Authors: Alison Stuart
When he had cleared her legs, he felt for broken bones and let out a breath of relief when he was satisfied that she had not suffered any serious injury. She moaned as he gently turned her over, her eyes flickering open.
“It’s all right, Alice,” he whispered. “I’m here.”
She gave a strangled cry and wrapped her arms around his neck. Paul gathered the child in his arms, holding her slight, shaking body tightly. He pressed her to him, overwhelmed with relief and the realisation that Charlie’s daughter had become as dear to him as if she were his own. Charlie’s daughter, Charlie’s wife. He wanted them both in his life forever.
As he sank down against the wall, the flashlight on the ground sputtered and went out, leaving him in utter suffocating blackness. He closed his eyes and held the terrified child closer.
The damp from the floor and walls seeped through his clothes. He closed his eyes as around him, the darkness closed in, a blackness broken only by flares and exploding shells.
* * * *
Passchandaele 18 September 1917.
Paul lay with his back against the wall of the shell hole, breathing raggedly. With the last of his strength he had hauled Charlie up from the putrid mud into which he had tumbled. Now he could do no more except lie against the shattered earth, staring up at the darkening sky with his good arm around his cousin’s shoulders.
“Paul?”
He turned his head with difficulty to look at his cousin and saw Charlie’s anguished eyes turned to him.
“Don’t let me go like this,” Charlie whispered.
They both knew that the terrible wounds Charlie had suffered were fatal but that death could be some way off yet.
“I’m not going to leave you,” Paul replied. “We’ll get back to our lines and...”
Charlie raised a bloody hand and gripped Paul’s arm.
“It’ll be too late…please help me…end it…now.”
Charlie’s fingers scrabbled for the cord holding Paul’s service revolver.
“No,” Paul caught Charlie’s hand. “I can’t.”
Charlie coughed and blood ran down his chin as his fingers tightened on the cord.
Paul closed his eyes, screwing them against the tears. When he had regained his composure, he took the cord from around his neck, lifting the revolver in his good hand. He shook so much he could scarcely hold the weapon.
Charlie’s eyes met his and his cousin gave a half smile. “Not asking you to do it,” he said. “Just help me. Give it to me.”
Paul took his cousin’s hand and closed the cold, bloodied fingers around the butt of the weapon. He shifted his weight and together they raised the revolver until the muzzle rested against Charlie’s temple.
“Let go,” Charlie whispered and Paul let his hand drop.
Charlie’s eyes held his as his lips moved in silent farewell.
The sound of the revolver shot reverberated around the shell hole, masked by a burst of machine gun fire across the wasteland above them. The weapon slipped from Charlie’s hand, sliding away into the water with barely a ripple.
Paul buried his face in the shoulder of Charlie’s tunic. With difficulty, he slid his good arm back around his cousin’s shoulders holding him while a heavy, silent grief poured from him.
* * * *
“Paul!” Helen called again, only to be met with resonating silence. Cold fear grasped at her heart. Sarah had been right–something evil had come to Holdston and now threatened all the people who meant the most to her in the world.
Sitting back on her heels, she contemplated the black hole before her that had swallowed her daughter and now Paul. She’d seen his face when the tunnel had been revealed. To have gone down there without hesitation had taken courage beyond her imagination and now she had to follow.
Rising to her feet, she found a candle from the store in the church. With shaking fingers, she lit the slender taper, pocketing a few extras and the box of matches she had found with the candles. Taking a deep breath, she recited the Lord’s Prayer and descended into the hole.
Bent double, Helen made her way along the tunnel, her fingers tracing the brick lined walls. The first candle sputtered and she lit a second.
“Paul? Alice?” she called but no one answered.
A knot of fear in her throat constricted her breathing.
Ahead the tunnel appeared to turn a corner and she wondered how close the house itself would be. She must have come at least one hundred and fifty yards.
As she rounded the corner, she saw them. Paul sat with his back to the wall, Alice held tightly in his arms. His eyes were shut and the light of the candle caught a gleam of wetness on his face.
A moan of despair escaped her. Alice was dead.
“Paul?”
He didn’t move but the child in his arms shifted. Helen nearly dropped the candle with relief. She lit another candle and wedged them both in the mud of the floor as she crept forward.
“Mummy,” Alice sobbed but Paul held her so tight she could do no more than turn her mud-streaked face to her mother.
Helen stroked her muddy hair and kissed the top of her head.
“Are you hurt?” she whispered.
Alice sniffed and shook her head. Helen turned to the man. He still hadn’t moved, hadn’t acknowledged her presence in any way.
She touched his face. His skin felt icy beneath her fingers. “Paul, she’s all right. You can let her go.”
She stroked his brow and his eyes flickered open. He stared at the opposite wall, seeming oblivious to her presence or the child in his arms. She touched his arm and felt the grip on Alice relax. Helen pried Alice from his arms and sat back on her heels holding her daughter, while tears of relief ran in scalding lines down her own face.
“Can you walk?” she whispered.
Alice nodded.
“I want you to take one of the candles and go back to the church. Wait for us. We won’t be long.”
“What’s wrong with Uncle Paul?” Alice asked turning her head to look at the man.
“He’s all right. We’ll be right behind you,” Helen said.
Alice slipped out of her mother’s arms and picked up one of the candles. Helen watched until the child had rounded the corner out of sight before lighting her last candle.
She picked up Paul’s hand and pressed it to her lips.
“Paul,” she whispered. “Talk to me.”
When she got no response, Helen turned his face toward her. The unseeing eyes scared her.
