Shoulder the Sky (17 page)

Judith agonized for him, and for Cullingford. It was too late for Prentice to redeem himself now; he would be remembered as he was. Perhaps only his family would think of him as he could have become.

Cullingford rescued him. "There is no need to say it, Major Harvester," he said quietly. "Mr. Prentice was not a soldier. He does not warrant a soldier's epitaph." His voice shook so very slightly that probably Harvester did not even hear it.

"He ... he was doing his job, sir," Harvester said, his face softening with gratitude.

Joseph spoke at last. "Would you like to come this way, sir?" he asked. "I'll take you to the grave."

"Thank you." Cullingford followed him.

Judith waited behind. She had disliked Prentice. She had no right to go now as if she mourned him, and perhaps Cullingford would value a few moments of privacy for whatever grieving duty permitted him. She watched him go, stiff and upright, intensely alone.

A sergeant came over and offered her a mug of tea. Harvester went about his duties.

Twenty minutes later Cullingford came back, his face white, his eyes bright and oddly blind. He thanked Joseph and walked to the car. Joseph looked for a moment at Judith, his face shadowed with anxiety. She would like to have had time to speak to him, ask how he was, and above all, what he had meant by his strange remarks about Prentice's death. But not only was Cullingford her duty, he was her chief concern also. She smiled fleetingly at Joseph, and went to the car.

Cullingford was already seated, waiting for her, this time in the front passenger seat. Judith cranked the engine, climbed in and drove back on to the road towards Zillebeke.

She would like to have said something good about Prentice, but she knew nothing. To invent it would have been intolerably patronizing, in a way making it even more obvious that invention was necessary.

She was weighed down by a savage awareness of how alone Cullingford was. The men expected him never to show fear, exhaustion, or doubt of final victory. If he had weaknesses or griefs, moments when he was overwhelmed by the horror of it all, he must keep them concealed. There was no one at all with whom he could share them.

Joseph must have seen the conflict in him over Prentice's death. He might have understood it as grief for his family, pity for his sister, regret for all the possibilities now gone, and perhaps a thread of guilt because he had disliked Prentice and found him a professional embarrassment. He respected the ordinary fighting man, British or German. He understood their strengths, and their weaknesses, and he hated intrusion into their privacy, or their need. Prentice had violated both.

But Judith did not know how to find words that would not commit exactly that same intrusion, and let him know how much of his emotion she had seen.

"I'm sorry for Mr. Prentice's death, sir," she said finally.

The traffic was slowed to a crawl. Cullingford looked at her. "Are you? It is unlike you to express a sentiment you do not feel, Miss Reavley, for courtesy's sake." There was the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Eldon was eminently dislike able don't you think?"

She was startled by his frankness. Had she made her feelings so very obvious?

"I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to .. ." How could she finish? '.. . to have been so .. ."

"Honest?" he suggested, his eyes bright and surprisingly uncritical.

"Undisciplined," she corrected him, looking away, the heat burning up her face.

"Discipline does not require that you swallow your own ideas of morality," he answered, turning sideways a trifle to look at her more comfortably. "You must have heard about the court martial of the sapper, and the way Eldon behaved when Charlie Gee was brought into the casualty clearing station?"

Of course she had heard. She knew it was Joseph who had restrained Wil Sloan from half killing Prentice. She was profoundly grateful for that. She liked Wil enormously. He was brave, funny and generous. She loved the stories he told of working his way across half America on the railroads in order to get passage to England for the war. She also knew he had had to leave his home town in the Midwest in an indecent hurry after losing his temper once before.

Cullingford was right about what she had thought. She hated being put in the position of not knowing whether she should deny it or not. He was Prentice's uncle, and had probably known him since he was born! He had to care, even if largely for his sister's sake. She would love Hannah's children, whatever they did. It was not a choice; she could not help it. But Prentice had still been an insensitive man who put his own advancement before a basic decency in the face of human pain.

"Yes, sir, I'm afraid I did." The words were said from a depth of feeling, and she only thought afterwards of how they might hurt him. "I'm sorry."

"Please do not keep saying you are sorry, Miss Reavley. It is growing tedious. And don't treat me like an aged aunt. Your honesty is one of your better qualities along with your ability to mend a car."

She was confused, uncertain how to react, and she felt ridiculous that it mattered so much to her.

Then he smiled suddenly, which lit his face and took the tiredness from it. Images raced in her mind. What was he like away from war? What sort of man was he when circumstances did not force him into this hideous extremity of planning and executing death, having this unnatural power and answer ability for the hope, morality, and survival of thousands of other men? What did he do when he was on leave? Did he like gardening, playing golf, walking? Did he have a dog, and did he love it, touch it with the same gentleness as her father had his dog? What music did he listen to? What books did he read? Who were his friends?

"A penny for your thoughts, Miss Reavley?"

Again she felt herself colouring. Thank God he could not know! "I wasn't thinking of Mr. Prentice," she answered.

"No, neither was I," he admitted. "If I had thought you were, I would probably have reduced it to a ha' penny

She smiled back, and told him a half-truth. "I was wondering what we would be doing if we were not here." She knew the answer for herself. She would be living the same rather purposeless life that she had before the war. She would take part in all the usual village events, feeling unnatural and inadequate at it, watching time slip by having done nothing that made more than superficial difference. She could be wondering if she would settle for marrying someone she was merely fond of, someone who would be predictable, kind to her, who would behave with honour, whom she would probably even like, but never love with all the passion she could feel. Would he be someone she could live with, but not someone she could not bear to live without?

Cullingford fished in his pocket and put a penny on the dashboard.

