We Shall Not Sleep_ A Novel - Anne Perry [50]
Now he felt awkward, in case it was he who had presumed to go too quickly beyond simple friendship.
She heard him come and turned around from the medicine table quickly, concern in her eyes.
“He’s asleep,” he assured her. “His pulse is not strong, but it’s regular, not fading or skipping. At least he’s got a little while away from the worst of it. I must go back to the Admissions tent.”
“I know. Thank you for coming. Not to be afraid helps—a bit.”
He smiled. “Some of the time,” he said. Then, abruptly: “Lizzie, why did you stop writing?” Instantly he wished he had not said it, but it would only make it worse to try taking it back, somehow explaining it away. He did not want to know the answer; it might be what he was afraid to hear.
“Because I was out here at last,” she said very quietly. “To begin to realize what it was really like. I’d wanted to be a driver, like Judith, but they needed nurses. I started in Cambridge, actually quite a long time ago. I didn’t tell you because it seemed so…mundane at the time. Safe at home. Then out here they kept moving me. I didn’t know whether you were still writing to me or not. There was no one to forward anything.”
“I was.” Then in case it sounded like blame, he continued quickly, “It doesn’t matter now.” He wanted to add something else, something that would capture the old lightness, the ease they had had with each other in St. Giles, driving through the lanes, seeking a terrible truth, his leg aching like an abscessed tooth.
“Thank you for coming,” she said in the moment’s silence, fitting it in as if she was afraid what he might say if she allowed him. “It was what I hoped you would do. I know you have to go back to the Admissions tent. You’ll be needed there, too.” She looked at him an instant longer, then turned back to the medicines.
It was final, and there was nothing for him to do but go back as he had said he should, his heart bumping in his chest, a mixture of hope and confusion in his mind.
Richard Mason was sitting in Casualty Clearing Station to the east of Messines with a colleague named Harper, who was about to return to London. It was raining outside the Admissions tent, and even inside it was chilly.
“Bit unreal, isn’t it,” Harper said thoughtfully. “Used to think at one time that it would never end, and now we’re nearly there. There’s only one way it can go, and everybody knows it. Yet we go on shooting at everything in sight as if there were still something to fight about and it could all make a difference. It’s as if we got so insanely into the habit of it that we can’t stop.”
“That’s probably close to the truth,” Mason remarked. “Have you ever thought how we are suddenly going to start enforcing the law and saying you can’t shoot people anymore, or stick a bayonet into them, even if you think they thoroughly deserve it?”
“You talking about that bloody horrible business up with the Cambridgeshires near Ypres?” Harper asked, pulling a sour face, although it might have been the last of his tea that caused it.
Mason had avoided the sludge at the bottom by leaving the final couple of mouthfuls, but then he had been here many times before. “What are you talking about?” he asked absently.
“Haven’t heard?” Harper winced again. “Some damn lunatic hacked a nurse to death in the clearing station nearest to Ypres. No idea who, or why. All pretty violent and disgusting. Killing any woman is bad, but one of our own V.A.D.’s is beyond the pale.”
Mason’s head swam. His mouth was dry, and there was suddenly a senseless roar in his ears,