Angels in the Gloom_ A Novel - Anne Perry [8]
His parents were no longer here, but when he lay awake in the night with the light on to read, he heard Hannah’s footsteps on the landing. For an instant it was his mother’s face he expected around the door to check if he was all right.
“Sorry,” he apologized before she could ask. “My days and nights are a bit muddled.” It was pain that was keeping him awake, but there was nothing she could do to help it, so there was no purpose in telling her. She looked tired, and, with her hair loose, younger than she did in the daytime. She was far more like her mother than Judith was, not only in appearance but in nature. All he could ever remember her wanting was to marry and have children, care for them, and be as good a part of the village as Alys had been—trusted, admired, and above all liked.
But everything was changing, moving much too quickly, as if a seventh wave had accumulated and drowned the shore.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she said anxiously. “Or cocoa? I’ve got milk. It might help you sleep.”
“Yes, please,” he said, as much for her as for himself. “Cocoa.”
She returned ten minutes later with two cups on a tray, and sat in the chair beside the bed sipping her own, having assured herself that he could manage his.
He started speaking to fill the silence. “How is Mr. Arnold?”
Her face pinched a little. “He took Plugger’s death pretty hard.” He was a widower, but she knew Joseph would not have forgotten that. “He spends most of his time down at the forge doing odd jobs, cleaning up, taking people’s horses back and forth. Mostly for the army, and to keep busy, I think.”
“And Mrs. Gee?” Memory of Charlie Gee’s death still twisted inside him. When he was well enough, he planned to go see these neighbors and friends. He knew how much it mattered to them to hear firsthand news. They wanted to ask questions, even if they were afraid of the answers. Mrs. Gee’s other son, Barshey, was still at the front, and most of the other young men she knew as well. Everyone had friends or relations in the trenches; most had lost people they loved, dead, injured, or simply missing. In some cases they would never know what had happened to them.
“Mrs. Gee is all right,” she answered him. “Well, as all right as anyone can be. She always has to make up her mind whether to go and look at the casualty lists or not. And she always does. Like the rest of us, I suppose. You go with your heart in your mouth, then when your family’s names are not there you feel almost sick with relief.”
She bit her lip, her cocoa forgotten. Her eyes searched his to see if he understood the depth of the fear, the moment of crippling aloneness. “And then you realize that other women next to you have lost someone, and you feel guilty. You see their faces white, eyes with all the light gone as if something inside them was dead, too. You know it could be your turn next time. You try to think of something to say, all the while knowing there isn’t anything. There’s a gulf between you that nothing can cross. You still have hope. They don’t. And you end up saying nothing at all. You just go home, until the next list.”
He looked at the misery in her eyes.
“Mother would have known something to say,” she added.
He knew that was what Hannah had been thinking. “No, she wouldn’t,” he answered. “Nobody does. We’ve never been here before.” He paused for a moment. “What about your friends? Maggie Fuller? Or Polly Andrews? Or the girl with the curly hair you used to go riding with?”
She smiled. “Tilda? Actually she married a fellow in the Royal Flying Corps last year. Molly Gee and Lilian Ward have gone to work the factories. Even the squire has only one servant left. Everybody seems to be doing something to do with the war: delivering the post, collecting clothes and blankets, putting together bags with mending supplies, and of course knitting . . . miles of it.” She sipped her cocoa. “I don’t know how many letters I’ve written