Drawing Blood (22 page)

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Abigail

It was always going to happen this way,
she told herself.
You don’t get to keep them.

Abigail heard the tanks before Elliot did. The sound of extremely heavy equipment rumbled the ground. She knew it likely wasn’t the Germans.

She tightened her hold on him. It woke him, and he kissed the top of her head, his hand trailing up and down her side. Then he heard the vehicles, too.

Elliot sat, running his hands over his face to wake up. He got to his feet, pulling on his trousers. She stayed huddled under the blanket, watching him move about.

That was that. He was leaving. They were leaving.

He closed the pocket doors behind him. Then she heard him exit through the kitchen door, and that’s when she got up and pulled on the dress she’d been wearing the night before. She left her feet bare and her hair loose as she went up the stairs to the bedroom. David was on his back, asleep, still fully dressed, on top of the covers. He was snoring loudly.

She came into the room, not trying to be quiet. He didn’t stir. She touched his shoulder, and he shot upright in bed, crying out and swinging at her.

She ducked the fist, ending up sitting on the floor.

David’s eyes were wild as he looked around the room, arm still up. When he saw her, his brows furrowed. “Abby? Are you okay?”

She got to her feet while nodding. “I’m fine. Are you okay?”

He shivered, running his hands up his arms. “I’m fine. I must have been dreaming.”

“I think your friends are outside,” she said, picking up his boots from the floor by the door. “Elliot’s outside now. They should be able to get you to a hospital, make sure your leg will heal.”

David took her hand as she put the boots down next to the bed, holding it as she straightened. “Abby? What’s wrong?”

She just shook her head. “You want me to help you put your boots on?”

“Abby, stop. Talk to me.”

She forced one boot on to his foot. He let her put them on and tie them up. She knew her brave face was cracking.

He took her by the arm and sat her next to him. “Abby? You’ll be able to go back to England now. Maybe wait a few months …”

She shook her head, wiping her eyes. “There’s nothing in England. I have no home there. No job right now. Here there’s at least this house. This was to be my only inheritance. This really is all I have.”

He rubbed her shoulder then he shocked her. “Come with us. We’ll get to Calais, find a boat to England. Then just come home with me once it’s all over. I’m not seeing any more combat with this leg. I’ll put in for a discharge and we’ll go to Canada.”

She was uncomfortable, so her first reaction was to give a nervous laugh. But she couldn’t laugh at him. His expression was so honest, so open. He hid nothing. She patted his cheek. “David, you are going to make a girl so happy one day.”

He frowned. “I mean it, Abby.”

“I know you do. And I appreciate it.” She stood up. “I’ll get your clothes.”

His undershirt and blouse were still in the bathroom, folded neatly. She helped him dress in his fatigues. As they were making their way down the stairs there were other strange voices in her house she didn’t recognize. Men with the same accent Elliot and David had.

A man came to the foot of the stairs, peering up. His face broke in to a giant grin, making him maybe look all of twenty. “Holy shit Cleary. You can’t die, can you?”

David laughed next to her, and this young man came forward to take her place under Cleary’s arm. “Ma’am,” he said pleasantly. “Let me help you.”

“Don’t believe him. He’ll toss me down the stairs.”

She realized they weren’t following her. She turned back to see them embracing, slapping each other’s backs to make it seem like a more manly thing to do. She allowed a smile.

Abigail disappeared in to the shelter while the reunions were happening, then she carried the trunk full of medical supplies up in to the kitchen. Another solider was there, this one blonde with bright blue eyes. He took the trunk from her with all the manners of a well-raised boy. She asked who the medic was, and he said the medic was back on the truck. She told him to take the trunk to him.

He just nodded and did as told without question. The backpack Elliot had carried in the night they arrived was on the kitchen table, next to the German Luger. The submachine gun was gone.

Elliot entered the kitchen from outside, and she had to admit he didn’t look happy and excited to be leaving, but he clearly was. He picked up the pack by the shoulder strap.

“I saw the medicine trunk,” he said quietly. “I hope you at least kept a few things for yourself.”

“I did,” she lied, standing awkwardly in the centre of the room, arms linked across her stomach.

Elliot suddenly looked very different to her. His walk was strange, his mannerisms odd and foreign. Again she reminded herself that she didn’t know him. These observations were unwarranted.

“Abigail, I can’t begin to thank you for helping Cleary – David. And me. It was dangerous to take in two strangers.”

It was, she agreed. This was a new and exquisite kind of pain all over again. She was sure it had hurt less when James left. She didn’t know what “alone” meant when that happened. Now she knew it all too well, and she was heading back in to it and wincing already.

“We made sure to move the body from the barn. I guess there’s a morgue in town where people are bringing the bodies they’ve found on their land. We’ll take … him with us.”

Abigail nodded. She didn’t trust her voice.

“I hope … I hope your husband makes it back soon.” He said. “You deserve to be happy.”

