Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [104]
“I don’t suppose you know who did?” Joseph said casually.
“No oidea.”
Barshey stubbed out his Woodbine and lit another, cupping his hand around the match from habit, even though they were well behind the lines now. “Didn’t you and Major Wetherall go out and look for some o’ them as moight be still alive? You brought Captain Hughes back, didn’t you? He didn’t make it.” He shook his head and his voice dropped. “Pity. He was a good man, even though he was Welsh.”
“Yes. We found Prentice’s body, too.” Joseph said nothing about Hughes, even to defend the Welsh. That was Isobel’s husband, and losing him still hurt.
Barshey shrugged. “Don’t know whoi you bothered risking your neck for that one. He was dead anyway. No point, really.”
“I’d have fetched him if he’d been anyone else,” Joseph said.
Barshey grinned suddenly. “Oi reckon you’re a fool, Cap’n, but it’s a sort o’ comfort. Oi’d loike to think you’d come for me, whether Oi were any good or not. Because sometimes Oi think Oi’m foine, but other days Oi wake up with dead Jerries in moi ’ead, and Oi think of their woives and mothers, and that maybe they’re the ones Oi can hear singing sometimes? Or the ones that left the sausages out there for us, or that yell out asking for the football scores, an’ Oi can’t stand it. Oi need to think there’s someone that’d come for me, no matter what.” He was still smiling, but his eyes were brilliant, hurting with the intensity of his need.
“Don’t think it,” Joseph said softly. “You can be sure I would.”
Barshey nodded, blinking a little. He looked down and squinted into the empty Woodbine packet to hide his feelings, not because he wanted another cigarette. “You know if you want to find out what happened to the stupid bastard, you should ask Major Wetherall. He was with him up the saps ’cos Prentice was bragging about it. Reckoned Wetherall thought he was some kind of soldier. Load of rubbish, if you ask me. Wetherall despoised him. But he came from the saps over to us during the raid, roight across no-man’s-land. More guts than any other man Oi know. He might’ve seen the stupid sod fall in a crater.”
Joseph was cold in the pit of his stomach. “Major Wetherall came across no-man’s-land during the raid?”
Barshey smiled. “Loike Oi said, he’s one on his own.”
It was the one answer Joseph had not thought of: any of the other sappers, Corliss’s friends—but not Sam!
“You all roight, Cap’n?” Barshey said gently. “You look pretty bad. You didn’t get hit, did you?”
“Hit?” Joseph said stupidly.
“Did you get hit—that last raid?” Barshey repeated carefully, searching Joseph’s face. “You all roight? You look koind o’ sick.”
“Just bruised,” Joseph replied. “Bruised inside, I think.”
“Hurts, doesn’t it,” Barshey said sympathetically, even though he was not sure what he was referring to.
“Yes,” Joseph agreed. “Yes, it hurts.” He wished now that he had taken Sam’s advice and not looked. He did not want to know, but you cannot undo knowledge. He knew who had killed Eldon Prentice. Thinking of Corliss still waiting to know if he was going to face the firing squad, perhaps it was not difficult to understand why. Maybe he should have known from the beginning. But he could not let it go just because it wounded him too deeply to deal with the pain of it.
There was no use hesitating. He would like to have avoided facing it altogether, but he knew that was not possible. Scruby Andrews’s words were in his head, and the knowledge of the truth of them would not leave him. It would not now, and he knew it would not later.
At stand-to, Sam would be at his usual place. Breakfast was not the time for such a confrontation, and straight afterward they would both be occupied with other duties. It must be before. There was no choice but to waken Sam now.
He walked slowly along the damp morning earth. The trench walls were studded with beetles. A rat ambled away, unconcerned. He went up