It was lucky that I had thought to bring the pony; I would never have got Matthew back on my own. It was almost as if in that instant of deciding to accept my help, however reluctantly, all of his remaining strength had been spent and for a few horrible long minutes I had feared that even maintaining a grip on the pony’s mane as it towed him steadily along was going to be a demand too far.
If I had thought that task difficult however, getting him to relinquish it for an arm about my shoulders and from there steering him into my house proved even more of a challenge. He had neither spoken nor moved from his hunched position since we had started for home and as I set about tugging him along the path, it became horribly apparent that he must have been wandering about out there for far longer than just a few hours. In truth he was barely conscious and although he was obviously trying to spare me as much as he could, he very nearly crushed me when we finally attempted to coordinate a sort of crabwise shuffle into the house.
Freddy, however, was utterly amazing. The boy had already appeared noisily by my side before I could have possibly expected him and, as soon as Matthew and I had set off on our unsteady way, had whisked the tired pony away to hay and a dry stable, only to rush to the door before we had even made it around the side of the house, still talking ceaselessly. He was there now, ahead of us, pushing the door open and dragging it wide so that we could slowly shuffle our way into the short passage by the kitchen.
Even with the boy’s help, the doorway was still very narrow and it took some manoeuvring to ease us both through. I suppose if I had thought, I could have got Freddy to run and open the more impressive – and therefore much wider – front door but as with all farmhouses, the kitchen door was the one that we used on a daily basis and I wasn’t even sure if the thick ancient bolts could be drawn back on the other.
It had been my intention to cross the wider space from kitchen to stairs, and from there take Matthew up to a bedroom where he could rest and recover in relative comfort but Matthew himself forced me to swiftly abandon that idea. I had managed to get him this far by taking his right arm heavily across my shoulders while his other groped drunkenly from handhold to handhold but whether it was from the blaze of unaccustomed heat or the unexpected realisation that his ordeal was nearly over I do not know, but all of a sudden his remaining ability to support himself abruptly vanished. Entirely without warning, his fingers fell short from their reach towards the tabletop and then his head drooped. He had already been testing me pretty near to my limit but this sudden collapse took me far beyond tolerance and we were very lucky that I even managed to get him as far as the living room settee, let alone all the way upstairs to my bed.
A peculiar pause followed this where, after my abrupt release from such a heavy burden, the sensation of being airborne was so strange that the force of it nearly finished what Matthew’s weight had begun. My face burned from exertion and, added to the heat of the fire at my back, it seemed to take an eternity before my aching lungs could adjust to breathing warm air. But then, in the next instant, normality reasserted itself and I had time to wonder that it was Matthew Croft of all people who had been found lost in a snowstorm. And then to notice almost immediately afterwards that the voluble enthusiasm, which had been an almost constant backdrop to our journey across the kitchen, had faded sharply to silence.
Freddy’s delight at his part in an apparently heroic rescue ought to have been inexhaustible; I quickly turned with a smile and encouragement so that the boy would be protected from understanding the full urgency of getting the object of his adventure warm but he wasn’t looking at me. Freddy was staring with eyes fixed wide at the man who was sitting slumped before us and blinking blearily at the threadbare carpet by our feet.
I took a steadying breath. “Freddy, will you fetch some of my father’s old clothes? We’d better get him into something dry.” My voice was bright and carefully filled with that lively tone of artificial cheer that was usually the reserve of matronly housekeepers but I might as well have said nothing for all the notice he took.
“Freddy,” I said sharply, “did you hear what I said?”
Then I turned my head and followed his gaze.
Matthew was still sitting exactly where he had landed when I had clumsily surrendered him to the settee except that now he was making an ineffectual attempt at unfastening the buttons of his soaked jacket. Finally able to see it properly, the jacket looked like it was made from a kind of stylish brown wool and would have originally been better suited to a walk through town towards his office than across country in the snow. Whatever it had once been however, now it was only disgustingly grimy and the torn seam on his sleeve that had been noted before had since parted even further so that it was now exposing a large expanse of lining.
