Angels in the Gloom (23 page)

“Your sister?” she said with interest. “Is she the one who drives an ambulance in Flanders now?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve thought of that. I should try to do something really useful. Take my mind off myself for a while.” She said it with a small, rueful gesture. “What sort of qualifications would I need?”

“Are you sure it’s what you want?” he asked, looking sideways at her face, as she stared through the windscreen intent on the road ahead. She was not a pretty woman but there was a kind of individuality and intelligence in her that he liked. Her nose was a little crooked and too long for beauty. Her eyes were very clear blue, in spite of her dark hair. She looked less numb than she had when he first met her, the day of her husband’s death, but she must still be suffering a bitter bereavement. It was simply that the pain had settled deeper and she had managed some fragile mask to hide the surface.

Was she also feeling passionately betrayed? Was that why she wanted now to go to France and lose herself in the war? That was not a good reason to go. Injured men needed someone who wanted to live, whose mind was free to give wholly to the job of getting them back to hospitals, and help.

They turned off the village street onto the road toward Madingley. The fields were hazed with green and an old man, shoulders bent, led weary horses along the lane to the Nunns’ farm.

“You should think about it a little longer,” Joseph advised. “Wait at least until you have had a chance to heal a little from your loss. You are still shocked now.”

“You think it will get better?” Lizzie said wryly, glancing at him for an instant, then back at the road. “Are all the ambulance drivers in France calm and comfortable inside? None of those girls have lost husbands, brothers, or fiances?” She swerved around a pothole in the road. “Haven’t you lost people you cared about? Did they send you home?”

Of course it was preposterous. You cared about the men you were with. No one who had not been there could understand the friendships in the trenches, the sharing of everything: food, body warmth, dreams, letters from home, jokes, terror, secrets you would have told no one else, perhaps even life’s blood. The bond was unique, fierce, and lifelong. There were ways in which no one else would ever be so close, memories that locked you together beyond words.

He thought of Sam Wetherall, and for a moment a pain of loss engulfed him like a fire burning out everything else. It was as if it had been only yesterday that they had sat in the dugout together and talked about Eldon Prentice, and shared the last of Sam’s chocolate biscuits. He could still smell the Flanders earth, slick, wet clay, and the latrines, and the odor of death that got into everything.

“No, they don’t send us home,” he answered her. “And sometimes when we’ve lost someone particularly close, or made mistakes, got too tired to think, someone else pays for it. But we don’t deliberately start out too bruised to care.”

She smiled faintly. “You’re very blunt.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I prefer it that way. That policeman doesn’t seem to have any idea yet who killed Theo, you know.”

“He will, but it could take time.”

A weasel ran across the road, sleek and bright. She braked a little, then accelerated again. “You knew him before, didn’t you.” That was more of a statement than a question.

He was surprised. “Yes. A friend of mine was murdered, just before the war.”

“I’m sorry. That must have been horrible.”

“Yes, it was. But Perth’s a good man.”

She was driving with unconscious skill, as if she loved the feel of the control and the power. It sat easily with her; there was no rushing, no arrogance. Her hands were relaxed on the wheel. She would be a good ambulance driver, if she was not too angry and too hurt to give herself to it.

“I knew he was having an affair with Penny Lucas,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure how. I’m not even sure if it was partly my fault.”

His mind wheeled around thoughts of Hannah, and Judith, and then other people he had known; love, envy, loneliness, the need to know beyond question that you mattered to someone. Relationships were complicated, full of hungers so intense they overrode all wisdom and understanding of morality and loss.

He should have been gentler with Hannah. What had crippled his imagination so badly that he had allowed himself to be angry with her? “How could it be your fault?” he asked.

