The Foreshadowing (14 page)

I hear one word, spoken quietly, in a tone of terrible respect.

“Telegram.”

That’s all.

And then I hear Mother screaming.

She’s screaming and screaming.

58

Though the events of Christmas morning are months ago now, I can still see them all as if it has just happened. In some ways I can see things even more clearly now than I could at the time, because then my vision was obscured by shock and pain.

Now there’s only pain.

57

Tomorrow will be June the twenty-fifth.

It’s six months since we heard that Edgar had been killed. It is five days more than that since the actual moment, but details are still hard to come by.

The telegram was brief and to the point, and to be honest, it didn’t really matter at the time. But now I want to find out more about it. I want to know everything, though we may never know it all.

We had a memorial service for Edgar in early January, but there was no funeral because there was no body to bury. He was buried somewhere in Belgium, in a military cemetery.

A letter we had later from a friend of his, another captain in his battalion, said he had been killed leading a raiding party into the enemy trenches. He said Edgar had been very brave and the raid had been a big success.

But that’s a lie.

Just as I had heard Edgar tell me he was dead, I had seen a horrible tableau of the moment.

The panic. The complete chaos. No one was brave, not Englishman nor German; there was only horror and fear and utter bestial panic as Edgar’s party arrived in the wrong place, as they killed and were killed, and as a couple of lucky men managed to stagger back to their own trench, their only success being alive to report what a disaster the whole thing had been.

But I said nothing of that to anyone.

Mother and Father cling desperately to the idea that their son died a hero’s death, as if it makes any difference. Death is death. But if it helps them to think that, then it is well enough, I suppose.

56

Six months.

The longest of my life. We have been pretending, and pretending, and pretending, all this time. That life could go on, that the war would end soon, that Edgar would come home, that it isn’t really happening.

Now we know the truth.

Mother is broken, Father is sullen, and Thomas?

Thomas has gone.

That is almost the saddest thing about Edgar’s death.

Something changed in him that Christmas morning.

He didn’t cry, not like Mother and me. Father shouted and cursed, but Tom went silent, immediately.

Now he is in France.

55

It was only a few days afterward, maybe not even into the new year, that Thomas told us he was going to join the army.

Mother took it badly, and begged him not to go, but Father . . .

I had thought he would have been overjoyed, even delighted that he had finally won the argument with Thomas, but he wasn’t.

“Very well,” he said, but his voice was toneless. “You should go. I am proud of you for coming to the right decision. You can make
us
proud and keep the memory of your brother alive.”

I can’t believe what Tom did when Father said that.

He hit him.

There and then, he struck him across the chin. Father stumbled back and sank into a chair, but what is even more amazing is what happened next.

Nothing.

I was ready for Father to explode, to beat Tom, throw him out, at the very least curse him. But he sat in the chair, looking like a tired old man, and rubbed his chin.

Tom glared at us all, then turned on his heel and left. As he went I saw drops of blood from his knuckles stain the carpet in the hall.

54

That moment, six months ago now, that lives on so vividly with me, was forgotten, or rather ignored by us all.

Tom went back to Manchester after Edgar’s memorial, hardly saying another dozen words to any of us.

Not even to me, and I could hardly bear that.

One thing was clear, he intended to join up.

Father made some ’phone calls, and as with Edgar, he managed to secure a commission for his son, though Tom would be in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

Then, without warning, Tom arrived back in Brighton. Father had been trying to make contact with him for days, to let him know about his commission, and was a little annoyed when he just strolled into the kitchen through the back door one day in January.

“I’m leaving,” he said.

We all looked puzzled; he had only just arrived back.

“I’m leaving for France.”

“I don’t understand,” Mother said. “Father’s got you a place in the RAMC, you can’t be leaving yet.”

Tom looked from her to Father.

Neither of them said anything; then Tom put his hand out awkwardly to Father. He left it there for what seemed an age, until finally Father took it and shook it.

“Thank you,” Tom said.

Mother smiled.

“It’ll be fine in the RAMC,” Father said. “Much safer, but you can still . . . you know. Help.”

Tom stepped back abruptly.

“No,” he said. “You don’t understand. I’m grateful to you for trying, for getting me the place. But I’m not taking it.”

“What?” Father said, his voice pinched with disbelief.

“I’m not taking a commission. I’ve enlisted with the Twentieth Fusiliers, in Manchester, the Public Schools Battalion. As a private.”

I saw Mother put her hand to her throat, and the color drained from her cheeks. I stood up and grabbed Tom, begged him not to go, but he wouldn’t listen. I asked him what had changed, why he didn’t want to be a doctor anymore, and a hundred other things, but he wouldn’t talk.

Mother was trying, and failing, not to cry; Father stomped around the kitchen, starting sentences, then stopping them, hot under the collar.

“But Tom,” Mother pleaded. “You’ll be safer in the RAMC, and you want to be a doctor, don’t you? Don’t you?”

Tom looked at her, miserably, his lip trembling.

“There’s no use in it.”

That’s all he would say.

53

He left in January. It’s June now. Winter ended, spring came and went, and now summer is here.

The house is so quiet. Father is working longer hours than ever. Mother speaks of nothing but what is necessary, and I have been left to myself, day in, day out, going crazy.

I have far too much time to think, far too much.

I think about everything that has happened to me, and to my family, and it does me no good at all. I pray like the stupid little girl I am to be young again. For all this not to have happened. For Edgar to be alive and for Tom to be happy. I long to be a young girl playing in a summer’s garden, but even that desire has bad memories. Then I understand how naïve I am. That past, that happy past, is gone. Long gone. I will never have it back. Now I can see what it is that put distance between me and my family. It goes all the way back to Clare. Mother was scared by it, and has spent all her time since then trying to keep at bay a future she didn’t want me to face. Father disbelieved it, and withdrew from me, and Edgar took his lead from Father, as always. Only Tom kept some faith with me, probably just because he was too young to do otherwise than keep loving his little sister.

And that’s the feeling I’ve had all this time. Guilt that I lost my family because of what I am, and that they lost faith in me.