“I said, no.”
“But what else are we doing here? Why did you help me get away if not for that?”
He lit another match, studied my face. I glared back at him, my breath coming heavily.
“I got you out because I didn’t want anything to happen to you. I want you to go home to England. I want you to be safe.”
“But Tom—”
“Is dead already.”
“No!” I cried. “That’s not true.”
“If you’ve seen him killed then he’s as good as dead. There’s nothing we can do to change the future. Don’t you understand that yet?”
“No!” I shouted. “He’s not dead.”
“Not yet!” Jack shouted back.
He cursed as the match went out.
I began to cry in the darkness.
“You don’t understand,” Jack said. “Why don’t you understand? The future’s already done! How else do you and I make sense of what we see? What you have seen will come to be, and there’s nothing you or I can do to change that.”
“I thought you had changed your mind,” I said, through a mouthful of tears. “What I said that night. That we have to play our part anyway. I thought you understood that. I thought you’d come to help me play my part. I can’t simply let him die!”
Jack said nothing, and I listened to myself crying, and hated myself. Edgar was right. I’m just pathetic. Weak.
“Alexandra,” Jack said. “Don’t cry. I’d like to help you. Don’t you understand that? I got you out of Bethune because I want to help you. But there’s nothing we can do. . . .”
“If he was your son, would you let him die?” I sobbed. “I’ve already lost one brother. I can’t watch it happen again. If I hadn’t been given this curse, then I wouldn’t know any different. Maybe that would be easier. But I can’t help it. I have seen Tom and I am going to try to save him. I’d like to say I can do it without you, but I can’t. I know that. I need your help.”
Still Jack was silent.
“Why are you helping me?” I asked. “Why set me free, when you don’t want to help me save Tom?”
“I want to help you. I said that.”
“Because I remind you of someone?” I said, spitefully. “Is that it? Your daughter? Your wife?”
“No,” said Jack. “I’m not married. There’s no one like that.”
“Then why?”
“Because, Alexandra, you’re the one person I’ve met in this war whose life I might be able to change.”
“So you do think lives can be changed, then?” I asked.
Jack was silent.
There was silence for a long time, but in the end I convinced him. I don’t really know how. I know Jack is a man who had all belief and hope taken from him long ago. But something I said seemed to make a difference. He lit a third match in the silence, and shuffled over to me. I didn’t like him coming that close, but I couldn’t say so. I thought it wouldn’t be wise to anger him again. He was so near to me that I could smell him, his unwashed skin and clothes. His face was deadly serious.
He looked deep into my eyes, and he was so close I could see the match reflected in his. He put out a shaking hand toward me, and stroked my hair, just once. I closed my eyes and tried not to shudder.
When I opened my eyes again, he was sitting away from me, his eyes closed, his head bowed. He was motionless, as if deep in some dream.
The third match went out.
“I’ll help you,” he said.
16
Jack is sleeping, but I slept enough in fits and starts during the afternoon and am not tired.
I do not want to sleep again, in case I see those things, those dead people again. I cannot prevent one thing from surfacing in my mind, however. Amidst all the terrible things I saw, I had another sight of Tom.
I saw the gun that will kill Tom, and I flew with the bullet, spinning, spinning toward him. I was so close to it all, I could smell it. I could taste the powder from the cartridge.
The bullet struck his chest, and I followed only a moment behind.
15
The last two days have been a lifetime.
I think it can barely be thirty-six hours, in fact, since we left the safety of the haybarn, to where I am now.
Where I am now.
From what I can see in the valley below me, this can be only one place.
The mouth of hell.
14
We left the barn early.
We were both awake to hear a deafening chorus of bird-song in the wood behind the barn, but though the birds were singing, it was a desolate morning, with a lowering bank of cloud above us. A mild drizzle gave way to maybe an hour of insistent rain, but we left anyway, because we were hungry.
“We’ll head for Doullens,” Jack said. “We can find food there.”
I suddenly worried that maybe Jack was going to change his mind about helping me find Tom, but I needn’t have.
“Doullens is quite a big town,” he said. “There’re a couple of railheads there. Supply dumps. And at least two casualty clearing stations, that I know of. There’re lots of people. If your brother’s division came through, we might find someone who’s seen them.”
We rode on the motorcycle across the wet French countryside. It was hard going. The roads we chose were small ones that had been subjected to less traffic, but nevertheless, the thin tires on the bike cut into the mud at times, and we nearly got stuck twice.
By midmorning we came over the crest of a low hill and saw an ugly little town in front of us. Jack brought the bike to a standstill as the lane we’d been using joined the main road into Doullens.
He seemed to be weighing things up.
“Jack . . . ,” I said.
He looked at me, and I knew what he was thinking. Even from this distance I could see he was right about the town. It was busy, full of people, soldiers. A hive of comings and goings. I looked down at myself. Still in my uniform, though soaked with rain and mud, with Jack’s greatcoat wrapped around me. I would attract attention immediately.
