she always enjoyed talking about Martha and Archie.
But as Adelaide spoke, Lucy realised she was only half-listening. Her brain focused on the booming of the big guns in the distance and her constant churning fear for Charlie.
Suddenly, at around four-thirty in the afternoon, the gunfire ceased. They looked from one to the other. Half an hour later the first souls came down from the ridge to announce victory for the allies, and Adelaide and Lucy hugged each other. Lucy found another bottle of porter in Charlie’s bedding roll and poured them each a small glass to toast the troops. Men began to trickle back to camp, weary and dirty. The wounded were carried on the shoulders of their comrades, since no ambulance carts and insufficient stretchers had been brought along. The women went to offer sips of water and words of comfort while they waited for a doctor.
Charlie arrived around eight in the evening, and Lucy dashed up to him, almost pulling him from Merlin in her joy. Her chest had been tight with fear all day but now at last she could breathe easily. With him he brought a ladies’ parasol of black lace over ivory silk, a wickerwork picnic basket and a bottle of wine he had found abandoned on the Russian side.
‘Their wives were watching behind the lines,’ he said. ‘It was a day out for them.’
‘Where is Bill?’ Adelaide asked, her voice tight with nerves.
Charlie grinned reassuringly. ‘He was helping to round up prisoners but should be back before too long. Shall we open the wine now or do you want to wait for him?’
They agreed it was fairest to wait. An hour went past, then another. Finally Charlie offered to ride out and see what was keeping Bill.
Half an hour later, they looked up to see Charlie galloping across the field towards them. He leapt from his horse, eyes wide with shock and his whole body shaking. ‘I’m s— so sorry.’
Adelaide screamed and clapped her hand to her mouth.
Charlie struggled to speak: ‘One of the prisoners had a pistol and when Bill tried to disarm him he was sh-shot through the h-head.’ He broke down and sobbed so hard the last words were virtually indistinct: ‘He died instantly.’ Adelaide’s legs buckled and she sank to the earth with a cry, her face buried in her hands. Charlie leaned his face into his horse’s flank, his body trembling with violent sobs, and Lucy looked from one to the other, so shocked she couldn’t react. Bill had gone. He wasn’t coming back, although he’d been the picture of health when he rode out that morning. It was unfathomable. What about his children? What about Adelaide?
Lucy realised she must comfort her friend but what should she do? Charlie had fallen to pieces. If only Dorothea were there. She must comfort people who’d lost their husbands all the time. She would know what was needed, but Lucy didn’t have the first idea.
Charlie arranged for Bill’s body to be brought to a quiet spot amongst some bushes on the edge of the camp, where Adelaide kept vigil by his side all night long. Lucy and Charlie took turns to sit with her as she grieved. Sometimes she muttered prayers, at others whispered to Bill under her breath while stroking his face or holding his hand. Someone had arranged his fur busby on his head to hide the fact that part of his skull had been blown away. Adelaide wouldn’t accept any tea and barely said a word to either Lucy or Charlie, but focused all her attention on the man lying on the ground. As night went on, a purple stain seeped down into his face, which swelled until he was barely recognisable, while his limbs stiffened awkwardly, but he was still her husband, the man who played at being a big bear while their children clambered over him.
Charlie was in tears much of the time. How would he cope without the steady presence of Bill, who had been such a close friend? Only the previous evening they’d all been chatting by the fire. Somehow Lucy had expected there would be an inkling of impending death, such as they’d had with her mother, but Bill was full of life one moment and gone the next. Her heart ached for him, for Adelaide, Martha and Archie. And sometimes a selfish thought passed through her mind: Thank God it wasn’t Charlie.
Towards morning, Adelaide began to go through Bill’s pockets, removing personal items, and she gave a little cry when she found a letter addressed to her in an inside pocket.
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