Lizzie kept her eyes on the road. “I don’t know. Sometimes I wish life could be as it used to, but part of me is excited by the changes, the new possibilities opening up. I’ve always just waited on Theo.” Her face was motionless in the evening sunlight. “He was truly brilliant, you know, perhaps one of the best scientists we’ve ever had. It’s not just me who’s lost him, it’s Britain, maybe the whole world. But in a way now I can be me.” A wobbly smile touched her lips. “I’ve got to. I no longer have him to look after anymore.” She blinked back sudden tears. “What I mean is, perhaps I wasn’t doing it so well anyway.”

He believed her. She was filled with regret, and her determination was a balance between fear and hope, and a mask for the pain too deep to face.

Had she loved Theo enough to be passionately jealous? He did not want to consider even the possibility. But he had been wrong before. Other people he had cared about, loved, and known far better than he knew her, had had the courage, the violence, and the moment’s unreasoning fire inside them to be blinded to the values of eternity and see only the need of the moment—and kill.

There was death and bereavement all around them. Casualty lists were posted every day. How easy was it to think of France, only twenty miles across the Channel, and keep sanity untainted here?

“Wait until Perth has solved it and you’ve had a little time to get your strength and make a firm decision,” he said to her.

She smiled and took a deep breath, reaching for a handkerchief in her pocket. She was too busy trying to master herself to repeat her thanks.

They were almost at the Corcorans’ house and they did not speak again until arranging what time she should return to take him home.

The visit was just what Joseph needed: the warmth of welcome, the familiar rooms with their memories of the past, old pictures, old books, chairs that were long worn into the shape that held his body.

The French doors were open to birdsong in the garden, even though the air was growing cooler. There was a comfort about it all that put mistakes in perspective.

Corcoran was delighted with the goblet. He held it up to let the light play on its satin surface. The beauty of the gift captivated him, but far more than that was the fact that Joseph had chosen it and given it to him. He set it in the middle of the dinner table and his eyes kept going toward it.

Over dinner with Corcoran’s wife, Orla, they talked of matters other than war and tragedy: timeless ideas and the beauty of poetry, music, and fine art that outlasted the storms of history.

Afterward, Orla excused herself, and Joseph and Corcoran sat alone in the twilight. At last they turned to the matters of the present.

“You must have known Theo Blaine quite well,” Joseph said almost casually. “Did you like him?”

Corcoran looked surprised. “Actually I did. He had a very pure enthusiasm it was impossible not to like.”

“Was he really one of the best scientists in England?”

A slight shadow passed over Corcoran’s face, hardly more than a change in his eyes. “Yes, I have no doubt he was, or at least he could have been. He had some distance yet to mature and realize his full potential. Certainly he was remarkable. But don’t worry, Joseph. We will finish our project even without him. He is not indispensable.”

“Do you think it was a German spy or sympathizer who killed him?”

Corcoran chewed his lip. “The more I consider that possibility, the less certain I am. At first I assumed, because of the work we were doing, that it had to be. Now I am beginning to remember that as well as being a superb mind he was also a young man, with a young man’s appetites and occasionally an impractical way of looking at things, and particularly at people.”

Joseph smiled in spite of himself. “Is that a euphemistic way of saying that he ignored other people’s feelings? Like, possibly, his wife’s? Or those of Dacy Lucas?”

Corcoran’s eyes widened. “You know about that?”

“I’ve heard. Was he self-centered?”

“I suppose so. A lot of young men are, in that area of their lives. And I think Mrs. Lucas is a headstrong woman, perhaps a trifle bored with being the wife of a man devoted to his work, in which she has no part, and very little understanding.” He shook his head. “She has a hot temper, and I think considerable appetite, at least for admiration.” His face puckered. “I’m truly sorry about it, Joseph. Sometimes we ask a great deal of people, and we forget that even highly talented individuals may have the same human weaknesses and needs as the rest of us.”

“Shanley, are you speaking of Theo Blaine, or of Mrs. Lucas? Or Dacy Lucas?”

