The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (141 page)

‘It sounds extremely confusing,’ said Belle, adjusting the tripod. ‘Would you mind turning a little to the right?’

The young man did as she asked, but then turned back again, so that she could only see his profile. ‘Would
you
believe it?’ he said. ‘I mean, if you were thirteen, and someone told you that in fact you were really grown up?’

Belle thought of Cornelius Traherne. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Could you turn just a little more to your right?’

Again he did as he was told, and then twisted back. For some reason he seemed to be reluctant to face the camera full on.

Belle noticed that his hands were clenched on either side of his thighs. ‘Does the camera remind you of a gun?’ she asked quietly.

He looked startled. ‘I don’t think so. Although now that you mention it, I – I do find it rather scary. Which is a bit rum, I suppose.’

‘Try turning the chair round, and leaning your arms on the back.’

The young man tried it. Immediately his shoulders loosened and his fists unclenched. ‘Much better,’ he said. ‘But why d’you want me to face forward, anyway?’

Belle smiled. ‘I want your ears to show.’

His face fell. ‘Oh, do they have to? The fellows at school will rag me most awfully.’

‘Sorry, but the point isn’t to take the most flattering picture, it’s to capture who you are. And I’m afraid that with you, the ears are part of it.’

‘Oh.’

‘They might help someone to recognize you. Which would be worth it, wouldn’t it?’

He grinned. ‘That’s sort of the point of all this, isn’t it? I was forgetting. I seem to do that a lot these days.’

Without being aware of it, he was now facing the camera full on. Belle took the picture. ‘There,’ she said. ‘That didn’t hurt, did it?’

He shook himself and glanced down, as if to make sure that all his limbs were still there. ‘Phew. Glad that’s over. Do you do this all the time? Take pictures of fellows who don’t know who they are?’

‘Not all the time. Sometimes I take pictures of graves for relatives who can’t afford to visit; or of cemeteries for the GRC records. That sort of thing.’

‘Gosh,’ said the young man, visibly impressed. ‘Well, I suppose I ought to be off, or Sister will be on the rampage.’

‘I hope you get better soon,’ said Belle.

Again he grinned. ‘Oh, I think I shall. When I was picked up, I thought I was seven. Apparently it’s called shrinking amnesia. With a bit of luck, it’ll shrink some more, and I shall be back to nineteen.’

Belle smiled. ‘I hope so.’

She was packing up her camera after he’d gone when there was a knock at the door, and Dr Hughes looked in. ‘Finished for the day?’

She nodded. ‘In a while the light will start to go. Best to shut up shop.’

With his hands in the pockets of his white coat, he wandered over to the window and leaned against the wall. ‘Do you put away your kit every night?’

‘Every night,’ she replied as she started unscrewing the tripod. ‘Just in case they need the room while I’m off somewhere, and forget to tell me.’

He smiled. ‘You’re beginning to learn the ways of the army.’

‘Just a little,’ she said wryly.

Idly, he glanced at a stack of photographs in the tray on the shelf. ‘You’re awfully good at this, you know. This one on top, he’s a patient of mine. You’ve exactly caught the way he is. I mean, not only the way he looks, but his character.’

She threw him a surprised glance. ‘Thank you. Actually it was my aunt’s idea that I should give this a try. When I came out here I thought I was going to be put to work planting shrubs.’

‘But you enjoy it, don’t you?’

She thought about that. ‘Yes. I do. Very much. It makes a change, to be useful. And to have found something that I’m good at.’

‘Oh now, that can’t be so unusual for someone like you.’

Something in his tone – a slight added warmth – put her on her guard. As she finished stowing the rest of her things, she felt him watching her.

And yet she’d followed Sophie’s advice to the letter. ‘Clumpy shoes, shapeless tweeds, and
no
rouge. Some of these poor lads haven’t seen a woman in weeks, apart from a nurse. And be warned about the doctors. They’re worse than the patients.’

Thinking of Sophie, Belle felt a pang of concern. It was time to get back to their billet. These days, it wasn’t fair to leave her alone for too long.

‘I don’t suppose,’ said Dr Hughes, going pink and staring determinedly out of the window, ‘that you’d care to have dinner tonight?’

Oh, bother, thought Belle.

‘Not just with me, of course,’ he added hastily. ‘There’s a group of us going along, and Sister Martin will be there, so it’ll be absolutely . . .’ His voice trailed off. His face had turned puce.

