Legacy of the Dead - Charles Todd [8]
He couldn’t see her face clearly, but he instantly recognized her. And the grief in her eyes shamed him, cutting through his defenses.
Terrified, he tried to turn away, and couldn’t. His feet were rooted to the spot, his body paralyzed by her eyes.
She was coming toward him now, up the church walk. She was saying something to him, then she pointed to the side of the churchyard and the grave there. Only there wasn’t a body lying beneath the bare brown earth. He knew that at once.
There were tears on her face, but no hatred. He thought he could have borne the hatred, but not the pity in her eyes.
He began to walk toward her, not of his own volition but of hers, drawn to her, drawn to the drift of flowers she held, drawn to the grave they were destined for. She had brought enough flowers for the two of them to spread over the earth, to cover its ugliness. He could see it now, raw, without beauty or grace or the mercy of time, and he couldn’t face it—one more step and he would read the name on the stone, and that would be intolerable—
IAN RUTLEDGE WOKE with a start, breathing harshly from shock.
He was sitting upright, knees raised, head flung back, drenched with sweat and with horror, terrified of the heavy, suffocating blackness that surrounded him, that made him blind.
Frantic, he put his hands to his face to claw the viscous mask away and touched—not the thick mud of the trenches but his own flesh.
Surprised, confused, he tried to think. If he wasn’t in France, where was he? His hands floundered, found sheets—a pillow. The clinic?
As his eyes grew accustomed to the impenetrable darkness, he was able to pick out the ghostly shape of his surroundings. A door—a mirror—a bedpost—
Rutledge swore. I’ve been asleep—I’m in my bed— I was dreaming—
But it was several minutes before the vivid dream faded enough for him to shake off the overwhelming sense of doom it had left behind. In the back of his mind he could feel Hamish rumbling like heavy thunder—or the guns— trying to tell him something he didn’t want to hear—over and over again.
Fumbling for a match, he lit the candle on the table by his bed, then got up and switched on the light. It blared down at him from the high ceiling, garish and stark after the darkness, but he was grateful for the reality it provided, pushing back the last remnants of sleep and of his nightmare.
He pinched out the candle flame, looked at the watch lying beside the brass candlestick, and saw that the time was close to three o’clock. In France he’d often slept with a stub of candle clenched in his hand. Unlit—it would have been madness to light it—but a symbol of light all the same. He still kept one beside his bed, a talisman.
This was London, not the trenches, and there was no mud— He repeated the words, listening to their sanity.
Around him were his own belongings: the carved armoire by the door to the sitting room, the mirror where he put on his tie every morning, the chair that had been his father’s, the tall posts of the bed he had slept in as a boy, the dark burgundy draperies his sister had helped him hang. All of them familiar, and in their own way, unexpectedly comforting. They had been his before the war, just as this flat had been, and returning here had been a bulwark against the intervening hell of the trenches. A promise that one day he would be the same man again.
I’ve been working too hard, he thought, moving between the bed and the tall chest and coming to a halt by the table set beneath the window. He pushed aside the draperies. Outside, rain clouds were hanging heavily over the city. Gray and depressing. He turned away, letting the heavy fabric fall again. Frances is right, I need rest. It will stop when I can rest.
His sister Frances had put it in no uncertain terms. “You look terrible, Ian! Tired and thin and still very unlike yourself. Tell Old Bowels to give you leave, you