No, the real problem with Leslie was that, though a competent man and one capable of a bold initiative, as we saw, the basic thrust of his metabolism had been slowed to the cautions and circumambulations of the law’s delays; he wanted justice for Dodds, and justice against Braddis. But he did not know how to deliver justice at the pace of war. He left, and made arrangements for the senior military police officer to meet with him tomorrow.
Dodds’s platoon, full of baleful speculation and grieving, was driven to fury by the announcement that they would have to return to the ground from which they had been virtually expelled that morning, if only to reinforce wire. It was a broken promise. The adjutant had come and told Braddis that he would be in command, but that the men were not to be troubled with anything besides basic watch duty—no patrols or drills. Now back comes Braddis and says, “Nothing I could do about it, lads. I’m the junior man there. All the officers very eager to repair the damage, and the major went along. Makes sense, of course. When a man knocks a hole in your fence, you don’t let it sit unfilled, or you’re just inviting him to walk right in when he comes by again. You’re not minding your property; you just don’t care. Anyway, it’s to be out at 2200 and back before midnight, so it’s a very limited mission. And the word is there’s a rum ration thrown in with tea.”
They were so easily bought off. Men with small expectations, smaller sense of entitlement. But not Callum. His rage was now boundless, and it was not on any union grounds of a clause in the contract reneged on. His outrage proceeded from the single fact that Braddis was still in command, which could only mean that Captain Leslie had done precisely nothing. Which was in fact true. And for Callum that led coldly and directly to only one conclusion. Alston saw the thunder in his face, and came to try and calm him down. “Don’t say one thing, Charlie,” said Callum. “I gave him the fucking pistol that shot Dodds. I just don’t get it. He goes into a room and sits down at the table, with the pistol that shot Dodds in his pocket; across the table sits Braddis, who had used the pistol, and is sitting with the watch in his pocket, which he had got by using the pistol. So in one room, you have the killer and thief, the weapon he used to kill, and the ill-gotten gains of his killing, and another man who outranks him and knows all these things and does bugger all—except maybe talk about wire. So what’s he going to do with the gun, anyway?”
“He’s giving it to the military police, to get the fingerprints off it—which should nail him down good.”
“How long’ll that take?”
“I don’t know about these things. Maybe a couple of days.”
“A couple of days we don’t have. You know enough to know that Braddis should be under arrest as we speak, instead of being promoted to command the platoon; and a full investigation under way to find what’s left of the bullet, which was fired from that gun we gave them, and will have some of Dodds’s blood on it. Don’t go all dumb on me, Charlie. You know that ought to be happening, before the evidence gets removed or destroyed by rain, or trampled into the mud by a fucking wire party.”
“Yes, you’re right, Tim. It should.”
But the conversation had cleared Callum’s mind, and a little venting of his frustration had cheered him up considerably; he was now looking forward to the evening’s wire party. In fact, Callum and his adversary Braddis were probably the most enthusiastic about the coming escapade; Callum was sorting out his own purposes, and Braddis was looking for another chance to do what he did best, and this time in command, so the spotlight would be on him. He was where he wanted to be, and he would look after his men and show real savvy, and bring them all home safe. He was feeling positively benign, basking in his major’s approval.
So at 2200 the Norfolks took to the field again, this time encumbered with picks, shovels, coils of revetting wire, fierce-pronged staples, pine stakes, and picket mauls to drive them home. The sergeant would lead the wire party, because he was the only one who knew what did or did not need doing, and Private Alston would lead the cover group, though they would help with the carrying, going out. After the morning, they were down to two sections now. Braddis addressed them all in the trench before they went:
“All right, lads, piece of cake. We’re going to go slow, low and methodical. No talking, except to your mate on the exact job in hand, and very short, quiet talk even then. Remember, if the stakes are sound, you don’t have to drive in new ones. You just have to wrap new wire across the gaps and staple it home. Too much hammering and you-know-who wakes up.”
