by Robert Edric
‘Are the bodies all identified, then?’
‘Every single one of them.’
‘And Wheeler’s happy to do that – to see the men buried without any further inquiry into how they might have been killed?’ It occurred to Reid that he was voicing these concerns more for Lucas’s sake than for his own.
Lucas held up his palms. ‘Soapy Joe Guthrie agrees with Wheeler that it’s the only sensible – the only honourable – course to take.’
Reid motioned to the bag on the table.
‘All the necessary paperwork,’ Lucas said. ‘You see what a nice neat little package everything has become. Wheeler wants you to prepare and allocate the graves, bury the men, and then sign everything and return it to him.’
Reid pulled the bag towards him. ‘It might just be for the best,’ he said.
‘Of course it might.’ Lucas leaned back in his chair and yawned.
Reid opened the bag and looked briefly at its contents.
‘The youngest was eighteen, the oldest fifty-two,’ Lucas said.
‘And were your suspicions concerning—’
‘Any suspicions I might once have had have all been blown away in Wheeler’s chill and cleansing wind,’ Lucas said. He paused and looked directly at Reid. ‘Just as everyone told me they would be.’ He picked up the cloth and wiped his face again, this time pushing it into his mouth and rubbing his teeth. He drank from his canteen, tipped back his head and gargled, afterwards spitting the water at his feet. ‘We found sixteen clear head wounds,’ he said. ‘Over thirty of the corpses had suffered post-mortem burning. I’m only telling you this because none of it is actually mentioned in the files.’
‘I see,’ Reid said. He pushed the papers back into the bag and closed it.
‘Jessop went to great lengths to make it perfectly clear to me that under no circumstances was I to add any of my own – what was the phrase? Oh, yes – “unwarranted concerns” to the documentation,’ Lucas said.
‘Things like this must happen all the time elsewhere,’ Reid said, immediately wishing he hadn’t.
‘I’m sure they do,’ Lucas said.
‘Meaning?’
‘Meaning they happen elsewhere, and not under my supervision,’ Lucas said.
‘I’m sorry,’ Reid said. ‘Perhaps Wheeler himself is being put under pressure.’
Lucas refused to respond to this, merely shaking his head.
In Lucas’s eyes, Reid knew, he was as complicit as any of them in Wheeler’s scheme to retrieve and then bury the desecrated bodies.
‘Jessop said he’d come to you personally when everything was done,’ Lucas said.
‘To make sure the men—’
‘To make sure your signature was everywhere it needed to be. Just as mine already is.’
‘Right,’ Reid said. He wondered how he might now change the subject.
‘Besides,’ Lucas went on, ‘Wheeler’s reasoning is probably right – what are these forty-two compared to all the hundreds of thousands of men who have vanished completely? At least this lot have finally been retrieved and identified and will be laid to rest. What of those hundreds of thousands of other ghosts left to wander endlessly out there, shouting to be found?’
It was an uncharacteristically melodramatic thing for Lucas to say, and Reid hesitated before speaking.
‘At least we know the names of all the men,’ he said. ‘They’ll all get their monuments somewhere, eventually.’
‘Of course they will,’ Lucas said. ‘And thus – just as Wheeler decrees it – will everyone be safely gathered up and delivered back into the fold.’
‘That was always the plan,’ Reid said, aware that everything he now said was a further disappointment to Lucas.
They were distracted briefly by an engine moving slowly along the track beyond the doorway. Both men turned to look, but neither of them recognized the driver or guard. There were no carriages attached, and the engine seemed to be about to come to a halt with each slow turn of its wheels. But it continued moving and passed from their view.
The small trains passed through Morlancourt several times each day, and occasionally Benoît said even he had no true idea of where they had come from or where they were going, let alone their purpose. To Reid, because they exhibited no urgency, and because they carried neither cargo nor passengers, they always seemed somehow lost, wandering aimlessly, a kind of dying momentum made manifest in all those tons of grinding and wheezing machinery, and driven and directed by men who were themselves becoming ghosts of their own former vigorous and purposeful selves.
