No Man's Land

by Reginald Hill

  Besides, he had other worries to keep him awake.

  His talk with Nicole had left him full of perplexity. She had answered him monosyllabically at first, but once her initial reluctance was overcome, the difficulty had been to interpret the torrent of words and tears.

  The facts were simple. Yes, she was pregnant. And yes, he was the only possible father. But how to deal with these simple facts, that was not so simple.

  His one source of consolation was that though his role as father was beyond doubt, he suspected he would be Nicole’s own second choice as protector. At the end of their conversation she had asked almost inaudibly, ‘Will Josh be coming with Monsieur Viney’s friends?’

  Unfortunately the answer was no. The raiding party consisted of half a dozen men, the best fighters remaining in the Volunteers. Viney was not going to risk Josh in this number, and the boy himself had shown no desire whatsoever to return to the farm.

  So Lothar sat and mused till four-forty A.M. when the thunder of the German artillery brought him rushing to the door.

  The fog was thick here too, but the farm was several miles closer to the front than the château and the display of firepower was proportionately more impressive. Lothar’s expert ear attempted to identify what was coming over, but the continuous belt of noise defeated him. All he could be certain of was that practically every piece of ordnance from the lightest to the very heaviest must be in use.

  Soon Madeleine and Nicole came to join him, their faces strained with new-awaking and fear. Madame Alpert, sadly declined in strength, remained in bed apparently unmoved by the fearsome thunder.

  ‘What is happening? It sounds so close! Are the Boche coming?’ demanded Nicole, clinging to Lothar’s arm, oblivious of the fact that here was one of those Boche.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Lothar. ‘It is a long way off still. I think they are probably shelling the area well behind the front line to cut communications and damage supply routes. Come, let us go inside. Out here it is too cold.’

  He ushered the unresisting women back into the barn where Madeleine stoked up the living-room fire and started boiling water for coffee.

  ‘Lothar,’ murmured Nicole, her young face troubled, ‘this place out there in the dead lands where you all live, the Warren you call it, will the shells reach to there?’

  ‘No,’ said Lothar smiling. ‘They are still well behind the lines, many miles. They will be quite safe.’

  What he said was true, but he also realized the devastating effect this bombardment might be having on the Volunteers. The Warren must be trembling in the shock waves of these explosions, and among Viney’s Volunteers were many whose apparent normality was quickly destroyed by any sudden violent noise, let alone such an eruption as this.

  He looked at his watch. It was after five o’clock. Viney should have been back by now.

  At five-thirty there was a slight check in the bombardment though it was quickly resumed with a subtly altered timbre. Lothar guessed that sights had been lowered from the rear zone to the British infantry positions. At roughly ten-minute intervals after that there were other small hiccoughs in the distant bombardment.

  ‘What are you listening to, Lothar?’ asked Nicole.

  ‘Just to my old comrades,’ smiled Lothar, trying to reduce the girl’s anxiety by adopting a light tone. ‘The guns pause now and then, do you hear it? What they are doing is making range checks, I think. You see, with the first bombardment it didn’t matter too much because they weren’t aiming at anything in particular. But now they must be precise.’

  ‘So that they can kill the Tommies in the trenches, you mean?’ she said seriously.

  ‘Yes, my dear,’ he said softly. ‘That is what I mean.’

  He could have said more. The military part of his mind told him that this need for range checks during the bombardment meant that the checks had not been made, as was usual when a battery took up a new position, by firing a few shells and seeing where they landed. This desire for secrecy plus the sheer intensity of the bombardment told him that this was no mere local show to gain half a mile of no-man’s land but a major push, perhaps a last desperate throw by Ludendorff in an attempt to break the Allied line, turning the British flank north of the Somme and rolling them up towards the sea.

  But such matters were not for Nicole’s ears. Nor indeed were the possible local implications of the attack. If there was a breakthrough, the British could be pushed right across the Desolation and the untouched pastureland between the farm and Barnecourt could become a battlefield.

  But the front was many, many miles away. On past performance, a couple of miles in a day was an incredibly rapid advance. The great Allied push on the Somme in 1916 had gained at most five miles in as many months.

