No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  He broke off abruptly and sat with a faint look of surprise on his face as if taken aback himself at what he had just heard.

  Lothar turned his back on Viney and .stood facing the men.

  ‘Lastly,’ he said, ‘I would like to read you something. It is a letter Mr Cowper gave me; asking me to post it somehow, if things went badly for him.’

  ‘You bastard!’ shouted the officer on his feet and flinging himself forward, ‘You Hun swine!’

  Lothar evaded the blind rush with a simple side step and a couple of men seized Cowper and dragged him, cursing and threatening, back to his chair. He waited till the man’s protests faded into the expectant silence and then he started reading. ‘My dearest one, If you read this, the worst has happened but I believe you will know that long before this letter can possibly reach you. Yet I do not believe the worst will happen, at least not here, not now. I’m with some chaps who seem to threaten all kinds of unpleasantness to me, but to be honest, the most of them are so like those decent, good-hearted, long-suffering soldiers I’ve been working alongside for three years now that I cannot believe they’ll let the one or two madmen here harm me. In fact, this is probably one of the safest places I’ve been for a long time, and I myself must be a madman to want to get out of it and back to the fighting! So, no, I’m sure you’ll never have to read this but instead will be able to hear rather than merely see these words of love and longing that I now send to you.’

  Lothar paused, then slowly refolded the letter and replaced it in his tunic.

  ‘There is a little more,’ he said. ‘But such things should only be heard by a wife from her husband’s lips. I hope that is how they may reach Mrs Cowper.’

  With a slight nod at Viney, he sat down.

  The Australian’s face wore a pensive frown. No one broke the utter silence of the chamber.

  Suddenly the Luger butt crashed down on the table.

  ‘Trial adjourned,’ growled Viney, rising. ‘We’ll take an hour off for grub.’

  It was in its way an admission of defeat.

  But not, Lothar guessed as he made his way to the sleeping area to check on Josh, necessarily a final defeat. The ‘hour for grub’ would probably extend as long as Viney could drag it out. The Australian would know full well that time was the best dilutant for the sympathy which had been won for Cowper. Lothar resolved to press for the reconvening of the so-called court as soon as possible.

  Instead, ten minutes later he found himself offering Viney an excuse to delay as long as he wanted.

  ‘Disappeared? What the hell do you mean, Josh has disappeared?’

  ‘He’s not in the Warren, Viney,’ said Lothar wretchedly. ‘I think he must have gone out.’

  His eyes met Taff Evans’s and the Welshman looked away.

  ‘Out?’ said Viney, his eyes hard as slate. ‘Who’s on sentry?’

  Coleport left the chamber and returned a moment later with Eddie Nelson, the bald-headed Londoner, who looked terrified. Before he could say anything Viney hit him high on the temple, sending him crashing to the ground.

  ‘I’ve warned you what’d happen to anyone sleeping on sentry!’ he cried.

  His threat had a dreadful irony as Nelson’s close associates knew that it was being caught asleep on duty which had precipitated his desertion.

  ‘I wasn’t sleeping,’ protested the man, cowering away from the angry Australian.

  ‘How the hell did he get out then?’

  ‘I say let the silly little cunt go,’ said Strother. ‘He’s doolally tap anyway.’

  ‘Mebbe,’ said Viney. ‘But he’s not so daft he couldn’t lead the redcaps back here, Strother!’

  ‘I don’t think the lad’d betray us,’ protested Hepworth.

  ‘Don’t talk wet, Heppy,’ said Viney wearily. ‘Half an hour with them bastards and Jesus Christ’d betray us! So let’s get organized. We’d better find him quick!’

  8

  For the first ten minutes after he left the Warren, Josh had run as far as the broken ground would allow him. He headed westward, towards the declining sun, towards the leaf-heavy trees he had distantly glimpsed from the escape hole of the ventilation shaft.

