Inherit the Skies Page 40

  With a sinking heart she knew he had her. The prospect of being alone with Hugh for a single hour, let alone perhaps days on end, was repugnant to her but when Gilbert put it like that it was impossible to refuse him after all he had done for her. She folded her hands tightly, conscious of his eyes on her as he waited for her answer.

  ‘Very well. What do I have to do?’

  ‘Alicia begins her course on Monday. Perhaps you could come to Chewton Leigh early enough for her to show you the ropes.’

  Another wave of distaste made Sarah’s skin prickle. Surely they did not expect her to attend to Hugh’s personal toilet – wash him and dress him? She could not do it. Would not!

  As if reading her thoughts Gilbert said swiftly: ‘Don’t worry – you won’t have to do anything you might consider improper. Hugh is quite capable of doing everything for himself now with the exception of having his bath and Evans has proved himself most loyal in that respect. No, it is more a matter of being with him and preventing him from brooding too much. A good many of his friends died at Wytschaete, you know, and things were pretty bad. Hugh is more affected than he cares to admit.’

  ‘Really?’ she said, doubt creeping into her voice. Hugh the career soldier, Hugh the man – neither had ever struck her as being sensitive enough to be upset by the things he had seen and experienced, however horrible. She pictured him as he had been at Christmas, sitting there and sneering at her, and found Gilbert’s statement even more difficult to believe.

  ‘A man like Hugh believes emotion is a weakness,’ Gilbert said and again she had the uncanny feeling he could read her thoughts. ‘As for fear – he equates that with cowardice, not fully realising that it is only possible to be truly brave when one is afraid. Until now his boldness has all stemmed from lack of imagination. Now he has seen warfare at its most horrible and he does not need imagination to conjure it up. His memories are all too real and he has to come to terms with the emotions they evoke. Besides this he knows he has to return to France as soon as he is fit.’ He paused, looking at her directly. ‘ Some of the stories he may tell you will not be very pleasant, but I believe you are strong enough to listen, just as Alicia is. You are strong enough, aren’t you, Sarah?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said faintly, thinking that however gory Hugh’s conversation might be it would be preferable to the personal things he might say to her.

  ‘Good. As to this flying business, put it out of your mind. It is not practicable at the moment – and goodness knows what Eric would say if he knew what you were suggesting. Since he is not here it is only right that I should uphold his wishes.’

  So much for your fine theories about the emancipation of women! Sarah thought furiously but she did not dare say it. Her respect for Gilbert was far too great.

  ‘I shall tell Alicia to expect you first thing in the morning then,’ Gilbert said and there was nothing she could do but nod impotently.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  On a bitter morning a week after Christmas Adam pushed aside his rough army blanket and crawled out of his narrow bed. Outside the hut which comprised his billet here at the Central Flying School the darkness was still complete and Adam shivered as he drew icy water for his bath and soaped himself vigorously.

  If this was war then it was a tedious business! he thought irritably, and not for the first time he found himself envying the young men he tutored. They were a motley crew, some with the instant feeling for the controls which marked out the born flier, some struggling with grim determination to master the techniques and skills, a few who would never make pilots at all. But they all came to the Flying School brimming with enthusiasm, craving the excitement that trench warfare could never give them, ready to swank about their achievements and excuse their disasters, and Adam had found himself growing steadily more impatient with his own role. All very well to tell himself he was playing a vital part in the war effort – he could not rid himself of the feeling that instructing was an old man’s job, and he was far from being an old man.

  It was true, of course, that very little was going on in France just now. The hard European winter had settled in on the battlefields, freezing the mud in the trenches and restricting the flying. When pilots did manage to take off for reconnaissance they were at the mercy of strong westerly winds which blew them towards Germany. But when conditions improved in the spring it would be a different story. Then the squadrons would have plenty to do. As he threw on his clothes ready to begin another long day’s instruction Adam made up his mind. He was not prepared to take a back seat any longer. When the show began again he wanted to be in the thick of it.

