We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [47]
Gwen glanced sideways at her once, then kept on walking. “I have no idea. I know how she was generally rather loose in her manner, which is foolish as well as vulgar. I suppose I should have spoken to her about it, but I thought she’d just ignore me and get angry. I was wrong, wasn’t I.” There was a sharp acknowledgment of guilt in her voice.
Without warning Judith’s anger evaporated and was replaced by pity. Gwen was not an easy person, always arguing; very few people actually liked her. Most treated her with tolerance and a general sharing, because that was what everyone did; it was a habit for survival. “No,” she said gently, falling into step beside her. “She might easily have become worse just to spite you. Maybe we all should have said something.”
“I saw her every day,” Gwen argued. “It was more obvious to me.” Her voice was so low, Judith could only just hear her above the squelch of the mud as they stepped beyond the boards onto the earth. They were now far enough from the fighting that the sound of guns was only a rumble in the distance. Curiously, as the battle moved ahead of them she felt not relief but a sense of being left behind, no longer of the most use she could be.
“Everyone could see how she behaved,” she replied. “It’s not your responsibility.”
Gwen shot her a quick glance. Then they reached the water supply, and she began to fill the pail she had brought. “Not your brother’s keeper? Your brother wouldn’t agree with that,” she said wryly. “Do me the kindness to be honest, Judith. Apart from the cruelty of it, lying won’t work because I know what you really think. You don’t often hide it.”
Judith was chastened. She had not realized that her dislike of Gwen was so apparent, or that she was quite so free with her own opinions. A little tact, a little kindness would have been better. “I’m sorry,” she said sincerely, and the moment after, wondered if that sounded dishonest, too. Then Gwen smiled at her, and she knew it was accepted, at least for now.
It was three days since the murder of Sarah Price and they did not appear to be any closer to knowing who had killed her. Suspicion grew, often absurdly. There were brief outbreaks of anger and violence, but no more German prisoners had been seriously hurt. News of the fighting came every day. The British were advancing on Lille; the Belgians had occupied Zeebrugge and stormed Bruges. Someone said that the British forces in Syria had entered Homs and were headed for Aleppo. Everything was closing for a German surrender, but it hadn’t happened yet. The hope itself was a kind of strange, exciting, disturbing thought, so very close and yet so many men were still dying every day, sometimes hundreds of them.
Judith heard many other arguments over Sarah Price, some like those in the operating theater, others quite different. Some young men, knowing their own innocence, were hurt when nurses were afraid of them.
The fighting was so heavy on the third night, all ambulance crews were needed. Judith and Wil Sloan drove beyond Menin to pick up badly wounded. It was cloudy, but there was no rain, and after a while the sky cleared, moonlight showing the devastated landscape and shattered buildings. Tree stumps were gaunt, motionless, but looking as if they writhed, pointing half-amputated limbs upward, reaching toward some help that never came. The lights showed rutted tracks swimming with water, glistening pale on the craters, punctuated by the black silhouettes of broken guns, wheels, even an occasional foundered tank, its giant caterpillar tracks high in the air. Judith knew there were also bodies drifting to the surface, but you could not tell their mud-caked outlines from the banks and paths.
“I guess even the Badlands are going to look good after this,” Wil said with a half smile. “Main Street will be pretty wholesome.”
“I’m sure it will,”