Part Three
Yes, I know you will have been thinking that something has happened. I’m sorry. But there were various troubles which I won’t go into now, because they’re resolved or under control anyway and more practically, I simply haven’t had a chance to write until now, we have been shifted about so much, nobody has had the faintest idea what’s been going on. We had a shocking march up here, we have scarcely unpacked for a week and your letters are only just being sent on to me, after long delays – which shows that nobody else knows where we are, either! I suppose there may be others of yours still to come. The upshot of it all is that we have come further north and that it has rained solidly for a fortnight. We are now in the front line trenches and under heavy fire the whole time. No farther than 150 yards away from the enemy. Why we moved from the last place is a mystery – we had thought they were fattening us up for the kill there, but apparently not and in any case all of our movements seem to be a mystery, we go when and where we are told. Perhaps someone knows why.
The rain. Yes, they all told me what it would be like, but I wasn’t really prepared for it and nor was John, because of course he didn’t come out till last spring, by which time the worst of it had cleared. The trenches here are very bad, under about 2–3 feet of water all the time. Of course we have trench pumps and of course they don’t work so the men spend much of their time baling us out with great ladles. Pretty useless and the rain just fills us up again. We live all the time in waders and mackintoshes. But I doubt if I shall ever feel truly dry again. I cannot believe that only a couple of weeks ago the ground was cracked and parched with the sun, and we were still passing through the last of the fruit orchards.
We have a tiny dugout which has been shelled a few times in the immediate past and patched up badly. It smells, it’s under a bank and the roof is only broken timber reinforced with some sandbags. There are two bunks of wire netting, which is useless. The old dugout in the supports was like a Grand Hotel suite in comparison and we have lost the gramophone – I mean, we were forced to leave it behind. I feel it may be a good thing. We have been in very low spirits and physically exhausted, very depressed altogether – our heads feel black and blue (if you see what I mean) from constant noise and alarums. It would have been hard to listen to Schubert and Elgar and be soothed, only to be dragged back so roughly into this present every other minute.
Besides, we have simply had no time.
John has had an appalling cold and sore throat, I suppose because of the wet feet and wet beds – wet generally. We have lice for the first time – a pleasant addition. And rats, which are what I really cannot cope with. You will remember how I used to secrete white and other mice in the house – well, don’t worry. I shall never be able to look any sort of verminous creature in the face again. And what faces these rats have! Really evil, and they are so bloated and fat and fit looking, they are scurrying about the whole time, you never know when one will come up. They feed on the corpses, of course, of which there are plenty and our own new ones are added every day. There was a battle here about a month ago, leaving the place in a terrible state.
Everybody is on digging parties during the day, rebuilding and sandbagging, down at support line and then back here at night. There is no rest at the moment, and we snatch what sleep we can – we don’t seem likely to be relieved.
At night the parties have somewhat got to carry on as usual through the mud and rain, struggling to bring up the supplies, food and mail and all the stuff we need for our digging and repair work and so on. It’s much worse in this weather, it takes so much more time – with water up to your thighs and shells bursting all over the place, you often feel like simply giving up and lying face down in the water. The duckboards are quite useless. But somehow it is still tedious and fairly pointless work: imagine trying to patch up derelict houses in the middle of nowhere all through a pouring wet autumn night! We are drones not fighting men. Not that I want to be a fighting man. But John says that at least there’s a feeling of doing something positive, having one clear objective, in a battle. I suppose that means the men are ‘dying for the cause’ whereas here they are simply shelled or snipered at random in the middle of dinner or foot inspection or sleep, it is like a road accident on an ordinary day, you feel resentful because of the sheer waste of it all.
But I am feeling very resentful altogether now – I have seen enough. The men sing ‘I want to go home’ and they mean that they want to see their families and that they are sick of all this tiredness and wet and cold and din. That’s what I mean, too, but more, I want to be out of it all because I feel guilty that I’m here, and doing nothing to stop it – even if that were to mean bringing it to an end in some great, violent push. And I also just want to be comfortable again and sleep in a bed and have dry socks, to wander about where and when I choose, and to see you all – oh, but you cannot imagine how we long for the small everyday things, scarcely worth mentioning, scarcely noticed at home.
I think we have been brought up here because of some attack planned on the enemy trenches but really we do not know, it might simply be because we’re good at repairing. We thought we were going into battle at the last place, before we went down to reserve camp, but nothing came of that. It’s all hearsay.
