Australia refused. It was certainly not only one man, they replied, it was also their future as a government. The so-called unnamed soldier could be punished by a term of imprisonment, but he could not be executed.
And while they had previously been pressed to agree that names of deserters could be published in the newspapers along with details of their prison sentences, many editors had felt this a harsh and unfair burden placed on the innocent families. Some had even refused to publish. Because of the history of shell shock in this case and other disturbing elements relating to the court-martial proceedings, Australian cabinet opinion was that the interests of justice would be best served if the name of the soldier concerned was not made public.
In a fury at this equivocation, Whitehall ordered the court-martial in the case to reconvene. Colonel Carmody was instructed to return from Paris where he had spent much of the war as a special liaison officer, and told to immediately put his mind to meditating on a valid new sentence that could stand scrutiny — one that these awkward antipodeans would accept.
The court deliberated. Within an hour they handed down a new verdict, and the accused was sent for. He appeared before them chained, for in the words of the President of the Court, he was considered to be extremely dangerous.
The sentence was commuted to ten years’ imprisonment with hard labour. He would receive a dishonourable discharge, although his name would be suppressed from publication. However, he would be removed to a prison in England, and there he would serve the full ten-year term, without any remission whatsoever.
‘So they got him in the end.’ Patrick sounded defeated as they walked along the towpath to their newly adopted Italian restaurant that evening. He had a distinct sense of anticlimax. After the excitement of their discoveries they’d reached the finishing line, but there was no tape to mark it. Just a blank wall.
‘At least they didn’t kill him,’ Claire replied. ‘We don’t even know if he served the full ten-year term.’
‘It looks like it.’
‘Not necessarily. The report stopped right there. I’ve searched, and it’s not mentioned anywhere else.’
‘Poor bloody Stephen. He truly became the unnamed and unknown soldier.’
Claire sensed his mood and tried to be optimistic. ‘There are cases of others who were sentenced like him, then released after the armistice,’ she assured him. ‘I don’t know if we can find out whether it happened to him, but I’d like to try.’
‘You’ve done heaps already. It would’ve been impossible to get this far without you,’ Patrick said, and took her hand.
They walked towards the lights of the restaurant. Beppi, the owner, was standing outside. He had come to know them, and often sat with them after dinner to share a liqueur on the house. ‘Buona sera!’ he called to them.
‘Buona sera!’ they replied.
‘Tonight,’ Beppi said, ‘we have a nice chianti with your names on it, beautifully chilled and waiting for you.’
‘Tonight, Beppi,’ Patrick said, ‘I think we need a bottle of French bubbly. We have an anniversary.’
Claire turned to look at him with pleased surprise.
‘Tonight,’ Patrick told the restaurateur, ‘is exactly one month since we met at the Menin Gate.’
Her Majesty’s Prison Service in High Holborn is a bustling, modernised department. There, a civil servant with whom Patrick had an appointment, made it abundantly clear their records were concerned with present-day prisons, which they preferred to call ‘correction centres’, and they were not in the business of answering questions about detainees of so long ago. After more than eighty years, he said, it was hardly likely they’d have the details being requested in this application under the Freedom of Information Act.
The civil servant had thick bushy eyebrows that he raised while studying the application form without enthusiasm.
‘Stephen Conway? Army deserter?’
‘Unjustly accused,’ Patrick pointed out.
That was neither here nor there, he was told. ‘If it was an army matter, Sir, you’ve come to the wrong place.’
‘I think he was sent to a prison, perhaps Dartmoor. A few other Australian soldiers were sent there about that time.’
‘Have you been in touch with Dartmoor?’
‘They said they have no facilities for this kind of enquiry, and referred me here.’
‘If he was sent to a civilian establishment, do you know how many hundred correction centres we have in the United Kingdom, not to mention the many that have changed names or no longer exist?’
‘I’m aware it’s a big ask.’
Raised eyebrows told him indeed it was a big ask. He typed the name Stephen Conway on a computer and Patrick waited hopefully. ‘This is all I can do, you realise?’
‘I know,’ Patrick said. ‘I appreciate your time.’
When the response came the civil servant appeared to be vindicated by the result.
‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid no record exists in the files.’
‘Or else it’s been deleted.’
‘I really can’t imagine why. It’s most unlikely that records were preserved, except on high-profile prisoners.’ He gave a wintry smile. ‘We have extensive detail on Irishman Sir Roger Casement, for instance, hanged for high treason. Nothing on Stephen Conway, an Australian soldier who managed to escape the same fate.’
‘His trial was the subject of a row between your country and mine. I thought there might be some trace, because of that.’
‘It seems not. Perhaps you’re right, and for political reasons the name has been expunged. He may’ve been important after all.’
‘He was to me. An unknown, unnamed soldier, and a most unlucky one.’
The civil servant seemed more sympathetic. ‘But after so long, Mr Conway, what is there to find out?’
‘The date of his release. I was told many soldiers in jail were freed after the armistice. I wondered if my grandfather was given a similar reprieve.’
‘If not, he’d have served until 1928. But I’m afraid we’ll never know that.’
