She tried to cover her surprise. ‘Jack – what will happen over there?’
He stared at her, vaguely conscious of the use of his first name, and of the fact that she had so neatly changed the subject.
He answered, ‘Well, Miss, it was April when the Colonel left, an’ now it’s near the end of May. According to one report in the newspaper, the Germans have had enough. They couldn’t take another battle like Verdun and this last bloody set-to with the whole French army. An’ with the Yanks in the war, old Jerry might decide it’s time to throw in the towel.’
She stared into the stream, at her own small feet so pale against the loose stones.
‘But you don’t think that.’
Swan said slowly, ‘I’m not really the one to ask. I did my soldierin’ against spears and muskets, brass cannon an’ screaming natives. Hardly the Somme, or Loos. I’ve spoken to a lot of the poor fellows who come here to try and get over what’s happened to them. They’re not bitter, as you might expect. Nor do they act like the world’s rejected them because of how they are or how they look. It’s as if they’ve rejected our world.’
She watched him as he loaded the last of the sticks onto his cart. Why had she never spoken to him like this before? Why hadn’t anybody?
Swan tapped out his pipe and heeled the ash into the track with great care.
‘Fact is, Miss, I don’t think they know how to stop it. If they lose an attack the general staff seem to think that to try something different would show the enemy we’ve lost our guts, begging your pardon, Miss. So they do it all over again!’
He touched his hat and clambered onto the little cart.
‘Nice talking to you, Miss.’
She watched them until they had topped the rise. A man and his donkey, like a picture in one of her books when she had been at school. She pulled the neck of her dress away from her skin and felt something like guilt as her fingers touched her breast. Was that how it might be? Could be?
She recalled how she had deliberately turned her head so that their mouths had met in a clumsy kiss. The awareness had been there; but experience? Not at all. Not a bit how Swan had described Jonathan’s beloved brother David. A bit of a lad with the ladies.
Perhaps she was the strange one. She had not been teaching Braille for more than a month at Hawks Hill when she had seen the other side of men. It had been before the place had been enlarged, when the flood of wounded and shell-shocked officers had scarcely begun.
It had been a day much like this one, heavy with the scent of grass and flowers, the air full of birdsong. She had been sitting in a small ward using both hands on the fingers of the man who sat with her, moving his bandaged head and eyes from side to side, listening to birds he would never see again. Or merely trying to remember, as she worked his stiff fingers in her hands.
She had suddenly been aware of his arm encircling her waist, and she had lightly scolded him and thought nothing more of it.
In the next instant she had been thrown back across the bed, while he held her with a grip so hard she had almost cried out. She had forced herself to lie quite still while he had pressed his face against her, gasping staccato sentences about the smell of her perfume and her body. Then she had begun to struggle, and heard herself scream as the man tore the front of her blouse apart and pulled at her until his fingers were digging into her breast. One of the other blind patients had come in with an orderly and it was all over. While they were pressing the emergency bell she had tried to cover her nakedness: her skin was raw where he had clawed it. Looking back, almost the worst part had been the immediate aftermath. The two blind men had circled one another, hitting out and shouting every obscenity they could think of like a pair of sightless gladiators.
After that, the duty sergeant always had an orderly close by when she was in the ward alone. It was not possible to blame them all, or be wary of them all: she could not even dimly imagine what shattered thoughts and images preyed upon their minds. There were many failures, where memory and interpretation were too broken ever to retain anything again, but other men who worked with her and not against her while she had taught them the mysteries of groups of raised dots had given her an indescribable sense of pride even as they had saddened her.
She put on her shoes, and was walking down towards the village when the thought hit her like a slap. Suppose Jonathan should return like that, shattered in mind or body; or the war and its brutalities fuel his hunger for something she sensed he had never known? If he touched her, what would she do?
She walked on, oblivious to the whistles from passing lorries and other army vehicles. She was used to it: everyone was. When she reached the house she could hear voices in the surgery. Her father’s practice had become his whole life, and he would see anyone at almost any time if he thought it useful.
