No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  But now at moments like this they shifted their inner gaze from a joyous past to a hopeless future and tasted the bitterness of a new despair.

  The tune ended and perhaps with some idea of cheering them up, Tomkins ran almost immediately into the lilting melody of Après la Guerre Finie. It was a bad choice.

  ‘Give it a rest, Tommo, for fuck’s sake!’ growled someone and there were no protests as the music stuttered into a silence broken at last by Lothar speaking very softly.

  ‘But what is it that we shall do, après la guerre finie?’

  For a while the question seemed to have gone unheard, then a hesitant voice said, ‘Mebbe there’ll be an amnesty!’

  ‘What the fuck’s that when it’s at home?’ .

  ‘It means they’ll say it’s all right if you turn yourself in, no charge, like.’

  ‘Oh yes? I can just see them doing that!’

  ‘It wouldn’t be for a long time anyway,’ said Hepworth. ‘Not for years, if ever.’

  ‘At least once the fucking war’s over, there’ll not be all them fucking redcaps hanging around the ports. It’ll be a bloody sight easier to find a boat to stow away in, and get back home!’

  This was the first comment which produced any lightening of the atmosphere. It lasted only until Strother said, ‘What makes you cunts think this war’s ever going to be over?’

  There was a mutter of unconvincing protest.

  ‘It’s got to finish sometime,’ said Taylor. ‘Here, Fritz, you started all this, what do you think’ll happen to us after the war?’

  There was an expectant silence.

  Finally Lothar said, ‘I do not know, my friend. I think that some of us may get home, but not all of us, and it will not be a happy homecoming for all who do.’

  ‘Christ, you’re the cheery one, ain’t you!’

  ‘I am sorry. I do not mean to be depressing, only realistic. It seems to me that the future is too dark to penetrate. But one thing is certain, what we are and what we do now is important. The future is built on the past, all of it.’

  ‘What do you mean, Fritz?’

  Lothar sighed and thought that probably it would be wise to stop here, but then he told himself angrily that if he couldn’t practise what he was about to preach, he had no right even to think of preaching it.

  ‘The way we live together, the way we regard each other and behave to each other, this must be better than in the life we have abandoned,’ he said earnestly.

  ‘You mean the Army? That won’t be difficult!’ said somebody.

  ‘Yes, it is difficult,’ insisted Lothar. ‘In the Army, you have the rules to blame. Here, we cannot blame the rules for that is to blame ourselves. How shall we justify what we do here? Killing. Stealing. How shall we justify these?’

  ‘You ain’t including raiding for grub, are you, Fritz?’ demanded Nelson. ‘How the fuck are we expected to live?’

  ‘Taking stuff off the Army ain’t stealing anyway,’ said Foxy. ‘We all know that!’

  There was a ripple of amusement.

  Lothar held up a wine bottle.

  ‘Did this come from the Army?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘Likely not, but I saw you drinking it happily enough!’ cried someone.

  ‘And these Frogs have been robbing the swaddies something rotten, so it’s about time some buckshees came back our way. Any objection, Fritz?’

  ‘It is not my objections, or Viney’s objections, that are important,’ frowned Lothar. ‘What I have been trying to say is that each man must now make his own objections for there is no longer a force upon him to do things one way or another.’

  ‘No?’ said Evans. ‘Have you seen Viney lately, boyo? Now there’s a force for you!’

  ‘Someone taking my name in vain, sport?’

  How long had he been there, standing in the doorway, listening with frowning intensity?

  ‘Sounds like someone’s plotting a spot of revolution, Viney,’ said Coleport at his shoulder.

  ‘No need for a plot,’ said Viney. ‘I’ve always made it clear, anyone wants the top job, all they do is kick me off the heap. Right, Fritz?’

  ‘That is force you talk of, Viney,’ said Lothar. ‘What we have been saying here is that what is possible for us is a society without force, so while the future may be black, we can at least live the present in dignity, in charge of ourselves.’