Patrick went back to Fulham, feeling defeated by the passage of the years, and the obfuscation that seemed to put the final chapter of Stephen’s life beyond his reach.
Claire had spent the morning researching details of Netley’s bizarre hospital from the Internet, but time made that equally difficult. There were no lists of patients or staff, apart from a passing mention that the war poet Wilfred Owen had once been treated there. She printed the available photographs, and they were startled at the immensity of the place.
‘My God, what a monster!’
‘Isn’t it? There’s the pier, the stables, bakery, post office — even the railway station.’ Claire pinned some of the photos to a corkboard alongside her desk and pointed to the places in turn. ‘Here’s the officer’s mess: very Italianate and suitably grand. That’s where Sassoon and Wilfred Owen must’ve dined. And this building over here, you can tell what this is, can’t you? The asylum ward in D Block, taken at night with all those lights blazing.’
Patrick gazed at it, unable to prevent thoughts of the pain and anger that had been experienced there. It conjured up a too-vivid image of his twenty-three-year-old grandfather facing the relentless probing of the Scots doctor; enduring the experimental electric shocks; and returning here in despair after learning of Elizabeth Marsden’s death. He’d come back to this place because there was nowhere else to go, Patrick realised, and felt a deep sadness that no one would ever know the real fate of Stephen Conway. To his wife and child and other family of that time he would’ve been a man who had literally vanished as surely as if he’d been swallowed up in Flanders mud. Not even he and Claire would ever find the truth about the rest of his grandfather’s life.
‘Patrick…’
‘Sorry, I was miles away.’
‘And years away, I’d venture. Is this where you were?’ She handed him a scenic photo she had just enlarged. It was a wide-angled view of th
e hospital taken from offshore. He studied it and nodded.
‘That’s where. It looks just the way he described it. What was it he wrote?’
“‘This haughty and gargantuan building… the size of six English seaside hotels”,’ she reminded him.
‘He was deadset right about that. On the water’s edge, with so many acres of ornamental gardens. More like a maharajah’s palace than a hospital.’
‘Makes him seem quite close,’ Claire said, ‘doesn’t it?’
‘Netley dome,’ the guide announced as the tour boat approached across Southampton water. ‘A fine example of Victorian architecture was preserved when Netley Hospital, the largest infirmary in the world, was partly destroyed by fire and then demolished in the 1960s. What you see was originally the chapel and centrepiece of the hospital, built after the Crimean War by Queen Victoria, who planned it in collaboration with Florence Nightingale.’
On board among a group of tourists, Claire smiled at Patrick. According to their Internet research, the outspoken Nurse Nightingale had disliked the place intensely, declaring the corridors were far too long, the wards too small, that too much money had been spent on appearance instead of patient comfort, and the country had been landed with a stupid mistake — and an expensive mistake at that.
In Claire’s view this was why the nurse had never been made a Dame of the British Empire, nor received any official honour while Victoria lived to resent such comments.
‘Miss Nightingale,’ the guide continued, ‘personally selected the site, approved the architecture, and gave it her blessing.’
‘So there,’ Patrick whispered, and Claire stifled a giggle, tucked her arm in his, and watched the land approach.
They went to the dome, now a museum. Inside were images of the past on ancient spools of film. They showed glimpses of the wounded brought by troop ships, then transferred by lighter to the pier, and taken to the hospital by horse-driven carriage down a steep cobbled road — the speed of the ancient sprocket film making it seem like a dangerous headlong gallop — while a modern soundtrack explained that some unfortunate patients had died from this experience before actually reaching the wards.
‘It’s like hearing it straight from Stephen,’ Claire whispered.
They spent several hours there, studying photographs and the original postcards his grandfather had found so grotesque. They left feeling it was an interlude that achieved nothing other than satisfying their curiosity. The search was at an end. It was doubly disappointing, for they had come so much further than Patrick had expected, but tantalisingly not far enough.
They drove along the winding coast road to East Sussex and the Cinque Port town of Rye, spending the night at the historic Mermaid Inn. The next day, returning to London via Romney Marsh and the back roads of the Kent countryside, Patrick’s mobile rang. It was Charlotte Redmond’s office, her secretary saying that Ms Redmond would like to see him at White City next Tuesday if it suited, at ten in the morning.
TWENTY FOUR
Charlotte Redmond was on the phone again, gesturing a casual wave of recognition at Patrick, and making the same signal for coffee to her secretary. It’s a bloody charade, he thought as he sat waiting, then realised anger would be pointless. What would happen if he stood up and walked out? Nothing much, except she’d put his screenplay through the shredder.
Before he could progress this thought she terminated her call. ‘Well, Patrick.’
‘Charlotte,’ he acknowledged her. There was a moment before she responded.
‘Ah yes, your project.’
She looked at a folder in front of her, as though recollecting why he was there. She’s a poseur, he thought, full of shit. Anger might be pointless, but it was extremely difficult to avoid it with someone like this. He realised she was removing the script from the folder and sliding it across the desk to him.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Patrick. This may have been Tim’s sort of film, but I have to be honest and say it’s not mine.’