He was such a nice man. Belle liked his tired eyes and his gentleness with patients. It was hardly his fault that he wasn’t Adam. But she wished that she’d spotted the signs sooner. ‘The thing is,’ she said carefully, ‘my aunt . . .’

‘Of course,’ he muttered. ‘I quite understand.’

There was an awkward silence.

Then he said, ‘I take it that there’s still no news of her husband?’

Belle shook her head.

‘Ah. Well. I dare say he’ll turn up.’

‘He’s been missing for nearly two weeks,’ said Belle. ‘If he was alive, surely we’d have heard by now.’

‘Not necessarily. I don’t want to offer false hope, but . . . well, labels get lost, you know. Patients are sent to the wrong hospital. They get mixed up. Either because they’re unconscious and the records become jumbled, or, if they’re conscious, because they sometimes get . . . well, a little muddled.’

Belle thought about that. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and meant it. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

He opened his mouth to say something more, then seemed to change his mind. Pressing his lips together in a smile, he pushed himself off the wall, and wandered out.

Thinking about what he’d said, Belle stowed her things under a bench, then straightened up and looked about her. The light was failing fast, and as she hadn’t lit the lamp, a chill grey dusk was seeping into the room.

Suddenly her spirits plunged.

She hadn’t been lying when she’d said that she enjoyed what she was doing, but neither had she told the whole truth. She managed reasonably well when she was with patients, because then she had to concentrate on putting them at their ease, which meant forgetting about herself.

It was when she stopped that things became hard. Ever since Ben had been posted missing, Sophie had tried everything to find him, but had consistently drawn a blank. Because he’d been on a mission for Special Services, she couldn’t even find out where he was when the ‘incident’ had occurred – or what the ‘incident’ had involved.

Through the window the sky was darkening to indigo. An early star was beginning to show. Belle pulled up the chair and sat down, and thought of the long, peaceful twilights of Cairngowrie, and the glitter of moonlight on the waters of the loch.

Despite all Sophie’s urging, she’d cut herself off completely from Scotland, not even writing to Maud to let her know where she was. Now, with Ben missing and Sophie fast losing hope, even to be thinking of it felt like an act of disloyalty. But she couldn’t help it. She missed Adam so much that it hurt.

She and Sophie had been lucky with lodgings. One of the higher-ups in the Commission had heard that Sophie needed to be near HQ because of Ben, and had pulled strings, so they’d been given a pretty little eighteenth-century town house just off the main square in Saint-Omer.

Belle got a lift into town from a doctor who was billeted a few streets away, and arrived just after six, to find the house quiet, and almost in darkness. The girl who ‘did’ for them told her that Sophie was in the drawing room, and that there hadn’t been any news of Ben.

The drawing-room door was ajar, so Belle made no noise as she went in. It was a beautiful room, and surprisingly untouched by the War: furnished in a delicate Arcadian style, with a suite upholstered in silvery silk. Belle always thought that Sophie, with her cloudy hair and narrow, distinctive face, fitted in perfectly: like some kind of rational eighteenth-century ghost.

This evening, though, she didn’t look particularly rational. She was sitting by the fire with her hair coming down and a pile of paperwork sliding off her knees, staring at her photograph of Ben in its leather travelling case. Belle could only see her face in profile, but the strain was evident. She’d lost weight, and rarely slept more than a few hours a night.

Belle glanced at the photograph on the side table. It had been taken by her mother, and she was only now beginning to appreciate the skill which had gone into it. Her mother had taken it in the grounds of Fever Hill, in the soft shade beneath a guango tree. Ben was in shirtsleeves and riding breeches, with the inevitable horse standing beside him and resting its head peacefully on his shoulder. Ben himself was facing the camera, with his hands in his pockets and the beginnings of a smile just lifting one corner of his mouth. No problems for him in staring at the lens, thought Belle, thinking of her young amnesiac. If Ben had been facing a gun, he’d probably just have stared it down.

God, I hope you’re all right, she told the photograph silently.

Sophie felt her presence and turned, and composed her features into a smile. ‘I keep thinking about what I said at Newton Stewart,’ she said without preamble. ‘I said that I’d kill him. Do you remember?’

Belle nodded.

‘I wish to goodness I hadn’t said that.’