I suppose it was because of this obvious damage to one shoulder that I had not noticed what had happened to the other.
The stain had spread from his collar down towards the elbow of his left sleeve and it was entirely different to the multitude of scuffs and scrapes of mud and filth that coloured the fabric elsewhere.
“Here, let me.” The quickly delivered request was tinged with disbelief as I leant down and reached for the sodden jacket.
His numbed fingers surrendered the task of fumbling with the buttons readily enough and then in a few short seconds I was pulling the icy flaps apart.
“Oh, good God.”
Blood had soaked through the shirt onto his woollen jumper and from there spread in an ugly stain across his chest, and it was very clear to me now that there could be no ordinary explanation for what I had found out in the snow.
“Good God, Matthew!” I said again. “What has happened to you?”
He looked up at that and gave me a faintly blurry smile. “Pay no man, isn’t that what they say? No, hang on, that isn’t it – what’s the saying…?” He was speaking with the careful enunciation of one who was not in nearly as much control of himself as he would have liked to have been. He blinked and then added, “Ah yes, owe no man. But that isn’t fair; I don’t think he can have meant for it to turn out like that…”
Then his expression clouded as if he knew he was wandering and, with an obvious effort, he bit off whatever else might have followed.
Freddy must have moved behind my shoulder because Matthew’s eyes suddenly snapped past me. He stared up at the boy for a moment, the heavily shadowed eyes widening in alarm before travelling jerkily back to my face. Then, with a blur of movement that was startlingly reminiscent of the precision I had seen out in the snow, he reached out and took a tight hold of my hand.
“Don’t tell them.” His voice rose anxiously as the draw on my arm forced me to bend awkwardly down towards him. “You won’t tell them about me, will you? Please?”
I shook my head, trying to discreetly prise my wrist free only to feel a cold stab of apprehension as he begged again, “Please!”
“I won’t, Matthew,” I said, not really knowing to what I was promising.
He gave me one long hard look and seemed to believe me. Releasing my hand, he blinked from me to Freddy and back to me again. Then, letting out his breath in a long gentle sigh, he slowly and with about as much grace as a bad actor playing a part, crumpled backwards onto the soft panels of the settee.
I stared down at his prone form for a moment before my brain clicked into gear.
“Right Freddy,” I said crisply. “Fetch my scissors, the medical kit – the horse one I mean, we’re going to need more than plasters – and some blankets. I’ll get some water on the boil.”
Freddy looked at me with big scared eyes. “Is he dead?” he whispered.
“No Freddy, he’s not,” I said firmly. “Now off you go, quickly please!”
When the boy had finished that little task, I would strategically send him on another lengthier errand, this time to the hay barn.
If I had been determined to protect Freddy from further shock and the subsequent bad dreams, I only wish I could have extended the same courtesy to myself. Patching up the various wounds that the horses have presented over the years may have trained me in all the practical skills, but nothing could have prepared me for the emotional horror of having to cut away his shirt and examine the twelve or so shotgun pellet wounds that had splattered across his upper arm and chest. None of them had gone deep, he must have been hit at the very edge of the gun’s range, but blood still oozed sickeningly from the wounds as I carefully eased the pellets free.
Blessedly, he was still unconscious as I dressed the wounds with iodine solution and gauze; it seemed to take forever to strap it all firmly into place with the thick rolls of bandage when I had to deal with the leaden weight of his body on my own. But then at long last it was finished and I could place bandages, wounds and everything safely out of sight under the great stack of blankets which would slowly but surely bring him back to vital warmth, and pause a while to gather my thoughts.
Many hours later though, and after all that bustle and urgency it was suddenly feeling very much like I was being given rather too much time in which to think. Freddy had been fed and dispatched off to bed long ago and with the wind outside picking up little gusts of ice and sending them in a distant rattle against the glass, I was actually for the first time in my life finding the house slightly eerie. The rhythmic hiss and creak of the door beneath the stairs made it sound like I was catching the stealthy betrayal of someone’s passing footsteps and with very little else to do now but sit and wait, I found myself wishing very fervently that the back room was not so draughty and my imagination not quite so alive.