When they could no longer hear the engine, Reid said, ‘When will they come, the bodies?’
Lucas shrugged. ‘Soon, I imagine. Tomorrow, the day after.’ He continued watching the world outside the shed. ‘Someone said they were testing the rebuilt line towards Bonnay,’ he said absently. ‘Perhaps they’re settling the beds.’
‘Will you be staying here tonight?’ Reid asked him.
‘In Morlancourt? I hope so.’ Lucas hesitated a moment and then searched his pockets, finally pulling out an envelope. ‘This arrived yesterday. My wife’s unwell.’
‘Oh?’ Reid remembered the conversation he’d had with Lucas at Amiens station and wondered what to say.
‘Her mother sent it. She’s gone to stay with Elizabeth.’
‘Is it serious?’ Reid said.
‘I don’t know. There’s a suggestion it might be scarlet fever. Apparently, there have been other cases locally. Any excuse and the woman would have moved in. It was posted eight days ago. There’s been nothing since.’
‘Surely that’s a good sign,’ Reid said. ‘Perhaps she’s already recovered.’ He was grateful, finally, for the chance to turn in this new direction.
‘I’ve written back asking for more details. I wonder, do we still have censors?’
‘I don’t know,’ Reid said. It was three months since he’d last written to anyone at home.
Lucas rose from where he sat and gathered up his few belongings. Reid picked up the bag of documents, and the two men walked from the cool and dim interior of the building out into the warmth and light of the early-evening sun, which was already falling towards the far horizon, and which cast their shadows across the platform and on to the tracks.
Fifty yards up the line, the small engine sat motionless, exhaling thin plumes of steam and smoke, and dripping water, looking more than ever like the lost and exhausted creature it had become.
17
THE NEXT DAY, Reid was working at the cemetery when one of his workers came to him and indicated the car sitting at the entrance. A solitary man in uniform had already climbed out and now waited by the road.
‘Can’t he come to me?’ Reid said, unwilling to leave his work; he was running behind schedule and expecting the bodies from Prezière at any time.
‘He told me to fetch you,’ the man said. ‘Said it was important that he saw you alone.’
Reid gave instructions to the men he was with and then walked to the entrance.
As he approached, he finally recognized Roger Jessop, and the man’s unexpected presence there made him wary.
Upon his arrival at the car, Jessop held out his hand, and this too kept Reid on his guard. Jessop then suggested they walk a few paces away from the nearby men.
‘It looks good work,’ he said, waving at the cemetery without really looking at it. ‘Good progress. Edmund is forever singing your praises. Everything taking shape, and all that.’ It was the first time either Jessop or Wheeler had been to Morlancourt in the past two months.
‘So have you come to make an assessment for him?’ Reid said. ‘Concerning the bodies from Prezière?’ He wanted Jessop to get to the point and then to leave.
‘Prezière? Oh, Good Lord, no, nothing like that. They’ll come in three days’ time, by all accounts.’ He spoke as though Reid had already been told this, or as though the information were of no consequence to him. Or perhaps the seemingly casual remark was a del
iberate attempt to play down everything that would now soon enough be concluded. ‘No, no, Edmund’s taking good care of that particular …’ He left the remark unfinished and concentrated on fastening a button which had come undone on his tunic.
‘So what is it?’ Reid prompted him.
‘In fact, I daresay he would have been here himself – Edmund, that is – if he wasn’t so damn busy. “Desk-bound”, he calls it. Tethered to his pieces of paper and his meetings.’ He spoke as though Reid had said nothing. He looked at his watch. ‘In fact, at this very moment, he’s at another of his interminable conferences. In Doullens with someone from the Chamber of Deputies to go over the Perpetuity of Sepulchre question. Sepulchre? Sepulture? I can never remember. Big gathering, pow-wow. It’s still a cause for some concern, apparently.’
To Reid, it had always seemed too grand – too weighted – a term for what was essentially an arrangement about the long-term cost and maintenance of all the British cemeteries on foreign soil.