He didn’t touch her one last time, kiss her. His men were in the kitchen with them, moving around. They weren’t paying her any mind really, but if he did that they sure would. She wanted to embrace him one last time but his body language clearly forbade it. It stung. His eyes told her everything she needed to know but it was his touch she wanted.

In the yard she caught up with David. He hugged her tightly, saying lovely things about how he’d never forget everything she did for him. It touched her heart that he was still so tender after everything he’d gone through. Abigail stood along the road and waved goodbye as the convoy rolled past her house on its way to Calais. Once they were out of sight the world was starkly silent again. The wind raised her hair from her shoulders, moving her skirt. A bird flew overhead giving a spooky cry.

The Germans were retreating, the war was turning around. For Abigail absolutely nothing and everything had changed.

1947
    

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Elliot

A hundred metres of water; that was all there was between them and who knew how many German infantry. He squinted in to the night sky, and none of it looked real. Fire didn’t fall from the sky. It didn’t drip down like drops from hell and hit men, lighting their clothes and sending them screaming from cover so they were easier to shoot.

He sighted down his 303 again. The Germans were returning fire. He aimed for the bursts, the only relief coming when the gunfire ceased from that shadow or brush or tree. The air stunk of fire, petrol, small and large munitions, and below all that: burning flesh. That was what stuck in the nose.

He was warm. Sweat was running down under his arms; it even stung his eyes. Strange for November, but then again there was fire raining down in bright arches across the canal like a rainbow.

The mortar team next to him was hitting their targets; there were just a lot of targets to hit. They’d have to be patient. He was pretty sure there were no tanks across the Leopold; the banks were so muddy he wasn’t sure how they would get up the other side on foot.

The shot that literally rung his bell came just as the mortar team took out a machine gun on the opposite bank. He was turning to tell them it was a good hit, and when he turned back his head snapped back as far as his neck let it, and he rolled to his side, blinking and wondering how someone went about stopping their ears from ringing. His helmet rolled over with him, and he looked up in to the face of Craig Jasper, one of the guys from his training days. The guy looked shocked, then confused.

“Lieutenant, you okay?”

“What the fuck just happened?”

Craig handed him his helmet. There was a dent in the front, courtesy of the German Army. That would have been in the back of his head if it wasn’t for the helmet. He put it back on, and was thanking Jasper just as the man’s face caved in one side, a round taking out a portion of his cheekbone and eye socket.

Elliot’s eyes flew open, his own breathing loud in his ears. A cold hand was on his forehead, stroking at his hair with cool fingertips. He took in the ceiling, the pillow, and Janet looking down at him. Her face had its usual concerned look, puckering her forehead.

He let out a deep breath, throwing an arm over his eyes. In her soothing manner she said, “It’s okay, you’re home, honey.”

He nodded. His face had cold sweat on it. Actually, his whole body felt sticky from the same problem.

“Where were you this time?”

“The Scheldt,” he mumbled.

“Again? That must have been a bad one.”

“Mmm hmmm.”

“You were screaming about Jasper again.”

“He died in front of me.”

“I know.” She kept playing with his hair, her nails slightly scratching at his scalp. He loved it when she did that.

“What time is it?” He half-sat up, rolling over to see the clock. It was eleven in the morning. “You let me sleep in again.”

“You were so tired last night.”

“What are you doing up?”

She shrugged. “I got up to go to the bathroom and couldn’t fall back asleep. I was going to make you breakfast.”

“You should rest more, you know.”

Janet leaned against the headboard, bringing her legs up on the bed next to him. Her hands sat on top of her tummy, slightly swollen and just starting to show her pregnancy. Elliot put his head in her lap, curling himself around her and closing his eyes again. He rested the side of his face on her stomach, smiling to himself as she continued playing with his hair.

“Let me make you breakfast,” she said eventually, making to get up. He tightened his arms around her waist.

“Not yet,” he moaned. “Just sit with me.”

So she did. “You want to tell me about it?”

He thought about that. He’d told her about D-Day, how at the time moving on and leaving the fallen behind had been necessary. But now he just wondered if they were dead, if they weren’t
saveable
. Like that kid that had gotten tangled in the barbed wire and shot outside that first bunker on Juno; if they had helped him, would he now be at home too, waiting the birth of his first child?

Guilt when you could do absolutely nothing to fix it was hard to shake. It was worse than regret.

“Not yet,” he admitted. He didn’t want to tell her about what the human head does when it takes a bullet, or what burning bodies smelled like. Or the sound a man made when he was burning to death. In short, he didn’t want to tell her anything about Caen, Falaise or the Breskens pocket. Everyone had heard about D-Day, everyone thought it was the worst day of the war.

