Harvest of War (18 page)

Soon after Victoria and Luke's departure Tom was discharged from hospital and sent to a private nursing home in Surrey to recuperate. Victoria had left Sparky in Leo's care, so she was able to drive down to visit him every few days. The journey through the darkening country lanes, where the rain dripped endlessly from the leafless trees, seemed to Leo to symbolize everything she felt.

Then, one afternoon, she arrived to find Tom in the unheated conservatory, wrapped to the chin in blankets and sweaters, sitting in his wheelchair in front of an easel, with a brush in one hand and palette in the other.

She hurried to kiss his cheek. ‘Tom, you're painting again! I'm so pleased!'

He looked up at her with a small, wry smile. ‘I woke up yesterday morning and realized I was wallowing in self-pity and there was no justification for it. I can still see and I have the use of both my arms. So I can paint, which is all I have ever wanted to do. Besides,' he indicated the canvas in front of him, ‘there are things I need to get off my chest.'

Leo saw the half-formed outlines of bodies, lying in contorted heaps, and shuddered. But she squeezed his shoulder. ‘Yes, you're right. People need to see what you've seen, and you need to show them. Well done, my dear!'

He reached for her hand. ‘I've drawn on you for comfort, at a time when I should have been trying to give it instead. I'm sorry.'

‘There's nothing to be sorry for. All I want is to see you get back to your old self. And now I can see you're on the mend.'

‘Thanks to you.' He kissed her hand. ‘You're freezing! Let's go back inside and get warm. I can get on with this later.'

The following day Leo received a telegram.
Arrived in Athens safely. Awaiting arrival of goods, love V and L.

Back at the nursing home she found Tom had been hard at work on his painting but it worried her that the cold conservatory was not a good place for a convalescent. He pre-empted her concern, however, by saying, ‘The people here are dropping hints that it's time I moved out and made room for someone in greater need.'

‘But where can you go?' Leo asked. ‘You can't possibly live alone. You need help with so many basic things.'

‘I know,' he said ruefully, ‘and before you even think of volunteering, the answer is no. I won't let you burden yourself with all that. Besides, it's not a woman's job.'

‘No,' Leo agreed. ‘What you need is a male nurse, or a manservant who has some experience in that direction.'

‘A gentleman's gentleman,' he said. ‘That's what I was thinking.'

‘Didn't you have someone, before the war?'

‘Peters – yes. He volunteered to enlist with me, with a view to becoming my orderly, but he had flat feet, apparently, and they wouldn't take him. But I heard from him later. When conscription came in it seems his feet weren't as flat as the first MO thought – anyway, they were good enough for cannon fodder. I had a letter from his mother, last summer. He was killed on the Somme.'

‘Oh,' Leo said. One more death out of so many warranted no further comment. ‘Well, we need to find you someone else. I'll put an advert in the papers. But if you leave here, where will you go?'

‘Denham, I suppose. There's just about room for me and a servant in the Dower House with mother, and I suppose I ought to spend some time with her.'

‘Have you heard from her?'

‘She occasionally sends me parcels. I think she believes I am still at the front.'

‘Oh dear! That isn't going to be an ideal arrangement, is it?'

‘No, but the house in Cheyne Walk is let for the duration, and anyway it's hardly suitable with all those stairs. I think I'll see if the current tenants want to buy, and then I can get a flat. But until then it will have to be Denham.'

‘Well, at least we can find you someone congenial to look after you,' Leo said. ‘Leave that to me.'

Glad to have a new project, Leo placed advertisements in the situations vacant columns of several newspapers, though without much optimism. With so many dead and others away at the front there were far too few men available to fill the vacancies. However, she was pleasantly surprised by the response and, after a series of interviews, she whittled the applicants down to three and arranged to take them down to Surrey for Tom to make the final choice. It gave her some satisfaction to learn that he had picked the man she herself would have chosen.

