Before the Dawn Read Online Free PDF Page A

of terror.
    "George."  Katherine moved quickly to embrace her son, her arms not quite touching him.  George's arms closed around her, also not touching, a matter of form.
    "Mother."
    Alice watched them and knew it was her turn to speak.
    "Hello, George."
    His eyes traveled to her, resting on her briefly. He looked mildly surprised. "Alice." He nodded once and burdened by her mother-in-law's expectation, Alice darted to George's side and stood on her tiptoes to kiss his cheek. He hesitated before bending down to pat her on the shoulder, methodically, as if she were a dog.
    "I've brought the car," Katherine said. "Drove myself, would you believe.” She let out a high, brittle laugh that seemed to echo down the empty platform. “Petrol is impossible to obtain still, of course you know that..."
    "Of course." George fell into step with his mother, Alice trailing behind.
    There was another awkward moment when they reached the car, for naturally George would be expected to drive, and yet he did not. They stood by the door, silent, suspended, and then with an ironic little bow he stepped aside for his mother to take the wheel, and opened the door for Alice to sit in the back.
    All the way home he averted his face, gazing out at the neat hedgerows and chocolate-box cottages with a look of cold indifference. Alice watched his face covertly and with a growing sense of fear.
    The man she'd married was a stranger, she'd no doubt about that. She’d expected that. She’d cultivated it.
    One night, when they didn’t know whether he was dead or captured, when she’d still kept hold of that bit of herself that hadn’t been absorbed by the War, by the blood and dirt, and the thought of the blood and dirt, she’d indulged in a frenzy of worry and terror.
    She’d seen his face contorted in pain, blank in death. She heard him screaming, crying, pleading, and then silence. She thought of him coming home, a mere husk, and she thought of him not coming home at all. She didn’t know which one she preferred.
    Her stomach churned, her heart beat fiercely, her nails dug into her palms, her limbs twisted and writhed in denial, until she stumbled from bed and vomited in the chamber pot.
    After that she decided she would not endure that again. She would not live on the thin vapor of hope.
    Katherine drove the car up the long, sweeping drive to Longworth House. It was a pleasant house of Georgian brick, two rows of blank windows glittering in the late afternoon sun.
    Alice had lived in this house since her marriage.  Originally, it had been a temporary arrangement till George was established in his father's law firm. 
    In those first few months, Alice had spent idle afternoons wandering through Longworth. She'd imagined her and George in some cozy nest, perhaps with him reading to her in the evenings by the glow of a coal fire, her head on his knee, his hand stroking her hair.
    It was a vague image, not fully realized, not even fully imagined. It had never been meant to sustain her.
    Then George had volunteered for the Front as soon as the battles lines were drawn. It had been, although unsaid, a matter of principle.
    Alice remembered holding her hands out and saying, “Please, George.” He had drawn her into his arms. “Don’t,” he said. “If you say any more, I shan’t be able to go.”
    She’d loved him even more for that. Or at least, she managed to believe she did.
    So Alice had swallowed her plea and waved George off cheerfully, knitted him socks and mittens, arranged for The Times to be delivered to his bunker. She’d written insipid yet newsy letters about life in Longworth. She’d rolled bandages, planted cabbages, and felt her soul being absorbed through her fingers and her silent lips, into this thing called War.
    When George had gone missing, presumed dead, Alice had remained suspended between doubt and hope, unable to move, even to think, certainly to feel. The absorption was complete.
    Her father had written, suggesting