A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  At least if you’re moving you don’t feel the cold quite so much. And the great thing is, we’re doing what we came for: going on the attack. So morale’s not bad, considering, but there’s no singing because of the element of surprise. Presumably the Turks had their ear-muffs on when our flotilla opened fire . . .

  Some time in the small hours a halt’s ordered and we take a break. Now I can really feel the desert stretching out around us in all directions. Miles and miles of miles . . . And somewhere out there the enemy, not that different from us I imagine, waiting and listening. Some blokes light up, little red sparks glowing and fading as they inhale. An officer on horseback trots past, black on black . . . whoof, whoof, whoof, the hoofbeats in the sand and the creak of the harness. There’s a kind of magic about it, so many of us stranded out here in the endless dark; thousands of men clumped together and alone. The sky’s cleared, and it’s beautiful in this place you can really see that we’re outnumbered by the stars. Like that other time, up on the roof in Basra, I feel more peaceful than I ever did in England.

  ‘Will you look at us . . .’ Dick Drago may be thinking the same thing, but not for the same reason. He treads out his cigarette beneath his boot.

  ‘We could just walk away, Johnnie—shall we do that now, just walk away into the night and never be seen again?’

  I shake my head, but of course he can’t see me. ‘What’s that?’ he says.

  ‘Count me out.’

  ‘Well, I shan’t be going on my own, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Sorry to disappoint you.’

  ‘Don’t give it another thought. It’s tough, so it is, being the only one with a spirit of adventure.’

  I smile, but he doesn’t see that either.

  The order comes down to continue. ‘Hey-ho,’ says Drago. ‘On with the dance.’

  The next time we stop is just before dawn, about four thirty. The landscape’s just beginning to show itself, like a photograph in developing fluid—I used to see those when I was on the paper. Our surroundings emerge from the dark, and as that happens our sense of scale returns, and it’s no comfort: we’re still in the middle of nowhere. We all look terrible: skinny, dirty, unshaven, knackered. Just the lads to attack a well-entrenched enemy.

  The arch is colossal, and as the sun comes up it seems to get bigger. There’s a moment when the rays catch it bang on the edge, and it looks as if it’s on fire. It’s so impressive that it takes a minute or two for us to register the barbed-wire entanglements in front of it, like a bloody great thicket of brambles. And between the barbed wire and the arch there’s a ruined wall, a lot bigger than the ones we’ve been scrambling over. Still about half a mile away, but in this terrain things can look closer than they are; the light and the flatness play tricks on you.

  It turns out the commander of the other column’s a bit keener than ours, and since there’s been no sound of attack, his lot’s going to swing out and head for the Turkish second line. There’s a rumour going up and down that Charlie Townshend’s luck has held up, and the Turks have turned yellow, withdrawn, and left the way to Baghdad open. This creates the dangerous expectation among some of us that all we’ve got to do is keep marching and we’ll be painting Baghdad red in no time.

  Suddenly we’re having a picnic—sun’s rising but it’s not too hot yet, we’ve got plenty of fresh water and bully-beef sandwiches all round. One or two of the officers ride up and down, making encouraging noises. Jarvis is one of them, looking like a man who spent the night on a feather mattress, as per.

  ‘Make a good breakfast, men,’ he says, ‘keep your strength up.’

  He spots me and rides over. ‘How are you doing, Ashe?’

  ‘Sir!’ I snap to attention. Drago gawps. He doesn’t know it’s all for my own amusement.

  ‘Stand easy, man, eat your breakfast. We don’t know what’s out there.’

  ‘No indeed, sir.’

  ‘We must hope for the best and prepare for the worst. Good luck.’

  ‘Sir.’

  When he’s ridden off, Drago makes a blowing sound. ‘What does he eat? I wouldn’t mind some of it.’

