God's Sparrows

by Philip Child

  When they were married, Dan said:

  “Now my wife must rest for a bit. You must sleep, Beatrice. I’ll be here when you wake up.”

  “You are so dear!” she whispered. “You will truly be here? You won’t go away without waking me?”

  “Word of honour, Beatrice.”

  She sighed and closed her eyes. Then opened them again. “Dan?”

  “Yes, dear?”

  She put out her hand for his. “Will it be all right? Us, I mean.”

  “It will be, my very dear. You are mine now, and I am yours. You will feel that more and more.”

  Beatrice did sleep, and Murdo, more pleased than Dan had ever before seen him, said several times in accession, “I’ve little doubt of her pulling through now. Hm, yes! All she needed was the will to live. The will to live.”

  She awoke shortly before dawn and, bewildered by the darkness, called out Dan’s name.

  “I’m here, dear.” He took her hand.

  “I feel better.”

  “You are better.”

  “Dan, when must you go?”

  “When you are out of danger.”

  She was silent a moment, then she said: “Light the lamp, Dan. I want to see you.… Now, dear, you told me you had to go back today.”

  He groaned.

  “Dan, you have helped me. And we are married, aren’t we? No secrets. You must let me help you, too.”

  “The major thinks I’m afraid to go over the top.… And the damnable thing is I’m not sure he is wrong.… I’m not sure of myself, Beatrice. I can’t tell for certain until I go.”

  “Then you must go, Dan. I will get better, I promise.… When, Dan?”

  “If I leave now, I can just make the battery in time.”

  “Then hurry! Hurry! … Dear Heart, I am wearing your ring. I love you. I’m not a coward any longer.”

  “Will you promise to have them send me a telegram about you everyday?”

  “I promise.… You aren’t going to be killed, Dan. I know it for sure. I can’t tell you how I know but I do … and I’m not going to die, either. We shall have a long life together, dear. And we’ll make it count for something.… Take my hand and kiss me goodbye on it.”

  Murdo Burnet was waiting for him downstairs “Well, my boy, I suppose you must go now?”

  Dan nodded.

  “I don’t think you need worry about Beatrice.… You know about the attack tomorrow?”

  “Yes, I’m brigade FOO.”

  “I shall be in it, too. I am going up the line today. If you come through and I don’t, remember this from your closest older relation — remember that those who come through the war have their lives loaned to them with a debt to pay. See that you pay it, Dan.… You have turned out better than I thought you would. You parents would be satisfied, I think.”

  “Thanks, sir.… I’ve got to hurry.”

  Dan got back to the battery by lorry. He had had no sleep that night and he would be lucky if he got any tonight. He had a feverish headache, and he realized that he was very tired. “Beatrice will be all right now, thank God!” he told himself over and over.

  At the battery he went to his billet to get a little rest. “I feel rotten,” he thought; “I wonder if I am getting the influenza?” … He decided grimly that nothing on earth would induce him to report sick until after this show. “They’d never believe I wasn’t scrimshanking.”

  On his bed lay the packet of letters which he had not opened thirty-six hours ago. The first of these was a cable from Wellington. He opened it with a sinking heart; a cable probably meant bad news. It was from Joanna.

  Tessa died today in childbirth. Please write to Uncle Daniel. The child may live.

  Dan thought of the time years ago in the drawing room at Ardentinny when he had accidentally overheard Tessa and his uncle. “She wanted a baby,” he thought; “Daniel didn’t. I wonder whether the war had a hand in this.”

  II

  Quentin Thatcher threw his pack beside Dan’s bunk, took off his boots, and lay down hoisting his feet above his stomach and holding them against the plank wall to rest them, as recommended in “Infantry Training.” He began to whistle under his breath, watching Dan, who was packing a haversack (Chaucer, a change of socks, a flask, a shirt, extra food) with quiet, satiric eyes.

  “Are you going over, too, Dan?”

  “I’m brigade forward observing officer.”

  “Truly? Then, perhaps, we shall meet up the line.”

  “Smoke?”

  “No. But I’ll have a drink. Got any?”

