The Foreshadowing

  He went.

  Jack and I argued over what to do, but in the end it was obvious. We had to go home. Tom wasn’t going to come, and even if he did, he’d be shot for desertion.

  All my hopes and plans lay in ruins. Everything I’d worked for. But I couldn’t leave it like that.

  I had to talk to him once more, and say goodbye properly. Then I would leave it alone like everyone wanted me to. I knew I couldn’t risk being seen in the valley in daylight, and now that the mist had lifted, it was much too risky. We found an out-of-the-way crook at the top of the valley, a little hollow among some sickly-looking trees. Away in front of us was the valley, and beyond that, the awful sight of Mametz Wood. The whole place like a biblical scene of pestilence and death.

  I begged Jack to go into Death Valley, find Tom and bring him to talk to me.

  He agreed—grudgingly, but he agreed.

  And that is where I am now, waiting for Tom, to say goodbye.

  As Jack left, he lifted his tunic and pulled his revolver out from the case at his hip.

  “Here,” he said. “In case you get into trouble. Just squeeze the trigger. Don’t pull. And keep your arm strong.”

  He really meant me to use it.

  I knew what he was afraid of. If someone came across me, out here, away from the sight of the rest of the men, anything could happen.

  I sat down in the hollow, using the greatcoat as a blanket, and waited.

  And I am waiting still, for Jack to return with Tom.

  If he doesn’t, then what?

  What if something happens to him? How will I get away then? I will be lost without him, and anything could happen to me. And if it does, my story will stop here, with me in this hole, clutching the revolver tight with every hour that passes.

  My story could end right here.

  5

  4

  3

  I am blind.

  I am as blind as a book with no writing on the page.

  2

  Blind.

  Slowly, everything came back to me.

  But it was a slow and painful recovery, a memory that did not want to come to mind easily, and did so like a difficult birth.

  It has all been a bitter joke.

  The hours passed, dragged by. Finally, I could stand the waiting no longer, and crept to the top of my little hollow in the trees, and peered down on Death Valley. I can only guess at how many thousands of men were massing there.

  It was a vast waiting room, the point at which men and horses and guns were all being gathered in readiness for some terrible battle at the front. I watched streams of horse-men below me, the Indian cavalry again. I almost smiled to see them. Teams of guns were ridden up as well, and thousands upon thousands of men, all milling about in the open, as if it was an expedition and not a war.

  I strained my eyes, desperate to glimpse Tom, or Jack.

  More than once I thought about going down myself, but I forced myself back into my hollow and lay looking at the sky. I was starving, but what did that matter? There were more important things afoot than hunger.

  I thought about Jack more than Tom for some reason. I understood that deserters were shot, and I worried that I had got Jack into danger. What if he was accused of desertion? He had been missing for two days now.

  I couldn’t bear the thought that I might be responsible for getting him shot because I had only been thinking about Tom.

  And Tom. I now realized at last the misconception I had been living under. I’d wanted to mend everything by saving him, to make my family whole again—as whole as it could be, at least—but everything was in tatters.

  I couldn’t take Tom away, or he’d be shot for desertion too. The only way men got away from the front was with a decent wound.

  I clutched the revolver so tightly my fingers ached.

  Then, without warning, there was a scrape behind me, and two men came over the lip of the hollow.

  It was Tom, and behind him, Jack.

  I dropped the gun on the coat and jumped up to meet Tom, and put my arms around him.

  We stayed that way for ages.

  I cried, and so did he.

  Jack stepped back, then sat down on the ground.

  “You haven’t got long” was all he said. He seemed nervous, agitated.

  I looked at Tom, and at last I was pleased to see he seemed happy to see me.

  “I can’t believe you got here,” he said, smiling.

  “I’ve been nursing. In France,” I said. “But I was just trying to get to you.”

  “You’re amazing,” he said. “It’s hard to . . . But you’re here, so it must be true.”

  “How are you?” I asked.

  Tom shook his head.

  “All right,” he said. “I’m all right. Just tell Mother and Father that.”

  I must have looked strangely at him.

  “What is it?” he asked. “Are they all right?”

  “I think so,” I said. “I don’t know. Tom, I ran away. They don’t know where I am. I did this for all of us, but if I ever get home they’ll probably never speak to me again.”

  “Of course they will,” Tom said. “And you must go home. It’s wonderful to see you, Sasha, but you must get away from here. It’s dangerous, for so many reasons. I spoke to your friend Jack. He’s told me what you’ve done. He says he’ll help you get home.”

  “Yes, Tom, but—”

  “No, Sasha, no. I only came up here because Jack assured me you’d seen sense now.”

  “You don’t know what I’ve seen,” I said, angrily.

  “Alexandra, listen, you have to drop all this talk about seeing the future—”

  “Why?” I cried. “Why don’t you believe me? Mother and Father wouldn’t believe me. Edgar wouldn’t believe me. I thought you would, Tom. I need you to. You have to.”

  “It’s not that easy to understand.”