Like our water supply, this little corner of the Cotswolds had never been connected to mains electricity either, so the room was merely lit by the inky amber of an oil lamp and the formerly companionable glow of the hearth. This scene was not unique to my household; on the assumption that others were keeping the same late hours, and hopefully for considerably more ordinary reasons than mine, their homes too must be chasing away the shadows with mild lamp light. Across the country, main roads and railways were closed by impossibly deep drifts and after a month when only a few coal trains had managed to reach the power stations, urban homes and even the factories that had managed to labour for years under the most fearsome bombardment had no choice now but to at long last fall silent. Here was another reminder that the weather had the power to do what the war had not.
Admittedly, I could not exactly claim this particular shortage for myself or my little rural farmstead, having never had any electric heaters, refrigerators or lighting to worry about. But at this precise moment the background hum from a little domestic machinery might well have made all the difference to the windblown whispers which were presently stalking me across the room.
Matthew’s head moved on the arm of the settee and I tensed, thinking that he was awake, but his eyes remained closed. His sleep must have been punctuated by nightmares because every once in a while his breathing would jerk and catch in his throat, and occasionally I caught the low murmur of words uttered in an agitated undertone, but he said nothing I could make any sense of. I put the back of my hand lightly to his forehead; it was warm but not alarmingly hot.
I sat back in my chair and settled to watch as he slept. It was strange to find myself so unexpectedly maintaining this late night vigil over a man I had not seen for years, and who now lay restlessly sleeping on my settee. Earlier, my confusion had fixed itself upon flimsy theories of wandering too far in deteriorating weather, but it was impossible to continue this pretence, especially when I remembered that even in a whiteout Matthew would have known these fields and byways as well as I did, if not better.
He stirred again, uneasily. The features of his face were being drawn into sharp relief by the sooty smear of light from the lamp behind me and beneath the tangle of sandy hair which had been thick with dirt and burrs, I could see scratches on his cheek that were days old. His chest was marked by a darkening smudge of fresh bruises and earlier, while I had been dressing his shoulder, I had noted that there were scars too, a jagged series of lines running lightly across his ribs, whitened with age, which must have been from the war.
I shivered suddenly in spite of the fierce heat from the nearby fire and, tucking my legs up under myself, I turned my head aside to fix instead upon the shredded remains of clothing which were laid out on the hearth beside me. Most would be burnt as soon as they were dry enough and only his boots and trousers had been cleaned and hung out with more care. Torn and battered though they were, I suspected he would be too tall for my father’s old clothes and with no hope of getting more from elsewhere, I could not possibly discard them.
His breathing changed and I did not need to see the eyelashes flutter on his cheek to know that he was awake. Silently, I slipped across to the fireside hotplate where I had set some broth to warm and, tipping some into a bowl, I slowly turned back to face him once more. His eyes were glinting in the firelight, following me as I carefully drifted closer. Although they ought to have been a dark hazel with flecks of deeper brown, under the light fever of exhaustion they were paler, almost amber.
“Are you hungry?” I asked. He didn’t answer and just lay there, staring at me.
“Come on, let’s get some of this into you,” I said brightly and, firmly ignoring the foolishness that tried to make me clumsy, knelt by the settee before helping him to spoon some of the warming liquid into his mouth.
For a little while he gulped it down hungrily but then, unexpectedly and with surprising force, he pushed my hand away as if the thin meal suddenly disgusted him. He must have noticed my flinch because he quickly apologised.
“Thank you,” he said softly, allowing his head to fall back onto the cushions. His voice was weak and quiet as though the effort of speaking was almost too much for him but I was relieved to note that there was more colour in his pallid cheeks.
“Don’t mention it,” I replied lightly.
He shut his eyes, “I’ll be on my way again in the morning.”
