The Horizon (1993)

by Reeman, Douglas

  He was trying to shout but it came out as only a whisper.

  ‘Stand-to! Face your front! Hold your fire, damn you!’

  She spoke to him gently and a slow recognition crept into his eyes.

  ‘It’s all right,’ she whispered. ‘You were having a nightmare. I came to help.’

  He stared at her, then groped feverishly about, she supposed for his pyjama jacket. She sat on the bed and put her arms around him.

  ‘There. I’ve got you. You’re safe now.’

  ‘Mustn’t see me like this.’ His face was buried in her hair. ‘It’s – wrong.’

  She stroked his shoulder, and then the savage scars on his back. ‘You’re like ice.’

  He was still trying to see her face. ‘So sorry about this. You were having – such a nice time—’

  Humble, she thought, like a small boy who had disgraced himself. She released him gently and said, ‘You can have this to put over you.’ Her fingers were shaking, and she fumbled impatiently with the cords of the dressing gown and slipped out of it. She faced him in the lamplight, her eyes quite steady.

  ‘Is this what you want, dear Jonathan?’

  He reached out and took her hand, and very slowly drew her onto the bed beside him; and propped on one elbow he gazed down at her, probably imagining it was only the beginning of another tormenting dream.

  As his hand caressed her she heard herself whisper, ‘This was meant to happen,’ then his fingers were exploring the silk and lace, sliding the ribbons from her shoulders so that he could uncover her.

  It was like being someone else: the smiling stranger in the mirror. It was not happening to her but to someone else. His fingers stroked each nipple, then his shadow was above her as he slipped the nightgown from her body. He was touching her everywhere, kissing her skin and allowing himself to explore her, so that she could only guide his hands and invite his body to a deeper intimacy. Their mouths were joined, her tongue touching his while her blood and pulse seemed to pound with the thunder. His hand went down, strong, insistent but strangely tender.

  She gasped, ‘I’ve never—’

  He was looking down at her, his breath mingling with hers, his face youthful once more. She whispered, ‘Whatever I say – whatever I do, don’t stop. I love you, Jonathan!’

  She cried out as he entered her, and the sudden pain seemed like one last resistance. Then as she received him the pain faded, like the thunder which had given them to one another.

  The storm over London culminated in a heavy downpour. But in the room above the wet and streaming street, they heard none of it as they lay exhausted in a tight embrace. As if, even in sleep, each was afraid of losing the dream.

  Sixteen

  The Fifty-First battalion left the camp at Étaples and marched towards Flanders once again. Three days later, despite an attack by two German scout planes, they reached their new reserve position, which was even more desolate and ruined than their original one. They found a cellar in one of the houses where Jonathan and his H.Q. platoon could set up their telephones, but all the drains were shattered, so if it should rain even modestly the place would be flooded.

  Shortly after their arrival Brigadier Ross and two of his staff came up, and while the latest intelligence pack was handed over to Vaughan and Wyke Jonathan took the brigadier on a tour of his command.

  ‘Can’t tell you how glad I am that you’re back with us, Jono.’ The brigadier’s eyes flitted from freshly dug defences and new latrines to the machine-guns, mounted so that they would be ready for an air attack offering either bullets or the terrible splinter bombs that could cut down twenty men at a time if they were not under cover.

  All the marines, busy in their shirt-sleeves, were careful to have their anti-gas respirators slung around them, and Jonathan guessed that a lot of them probably feared that most inhuman form of warfare more than anything. He had already seen gassed soldiers being led back to the rear lines, eyes bandaged, each man shuffling uncertainly with his hand on the shoulder of the one in front.

  Ross said briskly, ‘Good leave? Much about us in the newspapers?’

  Jonathan had come to like this crisp, sometimes intolerant man. ‘They’re more or less saying it’s all over, bar the cheering.’

  ‘They would.’ Then he added angrily, ‘As I said before, we should have kept going. It’s one thing to lose so many men, but for no good purpose it’s unthinkable.’