"I would probably be driving," she said, not meeting his eyes, 'but not really going anywhere, just around the village, trying to do what my mother would have done. Do I have to find a penny for you to tell me what you would be doing, if there were no war?"

"You have a penny," he pointed out.

"Somewhere, but I don't know where."

"I paid you. That one is yours."

"Oh! Well, it's yours again, then. What would you be doing?" She wanted intensely to know.

"It's nearly May. I would be walking down to the woods to see the bluebells," he said without hesitation. "I would follow the path between the wild pear trees right into the middle of the flowers, where it all but disappears and you can hardly see where to put your feet without treading on them. The woods would be full of the sunlight and silence. I would stand there and let the sight sink into me until I was part of it."

She was seized with an overwhelming hunger to do all the same things, to do them with him, not to say anything, simply to be there.

"It sounds like a lot more use than anything I would do," she said quietly.

"If you would try to pick up the pieces of the things that your mother used to do for others, is that not useful?" he asked. There was a startling gentleness in his voice. "Isn't that what we do, when we miss someone almost beyond bearing?"

She looked away from him; his eyes were too tender, too probing. "I hadn't thought of it." She choked on the words. "I suppose it is. I miss my father more. He would have gone walking, only he would have taken Henry, our dog." She blinked rapidly. Her throat was so tight she could hardly speak. "I miss dogs I miss dogs I could have as friends. You can't do that here; they're all messengers, or something. And I can't bear caring about them, because I know how many of them get killed."

Ahead of them the traffic was moving again, and she eased the car into gear and started forward. "It's bad enough to lose people. I can't cope with it when it's animals. Don't tell me that's stupid, and wrong. I know it is."

"I don't know how wrong it is to love anything, or not to love it," he replied, looking away from her and towards the traffic ahead. "I haven't learned how to prevent it." His voice shook a little. "With me it's the horses."

A dozen answers streamed through her head, and none of them was what she wanted to say. There had been a depth of emotion in him that was far more powerful than the simple meaning of the words. She put all her attention to driving, forcing everything else out of her consciousness, because she could not cope with it.

It was after they had returned to Poperinge, late in the evening, and extremely tired, that the general spoke to Judith again. They were eating at their usual estaminet, Le Nid duRat" in English The Rat's Nest, a small, comfortable place with half a dozen tables. They had stew mostly vegetables and good bread. Today she was acutely aware of how much better it was than anything Joseph would have. She had seen something in her brother's face that troubled her, a kind of blind, painful purpose deeper than simply the duty to tell Cullingford of Prentice's death. He had suggested that he had been killed by someone who knew him, a British soldier, not a German one. If that were true then it was not an act of war, it was murder. And surely, after the past, Joseph of all people would not accept that unless he were forced to? There must be evidence he could not escape.

Could it be Wil Sloan after all? How violent was his temper? Before driving Cullingford Judith had driven ambulances nearly all the winter, much of the time with Wil. There were ways in which she knew him even better than she did her own brothers. She was familiar with the rhythm of his work, exactly how he liked his tea, how he curled over sideways when he slept, the patterns of his speech, how he hated the lice and would scratch himself raw, and then be ashamed of it. She knew precisely which jokes would make him laugh, and which embarrass him.

If Wil had been so appalled at Charlie Gee's injuries that the horror had overwhelmed him, maybe frightened him out of control, could he have gone after Prentice, out to no man's land, and pushed his head under water? Perhaps they had quarrelled about it again, and the misery had come back, the utter blinding helplessness of it. It would not be Prentice that Wil was lashing out at, just Prentice's blind, uncaring face, Prentice as a symbol of all that hurt too much to bear.

And if that were true, she would lie in her teeth to protect him. The law might require Wil to answer for it, justice did not, not to her.

She looked up and met Cullingford's eyes. He was watching her anxiously. But he did not know Wil Sloan. Who was he worried for? Or was it just the fear that someone had hated Prentice enough to kill him?

"I imagine your brother does not speak lightly?" he said, ignoring his food.

"No," she answered. She could feel her stomach hurt. How was she going to answer him if he asked questions that led to Wil? Suddenly her loyalties were torn. Cullingford was authority. He could not turn a blind eye. She could, and must. But she would hate lying to him. "But I don't think he knows anything," she went on.

"Of course not," he agreed. "Not yet. But he sees a cause of truth in it. He's a priest. He is used to thinking of morality in absolutes, and letting God take care of the broken pieces."

Now she was really frightened. She wanted to ask him what he meant, as if she were a child and he the adult to explain it for her and make it right. But if she wanted him to see her as a woman, in moments away from duty as something like an equal, then she must also accept the loneliness and the decisions, and the blame.

"Joseph will try to find out what happened," she agreed. "And if someone is responsible, who it is."

"I see." Cullingford picked up his fork, but he did not eat any more.

"Are you afraid it is someone you know?" she asked.

He looked up quickly. "Do you know?"

"No. But that is what occurs to me."

"Hadrian?" There was a wealth of misery in his face, as if he himself were guilty.

She smothered her surprise, turning her gasp into a cough. It had never occurred to her that Hadrian's very clear dislike of Prentice was anything more than a proficient soldier's contempt for a man who did not understand the army or its rules and conventions, and had no genuine respect for its men.

"Surely he didn't dislike him sufficiently to do that?" She tried to believe it, remembering the loathing in Hadrian's eyes as he had watched Prentice leave when he had come to see Cullingford a few days ago. Cullingford had given him written permission to pass almost anywhere he wanted. It was a defeat for Hadrian, who had told him such a thing was impossible.