D-Day had just been their first real day on the job. Everyone had been full of piss and vinegar. Everything after D-Day was full of horrors that no one who hadn’t been there could understand. He didn’t want to tell her about the towns of people killed and stacked up like cords of wood, including women and children. He couldn’t share with her the stink of a prisoner camp where Germans worked slaves to death or just killed them for sport, then locked them up to starve to death while they made a run for it. She certainly couldn’t hear about that when their baby was growing inside her.

“You hungry yet?” She asked, and he had to chuckle. She was incapable of passing time relaxing.

“Yes.” He sat up, and she ran her hand through his hair to try and smooth it down. It was too thick. Once it was slept on it had to be washed before it would lay flat. She sighed and smiled at him.

“All right. Breakfast in twenty minutes, Lieutenant.”

“Yes ma’am.” He gave a salute.

“You’re an officer.”

“Trust me, the wife outranks everyone else.” He ducked her as she made to cuff him on the shoulder, and she left the bedroom laughing.

He grabbed slacks and an undershirt then headed to the bathroom for a shower. Hot water on demand. Soap. Toilet paper. Home was paradise for so many reasons.

In the two years since he’d been home the nightmares had been gradually letting up. Janet had found out about a group of veterans that met every Wednesday night in the basement of the Legion and just sat around drinking coffee and talking about the war. Their stories were all different but all the same. They talked of nightmares, wondering about the friends they’d left, assumed to be dead.  He hadn’t expected it to have any affect; their visions were not his, and his had nothing to do with them. Some drank too much now. Others had black out moments, or periods of rage for no good reason. Their wives were terrified of them. Some even saw things that weren’t really there. Those really scared Elliot. He didn’t want to … Well, go crazy.

He really felt terrible for the ones that came home addicted to opiates. They struggled with drug and alcohol abuse, which made their nightmares even worse than his. His dreams were all memories. Theirs weren’t based on reality; they were based on their own worst fears, like their subconscious was trying to break them down bit by bit using something that only seemed real.

Elliot’s night terrors were gradually getting further apart, shorter, and less intense. When Janet had first told him she was pregnant he had offered to sleep in the spare bedroom because sometimes in a nightmare he would flail his arms and legs and he didn’t want to risk hurting her. He was surprised when she told him he hadn’t been moving around in his sleep at all for a couple months.

The only time she’d made him sleep in the spare room was a three week stretch after he’d told her about Abigail Spencer.

He’d waited a month after getting home before unloading that little shocker. As expected, she was furious and hurt. She’d slapped him, yelled at him, cried herself to sleep for about a week straight. She wouldn’t look at him or talk to him. Elliot had felt like the lowest form of dog shit.

Then one night as he sat on the spare bed after getting home from work, reading a book, she had come in to the room, arms crossed. She wouldn’t look at him, but she’d said in her best pissed off voice, “One woman? That whole time? She was the only one?”

“Just the one. I swear.”

She paused before knocking the wind out of him. “When Elizabeth Talbot was pregnant with their first, they came over for supper with a bottle of wine. She went home early and Hank stayed to put those shelves up in the front closet. We drank the whole bottle of wine. And he kissed me.”

Illogically he felt his jaw tighten, his shoulders tensing. He tried to sound light. “Our neighbour kissed you?”

She nodded, still not looking at him. “Yes. There was kissing. Some touching. That was it. I couldn’t do as much as … he wanted.”

His hands tightened on his book. “What did he want?”

This time she did look at him as she said, “Don’t men always want everything?”

Elliot snapped the book shut and got off the bed. “Right.”

“Where are you going?” She was following him down the hall.

“To punch him in his lousy fucking face.”

“Elliot, don’t.” She had grabbed his arm. He couldn’t throw her off without hurting her, and he didn’t want to do that.

“They’re our neighbours, Elliot. Our friends.”

“Yeah, Hank Talbot’s a great friend, isn’t he? I’ll make sure to ask him to look out for you the next time I have to leave town, that’s for sure. What a fucking pal.”

“Stop it!” She had shrieked, making him freeze at the backdoor.

“Stop what, Janet?” The way he said her name had an edge to it: it was the ugliest tone he’d ever taken with her.

She slapped him across the face, the second time she had ever done it. He was shocked, but it also brought back some clarity.

“I stopped him. And I still felt so incredibly guilty this whole time.”

He didn’t respond. He was still stewing on how he was going to make Hank Talbot into hamburger.

“It bothered me because you’re perfect, Elliot. I never thought you’d understand.” She gave an exasperated sound of surrender. “You’re not perfect. The more I think about it, the more of a relief it is that you’re not.” She shook her head. “I hate that I’m still so relieved to have you home. Even with that between us … I’d still rather have you here than not have you at all.”

He didn’t deserve her, but he was going to do everything he could to qualify. They’d decided that night to try getting pregnant. That process had taken a lot longer, but the trying had been worth every minute.

He was home, his only injuries internal and they were slowly healing. He had a great job working for Janet’s father building homes. Their baby was healthy so far and only five months away from joining them. Yes, Elliot Murphy was a lucky bastard.