We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [124]
Now she was sick again, desperate for privacy, and surrounded by men, two of whom she barely knew. They were always in a hurry, feeling the urgency all the time, the need to move, the knowledge that if they made even one slip they could be stopped, imprisoned, even executed summarily. The hunger for revenge was in the air like the smell of decay.
How could he help her? She was walking back over the grass a little shakily. Her face was bleached of all color, and her hair was straggling out of its pins. He ached to comfort her, but might he be making promises he could not keep? Could he love that child as if it were his own, and never even for a moment look at it and hate it because Benbow was its father?
He remembered how he had felt as a child: the certainty of his father’s interest, his time and attention. He thought of countless hours shared: in listening to his father’s long, rambling funny stories; in pottering in the garden feeling he was helping, learning weeds from flowers. Later there had been more complicated discoveries about the first thoughts in philosophy, feeling his way toward wisdom. He remembered long walks in comfortable silence, always certain that he was not only loved but liked, valued, believed in, a necessary part in the greater happiness. Arguments meant nothing; the security was always there underneath, like a deep ocean with an inexhaustible current.
A warmth opened inside him, a steadiness that had been absent for some time—he could not remember how long. It was back again now, a bedrock on which every good thing could be built. Lizzie’s child deserved that. Everyone did. Nothing less was enough.
He walked toward Lizzie and took her arm, lending her his strength. She looked up at him quickly, and he met her gaze without wavering.
She saw the knowledge of something new in him, a complete absence of fear. She took a deep breath and smiled at him, hope flaring up.
By evening the rain had returned, steady and hard. They were grateful to be offered both food and shelter at what before the war must have been an excellent café. During the occupation it had housed German soldiers. Now the original owners had taken it back and were trying to salvage all they could of the past.
“Broken!” Madame said furiously, picking up a blue-and-white china platter to arrange the food on. It had been cracked across the center and carefully glued together again. “Everything is tired and dusty and broken. I’d kill every last one of them if I could.”
Joseph struggled for something to say. She clearly wanted justice, some answering pain to compensate for all that had been taken from her and from all the others she had known and loved.
“I know,” he answered her. “There’s not much left.”
She grunted and regarded his chaplain’s uniform with contempt. “Aren’t you going to tell me to have faith in God?” she demanded. “Or at least remind me that we should be grateful to you British for fighting for us? That’s what my husband tells me.”
“You don’t do what you think is right for other people’s sake,” he said. “You do it for yourself.”
She was surprised. It robbed her momentarily of the response she had been going to give. “I suppose you’d like something decent to eat?”
“Wouldn’t we all? But we’ll be grateful for anything,” he replied.
“Don’t be grateful!” she snapped. “I’m not giving it to you.”
But when the meal came it was prepared not only with care but with imagination and skill as well. Dark bread was set out on the mended blue-and-white platter, made to look inviting with a few leaves of parsley and red radishes. There were small dishes of something that resembled Brussels pâté, and others of pickled fish to add taste, and the suggestion of meat. They were all sitting around one long table, and she placed them