by David Hough
Wendel took a step towards the structure. He had to see more, had to give Cumming an accurate picture of the devastation. The world had to know that Leuven was not a one-off act of mindless vandalism.
*
DeBoise awoke slowly, as if he was gently rising up from the depths of another world. It was a world in which he had dreamed of things more beautiful than anything he had experienced in this life; a world in which there was no war, no human belligerence, only endless love. He blinked as he came to the surface, disappointed to discover it was only a fantasy. Then he saw that one part of the dream had followed him up into the reality of living.
It was Marie.
A beam of daylight streamed through a gap in the curtains and lit up her face on the pillow next to him. Without his glasses he was unable to see her clearly, but he had no need to. Her image was fixed inside his head, an image so sharply etched into his brain that he was able to instantly rectify the haziness caused by his weak eyesight. He lay quietly for several seconds, staring at her in wonderment, slowly latching on to the sweet scent of her body.
She was already awake, silently staring back at him. The bedclothes had slipped back to partially reveal her nakedness. A noise outside the hotel broke his reverie and he glanced away to where a small breeze tickled the edges of the curtains at an open window. The muted street sounds from below began to intrude further into his mind.
Marie said nothing as she sat up, and he turned back towards her at the rustling sound of the sheets. He felt a stirring of desire he was unable to suppress.
“You were dreaming,” she said in a soft, gentle voice. “I could tell. You were, weren’t you?”
“Yes.” The lingering images of his dream were still in his mind, images that bore such a close resemblance to the reality before him.
“Was it a good dream?” A gentle smile lifted the edges of her mouth. Her eyes seemed to be dancing with good humour.
“You were in it.” And in case she didn’t understand, he added, “It was a perfect dream. All men should have dreams like that.” On a sudden impulse, he reached out a hand and caressed her warm skin. It felt like silk. He thought she might draw back when his fingers gently touched her, but she didn’t. And her smile continued.
“I awoke an hour before you. Couldn’t get back to sleep.” She lay down again on her side, facing him. “I was thinking about last night and what we enjoyed together.”
Somewhere in the town a dog barked and the other street sounds continued as a muted background to the morning, but there were no loud noises of war. No guns, no bombs, no killing. And there was time to enjoy this moment.
He wanted her to know how much the experience of intimate loving had meant to him, so he said, “Thank you for what you did.” Then he realised he had spoken without thinking, as if it was the right thing to do: to thank a lady for giving him the full pleasure of her body.
“Why thank me, Charles? I enjoyed it.” She looked amused by his words and that worried him. Was he doing this all wrong? Was he making a fool of himself? He had no similar experience by which to judge his behaviour.
“You’re very kind to say that, but I know I can’t compare with–” He realised then that he had said too much. It could be taken the wrong way.
“Other men?” She continued smiling and he saw that she hadn’t taken offence. “Other men have used me for their own enjoyment, sometimes roughly, but you’re different. You were so gentle and you tried to give me pleasure in return.”
“It meant a lot to me.”
“And I really wanted to do this with you. I’ve wanted to love you since…” She hesitated. “It was while we were on that barge heading up the canal towards Antwerp. There was time then to talk. Do you remember that? Do you remember how we talked and you let your feelings come to the surface? I liked the tenderness I saw in you, but I couldn’t find a way to say so. There was something fresh about you, something that made me want you.”
“You wanted me?” He was surprised. He knew that beautiful women were attracted to the likes of Captain Wendel, women like Brigitte Clostermann, the young French spy whose life Wendel had spared when they arrived in Antwerp. Was that because she was pregnant? He still held some suspicions about the Captain’s motives. But he was not in the same mould as Captain Wendel. He had none of the male magnetism that attracted so many women. He had been an innocent until last night when Marie Duval had shown him what human love could be like.
“You sound surprised,” she said.
“Why should you want me?”
“Why not?” She shifted closer in the bed and the sweet smell of her body invaded deeper into his nostrils. “I understand how you felt after that poor Belgian girl died. You loved her, didn’t you? And you deserve to be loved in return.”
“I killed a man because of that.” He said it with a chill in his voice. He turned on his back and reflected, conjuring up images of the Belgian girl’s angelic face. It had been a strange time: the first time he had truly found himself in love.
When he glanced at Marie again, he saw a cloud of sadness flitter across her face. “You killed the man who murdered the girl. Maybe he deserved to die.”
“No, he didn’t. He was only a youngster who didn’t know what he was doing.” He thought about it for a minute. “You didn’t allow me into your bed because you pity me?”
“Pity? Certainly not!” Marie drew back and frowned. “Don’t ever accuse me of that. I did it because you were very brave when we were behind the lines. I admire a man who is brave.”
“Captain Wendel is the brave one,” he suggested, privately pleased by her words. He turned to face her again.
She relaxed her expression. “Let’s not talk about him. Let’s talk about us. You need some comfort, Charles, and I can give you that. And it really does please me to make love with you. More than you realise.”
A sudden noise outside drew his attention, the sharp bark of a sergeant bringing his men to order. They seemed to be gathering in the street not far away. It reminded him that he was here in Dunkerque as a matter of duty, not to be enjoying himself.
