Until the Colours Fade

by Tim Jeal

  Paralysed and frozen at first, the whole living mass on the glacis began to reel and sway, fragmenting while some still went forward and others started to fall back. Above the crash of gun-fire a bugle sounded and the second wave of infantry began to shake out into extended order, company by company, section by section to avoid the shells still whistling down from the Redan. Had the supports been withheld even minutes longer, the wavering storming party on the glacis would have broken and fled, but, seeing their compatriots already swarming over the abatis, the survivors pressed on. From five hundred yards away Tom saw the leaders scrabbling at the ramparts with their bare hands, struggling to tear down the rubble-stone work revetting the parapet in order to form a ramp for the final ascent. The Russian riflemen had now mounted the firestep and were discharging volleys at the men beneath them, now too close for the field-guns to be effective. The guns in the British ‘Right Attack’ were at last answering the fire from the Redan and Malakoff. Two more minutes and the second body of attack had reached the parapet, many, in their broken formation, having survived the gusts of grape that had worked such havoc with the storming party. The Quarries were now completely hidden behind dense white clouds of smoke, frequently lit from within by flashes. There was continual shouting and the accelerating rattle of musketry often drowned by the deeper crash of the British siege guns shelling the Russian bastions. The small-arms fire slackened and then there was a loud cheer, which was soon taken up by the men in the forward British trenches. Since no men were running back, it was clear that the Quarries had been taken.

  His eyes glistening with excitement, Tom turned to Watts, who had been watching impassively beside him.

  ‘They’ve done it.’

  ‘They’ll try to get it back, don’t you worry.’

  Regardless of their own wounded in the battery, the gunners in the Redan now started firing on the Quarries. A large working party with spades and picks streamed towards the captured position past the heaps of dead and dying near the ditch; ahead of these sappers lay the formidable task of reversing the work’s defences under fire. After two companies from the reserve had followed the working party across the open ground to the Quarries, the senior engineer officer spoke to the surgeons and five minutes later they were picking their way across the shell-pitted ground towards the glacis. Since the Russians now seemed to be concentrating all their fire on the captured battery, and none on the approaches to it, there was now talk of getting the wounded back to the trenches, and indeed the stretcher parties busied themselves with this task the moment they reached the abatis.

  Never having seen the immediate aftermath of even a single violent death, the scores of mutilated bodies and still trickling blood, the moans and hysterical cries for help, made Tom’s legs quake under him and his head swim. Yet in spite of himself he could not look away from shattered and torn limbs with bones sticking out through sleeves and trousers, and from chests torn open like carcases in a slaughterer’s yard. He wanted to but could not; and, although feeling that he had come and seen and was now free to return, he did not at once do so.

  In the sap-head, he had told himself that he would go as far as the ditch and then return at once to the trenches, but within moments that option seemed a more dangerous one than remaining where he was. Having seen the stretcher parties taking back the wounded, the Russians now started to drop shells around the abatis to discourage this proceeding and to prevent the men in the trenches thinking that they could reinforce their comrades at will. The ditch beneath the parapet, although choked with corpses, was now the safest place for the living to be, and the surgeons and their orderlies were soon at work there, binding up wounds as best they could to stop men bleeding to death. On the other side of the parapet shells were continually falling into the battery, and before long a steady stream of casualties were being brought back to the ditch for attention. Tom caught sight of Watts, the front of his tunic splattered with blood and his hands as red as if his wrists had just been cut.

  Still a little dizzy and finding it hard to check occasional sobs of shock, Tom felt firmer on his feet. Soon he was filled with a powerful urge to look inside the battery itself – not merely to see it, or even to be able to say that he had set foot there – but because he was intuitively certain that he would come across Charles’s body. He did not wish him dead, but was convinced that he would be, and was sure that he would find him. Even if the living man would never know that the artist he had taunted and despised had reached the Quarries, there would still be, it seemed to Tom, a fitness in the confrontation, even with one party dead. Crawford might even be dying, and he could give him water. Tom wondered what Helen would make of that if she were ever to hear of it. The day before, he had learned about Admiral Crawford’s successful coup on the Tchongar Bridge and imagined the pleasure this would bring Helen. Then he pictured her opening the papers to see sketches of the scene in the Quarries minutes after their capture and before the first counter-attack. Magnus would see that such sketches were published and properly credited. Colnaghi’s could not complain about what would later boost the sales of the lithographs. Tom suddenly felt happy; I must be mad, he thought, to be feeling like this. Death and suffering around me and I’m happy. But his light-headedness remained; the shock and his fear and the strangeness of the trenches, the unreality of the moonlight – everything until now had hidden from him the remarkable fact that he was at a spot which within days would be the focus of the nation’s interest; not just one nation’s, but the world’s. What he had just seen and was still seeing with his own eyes would be described at second hand, or reconstructed out of what various soldiers said, and written down for millions of people to read about. It was at once obvious and extraordinary; and all the more so because until this moment he had thought of everything only as it concerned himself and Charles, and Magnus and the men fighting and dying yards away. You’re an idiot, he thought; but if anything his surprise increased, because now he was thinking of the extraordinary sequence of events that had brought him to this spot. Helen, of course; Charles too; but, before either of them, George Braithwaite and a visit with him to Bentley’s. So many chances; yet was any life different? He remembered reading some words in a book of maxims, but could not remember the source: ‘In the writing upon the wall, we may behold the hand but see not the spring that moves it.’ His sense of his own littleness, even within the pattern of events which had directly shaped his life, increased his light-headedness. The parapet … the battery … Charles’s body. Of course. The decision was already made for him. Without fear he clambered up onto the rampart and dropped down into the Quarries.

