by Neil Spring
My chest tightened. I had to ask:
‘How old was he? How was he dressed?’
‘Young. Five or six. Filthy, in rags. Starving, by the looks of it.’
Oh Lord. It was the same child!
‘Sarah, what’s the matter?’ Price asked, looking at me, his gaze part curious, part accusatory.
I should have admitted that I too had seen a boy like this, a wandering child. But just as I had set my mind to substantiating the sergeant’s fantastic tale, I remembered Oscar Hartwell’s warning to trust no one in this camp.
‘Sarah?’
I waved off Price’s question and asked Sergeant Edwards, ‘What happened next?’
‘When I saw the boy, I was struck with a fear I’ve never felt before. I ran out of the mill into the woods.’
I tried to imagine this: the burly soldier fleeing through the thicket, tripping over shallow roots and gasping for breath as he bolted from the spirits of the dead.
‘I made it as far as the path that leads back to the centre of the village, near the chalk pit, when my legs gave out.’
‘We think that’s when he found the can,’ the commander said in a low voice.
‘What can?’ Price asked.
‘A petrol can. It must have been left behind on a previous exercise.’
Price and I looked at one another with equal expressions of horror. Petrol?
‘What did you do?’ I whispered to the sergeant, unable to take my eyes off those horrific burns, his missing ears and swollen lips.
When he next spoke, the veins were standing out on his neck. ‘I heard them whispering to me,’ he said. ‘I heard them, filling up my head. I could hear the force of their anger and hatred. Blaming me . . . goading me to harm myself.’ Then, in a flat voice, he said, ‘I used to think ghosts went out when the electric lights came in, but it’s not so.’
‘You think you heard the voices of ghosts?’
He nodded. ‘The spirits of old residents who want us out.’ His charred face confronted each of us in turn, his glittering eyes imploring us to understand. ‘They made me do it. They made me pick up that tin can, full of petrol. Made me strike the match!’
His hand shot out and gripped my forearm. ‘I think the boy I saw at the mill is some sort of omen. That child brings disaster,’ he said desperately. ‘For your own sake, miss, go now. Stay the hell away from Imber.’
*
‘That man needs a lobotomy!’
‘No, Harry, what he needs is to be heard by people who won’t lock him up and casually dismiss what he has to say. I would have thought you of all people would understand that.’
We were outside Edwards’ room in the cold concrete corridor. Outside, the wind was really ramping up. Somewhere on the roof a loose piece of corrugated iron was flapping and banging.
‘Sarah, he is mentally disturbed.’
‘Yes, but did he see that child because he’s disturbed? Or is he disturbed because he saw it?’
Price frowned, clearly aggravated at being challenged, just as Warden Sidewinder and the commander exited Edwards’ room. They pulled the door shut and stood beside us, both looking as shaken and exhausted as I felt.
‘Warden Sidewinder will take you into Imber at dawn,’ the commander told us. ‘Once on the range, you’ll have twenty-four hours to undertake your investigation and provide a full recommendation on our next course of action.’
‘I am afraid that one day won’t be long enough.’
‘It’s all the time we have, Mr Price. Tomorrow is Saturday. The Imber Service is on Sunday. Our men normally assist at the event – provide the chairs and tables, clean the church, ensure civilians don’t stray from the main paths. I don’t want to have to explain to the public and the newspapers why the service can’t go ahead this year.’
‘I assume you’ve already inspected the old mill?’ Price asked.
The commander nodded. ‘Of course. But we found nothing of interest there. The most recent reports of unusual activity have been focused on the churchyard, so that’s where I believe you should concentrate your efforts.’ He frowned at Price. ‘You will explain what is happening here, yes?’
Price’s jaw became set with determination, but before he could reply I asked another question. ‘Commander, what if we should fail? What then?’
Commander Williams cocked his head and, though he was smiling, his jaw muscles tightened.
‘Some options are not available to us, Miss Grey. Failure is one of them.’
