Redemption - Leon Uris [226]
Christopher had passed over the threshold. He’d bury his lie no longer. He was face-to-face with Christopher. He nearly gagged sorting out his words; they had to be untwisted carefully.
“I feel something now very deeply,” he muttered. He now knew internal pain and the man had become bewildered by it. The discovery of buried passion suddenly tore him off the pedestal he had placed himself on and brought him down to common earth with common pain. Twenty-five years of building an armor of reserve attitude, of detaching himself from human misery was blown away, snatched from him and reduced him to dust in a sudden moment. Welcome to the human race, Major Hubble.
Christopher found his old steel. He looked directly at his brother. “When we took Molly from you, I was as evil as a brother could be. You writhed in agony and I kicked you and enjoyed it. I was above you, you see. When you became a drunk and I rose over you in rank, I delighted in humiliating you. When you were terrified to sign the resignations at Camp Bushy I adored tormenting you as a coward.”
He stood and clasped his hands behind him. He was pleased that his words were direct and did not falter, for he had never ventured into such territory of the heart. “I never really understood the meaning of pain until I opened Hester’s letter. Physical pain, yes. But one keeps a stiff upper lip when he is thrown from a horse and merely suffers a broken arm. This was pain of a horrible dimension. Oh, I admit I did not love Hester with any sort of bottomless fervor. Hester had to be collected by me along the way to fit into a niche. When I was unable to make her pregnant, I was concerned only that my manliness might be in question. I had no understanding why she seemed to be so distressed.”
Christopher felt his brother’s hand on his shoulder for the first time since they were kids. No touch of another person in his life had been so meaningful. He felt it all over, for the first time.
“I was foolish to block inside pain from my life, but I didn’t consciously know I was doing it. Detachment from others seemed the normal way of being. To have learned it all in this single moment was too much for me to bear. I had betrayed Hester with my indifference. I never felt jealous of her, not once. She was not much to be jealous of, one would think. She existed only to serve my requirements, nothing more. I never understood that she was a tight rosebud who craved to bloom. She is happy now…truly in love…a baby in her belly and risking all. Only now do I realize what I did to you. God, you must despise me.”
“I’ve never felt any sense of revenge. I wish I could take some of your pain from you now. I can’t. But I am your brother and I love you.”
It was all too much for Christopher, to keep together, not to break down. Blast, he had his pride! “What can I do to make it right for those lads?” he asked softly.
“You have to put your head in a noose for them,” Jeremy responded without hesitation.
“I’m listening.”
“Camp Anzac is starting to fold its tents. The first battalions to move out are infantry, sappers, artillery. Apparently we are the tail end of the line.”
“I’ve already spoken to General Brodhead about it. He said it is a typical army bureaucratic fuckup. We are officially a service unit. Service units have always brought up the rear. They made no provision for the fact that the Seventh Light Horse has extraordinary urgencies. The War Office and Darlington are on automatic. Brodhead has protested to London.”
“We must leave Egypt first, Chris. If we don’t have mules on Lemnos in a week or two and cram our training, we are going to fail in our mission, miserably,