Heart of War (42 page)

‘Put your arm round me, John, quick!' Alice cried. ‘Pretend we were dancing!'

She saw David Cowell take position back to back with her brother and experienced a warm glow of pride. He would fight to protect John.

Naomi pushed to them through the mob, gasping, ‘Daddy! What on earth are …?'

‘I came with the pacifists,' he said quietly.

‘You didn't tell me!'

‘I didn't want to trouble you. Or have an argument, which would upset all of us. My mind was made up.'

‘But Daddy … how can you, when the men are dying by thousands in France to win the war?' The poor girl was in tears, Alice saw, her voice trembling.

‘That is exactly why I must,' John said. ‘Your mother does not agree with me. We are really each doing what we think right, for Boy's sake.'

‘But Boy would …'

She broke off. Lance Corporal Seddon had pushed her way into the crowd of men kicking Bert Gorse, and now barked, ‘That's enough now! Stand back! … You, stand back! Do you want to be charged with murder?' The police constable's burly figure loomed close as he strode forward, and the men obeyed. Bert lay on the floor, writhing in agony, his face a ghastly green-grey, his nose dripping blood, blood staining his mouth, his lips bloodied. He pulled himself to a kneeling position and began to retch.

Rachel, beside him, croaked, ‘Savages! Bloody, murdering savages!' She caught Naomi's eye and stared, not recognizing her through her own bruised and bloody eyes. Then she whispered, ‘See, this is what your class lives by!'

Naomi put out a hand – ‘Rachel …' She wanted to say, let me help; let's talk about it later; you've really asked for trouble, coming here, but …

Rachel turned her back. Lance Corporal Seddon said, ‘You have some strange friends … Don't move him yet … let him lie down.'

Gradually the crowd dispersed. Rachel said to Lance Corporal Seddon, ‘You saved his life.'

‘Unfortunately,' Miss Seddon said coldly, and walked away.

Cate thought, Poland … one knows of it as a nation, a country; one knows roughly where it was; one knows of Poles and reads about Poles: Paderewski was a Pole, so were Pachmann, Pilsudski, Conrad, whose real name was Korzeniowski; Chopin had been … but when did Poland last actually exist? There had been three dismemberments at
the end of the 18th century; after the last of which Poland ceased to exist as an independent country. Then the Congress of Vienna had re-created it – Congress-Poland – with its own constitution but really united to Russia. But soon Russia and Austria and Bismarck's Germany had once more swallowed it piecemeal. This latest move of Germany's was obviously aimed at turning Polish resentment and latent patriotism into fervour for Germany, and as a consequence, increased antagonism to Russia, which had made no such declaration in favour of re-establishing a sovereign Poland; though what sort of ‘sovereignty' Poland would actually receive, if Germany won the war, was a big and unanswered question.

The real interest of the article lay in the last sentence. Herr Harden's whole article had not been translated and reprinted, so one could only guess at its full content; but if an influential German was publicly demanding that Germany initiate a move toward peace … well, who knew what might come of it?

Garrod came in and refilled his cup. ‘Thank you, Garrod,' he said. She returned to the sideboard with the coffee pot. Watching her, he said, ‘You have a sister in Eastbourne, don't you?'

‘Oh yes, sir,' Garrod said, turning, ‘ten years older than me, she is. Widowed five years ago.'

‘I remember. You went to the husband's funeral … Would you like to spend Christmas with her this year? It'd be a change … a rest.'

Garrod looked shocked – ‘Why, sir, my place is here for Christmas, with Miss Stella and her husband coming, and Mr Laurence home.'

‘He'll be at the barracks in Hedlington,' Cate said. ‘Most officers have to spend Christmas with the men … What about inviting your sister to have Christmas here with us, then?'

