Justice Hall

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

The Reverend Mr Hastings settled back into his chair with an air of summoning his energies for the final push. He spread his hands out on the arms, where the upholstery was brown and shiny with wear.

“Gabriel joined us, as I said, in the middle of March, just in time to meet the full German assault. How he even got up the lines to the trenches I don’t know, but he must have slipped in during a lull in the gas. The mortar fire was more or less continuous, but gas depends on which way the air is moving. At any rate, there he was, a fresh face—looking no less weary than the other men but a good deal less filthy. No-one took much notice of him that first week, other than to see that he could hold his own, since we were all too busy with getting out the wounded and trying to keep from being pushed all the way to the sea. The Front retreated in a fifty-mile bulge in three weeks, then slowed, and in the second week of April we were laying down new trenches.

“That is when Gabriel Hewetson and I began to have our conversations about the natural history of Berkshire. When I became aware that we had a rather extraordinary young gentleman in our midst. When I began to regain a sense of my vocation. I’ve often thought that Gabriel gave me more spiritual guidance than I did him, without ever speaking about God.”

I did not know what to make of him as a man of religious sensibilities. His rage against God was powerful, yet the trenches had not killed his faith. I thought I might risk interrupting his flow of words with a question.

“I’m curious, Mr Hastings. I’d have thought that as a chaplain you would have spent more time behind the lines, and yet you seem to have been actually at the front line a great deal. Was this usual?”

“Jesus Christ was the Son of God, but He was also a man—a carpenter’s son, a wandering preacher, a friend of the poor and the downtrodden. Jesus would not have spent that war comforting those already in the comfort of dry beds and hospital wards. When I volunteered, it was with the knowledge that I had to follow His example as long as my strength held out.

“Young Gabriel helped me maintain that strength, for a few vital weeks when I needed it most. And in the end, I failed him.

“We were among the armies transferred south in early May, to a quiet stretch of the Front on the west end of the Chemin des Dames, and it was as if we’d been lifted out of a cesspit during a riot and set down in Paradise. It was disorientating—there’d been heavy fighting there the year before, until the French mutiny, but the villages were still whole, church bells rang from intact steeples, old women went out to work the fields. Cows grazed, chickens scratched. We even slept to the song of nightingales.

“Three blissful weeks of this—broken by the occasional skirmish, of course, but with long stretches of silence to heal the soul. The air smelt of growing things, not of death. Bliss.

“And then, just after mid-night on the twenty-seventh, the Germans decided that our patch was the one they wanted for their break-through, and we were back in the thick of it. Fast asleep, most of us, when the gas canisters landed, and almost before the sentry could get to the nearest shell casing and hammer out a warning, a thousand guns opened up. The ground heaved, trenches collapsed, the sky was aflame.” The memory was so raw in his face, for an instant I thought I saw the fires reflected in his wide-staring eyes.

“A ten-mile retreat that first day, thousands taken prisoner, utter confusion, equipment abandoned, men fleeing in the wrong direction. The next day was worse, with the men beginning to panic. By the time the Germans came up against the Americans at Belleau Wood the first week of June, we fully expected Paris to fall. We took one look at the Yanks, and despaired—they were far too shiny-new to be of any use.

“But by God they held, and the German offensive ground to a halt, and then it was time to march back up the line and dig in again, after our nice quiet holiday.

“Every-one knew now, after four years, this was it. The men had been fighting hard since March, but now the death-struggle began in earnest, every inch of ground bitterly contested. Our men were footsore and exhausted and ready to do it all again, and I’ve never been prouder of them.” He paused briefly to take a swallow of cold tea.

“We’d been jumbled in among the French this time, which made for a certain amount of confusion, but no doubt the rivalry helped maintain spirits on both sides. I was no longer in Gabriel’s regiment, but as I was only a few miles up the road and padres were scarce, I saw him every two or three days. He had been badly shaken by the sudden bombardment down at the Chemin des Dames in May, and spent a couple of weeks twitching and pale. I urged him to go back for medical rest, but he refused. His men needed him, he said. It may even have been true.

“His regiment had been set to hold a hill. One pitiful bump in a flat land, facing another insignificant rise half a mile off held by the Boches. More trenching, more sniping and waiting for orders.

“I wasn’t there when his order came. I don’t even know who issued it, but someone safely back in headquarters decided that Second Lieutenant Gabriel Hewetson needed to rouse his men into a wiring expedition that would show the French how it was done.

“The problem was, it was a full moon on a crystal-clear night. A rat couldn’t have got through the wire unnoticed. Gabriel pointed this out, pointed out that the sniper opposite had a lethal aim, but the order stood.

