To Love a Traitor (13 page)

“George, I’m so sorry,” Matthew said quietly, coming over to where George sat hunched on his own bed and laying a hand upon his shoulder.

“It’s fine, really,” George said, trying to force lightness into his tone. “As I said, I was one of the lucky ones. Only spent a year in gaol. Some of the men—the absolutists, they called them, the ones who wouldn’t do any war work at all—they were in for two or three.”

“What was it like in quod?”

“Well, one pretty soon became heartily tired of porridge.” George essayed a weak smile. “Unless, of course, one happened to be caught breaking the rule of silence or any of a hundred other rules, and be sent to solitary for three months on a diet of bread and water, in which case I’m told one soon began to miss it. No, don’t worry, that never happened to me, thank God. But to some of the men, particularly the more political among us, yes.” He was silent for a moment. “You know, in a funny way, I envied them. They were so certain they were doing the right thing. All I had to sustain me was the knowledge that not even death would be worse than taking a gun in my hands and using it on another man ever again.”

Matthew squeezed his shoulder. “Did they make you break rocks or turn treadwheels, or is my knowledge of prison life hopelessly out of date?”

“In Winchester, at least, there was none of that. No, it was mail bags for us. I became quite a dab hand at stitching.” George’s attempted smile must have been more successful this time, for it was rewarded with an answering grin.

“Excellent. The next time my socks need darning, I shall know where to bring them. How did you get out, in the end?”

“I—a friend of my brother’s put in a good word and got me a job at the Admiralty. Managed to get me an exemption that way.”

“That sounds rather exciting. Were you in charge of supervising shipping? Something hush-hush?”

For a moment, George experienced a visceral urge to tell all. To prove he’d also done his bit, in a way. And God knew, he had some stories to tell of their motley band of literature scholars, classicists and mathematicians. Matthew would laugh his head off over the chap—one of their most brilliant cryptographers—who’d had a bath installed in his office and always insisted that was where he did his best work.

But that was pride talking, and vanity.

“No, no.” He examined his fingernails. “Dreadfully dull, really. Mostly filing.”

“Ah, well. I’m sure it was all very necessary. And far more useful than having you mouldering away in a prison cell.” Matthew sighed, and stood up. “I hate to think of you suffering like that. And I’m jolly glad you were able to get out of it, even if those other poor wretches weren’t.”

“Thank you.” George changed into his pyjamas, being careful not to look in Matthew’s direction as he did the same.

Then he climbed into bed and pulled up the blankets. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Unlike the previous night, George fell immediately into a deep, restful sleep.

Chapter Sixteen

Boxing Day dawned grey but promised to be dry and extremely mild. Looking forward to a day spent in Matthew’s company doing nothing in particular, George was a little put out to find that even here, he was unable to escape the dreaded football. A match had been arranged between the local brewery and the agricultural workers—and Matthew, by virtue of his father being a landowner with several farms in the area, would turn out for the latter.

“You needn’t come, you know,” Matthew assured George as he readied himself for the match. “I know it’s not really your thing, and I promise I shan’t feel slighted. You’ll have plenty of company here.” He grinned. “Or, if you like, you could go in for the cross-country race later on—Jimmy and Peter will be running. I’ve been trying to get Father to have a go, but so far he’s resisted all my attempts at persuasion.”

“As these attempts,” the reverend himself said, startling George, who hadn’t seen him enter the room, “consisted entirely of reminding me that there will be a prize for the oldest competitor, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s little wonder!” He turned to George with a smile. “We shall be happy to enjoy your company here while my sons go and romp in the mud like the street urchins they are at heart.”

“Actually, I think I should rather like to see you play, Matthew,” George said, surprising even himself.

His sacrifice was amply rewarded by Matthew’s look of delight. “Excellent! Right, then—we’d better be off.”

In fact, George found to his astonishment that he thoroughly enjoyed the match and had shouted himself practically hoarse by the time it culminated with the farmers filthy yet victorious, having trounced the brewers 7-0. George even found himself saying he might have a go at the game himself next time, much to Matthew’s glee. The friends returned to the rectory in excellent spirits.

“Not that I scored any of the goals,” Matthew explained to his sister, “but I must say, it was rather satisfying to beat the upstarts so thoroughly.”

“Surely you’re being a bit harsh,” Agnes protested. “It’s not the brewers’ fault they’re a new team.”

“No, but it was their fault that they turned up in a spanking new kit and proceeded to look down their noses at our rag-tag assortment,” Matthew said warmly. “Still, ‘pride goeth before a fall’, as the Good Book says.”

“Matthew!” she chided him, laughing. “Have a care. Father will have a heart attack if he hears you quoting scripture!”

Once Matthew had scraped off the accumulated grime and was once more fit to be seen in company, he and George indulged in the rather more sedate pleasures of a game of bridge with Matthew’s mother and sister.