  “Enough for about two spots. You may not believe me, but it’s Napoleon brandy.”

  Quentin grinned. “It seems there are things in this life I still cling to. Bring it out and I’ll be thinking of a good toast.”

  Dan rummaged in his Wolseley valise for a bottle. “Why are you so beastly cheerful, Quentin? There’s still a war on, isn’t there?”

  “I shall be finished with it by this hour tomorrow, old man. I’m travelling light this time. I’ve finally chucked overboard a whole packful of useless illusions. I don’t care a damn anymore.”

  “You’re a queer chap, Quentin. I never get to the bottom of you. Thank God I’m not a poet.”

  “Listen, Dan. You know how an expression on a person’s face or, perhaps, a fine view that you come on unexpectedly can make you unreasonably happy for time? I’ve pretty well lost that faculty since France. But today, coming up here, I passed a wheat field ready for harvest. There wasn’t a soul about, not a single human being, thank God; and there was that field rustled by a light breeze under a blue sky, just being beautiful and not giving a damn whether anyone saw it or not.”

  “Yes, but —”

  “That was the beauty of it, Dan — its supreme indifference to us. We might never have been — the whole human race —and yet it would still have gone on being beautiful. I got off my bicycle and lay down full-length among the stalks, smelling the earth smell. And it flashed into my mind that this was the first time in all my life — since childhood, anyway — that I’d seen beauty without wanting in some way to possess it and make it part of me.… But how in hell can I make even you understand what I felt? First thing I knew, an officer was shaking me and swearing at me. ‘What the blankety-blank are you doing there, my man? Are you hurt or simply befuddled?’ I said: ‘Neither, sir, merely bemused.’ Then he got angry and cursed me some more, and I went on my way rejoicing.”

  It irritated Dan that he could find no response to this. Quentin always affected him that way. Something intense and exacting about him that froze up one’s friendliness. When Quentin said, “I have finally thrown away a lot of useless illusions,” Dan felt resentfully that his friend was thrusting, in his ironic way, under Dan’s guard. It was like Quentin to say that! His deepest remarks somehow always carried the suggestion that Dan had failed him as a friend. And besides, no one ought to reveal himself as nakedly as Quentin always wanted to. It wasn’t decent to.

  Dan uncorked the bottle and tilted it, remarking: “It’s a shame to drink stuff like this out of a cheap teacup. I suppose that’s a sort of symbol of the war.… There’s enough for another drink after this.”

  “Then we’ll save that for philosophy, Dan,” said Quentin, lifting his cup. “First the personal sentiments, then philosophy. That’s the right order, though I didn’t find it out till too late.… I drink to your health, Dan. If you come through and I don’t, enjoy life for me, will you, old man?”

  “Here’s to yours, Quentin. And” — Dan stammered slightly, avoiding his friend’s eyes — “one can’t tell what’s going to happen tomorrow … thanks for being my friend. I’d say more if I knew how to. I can’t talk properly about those things.”

  Quentin answered soberly: “We each gave — what we had in
us to give, Dan.… I’ve been a queer, crabbed, disappointing sort of beggar in the human relations, haven’t I? And very exacting; that is what has spoilt things between you and me. Of course, you could always get on with me at times when no one else could. And you could always have got on without me, too.”

  Dan thought: “There’s a hard streak in Quentin. He won’t forgive me for not being what he wants me to be. Well, what he says is true, and I can’t lie to him about it. And I won’t.… Anyway, he would know I was lying.”

  Quentin said reflectively: “Do you know what first made me want you for a friend?”

  “I can hardly remember a time when we weren’t friends. I suppose I have taken it too much for granted.”

  “It was when I realized about Joanna; that you had sickness in your family, as I had in mine, and that you were taking it as I did. I thought in the vague way a boy does: ‘We’re alike. We’ll be friends.’”

  “I knew your mother was an invalid. I never quite ventured to ask you about it.”

  “Do you know about Mary Lamb, the sister of the essayist?”

  “Yes.”

