Tides of Honour Read online

  Danny heard a small sound at the door. A scratching, then a soft chirp, almost apologetic.

  “Cecil,” he whispered, surprised at the sudden joy coursing through him, and he pulled open the door.

  Cecil’s salt and pepper muzzle had turned almost pure white. The black Lab’s eyes were milkier than they had been, and his hips wobbled with the stiffness of old age. But when Danny grabbed a coat off the hook and stepped outside, the dog’s tail thrashed from side to side, and his ecstatic whines got louder and more excited. His smooth black lips pulled back in an approximation of a smile.

  “Hey, boy,” Danny said, and at the sound of his voice Cecil threw his head back as if he were about to howl, but Danny set his palm on the hard black skull and grinned. “C’mon, Cess. Let’s not wake the whole house.”

  The sky was beginning to lighten, no longer an infinite black but a velvet indigo, readying the earth for the sun. As man and dog took their favourite path down to the sea, Cecil hobbled ahead, then circled back as if he couldn’t believe Danny was there and had to keep checking. Danny stopped short on the outskirts of the rocky beach, admitting to himself that the slippery unevenness of the stones looked a little beyond his abilities for now. The tides were low, retreating for another hour or so, he figured. He leaned against a boulder he’d climbed as a boy, dropped his crutch, then slid down until he sat on the ground. Cecil was immediately at his side, licking Danny’s face until he couldn’t help laughing. God, it felt good to laugh.

  “How are you, boy? Miss me?”

  Cecil stared at Danny with adoration, his heavy black tail thumping in celebration. He sniffed Danny’s hair, his coat, and finally his pants. He spent a little time snuffling at the stump, wrapped within Danny’s pant leg.

  “Yeah,” Danny said. “That’s something new, ain’t it? I might give you a couple of shoes to chew on, Cess. I won’t need ’em.”

  It was Sunday, so the fishing boat hugged the dock, resting for the day. The others would be getting out of bed soon, curious and eager to see their brother now that he was awake. Cecil lay down and drummed his tail on the earth, then rested his nose on Danny’s foot. They stayed like that for ten minutes, the dog dozing, the man staring out at the receding tide, one hand on his companion’s sleek black head. He breathed in, filling his lungs with crisp, salty air, welcoming back the cleansing stink of fish.

  The Twenty-fifth Battalion’s mascot, an underfed golden Labrador retriever, made her way through the soldiers, winding around sleeping bodies, sniffing for bits of food that didn’t exist. She was a distraction.

  “Hey, Minnie,” Danny said softly. “How’s hunting, girl?”

  Her tail’s constant wag sped up. She walked to Danny’s side and nudged his hand. He didn’t mind the lice on her—he probably carried just as many within the seams of his own shirt. He’d given up fighting them. He stroked her neck and she pulled closer to him, then curled up at his side.

  “Good idea,” he said. Danny stretched out as well as he could, then rested his head on Minnie’s bony back. She sighed under him, and they both slept awhile.

  Minnie died a few weeks later in Ypres. No one had given her a gas mask when that hateful yellow gas had spilled into the trenches.

  Cecil’s head jerked up. A low growl started deep in the loose folds of his throat.

  “What is it, boy?” Danny slid back into the present. He tried to peer around the boulder, but he couldn’t see from his position. Cecil’s growl rose, and he scrambled to all four paws, hackles raised.

  “Okay, okay,” Danny said, rolling to his side so he could get up the way the nurses had taught him. “What we got? A porky?”

  Cecil sounded furious, but Danny only smiled when he spotted the intruders. Three young dogs loped down the trail toward them, tails wagging cautiously. They stopped a few feet away, their heads low to the sprouting grass as if scenting it for clues about this mysterious stranger.

  “Who’s this, Cess?” Danny asked. The dogs came closer at the sound of Danny’s voice, optimistically wagging their tails. “Sit,” he said, and they all sat. Danny lifted his eyebrows, surprised at the unexpected result. “Well. Don’t you boys have good manners.”

  Cecil stopped growling and sat as well, but he kept his cloudy eyes trained on the other three. Danny wanted to crouch, get to know the dogs, but crouching was out of the question. Too awkward.

