The Glorious Dead

by Tim Atkinson

‘Aye, it’s certainly been a while. Well, lads,’ Jack raises his hands. ‘It’s been grand, but I’ll not keep you two any longer. I know how busy you’ve been. Why, so busy you couldn’t even spare a couple o’ years abroad, fighting for the King.’

  ‘We all know why you left in such a hurry, Patterson.’

  ‘Yeah, now fuck off out of it again,’ says the man with the gun.

  ‘An’ don’t fucking well come back.’

  Next morning, before dawn, Jack sets off on foot for York. His travel warrant has just three more days to run. Twenty-four hours later he is on the London train.

  Dear Anna.

  The station café at King’s Cross is almost empty. Jack sits at a grubby table with his back to the counter, covering the words with his arm as he writes. He moves the ashtray to the windowsill. His mug of tea sits next to a single sheet of paper.

  I was discharged from the army on the 3rd of September. It nearly didn’t happen after the mix-up over the grave you came to Belgium hoping to find. My grave, that is.

  Jack takes the fag from the ashtray, puts it to his lips and inhales deeply, blue-grey smoke suspended in thin, swirling layers above his head.

  Funny, up to then I’d have been quite happy to be someone safely six feet under. There’s plenty better than me out there that is! There was such a lot of trouble in the village after you was born. I reckon I had almost as many enemies in Edgham as I did in Belgium. It seemed easier not to bother putting the record straight. The Battalion lost so many wickets on day one of the Somme that there was next to nobody left alive who knew who I was. It seemed like a stroke of luck, being ‘killed’ like that and coming back as someone else.

  Jack lifts the mug and holds it midway between the table and his mouth as he goes over what he’s written. Satisfied, he drains the tea. Picking up his pencil, he goes on.

  I should’ve known that I could never pull it off, should’ve known that one day someone would come looking. Only I never dreamt that someone would be you. I had it all planned, in me head. New life, new country, marry a local girl. Even learning bits and bobs of the language, I was. I had it all mapped out. After all, there was nowt for me to come home to. They wouldn’t let me near you when you was born and now, well – as Lady of the Manor it’s better that the secret stays that way, if you ask me.

  Anyhow, the army sent me back to Ripon, so naturally I tried to see you. There was such a lot I should have told you when we met. I know it was a shock. It was a shock for me, too. I realise now why Lady Agnes sent you. I think you knew that, too. I reckon she knew that I was the only one who could tell you what you had a right to know.

  Jack looks through the steamed-up window. A train grunts then screeches like a greased pig as the brakes of the huge black locomotive bring it to a jarring halt just a few feet from the buffers. Doors open. Instantly the previously empty platform is alive with people. Hundreds of identical shapes step down from carriages, a few hurrying down the platform to be the first to hail a cab, others checking their luggage and summoning porters while the younger, fitter travellers run into the open arms of waiting lovers. A group of women gathers at the platform gates, straightening hats and replacing pins. A man comes up, speaks to them and ticks off their names on a list. They follow him out of the station, onto the concourse. The women all wear black.

  Your mam – your real mam, that is – was a grand girl. She weren’t much more than eighteen – your age now. And I was about a year younger than her, I reckon. Both of us was employed on the estate. Me, I were a poacher turned gamekeeper – well, ’keeper’s apprentice – and your mother, she was Lady Agnes’ favourite. A proper surrogate daughter to her, she was. Even called her ‘Auntie’. Lady Agnes insisted!

  That’s what probably made it harder, when Lily found out she were expecting. There was a bit of trouble. You can probably imagine. I lost me position. Lily was to be kept on during her confinement but then … ? Nobody knew what was going to happen. So your mam did a flit. She upped and left in the middle of winter. Half the estate was out searching for her. But they didn’t find her. Not before I did. And not until you was born. But the strain had been too much. She died, while I held you in my arms.

