Chapter 17

 

 

In the drab Belfast hotel room Paul lay awake finishing a cigarette and staring up at the ceiling.

Devlin’s wife had been expecting him and had wasted no time showing Paul upstairs to the little room where Devlin lay dying. The man lying propped up high on the pillows had the familiar waxen pallor of a man facing death, his face a skull’s head over which the skin stretched like parchment. Only his bright eyes, fixed on Paul’s face still danced with life.

He tried to raise himself but the effort caused him to cough. His wife wiped the blood from his lips and resettled him on the pillows.

“I’ll leave you. Don’t keep him talking too long, Major Morrow,” she said and slipped from the room.

Paul pulled up a chair close to the bed. “Devlin” he said. “I’m sorry to see you like this.”

“They got me in the end, sorr. But it does my heart good to see you hale again.”

“A little battered but I’ll do,” Paul said.

They made polite conversation, exchanging news of their lives since the war. As Devlin’s breathing grew more ragged, Paul put a hand over the other man’s, clasping the fingers lightly in his own.

 “You’re tired, Pat. I should go.”

The other man shook his head. “Bide a while longer, sir. I never got a chance to tell you that I was sorry about the Captain.”

“So am I. There’s not a day goes by when I don’t think of him,” Paul said with a frankness he would not normally display. “Pat, perhaps you can do something for me?”

Pat Devlin’s mouth twisted in a parody of a smile. “Whatever’s in me power.”

“That night...I can only remember bits and pieces. Can you tell me what you saw and heard?”

“You went back for him, sorr.”

“I remember that. It’s what happened out there in no man’s land that–” He shrugged helplessly. “We were lagging behind the rest of the men and I remember an explosion and then, nothing.”

“All I can tell you is that those of us that could, got back to the trenches under heavy fire. I looked back and saw you with the Captain and then a bloody mortar lobbed in front of ye and that was the last I saw.” His thin chest heaved as he struggled for breath. “They made us pay, sorr–kept up the bombardment all day and night. Nothin’ we could do but keep our heads down. They let up in the morning and that’s when young Evans saw you crawlin’ in through the mud. Couldn’t believe our eyes. Trouble was the Huns seen you too and thought you’d make some fine target practice. Tha’s when I thought it best to go and bring ye in meself.”

The selfless act of going out into no-man’s land went beyond words. Paul’s fingers tightened on Devlin’s and he hoped the simple gesture conveyed his understanding of what the man had done for him.

Devlin fought his breath and said so softly that Paul had to bend to hear him.

“There were whispers, sorr. After...that you may have ‘elped him, if you know what I mean...but no truth to that...Brewer said he thought the Capn’ was on his way out even before you went back for him.”

Paul’s mouth tightened. “He wasn’t dead, Pat, and I wasn’t going to leave him. I owed it to him to bring him back. I allowed him to go out there to take the pill box out with the grenades before the attack.” He drew a heavy, shuddering breath.

“If you hadn’t let him go? How many others would’ve died that day?” Devlin frowned. “It weren’t the attack that killed ‘im, it were the retreat. Nearly killed you too, so are ye going to spend your whole life blaming yourself, sorr?”

Paul slowly shook his head. “No. I’ve learned to live with my decision, Devlin, but it can be an uncomfortable companion at times.”

“Aye, it would.”

Devlin nodded and began to cough again. Paul saw to him with the tenderness of a father for a child and laid the wasted body back on the pillow.

The war had taken another casualty. Pat Devlin died in the dark hours of the night with his family, six children of varying ages, their eyes large and fearful in pale faces, his wife and her mother and Paul Morrow by his bedside.

Slowly the fragments of his memory were coming together. Devlin had saved his life and Devlin had given him a few more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. Paul stubbed out the cigarette and closed his eyes. Remembrance came at a cost.

* * * *

Passchandaele September 17, 1917.

Paul’s first thought as he felt the rain on his face, was one of despair. The cold, unrelenting wetness meant only one thing. He wasn’t dead. He opened his eyes and looked up into the dark sky and wondered what time it was. Midnight? Past midnight? He parted his lips and let the wetness relieve his raging thirst. It tasted of blood, everything tasted or smelt of blood and worse.

He dared not move. Movement would attract the unwanted attention of the snipers in the German trenches and, he thought grimly, start his wounds bleeding again. He would die here in this shell hole, already up to his knees in the fetid water beneath him. It would take days to die, a long, slow agonizing death. God knew in the last few years he had seen such deaths often enough.

He tentatively moved his right hand, just enough to seek out his holster. Finding it empty, he closed his eyes and grimaced in impotent despair as memory flooded back. He raised his aching head to look down into the dark, evil water below him. Nothing disturbed its surface except the spattering rain drops. It was as if the earth itself had swallowed Charlie and now tried to suck him down too.

