Angels in the Gloom (43 page)

“You don’t know that!” Corcoran shouted at him. “There’s nothing to prove it, except your word! You could be wrong…”

Joseph turned back. He hated meeting Corcoran’s eyes and seeing the terror and the self-pity in them, but to look away now could be a cowardice he would never be able to mend. “No, I’m not wrong. You didn’t kill Blaine to save the project; you killed him to prevent him from eclipsing you. You have to be the center, all eyes on you.”

“Don’t testify!” Corcoran’s voice cracked. “You don’t have to! You are my priest. You can’t be compelled to!” His face was slick with sweat now and he was trembling. “Your father wouldn’t have done. He understood friendship, the supreme loyalty.”

Joseph thought of all the arguments in his mind. He thought of Archie at sea, and of Gwen Neave’s sons, and the loss and the grief still to come. Whatever betrayal he felt for himself, he owed them better than to run away now. He turned and walked to the door. He reached it and banged with both fists.

The guard came and let him out. Only when he was outside in the sun and in the wind of the courtyard did he realize that his face was wet with tears, and his throat ached so violently that he could not speak.

It was the first day of June, warm and still. A few clouds drifted like bright ships across the sky, sails wide to catch the sun. In the orchard the blossom was over, the fruit setting. The garden was dizzy with color and perfume.

Joseph was in his shirtsleeves, working with pleasure. It was good to feel his fingers in the earth pulling the thick, lush weeds, and to move with only a slight awareness of an ache, no pain, no fear of pulling on a muscle or tearing open the healing flesh. He could not stay much longer, only until he had testified for Admiral Hall, and then all this would be forfeited again and become just a treasure in the mind.

Hannah came out of the back door toward him, her face pale, her voice breathless.

“Joseph, there’s been an enormous battle in the North Sea, off Jutland. Our whole Grand Fleet against the German High Seas Fleet. They don’t know what’s happened yet. They don’t even know if we’ve won or lost, but lots of ships have been sunk on both sides.” She stared at him, eyes wide.

What should he say? Hope? Cling onto the belief in good until the last possible moment? And if it was smashed, if Archie and Matthew were among the thousands lost, what then? Did trying to prepare yourself ever do any good? Was the blow any less?

No. It always hurt impossibly, unbelievably. Would it have been easier to bear, quicker to recover from if he had imagined his parents’ deaths, or anyone’s? Would he have missed Sam’s friendship any less, been able not to lie awake in his dugout in the mud of Ypres and not wonder if Sam was still alive, imagine hearing his laughter, or what he could have said to this, or that?

He touched Hannah gently, both hands on her shoulders, but softly; the slightest pulling away would have released her. “Far more will come home than have been lost,” he said. “Think of them and don’t face anything else unless we have to.”

She controlled her fear with an effort so intense he could not only see it in her face but feel the power of it through her body. She blinked several times. “Thank you for not telling me to have faith in God.” She smiled a little twistedly. “I want a brother, not a priest.”

“Have faith in God, too,” he answered. “But don’t blame Him for anything that goes wrong, or imagine that He ever said it wouldn’t. If He promised you that Archie and Matthew would come back, then they will. But I don’t think He did. I think He said we would have all that we need, not all that we want.”

“All we need for what?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“To realize the best in ourselves,” he answered. “To practice pity and honor until they become part of us, and the courage to care to the last strength we have, to give everything.”

She frowned, “Do I want all that? Wouldn’t ‘pretty good’ do? Does it have to be ‘perfect’?”

He smiled, widely, a warm, genuine laughter inside him. “Well, decide what you don’t want, and tell God you’ll do without it. Maybe He’ll listen. I have no idea.”

“You still think He’s there?” she said perfectly seriously. “Will you think that if they’re gone?” She wanted an answer, the gravity was there in her eyes.

“It’s still the best option I know,” he answered her. “Can you think of anywhere else, any other star to follow?”

She thought for a moment. “No. I suppose the alternative is just to stop trying. Sit down. There are times when that seems a lot less trouble.”

“You have to be pretty certain you like it where you are to do that!” He let go of her and touched her face, brushing a stray hair off her cheek. “Personally, I think this is a sod of a place, and I have to believe there’s a better one, fairer to those who hadn’t much of a chance here.”

She swallowed and nodded. “I’ll make lunch. There’s nothing to do but wait. Please don’t go out, Joseph.”

“Out? Don’t you think I care as much as you do?”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.”

It seemed an endless afternoon, every minute creeping by. Time after time Joseph drew in breath to say something, and then found he did not mean it, or it was pointless anyway, only making more obvious the fears that crowded his mind. He looked at Hannah and she smiled, making a little grimace. Then she returned to her ironing, going over and over the same sheet until she was in danger of scorching it.

The news came in the early evening. The Cormorant was among those ships lost. Joseph and Hannah stood together in the sitting room, holding each other, numb, minds whirling over an abyss of grief, struggling uselessly not to be sucked into it.

Not just Archie gone, but Matthew as well. They would never know how: blown apart, burned to death, thrown into the sea to struggle in the water until their strength was gone, or worst of all, imprisoned in the ship itself as it plunged downward into the darkness of the bottom of the ocean until it was crushed and the sides caved in and the water suffocated them.

The loss was overwhelming, unbearable. Time stopped. The sun lowered in the sky and darkness came. The children went to bed and neither Joseph nor Hannah found any words even to begin telling them what had happened.

“There’s been a big battle at sea,” Hannah said, her voice oddly flat and steady. “We don’t know how everybody is yet.” It was a lie. She needed the time. Perhaps she needed to grieve alone and do her first, terrible weeping before she gathered strength to share it with them.