  I hope they don’t speak badly of her. She would have been so proud of you. It weren’t her fault she got into trouble. And it was kind of Lady Agnes to take you in and to bring you up as her own. They always used to say she longed for a daughter. Well, she got one didn’t she? And the most beautiful, adorable, wonderful daughter any one could ever wish for, I reckon. I know I’m biased, but …

  Outside the café window, the station is deserted. Black gates close off the ends of platforms. Carriages stand empty, their locomotives up the line taking on coal and water.

  I’m going to see if I can get a job back in Flanders. There’s nothing for me here. I’ve tried, believe me I’ve tried. There’s nowhere to live, no job, and no family. Well, apart from you, that is. If I’m allowed to call you ‘family’ of course. I’m hoping I might be able to pick up things again with Mademoiselle Steenvan – Katia. Do you remember her? I might get some work with the War Graves Commission. There’s still plenty needs doing out there. But I won’t be far away. You found me once and it’ll not take as much effort next time. If there is a next time. I hope there will be a next time, once you’ve settled down, once it all makes sense to you, once you understand what happened, why I did what I did. You’re the spitting image of your mam, you know – your real mam. But you wouldn’t know that, would you?

  Jack puts down the pencil, reads what he has written, makes a few corrections, orders another mug of tea and lifts the ashtray from the windowsill and places it back on the table. He squints at the station clock through the smoke of his cigarette. The café, he reckons, will be closing shortly. He wonders if it’s still raining outside.

  Anyhow, I’d better sign off now. Please don’t think of this as my interfering. You’ve had a lot to come to terms with and I know it’ll take time to get things straight, in your head. I’m not going to ask you for anything. I just want you to know that I’m here if you want me. I’ll always be here. And I want to tell you that I’m sorry.

  Yours,

  Yours? Jack chews the pencil. Yours … He puts the pencil down, picks up the smouldering Woodbine, drags, balances the stub on the ashtray and picks up his pencil again. He crosses out the ‘s’ of ‘yours’, changing it quickly to,

  Your ever-loving,

  Pa.

  34

  ‘So you’ve been working at the cemeteries already?’ the man is asking. ‘In one of the Labour Companies?’

  ‘Aye,’ Jack says, fiddling with his cap. His ribs ache after another night sleeping on a hard, damp bench in the park. His greatcoat is so badly stained from sleeping rough that only the arrival of the chairman of the interview panel prevented the top-hatted doorman at the entrance to the Cavendish Hotel in Jermyn Street from turning him away.

  ‘We was attached to them, sir. When t’war was over and they was trying to find some bits and bobs for us to do. I weren’t able to bear arms after the Armistice, sir, so I weren’t eligible for other duties – army of occupation, prisoner escort, peace conference …’

  ‘Why was that, Corporal?’

  ‘I was downgraded, sir. After being gassed.’

  ‘But you could still dig?’

  ‘Dig like the very devil, so I hear,’ one of the other panel members interrupts. ‘Drive too, I see.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ Jack sits a little higher in the chair. The three men behind the wooden desk look down at their papers, look at one another, then look back at him.

  ‘You say …’ The chairman picks up a small piece of paper. ‘You say here’ – he pushes a pair of spectacles further up his nose and reads the short note to himself – ‘it says here in your application that you will only accept a position in or around Ypres. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes, sir. That’s right, sir.’ Jack runs the rim of his tattered cap through his fingers
, wheeling it backwards and forwards, over and over, round and round, again and again.

  The man tosses the scrap of paper down, raises his eyebrows and lets out a sigh. The bald man on his left shakes his head.

  ‘We cannot possibly guarantee a man a specific placement,’ the red-faced man on the right says. ‘It’s out of the question, simply out of the question.’

  ‘If we offered you a position,’ the chairman of the panel goes on, ‘you would I’m afraid have to be prepared to work wherever the Commission were to send you.’

  ‘Yes – wherever there is work to be done,’ says the other man.

  Jack looks at each of the three of them in turn, unsure whether they expect him to respond or not.

  ‘Do you wish to proceed with your application on that basis?’ the chairman asks.

  Jack isn’t sure what to say. He opens his mouth for a moment, then closes it again, shaking his head and looking down at the floor.

