Tom, in a hole scooped out of the trench-side, felt the earth would never stop shaking. He felt it would open and swallow him up. Opposite him was a man named Lambert, who crouched on the firestep with terrible tremors running through him, and who plucked with his fingers at his lower lip till blood splashed down onto his tunic.
Suddenly Lambert sprang to his feet and hauled himself over the parapet. Tom tried to catch him but was too late. Lambert was already through the wire, running towards the enemy, lobbing imaginary grenades as he went.
‘Bloody guns!’ he shrieked. ‘I’ll soon shut you up! I’ll shut you up once and for all!’
Tom was following, running like the wind, when Lambert fell dead, a sniper’s bullet through his forehead. Tom veered and doubled back. He leapt head first towards the trench and rolled over into safety. His left foot felt as though he had hit it with a heavy hammer. A bullet had taken the heel off his boot.
Sometimes, during a period out of the line, housed in a barn or ruined cowshed, a man might throw himself down in the straw and sleep for ten or twelve hours at a stretch. He slept through anything. The world could end for all he cared. The last trump could sound and he’d never hear it.
But in a day or two he would revive. Hot food eaten in safety; hot tea made with clean water; time to sit and smoke a cigarette; and perhaps after all the end of the world had better not come yet. A wash and a shave could make a new man of one who had thought himself played out. There were things to do. Pleasant things. And if he were lucky he could stroll in places where grass still grew and leaves were opening on the trees; where the air still smelt wholesome; and where, from fields of green corn, larks flew up and hung singing in the blue sky.
‘It’s funny,’ Tom said, ‘how many things is just the same as they are at home.’
On the farm where they were billeted, there was an orchard of apple trees, and the blossoms were just beginning to open. Tom sat on the ground and watched the swallows building in the eaves of the ruined farmhouse. Some chickens were pecking about in the grass, and a little way off, sitting on a hencoop, a solemn-faced girl of seven or eight was keeping guard over them.
The house was no more than a broken husk, but the elderly farmer lived there still, with his family of womenfolk and small children. The younger men were away fighting. The old man was up on the roof, nailing canvas over the beams, a short clay pipe between his teeth, a straw hat on the back of his head. The women were working in the fields. One was ploughing with a team of cows.
Tom got up and walked towards the child on the hencoop. She looked at him with frowning eyes.
‘You needn’t worry. I shan’t steal your hens.’
‘Comment?’
‘Chickens,’ he said, and pointed to them. ‘I shan’t steal them. Nor the eggs neither.’
‘Comment?’
‘I was watching the swallows, that’s all, and looking at the blossoms on the trees. I reckon you’ll have a nice crop of apples, so long as there ent no nasty late frosts.’ The child said nothing. She did not understand him. She sat with her hands tucked into her apron and frowned at him harder than ever.
‘Look at this here,’ he said to her, and took a snapshot from his pocket. It had come with a letter from Betony and it showed her mother in the orchard at Cobbs, a straw beeskep between her hands, about to take a cast of bees that were swarming on the trunk of an apple tree. ‘You know what those are, I’ll be bound. I see you got stalls of your own up yonder. This is in England. Blighty. You know. See the blossom on the trees there? Just the same as you got here.’
The child took the picture and looked at it for a long time. She handed it back and her hands disappeared in her apron again.
‘C’est la ruche,’ she murmured, ‘pour les abeilles.’
‘Ah. Well. Like I say, that picture was took in England.’ Tom walked on. Newers and Danson were coming towards him. So was Evans. They were stopping to smell the apple blossom.
‘Hello, Toss, been fraternizing?’
‘I was trying to tell her I wasn’t after her eggs and chickens.’
‘We’d be after ’em fast enough if it warnt for her grandpa. The old devil keeps a shotgun.’
‘I wish I could talk to the people here. It don’t seem right, not to be able to talk to them.’
‘What’s that to you, Toss? You don’t hardly talk much even to us. You was always a silent sort of bastard.’
‘I talk when I think of something to say.’
‘Ah, Tuesdays and Fridays usually, ent it?’
