We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [117]
“Very nearly,” she agreed. She wanted to tell him the truth—he did not deserve any more lies—but she dared not. “No more bombs that I know of,” she equivocated. “Just too many people, thousands of them everywhere. It’s all clogged up, and we need to be quick.”
“Badly wounded?” he asked sympathetically.
That lie might catch up with them. “Some wounded,” she said, praying he would believe her. “Some pretty urgent dispatches. Kill two birds with one stone.” Then suddenly she wondered if he was familiar with the phrase, or might wildly misunderstand her. “Two jobs in one,” she explained.
He smiled, bringing sudden light to his heavy features. “I know. We say much the same. Good luck.”
More broken bridges drove them farther north, where the Belgians had opened the dikes and let the sea fight the invader where they could not. The armies marching in had found a different kind of ruin, one they could hardly equal.
A gray dawn saw them creeping forward through shattered villages. The houses were gutted by fire and bomb blast, some little more than mounds of rubble scarred black, perhaps a chimney breast still standing, or here and there a door frame. The fields around them were barren, the men who would have worked them dead or too mutilated to labor anymore. The bones of animals shone pale, picked clean by scavengers.
They saw a group of buildings half in ruins. It had once been a thriving farm with barn, cow byre, pigsties, and henhouses.
They stopped and asked for breakfast, willing to pay for it.
An old woman came out of what was left of her house. She saw the two women in V.A.D. uniform and recognized it immediately, her gaunt, sagging face lightening.
“What you need?” she said in thickly accented English.
Judith smiled at her. She could see from her worn, broken-nailed hands, and the pallor of her skin under the weathering, that she had almost nothing, and yet for British soldiers she was willing to part with it.
“Water so we can make some tea,” Judith replied. “And if you have bread of any kind.” She was suddenly uncertain whether an offer of payment would be welcome or considered an insult.
The woman was waiting, as if she expected to be asked for more.
Joseph came up beside her. “We have a little jam,” he said to the woman. “Army ration, not very good, but we would be happy if you would share it with us. Tea, bread, and jam. It could be worse.”
“Yes, yes, yes!” the woman said happily, nodding. “Bread is not much good, either, but with jam, will be fine. Yes, yes.”
“Thank you,” Judith murmured to Joseph as the woman hurried off to fetch what bread she had.
“I liberated a few tins,” he said. “With Barshey’s help.”
“You didn’t tell him—”
“Just told him I needed it. He didn’t ask why. Got me a couple of tins of Maconachie’s as well. Won’t last long, but it’s something.”
“You pinched army stores!” She rolled her eyes. “There’s hope for you yet!”
He did not answer, and suddenly she wondered if she had hurt him. It was something she would have said before the war, before she knew him so very well, understanding what he did and why, knowing the hurt he did not show, the pity he knew better than to display because it did not help. She had always admired him but found him distant and a little intimidating. He was the eldest, she the youngest. He conformed, she rebelled. Except that was far too facile a judgment. He also rebelled, in his own way. Hannah was the only one who really conformed. And yet she was going to find the changes of war the hardest of all, because the old ways that she had loved and that had been natural to her were gone forever.
No one could conform now, or be comfortable: There was no standard left with which to conform.
“I’m sorry,” she said aloud. She did not know how to retreat without making it worse.
He smiled at her. There was warmth in it, even amusement. “It’s all right. You can’t think of everything.”
“What?” she was confused.
“Jam,” he replied, laughing at her. “You liberated the petrol and the spark plugs—ever practical. I have the jam.” And he turned and walked back to the