No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  Viney stood with his head bowed in deep thought for a whole minute. Could he really be contemplating the rape and murder of these two women? thought Lothar in horror. Why not? he answered himself. After the huge descent into the pit of war most other moves towards violence were a matter of degree.

  At last the Australian spoke. ‘It’s your idea, Fritz,’ he said. ‘Tell ’em they can go, but we’ll be in touch. I want ’em too scared to try anything funny.’

  Lothar turned to the two women and told them they were free to go. The atmosphere relaxed generally. But Madeleine, who looked far from scared, now addressed her daughter who after a while shook her head, then pointed to Strother.

  ‘She wants to know who the man was who attacked her daughter,’ Lothar said to Viney.

  The Frenchwoman strode across the clearing to Strother. The Cockney watched her approach with an obscene leer. She came to a halt about two feet in front of him, took a deep breath and spat full in his face. With a cry of rage he leapt forward at her but her right hand which had been buried in the voluminous folds of her black dress swung upwards. She was still grasping the stone she had picked up as a weapon on her first appearance in the glade. Now she crashed it with all her strength into Strother’s crutch.

  The Cockney collapsed like a pole-axed bull, and rolled on his back, his knees drawn up to his chest, screaming in agony. Beside Lothar, Josh took a step forward, but the German caught his arm.

  ‘Someone shut him up,’ ordered Viney. ‘And let’s get out of here before they start selling tickets to come and watch us. Come on, move it!’

  The men began to fade away into the night.

  Josh went up to Nicole and anxiously, uncertainly he held out his hand.

  She regarded it suspiciously, then slowly stretched hers out in return and touched his finger ends.

  ‘Au ’voir,’ said Josh, but she would not answer.

  ‘Come on, Josh,’ said Lothar. ‘I think you have angered our leader enough for one day.’

  He hurried the young man along after the others, talking gently into his ear in a manner both reassuring and distracting. He had noticed Patsy Delaney detaching himself from the group at a nod from Viney and guessed that he had been instructed to follow the women. Whatever his purpose, it was not in Josh’s interests to be aware of it. But the boy was too elated with relief to pay much attention to the others.

  ‘I thought that Nicole’s mother had really upset things when she hit Strother!’ he confessed. ‘I thought I was going to have to fight everyone!’

  ‘On the contrary, Josh,’ laughed Lothar. ‘It was the best move she could make. No need to assault your daughter’s attacker, is there, if you propose to go immediately to the authorities and arrange to have him shot! No. Beating in Strother’s balls was better than swearing an oath on the Bible, and Viney knew it! He has a good understanding of people, our leader, but not so good of himself. That’s what makes him so good a leader, I think. And that’s also what makes him so dangerous.’

  10

  In the days that followed, life in the Warren settled back into its old routine, but things were not the same. The trial and the episode with the Gilbert women had brought about a re-evaluation of relationships which produced some curious results. Josh had always been popular except with those who resented Viney’s evident fondness for the boy. Now he was accorded an almost talismanic status. He was ‘the still centre of innocence in a guilt-racked community’, a phrase of Lothar’s which had Taff Evans closing his eyes in concentration before nodding his head in agreement.

  Nelson and Fox in particular seemed keen to dissociate themselves from Strother’s attempted rape of Nicole. Nelson, a butcher in civilian life, who still plied his trade when theft or traps produced any fresh meat, went out of his way to slip Josh tidbits. Fox’s method of making his peace with the boy was more indirect. His approach was via Lothar, whom he asked abruptly one day if there was anything he could do for his facial sores. Lothar washed them with makeshift disinfectant, mainly spirit and vinegar, and instructed Fox that this must be done at least twice a day.

  Only Strother and one or two of the darker spirits continued to view the young Cumbrian with open resentment.

  Josh himself was concerned with one thing only, the development of the Volunteers’ contact with the family Gilbert. Viney just laughed at him when his impatience became too strong to hold and, ruffling his blond curls with his huge hand, said, ‘Hold your horses, son. We need to move easy. But if it can be managed, I’ll see it’s done. That’s a promise.’

