“No, no.”
It had snowed the night before, and London was deep in slush, the rims of it icy on the pavements and in the gutters. Filthy half-frozen snow had been tracked through Victoria Station by thousands of hurried feet and continued to be tracked in by thousands more. I wore my thickest shoes, my heaviest coat and gloves, but still I could not get warm. I felt the muscles between my shoulder blades contract in a convulsive shiver, but I fought it down. A headache was making its way up the back of my neck and over the top of my skull.
“Look,” Alex said, “you needn’t come farther. We can say our farewells here.”
I gripped his sleeve harder and looked up into his face. “No.”
He looked down at me, and those extraordinary eyes softened beneath the brim of his handsome, sharp cap. “The train leaves in fifteen minutes, Jo.”
“Fifteen minutes, then. We should keep moving. You’re going to be late.”
He looked into my face a moment longer; then he turned away and led me through the crowd. I followed with my arm entwined with his, staring at the line of his shoulder, the weave of his wool coat. I had done this before, seen him off on leave. This was always the worst, these last moments, in the middle of a crowd, wanting to say everything and nothing at once. It was an experience so painful one’s mind suppressed it, like the death of a loved one or the agony of childbirth. Yet there was no avoiding it. I would not say good-bye at home and let him walk away without me any more than I could detach my own limbs from my body and let them walk out the door.
Still, this was worse than any of the others. I wasn’t well, though I was trying to hide it. I was shaking with cold sweat beneath my heavy coat, my feet clammy and frozen, a fog in my head that shrouded my vision. My stomach roiled, threatening to give up the little breakfast I’d eaten. Fifteen minutes. I just had to get through them one by one.
Before this leave, he’d been gone nine months. I could recall not a single one of the days of those nine months, not one meal, not one night or morning. I could not tell you what I had done, what clothes I had worn, whether it had rained or been hot or cold. I had kept myself occupied, volunteering for soldiers’ charities, but at the moment I could not recall a single person I had met, not a name or a face.
I had tried. One must get on with things, after all, and not sit around making a cake of oneself over a man, even if that man was one’s husband. One must not live only for his letters, coming alive briefly when the thin envelopes arrived, not caring that the thick, clumsy fingers of the censor had already handled the page before I did, that a stranger’s eyes had already read my husband’s words. Not much to report from here, my Jo. We are grounded due to fog. The men are playing cards. I can hear the shelling in the distance at the Front. I am picturing you, sitting at the table in our kitchen, reading this, wearing the dress with blue and white flowers you wear so often, your hair tied back, the curls coming loose . . .
We had come to the entrance to the platform now, and there was a gray-haired man in a crisp uniform and a thick mustache looking at Alex, taking in his uniform and his ticket and giving him a respectful nod. He gave me a nod as well as we passed him, but I barely noticed it, and he was gone, swirling into the crowds behind us before I could think to turn and return the gesture. I could not have turned anyway—my neck seemed to have been soldered into my shoulders in a straight line. I touched my gloved fingers discreetly to my face and sponged the sweat from my temples.
The platform was crowded, the cold air mixing with the warmth of hundreds of bodies in a horrible miasma. I tried to cover my nose. My feet were numb with cold while sweat dripped under my arms and down my back. Someone bumped into me and I stumbled.
Alex caught me, his arm coming around my waist as naturally as breathing. “Jo?” he said.
“I’m all right.”
He turned away, kept his arm around me. “Pardon me,” he said as he arrowed through the crowd. “Make way, please. My wife is not well. Make way.”