You have never seen such a desolate place as this, it has got uglier and uglier the further up we have come and now it doesn’t look like a land made by either God or man, it was thrown up by some prehistoric monsters or devils with no sense of anything but chaos. The road coming was just like a river, with trucks and cars and horses bogged down in the mud and what houses were left just a few bits of wall sticking up out of the ground. As far as the eye can see it is flat and wasted. There are some stumps of trees left and at night they take on all kinds of weird shapes, lit by the Verey flares. The men tell one another they have seen spectres and dead Germans rising up, and although nobody believes it, there is a fashion for telling these rather crude ghost and horror stories just now. It’s amazing how many people can produce a tale of haunting when called upon.
The ground is full of craters and of course they are full of water. A canal not far from here overflowed its banks. I suppose that didn’t help the general water level, and bodies which had been lying at the bottom since July all came to the surface and were spewed over the countryside.
Ahead I can just see the enemy line and their sandbags, poor devils, they are in just the same mess as we are, suffering all the same problems, I can’t blame them for strafing us all the time just to relieve their feelings. Their wire looks horrifying. It’s much deeper and thicker and more carefully set up than ours, even though we spend all night and use bale after bale of the wretched stuff, which cuts into your hands even if you have gauntlets on. Of course their shells just keep breaking it all down.
Well there, I have told you what it’s like and made it sound bad because that is the truth and I would have you believe it all, and tell it to anyone who asks you with a gleam in their eye how the war is going on. A mess. That’s all. I shouldn’t say that but we censor our own letters, unless we’re unlucky enough to have one stopped at random going through the next sorting-post. I’ll chance it. Tell all this to anyone who starts talking about honour and glory. I know you will understand, though John, who has been reading this, says he could not write such things to his own family. They believe we are making advances the whole time, that by Christmas we shall all come home as conquering heroes, that every death of ours is really a nail in the coffin of the Boche, and we will chase them out of France like a pack of dogs, over the top of the hill. He doesn’t complain to them about his physical condition, either, as I have been doing to you. But in fact he has far less resistance than me – hence his cold, which I have not had and nor did I get the dysentery which went the rounds not so long ago. My only injury so far as been some kind of small sore on my foot where I must have trodden on something. Scarcely worth going all the way to the M.O. to complain about!
I almost gave up a short while ago. I can tell you about it now. A deserter is shot if found, of course. I had come to feel that I would rather be shot. You will be ashamed of me. But in fact I did not intend to desert, I had thought of surrendering as a conchy. I didn’t and will not do so now. I can’t say any more about it here. I would need to sit round with you all and talk about it. I am better, in any case, I think I have come out of the other side of whatever wood it was.
But I am no longer so gay and light-hearted. I keep worrying that when you see me you will notice changes. But a few days with you at home would restore everything. The men, in spite of their weariness, keep us all sane, particularly Coulter and the Platoon Sergeant called Locke. He is a fisherman from Suffolk, and tells us amazing stories of storms and lifeboats and also of long days spent fishing miles off shore, when the water is smooth and glitters like silk and the wind drops and the fish pour into his nets and he rocks in his boat and smokes a pipe and is the happiest of men. Oh, I envy him: he will go back to it and ask nothing more. He has five sons. You wouldn’t think he’d be at home here but he is more good-humoured and long-suffering and patient than anyone, and behaves as though most of the younger men were extra children of his! He is also very religious though in a rather stern way. He talks to the young privates when their swearing gets too blasphemous or obscene, and it is as though he is really hurt by it. He gives us all good advice about marrying nice wives and rearing broods of boys! We love him, because he is so straight and conscientious.
Everybody grumbles about the wet and the food and the general low state of health, everyone is on edge with being shifted from pillar to post but there is still this constant, grim good humour, jokes fly back and forth, nobody is cantankerous. Otherwise we would all have given up long ago. Every now and again Coulter gives us his pep talk, about how we are going to ‘go out there and show ’em’. I think he isn’t entirely convinced that John and I share his fighting spirit, but he never gives up!
LATER
We have had a very bad day. Trench flooded and like a river again. But the shelling has been simply awful. We were strafed for about three hours without a break and all we could do was to sit tight and watch and pray. The C.O. and the Adjutant had just come down and they spent part of the raid in our dugout. We all huddled together in the near dark and every minute or two there was a crash and we all avoided one another’s glance. Earth kept thudding down on the roof – I thought we were all going to be buried alive. When I did have to go out into the trench I felt a lot safer. Then there was a constant cry for stretcher bearers. The C.O. went up and down several times in the middle of it all. The men like and respect him for it. He looks very ill though. He brought a bottle of whisky with him and left it for us to finish when he went. Neither of us much likes whisky but we have been needing it, I can tell you.
