Band of Angel (60 page)

During her search for socks, she found, in his saddlebag, an oval pebble she’d picked up years ago on the beach at Whistling Sands. She’d painted a wobbly version of Gray Dawn’s face on it. He’d kept it.

He rolled over, groaning a little; she flew to his side. He’d wet his bed. She didn’t want to shift him in case she burst his wounds, so she packed some towels around him, and wedged him against the walls with two sandbags. His color was a little better, but he still looked shriveled, much older. She wanted him awake soon and walking around.

After she’d washed her feet and made tea and set about preparations for dinner, she was shocked to find herself slightly at a loose end. Everything was so quiet now and she’d been so very busy. She wondered if it would be possible ever really to go home again now, to a house with only one or two other people in it, to a family.

This thought made her angry. How impossible she was: she’d only just found him again and she was already a little bit homesick for friends like Barnsie, Sam, and Betsy, for their company as well as their moral support. She’d never had friends like these; people you could tell anything to because you’d shared so much. Could one person ever replace all that?

She shivered and shook her head. Why was nothing in life ever really clear-cut and straightforward once you thought it through?
Finding what you wanted, what you were for, was the hardest question of all—you had to meet it head-on, make some mistakes and some hard choices, and then, perhaps, if you were very lucky, you might understand in the end why you made the decisions you did. No wonder Eleri had said it was a life’s work.

She opened the door and stepped outside. The light was fading, but there was still a faint golden sheen as if there had been sun during the day. Craning her eyes, she looked toward the distant hills and the harbor, romantically shrouded in a veil of pink light. Betsy had told her what a pretty place this was before the war began; seeing it like this you could almost believe her.

Then Arkwright appeared again, shambling shamefaced through the door with a piece of foreign-looking bread and some goat’s cheese for her. She was starving and wolfed it down. He said if she needed to go back to the hospital for a while, he would sit with Deio.

“Do you feed the horses?” she asked him.

“I do, miss,” he said. “When we’ve got forage.”

“Can I groom Moonshine when I get back? I like the horses.”

“If you like, miss.”

She wondered why every time she mentioned the horses, he looked like a whipped dog.

Before she left, she boiled some more water, found some salt in the supplies box, and, lifting Deio’s nightshirt, looked carefully at his wounds. The circle of skin around his broken ribs was still black and blue; the stomach wound was leaking blood and pus, but Cavendish’s neat stitches were still in place, regular and perfect.

What a mystery Cavendish was: lifesaver, perfectionist, bully, and liar. Her mother had once instructed her never to use the word “hate.” “Such a strong, ugly word dear, say, ‘don’t like very much,’ or ‘dislike.’”

But no, only hate would do for now. Apart from what he had done for Deio, she
hated him
. His soft voice, his creeping hands, the memory of her head jammed between the railings of a bed in Constantinople.

Now she knew that if Deio and she were to have a chance, she had to face up to Cavendish, or else be his quarry for the rest of her time here. Every time the door knocked, she’d expect him. When she drew the curtains she’d see his blank eyes staring in. But
no more
. She’d made up her mind now. Tomorrow, she would go down to the hospital and would ask to see him. She would thank him sincerely from the bottom of her heart for treating Deio, and then she would threaten to blow his head off if he ever tried to touch her again.

On the wall above the table was a gun-rack holding a rifle and what she recognized as Deio’s prized Minie.

“Mr. Arkwright,” she said, “would that be too heavy for me?”

“No,” he said. “But he won’t let you borrow it.”

“Well, he won’t know,” she said. “Unless you tell him.”

He actually smiled. “So, are
you
going to join up now?”

“I might do,” she said, and smiled back.

When she finally got back to the hospital, a week later, Betsy told her Cavendish had gone to a hospital station near the Fifth Redoubt, so she never had to point that gun. She was so flooded with relief, she had to sit down. She’d been dreaming about him, horrible dreams, for nights on end. In one, he was drinking water from a canteen when a bullet went straight through the canteen and into his jaw. She kept seeing him coming toward her smiling—that rocklike face all mashed up and wanting a kiss. So now there was a new flaw in her nature to consider: she hoped he would stay there, even die there, although she wasn’t sure she was prepared to go that far.