  Bully beef’s like a shot in the arm when you’re tired and hungry. Ten minutes later we’re looking a lot more like fighting men and when the order comes to get back in line even I start on this crazy optimism lark. Baghdad—now there’s a place I wouldn’t mind doing business in.

  I still look back and wonder what was going on in our commanders’ heads that morning. Did they think if the Turks were there they’d stand up and wave? We’re in open desert, they’re snug as you like behind a wall and several miles of barbed wire.

  We fix bayonets and advance. We’ve gone no more than twenty yards when they open fire, big guns and small arms all at the same time. We’re surrounded by the whine and crash of the shells and the mean, sharp chatter of the rifles, and the yells of our men getting hit. Dick Drago just disappears. That’s what it feels like—whump!—and he’s gone. I’m still moving forward and suddenly he’s not beside me and my leg’s covered in sticky matter: his blood and brains. I’m not going to see him again.

  We have to go to ground, and now we’re thanking God for all the fucking ditches and ruins we were cursing last night. At least there’s somewhere to hide. You have to hand it to the Turks, they’ve played a waiting game. All this time they’ve had a bead on us, while we were standing around watching the sun come up, eating breakfast, having a fag and a slash . . . They must have watched us load up and start the advance, and still kept their fingers off the triggers until just the right moment. Till they could smell us, almost. I thought they were supposed to be the hot-blooded ones. It’s the English who are meant to be patient and dogged. Talk about beaten at our own game.

  It’s hellish. Literally, like hell. The sense of helplessness. We’re pinned down. It seems like hours before our heavy guns get the range. And with full daylight there’s a mirage in the middle distance, so anything could be happening out there. A lot of us got hit in the first round of fire, there are dead men all over the place, and as many again yelling and screaming in pain, an animal sound. Heard a rabbit scream when the stoat catches it? Like that—shrill, panicky agony. Bullets and shrapnel rip men to bits. Less than half an hour ago we were standing around eating and drinking and talking amongst ourselves, our bodies were something we felt safe in. Not now. If I so much as glance to one side or another I can see bodies in tatters, broken and bubbling, torn open, and whatever you call the human bit, the part you can’t see, reduced to this awful screaming.

  For some reason I don’t think I’ll get hit. Don’t know why that is, it’s as though I’m in a cocoon. I’ve got no idea what we’re supposed to be doing, I’m not going anywhere, just lying behind this heap of stones, loading and firing into the quivering, shimmering mirage. I think somewhere I’ve got the idea that I won’t get hit as long as I keep firing. It didn’t help any of the other poor sods but once the idea’s there it sticks and I just blaze away.

  All that stuff that used to be Dick Drago—all the blarney and the bullshit and the bloody terrible jokes—has formed a big crust on my leg. Tenacious in death, then; he always was a relentlessly sociable bastard.

  From the direction of the firing it’s pretty obvious there’s a parly of Turks up on the high wall, and that their front-line trench leads off from there to our left, to the west. In breaks in the smoke I can see in the distance a hillock which gives them another vantage point. They’re laughing. We can only hope someone in charge has a bright idea because it’s not looking good.

  They’ve had an idea. The order comes to ‘advance at right angles to present line of attack’. So we’re going to leave what cover we’ve got, and cross open country, in full view of the Turkish front line, I’m not afraid. What’s the point? It’s all so straightforward—they have the advantage, we’ll be alternately scampering like rabbits or crawling like lizards. We’ll be a moving target but a bloody easy one for marksmen as good as the Turks.


  We’re off!

  The Battle of Ctesiphon. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

  Chapter Eight

  Midsummer, and it was hot, they said in the village. Eighty degrees, and only June! It boded well for the harvest, though people weren’t as well disposed as they had been to one or two of the farmers, who’d been coining it in during the war years, growing fat while young men got cut down.

  To Ashe, this wasn’t hot, and the people who said it was didn’t know they were born. This was pleasant, English weather at its best. You got some warning—a long, red sunset . . . a slow, hazy dawn . . . a sun that slid indolently up into the sky, taking its time so you could grow accustomed to the temperature. And there was always the green, enfolding English countryside to shield you, always shade, and water and grass beneath your feet.