  ‘We’re wasting our time here,’ the red-faced man mutters. ‘There are plenty more men to see.’

  The chairman holds up a hand, looking down again at the papers in front of him, searching for something.

  ‘Why Ypres?’ he looks up, suddenly. ‘Why Ypres, in particular?’

  ‘Almost everybody served in the Salient, sir,’ Jack says. ‘It’s the place I know best.’

  ‘You’ve served in other sectors, too,’ the red-faced man says.

  ‘“Served on the Somme”, it says here. Conducted searches and salvage operations around Loos too, I see,’ the bald man adds.

  ‘Aye, sir, that’s right, sir,’ says Jack.

  ‘Well then, Corporal, I think under the circumstances that’s about all there is to say on the matter. If we find we are in a position to offer you employment then you must understand that you will have to decide for yourself whether you are able to accept. But if you do choose to accept it will be whatever position we offer you, in whatever location we choose. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘In a position, sir?’ Jack shakes his head. ‘In a position to offer me employment? Pardon me, sir, but you’re hardly flooded out wi’ applications, are you?’

  ‘Thank you, Corporal, that will be all.’

  ‘No sir, but that won’t be all. I’ve been out there for six years – three years fighting and nigh on three years digging. And I want to go back. I don’t want to stay here. I have a job to do and I want to see it through.’

  ‘Corporal?’

  Jack is now pulling his cap through his hands like rope, the heat from the friction burning through even his thick calluses. He gets to his feet.

  ‘There’s things I have to do, sir. It has to be there. It has to be Wipers.’

  The red-faced man leans across and points to something on the application form. The man in the middle looks more closely.

  ‘Sit down, soldier,’ the other man says.

  ‘It says here …’ The chairman pushes the spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose. ‘It says here that you were … you are. Hang on, yes – 22198 Lance-Corporal Patterson, J …. yes, here it is …’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ asks the bald-headed man.

  Jack sighs. ‘There was a mix-up, sir.’

  ‘What kind of mix-up?’

  ‘I, er … Mistaken identity, sir. I was listed as missing. Missing, presumed killed, sir.’

  ‘But you are clearly neither.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So why wasn’t the record altered?’

  ‘Well, sir,’ Jack sighs. ‘I, er … I didn’t … I don’t rightly know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ The red-faced man splutters theatrically.

  ‘Not really, sir. No. Seemed best not to, er … cause any trouble. Kick up a fuss.’

  ‘Man’s as good as a deserter,’ the red-faced man is saying. Jack hears the words ‘court martial’ muttered darkly from across the table.

  ‘So how—’

  ‘Well, sir, it turns out I were dead an’ buried and lying in the very cemetery whose graves I’d just been digging.’

  ‘Vlamertinghe?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘But the grave was someone else’s?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’ A horse whinnies as a hansom passes on the street outside. The ruddy-faced man throws down his pen, but the chairman of the panel smiles and passes him a piece of paper, pointing at something with his finger.

  ‘You were highly decorated, Jack. In your former incarnation, that is.’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘Can’t be many men on the exhumation teams entitled to wear a VC ribbon.’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘But yours of course, your medals … well. You can hardly wear them if you’re dead, I suppose?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Rescuing a fallen comrade under heavy fire,’ the man reads, ‘returning time and again in the face of hostile action …’

  ‘You’re a brave man, Patterson.’

  ‘I weren’t brave, sir. Not really. Just glad to take t’risk I suppose. Didn’t care much about coming home, if I’m honest. If you can call this country home.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean, soldier?’

  ‘Well, I er …’ Jack stammers. The man on the right glares at him above bristling whiskers, face ruddied by brandy downed in the safety of the Officers’ Mess rather than days and nights in all weathers in the trenches with a tot of rum, Jack thinks. Or still less, sleeping under the stars for a couple of months in the centre of London.