  “My mother was like her.… A thing like that may fix a man’s destiny, I think. It stirs him up and gives him a sense of responsibility — young.”

  “I know.… Hand over your cup, Quentin, there’s another drink for each of us.”

  “Well, this time we’ll drink to the finalities.”

  “Are there any? What are they?”

  “Death, old man. And immortality or the lack of it — that sort of thing.… Do you remember once when we were walking together on the campus in Toronto? We passed two freshmen coming from a philosophy lecture; one of them said to the other, ‘Do you believe in God?’ and the other replied, ‘Hell, no!’”

  “Yes, I remember. You winked at me and said: ‘So that’s settled.’”

  “I know.… Well, do you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “There isn’t any, ‘of course,’ about it.”

  “Yes, I do, then. Do you?”

  “And do you believe that Christ died to save men?”

  “I don’t know. I think I may understand that when I’m wiser.”

  “I might have been loyal to Christ as a person if I had thought of it — soon enough. Then I wouldn’t have been beaten looking for perfection in a mere human being. I know very well that a man has to love someone flesh and blood, not merely an idea like God; if he can’t, he becomes sick in his mind. Trouble is I can only love those whose souls I see. Mostly, I only see their bodies; I only see that they seem to be all body and nothing much else. I suppose Christ, being closer to God and yet a man, too, like us, always saw a man’s soul: what it was and what it might be.”

  “What about a future life, Quentin?”

  “I’m only twenty-two , Dan, but I’m tired. I’ve seen too much and thought too much and struggled too much. I’ve seen a lot of horror — yes, and done it, too.… I can’t forget.… If I took my personality to another life I’d have to take that, too.”

  “Why did you come back to France, Quentin?”

  “Because I lost my drive.”

  “But they didn’t make you?”

  “No. It was what was inside me. The machine in us is too strong. Look at you and me, for instance, killing fellow human beings from a sense of duty, like good dependable reaping machines.”

  “I don’t think that’s quite the way it is, Quentin.”

  “You’re not like me, though, Dan. You were always obstinately normal.”

  “I wasn’t — after I got blown up.”

  “Are you all right now, old man?”

  “Right enough, I hope. Can’t tell for sure until tomorrow.… Nobody is quite the same — do you think? — when he has once looked into himself.”

  “True enough. So you, too, have seen the clockwork inside you.… What is your idea of the Last Judgment, Dan? Mine is that there will be a machine to sort out souls; large sizes in the heaven-basket on the right, small sizes into the hell-basket on the left. No. It’ll be like the army, all smothered in red tape. Your theological credentials will have to be precisely in order; then they’ll send you from one understrapper to the next, as they do when you go to find out something in the War Office, all little men dealing with you by rule of thumb.… What’s your idea of it, Dan? The scales of Osiris to weigh your soul in the balance against truth?”

  Dan thought of Mr. Teti and his mythological hocus-pocus and said, violently: “No! You remember the epitaph to Martin Elginbrod:

  ‘Here lie I, Martin Elginbrod:

  Hae mercy o’ my soul, Lord God;

  As I wad do, were I Lord God,

  And ye were Martin Elginbrod.’”

  “Yes,” said Quentin, frowning at his teacup. “If there were a sort of celestial court martial, it would be interesting to know what has happened there to all those chaps we knew. Jiffy Tripp and Charles Burnet; yes, and the bad hats, too.

  “Mind you, Dan. I’m not afraid of death. Not a bit. Being wiped out — phut .” — Quentin spread his arms in an explosive gesture to indicate a man hit by a shell and disintegrating into nothing — “Being wiped out is the ultimate reality, very likely. Suits me. Only thing I’m afraid of — and hate — is this damned unreality we live in here and now: not knowing what we are, or what we are here for; desiring — and not knowing why we have to; wanting life, more and more life, and getting death; wanting some law behind it all of form and style and beauty, and always bumping up in the end against the God-forgotten machine .” Now Quentin spoke with passion. “Who was it that wrote, ‘I see passing on the wall as it were vague shadows and I am afraid’? Don’t you feel that? Don’t you feel the unreality?”