Captain Franklin is imperturbable, as cool as a cucumber. Very efficient, which the men also respect. They know he isn’t going to lose his head. John says he may have a head to lose but certainly not a heart. I wonder.
For much of the time when we emerged into the trench, we could see nothing beyond about 20 yards, for the smoke and mud being sent up in great spouts like water from a whale. The noise was unbelievable. It’s like being in a tunnel with trains both roaring towards you and coming at you from behind, and then going on over your head, screeching and wailing. And then the crash crash, crump crump. I thought my brain, or at the very least, my eardrums, would burst from the din. A lot of men had been sent fancy ear-muffs and plugs and heaven knows what other bits and pieces by well-meaning aunts at home but you would need a lot more than some rubber or cotton wadding to shut out any of this. I should think you must be able to hear it all where you are. Every gun of every size must have been trained on us for the whole of three hours. We lost a lot of men. The Suffolk Sergeant whom I told you about just above, which upset us all, and a subaltern called Glazier, who was horribly mangled but lived for a while, in a terrible state. He was, I’m told, incredibly brave and kept on telling them not to bother to send down stretcher bearers, he wouldn’t live to need them, they were to save them for someone else. I had never liked him much, and so had occasionally gone out of my way to be friendly to him – a bit hypocritical, but I’m glad I did now. I’m sorry he’s dead, because he was looking forward to leave which was due shortly, and which would come nicely at the start of the fox hunting season. He lived for hunting. They did fetch a stretcher party for him which was, as it happened, the worst luck of all, because no sooner had they got him on and gone a few yards than they were all hit, which meant three dead men instead of one and we needed all the stretchers and bearers we could get.
John and I are quite unharmed.
The worst thing apart from the noise and mess is being so thirsty, after the constant breathing in of shell dust and cordite and so on. Your throat feels as if it’s being burned out. Well, and after all that, nothing came. We had, of course, been expecting an attack, the Germans were surely on their way down into our trenches, the men had fixed bayonets the whole time, and were waiting and waiting – Coulter, I may add, with something near to glee. He can’t wait to get his bayonet stuck into someone, which I find very chilling, and more so because he is basically such a nice chap. But when the strafing finally stopped, everything just went quiet. They left us to pick up the pieces. I don’t know what the point of it all was. Garrett said they were expecting us to retreat out of here, but we couldn’t have done so successfully, and in any case, nobody thought of it.
Now we are left in the mud and rain to begin the dreary business of repairing the damage as best we may and getting the dead moved. B Company has lost 2 officers and 3 wounded, and about 30 of other ranks. Very bad indeed for one day’s shelling.
I hope you got the note asking for the Sir Thomas Browne. It’s on my fourth shelf, a blue book. I’d also like the Japanese verse anthology and The Tempest, if you can send them, and a good novel, which choice I leave to you – just in case I ever get five minutes for reading. The same address, though it is all taking ages, as I told you. No, I have no news of leave and shouldn’t hope for any yet. I have no idea about Christmas. It’s all the luck of the draw.
John sends his love. He is much better at getting through all this than I am in spite of his not being well. He’s kept me going lately, though he would say that the boot’s on the other foot. But that cannot be true, I’ve not been fit company for anyone lately. Even Coulter remarked that ‘Mr Barton looks a bit seedy’, which is his way of saying ‘bad tempered’. Have you a chance of getting anywhere to buy me a few postcards with reproductions of paintings on them? I’d like Turner, particularly. Don’t go to a lot of trouble or expense. But I should so much like to look at something as far as possible removed from this dun, grey, muddy scenery. I think of you all having been in Wales with great envy. I should like more than anything else to be at St David’s now. Or anywhere. But I’m here because I’m here because I’m here!
‘How do you feel?’
‘Wet. I’m sick of this.’
‘Yes. What’s it like down at that end?’
Barton sat on the bunk and began to unwind his puttee. ‘Much the same. Race got his legs blown off this morning – that shell we thought had landed behind out of the way, I think. Apparently it didn’t.’
‘I can’t remember which one is Race?’
‘Glazier’s platoon. The one with the odd eyes.’
‘Odd?’
‘One blue, one green.’
Hilliard was still amazed at how much Barton took in, how many of the men he had come to know well, the small things he remembered about them. He said, ‘If you stay here long enough you’ll be a C.O.’
‘I wouldn’t want to Promotion isn’t my line.’
‘You’d make a good C.O.’
‘No, because I’d tell them the truth; I should have a demoralizing effect.’
