I stopped, my heart pounding so hard I was sure it could be heard. I turned my head, trying to analyse the sound. Had it been a shuffling step, as I’d thought? Or might it have been a simple shifting of some masonry down there, disturbed by my passage through the room above? The sound did not come again and I decided on the latter, and let myself breathe again. I took a couple of steps, concentrating on where my feet fell; I didn’t want Boxy’s worries to become a reality, and even a sprained ankle would put me out of action for tonight’s work.
I pushed at the awkwardly hanging bedroom door and looked in, seeing the window I’d broken, and the thin curtain hanging limp and sodden as a result, and was hit by the horrible irony that I might have destroyed the rose by my own impatience, letting all the damp in. If the box had been even a little bit open…
The noise came again. This time I was certain: it was a footstep. On the cellar stairs. A sliding scuffle of a boot, and now I could hear another, and another. What if it was Potter? He might have seen me park up, and followed me in, knowing there was no way for me to get out once I was this far into the room. But what was he doing in the cellar? Scavenging? There might still be some medical supplies down there, and anyone who could attack a vulnerable young girl would be just the type to try seize them and sell them on.
My skin rippled into terrified goose flesh, and I looked around for somewhere to hide. If I could only make him think I’d gone, he’d go back downstairs and I’d be able to make a run for safety… I ducked down behind the broken door and listened, holding my breath, letting it out oh, so slowly, before drawing another and holding it until I felt dizzy. The sounds stopped. I didn’t know whether that was because Potter had reached the main room, or because he had gone back down to finish what he’d been doing. It was likely still flooded down there, and I couldn’t hear the swish of water as he walked through it…but neither could I hear any sound from the next room. Perhaps he’d seized the opportunity to escape unseen, while I cowered back here like a frightened child?
Slowly I rose to my feet, careful not to dislodge any of the broken sticks of furniture or loose bricks that lay strewn across the floor in the semi-darkness, and peeped into the main room. Right away I could see it wasn’t Potter; this man was taller, and an officer. I could only see his left shoulder and his head as he’d begun to descend the cellar steps again, and he was hunched with cold and fatigue, but the colour of his hair, unkempt and escaping the confines of his cap, was unmistakeable.
‘Oli!’
Oliver turned in shock at the sound of my voice. He was a terrible mess; exhausted and terrified, his face no longer clean-shaven but dark with two weeks’ growth, and filthy. His eyes flew wide at the sight of me stumbling across the room towards him, and he held out a defensive hand.
‘Don’t, please…’
I stopped, worried he might turn and run. ‘What are you doing here, you bloody fool? We’ve been all out trying to find you, to give yourself up before it’s too late.’
‘It is too late,’ he said, and his voice shook.
‘No, it’s not. Look,’ I stepped closer, carefully so as not to scare him, ‘Jack Carlisle is doing everything he can to fix things. We’re going to get Kitty out here to tell her story…’ I hesitated, unsure whether to tell him, then decided he ought to know. ‘Oli, Kitty lost the baby.’
He caught his breath, then came back up the stairs. Framed in the front doorway, his hair caught the light and he looked so much like his sister I could have wept for them both. ‘Is that the truth?’ he asked quietly.
‘Yes.’
‘Then I suppose I should be glad,’ he said, but he didn’t sound it. ‘A child born of violence can’t have a happy life, one would assume.’ He gave me a sad smile. ‘A child born in love has no guarantee either, evidently. Poor Kitty. Is she all right?’
‘She’s being well looked after. Look, we all want to help, but they’ll find you eventually and it’ll go badly for you if you wait until they do. Oli, you have to come back with me.’
‘No!’
‘Please! There may still be time to put this right, when you explain why you wanted to go to England.’
‘And why was that?’ he said bitterly. ‘To speak to Kitty? That was how it started, but I didn’t do that, did I?’
‘I understand you were scared –’
‘I can’t come back with you, it’s too late.’
‘Why do you keep saying that?’
‘Because he’s dead!’
I fell silent, wondering if I’d mis-heard. He backed out of the door, almost losing his balance on the loose stones, his green eyes on mine and his face a twisted mask of fear and misery.
‘That’s why I ran away, Evie. I killed him.’
Before I could find my voice, or any words, he had gone. The doorway stood empty, but afforded me no other sight than a shattered yard and the distant road. Oliver Maitland had vanished again. Numb with shock, it was almost as an afterthought that I turned back to the bedroom; even the black box didn’t seem as important as it had just a few minutes ago.
Until I saw it had gone.
‘What do you mean, “gone”?’ Boxy said, when I told her.
‘Exactly that.’ I couldn’t tell her about Oli, and so the vanished box became the focus of my thoughts until Archie responded to my urgent wire. Not giving myself time to agonise over the choice, I’d gone straight from Number Twelve to the field post office, and now every time I heard a vehicle outside I prayed I’d done the right thing.
‘Someone stole it? Was there anything else missing?’
‘Someone must have decided it looked interesting enough,’ I said. ‘Probably one of the soldiers who helped move the bodies out after the flood.’ I’d already considered, and dismissed, the hope that Oli might have thought the box was Kitty’s and taken it; he had nowhere to put it. Sorrow stole through me again; when whoever took it opened it, and saw nothing inside but a collection of letters and a tattered paper rose, they would discard it in disappointment and it would lie there in the mud, and eventually become part of the landscape. No matter how much I told myself it was just a piece of paper, it symbolised so much more and now its disappearance fell into neat symmetry with the loss of Will. Like the world at war, everything was falling to pieces, everything was dying.
