Two Storm Wood, page 35
Amy brought a hand to his cheek. ‘It doesn’t matter now. You’re alive. That’s what matters.’
He dried Amy’s hand with gentle dabs of a towel. ‘We should get some disinfectant on these. I’ve got bandages.’
He took the basin away. Why didn’t Edward tell her how he had missed her? Why didn’t he tell her what it meant to see her again? Was it for the same reason she didn’t: because there was too much to say, too much to tell?
He emptied the basin and returned with a first-aid kit in a canvas satchel.
‘Why didn’t you write to me?’ she said. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t keep your secret?’
‘Hold out your hand.’ He placed a pad of gauze on her palm, then wrapped the bandage around it, cutting and pinning with practised speed and precision.
‘Did you think I’d be ashamed of you?’
‘For running away? No.’
‘Then why …?’
‘Because …’ He looked up at her, then went back to work. ‘Because I knew you’d wait for me. I was afraid you’d wait for ever. And … I couldn’t take that from you as well.’
‘There are worse things than waiting. I’d have known you were alive.’
Edward reached for another bandage, took hold of her other hand. The cuts weren’t so bad. He ran his finger over them, as if to test their depth. She shuddered at his touch, just as she had the first time they met. The shock of finding him still coursed through her.
‘And you’d have stuck with me,’ he said. ‘A criminal and an addict. You’d have followed me to the bottom: whatever the disgrace, whatever the hardship.’ His head sank into her lap. ‘I’m not worth that, Amy. I never was.’
‘It was the war, Edward. Edward? Whatever happened, you aren’t to blame – or we both are. You came here because of me, I know that. It’s my fault.’
He did not seem to hear her. ‘I used to think about our time together. I thought if I could hang on to those memories, I could hang on to the way I was. But by the end they didn’t feel like they were mine any more. When I wrote to you … about the fields and the wheat, that’s what it was. I knew it was all lost – lost to me, nothing left to go back for.’
For a moment Amy thought he would break down and cry, but before she could reach for him again he was on his feet. This moment had already happened in his mind, she felt sure. And he knew that tears would not help. They would only make it harder to set her free.
‘Come home with me,’ she said. ‘Come home. I won’t let you down again. I’ve made my choice.’
‘But you don’t know me, Amy. Until I came here, I didn’t know myself. One thing you can say for the battlefield: you find out what you’re made of. You find out what’s underneath.’
The tears pricked in her eyes. ‘But I’ve been here too, and I know, I understand – enough, at least. Enough to know it wasn’t your fault.’ She saw his eyes close. ‘Now let’s leave this place and never come back.’
Edward did not reply. His back was to her as he packed away the first-aid bag. ‘You didn’t explain how you found me.’
Amy felt dizzy and short of breath, too weak to try and make him listen. ‘Bill Egerton. He said he was in the line when you were killed. I found out that couldn’t be true.’
Edward shook his head. ‘He should’ve known better than to try and fool you. I told him you were sharp.’
She hung her head. ‘I was fooled. It was Sergeant Farrer who wasn’t. Edward, please—’
He turned. ‘Farrer? You’ve seen him? Does he know who you are?’
The fear in his voice sent a jolt through Amy’s heart. She nodded. ‘He’s the reason I came back here.’
Edward dropped the bag and went straight to a trunk lying in the corner. He threw open the lid and pulled out a revolver. He flipped open the cylinder: it was fully loaded.
‘If Farrer knows—’
Movement. The creak of a board. They both heard it: footsteps easing up the bare wooden stairs.
The door onto the landing was ajar. Edward snapped the cylinder shut and took aim. The footsteps stopped. A faint metallic snap. Something hard and heavy rolled along the wooden floor.
‘Amy, get—’
The Mills bomb clanked against the back of the stove and detonated.