  As soon as the opportunity arose he went to see the Commanding Officer and put his case. At first the CO tried to talk him out of it – Adam was one of the best and most experienced instructors he had. But Adam persisted and at last the CO agreed to put his request to the authorities. A week later the reply came back – granted. Adam was to be posted to one of the squadrons at present in France who had suffered losses. His place at Upavon would be taken by a Flying Officer who had been wounded when his Avro had been shot down but who was now well enough to return to light duties.

  ‘You had better take a few days’ leave and go home to say goodbye to your family,’ the CO told him, squinting at Adam through his monocle. ‘ God alone knows when you will be back in England again.’

  ‘Can’t we be friends, Sarah?’ Hugh asked.

  It was her second day at Chewton Leigh House. Annie had agreed to look after Stephen and with some trepidation Sarah had moved in to be on hand whenever she was wanted. This morning she had been up with the lark to lay the fire in Hugh’s sitting-room and bring him breakfast and the round of chores took her back to her days in service. But she minded this less than having Hugh’s company forced upon her and now his silken request made her bristle, wary of what was to come.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, avoiding his eyes.

  ‘Yes you do. I believe you’d be nicer to me if I were a German prisoner of war!’ he said ruefully. ‘But since we are stuck with one another for the next couple of weeks don’t you think we should let bygones be bygones? What happened was a very long time ago and before that we used to get along very well. You liked me then, didn’t you?’

  Briefly she was transported back to those sunny days of her youth before everything had turned sour. Yes, she had liked Hugh.

  He had often been her champion and she had enjoyed his company. It was what he had done to her that she could not forgive.

  She glanced at him, sitting there in his chair with the breakfast tray on his knees, looking thin and frail almost in his paisley silk dressing gown, and wondered suddenly if perhaps she had been too hard on him. He had been young and headstrong, carried away by a young man’s passions. As for his betrayal of her that was almost understandable. He must have been terrified of Gilbert finding out what he had done. It did not excuse him, of course, but all the same it was true that it was a long time ago now. Hugh was no longer the brash youth he had been – there were dark shadows beneath his eyes now and lines on his handsome face that had not been there before.

  ‘I hate being bad friends with you, Sarah,’ Hugh was saying, and the eagerness of his tone tore at her heart. ‘Couldn’t we at least be civil to one another whilst you are here? Otherwise we are in for a pretty miserable couple of weeks, aren’t we?’

  The door opened; it was Evans who had come to help Hugh with his toilet. Sarah made to leave but Hugh caught at her arm.

  ‘Please?’ he pressed her and she caught a glimpse of the old, charming Hugh.

  ‘Oh very well, we’ll see,’ she said shortly.

  It was impossible to dispel the grudges of a lifetime so easily but over the next few days her attitude towards him softened imperceptibly.

  He was subject to wild swings of mood, she discovered. At times he could be amusing, entertaining her with anecdotes of life in the Officers’ Mess, at others he became so silent and depressed she fel
t it her duty to prise from him those other, horrifying stories which upset him as much to tell as it did for her to listen, but which were a vital part of the healing process none the less.

  He told of refugees traipsing wearily along with their few pathetic belongings heaped onto handcarts, of burning houses sending showers of sparks and clouds of acrid smoke into the clear autumn air, of a ravaged countryside where the trees, shattered by shellfire, stretched bare and broken arms to the sky. Worst of all he told of the friends he had seen die, of the thunder of the guns and the screams of terrified horses.

  ‘Christ, don’t ever tell Alicia what happens to the horses out there,’ he begged. ‘She’d go crazy if she knew. The battlefield, with all the modern weapons of war, is no place for them any more.’

  Sarah pressed her hands together so tightly that the nails bit into the palms in an effort not to show her own horror at the fate of the proud and trusting beasts. Things must be very bad, she decided, if a dedicated cavalryman like Hugh had come to believe that the horse no longer had a place in warfare.

