Page 49 of The Housekeeper's Secret

He shook his head, helplessly. ‘You’re not invisible. You’re all I can see… But I’m not good enough for you, Kate; I’m not worth the risk. There are so many things you don’t know about me—’ His eyes flickered closed. ‘I should never have dared come within a mile of you. I’m a footman, for Christ’s sake—that’s the most I can ever hope to be—’

‘None of that matters.’

His insecurity touched her, just as his tenderness had, but his lack of certainty only made hers grow stronger. She cupped the back of his head and kissed him slowly and with a sort of reverence, marvelling at the presence of him… the living manifestation of her solitary dreams. And then she twisted herself free of the towel and went to blow out the candle, so they were folded into secretive shadows.

She found his hand and led him to the narrow bedroom.

‘You’re sure?’

She didn’t want to think of all the reasons why she shouldn’t be.

‘You said what I want matters to you.’

‘It does.’

‘I want this.’

Gathering up handfuls of wet cotton, she lifted her nightgown upwards, over her head. In the silence she heard his shaky exhalation and stepped into his arms.

It was the hour between night and dawn, where the old day was spent and the new one not yet minted. The still hour, when those late to bed were sleeping and the early risers weren’t yet stirring. Around them the vast old house was silent as he peeled off his damp clothes and lay down beside her in the narrow bed, and the world shrank to the scent of his skin, the touch of his fingers—brushing her collarbone, trailing across her ribs, stroking her hair—the warmth of his mouth and the hard planes of his body against hers.

Outside the rain still came down steadily, a murmured lullaby. It puddled on the baked ground, soaking down to the roots of the scorched grass, running off the hills in rivulets that swelled into streams, that gushed into waterfalls. It splashed on the dusty leaves of trees in the park—crisping and turning prematurely brown—washing them clean, bringing them back to life. It fell on the wilting lilies in Gatley’s garden, and they tipped their faces up to the heavens and opened their parched throats to the deluge.

July 2nd 1916

France

He comes to with a jolt, levering himself upright, his veins singing with panic. For a moment the pain in his head makes the sky blacken and the figures moving around him fade to phantoms. He thinks he might be sick.

His face is tight and hot, his lips parched to stiffness. As his surroundings swim back into focus, he understands that he is at an Advanced Dressing Station and is one of many men laid out on stretchers on the baked earth.

He searches his mind but has no recollection of how he got there. Was it Henderson again? His memory gapes, then he remembers the advance. He remembers Joseph falling, and the blood on his hands. He remembers his promise to go back.

Staggering to his feet, he sways drunkenly and almost falls on the man lying next to him, who has a blood-soaked bandage wrapped around his face, and recoils, whimpering in alarm. Jem feels like he’s standing on the deck of a listing ship and raises his hands to his own head, but can find no dressing or any wound that would account for the feeling of a sledgehammer beating at the inside of his skull. Carefully, stopping frequently to steady himself, clutching his head with both hands to contain the ache, he picks his way through the stretchers.

A Regimental Medical Officer standing at the door of a sandbagged dugout breaks off his conversation and looks round as Jem approaches. His neat moustache has lost its definition in several days of stubble and the red cross on his white armband is almost obliterated by bloodstains. ‘I’ll try to get you on the next convoy,’ he says wearily, through the roar inside Jem’s head. ‘The ambulances can’t keep up. Those with bleeding wounds take precedence I’m afraid.’

‘I don’t need it, sir.’ His tongue is thick inside his mouth. ‘I have to get back.’

Beneath his tin helmet the RMO’s face registers surprise. ‘Lance Corporal, you were in a trench mortar attack. You were brought in unconscious and suffering from a severe concussion—’

‘I’m all right. I have to get back. Sir.’

Has he said that already? He senses that the RMO is torn between professional duty and the prospect of lightening his burden of responsibility. To sway the balance, Jem makes an effort to lift his head and meet the man’s eye, though his face blurs out of focus and there seems to be a curtain across one side of his vision.

‘I need to return to my battalion, sir. I have to collect the wounded.’

The RMO’s face seems to be coming close and then moving away, looming and retreating, looming and retreating. Jem tries to swallow but his mouth is too dry. The need to be sick is building inside him and his face feels clammy, but just as he’s not sure he can hold it much longer, the RMO looks past him.

‘Thank bloody God,’ he says with jubilant relief.

Three ambulances are snaking towards them in a plume of dust. Patting Jem absently on the arm, the RMO goes to meet them, and the other man comes out of the dugout to follow. As he passes Jem, he says, ‘I wouldn’t bother, pal. Going back for the wounded. It’s been almost thirty-six hours. There’ll be no one left out there alive.’

Thirty-six hours? More than a whole day?

Jem’s legs take him forward. He makes it a hundred yards and is sick into the long grass beside a heap of stinking dressings.

Brighton