  ‘That’s what’s worrying you, is it?’ said Viney. ‘The future! Well, I ain’t promising and I don’t persuade. It’s up to you jokers to come along my way if you want. I don’t give a toss!’

  ‘Alternatively, you can follow Fritz here,’ mocked Blackie Coleport. ‘Give us your policies, Fritz. I like a good political meeting.’

  ‘I have no policies,’ said Lothar wearily. ‘This is not a political meeting.’

  ‘No? Well, I’d bet you’d like to make it one, mate. Listen, you jokers, ain’t it ever struck you as odd that Fritz here didn’t take off to his own country? I mean, the rest of us we deserted all right, but we didn’t fucking well go over to the enemy, did we?’

  There were some sounds of agreement.

  Lothar said, ‘I did not know that Viney’s Volunteers were anyone’s enemy.’

  Hepworth intervened. ‘Any road, we’ve been through this before. He did it to take care of young Josh. If he’d wanted, he could have been sitting the war out in a POW camp, right comfy. Well, at least as comfy as this.’

  ‘You’re right there, Heppy. Tell you what I think,’ said Coleport. ‘The reason he ain’t is that he can do his little job better here. I reckon our German friend here is one of the Russki agitators, a fucking anarchist or some such thing. What he’s after is recruits. Watch out, mates. He’ll get you back home all right, long as you promise to blow up Parliament and hang the King!’

  Strother and a couple of others made agreeing noises once more, but the majority were silent, except for Josh who said indignantly, ‘That’s daft! If Lott here could get the lads home to do that, don’t you think every last one of them wouldn’t promise to help him just to get home?’ It was a devastating piece of reasoning which took Coleport by surprise as much by its source as its logic.

  ‘Oh, she’s finding her tongue, is she?’ he mocked. ‘Mustn’t let anyone say bad words about Daddie!’

  Lothar saw Viney’s face darken as it always did when anyone dared to speak ill of Josh, especially when sexual innuendo was involved. In another moment, Viney would put Coleport in his place. But suddenly Lothar was not prepared to let the big Australian always take the lead.

  He scrambled to his feet, pushing down Josh who was also trying to rise, and said, ‘Coleport, you talk too much, I think. In the East, their leaders, sultans they call them, also often have fat men to do their talking. Sometimes they are fat because they are pigs; sometimes because they are eunuchs, that means they have no balls. But in the end, a man’s ears grow tired of the eunuch’s squeaking and want to hear the sultan speaking for himself.’

  The foot snaked out fast and vicious. Ready though he was for the blow, it had been the hands Lothar was watching and he was almost taken by surprise. But he twisted his body so that the heavy boot drove into his thigh rather than his crutch.

  Pain shot up his leg, but he paid it no heed. His own attack was already prepared and he knew that speed was essential. Fat Coleport might be, but he was a vicious and experienced brawler. His very fatness made assaults to the body pointless and Lothar doubted if he could put him down with a single blow to the head, yet a single blow was all he might get in.

  So the hand he darted forward was not clenched but had the first and middle fingers splayed rigid as though making the sign to ward off the evil eye. The evil eyes these fingers were aimed at belonged to Coleport.

  The fat man screamed in agony as the finger tips drove against his eyeballs. Lothar skipped to one side in a scatter of men. Even half-blinded, this man could wreak terrible damage if he got you in his grasp. Clasping one hand to his eyes, Coleport
rushed forward. Lothar came in fast from the side and, locking both his hands together, swung with all his strength at the base of Coleport’s skull. The blow almost broke one of his own wrists. The fat Australian went down full length without even a groan and lay quite still.

  Lothar spun round to face Viney. Patsy Delaney, his cold eyes suddenly ablaze with fury, was trying to push past to avenge his fallen friend, but Viney’s huge arm was stretched out to restrain him.

  The German and the Australian stood a couple of feet apart and locked gazes.

  ‘For a man who don’t approve of force, you’ve an odd way of working,’ said Viney softly. ‘Is this the way it’s going on?’

  It was a challenge; at least that was how it must sound to the expectant men; but Lothar thought it also sounded like a genuine query.