“You’re going to have to stay up here,” he said.
“No . . . ,” I said, but I knew he was right.
“We passed a copse a couple of miles back,” he said. “That will have to do.”
It felt awful to have to turn around and retrace our steps even a hundred yards, but I told myself that until we had news of where Tom was, it made no difference which direction we went in.
Jack left me at the copse.
“Stay hidden,” he said. “I’ll be as quick as I can.”
I scrambled into the trees until I thought I was out of sight, and turned in time to see Jack and his motorbike disappear.
I sat down in the wood, and began shivering almost immediately. The rain had stopped, but I was wet through.
Above me in the sodden treetops, birds jumped and shrieked noisily. I looked up, fearing what I would see. Even the thought of the raven was nearly enough to push me again into a terrible vision of the bird that kept stalking my imagination and my dreams.
I hoped Jack wouldn’t be long.
13
Maybe a couple of hours later Jack came back. I heard the hum, and then the throb of the motorcycle engine, but I waited until I was sure it was him before walking to the edge of the trees and showing myself. Having sat in the cold for all that time, my legs didn’t move properly, and I feared he might miss me as I staggered out, but he had seen me, all right.
“Not a bad place,” he said.
“Any news?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Sorry. Nothing.”
I felt panic rising, and had to fight to control it.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” he said. “We’ll go on to Amiens. It’s most likely they were entrained to Amiens, if they’re heading up to the Somme. Someone there might have seen them. Be hard to miss a division on the march.”
“Why don’t we just go straight to the Somme?” I asked.
&n
bsp; Jack laughed, then stopped abruptly when he looked at me.
“If it were that easy . . . ,” he said. “We can travel quite fast back here. I know it seems slow, but at the front . . . no one goes anywhere quickly. The roads, if there are any, are thick with mud. And the front is full of people. Don’t forget that. The closer we get to the front, the less like this it will be. We haven’t passed anyone else all morning, have we? I could just about get away with it—I am a dispatch rider, after all. But you . . .”
I saw what he meant.
“We’d be stopped in no time,” he said.
I nodded.
“So we need to know exactly where he’s gone first.”
I thought I might start to cry then, but Jack reassured me.
“Don’t worry. We’ll find him.”
I wished I shared his belief.
“Breakfast,” said Jack, swinging a bag from his shoulder. “Or is it lunch?”
“I think it’s last night’s supper,” I said.
The bag was large, but I was disappointed to find that it was not all food. After he pulled out a loaf and some soft cheese, the bag contained only clothes.
A uniform.
“What’s that for?” I asked.
“For you.” Jack nodded. “Put them on. We might pass you off for a soldier from a distance, and besides, they’re dry and you’re not.”
We ate.
“I thought you told me once that this isn’t a fairy tale. That I can’t dress myself as a man and get away with it.”
“I said a lot of things,” he said, and turned his back. “But it can’t hurt, anyway. Get changed, then we’ll head for Amiens.”
I tiptoed a little way back into the wood, and pulled off my nurse’s uniform. As I reached for the clothes Jack had brought me, I saw with revulsion that there were holes and bloodstains in the tunic. I wondered where he had got them, but it was obvious, really. He had said there were casualty clearing stations in Doullens. I saw the regimental badge on the shoulder of the tunic, but didn’t recognize it. It meant nothing to me.
I pulled the clothes on, waves of different feelings washing over me. I realized how comfortable I felt in my VAD uniform, how I belonged in it. I knew who I was. As I dressed myself in a dead soldier’s clothes, it made me feel fragile and weak. I saw my pale girl’s skin slip inside the rough cloth of the uniform, and almost laughed at the stupidity of it all. I didn’t belong in this world.
The uniform was too big for me, but not by so very much. And then, as I was turning the trousers up, a vision came to me and I knew it was how the man had been wounded. A wound from which he had later died.
I was wrapped in the soldier’s dead world, and could not shed it. I had to wear these clothes if I was going to find Tom. I looked at my nurse’s uniform on the wet earth of the copse.
I picked it up and made my way back to Jack.
“What shall I do with these?” I asked.
“Leave them here,” he said. “Come on. We should go. The heat from the bike will warm you up again, at least.”
Something felt wrong to me. I couldn’t just drop my uniform in the mud. I folded it up neatly, and made a small pile, finishing with my apron with the red cross uppermost. I placed it at the foot of a tree just inside the copse, and then turned to Jack.
“Let’s go,” I said, and swung my legs over the parcel rack of the bike properly, now that I was wearing trousers.
We left.
I squinted into the wind as we rode.
After a few miles, I imagined the dirty, stolen uniform that had become mine for a short while, lying in a wet French wood. Then I suddenly remembered that I had left my Greek book with the uniform. In the rush I’d forgotten all about it. I imagined what someone might think if one day they found a nurse’s uniform and a small book of Greek myths in English on the edge of a French wood. Would they ever guess even part of the story behind it?
