Sandrine climbed the final few rungs and pulled herself clear, setting down the lantern and killing the flame within it. She reached down and held out her hand to Henry, coming up out of the darkness after her.
“I do hope you didn’t look up?” she said, sniggering like a love struck teenager.
“Perish the thought,” replied Henry, adopting a look of mock surprise at the accusation. He laughed and then caught the rumble of the latest artillery barrage upon the city. “So they’re at it again,” he mused sadly, as Sandrine knelt and pushed the cover back over the hole to conceal it.
“It won’t be for long, Henry, trust me.”
She took his hand and stepped quickly away.
“I do like your optimism, my darling, but I fail to share in it. It seems to me that everything has, well, stalled. I can’t see us ever getting over it, or out of France.”
She stopped and drew him into her arms, kissing him briefly but passionately.
“But for you, Henry Frost, it is over. These clothes,” she said, tugging at his shirt, “say good bye to them, for after today, you will not wear a uniform again.” She took the diary from under his arm. “What are you going to do with this?”
Henry looked at it and pursed his lips.
“I don’t know. I should probably have left it behind, like everything else but I felt, well, I just thought I owed it to them, to Sergeant Holmes and Dawson and, well, all the men, that they shouldn’t be forgotten.”
“We will post it,” Sandrine announced, nodding with satisfaction at her suggestion. “We will post it, in the morning, and then you will be free of it.”
Henry smiled and drew her to him, showering kisses on her mouth and her cheeks.
“Now, where the hell are we going to stay until then? I’m afraid I have no money and I really don’t fancy a day or night on the streets!” he said, on hearing a loud bang not far from where they stood.
“It is okay, Henry, I know someone who will help us and I owe him one final visit, if only to say goodbye.”
Sandrine led Henry by the hand along side streets and back alleyways, her pace light and swift. She didn’t want to risk anything now, not to meet other British soldiers, not with Henry still dressed in his soldier’s fatigues, the shirt, trousers and boots of his unit, not when they were so close to their escape. The grime of the weak afternoon light and the barren streets gave the impression that they were the only people left within the city. Henry hated it. It reminded him of Fampoux but on a far larger scale. He longed for somewhere where there was life and noise and colour, not infernal greys and browns and the endless whining sounds of falling shells.
“We’re nearly there,” Sandrine announced, turning down into an alley where buildings loomed over the route.
“Will Alessandro be okay with this, with us just turning up?”
“He will be fine,” Sandrine insisted, although there was now doubt beginning to grow in her mind the closer they drew to his home. She remembered his tears and his pain at their last meeting. But she also thought of Alessandro’s lightness of character and the joy in his manner. “No, he will be fine,” she insisted, almost to herself. But on turning the corner to his street, the words were torn from her mouth.
In front of her stood Alessandro’s house, boarded up.
She gasped and ran towards it, standing in the middle of the street looking up into the windows of the building.
“What has happened?!” she cried, storming forward and ripping the boarding from the front door effortlessly.
“Maybe it was hit by shell fire?” suggested Henry, but he could see that the building and its roof appeared intact.
“The door!” Sandrine cried, burrowing her way between the boards. “The door has been smashed in! There are marks, Henry! Claw marks!”
He heard her cry and the sound of her feet vanishing into the building. At once, Henry thrust his way inside after her, terrified by what he might find. He thought he’d seen the last of gruesome scenes the moment he’d sunk into the depths of the tunnel of Fampoux to leave. He reached the steps of the house and raced up, taking them three at a time. Above him he could hear nothing, no screams, no sobbing, just silence. He reached the top of the flight of stairs, looking left and then right.
Sandrine was standing in the middle of a small wrecked bedroom, furniture dashed and shattered around the room, the walls and floor covered with darkened dried blood. Every surface, every wall was splashed with the gore. Henry swallowed and stepped slowly up behind Sandrine, wrapping his arms about her. She turned and buried herself into him.
“Poor Alessandro,” she wept. “Poor, poor Alessandro.”
He kissed the top of her head and held her tight through her sobbing.
“Henry, is everything I touch cursed?”
He soothed her gently and rocked her in his arms. “No, of course not!”
“This horror, will it never end? Will we ever be free of it?”
“Yes, it will end. Tomorrow we leave Arras and everything behind us.”