No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  The civilian had been an official for the local administrative department come to check on the Gilberts, and in particular on a rumour that there was a man of military age working on the farm. He had been satisfied with the explanation, supported by Auguste’s medical discharge papers. But he had been very stern with Madeleine for failing to obtain official approval for re-entering what was still a militarily interdicted area. Using the stately language of French bureaucracy, he informed her that he could offer no guarantee that she would not be further contacted on this particular matter.

  The British officer had also been unhappy, but merely because of a wasted journey. He said he was in charge of army billeting in the area and had accompanied the official in the hope of discovering an unused billet in the vicinity of Barnecourt.

  There was news of the war too. Old Georges had been the one to ask how it was going, and the official, with the grave courtesy the rudest of Frenchmen reserve for the old, had explained in detail that the glorious French Army with Pétain as its new commander-in-chief had been holding firm against great Boche pressure along its section of the front. Russia, now in the hands of evil men who had overthrown their Tsar, was a spent force, leaving the fate of the whole of Europe in the hands of France whose main ally, Great Britain, instead of putting all its forces at Pétain’s disposal here, where the real struggle lay, had been frittering away its energies in minor skirmishes across the border in Belgium around Ypres.

  This last section of the analysis, Lothar assumed, had been given with the British officer out of earshot. Rearranging the pieces, he reckoned that Russian warweariness was permitting more German units to be sent to the West. The French, regrouping under Pétain after their spring disasters, were in too poor a shape to do more than occupy their trenches, and the main effort of tying up the German forces by a large attack had fallen to the British.

  His countrymen should have been attacking the French-held front with everything they’d got all through the summer, he found himself thinking. A great chance had been missed.

  Then Josh said eagerly, ‘What’s it they’re saying, Lott?’ and Lothar was suddenly reminded of where and what he was, and stood amazed at himself and the ease with which that old nationalistic militarism could be rekindled.

  ‘Nothing, Josh,’ he said. ‘Nothing important. There is no danger as long as we keep watch.’

  ‘Why do I find it so hard to speak their lingo, Lott?’ enquired Josh in angry frustration, looking longingly at Nicole. ‘I must be really thick or something.’

  ‘Do not worry,’ said Lothar, smiling. ‘It will grow easier, believe me. But meanwhile I shall continue to teach Nicole your language. She is a quick learner, I think.’

  He spoke to the girl in rapid French and she laughed delightedly. Josh frowned sulkily and Lothar clapped his hand on his shoulder.

  ‘Come, Josh,’ he said. ‘Show me where and how we should start our reconstruction in here. Let Nicole see that you are the master and I am the labourer, eh? Such language as that all women understand.’

  He laughed as he spoke, but the young man’s face remained serious.

  ‘Lott,’ he said, ‘must we tell Viney that this officer came today?’

  Lothar caught the drift of his thought instantly. Viney’s prime concern was always for the security of the Warren and Lothar guessed that he had regretted almost at the moment of giving his permission for the three men to visit the farm. Josh had been the key. The youngster’s delight had touched the big Australian in some obscure way and he was clearly reluctant to destroy it. But he had been adamant that they must abandon any visit if there was the least evidence of outside activity anywhere near the farm.

  News of today’s events would mean a week’s embargo at the very least, perhaps longer.

  ‘I think we ought to tell him,’ said Lothar hesitantly. He watched Josh carefully as he spoke. His reaction took him by surprise, not because of its content but because of its manner. Resistance, argument, protest he had expected, but so used had he become to thinking of Josh in almost childlike terms that he had looked for these things wrapped up in emotional, even tearful terms. Instead the young man replied in a carefully measured tone, ‘Lott, let’s get one thing straight. If you feel you have to tell Viney about that officer being here, then I’m not going back with you. I’ll stay on here by myself. You can tell Viney that even if I got caught I’d not tell them about the Warren or anything. I know he’d likely not believe you but that’d be up to him, and he’d have to come here himself to get me back, and I’d not come easily.’

  The only sign of emotion was a slight breathlessness as he finished and a faint flush on his cheeks.

