Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [34]
Was that what he wanted? With every nightmare, with every aching bone or stab of pain, yes! Yes, he longed to find a reason never ever to go back. He longed to stay here where he was safe and clean, where he could sleep at night, where he could see the slow, sweet spring blossom over the earth, watch the patient horses pull the plow, walk with his dog and see the birds circle in the sky at sunset and fly low to roost in the elms.
Could he do that with an easy heart, knowing his men in Flanders expected him back? No one wanted to return after leave. The only ones who imagined war in heroic colors were those like Hallam Kerr who had never been there. Even most of them were a little wiser, a little more sober now.
The morning post had brought him a letter from Isobel Hughes. He was surprised how much it had pleased him to see her handwriting on the envelope. He had torn it open eagerly.
She was concerned for his injuries in case they were more serious than he had said. They were. But then he would have felt childish telling her the pain had been so consuming he had, at the beginning, even wished he could die of it to escape. That sounded so cowardly now he was intensely grateful he had not said anything.
As always, she told him of village life in Wales, the changing seasons, a little gossip about those she knew and cared for, making light of the hardships without denying them. Only this time there was something darker, a story she introduced quite casually, but her choice of words was different and even her handwriting had an urgency about it.
A young man here on leave from the front has deserted. They say he has run away, but those are simple words. I don’t think they tell anything like all the truth. I saw his face when he was in the village shop. He spoke to me quite pleasantly, but his eyes looked beyond me to some hell I could not see, but perhaps I had a glimpse of it for an instant.
I know there are a million men out there who are staying and facing everything there is, no matter what, and that many of them will not come back. Every reason in my mind tells me that if I knew where he was hiding in the hills, then I should tell the authorities so they can hunt him out. I imagine he will be court-martialed and then shot. I can see how that is necessary, or maybe thousands would desert, leaving only the bravest to face the enemy alone.
His father is so ashamed he won’t go to chapel anymore. His mother weeps, but for him, I think, not for herself or for shame. Perhaps it is something in us because we are women, we admire the strong and the brave, but we protect the weak. Is that pity, or simply that we do not think far enough ahead to see the damage it does?
I have troubled myself about this quite a lot. I ask you because I hunger for the answer and I know no one wiser or more able to weigh the matter from the view of both the army and the kinder and greater judgment of God as well. Or at least as much of God as it is given us to know.
Joseph had thought about the letter, rereading it to make sure his first impression was right. She did not dare write it openly, but he was convinced she knew where the deserter was, and wanted his opinion as to whether she should betray him or not.
Then he realized with a jolt that by the very use of the word betray he had allowed his sympathies to be as engaged as hers were. He knew the blind stare on young men’s faces when they had seen too much for the mind to bear, when their ears never ceased to hear the roar of the guns, even in the silence of the fields or the chatter of a village street.
And yet if she knew and sheltered him, even by her failure to report it, she would be held accountable for aiding a deserter. At the very best she could be shunned by her own people, at worst she could be charged with a crime. His