‘That is exactly the opposite of what you do. You keep us all going, you should know that by now.’
‘There’s something wrong with this sore on my foot. It looks a peculiar colour.’
‘Let’s look – did you cut it?’
‘I suppose I must have.’
‘You’d better get dressed. Go and see Farquharson.’
‘Not with this. Anyway, I want to eat and sleep. I’ll stick a dressing on it myself if it doesn’t heal up.’
‘My father sent us a bottle of brandy in the parcel today. I’ve only just got around to opening it. And some quince jam.’
‘Praise be!’
Hilliard found a cup and poured out a good measure of the brandy and handed it to Barton. Then he said, ‘There was a letter from my sister.’
‘Beth.’
‘Yes. She’s getting married. She says on Saturday. I don’t know which Saturday – that could be tomorrow, I suppose. Tomorrow is Saturday, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Barton put a finger into the alcohol and was dabbing it experimentally on to his foot. ‘Anaesthetic,’ he said.
Hilliard touched the envelope which lay on top of the opened parcel. ‘You can read it.’
‘Do you want me to?’
‘Yes.’
Barton took the single sheet of thick paper.
Dear John,
It is so nice to have your letters and we are glad to know you are fit and cheerful. We wish you were home but it seems that things are going well from what we read in the papers, and that you will all be back before very long. This letter will come to you with a parcel from father, but it is really to let you know that I am getting married on Saturday. It will be quiet, though there will be what mother calls ‘a few’ (and I think are a lot!) people back here for luncheon afterwards. We shall miss you, of course. It may seem that it has all been arranged suddenly but I have been thinking about it for some time as I told you when you were home and we have been planning things here for a while. There has seemed no time to write to you.
We are going to the Isle of Purbeck for ten days and after that I shall be
Do write. I must stop now, there are so many things to do you wouldn’t believe. I shall never be ready. Mother has a marvellous new lilac dress and coat in silk from Worth, for the wedding.
Our love to you and all kind wishes from Henry.
Barton held the letter for a long time after he had finished reading what it contained, for he did not know how to comment, it was so brisk and cool and distant, so lacking in emotion or character. John had talked about his sister, but mostly as she had been when they were children. What was she like now, what did she conceal beneath this formal letter in the plain, dull handwriting? He thought of the long, loving, detailed letters from his own family, which came by every mail and the difference between them. He wished suddenly that John had no father or mother or sister, so that he would be able to bring him entirely under the wing of his own. These aloof strangers ought not to exist at all.
‘She said she was going to marry Henry Partington.’
‘Yes. You told me.’
‘He’s a lawyer. He is a dull, stuffed, crass, insensible fool and he will put my sister in a rich home like a padded cell and she will give luncheon parties and tea parties and dinner parties and knit socks for the men and believe that we shall all be home by Christmas and be dutiful to the son by his first marriage and in a short time she will become indistinguishable from my mother – except that she will never be so beautiful or so elegant. She will be quite content and whatever she used to be will have gone, be buried. I’m glad I’m here, David, because I would truly rather be in the middle of this than sitting in that church in a tight collar and then sitting at our dining table and hearing my father make a dull speech and Henry Partington make a stupid speech, and the vicar and Beth’s godfather and… I should go off my head.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Barton reached out a hand. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Oh, that’s enough of it. I’m sick of the whole business.’
‘Yes.’
‘But poor Beth! And how happy she sounds!’
‘Does she? Is that a happy letter?’
‘Did it seem a miserable one?’
‘It seemed – I didn’t get the impression that she felt anything at all. It’s so – formal.’
‘She is, now.’
‘What you should be doing is drinking some of this excellent brandy.’
‘How’s the foot?’
‘Hurts. Go on – have some.’
‘Yes. Then I’ve got to do these letters – oh, I’m sick of reading other men’s secrets, I feel like Paul Pry every day.’
‘I wish Coulter’d bring up the dixie, I’m hungry and I’m dropping asleep on my feet and I daresay I shan’t get more than a couple of hours anyway.’ Hilliard had slept while he was out in the trench, supervising the carrying party.
‘Talk of the devil.’
‘Speak of angels is what you should say, sir!’ Coulter ducked involuntarily as a shell roared overhead and crashed somewhere far off, down the road. But it had been quiet tonight and all the previous day. ‘Message from Captain Franklin, sir.’
Barton looked up. Hilliard read the slip of paper, got to his feet. ‘No sleep, no supper – get your boots back on, Second Lieutenant Barton.’