  No, he told himself. Forget the madness going on over there. The real worry was, what had happened to Viney.

  It was after seven o’clock when he at last heard sounds in the swirling mist, bright now under the touch of the invisible sun. He picked up a rifle and worked a round into the chamber. Then angrily he ejected it, and rested the weapon against the wall once more. If trouble was coming, it was not going to be the kind that could be turned away by bullets.

  He stepped clear of the barn door and strained his eyes into the mist.

  The touch of a hand on his shoulder made his heart twist and gape like a decked fish, and he turned round so quickly that he cricked his neck.

  It was Hepworth, scouting ahead to check that all was well. Viney now joined him, his huge figure damp with mist. Both men looked weary and depressed.

  Lothar said, ‘Tomkins?’

  ‘Dead,’ said Hepworth.

  ‘The raid, it will be cancelled then?’ said Lothar to Viney.

  The Australian said, ‘Why? I got what I wanted.’

  ‘But they will be alerted,’ protested Lothar. ‘A man is shot – a man they know, remember that. They will draw conclusions, take precautions …’

  Viney yawned massively.

  ‘They’ll have other things to bother them, I guess,’ he said. ‘Or haven’t you noticed? Jerry couldn’t have picked a better moment – Christ, but I’m whacked.’

  He went into the barn.

  Lothar and Hepworth stood and watched the flame-lurid horizon. The mist was lifting a little and the curve of fire was clearly visible.

  ‘Tomkins was definitely dead?’ queried Lothar.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Hepworth. ‘Back and front dead.’

  ‘Viney?’

  The Yorkshireman nodded.

  ‘But getting that bugger back or front isn’t so easy,’ he suddenly added.

  Was he describing his own failure? Lothar wondered. Or inviting a conspiracy?

  He considered the matter, then shook his head in self-irritation. He had not come so far along this road from senseless killing to signpost it with a murder.

  Madeleine came out of the barn and stood looking at Hepworth without expression or comment. Lothar felt a sudden envy of the man. He had found something in this war which to nearly all the others had simply meant loss.

  He went into the barn and left the man and the woman to their private greetings.

  5

  The bombardment had continued for another two hours, rising to a climax at nine-thirty. Even at this distance it pulped the nerves; and lying underneath it must have been like having your soul flailed out of your body, leaving behind a gross dull incomprehending animal hulk.

  Then it stopped.

  And slowly all along the front, most of those near-lifeless hulks would be arising, and reassembling their manhood, and straining fear-dilated eyes into the mist and the smoke to discern the advancing enemy.

  Lothar sat before the fire and wept silent tears for what man is and what he could be; for what nobility he wasted in what vile ends.

  Then he stretched out on his pallet and joined Viney in sleep.

  Noise of the distant battle rumbled on for the rest of the day and rumbled on far down the valley ti
ll it reached Château d’Amblay, where amidst the endless comings and goings and the hurly-burly of tactical conference and strategic assessment, despatch of orders and receipt of intelligence, Jack Denial could find no one of senior rank interested in the death of Corporal Arnold Tomkins.

  Even among the other ranks, he got only the mockery of attention due to his three pips. The exception was Sergeant-Major Maggs, whose eyes lit up when he heard the magic word, Viney. But even he was distracted as the day wore on and reports of massive enemy pressure at key points along a fifty-mile front began to trickle out of the staff conferences.

  The court-martial had been prorogued, but Denial had not returned to his unit in Barnecourt. Instead he had ordered every item of Tomkins’s equipment and clothing removed and brought to him. Unaffected by the blood-stained tunic, the back of which was almost entirely ripped away by Viney’s bullets, he went over the assembled material painstakingly, until early in the afternoon the door opened and Maggs appeared, just having time to say, ‘Colonel Forbes, sir,’ when he was pushed aside.

  The Colonel looked at Denial in amazement.

  ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing, man?’ he cried.

  ‘It’s this fellow who was shot last night,’ began Denial, eager to try out his conclusions on anyone ready to listen, but the colonel was not on this very short list.