  “Danny?”

  Danny looked up the trail, back toward the house. The sun was starting to come up, and despite the lack of light he recognized his twenty-two-year-old brother, Johnny, standing on the path. Johnny was staring at him, a smile plastered on his face. Not a real smile, Danny saw. One he was trying real hard to hold in place.

  It was difficult to believe he’d gone almost two years without seeing Johnny. The last time had been on that day at the pier, when Danny’d boarded the ship in his freshly pressed uniform. His mother had cried, his father had stood proud but stiff, trying to maintain a cool expression. The oldest of Danny’s brothers had buzzed around him with envy and emotion, and the smallest two had cried until their baby blues turned red. After their father, Danny had always been the man of the house. The one all the other kids followed. Then he had sailed to war, leaving them crying on the shore.

  He and Johnny had been practically inseparable before the war. Now they were like strangers. Johnny looked older, as though he’d become a man while Danny was away. For the first time Danny wondered what it had been like around here, worrying about him, making do without him.

  He kept his voice soft, blending with the morning. “Hey, Johnny. Come here.”

  Johnny strode down the trail, trying to look nonchalant, but his eyes were inexorably drawn to the missing leg. Danny let him look. He was going to anyway. Him and everyone else. Danny might as well make it easier on them.

  Danny raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Do you want to see it?”

  “I don’t know,” Johnny replied, lifting his gaze. “Should I?”

  Danny shrugged. “It ain’t pretty, but it’s all I got now.”

  Danny propped himself against the boulder, then watched Johnny’s face while he untucked the trouser where his leg should have been. For the first time, Danny worried about his brother’s reaction. He undid the folds and hated the way his hands shook while he did it. They always shook now, even when he was at ease. It seemed strange, to be scared of a little thing like what Johnny’d say after all Danny had been through.

  Danny had to be calm. Reassure both of them. He rolled the material back, exposing the ugly pink skin at the end of his stump, about four inches beneath his right knee. The doctors had done what they could, patching it together, sewing it back up when it split apart. Scars criss-crossed like barbed wire, white against the pink.

  Johnny stared at it, blinking hard. He didn’t meet Danny’s eyes.

  “What do you think, kid?”

  “Does . . . does it hurt?”

  He didn’t like the sound of Johnny’s voice. It had been years since either of them had cried in front of the other, and Johnny sounded close to doing just that. Danny cleared his throat, more confident now that he was back in the older-brother role.

  “Nah. Not anymore. Feels strange but hardly hurts anymore. Funny thing is, sometimes my foot hurts. The one that’s gone.”

  Johnny drew nearer, examining the leg. He reached to touch it, then glanced apologetically up at Danny, who nodded.

  “Go ahead.”

  Johnny poked it gently, then prodded a little harder in a few other places. “Feels like a leg still.”

  “Still is a leg,” Danny confirmed, lifting one side of his mouth in a smile. “Just a little shorter.”

  “Your knee still bend okay?”

  “Oh yeah. But I ain’t gonna outrun you like I used to, that’s for sure.”

  Johnny took a seat on a facing boulder. “You never did,”
he muttered, looking away from the stump and focusing on Danny’s face. His eyes flickered with emotions Danny needed to understand. But he knew better than to ask.

  “What was it like?” Johnny asked, bold as always. “The war, I mean.”

  Danny’s eyes shot toward the water, and a door slammed shut in his mind. Sweat dampened his palms in that instant, and he was desperate to change the subject.

  “Hey, no problem,” Johnny said quickly. “We don’t have to talk about that.”

  “Who are these hounds?” Danny asked. His voice was strained, his throat constricted by the effort of holding back an unexpected wave of fear.

  “Oh.” Johnny frowned and pointed out the pups one by one. “That real dark one’s Toby, the one with the white on his tail is Pops, and that’s their sister, Betty. They live in the old shed out back. We think their mother got killed by a bobcat. They came through about a year ago and have been here ever since.”

