The rain fell on Arras with the power of a biblical flood. The downpour woke Henry from his sleep. He rolled over on the kitchen floor of the house and drew Alessandro’s coat tight to his chin in an effort to fight off the morning chill. They’d chosen to sleep on the kitchen floor. There was no question of them sleeping in that room where Alessandro’s final moments had taken place. There was too much squalor within it, terror and violence captured on the walls and floor, too many bad spirits.
Henry watched the rain teem down the window pane in swollen rivulets, combining with other rivulets to make rivers, which washed down off the window to the sill and finally to the street below. A clash of thunder rippled around the city. He peered over to Sandrine sleeping beside him, her breathing barely audible over the rain. She looked at peace, still dressed in the clothes she had worn when she’d left her home.
Her home. Where was their home now?, Henry wondered.
The thought stirred him into action. Silently, he rose from the makeshift bed and slipped into the bedroom where the attack had taken place. He felt wicked, violating Alessandro’s peace by searching through his cupboards for clothes, but Sandrine had insisted he must before they left in the morning. Luckily, Henry was nearly the same size as Alessandro, maybe a little longer in the leg and larger in the foot, giving Henry a rather puzzled, imbecilic look with his toe pinched shoes and raised trousers, but he guessed it would suffice for now, at least until they were out of the city.
He stole slowly back to the kitchen. Sandrine still slept in peaceful abandon, beautiful and alluring, amongst the ragtag sheets of the hastily assembled bed. Picking up the coat and the unit diary, he crept downstairs and out into the thundering downpour.
Already it had begun to flood outside the boarded up house, the street turned to a river of murky water. He snuck the diary under his coat and hurried on. A platoon of soldiers, drenched and dismal in their sodden clothes, tramped past under the watchful glare of their platoon Sergeant. Panic gripped Henry’s throat, but the soldiers moved away with neither a look nor a word to him. Henry could feel the tension shimmer up his throat and gather in the base of his skull. He breathed deeply and moved on. He didn’t know how far it was he had to go. Sandrine had explained it to him and made him memorise the route, there and back, so there would be no chance of him becoming lost in the depths of the city. Anything to avoid unnecessary risks. Anything to avoid the chance of capture and arrest.
At the end of the street was a square, badly buffeted by shell fire. Lined by trees, three had been uprooted and lay snapped and gouged from their cobble lined beds. By now the rain had intensified and was blown on strengthening winds, whipping across the square almost horizontal to the ground. Henry bent himself against it and staggered on. At the edge of the square was the street he remembered from Sandrine’s description he was to take. It offered some respite from the wind and Henry drew a little breath as he trotted down it, hugging the diary tight. It was then that he cursed himself and his loyalty to his unit, for taking such a risk for the sake of a record of a lost unit. He doubted anyone would ever read it anyway. He was minded to throw it away, cast it into a bin or the gutter and be done with it. But he thought of his colleagues who had fallen and knew he could never do such a thing. He owed them that much. He owed them the truth being revealed.
Halfway down the street he found the lane Sandrine had gone on to mention. The wind blew even stronger down this, casting rain and hail and broken vegetation down the channel the buildings either side created. Signs swung wildly on chains or lay snapped and broken across the floor. Henry peered through the downpour and there, in the distance he could make out the custard yellow of the post office. He half staggered, half ran to the door and cast it open, throwing himself inside.
The postmaster looked up from behind his desk and chuckled, asking him something in French.
“I’m sorry,” Henry replied in his basic grasp of French, suddenly aware of the flaw in his plan. “I don’t speak very good French.”
The postmaster shrugged and shook his head.
“Paper?” Henry asked, removing the book from his coat, but hiding its cover from the postmaster’s eyes.
“Paper?”
“Yes, paper.”
“Ah, papier?” the postmaster nodded, gathering him a roll. “Ficelle?” he then asked. Henry hesitated. “Ficelle?” the smart looking elderly gentleman asked again. “String?”