  But as he approached the edge of the Desolation he began to slow down. It was over a year since the battle had moved on from this land. A harsh winter had balmed its wounds in snow, sudden spring had washed them in floods, and the heat of summer had tried to coax the dead earth back to life. The untouched countryside to the west, now beginning to ripen into rich autumn, had sent raiding parties of couch-grass and bindweed, of dock and vetch, into the Desolation. Here and there a flash of blue or a smear of red showed where cornflower or poppyseeds had been washed deep into the still living subsoil. But for this season they were merely a gesture, wreaths in a charnel-house, with the bare gaunt bones of the wrecked trees protruding from their own dry dust.

  Somehow Josh felt that this was where he still belonged. To venture out of his dead forest was to risk once more the hot, violent pains of life.

  He came to a halt a yard or two from the uneven boundary and sat down, his back against a tree, his eyes full of the slanting sun.

  He felt no surprise as he saw the girl. She was moving parallel to the dead forest, picking up pieces of dry wood which she dropped into a pannier she carried over her left shoulder. She wore a simple blue dress which hung loosely over her slender figure and her long blonde hair was bound back with a green ribbon.

  She moved among the stumps like the Spirit of Spring herself, come to promise that next year would be better. Such a fancy notion was far from being articulated in Josh’s mind, but he felt her presence as a blessing, not a threat, and he sat quietly drinking in the total scene.

  Nor did the girl have any such conceit of herself. She was enjoying the evening, enjoying the air, enjoying this excuse to absent herself a while from the daily round of hard toil.

  But when she saw Josh, she felt no doubt that he was more likely to be a threat than a blessing.

  With a cry of alarm she started back, the pannier slipping from her shoulder and falling to the ground where half its contents spilled sideways. This was the only consideration which inhibited instant flight. Her mother had warned her a hundred times, and without mincing her words, of the perils of close contact with soldiers of any class, rank or nation in these times of war.

  That this was a soldier of some kind she saw at a glance. The boots, the worn and tattered but still recognizable khaki uniform; un Anglais, she guessed. It was partly the excellent, camouflage of the man’s clothes against the brown background which had kept him concealed so well, but added to this was his unnervingly absolute stillness. He sat unmoving, his back against a tree-stump, staring unblinkingly westward towards the sunset.

  Slowly she reached down for the pannier. Her simple instinct was to pick it up and run. But her eyes, fixed on the soldier’s face at first in terror, gradually admitted some diluting curiosity.

  He was so still; and so young too. His face had something of that expression she saw every day in her own brother, Auguste, who had come back from the war a ghost in the ruin of his own mind. It was touched with unhappiness and suffering, but not aged by it. In fact he didn’t look much older than herself, and she was only seventeen.

  She postponed flight and began repacking her pannier. By the time she had finished this, curiosity had almost completely pushed out fear and was in its turn being joined by something like annoyance at the young soldier’s complete lack of reaction to her presence. Her pannier replenished, she moved a few paces away and here paused, curiosity and pique finally compounding into boldness.

  ‘Bonjour, monsieur,’ she said in a clear, high voice.

  For a moment there was no reaction. Then slowly the wide child’s eyes turned towards her and seemed to see her for the first time.

  ‘Bong jewer,’ he said slowly, and smiled.

  The smile dispelled what little remained of her fear. It was innocent and charming and free o
f any hidden intent, and it lit up his face with a glow that reflected the light of the setting sun.

  She said, ‘Qu’ est-ce que vous faîtes ici, monsieur?’

  The smile remained but he shook his head.

  ‘Silver Plate. Mercy,’ he said. Then he scratched his head with a look of comic concentration and finally added triumphantly, ‘Van blonk. Bon!’

  She suddenly realized he was displaying his total French vocabulary for her benefit and laughed aloud. Eager to reciprocate she said slowly, ‘Tommy. English. No Eggs. Cheerioh!’

  He looked at her with such eager expectation that she racked her brains for more, but nothing would come.

  Shrugging her shoulders, she said, ‘Je regrette, c’est tout.’

  The two young people faced each other, smiling. Her shadow ran long before her, touching his body.

  She said, ‘Pardon, m’sieur, il faut partir. Maman …’

  He interrupted, saying, ‘Josh.’