There was a familiar envelope on the hall table, stamped with the Crown and the words PASSED BY CENSOR.
She took it and went straight up to her room, and opened the windows to catch the scent of the garden. Then she sat on her bed and tore the envelope. For just a moment she stared at her dressing-table mirror and touched her breast again as she had by the little stream. It was like looking at a total stranger, as the question came once more to her mind.
When she unfolded the letter she saw his now-familiar hand, as if she could hear his voice. My very dear Alex . . .
When she looked up again the stranger was still there. Lips slightly parted, eyes devoid of shame.
As usual it was a short letter, as if he could not bring himself to speak his mind.
‘We are in a quiet village now, not even as large as Alresfordd . . .’ There was a blue smear in the margin, as if the censor had been trying to decide if they were using some kind of code, and had obviously given them the benefit of the doubt. ‘My men are in good heart and have settled down very well in rather primitive conditions. I received another letter from you today. I shall reread it when things are quieter.’ Quieter? Did that mean they were closer to the front? ‘I long for the day when I shall see you again. You are never distant when I think of that meeting we had at . . .’ The name Salisbury had been deleted.
He had ended, ‘From your friend and admirer, Jonathan.’
A letter so gentle and yet so uncertain. Would she ever know the other man, the one she had imagined she could reject in David’s memory? The man she had seen at Eastney among high-ranking officers, on whom his men would depend; trust, even when their very souls were committed to hell if so ordered.
And he trusts me. It was almost as if the mirror’s reflection had spoken. Then she put the letter in her drawer with the others and went downstairs.
‘Did you get your letter, Alex?’ Her father was squinting at a pill bottle, his glasses on the top of his head. He blinked at her. ‘Ah, I see that you did. Good news, I hope?’
How old he was getting, she thought, his little pointed beard was almost white now. What did he really think of her correspondence with a soldier, an officer and a Blackwood to boot?
‘I think, Daddy . . . I think there’s going to be another great battle.’
But when she looked, he had gone back into the surgery. Later he would play chess with his old friend Proudfoot the vet, and refight the campaign again.
Something like ice seemed to brush her skin, which before had been pleasantly warm. When she went to the window all the birds had stopped singing. There was only silence.
Dear God protect you, Jonathan. I want you back.
‘I’m going up to Hawks Hill, Daddy.’
‘Don’t be out too late, my dear!’ But he did not leave his surgery, and she was glad. She did not want him to see her face.
The heavy staff car lurched and dipped through countless potholes and shattered cobbles, which lay about the road like petrified loaves of bread.
It was obvious from Wyke’s silence that he was shocked by what he saw: a small market town reduced to gaunt walls and smashed window frames, the air heavy with dust and s
moke and something foul which the driver had laconically described as the aftermath of a gas attack. A town abandoned, bombarded and fought over, looted and then destroyed, first by the enemy and then by the French. The Germans had fallen back a few miles for fear of being separated from their main divisions by the ambitious counter-attack which had gained almost nothing; and there were many crudely-made crosses in overgrown fields, where rotting carcasses of cattle still lay as evidence of the fighting.
Jonathan recalled how he had described their own position as ‘a quiet village’. That was true. But it too had been abandoned, and after they had travelled all the way from Le Havre, mostly on foot and then in the final stages by a battered fleet of London double-decker buses, the sight had made some of his men stare with astonishment and disgust. The village lay about eight miles from the front line, the Messines Ridge to the south, or as far as the troops were concerned, to the right of the Ypres salient. Names and places already fought over again and again: a desert of pain and murder, rusting barbed wire, huge shell holes, many of which were still filled with water despite the warmth of early summer. Others retained the stenches of battle, and thick oozing mud like quicksand. Flanders.
