Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [146]
Mrs. Prentice heard it and bit her lip.
There was a moment’s silence. There were tears on Belinda’s face.
“He had someone willing to publish his work, didn’t he?” Judith intervened, her voice harsh with her own grief. She was speaking to wrench her mind away from it. “Because most national newspapers wouldn’t.”
“Oh, yes!” Mrs. Prentice said quickly. “If anyone had found his notes, we would have forwarded them on.”
“It probably wouldn’t have helped,” Belinda put in. “He used to write in his own kind of shorthand. Unless they could decipher it, it would be meaningless.”
It was absurd. Joseph thought of Sam, and his knowledge of the schoolboy cipher. A week ago he would have given almost anything to have known where to find the publisher. Now, because of Richard Mason, Matthew would find out and it no longer mattered.
“It wouldn’t have made any difference,” he said to Mrs. Prentice, mostly so Judith would know. “If it would be against the Defense of the Realm Act it would be suppressed. The Intelligence Services know who it is.” Then as her face crumpled in confusion he wondered if he should not have said it. It was Judith who needed to know that it did not have to be pursued. Mrs. Prentice could have kept her dreams, if they were of comfort. But could he retrieve it without being obviously patronizing, and destroying everything else he had said? How could you touch such grief without adding to it?
“It was secret,” she protested. “He meant to do so much good! He said no one tells the real truth, and people have the right to know. You can’t ask men to give their lives, and lie to them how it will be.”
“Sometimes we can only take bits of the truth, and still survive,” he reminded her. “We have to fight, and for that we need courage, and hope. By the time he got back to England, he might have realized that, especially if he had spoken with you.”
She turned away quickly, her voice choking. “Do you think so? I’m sorry.” She stood up. “Please excuse me.” And she hurried from the room.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Joseph apologized with contrition.
“Oh, it’s all right!” Belinda said hastily, her face white. “Eldon was too arrogant to listen to anyone, but it’s nice to imagine he might have. It’s all we have now.”
Joseph said nothing. Perhaps Prentice might never have grown wiser or kinder, or have matured into a man of anything like Richard Mason’s humanity, but it was still a tragedy that he had been robbed of the chance. Sam’s face was sharp in his mind. He was everything that Prentice was not. What he would have become was only a hope, his mother’s hope because she loved him, perhaps felt responsible for his failures as well as protective of the good she knew of him, the ability to struggle, to feel pain. One defended one’s own, it was part of the love that was belonging. It was instinct more powerful than reason, the passion that forgave, that never surrendered belief. It had saved many when nothing else could have.
Now was the time to change the subject and look at the photographs. He turned to them and regarded them quite openly. “It’s a wonderful gift, to be able to have memories kept like this,” he observed. “Happier times caught and held for us. Is this Henley?”
He heard Judith draw in her breath.
Belinda followed her gaze. “Yes. It was a good time. The year before last, I think.”
“A pretty young woman. Were she and Eldon close?”
Belinda looked at it more closely. “I don’t think so. I remember I liked her. She was fun.”
“Perhaps we should