3
THE SIGN POINTED directly up the bare hillside, along a tractor-beaten track which was edged on each side with the merest wisps of grass; it was only the rarity of hedges that made this farmland different from England, and with it the relative absence of birds, as though the thrifty Frenchmen were determined to use every square inch of field-space, sharing it as little as possible with wild creatures.
But he would have known the place without a signpost, even though he had never before approached the eastern tip of the ridge from this direction: with Bouillet Wood in view on the skyline all the time it was impossible to become disorientated.
And that in itself was strange, for on his previous visit to this section of the front he had never been so aware of the wood’s commanding position. Now that it was closed to him, and maybe hostile too, he saw not only how it dominated the landscape but also began for the first time to understand why the men of 1916 had written about it with such loathing. They had been like ants, vulnerable under the eyes of the enemy above them, and if the defences of the redoubt under the demolished chateau had been far more formidable, those had been virtually out of sight: it was because they could always see the wood that they knew the Germans in the wood could always see them. He thought - and the thought came to him so quickly and suddenly that it stopped him in his tracks as though it created a physical barrier - maybe someone up there is watching me now, another rash ant unwisely straying into forbidden territory to be squashed without compunction.
But that was ridiculous. He was just another Englishman doing what dozens of others must have done before him: he had gone to the other entrance and had stated his intention without equivocation - and had even made a fuss when he had been turned away. Now he was only doing what he had been told to do, and there was nothing suspicious in his action; it would surely have been more suspicious to have done anything else, or even to have done nothing else.
He lifted his field-glasses, sweeping the far distance to the south and west. There, just visible in the slightly fading light above its belt of surrounding trees, was the top of the huge redbrick Thiepval Memorial; there, peeping over the top of the Tara-Usna ridge, was the Golden Virgin herself… and there, much closer, was Bouillet Wood - Bois de Bouillet, Wald von Bouillet, Bully Wood.
He focused on the inner fence, against the dark background of trees and bushes. His first impression, that they were pressing against it, imprisoned by the wire mesh, was wrong: there was maybe a yard or two of open ground between the fence and the vegetation. Beyond that he could see nothing and could only try to recall what lay within.
The house had been built about two hundred yards in from the southern edge, long and low, with an inner courtyard; full of rooms for unborn Regnier grandchildren - unborn and never to be born … There were lawns round it, and straight geometrically-driven avenues cutting through the wood.
Just to the north, or north-west, of the house there had been a single tiny field of sweet corn, he remembered; between the rows, lying on the sticky rain-washed clay, unused British and German ammunition had been scattered thickly, green with age and damp, but still live enough when dried out.
Apart from the lawns and the avenues and that field there had not been a square yard of level ground in the wood; the trees had been allowed to re-establish themselves naturally among the craters and crude trenches which were themselves formed of interlinked craters, all fallen in now and softened by the fallen leaves of half a century. Perhaps in the bright sunshine of a summer’s day it might have passed for any piece of rough woodland, anywhere. But he had seen it first on a dark, rainy autumn day when it had been ugly and depressing.
He stopped his sweep along the wire as his eyes caught a tiny brief movement, a momentary shivering of the leaves which could not be accounted for in the surrounding stillness.
‘Can you see anything?’ said Nikki.
He lowered the field-glasses.
‘No. Just the fence. It’s the same as on the far side - it obviously goes right the way round.’
It was true: he could see nothing, the patch of undergrowth was motionless. But it had moved, of that he was certain.
‘And that’s the cemetery?’ She pointed to the low wall of dark grey bricks ahead to the left.
‘That’s right. See how thick the chalk is in the fields here - and there are bits of brick in it. This is where the old Chateau de Bouillet was, and then the Prussian Redoubt.’
And now and for all time the Prussian Redoubt Cemetery.
He pointed suddenly to the right of the arched gateway.
‘There! I said you’d see one - and there’s more than one. That’s from the recent ploughing.’
Stacked neatly beside the gateway were three very rusty shells.
‘Two British i8-pounders and a German 5.9 - or they could be two German whizz-bangs, I don’t know.’
‘What are they going to do with them?’ She stared at the shells fixedly. ‘They’re not going to just leave them there?’
Mitchell laughed.
‘Oh, no. The army comes round and picks them up from time to time.’
‘But aren’t they dangerous?’
‘Not unless you take gross liberties with them. There’s Hindenburg Line blockhouse I know, just over the Sensee at Fontaine-les-Croiselles - ‘
He looked back down the slope towards the way they had come, where he had left the car by the roadside. Without remarking on it he had heard the sound of a motor-cycle a few moments earlier, but now he was aware that the sound had not passed on into the distance, but had stopped abruptly at the bottom of the hill.
‘Yes?’
Two motor-cyclists.
‘Er - Fontaine-les-Croiselles, just near Arras,’ he repeated. In another moment they would start up again. ‘I trod on an unexploded i8-pounder lying in the grass there, a beauty - ‘
They had not started up. One rider had climbed off his machine and was sniffing round the car. The other stared up the slope, pointing with a black-gauntleted hand. He raised his field-glasses, but the close-up only confirmed what he knew already.