“His men would have followed him. There was no question in his mind, or in theirs, or in that of the man giving the order. They would have followed him, and they would have died.” He looked down, studying his old-man’s hands; I wanted to stop his narrative to save him the reliving of it. Instead, we waited as he drew a shaky breath, and then went on.

“Gabriel said no. In fact, he specifically ordered his company to stand down.”

“Thus taking full personal responsibility,” Holmes said, to show the man that we understood. The image of the Justice mascot, the ungainly bird ripping its heart out for its young, flashed starkly before me. “What was said at the trial? Did you attend?”

“I did not. It was so fast, by the time I heard about his arrest, he’d already been condemned.”

“What? How long was that?”

“Five days.”

“Five days? Surely that was an extraordinary rush?”

“It was judged to be a precarious time and place, and considering Gabriel’s popularity, his insubordination threatened the discipline of that entire stretch of the Front. Instant punishment was seen as essential. He was executed ten days after his arrest.”

“Ten—” Holmes was without words.

“Did no-one speak up for him?” I demanded.

“The opinion of his men was judged to be emotional attachment.”

“Surely his representative protested?”

“He had no defence.”

“No defence?” Holmes repeated, as appalled as I.

Hastings drew a deep breath. “Normally, he’d have had some kind of advocate. Normally, for a man his age, an officer, and a first offence, he’d have been stripped of his rank, perhaps given field punishment; certainly that’s what Gabriel expected. Normally, between arrest and execution there would have been at least two or three weeks, during which time appeals would be made. But in that part of the Front, in the summer of 1918, nothing was in the least normal. His court martial looked at his offence and heard him plead guilty. There was neither time nor inclination for leniency.”

“But he was an officer,” Holmes pointed out. “I could find records of only two or three other officers executed during the whole War, and only one of those for refusing to fight.” It was, in truth, the most incomprehensible part of the whole affair: Gentlemen were simply not lined up and shot, and even as Gabriel Hewetson, the boy’s class must have been instantly recognisable.

“It must have been the divisional commander’s letter that did for him. ‘An example must be set,’ it said. ‘The regiment’s unrest and growing unwillingness in the face of battle is a grave danger to us all,’ it said. ‘The cowardice of one young officer whose fighting skills have already been demonstrated to be of a low order must not be allowed to infect his fellows with the urge to mutiny.’ ” Hastings rubbed his face with both hands, a dry rasp that made my own skin creep. “The words of that letter are graven on my memory. But do you know, when I finally reached the man and confronted him with the result of his letter, in the first part of September, he could not even recall having written the thing.”

His aged voice trailed into the exhaustion of despair, and he did not need to tell us that this last betrayal had been the final blow. After a minute, he went on.

“They told him the day before, what his sentence was. That was common practice. I suppose it was hard on the other men, to hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth from their condemned comrade. The next morning they took him out and shot him at dawn. Marched him with a sack over his head so the eight men didn’t have to see his face, and a square of white cloth pinned to his breast as the target. They stood him in front of a half-ruined house, with pock-holes where a previous man had been dispatched. Eight men picked up their rifles from the ground, each hoping that his held the blank. And do you know what that lad called out to his executioners when he heard the bullets going into their chambers?

“‘Aim true, boys!’ he said. ‘Don’t let me down.’ ”

And with that, Hastings finally buried his face in his hands and wept. I was not far from sobbing myself, and Holmes’ stony features concealed little of his own emotion.

It would have been a mercy to end there, to offer the man our bleak thanks and leave him to his misery. Since that was not possible, we were obliged to regroup, to ply Hastings with food and drink until he had regained his equanimity. It was distressingly like the medical attention given a man to enable him to stand with his blindfold in place.

An hour later, with a degree of colour returned to those sallow cheeks, Holmes went after the last pieces.

“You told us he had a visitor.”

“The night before the execution, yes.”

“Only one?”

“Two, in addition to myself and his batman, but one was simply a representative from his men, offering their farewell greetings. The other was an officer, a staff major I had not seen before. He asked me to leave them alone, spent perhaps two hours with Gabriel, then left.”

“Did the boy tell you who this major was, what they said?”

“He was a friend, perhaps a family member. Some person of long acquaintance, to judge by the warmth of the handshake. And the man did seem to do some good. Before he arrived, Gabriel was growing increasingly agitated—pacing in his cell, unable to settle to prayer or conversation. He had been asking me if I would take a letter to the commanding officer. He had not written anything as yet, but he seemed to think that the letter might save him. I tried to press him—if there were mitigating circumstances, health problems, if he’d lied about his age, anything that might convert his sentence, that I could present in appeal—but before I could find out what he had in mind, this major arrived, and when he left, Gabriel’s demeanour had altered entirely. Whatever they said to each other, the boy’s fear had vanished, replaced by a calm acceptance that gave him a sort of wisdom beyond his years. He seemed to radiate holiness, if that doesn’t sound like some foolish fancy of an old man. He was very beautiful.”