  He pressed Jonathan no further for details of his leave and for that Jonathan was grateful: it was not something he wished to share, except with her alone. Every day some new discovery, a fresh awareness of one another and a new arousal of passion. He had taken her to a music hall, one he had heard Wyke mention, to museums and shops and to Westminster Abbey where they had sat in silence, hands clasped. Strangely, with her it was a place of peace despite its towering grandeur and its many memorials to the dead.

  He still found it difficult to believe that it had really happened. How she had held him, her hands cool against the scars until even he was no longer ashamed of them. She had been shy, but once that had been overcome her desire had matched his own, and with her hands and lips and then her entire body she had left him weak and gasping, only to be roused again, and again.

  Now he was back. He had put her on the train before he had gone to gather his kit. Harry Payne had arrived at the house, rather subdued and not his usual talkative self, and curiously Jonathan was glad of this too. He needed privacy, in the little time that remained to him, to cling to every memory of her.

  She had shed no tears when the train had begun to move, but had watched him steadily from the open window until the carriages were hidden by the curve in the track. At the house he had found a letter among his freshly laundered shirts, and a neatly folded lace handkerchief: the one she had used as a private signal at Eastney.

  Brigadier Ross said, ‘The date stands, I’m afraid. Thirty-first of July. A massive artillery bombardment before dawn . . . Division tells me there’ll be over three thousand guns. Never knew we had that many. Your R.M.A. will be amongst ’em, but I fear heavy casualties. Jerry knows all about it. No damn mines like the last advance.’ He shot him a quick glance. ‘You’ll hear anyway. I’m afraid your Anzac chum Major Duffy didn’t make it.’

  Jonathan stared at a solitary bird overhead. From where, he thought, and to what place that would be safe? ‘I think I knew, sir . . . His father will miss him. He builds boats.’

  Ross remarked, ‘Is there a country where men still do simple, ordinary things?’ He peered at his watch. ‘Must get back.’ He looked at him searchingly. ‘You look well, Jono. Good thing, too. I’m going to need all the reserve battalions once we get going.’

  They shook hands, observed by a few of the marines and surrounded by the remains of a dead village.

  After he had gone Jonathan found Major Vaughan working through the battle orders.

  He looked up with a puzzled frown on his battered face. ‘All these guns, sir. After the last advance at the Messines Ridge I would have thought the enemy would have had enough of it.’ He opened his stiff-backed map case. ‘It all seems to hinge on this place, sir, although it doesn’t seem to warrant much attention strategically. I have to confess I’d never heard of it.’

  Jonathan glanced down at the map. Passchendaele. It meant nothing in particular to him.

  ‘I think they intend to remedy that, Ralph.’

  He felt a sense of urgency, the need to write to her again, reveal all his thoughts and to hell with the censors. Leave out nothing. So she would remember too, and cherish everything as he did.

  It must have taken true courage to do what she had done, after the sheltered life she had always known. He saw her now, facing him in the lamplight while the storm had burst around them and the nightmare of the Western Front had come alive as he had tried to fend it off, unable to hide from it even in sleep.

  He sat on a broken fence rail and slowly filled his pipe.

  Vaughan remarked in an
undertone, ‘He’s different in some way. Don’t you think?’

  Wyke smiled, recalling the girl with the chestnut hair who had visited the colonel at Salisbury. She must have done that for him, and his own Hermione would soon do as much for himself. He and his parents had taken her to a charity ball at Claridge’s in Brook Street, and as his mother had commented afterwards, ‘We’re all very lucky, Chris. She really fitted in.’

  In one of the temporary dugouts, Sergeant-Major McCann was drinking his rum ration with several of the sergeants. He looked up and wiped his considerable moustache as Sergeant Ned Timbrell ducked through the canvas curtain.

  ‘Tot ready?’

  The new colour-sergeant, Bill Seagrove, folded a tattered magazine and said, ‘Meant to tell you, Ned. There was a bloke at the camp asking about you. Forgot to mention it at the time – we was all a bit pushed as I recall.’

  Timbrell looked at him over his mug, his black-olive eyes steady. ‘Wot did ’e want?’