‘The Quatre Fils,’ Jessop said. ‘The meeting. The name of the restaurant. It’s a different world. Hardly a brick out of place. The Quatre Fils d’Ayman. A different world entirely.’
Reid had visited the place only once, soon after his arrival. The restaurant was reputedly the grandest in Doullens, and largely used now by the wealthier visitors touring the battlefields, Americans mostly.
Motioning to the lane he had just driven along, Jessop said, ‘I wonder if we might walk.’
‘Because of the reason for your visit?’ Reid said, finally losing patience with the man.
Jessop cast him a hostile glance. ‘If you want to put it like that, yes.’ He smiled and nodded to a group of nearby men.
Put it like what? Reid wanted to shout, Just get on with it. The man was as adept as Wheeler at orchestrating these unnecessary and unsettling dramas.
Eventually, Jessop walked away from the entrance until he came to the shade of the trees which overhung the narrow space. He stopped and leaned against one of the smooth, pale trunks. Reid joined him and leaned against the bank there.
‘You’ve finally got the man coming from Neuville,’ Jessop said, his voice low. ‘A few days’ time, perhaps. He was flagged up to us by the depot at Péronne.’
‘You mean his body?’ Reid said, remembering. The old clearing-station cemetery at Neuville was being dismantled and its corpses distributed elsewhere.
Jessop took off his cap and wiped his brow. ‘The executed chap,’ he said. ‘Name of Etherington. 1915. Sad affair. Eleventh Royal Warwicks. Edmund just wanted to let you know in advance. You know … in case … well, I’m sure you understand. He said you’d appreciate the gesture – forewarned, and all that. You’ve already taken delivery of some of the same mob, I believe.’
Taken delivery.
‘Eighteen,’ Reid said.
‘Sorry?’
‘Royal Warwickshires. We’ve already buried eighteen of them.’
‘Laid to Rest. Good. Then perhaps the poor chap’s in the right place, after all. God rest his soul. In accordance with the new directives, Colonel Wheeler wants him put in with the others, everything kept … Well, you know better than most, I daresay, how feelings run where these things are concerned.’
Not really, Reid thought, but said nothing.
‘There are still plots available in the same row,’ he said eventually, looking back over the cemetery and trying to remember exactly where the Warwickshires were buried amid the spreading lines.
‘Good, excellent,’ Jessop said. ‘Fact is, Edmund asked me to be quite specific on the point. He’d much prefer—’
‘If the man was buried at the centre of his companions?’
‘Spot on,’ Jessop said. ‘Spot on. Shove him in among the honourable dead, and all that. Keep everything … well …’
Hidden away? ‘It’s where he deserves to be,’ Reid said.
‘Of course it is, of course,’ Jessop said. ‘Edmund’s sentiments precisely. Good man, good man.’
A few months ago, there had been a short-lived labour strike at the Cerisy-Gailly cemetery when four executed men had been sent for burial among their own battalions.
‘We’ll exhume one of the others and lay him at the end,’ Reid said, quickly calculating the time and labour necessary for the work.
‘Good show,’ Jessop said, clearly relieved that this part of his errand was done. ‘Edmund said you were a safe pair of hands, that he could rely on you.’
To do what I am told, Reid thought, but again said nothing either to make Jessop suspicious or to delay his departure. Everything that had passed between them, he knew, would now find its way back to Wheeler.
‘I suppose these chaps will be turning up all over the place,’ Jessop said. ‘In fact, it’s a wonder no one—’
‘What was the charge against the man?’ Reid said.
Surprised at being interrupted like this, Jessop said nothing for a moment. ‘Etherington? I’m not entirely certain. Desertion, I should imagine, same as most of them. Though 1915 – cowardice, perhaps. I haven’t actually seen the paperwork myself. Edmund’s your man for that. Though I daresay it hardly matters, not after all this time.’
‘It will matter to those who knew him and who might one day come to see his grave,’ Reid said.
‘Quite. Of course. You’re perfectly right. And that’s why we must all endeavour to do our best for the poor chap. In fact, just the other day we were discussing the likely numbers where visitors were concerned. Here, everywhere.’
‘Did you come to any conclusions?’ Reid said.
