No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  ‘You promise, Viney? I don’t want to stay at the farm any more.’

  ‘Promise,’, said Viney. ‘I reckon they’ll be coming up after us once this lot passes, so it’d be stupid to hang around.’

  ‘Viney,’ the boy said, pressing himself close with his voice muffled by the proximity of his companion’s chest. ‘How could he do it? How?’

  ‘Things happen,’ said Viney. ‘There’s all kinds of needs, sometimes you can’t help yourself. You’ll learn.’

  It was strange. Up to this point there had been nothing either in the sight or the touch of Josh’s body which had touched him sexually. At least not consciously. But as he asserted the irresistible power of physical need, it was as if he punctured some thin membrane between the conscious decision-making part of his mind and the darkness which lay beneath. Desire swept over him in a long tidal wave. His penis, shrunken by the cold, arose, blood-gorged, against Josh’s flat belly. The boy felt it and went tense. Horrified at himself, Viney tried to draw back and might have succeeded had not Josh, in a movement ambiguous of rejection or submission, rolled over so that his back was to Viney. Even now, had he spoken or resisted, the Australian’s self-revulsion might still have been triggered to the point of breaking off from the contact. But as Viney’s hated lust swivelled his hips forward bringing his steel-stiff member against the boy’s skinny buttocks, Josh did not speak or flinch, but lay utterly still and silent except for one small cry of pain as Viney thrust deep in the final searing explosion.

  Afterwards, without any spoken decision or agreement, they pulled on their still damp clothing. They had things to say to each other, but neither spoke for they could scarcely find the words to express these things to themselves. For Viney it had been the final open recognition that he was the very thing his whole idea of life cried out against, that he, of all men the strongest, was of all creatures the weakest. It was a devastating admission, yet one not devoid of comfort in that now, for himself at least, this one deceit was over.

  For Josh it had been two things – recompense for what he had unconsciously acknowledged from their first encounter, Viney’s love; and revenge on Nicole. Her body had been entered and sullied; so his too. Now they were even but not with an evenness which could ever match them together. It was a vengeance entirely devoid of comfort.

  They set off later back to the farm, Viney breaking the path ahead, flailing his arms like a swimmer, or sometimes, where the snow was deepest, like a drowning man.

  They arrived back at the farm in darkness. It was not a riotous homecoming. There was relief but no surprise. When Viney set out to do something, it was difficult to admit the possibility of failure. There was very little drama either. Lothar tried to speak to Josh but when the boy ignored him, the German simply shrugged helplessly and fell quiet. As for Nicole, she lay in bed within her sleeping chamber and whether her ears strained in the darkness or her eyes opened as she lay there, no one could know.

  ‘We’ll move out at first light,’ said Viney after he had dried off and fed himself.

  ‘Out?’

  ‘To the Warren.’

  Hepworth and Evans exchanged glances.

  ‘But Strother can’t move,’ protested the Welshman. ‘He’ll have to stay.’

  ‘He’ll stay only if he can’t move,’ said Viney.

  It was not a double-meaning. It was spoken in such a way as to be quite unambiguous.

  Coleport laughed wildly but it was Hepworth who provided the real drama. As preparations for the move got under way, he said, ‘I’m not going.’

  Viney said, ‘What’s that, Heppy?’

  ‘I’m staying. They’ll not get through the winter ’less they have a man about.’

  ‘How long do you reckon you’ll be about, sport? They’ll be coming up here, you know that? They’ll likely clear the whole lot of them off, shove ’em in jail for harbouring deserters. Well, that’s their bad luck. But you in jail, Heppy, that could be our bad luck, couldn’t it?’

  Hepworth regarded him calmly.

  ‘I’ll not promise not to talk, Viney,’ he said. ‘I know you don’t rate that kind of promise very high. But I will promise not to get caught.’

  ‘You mean you’ll just keep out of sight when they start pushing Madeleine there into a truck?’ said Viney disbelievingly.

  ‘They’ll not do that,’ said Hepworth. ‘I’ve spoken with her. As they come up, they’ll meet her on her way down to Barnecourt to report there’s been a bunch of wild men here, holding them hostage till they upped and left the previous day.’

