Harvest of War (3 page)

The boy shrugged and moved to the door. As he reached it Tom said sharply, ‘And don't go making any such lewd suggestions to any of the other officers, or you might get a hiding. No English gentleman would stoop to anything so low.'

Louis gave him a smile of amused contempt. ‘You think?'

He left the room, closing the door softly behind him, and Tom, deeply shaken, grabbed the glass of Pernod and drained it, even though the taste revolted him. He looked at himself in the mirror. Why had the boy approached him? Was there something about his face or his bearing that gave a clue to his awful secret? He thought he had concealed it very well but now he wondered if other people guessed it too, and the thought made him blush again.

Going downstairs he was jolted out of his introspective mood by the sight of a familiar figure standing in the hall. Ralph had been wounded a month earlier and sent home to recuperate. Tom's heart leapt. Ralph had been the most significant presence in his life since his schooldays. They had joined up together and this was the longest time they had been apart since that first day. At Tom's exclamation of delight Ralph swung round and ran to the foot of the stairs.

‘Tom! Thank God! You're still OK. Oh, it's good to see you!' He gripped Tom's hand in a fervent clasp and pounded him on the shoulder.

Tom, in a confusion of mingled joy and shame, resisted the urge to embrace him.

‘It's good to see you, too. But I'd rather you were still safe in England. How are you? Completely recovered?'

‘Fit as a flea and thankful to be back in harness.'

‘Really?'

‘God, yes! You've no idea how awful it is at home. People constantly asking “what's it like out there?” and “how did you get wounded?” and then the next question is always, “when are you going back?” As if anyone who has been through it wants to talk about it when they get home!'

‘I remember,' Tom agreed.

‘Oh, I've got news! I had a letter from Leo. She's in Salonika. Have you heard anything?'

‘Yes, there was a letter waiting for me when we got back here last week. Thank God she's all right.'

‘I wish she'd come home. Can't you write and tell her to get on the first ship?'

‘I can write, but it won't do any good. You know that as well as I do.'

The gong sounded for dinner and they went in to join their fellow officers, who were all delighted to see Ralph back. After that there was little time for private conversation.

Three days later, as he left the dining room after dinner, Tom was sent for by the colonel. ‘You're not going to like this, old man, but I'm afraid you're being transferred.'

‘Transferred? Where to?'

‘First Battalion are being moved to the area round Thiepval, near the River Somme. They're very short of officers, so I've had orders to transfer you to them.'

‘Why me?' The words came out almost as a bleat.

‘Don't ask me.' The CO shrugged. ‘God alone knows how the minds of those at HQ work. I'm sorry, old chap, but there it is.'

‘When do I go?'

‘First thing tomorrow.'

Ralph was not in the drawing room, where the officers habitually assembled after dinner, and someone said they thought he had decided to have an early night. Depressed beyond words, Tom dragged himself upstairs to find him and give him the news. It seemed unjustly cruel that they should be separated when Ralph had only just got back. Reaching the corridor leading to the bedrooms, he was infuriated to see Louis coming out of Ralph's room.

‘Damn you!' he exclaimed. ‘I told you to keep your filthy ideas to yourself.'

The boy looked at him and sniggered. Then he reached into his pocket and held up a packet of English cigarettes. As Tom stared, he slipped past him, still sniggering, and ran down the stairs. Tom rapped briefly on Ralph's door and walked in. Ralph was standing in front of the washstand with his trousers round his ankles, washing his genitals. He swung round as Tom entered, water splashing on the carpet.

‘Damn it, Tom! Can't a chap have any privacy? What do you want?'

Tom stood and stared at him wordlessly. There was no doubt in his mind about what had been going on, and suddenly the whole idealized edifice he had built up since his adolescence came crashing down. Ralph glared at him for a moment, then reddened and turned away, pulling up his trousers.

‘I don't know what you're thinking . . .' His voice wavered uncertainly.

‘I know,' Tom said. ‘I know what has happened. That boy came to me a few days ago and made the same suggestion.'