“I’m sure you will.” He looked like the idea of even sitting up was beyond him.
He gave me a little smile, eyes still closed, and suddenly looked more like the man I knew.
“How did this happen to you?” I asked gently as I climbed to my feet. When I looked back, he was staring at me with an expression strongly reminiscent of the one I had first seen in the snow, but I was determined not to let the opportunity pass this time. “Who did this to you, Matthew?”
His head moved awkwardly on the arm of the chair and I thought for a moment he was going to try to get up. “I don’t … I can’t seem to remember,” he whispered helplessly.
“It’s all right,” I said quickly, guiltily covering the rush of concern that filled me. “It’ll keep until morning I’m sure.”
“You won’t tell them I’m here, will you?” His fingers clutched at the blankets and my heart tightened painfully as that same hunted expression beat a return to his pale haggard face.
“I won’t tell them, Matthew. Don’t worry.”
“He … I didn’t mean to … They’re …” He spoke agitatedly, seeming to be talking more to himself than to me, and I stepped back as he tried to sit up, feeling suddenly nervous as that wild urge to bolt altered his eyes again. His strength failed him however, and slowly he sank back down onto the settee, looking grey and utterly exhausted.
After a while he seemed to fall helplessly into an unmoving slumber and finally I was able to unclench my fingers from the bowl enough to set it down on the kitchen table. His agitation disturbed me and as I gazed down at his averted face from the comparative distance of the other end of the settee, I wondered just what sort of explanation I was expecting him to give, when the morning came.
Would he even be glad when he finally regained his senses, to discover that it was me that had patched and bathed his wounds? So far his reactions had ranged from gentle recognition to horrified aversion, and I really wasn’t sure which emotion I could expect to prevail when daylight and lucid reasoning made their return at last.
“Oh, stop it,” I muttered to myself, crossly avoiding working this up into a larger complication than it deserved. There were, I was sure, any number of more pressing concerns in the mind of a man who had very nearly died than whether or not the person that had helped him was feeling suitably thanked.
Armed with this fresh conviction, I slipped silently back to my station in the armchair and prepared to watch once more. I was just beginning to doze myself when he spoke again;
“What is your name? I’ve forgotten it, I’m sorry.” His head moved on the cushion as he tried to twist round to look at me but his shoulder must have hurt him because he gave a short hiss of pain before allowing his head to fall back again.
“Eleanor,” I said softly from my armchair.
“Oh.” There was a long pause and I thought that he had fallen asleep but then he added, “I knew an Eleanor once, but that was a long time ago; before I went away.”
I said nothing and just watched the fire as it flickered gently in the grate.
“She was a lot like you, but younger. And possibly a little shorter, although that could just be because you’re thinner than she was.” His voice was faint as he mumbled dozily and I realised that he didn’t know where he was. “Her father died you know. I meant to write and tell her how sorry I was but somehow I just couldn’t find the words.”
There was another long pause and then I saw his body tauten. “I’m not making sense, am I, Eleanor?”
“You’re fine,” I replied soothingly. “Just go to sleep.”
For a while I thought he had, but then in a stronger voice he asked, “What did he die of?” He turned his head to look at me and I saw that this time he knew who I was.
“Something with a long unpronounceable name, but basically it was his breathing again,” I said quietly. “He lasted a long time, much longer than the doctors said he could. But he went peacefully, and at least it wasn’t a shock.”
“And you nursed him to the end.” It was a statement, not a question.
“Yes,” I said quietly.
“No wonder you look so …” He stopped.
“So what exactly? My weather-beaten exterior is confusing you,” I supplied lightly.
I think he might have even given a faint chuckle, “I was going to say careworn, but weather-beaten will do.”
For some unfathomable reason, given that I had started it, his evident amusement irritated me and I really didn’t want to think about why. “Go to sleep.” I spoke firmly.
“Yes ma’am,” he said with a faint hint of the wry humour that had once so typified him. He didn’t speak again.