‘Oh Lord…’
‘A nice little reconnaissance party all the way out there through the lovely mud, in a downpour, just the sort of adventure you’d have enjoyed at the age of nine. Coulter, send Sergeant Davies up here, would you please?’
Barton was pulling his boots on again, and then the rubber waders, reaching to his thighs. He caught Hilliard’s eye. ‘It’s what you’ve been promising me,’ he said, ‘a recce party? I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.’
‘Quite.’
Coulter ducked his head back inside briefly. ‘Cheer up, sir. It’s stopped raining and they’ve been nice and quiet as mice across there for hours. Just right!’
‘Coulter…’
He went again rapidly, his boots making a slopping noise down the trench. Hilliard paused a moment. Then said, ‘It’s absolutely bloody pointless. Even if the rain has stopped. We won’t be able to see a thing, it’ll be like going through mud soup, we’ll get soaked – what the hell do they think they’re doing? We can see all we want to see of their lines from the o.p. during the day and they’ve been sending planes over every half hour.’
‘What are we supposed to be finding out?’
‘Oh, everything.’ Hilliard began to look about for his compass and stick. ‘All possible information you know. Everything.’
‘Time spent in reconnaissance is seldom wasted,’ Barton said. ‘Field Service Regulations Part I Chapter 6.’
Hilliard shot him a look.
‘Will you go and meet Davies? We need eight volunteers, but don’t let Devine come, though he’ll ask to – he isn’t fit. And not Lawrence, either, he’ll make a noise enough to wake the dead and then panic. Tell them to black their buttons and their faces. And you do the same of course.’
‘What with?’
Hilliard smiled. ‘Mud, dear boy, mud. If you look carefully you should find the odd bit of it around somewhere. All right?’
Barton was watching him with something like glee. He said, ‘Who was talking just now about potential Commanding Officers? What about you? You’re enjoying this, it’s exactly what you like, getting something organized, giving out the orders, making sure it all goes like clockwork. You should be a General before you’re forty.’
‘It helps to pass the time, that’s all.’
‘Oh, come! You enjoy it.’
Hilliard stopped in the doorway, looked back. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No I don’t. And nor will you.’
‘Well, you can cope, anyway.’
‘That’s not exactly the same thing, is it? Are you ready now?’
Jenner and Moreton had been cutting the wire but there was still a good deal to get through before they made enough of a gap for the party to go out. Hilliard sent Coulter back to the dugout for his own pair of wire cutters, bought in the Army and Navy Stores. Waiting, he had a sudden recollection of that day, it seemed like a dream, a mirage of heat and sunlight and elegant crowds, of idleness and chatter and money to be spent at heaped counters, he could not believe in it. The wire cutters were far more use than the standard issue, with which the two men had been struggling.
There were six of them, besides Barton and himself, and including Coulter. He looked at them and saw how ludicrous they were, smeared with mud, their steel helmets exchanged for the ugly, dark woollen balaclavas.
The air smelled moist and thick with mud and stale shell dust, but there was still a faint sweetness, as in any countryside after rain. The sky was completely clouded over – the dry spell would not last. Along their own line they heard the night sounds, the breathing of the men coming up the trench with nightly rations and pit props, bales of wire, sandbags, the suck-plash of their boots in the mud, and then a bump, a soft curse, muffled at once, the occasional creak as someone trod on a duckboard as though into the bottom of a boat. The evening meal was over, and because of the rain it was hard to light fires now, even in the deepest dugout, so that the men lived on tins of cold bully beef, bread and jam and the stew which came up in the dixies and was lukewarm by the time it arrived. Only tea was made on the spot and came in the tin mugs, sweet and dark and boiling hot.
The news of their departure was passed along to their own sentries, then they climbed out one by one and slithered between the wire. Hilliard, going last, snagged the back of his tunic and felt his skin taken off.
They got down and moved on their hands and knees, in total darkness, and at once the wetness of the earth soaked through them. The going was slower than snail’s pace. But for several minutes there were no Verey flares sent up. Hilliard, at the far end of the line and a yard ahead, could not believe that their luck would last and as he thought it, a light shot up, green and beautiful as a firework from the enemy line. It soared and burst like a fan, casting a pale, haunting light over the whole area. They had flopped down on to their stomachs at once, heads pressed into the ground. Hilliard felt his face touch against the cold mud. Just behind him, Coulter had gone into a shallow water-filled shell-hole. Hilliard waited. There was a faint splash and plop, like a frog going into a pond, as the batman pulled himself out, half inch by half inch. Eventually, he touched Hilliard’s ankle, signalling that they could go on. The Verey flare had died away.