Most of the marines were more used to the careful cleanliness of ships and barracks, where the life, if rigid and spartan, was something they all understood. But after shelter was rigged in some old barns and roofless cottages they got down to work, throwing out pickets, much to the amusement of the soldiers at a nearby field-dressing station, digging latrines, and preparing the mobile kitchens where they would display no lights and give no hint of their strength to any reconnaissance aircraft or spy. And that first night after their arrival they had stood in silence and watched the inferno that seemed to cover the whole front line. It went on for two hours, the ground shaking and the bellies of the clouds lit with vivid red and orange flashes and drifting flares. A picture from Dante; and many of the marines were wondering how anything could live in it, while the heavy artillery roared out and the shells screamed over the village at eight miles’ range. And yet it felt so near they had almost imagined the heat of each screaming salvo.
After a few days, incredibly, they had got used to it. Reports came and went on the field telephones or brought by filthy dispatch riders, one of whom had been chased by a Fokker fighter plane, the road sparking with bullets until the soldier had managed to throw his motorbike into a ditch.
A military policeman waved down the staff car and strode up to inspect the occupants. The redcap looked so alien in his steel helmet, and Jonathan was well aware that his own men hated the new headgear, clumsy, heavy, and impractical as it was. In time they would even get used to that, he thought. The redcap saluted, and then glanced round as four more of his section clumped along the battered road with a soldier in handcuffs, his face bloody as if somebody had struck him.
He said sharply, ‘Deserter, sir. He’s for the chop.’ He said it with such venom and hatred that Jonathan stared at him, recalling some of the men he had seen in Plymouth and at Hawks Hill, as deeply wounded as if by shrapnel or bayonet.
They were waved on and Harry Payne remarked to their driver, ‘That pig can afford to be brave, eh? He’s got the whole division between him and the Jerries!’
There was hate there too. He was thinking perhaps of his kid brother, who had vanished in this terrible place. Nothing left even to bury.
The driver glanced up at the eyeless window of a house, or what remained of it. There was a soldier sitting by it with a pair of binoculars, who waved casually and then continued scanning the sky, looking for aircraft, observation balloons, anything.
The driver climbed down and remarked, ‘If you ’ears a football rattle it’s a gas attack, gentlemen. Masks on, pronto. Nasty stuff, is gas.’ He said it with no particular emotion. Just an ordinary soldier, by now one of the old sweats who had somehow survived. He pointed at a collapsed building. Wine shop, he grinned, the strain and anxiety falling away. ‘No drink now, o’ course. But Brigade H.Q. is under it.’ He indicated a sandbagged doorway. ‘In the cellar!’
He took out a cigarette and watched the two officers duck into the doorway, then he said to Payne, ‘What’s your lot then?’
Payne unslung his rifle. ‘Royal Marines.’
The soldier drew slowly on his cigarette. ‘Takes all sorts, dunnit?’
‘Will they really shoot that poor bugger?’
‘Yeh. ’appens all the time. Sometimes, nearer the front line, the bloke’s shot by ’is escort so they don’t ’ave to risk their own lives getting to the rear. The officers know. But nobody sees it, right?’ He paused. ‘I was in the first high jinks at the Somme last year.’ He shook his head. ‘Strewth – is that all it is?’ Then he said dully, ‘In with a division, out with less than a company, an’ damn all to show for it!’
Inside the wrecked wine shop a group of soldiers were sitting at a trestle table with field telephones, signal pads and mugs of tea. One, a sergeant, stood up.
‘’Tenant-Colonel Blackwood, sir?’ He pointed to the cellar door. ‘Brigadier’s down there, sir.’
Jonathan glanced in passing at a colourful calendar advertising lemonade, which was propped against a steel helmet. It showed a scantily-clad girl with a saucy smile saying, ‘My Jack always likes his glass of Austin’s!’
Wyke said, ‘Not the only thing he likes, by the look of it,’ but his voice was empty. The ruined villages with their deathly stillness had obviously affected him deeply.
