With My Last Breath

Be careful what you wish for…

One

Ypres, Belgium

October 1917

Owen ducked low and ran along the front-line trench. On the other side was No Man’s Land, where his fellow countrymen lay dead and dying.

Get out of the way, you bloody fool!

The passing soldier glared at Owen, either not noticing or ignoring his captain’s insignia. War correspondents were all made up to the rank of Captain, whether they deserved it or not. The soldier was gone before Owen had a chance to ask him where he could find Major Lanyard. Owen had met the major several times at headquarters and found him to be a sensible man in a world where good sense was in short supply. They had become friends, finding common ground in their backgrounds, their sense of obligation to their country, and their dismay with the high toll of human life the war was taking on their countrymen.

Owen turned a corner. A stretcher-bearer party was ahead of him, but the two men with red crosses around their upper arms were not hurrying and the stretcher was empty. One of them reached into his jacket and pulled out a cigarette. Owen went to pass them, pushing himself hard against the trench wall.

You in a hurry, mate? The laconic Australian accent was no surprise in this place, where he had heard voices from every corner of the world. The one we’re off to fetch isn’t going anywhere. Deserter, he added, and spat on the ground. Major Lanyard is having him shot.

Owen swallowed his sudden nausea. Shooting deserters was meant to be a warning to others, and he imagined that especially at a time like this, when Major Lanyard was sending his men across No Man’s Land to face possible death, he would want to focus his troop’s attention.

It was brutal, but then war was brutal. Owen wondered how he would cope if he was ordered to run into enemy fire, and then his clever brain was twisting and turning, creating a story for his newspaper, the London Courier.

Do you know where I can find Major Lanyard? he asked.

Up ahead. Look for the red flag.

He watched as the stretcher-bearers took a breather, puffing on their cigarettes. The deserter must have a story. Would Major Lanyard discuss it with him? There had to be a reason for him to have deserted. Owen considered the questions he might ask some of the dead chap’s colleagues as he made his way forward.

A shell made the ground shake, and he felt the first splatters of rain hit his tin helmet. He glanced up at the grey sky and saw the red flag and the shored up entry to what must be the major’s bunker. A couple of soldiers were slumped against the side of the trench, as if waiting, and he recognised one of them as a corporal he had spoken with on another occasion.

I’m here to see Major Lanyard, he said. "Owen Flett, from the London Courier. He’s expecting me."

They stared back at him, disinterested and weary. The corporal answered. He’s not here. Had something to do. Should be back soon, he said.

Owen looked further down the trench. I can meet up with him?

The soldiers exchanged glances. We can’t let anyone through, sorry, Captain. Orders.

The deserter, of course. As much as he wanted to be present, he couldn’t disobey an order. All the same, he had the makings of a story and he may as well start his interview now.

When you say he had something to do… Is that the deserter?

The two men exchanged a glance and the corporal shrugged. Aye. The men were ordered to watch him shot before they went over, just to encourage them, like.

Owen reached into his pocket, found his cigarette case and offered it to the two men. They both took a cigarette, tucking them away for later. Do you know anything about the man?

That one is a right bastard, the private muttered. I mean, some of them you feel sorry for, you have to. You understand why they do it. But him… He grimaced.

The corporal nodded in agreement. World’s better off without ’im.

Owen felt a glimmer of excitement. Maybe there was a story that was worth pursuing here, a different kind of grim misery?

So he wasn’t… isn’t just a deserter?

Another look exchanged by the two men. No, it was more than that.

He had been about to ask the man’s name when voices drifted from further along the trench. Owen took a step and then paused, expecting the two soldiers to stop him, but they simply shrugged and turned away.

Owen squinted against the mist that seemed to have risen up around him. Was that Major Lanyard’s voice? He took another step.

There was a crack of gunfire. Was the firing squad closer than he’d thought? Should he go back? And then a scream came from above him, the high-pitched whine of a shell, so close he could feel the air around him heat, scorching his skin. Then a roar. The feeling of falling, of being crushed.

Then nothing.

Slowly, he became aware of small sensations. The weight of his body, held down, buried. The smell of damp earth and blood. Muted voices drifting further and further away.

Emilia. He had to get home to Emilia. His heart pounded so loud he could no longer hear anything apart from that rattle in his chest. It stuttered, stopped, started again. And then stopped altogether. Nothing now but endless silence.

Eventually, it was panic that forced his eyes to open. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but he’d expected to see the trench or the ruined landscape of Belgium. Instead, he was seated on a bench in a railway station.