  Josh believed him and so did Lothar. Viney was a man outside most systems of morality and legality, but he would not lie to Josh.

  The question which bothered Lothar most was the postponed decision on Lieutenant Cowper’s fate. He didn’t know whether to press for a reconvening of the ‘court’ or to leave well alone. He tried to keep the young officer cheerful by frequent conversations and he returned his letter to him with the assurance that it served no function now as his release was almost certain. But as the days slipped into weeks, he could see the dull despair of the prison cell beginning to steal over his spirit. What Lothar feared most was that Cowper would be driven to try to escape, thus providing the perfect excuse for killing him.

  Finally he went to see Viney and urged a quick decision.

  ‘Shooting the bastard, that’s a quick decision,’ mocked Viney.

  ‘Release him. That is quick too,’ said Lothar.

  ‘And wait for him to bring the redcaps back? That’d be quickest of all, Fritz.’

  Lothar said, ‘He doesn’t know where he is, Viney. If we blindfold him and take him many miles before releasing him, he can hardly lead anyone back to the Warren. The redcaps know we are somewhere in the Desolation, I am sure. All these raids you do are a very strong hint!’

  ‘Too right,’ admitted Viney. ‘All right, Fritz, I’ll think about it and give a verdict tomorrow.’

  That night Lothar deliberately steered the conversation in the common chamber round to Cowper in the hope of recreating some of the sympathy that the trial had brought his way. It was interesting. Because they were talking about another man’s fate, many of the Volunteers were much less inhibited about their own background and experience than hitherto.

  Hepworth, it emerged, despite his bucolic appearance was a townie, a mill-hand from Bradford who had joined up with a lot of his mates in a local ‘pals’ battalion. He was adamant that he had had nothing against his officers.

  ‘There were some grand lads among ’em. Grand lads. Especially the young ’uns. Just like us, they were. Up in the front line, same risks, same attacks, same patrols. Nowt wrong with them, and there doesn’t seem much wrong with this lad Cowper to me.’

  ‘Same as you, was they?’ mocked Strother. ‘Same grub? Same pay? Same leave? Give over, Heppy, you’ll have me dead laughing.’

  ‘Give you the chance at better grub or pay or leave, wouldn’t you have jumped at it?’ demanded Hepworth.

  ‘That’s why I’m here!’ said Strother. ‘Which brings me to the point: if you liked it so much back there, why’d you bunk?’

  Hepworth took a long time to reply.

  ‘Something gets stretched,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Something gets a bit tighter every time you go over the plonk, every time you hear a shell scream towards you or see a Flying Pig spinning over your head. I saw a lot of my mates get killed, but it weren’t that. It were one chap who started talking of giving himself a Blighty through the foot before the next attack. Next attack came and bang! I heard his bondook going off down the trench a way. I went to see, but when I reached him, I saw he’d changed his mind. He’d blown his head off instead. I thought: That can happen to me. Hang on till you stretch too tight, and that’s what you do. So I said, Sod this, and next chance I got, I was off out of it. But I’m not blaming any other bugger for it, leastways not anyone like Mr Cowper. Brass hats and base wallahs, yes, but in the front line, we’re all in the same shit, that’s
how I see it!’

  ‘No, no, it’s not true. It’s different for them, at least for most of them,’ interrupted Fox vehemently. ‘They think they’re little tin gods. They’ve been to these fancy fucking schools and have got fancy fucking manners and they think they’re better than the rest of you. They’re just too thick to be afraid, that’s the top and bottom of it. Too fucking thick!’

  This rather odd intervention almost halted the debate for a moment, but Strother picked up the main line again, saying triumphantly, ‘Anyway, he wasn’t in the front line, this bastard, was he? He was riding around up there, wasn’t he, this fucker, hunting down poor sods like us, just like we was fucking foxes or something, begging your pardon, Foxy. I say we should top him!’

  Fox nodded his agreement.

  ‘Why do you two hate officers so much?’ asked Hep worth curiously.

