Delusion (5 page)

“Phil,” Fee whispered, and crept up to touch Algernon’s arm.

“You can stare,” he said. “I won’t know. It happened at Dunkirk. It’s funny, a physicist told me how it works. It wasn’t the shrapnel that blinded me. The concussive force got to my eyes first and ruined them a fraction of a second before the metal got there. By then my eyes were squeezed shut. The shards never touched them. Amazing things, nerves, when they still work.”

He groped behind him for the settee, and Fee was immediately there, supporting him. In an instant she saw the possibilities: a lifetime of dedication and sacrifice, evenings spent reading him poetry, being his eyes on their rambles, the way other senses (touch, she hoped) would be enhanced now that he’d lost his vision. Fee was always a sucker for lame dogs and birds with broken wings. In the space of a breath she was half in love with him, and it is fortunate that before the other half could construct itself, an irate female voice snapped, “He doesn’t need your help!” A girl with a pretty, hard-set face and sulky mouth came from another room laden with tea—for two.

The Albion girls introduced themselves, and she told them, “I’m Diana, Algie’s fiancée.”

Fee sighed. Well, there must be plenty of other prospects nearby.

“Darling,” Algernon protested gently, “I’ve told you the marriage is off.”

“No,” Diana said, plainly resuming an old argument. “Do you think I’d change my mind just because you’re blind? Would you, if it were me?”

“That’s different. I’m a man. I’m supposed to run this farm, support my family. How can I do that now? Now that I’m useless, I’ve freed you to find a better man.”

“I don’t want a better man, you idiot. I want you.”

Phil and Fee exchanged quick looks but managed not to laugh.

“Perhaps we should go to our room and freshen up,” Fee said.

“Yes,” Diana said, glaring at them, at Fee in particular. “Why don’t you do that. It’s the last room, down there.” She pointed absently. “I’m sure you can find your own way.”

Having received their marching orders, they walked down the narrow, winding hallway to their room.

Fee unpacked her books, commandeering the single nightstand between their twin beds, while Phil started to hang up her clothes. She’d packed her most practical things—dungarees starched by Miss Merriall and ironed into a razor crease, shirts swiped from her brother, sweaters in her most utilitarian colors—though of course, being an Albion, those colors were bright canary (on the theory it might blend in with fields of grain) and deep claret with rhinestones sewn on. To these she’d added opera gloves for warmth, silk scarves to tie up her hair, and her few remaining silk stockings. Both girls brought some of their stage clothes, too, show dresses with beads on the bosom and feathers on the nethers, mementos of the life they’d left behind.

Their parents, such sticklers for discipline on the stage, had never bothered to extend that authority to the rest of life, and the girls were allowed to wear—and for the most part do—exactly what they liked. Of all the girls at the city school, only Phil and Fee glittered on a regular basis.

Phil didn’t consider herself vain. It was just that she would never wear beige when she could wear fuchsia, or wool when silk was available. And even when cloth, along with practically everything else, was strictly rationed, there were always yards and yards of rare and beautiful material neatly folded in Miss Merriall’s many cedar chests. During times of plenty, she bought every lovely fabric that caught her eye. And it was a good thing, too, for Dad was always changing up the show. He’d decide in the morning that what the audience really needed was for them to all dress as a pasha and his harem, and Miss Merriall, fingers flying, would comply with coin-studded bodices and puffed gauze trousers by the evening performance.

Phil, taking inventory, suddenly gasped. “Boots!” She held up a pair that were bootish in only the most nominal sense that they came up over her ankle—soft white leather, overlaid lace, a spool heel. “How could I have forgotten to pack real boots? Fat lot of good these will do me when I’m digging a trench or pouring concrete for a pillbox bunker.”

“We’re staying in farm country. I’m sure someone can lend you sturdy boots.”

“Of course,” Phil said, jumping up, filled with nervous energy and the fervent need to perform some patriotic act immediately. “That Diana’s too puny, and for some reason I don’t think she’s eager to do us any favors, but there must be some old boots in a closet that no one will miss. Back in two shakes.”

She went in search, leaving Fee to curl up with
Sense and Sensibility
and wonder if Willoughby was really so bad after all. She rather fancied finding a dissolute seducer to reform.