They went out on a starry night under a quarter moon. It was as smooth as Braddis, the lucky old professional, had said it would be. Only four strands were cut, and Braddis knew where they were likely to be, so there was no aimless roaming up and down the wire to find the gaps. By 2310 the work was done, and they regrouped around the sergeant. “Right, lads,” he said softly. “We’ve locked the gate and swept the porch, and we’re going back inside.”
Private Alston led them back, the wire party following, still encumbered with its tools and most of its materials, then the cover group, and then Sergeant Braddis, the platoon commander. He had in mind, before they set out, to stop off at the point of his fateful encounter with Dodds that afternoon on his return, just to confirm that everything was shipshape, but he was now feeling that was unnecessary: forty-two individual boots had stomped up that narrow path on the way out, and the same forty-two on the way back; if it was a crime scene, it was already a very well trampled one. Besides, he was conscious that any delay in his return would start prompting thoughts of his late return earlier; the men were feeling good about his sure touch on this patrol—he should join them promptly, thank them for their good work, wish them a sound good-night, and let them look forward to more good times under his kindly management tomorrow. Right now, Braddis was feeling in a more euphoric state than he had at any time perhaps since he had hoisted the King’s hefty silver trophy for the services champion marksman at Bisley.
Private Callum was also in an altered and surprisingly euphoric state during the patrol: he had worked out exactly what he was going to do, and he was certainly not going to do it in the cowardly way that Braddis had disposed of Dodds. When the moment came, it seemed there was a great, spreading ease of opportunity given him by good luck alone: it would be simpler for him now, because Charlie Alston had been sent on ahead to lead the withdrawal and would not be around to keep an eye on him, when he followed with the rest of his section behind the wire party.
Callum had chosen another rampart conveniently molded by the earth-moving sculpture of an exploding artillery shell, about twenty yards farther on from the Norfolks’ lines than the smaller Johnson hole where Braddis had waited. Callum had thought that Braddis might well linger around the earlier site, and lingering men are more on their guard. He was third to last of the cover section to leave the wire, and when he got level with his rampart he stopped to retie the dragging bootlace he had untied before he left. The other two, impatient to be back, were about to swear at his delay, but he told them to go on ahead. “It doesn’t matter what fucking order we arrive in, for Chrissake.” He had not more than ten seconds to hide himself, take the bayonet from its scabbard, fix it to his rifle, and take his position. He did it in seven, no record time but quite creditable.
Braddis came down the path at his regular, light-footed speed, even whistling to himself under his breath. Callum had calculated from watching him move in battle that he would be almost upright in this enclosed space, and he was. Callum was into him as he was drawing level, with a deep thrust into the belly and then upwards under the thorax to pierce the heart. It was a move Braddis had taught them all at bayonet practice in the Bull Ring at Rouen, before they went up to the line, but the sergeant was not quite ready for it now. He dropped the maul he was carrying in his left hand, and grabbed Callum’s rifle ahead of the bayonet, pulling himself onwards to reach the attacker. Callum, with clenched teeth, was watching the big, heavy man coming at him, holding on for dear life, and i
n some dread that those awful nails might get close enough to close on his jugular. Braddis was looking at him with half-closed eyes, and said in an almost normal voice: “So, finished me, have you, young Callum, with an up-and-under from below, easy as tossin’ hay in summer? . . . Your friend Dodds’s watch is in my left pocket here, and he might want you to have it. . . .” Callum allowed his eyes to flicker for a half second towards Braddis’s tunic, and in the same moment Braddis had his bayonet in his right hand, and used it to slice deep into Callum’s left leg, and drag it upwards, gouging the hipbone, and then sinking the razor-sharp, attenuated blade deep into the lower bowel of the boy’s stomach.
With a final, galvanized spasm of his full strength, Callum managed to throw the sergeant backwards with the rifle and bayonet still in him. The bayonet was sticking out of his back, but the fall dislodged it, and the weapon quite slowly collapsed on top of him. Braddis was dead, and Callum knew he had a fatal wound, too, but was still riding the high tide of exultation at what he had done. He moved quite deliberately, holding his stomach. He found the watch where Braddis had told him, and he managed to remove the bayonet from his rifle, and left it lying there. Then, using the rifle as a prop, he headed out deeper into no-man’s-land.