“Paul, please. You can’t stay here.”
She cupped his face in her hands and leaned toward him, her forehead resting against his. Her lips brushed his but she felt no answering response. Helen took both his hands and began to chafe them as she repeated his name, over and over.
Behind her the candles burned low. She had so little time.
He jerked, pulling his hands away from hers and his eyes, alive once more, met hers.
“Helen,” he whispered.
She touched his face and smiled. “We’re about to lose the light. We have to get out of here.”
She began to move away from him but he caught her arm.
“Charlie ...”
She saw the glint of tears in his eyes and felt her own eyes well. He had remembered.
“I tried to hold him but he went in the night...the revolver...I didn’t...”
The words, confused and ragged with grief tumbled from him. He had warned her that she may not want to hear the truth.
Helen turned back to him and took his hand in hers, pressing it to her mouth. “Paul, don’t say any more. I don’t want to know.”
In the light of the last candle, Helen wrapped her arms around the man and held him to her as she had done on the battlefield. In the darkness, she sought out his mouth and this time he responded with a desperate urgency.
Helen broke away, her fingers seeking his face. “Are you ready? We’ve got to get out of here, Paul.”
He nodded and she kissed him again, lightly. “You go first,” she said, “I’ll follow.”
The candle sputtered and went out leaving them to crawl through the thick blackness of the tunnel, heading for a thin light that marked the entrance. As they neared it, the light disappeared behind the bulk of the vicar as he extended his hand to help them out of the hole in the wall.
Paul crouched against the wall of the crypt, his face ashen, his hands hanging loosely between his knees. Helen gave him a cursory glance. He could wait. Her eyes were only for her daughter who sat on the steps down into the crypt with Lily Bryant’s arms around her. Both girls were crying.
She rushed to her daughter’s side taking her in her arms, while the vicar tended his own daughter. When the tears subsided into hiccups, Helen sat Alice up and tried to put on a stern face.
“Why on earth did you go down the tunnel?”
Alice’s face crumpled again. “I thought I heard someone crying.”
Over her daughter’s head, Helen caught Paul’s eyes. Just as she had heard a woman crying that first night? Was this the work of the Holdston spirits or just an unfortunate accident? She smiled and smoothed Alice’s mud-streaked hair. “It’s all right, I’m not cross, but we’d better get you back to the house for a bath and then a rest.”
“It looks like you all need a bath,” the vicar observed. He stood and walked over to the entrance to the tunnel. “I’d heard stories of course but these things are lost in time. Does the tunnel go through to the house?”
Paul shook his head and spoke for the first time. “Not anymore.” He pulled himself to his feet and joined the vicar. It seemed to Helen that Paul braced every muscle in his body as he put his hand to the faint carving of the martlet. The wall creaked and groaned to a close. He leaned his forehead against the wall for a moment before turning back.
“I’ll have that sealed,” he said. “I don’t want anyone ever going back down there. He crossed to Helen and as he lifted Alice from her arms, he held them both for a fleeting moment.
“Enough excitement for one day. Let’s go home,” he said.
Alice wrapped her arms around his neck and Helen saw his eyes close as the child snuggled up against him. Alice had been brought up in a house full of men but there had never been one special man in her life and now Helen saw how important that missing relationship must have been to her daughter’s life. The thought made her heart ache.
The vicar shut and locked the crypt behind them and they walked out into bright summer sunlight. Once more in control, Paul thanked the vicar for his help and they stood and watched the man take his own daughter’s hand and lead her back to the vicarage.
Helen looked up at Paul. “Are you all right?” she asked.
A slight shake of his head warned her that now was not the time to raise what had happened in the tunnel. Instead, he shifted Alice’s weight to his right arm and placed his left arm around Helen’s shoulders, drawing her against him. Slowly they walked back to the house.
Chapter 26
Helen stood looking down at the man on the bed. She hadn’t intended to intrude into his bedroom but there had been no response when she had knocked on the door and the nagging anxiety about his state of mind, caused her to enter his room.
Paul lay sprawled across the bed cover, still in his muddy clothes as if he had reached his room and just fallen on to the bed. His face was half turned away from her and she reached out and touched his hair, gently stroking it away from his forehead. For the first time she noticed the faint line of a scar high on his temple at the hairline. Her finger traced it, wondering, not for the first time, how many scars he bore.
His hand clamped on to her wrist as he jerked awake, rolling into a sitting position with such rapidity, Helen took a step back.
He let her go.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” she said.
He fell back on the bed. “A soldier’s reflex,” he said. He covered his face with hands. “How’s Alice?” he asked, his voice muffled.
“Bruised and a bit shaken but all right,” Helen said. “I’ve put her to bed. How are you?”
He drew his hands down his face and she saw the lines of pain etched around his mouth. The pupils of his eyes were pinpricks.
“I’m sorry...you’ve got a migraine haven’t you?”
His lips tightened and he gave a barely perceptible nod. “It’s been threatening for a while.”
“Is there anything I can get you?”
“No. It’ll take its own time.”
“Are you sure...?”
“Quite sure. Just leave me, Helen.” He closed his eyes.
She found a blanket and threw it over him before pulling the curtain shut and tiptoeing out of the room, closing the door behind her. Outside in the corridor she leaned against the wall and swore. Paul would be out for at least twenty-four hours. She was on her own now.
* * * *
That night Helen slept badly. In the dark hours of the morning, she found herself tossing and turning as her mind replayed the events of the previous day. She had so nearly lost Alice and then Paul–why had she let him go after Alice, knowing what she did about the trench collapse?