Ralph looked round. ‘You didn't . . .?'

‘No, of course I bloody didn't!'

There was a silence. Then Ralph, his back turned again, muttered, ‘Oh, Tom, I'm sorry. I hoped you'd never find out.'

‘Find out? What?'

‘What a weak, pathetic creature I am. I've tried, God knows I've tried. But there is something in me . . . something that yearns for . . . for . . .'

‘For that? For that sordid business with a despicable creature like that boy?'

‘No! No, you don't understand. How could you? You're so straight, so honest. We used to snigger about this sort of thing when we were at school and express contempt for those who fancied themselves in love with a pretty boy. Me, louder than anyone! Because I was terrified of what you might guess. I thought it would pass: that one day I would feel differently. But it hasn't. I know that for men like me the only honourable course is abstinence . . . but I don't have the strength.' He turned to Tom, and his face was streaked with tears. ‘I need someone, Tom! I need some kind of human contact.'

‘But why not come to me?' Tom cried. ‘For God's sake, Ralph, you didn't have to suffer like this. If only I had known . . .'

He was about to spill out the story of all the long years of painful concealment but before he could go on Ralph came closer and put his hand on his lips.

‘No, Tom. I know you want to help, but there's nothing you can do. You have to understand. All these years you've been the one shining light in my existence. Your honest friendship has kept me sane, made me feel that I'm not completely worthless. If I lost that, I don't know what I should do. I'm more sorry than I can say that you had to find out this way. But if you can find it in your heart to forgive me, to continue to be my friend, that is more important to me than anything else in the world. Can you do that?'

Tom stared at him in dumb misery. ‘You know I can. Whatever happens, I would never let you down.'

‘I love you, Tom,' Ralph said. ‘You are like the brother I never had. Please let me hang on to that.'

Tom swallowed and nodded. He wanted to seize Ralph and crush him in his arms and pour out his true feelings, but with a few words he had put that beyond the reach of possibility for ever. Instead he said, ‘They're transferring me to First Battalion. I leave first thing tomorrow.'

Luke Pavel drew the hired buggy to a standstill and pointed ahead with his whip. ‘There it is. Welcome to Taupaki Farm.'

Sophie gazed in the direction he was pointing. ‘All this? Yours?'

‘Well, my Dad's at the moment. Mine one day.'

‘Is beautiful!' Sophie was still struggling with English, although Luke had been giving her lessons on the voyage from Cairo.

‘Horsey! Horsey! Giddy-up!' cried an excited voice from behind them. Anton had made more rapid progress with the new language than his mother.

Luke turned in his seat and smiled at the little boy. ‘Yes, lots of horses. We'll have to see if we can find you a pony to ride.'

He turned back abruptly and shook the reins to make the horse walk on, aware that his words had contained an assumption that he had no reason to make. That thought segued naturally into the dilemma that had dominated his mind since the ship docked at Wellington. In a few minutes he would have to introduce Sophie to his family – and he did not know what form of words to use. He had written home soon after leaving Cairo and posted the letter when the ship called at Cape Town, but he had ducked the problem of explaining their relationship, simply stating that he was bringing with him a young Macedonian widow and her son, whom he had met by chance during the fighting on Gallipoli and who needed sanctuary and a temporary home. He knew that the reference to her nationality would guarantee her welcome and decided not to muddy the waters by referring to their hasty marriage. That was what he told himself, but he knew that the real reason was that he was so confused in his own mind about the nature of their relationship that he was unwilling to make it concrete in writing. All through the voyage they had maintained a chaste distance. In fact, they had had little choice in the matter as Luke had been accommodated with the rest of the returning troops in a crowded dormitory, while Sophie and Anton had shared a cabin with two other nurses. But during the day they had spent a lot of time together, reminiscing about their earlier experiences at Adrianople and playing with Anton. Luke found himself enjoying both her company and his developing relationship with the little boy more and more as the days passed. They had never spoken of the future. It seemed that they had both tacitly agreed that the duration of the voyage was a time apart from ordinary life, belonging neither to the trauma of the past nor to the uncertainty of the future.