Leery of bothering the engaged-or-perhaps-not couple, Phil tentatively searched the rest of the house, hoping to find a storage closet where she could equip herself. The house was dark by now, which pleased her because the Germans couldn’t see them, but it made navigation rather difficult, not to say frightening.
Not,
she told herself,
that I can let myself be frightened of anything ever again. I mean to be a soldier now, like Hector, even if I can’t be in any official organization. I’ll know in my heart I’m a soldier for England, and a soldier never quails before anything.

Still, she was thinking of getting a candle when she heard a low ghastly groan coming from the nearest room. She froze, desperately wanting to run, and told herself that with so many real terrors, she’d be a fool to believe in ghosts.

The sound repeated, and she heard a grinding, low and repetitive, and a metallic rattle that was somehow familiar. Ghosts, she seemed to recall, sometimes wore chains . . .

Whatever it was, it couldn’t be a line of German soldiers, so she had to be brave and go in. What was the worst it could be? A rat? An old lady in a rocking chair?

A dead old lady in a rocking chair?

She clamped her teeth together and opened the door.

A second later she ran, not quite screaming but certainly gasping, back to the parlor, where Algernon and Diana stared at her, he in amazement, she in irritation.

“There’s...there’s . . .” she panted.

“Calm down. What is it?” Algernon asked.

“It’s a giant bug, tied up, in terrible pain!”

“She found Uncle Walter,” Diana said. “You should have warned her. Good night dear, I’ll be back tomorrow.” She leaned in to kiss his scarred face, and he moved to evade her as soon as he felt the brush of her lips.

“You don’t have to.”

“Shut up,” she said, and left.

“What’s Uncle Walter?” Phil asked, catching her breath.
What,
for that thing back there could not possibly have been a
who.

“Another one who left the farm,” Algernon said. “He went away to the Great War—the war to end all wars, they called it—a happy young buck who rode to the hounds and had quite a way with the ladies. A few years later they sent us home that. You must have seen him in dim light. That’s the gas mask. He’s wearing his old helmet too, I’m sure. He always does.”

“He was hunched over and rocking, and I heard a chain. I thought maybe . . .” She was too embarrassed to say what she’d thought.

“He’s handcuffed himself to the radiator. In cold weather he locks himself to the bed so he doesn’t get burned—he’s mad, not stupid—but he prefers the radiator. He’s sure he can’t get away from that.”

“Is he dangerous?”

“He says he is. He only handcuffs himself on the bad days, though. Sometimes he’s almost normal.”

“What happened to him?”

“They called it shell shock, but we all know a shell had nothing to do with it. This,” he said, wiggling his fingers at his ruined face, “is shell shock. What Uncle Walter has is pure human-induced insanity, self-chosen, as the least of all available evils. Shall I tell you? You seem pretty gung ho, and I don’t want to put you off war.”

“Please.”

“He’s talked about it a few times. You can’t imagine how it was. Half his friends blown to bits in the most horrible ways. Not that there’s any particularly good way to be blown to bits, but when I was in France, people seemed to die cleanly. Better guns these days, I suppose. In the trenches back then, it was all leaking intestines and gangrenous legs and screaming for days stuck in no-man’s-land.”

“That would be enough to drive most people mad,” Phil said.

“No, he got through that part. He said every second he thought about running away, but he didn’t. He said he was so scared, he vomited ten times a day, hid his face in his helmet and cried, and didn’t bother to learn anyone’s name because they’d be dead the next morning. He was terrified of dying, yet he thought about strolling out on the battlefield and letting a sniper take him cleanly, just to get it over with. He thought about all these things, went quietly crazy inside, kept it to himself, and soldiered on.

“Then one day they caught another boy, just like him. A farm boy not even seventeen, who got so scared and lonely he crept off to an abandoned barn to hide and fell asleep while his friends were killing and dying in droves. When they found him, he had his thumb in his mouth and was cuddling a letter from his mother under his cheek. They charged him with desertion and court-martialed him within days. While his unit was still at the front, they drove him a mile back behind the lines, tied him to a post with a red X on his chest, and picked twelve men for the firing squad. Uncle Walter was one of those men. He shot the boy, then allowed himself to go mad at last. At least the boy died fast, not holding his guts together in the frozen mud. He had ten bullet holes in his chest, and one between his eyes. Uncle Walter was a sharpshooter, you see.”