“Oh, string, yes, please,” said Henry, taking both and stealing over to the side of the shop to wrap the diary in the privacy of a corner. No sooner had he crept away than the door to the post office flew open and two British officers staggered in, laughing and cursing at the buffeting they’d received from the elements. They stood in the middle of the office, brushing themselves down and chortling, tall, slick haired moustached men, a Major and Lieutenant Colonel.
“Blasted weather!” one called, flapping his cap into his hand.
“One feels that summer is well and truly over now, Nicholas,” the Major called, approaching the desk. Henry’s eyes were on the pair of them and then the postmaster. His gaze was drawn by Henry’s and he looked at him hard before looking back at the Major.
“Now then my good man, do you speak English?”
“Oui,” said the man, looking across at Henry and then back at the officer. “A little.”
“Good stuff. Look here, I’m expecting a package from home. Not coming in via usual circles. Don’t want it go by army post. I was wondering if I could have the parcel sent here and then I come and pick it up from you?”
“Parcel? Sent here?” replied the man, torn between looking at the officer and glancing with suspicion at the British man in civilian dress in the corner of the room.
“Yes, that’s right. Get it sent here. That way I might get a chance of getting it before Christmas, what?” The officer chortled and the distracted postmaster feigned the same. His distraction caught the officer’s eye and he peered over at Henry, clasping the bound and addressed book in his hands. “Everything alright, chum?” he asked him.
Henry could feel the blood drain from him, his head go light. It felt like his entire world was turning in on itself. His heart felt like a battered anvil in his chest. He nodded and avoided any eye contact, retreating a little into the corner in the pretence of finishing addressing the parcel.
“What have we got here then?” the Major asked, stepping forward and tugging the package around so he could read to whom it was addressed.
“No, non,” muttered Henry, but he knew the game was up and didn’t resist further. They’d take him to the red caps. From there he’d be sent for court martial. He thought of Sandrine, awaking to find him gone. How long would she wait till she realised he would not be coming back?
“For the British HQ, Arras, eh?” muttered the Major.
Henry nodded and swallowed hard.
“Well why don’t you let me take that?” he said, raising an eyebrow. “We’re heading back there now. Save you the price of a stamp.”
Dumbfounded, Henry let the parcel be plucked from his grasp, the Major sticking it inside his jacket pocket. He swivelled around and lent across the office counter, producing a pad from an inside pocket.
“So, what’s the address here?” he asked.
The postmaster told him, and the officer wrote it down, telling the man his name.
“So, when the package arrives, you will hold it for me? Here?”
The postmaster nodded and looked back at Henry, his eyes like slits.
“Good-oh!” the Major announced, wrenching the door open. “Ready?” he called to the Lieutenant Colonel, and together the officers fought their way back out into the street and the torrential wind and rain.
A smile lightened the face of the postmaster.
“Go on then,” he muttered, nodding to the door. “On y va.”
He was drenched to the bone and shivering when he reached the stairs of Alessandro’s house. He could hear the rain fall on the roof and the street just outside the terraced row of buildings, swelling the puddle at the front into a flood. Henry stopped and closed his eyes, his hand on the banister of the stairs, his ears alert to the sounds of the city. And it seemed to him that he could hear each individual raindrop of the torrential downpour, and the splash of a resident running through the puddles, and the cry from an officer turning his soldiers in the storm. If he listened very hard he could make out the booms and the rumble from the front, the rusted tight deadlock of the units and the battalions and the divisions facing each other, starting up their hate-filled offensives once again.
And then it struck him – in the middle of that tempest from God and the warring forces – the majesty, the beauty and the miracle that was life. The realisation hit him like a thunderbolt, so strong and so dramatically that it drenched his eyes with tears and took away his breath. How everything in life was finite and balanced so precariously.
He climbed the stairs slowly, reverently, and gathered Sandrine into his arms on their makeshift bed. He kissed her back to consciousness.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s go and live.”