After another few yards, they could crawl on their hands and knees again. But weighed down as they were with revolvers and the grenades and bayonets, they felt the drag of each slow forward movement, their shoulders and thighs were already aching.
At the other end of the line Barton tried to release the cramp in his foot. He could see nothing at all, they might have been down a mine. So where was the point, how would they be able to tell anything at all about the lie of the land or the enemy front line which could not, as Hilliard had said, be seen through the periscopes in daylight, or on photographs taken from their planes in the air?
They seemed to be going on for hours. His foot was throbbing again and the thought of gangrene flitted through his mind, he smiled at the ludicrousness of it. All the same, he was worried that this was another thing the war had done to him. He usually took it for granted that he was never ill and that if he were it was nothing, he would get better quickly and without complications. Now, a small injury to his foot was worrying him disproportionately, his mind kept returning to it.
Suddenly, they heard voices, he realized that they were much nearer to the German line than he had guessed. The sounds they could hear were the same as their own, the bump of sandbags, shovelling, soft footsteps, the clip-clip of wire cutters. He imagined a similar party, also making a reconnaissance raid, imagined both groups of men crawling steadily towards one another with muddied faces, until they bumped, nose to nose, and panicked, sprawling in confusion and, because they could not see, risked nothing except immediate retreat. It seemed so insane, so like something out of a boy’s adventure paper, that he snorted with laughter, and then stuffed his fist into his mouth to silence the noise. He was soaked and cold and cramped, but curiously elated, the whole movement had such an air of unreality. He imagined the report they would put in. ‘We progressed through thick mud in total darkness, and therefore were unable to get the expected clear view of the enemy line. We ascertained that there was a line, and that this contained men. This was deduced from the sound of a faint cough, and two whispers. The fact that these were German men was deduced from the foreign sound of the cough and whisper (see above).’
Again, he almost laughed out loud, and certainly he was grinning, and knew that close beside him Corporal Blaydon had noticed it and was watching him.
They had stopped and were fanning out, wriggling sideways in the mud. Barton peered ahead. Moved a little further. He was very close to their wire now, he heard a whisper quite clearly.
‘Nein. Wo ist der Kapitän?’
‘Achtung!’
He went still. But they were hammering stakes, he thought, the man had not been calling attention to his presence. Besides, the Germans would not imagine that anyone was mad enough to come out on a raid through this wet and darkness. The hammering noise went on, only slightly muffled and then another, unidentifiable sound, though the voices had ceased. It was impossible to see anything of the trench, even though he moved another yard further forward. The wire was much thicker than their own, and more expertly coiled. All of which they knew. All of which…
When the shell exploded, it threw Barton on to his back and he lay staring up, baffled, into the darkness, watching the livid flare of the explosion, and then the green of another Verey light. He felt strangely relaxed by the brightness and the patterns in the sky. Machine gun fire, and then another shell, much closer, the Germans must have got the measure of them. Beside him, Blaydon was whispering, ‘Get back, we’ve got to get back!’
Someone was crying out, and Barton wanted to tell him to be quiet before he realized that the man was wounded. He felt himself bump up against something, touched the cloth of a tunic. It had gone dark again and the rifle bullets were coming now, over the short space between them and the enemy front line. There was a soft thud to his left. Then Hilliard’s voice behind him.
‘Get on with it. Duck and run.’
‘There’s…’
‘Get on!’
Another shell but ahead this time, as though the enemy were trying to block their retreat. As Barton struggled forward, slipped into water, pulled himself out again, he wondered what had happened, what had raised the alarm. He thought they had been entirely unnoticed. Then there was the cry again. He had gone some way beyond it. Someone passed him, he could not tell who, and then, for a moment, he seemed to be quite alone in the darkness. The cry again.
‘Come on, Barton.’
‘There’s a man wounded.’
‘I know. It’s Coulter. I can’t help him. Get on.’
‘But he…’
‘Shut up. If you’re down first warn the sentry that it’s us.’
‘You can’t leave him there.’
‘He’s too bad to bring in now, we’d never find him, we’d never make it. And we shouldn’t be talking.’
Gunfire again. Barton was frantic. ‘Look…’
Hilliard said, ‘I order you to go on.’
Barton felt the water running down his back under the tunic, and mackintosh, and tasted it too, foul and rusty in his mouth. Behind them there was silence now. Hilliard said nothing else. They waited again. Still silence.
Barton got up and began to move forward, crouching and running like a monkey, ready to drop down. Once, a Verey flare went up, but too far away to mark them out, perhaps the Germans had given up, satisfied with what they had achieved.