CHAPTER 12
The Deserter in No-Man’s-Land
Tim Callum could not go far in his condition, but he made it about seventy yards, the last part of it off the track into yet more cratered terrain. This was near where he and Private Alston had been covering for some of the wire party an hour ago, and he had made a point of saying to Charlie he thought it might make a good hideaway; he was hoping Charlie would come looking for him soon. Not that he wanted Charlie to take him in: that was the very last thing he wanted. But he expected he would be dead by morning, and he wanted to talk to him before he died.
He lay down carefully on the gradual slope of his chosen crater; it certainly hurt to bend, and he didn’t intend to move again. He had his rifle and his water bottle next to him, and that was all he would need now. He could feel his stomach distending as it was filling up with something that he hoped was blood. In the grisly talk of the trenches, on the theme of terrible ways to go, someone had mentioned people having their intestines pierced and their stomach cavity filling up with their own shit, and poisoning their blood, so that days later they died of something like gangrene. He had no intention of lingering to die of anything so obscene. But above all he would not let Charlie take him back.
Meanwhile, less than ten minutes had gone by, but most of the men and certainly Private Alston were already aware that neither Sergeant Braddis nor Private Callum had returned. He sent a runner to the orderly room to tell Captain Leslie that both of them were missing in action, and that he personally was going back with two other men to try to find them. So for the third time within eighteen hours, the three of them were stalking the access lanes of no-man’s-land.
They found Braddis where he lay, his custom-tailored bayonet still in his right hand, and presumably Callum’s blood on it, and Callum’s regular one alongside it. Blood and white nooses of intestine had bubbled out of the extended gash in Braddis’s tunic. For several moments, they were all silent in shock. Then Private Rhys, for the sake of filling the void, said, “If you were a betting man, you’d have to have said it would go the other way.” And his friend Jim Berry said, “Yes. He must have taken him sudden, maybe coming out from there; but he took him from the front, man to man, not with a bullet in the back.”
“Amen to that,” said Alston. “Now you two need to go back and choose two good friends for a stretcher party, take Braddis back and try to keep the place from going hog wild with talk and rumor. Some hope. If Captain Leslie is there, tell him I’ve gone to look for Callum, but I will be back within thirty minutes.” He was taking charge.
They went back for their friends and the stretcher, and Alston went on to find Callum. He knew where he was. He found him on the slope of the crater, still leaking a lot of blood from his leg and stomach. A small stream of it was flowing down between his legs, had reached the bottom of the slope, and was mixing with the large puddle on the crater floor. He was pale as a ghost, but lying still and not yet in much pain, and he wanted to talk.
“I knew you would come. Some first things first, Charlie. I’ve got right here Mr. Dodds’s watch, and I want you to take it and make sure it goes back to his grandfather, who gave it to him, Augustus Dodds, who lives somewhere on the Bure River in Norfolk. It’s all right if you give it to Captain Leslie to pass on, because he may be able to get it there quicker, but you’ll impress on him that it’s to go to no one else. Now the second thing is, when you get back to Norfolk yourself, I want you to visit my dad and the children, you’ll like them, and just talk to them simple as you can and tell them I died honorable. But I want you to visit Ann Houghton, my old teacher from the local school, in person, and give her my sketchbook, which you’ll find in the top left-hand pocket of my battle-dress tunic. Don’t bother my dad with it, because he never cared much about art and stuff, never had the time for it. But I’d like Miss Houghton to know I did good for her. Will you do these things for me?”
“You know I will. To the letter.”
“Yes, you will. You know, Charlie, I don’t regret one bit what I did tonight. I’m proud of it, and I’ll tell you why. Mr. Dodds recognized me, and encouraged me, through all this shit of the war, and I wasn’t going to let him die unavenged. And I wasn’t going to wait till I could do nothing about it. Do you blame me?”
“No, I don’t think I do. You’re not me. You’re an avenging angel, and there’s a lot of anger fuels you. If you had been my son, you’d probably come with more caution; but you wouldn’t have been able to do half the things you do.”
