“There’s a train at 9:30 tomorrow morning from Waterloo.”
Paul looked at her and gave her the benefit of one of his rare smiles. She wished he smiled more often. It transformed his face.
“You did well.” He stubbed out the cigarette he had been smoking and looked at his watch as Tony and Angela returned to the table. “Tony, if you don’t mind, I’d like to call it a night. I’ve a busy day tomorrow.”
“What are you up to?”
Paul smiled. “I’m going to visit a bishop.”
Tony rolled his eyes. “You can tell me about it later. Come on, girls. We’ve had our marching orders. I’ll get us a cab.”
Paul touched Helen’s arm and pulled her back. “I’ll meet you at Waterloo at 9:15,” he said.
“You still want me to come?”
He looked at her with surprise. “Of course. It’s your story too. Tomorrow morning, Helen?”
“Yes, sir.” she replied softly, responding to the sudden authority in his tone.
Chapter 14
“You’re very quiet,” Paul remarked.
Since they had boarded the train back to London from their visit to the bishop, Helen had been staring out of the window, her chin resting on her hand. Her simple grey felt hat put her face into shadow but the line of her neck and the tension in her shoulders gave him a sense that something bothered her.
Helen brought her attention back to the train carriage and patted the thin folder on her lap. The bishop had found among his family papers, a collection of contemporaneous correspondence addressed to Suzanna’s brother, which he had given to them. The letters now posed more questions than they answered.
“I’ve been thinking about Suzanna,” she said.
“Go on.”
They had the carriage to themselves and it would be a good hour before they reached Waterloo. It seemed an ideal opportunity to discuss what they had discovered.
Helen opened the folder and took out the first sheet, a letter from Suzanna herself dated only a few weeks before her disappearance. She read aloud.
“...Oh my dearest, dearest brother I cannot begin to tell you how utterly wretched my life has become. I wish you were here so I could talk with you and indeed, confess to you in the fullest sense of the word, the woes that have been laid on my heart. I am heartsick and long for your wise counsel and caring heart. Can you conceive some excuse to come to me soon? I know only that I cannot go on living in this fashion and I fear despair will drive me to a reckless act. Yr. Loving sister, Suzie.”
Helen flicked through the other letters, the first from Lady Cecilia Morrow advising of Suzanna’s disappearance. She read:
“Holdston, September 16, 1812. My dear Reverend Thompson, Your letter of the 10th inst addressed to my daughter-in-law arrived this morning and I fear that it falls to me to be the bearer of bad news. Three nights hence your sister left Holdston taking with her a valise and a small amount of money. I am ashamed to say it, but it has been strongly rumored for some time now that she has been carrying on a secret liaison with a man of good birth but dubious reputation and we are left with no other conclusion. She has absconded with this man. I cannot describe to you the effect her wanton abandonment has had on her children who cry piteously for her and as for my son, in his already weakened state, we fear again for his life. I have caused enquiries to be made and to date have received no information on the whereabouts of this wicked woman and her paramour. The shame that she has brought to this family, and indeed to your own good name once her desertion becomes common knowledge, cannot be measured. I do not see how, should she somehow be retrieved, she can ever be admitted back into decent society, let alone the good graces of this family. I shall, of course, keep you fully informed of any developments in this matter as of course I would expect of you, should she endeavor to make contact with you. Yrs. Respectfully, Lady Cecilia Morrow.”
“You know I really don’t like Lady Morrow,” Helen looked up at Paul. “Why doesn’t she name the man involved?”
“We know that S was a man of respectable family and, sadly, if she did indeed run away with him, she would be considered the guilty party,” Paul replied.
The good reverend must have written to Lady Morrow, suggesting his sister’s mind may have been suicidal. Lady Morrow’s terse response followed. Helen read it aloud.