“Good God, woman,” Betsy had said, when she’d arrived back and was sitting in the kitchen. “You look terrible. I hope you’re not thinking of coming back to work yet.”

Catherine asked if it might be possible to go to Deio at night, but to work at the hospital during the days. Other women did it and spring was coming, so it might be.

“Catherine”—Betsy put both hands on her stout waist—“you may have a fight on your hands with Miss Weare.”

“I know.”

“But the war
is
winding down, and spring
is
coming, and my guess is they’d rather have you on those terms than not have you at all. But here’s a question: How long since you had a day off?”

“Not for over a year. Longer if you count my training at the governesses’ home.”

“Well then, it may not be a big problem, because you’re owed leave. Do you love him?”

She slipped the question in so quickly it caught her off guard.

“Goodness Betsy, I . . . I . . .”

“Well then, that’s fine then,” said Betsy serenely. “Isn’t it?”

She took the rest of her clothes back to the hut, including the breeches Deio had given her what seemed like years ago. On her second morning there, she found a sack of bran for the horses. She boiled it, bulked it out with some cooked split peas and bread—beggars couldn’t be choosers—and took the whole mess out in a steaming bucket to the five horses, watching with satisfaction while they scoffed it down. Moonshine ate so fast that some food got stuck in his throat; he choked and spat helplessly for several minutes before gobbling it up again with pathetic groans of pleasure. He and the others licked their bowls so clean they shone.

With a dandy brush from Deio’s kit she brushed Moonshine’s neck, belly, flanks, and rump, marveling at the amount of mud and sweat that could stick to a horse. He lapped up the attention, butting her with his hollow-eyed head, and pointing with his nose to the bits on his side where he itched. She curry-combed his tail, dunked it in a warm bowl of water, rinsed it, and rubbed it dry. Last, she picked out his feet, and then gave him what he loved most, a head rub between the eyes. Half an hour later, she was covered in grime but he looked halfway presentable. She felt peaceful for the first time in a long time.

Little by little, and without really discussing it, they settled into a routine together. Every morning she rode Moonshine up a hill toward the small stream that flowed down the hill to the east of
their hut. Along with Deio’s nightshirts and bedlinen, she took her old clothes—the blue-sprigged dress still smelling faintly of citronella, the awful black dress that Gwynneth had given her—and she washed them with Deio’s things. If the water was too cold, she carried it back to the hut and did the clothes there.

And then, one morning, two weeks after she’d come, she was packing the soap and the dirty clothes into her pannier when a robin came and sat on the posts of the small veranda outside their hut and sang. Later, while she was washing, she saw a lark singing above her head in a tree peppered and scarred with shotgun bullets.

Spring had crept up on them and caught them by surprise. Now you saw it, it was everywhere: a clump of violets poking around the sandbags, some small, pink flowers beside the track. She rushed back home to tell him, said they should think about making a garden on the flat bit of land between the corral and the hut. He smiled politely at her and said that sounded like a good idea, but he thought the ground was still too hard, and also, how much longer would she be here?

Trying hard not to cry, she unbuttoned his shirt and bathed his wounds. Being young and fit, he’d healed remarkably well considering. The angry skin around the sutures had already faded to a dark pink, and although the swelling around his ribs had gone down, she warned him it would be six weeks at least before they were properly healed. He thanked her as usual, but still, things were not going as she’d planned. He was so quiet with her. He was now well enough to get up, and would walk around for a monosyllabic hour, but she often wondered whether he wanted her there at all.

Being by nature impatient, she found this hard on the nerves, but she knew better than to try and force the pace. She had to sit and pay attention, try and learn him again. It seemed the only thing she could do now. There was life as it was, and life as you wanted it to be. This was life as it was. She didn’t even know yet what had happened to him, only that it had been bad, and that he’d smashed through the invisible safety net that the young and careless carry with them, and was in pieces. This hut was no love nest; it was
more like a lair where two hurt animals must rest and lick their wounds and wait.