“And you have no idea who this red-tab major was?”

“I don’t.”

“What did he look like? Tall, short, blond, what?”

“It was fully dark. The nights were brief then, but he came well after mid-night. He was shorter than I, but not much. I didn’t see his hair. If it is important, you might ask his family. They will almost certainly have saved the letter Gabriel wrote them.”

“It was brief and uninformative,” Holmes told him.

“No, no, I mean his last letter, the one he wrote and gave to the major.”

There was a moment’s startled silence. Then Holmes said grimly, “You had best tell us about this letter.”

“Do the family not have it? Perhaps they destroyed it. I can understand not wanting to have it as a reminder. It took Gabriel more than an hour to write, earlier that evening, before the visitor came. It came to several pages, I remember that, and was addressed to ‘Father.’ I did not ask to read it; I merely provided the paper and pen.”

“The only letter the family received was a rather grubby object of less than a page, informing them that he was going into battle on the morrow and that he loved them. It was undated.”

“Most of the soldiers carried similar notes, a final good-bye in case they were killed. But there was nothing else from the major?”

“There was no letter from any major.”

“Oh, dear Lord. It must have been lost. What a great pity. But he must have gone to see them, after the War. He was some sort of family, after all.”

“They had no word.”

“But . . . he was staff.” Meaning, staff officers, secure behind the lines, did not suddenly get themselves killed in the final months of fighting. Hastings assumed that we knew this, and continued with his narrative.

“I wrote to the family, of course. But then that is how you found me, so you know that. Writing letters to families was one of the main duties of officers. I found later that there’d been heated exchanges in the House of Commons over executing volunteers, particularly when they were not even legally adults. However, the Army deemed capital punishment a necessary tool in the maintenance of moral fibre, so instead of doing away with executions, they simply concealed them from the people at home. Death notifications became merely ‘died in active service.’ My own letter refrained from mentioning the manner of Gabriel’s death, stressing instead the love his men had for him. I kept the details to myself, since I assumed the major would write and I did not wish to contradict whatever he chose to tell them. What a tragedy, that his parents did not have his final words to them. I suppose this means that Gabriel’s own letters were lost as well?”

“Do you mean to say that this major appropriated the boy’s letters?”

“Goodness. I always assumed he had. That same afternoon, I helped Gabriel’s batman—McFarlane was his name; poor fellow, he was heartbroken—to pack up Gabriel’s effects and return them to the family. There was a pretty biscuit tin where I’d once seen Gabriel put a letter from Hélène, and it was gone. I didn’t have the heart to ask McFarlane about it—he was on the edge of tears the whole time. I thought that Gabriel had instructed his man to give them to the major, or perhaps to destroy them. They might have been too personal for him to wish his family to read.”

“Do you remember McFarlane’s full name?”

“Jamie, I think it was—Jamie McFarlane. A gnarled stump of a man; looked as if he’d live to be a hundred and ten, but he died two days before Armistice. Not from injuries, either, but an illness. Pneumonia, as I recall.”

It was frustrating beyond belief, Hastings’ tantalising bits of information that lacked any evidence to tie them together. The picture of Gabriel’s last days had evolved into a ghostly sketch, but every possibility of adding colour and dimension—the major’s name, the batman, the girlfriend’s surname, Gabriel’s letters and diary—was snatched out of our reach as soon as it appeared.

“And the diary, no doubt, went the same way,” Holmes complained bitterly.

But to our surprise, Hastings was again shaking his head. “No. Gabriel kept that with him during the night, and wrote small notes in it from time to time.” And then, as Holmes was opening his mouth to demand what in God’s name had happened to that piece of Gabriel Hughenfort’s life, Hastings’ next words dropped into the room with the impact of an unpinned grenade, tumbling over each other in his haste to explain, and justify. “He gave it to me at dawn, just as they came for him, and said to keep it safe until someone came to ask me for it, and so I kept it, and I waited, and the War ended but no-one came. No-one came! That was when I learnt his true name—only then, nearly a year after his death, did I breach its pages to see if I could find . . . But when I discovered who he was, I didn’t know what to do—I could not bring myself to write to such a family. No, Gabriel told me to keep it safe until someone came to ask me for it, so I kept it safe, and no-one came. Until you.”