  She looked at him in puzzlement.

  He pointed his forefinger at himself and said, ‘Josh.’

  ‘Ah! Vous vous appellez Josh?’ she cried. ‘Moi, Nicole.’

  She imitated his gesture with the finger and repeated, ‘Nicole.’

  ‘Nicole,’ he said.

  ‘Josh,’ she said.

  They smiled at each other in shared triumph as though the language barrier had been permanently broken.

  Josh racked his mind in search of some way of extending the moment. Suddenly he thrust his hand into his trouser pocket, pulled it out and reached towards her.

  Alarmed, she took a step back.

  Then he said, ‘Chocolate,’ and she saw in his palm two squares wrapped in silver paper. They were a present from Viney, given with a conspiratorial wink which hinted at a private horde, rather than the gentler truth that they were the Australian’s own ration.

  Slowly she reached out and took them. Then, as if fearing a change of mind, she rapidly thrust one of the squares into her mouth and chewed it with such an expression of delight that Josh laughed aloud in vicarious glee.

  He motioned to the tree-stump inviting her to sit, but she wasn’t ready for that. On the other hand courtesy as well as curiosity demanded that she did not eat this strange young man’s chocolate and immediately depart.

  ‘Non. Promenadons,’ she said emphatically.

  This was a word Josh recognized. He knew it meant walk but it also had such sexual overtones from its unique use in the always erotic invitation ‘Voulez-vous promenader avec moi?’ that his stomach contracted for a second. Then he grasped that the girl’s intention was to lessen the chances of the physical contact and he blushed as if she could understand his thoughts more easily than his speech.

  They strolled along slowly with a good yard between them. From time to time each glanced at the other and from time to time their glances met and they smiled. She nibbled the other piece of chocolate, savouring its flavour. Some crumbs floated on to the front of her dress and she picked at them greedily, her hand against the loose fabric giving a hint of the slight breasts underneath.

  ‘Tu es soldat?’ she asked suddenly.

  Josh nodded, delighted to have understood.

  ‘Oui, moi soldat,’ he answered.

  She regarded him curiously and, looking down at himself, he realized what a strange kind of soldier he must appear. What remained of his uniform was tattered and stained. He wore no hat or battledress tunic and carried no weapons. And though his enforced daily shaving had never had much more to remove than what Wilf had unkindly termed ‘bum-fluff, the total neglect of the last months had allowed a generous haze of blond hair to emerge on his chin and cheeks.

  But he knew no way to explain, and was not altogether sure he wanted to, that he was an ex-soldier, a deserter, a criminal in the eyes of his own country and probably hers too.

  ‘Soldat,’ he repeated, and performed a mime of shouldering arms and marching along with exaggerated limb movements. This made her laugh aloud and for a couple of strides she imitated him.

  Josh racked his brains for something to say which would build upon this lightness of mood, but nothing came. So inexperienced was he in the making of Small-talk with pretty young women that he would have had difficulty enough in English. In French it was utterly impossible. Fortunately the girl did not suffer the same inhibitions. She started to chatter away rapidly in French, seeming to find his looks of incomprehension amusing rather than frustrating. It crossed his mind that perhaps she was laughing at the nature of the things she was saying to him. He had heard British soldiers make the most outrageously obscene remarks to uncomprehending Frenchwomen, often accompanying them with serious and courteous expressions and gestures. It had usually seemed amusing at the time. Well, he couldn’t believe that Nicole was saying anything obscene, but her delighted giggles made him guess that she was being a little cheeky.

  But this cut two ways, he suddenly realized. There was no need to be tongue-tied as he would certainly have been with an English girl. Here he could say what he wanted, what he felt!

  He began tentatively.

  ‘I think you’re smashing,’ he said.

  She paused in her chatter and looked at him in surprise.

  ‘I think you’re the prettiest lass I’ve ever seen,’ he said with increasing boldness. ‘I think your hair’s lovely, and your eyes, and your face, and … and … all of you.’

  They were walking parallel to the edge of the ruined wood. Nicole paused, regarding the fell of charred stumps distrustingly.