  Lothar regarded him with a frown. The distressed boy he had been able to comfort, and to deal with, had disappeared. This was someone different.

  He said, ‘There is Heppy too. We must talk with him.’

  The Yorkshireman saw no problem.

  ‘What? Risk getting ourselves stuck back down yon hole permanent? Nay! I’ll tell you what, Fritz, if you’re going to say owt of this to Viney, I’m stopping here with the lad. In fact, it’s not such a bad idea anyway. It’s bloody daft us making the trip twice a day when we could doss down here and be on the spot to work in the morning. And a sight less dangerous too. Roaming around the Desolation, that’s when we’re likely to be spotted, not by some skiving, short-sighted billeting officer!’

  Lothar sighed. Confrontation with Viney would mean more trouble than he personally felt able to deal with. Yet, in a way, the man had a right to know what had taken place.

  He chose the lesser of two evils and said, ‘All right. I will say nothing. But you must also say nothing about this business of spending the night here.’

  ‘Why not?’ grumbled Hepworth. ‘Makes sense, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Of course it does. But it also makes sense not to risk provoking Viney in any way, doesn’t it?’ snapped Lothar. ‘Now, leave it to me. Agreed?’

  He waited till the other two nodded their heads, then turned and walked away, irritated at being once more forced into the position of leader and strategist. It was much easier simply to mock and make rude gestures at authority rather than get into harness with it. How this would amuse my father! he thought.

  Josh overtook him in a few steps.

  ‘Lott,’ he said. ‘Don’t be angry. Like Heppy says, why spoil things for a skiving old billeting officer?’

  It was hard to maintain anger long in the face of Josh’s open young face.

  ‘Yes, Josh. Probably you’re right,’ smiled Lothar. ‘Why indeed?’

  If he had known the identity of the ‘skiving billeting officer’ he would have felt very differently.

  Jack Denial had learnt the hard way that information was the better part of detection. Information and a meticulous attention to detail. He had made it clear by repetition and by reprisal that he expected everything relevant to activity in or around the Desolation to be reported to him. By a mixture of flattery, threat and bribery, he had even won the cooperation of local officialdom and it was from the district mairie that word had come of a report that there were people working at this isolated farmhouse above Barnecourt, including at least one young man. He had asked permission to accompany the investigating official, and some innate caution had made him masquerade as a billeting officer.

  Well, he thought as the motorcycle bumped back down the track towards Barnecourt, it had all been a waste of time. Yet there had been something, an atmosphere … no, not even that; a sense of constraint going beyond even the usual Gallic charmlessness in the face of officialdom. The girl … yes, it had been most evident in the girl. She was a pretty thing. His thought was quite without passion. He doubted if he would ever look at another woman with desire, not since Sally. Something of himself had perished with her; some long dormant spring which she had tapped had finally dried up.

  But the girl had sent out a vibration which he had picked up. Probably simply fear that the official was going t
o insist that they move. She needn’t worry. He had asked the man what he would do and received the answer, nothing. The winter would almost certainly do it for him.

  Yet, though he was almost satisfied, Denial was not yet ready to relegate the Gilbert farm to that area of his thinking and of his filing marked ‘closed’. He recollected Cowper’s notes, that brief and puzzling reference to contact with the local peasantry.

  He filed it instead under ‘pending’ and turned his mind back to the wider, day-to-day problems confronting an APM in this apparently unmoving and unending war.

  2

  ‘Well, if it ain’t the kraut from Snowy River,’ said Blackie Coleport, reclining on his pallet with a long thin wine bottle in his hand.

  ‘Your pardon?’ said Lothar at the dug-out entrance.

  ‘Old Pardon, the son of Reprieve!’ laughed Coleport. ‘Have a snort, Fritz. You know what today is? Today is my birthday. Go on, have a snort!’

  ‘My congratulations on your birthday, but no, thank you, for the drink. Viney, I would like to speak with you.’

  ‘Go ahead, Fritz,’ said Viney. ‘The air’s free.’

  ‘The liquor’s free too,’ protested Coleport, ‘but this fucking Hun’s too stuck up to share it. I reckon he wants educated in civilized manners.’

  ‘Shut it, Blackie,’ ordered Viney.