“We’ll be having an early supper, as we have some people coming round for drinks later on,” Mrs. Connaught announced as she dealt. “Just friends from the village, and one or two of them will be bringing guests, I should think. Quite an informal affair.”

“Oh. Right-oh,” George said, doing his best to look as though he’d welcome the company. Was he never to get Matthew to himself?

“We used to have them over in the afternoon,” Matthew explained, taking up his cards and making an exaggerated expression of dismay at the hand he’d been dealt. “But the trouble was, some of them tended to settle in, rather, and of course we couldn’t eat until they left. Aggie got terribly tipsy one year from too much sherry on an empty stomach.”

“I did
not
,” she protested, laughing. “That’s a beastly lie. I was simply a little light-headed.
You
were the one who was tipsy. You couldn’t stop laughing at poor Mr. Lawton’s moustache.”

“If he didn’t want me to laugh at it, he should have waxed it properly so he didn’t have one end pointing up, and the other drooping down as if it couldn’t decide whether to be happy or sad. Or better yet, he should have shaved the ghastly thing off altogether.”

“Children,” Mrs. Connaught said with fond severity. “What will George think of us all? There will be no laughing at anybody’s misfortunes this year, and there will be
no
tipsiness. We shall simply have a pleasant evening with friends.”

Matthew grinned and gave George a conspiratorial nudge. “Don’t worry. They’ll have come to see Mother and Father, not us, and will most likely ignore us altogether. Bother. I thoroughly messed up that round of bidding, didn’t I? Sorry, Aggie!”

“Next time, I’m playing with George,” his sister declared firmly, and the conversation remained with the cards for some time.

Later, when George and Matthew were idling in the drawing room, talking of this and that, the reverend came in, having been engaged upon some parish business. “Matthew, could I have a word with you?” he asked.

“Of course, Father.” Matthew sprang up from his chair, clapping George on the shoulder. “I’ll be right back, George.”

They retreated only as far as the next room, and through the open door, George could watch them as they talked. It amused him to see that they used the exact same mannerisms—he wondered if they were aware of the fact. He became less comfortable, however, as he realised each of them was periodically glancing over at him, their expressions hard to decipher. Could the reverend be warning his son against George?

Trying to convince himself that he must have developed something of a persecution complex, George was relieved when the little conference broke apart and Matthew returned to him. “Nothing serious, I hope?” was all the enquiry he dared make.

Matthew smiled. “No! No, not at all. Now, would you like to go for a stroll before supper?”

“I’d like that very much indeed,” George said with perhaps a little more enthusiasm than the invitation warranted—unless, that was, one had been hoping all day to finally get one’s friend to oneself.

Matthew beamed at him. “Good man.”

They pulled on their coats but didn’t bother with mufflers and the like. It really was unusually mild for the time of year. Then they set off to wander the countryside to the rear of the rectory. The paths, although well-trodden, were fortunately dry, and made for pleasant walking through farmers’ fields and past ancient spinneys.

“You know,” Matthew said quietly, “I used to go on walks much like this with Donald, out in Ypres.
Wipers
, the men used to call it.” He chuckled. “When I was on rest, of course. We’d take his dog, Scout, and we’d walk for miles—take a picnic with us, and sometimes a cricket bat. I shouldn’t be a lot of use with one of those now, should I? The countryside was very beautiful there, if you got far enough behind the lines. It made the mess we’d made of the rest of it seem so much worse—Ypres itself nothing but a pile of rubble, woods that were just broken stumps of trees, and acres of fields carved into a churning mass of mud, barbed wire and bodies… God, I’m so sorry. This is hardly the sort of thing I should be speaking of at this time of year.”

George’s chest tightened. “No, it’s quite all right. If you want to talk of it, you should.” Remembering how Matthew had comforted him the night before, he hesitantly placed a hand on his friend’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “Tell me about Donald. Was he one of your men? A fellow officer?”

“No, no. He was an orderly in a Field Ambulance—you know, it’s funny, I never did understand why they were called that, instead of Field Hospitals, which is what they really were, of course. Always meant to ask Donald, but somehow I never got around to it. There were so many other things to talk of. England, books and poetry, and whether Jerry would give up and let us all go home any time soon.” Matthew made a brave attempt at a smile, but his eyes were dim, with none of their usual bright merriment.

“Were you…?” George found he couldn’t quite manage the word
lovers
, but his hesitation seemed to get the word across just as eloquently.

“Yes.” Matthew looked down at his feet for a moment. Perhaps he was remembering them clad in army boots, with puttees winding up his legs as he tramped the earth of another country, another man by his side. Then he looked up again with a determined air. “Yes. I was really most awfully fond of him. But how about you? Did you have anyone?”

“I’m afraid any romantic leanings were rather discouraged in prison,” George said lightly. “No, there wasn’t anyone for me. Not even later, when I was working in London.”

He’d had his suspicions that one or two of the other chaps in the department might have shared his inclinations. But at the time, it had been quite enough to tread the unfamiliar paths of his new job, and interaction with the other men—would they despise him for his time in prison? Some of the Navy fellows had certainly seemed to. He wouldn’t have dreamed of adding to his difficulties by risking exposure as an invert.

