Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [54]
It was all couched in terms of village politics, but Mason knew enough of what it meant for his interest to be held as if in a vise. When he finished reading the letter, he put it in his pocket and sat crouched on an ammunition box, his feet on duckboards awash with rainwater, the weak spring sun thawing some of the chill out of his flesh. He could hear the sounds of men moving about. Someone was singing a bawdy song. There was a burst of laughter, and then others joined in. There was a kind of desperate courage in the singing that he admired with a passion so intense he found his hands were shaking on the tin mug he was holding, slopping the tea over. Anything that would save them was worth trying. Tired, beaten, bereaved, afraid—none of them were excuses for not trying. Pride was not even the beginning of an excuse. He would go back and listen to the Peacemaker, see if there was anything worth attempting. Then men like these around him could go home, and a woman like Judith could drive ordinary cars crazily along country roads instead of carrying the bleeding and the dead through this carnage.
He was on his way back to London anyway. He had only come through Ypres in the hope of seeing Judith. He was startled and a little afraid how much it had mattered to him. He was not at all certain it was what he wanted, not now, not when nothing could be held on to, treasured, promised for life.
But there should be life, for all these tens of thousands of men around him, its possibilities and hopes and chances for good or ill.
He drank the rest of the tea and climbed to his feet. He could not afford to stay here any longer. He must leave before the night’s bombardment began, and cadge a lift toward the train.
Mason arrived on a troop train in London and climbed out onto the platform at Waterloo station, stiff and cold. He heard the doors open and men call out, the clatter of boots, the whistle and hiss of steam as the engine belched. The platform was crowded, people pushing and jostling together, all straining eagerly to catch sight of a particular face, and growing more and more desperate if they didn’t. There were nurses in long, gray uniforms, always busy, too much to do, too little time; porters with luggage, men too old to fight, or not fit enough; and multitudes of men in khaki with white bandages, some spotted with blood.
Outside the station most of the people waiting in the taxi line were wounded. Though Mason was stiff and cold, he was unhurt so he walked to the nearest stop and waited for an omnibus. It could even end up being quicker in the end.
London looked drabber and more exhausted than Mason had remembered it. The women wore smart, elegant jackets, skirts to the midcalf with often a longer one beneath, but there was no color, no extravagance. There were no lace parasols as there used to be before the war, no hats with big flowers on them.
The street was alive with both horse-drawn carriages and automobiles and contained all the familiar advertisements, all the noise and the movement—but it looked dirty in the sun.
Since the last time he had been to Marchmont Street, he had reported not only from the Western Front and Gallipoli again, but also the desperate Italian resistance to Austria and the fighting in the Balkans. His emotions were raw with the bitter sameness of the loss. And now Judith’s face, blank with misery, haunted his mind. He wanted to hear her laugh again, to see her walk with a lift in her stride, with the energy, passion, and even arrogance that had caught his eye before.
The horns and the traffic brought him back to the present and the street again. The bus came and he boarded it, glad to find a seat.
He alighted while he was still half a mile from Marchmont Street. It was easier and certainly faster to walk the rest of the way than wait for another bus.
He recalled the first time he had come here, before the war. He had been full of