Joseph too needed time. He hurt for Hannah, and he hurt bitterly for himself. He had always loved Matthew, but it stunned him how intensely Matthew was inextricably woven into the fabric of his life. It was as if John Reavley had died again, a large piece of him gone in a new and heart-numbing way. He had not expected that Matthew could be in any danger, even going to sea to test the prototype. The loss was too vast to take into his mind. Matthew could not be gone!

Was it like this for everyone? The world falling apart, reason and joy disintegrating into an all-engulfing darkness?

And that created the need for another decision. Could he go back to the trenches now and leave Hannah and the children alone?

He found her in front of the looking glass in her bedroom. She had an old dressing wrap on and her hair down around her shoulders. Her face was bleached of all color, every shred of blood drained away, but she looked quite composed. She just moved slowly, as if afraid her coordination would not keep her from knocking into things, or perhaps even falling over.

She looked exactly as he felt. He understood completely.

“I won’t be going back to Ypres,” he said quietly. “I expect you know that anyway, but I thought I’d tell you, just in case.”

She nodded. “We’ll tell Judith… but not yet. I’m… I’m not ready.” She looked at him curiously, her face crumpled. “Joseph, how does everybody do it, how do they keep on, how do they live? Everything I’ve said to other women who’ve lost husbands or sons is idiotic!” She frowned in amazement. “How did I dare? Were they kind to me, or just too beaten and numb to care about anything else?”

“I’m not sure that anything we say touches people in those times.” He corrected himself: “These times. It’s worse when the shock wears off and feeling comes back. But I’ll be here. I won’t leave… or let you leave me.”

She turned away from him quickly. “Go to bed,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’m not ready to weep yet. If I do I won’t be able to stop, and I have to think how to tell the children, especially Tom. Please!”

He obeyed silently, closing the door behind him.

He slept fitfully. He heard Hannah up and down the stairs, he lost count how many times. At five o’clock he got up as well and went down to the kitchen, knowing he would find her there.

She was dressed, scrubbing out the pantry. The whole large cupboardlike room was empty, nothing left on the shelves. It was all piled on the kitchen table and on the bench above the flour and vegetable bins and the cutlery drawers. There were boxes, bags, tins, and barrels everywhere. She had her sleeves up to her elbows and an apron on over an old dress. She had not bothered to put her hair up, but it was in a loose braid, like a schoolgirl’s.

“Can I help?” he offered.

“Not really,” she replied, pushing her hair out of her eyes. “I don’t know why I’m doing it, it’s just better than lying in bed.”

“Do you want a cup of tea?”

“If you can find the kettle and the tea, yes.”

Half an hour later all the shelves were scrubbed but still wet, and Joseph had made some sort of order out of the piles of groceries. They were both sitting at the kitchen table and it was broad daylight, the sun shining in through the window as if it were any other day.

The telephone rang.

Hannah gripped her cup so tightly she slopped tea over onto her dress and arm. The sight of the mess upset her, tears gleaming in her eyes, simply because it was a hair crack in the facade and cost all her strength to keep from letting go.

Joseph went into the hall and picked up the receiver. “Joseph Reavley,” he said quietly.

“Good morning, Captain Reavley,” a voice said on the other end, sounding tinny and far away. “This is Calder Shearing.”

Joseph did not want to speak to this man. He could not cope with talking of Matthew’s death, not yet.

“Mr. Shearing…” he began.

“I have news you will want to hear,” Shearing cut across him. “There were quite a number of survivors from the Cormorant. Captain Reavley and Commander MacAllister are among them. Their injuries are trivial. They spent some time in the water, but they will be perfectly all right.”

Joseph found his voice was gone, stuck in his throat, his mouth dry.

“Captain Reavley?”

He coughed. “Yes… are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure,” Shearing said testily, as if some emotion had drained him as well. “Do you imagine I would have called you if I were not? The battle was appalling. We estimate casualties of over six thousand men, and at least fourteen ships. Your brother and brother-in-law will be home within two or three days.”

“Thank you… yes…” Joseph gulped. “Thank you.” He replaced the receiver and walked back to the kitchen, bumping into the jamb of the door and numbing his elbow. It should have been painful, but he was unaware of it.

Hannah stared at him. There was no fear in her face, there was nothing else left to hurt her, the worst had already happened.

“It was Shearing…” he began.

She frowned. “Who is Shearing?”

“Intelligence service. Hannah, they’re alive! They saved a lot of the crew, and Archie and Matthew are among them! He’s sure! It’s no mistake, he’s absolutely certain.”

She looked at him, eyes wide. Now she was afraid again, afraid to believe, to grasp the pain of hoping, going through all the torture of love and fear and waiting and dreading. “Is he?”

“Yes! Yes he is! Absolutely!” He strode around the table and pulled her to her feet and put his arms around her, clinging onto her and feeling her cry, great gasping sobs of all the emotion, the agony she had held in, and now at last was letting go.

He was smiling, tears on his face as well. Archie was alive—above all, Matthew was alive! Matthew was alive—he was all right—he would be coming back.

And that meant, of course, that Joseph would have to return to Ypres. But not yet, not today.

There were twenty-four hours’ respite, then Joseph went to London to testify at the trial of Shanley Corcoran. He was charged with high treason. The trial was held in a closed room; the only thing to make it different from a place where any kind of business might be conducted was the situation of the chairs, the height of the windows above the ground, and the armed and uniformed men at the doors.

As with any other trial, Joseph did not hear the testimony previous to his own. He waited in an anteroom alone, pacing the floor, sitting for a short time on the hard-backed chair, then pacing again. He turned over and over in his mind what he would say, if he would simply answer what was asked of him, in a sense leave his contribution to truth or justice in someone else’s hands. That would take from him the final responsibility, the blame for Corcoran’s fall, and whatever happened to him because of it. It should not be Joseph’s decision to weigh his guilt.