No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  ‘Yeah, well, all right,’ said Viney. ‘Let’s forget what’s happened, OK?’

  He looked at Hepworth who shrugged and turned away. Coleport seemed to have relapsed into shock once more. Evans said, ‘These poor devils ought to be in hospital, Viney.’

  ‘Hospital? To be fatted up so they’ll make a good target for the firing squad? Talk sense, Taff! They’ll have to take their chances. We’ll all have to take our chances. For the moment we’re as safe here as anywhere in France tonight!’

  And his confident assertion was still hanging on the air when they heard the shot outside.

  Everyone froze except Viney who spun round to face the door, his Luger in his hand, held steady as a rock at a man’s chest height.

  ‘No!’ yelled Lothar, throwing himself between the Australian and the door. If they were being attacked, the slightest sign of resistance when their attackers came through the door could lead to a bloodbath.

  No other shot followed and as the long seconds ticked by, some of those present began to doubt whether they’d really heard the first one. Some, but not all.

  Nicole suddenly called out, ‘Josh!’ and headed for the door.

  ‘Attends!’ commanded Lothar, barring her way. Cautiously he lifted the latch.

  Outside the snow was still falling, but gently now, a few big flakes feathering down to add the last touches to a scene which at first glance had something of the quality of a Christmas card illustration.

  The farm buildings and the rubble-pile which marked the site of the old house were equally beautiful in their covering of white. In the middle of the yard crouched Josh. With his blanket draped round him like a Biblical robe, he might have been a shepherd kneeling in adoration outside the stable. Two things spoiled the image. The first was the Lee-Enfield .303 in his hands. The second was the half-open byre door. No shaft of divine light came pouring out. But on the whiteness of the snow which had drifted across the threshold lay a crumpled shadow.

  Lothar went slowly forward and paused by Josh, his hand touching the young man’s shoulder.

  ‘I heard noises,’ said Josh in a flat, dead voice. ‘I thought they were in my head again. Then I saw the door opening in the corner of my eye. I thought … I thought …’

  But what he thought was never expressed, for Nicole screamed a long wavering scream.

  ‘Auguste!’

  And ran across the yard and knelt in the snow cradling her brother’s loose-lolling, open-eyed head in her lap, with her own hating, accusing gaze riveted to Josh’s face which was now so white that it was scarcely possible to distinguish the pale skin from the snow which clung to it.

  7

  They laid the young Frenchman out in Madeleine’s sleeping chamber, Madame Alpert and her daughter performing the task with stoic expertise born of the peasant’s long acquaintance with the realities of death.

  Hepworth, his own hurt forgotten, went to Madeleine with clumsy condolence, but she only looked at him from the shadowy pain behind her blank eyes and spat out the single word ‘Soldat!’ and went on with her work.

  As for Josh, he too made an attempt to speak to Nicole. But when he stood in front of her no words would come. Slowly she raised her head and looked into his eyes. Then, with a visible gathering of strength, she drew in a deep breath and spat full in his face. Josh did not move, but the girl, as if this had exhausted all her reserves, now surrendered nearly all control of her limbs and would have fallen in a heap if Lothar had not caught her.

  Madeleine came to his aid and together they laid her in the narrow chamber next to that in which her dead brother rested.

  ‘It is shock,’ explained Lothar. ‘Like when a shell goes off near a man. She must rest and be warm.’

  They piled blankets over her and left her in, though not at, peace.

  Josh said, ‘Lott, I heard a noise. I thought … I didn’t think … I just turned and I thought it must be … the rifle went off …’

  ‘Yes, Josh, yes,’ said Lothar gently, putting his arm around the young man’s shoulders and leading him to his bed-roll.

  It was a tragic irony. The war had at last killed Auguste. In the shock of Viney’s return with his wounded companions, it had not seemed possible for anyone’s attention not to be focused on this drama. But Auguste, in whose war-crushed mind Viney and the others were not allowed to exist, had risen on this morning as every other and gone out unnoticed to milk the cow.

