s Adrianople?’

‘Some distance away, I’m afraid. Over to the east. The Bulgarians have been besieging it for months. I assume your lady friend is working with them.’

‘Nursing typhus patients,’ Tom reminded himself. ‘Is she out of her mind?’

‘She must be a remarkable young woman,’ Vincent commented.

‘How can I get there?’ Tom asked.

‘It won’t be easy, I’m afraid. There’s no regular train service but they do send out reinforcements and supplies from time to time. They don’t go as regularly as they might, because the Serbs control this end of the operation and there’s no love lost between them and the Bulgarians. But we could go to the station and see if anything is scheduled.’

At the station, after being referred from one official to another until Tom’s temper began to fray, they discovered that a train was due to leave in five days’ time. When Tom asked if he could travel on it, however, he was told it was for military personnel only. There was some discussion in broken Serbian between Vincent and the official and at length the Englishman turned to Tom.

‘He says he wants to see your passport. Which I take to mean that if he happened to find a few crisp bank notes nestling inside it he might be prepared to stretch a point.’

Tom remembered how Max had got them into the country; it seemed a long time ago now. He turned his back, took out his wallet and slipped what he thought was a generous amount between the pages of his passport and handed it over. The official grunted, pocketed the money without comment and laboriously filled in some kind of docket, stamped it and handed it to Tom.

First thing in the morning, five days later, he arrived at the station to find no sign of imminent departure. After hanging around for several hours he was told that there had been an unforeseen hold up but the train would go tomorrow. Eventually, at midday the following day, the engine wheezed and clanked into motion and they were on their way. Tom sat back and gazed bleakly out of the window. He was not sure what he hoped to accomplish. Leo would almost certainly refuse to come back with him, but at least he could tell Ralph he had done his best.

Luke Pavel stood on the heights overlooking the battle lines on the Gallipoli peninsula and gazed towards the white flecked waters of the Dardanelles. To his right he could just make out the line where the Adriatic met the horizon, and to his left was the Sea of Marmara. Between the two, stretched across the neck of the peninsular, were the trenches, Bulgarian nearer to him, Turkish further away, and in the no-man’s-land between lay the bodies of hundreds of men. He could see the Turkish ships standing off the coast but not the beaches where the troops had landed. They had come storming out of the trenches, wave after wave of them, screaming, ‘Allah! Allah!’ and had been mown down by the Bulgarian guns on the higher ground. It was the first time he had understood the terrible destruction that these new machine guns could inflict.

An icy wind was blowing from the mountains to the north and sky and sea were slate grey against the white of the snow-covered landscape. It was a monochrome landscape, without colour or life, and without mercy. It reflected precisely the inner landscape of Luke’s heart.

Eighteen

On the morning after Victoria’s departure Leo presented herself at Malkovic’s tent. He was in the middle of giving orders for the day to his aides-de-camp and his only reaction to her appearance was a quizzically raised eyebrow. When he had finished and dismissed the men, he sat back and looked at her with that steady, inscrutable gaze that she found so unnerving.

‘I didn’t send for you.’

‘I know. The train took most of the patients from the hospital so I am no longer needed. So I am at your service – if you need me.’