  “No, all of it is too real, Quentin.”

  Quentin put down his empty cup. “When do you go up the line?”

  “I leave the battery at one.”

  Quentin stood up and worked the straps of his pack over his head. He said to Dan abruptly: “Got to get back to the battalion. Cheeroh, Dan. Perhaps we’ll meet again.”

  Dan put his equipment ready beside his bed and lay down in his clothes for a few hours of sleep. He was over-tired and feverishly wakeful. “If I sleep tonight, I shall dream,” he thought with a sinking heart. From “up in front” came the rumble of a trench mortar strafe. Already columns of infantry were marching past the battery toward the assembly line. It nearly always rained before a British attack, and he could hear the rhythmical slosh-slosh-slosh of feet through the mud. The marching men did not talk or whistle or sing. Dan’s mind, between sleeping and waking, detached itself from the fetters of the five senses and wandered among the potsherds of his soul’s experiences. Fevered fatigue and the troubled premonitions of coming battle seemed to lend the scenes and faces and fragments of forgotten conversations, which raised in his mind a significance that just eluded him.

  He slept.

  To the east the guns swelled suddenly into hysterical volume: merely an episode of the night; some trench raid, perhaps. The threatening sound reverberated through his dreams like the roar of the surf thunder-crashing on wreck-strewn rocks.

  Chapter XVII

  Trafalgar Square. Distorted. Apocalyptic.…

  A tall, granite column with stone lions at its base thrusts upward into twilight. Around it a phantasmal throng seethes, and its clamour is the shocking burthen of primal pain. From the base of the column, the lions smite the evening with peal after brazen peal in murderous rhythm like the crashing of the surf against the wreck-strewn rocks.

  He, who awake, calls himself Daniel Thatcher, looks because he must and goes closer. At his side walks a figure dim but known: Quentin, his cousin and friend.

  The multitude swarms from every quarter; those in the distance move sluggishly, but as they are sucked into the whir
ling centre of commotion, they race faster and faster until at last they seem fairly to fly. Some fling up their arms in a gesture of horror; some appear and disappear in an instant’s flicker with no cry, no gesture; many are in khaki, bearing rifles at the port; some are borne on stretchers; some are blown to bits before his eyes; but all approach and disappear with set faces and urgent eyes that see some inevitable goal to which they speed.

  To be alone in this mortal chaos is to know panic. He is beside Quentin, but his friend does not see him and Daniel Thatcher is bereft of speech. He is being rushed against his will toward some dreadful discovery which he is not ready to make … not ready. Quentin, too, he can tell, is panic struck. Words tumble without coherence from his lips. “These shadows … like shadows on the wall … and I, too —”

  Quentin seizes the arm of one of those drifting past them. The phantasm — shade or man — struggles like a beast and babbles crazily. Let me go. Let me go. Let me go.

  “Where are we going?”

  Let me go! I must go!

  The phantasm tears itself away and Quentin, glancing down in unbelieving horror, sees himself holding a hand and arm. He throws it from him; it goes flying after the body. He and Daniel run faster and faster down a nightmare street until something bursts inside their minds and they stumble and fall flat.… There is a ringing silence.

  They get to their feet in the middle of a street as empty as a rifled tomb.

  A distant rumble, as of gunfire, changes into the music of the spheres. A vast erection of clockwork rises before them and ticks somberly. Planets dance about it in ordered rise and fall. With each revolution of the second hand, the planets complete their orbit; and with each revolution an unseen choir chants a metrical foot.… The ticking stops abruptly, the voices cease in mid-beat , the planets are arrested in their orbits. The clock rusts and, presently, disintegrates into debris; the planets dissolve into space.

  Quentin, buried beneath the wreckage of life’s illusion, struggles to be free. “Still my terror. Fill the fearful vacancy into which I pour my restless, idle acts, my dead habits, and my unworthy desires.… Give me one true friend. Teach me to win, to bind him to me .… I would have loved him, but he would not listen. I would have helped him when he needed me, but he repulsed me. If I should call him now, he would not hear me.… Dan!”