  The pups got scraps for treats once in a while, but were mostly feral and hunted for their own meals, he explained. Cecil still retained ownership of the doghouse, three and a half walls and a good sturdy roof, packed tight with old blankets. Danny had built it when he was fifteen and Cecil was a puppy. Watching the faithful black lab shuffle arthritically toward the water, Danny realized ten years was just about all Cecil had in him. He was glad he’d come back in time to say goodbye.

  Danny stuck a piece of grass in his mouth and chewed on the end. “So, Johnny. What’s been going on while I was gone?”

  THREE

  Near the end of Danny’s stay in the Cambridge Military Hospital in Aldershot, England, Captain Johnston had come by to check on him. He’d brought Danny’s things, as well as two small boxes. On the top of each was stamped a name. One said Private James Mitchell, the other Private Frederick Arnold.

  When Danny got home, he’d tucked the boxes under his bed. For two days they sat patiently between his shoe and his wooden leg, waiting for him to come to terms with what he had to do. By the following Sunday, the silent voices of his two best friends, the wild Irish boys of East Jeddore who would never see her shore again, had forced him to do something about them.

  Danny packed the boxes into a sack he hung over his shoulder, then leaned on his crutch and stepped outside. It was raining, as it had been all night, and the mud wriggled down the road in streams like tiny snakes. Danny pulled his cap down and started up the slippery path to his best friends’ homes.

  From the outside, the Arnolds’ house looked abandoned. He knew they were there, though, because he could hear a couple of kids laughing and a dog yapping. It wasn’t that the house was in disrepair, it just looked gloomy. Could have been the rain, could have been the need for paint. But Danny figured the sadness of the house went far deeper, and he’d never have to ask why. He shuffled up the front walkway, between the skeletal remains of weeds in Mrs. Arnold’s unusually neglected flower bed and her unharvested potato patch, and knocked on the door.

  It felt strange, standing there, waiting for one of the Arnolds to let him in. As boys they’d roared through that door, barely pausing to take off muddy shoes before thumping up the stairs to Fred’s bedroom. Fred, freckled and carrot-coloured, always shared the wooden toys his uncle had made for him. They’d smashed carved horses and carts together, played with little-boy versions of guns. Fred had a huge collection.

  The front door was a solid reminder of why he was here. Nothing would ever be the same. He stared at it until the latch clicked and the door creaked open. Mrs. Arnold stood before him, frailer than before, wiping beet-stained hands on her apron. She took one look at Danny and stepped backwards with a whimper.

  “What is it, Alice?” came Mr. Arnold’s voice, and something twisted in Danny’s chest. Mr. Arnold’s quick Irish accent was so much like Fred’s.

  It took her a moment, an inhalation that swept her glistening eyes from Danny’s face to his remaining foot. Then she said simply, “Oh, Willoughby. It’s Danny. Danny’s come home.”

  “Good day, Mrs. Arnold,” Danny said, cap in hand. Rain pattered on his head, soaking him through, but he didn’t care. He felt safer standing in the rain than he did stepping inside the house.

  “Oh, Danny,” she said. Her chin quivered before she remembered to stand up straighter. “I’m ever so glad to see ye. Come in out of the rain, darlin’. Ye’ll catch your death out there.” She bit her lip and motioned for him to come in, then stood to the side so he could hobble through. In the old days he would have barrelled past her. Now he needed the width of the door frame to contain his body, the sack over his back, and his crutch. Mr. Arnold appeared behind her, a taller, older, thinner version of his son. He nodded at Danny.

  “Welcome home, son,” he said, and Danny knew how badly they wished they could have been saying those words to Fred instead of him.

  “A spot of tea?” Mrs. Arnold asked.

  “That’d be swell,” he said, then he followed Mr. Arnold into the sitting room.

  Everything looked exactly the same as it always had except for the large framed photograph of Fred sitting on the mantel. Fred in uniform, proud and raring to go to war. Give those Germans a taste o’ the Irish, was what he’d said.

