Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [70]
“There’s so much bad news at the moment,” he added. “I sometimes wonder if we are all insane. Or perhaps I’ll wake up and discover it’s still 1914, and all this never happened. It’s me that’s wrong, not the rest of the world.”
“I’d like that,” she said quietly, startled by how passionately she meant it, too. “I would give anything I can think of to go back to the way it used to be. It was so . . .”
“Sane,” he said with a smile, his eyes bright and soft.
“Do you think it will ever be like that again, when the war is over?” She wanted him to say it would, even if he could not know or dared not believe.
“Yes, of course it will.” He did not hesitate and his voice was full of warmth. “We’ll make it. It may take a little time, and there’ll be so many people to look after. But we haven’t changed inside. We still believe the same things, love the same things. We’ll heal. As with any illness, the fever breaks, then we begin to get our strength back.” He gave her a quick, bright glance. “Maybe it will give us an immunity?”
She smiled; it was such a commonplace idea it made sense. “Like getting the measles, or chicken pox?”
“Yes,” he agreed. “Exactly. We’ll have had a dose so strong we’ll never do it again. If you get burned badly enough, you don’t ever go near the fire in the future.”
“I like that!” she said quickly. “Then perhaps in a hideous way it would even be worth it. We would crown our folly with something so awful that future generations would learn from it. Then our price would have bought something worth having. Thank you. . . .”
He looked at her with a softness in his eyes so undisguised she was suddenly embarrassed. For the first time it was impossible for her to mistake his thoughts.
The moment broke with a shriek of outrage twenty yards up the street and Hannah was so startled she froze, the blood hot in her face.
Ben jerked around and stared.
Mrs. Oundle, a very large lady in a green dress, was standing outside the butcher’s shop clutching a torn piece of paper, and the brown dog was racing across the road with a brace of lamb chops in his mouth.
The old man on the bench stood up and reached out to stop the dog, who veered sideways, splashing through the water and soaking the man. Mrs. Oundle was still shrieking.
The butcher came out to see what the trouble was and she rounded on him furiously. Two little boys hopped up and down in glee, then, when Mrs. Oundle saw them, turned and fled, boots clattering on the pavement.
Hannah tried to stifle her laughter and totally failed.
The dog dropped the chops in the water and started to bark.
Ben doubled over, tears of delight running down his cheeks.
Mrs. Oundle and the butcher both got angrier and angrier, but it was no use at all, Hannah was incapable of stopping laughing, either. All the fear and misery exploded inside her in a glorious release of hilarity, and in the sheer joy of sharing it with someone else who saw the divine absurdity of it in exactly the same way as she did. There was no point in even trying to apologize to Mrs. Oundle. For a start, she was not sorry, and everyone could see that. On the contrary, she was supremely grateful for the sane absurdity of it.
She took Ben’s arm and they turned away, still laughing.
The brown dog was ducky-diving in the pond to find his chops and Mrs. Oundle and the butcher were sizing each other up to decide who was to blame, when Ben left Hannah at her gate where Joseph was pulling weeds, one-handed, in the garden.
He spoke briefly to Ben, then followed Hannah inside to the kitchen.
“Tea?” she asked, still smiling. “Thank you for doing the weeding.” She filled the kettle under the tap.
“It’s my garden,” Joseph replied.
She froze. It was an extraordinary remark. She turned around slowly to face him. He was standing in the middle of the kitchen floor, his sleeve was rolled up, his good arm slightly scratched and stained with mud and the green sap of grasses.
“Why did you say that?” she asked.