  ‘The stuff they have now is almost beyond belief,’ Hugh went on. ‘Take the Jack Johnsons, for instance – they will blast a hole in the ground twenty feet deep and thirty feet across. And the ‘‘coalboxes’’ – where do these names come from? – can kill several men at once. It’s a bloody war, Sarah – and I use the word advisedly, not as the adjective that figures prominently in our CO’s vocabulary and is not fit for use in the presence of ladies.’

  He smiled slightly as he said it but Sarah saw a muscle spasm begin in his cheek. Impulsively she reached over and took his hand.

  ‘It must be dreadful,’ she said inadequately.

  ‘Yes, and it’s going to get worse. This war isn’t like any other, Sarah, yet it is being fought the old way. Whole companies rushing from cover, wailing like banshees, for all the world as if it were a battle back in the days of the Civil War, and getting mown down like flies. And the more the boffins work on producing newer, more effective weapons of every kind the more dire it will get – unless the puppet masters change their tactics. I tell you, I’m not looking forward to going back – and I am a trained soldier.’

  ‘Do you have to go back?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Dammit, of course I do!’ Hugh replied, his nerves spilling over into irritation. ‘As soon as I am fit I shall be in the thick of it again – unless it’s over first, and I don’t think it will be. Not while there are still men left alive to stand up and fight.’

  His fingers tightened on Sarah’s but she scarcely noticed; cold horror had replaced all other feeling. What was happening out there was almost beyond belief, certainly beyond understanding. How could human beings do this to one another? For the first time she felt a glimmer of sympathy for James and his pacifist views. But she knew better than to mention them now. She sat silently holding Hugh’s hand and feeling more angry and more helpless than she had ever felt in her life before. All the crises and troubles of her own life seemed so trivial in comparison with this, mere pinpricks seen against this huge running sore of horror.

  The days passed and Sarah found something of their old companionship returning as she did her best to keep his mind off the nightmares he had lived through and to which he must shortly return. And without a doubt she was good for him. Soon he was taking his bath before breakfast unaided and eating with the family, so much more like his old self that even Gilbert noticed and commented on it.

  ‘You always knew how to bring a little sunshine into our lives, Sarah,’ he said, smiling at her, and she felt as warmed by his approval as she had when she was twelve years old.

  It was almost the end of the second week and they were in the drawing-room, Sarah reading to Hugh from A Tale of Two Cities. Since they had run out of topics of conversation it was a good way to pass an afternoon but Sarah’s mind was not completely on the book. This morning she had received a letter from Eric telling her that he was moving to Northolt from where he would be doing a certain amount of operational flying, patrolling the coast to keep a look out for raiders. Ten days before Christmas the German battle cruisers which had carried out an abortive raid on Great Yarmouth six weeks earlier had come back to the attack and this time had met with more success. Scarborough, Whitby and Hartlepool had been shelled from the sea and more than a hundred civilians killed. Now aeroplanes were to be used as an early warning system in an effort to prevent such a thing happening again.

  When she reached the end of the chapter Sarah looked up from the page to see Hugh’s eyes on her. She had thought she had grown used to his company over the past week but now something in his expression disconcerted her, an echo from the past. She placed the bookmark between the pages, set the book down on the table beside her and stood up.

  ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ His eyes were still on her face and his gaze was disconcerting.

  ‘Well I certainly would!’ she said, a little too quickly. ‘My throat is as dry as a bone.’ She turned, intending to escape to the kitchen, but as she passed his chair his hand shot out, fastening around her wrist. ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, startled.

  ‘Come here!’ His voice was low and urgent. ‘I want you near to me.’

  ‘Hugh, for goodness’ sake!’