The persistent rain sent icy splinters of cold through his soaked tunic into his bones. If the wounds didn’t kill him, exposure might speed the process. He lay for a long time in the cold and the dark summoning up the courage to move.

A shell burst close by, spattering him with mud and filthy water. Paul shut his eyes, his body responding instinctively, despite his protesting injuries, by curling up protectively. When the ground stopped vibrating, he wiped the mud from his eyes with his good hand and lay quite still, gathering his strength and mentally plotting the one hundred yards that stood between him and the British lines.

Another shell burst and taking advantage of the confusion in the air, Paul rolled on to his right side, crying aloud at the pain. It would be a long, slow crawl back to safety.

The movement had caused the wounds to reopen and he felt warm, fresh blood against his skin, a strange contrast to his cold, sodden clothing. The effort required just to haul himself up over the edge of the shell crater took all his strength and he lay still for a long time expecting a sniper’s bullet in his back.

An agonizing inch at a time, he dragged himself through the thick, black mud, propelling himself with his right hand and his left leg. As the first grey fingers of the new day lightened the sky, a bullet zinged past his ear, another slapping into the mud just short of his left leg. He raised his head and a wave of despair washed over him at the insurmountable distance between himself and the safety of the British lines.

Exhausted, he laid his head on his arm, unable to go any further and prepared to die. The next bullet or a trench mortar would finish him. He no longer cared.

He sensed rather than heard the presence of another human being. Opening his eyes, he looked into the dirty, unshaven face of his Company Sergeant Major who lay on his stomach directly in front of him.

“Well, sorr, are ye going to lie here all day?”

He could have wept at the sound of the familiar Irish lilt.

“Devlin! Oh God, Devlin, you fool.”

“We all thought you were done for, until Corporal Evans spots you moving. Now we couldn’t be leavin’ ye out here all by yerself, now could we?”

He felt Devlin’s hand on his uninjured shoulder. The touch of another human being overwhelmed him and he lowered his head.

“Sorr, what about the Captain...?”

Paul swallowed and looked up at Devlin again.

“He’s dead, Devlin.”

“Ah.” The sergeant let out a deep sigh. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

A grenade whistled overhead, exploding twenty yards from them, splattering them both with mud, followed by a fusillade of rifle bullets.

“Well, pleasant as it is to be passin’ the time o’ day with ye, I’ve a mind to a strong cup of tea and me own bivouac,” Devlin observed. “As I sees it, there’s only one way to get back to the lines and tha’s to make a run for it and you, me lad, are in no state for a quick sprint.”

Paul met his Sergeant’s eyes. “Do what you have to.”

“I’m not goin’ to be gentle about this, sorr...”

Those were the last words Paul remembered for a long time. They told him later that Devlin had thrown him across his shoulders like a sack of potatoes and sprinted as best he could through the mud back to the lines with the enemy bullets whistling around his head.

* * * *

Paul arrived back at Holdston in a heavy storm. It had been a rough crossing and he had missed the train connection at Liverpool. He felt drained and exhausted with both his bad leg and his shoulder giving him, what Sam referred to as ‘curry.’

Evelyn met him in the hall.

“Hello, Paul,” she said with a tight smile that instantly aroused his suspicion.

“Evelyn,” he acknowledged his aunt.

“You need to get out of those wet clothes, sir,” Sarah said, tutting as she took his hat and coat.

“Not until I’ve had a drink,” he said.

In the drawing room, he crossed to the decanters and poured himself a large, neat brandy. Clutching the glass as if it were a life preserver, he subsided into his uncle’s armchair and ran a hand through his dark, wet hair.

“How did it go?” Evelyn asked seeing to a glass of sherry for herself.

“It was a mess. Devlin hasn’t been able to work since the war so the family’s been subsisting on charity, the earnings of a seventeen year old boy and the pathetic pension the Government sees fit to reward its soldiers.”

He recounted the plight of the Devlin family. Evelyn listened in silence and when he had finished she said, “You didn’t commit your own money? Paul, you’re the one who keeps telling me we don’t have the money to keep ourselves let alone bail out every one of your soldiers.”

“I owe it to Devlin to see to his family, Evelyn. They are as much my responsibility as you are.”

Even as he spoke, Paul closed his eyes, trying to ignore the familiar tightening band around his eyes. Through the gathering mist, he sensed something wrong in his aunt’s demeanor.

Trying to focus his eyes, he asked, “Where’s Helen? Is she in bed already?”

The long pause before Evelyn gave a nervous cough, confirmed his suspicions.

“She’s gone.”

“Gone?” Paul straightened in the chair and stared at his aunt in disbelief. “Why?”