  The sergeant-major watched with sudden interest. There was an unusual rasp in Timbrell’s tone.

  The colour-sergeant said offhandedly, ‘Not one of our lot. Said he was from your neck of the woods. Blackfriars – that’s London, isn’t it?’

  Timbrell tried to push it aside. After all this time . . . Nothing could happen now. But Blackfriars – it was too much of a coincidence to take for granted.

  ‘Wanted to see you about something.’ Seagrove shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t say what.’

  ‘Did you tell ’im anything?’

  Seagrove grinned. ‘Course not. Think I’m daft?’

  Timbrell swilled his empty mug in a bucket of stained water and left the dugout.

  ‘What’s up with him, Sarn’t-Major?’

  McCann said, ‘Probably ’is bookie’s after ’im!’

  They all laughed, and standing in the rutted street Timbrell clenched his fists. Not after all this time. It wasn’t possible. The gaping corpse sliding into the Thames and drifting silently away . . . must be all of ten years, or bloody near.

  Lieutenant Maxted called, ‘Got a job for you, Sergeant!’

  ‘Right away, sir!’ He hurried over. This was more like it. His world, and one he understood. The rest was just a memory of the slums. Not real any more.

  The air vibrated to a burst of artillery fire and Maxted said tightly, ‘Not us this time. Nearer to St Julien.’ Why the hell should he care, he thought. He was in agony. He couldn’t last out much longer without help.

  Harry Payne ducked across the street and made his way to the cellar. Better safe than sorry. The Germans had been known to get their snipers right behind the lines. He had noticed the way Maxted kept his sergeant talking out in the open. Brave? Reckless? It would be plain stupid if the crosswires were already on him.

  Payne thought of the girl he had seen at Waterloo. He had been on a train from Portsmouth, returning from leave to join the colonel when he’d seen them. He had already guessed that a woman was involved, and he had suspected it would be Alexandra Pitcairn. The colonel wasn’t the kind to pick up some tart or a showgirl at a stage-door somewhere. Well, ruddy good luck to him. He himself had gone to the small house near the barracks where an old mate had once lived. He was dead now, had gone down in a cruiser after hitting a mine.

  His friend’s widow had come to the door, flour on her hands and smudges on her face. She had been surprised, embarrassed, but had made him welcome. A really nice little piece, he thought; he had been best man at their wedding.

  It was creepy that his friend should have been the one to go first: he had been nothing more dangerous than a drummer in the ship’s band. It made no difference to the sea, apparently.

  Payne could hear himself saying it as if she were right here with him. ‘Look here, Peg – I’ve always been pretty fond of you, you must have known that. Why don’t we make a go of it? Get spliced, all right and proper.’

  She had taken it very calmly. ‘You know we had a kid?’

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’m good with nippers.’

  ‘She’s with her gran in Gosport. Won’t be back till tomorrow.’ She glanced at the distant Union Flag that flew above the red brick tower at Eastney. You could see it from almost everywhere in Southsea. ‘I still expect to see him coming down the road,’ she said. She had made up her mind. ‘I’ll think about it.’

  But Payne had not gone to the barracks. Once, she had cried out her dead husband’s name in the night. But the rest had gone like a fairy-tale.

  He thought of the colonel’s remarks regarding promotion. Might be worth it after all now that he had someone to care about him, a ready-rolled family of his own. He could do a lot worse.

  Payne found the colonel sitting alone in a dugout, a half-empty glass of Scotch in his hand. He gestured to the bottle.

  ‘Have one yourself.’ Payne thought he looked oddly at ease, his features unlined and free of tension.

  ‘Cheers, sir.’ There was probably no other officer in the Corps who would treat him like this.

  Jonathan raised the glass. ‘A week’s time, Payne.’

  ‘Sir?’ He had known it was too good to be true.

  ‘Up the line. First reserve.’

  Afterwards, Payne thought it had been like hearing a door slam shut.

  Captain Wyke covered the field telephone with his hand and said, ‘Major Vaughan has just reported, sir. The battalion is standing-to.’

