The Gates of Rutherford Read Online Free PDF

to sit down on a chair in the corridor. The lights were all low, the gas sputtering in the gaskets.
    â€œWe went up steeply,” he murmured. “Then it stopped and started to go back. It had no speed, no power. The wind was stronger than the power it had to go forward, you see.” He had paused, reliving the stalling of the engine and the aching silence that took the place of the roar of the prop and the rushing of the air as they descended. “I could see it coming towards us,” he continued. He spoke slowly, dreamily. “You’ll not see that often, you know? I have it here in my mind.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “I have that picture—of the waves, you know—like corrugated iron, and the very color of iron. I closed my eyes as we hit, and that’s what’s done it. The cold shut my eyes.”
    She’d stayed for a long time holding his hand, and eventually he submitted to being taken back to bed.
    When she had seen him again the following week, he had asked, “Is it the lady who was here on my first night?”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œYou’ll have to forgive me for my stupidity,” he told her. “The doctor has spoken to me.” He had shrugged and spread his hands. “It’s that there’s no pain to speak of,” he said. “You understand, no pain, not what I would class as pain, really?”
    She’d hesitated by the bed.
    â€œI thought it must have been the shock of the seawater. But of course it can’t be that.” Charlotte had tried not to look into his face; rather, she occupied herself by staring at a spot on the linoleum so that she would not cry at his pathetic good humor, the embarrassment at his confusion. He had tapped his hand on the counterpane and gave a little gusting sigh. “A piece of the aircraft,” he said. “Not a bullet at all, not a shell. Ridiculous. So . . . I’m not quite sure what I shall do. . . .”
    â€œThat will all be explained.”
    â€œWill it?” he’d asked. “But I’m a gunner in the Navy. I’m in the Navy, you see. . . .”
    Hard to let go. To imagine any other life. “My brother is with the Flying Corps in France,” she’d replied.
    â€œIs he?” There had been a long silence.
    â€œI must get on.”
    â€œOf course,” he’d replied, with that same bewildered air. “Of course.”
    And it had been Allington who had been sitting on the bench with Christine the very first time that Charlotte had met her.
    Charlotte was wary—so many visitors just appeared and thought they were being helpful. They wandered in out of Regent’s Parkdespite all efforts to dissuade them. Charlotte’s worst fear was that she would come across some motherly women weeping over a “poor blinded boy,” as she had once found.
    But she need not have worried with Christine Nesbitt.
    Christine had not an ounce of pathos in her, nor was she taken to weeping. But she was an avid, intelligent listener. And as she spoke, she drew.
    That morning—frost was on the ground all around them—Christine had a drawing pad balanced on her lap and was sketching as she listened to Allington. As Charlotte had drawn nearer, she had heard what Allington was saying.
    â€œWhen I first got in a cockpit, I shot at the enemy with two Enfield rifles,” he was telling her. “Not much use. And then we got the Lewis gun.” He had begun to laugh quietly to himself. “Marvelous thing, but we had to shoot through the prop. Imagine that! Shoot through the thing that was keeping you in the air. Then they invented a synchromesh gear.”
    Drawing rapidly, Christine had not looked up, but she asked the question. “What was that?”
    â€œClever. It synchronized the firing of the gun through the propeller.”
    â€œGosh. That
is
clever.”
    â€œMade life