  ‘And you think the redcaps’ll swallow that?’

  ‘Aye, they’ll swallow it. When she shows them her dead son, shot by one of these wild men, they’ll swallow it.’

  His eyes flickered to Lothar and he added softly, ‘She can even tell ’em her daughter got raped by one of the bastards.’

  Lothar went pale but did not move.

  Viney said thoughtfully, ‘You’ve got it all worked out, my son, haven’t you?’

  ‘I think so, Viney.’

  Everyone waited.

  ‘All right,’ said Viney. ‘It probably makes sense to have someone around keeping an eye on these people. We’ve invested too much in ’em not to take care of them now. See you in the spring, Heppy. Just don’t get caught.’

  ‘I’ll not do that, Viney,’ said the Yorkshireman.

  A little while later as the sun’s pink stain started to seep across the white snow, they left. Strother was carried on a rough stretcher between Lothar and Taff Evans. The Welshman still protested it would kill the wounded man.

  ‘Then you’ll not have to carry him far,’ said Viney.

  ‘But we can’t even see the way we go to the Warren,’ cried Evans.

  ‘I’ll find it,’ said Viney. ‘And Josh here says it’ll thaw today. He’s got a nose for the weather, eh, Josh?’

  He smiled at the boy. He sounded almost light-hearted. Josh returned his gaze solemnly and Lothar noticed as they started the long trek away from the farm that the young Cumbrian did not once look back.

  Jack Denial lay in his hospital bed. They’d found him in mid-morning stumbling along beside his horse, too weak from the blow to his head and exposure to get into the saddle. There’d been a threat of pneumonia but after three days in bed he had beaten it off.

  Maggs had been to see him. They’d finally got up to the farm. On the way there, they’d encountered the woman, Madame Gilbert, who confirmed what he had suspected. The Volunteers had been there. Any doubts as to her own loyalties in all this were dissipated by the sight of her son’s corpse, shot clean through the heart with a .303.

  And now they were back in their hole.

  But the war went on. No one could see any end to it. For the first time ever, Denial did not find this a terrifying thought. The end of the war might take him and Viney out of each other’s reach.

  But the longer it continued, the more certain he was that they would meet once more.

  He closed his eyes and fell asleep.

  BOOK THE THIRD

  Resolution

  PART ONE

  ONCE MORE, THE SOMME

  In March 1918, the Germans launched their last great offensive, ‘die Kaiserschlacht’, on the Somme front.

  The British Fifth Army broke, and within a week the Germans had advanced up to forty miles, passing across the Desolation and penetrating countryside hitherto untouched by the War.

  For the first time in more than three years, noman’s land ceased to exist.

  1

  It was a long hard winter. It seemed long even to the men in the trenches who knew that for them spring’s renewal was merely a renewal of death. And for the men in the Warren, it was like a death itself.

  Yet there was in some of the Volunteers also a desperate clinging to life, a sense that this subterranean existence was perhaps merely a finite purgatory rather than eternal hell.

  By one of those massive ironies with which these carrion years were f
illed, their symbol of hope was the unlikely person of Dennis Strother.

  Incredibly, he had survived the rough journey back to the Warren and eight weeks later he was still breathing, and still cursing with every breath.

  He cursed his life and his luck and the lives and lucks of all those around him. He cursed all armies and all generals; all kings and all kaisers; all priests, potentates and politicians. He cursed England, France, and the whole world from pole to pole; he cursed the sun, the stars, and the entire universe. His cursings were the unceasing burden of life in the Warren. Above all, he cursed Viney. He had in his possession a bayonet which no persuasion or threat could remove from his hand. It tented the bloodstained blanket like some grotesque erection as he lay (still feverishly muttering) in the semi-conscious state which passed for sleep. The bayonet was meant for Viney, he screamed, or for anyone else who came near him – except for Lothar. Lothar was the only one he trusted to tend to his needs. The others were spies for Viney. And Viney himself, he called out amid his roll-call of maledictions, would only come near him to kill him.