‘In other words, you hate it,’ Patrick said, ‘so I have to ask, did it really take so long to decide that?’
‘Of course I don’t hate it,’ Charlotte replied. ‘I think it has charm, but it’s not what I’m after. An 1820 bank robbery in Sydney Town, and some lucky convicts who turn into prosperous English gents. To me it’s The Lavender Hill Mob, with kangaroos and kookaburras. Perhaps that’s why Carruthers was fired; not that he was stoned and insulted everyone, but that he could never pick winners.’
‘A bit traumatic, Charlotte, to hear you denigrate the idea, and then label me a loser,’ he said, stung by her remarks.
‘I didn’t mean to suggest that. I’m trying to say, however terrific your film may turn out to be some day — with another company, of course — it’s definitely not my sort of movie.’
‘I see.’
‘No, I doubt if you do.’
‘Well, it hardly matters now, does it? You’ve done the demolition job. You could’ve told me this at our first meeting.’
‘I was trying to be fair, and give it another reading.’
‘It obviously didn’t improve on closer acquaintance.’
‘Look,’ she said more forcefully, ‘I’m here because they want to change the culture of this place. Change the old-boy network, and the dated concept that Aunty BBC is the only game in town. It’s a hell of a long time since those halcyon days, but the melody lingers around here as if this was still 1960, instead of a new century. I’m on a performance-linked contract to get this department right, or out I go. My whole thrust is to make movies that get into the cinemas. Put them on TV later, when the juice has been squeezed out. Like the film on the life of Queen Victoria… Mrs Brown, with Judi Dench and Billy Connolly. Made heaps on the big screen then still topped the ratings on free to air.’
‘I saw it,’ Patrick said. ‘Went right off in the last reel. As if they didn’t know how exactly to end it.’
She stared at him. Having made her defining statement, Charlotte was clearly impatient to see him leave.
‘So what are you going to do, now that we don’t want your script and the project?’ she asked coldly.
‘Go home,’ Patrick retorted, all of a sudden not caring a fried shrimp in hell what she thought. ‘Go home and get to work on a new screenplay. One that’s become very important to me.’
‘And what might that be?’
Her condescending tone infuriated him. ‘Nothing you’d be the least bit interested in.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because it’s a love story.’
‘I like love stories.’
‘This one you wouldn’t. It’s set in the First World War.’
‘I have nothing against love stories in a war-time setting. I mean, look at the success of The English Patient. Does it have a title, this screenplay you’re going to write?’
‘It might have. At least a working-title.’
‘Is it secret, or am I permitted to know?’
‘Some Disputed Barricade,’ Patrick said.
‘Really.’ She allowed a long pause. ‘And do you think this is a title that has resonance?’
‘Absolutely. Just as much as The English Patient.’
‘You didn’t like it?’ She sounded incredulous.
‘Who cares if I did or not?’ he replied. ‘Or if you like my title — or not — since you’re not involved. It’s based on lines by a poet killed in that war. “I have a rendezvous with death, at some disputed barricade”.’
‘His name was Alan Seeger,’ she said, surprising him. ‘Not as prominent as Wilfred Owen or Sassoon, but a war poet.’
Fifteen love to you, he thought, determined to show no sign of being impressed. ‘I may change it, call it The Menin Gate. Because that’s where they met.’
‘Who met?’
‘A soldier and an English girl. She’s a volunteer nurse. They were called the Roses of No-Man’s-Land. She’s a Rose.’
‘I see.’
‘From a sheltered, middle-class background. Her father’s a vicar, she’s a virgin. The Roses were a special sort of young woman, they went as unpaid volunteers to France, slept in tents, put up with the rain and the slush, helped treat wounded men under fire, risked their lives.’
‘Sounds like a good part for a top young actress.’
‘A great part. Up to her knees in mud and blood, she’s bossed around by the matron and sisters, groped by the doctors and has half of the half-dead patients falling in love with her.’
‘What age is she?’
‘Early twenties. I’ve called her Georgina.’
‘You seem to have done a lot of work on this story.’
‘How do you think I filled in time,’ Patrick said, ‘while I sat around waiting for this meeting? Naturally I’ve registered it with all the writers’ guilds. British, Australian, America East and West.’
‘Very protective.’
‘I can’t pitch it unless I protect it.’
‘Are you pitching it now?’
‘Of course not. It isn’t your sort of film.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It couldn’t be. I don’t want it to be.’
‘Why?’
‘Because working with someone who treats me with disdain is not my idea of enjoyment… and I like to enjoy my work.’
‘Disdain?’ she repeated, gazing at him, startled. ‘What disdain?’ The secretary came back with one cup of coffee, and looked most surprised to see him still there. She put the cup in front of Charlotte, who summoned her own look of surprise.
‘Didn’t you bring a coffee for Patrick?’
‘I’m sorry, but —’
‘No thanks,’ Patrick said to them both, ‘definitely none for me. Can’t stand coffee, and I’m leaving in a moment.’
The secretary went out with a shrug and a puzzled frown. Charlotte barely waited for the door to shut behind her.
Barbed Wire and Roses Page 28