  ‘I’ll tell thee what that means, sir.’ Jack is suddenly on his feet again. ‘It means I fought for this country for nigh on three years, stayed on burying them that fought but didn’t make it for another three – spent getting on for six years in France and Belgium, sir, I did.’

  ‘Get to the point, man.’

  ‘The point is, sir, that I come back six years later and to what? To fellas wi’ one arm missing selling trinkets on street corners from a tray slung around their necks. To fellas – aye, sir, an’ not just fellas like me, neither – fellas like you, officers, too – sleeping on t’benches in Hyde Park because they can’t afford no better. D’you want to know where I slept last night, sir? Do you?’

  ‘Hyde Park?’ the man sighs.

  ‘St James’s Park, actually. Tha gets a better class o’ vagrant there, what wi’ it being so close to royalty. I had a major sharing t’bench wi’ me. Aye! An’ an MC he were, an’ all.’

  ‘That’s … that’s outrageous,’ the red-faced man splutters.

  ‘True, though,’ the chairman answers. ‘Sadly, only too true.’

  ‘Land fit for heroes?’ Jack says. ‘Well, sir, let me tell thee something. There are no heroes here no more. And this country in’t worthy of ’em anyway.’

  ‘But …’

  ‘No!’ Angry tears begin to prickle at the corners of his eyes. ‘I buried ’em.’ He jabs a finger at his chest. ‘They’re all six feet under in fuckin’ Flanders wi’ flowers growing out o’ their faces.’

  ‘Now, look here—’

  ‘Land fit for heroes?’ Jack trembles. ‘I know all about a land fit for heroes.’ He shakes his head. ‘Land fit for heroes? I’ll tell you what a land fit for heroes is … it’s …’

  ‘Steady on, old man.’

  ‘It’s a fuckin’ graveyard!’

  35

  Six months after Jack’s departure, and growing visibly – her belly swelling almost daily – the time has come for Katia, too, to leave and to go on a journey of her own. During the war such things seemed not to matter, or at least not matter quite as much. People understood, or if they didn’t understand they didn’t have the time or energy or opportunity to judge. Now, in peacetime, things are different. Life is slowly returning to normal. A new life is growing. And people are noticing. They see that Katia can no longer manage to change the barrels or lift the heaviest crates; they know why she is getting tired more often; why she cries more easily.

  The estaminet in Poperinghe is n
ow deserted. In Ieper, meanwhile, the cobbles of the Grote Markt have been relaid. The walls of the Cloth Hall are rising from the rubble. And the British Tavern is a family hotel again, run by a father and his daughter, with hot running water and with central heating.

  The broken stone of St Martin’s Cathedral has been cleared, and plans are in hand to raise the mighty nave roof once again, for it to swell and billow like the great ship of Christian souls that it has been for over seven centuries. Her own ship, her soul, is bound for a more distant port. In St Omer, almost nine months after Jack’s departure, Katia gives birth to a baby girl, a daughter, who will in time grow up to be the very image of her father. For a few precious hours Katia stares, astonished, at the girl’s blue eyes. Then the nuns return. The girl is taken. And a few days later Katia’s bags are packed and she returns to Ieper.

  It is only then, as the bus is pulling out of the French town, that she catches sight of him, or what she thinks is him, with six other men lining up beside an ex-Army transport wagon and being spoken to by someone in a dark suit and stiff wing collar.

  ‘Jacques!’ She bangs on the window of the bus, then suddenly notices everyone else on the bus has stopped talking. Women are turning and staring; men are peering over the tops of newspapers. Somebody at the back of the bus is tut-tutting. Katia rubs her head and curses quietly, hoping to fool them into thinking that she’s been thrown against the glass as the vehicle bumps along the cobbled road. She tries desperately to look back, but by now they have turned a corner. Staring straight ahead, she thinks of nothing else until she arrives back that afternoon in Ieper.

  The wagon lurches, coming to a halt at the south-west corner of the Grosse Markt at the end of Rijsel Straat. Jack jumps out, slings the huge haversack across his shoulders and walks round to the cab.

  ‘OK,’ the driver says, ‘straight up along, er …’