“Not an avenging angel, Charlie. I like to think I’m a very little bit like Odysseus, the Greek, whose name means something about sorrow. I was crazy about him when I read him in school. And when he was a boy he went to visit his granddad, who lived on Mount Parnassus where Apollo and the Muses live; they was doing nothing but art, as I understand it, and everything was beautiful. But unfortunately there was this huge rampaging wild boar messing things up and eating people; and Odysseus went out and hunted him. And the boar just erupted out of the thicket, but Odysseus was ready, and got his spear into him, with an underthrust, and held on for dear life, but the weight of the boar was on him, and he got his tusk into the boy’s leg before he died, and Odysseus carried the scar for the rest of his life, as I will Braddis’s. I was going to do a picture of it. The spear in the boar, and the tusk in the boy, all balanced. But too late. End of story.”
“I never heard that story before.”
“It’s there, right in the book. . . . I’m a little afraid of dying out here, Charlie, but you’re not under any circumstances going to let them take me back in, and patch me up, and have me shot for killing their fucking sergeant. I am going to die here, Charlie.”
“Yes, I know.”
“You remember all those spooky stories about where deserters went? They can’t go back behind their lines, because they’ll be shot, and they can’t go over to the other side, because they despise them and will probably shoot them too, so they all head out into no-man’s-land, and live wild lives, banding together in packs like wolves and scavenging for food and stuff off the dead and wounded bodies. Do you believe that?”
“No, I don’t. And you took on Braddis—he was more than a pack of deserters.”
“That’s true. And I’ve got my rifle right here in case. It’s time you headed back, or else they’ll think I killed you too, and come looking for you. Take the things.”
So Charles Alston took the watch and sketchbook and put them in his pockets, and left him his own water bottle and some chocolate.
“Will you come and see me again?”
“Yes, I will. About two in the morning. That’s a bit more than two hours from now.”
He went back and found Captain Leslie fretting and waiting fo
r him.
“This has been the most disastrous day,” the Captain said.
“Disastrous and long, sir,” said Alston.
“Yes, I’m sorry, you look all in. Tell me what you know.”
“Better to talk in private, sir.”
They went to Leslie’s office, where under the light, noticing Alston’s haggard state, he poured him a whisky, and took one himself. Leslie sat behind the desk, and Alston in a chair beside it. They were going to talk it out. Throughout, Leslie was conscious that the disparity in their rank, between captain and private, meant nothing, outweighed by a kind of moral force in Alston, which he did not feel in himself.
Leslie wanted to know where Callum was, and made it clear that he wanted him brought in to face charges: “This is not an army where you kill your sergeant with impunity.”
Alston would not tell him where Callum was. “And besides, sir, it’s irrelevant. He was badly wounded, and is quite likely dead while we speak. He will never live to face charges.”
“Do you know why he killed Braddis?”
“Yes, sir, I do, though it will make hard hearing for you. He was afraid it might be an army where a sergeant could kill his platoon commander with impunity. He knew you were in the room with Braddis, and that you had the gun he had used to kill Dodds in your pocket, while Braddis had Dodds’s watch in his. And you told us Mr. Dodds had warned you about Braddis. And young Tim could not understand how with this evidence, nothing was done; in fact, back comes Braddis on top of the world, promoted to platoon commander. As Callum said, you had the killer, the weapon, the loot in the room with you, and you did nothing. There should at least have been a full investigation launched, and Braddis held under suspicion while it was being conducted, Callum thought. As it was, we were going to send the whole platoon back stomping on the evidence out there.” Leslie was looking uncomfortable, and was about to protest. But Alston held up his hand to stop him. “No, sir, you don’t have to account for your actions; I know there is a regular process for these situations, which you would understand and I don’t, and I know you would have to consult Major Erskine and all that. I’m just explaining to you what Tim was thinking: he was an angry boy, and he could not wait—he decided he had to deal with Braddis himself.”
Rules for Old Men Waiting Page 17