  He stood lightly balanced on the balls of his feet and ransacked his mind for an answer. To back down was impossible, yet if physical battle were joined now between Viney and himself, Lothar could see no hope of. victory.

  Then the silence was broken, not from within the chamber but somewhere else in the Warren. A high keening note pierced the air, wailing up and down, up and down, an alien sound, almost inhuman, but full of human anguish.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Patsy, go and see what that din is!’ commanded Viney.

  Delaney rushed off. He was back in only a few moments his face pale.

  ‘Aw shit, Viney,’ he said. ‘Shit!’

  ‘What the hell is it?’

  ‘It’s Quayle. Aw shit.’

  There was a general move to see what had happened. Delaney did not follow but knelt beside Coleport who groaned and turned over. The others did not have far to go.

  The older Indian, Dell, was squatting at the entrance to one of the smaller dug-outs, singing the high, keening song through his nose.

  In the dug-out was Quacker Quayle, lying on his side, his hands still grasping the bayonet with which he had killed himself.

  He had not made a very good job of it. The first thrust up through the belly under the ribcage must have started too low, but with a will as hard as the tempered steel inside him, he had wrenched the blade this way and that in search of the elusive vital thread.

  Viney stood and stared down at the bloody mess as if testing himself against the wide, staring eyes of the dead man.

  Finally he said in a terrible voice, ‘Weak! These poofters are all the same. They break where a man should hold.’

  And roughly shouldering his way through the press of men, he left.

  ‘Poor sod,’ said Taff Evans at Lothar’s shoulder. ‘Poor desperate bastard.’

  ‘There was no need for this,’ said Lothar. ‘No need for this.’

  ‘No need at all,’ agreed Evans bitterly. ‘He should just 233 have told Viney he wanted to leave, and it would all have been done for him, nice and neat, like. Nice and neat!’

  3

  Outside the sun was already over the horizon, drawing up tendrils of mist from the dewy earth, but down in the Warren lights flickered low as men sought to find in darkness that solitariness which their close confinement made almost impossible in fact. A gloom of the spirit which matched this physical gloom was felt everywhere.

  Lothar lay by Josh and brooded in silence like all those around. But when a hand gripped his shoulder, he twitched into life, ready to attack or defend as the case might demand.

  The sight of Patsy Delaney’s long features rendered even more cavernous by the dim light of a lantern did not reassure him.

  ‘Viney wants a word,’ the man said.

  Lothar regarded him distrustingly. Suddenly a knife glinted in the man’s hand.

  ‘If I’d wanted to gut you, it’d have been done by now,’ whispered Delaney.

  The knife vanished.

  Lothar rose and followed him from the sleeping chamber.

  ‘Is Coleport all right?’ he enquired.

  ‘Right enough to tell me to leave you for him,’ was the terse reply.

  Viney and his two lieutenants shared the small dug-out which had once belonged to the officer commanding the HQ. It even had a curtain to pull across the entrance. Delaney motioned Lothar through but did not follow. Viney was sitting alone on a stool, leaning back against the boarded wall. On a makeshift table in front of him was a lantern turned up high as though darkness was no refuge to him. Alongside it stood a half-empty whisky bottle.

  ‘Sit,’ said Viney. ‘Drink.’

  Lothar obeyed. There are moments in life when even the most rebellious of spirits knows that unquestioning obedience is the only reaction. They drank in turns without speaking till the bottle was empty.

  Viney knocked it over.

  ‘Dead soldier,’ he said. ‘No more whisky. Brandy.’

  He produced an unlabelled bottle which contained a raw spirit which was nearer brandy than wood alcohol, but only just.

  ‘You got this on the raid?’ asked Lothar.

  ‘Yaw.’ Viney’s eyes challenged him to comment.

  Lothar said, ‘What am I doing here, Viney?’

  ‘Getting drunk.’

  They drank on. Lothar had acquired an excellent head for alcohol during his years of experimental debauchery, but the enforced abstention of recent months had left him vulnerable. Soon his mind was filled with shadows flickering like those of the lamp, but he drank on, certain that whatever lay at the end of this meeting could only be reached by following Viney’s prescribed route.