“But the man deserted,” Phil said slowly, trying to puzzle out her feelings.

“He was a boy, not a man, and you don’t know what you’re talking about.” Algernon’s easygoing jocularity was suddenly gone. “If you shoot a human being for being afraid, you might as well shoot him for being cold, or hungry. You can hide fear, like Uncle Walter did for a while, but you can’t help it. Pray God you never have to find out.”

“I’ll do my part in the Home Guard.”

“You can’t. You’re a girl. Besides, there isn’t one here.”

“Then I’ll make one. Even if I’m the only active member. Now, I need sturdy boots please.”

He laughed at her. “What do you think you’re going to do?”

“Whatever I can to keep the Germans from conquering England. It’s their fault, then as now, that innocent boys aren’t allowed to be quietly cowardly in the bosom of their families where no one need ever know. And that is why,” she added, striking a dramatic pose she didn’t realize was ludicrous, “I will fight to the death to keep them out of England.”

Algernon shook his head. “You should go out with the hop pickers. Earn your keep here and maybe take your mind off things for a while.”

Phil’s withering look was lost on the blind man, but her silence was not.

“Very well. You can wear Uncle Walter’s old boots, I suppose. He has several sets of them. They’re in his closet.”

She didn’t want to go back in that room with the poor madman in the gas mask, but she had to be brave, about everything.

“Why exactly is he wearing handcuffs?” she asked.

“When it was time to shoot the boy who deserted, he thought about shooting his commanding officer and as many of the other ranking men as he could get instead. He still isn’t sure he made the right decision, and he wants to be sure he doesn’t do something rash now. And then, as he will surely tell you one day if you get a bit of cider into him, he’s the bloodiest murderer in the county. He was a sharpshooter, remember. He killed a hundred men at least. He says he never knows when he might kill again.”

“Did you kill anyone?” Phil asked.

“I didn’t kill anyone, and I didn’t save anyone. I was just there, like a tourist. A tourist with one hell of a souvenir. Good night, magician girl.”

Phil meant to get straight to business at dawn, but her theatrical life had conditioned her to late hours, and she didn’t stagger into the dining room until nine. Mrs. Pippin had been awake since five to chivvy the hop pickers into action.

Algernon took care of the cows, making his halting way to the milking shed, where they let themselves into their stalls and waited patiently. There were only four, but it still took him the better part of the morning to milk them by feel. The farm cats had learned to follow close behind, because he spilled a quarter of it, and he always had trouble with the steam sterilizer, but he was determined to do what he could and only laughed at the thought of the additional damage a steam burn could do to his face.

“Everyone’s gone. Except Uncle Walter, that is,” Fee said. “Algie left these for you.” She indicated a pair of boots under the table. They were old but impeccably polished and looked only slightly too big. “They’re Uncle Walter’s. Algie thought you might not want to deal with him yourself.”

What he’d actually said was “Uncle Walter used to be quite the ladies’ man, back when he had all his marbles. The sight of a girl like Phil might shock him out of his insanity, and frankly we’re all used to it by now. Having a genuine madman in the family lends a certain panache.”

But the boots, bolstered with two pairs of socks, did admirably, and Phil turned this way and that before the slightly foggy old mirror, as happy as if she had a new part to play in the Hall of Delusion. Her outfit was a bit plain, though, so she cinched in her waist with a gold-dyed alligator belt as wide as her hand. And because a magician is always thinking about her craft, she repaired to her room and took a needle and thread to the back waistband of her brand-new dungarees, transferring something from one of her too-showy outfits.

“Are you coming with me?” she asked, hoping Fee would decline. Fee was fine on strolls, useless on walks. She had a distressing tendency to stop every ten feet and marvel at some perfectly bland piece of nature, and with imminent battle on her mind, the last thing Phil wanted was to be forced to praise a thistle.

“No—if you don’t mind, I’ll stay here and take care of the chickens.”