Garrod said, ‘Why … why, thank you, sir. That would be very nice. I'll have another bed put in my room.' Cate thought a tear was forming in Garrod's eyes, and wondered if he was seeing straight; Garrod never cried or became emotional. She continued – ‘It'll cheer her up a bit, sir. Her eldest son was killed last week. The last day of the Battle of the Somme, the papers said. Thirty-eight he was – been a carpenter all his life, until this war came. Left four children, sir, but I'm sure he died happy. He was doing his duty.'

The rain fell steadily on the British trenches, on the German trenches, on No Man's Land, and on all the men, living, wounded, and dead, in them. The earth was torn and misshapen, hills and vales alike scarred, gouged, blackened by four months of shell fire. The south-west wind blew the stench of putrefying bodies toward the Germans, and their sentries often wore gas masks after the sun (if there was sun) had been shining for two or three hours, causing a visible miasma of decay to rise and hover, like a poisonous gas, over what had once been the lovely curves of the downlands by the Somme. The battle of the Somme had been officially declared over on November 1st, four months to the day after it began. The British line had advanced a mile, in places.

In a front line British trench opposite Thiepval, under two groundsheets tied together and fastened on one side to the parados, and on the other to sticks stuck into the soggy floor of the trench, a large ration box, upended, had been covered with an oilcloth, once white, marked out in squares; four bore the devices of club, diamond, heart and spade: one a crown, one an anchor; and the seventh was bare, but on it stood a tiny table with bead legs, and on the table a box big enough to hold, and shake, five dice. Round the box six soldiers of the 1st Battalion, the Weald Light Infantry, wearing steel helmets, slung rifles, and groundsheet capes, stood or sat on other boxes, playing Crown & Anchor.

Private Lucas shook the dice in the box, chanting in a low voice, ‘Lay it down, me lucky lads … You come on bikes, you go away in Rolls Royce motor cars … Jessop, are you sure you can afford one 'ole tanner? … The Old Firm, the Best Firm, all the way from the Scrubs! Lay it down, Ikey Mo … the old Mudhook's badly backed … Any more for any more?'

In a single movement he dived off the ammunition box into the stained chalk of the trench floor. A moment later the others followed as the rumble of a heavy shell became apparent to them, too. As they grovelled the shell burst, five yards behind the parados.

The shelter was in ruins, the ‘table' overturned, the oilcloth and dice box in the mud. The soldiers began to pick up the pieces and set them all in order once more.

‘Just six more hours,' Bob Jevons said. His voice was trembling and his hand shook as he set up the little dice table.

‘That bugger came too fucking close,' Private ‘Ikey Mo' Leavey said. He blinked and licked his lips continuously.

The youngest of the six, Private Cyril Jessop, who'd given a false age to enlist earlier in the year, said, ‘None of them fuckers is going to get me till I've had my greens.'

‘Don't worry, we'll fix it,' Stan Quick said. ‘Pity Harry England caught a packet, he could smell a willing cunt a mile away.'

Private Brace frowned. He'd only been in France a month, and his mind was still attuned to the ponderous decencies of Laburnum Lodge, where he used to be houseman for Mr and Mrs Harry Rowland.

They knelt again. Quick said, ‘Can't understand why you haven't had a piece of skirt already, Cyril. You must be seventeen.'

Lucas began his chant again, ‘Lay it down, me lucky lads, the more you put down the more you pick up …' Jevons stiffened. Five shells rumbled over, to burst a hundred yards to the left and a quarter of a mile back, somewhere on the reserve trench area … ‘The old firm, the firm you can trust, all the way from Pentonville … Any more for any more? Lay it down me lucky lads lay it down, thick and heavy … Right, up she comes … Two jam-tarts, the Mudhook, Kinkie, and the Curse … Double on the Tarts … Lay 'em down, pick 'em up – see Jessop, you always win with the old firm …'

The sentry behind them muttered, ‘Officer coming!'

‘Who is it?'

‘Mr Jonson.'

‘He'll pretend not to see. Rare good young officer.'

2nd Lieutenant Benjamin Jonson passed. He pretended not to see the Crown & Anchor game, the soldiers pretended
not to see him, decorum was observed. The game continued.

