Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [74]
So Joseph accepted. He wrapped the pewter goblet carefully, making it as tidy and elegant as he could, and took it with him. He was excited at the thought of Corcoran’s pleasure when he saw it.
Lizzie arrived at exactly the time she had said, and he got into the car. It was a utilitarian Model T Ford that reminded him sharply of the one Judith had driven with such reckless pleasure before the war. He mentioned it to her as they set off.
“Your sister?” she said with interest. “Is she the one who drives an ambulance in Flanders now?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve thought of that. I should try to do something really useful. Take my mind off myself for a while.” She said it with a small, rueful gesture. “What sort of qualifications would I need?”
“Are you sure it’s what you want?” he asked, looking sideways at her face, as she stared through the windscreen intent on the road ahead. She was not a pretty woman but there was a kind of individuality and intelligence in her that he liked. Her nose was a little crooked and too long for beauty. Her eyes were very clear blue, in spite of her dark hair. She looked less numb than she had when he first met her, the day of her husband’s death, but she must still be suffering a bitter bereavement. It was simply that the pain had settled deeper and she had managed some fragile mask to hide the surface.
Was she also feeling passionately betrayed? Was that why she wanted now to go to France and lose herself in the war? That was not a good reason to go. Injured men needed someone who wanted to live, whose mind was free to give wholly to the job of getting them back to hospitals, and help.
They turned off the village street onto the road toward Madingley. The fields were hazed with green and an old man, shoulders bent, led weary horses along the lane to the Nunns’ farm.
“You should think about it a little longer,” Joseph advised. “Wait at least until you have had a chance to heal a little from your loss. You are still shocked now.”
“You think it will get better?” Lizzie said wryly, glancing at him for an instant, then back at the road. “Are all the ambulance drivers in France calm and comfortable inside? None of those girls have lost husbands, brothers, or fiancés?” She swerved around a pothole in the road. “Haven’t you lost people you cared about? Did they send you home?”
Of course it was preposterous. You cared about the men you were with. No one who had not been there could understand the friendships in the trenches, the sharing of everything: food, body warmth, dreams, letters from home, jokes, terror, secrets you would have told no one else, perhaps even life’s blood. The bond was unique, fierce, and lifelong. There were ways in which no one else would ever be so close, memories that locked you together beyond words.
He thought of Sam Wetherall, and for a moment a pain of loss engulfed him like a fire burning out everything else. It was as if it had been only yesterday that they had sat in the dugout together and talked about Eldon Prentice, and shared the last of Sam’s chocolate biscuits. He could still smell the Flanders earth, slick, wet clay, and the latrines, and the odor of death that got into everything.
“No, they don’t send us home,” he answered her. “And sometimes when we’ve lost someone particularly close, or made mistakes, got too tired to think, someone else pays for it. But we don’t deliberately start out too bruised to care.”
She smiled faintly. “You’re very blunt.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I prefer it that way. That policeman doesn’t seem to have any idea yet who killed Theo, you know.”
“He will, but it could take time.”
A weasel ran across the road, sleek and bright. She braked a little, then accelerated again. “You knew him before, didn’t you.” That was more of a statement than a question.
He was surprised. “Yes. A friend of mine was murdered, just before the war.”
“I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”
“Yes, it was. But Perth’s a good man.”
She was driving with unconscious skill, as if she loved the feel of the control