Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [142]
He smiled, widely, a warm, genuine laughter inside him. “Well, decide what you don’t want, and tell God you’ll do without it. Maybe He’ll listen. I have no idea.”
“You still think He’s there?” she said perfectly seriously. “Will you think that if they’re gone?” She wanted an answer, the gravity was there in her eyes.
“It’s still the best option I know,” he answered her. “Can you think of anywhere else, any other star to follow?”
She thought for a moment. “No. I suppose the alternative is just to stop trying. Sit down. There are times when that seems a lot less trouble.”
“You have to be pretty certain you like it where you are to do that!” He let go of her and touched her face, brushing a stray hair off her cheek. “Personally, I think this is a sod of a place, and I have to believe there’s a better one, fairer to those who hadn’t much of a chance here.”
She swallowed and nodded. “I’ll make lunch. There’s nothing to do but wait. Please don’t go out, Joseph.”
“Out? Don’t you think I care as much as you do?”
“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”
It seemed an endless afternoon, every minute creeping by. Time after time Joseph drew in breath to say something, and then found he did not mean it, or it was pointless anyway, only making more obvious the fears that crowded his mind. He looked at Hannah and she smiled, making a little grimace. Then she returned to her ironing, going over and over the same sheet until she was in danger of scorching it.
The news came in the early evening. The Cormorant was among those ships lost. Joseph and Hannah stood together in the sitting room, holding each other, numb, minds whirling over an abyss of grief, struggling uselessly not to be sucked into it.
Not just Archie gone, but Matthew as well. They would never know how: blown apart, burned to death, thrown into the sea to struggle in the water until their strength was gone, or worst of all, imprisoned in the ship itself as it plunged downward into the darkness of the bottom of the ocean until it was crushed and the sides caved in and the water suffocated them.
The loss was overwhelming, unbearable. Time stopped. The sun lowered in the sky and darkness came. The children went to bed and neither Joseph nor Hannah found any words even to begin telling them what had happened.
“There’s been a big battle at sea,” Hannah said, her voice oddly flat and steady. “We don’t know how everybody is yet.” It was a lie. She needed the time. Perhaps she needed to grieve alone and do her first, terrible weeping before she gathered strength to share it with them.
Joseph too needed time. He hurt for Hannah, and he hurt bitterly for himself. He had always loved Matthew, but it stunned him how intensely Matthew was inextricably woven into the fabric of his life. It was as if John Reavley had died again, a large piece of him gone in a new and heart-numbing way. He had not expected that Matthew could be in any danger, even going to sea to test the prototype. The loss was too vast to take into his mind. Matthew could not be gone!
Was it like this for everyone? The world falling apart, reason and joy disintegrating into an all-engulfing darkness?
And that created the need for another decision. Could he go back to the trenches now and leave Hannah and the children alone?
He found her in front of the looking glass in her bedroom. She had an old dressing wrap on and her hair down around her shoulders. Her face was bleached of all color, every shred of blood drained away, but she looked quite composed. She just moved slowly, as if afraid her coordination would not keep her from knocking into things, or perhaps even falling over.
She looked exactly as he felt. He understood completely.
“I won’t be going back to Ypres,” he said quietly. “I expect you know that anyway, but I thought I’d tell you, just in case.”
She nodded. “We’ll tell Judith . . . but not yet. I’m . . . I’m not ready.” She looked at him curiously, her face crumpled. “Joseph, how does everybody do it, how do they keep on, how do they live? Everything I’ve said