‘Not really. Hard to predict a thing like that. It’s Edmund’s belief that most of the families – lower ranks, Kitchener’s boys, that is – won’t have travelled very far from where they were born. Hard to see how they’d manage to get all this way. I suppose to most of them, all of this will seem like—’
‘A foreign country?’
‘Quite, quite. Parliament is already talking about setting up funds to assist the most needy. I daresay people might come once, but after that, only the better able and better travelled will continue to visit.’
‘Then let’s hope Parliament comes to the right decision,’ Reid said.
‘Quite,’ Jessop said again, the word like a palm held to Reid’s chest. ‘Besides, there are also all the Dominion chaps to consider. Imagine the problems those particular families will encounter.’
‘Do we know where Etherington was from?’
‘No idea. Like I said, Edmund’s your man for the paperwork. Royal Warwick? Could have been anywhere. I think perhaps the Black Country somewhere. Probably another of those boys only too glad to turn his back on the factory floor, eh?’
‘Probably,’ Reid said. He looked along the curving line of the lane, through its pattern of alternating bright sunlight and deep shade where the trees still stood. In parts, it was like looking along a tunnel.
‘So I can inform Edmund that you’re fully apprised and likewise prepared?’ Jessop said.
‘Of course,’ Reid said, sensing that the man was at last ready to leave.
‘And all this Prezière business,’ Jessop finally said, glancing away as he spoke.
‘The graves are ready and waiting.’
‘And Lieutenant Lucas …’
‘Gave me most of the paperwork yesterday,’ Reid said.
‘Good, good, excellent.’
‘So you can inform Colonel Wheeler – Edmund – that both Lieutenant Lucas and I have followed his instructions to the letter.’
‘I merely intended to ascertain—’
Reid laughed at the words and Jessop fell silent.
Then Reid turned away and walked back to the cemetery entrance.
Jessop walked quickly to catch up with him, determined, Reid supposed, to have the final word.
‘As a fellow officer,’ Jessop said to Reid’s back, ‘I shall not, of course, repeat any of what—’
‘Do whatever you please,’ Reid said, unwilling to t
urn and face the man again.
‘Good, right,’ Jessop said. ‘Then perhaps Chaplain Guthrie might get better sense out of you when—’
‘Guthrie? What’s any of it got to do with him?’
Jessop smiled at the remark and all it revealed. ‘Perhaps if you’d allowed me to finish speaking.’ He caught his breath. ‘Colonel Wheeler thought it only right and fitting that someone – in this instance, Jonathan Guthrie – say a few words at the interment.’
‘And Guthrie, naturally, jumped at the chance.’
‘I would prefer to say that the chaplain acceded gracefully to Edmund’s suggestion. But yes, he will attend and officiate at the burial. Or if not at the actual burial itself – you know how keen the Commission is to keep all these things until the proper time – then at least at the man’s delivery to you, at the final part of his journey.’
‘His journey?’
‘Here, to you, to the cemetery,’ Jessop said. He swatted the flies from his face. ‘Damn things,’ he said.
‘You get used to them,’ Reid said.
‘You might.’
The two men arrived back at the cemetery entrance, where a solitary block of stone marked the beginning of its proposed gate.
Jessop put on his cap, straightened it, ran a finger along the curve of its brim and then turned and walked back to his car.
Reid walked more slowly to join him.
‘I shall need one of your chaps to crank the engine,’ Jessop said. He climbed into the driving seat and sat rigidly with his hands on the steering wheel.
Reid went to the engine and turned its handle.
‘Not you, for God’s sake,’ Jessop shouted to him. ‘I meant for one of your diggers to come.’
The engine spluttered and fell silent.
It started at the third attempt and Reid stepped away from the car as the fumes from its exhaust drifted towards him.
Jessop waited a full minute before letting out the brake and slowly steering the car forward. He called to Reid, but Reid could not hear him above the noise of the engine, and instead of replying to whatever Jessop had shouted, he held out his arm and pointed to the left, in the direction of the Albert road. Jessop acknowledged this and carried on driving.