*
After a light supper of ham and potatoes, it was time for bed. Outside, as I walked with my case, the silhouette of Hut Three rose to meet me. This was my accommodation for the night, one of the many prefabricated structures I had noticed on my approach to the camp. Its thin, corrugated steel roof arced low from the ground, giving the impression that I was approaching a bunker.
Snap!
I found the switch and suddenly the hut was illuminated by the light of a bare, low-wattage bulb. And oh my, it was a depressing sight indeed. The stark interior walls were constructed from ghastly grey breeze blocks; the floor of bare concrete! Perhaps worst of all were the rows of cast-iron beds that now confronted me, about twenty in all, some of them painted grey, most black.
The sight of so many empty, stripped beds gave the hut an unsettling stillness.
I released a quiet sigh of exasperation.
Closing the door on the freezing night, I saw the jug and grimy bowl on the washstand, selected a rickety brass bedstead somewhere near the middle of a row, and felt my spirits sag.
Still, I had to be thankful. At least I had some privacy!
After slipping off my coat and kicking off my shoes and quickly putting them on again (the floor was freezing), I dumped my suitcase on the shaky bed and began unpacking; toiletries first – make-up, a wooden toothbrush, a bar of carbolic soap.
Then I saw it. The hand-painted lantern slide, lying on my neatly folded clothes.
I had allowed myself to believe that I had been transported, when I touched the slide in the silent auditorium of the Brixton Picture Palace, to another place. I looked more carefully at the image framed in the lantern slide – the young girl in the expensive-looking dress and, next to her, the younger handsome boy in the suit.
I reached out to touch their image, half-expecting to find myself taken once again to that place, standing in the long grass with the sun on my back and a faint wind rising.
Nothing happened. No sense of time passing. No sense of travelling somewhere else. Just a crude lantern slide in my hand.
I slipped it into my coat pocket, feeling a little silly. That crazy sensation of travelling somewhere else was pure fantasy.
It was only after I had washed and was brushing my teeth that the question occurred to me: Who are they, anyway?
It sprang up in my mind unbidden, and again as I was changing into my nightdress.
Who are they?
A peculiar question. The image on the slide was clearly old. Very old. Perhaps one way of discovering these children’s identities would be to have the image magnified?
I had told Price I would show it to him, and yet now that I had the opportunity I was curiously hesitant to do so. Partly because I was afraid he would mock me; but also because it meant asking once again for his expertise, which would only fill him with the smug satisfaction that could be quite intolerable.
I lay down on the creaky bed. Clear my mind, that was what I needed to do. Forget about Hartwell’s warning not to trust the army. Forget about Gregory Edwards’ hellish face and the fear he exuded from every pore. Forget about the guilt gnawing away at me for saying nothing to Price of his child . . .
But I could feel my nerves beginning to fray. An unwelcome voice in my ear reminded me of a word Sergeant Edwards had used earlier, a word that did not inspire c
onfidence.
Omen.
That word in my head. It was there, like a swirling black hole, drawing me in.
‘It doesn’t mean a thing,’ I whispered, but only felt more agitated at the sound of my own voice.
Feeling almost devoured with nervous tension, I rolled onto my side, wrapping my arms tightly around myself for warmth. The unavoidable fact was that I too had seen the child – did that mean that I too was now destined to meet with peril?
No. Edwards was just one man, whose mental condition was far from stable. All right, he thought the boy was an omen, but that didn’t make it true, did it?
Of course not. Focus on the facts.
But one fact I had overlooked, and it came to me now with a dragging uneasiness.
Edwards isn’t the only one to express concern about the boy.
Coldly, I remembered the tone in Hartwell’s voice when he had said, ‘Tell no one what you saw this night. It will be better that way.’
A chill went through me. Everything will be fine, I told myself. You just wait and see, Sarah.
