Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [24]
He found he could talk to her. With a male driver there was always the difference of rank between them. The man would be regular army, and regardless of conscience or loyalty, he would never lose sight of the difference in their station. An NCO could never argue with an officer, let alone a general, never even allow a difference of view to be seen. Judith had no such qualms. She was a volunteer, and could leave any time she chose. Strictly speaking, he had very little jurisdiction over her. He could dismiss her, but that was all. He could have no effect in her career because she had none. It gave her a kind of freedom, and he was amused to see her use it.
She was brave, generous, funny, and capable of the wildest misjudgments. But her innate honesty compelled her to admit it when she was wrong. It was on one of those occasions, weeks ago now, when he should have disciplined her, at least verbally, and he had found it painfully difficult to do, that he realized how dangerously his own feelings had overtaken him.
He had married later in life, only seven years ago, when he had been already forty-one. Nerys had been married before and it had ended in terrible tragedy. He had found her gentle, charming, and so utterly feminine that before he realized it she had become part of his life. Suddenly he had a home, a place of belonging where domestic order never failed him, where he was loved and comfortable. That he was not understood was something he had appreciated only recently.
He told her nothing of war; she had already suffered enough with her first husband’s death. Even now she had occasional nightmares. He knew it when he saw her face white in the mornings, and her eyes full of fear. She did not speak of it, there were always vast areas of pain that neither of them touched—his of the war now, the men broken and lost, hers of the scandal and the suicide.
Judith was different. She saw as much of the present horror as he did, when she had been driving the ambulance perhaps even more. She might be angry, tender, exhausted, or wrenched with pity, but she confronted it. Her parents had been killed shortly before the war, and her own grief was still raw. Every now and then it spilled over and she reached out to other people who were shaken with loss of one sort or another, with a tenderness that woke new and profound emotions in him, hungers that were frightening, and too honest to deny, much as he tried.
So speaking to Joseph Reavley about Eldon Prentice had been difficult. Nevertheless, Reavley was right, and Prentice must be curbed in his diligence. No, that was the wrong word; Eldon was ambitious and crassly insensitive. He was Abby’s only son, but Cullingford still found him impossible to like. He had tried, but there was an indelicacy in Eldon’s perception of other people that offended Cullingford every time he observed it. It was as if he had an extra layer of skin, so he was unaware of levels of subtler pain in others, embarrassment or humiliation that a finer man would have felt, and avoided.
His words within Charlie Gee’s hearing were unforgivable. His mere wounds were too hideous even to think of, mutilations worse than death. A decent man would not have looked. Reavley had said very little of what the American ambulance driver had actually done, knowing Cullingford would prefer not to know; all he wanted was to protect him.
There was a knock on the door.
“Come