It was so bizarre, so incongruous, that his first thought was that he was gravely injured and hallucinating. He stared as shadowy people wandered past him. Men in uniform. Steam hissed from a train waiting at the platform, the acrid smell filling his nostrils. Soldiers were boarding and he watched as the conductor took their tickets, closely inspecting each one. Several passengers were turned away. A protesting private began to sob.

How had he arrived here? Where was here? He had been to many train stations all over Europe and although this one did not look familiar to him, that meant nothing. They all blurred into something similar after a while. He listened hard to the voices around him, in case that gave him a clue, but the languages were a mish-mash of English, French, German, and many others he didn’t recognise.

He was still unconscious. He must be. Hallucinating, maybe. Perhaps he was injured and lying in the hospital tent behind the front line? Perhaps he was on his way home?

Owen looked down at himself, expecting to see injuries, but he appeared to be unhurt. No wounds, no limbs missing, none of the horrible gaping holes that a shell or machine guns could inflict. It seemed nothing was missing apart from his memory.

As he sat there, confused, his thoughts slipping in and out of the moment, he tried to grab onto the familiar. The past.

Before he left England, he and Emilia had visited her home in Belsham. Owen and Emilia’s father, Maurice Honeywell, the well-known writer of crime novels, had sat comfortably together in front of the fire. They’d been pondering various misdeeds and how they could be solved and the perpetrators brought to justice, without giving the game away in the first paragraph. Owen often thought that if he hadn’t become a journalist, he might have been an author.

As his memories grew stronger, the smells of the train station, steam and coal and fear, receded. Now he could feel the warmth of that fire, hear the crackle of the flames, taste the warmth of brandy in his throat.

You two. Emilia’s teasing, loving voice crept into his head. He looked up and she was smiling down at him, a tray with two cups of tea and two slices of cake in her hands. Now Dad has enough ideas for at least fifty more books. I don’t mind helping when the setting is near home, but please, no more crimes in Cairo.

Emilia was her father’s researcher and fact checker, and often complained, in a tongue in cheek sort of way, about some of the more obscure places he’d needed her to research.

Her father was trying not to smile. I thought perhaps I would set my next book in Siberia.

In winter, I suppose? She laughed, and her beautiful eyes, her kind brown eyes, warmed.

Emelia. His wife, his love, the woman he’d left at home to wait for him while he went off to a war he didn’t believe in to sate his need for honesty and integrity. Was that selfless or selfish?

His thoughts drifted to his final night in London, he and Evie cuddled together in bed in his house in Easton Street. You can’t change the world, she’d whispered in the darkness.

I can try.

I suppose you can. But if you don’t come back this time… Being without you … that would change my world, Owen.

It was more than she usually said. She was brave, stoic, and up until now she had always sent him off with a smile. This time, her eyes were bright with tears and her mouth trembled. He felt a sliver of fear. Because he had to go, they both knew it, and she was making it more difficult than it needed to be. He had begun to understand why some men did not come home at all, but spent their leave at headquarters away from family and friends who would only make the return to war all the more difficult.

We’ll take a holiday when I get back, he’d said, needing her to be strong so that he could be strong. Where would you like to go? Scotland?

She took a shaky breath. Scotland is rather far away, she said. Isle of Wight might be better. As she went on, her voice grew in strength, until it was almost back to normal. The conversation meandered on, and the awkward moment passed.

When it came time for him to say goodbye, he’d held her close and she didn’t weep. She smiled bravely, just as he’d wanted her to, so that his heart didn’t rip in two in his desire to be two men at once.

Selfish and selfless.

Owen wasn’t sure how long he sat, lost in the past, staring out at the station and the movement all around him. The train had gone, but there was another one waiting. A conductor stood nearby. He was tall and thin, in the usual sort of uniform conductors wore. His skin wasn’t just pale, however, it was white. Deathly white. He stared at Owen with the darkest eyes he’d ever seen. Something compelled Owen to stand and move toward him.

Have you a ticket? the conductor asked. Owen didn’t recognise the accent. He searched in his jacket pocket, expecting to find a slip of paper, but there was nothing. He searched again while the conductor waited.

I don’t have one, he said at last.

The man’s dark eyes fixed on Owen. You can’t board without a ticket, he said. The sound of a throat clearing. Someone was standing behind him, and Owen turned. A soldier, smelling of damp wool and regret, stood behind him. The conductor held out his hand, and the soldier gave him a ticket. The man brushed by Owen to climb aboard, but Owen clasped his arm to stop him.