‘We’ve got company.’
Nikki followed his gaze.
‘Oh -‘ Her shoulders sagged. ‘Oh, no. The police!’
‘So what?’ He injected a confidence he didn’t feel into his tone. ‘For God’s sake, we haven’t done anything. At least, I haven’t - have you?’
‘Me?’
The squeak of protest was cut off by the renewed roar of the powerful engines. The rider who had examined the car circled his machine in the road expertly and swerved sharply into the track to the cemetery. An instant later his colleague kicked his own engine into life and turned to follow him.
Mitchell watched them with a sick certainty that he was their objective: on the road they had been disturbing enough in their black uniforms, helmeted and goggled to match; on the track, heading straight towards him, they were as malevolent as Cocteau’s outriders of Death.
But now he was letting the girl’s police-phobia get the better of him, he told himself. Butler had warned that the security forces were out in force in Picardy, and it was impossible that they could yet suspect him of being here under false pretences. So this was just a piece of routine checking, routine curiosity, routine officiousness. He only had to stand his ground and be what he was supposed to be, with little to fear except his own fear.
Unfortunately that was enough, and more than enough, to expose his false courage to his own contempt. If he owed nothing to Audley, he had a score to settle on Charles Emerson’s behalf and his own, not to mention the poor old man, George Davis. He even had a responsibility of some sort to the girl beside him to put on a brave face and bluff it out.
‘Now, whatever can they want?’ he heard himself say.
The voice was Captain Lefevre’s, full of insular confidence.
‘Well, whatever it is, please give it to them - don’t argue with them, Paul. They aren’t like your “coppers”, these animals.
’
‘So you keep telling me - you’ll have me scared stiff in a minute.’
He managed a grin to match the words, a grin not wholly forced as the irony of the situation took hold on him. It was surely a sign of the times that the pure in heart no longer had the strength of ten, and this girl’s clear conscience was no more comfort than his own bad one. Indeed, with a bad conscience one did at least know what to worry about, he decided, remembering the fear and confusion of his meeting with Constable Bell.
‘Stop worrying, Nikki. They’re just policemen.’
‘Policemen?’ She gave him a pitying look. ‘Have you ever seen our policemen handle a riot?’
The black figures were closing on them now in a rising crescendo of noise.
‘We’re not a riot. And I gather your rioters aren’t exactly boy scouts, either, are they?’
The pity was transformed into displeasure.
‘I was forgetting you wear a uniform too,’ she shouted.
Perhaps it was just as well there was no more time for this argument to develop, since it was clearly heading straight for Northern Ireland. But with a final burst of sound the motorcyclists drew up alongside them, one on each side.
For a moment both sides took stock of one another in a sudden silence almost as crashing as the noise which had preceded it. Then the nearest policeman raised his goggles and climbed stiff-legged off his motor-cycle.
By that time Mitchell had abandoned any idea of opening the dialogue, for with their machine-pistols slung across their chests and bolstered guns at their waists these two characters were a world away from Constable Bell and his notebook and pencil, Artillery like that explained Nikki’s sense of anxiety all too well, drying up any thought of argument on his own part: where Bell, unarmed, had been the arm of the law, what faced him now was the fist of the state with a weapon clenched in it, to be defied at one’s peril.
The policeman looked him up and down once more, as though to confirm his goggle-eyed view, and then raised his hand in a salute.
‘M’sieur. Vos papiers, s’il vous plait.’
The salute had caught Mitchell by surprise, his own hand already halfway to his pocket. He was glad Colonel Butler wasn’t present to witness his belated acknowledgment of the unexpected courtesy, which fell far short even of the standard required by the Cambridge University OTC.
Not that such slovenliness seemed to matter to the Frenchman: he removed one gauntlet and examined the documents with methodical care, his lips spelling out the words silendy. But he could go on reading them until doomsday for all the good it would do him, thought Mitchell, drawing strength from Audley’s assurance on their authenticity: there was nothing wrong with the bill of goods, it was the real thing. Only the goods themselves were counterfeit.
Finally the man looked up at him again.
‘Capitaine Lefevre?’
‘Yes - oui.’
‘You are on ‘oliday?’ The policemen had evidently decided to try out his English. ‘On leave from your regiment?’
‘No. I am here on official business. I have been asked to meet a party of old soldiers - anciens combattants de la bataille de la Somme - who will be visiting this place in a day or two. I am looking over the battlefield in preparation for that - ah - that duty.’
The policeman took a moment or two to assimilate the information. Then he gestured to Nikki.
‘And this is madame, your wife?’
‘Oh, no,’ Mitchell smiled. ‘This is Mademoiselle MacMahon of your Ministry of Tourism who has been assigned to help me. Mademoiselle’s presence here is a token of Anglo-French friendship for which we are very grateful.’
The policeman’s eyes flicked over Nikki and then returned to Mitchell, the eyebrows lifting for a fraction of a second to suggest a certain envy. It was like a shutter opening, revealing a human face for an instant, and then snapping shut again.