  Viney said, ‘Forget it, son. These things happen. Poor bastard’s probably better off dead.’

  It was kindly meant but Josh simply turned a comfortless face to the Australian and began crying. In helpless embarrassment Viney turned away.

  Slowly the day dragged along. Strother and Coleport were made as comfortable as possible, but soon the Cockney’s groans had become as much a part of the background noise as the wind which still rearranged the fallen snow outside the barn. Nicole did not emerge from her chamber. From time to time Madeleine who was seeking her own solace in constant activity went in to see her, taking bowls of soup and coffee, but always responding to Lothar’s queries with an irritated shrug.

  She did speak to him once, however, and Lothar approached Viney who was resting in monumental stillness in the furthermost corner of the barn, only stirring to dismantle and clean his weapons.

  Lothar said, ‘Madeleine says there will have to be a priest.’

  ‘Je-sus,’ exclaimed Viney. ‘I thought those jokers were meant to be here before death, when they could still save your soul.’

  ‘There is still work for him,’ said Lothar. ‘And there are the funeral arrangements to be made.’

  ‘Funeral!’ exploded Viney.

  ‘Why yes, Viney. These people are not up to date with the modern custom of tossing the body into the nearest old trench or new shell-hole. They still expect consecrated ground, a coffin, and a ceremony.’

  Viney thought about this.

  ‘What you’re saying, Fritz, is we’ll have to be moving out of here pretty soon?’

  ‘I fear so. In any case, once the snow goes, there may be men here looking for us.’

  ‘Yaw. And Strother, he ain’t going to be easy to move.’

  ‘No. Perhaps we could leave him. He needs hospital treatment.’

  Viney looked at him blackly.

  ‘We leave no one, Fritz,’ he said. ‘How long do you think Strother’d keep his mouth shut? They’d be into the Warren in half a day.’

  ‘The Warren is not the only place to hide in the Desolation,’ said Lothar.

  ‘You want to look for somewhere? With winter all ahead of us? Don’t make me laugh, Fritz! No, tell Madeleine she can fill the place with priests after we’ve gone, but that won’t be till the weather improves!’

  He reached into his pack and produced a bottle of spirit.

  ‘Care for a snort?’ he asked.

  ‘Thank you, no.’

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said indifferently. ‘Suit yourself.’

  It never really got light that day, but at last what passed for light faded, and gradually the activity in the barn died away and, except for Madeleine and Madame Alpert who were taking turns in keeping vigil by Auguste’s body, everyone settled down for the night, though settled was not a word which suggested itself to Lothar. For the Volunteers, he thought, this was in many ways the low point of their existences, a nadir when all the horrors of the past and the uncertainties of their future ran into each other and showed they were the same. Strother, anaesthetized with brandy, tossed and groaned; Hepworth lay with his head between his hands and from time to time sighed deeply; Coleport stared unblinkingly into the darkness and moved his lips in soundless repetition of one of his favourite ballads; even Viney’s indomitable spirit seemed subdued by the events and atmosphere of the day. Josh lay close by Lothar. He had spoken scarcely a word all day and now, when the German tried to put a comforting arm round him, he rolled further away.

  Lothar lay in the darkness, more despairing now than at any time
since Sylvie’s death. Beside him he heard Josh’s breathing at last lengthen into the steadiness of slumber, but for him no rest came.

  How long he lay there he did not know, but when a noise came from one of the chambers, he was already fully awake. It sounded as if something had fallen over. Careful not to disturb any of the others, he rose and went to investigate.

  The cause of the noise was soon found.

  In the vigil chamber Madeleine, still at last as she sat by her dead child’s bed, had finally succumbed to the fatigue of a day without rest or respite, and lay slumped forward in her chair with her head next to Auguste’s. The movement had upset one of the pair of candlesticks at the bed head. Fortunately the flame had gone out as it fell.

  Lothar picked it up, relit it from the other, and set it out of danger’s way. So deeply fatigued was Madeleine that none of this roused her and he decided the kindest thing to do was let her sleep on.