“What will you do now?” he asked, his thoughts diverted towards the reality of a savage war that was raging not far away.
“Kiss you,” she said easily. “And then I shall make love with you again.”
“Like we did last night?”
She shuffled herself closer still and rested one hand on his chest. He tingled as he felt her soft hands running over his skin. “I once intended to become a priest. I would never have known this sort of feeling.”
“And I once thought of becoming a nun. I prefer being here with you.” She giggled and the gentle sound was all he needed to make him succumb to her attention.
Chapter Eight
It was true. Termonde had suffered the same fate as Leuven and that one thought brought a torrent of anger into Wendel’s mind.
Before they crossed the River Schelt, he turned in a circle, mentally recording what was left of a once proud community: the creak of a windmill whose broken vanes somehow managed to turn in a light breeze, the hideous howl of starving dogs scavenging within the ruined piles, and the lingering smell of smoke rising from out of the destruction. But there were no human sounds other than from themselves and the Belgian soldier.
“Come, see,” the Belgian said. “See what the Boche have done to our town. I shall lead the way”
The river crossing looked perilous, but Wendel was determined to find out exactly what the enemy had done here. With Donohoe close behind him, he crawled across the slippery beams, suspended a few feet above the water and supported by heavy wire. On the opposite side the stench was more intense. Wendel put a hand to his nose and scowled.
“Bodies.” The Belgian said. “It is the smell of dead bodies. There are too many of them for me and the engineers to carry away.”
They walked beside the river for a few yards to where the thin neck of the Upper Scheldt was less than one hundred yards wide. Fro
m here it curved between lines of charred and flattened buildings. In the background a rush of water tumbled and splashed through the wreckage of the town bridge.
“Do you hear that?” The soldier cupped a hand to one ear. It was the distant boom of field guns. “It’s started again. The Boche are never too far away and each time they come back they cause more destruction.”
“It makes me sad to see this,” Wendel said, aware that his words were too feeble to express his inner feelings. Sadness was a poor way of expressing his sense of outrage. Termonde had once been a thriving town, a pretty and quaint testimony to the loveliness of the Flanders countryside, as well as the prosperous centre of its rope and cordage industry. This morning it was a heap of smouldering ashes.
The Belgian pointed towards a statue of a Jesuit missionary, unharmed amidst the cold wasteland. “It is odd that they spared this. Maybe they have some respect for religion after all.”
“Or maybe they got tired of knocking things down.” Wendel turned away, trying to take in all he saw and yet sickened at having such images remain inside his head.
They walked on through the town, still with the distant sound of guns as a backdrop. They saw more dead bodies here, decomposing fast where they lay in the street. Wendel put a hand over his face, but nothing could protect him from the smell. He felt a further sense of revulsion when he noticed that the devastation looked planned, carried out with precision.
As they continued their foray through the ruins, the soldier pointed to where the convent was burnt and pillaged. Wendel wondered what happened to the nuns, but he dared not ask in case he was given a graphic response. He had no stomach to take in the detail.
A little farther on they came to where stones and mortar littered the street in front of the ruined Hôtel de Ville. Nearby, church bells lay on the pavement, bombed from out of their belfry. So many buildings had been horrifically burned, systematically drenched with naphtha and then torched. “And yet those houses were spared.” Wendel pointed towards what was clearly a poorer area of the town.
“Ah yes. That was where the prostitutes lived.” The soldier took them closer and pointed to a caption that had been chalked in German on one wall.
These are good people. Do not burn them.
“Prussian humour,” he said wryly. “Or maybe the girls gave a good service to save their lives. In their shoes it is what I would do.”
“Where are they now?” Wendel asked.
“They fled like all the others.”
Growing ever more dispirited, they made their way along the street, wading through piles of broken furniture, beds, chairs and smashed tables. They held their noses as they by-passed the carcass of a horse with its belly bloated and flies feasting on its eyes. In what had once been a street of shops, they crunched over broken glass as they entered a bakery. A clock still ticked upon the wall, an ominous sound of passing time.
They moved on until Wendel said, “We’ve seen enough. Enough to sicken me for days to come.” He meant years to come, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit it. It seemed too much like weakness.
The Belgian soldier nodded in apparent understanding. He guided them back through the streets until they came again to the remains of the convent. This time he did not by-pass the ruins. “When you get to Ghent, tell them what you saw in here,” he said and, without waiting for a reply, he led them through the open doorway.
Inside the building, they crawled over heaps of debris, wrinkling their noses at the stench of leaking sewage. Then they came to the dead bodies. A nun lay naked on her back in one room, her blood splattered upon the walls. Two more naked bodies lay prone in the chapel. Their throats had been cut.
Donohoe suddenly turned and ran from the convent and Wendel heard him vomiting outside. The young soldier did not come back inside the building.
“No one will bury the nuns, and no priest will come here because of that,” the Belgian said. He pointed to a scrawl of painted words on the chapel wall. They were written in German.
Hell is within these walls.
“You’re afraid of words?” Wendel replied, suddenly overwhelmingly angry that these victims had not been given a decent burial.