“Holdston, September 20 1812. My dear Reverend Thompson, I am in receipt of your letter of the 18th inst and I am afraid I cannot agree with your conclusions. At no time did your sister appear so distressed that I would have thought her capable of taking her own life. Such a notion is preposterous. The fact she took a valise and money with her is, to my mind, and that of the Chief Constable, proof positive that she did not intend to return. However at your insistence he has caused the moat and the nearby river to be dragged to no avail. I fear we must accept the fact that your sister has proved herself a woman of the basest moral fiber and as far as this family is concerned, we are well rid of her. I will entertain no further correspondence from you on this matter, unless either you or I have news of mutual interest. Yrs respectfully, Lady Morrow”
“But he was right to have drawn that conclusion. In her letter she sounded so desperately unhappy,” Helen said. “Do you suppose she could have taken her life?”
“A suicide would not generally pack a valise or take money with her,” Paul pointed out.
Helen closed the folder.
“But if she was still alive, why no other communication at all? I can understand her not dealing directly with the Morrows, but she was close to her brother. Surely she would have written to him? Put his mind at rest? Sent messages for her children?”
Paul shrugged. “Shame can render people silent. Wherever she was, mail may have been erratic. She could have written letters that never reached him.”
“But why did she never try to contact her children? I can’t imagine walking away from Alice without a word,” Helen persisted.
Paul looked out of the window at the passing fields and thought of the jungles of his childhood. “I told you my mother died when I was eight? That’s not strictly true. I was told she died but in fact, she had run off with the manager of one of the tea plantations. It was only when I was commissioned that a friend of my father’s from the regiment told me the truth. I wrote to my mother, but it was too late, she had died three years earlier. The man she had been living with wrote to me, telling me that she had written to me every year on my birthday, trying to explain what she did and why she did it. I never received those letters. Evelyn had intercepted them and destroyed them.”
“Evelyn?”
“Yes, my dear aunt. I confronted her with it and she told me that she judged it better that I consider my mother dead than to live with the scandal of having a mother who was a bolter.” He brought his gaze back to Helen, seeing the shock in her eyes. “So you see it is quite possible that Suzanna tried to contact her children but someone, maybe her mother-in-law, destroyed the letters.”
She stared at him, her brow furrowing as she struggled to master her emotions. “Oh, Paul, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe Evelyn could be so heartless.”
He shrugged. “It was a long time ago and I’ve no doubt Evelyn’s motives were pure.” But he could still feel the stab of pain as he thought of those missives consigned to the flames, the words of love and comfort from his mother that he had craved, disappearing in an instant. He changed the subject. “Is there anything else you need to do in London?”
Helen shook her head. “I just need to collect my suitcase from Angela’s flat.”
“If you don’t mind the company, we’ll catch the five PM train.”
* * * *
Angela sat on a stool, chewing the end of a brush, regarding her canvas of Waterloo Bridge as Helen and Paul entered the flat. It appeared to take her a moment to comprehend Paul’s presence. When she did, her eyes widened and she jumped off her stool like a startled rabbit.
“Paul!”
“Hello,
Ange. You don’t look particularly pleased to see me.”
“Of course I am,” she said. “I just wish I’d known to expect you.”
As she spoke, her eyes flicked across the room to the paintings of Alpha and Omega, still on prominent display. Paul stood quite still in the doorway, the color draining from his face. Slowly, as if drawn to the paintings, he crossed the room and picked up the third canvas.
He turned to Angela, his eyes blazing. “Why...?” he started to say but seemed unable to find the words to express himself.
“I’m an artist, Paul.” Angela said.
Paul set the painting down and turned for the door. “I’ll go and hail a cab, Helen. Be quick or we will miss the train.”
Angela cast a despairing look at the door as it slammed behind him and sat back on her stool, fumbling for a cigarette.
“Sod it,” she said as the match she broke against the flint. “Sod it! Sod it! Sod it!” She flung the matches at the painting. “Why did you have to bring him back here?”
“I didn’t even think about the paintings,” Helen said. “I’m sorry, Angela.”
Angela’s shoulders sagged. “I suppose he had to know about it some time.”