Her eyes strayed to the photograph, and then away, as if it hurt to look for too long.

Belle pulled up a footstool and sat down beside her.

‘I keep wondering,’ said Sophie, ‘if it would feel different if we’d managed to have children. Would that make it easier, or worse?’

Belle stayed silent.

‘What if he’s gone, Belle? What if we never learn anything more?’

Belle said, ‘I was talking to Dr Hughes. He says that the wounded go missing all the time. Labels fall off. Names get mixed up in the records. Patients become muddled. When you think about it, it does make sense.’

Sophie’s face cleared fractionally. ‘Yes. I suppose it does.’ She sounded as if she desperately wanted to believe it, but wasn’t good enough at self-deception to succeed.

Belle took her hand. ‘Let’s go and have dinner.’

Sophie sighed. ‘I’m not really—’

‘I know you’re not, but you still need to eat something.’ She stood up. ‘I’ll run upstairs and change. You put away your papers.’

She was on her way out when behind her, Sophie said, ‘Belle – thank you.’

Belle turned. ‘For what?’

Again Sophie smiled, but this time it was genuine. ‘Just thank you.’

As Belle went upstairs to her room, she thought how swiftly things could change. A couple of weeks before, at Newton Stewart, she’d felt so low that she’d been quite content to have Sophie take charge and treat her like an invalid. Now the roles were reversed. Sophie was the one who was lost, and she was the one who was found.

Belle spent the night drifting in and out of an unrefreshing slumber, and just before dawn she had a nightmare about Ben.

It was back in Jamaica, years before Cornelius Traherne. She was walking with Ben over the lawns at Fever Hill, while Patsy, his favourite mare, ambled behind them like a large, docile dog. Belle turned to stroke the mare’s gleaming neck – and saw to her mute horror that she was stroking a skeleton horse.

‘But Patsy’s dead,’ laughed Ben, showing his sharp white teeth. ‘Didn’t you know? And so am I.’

Belle woke with a start. The room was in darkness, and very cold. Knowing that further sleep was impossible, she lit a candle, threw on some clothes, and read a book until it was time to go to the hospital.

She was in her studio setting up the tripod when she heard the first patient knock, then open the door.

‘You’re early,’ she said over her shoulder.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sounding aggrieved. ‘They told me I’d find you here.’

Belle turned and saw to her surprise that the man standing uncertainly by the door was not in fact a patient – at least, he wasn’t in hospital blue, although his leg was in a splint, and he walked with the aid of crutches, to which he was clearly not yet accustomed. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, with short red hair and a pinched, unhappy face. His pale eyelashes reminded her faintly of Max – although there was nothing Max-like about the resentful puckering of the mouth.

‘My name’s Winsloe,’ he declared. Somehow he managed to make that sound defensive, too. ‘Arthur Winsloe. And I’m not a patient. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with my nerves. Though I dare say I look as if there is.’

‘Oh,’ said Belle, for want of anything better. ‘Well. How do you do, Mr Winsloe? I’m Isabelle Lawe. But I’m afraid there may have been a mistake. You see, I don’t do portrait photographs.’

‘I know that,’ he said irritably. ‘I haven’t come for a photograph. I’m here because someone told me you knew the whereabouts of Captain Palairet.’

Belle froze. Then she said, ‘I’m sorry, I don’t—’

‘I need to see him,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just got out of hospital myself, and I thought he was in the same one as me, but—’

‘
What?
’ said Belle. ‘Are you saying that Adam – Captain Palairet – that he’s here?’

‘Like I said,’ said Winsloe, ‘that’s what I’m trying to find out. I’ve been asking around, and this lady at HQ, a Mrs Kelly? She said for me to come to see you.’ For the first time he seemed to notice Belle’s stunned expression, and his own became uncertain. ‘I think I’ve been misinformed.’

Belle cleared her throat. ‘Just now, you said you thought he was in the same hospital as you. What did you mean?’

‘Well, I can’t be certain,’ said Winsloe defensively. ‘I mean, we were both in a pretty bad way after the bomb went off.’

Belle swayed. ‘The bomb.’

Winsloe wasn’t listening to her. ‘I couldn’t see very well at all. Blood all over me. Him too. He was unconscious, not sure how bad. Anyway, they took us to a clearing hospital, Bailleul, I think. And after that things got fuzzy. That’s all I know.’