  ‘Shot last night? We’re all liable to be shot tonight, or tomorrow night or the night after that! For God’s sake, man, don’t you know what’s happening? We’re going to need every bit of our reserves, I tell you, and even then they may not be enough. The roads are going to be chaotic. My God, it’s like Piccadilly Circus outside the château already. That’s where I want to see you and your chaps, that’s your damn’ job, isn’t it? This is no time to be playing Sherlock Holmes, Denial. Get out there and start sorting out the traffic!’

  He left. Maggs kept his eyes fixed on a diplomatic space a foot above Denial’s head and waited for the captain’s orders.

  ‘I think that Viney is planning a raid,’ said Denial thoughtfully.

  ‘On HQ, sir?’ said Maggs disbelievingly.

  ‘Why not? He has delusions of grandeur, I believe. And there must be any amount of stuff here these deserters would find useful. But I don’t think he could possibly do it out of the Desolation in a single night. So it must be like last time, when Delaney was killed. They’ll be using somewhere as a jumping-off point. Look.’

  He held out a boot. Maggs looked.

  ‘Smell it.’

  Maggs sniffed reluctantly.

  ‘Cow shit, sir,’ he opined.

  ‘Right. And fresh too. Like this.’

  He held out some crumbs of bread removed from Tomkins’s tunic pocket.

  ‘Try some,’ he said. Maggs looked at the bloody tunic and shook his head. Denial nibbled a crumb.

  ‘It’s very fresh. Recently baked. So. Cow dung and fresh-baked bread. A farmhouse, wouldn’t you say, Mr Maggs?’

  ‘That one at the top of the valley again, you mean, sir? Could be. But look, sir, no one’s going to make a raid, not with all this going on.’

  Denial said in surprise, ‘Why on earth not, Sergeant-Major. Viney and his gang have opted out of the war, remember? The bigger the confusion, the more they’ll like it.’

  ‘Sir!’ said Maggs, unconvinced. ‘You may be right, sir … meanwhile …?’

  He held open the door.

  ‘Very well, Sergeant-Major,’ said Denial resignedly. ‘Let’s go and direct traffic.’

  The raiding party was supposed to journey from the Warren the following night, but when dawn came it had not appeared. The fog was very thick again and Lothar suggested that if, as was likely, it was even worse out in the Desolation, probably Evans had decided it wasn’t worth risking the trip in such conditions.

  ‘Or perhaps the stupid bastards set off and got themselves lost,’ snarled Viney. ‘Leave them alone for ten minutes and they’re useless!’

  Hepworth raised his head from the gun he was cleaning and said, ‘Sounds to me like that battle out there’s getting closer.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Lothar. ‘It does. Perhaps Taff felt it wiser to keep underground.’

  It was strange to see the same look of alarm leap into Nicole’s and Viney’s faces. The girl’s English was still not very good, but she could follow simple statements well enough.

  ‘The Boche couldn’t have got that far. Impossible!’ protested Viney.

  ‘I believe so too,’ said Lothar. ‘All I meant was, if the front has moved, then everything will move. Perhaps there is new activity with reserves and supply lines closer to the Warren. In this fog then, it would be wiser to stay still.’

  His explanation repeated in French seemed to allay Nicole’s worries, but Viney was preoccupied all the next day.

  As evening approached he said, ‘Perhaps I should go to meet them. Or go all the way to the Warren.’

  There was an uncharacteristic uncertainty in his voice and Lothar’s reply was cautious.

  ‘Perhaps, but you might miss them.’

  ‘The raiding party? It’s not them that’s worrying me, Fritz. They can just about look after themselves. It’s the other jokers … there’s no one left to take proper charge.’

  ‘There’s Coleport.’

  ‘Blackie? I’d have said so once, but he’s been crook in the head since Patsy died. No, I’ve slipped up for once, Fritz. I should’ve made sure there was someone back there I could rely on. Like you. Mebbe you should have stayed back there, Fritz.’

  He said it almost accusingly. Lothar forbore to point out that he had been practically ordered to the farm, and said, ‘There’s not much can go wrong, Viney.’

  ‘What if the Boche break through? What about that, Fritz?’ said Viney angrily.