I slept late after a particularly gruelling night, and emerged from my flea-bag just before lunch to find, not Archie after all, but Uncle Jack, in uniform, sitting at the kitchen table, chatting amiably with Elise and Johnstone. I’d not seen him wearing his uniform in years; he cut a dashing figure though, and I couldn’t help smiling at the way Elise was staring at him.
He looked around as I came into the room, and rose to his feet. ‘Sweetheart, you look exhausted. How are you holding up?’
‘I’m well,’ I assured him, and accepted his unselfconscious hug with relief. ‘And so pleased to see you, but what are you doing here?’
‘I came over yesterday, on government business rather than army, but it’s surprising what difference a uniform makes. Archie couldn’t get away, but he showed me your wire. Shall we go for a walk while you tell me what’s so urgent?’ He had obviously sensed it had to do with Oliver, and I nodded gratefully and took my coat off the back of the door. Boxy thrust a piece of toast at me in lieu of breakfast, and then we were outside, glad to find a rare clear sky and even the glimmer of the sun behind scudding clouds. It was a relief to explain everything, and the words tumbled out, in the wrong order and punctuated by distractions as I went back to try and correct them, but he grasped what I was saying.
‘Poor boy must be beside himself,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘Look, try not to worry, darling. Now we know he’s around here, we can concentrate on finding him.’
‘But what about Potter?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know. No one’s reported having found him, it may turn out that Maitland only believed he killed him.’
I snatched a sudden, hopeful breath. ‘Is that likely?’
‘Well, it’s most odd that a body hasn’t turned up in over two weeks. He might just have been put out of action for a while. I’ll check the field hospitals and the clearing stations, in case he’s wandered in looking for medical help. Don’t worry, I’ll be discreet.’
I shook my head, almost ready to laugh. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t even consider the possibility!’
‘You’ve a lot on your mind,’ he said. ‘Besides, I don’t want to raise your hopes. Unless Maitland stole his papers Potter would have been identified by now, if he did go for help. Then again, HQ would have been informed if he made a complaint against Maitland, so that’s another possible bit of good news.’
I needed that, and held onto it, hugging his arm in relief. ‘Thank you. How are you, anyway? I’m so sorry, I never remember to ask.’
He patted my hand where it lay in the crook of his arm. ‘Don’t worry about me, love, I’m fine. How’s Kitty?’
I could see that wasn’t really what he wanted to ask, and said, ‘I’m sure she’s being very well fed, and will soon be up and well.’ Then I added casually, ‘I expect Lizzy has made some biscuits for her.’
The smile that swept across his face could have lit St Paul’s Cathedral. ‘Lucky Kitty,’ he said, and pretended to check his teeth for breakages.
I laughed. ‘She misses you like a lopped-off limb,’ I told him, and his smile faded a bit, but the warmth was still there.
‘I worry about her doing too much,’ he confided. ‘I’m not able to spend enough time watching her, what with zipping off all over the place, and she does tend to try and do everything herself.’ He bumped me with his elbow. ‘A little bit like someone else I know.’
‘I’m learning,’ I assured him.
‘And how is Will?’
This time I was able to hide my emotions quite well; it wouldn’t be fair to pile my cares onto shoulders that already bore so much for the sake of others. ‘He wrote a few days ago, and I wrote back,’ I said evasively, ‘it’s all rather the same as always. His unit’s in Arras now, so the grapevine tells me.’ Archie, of course, being the grapevine; letters between units were now almost as strenuously censored as those travelling back home, and more and more I had been left with a few bland words between the heavy black smudges. But I would have treasured another one nevertheless.
‘He’s a good man,’ Jack said, and I heard genuine approval in his voice. ‘He’ll keep you in check once all this is over, goodness knows you need a strong bloke to keep you on the straight and narrow.’
‘Uncle Jack!’
He grinned at my protest, and his teasing helped ease the ache. For a while we talked of inconsequential things, but soon the conversation drifted back to Oliver.
‘He’s just twenty-one,’ I said, ‘surely they’ll go easy if he gives himself up?’
‘If Potter’s alive, maybe. It’ll still be the desertion charge, and that’s bad enough, but once we get Kitty over it might just go in his favour. Plus, he’s an officer, and, anecdotally, if not officially, it’s less likely he’ll be shot for desertion. But if someone finds Potter’s body, and they realise he’s not a military casualty…’ He didn’t have to complete the sentence, and we didn’t discuss it any further as we turned to walk back, and I bitterly regretted all the times I’d taken our leisure for granted.
We said goodbye in the yard, and Jack paused with his hand on the car door handle.
‘Evie?’
‘Yes?’
He didn’t smile, but I felt his strong, dependable love reaching across the cool air between us. ‘You did the right thing telling me.’
I nodded, but watching him drive away, I felt very young, and suddenly quite lost. What if all our hopes came to nothing? How would Kitty survive that, knowing what had spurred Oli into violence?
‘Come inside, poppet,’ Boxy said, coming out of the cottage. ‘Elise has made lunch.’
I turned and smiled. I could feel it wobbling, and knew she could see it, but moments like this weren’t unusual, certainly nothing to dig over. The trouble was, I could feel the expectation of many more “moments” to come, and it was getting harder and harder to pick myself up. The morning of April 23rd 1917, St George’s Day, would prove to be one of the worst.