‘Take no notice of Pecker,’ said Newers. ‘He just lost his pay in a game of poker.’
Tom had picked up a rounded chump of sweet-chestnut wood, roughly the size of his own fist, and had carved the little girl’s likeness from it. Whenever he had a moment to spare he worked away at it, shaping the neatly rounded head, set so gracefully on the fine neck, and perfecting the features from memory.
The battalion was under notice to move. The men were mustering outside the village. Tom walked out to the old farmhouse and met the child driving cows up the lane. He took the carved wooden head from his pocket and gave it to her.
‘For you,’ he said. ‘A souvenir. I done it myself, see, with this here knife. I hope you like it.’
The child looked at the carved head, then at Tom. Her face remained blank. She said nothing.
‘Well!’ he said. ‘I’ve got to go or I’ll land in trouble. We’re moving in a little while.’
He turned and hurried back towards the village, his boots thudding in the dust of the roadway. When he got to the bend and glanced back, she was still standing, a tiny figure, the carved head clutched against her chest.
At ten o’clock that morning, the whole of the battalion was assembled outside the village, fully accoutred and ready to move. The day was a warm one and the air smelt sweetly of trampled grass. The men sat about on the roadside verges, smoking and talking, awaiting orders. Newers and Danson were throwing dice. Tom was adjusting Evans’s pack.
‘Hey, Toss!’ said Newers, nudging him. ‘Ent these the people from the farm?’
An old man and a small girl were coming slowly along the road, scanning the crowds of waiting soldiers. The old man had very white hair and black eyebrows. He wore a blue cap and smoked a pipe. The child wore a pinafore striped white and brown. They came along the road hand in hand, and one or two soldiers called out to them, making jokes in broken French. Suddenly they came to a halt. The child was pointing a finger at Tom.
The old man nodded, puffing at his pipe. He took something from his pocket and gave it to the child. She in turn gave it to Tom. It was a wooden crucifix, six inches long and four wide, with Christ carved very plainly and simply: the sort of crucifix he had seen so often lately, hanging on the walls of ruined houses throughout the district.
‘It is for you,’ the old man said, in careful English, ‘to keep you safe from harm in battle.’
‘Laws,’ Tom said. ‘You shouldn’t have walked out all this way ‒’
‘The little one wanted so much to find you. It was important. Very. Yes. You are her friend and make her a present. She will keep it always, and remember you. Me too. We will remember.’
‘Ah,’ Tom said, and rose awkwardly from his knees, aware of the men listening all round him. ‘Thank you. Merci.’ His hand rested briefly on the child’s head.
‘Bonne chance,’ the old man said. ‘God be with you, and with your comrades.’
He and the child went back hand in hand. They were soon lost to sight, for the soldiers were moving now, thronging the road. Tom stood looking at the crucifix, turning it over in his hands, feeling the smooth-worn corners and edges, and the smooth grain. It was carved from boxwood and felt very old.
Sergeant Townchurch came along, shouting orders. He saw the crucifix in Tom’s hands.
‘What the hell’s this? You aren’t a bloody Catholic, are you, Maddox?’
‘No, somebody gave it to me,’ Tom said.
‘Some tart, I suppose,’ Townchurch said, and passed on, shouting his orders. ‘On your feet, all you men! What d’you think this is, a jamboree?’
So the Sixth Battalion marched away, leaving the village of Nobris behind them. Larks sang overhead and sparrows whirred from the roadside hedges. The sun was in the soldiers’ eyes. They were marching again to the battle area.
‘I was married,’ Evans said, ‘but my wife died ten years ago, and our baby with her.’
‘How long was you married?’ Danson asked.
‘Two years, that’s all.’
‘Ent you got no family at all?’
‘None that I know of,’ Evans said. ‘There’s no one to miss me when I’m gone. That’s one good thing.’
‘Gone?’ said Braid. ‘Why, where’re you off to, Taff? Monte Carlo?’
Evans gave a little smile.
‘I shan’t come through this war alive.’
‘Oh yes you will,’ Newers said. ‘I bet you a pound.’