She knew it. She knew it. But here she was—such a fool!—sitting beside him in her blue dress, daring to hope again.

One afternoon when she had got back from her shift at the hospital, Arkwright and Deio jumped up in a guilty way when she walked into the hut. Around them were saddlebags, sleeping gear, a water container, and some rolled-up tarps.

“What’s going on?” she said.

Arkwright just hung his head. He looked as white as a sheet.

“Out.” Deio was scowling at her. “We’re going out.”

“Where?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Are you well enough? Those ribs aren’t properly healed yet.”

“I’m well now. I’ve strapped them.”

He was handsome again, and with his old air of authority.

“Will you be all right here?” he said. “We’ll be no more than a day.”

“I’ll be all right.”

“So we’ll see you, then?” He gave her an extra look of concern. “We’ll try and catch some hares while we’re up there.”

“Up where?” she wanted to ask, but she held her peace.

For three days they went out in the morning and came back at night. Each night when he returned Deio looked more emptied out, and she was in despair about him. She was pretty sure he wasn’t out fighting, because that had gone quiet, too; also, his commanding officer had sent a message, via Arkwright, that he should let the wound heal before he reported back to work.

She grew lonely in the hut on her own, and resentful. He and Arkwright seemed suddenly part of a club that excluded her. Finally, after two nights when he’d come home to sleep and hardly said more than four words to her, she let him have it.

He was smoking and brooding in a chair in the corner of the
hut. She was cooking some bread in a skillet on the stove. She heard herself say, “Are you ever going to talk to me again, because I’m getting heartily sick of it?”

He looked at her and got up and walked away. She warned herself to calm down, then walked across the room and smacked him squarely across the face shouting, “Don’t you dare walk away from me. I hate that.”

He held her eyes briefly. “Don’t shout like that,” he said. “I don’t like it, and it’s not safe.”

“I don’t care. I’m so angry I could, oooh—” He had put his hand over her mouth, and she looked at him, and he looked at her.

Later, when she’d stopped breathing heavily and they’d calmed down, she got the bread out of the oven, and a piece of salt pork, and they sat down and ate miserably together, both of them staring into space.

“You must say something,” she said. “I can’t live like this.”

He put down his knife and fork, and said in a low voice, “What do you want me to say.”

“Anything would be better than this.”

His eye was wandering and she glimpsed his great distress, but she was remorseless.

“Tell me. You must tell me. I feel as though you’re starting to hate me.”

She heard him catch his breath.

“Here is the truth, Catrin,” he said. “I’ve thought about you every single day since you left, and now I’m worn out with it.”

“What has happened to you?
Tell me now
. I don’t know you anymore.”

There was a look in his eyes of a man too young to have seen so much. She wanted to hold his hand, but he shook it away.

“You won’t like it.”

Tell me. You must tell me.

He told her about the storm and how the horses had flown away like bits of paper: Nobby, Conker, Duke, a nice little bay he’d bought outside London, Cariad, and all the others, all smashed and bleeding, mostly dead.

“Cariad!” His words were sinking in.

Now it was his turn to hang his head.

“I should never have brought her; I was so angry with you.”

“Is she dead?”

“No. Arkwright found three of them just a month ago, she was one of them.”

No don’t. Please don’t.
His eyes warned her to avoid excitement.

“You’ve never seen anything like it, Catrin. They’d been running wild in a valley near the Causeway Heights and the vultures have been at them and God knows what else, and it’s my fault; you must never see her like that.”

Now he wept.

“Why don’t you bring them here?”

“They’re too weak; she is in particular. She had a foal at foot when we found her and it died.”

“Poor mare.”

“Don’t try and see her, Catrin. If she doesn’t get much better, she’ll need a bullet through the head.”

“Deio! You are the biggest muff in the world sometimes. What I can’t bear is being shut out of everything, and don’t forget, I’m a nurse now, I’ve seen almost everything and I might even be able to help her.”