  The big Australian showed no outward sign that the drink was affecting him, but poured it down like a man trying to drown something trapped deep inside.

  ‘You married, Fritz?’ he asked suddenly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Lothar, about to shrug and say he had never thought about it, was struck by the notion that any evasion would instantly be spotted by Viney and that would be an end of it.

  An end of what? he asked himself. God alone knew. But Viney wanted to talk and his pride would only permit such talk to be straight trade; frankness for frankness, confession for confession.

  He said, ‘The only woman I would have wished to marry married my brother.’

  ‘That’s rough,’ said Viney.

  ‘Yes. Are you married?’

  A long pause.

  ‘Yaw.’

  ‘Do you have children?’

  A longer pause. Then an evasion.

  ‘This brother of yours, he in the Army?’

  ‘Was.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Yes. Dead.’

  ‘Were you sorry?’

  ‘Yes. Very. I loved him dearly,’ said Lothar, staring blindly into the flame.

  ‘And his wife. Widow.’

  ‘She is dead also,’ said Lothar. He took a deep breath. ‘I helped kill her.’

  Viney expressed no surprise but nodded as though this was confirmation of what he knew. Or perhaps it was in confirmation of what Lothar now knew to be the unspoken and inviolable agreement between them, that nothing of this exchange would ever pass beyond the pair of them, no matter what state their rivalry should reach.

  ‘She wanted, needed, my comfort. She came to me. I rejected her, out of guilt for my brother, out of shame at my own desire, out of pride and egotism and self-regard and all the other things that make men fight wars.’

  He paused. Why had he said that? It was not a connection he had made before. But there was truth in it. ‘So she sought comfort instead in death,’ he concluded. ‘Killed herself.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like Quayle.’

  ‘Just like Quayle. All hope of comfort and love gone.’ For a second Lothar thought Viney was about to burst forth in another of his rantings against perversion, but the tremor of emotion which passed over the man’s face vanished quickly and he took another draught of the raw spirit.

  When he spoke, his voice was very low but controlled. ‘My wife has a kid. Not mine.’

  ‘You are sure?’

  Viney considered t
his.

  ‘Fair do’s,’ he said. ‘Almost sure.’

  Lothar did not speak but Viney seemed to hear a question.

  ‘I said I’m almost sure,’ he growled. ‘It’s like a firing squad, Fritz. One shot up the spout. You can’t be sure your one shot hits the mark when there’s a dozen other blazing away all around you, right?’

  ‘One shot? You mean …’

  ‘We were only married two days before I sailed,’ said Viney. This was hardly an adequate explanation but instead of enlarging upon it he chose to go off at a tangent, or so it seemed.

  ‘You had a lot of girls, Fritz?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Me too. Girls! It was all right then. Young. They were young.’

  ‘How old are you, Viney?’

  ‘Me. Twenty-four, twenty-five. Fuck knows.’

  Lothar was taken aback. He’d speculated on Viney’s age but had never placed him as young as this. That brooding intensity, he must have been born with it! A man with his power over others imparted a sense of agelessness. Twenty-four! He was a boy!

  And I am twenty-six and an ancient! thought Lothar with heavy irony.

  ‘These girls, I’ve thought of them. Some were scared. It was the first time. They cried out. I told them to shut up. Even when it wasn’t the first time, they’d often cry out and I’d shut them up. They’d lie there like I wanted them. They’d lie still till I finished. Sometimes on their backs. Sometimes on their bellies. But always still till I’d finished.’

  Lothar watched him drink, took the proffered bottle and pretended to drink himself. A small deception, instantly spotted. He affected to sneeze to explain it, then drank deep. The bottle went down on the table with a crash which made the lantern jump and flicker. Viney did not react.

  ‘She was different,’ he said. ‘She was the one they were all after, officers, swaddies, everyone. She was for me, it had to be, everyone thought it. I never looked for it, but she came right at me, and everyone got out of the way.’