Helen collected her case from the spare room.
“I don’t know what to say to him,” Angela said. “Tell him...” She lit another cigarette. “Tell him I love him too much to hurt him.”
Helen stood in the doorway. “Do you really want me to tell him that?”
Angela shrugged. “No...yes...tell him what you like.”
Paul waited on the corner, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets. When he saw Helen approaching, he flagged down a cab and they proceeded in silence to Euston station.
* * * *
The taking of tea in times of stress was a peculiar preoccupation, Paul thought, staring at the cup of brown liquid that Helen had ordered for him. He had no taste for it. A whiskey would have been preferable.
He lit a cigarette and looked out of the window of the café at the passing throng on the station, drawing slowly on his cigarette.
“She’s never shown it,” Helen said at last.
He brought his gaze around to her and frowned. “What?”
“The painting. She’s never shown it.”
How could he explain that it wasn’t the painting itself? He didn’t care one way or another what Angela painted. He admired her talent for bringing the visceral reality of war to a two dimensional canvas. The stark representation of the ruined church that had served as a field hospital had torn a jagged hole in his memory. Over the smell of coal smoke from the trains, he could once again smell that strange mixture of blood, excrement and antiseptic.
“What does she call it?” he asked to divert his thoughts.
“It forms a triptych. She calls it Alpha and Omega.”
Paul gave a snort of laughter. “The beginning and the end?”
Helen nodded.
“It was not personal, Paul. She’s an artist. She saw only a representation of an idea.”
Paul stubbed his cigarette out.
Helen continued, trying to fill the silence between them. “I can see how you would feel it was an–” she struggled for the right words, “–an invasion of privacy.”
“It’s not that.”
Paul’s eyes moved away from her, staring back at a place he didn’t want to remember but remembrance had jerked itself up through the blackness like the rotting flesh of a long dead corpse had done in the trenches.
He took a swig of his nearly cold tea.
“We’ve a train to catch.” He knew he sounded brusque but the memories tugged at him and he had no time for social niceties.
Picking up Helen’s suitcase, he strode off, leaving her running to keep pace with him. They found an empty carriage and he stowed the case on the luggage rack. Helen sat down opposite him and unfolded a magazine she had bought at the station.
As the train pulled out, Paul looked at her, seeing the concern in her face. He wanted to share his thoughts with her but the words and the pictures in his mind couldn’t bring themselves into a cohesive whole.
“Helen…” She looked up, fixing him with her steady gaze.
As he wondered where to begin, the door slid open and a young couple pushed into the carriage with nodded apologies and the moment passed.
Paul looked away, conscious that Helen still watched him with hurt and confusion in her eyes. He stared out into the peaceful, lush, English countryside but saw only the mud, filth and death of a battlefield in Flanders.
* * * *
British Field Hospital, Furnes Belgium, September 22 1917
Somewhere above him, a single light bulb swayed, casting shadows across a ceiling painted with a mural of some biblical scene. Bits of the ceiling had collapsed leaving several of the wandering Israelites armless or legless.
A shadow loomed over him.
“Well, sorr, ‘tis good to see you.”
Devlin. He tried to speak but the words only circled in his head.
“Walker packed your trunk so I found some excuse to visit headquarters and brought it in for you. Don’t think you’ll be coming back to us for a while, sorr.”
He could hear footsteps, a woman’s heels clacking on the stone floor.
“Sergeant Major Devlin.” Angela’s voice.
“Mrs. Lambton, sure it’s good to be seein’ your pretty face.”
“Enough of your Irish charm, Devlin. How are things at the front?”
He shook his head. “Battalion’s been broken up, scattered through the Brigade, no officers and hardly any men.”
Angela frowned. “No officers at all?”
“Well as ye know, the Colonel’s back in old blighty with a broken arm, the Major...” Devlin looked at the bed. “And with Cap’n Collins and Cap’n Morrow both dead...” He stopped and Paul heard a stifled gasp from Angela. “You didn’t know?”