Amy felt the blast go past her, a fury of fire and iron. The flue above the stove came down, smoke and soot billowing. Edward was on the floor, clutching his leg. He was shouting at her, but she couldn’t hear him. The whole room had come adrift: it stretched and rolled as if riding on an ocean. She dropped to her knees.
Farrer stood in the doorway. The right side of his face was caked in blood, his ear sliced in two from front to back. Rhodes’s blade had missed him by an inch. He pulled the knuckle-knife from his belt.
Amy’s knee brushed against something hard. She looked down, saw the revolver. Edward was still shouting at her, beckoning with an outstretched arm, racked with pain. Farrer stepped into the room.
Sound rushed back like a breaking wave.
‘Throw it to me. Throw me the gun!’
Amy grabbed at it. Her bandaged fingers wouldn’t reach around the trigger. She juggled it into her left hand, pulled back the hammer with a heavy click.
The sound caught Farrer’s attention. He looked at her with the same expressionless eyes, as if she were a window someone had forgotten to close.
The revolver danced in her hands. Her whole body shook. She tried to take aim.
‘Amy, throw me the gun, for God’s sake!’
Her finger locked around the trigger.
Farrer shook his head. ‘You won’t shoot me, Miss. A bit o’ mud don’t make you a soldier.’
‘Amy!’
She pulled the trigger. The gun leapt in her hand. Farrer rocked backwards. His knife fell to the floor. She had hit him, but she couldn’t see where. Farrer clawed at his throat.
He came to rest against the jamb. He looked lost, breathless, his head hanging forward. Absently his right hand reached into the pocket of his greatcoat. He pulled out another grenade and put the pin between his teeth.
Amy’s second bullet hit him in the chest. His body lurched and twisted away. His hand was down by his waist again, with the grenade still in it. He frowned at it drunkenly, as if surprised to see it there. Then, with his other hand, he reached for the pin.
Amy’s third shot opened a hole beneath his eye.
St James’s
London
April 1919
Dear Amy,
I asked after you at Heveningham and received the news this morning that you had gone back to your aunt and uncle in Cambridge. I was happy to hear you are recovered from the fever and, I trust, from the trials of last month. I think your idea of undertaking a course of medical study is a good one. An agile mind needs occupation, especially in the aftermath of tragic events. Setting aside the past will never be easy, when so many holes have been torn in the fabric of the future.
From your mother’s communication, I see that you have followed my suggestion and refrained from sharing with her or your father the full extent of your discoveries in France. I think, in the circumstances, this is wise. It has certainly made things easier with respect to the War Office and prevented events from running ahead of us. I am now able to report on the fruits of my labours on Edward’s behalf.
The deaths of Sgt Farrer and Lt Col Rhodes have been under investigation by the provost marshals’ branch – the French authorities having satisfied themselves that it is not a matter for them. I understand that some important information has come to light, much of it supplied by Captain Mackenzie of the 21st Middlesex, whose acquaintance I believe you made in France. This information implicates men of Rhodes’s battalion – and, by extension, Rhodes himself – in the unlawful killing of an officer and a dozen other ranks serving in the Chinese Labour Corps last summer. This information, together with Rhodes’s war record and the testimony of doctors who later treated him during his convalescence in England, make it entirely plausible that Edward’s life was in imminent danger when he was reported missing from his unit.
I am happy to tell you that I yesterday received informal assurances from the War Office that no action will be taken against Captain Haslam, should it come to light – formally, I mean – that he is alive. The one condition attaching to this assurance is that Lt Col Rhodes’s misconduct should not be made public. The man, after all, is not alive to defend himself, and was recently buried with full honours at Bertrancourt Military Cemetery. The matter, I may add, might cause some embarrassment, involving as it does foreign nationals, especially if it were to be misrepresented in the press.