  Behind a temporary screen of gabions the members of the working party were digging like men possessed, desperately attempting to throw up a breastwork, thick enough and tall enough to stop the shells and round-shot fired at flat trajectories from the Redan. Other men were hastily dragging the Russian fieldguns from one side of the battery to the other and placing them at the embrasures in the new breastwork. Gunners were feverishly working at the breeches of pieces that had been spiked too hurriedly by the departing Russians to be irreparably damaged. It seemed extraordinary to Tom that men who had just fought so fiercely to take the position, should now be working harder than he had ever seen men work before. Every so often those with spades sank to their knees and others at once snatched up the tool and went on digging, tossing up so many spadefuls a minute that Tom lost count. After a shell had killed three sappers, he dived behind a traverse, affording him some shelter from the splinters of shells falling short. Everybody in the work seemed so taken up with what they were doing that none appeared aware of the constant danger and the devastation around them: overturned guns, shattered balks of timber and the scarred and pitted earth they moved upon. Nobody spoke to Tom or seemed aware of his existence. He pulled out a small pad and started hastily drawing the men digging, sensing, as he drew, the urgency of their task but still not understanding the need for them to work at such a frenzied pitch.
The idea that the Russians might counter-attack within half-an-hour of being driven out, had not occurred to him.

  Whenever a shell did any damage to a section of the breastwork, the hole was at once plugged with gabions and no time wasted filling it with earth. During Tom’s first five minutes in the battery, no shell burst closer to him than thirty yards, and the impact of that one had been entirely absorbed by a traverse. Feeling much bolder, he began to move about, still sensing that he would find Charles. On one occasion he was cursed for getting in the way of a man carrying ammunition boxes across to the guns, and on another was pushed aside by a group pulling on a rope trying to right an overturned truck-mounted gun. But everywhere he looked there was no sign of Charles’s corpse. He had given up his search when he heard an officer scream:

  ‘They’re coming!’

  Other orders came with bewildering speed: ‘Load with case, stand to the parapet….’ Riflemen were rushing over to the new breastwork and kneeling or crouching behind it. Seconds later he heard the hiss and crack of bullets and was no longer in any doubt what was happening. The blood rushed to his head as he leapt back towards the parapet he had climbed over ten minutes before. From somewhere he heard a frightened cry:

  ‘To the right…. They’re behind us to the right.’

  From the corner of his eye he caught a glimpse of grey uniforms and a gunner swinging his sponge stave in a wide arc. Tom was on the parapet, jumping and then falling, the ground rising sharply to meet him – a burning numbness in his side. He twisted slightly as he tumbled down into the ditch, and banged his leg on something hard; for a moment he was more frightened by the thought that he had broken it than by the creeping numbness in his chest. He had fallen across a corpse and was trying to move away when he fell back and saw bright blood on his hand and on his coat. Faint and thirsty he looked for his water bottle but his eyes were not focusing. Feeling little pain, he was not afraid. The surgeons could not be far away. The firing from behind the parapet had become indistinct; a pleasant sound like heavy drops on canvas or the beat of distant hooves. Men were running past and clambering into the battery; fresh troops, he thought joyfully; then, frightened they would tread on him, he tried to shout and was surprised to hear a choking groan. Seconds of fear were followed by a delicious floating sensation and a vision of flickering golden rods in front of his eyes.

  Later he saw the crystals of frost and the moonlight again and realised that he was crying. If I could paint those rods, but how? So much work, when I get home. Just remember what they looked like. That was the thing. He imagined himself on a stretcher being carried back. Everything was taking so long though; already it seemed hours since the men had passed him. Time hung brooding in the air, its seconds marked only by the small fountains of warm pain now spurting in his chest … filling him with pain. Lapping wavelets and then pouring like an incoming tide: an engulfing ocean. A dark ocean, himself a tiny light.

  He writhed with a sudden convulsion; a heavy heated iron was pressing down deep into his flesh. So much heat and yet he was shivering; his limbs felt like ice. His mind lapsed, and, when he came to again, he felt better: no longer immersed in pain, but floating in clouds, dispersed and separate from him.

  I never understood any of them, he thought. Never. Not really. But it did not trouble him. Thirst again; parched earth. Rain would be nice, a light fine rain. But above him the sky was clear and very bright.

  He was being moved. Somebody was bending over him; a blurred face – like a gargoyle eroded by wind and rain. So many gargoyles and carvings and none of the artists known; no names at all. The face loomed closer and then withdrew.