But as I closed my eyes, listening to the hut creaking in the wind, hoping for sleep, a distinctly unpleasant and unwelcome question surfaced: What horrors would come to me in my dreams? The wandering child? A ravenous black dog? Or worse, Imber’s furious blacksmith, lumbering purposefully towards me. Swinging his hammer.
I shivered; my eyes flew open.
Perhaps, tonight, it would be better not to sleep at all.
PART TWO
A PLACE OF GHOSTS
They say the dead won’t harm you; it’s only the living who harm you. That’s what I tried telling myself, over and over, whenever I went out to that village.
SERGEANT GREGORY EDWARDS, October 1932
The lawn
Is pressed by unseen feet, and ghosts return
Gently at twilight, gently go at dawn,
The sad intangible who grieve and yearn . . .
T. S. ELIOT, To Walter de la Mare
– 12 –
ENTER THE VALLEY
Dawn. Grey. Damp. We made our way into Imber beneath low-hanging, swollen clouds in Warden Sidewinder’s rattling army truck. A group of soldiers huddled outside a bomb shelter, smoking, and I felt their enquiring eyes on me; I didn’t feel intimidated, but I wondered how long it had been since they had seen a young woman in their camp.
Soon we were out on the downs, driving into the drizzly mists which were rolling in and which held now the distant rumble of tanks, the resounding echo of shellfire. We were told that the journey to the lost village would be roughly fifteen minutes, and bundled up in the back seat with Price, I felt every moment of it – every bump, every dip. I kept thinking of Father, of how he must have endured many weeks here of bleaker conditions than this, before being sent to fight, and die, in the trenches. It wasn’t just shells and mortars he had contended with here in Wiltshire; it was the rain, the storms and floods for which Salisbury Plain was renowned. The sheer loneliness. How must he have felt, knowing Mother and I were back in London, unaware of where he was?
My belief that I would find my own truths here suddenly seemed hopelessly naive. That belief had led me to leave Mother alone in London, to put my new career on hold. What if Price and I failed in Imber? I knew the answer to that. Outrage from the former residents. Trouble for the military. None of that boded well for rekindling my friendship with Vernon Wall. If we failed, he might as well forget about all those close military connections he needed.
Sidewinder dropped down a gear. The engine sputtered, sending a shudder through the truck, which clattered loudly, as if it too harboured grave misgivings about our mission.
Our driver had been noticeably cold with us both since leaving camp. I glanced at Price and sensed from the glint in his eyes that he was spoiling for a fight.
‘I hope this is the right road.’
‘Harry, it’s the only road,’ I told him, keen to avoid any tension between these two.
Sidewinder said nothing.
As we came over the brow of a barren hill, the expanse of the plain opened before us: rugged and rolling, its skyline was stippled with Iron Age hill forts and Bronze Age burial barrows. There was something almost oceanic about this chalk grassland; something both pleasing and terrible, for it was indeed beautifully bleak, wild and raw. Mysterious. But to my amazement Price uttered not a word, even as the morning light, ghostlike, shifted and trembled, turning the miles of chalk from cold grey to tufty brown to glittering silver.
Why so quiet, Harry? What aren’t you telling me?
I knew there was something; there always was with him. A memory tugged at me; something I’d been too tired to consider properly until now: Price had been in a private meeting with the commander when I arrived at Westdown Camp. Discussing what?
Although the spectral child who had appeared in the woods at the side of the road was still on my mind, the shock of the previous night’s journey had faded, so much so that the experience might have happened long ago. Now I was focused on the task at hand. But as we approached Imber along a deserted track lined with lumps of chalk, I saw, coming up on our left, the crossroads with its rickety sign. Just the sight of it made me straighten up.
‘Something wrong?’ Sidewinder asked, catching my eye in his rear-view mirror.
I did not mention the wandering child, but I did mention the upright and respectable Oscar Hartwell.
‘How do you know him?’ Sidewinder asked; he sounded almost accusing.
‘I don’t. We met by chance on my journey here.’