  “Everyone thinks I’m a fool. Edgar died still thinking that. I can’t take it from you, too.”

  “Edgar didn’t think that, I swear,” Tom said. “None of us do.”

  “How do you know what Edgar thought?” I said, bitterly. “The last time we saw him he was miserable and silent. You weren’t even there. Then he went back to the war and was killed.”

  “No, Sasha, I did see him.”

  I looked sharply at Tom, incredulous.

  “He came to see me in Manchester. He said he’d left Brighton a day early to come to see me. We talked like we’d never talked before. It made everything seem right again between us. I felt I understood him, and what he wanted to do. With the war. But he said it had changed him. It wasn’t what he was expecting. He said it terrified him. He told me to go on trying to be a doctor. That there was more use in that than fighting.”

  I shook my head, struggling to understand.

  “And he talked about you, so much. I know he was difficult with you, but he was proud of you, too. He loved you, Sasha. He really did.”

  I just stared at Tom.

  “It’s the truth. Then he went back to the war and he was killed, as you say. When I heard, I wanted to die too, and I couldn’t think of any easier way to do it than to come out here. Do you understand? And I’m going to stay here until either I’m dead, or the war is over.”

  I felt utterly empty. I thought back to when Tom had changed his mind about the war, after Edgar died. Edgar had told him to go on with his training, but what had Tom said that day in the kitchen? Mother had begged him to go on being a doctor, and what had he said?

  There’s no use in it.

  So he’d come to fight or die, instead. I would lose both brothers. I saw that now.

  Tom turned to go. He hesitated, then came toward me, and put his arms around me. As he was breaking away he suddenly froze as he looked at my eyes. He saw something.

  “God, no . . .”

  Then he shook his head, pulling away, shaking his head as if to clear his vision.

  “I’m so tired, I can’t . . .
I have to go now, Sasha. You understand that, don’t you?”

  And I had.

  I had understood that he had to go, I really did. I knew there was nothing I could do, that he couldn’t walk away from it all.

  Unless he was wounded.

  I think it was the weeks and days and hours of seeing and hurting and fearing and believing in Tom’s death.

  That was what made me walk to the greatcoat, and pick up the revolver.

  It happened as slowly as it had in my dreams. But this time I saw everything.

  I saw Jack’s head turn, to see what I was doing. He began to stand, but I had already picked up the gun and pointed it at Tom.

  Jack called out.

  “No!”

  Tom turned.

  I pulled the trigger. The gun seemed to explode in my hand, and I felt a kick to my arm. I had tried to aim at Tom’s legs, so I wouldn’t hurt him too badly, but the force of the recoil sent the gun flying up.

  A moment later, Tom lay bleeding on the ground, the trees above him still shaking from the gunshot.

  “Oh, Sasha,” Tom said. “What have you done?”

  Blood began to pour from between his fingers as he held them to his chest.

  Time stood still.

  1

  So, weeks have passed, and that moment is behind me now, but it leaves behind an awful fact: that it was I who shot Tom.

  First, it is true that without Jack, Tom would have died.

  As we stood in the hollow, and the reality of what I’d done broke through, I began to shake with fear. Those final moments are unbearable to think of.

  Almost as soon as I shot Tom, a flight of shells began to twitter overhead. They landed nearby, with a soft plop into the ground, and no loud explosion.

  I didn’t understand, but Jack did.

  “Gas,” he said. “Oh, God.”

  Tom was barely conscious.

  But somehow, we got him down from the hollow, and that’s when I took the gas. I was lagging behind as Jack carried Tom toward the camp.

  Suddenly gas was in my eyes, and my lungs, and though I was sure I was full of it, I must have had only a taste. Nonetheless, I was struggling to breathe properly. I staggered and fell well behind Jack. Another shell burst somewhere near me, not gas but explosive this time, and that’s when I stopped seeing.

  Amidst the chaos from the gas attack, Jack found some stretcher bearers and got Tom to the field dressing station. I stumbled along by myself, then felt Jack’s hand. He had come back for me.

  I heard voices.

  “Poor lad, got a whiff,” someone said.

  “We’ll sort him out.”

  It took me a while to understand they were talking about me. I must have looked so awful they really did think I was a boy. Jack told me later that I was a complete mess. My eyes were watering, my skin was gray. I was covered in mud from head to toe and coughing up great chunks of mucus and fluid from my lungs.

  No wonder they didn’t see the girl underneath it all.

  We got away.

  I didn’t see Tom again. Jack says he was packed straight off to the ambulance train, and given his Blighty ticket with a good chance of making it. He had a nice clean bullet wound, not some terrible jagged mess from a piece of shrapnel.

  I really believe he’ll be all right. The visions have stopped.

  In fact, for a long time, I had no vision of any kind.

  Now I can see again, but like any normal person, nothing more.

  I was put on an ambulance train later, still unable to see, still fighting to breathe, and ended up in Rouen.

  And there, as some friendly nurse cut away my uniform, they finally found out I was a girl.

  Blind, I reached up and grabbed the nurse’s arm.