  Then with a dismissive movement which set her skirt twirling to reveal brown legs, she whirled round to present her back to the ruined woodland and sat down on a gnarled root which had broken the surface like a bent knee. Large blue eyes were raised to him expectantly and she gave a little encouraging nod.

  ‘I think you’re smashing,’ repeated Josh, suddenly as awkward again as if this had been Brack Wood behind St John’s church and Nicole were an Outerdale lass he’d taken walking there after the service on a Sunday evening. The church, the wood, the whole valley came into his mind as clearly as though he were looking down on them from Outer Pike on a sunny day and with a poignancy that pierced him like a bayonet-thrust.

  Slowly he squatted down on his haunches about a yard in front of the girl.

  ‘Back home,’ he said his eyes fixed on the ground between them, ‘in Outerdale, this time of year, I’d likely be coming down from the fells at this hour. I’d be able to see our house in the distance and there’d be smoke from the kitchen chimney where me mam was making our supper. Dad’d be there already, he gives you a sharp look if he finds you’ve got home before he does, even if it’s only by a minute. And likely as I got down to where Charter Beck starts to level out, I’d meet up with our Wilf …’

  His voice trailed into silence. Wilf. He’d not mentioned his name since he and Lothar had walked off that mistily remembered battlefield. And though at first the horror of his dying had haunted his cratered mind like the cries of a wounded man alone and unreachable out in no-man’s land, in the end the sound had faded or at least blended in with the background noise to become too familiar to be specially noticed. Wilf. He tested the name in his mind then spoke it out loud again. ‘Wilf.’

  He could speak the name quite freely. Was it a betrayal that now so soon he could speak the name and feel nothing? The girl was looking at him strangely, at first he thought simply because of his sudden silence. But as he raised his head and tried to smile reassuringly at her, he tasted salt on his lips, and felt the evening breeze chill against his damp face, and realized that his eyes were running with tears.

  Nicole made a small movement towards him. It would probably have been easy then to precipitate what he so longed for – the close body to body embrace with his face buried deep in that golden hair. But he held back, made no confirmatory gesture; this grief and this girl had no acquaintance and to make one a bridge to the other would, he suspected, feel later like a betrayal of both.


  ‘It’ll be our Bert who works up the fells now,’ he resumed in a stronger voice. ‘He’d just left school when me and Wilf joined up. Next there’s Annie, she’s eleven; no, it’ll be twelve now; and Ruth, she’s seven; they’re both still at school though soon it’ll be the holidays and they’ll be getting under Mam’s feet. Then there’s little Agnes, she’s just a baby, always hungry. Three girls and three boys. Everyone said our dad was dead lucky when his first three were all lads. Then everyone had a good laugh when his next three were all lasses and said that God always evened things up. What they’ll say now I don’t know, now there’s only Bert. They told them about Wilf, told them he was dead. Now I expect they think I’m dead too, I expect that’s what they think.’

  And now the tears which had been flowing so effortlessly were starting to force themselves out in huge bodyshaking sobs. Through the swimming eyes he could see the girl’s face twisted in bewildered concern. Once more she leaned towards him and this time he knew no strength remained in him to refuse her sympathy and whatever came behind it.

  And then, like a waking dream, she retreated from him, her face contorted now in pain and terror. A rough hand was in her hair, twisting and pulling. Behind her, out of the coarse grass which had begun to make inroads on the still ashy ground of the Desolation rose a familiar figure with a triumphant leer on his face. It was Strother, and he was not alone.

  9

  Josh hurled himself forward but Strother merely used his free hand to strike him full on the nose, adding tears of pain to those of sorrow which still dampened his cheeks.

  Nicole opened her mouth to shriek, but only one short, almost soundlessly high note emerged before Strother flung her into the arms of the approaching men, one of whom clapped his hand over her mouth as they bore her, kicking and struggling, back among the tree-stumps. There were about half a dozen of them, including the scab-faced Foxy, Nelson, the sentry who’d had to bear Viney’s wrath, and the black Moroccan.