‘Vos papiers, s’il vous plait. Mademoiselle.’
Nikki’s credentials received the same thorough inspection, with the same eventual result.
‘Merci, mon capitaine - mademoiselle.’
The hand came up in salute again. Mon Capitaine had passed another test.
But success was something to build on, not to sit on.
‘Un moment -‘
No. Better to keep it in English, which was more flattering to the man’s ego.
‘ - I wonder - could you tell me one thing, officer.’
‘M sieur?’
’When I was last here, two years ago, Monsieur Amaury Regnier lived in the house in the wood.’ He pointed towards the fence. ‘Could you tell me who lives there now?’
The Frenchman frowned.
‘Why do you wish to know?’
That wasn’t the answer he had hoped for - it was no answer at all - but this time he was ready for it.
‘Some of the men I am to meet captured that wood from the Germans in 1916. Most of their comrades are buried here, in this cemetery. I had hoped we might visit the wood, but I have been unable to discover who owns it now.’
‘I am afraid I cannot help you,’ the policeman shrugged.
Then he looked at Mitchell sidelong.
‘But perhaps - you are resting nearby tonight?’
Mitchell turned to Nikki.
‘Where are we staying?’
God! That was the wrong way to put it, he realised too late as he saw her face change.
‘I m-mean, which hotel in Arras have you booked me into?’
‘La Belle Etoile in the Place Lloyd George, Captain Lefevre,’ she replied icily.
The policeman coughed politely - in fact so damn politely, that it was clear that he had formed his own interpretation of the nature of this example of Anglo-French friendship.
‘Very well -La Belle Etoile. If I am able to find out the answer to your question I will telephone the ‘otel.’
Mitchell watched them ride away, relief and embarrassment cancelling each other out within him. With an effort he turned again to meet the astonishing green eyes.
‘I’m - ah - sorry for putting my foot in my mouth.’
But the eyes were no longer arctic green, and she shook her head at him with an expression of half-amused resignation.
‘You’re all-British now, Paul - there’s no doubt about that.’
Mitchell was agonisingly aware that he was blushing.
‘But…’ She laughed out loud, gently, as though she was doing her best to save his feelings from total demolition ‘… but at least you know how to disarm French policemen - which is more than most Frenchmen are able to do.’
If that was the case, maybe there was consolation to be derived from his very gaucheness, humiliating though it might be: only the innocent should be so - so innocent. Perhaps that was what Audley was reckoning on.
Then the amusement in her face was gone, just as suddenly as it had appeared.
‘But now I will see your cemetery, Paul. And then it will be time to go, because it will be getting dark very soon - and I don’t think I will like it here very much then.’
She was quite wrong, of course - wrong to feel disquieted in this place, in these places, of all places.
Where the long rows of white headstones were, lined meticulously on their weed-free strips of tilled soil, carved just as meticulously - number, rank, name, regiment, age and day of death, regimental crest - there was no menace, only melancholy. Maybe outside, in the busy fields and roads, there were ghosts and unspent passions unable to rest because continuing life mocked them. But in the war cemeteries on the battlefields the dead had finally conquered the land and had no call to contest it with anyone.
Nothing would stir here until the last trump, and even then there would be no fuss or jostling for position, but only a quiet, well-ordered reunion.
Nikki pointed.
‘Look - poppies.’
Poppies, sure enough. A few late roses, dark red, blossomed between the stones, but some inspired gardener had carefully left the true f
lowers of the battlefield, the flowers of remembrance and forgetfulness, while removing every other weed.
‘I thought it was in Flanders that all the poppies grew,’ she added.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow … So she must have read that poem, or at least encountered it while doing her hurried official homework.
‘They grow wherever the topsoil is disturbed. Maybe they like the chalk, I don’t know.’
‘It’s very chalky here.’
He tore his gaze away from the name on the stone behind the poppies:
2103113 Rifleman A. SMITH RIFLE BRIGADE AGED 20.
One of the Poachers. So was the next one, and the next - and as far down the line as he could see. Somewhere along here, as likely as not, there’d be SECOND LIEUT. R. DYSON, General Leigh-Woodhouse’s friend.
I expect I’ll be saying’Good morning. God’in a moment or two…
‘Chalky?’ He repeated vaguely.
When he finally focused on her he saw that she was regarding him sympathetically now, as though she could read his face.
‘Forget it - it’s not important, Paul.’
Beneath the provocative female - and the prickly Franco-Irish nationalist - there was a human being, and a rather nice one too, decided Mitchell, decisively shelving the last vestige of his plans for an amorous evening. They probably wouldn’t have worked out anyway, at that, particularly when he ought to be keeping his mind on a very different sort of objective.
‘Chalky, yes.’ The decision was like a burden lifted from his shoulders. ‘We’re right on top of the redoubt now. Do you see where those headstones have been laid flat over there?’
He pointed to the centre of the cemetery.
‘They are graves?’
She peered over the standing stones to where a whole group had been arranged horizontally.
‘I thought that was a pavement.’
Other Paths to Glory Page 14