  It was a question which had already begun to trouble Lothar. Judging the progress of a battle at a distance was almost impossible. All they could say for certain was that it was still raging fiercely and that, as Hepworth had pointed out, from time to time it sounded closer. But if there was a breakthrough, and Josh should suddenly find himself swept back into that maelstrom of horror from which his mind had so recently been rescued, then …

  He caught Viney’s eye and saw in the big Australian’s expression that exactly the same thoughts were running through his mind.

  The next twenty-four hours passed in much the same way as the last with the sounds of battle now perceptibly closer and Viney growing more and more anxious.

  Lothar took Hepworth aside in the middle of the day and suggested to him that it might be wise for the womenfolk to pack up and make the trek down the valley to Barnecourt.

  Hepworth replied, ‘The old lady’s too weak and Madeleine’ll not leave her.’

  ‘They can use the horse and cart,’ Lothar insisted.

  The cart was a ramshackle affair which was the best that even Josh’s skills had been able to construct from the debris of old implements. One wheel was missing a small segment, and the best that could be done was to give it a straight edge at that point. The result was a curious limping motion which, added to the effect of the deeply rutted tracks, made riding on this conveyance a nauseous and dangerous business.

  Hepworth put the suggestion to Madeleine who shook her head vigorously.

  ‘It will kill her,’ she said. ‘She is old and very frail. Since Papa died, she has lost the will to live. Well, at least I can see she dies in her own bed and not in a muck-cart.’

  Hepworth shook his head in a gesture which conveyed perfectly to Lothar his belief that women were undeniably crazy but also crazily undeniable.

  But Madeleine was no fool, and the judgement of these two men both of whom had won her not easily given respect was not to be ignored. If they felt the Boche might come, there must be something in it.

  She said, ‘Nicole can go. She can take the horse and lead the cow. You, Heppy, can see that she gets there safely. It is settled.’

  Lothar regarded this indomi
table woman with unstinted admiration. At a blow she was consigning to safety all that was valuable to her both emotionally and materialistically. Her daughter, her lover – and her livestock!

  Hepworth began to protest, but she brushed him aside and called to Nicole. Lothar stood back to enjoy the clash of wills between the determined Frenchwoman and the stubborn Yorkshireman. It would be a battle whose ferocity would fall little short of that great battle raging to the east. But there was a surprising turn of events. Nicole on hearing her mother’s instructions burst into tears and announced with a near-hysterical intensity that she was definitely not leaving. Madeleine frowned menacingly at this unexpected opposition, then equally unexpectedly did not press the point but went back to her work.

  She shared with Viney, Lothar thought, the great strength of knowing when to bow.

  The night came and went in the same pattern of fog and anxiety as those before.

  As the morning sun began to draw up the mists, Viney said, ‘That’s it. Something’s happened. I’m going to find out what.’

  ‘Wait till noon,’ urged Lothar. ‘They may have set out and got lost. It would be stupid to miss them by a couple of hours.’

  Viney agreed with surprising readiness. There was a look about him which Lothar recognized but could not identify. Then it came to him, and with it the explanation of its difficulty of identification.

  It was fear; as unlikely a feeling to shape Viney’s features as lust on a Mother Superior’s.

  It took a little while longer for Lothar to work out that it was not fear of the journey but what he might find when he reached the Warren. The battle-line – if a line actually still existed – must be snaking even closer. There could be no doubt that the bruised and ravaged earth of the Desolation which had lain fallow for nearly two years was now experiencing yet again the ripping, gouging plough of war. Sound told of its approach, and sight too, as fists of black and yellow and grey smoke clenched themselves in the air, then opened hazy fingers and hurled hot seeds of metal between the rambling, ugly furrows below.

  The sky seemed full of aeroplanes today also. Lothar did not believe he had ever seen so many, not only nimble little biplanes swooping and diving over distant targets, but wide-spanned bombers and slow observation planes lumbering to join them, unnaturally low. It could mean only one thing. The British were desperately throwing everything they had into their efforts to inhibit the German infantry advance. After more than three years, war had finally broken out of the trenches and suddenly the old snail’s pace of movement to which they’d all become conditioned was a thing of the past.