Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [133]
“Beverly,” Mason replied. “Near Hull, in Yorkshire. Where do you?”
“Selborne St. Giles, just outside Cambridge,” Joseph said. “Have you always been a journalist?”
“Nothing else I ever wanted to do.” Mason smiled bleakly. “Don’t tell me you always wanted to preach, I couldn’t bear it! Some time, even if it was in the cradle, you must have wanted to do something else!”
“My father wanted me to be a doctor. I tried, but I felt so useless in the face of the pain, and the fear.”
“So you chose the pain and fear of the spirit instead?” There was surprise in Mason’s face, but it was not without respect. “Was your father upset?”
“Yes. But he’s dead now.”
“So is mine. He died while I was in Africa . . . reporting on the Boer War.” He said the words with anger and a grief that clearly still hurt him. He was looking not at Joseph but at the sea rolling away behind them, now beginning to be touched with color, but a heavy gray, only undershot with blue.
“That’s where you learned to hate war,” Joseph observed. It was barely a question.
“It’s not a noble thing,” Mason said, his lips tight. “It’s vicious, stupid, and bestial! It brings out the worst in too many men who used to be decent. There is immense courage, pity, honor, and all the things that are finest in human nature in some, but at the price of losing too many. The sacrifice is immeasurable. And it’s a cost we have no right to ask of anyone—anyone at all!”
Joseph was quiet for a while. It was becoming difficult to hold the oars. The boat was bucking as the waves caught it from different angles and his strength was failing. He began to think of all the things he valued most, not what ought to matter, but what really did: his family, the people he loved who formed the frame of his life within which everything else took meaning. What was laughter or beauty or understanding if there was no one with whom to share it? What was achievement alone? So many things were made only in order to give them to someone else.
Friendship was at the root of it all, the honesty without judgment, the generosity of the spirit, the tenderness that never failed. In a way it was the end of fear, because if you were not alone, everything else was bearable.
He thought of Sam. If he and Mason didn’t make the shore, then at least he would never have to go and find Sam and tell him he knew he had killed Prentice. He was surprised how much of a relief that was.
His hand slipped on the oar, as if he had already half let it go. Mason jerked around, fear in his face for an instant, until he saw Joseph tighten his grip on it again.
What would Sam have said to try to persuade Mason not to write his article on Gallipoli? What arguments were there left? He had tried everything he could think of. None of it was enough. What if he failed? Finally he faced the thought he had been avoiding for the last two hours. There was only one way to be absolutely certain that Mason did not publish his piece, and that was to kill him. Could he wait until they were within sight of land, and he could manage the boat alone, then calmly take the oar and strike Mason with it, so hard it would kill him? He had no need to ask himself, he knew the answer. But was that humanity, even godliness? Or was it cowardice?
What if a ship were to see them before that, while he was still dithering, and pick them up? The decision would be taken out of his hands. No. That was dishonest. He would have left it too late, and missed his chance. Anyway, justification or excuses were pointless. If morale in England were destroyed, the reason Joseph Reavley failed to act would be utterly irrelevant.
“You would tell all of the men who might enlist and go,” he said aloud. “And then many of them would change their minds. Their families would be relieved—at least most of them would. How about the families of all those who are already there? Or who have