The Heart's War (19 page)

I assumed that he just went about his duties as
normal, possibly remarking about the girl he'd helped in passing to his coworkers.

The note stayed closed in my hand until I got back to my room. I opened the window a crack, letting the outside air and noise in.

For a moment, I thought I heard the shrieking call of the newspaper boy.

A peculiar apprehension filled me as I sat on the edge of my bed. I looked at the note, turning it over in my hands, examining all the little creases, seeing the ghosts of the letters through the back of it.

"Stop being so silly," I said.

I reminded myself of the awful dread I'd felt at the first note, and how it had made me feel directly after reading it. But then I remembered the past week, regaining my composure and sense of self in this imposed vacation.

I opened the paper.

"Dear Miss Winters,

I wanted to do you the courtesy of sending you this notice. Private Beech's listed next of kin is his mother, so you would not be informed until you received word from her. Given the state of trans-Atlantic mail, God only knows when that would be.

I regret to inform you that Private Jeffrey Beech, of Kitchener, Ontario, was killed in action at Passchendaele, which is in Belgium near the city of Ypres.

I also regret that I can offer you no further details on this matter.

You are in my thoughts and prayers.

2 Lt. Cross"

I sat there, staring at the blank wall as the sounds of life going on as usual outside buffeted me.

My first reaction was laughter. Not the laugh as if someone told a funny joke, but the cackle of someone crazed. I crumpled the note into a ball in both my fists, and pushed those against my forehead.

Again, instead of crying, I found myself in that empty dark void somewhere in the back of my mind.

I should have expected this. I should have known he would die.

But, I realized, I had known. Or rather, felt it. Ever since Jeff came into Marie's kitchen clutching that draft letter I had known. Ever since I saw Shelley Clarkson and her mother grieving quietly at the back of the church while old men patted Jeff on the shoulder and offered him cigars, I had known.

It had been fate. My destiny had been to follow the man I loved halfway around the world and lose him time and time again.

And now he was lost to me forever and ever. Was he in some unmarked grave in Belgium? Or was his body lying on the battlefield still, unrecognizable from the horrors of the war?

I would never hear his voice again, I thought. I still couldn't recall the sound of it, my mind always providing any memory of him a generic, masculine-sounding thing that made my memories seem false.

We would never marry. But then again, I thought, we had never been formally engaged. I called him my fiancé, but my ring finger was bare of any engagement ring.
We would never have Paris.

God damn you, Jeffrey Beech! I thought.

I grabbed up handfuls of the sheet and then slammed them back onto the mattress. I kicked at the footboard until a sharp pain ran up my ankle.

Then I pulled my pillow down over my face and pressed it against my mouth and nose as hard as I could. My lungs burned for air after some seconds, but I denied them.

I found myself liking the heat and the pain. They filled up that void within me, that hole that threatened to swallow me up and leave me an invalid the rest of my life.

The urge to breathe became unbearable. I bit into the pillow, fighting that instinct.

But it would be no good, I knew. Even if I held my breath until I passed out, I would simply wake again in some minutes or hours to this terrible excuse for a thing called my life.

So I threw the heavy feather pillow at the chest of drawers. The cheap old piece of furniture tottered on its legs, dancing out a tapping tune on the floor. I wanted it to fall. I stared at it, willing it to fall.

It didn't fall, instead settling down, facing a few degrees clockwise of where it had been pointed before.

"Just let me be asleep," I said, my voice hoarse, my lungs still aching as my chest heaved to satisfy them.

Please, just let this all be a dream. Can it be just a dream? I thought.

My vision started blurring and I wiped at my eyes with the back of my hand.

I looked at the wetness on my skin. It was the first sign of tears I'd had in days. But no more came. My body busied itself with other things.

I knew it wasn't a dream. It hurt too much to be a dream. If you hurt yourself in a dream, you wake up. Everyone knows that.

A gasp escaped my lips then.

"Oh, Marie!"
I said.

Here I was, lying there feeling sorry for myself. But Marie was thousands of miles away, on another continent. She'd be lucky to hear of her son's death in a month. She'd spend the next several weeks in ignorance.

Maybe she even thought that I had found Jeff, and that we'd had a wonderful time together before he went off to be a gallant hero.

At first, I felt jealous of her. Here, I was telling myself just that day, after receiving the second note, that it was better to know than to not. Better to be cleansed by the truth than to wallow in the lie, or the ignorance.

How I wished I didn't know. Several more weeks of not knowing about Jeff's fate sounded like absolute bliss.

But then pity mixed in with that jealousy, diluting it. She had lost both of her sons, and at this very moment, back in Kitchener, she thought she still had one. And a future daughter-in-law to boot!

And I wouldn't even be there to comfort her unless I could somehow find passage on a ship bound for North America.

So she was alone in her grief, just like me.

Somewhere, I found the strength to sit up against the headboard. I had to read the note again, just to be certain. Perhaps I had misread something, missed some key piece of punctuation that would change the meaning entirely.

The moisture from my palms dampened the paper, giving it a delicate, tissue-like texture. My eyes devoured the words, searching for anything that might offer an alternate explanation.

But Second Leftenant Cross was quite pithy. I couldn't find any fault in his discourse, so I crumpled the note again and squeezed my fingers as tightly around it as I could. My whole arm shook with the effort.

Then I opened my hand and attempted to reopen the note. My sweat and pressure had destroyed the words, smearing the ink and tearing the paper.