The date on the calendar was the fourth of June. David’s birthday, or would have been. Did she still think of him? It seemed incredible that David had never noticed her when he was at home on leave; it was a small place, and she would have caught any man’s eye. Jonathan did not altogether believe in his brother’s reputation where women were concerned: during the siege of the foreign legations in Peking there had been a rumour about David and the wife of some German diplomat, but he himself had always thought it only that. A rumour. Old Jack Swan might have known, but he would be like a clam as far as loyalty to David and the past were concerned.
Down the stone steps and through a smelly anti-gas curtain. The cellar was large, and filled with maps and clips of signals brought by dispatch riders or runners close to the trenches. The brigadier, a lean officer with cold, searching eyes, looked up from his maps table.
‘Blackwood? Good chap. I’m Ross.’ Short and sharp, like the opening and closing of a rifle bolt. Two of his red-tabbed staff officers were poring over plans and neither glanced up at them. ‘Here we are.’ He was leafing through his personal log. ‘Fourth of June.’
There were newly pierced holes in his shoulder straps. He must have been promoted right up from lieutenant-colonel: Jonathan could even see the old imprints where the rank had been.
‘I was ordered not to involve you yet.’ He slapped some dust from his jacket. ‘Filthy place!’
Jonathan leaned carefully against the canvas back of the chair offered to him and crossed his legs. It made him appear relaxed, confident. He was neither.
He said, ‘Major-General Sir Herbert Loftus told me when we left England . . .’
‘All changed, I’m afraid. His own division is not quite ready for this sector. Sailors and marines, not the best of mixers in my experience.’ He watched Jonathan’s expression, searching for something. ‘Your adjutant-general has given it a qualified sanction, but Sir Douglas Haig has personally taken charge. He will brook no argument, but then he’s probably right. Your Fifty-First battalion will close up to the support lines. I’ll make certain that your men are properly guided to the rear positions.’
‘All taken care of, sir.’ One of the red tabs had spoken but still did not look up.
‘Well done, Harry.’ The brigadier looked at Wyke. ‘Take this pack, Captain. Guard it with your life.’ He added off-handedly, ‘You can get some tea. Outside.’
Wyke needed no second telling. He left the cellar.
Ross leaned forward in the dimness and
stared at the bright scarlet and blue ribbon on Jonathan’s tunic.
‘Hm. Heard about that, Blackwood. Just what I bloody well need at the moment!’
‘When do you expect to go into action, sir?’
‘June the seventh. It’s all been well planned, but we’ve had to advance things. The French might easily throw in their hand if we don’t ease the pressure.’ He jabbed his map with one finger. ‘Here: the Messines Ridge. Once we’ve taken that, all we have to do is thrust through the enemy’s line about thirty-five miles, and we’ll be at the coast.’ He must have seen the doubt in Jonathan’s eyes. ‘We have the weather for it . . .’ He hesitated for the first time. ‘Not like last year. So let’s make the most of it.’
Jonathan leaned over the map and tried to restrain his apprehension. It was almost exactly the same as the last time. But how could it be? Who would see sense in it if the plan was faulty?
Last year the goal had been the same. The British had attacked on a front twenty miles wide. After four months of indescribable savagery they had only been able to advance about three miles. Four months: and the cost to the British army in that exhausting struggle had been four hundred thousand casualties.
I must have missed something.
‘Don’t worry too much, Blackwood.’ The brigadier was peering at his watch. ‘We’ve got a few surprises for them this time. It’s all in that pack I gave your chap. Just get the Fifty-First into position. When the first attack is completed, we’ll need trained and disciplined men in the line. In short, your marines.’
The building quivered and more dust drifted down from the ceiling onto the steps.
The brigadier said, ‘That’s on the Sixty-Third Division’s sector. They’ve been having a rough time, but there are no real problems.’
Jonathan straightened his back with effort and listened to the thunder of artillery.
‘Do they get many deserters, sir?’
Ross regarded him coldly. ‘There will always be a few cowards, Blackwood. Even in the Royal Marines, I daresay.’ He held out his hand. ‘Good to have you with us.’ He could have been talking about a mess party. Or was that to cover his own doubts?
The Horizon (1993) Page 23