  “Here you go,” Mrs. Arnold said, carrying a tray of tea and apple tarts, just as in the old days. How strange. Danny already thought of it as the old days. Another lifetime. She placed the tray on a table between them, then she sat across from Danny, her hands linked together on her lap. She and her husband sat stiffly, an inch apart from each other. The Arnolds stared at Danny, and he stared back, not knowing how to start.

  “Yer mother must be so happy to have ye home,” she finally said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Danny said. “She’s learning to put up with me again, I figure.”

  “And yer fat’er too. His sermons have oft remarked upon our sons being far . . . too far away.”

  The knuckles on Mr. Arnold’s big hand tightened around his wife’s leg, and she tried to smile. Another awkward silence filled the room.

  Danny cleared his throat. “I’m sorry Fred’s not with me. Truly I am. I’m so sorry he isn’t here.” Mrs. Arnold blinked a few times then smiled again, but this time Danny saw the mother behind the mask. She was a little brown-haired woman, not particularly attractive, but efficient in an appealing way. She had been the one mother to always ensure the boys had enough to eat, but not always scones. The Arnolds had a small, hardy orchard, and Mrs. Arnold could work magic with that fruit. Besides all different kinds of apples, she grew rhubarb and plums, and from the bushes she plucked raspberries, blackberries, foxberries, and blueberries, which she made into jams and pies that disappeared far too quickly. Her daughters often brought the finished products to neighbouring homes, feeding the elderly and the infirm. It was every good Christian’s responsibility, she had always said, to provide for those who could not—or would not—provide for themselves.

  Her voice was soft when she spoke again. He’d never heard her speak like that. Maybe she reserved that tone for grown-ups, and it was the first time she’d used it with him. He would have preferred hearing her scold.

  “Ye’re a good lad, Danny. Oh, what I’d have given to have my boy here, but no matter how long the day, the evening will come. We will survive.”

  Mr. Arnold was staring at Danny’s foot. “How’s the leg?” he asked.

  “No idea, sir. I’m sure it’s having a fine time in France right now. I haven’t seen it in months.”

  Mr. Arnold had never been overly fond of humour. He frowned. “’Twas the other one I meant, boy.”

  Danny’s mouth twitched with a smile. “I know, sir. Sorry. It’s fine, thanks.”

  “Thank you for the letter ye sent,” Mrs. Arnold said. “Meant a great deal to us, it did, gettin’ that letter from ye.”

  Danny nodded, then cleared his throat. “I’ve, uh, I’ve brought you his thing
s.”

  He leaned down to pull Fred’s box from the sack, then stood, balancing awkwardly against the sofa arm without his crutch. They both rose, and Mrs. Arnold stretched out her hands. She brushed small, flickering fingers over the top of the box, then folded it against her breast as if it were a babe. Mr. Arnold stared at it, his abundant freckles stretched over a tight jaw. Eventually she pried open the lid and peered inside. Both parents seemed to slouch at the same moment, like air leaking out of twin balloons.

  “Oh, Willoughby,” Mrs. Arnold whispered, beginning to weep. “What a sin. What a sin.” Her husband came around from behind and wrapped his long arms around her, the box held between them.

  A promise broken.

  They forgot all about Danny, and he didn’t wait for them to remember. He’d heard men cry before. Lots of men. He didn’t need to hear the Arnolds’ grief. He politely excused himself, then headed back outside.

  It would be worse at the Mitchells’, he knew. They had already had more than their fair share of loss. They lived the farthest from the Bakers, so when Danny had fallen or hurt himself in some unpredictable way, Mrs. Mitchell had been like a second mother to him. Danny’s mother had done the same for Jimmy. In effect, they had both lost a son that day.

  He was nervous about how this visit would go. Would they still think of him as Danny, or would they see him as the one who came home when Jimmy hadn’t? Would they still love him, or would their familiar faces try to mask resentment? He would understand that. How many times had Danny wished he could have replaced Jimmy on that stinking field, taken that bullet himself?

  The Arnolds’ front door had been a faded white. The Mitchells’ door was freshly painted as it was every other year, the trim a festive red to match the shutters. Floyd Mitchell would have been sure to do that, come hell or high water. It was Floyd’s message to the world that the Mitchells were doing just fine, thank you very much.