The Foreshadowing (22 page)

“All those other times. You have seen deaths, and they have happened, because they were the future. What makes you think it will be any different with your brother? That’s how it is. You should go home before you get yourself killed. Or worse. What are you going to do? Dress up as a man, as if this is some kind of fairy tale, and find him in the whole of the front line?”

I could feel tears falling from my face onto the table now.

“But that’s—”

“Awful?” Jack said. “Terrible? Terrifying? Appalling? Which is it to be? Because I’ve been through them all, and still can’t decide which. The future is written, and there’s nothing you can do about it. The future is written in blood. Your brother’s death, yours, mine. All written and waiting to happen, and not a damn thing you can do about it!”

He flung his hand at the jug, which smashed against the wall. The last of the wine flowed across the rough surface of the table, and I could not help seeing it as blood that had been shed.

A large old man came across the room toward us. He looked angry. I guessed he was the owner. I could see the young girl peering at us from behind the bar. The soldiers, too; one of them stood up, sensing trouble.

But Jack averted it all.

He rose, took an extravagant bundle of francs from his pocket, and put the notes on the table, avoiding the wine.

He held his hands up to the man, and shrugged, showing that we were leaving. Seeing the money, the man smiled back.

As we went Jack spoke to him.

“Je suis desolé,”
he said.

And in my muddled state, I couldn’t remember whether that meant “I’m sorry” or “I’m desolate,” though I knew what Jack meant, in truth.

Jack seemed to sober up quickly. Maybe he was never anywhere near drunk, but he brought me back to Wimereux, where it was Millie’s turn to be appalled at how late I was.

“Alexandra,” she whispered to me, through the darkness. “I heard McAndrew talking about you. She was talking to our section superintendent. I didn’t hear what they said, though. I just heard your name. Well, they said Miriam, but you know what I mean.”

I was too tired to care.

I’m lying in bed now, trying to remember everything Jack said. As he stopped the motorcycle and helped me to the ground with a gentle hand, he spoke to me, softly.

“Alexandra,” he said. “Try to understand that there’s nothing you can do. The future has already happened. We’re just waiting to live it.”

“Well, then,” I said. “In that case, it’s my future to try to save Tom, whether he dies or not.”

Jack smiled, thoughtfully.

“You’re a wise girl. It took me years to get to that point. Very well, then it’s my fate to tell you this. Your brother’s brigade is in Flanders. Around the La Bassée canal. You can’t miss it. There’s a new crater near Givenchy called the Red Dragon that you could lose St. Paul’s Cathedral in. But you’d better hurry, no one stays in one place for too long around here.”

And he sped off into the darkness, his engine roaring loud enough to wake the dead.

31

I dream.

I dream of Jack, his pale blue eyes, and I can see that once there was life in them, that once they showed joy. I see him as a young corporal, eager to please, prepared to work hard.

It’s gone now, that blue fire in his eyes; they are eyes that have seen too much death and are dying from it themselves.

But not entirely.

I cling to the fact that even Jack, who has had all belief ground out of him, had enough spirit left to set me on my way to Tom.

I’m coming.

30

Five days have passed since that evening with Jack, the longest five days of my life.

I thought I was coming to find Tom, but the war had other ideas. In a way it was the war that saved me, and the war that betrayed me.

The day after Jack told me where to find Tom I got even more definite news of his battalion. I had still not seen a soldier wearing the uniform of the Twentieth Royal Fusiliers, but I also knew that had there been any I might have missed them. There were still as many as thirty trains a day arriving loaded with wounded.

We were stretched beyond exhaustion that Saturday, as we had been all the previous week. Most of the casualties were coming from the south, from the Somme, but there were one or two trains from the east, from Flanders, and that was where my attention was now fixed.

From the east there finally came the message I had been waiting for, but it was a grisly one.

A train rolled in from Bethune about nine o’clock that Saturday evening, and I set myself to help unload the wounded. There was such chaos and confusion along the platform that no one noticed that I should have finished my shift and left by then.

I saw what I had been waiting for.

He had died on the train. A private of the Twentieth, a public school boy who didn’t even look as old as Tom.

Shamelessly I cursed him for dying before I could question him, ask him where he’d come from, where the rest of the men were now. And whether he knew Tom. But he must have. I know that Tom’s battalion is a small, closely knit one. It has a poor reputation because it’s very new, and it’s formed only of boys from public school.

But the boy in front of me would be answering no questions.

Sisters and nurses were staggering wearily from the carriages; orderlies were lifting the stretchers onto the platform. The men who could walk were shuffling down to the rest station.

I would have to be quick. The dead boy lay on a stretcher on the platform. It was obvious he was dead, but everyone was too busy worrying about those still living.

I put out my hand and touched his white face. I hate to say it, but I have seen so much death now it leaves me cold. If I thought of every mother of every soldier waiting at home and praying, I’d break down. It’s the same for all the nurses. We have become immune.

Nothing. He had gone, and whatever life is had gone with him. I felt nothing, saw nothing, heard no words.

Then I felt ashamed of myself, and came away before anyone noticed that in spite of my immunity, I was crying over a dead boy I’d never even met.

29

I went back to our billets, and slept.

Things were closing in on me last Sunday, though as I reported for duty that morning with Millie, I had no idea how fast.

It was another ominous, cloudy day.

Trains poured in constantly, and once more we waded through a sea of wounded men, and their bloody bandages and muddied uniforms. Cutting, washing, daubing, wrapping.

Then we heard that there were shortages of nurses and doctors aboard the trains. It meant nothing to us at the time. There’s a shortage of everyone and everything everywhere.

Later that morning Millie heard that she was going to make a run on an ambulance train to Amiens and back. It meant she’d be away for hours, the best part of a day, in fact, and then I was scared. I needed Millie, I needed her looking out for me, covering my back, keeping an eye on McAndrew.

It wasn’t to be. Around lunchtime, she left on the train for Amiens. I didn’t even see her go, or have time to say goodbye, because I was waist deep in mess in the rest station. At the time I just felt sorry not to have seen her go.

I had no premonition. I didn’t know then what has happened since. I had no idea what was going to happen to me later, and it made me aware of something I had not considered before.

In all the things I have seen, and witnessed; in all the foreshadowings, I have yet to see anything about myself.

28

The war saved me.

It was about ten o’clock on Sunday evening. I had been working for nearly fourteen hours without a break. I scarcely knew what I was doing.

Men came into the rest station, without ceasing. Man after man after man. Tall ones, short ones, thin ones, young ones. A few older ones, but not many. By then they were all the same to me. I hate that. When I got to France, I cared about every man, and I saw each as an individual with his own story. Now they’re just men, and I treat them all the same. I have become blunted to them, I can no longer feel for them. But I sense their terror as a single huge monster.

Occasionally I see death in front of me on a living man’s face, but even that no longer shocks me. I have seen it so much.

But every death reminds me of Edgar, and reminds me of Tom.

Suddenly I was plucked from the slow hell of the rest station dressing suite.

“Hibbert!”

I was so lost in my work, so exhausted, that I heard the name called maybe only the third time.