“Not the words…” the man replied, “…but the heathens who did this. The devil’s work went on here. The demons left their evil in this place and it’s round us. Their evil contaminates everything, including those bodies. We cannot bring ourselves to touch them. We cannot touch their evil.”
“They were innocent victims!” Wendel hissed.
“They’ve been contaminated with evil.”
“God forgive you, all of you,” Wendel wasn’t sure who his anger was aimed at now, the inhuman brutes who had raped and killed in this place of God, or the weak men who left the bodies to rot. He knelt, put one hand firmly upon a dead nun’s forehead and closed his eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he recited the Lord’s Prayer in English and hoped the Belgian soldier understood every word. When he was done he recovered a ripped and bloodied habit and draped it over the corpse. Then he took a torn window curtain and laid it over the other two bodies.
The soldier eyed him sheepishly as they left the building. Was he ashamed? Wendel hoped so. Beside the broken door, he spotted a crucifix lying upon a heap of cobblestones. It was covered with blood. He picked it up, strode back into the convent and laid the cross on the breast of the nearest nun.
“God be with you,” he muttered and bowed his head in a silence that was broken only by the distant guns and the aching throb of his heart.
The Belgian soldier seemed uneasy when Wendel came out from the convent. He said nothing, but led them back to the temporary bridge.
“We’ve seen enough,” Wendel snapped, anxious to be away from Termonde and all it portrayed.
The Belgian shook his head firmly. “No! You think I am heartless, don’t you? You think I don’t care! Well, there is one more thing I want to show you.” He pointed to yet another burned house and there were now tears in his eyes. “Look over there. That was my home. My home! I was not there when they came. I would not now be alive if I had been there.” He paused to wipe at his damp cheeks before relating how four uhlans had entered the house, helped themselves to his food and drink, and laughed as if it were a fun thing to do. For a while, he told them, the uhlans sat in his home playing his phonograph, jeering and making jokes about what they would like to do to his wife. Finally, they told his wife they were sorry, but the house must be burnt.
“They were still laughing at her,” he said. “They poured naphtha around the house, but they did one more terrible thing to my wife before they lit the flame. Each one of them did it… to my wife… each one of them. And there were six of them.”
“I’m sorry,” Wendel said, lowering his gaze.
“She lives to tell the tale,” the Belgian soldier told him. “But she wishes they had killed her. She still wishes she were dead. You see what I mean by evil? It is here amongst our homes.”
“War brutalises people,” Wendel said, looking up. “It turns ordinary men into inhuman thugs. War is the cause of all this.”
“And who started this war?” The Belgian suddenly raised his voice and stabbed a finger at Wendel. “They started it. They invaded our country. And they did terrible things to my wife! I want to kill them!”
“You and many others,” Wendel murmured.
The soldier nodded sheepishly before glancing at his watch. “Enough of this. We must get back across the river. It will be time to destroy the crossing.”
They crawled back across the slippery beams which cracked and strained beneath them. On the far side, the three Belgian engineers called on them to hurry. Wendel jumped the last few feet onto to firm ground and dusted his hands. He watched Donohoe and the soldier land beside him and then saw one of the engineers kneel beside the dynamite fuse. Hardly had he gathered his breath before the Belgian soldier hurried them away from the river.
At the nearest street corner Wendel turned and saw the enginee
r applying a match to the fuse. He ducked back into the cover of the nearest building and, moments later, the dynamite exploded. Barely had the blast subsided before he peered around the side of the building to witness the beams rising up from the bridge like a disintegrating monster. Then they crashed down again into the Scheldt and the remaining planks writhed and twisted in the rushing waters.
As the sounds of the bridge’s destruction died away, Wendel tapped Donohoe’s shoulder. “Time for us to get going. There’s nothing more here for us.” He started walking along the street that would take them from the ruined town in the direction of Ghent.
And in that moment a sudden gunshot rang out. The bullet hit one of the engineers just a few feet away. The soldier crumpled to the ground, dead in an instant.
*
DeBoise put down the hotel telephone with a sad, disgruntled sigh. The concierge gave him a questioning look, but DeBoise chose not to reply. It was none of the man’s business.
“No joy?” Marie stood close beside him in the hotel foyer.
He shook his head. “Commander Cumming is there at the hospital, but they refuse to let me speak to him, and they say I cannot be allowed to visit him. Kitchener himself has ordered he’s to be allowed no visitors.”
Marie grabbed at his arm and turned him towards the dining room. “C will be fuming at that. He doesn’t like his life being organised by others. And he’ll know that we need to speak with him right now.”
“Kitchener will be looking at the long term. He needs C back at his desk in London and that means as quick a recovery as possible. None of which helps our cause one little bit.” DeBoise sighed again. “We’ll just have to do what we can with what information we have. I hope Captain Wendel will be able to make something of all this.”
Chapter Nine
DeBoise put aside his frustration at not being able to speak to C. There was nothing he could do about it for now. Instead, he allowed an unusual sense of pleasure to take over his thoughts as he followed Marie into the hotel dining room.