‘By chance?’
‘He was kind enough to give me a lift.’
‘I see. You should know that Mr Hartwell is a tricky individual, Miss Grey.’
‘He rather implied the same about you lot. You’re familiar with his campaign?’
‘Sadly. Hartwell used to be a reasonable man,’ he said. ‘His was one of the most prominent families in Wiltshire. But since his son passed away, he has lost all direction. His wife even more so. I fear she will end up in a mad house before long. She is Hartwell’s second wife.’
‘What happened to the first wife?’
‘A maternal death. As I understand, she suffered severe blood loss. A stillbirth. It was their first child – a daughter, Lillian. After that, Hartwell met Marie in Paris, on one of his many business trips.’
He told us then that Imber Court had been in the Hartwell family’s ownership since the 1500s. That most of the land in the village had at one time belonged to the family; that the Hartwells’ coat of arms was believed to be the oldest in the English armorial; and that the Hartwell manuscript of Richard III was the earliest surviving manuscript of any play by William Shakespeare. ‘They were true and good pillars of the community, but their history is marked by great tragedy.’
‘Oh?’
‘Hartwell went on to have two daughters with Marie, Beatrice and Rosalie, and they also perished young. Eventually, long years after the evacuation of Imber, they had a son, Pierre. When they also lost him to illness, Marie disappeared from the community altogether. Now Mr Hartwell is consumed with a singular obsession – getting Imber returned to the people. If he had his family, perhaps he’d forget his hopeless campaign.’
‘But to lose a wife and four children . . .’ I said, trying to wrap my head around the scale of this poor man’s loss.
Sidewinder nodded, but his frown only deepened. ‘Losing his children doesn’t make his arguments sound. Or his judgement. Hartwell is leading a reckless cavalry charge that’s certain to end in calamity. Tragedy. Encouraging members of the public to stroll back into Imber is thoroughly irresponsible. There have been too many near accidents. Imber is an immersive training environment for troops to practise urban manoeuvres, to simulate potential scenarios of combat. Even when roads into the village are opened, its buildings
and all areas away from the roads remain strictly out of bounds. There’s a constant danger of civilians straying from the path and coming across unexploded shell and mortar bombs.’
‘You leave live explosives scattered on the range?’ This sounded incredible to me.
‘Our men are highly trained, Miss Grey, but there’s always a risk something’s been overlooked. It’s a sobering reminder of the risks that our soldiers take to prepare themselves for combat. Necessary risks.’
‘Was it right to force the residents to leave their homes?’ I asked abruptly, and Price made a quick gesture with his eyebrows, as if to instruct silence.
‘It was war.’
I could have left it there, but my sympathy for Hartwell was insisting otherwise. ‘Yes, I’m sure you needed Imber when you took it. The question is,’ I added weightily, ‘why do you need it now? In peacetime, with the League of Nations watching over us? Why not return the village to its people?’
Our truck rumbled on to a new track, dustier and bumpier than the last. Every hundred yards or so a sign warned of tank crossings, impact areas and live firing ranges.
‘It may have escaped your attention, Miss Grey, that Europe is still not stable. We’ve got two thousand heavily armoured troops using the plain, training to fight in case of future conflict. The army takes precautions, which is why they have summoned you both here.’
At last, Price spoke up. ‘You don’t think we can help?’
‘No,’ Sidewinder replied, and the two men’s eyes met in the rear-view mirror. ‘And the commander is delusional if he thinks that you can. You, a man who thinks spiritualism can be reduced to a precise and rational science? No, I’m sorry, Mr Price, but your methods will have no currency in Imber.’
Sidewinder’s bitter tone surprised me a little. As for Price, he looked thoroughly affronted.
‘Warden, all I require are the facts. In this business, they can be frustratingly hard to come by, but facts are all we have. Cold, hard facts. Absolute, inimitable truth. But I see you’re not much interested in facts, are you? You’ve already made up your mind.’
