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“Edward? Edward, can you hear me?”
Harry bent beside Edward and turned him over, to prevent the mud and water from entering into his nose or mouth. Edward didn't respond. Harry pulled him into a sitting position and leaned him against the sandbags and then scampered up the wall, firing with the other men as the incoming bullets rained down over them. Harry didn't know much about Edward, who kept to himself, but he knew that Edward had given him bread this evening when his stomach felt at the verge of that extreme pain of a gnawing growl and so he felt a sort of loyalty to him. As concerned as he was for him, the man had to be ignored for the moment or Harry would end up wounded as well. Turning his back on Edward, he stood at attention, his helmet jammed down as far as it would go to protect him as much as possible.
“Fix bayonets!” the order sounded from down the line. A thousand flashing blades clicked into place. Hearts thundered, as perspiration rolled like raindrops down the men's bodies.
“Charge!”
A mighty roar lifted from the men as they prepared to go over the wall, but Edward heard none of it.
***
“HELP ME!”
“Help!”
The cries of the wounded mixed with the moaning from the pain of their injuries and suffering.
“This one here needs some help too,” the medic said, as he leaned over Edward. There was still a pulse and he was breathing, but was completely unresponsive. Seeing no visible sign of trauma, he shook Edward gently in an attempt to rouse him. He was just about to turn his back on Edward to continue helping the others and check on him later, when he felt a hand reach out and grab his arm. Edward's eyes were open, but he stared straight ahead.
“You're going to be all right after all,” the medic said, with a smile. Still, Edward did not respond. For the first time, the medic now noticed that Edward was cradling the left side of his face in his hand.
“Something wrong with your head?” he asked, but still Edward did not reply. Gently, the medic pried Edward's fingers loose. As they pulled away, much to Edward's horror, they were covered in blood. Seeing the terror in his face, the medic tried to reassure him.
“It will be all right. It's really not so bad.” He slipped a hand into his pocket and found a roll of gauze, which he wrapped as a bandage around Edward's head.
“We need to move him out,” the medic said to another.
“Right, I'll take care of it.” Then, he turned to Edward saying,
“We're going to get you out of here now.”
Edward still made no reply, but his hand had returned to the side of his face, covering the bandage with his blood-soaked hand.
“Poor chap, probably too scared to talk,” he thought, as he helped Edward stand and leave the trenches and two years of his life behind.
***
THE DOCTOR AT THE FIELD hospital stood over Edward, examining his wound now.
“How are you feeling today?” he asked, but still Edward made no reply.
“He doesn't talk,” a nurse said and then continued, thinking of that newly discovered malady that affected the minds of some of the men who fought and paralyzed them with fear,
“Do you think it's shell shock?”
“Maybe,” the doctor said, “but, I think perhaps—” He paused and snapped his fingers in Edward's left ear. There was no response.
“I think he's gone deaf. Get me a piece of paper, please and a pen.” The nurse gathered the requested materials and then handed them to the doctor.
Can you hear me? He wrote on the paper and then held it up for Edward to see. Edward tried to move his lips, but nothing came out. Seeing his attempt, the doctor placed the pen in his hand.
No he wrote.
“But, doctor,” the nurse said, who had been watching the events, “he is only injured in his left ear, shouldn't he be able to hear in the right?”
“It's probably just the trauma of it all. I think that with time, his hearing will return in his right ear.”
“Now, where are you from?” he said to Edward, as he quickly wrote it on the paper and slid it to him.
Edward took the pen and wrote his answer.
“California!” the doctor said, in surprise. Edward realized then that, without his accent and in the uniform of an English soldier, no one would have had any reason to suspect he was not English.
“I'm afraid that is a bit too far,” the doctor said, to the nurse. Seeing the doctor's surprise, he took the paper back and wrote,
I have cousins in England.
“Oh, wonderful! Yes, that will be much better.”
Edward couldn't make out the words, but he understood the general meaning and was too tired to carry on the written correspondence, so he settled back into the hospital bed and slept.
Slumber accompanied Edward for the majority of his journey back to England. In the trenches Edward had busied himself with the necessity of survival. Sleep had often been the casualty, sacrificed by so many thousand on the Western Front. Now, for the first time in the many rain and blood-soaked months of the past two years, Edward had a bed at his disposal and used it to its full advantage. How wonderful it was, first in the hospital and then on the ship, to be a stranger to the hostile rains and cold he had become so familiar with!