  Fox turned away, but the Cockney’s face darkened and he began to talk. His story, carefully tailored towards self-justification, was that, while a cook with one of the London regiments, he had protested when he discovered an officer removing all the tins of strawberry jam from a supply truck, leaving nothing but the unpopular apple and plum for the men. All that he got for his altruistic moral stand was an immediate transfer to fighting duties and selection for all the most dangerous jobs thereafter.

  ‘Victimization, weren’t it?’ concluded Strother. ‘They were all in it together, the bastards. And they’d have seen me dead before they was through. So I said fuck it and slung me hook. That’s why I hate fucking officers!’

  Taff Evans caught Lothar’s eye and grinned his recognition that the more likely version of the story was that Strother, having wangled himself a cushy job as a cook, was caught working a fiddle and returned to active duties.

  You didn’t contradict another man’s story, however, and now the flood-gates were open and man after man gave his story as if in the telling they could purge themselves of fear and shame and guilt. Fox didn’t offer to speak, Lothar noted, though even Nell, the younger of the two Indians, broke his customary reticence.

  ‘They told to us that the King needed our help,’ he said in a low, soft voice. ‘They told to us that there would be battles to be won, an enemy to ride at with our lances, green fields to pitch our tents in after the battle. Instead there were holes filled with water to hide in, and no enemy to be seen but only noise and bullets and huge shells exploding, and soon our horses were dead or taken away from us to pull wagons. But it was not our officers’ fault. They had listened to the lies too, they had been deceived like all of us.’

  This simple statement produced a sympathetic silence broken by the irrepressible Strother.

  ‘Don’t take no notice of this black bugger!’ he said scornfully. ‘They’re trained to think white officers are little fucking gods; they know no better. Anyway, he’s bound to be all for that cunt back there, isn’t he? They’re both fucking cowboys, moaning ’cos they’ve lost their horses, aren’t they?’

  Nell looked bewildered at this but the West Countryman Quayle, who had appointed himself a sort of unofficial guardian to the Indians, flung himself forward and seized the Cockney by the shirt.

  ‘Here, what’s this?’ yelled Strother as he was flung backwards against the wall. ‘You want to watch it, Quayle. I’ll have you, my son. I’ll have you!’

  ‘And you want to watch what you’re saying,’ said Quayle. ‘You want to watch your tongue.’

  He was a big man with a round, placid face, now contorted into an unprecedented anger. Usually a man of very few slow, drawn-out words, which had won him the ironic nickname of Quacker, he now spoke with a frightening vehemence.

  ‘Leave him be, Quacker,’ said Hepworth. ‘You’ll just catch summat if you get too close to him.’

  Slowly the anger faded from Quayle’s face to be replaced by an expression of faint embarrassment.

  ‘Aye,’ he said slowly. ‘You’re right there, Heppy. Just you remember, Strother, this lad’s got his right to speak just like anyone else.’

  He returned to his seat by the Indian and put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The young man smiled at him in gratitude and relief.

  ‘What about you, Quacker?’ asked someone. ‘You’re on the trial board with Heppy. What do you think?’

  ‘Me?’ said Quayle, as if surprised that anyone should be interested in his opinion. ‘I ran because I was frightened. If they catch me, maybe they’ll shoot me for running. That seems stupid and wrong to me. But shooting someone for not running, that seems wronger and stupider.’

  This felt like the final word. Many heads nodded in agreement. Lothar saw Strother shoot a glance of pure hatred towards Quayle but the Cockney was not prepared to risk another confrontation. He also saw Pat Delaney who had been sitting quietly in a corner rise and leave, doubtless on his way to report the general feeling of the Volunteers about Cowper’s fate.

  How Viney would react was hard to assess. Lothar felt he was reaching towards some kind of understanding of most of the men here, though he frequently warned himself against the arrogance of such an assumption in a man who could not begin to understand himself. But, arrogant or not, he had to confess himself beaten by Viney. Sometimes the man appeared a simple thug, sometimes a subtle and sinister manipulator, and sometimes (in very brief flashes, these) as a confused young man, bewildered and unhappy. Young man? How old was Viney? he wondered. Like everything else about the man, it was difficult to say. There was a barrier there against deep penetration, a darkness at the core which might conceal monsters, or nothing at all.