Then they were back in their own trench, slithering down from the parapet and a long way from the place at which they had come up. There was a pain in Barton’s chest from alternately gasping and holding his breath, and from hauling himself forward on his arms.
He said, ‘What happened?’
‘You went too near, that’s what bloody well happened. They saw you.’
‘They couldn’t have seen me.’
‘I was trying to get you to come back, you were practically on top of them. Do you realize…’
‘It’s…’
‘Ferris is dead, Moreton is dead, Coulter is probably dead and Blaydon’s got a bullet – in his arm I think.’
A few yards away, some men from Prebold’s platoon were filling sandbags. Now one of them came over, handed Hilliard a mug. ‘Tea, sir, and there’s a splash of rum. It’s not very hot, I’m afraid. Are you all right, sir?’
‘I am, thanks.’ Hilliard drank, and then handed the mug to Barton.
‘No…’
‘Drink it.’
Barton drank. The men went on with their work, perhaps sensing from their voices that something was wrong.
‘I’ve just sent along for a stretcher, sir. The Private who came in just before you, he’s got a bullet through his shoulder and his hand’s in a mess.’
‘Blaydon?’
‘I don’t know, sir. He’s in a bit of a state. We put him in the dugout. Can I get you any more of that tea, sir?’
‘No thanks, we’ve got to get back to the other end of the trench.’
‘They got the wind of you good and proper, sir.’
‘They did.’
‘It was nice and quiet till you went out.’
‘Sorry. Everything all right here?’
‘Oh yes, they didn’t come near us, sir, it wasn’t us they were after! We’re all right.’
‘Good. But you’d better tell the men to watch out for a bit, now they’ve woken up. Keep it as quiet as you can.’
‘We know what we’re doing, sir.’
‘All right. Thanks for the tea.’
As they moved up the trench they met the stretcher bearers. Standing aside for them. Barton thought he heard a cry again, from out in the darkness.
‘Hilliard…’
But he had already gone ahead. Barton waited. Still silence. In the end, he thought he must have imagined it.
Captain Franklin was waiting in their dugout. He said at once, ‘You’ve lost three men.’
‘Yes, sir. And one wounded.’
‘What on earth happened? They shelled you pretty accurately, didn’t they?’
‘Yes. I suppose we were quite close. And it was very quiet. They obviously heard something.’
‘Then you must have made a row.’
Hilliard’s face was stiff. ‘I don’t think so. We were unlucky. They found out where we were first go and let us have it.’
‘What did you see, anyway?’
‘Nothing much.’
‘Are they bringing up ammunition?’
‘I couldn’t tell. There was fetching and carrying, certainly.’
‘There is always fetching and carrying,’ Franklin said coldly.
‘Quite.’
For a moment the Adjutant stood, stick under his arm, his face, as always, expressionless. Then he turned. ‘Put your report in as soon as you can, will you?’ He went out.
‘John…’
‘Shut up. It’s all over and done with. You’ve never been out there before and it can happen to anyone. It probably wasn’t your fault anyway. Now forget it please.’
Hilliard sat down at the packing case, turned up the lamp and began to write. He was still wearing his mackintosh and the mud was drying in his hair.
Barton said, ‘Coulter…’
‘Coulter’s dead.’
‘How do you know?’
‘He must be. I saw the state he was in,’ Hilliard said shortly. He went on with his report.
It is still raining and very cold. They have moved us back again to where we were before, only in the front not the support line. But things are very slightly better because, in our absence, the 8th Division have been in and made very good work indeed of repairing these trenches. We spent two nights in billets in what had been a convent school which had a rather beautiful chapel with some 15th-century wall paintings. They had been badly neglected and damaged but the men took the place as a good omen for this next tour.