And sleep also offered sweet escape from the reality of a too quiet world. He had sought solace and a peaceful corner away from the bloodcurdling, fear-inducing, terror-stricken noise of war. The shell lobbed at him from across the wall, exploding in a truly deafening blast, was the last thing that he had heard. His ears were silent—at least for the moment— but his mind was not and his mind insisted on playing the sound over and over, like some spinning phonograph. Only sleep could silence the sound of memory, so long as the nightmares did not invade stretching their torturous, snarling fingers over him in entrapment.
Terrified as he had been at times while on the front, he had not had time to really dwell on the danger. But now it confronted him daily, building in strength, growing in strife. He shut his eyes to it quickly, to squeeze out the images, but they were emblazoned too deeply like scorched earth after a fire and the ash and soot could not be easily swept away. Seared into his mind, like the cattle that were branded on the ranches of his native state, was the suffering of men who were strangers and yet a part of him. He had distanced himself, unwilling—or unable—to lift their burdens as his own, but now they stalked him unrelentingly.
He had made that mistake once—with James in the beginning. They had talked freely under the wide-open star-strewn skies, like two boys on the grand adventure of a camping trip. James had said it reminded him of that, because he had been a part of that group called the Scouts that was started just a few years before. He had been one of the older members, acting primarily as an older brother to the younger ones. It gave him a sense of purpose, he had said. But, war with its own purposes—too cruel and unimaginable—had taken James and would not release him from its icy grip. His mangled body, lying somewhere in the now frozen grounds of France, was too hard to bear thinking about, and so Edward closed his mind to that part of his life and made a vow of silence about his friend to command some dignity to the event.
***
AGNES HUGGED EDWARD tightly to her, when he returned and he wondered if she would ever let go. She eventually did though she insisted on helping him with every task and Edward, accustomed to doing so much for himself, soon felt suffocated. He knew she was well-intentioned, but he often felt the need for sanctuary away from her. The afternoon walks, which he took through the meadows alone, caused her great worry. Slowly his hearing, just as the doctor predicted, was returning to his right ear but still Agnes felt it was unsafe for Edward to be by himself without full usage of his ears. Though he felt a quarter of his age when doing so, he had (at her insistence) promised to remain away from the road, so as not to unknowingly wander into the oncoming path of a horse and cart or, even worse, a horseless carriage. He knew that her protectiveness stemmed not only from her concern for him but also because, much as he had presumed, John and George were now on the Western Front as well. Unable to ensure their safety, she channeled her protection and love for all three men into Edward.
On one particularly cold day, near the approach of Christmas, Edward set out at a brisk pace across the expanse of undulating countryside. Wisps of smoke ascended from stone chimneys, as if they were people sending out puffs of steam as they breathed into the frosty air. With a pang of sadness, he realized that the sounds he associated so closely with the season—the chiming bells, carol singing, chestnuts popping on a fire— would be muffled whispers this year.
He could picture his parents gathered by the fireplace with wreaths and garlands hanging festively around them. All the accompaniments of the holiday would dress the table and Father would give a toast saying—
Edward froze, not only in his thoughts but, in his steps. From the inescapable cold rose a large manor house that beckoned to him. Much like Edward, it stood proud, solid, with an obvious history of grandeur but showing signs of harder days more recently, with its cracked windows and crumbling porch. Edward instantly felt a kinship with it and, for the first time since he could remember, a true sense of belonging. With a sizable fortune already, at the age of twenty-five, he knew at once that he would find whoever was responsible for it and buy it. There was an inexplicable need in him to become a part of the history of the house. It was almost as if someone were calling to him from inside of it. But that, of course, was crazy.
***
“AGNES, WHO OWNS THE house in the field past the lake?” he asked upon his return. His volume varied in an unnatural way, since it was still difficult to judge exactly how loudly he was speaking. She looked up from her knitting. She seemed always to be knitting these days. Not only did she mend her own mittens or Edward's socks, but also mounds of scarves, mittens, and socks for the transport ships to carry to the men on the front.
“The house past the lake— the old deserted manor?” She spoke louder than usual and slower, enunciating each word clearly, to help Edward hear her better.
“That's the one.”
“I don't know to be honest. It's been abandoned as long as I can remember. Why do you ask?”
“I'm going to buy it.”
She felt compelled to question his decision, wondering if his nightmares— which he never spoke of but that she knew he suffered from because of his moaning that she awoke to in the middle of the night— were depriving him of sleep and wreaking havoc with his mind. When she looked at him now though, eyes full of life and clear with jaw resolutely set, she knew there would be no persuading him otherwise.
“All right,” she said, “I'll help you find out.”
“Thank you, Agnes,” he said and, for just a moment, she thought a hint of a smile— unseen since his return— had lit the corner of his eyes.