  Jonathan held his watch against one flickering lantern. ‘I’m coming up. Tell him from me that every man will wear his helmet.’ He gave a quick smile. ‘Even Langmaid.’

  He glanced around the cellar. The reserve position was three miles back from the line, but if German artillery retaliated some of the shells might easily fall here. It was wrong to get too casual about it. About everything. And if the much-vaunted attack failed? He shrugged. Then this battalion would become the front line in a matter of hours.

  Harry Payne asked, ‘Care for a wet, sir?’

  Jonathan shook his head. He could just do with a drink, but had seen enough officers who had walked amongst their men stinking of it. Later he would have one. Maybe more than one.

  They went out into the cool clammy air. It was half-past three in the morning. Another twenty minutes and all those guns would open fire. What had Ross said? Three thousand of them?

  He clambered down into the command trench, which they had finished only days ago. Anonymous shapes, here and there a glowing cigarette covered by a man’s hand. They had to relax while they could.

  ‘Mornin’, sir!’ That was McCann.

  ‘Cloudy start, sir!’ Corporal Geach’s unmistakable Yorkshire accent.

  It was surprising how well he had managed to get to know these men, or most of them anyway. The extra company Loftus had sent over to him to reinforce the battalion was something quite different: all recruits, straight from their depot. Even their young company commander, Captain Conway, was leading his men into battle for the first time. Two months ago he had been in charge of the marine detachment in a battleship undergoing repairs at Malta.

  Jonathan moved his holster slightly and made certain that the respirator haversack was unclipped.

  He heard Lieutenant Maxted giving orders to his N.C.O.’s, his voice very curt and severe. Nerves, perhaps, or even fear. Maxted had already seen enough in his young life to know what to expect. To dread.

  Jonathan started as something tapped on his helmet and again on his shoulders. The next instant a heavy downpour had begun, lashing at the crouching men, beating against the front of the trench, the noise loud and angry in the darkness.

  He licked his lips. The rain was not merely uncomfortable, it was dangerous. Voices were cursing and blaspheming along the trench and he heard one of the light machine-guns being covered to protect it.

  But the weather, the strain of waiting, and all the other discomforts were forgotten as with a great, unending roar the British artillery opened fire. Men pressed themselves against the streaming trenc
h and covered their ears as the noise continued like one endless explosion. High explosive and shrapnel of every kind and calibre. In the searing red and orange flashes Jonathan consulted his watch again. It was just after ten minutes to four. Right on time, as Ross had said it would be. He forced himself to look at it, to try and estimate the fall of shot and the extent of the barrage. But it was impossible. The clouds which had opened their bellies as if to delay the attack were so low that he could see them glowing brightly in the bombardment. It was like being covered and surrounded by fire.

  He became weary with the incredible din, his mind too dulled to grapple with anything. And all the while the rain hissed and rattled down like bullets. The trench was already filling with water, and most of its occupants were soaked to the skin.

  When the bombardment stopped, the land over which the troops would have to advance would be so churned up by the heavy shell-fire that they would be slowed down even more by the craters and the mud. He knew this gunfire would be audible even across the Channel in England. Somehow that made it seem even more unreal.

  He tried to recall the quiet house and the night she had come to him. She would be at home now, remembering also. How had she explained her visit to London? She had said she had some days off due to her, but it would hardly excuse her absence, and he had no doubt that her father would take a dim view of the truth.

  In the letter she had left at the house she had written, I love you so much, my darling Jonathan. I’ll never leave you as long as you need me. It was like hearing her speak, as they had so often in the nights which had gone so quickly.

  The barrage continued without respite, and as the time passed and dawn came the sky remained as dark and threatening as night. Then men clapped their wet hands to their ears as, with one final roar, it all stopped.

  Jonathan found himself listening as if he expected to hear the attack. The infantry climbing from the firestep and onto the parapet, the shrill of whistles, the advance into the heavy rain. He could hear the machine-guns now, rattling steadily: their gunners were probably unable to miss.