I will of course inform Edward of the War Office’s position without delay. I had hoped that you and he would at last be able to continue your lives together where you left off two and a half years ago. Nothing would have been more welcome to me. Sadly, it seems that Edward is not yet ready to resume his former life in England, assuming such a thing would ever be possible. I do not know if he has communicated this to you himself, but my understanding is that he will be staying at the military hospital where you found him, at least for the time being. The work being done there is valuable, the patients being severely wounded veterans, and he feels a need to help them as best he can. This was, of course, before news of the War Office’s decision came through. Wherever and whenever Edward finally settles, I hope that you can accept his choice with equanimity, knowing that your actions have given him back both his freedom and his honour, and that nothing more could have been asked of you, or of anyone.
I will let you know at once if anything further transpires. In the meantime, I pray you may find something of the peace and happiness to which your steadfast devotion entitles you.
Affectionately,
Evelyn
Forty-six
England, May 1919
‘He’s certainly been lucky with the weather,’ Aunt Clem said. ‘How like your uncle to have the heavens on his side.’
Amy sat by the window in the upstairs drawing room, gazing across the road towards Vicar’s Brook. She sat there often these days, utterly still, lost in thought. Aunt Clem and her husband never knew whether it was best to leave her in peace or break the silence with conversation. It was a silence that Amy had brought with her from France.
‘Yes, it’s very like him,’ she said.
The tall trees crowding the banks were in leaf, the new growth vivid against a blue sky. It was the first warm day of the year.
Until now the weather had given Amy an excuse to stay indoors, to pass up the long constitutionals that her aunt and uncle swore by. Such observances felt unnatural now, as if she were playing a part, living out a life that belonged to someone else. Too much had happened simply to carry on as before. The battlefields of the Ancre still held her prisoner. She had no idea when they would let her go.
But she would have to step out now, if only for fear of seeming ungrateful. She would walk past the places she had once shared with Edward, and be reminded of how he was. Would those places lose their power one day? If so, when would that be? She looked down at her hands. The scars on her finger and palm were now ragged white lines, with here and there a hint of purple. They were the only visible reminders of her time on the battlefields, but they would be there for the rest of her life. Next to them, Edward’s pearl tiepin was pristine, as if freshly made.
Aunt Clem was anxious that Amy should rebuild her social life as quickly as possible. She brought Amy along to functions at the university. There had been a soirée at her house, replete with ‘new people’. A young lieutenant in the Berkshires, recently demobbed, was among the guests at a dinner party. Amy did her best to behave as expected, if only for her aunt’s sake, but the sense of detachment would not leave her. At times, polite conversation was such an effort, it left her feeling faint. It did not help that the other guests studiously avoided any reference to her recent past. How much they already knew about it, what rumours they had heard, Amy did not know (that she had killed a man, she thought, was not yet generally known), but it was enough to make them wary. Her experiences, she supposed, were ones a young woman was not supposed to have. For all Aunt Clem’s efforts, it was clear they did not know what to make of the Vanneck girl, or what to say to her.
As for Lady Constance, she had welcomed her daughter back to England with a show of warmth and a busyness that was surprising. It became clear that she had decided, in the light of recent events, to pretend that nothing very much had happened and simply carry on as if that were the case. It was the safest, the least embarrassing approach. Even the news of Edward’s survival was treated as an occasion for joy and congratulation. Amy was content to go along with the pretence. She had seen little of her mother in any case, just enough to satisfy appearances.
Aunt Clem was fluffing up cushions now and reassembling the scattered newspapers. The front page of The Times carried a report on the release from prison of several conscientious objectors. The government had agreed to free them all by the end of the year.
‘Do you think he’s taking the train back to London tonight?’ she said. ‘Perhaps he might be persuaded to stay over.’
‘I shouldn’t think so. He’s always so busy.’
The letter had arrived yesterday: Sir Evelyn had business at Trinity and would be pleased to call on them, if convenient. The arrangement seemed uncharacteristically last-minute. Amy wondered if it could really be just a social call.
