Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [79]
He was swaying a little, his skin was white. “You see I’ve been listening to some of the other wounded men in the hospital, as you told me to. Do you still think there’s a God in control of all this, then?” He started to laugh, a jerky, obscene sound on the edge of weeping. “Or did the devil win after all?”
Joseph studied the anguish in Kerr’s eyes, the fury and despair, the knowledge that he was falling into an abyss that had no bottom, and he was helpless to stop it.
“I’ve no idea,” Joseph replied bluntly. “But I know whose side I’m on. And it’s about time you made up your mind. War isn’t a new invention, nor is death, or doubt. Think of the centuries of admirable men and women before us. Do you suppose they had some certainty that stopped them doubting, or kept them from being terrified and thinking they were abandoned?”
“I . . . I . . .” Kerr shook his head in confusion.
“For God’s sake!” Joseph’s voice was growing louder. “They were just as lost as we are! The difference is that they didn’t give up! And it’s the only difference!”
Kerr kept on shaking his head and staggered backward, collapsing into the big chair by the fireplace, hands flapping. “I . . . can’t! I could recite all the things I’m supposed to say, but they’re just words. They mean nothing. I mean nothing, and she’ll know that. I’m a failure, but I refuse to be a hypocrite.”
“Who cares what you are?” Joseph shouted at him. “She’s the one who matters tonight, not you! Just be there!”
But Kerr bent over, his face in his hands, nothing in him moving.
“Then drive me there,” Joseph ordered him. “If that’s what you want, I’ll go.”
“I can’t face her,” Kerr was speaking through his clenched hands, knuckles white. “God didn’t create us, we created Him, out of our own terror of being alone. I can’t say that to her.”
“I just asked you to drive the damn car!” Joseph snarled.
The door opened behind him and Hannah came in. She had not bothered with the tea. “I’ll look after him,” she said quietly. “You’ll have to go and see Mrs. Neave, Joseph. She needs you every bit as much as you needed her when you were frightened and in pain.”
“How do I get there?” he said helplessly. His arm ached and his leg was pounding. He was so tired he was dizzy.
“I went after Lizzie Blaine. She’s waiting for you,” Hannah answered.
There was no excuse left, and he did not really want one. He would not sleep anyway. Perhaps being with Gwen Neave would be only marginally harder than staying and trying to pull Hallam Kerr out of the morass he had sunk into. Doubt was not a sin; intelligence demanded it now and again. He had just picked a damned selfish time to let it overtake him.
Lizzie Blaine was sitting in the car waiting for him, the engine running. He got in and thanked her. He was already half ashamed of himself for being so harsh with Kerr. He had seen shell shock in men in the trenches, and pitied it. Perhaps Kerr was suffering a kind of religious shell shock, spirituality stunned by too much challenge to a faith that had been slender at the best of times.
Lizzie did not speak. Perhaps she was too bitterly acquainted with grief to feel any need to make conversation. It was an odd, wordless companionship they shared driving through the lanes. The moon was now hidden by cloud, and the headlamps swept hedges and tree trunks as they careered around corners. Cottages were dark and beasts silent in the fields. Once an owl swooped low and large, gone again almost before its short body and huge wing span identified it.
They pulled up outside Gwen Neave