‘You got a foreboding, Taff?’ asked Dave Rush. ‘You’re all the same, you bloody Welshmen. ‒ All as superstitious as hell.’
‘You was exempt, being a miner,’ said Dick Costrell. ‘Why didn’t you stop down the pit?’
Evans looked up at the blue sky.
‘I wanted to come up out of the darkness.’
‘You warnt very clever, choosing your moment.’
‘It’s being afraid all the time, you see. I thought I’d left all that down the pit. I thought, out here, I should either be killed or not killed. I hadn’t bargained for living with death as though it was a presence in itself. A presence lying in wait everywhere, preying on the minds of men.’
‘It’s time you put in for a spot of home leave.’
‘I have,’ Evans said. ‘But somehow I don’t think I’ll ever get it. I’ve got this feeling all the time, that something is about to give.’
‘We all get that feeling,’ Danson said. ‘It means another bloody button going!’
Evans laughed along with the rest. He leant across and punched Danson’s shoulder. But the long period out of the line had not built him up as it had the others. He was white-faced and worn, and his hands, when he lit a cigarette, shook like those of a very old man.
There was heavy shelling in the Seiglon sector. The village was soon a heap of rubble. Both the front line trenches and the reserve were blasted in repeatedly, for the enemy had them registered ‘right to the fraction’ a Corporal Stevens said to Braid. One morning, early, a shell fell directly on a forward observation post, and afterwards there was silence there. The post had been manned by Lieutenant Bullock and two men, Bremner and Evans.
Tom and Newers crawled across, under fire from a machine-gun. They reached the post and began to dig. The officer and Bremner were both dead, but Evans, buried under four feet of earth, was still alive when they dug him out. His mouth and throat were full of earth; they had to scoop it out with their fingers; it was almost an hour before his lungs really filled with air.
They thought he would die if he didn’t have prompt medical attention and so they decided to run for it, although it was now broad daylight. They lifted him up and started off across no-man’s-land. They had about two hundred yards to travel. The German machine-gun opened fire and the bullets perforated the ground behind them. A rifle whipcracked three times. Then, abruptly, the firing stopped. The Germans were letting them cross in safety.
Evans went to the medical post at Rilloy-sus-Coll. The doctor pronounced him a lucky man and sent him back to duty again. A fallen rider should always remount at once, he said, and a shell-shock case should face the barrage. Sergeant Townchurch was of the same mind. He carried the principle one stage further. And only forty-two hours later he named Evans for a wiring-party.
‘You can’t take Evans,’ said Corporal Stevens. ‘He’s a sick man. He shouldn’t be in the line at all.’
‘All that twitching and jerking, you mean? He’s putting that on. He’s swinging the lead like he always has done.’
‘That man was buried alive in the O.P. on Monday. Newers and Maddox had to dig him out.’
‘So what? It’s only when he’s buried dead that he’ll be excused his whack of duty. Till then he takes his turn.’ So Evans went with the wiring-party, fifty yards out into no-man’s-land, carrying a coil of new barbed wire. There were ten men including Townchurch and during the night they were fired on by an enemy patrol. The party returned with two men wounded. Townchurch reported another missing. The missing man was Private Evans.
‘Was he hit?’ asked Captain Edman.
‘Not him!’ said Townchurch. ‘He’s bloody well skipped it, that’s what he’s done. I always said he was a slacker.’
Some days later, Evans was discovered sitting in the church at Basseroche, and was brought back under arrest. He went before a court martial, charged with desertion. Sergeant Townchurch gave evidence against him. So did the fox-hunting doctor from Rilloy, who stated that Evans was in good health, physically and mentally. Certainly Evans seemed calm enough now. No longer twitching. Only tired. He was found guilty and sentenced to death.
The battalion moved into camp at Berigny. The weather was broken. There were thunderstorms. The men of Number Three Platoon were digging drains to carry away the surface water. Sergeant Townchurch sought them out. He wanted Tom.
‘Maddox!’ he shouted. ‘Follow me!’ And, as soon as they were out of earshot: ‘I got a job lined up for you. One of twelve for a firing party. Little matter of an execution, first thing tomorrow morning.’