  He turned to the door and drew in a sharp breath. Wraith-like, a pale figure stood there. It was Nicole, clad in a linen shift, her white face set like a sleepwalker’s.

  Quickly Lothar left the vigil-chamber, drawing her with him.

  She spoke in a voice so low he could not make out the words. He stooped so that his face was close to hers and she spoke again.

  ‘Is he dead? Is he really dead?’

  ‘Yes, my dear. He is. Come now.’

  ‘No! I must be with him!’ she protested.

  ‘Your mother is with him. Come now. Come now.’

  He led her back into her own narrow room. She was shivering with cold and with fear too, he guessed. As he tried to lay her down on the bed, she put her arms round his neck and begged, ‘Do not leave me, do not leave me.’

  ‘I must. I must,’ he insisted.

  ‘No. Do not leave me, please, please, I beg you, I beg you.’

  In her voice was a fear and loneliness and despair which echoed his own. But worse than that was another echo, an echo from the lost, the dead time before his life had turned into this waste land. It was Sylvie’s voice he heard, her blind pleading for warmth, for comfort, Oh Lott, please, please. He tried to break her grip again, but her strength was too strong now or his efforts too weak. She was a dead weight round his neck drawing him down to the narrow bed. He ceased to resist, but went with her and for a moment they lay there, perfectly still, body against body, separated only by the rough cloth of his threadbare shirt and the thin linen of her white shift which had ridden up round her waist. Then her mouth came in search of his.

  Josh awoke from a dream of Outerdale with the snow crisp on the fields and the breath of carol-singers bright as their merry song in the morning air. Darkness and memory rushed back on him at once. Cold now, and in need of comfort, he rolled over and reached out his hand to touch the warm and comforting shape next to him. But his finger only encountered an empty roll of blankets.

  Alarmed, he explored further, but there was no possibility of error. Lothar was no longer there. What was more, the nest of blankets was quite cold. This was no quick enforced trip to the farmyard for a cold-cursing piss. It might of course have been a more urgent call of nature which would have taken him across the yard to the privy behind the byre. Trying to accept this theory, Josh lay in the dark for some minutes. But his uneasiness was growing and as it was accompanied by his own desire to relieve himself, he finally rose, pulled on his boots and trousers, and began to move quietly through the darkened barn.

  His conscious worries were all centred on Lothar’s possible illness, or, in the icy conditions, even more possible accident. And his route towards the barn door was consciously dictated only by his concern not to wake any of the other sleepers. He reached and passed the entrance to the living-room. He reached and paused at the entrance to the first sleeping chamber in which Auguste was laid out. The door was slightly ajar letting out a glimmer of candlelight.

  Slowly he pushed it open till there was a gap wide enough to permit vision.

  The corpse lay on the narrow bed, lit by a pair of soft-flickering candles. Madeleine Gilbert’s sleeping head rested on the pillow beside her son’s. It was only her presence that gave him the strength, drawn by what impulse he knew not, to step into the room to look at the young man. Perhaps it was the need of one who had seen too much of limb-shattering, gut-ripping, flesh-searing death, to be reminded of the high valuation of life implicit in this washing and composing and dressing and decent laying out of the empty fleshly husk.

  The face was calm and composed, but masklike – much deader in its way than the ruined head of some shrapnelled lad in no-man’s land, one cheek ripped away to show the white curve of the jaw. No living flesh ever reflected the candle-glow like Auguste’s waxen skin. It was touched with a light like that pale glimmer which steals across the high fells to mark what passes for day at an overcast November dawning.

  Josh looked and shivered, seeing suddenly how death and its pains weathered a man’s body like a landscape, taking soft richly rolling pastureland and reshaping it into a prospect of high bare mountains. With a strange flash of insight, it occurred to him that this in part was what brought all those odd tourists, whose motives had often puzzled him, to his own Cumberland. They were visiting and becoming familiar with the beautiful and fearful landscape of dying.