It was too late to go back for the book, and as we rode I couldn’t help but feel I’d lost my lucky talisman.
12
Below me, as I sit here waiting, I take the occasional peep down into the valley. My eyes grow wide at the sights I see. The men. Thousands of them. The guns. Hundreds upon hundreds of big guns. The horses. The tents, the equipment, the cooking wagons, the ambulances. In a muddy field in the middle of France.
I think back to the last steps of our journey here, through smashed villages and rolling open downs, to this awful, awful place.
“You don’t look much like a soldier,” Jack said as we stopped to rest.
“What do I look like?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. “You’re too pretty to be a man, even under all that mud. And too thin. But you couldn’t be a girl. Who’d think that? And there are some young boys out here. Very young. The ones that lied about their age so they could come.”
I shrugged.
“You don’t look like anything,” Jack repeated. “Your hair. That’s the problem.”
I had tied my hair up behind me, but I knew again he was right. Even though I had clumsily shortened it once before, and even though it was wet and dirty, there was just too much of it.
Jack fished around in the pannier on the bike, and pulled out a knife. A big, sharp knife.
He didn’t have to say anything.
And I said nothing in return.
I took off the greatcoat and laid it across the seat of the bike so it wouldn’t get any muddier. Then I stood before Jack and bowed my head.
Jack lifted the knife toward me, and took a tress of my hair in the other hand. He cut, and all too easily I watched my hair fall in clumps around my feet. I remembered having my hair cut as a little girl by Mother, and smiled bitterly to myself at these so different circumstances. And if a few tears ended up with my hair in the French mud, no one but me knew it.
“I’m no barber,” Jack said, after a while. It seemed to be taking forever. The big locks had come off easily, but as he got closer to my scalp, it was harder work, and he had to saw the hair off with little jerking motions.
At last it was over. I felt my head, and couldn’t believe it was mine. My long flowing hair had been replaced by short, clumsy spikes, an inch or so long, no more.
“It’s just as well we have no mirror,” I said.
Jack opened his mouth, then shut it again.
He looked at me sadly.
“Sorry,” he said. “You’re still too beautiful to be a soldier.”
I turned away, embarrassed. I wished he wouldn’t say things like that. When I turned back, Jack was pumping the starter pedals of the bike. It roared to life, and he held out the coat for me again.
“Getting low on petrol,” he said. “We can’t afford to mess around.”
Around us the landscape had changed. As we skirted the edge of Doullens we had come into a different type of countryside. The land now was more open, rolling downs crisscrossed with fields, and fewer trees. Bleak. Even the mud clogging our wheels and our boots was different, a sticky gray paste that tugged at us, slowed us down.
Jack had decided that we could risk the main road to Amiens.
“Just keep your head inside that coat if we pass anyone.”
But we saw no one. It was as if the world had ended, and everyone was dead except Jack and me.
On the main road we had made good time to Amiens, but as we neared the city Jack once again steered away from the place itself.
“Where are we going?” I shouted over his shoulder.
He shouted something back, but I couldn’t hear what he said over the engine noise. It made no difference. I had to trust him in everything now. I had no other choice.
Finally we began to see people. I clung desperately to his back and hid my face as we passed a column of soldiers marching into the city. Trucks rolled here and there, and I even saw a red cross on one and knew it was a motor ambulance.
The bike stopped.
There was a river in front of us. Not vast, but wide enough, and
smooth flowing. A stone bridge spanned it.
“That’s the Somme,” Jack said. “Across the other side is a place called Longueau. If they came down from Bethune by train, this is where they’ll have come.”
We crossed and came to Longueau, to the station, which was just about all there was of the place.
We parked the motorcycle by the wall of the station. It was late afternoon, and although it’s July, the sky was heavy and gray and the light was bad.
“Right,” Jack said. “I’ll do the talking. You stay with the bike. If anyone asks, you’re a new dispatch rider and I’m teaching you the ropes.”
“Is that going to fool anyone?”
Jack hesitated.
“No,” he admitted, looking at me. “No. Just pray no one comes near you.”
Jack trotted up the steps into the station. As I waited I tried to look nonchalant, and turned my back on the world if anyone came by, pretending to fiddle with the engine on the bike as I had seen Jack do. I thought it would probably do no harm to get some of the mud off it, and was so busy doing this that I didn’t notice Jack had come back.
“Cardonette,” he said, quite quietly, but I could see he was excited underneath. “They marched from here to Cardonette. Four days ago.”
“Four days?” I cried.
“Not so loud,” Jack hissed. “They’re hundreds of men on foot. We’re on a bike. We can catch them up.”
11
Cardonette turned out to be back the way we had come; in fact, we had passed within a mile of it earlier. But we weren’t to know that.
It was evening by the time we got there, and with night falling I felt less conspicuous. We risked riding right into the heart of the village, passing by a tented village of soldiers in the fields as we did so. I craned my neck and strained my eyes trying to see if I could recognize anything that might lead us to Tom, but Jack told me to keep still.