  Coleport blew a raspberry, echoed it with a fart, and took a long suck at the bottle.

  ‘You did well last night?’ enquired Lothar, looking significantly at the bottle.

  ‘Pretty fair,’ said Viney. ‘The lads deserve a treat now and then. Man cannot live on words alone, ain’t that the Good Book’s teaching?’

  It was early morning. Lothar had looked for Viney the previous night, but found him blacking up for a raiding party. They must have gone far afield to get within striking distance of wine. He had a nasty suspicion that Viney might have taken to raiding civilian targets, but this was not the moment to bring it up.

  ‘Viney, we need more men to help with the work at the farm,’ he said boldly. ‘It is September already and there is much to be done to prepare for the winter ahead.’

  ‘Is that so?’ said Viney. ‘How many did you have in mind?’

  Lothar was taken aback by this apparently sympathetic reception. Several weeks had passed since the English officer’s visit to the farm and there had been no more official contact. With everything quiet, Lothar had decided it was time to try out the idea that he and Hepworth and Josh should be permitted to stay overnight at the farm. His chosen approach was oblique. He fully expected his request for more men would be rejected out of hand, and then he would have put the other suggestion. But now Viney, relaxed perhaps by the drink, was apparently in the mood to give him what he really didn’t want.

  ‘Well, not too many. We must be careful always not to risk attracting attention either while we are there or by movement across the Desolation,’ he replied, putting forward the arguments he’d expected to hear from Viney’s mouth. ‘Two or three good workers. Taff Evans perhaps. He is strong and hard-working. Quayle too.’

  ‘Not Quayle,’ said Viney, his mouth closing like a prison gate.

  ‘But he is a countryman, big, strong ….’ protested Lothar.

  ‘He’s a poofter,’ said Viney. ‘A big soft bumboy. Quayle goes nowhere.’

  Ever since Nell’s death Quayle had retired into a shell of isolation, driven there perhaps by sorrow or guilt, but maintained there by the silent force of Viney’s disapproval which made many of the others unwilling to be seen too close in his company. To work on the farm might be a therapy, but there was on Viney’s face a look which did not invite argument. So, reminding himself that he didn’t really want the extra men anyway, Lothar quelled his natural inclination to argue and said, ‘One of the others then.’

  ‘If you like,’ said Viney as if suddenly tired of the topic. ‘We’ll talk about it later. How’s young Josh?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Lothar. ‘Better all the time.’

  ‘How’s he making out with that young sheila?’ demanded Coleport, grinning salaciously. ‘Getting his share, is he?’

  ‘Stow that, Blackie,’ commanded Viney.

  ‘Sorry, I’m sure,’ said Coleport. ‘What about you, Fritz? Getting your German sausage exercised all right? That Madeleine looked like she’d know a thing or two. What say you, Patsy?’

  Delaney who’d apparently been asleep on the floor opened one eye.

  ‘I heard there was a grandma,’ he said.

  ‘That’s it then!’ exclaimed Coleport in delight. ‘My money’s on Fritz fucking the grandma! So if Josh is fucking the girl, that leaves the mother for Heppy. Lucky bastard!’

  Lothar did not speak and made to leave.

  ‘Where’re you off to?’ demanded Viney.

  ‘To collect Josh and Heppy. Soon it will be time for us to move.’

  ‘Not today,’ said Viney, looking at him broodingly from under the heavy shadows of his eyebrows. ‘You’ll stay here today.’

  ‘Why?’ demanded Lothar angrily. ‘There is no reason that I know of. Why?’

  ‘Because I say so, that’s why,’ grated Viney. ‘Now sod off and tell them other two!’

  ‘How strange,’ said Lothar, fighting to control himself and knowing that his old duelling scar was probably standing out white and proud. ‘I thought we had abandoned the Army and its stupidities!’

  He left and went in search of Josh and Hepworth. He found them in the large chamber and quickly passed on the news. Neither concealed his disappointment.

  Josh demanded, ‘Why, Lott? He’s got no right, no right! He acts like he’s a bloody sergeant-major or something. It’s time he was told we’re out of the bloody army!’

