Charles Todd - An Unmarked Grave

“I want to go home,” he said, weariness and despair in his eyes. The first light of dawn was touching the horizon, and I could see how very pale his eyes were. But they were blue, not gray. Very definitely blue. “I’ve no will to fight anyone now. William and Ross are dead. There’s David with only one leg, and Llewellyn not right in his head. There’s only me and the twins left, and I’ve had no news of them for weeks, now. We’ve done our bit, this family has, and my Da needs help on the farm.”

I remembered the fallow fields, untended because there was only one man to work them and he could only do so much. How many times had this same predicament happened across the length and breadth of England? Women had been sent out to help till fallow land, to turn Commons and Greens and even estate parks into cropland. But no one had come to Peace and Plenty to remedy the lack of labor.

I was my father’s daughter, and this was a deserter. In wartime. I looked at Trelawney for support.

His face was hard. A soldier all his life, he had no sympathy for a farmer in Wales or anywhere else. Take the oath to serve the King, and you were his as long as you were required. Nothing else mattered.

In the distance the shelling had recommenced, this time the German guns. Range finding, they were laying down a blanket of fire in the hope of taking out ours.

Trelawney, casting a worried glance over his shoulder, said, “We ought to be going. This farm has been hit before.”

He was right. I said to Hugh Morton, “You’ll come with us for now. Into the front of the motorcar. I’ll be just behind you, and I don’t need to remind you that I’m armed.”

“I’ll stay here. Take my chances.”

“You’re lucky a patrol hasn’t found you before this. And if that hip isn’t seen to by a doctor, David won’t be the only Morton son with only one leg.”

He refused. And as I listened to the shells dropping closer and closer, I said, “I’ll shoot you myself. You won’t be going home either way.”

Hugh Morton studied my face. What he read there must have been determination, although he couldn’t know I was bluffing.

“I won’t give my parole,” he said. “You can’t force me to do that.”

“And I won’t promise not to shoot to kill when you run. Quickly, now!”

But it was too late. A shell threw up black earth not fifty feet from the side wall of the farm. Between us Trelawney and I dragged Morton to the motorcar. His wound, after my probing and cleaning, had left his leg too weak to hold him up, and it must have hurt ferociously. He kept swearing under his breath in Welsh, for I didn’t understand a word, but I heard Sister once, as he blamed me for crippling him, however temporarily. Even if he’d tried to run, he wouldn’t have got twenty paces.

Just then the next shell splintered the barn, sending shards of wood and debris all over us. Chickens flew out of the milking shed, squawking in terror, and even an owl, blind in the morning light, went swooping up from somewhere, trying to escape.

We’d just shoved Hugh Morton into the motorcar. Trelawney shielded me as best he could, then all but lifted me into the rear seat before dashing around to get behind the wheel. Thank God, he’d already turned the crank, and he spun the wheel, racing for a break in the farm wall, but it was already in flames, the shed next to it burning like a torch.

He began to turn away, looking for another exit, but there was no place left, fire spreading so rapidly we were all but encircled by smoke. It seared the lungs and made all of us choke and cough.

“Hang on,” Trelawney shouted, and pointed the bonnet directly toward the shed, so engulfed that the opening in the wall was invisible. He had searched the farmyard carefully, and even without being able to see the break, he would know how to judge it.

But I felt myself tense, and Hugh Morton yelled at Trelawney, telling him he was going to miss the opening. For he too would know this farmyard well.

Braced for hitting the wall at speed, I kept my eyes on Trelawney. He would be the first to know if he was wrong. Behind us another shell burst, showering earth and wall and fragments of farm equipment over us, rattling against the motorcar.

I could only think what a target we would have been in the night, Trelawney and I, if the shelling had begun while we were asleep.

Metal shrieked like banshees as the near wing brushed stone wall, and then we were through, still blind, when suddenly dawn broke ahead of us, and the sun breached the horizon in a bloodred ball.

I lifted a hand to shield my eyes, Trelawney swore, and Morton was clutching the dash with white-knuckled hands.

Angling away from the line of shells, we saw what they were searching for, massed troops making their way forward into the line. I shuddered, thinking of the wounded who would be streaming back to the nearest aid station. I reached out and touched Trelawney’s shoulder.

“We’re needed there,” I shouted over the din, but Morton caught his sleeve.

“For the love of God, no,” he pleaded.

“Your father believes you’re missing. That’s cruel.”

He was digging deep into his trouser pocket and pulled out a set of identity disks, dangling them where I could see them. “Here’s proof I’m Tommy Morris, and I’m not right in my head.”

He fell into a posture of vapid uncertainty, his mouth down at one corner, his eyes squinting and sometimes rolling as if he couldn’t control them.

“I saw a man once who looked like this. They took him away. Bad influence on the rest of us,” he said as he relaxed his face muscles.

And his brother was an actor. Hugh had enough of that talent to master his condition. I’d have believed it myself.

“Then why are you hiding in the ruins? Why haven’t you tried your trick on someone in an aid station?”

“The truth, Sister, is that I’ve lived in the cellar of that farmhouse for weeks now. Someone caught me foraging and took a shot at me. I didn’t know the password, see? That’s the wound you dressed. I wasn’t wounded in the line, I simply disappeared in the dark, taking another man back to the aid station. He died before I could get him there, his blood all over my hands. And I thought, ‘Here’s Providence providing.’ So I took my chance. I couldn’t outrun another patrol, not with this hip. But the motorcar was Providence all over again. I blessed my luck, and I’d have had it too.”

He’d come into the barn for my kit, to find something to help his wound and give him a chance. He couldn’t have held out much longer in the ruined farmhouse, but there were chickens, and surely eggs, and he must have found something to keep body and soul together before he was shot.

It was an interesting dilemma.

I found it increasingly difficult to believe he had killed the Major or Private Wilson. He wasn’t cunning enough to waylay me or set up an accidental death for Nurse Saunders. But what to do with him?

And what if I was wrong?

WE HADN’T GONE two miles when a shout went up, followed by the appearance seemingly out of nowhere of a patrol. I heard Hugh Morton groan, and Trelawney spoke swiftly, hardly moving his lips, “What do we do? Sister?”

“Stop the motorcar. Have your papers ready. Private Morris, I hope your disks save you now. There’s nothing more I can do.”

We waited, listening to the shelling, to the sound of a motorcycle runner heading forward to the Front, to barked commands by officers steadying their men in the line.

The company quick marched toward us, and by the time they reached the motorcar, I had taken out my papers from the Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service and had them ready. Trelawney had produced his own, and Hugh Morton, his face pale but set, held his false identity disks in one hand.