Her last days in France were still a chaos of sharp, fragmented memories. Between bouts of fever there were endless questions: from the French Gendarmerie, from two different military policemen, from someone representing the Commandant of Labour and from Uncle Evelyn himself, who wanted a full account of her encounter with the late Colonel Rhodes. By that time Amy had been removed to a civilian hospital in Amiens.
Some memories never left her: Farrer, the smell of him, the wide, empty gaze; the feel of the revolver in her hand, the cold weight, the balance and precision of the mechanism. She remembered using it, wanting Farrer’s death, the hatred that flared inside her. Those recollections came unbidden: when she stood before the mirror, preparing to wash; when she lay down at night to sleep, and in her dreams.
And she remembered Rhodes, restored briefly to himself, gliding to the kill on his beautiful horse, death in his eyes. In those moments she felt closest to Edward, as two people who had taken the same dark road and found themselves alone together.
One of her visitors in Amiens was Captain Mackenzie. His interrogation was the fullest of all, if only because she found him the easiest to talk to. He was apologetic about his failure, as he put it, to see Major Westbrook for what he was – a failure that had put Amy in grave danger. He had been blinded by the man’s bravery and decisiveness, soldierly qualities that he had witnessed for himself. Had it been otherwise, he might have asked himself if Two Storm Wood had anything to do with Whitehall, with uncovering the facts. He might have come to see that the object had only ever been Edward Haslam – his exposure or his punishment – and that Amy had been unwittingly recruited to the same end. Captain Mackenzie, it turned out, had been thinking a great deal about Colonel Rhodes.
‘Is it true he saved your life?’ he had asked.
‘Yes, but I can’t forgive him, not for the massacre, or the rest.’
Mackenzie had nodded. ‘Of course not. Do you think it was forgiveness he was after?’
‘Perhaps not. Perhaps he knew it was too late for that.’
‘And Sergeant Farrer? I understood he worshipped Colonel Rhodes. What happened? Why did he turn on him like that?’
Amy’s memories of those final moments were incomplete. ‘It was about a promise,’ she said. ‘A broken promise. That’s all I know.’
Sitting alone by the window now, Amy found herself hoping she would meet Captain Mackenzie again, if only to see if he had managed to put the past behind him, or if the ghosts of the battlefields still haunted him. Of course he assumed that she and Edward would now be reunited, married, carrying on where they had left off two years earlier. Amy did not share with him her doubts – doubts that her uncle’s last letter had done nothing to lessen.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a taxi pulling up outside the house. The railings and the trees obscured her view, but it could only be Uncle Evelyn. A glance at the clock revealed that he was almost an hour early. She watched him climb out, wearing an unfamiliar felt hat and carrying a cane.
Aunt Clem must have seen him too. She was hurrying down the stairs, shouting at her husband to prepare himself and giving orders to the maid.
‘Amy!’ Now she was calling to her niece. ‘Amy, it’s him. Sir Evelyn’s brought … Amy, come quickly!’
She got to her feet. The man with the cane looked up at the house. It was not her uncle, it was Edward. Sir Evelyn followed him out of the taxi and paused to pay the driver. Aunt Clem threw open the door. There were greetings and apologies, Sir Evelyn saying something about an earlier train, Aunt Clem assuring him that he had not arrived a moment too soon.
Edward stood at a distance, looking up at the window. Without the beard, he looked younger again, although not as young as the choirmaster Amy had once known.
‘Don’t just stand there, come in.’ Aunt Clem’s voice was hushed, as if sharing a secret. ‘Amy’s going to be so happy to see you. So happy.’
Edward hesitated, leaning heavily on his stick, as if unsure if that could really be true.
Amy got to her feet, her hands pressed against the glass. She was afraid the light would change and she would see that she had been mistaken, that it was not Edward after all. But the light did not change. The face looking up at her remained his.
She turned from the window and hurried downstairs. On her way out of the sitting room she cast a final glance at the tiepin in her hand and put it down on the mantelpiece.
