Read Online Skeleton-in-Waiting by Peter Dickinson - Free Book Online Page B

authority aboard and get a carriage again. So we waited. The siding served some mine. There was no town, nothing. Trains went by and did not stop. We finished our food. We waved and screamed at the passing trains. After three days we and the servants dragged timbers onto the track and stopped a train. It was full of soldiers, not Russian, not English—Serbs, I learnt later—going east, defeated, ragged. Some of them climbed out to drag the timbers clear, but when we approached the carriages to plead to come aboard others climbed down and struck at the servants with their rifles and started to drag me and my mother towards the train. We knew at once it was not because they wished to help us. One of my brothers tried to fight them but they cut him down. Then two men came running down the track and began to argue and struggle with the soldiers. One of them had a pistol and shouted at the soldiers in English, so we screamed at him in English, which of course we knew, for help. I was told later that the soldiers were running away from the battle because they had no ammunition left, but the Englishman had bullets for his pistol, so he fired a few shots and forced the soldiers to let us go. By now the track was clear and the soldiers climbed back onto the train, but somebody had found bullets for his rifle and he fired at us and killed one of the Englishmen, so we ran back to our wagon and the train left without us. The Englishman told us the next train would be full of Bolsheviks, so we buried my brother and the dead Englishman and walked away southwards. Fifteen months later we reached England, my husband and I and our daughter. All the others had died on the way. That is how I came to England. I was then seventeen.”
    Louise felt ambushed. In the nature of her work, visiting
    AIDS hospices, refugee camps, famine relief centres, aftermaths of tragedies, she was used to being confronted with stories of everyday but still extraordinary suffering, everyday but still extraordinary endurance. Father used to say that one of the main categories in the royal job-description was specialist social worker. You had to acquire a sort of soft shell which allowed you to feel and express compassion without being overwhelmed. Now, though, she felt momentarily at a loss, having Mrs Walsh’s story sprung on her, with its remoteness and horror and illusory romance. It took her an inward blink before the well-worn phrases came to her lips.
    â€œBut that must have been terrible! What an adventure! Why doesn’t everyone know about it?”
    Again that smile.
    â€œThere was a time when the world might have known,” said Mrs Walsh. “My husband was not a regular soldier. He was an adventurer, an explorer, a passionate anti-Bolshevik. He had attached himself to the Serbian brigade in order to fight for the cause he believed in, and though your War Office had given him some kind of semi-official status in order that he might act as liaison officer with the British contingents, when he returned to England with his health broken after his hardships they refused to accept any responsibility. We sold what was left of my jewels, apart from this, which was given to me by my mother as she died.”
    She raised a hand to the brooch in her toque. So the diamonds were real, Louise thought. She herself preferred costume jewellery, but there were functions at which she was expected to parade around wearing gew-gaws worth several decent semi-detacheds. The brooch looked in that class.
    â€œWe were penniless,” said Mrs Walsh. “So we decided to write a book about our adventure. There was a great interest in our war then, and many books published. Nobody cares to remember about it now—it is an embarrassment between the great powers. Be that as it may, we had high hopes of success. But the publishers we had chosen proved weak and incompetent, and when pressure was put on them from certain quarters they made excuses and