  He was not entirely right in this, but not entirely wrong either.

  The power structure of the Warren had changed. Viney’s absence on the raids from the farm had not been long, but it had permitted a relaxation of atmosphere and a freedom of speech which some of the Volunteers were reluctant to give up. And though Viney had never gained his strength simply by using the strength of others, there was no denying that the losses in the raids had deprived him of a great deal of powerful support. In particular, the old triumvirate was now down to one. Delaney lay dead in whatever grave his killers had seen fit to scratch for him. And Coleport was now a withdrawn, inward-looking figure, sitting nursing his healing but almost useless arm in a corner most of the time, except for sudden manic outbursts of energy when he would rush around the passages and chambers of the Warren, sometimes talking to the dead Delaney, sometimes declaiming the sad and lively ballads of A. B. Paterson. To Viney he never addressed a word, and this visible disaffection told more heavily against the Australian than anything else. The evidence that Viney had actually murdered his own friend and lieutenant was far from conclusive, but it was strong. More importantly, it was easy to believe.

  The opposition’s weakness was lack of a leader. Hepworth might have fitted the bill. There was in his straight-forward, down-to-earth manner a strength which could attract followers. But he might have been a million miles away for all the use he was to the men in the Warren.

  Lothar was a possibility. His German-ness was a barrier which familiarity had almost removed. He had shown himself skilful in practical matters as well as debate and, above all, he did not seem afraid of Viney. But if the Australian suffered by the disaffection of Coleport, Lothar suffered even more by the more mysterious disaffection of Josh who avoided all contact or conversation with his old mentor and stubbornly took Viney’s side in any matter of dispute.

  Josh sat by the Australian’s side one night at the supper table when the question of Strother came up again. His body had grown steadily weaker to the point where he was little more than a skeleton, but his voice seemed to increase in strength and could be heard clearly now, groaning and cursing in his pain.

  Nelson banged down his tin plate violently and said, ‘For Christ’s sake, do we have to put up with that? Viney, ain’t it time to put a muffler on that moaning bastard?’

  Viney said mildly, ‘Keep your hair on, Eddie,’ producing a general laugh. Nelson had already been tonsured like a monk when he arrived in the Warren, but during the past few months, worry or diet had caused all his remaining hair to fall out, leaving him bald as a cathedral dome.

  A Scot called Balfour said, ‘It’s true, but. If he’s still making that row when the spring comes and there’s a chance of someone wandering by, he’ll be a real danger. I was on sentry last night, and I could hear him clear.’

  Fox now joined in. He clearly felt little loyalty to his former ally, Strother, unless his words could be taken at face value.

  He said, ‘There’s no hope for the poor cunt, is there? We’d be doing him a favour putting him out of his misery.’

  All eyes were on Viney who turned to Lothar and said, ‘Fritz, you’re the next best thing we’ve got to a medical man. What say you?’

  Lothar said, ‘I agree. There is no hope. To me it seems a miracle he has not died weeks ago. Perhaps we should not interfere with miracles.’

  Viney was not going to let him get away with verbal evasions. He said, ‘So you’re against putting him out of his misery, Fritz?’

  Lothar took a deep breath.

  ‘If Strother wishes to die, I will not stand between him and his death,’ he said. ‘But I make no decision on the life or death of anyone else, not any more. That is why I am here, Viney, not out there directing the guns of my battery.’

  Viney didn’t argue, merely nodding his head and saying, ‘All right, if you want Strother to go on suffering and us to go on putting up with his caterwauling, that’s just what we’ll do, Fritz.’

  He rose from the table, accompanied by Josh.

  There were a handful of newcomers who had joined the Volunteers during the winter, bringing the numbers back up to around forty after the heavy losses at the end of the previous year. These had not yet seen Viney’s strength in other than its passive mood, and though this was inhibiting enough, it was not totally intimidating. One of the newcomers, a Northumbrian called Groom with a cheerful wrinkled monkey-face, emboldened by Viney’s assumed retreat, said to his neighbours, ‘I bet there’d be no talk of putting him out of his misery if it was young Josh there doing the caterwauling!’