Where are you going? he asked. Are we being transferred? Is the war over?

The man stared at him with a blank expression, and, without a word, he pulled away from Owen’s grip and climbed aboard. The conductor firmly closed the door and blew his whistle. Owen stumbled back as the train sent out a burst of steam and began to move, slowly gaining speed as it left the platform.

Owen turned back to the bench and sat down. Maybe the next train would be his. Maybe then he could go home.

Another man was seated nearby, his head bowed, muttering to himself. At least Owen wasn’t alone in his wait.

Emilia, he thought. Had he really been torn between being selfish and selfless? Suddenly the idea of telling the truth for the masses and having his name on a by-line did not matter nearly as much as being with his wife.

Emilia.

He pressed his palm to his chest and he felt more alone than he ever had in his entire life.

A pair of shiny shoes stopped in front of him and when he looked up there was a bearded man watching him. He half smiled and spoke.

Mr Flett. I have an offer I’d like to make you.

Notice in the London Courier, November 1917

Flett, Captain Owen. War Correspondent for this newspaper. Missing, presumed dead.

Captain Flett was working as a war correspondent for the Courier when the trench he was in was hit by a German shell. His body was not found, but he is presumed dead.

It appears that, not content to sit back and have the news from the front brought to him, Captain Flett had travelled into the trenches to speak to the soldiers himself. It was his belief that the readers at home preferred their information straight from the mouths of those doing the fighting, something frowned upon by the military hierarchy.

A man known for his integrity and firm beliefs, Captain Flett will be greatly missed by his colleagues.

He leaves behind his wife, Emilia, daughter of crime writer M V Honeywell, and a younger sister Florence, as well as the many friends and colleagues who will mourn his passing.

Two

London

March 1919

The bus moved forward, and I tried to make myself smaller in my seat as a large man squeezed in beside me. We didn’t speak, and we both wore face masks, so there wasn’t any need to be polite. I was glad of that. This was one of my sad days.

It was because I was thinking of Owen, although there wasn’t ever a day when I didn’t think of Owen. Sometimes I pleaded with God, promising anything, everything, if only I could have him back again. At times, the weight was so heavy that I wondered how I could get through all those empty hours ahead of me. This was one of those days.

It was ages since I had been to London, and now I was beginning to see familiar places. We had spent our short married life here, at the house in Easton Street. Every corner the bus turned brought forth a memory or reminded me of one. My father’s cottage in the country, where we had first met, was painful enough, but there were other memories there to distract myself with. In London, there was only us.

The man beside me rose and got off at his stop, and a woman took his place. Winter was holding on, and the cold rainy weather meant that the bus was filled with passengers of all ages. A baby bawled toward the front and I could see its mother desperately rock it. Despite the protective mask I wore over my nose and mouth, I could smell damp wool competing with the disinfectant which was supposed to keep the influenza at bay.

The numbers of deaths had been dropping since last year when they had been so frighteningly high, but then over winter had come a new wave of fatalities. Now that the war was over, troops returning home had brought the infection with them. The community had been warned to remain vigilant, and the government was doing its best to check the spread of the disease in public places.

I had escaped infection, staying with my father in his cottage in Belsham, near Cambridge. He too was well. Florence’s job in the hospital brought her in contact with many influenza patients, but she had survived the worst, apart from a fortnight in bed which she said was more about her feeling sorry for herself and missing her brother.

The bus jerked to a halt as a passenger got off and two more passengers got on before it started moving again. This morning, I had started out my journey to London by taking a branch line train from my father’s house, then changing at Cambridge to the London train. Gradually the open countryside had given way to choking suburbs and then the predictably smoky gloom of Paddington Station, where I’d caught a bus. Until now I had refused Florence’s invitations, but this time she would not take no for an answer.

"You never come and see me anymore! I know it must feel awkward, because you and Owen used to live in this house together, but I miss you, Emilia. I miss my brother. I miss you both."

The crackly phone line had not been able to hide the break in Florence’s voice. A mixture of guilt and longing had won me over, and I agreed to a visit for a couple of days. A couple of days which Florence had immediately lengthened into at least a week.

What about your job at the hospital?

It’s voluntary, Florence had reminded me. My real job will be to entertain you.

That made me laugh. I can’t be away for too long. My father—

My mother had died when I was born, so it had been the two of us all of my life. As well as keeping house, I had been his assistant when it came to his writing career. I worked as his researcher. At some point, he had stopped doing his