So I got up, went over to my suitcases, and put it in the bottom of one. I stood there, looking down at the bag, fighting the urge to tear it open and find that note again. That anger at Jeff returned. How could I ever have let myself love such a selfish imbecile? Why did he have to be so stubborn on one hand (insisting on going to war) and then so impressionable on the other (allowing himself to be swayed by those evil, feather-toting witches)?

Someone scratched lightly at the door. I wanted to scream at them to go away and leave me alone, but that more civilized part of me reminded the wild part that the person on the other side had no part in Jeff's death, and didn't deserve my anger.

I made a few futile passes at my hair and dress in an effort to tidy up before opening the door.

Jill Morton stood on the other side, a cup of tea sending up little curls of steam gripped in one hand. Those worry lines creased her forehead again when she saw me. I felt singlehandedly responsible for those wrinkles. When I first met her, she'd only been like her brother with the smile lines on her cheeks.

Yet another thing to punish myself for.

"Oh dear, oh
dearie. May I come in? Let's have a talk, shall we? I've brought tea!"

Tea was the English answer to everything it seemed. I gave her a stiff nod, fully intending to not let that cup touch my lips.

But I found myself sitting on the bed beside Jill a few moments later, sipping at the scalding liquid and feeling the ball of warmth it left in my stomach and chest swell.

The old mattress couldn't hold our combined weight without sagging, and I kept my feet tense against the floor to keep from sliding off. That, in combination with handling the tea, gave me a few precious moments of
mundanity with which to occupy my mind.

My eyes kept straying to my suitcases. That awful note sat at the bottom of one. I had destroyed the words it contained, but not its message.

How, I asked myself, could I just be sitting there, drinking a lovely cup of black tea? Jeff was across the Channel dead, and his mother across the Atlantic unwitting of the whole thing.

Jill Milton put one of her brawny hands on my back, between my shoulders. My head descended to rest on her shoulder.

"Tell me what's the matter, love," she said, running her fingertips through the loose strands of hair above my ears. She pulled accidentally on a few tangles, but I didn't even grimace. I could hear the heavy thump of Jill's heart, and her warmth felt so nice.

When I told her the contents of the note, she took my tea away, placing it on top of the chest of drawers, and then hugged me close. She kept muttering things like, "There, there," at me, stroking the back of my head.

I think she expected me to cry. I expected the same, and couldn't explain why I didn't. It must have been that emptiness. I could feel myself withdrawing into it again.

When she finally had to leave to attend to the rest of her patrons, she first made a fuss of tidying my little room up. Her eyes reddened as she gave my cheek one final stroke before going.

"You just rest here, dearie. I'll send Charles up with your supper."

She closed the door behind her and I listened to the floorboards creak as she walked away. The noises of the city intruded upon me again at that moment.

I marched over and slammed the window shut hard enough to rattle the glass.

How dare they go about living, doing their daily chores, worrying and laughing and loving? How could life go on as usual out there? It felt to me that the entire world should darken and stop. I felt offended that it didn't.

So I threw myself on the bed, mussing up the sheets Jill had so caringly put back into place, and stared up at the ceiling.

At some point I remember flat-footed Charles coming in and handing me a tray. It was more stew. Someone, probably Jill, had put a white rose on the tray as well. There was a whole pot of tea steaming.

I watched Charles leave and I found myself hating him. His damned feet kept him out of the war, safe here in Liverpool for Jill to fuss over. Why couldn't Jeff have had something like that?

Chapter 18

The next week I spent mostly in a daze. I remember flashes of wandering about the streets like some silent, melancholy ghost. Everything had drained of its sensory feedback. Colors were drab and muted, the red trolleys looking more brown or black. All the sounds melded into an incomprehensible hum, like bee's wings. Food and drink had neither taste nor satisfaction.

Jill came to visit me every day, often bringing my meals to my room. She sat with me quietly.

I remember checking in at the harbor to inquire about the ships, but neither the Olympic nor the Mauretania had returned. At that moment, there were no other ships available for a trans-Atlantic crossing.

I kept thinking that I should draft another letter to Marie. I thought it might make me feel better to get things down on paper. Often, when growing up, reading novels and putting my thoughts and feelings down in a journal helped. But I couldn't find the will to read or write. What was the point? By the time my letter reached Marie, she'd likely already know her son's fate.

Could I write my mother, maybe? I was sure that Marie would still allow me to stay in her home for some time. But I was no longer going to be part of her family, so I felt that at some point my welcome would wear thin.

The only thing I really busied myself with was keeping track of my money. What had first seemed like a large windfall Marie had given me now seemed barely
sufficient. I had enough for perhaps another week or two of lodging. I hoped to secure passage again as a member of the crew of some ship. Hard labor might help me forget myself.

***

I had wanted to put on mourning clothes, but Marie hadn't given me anything in black. The closest I could do was a grey skirt and a dark blouse.

It was on a Tuesday the following week that I received the letter. The old postman handed it over to me without a word.

My heart jumped when I saw the return address. It was from Kitchener. At first, I thought Marie might have written back to me.

But it wasn't marked as from her. It was marked as from a "Messer & Sons Barristers & Solicitors" law office. I hadn't the faintest idea of why a law office might wish to contact me.

Out on the street, the breeze nipping at the hem of my skirt, I wondered whether I should go back to the boarding house.