‘I won’t do it,’ Tom said.
‘Not all the guns’re loaded live. You might get a blank.’
‘It makes no difference. I still won’t do it.’
‘You don’t seem to realize ‒ this is an order. D’you know what’ll happen if you refuse?’
‘I don’t care a sod. You’ve got no right to pick men out from the same platoon. You won’t get none of the others to do it neither.’
‘Somebody’s got to do these things. I reckon it’s better, keeping it in the family as you might say.’
‘Let them who sentenced him do the shooting. I came out to kill Germans, not to kill my own mates. Ah, and I sometimes wonder why the hell I should kill them, seeing they’re people the same as us.’
‘Maybe you’d like to join up with them? There’s sure to be lots like you in their lines. You’d find yourself at home with Fritz. Don’t turn away when I’m talking to you! Where the hell do you think you’re going?’
‘I’m going back to my platoon.’
‘Oh no you’re not! I’m putting you under arrest, Maddox, and tomorrow you’ll find yourself up on a charge. It’s easy enough to disobey orders. We’ll see if you like the consequences.’
Tom was taken to the edge of the village and locked in a cowshed for the night, next to stables occupied by Evans. There was only a wooden wall between, and Evans heard Tom arrive.
‘Who’s in by there? Someone I know?’
‘It’s me,’ Tom said. ‘Toss Maddox.’
‘What you been crimed for, Toss, man?’
‘I was late on parade,’ Tom said. ‘Third time this week, according to the corporal.’
‘They’re going to shoot me in the morning. Did you know that, Toss? Did you hear what happened?’
‘Yes. We heard. The chaps was wanting to come and see you but somebody said you’d asked them not to.’
‘I’d just as soon be left alone. They weren’t offended, were they, Toss? It’s just that I need to have time to think.’
‘They warnt offended,’ Tom said.
‘It’s nice and quiet here, considering. I can hear a blackbird singing somewhere.’
‘You got a window in there, Taff?’
‘There’s a small round window above the door. I can see the sky, anyway. Looks like we’re in for another storm. It’ll get dark early tonight, I’d say, but I’ve got a candle and matches here.’
‘You got plenty of ciga
rettes?’
‘Diawl, yes! A tin of fifty. But I was never much of a ‒ smoker. Just the odd one now and then.’
‘Me, too,’ Tom said.
When darkness came, Evans struck a match and lit his candle. Tom sat on his bunk in the shed next door and looked at the cracks of light in the wall. A little while later he lit his own candle. Outside the shed, footsteps sounded occasionally, and men’s voices. Further away, north of the village, wheels rumbled on the stone-paved roads as the ration-limbers went up to the line, and further off still was the noise of the guns. In a lean-to shed next to the stable, a few chickens rustled on their perches during the night, querking sleepily now and then and changing places with a flutter of wings.
‘Toss?’ Evans said. ‘Are you awake?’
‘Yes, Taff, I’m awake.’
‘Are you sitting up with me till the end?’
‘Might as well. Company, like. But you don’t have to talk if it don’t suit you.’
‘Have you ever been to Wales, Toss?’
‘No, never,’ Tom said.
‘There’s a little village outside Merthyr with a stream running through it and an old crooked bridge over the stream and silver birch trees growing beside it. The water in the stream is so clear that if it weren’t moving over the stones you would never know it was there at all.’
‘I should like to see that place,’ Tom said.
‘When I go out tomorrow morning, I shall think I’m going to walk by that stream. It’s nonsense, I know, ‒ I’ve never believed in the life everlasting ‒ but that’s what I shall be thinking about, and that’s what I’ll see in my mind’s eye. I’ll follow the stream till the ground rises. I’ve done it often and I know exactly where I’ll come to. A green hillside and someone waiting.’
Just before first light, the stable door was unlocked, and the padre entered. He sat on a stool at the makeshift table and looked at Evans opposite. The condemned man, he thought, looked quite composed.
‘Well, Evans?’
The Sorrowing Wind (The Apple Tree Saga Book 3) Page 7