  As to the profiteering farmers, he had no feelings about them one way or the other. War was bound to be exploited by someone. The other harvest, though, that was a genuine grievance. In Eadenford, a village of about three hundred souls, thirty men had been killed or lost. There was scarcely a family left unaffected. The vicarage was one of the few households which had not experienced the dread and agony of the postmistress’s call, the bicycle against the wall and the tap on the door. Mrs Jeeps, through no fault of her own, had become the harbinger of tragedy, accustomed to keep her features tight and her eyes down as she handed over the mean little brown envelopes. One family had lost two sons in France and a daughter in a Zeppelin raid in the Midlands where she had been visiting relatives. Every day, all over the country, these small, stifled explosions of tragedy had been happening, too many griefs to be acknowledged, wounds imploding, leaving a land that still bled internally.

  Almost none of the bereaved knew where the bodies where. It had been decreed that the task of bringing the war-dead home was simply too vast, costly and complicated, and that they would therefore be buried—or commemorated—where they had fallen. A photographer from the local paper had showed considerable enterprise in travelling to certain areas on the Franco-Belgian border and taking pictures of rudimentary war cemeteries that were being initiated in the wake of the government’s decision. The parents of the girl bombed in Wolverhampton were accounted lucky because they had been able to bring back what remained of her and give her a decent burial. Talk of them had been tainted by real jealousy. Ashe was well aware that his face acted as an outward and visible expression of all the savage, bitter loss which the village had hidden away in bedroom drawers, and understairs cupboards and on high shelves . . . out of sight but far from out of mind.

  The official memorial arrived. Due to the dearth of able-bodied young men about the place, and because he was working more and more for the vicar these days, Ashe had been released from his station duties to join the work party: they cemented the stone cross into its plinth on the corner of the churchyard, facing down the High Street. Seedlings had been nurtured on warm windowsills and in greenhouses since early spring and were now planted around the base of the plinth. The ceremony of blessing and remembrance was set to replace matins on Sunday. Two Eadenford men who had returned would take pride of place at the ceremony. Neither of them was from Mesopotamia.

  This was Saturday morning, the day before the ceremony. With Mr Mariner’s approval Ashe had set himself the task of mowing the grass in the churchyard and giving the place a general sprucing-up. There were three relatively new graves, one of which was that of Amy Paget, the bomb victim, another that of her mother, Dorothy: ‘Beloved wife and mother, died of a broken heart. Rest where the angels sing.’

  Before he started mowing, Ashe went round all the graves with shears, and weeded the plots where necessary. He dead-headed the old-fashioned roses that lined the church path, and cut some narrow turfs from the far corner at the back of the churchyard, to fill in the raw patches around the memorial. By the time he got hold of the mower he was sweating, and took off his neckerchief to mop his face.

  His first visitor was Lady Delamayne, her car loaded with flowers for the church. She had brought with her one of the gardener’s boys from Eaden Place, and the lad staggered self-consciously up the path in her wake, loaded down with rhododendron, chrysanthemums and roses with their stems bundled in newspaper. Spotting Ashe, she paused to speak to him.

  ‘Good morning!’ She motioned the boy to put the flowers down in the porch. ‘Let’s hope we have this weather tomorrow!’

  Ashe halted the mower. ‘Yes indeed, m’lady.’

  ‘But just in case I thought I’d make sure we put on a good show inside as well as out—we don’t want the church looking neglected on such an important day, do we?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  She came over the grass towards him in her high heels, gazing about her imperiously as she did so. Her grand but rather flirtatious personality, edged (as so often, he’d noticed, with the upper classes) with a certain coarseness, preceded her like a force field, but Ashe was proof against it. From the corner of his eye he saw the boy emerge from the porch, brushing at his shirtfront, and stand leaning against the wall.