‘Lay it down me lucky lads lay it down, look, there's nothing on Kinkie …'

‘… all I want is some cabbages, eggs, bread, a chicken … anything fresh.'

‘Up she comes … Two of the darling Majors,
and
two Mudhooks, and a Shamrock … Thick and heavy! Up she comes …'

‘ 'Ere, 'ere, look where you're putting your bleeding boots.'

Lucas looked up at Ikey Mo Leavey's angry exclamation. A private soldier staggering down the trench had cannoned into Leavey, knocking him onto the oilcloth. The other soldier had now fallen back against the rear wall of the trench. ‘He's drunk,' Lucas said. ‘Half seas over. Wonder where the lucky bastard got the rum.'

‘Who is he?'

‘Never seen him before … must have come along the trench from A Company.'

The soldier slid slowly down the back wall, his hands slipping off the revetments, and fell on his back in the mud and water in the bottom of the trench.

The sentry above muttered, ‘Officers coming!'

‘Who?'

‘Gawd, three, four … old Rowley … a brass hat … the Regimental …'

Lucas swept the stakes off the oilcloth and into his pocket. He whipped the oilcloth off the ‘table,' rolled it up and stuffed it under his tunic. The little dice table and box he put inside the ammunition box ‘table.' He hissed, ‘Sit down on the fire-step! We're talking, see?'

‘What are we going to do with this bloke?' Brace asked.

The drunken soldier lay on his back, a beatific, twisted smile on his face. Lucas ripped off his groundsheet cape, covered the drunk's upper body and face with it, then sat down again, the rain dripping off his steel helmet onto his tunic and the box respirator slung on his chest.

Mr Campbell the adjutant came round the traverse into the bay, followed closely by a lieutenant general in a red-banded gold-leafed cap, Lieutenant Colonel Quentin Rowland, and Regimental Sergeant Major Dalley. The lieutenant general had short, white hair and a fierce, upswept white
moustache. He barked at Lucas, ‘What's your name, my man?'

‘Lucas, sir.'

‘Service?'

‘Twenty years, four months.'

‘Good man! That's what the New Armies need – a leavening of real soldiers.'

The general was about to speak to Private Brace when he noticed the groundsheet-covered body on the trench floor a pace or two ahead. He slowly stiffened, his right hand rising to the peak of his cap in salute – ‘I, Lieutenant General Sir Bailward Shannon-Watson, salute the gallant dead!' he intoned. He held the pose a long ten seconds, then snapped down, and moved on.

The groundsheet covering the ‘corpse' rose and fell away. The drunken soldier boomed blurrily, ‘What did the old fucker call me?' A shell rumbled close. The R.S.M. appeared to slip, falling on top of the drunk, effectively hiding and stifling him. The general and his party stiffened and crouched. The shell burst behind the next bay. The corps commander and party moved on. The cry came back down the trench, ‘Stretcher bearers! Stretcher bearers!'

Jevons said, ‘Jesus … only five hours to go in the line, and some poor bugger …'

Lieutenant Campbell passed back down the trench, hurrying. Lucas said, ‘Was it bad, sir?'

Campbell shook his head. ‘Just two. Mr Jonson and Lance Corporal Corbett, killed. No one wounded.' He hurried on.

The soldiers sat down. ‘Want to start the game again?' Lucas said. They shook their heads. Only five hours …

Jevons started chuckling, and, imitating the general's potato-in-mouth accent, boomed, ‘I salute the gallant dead …'

Lucas said, ‘He looked a fool, all right, but you'll remember this day, Jevons, because of him. That's the first lieutenant general I or any of us ever seen in the front line.'

They came out of the fading twilight, snaking down the communication trenches toward the west, until near Authuille the trench system ended and the men rose painfully like demons from the earth, to trudge on top of it through the slanting rain toward the battalion rendezvous, two miles farther on.