“I don’t know what I’m doing here,” Jed said at last.“I was sure that if only I could get Bess back, everything would be all right.But it don’t work like that, does it?”
Solomon’s shoulder was solid and comforting, pressed against his.
Jed lifted his head to look sideways at him.“I just wanted to go home.”
“I know.”
The grass was warm and dry under his hands.A cricket chirped noisily—nearby, but somehow distant, like being underwater.
“I don’t think I’m going to see this Mr Harlow.”
The words came surprisingly easily.He wasn’t sure how he felt, afterwards.Like coming unmoored—or maybe being set free?
Solomon nodded.In the face of his calm acceptance, Jed felt a little better.
He straightened up, scrubbing his face and taking a couple of deep breaths.He looked up at the sky.
“It’ll be sunset in a few hours.I suppose we should go back down to Ledcombe and look for somewhere to sleep.”
“That old pithead where we slept before,” Solomon said thoughtfully.“That’s not far from here, is it?”
Chapter Twenty
They sat on the grass among the pithead ruins, eating the food they’d brought with them from Mrs May’s village.It was much warmer now than it had been when last they were here, the spring chill gone from the air.
Jed said abruptly, “Sometimes I see things.As if in a waking dream.Things as happened to me, or as could have happened.”He tugged at a handful of grass, tossed it aside, pulled up another.“It seems so real.As though I’m truly there, on board ship, and not here in the real world.When it happens… I don’t know where I am.WhenI am.”He bit his lip.“Sometimes I think I’m losing my mind.”
“I don’t think you are,” Solomon said quietly.
“I thought maybe, if I could only go back to my village and my old life… That was a fool’s notion.”He tugged up another handful of grass, still not looking at Solomon.“And then there’s this other thing… You may think me an ill-tempered, ill-favoured bastard, but I never used to be that way.I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”
Solomon had been sitting sprawled across the ground, but now he drew himself up, tucking his legs under him.
After a moment, he said, “When I went away to London, when I was a boy… Well, truth be told, I didn’tgoaway, Iranaway.I’ll tell you about it some other day.But anyroad, when I got to London, I thought all my troubles were over.But they weren’t.I was miserable, I couldn’t sleep.And the waking dreams, like you said… Sometimes I couldn’t even breathe.”
Jed wished he could go back in time to comfort that young boy.“Did it get better?”
“With time.Not entirely.”
Jed thought this over.
“You’re talking about something as happened when you were a boy.I’m a grown man.”
“A man who just spent five years at war.”
“There are a hundred thousand men in the Service.Men who’ve lost arms, legs, eyes… I came away unscathed.”
“I don’t think you did,” Solomon said.“And I expect you en’t the only one.Not by a long chalk.”
It was an overwhelming idea, too big to take in, and Jed didn’t know if he wanted to believe it.If he was able to believe it.
Finally, he said, “I just want to be the man I was.”
“It’s the man you are now that I lo—like.Admire.”
At that, Jed raised his head.They were sitting close together, only a foot or two of air between them.Solomon’s expression was open but wary.Vulnerable, somehow.
Jed looked at him, thinking about how often Solomon had reached out to him over the months, and how often Jed had pushed him away.Not that Solomon hadn’t done his own share of pushing away.