  The secret was to seek even the smallest improvements at whatever cost of time; that way he could capture the moonlight. The secret was … to treat a trifling matter with gravity – a child’s seriousness in play. Treat what? Art? Life? He could not remember. Those rods again – fragmenting now. Try to remember. No. Best enjoy them in case they disappeared.

  *

  Watts returned with a stretcher party ten minutes after first looking at Tom’s wound – a bad one, but men had survived worse: Major Bailey with eight bayonet stabs in the chest at Inkerman and not found for fifteen hours. Others died of shock after no more than a graze. It was hard to tell, but Watts prided himself on his powers of prediction.

  He let Tom’s hand fall in irritation. Dead all right, and he’d had a definite feeling that he’d come through. Some surgeons said the more they saw, the less they knew, but Watts didn’t feel like that, and he was angry to be proved wrong. A man was groaning further along the ditch.

  ‘Let’s get on then,’ Watts shouted.

  Thirty hours already without sleep, and God only knew how many more to come if they went on attacking; and they would. He could count on that.

  52

  By quarter-past eight Magnus was beside himself with irritation and anxiety. He had left Cathcart’s Hill to keep his appointment with Tom still uncertain of the outcome of the attack on the Quarries. The British had then still been in possession but were being increasingly hard-pressed by determined Russian sorties. As Magnus waited impatiently for Tom, the ceaseless sound of gun-fire, echoing across the plateau, increased his agitation.

  Magnus had called at the Naval Brigade’s camp on his way to his hut and had learned that Charles had not returned. Out of the one hundred and twenty members of the ladder party only thirty had come back unscathed and less than a dozen wounded sailors had so far been brought in. The day before, when his father’s squadron had anchored off Balaclava, Magnus had not even known that an attack was imminent, let alone that Charles would be involved. But when in possession of these facts, he had at once done his utmost to find Tom to postpone their ill-timed meeting. Not only had he failed to find him, but had even been unsuccessful in his attempts to discover where he was billeted.

  At half-past eight Magnus decided that Tom had forgotten, and returned to Cathcart’s Hill in time to see the British repulse the largest counter-attack to date, but only by committing half their reserve. Two more determined enemy sorties and the Quarries seemed destined to be back in enemy hands by the early afternoon.

  Shortly before ten o’clock, Magnus took advantage of a temporary stalemate in the fighting to return once more to the naval camp to make further inquiries about his brother. He learned from a group of officers congregated outside the commodore’s tent that three more wounded sailors had been brought back but as yet no officers. The Russians were still shelling the ground between the advanced British trenches and the Quarries to prevent reinforcements reaching the work, and the severity of this fire had all but stopped further efforts to bring in wounded. Throughout the camp there was an air of deepening despondency.

  Magnus was walking dejectedly away when he saw Humphrey sitting on the ground at the side of Lushington’s tent. His eyes were red-rimmed with crying. Magnus came over and sat down beside him.

  ‘He’s sure to be dead, isn’t he?’

  The boy’s bitter personal grief made Magnus feel momentarily ashamed of his own less vehement feelings.

  ‘If he was hit crossing the glacis, he’s probably still alive.’

  ‘But if he reached the parapet?’

  Magnus sighed.

  ‘His chances won’t be so good.’

  Humphrey nodded and swallowed hard. After a brief silence he said:

  ‘Your father’s in with the commodore.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ll see him till we know what’s happened.’

  ‘I haven’t been in either.’

  Not wishing to build up false hope, Magnus could think of nothing to say; his own belief was that Charles had been killed shortly after the attack began. He was imagining what it would have been like to have been among the first to reach the ditch, when he heard Humphrey saying something about having seen Tom in the camp several hours before dawn.

  ‘Doing what?’ he asked in astonishment.

  ‘I don’t know. I saw him near the armour
y and then lost sight of him.’

  ‘Have you seen him since?’

  ‘No. I don’t suppose I’d have remembered unless I’d seen you.’

  Magnus felt a knot of fear tightening in his stomach. Of course there was nothing ominous about an artist or journalist coming to see the men marching down to the trenches, but then why had Tom not been on Cathcart’s Hill when the attack started? Possibly he had been there; with over a hundred officers clustered round the look-out post and the light so bad, it would have been easy enough to have missed him; and yet Magnus had made a point of looking for him to put off their meeting. He turned to Humphrey.

  ‘Do you know the name of the officer on duty in the armoury last night?’

  ‘No, but they’d tell you in the paymaster’s office.’

  *

  Once Magnus had found the Assistant Paymaster, it took him few questions to discover that Tom had gone down to the trenches with the surgeon’s party, none of whom, with the exception of a few stretcher bearers, had been seen since. Sick with fear for his friend, he rounded furiously on Parnwell.

  ‘Why in Christ’s name did you let a civilian go down?’

  ‘I don’t have to answer your questions.’

  ‘My brother is Captain Crawford. Now, why did you let him go down?’

  ‘I tried to put him off. I had no powers of arrest, sir. I told him what the captain had said. What else could I do?’

  Parnwell’s face was ashen with tiredness and his hands were shaking.

  ‘The captain?’ repeated Magnus.