the heavy stuff. Need you to keep them moving,’ she said. ‘Let them get their loads sorted, and then it’s a long, hard trek to camp, Ensign.’
‘Right, Sergeant.’ Emily stood back unhappily, watching Elise drag an ammunition crate from the pile, swearing at it with every step. Rather than watch the pile diminish crate by crate, Emily looked about at Locke instead. What a shabby little place, she had to think. What a fluke of geography had thrown this little trader town, this end-of-the-track prospector’s place, into such sharp relief. Some places were never meant to bear the weight of history.
A sergeant – a man – approached them and conferred briefly with their own officer before turning to them.
‘All right, ladies, I’m going to make a count now, so’s we know how many we’re sending on. Everyone stay still and give a smile for the sergeant, now.’ He was a short, stocky man with a lined, humorous face and a jaunty step, but she would never have recognized him if he had not spoken. His voice brought it all back, that dark pre-morning that she had consigned to the bins of her memory. It brought it all back, and it hurt.
She was a soldier, so she silently let him complete his count as the women around her lowered their burdens and waited patiently. She even waited until he had made his final tick on the sheet of paper he was carrying, and was just turning to go back to the little office he had emerged from. Then, as the women finished demolishing the pile of crates, she accosted him.
‘Sergeant,’ she began.
He turned and eyed her. ‘Something I can do for you, Ensign?’
‘Sergeant Pallwide,’ she named him.
There was no recognition in his eyes, but his face might have been lifted straight from her memory of that morning when he came with his band of recruits to take her brother Rodric to the war.
‘Emily Marshwic, Sergeant,’ she prompted, and still he did not know her until she added, ‘you came to Grammaine last autumn, for my brother.’
Then something came to him, but she never knew for sure whether he had placed her as a person, or just placed her in a class, in a category of women. ‘What of it?’ he asked defensively.
‘You took my brother to the war, Sergeant, and you told me you would look after him. You said he would be serving in your company. What is your company, Sergeant?’
‘Administration corps,’ he almost mumbled.
‘You lied to me,’ she said flatly. ‘You lied to me, and you threw him to the wolves.’ She knew she was going too far, getting too emotional, but she could not stop herself.
‘It’s war,’ he said flatly. For a moment she had him: she was the lady of a great house, and he was a dirty, embarrassed soldier not knowing what to do with himself. At the last he remembered, though, what their positions were.
‘People die in war, that’s the point,’ he told her, with a look that said that he himself would be staying to file papers while she went off to the front. ‘I tell everyone I’m going to look after their sons and brothers and husbands. It’s good business, but I can’t watch over everyone, can I, Ensign?’
‘But you said—’
‘I said “Can I, Ensign?”’ He stepped in close to her, staring up at her, daring a challenge.
‘No, Sergeant,’ she said resignedly.
‘That’s right, Ensign. Now you go off, and you can die yourself for all I care. Your company’s waiting for you.’
He strutted away, leaving her to turn and face an accusing look from the master sergeant. But perhaps the woman had understood some of what had gone on, for she said nothing, only gestured for Emily to catch up as the great train of soldiers began to move off, staggering under its collective load.
Back in Mrs Melchance’s classroom, Emily had studied the maps of the Levant front with an almost morbid interest. She had marked out in her memory the swathes of green where the artist had drawn sketchy trees or ripples to indicate swampland. She recalled the careful shading of tans to browns, then to greens; the little rocks and pools that marked the approach from Locke to the Levant. On the maps, the trails had been dotted lines winding their way from point to point. They had seemed the sort of trail one might follow into the Wolds, for a picnic on a sunny afternoon.