  Lothar was struck by the echo of his own response. He put his arm round Josh’s shoulders and urged, ‘Leave it, Josh. Let us relax and join the fun, heh?’

  Angrily the youth shook himself free but at least he remained where he was.

  Lothar settled down beside him and looked round at the assembled men. There were several bottles of wine in evidence though not enough, Lothar assessed, to let anyone get more than gently merry.

  ‘Here, Fritz,’ called Evans. ‘Come and have a wet.’

  ‘That bugger probably sups a gallon of the fucking stuff every day,’ growled the man with the nearest bottle, but he didn’t resist when the miner plucked it from him.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lothar. ‘Prosit!’

  He drank and returned the bottle.

  ‘I would like to speak to you, Taff,’ he said in a low voice, thinking that if his diversionary proposal were in fact accepted by Viney, the Welshman ought to be forewarned. Not that he expected any objection. They were still the object of much envy, not all of it good-natured.

  Before Evans could reply, however, someone shouted, ‘Here, Taff, give us one of them songs of yours, get the party started.’

  ‘Get it finished, more like,’ grunted Strother. ‘Fuckin’ Welsh caterwauling.’

  ‘It’s a sight better than listening to them Aussie rhymes of Blackie’s. Come on, Taff.’

  ‘All right, boyo. If that’s what you want.’

  The Welshman took a deep breath and without rising from his place began to sing, not the rousing song with a catchy chorus his encouragers clearly wanted to hear, but a gently lilting, melancholy tune which he sang first in Welsh and then in English. It was a song about an ash-grove, an ironic choice, thought Lothar, for these men who inhabited a landscape of charred tree-stumps, but no one else seemed to feel the irony, only the deep silent pain which filled the chamber after the last words had died on the air.

  … the Ash Grove, the Ash Grove which sheltered my home.

  Strother broke the silence.

  ‘Well, that was real cheering, that was. Real fuckin’ jolly.’

  ‘Stow it, Strother,’ said the bald-headed Nelson, who since the incident with Nicole had been much less under his fellow Cockney’s thumb. ‘Come on, who�
�s next? We ain’t going to let a Welshman show us the way and not follow, are we? Heppy, what about Ilkley Moor, eh?’

  Hepworth shook his head morosely.

  ‘He’s sulking ’cos his little trip out’s been stopped today,’ laughed Foxy, whose sharp ears picked up most things that were said within his vicinity.

  Hepworth scowled and looked as if he might take this further, but Nelson went on hastily, ‘What about you then, Fritz? One of them Jerry tunes. I ’eard ’em sing Silent Night in the trenches, Christmas before last. It was Kraut words, but, fair do’s, they made a bloody lovely job of it.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ said Lothar. ‘I have no singing voice. I would be ashamed to follow Taffs beautiful song.’

  ‘We don’t want no Hun music anyway,’ said Strother. ‘Tommo, give us a tune!’

  Arnold Tomkins, though obviously a recruit from terror of Viney rather than terror of the war, had proved an asset in at least one way. He turned out to have been a theatre musician in civilian life and in his hands an ancient mouth organ on which one of the others had wheezed out barely recognizable tunes turned into a musical instrument. The trouble was that Tomkins was sliding slowly into a deep depression and his choice of music tended to reflect his own melancholia. Tonight by request he had started with a foot-tapping rendition of Hold Your Hand Out, Naughty Boy but within seconds of finishing that, he was into There’s A Long, Long Trail A’Winding. During the mood of introspection brought on by this mournful tune, Lothar studied the others. It was not that he was unaffected by the mood but simply that he feared its inevitable conclusion. For him all such melancholy trails invariably wound towards Sylvie and his rejection of her and the discovery of that dear, slight body drifting in the cold waters of the lake pool.

  Anything was better than that image. He looked round the assembled men, saw their closed and inward-looking eyes, and guessed that for most of them their plight was worse than his. Their pain rose not from images of the unreturning dead but of the unreachable living. Wives, sweethearts, children, friends. At first, escape from the horrors of the front had seemed enough; then survival in the Desolation under the leadership of Viney had come as a blessing.