Angela’s voice sounded strangled. “No. How?”
Devlin shrugged. “As near as we can say, he was caught in the same shell blast as the Major. Only the Major came back. We don’t know what happened out there and we’ve no body to bury that we could see so we just suppose that he’s dead. Missin’ in action they’ll call it officially and that’ll be what they tells the family.”
Back and forth the light bulb swayed.
Charlie... Charlie is dead.
The words echoed in time to the swaying light as Devlin continued, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
“No, it’s all right. Thank you, Devlin.”
It seemed a long silence before Devlin spoke again. “How is he?”
Were they talking about him now?
“They’re waiting for his condition to stabilize and then they’ll ship him back to England.”
“Ah well, his war’s over, I’m thinking. It’s poor sods like me that’s got to go back to the lines. I brought his things. Figured he wasn’t coming back.”
“Thank you, Devlin.”
“Well, Mrs. Lambton, I’ll be biddin’ you good day.”
As the sound Devlin’s boots faded, someone picked up his hand. Angela. Angela had been here before. Angela...he felt her lips brush his fingers.
“Well this looks cosy!”
Another shadow blocked the light bulb. A staff officer, his uniform crisp and immaculate came into his line of sight.
“Tony. What are you doing here?” Angela said.
“Same thing as you, Ange.”
“I’ve just learned about Charlie,” she said. “Oh, Tony, he’s dead.”
Her voice sounded muffled as if she had buried her face in her brother’s pristine tunic. Charlie is dead, Paul thought. Angela is crying because Charlie is dead.
“There, there, old thing,” Tony said as Angela’s sobs subsided to choking gulps.
“How’s Paul?” Tony asked.
Angela sniffed and blew her nose. “Not good. They’ll put him on the boat train as soon as they can and get him o
ut of here,” she said. “Does Evelyn know about Charlie?”
“She got the telegram advising he was missing in action. I managed to ring Ma and she tells me that Evelyn is carrying on stoically. Sir Gerald is the one they are worried about.”
“Does Evelyn care that Paul is still alive?”
“Of course she cares, Ange. He’s all she has left. She will see it as her duty.”
* * * *
‘Duty, duty must be done, the rules apply to everyone and painful though that duty be to shirk the task of fiddle-de-dee...’ the words of the Gilbert and Sullivan song that Charlie used to sing whenever some particularly unpleasant task came his way, clanged through Paul’s head. He hated Gilbert and Sullivan.
“Pardon?” Helen looked up from her magazine.
“Duty, duty, must be done...” Such a catchy tune. He wasn’t even aware he had been humming it.
Paul swung his gaze to her puzzled face.
“Nothing,” he said.
Chapter 15
Paul poured himself a whiskey and walked over to the window. He propped himself on the wide windowsill. In the glorious summer evening the view across the village and the church was mesmeric and he wondered if his silent, ghostly companion had sought this view as a solace to his own troubled soul.
Paul looked up half-expecting to see Robert standing sentinel beside him but he was quite alone.
He hadn’t told Helen that the spirit of Robert Morrow had begun to haunt him when his uncle had given him Robert Morrow’s copy of Homer’s Illiad in the original Greek for a twelfth birthday present. From that day, he had seen glimpses of a man in the library but it was only when he had returned to Holdston after the war and taken over the main apartment that Robert had become an almost permanent fixture at the window. Watching and waiting.
Now he knew why Robert kept his vigil. He waited for his Suzanna to come home. There had been times on his own long road to recovery when it had seemed easier just to let it all go, close his eyes and never come back, but at those times he had begun to sense a silent, watching, presence. A shared pain between two men that reached out beyond the restrictions of time. Robert Morrow had become his companion on the journey. He reached across and picked up his copy of the Illiad from the table. Opening the battered cover, he read the inscription. “To my darling husband, Christmas 1805, SJM.” Suzanna’s gift to her soldier husband.
Gather the Bones Page 16