Arnold Simpson, Sim as he begged to be called, was twenty-seven years old, a sturdy, broad-shouldered young man with a ruddy countryman's complexion marred by a deep scar that ran from the corner of one eye to his jawbone. He had left school at fourteen and gone into service in a country house in the Cotswolds but after several years there had been offered a job as valet and general help to a doctor with a prosperous practice in Cheltenham. When the doctor had volunteered to serve with the army Sim had gone with him as his orderly and had served as his right-hand man when dealing with casualties. The doctor had been killed during the battle of Loos and Sim had gone on to work as a medical orderly, until he in his turn was hit by a sniper's bullet which had gone into his back below the shoulder blade, come out by his collarbone and carved the scar on his face. That was six months ago, and though he had been discharged on medical grounds because the bullet had clipped his lung, he declared himself fully fit and able to do all that Tom might require. Apart from the obvious relevance of his experience in the field, there were several things that recommended him to both Leo and Tom. First was an indomitable cheerfulness, a quality that they both felt much in need of. Also, in spite of his lack of formal education, it was clear that he was highly intelligent – something the doctor who employed him had obviously spotted because, as Sim himself said, he had taught him more during their years together than any amount of schooling. The doctor had been a man of wide interests and much of that had rubbed off on Sim and his country upbringing had given him much in common with Tom. He showed an immediate interest in Tom's paintings and, having lived through the same horrors, was able to relate to them in a way that was impossible for Leo. As a final bonus, he was not employed and could start work immediately.

A week before Christmas Leo hired a brand-new Rolls-Royce motor car, Sparky in her opinion being neither commodious nor reliable enough for the job. She collected Sim from the station and drove him down to the nursing home. There they helped Tom into the car, put his wheelchair in the boot and set off for Denham.

Leo spent Christmas at the Dower House with Tom. It was a less-than-ideal arrangement. The house was really too small for all of them and a bed had to be moved down to the study, the only room on the ground floor which could accommodate Tom without disrupting the rest of the household. With the three servants plus Leo and Lady Devenish, every room in the house was occupied, but what was more important, in Leo's mind, was the fact that there was nowhere convenient for Tom to paint.

Lady Devenish's hold on reality was becoming noticeably more fragile. She seemed unable to remember why Tom was in a wheelchair. Sometimes she reverted to the time when he was a baby in a pushchair and thought Leo was his nursemaid. Once she chided him petulantly for not standing up when she entered the room. Tom treated her with patience and courtesy but Leo could detect no warmth in their relationship. It seemed that the close bond that should exist between mother and son had broken down – if it had ever existed.

On Christmas Eve Tom asked Sim to push him up the drive to the big house and Leo went with them. The house had been bought by a developer who intended to turn it into flats but so far it remained empty, the paint peeling and the windows veiled with cobwebs. After they had walked all round and peered into the empty rooms Tom sighed.

‘You know, when I was a boy this place would have been alight with candles and decorations at this time of year. My father always gave a big party on Boxing Day and invited half the county. He was still doing it, right up to last year – on borrowed money, of course. But they were all glad to come and eat and drink at his expense, and now there hasn't been so much as a Christmas card from any of them. Nothing like a bankruptcy and a suicide to wipe you off the social map!'

One regular visitor to the Dower House, they learned from Lowndes, had been the local vicar, so out of gratitude to him rather than religious conviction, they all went to Matins on Christmas morning. As they made their way down the aisle towards the family pew at the front of the church Leo was conscious of heads turning in their direction and whispers passing along the rows. Out of habit, Lady Devenish smiled vaguely and bowed to left and right, but her eyes lacked focus. Tom stared straight ahead. At the end of the service the local gentry seemed inclined to make amends for their neglect and clustered round Tom's wheelchair, mouthing platitudes about ‘heroism' and ‘duty' and defence of the country. Tom received their plaudits with chilly courtesy and Leo, standing beside him, felt appraising eyes upon her as she was introduced as his fiancée. After that, the invitations did begin to arrive, and all were politely declined.

One good thing came out of the occasion: two days later the vicar called again and took a lively interest in Tom's painting.