  He rose and stretched.

  ‘Sleep, I think,’ he said.

  As he went past Quayle, he said in a low voice, ‘Be careful of Strother. He is a bad enemy, I think.’

  Quayle smiled and said, ‘No, it’s mostly show, I shouldn’t be surprised. Where I come from we take people as we find them and there’s a lot of good even in the worst.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Lothar. ‘All the same, be careful. We all must take great care.’

  He went to bed.

  11

  Josh woke out of a deep sleep to the tail-end of a fearful scream.

  All around was confusion and alarm as men started up from their pallets and grabbed for clothes or struck lights for lanterns. A hand grasped Josh’s arm and, turning, he saw Lothar peering closely at him.

  ‘Are you all right, Josh?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. What is it, Lott? What’s happening?’ Lothar gave him a reassuring smile. Inwardly, he was delighted to observe the normality of the boy’s reaction to this alarum. The contact with Nicole and the neartragedy which had followed seemed to have shocked him back to a much fuller contact with reality, if this strange troglodyte existence could be so termed.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Lothar. ‘Let’s go to find out.’ Together they set out to follow the others. There was not far to go and a corpse awaited them at the end of the trail.

  It was Nell, the younger of the two Indians. His smooth brown body, completely naked, lay in a corner of one of the smaller dug-outs. His face was upwards and was composed into such an expression of peace that he might have been simply sleeping had it not been for the strange angle of his head to his shoulders.

  In the other corner, also naked and with blood streaming from his mouth between broken teeth and crushed lips, was Quacker Quayle. His big brown eyes peered upwards with the incomprehension of a scolded animal at the figure of Viney whom rage seemed to have swollen to the stature of a Colossus. His right fist was clenched solid, with fresh blood staining the white knuckles, and his eyes were ablaze with mad fury. Blackie Coleport had placed a restraining hand on his shoulder and it was he who offered an almost apologetic explanation.

  ‘He found them together. They were at it,’ he said.

  ‘I won’t stand for it! I won’t stand for it!’ cried Viney in a terrible voice.

  There was a disturbance of the press of onlookers round the entrance and Dell, the grey-haired India
n emerged. He took the scene in with an impassive glance, and, ignoring the Australians, knelt alongside his dead countryman and began to arrange his limbs.

  ‘Oh Lott!’ whispered Josh, his voice catching. ‘So far from home. They’re so far from home.’

  Abruptly Viney shouldered his way through the crowd and disappeared. For a moment the rest of them just stood and looked at the dreadful scene, then abruptly Taff Evans stepped forward and bent to assist Quayle to his feet.

  ‘Come on, Quacker, me boy,’ he said. ‘Let’s be getting you out of here, shall we? Here, one of you lot, give us a hand.’

  For a second there was no movement except for an involuntary back-stepping by a couple of men at the front. Then Lothar seized Quayle’s other arm, slipped it over his shoulder and together they helped the half-stunned man along the passage to his pallet. Here Lothar bathed and cleaned his mouth as best he could.

  ‘He needs medicines to make him rest,’ he said. ‘He is under shock, I believe.’

  ‘Poor sod,’ said Evans, then added with sudden ferocity. ‘That Aussie bastard! He needs pulled down, that one. I don’t approve nothing of these nancy boys, but he’s not God Almighty to be dishing out such punishments.’

  He raised his voice, but no one accepted the invitation to support – or oppose – him. When discussion did take place, it was carried on in twos or threes with the men whispering and casting fearful glances around as though anticipating Viney’s sudden and violent interruption.

  Josh was both horrified and fascinated by what had taken place. A virgin still, his inexperience of matters heterosexual was to some extent compensated for by natural inclination, barrack-room discussion and a country upbringing which made no secret of the basic facts of nature. But contact beyond the male-female baffled him completely.

  Lothar tried to explain, but after a while Josh burst out in bewilderment, ‘I still can’t see why any man should want to put his cock up another man’s bum!’

  He was hurt and slightly indignant when Lothar’s response was to smile and shake his head.