  Then he heard voices and old Cumberland and new metaphysical speculation fled at once from his mind. It was just a low murmur, indistinguishable and almost instantly stilled. But his keen young hearing told him it came from the neighbouring chamber, where Nicole slept. And within the murmuring had been a man’s voice. Yet in the very same instant as his ears registered this, his mind was telling himself he had been mistaken. It was a murmur of women’s voices. Madame Alpert had gone to comfort her grieving granddaughter, that was all.

  As reason strove with recollection, his body exerted its own will. He plucked the candle from its place at Auguste’s head and left the chamber as quietly as he had entered. His mind called for him to pause and consider but his body knew that there was a cold waste of circumspection in which resolve would freeze and certainties be misted over with every future breath. Not hurrying, but not hesitating, he pushed open the door of the bedchamber and entered, holding the candle high so that its small light fell with all its force on the occupants of the narrow bed.

  They pushed themselves half upright, alarmed, Nicole’s face pale and small within the fanned-out tresses of her luxuriant hair which covered but did not conceal her naked shoulders. As his eyes were drawn resistlessly to her tiny but exquisitely rounded breasts, he recalled how even in that dreadful moment when Strother threatened what seemed inevitable rape, he had not been able to avoid the prurient thrill of his first glimpse of a woman’s sex. And now again. Now he had seen all of her, but not as a man ought to take his view of the woman he loves; no, certainly not that.

  Those should have been his arms round her, that should have been his chest pressed close against her bosom, his arms coiled protectively round her shoulders.

  Now at last his mind confirmed what his eyes had been refusing to accept.

  He threw back his head and screamed into the cold invisible air.

  ‘Lothar!’

  And flinging down the candle, he rushed out into the bitter anaesthetizing night.

  8

  The mutiny at Étaples had not lasted long. For eight days the camps had been in the control of the mutineers, prisoners had been released, deserters living in the woods and caves around the complex had mingled freely with their old comrades, and to wear a red cap within striking distance of the rioting men had been a provocation to assault if not to lynching.

  But finally by a mixture of threat, promise, naked force and, above all, the deadening, self-defeating conservatism of the British working man, the situation had been brought under control. Now, except on a few bits of highly confidential paper in the most secret recesses of the War Office, Denial doubted if the mutiny was officially acknowledged to have taken place at all.
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  He had stayed on through October and November, helping to restore and maintain normality and also to track down those of the ringleaders who had gone into hiding. His work had been so impressive that it had been suggested that he ought to remain as permanent APM in the area. That this came as a suggestion rather than an order was a matter more of semantics than anything else, but Denial took it at its face value and produced a list of conditions for accepting the job.

  ‘But these are absurd!’ he was told by his baffled superior. ‘These are to do with military policy, not with military policing! It’s impossible – no, it would be grossly dishonest of me to even hint that they are acceptable.’

  ‘Then let us hope the war ends within at most a year,’ said Denial. ‘I doubt if the idiots who are running it can trade on the tolerance of their soldiers much beyond that.’

  ‘Jack, you almost sound like one of these new-fangled socialist communist fellows!’

  It was meant as an atmosphere-lightening joke but Denial did not smile.

  ‘I’m a policeman, sir,’ he said. ‘That means I believe in equality before the law. Tell me where I’ll find that politically, and that’s where you’ll find me.’

  He spoke vehemently and when he had finished, he sensed he might have gone too far. He had relied a great deal on his superior’s willingness to let him have his head and this was ill payment. So now it was his turn to try a conciliatory tone.

  ‘Oh, by the way, sir,’ he said. ‘That name von Seeberg in Cowper’s notes. Did you ever find out anything?’

  ‘Nothing very helpful. There was a Count von Seeberg, some big nob in Berlin, died recently. Had two sons, both killed in the war, poor devils. Win, lose, how do we replace the children, Jack? How do we ever do that?’

  It was shortly after Denial’s return to Barnecourt that the first of the Volunteers’ raids had taken place.

  ‘They got clean away!’ Sergeant-Major Maggs reported. ‘They stole a truck! What’s it to be, sir? Go after them?’