It wasn’t easy to tell, in any case, with the sort of men he’d been working with, whether they’d welcome masculine advances. Some of the most flamboyantly eccentric of that disparate bunch had, to all appearances, been absolutely devoted to their wives.

And then had come the news of Hugh’s death, and any thoughts of dalliance had fled.

George stared out across the rolling fields, the countryside still beautiful even in the depths of winter. It all seemed so very far removed from what he’d heard of Ypres, and the trenches. The war, Hugh’s death—in this peaceful scene, it seemed almost unreal, and very far away.

He wasn’t sure what to do. Matthew’s interest in him, he was certain, hadn’t abated—had if anything grown stronger with the time they’d spent together here. Lord knew George felt his attraction to Matthew burn ever more fiercely.

God, he hated that his beastly doubts about Matthew still came between them. He was almost certain now that Matthew was innocent. He simply wasn’t capable of any underhand behaviour—he was all that was good and honest in the world. If only there were some way of finding out for certain… It came to him that surely, if he mentioned his own work in Intelligence, Matthew
must
react—must show some signs of guilt and fear, if he truly had been a spy.

It was a risk—any spy worth his salt would find a solitary stroll near woodland the ideal opportunity to rid himself of anyone sniffing around. A thrill of fear ran through George’s chest—then he almost laughed aloud at the thought of Matthew—dear, good-hearted, one-armed Matthew—knocking him over the head with a tree branch and then energetically digging him a shallow grave in the frozen ground of the woods. It was absurd—and the very absurdity of it gave him the courage and the confidence to speak.

“Matthew? You remember when I spoke of the work I did, in the latter part of the war? I, well, I didn’t tell you the whole story. I was working in the Admiralty, as I said. But I was recruited to a new department there, working on decoding German communications. Naval Intelligence.” He looked up as he said it, intent on catching Matthew’s reaction.

Matthew’s handsome face had broken into an astonished smile. “Good Lord!
Dry and dusty old filing
, indeed! You dark horse, you. It must have been fearfully exciting.”

There wasn’t a trace in Matthew’s manner of any of the emotions George had been dreading—fear, suspicion, distrust. His gladness couldn’t be feigned. George was sure of it. He grinned back, his heart suddenly lighter than the solitary lark that soared above the fields. “You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But in fact the vast majority of it was every bit as dry as filing could have been. Imagine a whole department of men of all ages, desperately trying to solve…say, the acrostics in the
Strand
magazine. But with the clues in Hindi, the answers to be given in German, and the whole thing compiled by someone who could only speak Japanese. Every so often, someone would shout out in delight at having solved some particular riddle, or news would come in that a German codebook had been discovered in some Bosch’s imperial woollen long johns, and we’d get a breakthrough, but most of it was quiet frustration.”

“Good Lord,” Matthew said again, laughter in his voice. “You’re joking about the long johns, surely?”

“Not a bit of it. Although apparently they were in a suitcase at the time, rather than on the person of the Bosch in question, if that helps.”

“Rather. I’m not sure I like to think of you being forced to poke around in some Hun’s underwear—at least, not while he was wearing it!”

“Oh, don’t worry. I wasn’t the one doing the poking. No, my war was fought at a desk, and the only skirmishes were over the last of the custard creams when the tea trolley came round.”

“Yes, but think of how many Tommies’ lives you must have saved, working out what old Jerry was up to and sending a timely warning.
They also serve, who only stand and wait
—how much more, those who…” Matthew clicked his fingers in frustration.

“Sit and cipher?” George suggested with a grin.

“Exactly!” Matthew grinned back—then frowned. “But why do you always say you were a C.O.? I mean, of course you
were
, but surely not the worst militarist could complain about you not going off to fight when you were doing such valuable work back home?”

“Because to everyone who knows me, that’s all I was. I was in prison for a year. It’s a matter of record. And even when I came out, I couldn’t tell anyone what I was doing. For all everyone knew, Father had managed to get me a job as a civil servant—just enough to keep me out of gaol and out of the trenches. So I was still”—George saved himself in the nick of time from saying
Conchie Cottingham
—“just a rotten, cowardly conchie to them all.” He looked away, his mood sinking once more as he remembered Hugh. “Still, it wasn’t any more than I deserved, was it?”

“Rot! Not wanting to kill a man doesn’t make you a coward. I
know
how brave you are, so kindly cease and desist forthwith—you see, I know legal terms just as well as you do—from insulting one of the finest men I know.”

The praise falling lightly from Matthew’s lips would have been meat and drink to George—had he but thought he deserved it. As it was, the flush it raised was prickling and uncomfortable. “How can you call me brave when I was never in any danger? Not like you, or…or Hugh. You both faced terrible danger. And I should have been the one out there, not Hugh. He was the heir.
I
was supposed to be the spare.”