  “Whoever you are,” I said, “please help me. I’m a nurse. I swear, I’m a nurse.”

  And bless them, they did.

  I was put in a private room, and they nursed me back to health, and slowly, ever so slowly, my sight came back.

  They said it was a miracle, but I knew I had to see again, and I did.

  One day, I had a visitor.

  I was sitting in the hospital gardens. It was a warm, hot day at the end of August, and I looked up to see a soldier walking toward me.

  It took me a moment to realize it was Jack.

  He was different. He was smarter. Cleaner. I had never seen him clean-shaven before, and his hair was smart too.

  “Alexandra,” he said, and put his arms around me.

  I held him away from me and smiled.

  “You can see again?”

  “I knew I had to see you again,” I said, and he laughed.

  “Your hair’s growing back,” he said, as if it was the most amazing thing in the world.

  “I’ve got something for you,” he went on, and pulled a small package from his pocket. “I went back for it.”

  He handed me something wrapped in newspaper, and nodded at me. I opened it. It was Miss Garrett’s book of Greek myths.

  I began to laugh, with tears in my eyes.

  “Thank you, Jack.” I smiled. “Thank you. I said I’d take good care of it. Now I can send it back to her.”

  “It’s a little worse for wear,” he said. “A month in the rain.”

  I laughed again, and then he told me everything that had happened since the day we’d found Tom.

  He’d got away with being absent from duty, he said, by claiming his bike had broken down in the middle of nowhere. He said they just about believed it because it was easier than trying to prove he’d deserted. And after all, he’d come back, and so hadn’t deserted in the end, anyway. As for stealing me from the camp at Bethune, there was no proof that it had been Jack who had done it. They seemed to have let it drop.

  “There’s a war on,” Jack said, grinning. “Much worse things to worry about.”

  We talked for hours in the sunshine.

  It was wonderful to see him again, and he told me how much I’d helped him. He said he’d come to a new kind of understanding about his premonitions. That maybe what you thought you saw was not the only truth, but just one possible truth. Maybe you could change things to another, different truth if you tried hard enough.

  Like I had, he said.

  He said he still had visions, but they worried him less now.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  I told him that they had gone. That they had left me when I went blind, and so far had not returned.

  But still an awful thought hung over me.

  I had seen the very thing that had taken me all the way to find Tom, and it was I who had shot him. Maybe none of this had to happen at all, had I not made it.

  “Perhaps,” said Jack. “But your brother would probably have got it anyway.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “His battalion went up from Death Valley to High Wood a few days after we were there. It was a mess. They were annihilated. Almost none of them came back.”

  I thought for a while. I realized that I’d never really seen anything about myself. Of course, I’d had the raven dream many times, but never seen that I was the one pulling the trigger.

  And somehow, I understood something else. Maybe it had to happen like this. Extraordinary as it is, I think this might be the thing that brings my family back together, in the end. Edgar is gone, but my memory of him is a happy and proud one now, and I know he felt the same about me.

  Then something else came to me. I suspected something.

  “Why did you agree to help me, Jack?” I asked. “After you got me out of Bethune, you just wanted me to go home. Did you see what was going to happen? When you touched me?”

  Jack sighed.

  “Yes. In a way. I couldn’t believe it, but I went along with it. I wondered if there was a way out of it for you after all. I didn’t say anything to you. What could I have said? But when I saw you aiming the gun . . . then I wanted to stop you, but it was too late.”

  After a while
, Jack left me to my thoughts.

  Before he went, we held each other once more.

  “Do you see anything?” he asked, looking into my eyes.

  “No,” I said. Then, almost too nervous to ask: “Do you?”

  “No,” he said, smiling. “Just a long and good life. Be happy, Alexandra. You deserve it.”

  I waved to him from my bench in the garden as he turned the corner of the hospital, and vanished from sight.

  And so I am left alone, but not alone.

  I have decided to stay here.

  I spoke to the commandant of the hospital here in Rouen, and told her some of my story, though not all of it. I told her I was a VAD nurse who had got into the danger zone, and that all I wanted to do was try to help men get well.

  She asked no more questions. They need every pair of hands they can get out here.

  One day, I might go home to my parents. I will write to them soon. I don’t know what they will say, but for now, I am happy.

  It’s funny, but out here I often think of Clare, my friend from long ago. I’m not sure why, but maybe it’s because I hope I’m making up for things at last, by helping with the wounded men.

  Father didn’t want me to be a nurse at all, and now here I am, in a war in France, doing just that. Maybe, like Edgar, he thought I wasn’t up to it. But I realized a few days ago that I am. I went all the way to the front to find Tom, and though I was very scared, I did it.

  I did it after all.

  So I am happy. I am busy.

  The bells are sounding.

  Wounded men are coming.

  And I must go. I have my work to do.

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. In order to give it credibility much of it is based on real places and events, but all characters in the story, both in England and in France, are fictitious. However, instances of reported premonition were not uncommon in the trenches, and the epithet Hoodoo is from a genuine case.