  The older Volunteers froze into silence. Viney halted and turned.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean, Groom?’ he asked quietly.

  Not yet alert to his danger, or unwilling to back down in front of his fellows, the Northumbrian essayed a conciliatory grin and said, ‘Nothing, Viney, except that Josh is far too bonnie a laddy to let die.’

  He was stupid enough to round off his remark with an appreciative smacking of his lips.

  Viney said not a word but moved forward with tremendous nimbleness for a man of his bulk, smashing aside a table in a scatter of tin mugs and cursing men, and caught the half-risen Groom a blow which completed the process, lifting him clear over his stool and hurling him against the wall with a force that cracked the board-lining to reveal the bare earth behind. Viney went in pursuit, swinging his booted foot at the slumped body.

  ‘Viney!’ called Lothar in a voice which suddenly reminded the others that he was or had been a German sergeant.

  Responsive to the tone, Viney restrained himself with obvious difficulty.

  Lothar said softly, ‘Must everyone who offends you be killed?’

  ‘Killed! Who said anything about killing?’ snarled the Australian. ‘I’m just going to teach this joker a few manners.’

  ‘You may believe so. But in our present state, it is too easy to kill. Anything we cannot properly treat, no matter how minor to start with, can prove fatal. Only by helping each other, which means, to start with, by not harming each other, can there remain any hope.’

  ‘Hope? Hope for what?’ cried Arnold Tomkins in one of his rare contributions to debate. ‘It’s all right for you lot! You ran off because that’s what you wanted. I never ran off at all. I was kidnapped! But who’s going to believe that, I ask you? Who?’

  ‘Not to worry, Tommo. We’ll get Viney to sign you a chitty,’ said Fox.

  There was a general laugh which Viney joined in.

  Tomkins said piteously, almost talking to himself now, ‘I shouldn’t have been in the Army at all, you know that? All the way along, they kept saying that. I was thirty- nine. You won’t get your papers, they said when they brought conscription in. They’ll never take you with your eyes, they said when I went for my medical. You’ll never get further than Aldershot, they said when I went to do my training. And when I got posted out here to Di
v. HO, they said, well, at least you’ll be safe there. No fighting for you. But here I am, aren’t I? Here I fucking am!’

  His voice had risen to a near-hysterical scream.

  ‘Give it a rest,’ snapped Nelson. ‘At least they didn’t make you fight. You had it cushy, mate, sitting in your little office, doling out leave passes for real soldiers!’

  ‘I didn’t want to sit in any offices,’ yelled Tomkins. ‘I was a musician, not a fucking clerk. They’ll put you in a military band, they said! The nearest you’ll get to France is sitting on the quayside at Tilbury Dock playing Rule, Britannia, they said! And look at me now.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ cried a wag. ‘I’d prefer something more cheerful. Like a newly-dug grave.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll see that, likely enough,’ said Tomkins viciously. ‘You’ve all got a better chance of seeing that than you’ll ever have of seeing the white cliffs of fucking Dover.’

  This brought silence, broken by Evans.

  ‘There’s a thing, Viney,’ he said. ‘What do you think our chances are, really now, of seeing the white cliffs?’

  ‘Don’t ask me, sport,’ said Viney. ‘White cliffs mean sod all to me. Aussie’s my home and that’s ten thousand miles away. Though come to think of it, Dover might as well be that far, for all it matters. You’d better ask Fritz here. He’s the clever one, the one with all the answers. Me, I’m just an ignorant digger. Tommo, you got a mo? I’d like a word.’

  He left with Josh and a frightened-looking Tomkins following. To some of those remaining it might have seemed almost like an abdication. But Lothar, looking round at their uncertain yet expectant faces, knew that it was no such thing but a serious and deadly challenge to a duel for the primacy.

  It was Groom who actually voiced the question, rubbing his jaw which happily seemed not to be broken.

  ‘What do you say to that then, Fritz?’ he mumbled. ‘What is going to happen to us?’