  ‘The memorial looks very splendid,’ observed Lady Delamayne. ‘Though I suppose it’s shocking that in such a small place we should need to have one at all.’

  Ashe didn’t answer, but gazed, like her, at the stone cross glinting in the sunshine. He felt the moment when her eyes turned to rest on him, but didn’t alter his stance one iota.

  ‘All this must bring back many memories,’ she said.

  ‘One or two,’ he agreed.

  ‘But of course no two persons’ experiences will be the same.’

  ‘Very true.’

  The lad by the church door bent down to pull a grass stem, and put it between his lips but Lady Delamayne, intent on her interrogation, was impervious to his boredom, if she had even noticed it.

  ‘Were you in France, Mr Ashe?’

  He shook his head. ‘In the Middle East.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ She bestowed her vulpine smile. ‘So these temperatures are nothing to you.’

  ‘Not really.’ He took hold of the mower handle again. ‘Nice working conditions as a matter of fact.’

  ‘And I mustn’t hold you up any longer . . .’ She glanced at the boy, who pulled the grass from his mouth and stood to attention. ‘Tony! You might as well take those in—and get rid of the newspaper!’ She turned back to Ashe. ‘We must both get on.’ But she still didn’t go, and added, as he took a first step forward, ‘Do excuse my vulgar curiosity, Mr Ashe, but was it in the East that you received your injury?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘In battle?’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Ashe sensed her excitement, which he fully intended to fuel. Leaning down to pull some weed-fibre from the blades of the mower he added tersely: ‘I’d prefer not to talk about it, your ladyship. If it’s all right with you.’

  ‘But of course!’ It was the use of her title that nailed her, as he knew it would, reminding her of their relative positions and the importunate nature of her question. ‘What was I thinking of? I do apologise.’

  ‘No need.’ She’d get no more ‘ladyships’ out of him and they both knew it.

  ‘There we are. Better get on.’

  He was on his way at once, leaning into his task as she began to walk back to the church. Five minutes later he saw Mrs Mariner arrive via the vicarage’s garden gate, wearing a straw hat and a striped sundress, and with some sort of canvas haversack slung round her, from which protruded handles and string. She gave him a wave before disappearing into the church. He heard the dog bark excitedly a couple of times on the far side of the gate.

  Ashe mowed on, moving around the eastern end of the church beneath the Lilies of the Field stained glass window. Ten minutes of concentrated work later he was on the north side, the door in which was kept locked. The building was between him and the road and he had a clear view of the vicarage garden gate. Scenting him, the dog was still standing there, ears pricked expectantly; when it saw h
im it began to wag and wriggle, squeaking and scratching at the bars. Ashe raised an admonitory forefinger and it sat down, shifting from foot to foot and panting.

  He glanced at the house. Hilda came in late on a Saturday, but he had no idea where Mariner himself was. Best to play safe. Accordingly, Ashe slipped the full grass-bucket off the mower and carried it with him over to the gale. The dog stood to greet him, and he lifted his finger again.

  ‘Stay.’

  With his free hand he opened the gate. The dog was through in an instant, circling his legs but keeping low to the ground in a display of respectful adoration. Ashe pushed the gate without fully closing it, and patted his thigh, near his pocket.

  ‘Here.’ The dog stood at his side, quivering in anticipation, and followed him as he walked across the churchyard in the direction of the compost heap he’d begun at the edge of the wood.

  A couple of minutes later Ashe returned, clipped the now-empty container back on to the mower, and resumed his careful, arcing progress between the graves. As he came round the west end who should appear but Susan Clay, at almost precisely the same point where he had first met her on his arrival in the village nearly three months before. She was one of the few people whom he was in the habit of addressing before they addressed him.

  ‘Morning, Susan.’

  ‘Hallo.’

  She was empty-handed, and had a pink bow in her hair instead of the usual slides.

  ‘You look pretty.’