“She’s on some sort of tour of the continent,” Evelyn replied, looking down at her glass of sherry.

“That’s a sudden decision.” Paul knew his aunt well enough to recognize obfuscation. He narrowed his eyes and fixed his aunt with a questioning glare. “What did you say to her?”

“We...we had a bit of a row,” Evelyn raised her chin defiantly.

“A bit of a row? It would have taken more than a bit of a row to upset Helen so much that she felt compelled to leave the house,” Paul said.

Evelyn sniffed and looked away. “I was quite wrong about Helen. She is nothing more than a conniving little colonial gold digger who was only here to find some poor fool with a title just as she married Charlie.”

Paul stared at his aunt. “And what made you arrive at that conclusion?”

“It was obvious, Paul. Anyone who met her said the same thing.”

“No, most people who met her found her beautiful and charming. You mean Maude and a bunch of old bitches with nothing better to do than gossip?”

“Oh, Paul. Don’t be so blind. She set her cap for Tony Scarvell the moment she met him,” Evelyn said stiffly. “She has flirted quite outrageously with him.”

The lights had started to dance in front of Paul’s eyes. He ran a hand over them, forcing himself to focus. He didn’t have time to listen to Evelyn’s malicious tittle tattle. Any moment now, he would be on the floor.

“Where has she gone, Evelyn? When did she leave?”

“She left on Wednesday. I’m not sure where she’s gone but Sarah said something about a cousin in the north. The way she was so familiar with the servants...”

Paul stared at his aunt, speechless with anger.

He rose to his feet pulling himself up to his full height, towering over his aunt. “Evelyn, I can’t believe what I’m hearing. This is not you talking. Where has this small mindedness come from? It has to be Maude Scarvell.”

 “I saw her kissing Tony. I saw her, Paul. I am quite convinced if she couldn’t get Tony she would have made a play for you.” Evelyn fumbled in her cardigan pocket producing her handkerchief.

Paul tried to focus, to comprehend what Evelyn had just said. “She kissed Tony?” he repeated slowly.

“Yes.” Evelyn wiped her eyes and added in a spiteful tone, “She is a disgrace to Charlie’s memory.”

The temperature in the room plummeted and the whispering began. Paul felt the blood drain from his face.

He closed his eyes. “You’ve no idea what you have done, Evelyn,” he said softly.

“I know exactly what I have done,” she defended herself. “I rid this house of a scheming interloper.”

With infinite weariness, he shook his head. “You have started something you will regret, Evelyn.”

“Paul, I did it for you.”

“No, you did it for you,” he looked up and gave her a pitying glance. “And you have driven away your only grandchild. Fine work, Evelyn.”

“You’re wrong,” Evelyn subsided into the chair, the tears coursing down her face.

“No I’m not, Evelyn, and you know it.” Paul ran a weary hand over his eyes. “From the day Helen arrived, you have resented her youth, her beauty and her spirit. She represented everything you had lost. Charlie loved her and you couldn’t accept that.”

 “How dare you,” Evelyn screeched. “If Charlie hadn’t died, he would never have gone back to her.”

“Of course he would. He had every intention of going back to Australia after the war. He loved Australia in a way he never loved Holdston.”

“He would never have left Holdston. It’s you who should have died, not Charlie.”

It was finally said, the words that he knew had festered in her heart for the last six years. Trembling like a leaf, she rose to her feet staring at him, wide-eyed with horror. “Paul, I...”

Paul’s mouth lifted in a dry, humorless smile. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear you say those words, Evelyn.”

He set his glass down and ran a hand over his eyes as the bright lights zigzagged and danced across his vision. At the door, he stopped and looked back at her, sitting as straight as an arrow in her high backed chair.

“Now perhaps we can stop pretending an affection for each other that neither of us feels and begin to live our own lives,” he said.

He shut the door behind him and stumbled upstairs. He made it to his bathroom and sank to his knees on the floor closing his eyes against the crushing pain in his head. He heard voices and sensed Sarah Pollard at his side, but if she was talking to him, he couldn’t hear her.

Sam’s boots reverberated on the floor beneath him and his strong hands gathered him up and helped him to the bed. Sarah laid cold compresses across his eyes and pulled the curtains closed.

Alone again, he rolled over, hunching up against the blinding, nauseating pain. His hand slid beneath the pillows and his fingers closed over a piece of paper. He held it scrunched tight in his hand as he gave in to the twin demons of migraine and memories.

Somewhere in his nightmares, he heard a voice, Evelyn’s voice. Her hand on his shoulder, shaking him.

“Paul! Wake up. Please wake up. I’ve had a telegram.”

He groaned and shook off her hand.

“They found him, Paul. They’ve found Charlie.”