But now the voyage was over and in a moment he would drive up to the door of the farmhouse and be precipitated into the midst of his family. He was longing to see them, and he did not want the homecoming to be clouded by misunderstanding.

There had been no way of letting them know that his ship had docked, but they must have been forewarned somehow because the whole family was assembled on the porch as he drew rein, and for a moment he forgot his dilemma and jumped down to embrace first his mother, then his grandmother and sister, and to exchange a fervent handclasp with his father. His elder sister was married now and living in Taupo, but he was assured she would come to visit the next day. In the middle of these greetings Sophie climbed off the buggy and lifted Anton down, and Luke's grandmother solved the immediate need for introductions by rushing down the porch steps to embrace her with a babble of the Macedonian Serb which was still her primary language. Sophie replied in the same manner and soon she was being welcomed into the house by the rest of the family. No one thought to question why Luke had chosen to bring her to them. She was a fellow refugee from the old country and as such needed no further excuse.

It was not until after a celebration dinner of tender lamb marinated in fragrant spices, combining the abundance of the new country with the traditions of the old one, that the subject was raised. Sophie was putting Anton to bed. Luke's mother and sister were washing the dishes, supervised by his grandmother, and Luke and his father were sitting on the porch with cigars and a bottle of home-made peach schnapps.

Neither of them spoke for a while, until Mr Pavel said, ‘You didn't have any trouble getting Sophie through immigration, then?'

Luke put down his glass. He understood that he had been given the cue he needed. ‘No. You see, officially, Sophie is my wife.'

‘Officially?'

‘We were married in Cairo, just before we left. It was the only way the authorities would allow me to bring her on to the ship.'

‘Why didn't you mention this earlier?'

‘I didn't want . . .' Luke took a long pull at his cigar while he sought for words. ‘I didn't want to spoil things, when I had just come home. I was worried that you, or Ma, would be upset.'

‘It'll be a shock to your mother, certainly,' his father agreed. ‘I don't think it has struck her that you might have had any difficulty bringing Sophie in.'

‘But it did occur to you?'

‘I have been wondering, yes. But I felt the same as you about spoiling the celebrations.' It was his turn to draw on his cigar and they both smoked in silence for a moment. ‘When were you thinking of letting us into the secret?'

‘Tomorrow morning, I suppose.'

‘Before or after you shared a bedroom?'

‘We haven't . . . I'll sleep in my old room.'

‘And then? What are your plans for the future?'

‘I'm not sure.' Luke hesitated. ‘I suppose Sophie will have to find a job somewhere, eventually. She's a qualified nurse, so it shouldn't be a problem.'

His father grunted in assent. ‘I guess we can't have too many of them, with all you boys coming back wounded.' He nodded at Luke. ‘That leg doesn't seem to give you too much trouble.'

‘No. The medics did a pretty good job on it, but it took a while.' He thought back to the endless days on the hospital ship, where men around him died every night and their places were taken by new casualties. He was glad that his parents had not seen the pathetic skeleton to which dysentery and exposure had reduced him. The period of recuperation in Egypt and the long voyage home had allowed time to repair most of the damage. He had put on weight and the blistering sunburn had subsided to a healthy tan. He only limped now when he was tired, but the memories of the horror which was Gallipoli were still fresh. He said, ‘I was in a bad way for a while. I probably owe my life to the way Sophie nursed me – in fact, I know I do.'

‘You've no idea of making it a real marriage?' his father said. ‘You wouldn't be the first man to fall in love with the woman who saved his life.'

Something turned over in the region of Luke's stomach and he took a quick swallow of the schnapps. ‘Sophie's a widow, dad. It's only a few months since her husband was shot by the Turks. The question doesn't arise.'

‘If you say so,' his father said. After a pause he added: ‘I guess it was tough out there.'

Luke hesitated. Should he try to describe the heat, the flies, the insanitary conditions, the suicidal attacks, the incessant sniping? He shrugged. ‘Yep, it was tough.'