Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [79]
One old man with a black armband asked him outright. “You on leave?”
“Yes, sir,” Matthew answered, with respect for his loss, which he judged from the band to be recent. “Sort of. I’m taking the time off for a duty, but I can’t discuss it.”
The old man blinked back tears. There was anger as well as grief in his face, and he was ashamed of them both, but his emotion was too strong to hide. “A healthy young fellow like you ought to be doing something!” he said bitterly, ignoring his tankard of ale.
“I know,” Matthew admitted, his voice suddenly gentle. The old man was racked by loss, the details did not matter, the pain obliterated them all, he simply railed against the unfairness of it. “But some things have to be done secretly,” he went on. “I lost both my parents. I think they were the first casualties of the intelligence war, which one can’t afford to forget. My elder brother is on the Western Front, and my younger sister drives an ambulance out there.” The moment the words were spoken he wondered why he had said them. He had never bothered to tell anyone before, and it was certainly not the first time anyone had looked at him with doubt, or even open blame. These days, coward was perhaps the ugliest word there was. One despised one’s own who stayed at home and left others to fight, bleed, perhaps die, with far more passion than one ever hated the enemy.
Perhaps it had something to do with the pent-up despair he had seen in Shearing, or the fact that he was coming from the city and going home to the land he loved. In another hour or so he would pass along the very length of road where his parents had been killed. It would look just as it had on the hot June day when he and Joseph had first seen the gouge marks on the surface, and the broken twigs, the scars on the bark, mute witnesses of the violence that had cost so much.
And it still hurt to go into the house in St. Giles, with its familiar hallway, the furniture he had grown up with, the way the light fell in patterns he could see even with his eyes closed. But his mother would not be in the kitchen, nor his father in the study.
“My son,” the old man said with choking pride as he touched a gnarled hand to the black band. “Gallipoli. They buried him out there.”
Matthew nodded. There was nothing to say. The man did not want understanding, and there was no help to give. Platitudes showed one’s own need to attempt something that was impossible.
He finished his meal and went back to the car. He was in Selborne St. Giles by ten past nine. The main street was quiet. Children were in school. The village shop was open, newspapers outside full of the same sort of thing as always these days, the Dardanelles, the Western Front, politics; nothing he was unaware of, and certainly nothing he wanted to read.
He turned off the main street and along the short distance to the house. It looked silent in the morning, almost unoccupied. In the imagination he still saw his father’s yellow Lanchester that Judith had sneaked the chance to drive whenever she could. Hannah had never wanted to. Before the war she had had no need, there was always someone to drive her. Now few people had vehicles. Petrol was expensive. Tradesmen did not make deliveries anymore, the men who would have performed such a service were in the army. People walked, and carried. If they lived too far out, then there were dog carts, pony traps if you were lucky. God knew how many horses were in the army, too, poor beasts!
He switched off the engine, took his small case out of the boot, and went to the front door. It was unlocked. He hesitated before pushing it open. It was an idiotic moment, but just for an instant time telescoped and it was a year ago. Hannah would be in Portsmouth, Joseph at St. John’s in Cambridge, but everyone else would be here. His mother would be pleased to see him, thinking about what she could make for dinner that he would like.
His father would leave his study and they would take the dog and walk around