  ‘Be nice to me,’ he wheedled. ‘ It’s not such an unpleasant thought, is it? You like me, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She tried to free herself from his grasp and could not. Frail he might have looked but there was no mistaking his strength now. He laughed, holding her fast and levering himself to his feet so that he towered over her.

  ‘Oh Sarah, don’t you remember the way it was? I do. How could I ever forget?’ His voice was slightly slurred as if he had been drinking though Sarah knew he had not.

  ‘You’re mad!’ she managed.

  His lip curled a little. ‘Am I? Perhaps you make me mad.’

  She began to struggle but somehow struggling only brought her into closer contact with him. His lips found hers and he kissed her brutally. She beat at him with her hands but he was too strong for her and he held her fast, laughing down at her.

  ‘Oh Sarah, how you love to fight! You always did. But you mustn’t fight too much now. I am a sick man, remember.’

  ‘You are sick all right!’ she grated and tasted the blood on her lips where his teeth had sunk in.

  ‘You wouldn’t send me back to France without something to remember, would you? Come on now, Sarah …’

  ‘Stop it!’ she screamed, memories of the past so fresh and sharp in her mind that she reacted with something close to hysteria. But her resistance only excited him more. His hand went to the fastening of her dress, tearing at it in a frenzy. ‘Stop it!’ she screamed again as the fastening gave.

  And at that precise moment the door opened and a voice enquired: ‘What the devil is going on here?’

  Again it was déjà vu. Hugh released Sarah abruptly and she swung round, half expecting to see Lawrence, his fists raised to fight Hugh. But it was not Lawrence. It was Adam.

  For a moment the shock of seeing him numbed her. Then reaction to Hugh’s attack, shame, and horror that he should find her in such circumstances made her sob aloud. Her hands flew to the open neck of her dress, pulling it together over her exposed bosom. She heard Hugh laugh but recognised the trace of nervousness which was choking him.

  ‘Adam, old man! Sarah and I were just having a bit of fun …’

  Adam was staring in disbelief and her shame turned to fury. Once before Hugh had blamed her and she had been unable to defend herself; he was not going to do so again.

  ‘How dare you, Hugh?’ she spat at him. ‘You might have been having fun – I certainly was not! If I had known you were capable of a repeat performance I would never have come here to keep you company, no matter how Gilbert begged me. And to think I felt sorry for you! You haven’t changed. Not one iota. You are still the same. Well, I won’t keep silent any longer. Th
e only reason I have done so all these years is because I thought the truth would hurt Gilbert too much – and because I was afraid he might not believe me. Now …’

  She whirled round to face Adam. ‘Listen to what I have to say – and then see if you think I was enjoying myself with this monster!’

  The room seemed to sing still and echo with her words. Hugh had turned pale, the blood draining from his face and leaving it the colour of old parchment so that once again he looked sick and ill; Adam was staring from one to the other of them like a man who had seen a ghost. And suddenly the realisation of the hopelessness of it struck her like a thunderbolt. Whatever she said it would make no more difference now than it had then. Adam would dismiss it all as hysterical guilt. She could see the contempt and disgust in his eyes and she could bear it no longer.

  ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that!’ she snapped.

  She ran from the room but by the time she reached the staircase she was seeing it through a red mist. She lifted her skirt clear of her flying feet and raced, upstairs as if a dozen devils were on her heels. She was using one of the rooms Alicia had prepared for her officers – there had been no alternative – and she rushed in, closing the door after her and leaning against it, her breath coming in sobbing gasps and the tears, hot and blinding, running down her face.

  Oh the injustice of it! She had grown used to Lawrence, Blanche and Alicia regarding her as little better than a whore, but for Adam to think the same …

  After a while she crossed to where her valise was stowed on the newly constructed luggage rack and laid it open on the bed. She had begun throwing her clothes into it when a tap at the door made her stiffen. ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Adam. May I come in?’

  She almost called out ‘no’, she did not want to see anyone and especially not him, but she did not. She crossed to the door and opened it.