Lady Devenish presented him with yet another beautifully worked kneeler and he said with a laugh, ‘At this rate, every member of the congregation will soon have an embroidered hassock to kneel on. But I have another idea. Perhaps, Sir Thomas, you could design a wall-hanging for your mother to embroider – something that would serve as a memorial to the fallen. What do you think?'

Tom was immediately taken with the idea and it gave Leo some pleasure to see him and his mother with their heads together, examining his preliminary sketches and discussing colours. For the first time, it seemed, they felt a genuine connection.

Once Christmas and New Year were over it became obvious that they could not all continue to live in the Dower House so one evening, when they were sitting alone in front of the fire, Leo drew her chair close to Tom's.

‘We can't stay here, Tom. It's too cramped and there is nowhere for you to work. Why don't you move in with me at Sussex Gardens?'

He raised his eyebrows. ‘And scandalize the neighbourhood? What about your reputation?'

Leo laughed dryly. ‘My dear man, you and I both know that after the life I've led I have no reputation. Anyway, who cares?'

He shook his head. ‘It wouldn't be right. I mean, on what basis would I be there? Would I be a lodger or what?'

‘Does it matter?'

‘Yes, I think it does.'

She was silent for a moment. What she was about to say had been germinating in her mind for some time but she had never formulated it in words until that evening.

‘And if we were married? Would that make it all right?'

‘Married? You're not serious.'

‘Why not? After all, we've been engaged long enough.'

‘But we both know that was purely a device. We never intended to marry.'

‘Not then, I know. But circumstances are different now.'

‘Yes, indeed they are. You know it could never have been a real marriage, for reasons we both understand. But at least then I should not have been a burden to you. Now it is doubly impossible.'

‘I know that! You know I'm not expecting anything like that. And you would not be a burden.'

‘Yes, I should. And I'm not going to let you throw yourself away looking after me.' He silenced her protest with a gesture. ‘You're a beautiful woman, Leo. When this war is over men will be queuing up to pay court to you.'

She gave another brief, ironic laugh. ‘After all the deaths there have been, it's the poor spinsters who will be queuing up for any available man that's left. But I shan't be one of them.' She took his hand. ‘I've had my one great love affair, Tom. I don't expect to have another. We've both lost the one person who mattered more to us than anything else in this life. All I want is a companion. We're good friends. We're very fond of each other. Can't we get what consolation we can from that?'

He gave a lopsided smile. ‘There was a time when you couldn't stand the sight of me.'

‘Only because I thought I was going to be forced to marry you! I'm older and wiser now.'

‘But what about children? You could still have children with the right man.'

‘I have a child, remember. That's all I want.'

‘And you still want to go and look for her?'

‘Of course, as soon as the winter is over. I'll have to leave you for a while then, but you have Sim to take care of you.'

He was silent in his turn. Then he said, ‘I'll make a bargain with you. I'll move into Sussex Gardens as a tenant to take care of the place while you're away. You go and find your daughter, and when you come back we'll talk about this again – if you still want to. Will that do?'

She kissed his cheek. ‘It will have to, for now.'

In the last days of February Leo stood on the pitching deck of a small fishing boat and watched, for the third time, the outline of the city of Salonika take shape in front of her. Memories crowded her mind: sailing in with Victoria, six years ago, thrilling at the start of a great adventure (what a naïve pair they had been then!); returning by land, bitter and resentful, when her brother dragged her back to Belgrade; sailing in again with Mabel Stobart and her team, older and wiser, but still excited by the thought that Sasha was somewhere beyond the mountains, and soon she might meet him again; and then, the summer before last, standing on deck with his arm round her waist, in the first glow of their love affair, convinced that soon they would be marching into Serbia and able to begin the life they had imagined for themselves. How different this return was! And the difference was emphasized by the city itself. Gone were the minarets and domes she remembered and in their places were blackened ruins or empty spaces where land had been cleared but not yet built on. It was a tragic irony, she thought, that this disaster had not been the result of war, but rather of an army kept too long away from the fighting; for she was sure in her own mind that the fire must have been the result of some drunken revelry of a kind she had seen often during her last stay.