“Or Lizzie Blaine,” Corcoran added wryly. “I really have no idea. And to be honest, I prefer not to. I don’t want to look at the people I know and like—and think such things of them.” His mouth twisted a little. “Perth told me that a woman was seen on a bicycle about half a mile from Blaine’s house, and there were bicycle tire marks in the damp earth of the path along the back. I wouldn’t like to think that it was Mrs. Lucas. That would be terrible. Although I suppose I have to admit that it is possible.”

“Why would she kill Blaine? She had nothing to be jealous of. If she wished to end the affair then she could have done it,” Joseph reasoned.

“Perhaps she didn’t wish to,” Corcoran responded, looking at Joseph with a patient smile. “Maybe he did?”

Joseph realized the obviousness of that now, but the thought was ugly. “And kill him?” he protested. “That seems…”

“A very violent passion,” Corcoran observed. “Of course it does. Insane to you or me. Very probably it was a German spy. I rather hope so. That resolution would be infinitely preferable to revealing the murderer as someone I know and probably like.”

“Did you know about his affair before?” Joseph asked.

Corcoran spread his hands in half apology. “I chose not to look, but I suppose I was aware.” Guilt creased his face. “Do you think I should have intervened somehow?”

Joseph drew in breath to say that he should, then changed his mind. “I don’t know. It probably would have looked more like interfering than the warning of friendship. I doubt it would have stopped him.”

“I could hardly threaten to dismiss him,” Corcoran said ruefully. “His genius put him above such law, and he knew it.”

“And whoever killed him?” Joseph asked, then almost instantly wished he had bitten the words into silence. Would Corcoran protect a man, even from payment for murder, if his brain were needed to finish a project that might be crucial to the war?

“Don’t ask me, Joseph,” Corcoran replied quietly. “I don’t know. Do the ordinary laws of society apply to men like Newton, Galileo, Copernicus, or geniuses of the spirit like da Vinci or Beethoven? Would I have saved Rembrandt or Vermeer from the gallows, if they had warranted it? Or Shakespeare or Dante, or Homer? Yes—probably. Wouldn’t you?”

Joseph had no answer to offer. Did you weigh one gift against another, count the price in other people’s lives, innocent people, make judgments? He refused to think whether such a thing had been necessary, or would yet be. Shanley Corcoran had no more idea than he had who had killed Theo Blaine.

He smiled, and they indulged in a pleasant debate as to who was the greater, Beethoven or Mozart. Corcoran always favored the lyrical clarity of Mozart, Joseph the turbulent passion of Beethoven. It was a conversation they had had before, more times than they could count, and it was a sort of game.

When Lizzie Blaine returned, it was already half past ten, and of course Corcoran had to be up in the morning and at his office in the Establishment. Only then did Joseph realize how tired his old friend must be. He moved slowly and as he walked with Joseph to the door, there was a dry, papery look to the skin around his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” Joseph said, ashamed of the time he had taken up. He should have said at the outset that he would leave earlier, and asked Lizzie Blaine to come before ten.

“My dear boy, it has been delightful to see you. No matter what work there is to do, even I am allowed a little self-indulgence now and then. A few hours of doing what you wish restores the spirits and gives you strength to resume. I am the better for seeing you, I assure you.”

Joseph thanked Orla as well, and then went out into the darkness with Lizzie. Within moments they were motoring back toward St. Giles.

“He looks terribly tired,” Lizzie said after a while. The nighttime road did not seem to disconcert her at all. The overhanging hedgerows, tilting camber, and heavily overgrown verges made her hesitate no more than the bright bars of moonlight on the smooth tarmac of the stretches between.

“Yes, he was,” Joseph agreed, recalling now the strain in Corcoran’s face in repose, the tension in his hands, usually so relaxed. “It must be hard for him to carry the extra load. Your husband’s loss is very great.”

“Does he think it was Germans?” she asked quickly.

He did not know how to answer. What should he say to hurt her the least, and yet still be honest? “Do you think the Germans would pick on him particularly, more than Iliffe, Lucas, or Morven—or Corcoran himself?”