Our dugout this time is only a few yards away from the o.p. in which I sat to draw my map that terrible day – though you could scarcely believe it is the same place now the weather has changed. There has also been some bombarding of the wood along the top of the ridge by our guns, so that the trees there have begun to look a bit like the old familiar stumps of rotten black teeth. It is so easy to destroy landscape, it takes a couple of days of really bad fighting and strafing, plus this rain, to turn what was beautiful (in spite of the war and everything littered about) into the most frightful scarred waste. I feel we shall have this on our consciences every bit as much as the deaths of men. What right have we to do such damage to the earth? After all, you may say that man can do what he likes with himself but he should not involve the innocent natural world. John disagrees, he says that a tree grows again and grass covers the craters in no time, but a man is dead, is dead, is dead. The animal and bird life seem to survive as a sort of undercurrent to the life of the war, but I wonder how much we have destroyed of that too, and what it is like for these creatures to live down in the earth among the bodies, and to be deprived of leaves and grass and thickets for cover, or to live in the air which is rent by shell blasts and full of dust and smoke and flying metal objects. The men are forbidden to keep pets or to feed the birds, but some of Prebold’s platoon had a hedgehog to which they were giving bits of meat and sweetened tea. It then began to dig itself into the side of the trench among some of the sandbags, to hibernate. Until Fakely from that platoon (a strange and rather vicious person) began to get nervous and told everyone that hedgehogs were unlucky and boded evil and death (as if anything didn’t bode that, out here!). But he got himself believed – superstition, like the ghost stories, is rife here just now, it seems to pander to the prevailing atmosphere of fear and the constant tension, and also to add a sort of spice to boredom. So in the end they dug, and dragged the wretched small hedgehog out of its dark hole and slung it over the parapet, where it lay on its back, half stunned, half dormant. I happened to be going along just then and saw the whole incident. I can truthfully say it was the first sign of any kind of unfeelingness I have encountered here. I was very angry, irrationally so, and sickened. I then did a most stupid thing, which was to climb up over the parapet and go through the wire and crawl on my belly to retrieve the creature. I might very easily have been shot – I was a good target. Whether they thought I was attending to someone wounded (they often hold their fire if that happens, as we do) or whether I was simply not seen at all, I don’t know, but miraculously, there was complete silence, the enemy might just as well not have existed and I got back safely, the hedgehog in my hands. It was crawling with fleas and most prickly. I felt a very great fool but I put it back in the hole in the trench side and covered it up and if it doesn’t get blown out of hibernation into kingdom come it may live to see the spring and perhaps even a quieter world.
The men simply thought I’d gone off my head, though perhaps they also wondered if I wanted a way of Putting An End To It All! I felt ashamed of myself. And I have been thinking ever since that I felt incensed and hurt on its behalf and yet I had not thought of going out again and trying to bring back Coulter, after we’d left him in No Man’s Land that night. I have been haunted in my sleep and in my waking by the sound of his voice crying out, I have not been and shall never be convinced that we could not have done something for him, brought him back or at least stayed and comforted him in some way while he was dying. Did he die? Perhaps he wasn’t so badly hurt as John thought. (He won’t tell me exactly what he saw.) Perhaps Coulter started to crawl after us but we had gone and he couldn’t get any further. He might have died of exposure or neglected wounds or simply of despair that he’d been left behind. Anything. I cannot, cannot forget it.
There have been stories of men who have been lying out wounded and crying in pain and have stuffed their fists or the sleeves of their tunics in their mouths to stop themselves, knowing that they would only bring out rescue parties who would be risking their lives, for hopeless cases. The more I hear from John and the others, the more amazed I am by the astonishing bravery of many men and by their tolerance of pain and terrible conditions, and by the part that chance, accident and coincidence play in this war. But I wish that Coulter had died rushing towards the enemy line through a hail of fire with fixed bayonet – he was a strange, gentle man really, and yet he did have this passionate belief in the rightness of our cause and the essential evil of the whole German nation. A man after the hearts of all generals, politicians and recruiting officers. But worth the whole lot of them. He’d seen a lot of slaughter and though I abhorred all of his ideas and thought him entirely wrong-headed, yet I admired him, he was so cheerful and determined and amusing. I have written a sort of obituary, haven’t I? And yet I cannot get it into my head that he is almost certainly dead. I do not feel it. I wish I’d seen him, no matter what state he was in. John has not mentioned him for days now but I know he feels his loss greatly and though he had no real alternative but to leave him (Oh, I do know that really, I trust John’s military as well as his human judgement) yet I know he is also anxious and perhaps feels guilty, too.
There is little more to tell you for the moment. Life here changes so much and yet essentially changes very little – the daily routine is the same, the food is the same, the weather is the same, we live without a sense of time – or rather with a sense of being in army-time, which bears little relation to the time you live in. Preparations are going ahead for a manoeuvre about which I cannot tell you, we are almost off our heads with exhaustion and driven mad with orders sent along every five minutes, and with conferences every day and heaven knows what else. We are grateful for the tiny improvements in our physical conditions – life cannot have been worse than it was during those two weeks further north, we were in as bad a state as men can be. If only the rain would stop, if only I could remember what it feels like to be clean and dry.
I got your parcel, for which many thanks. I have had little time yet for appreciating the books you chose so carefully. But I have been able to retreat into otherworlds once or twice – reading the Forster novel, which is so elegant and intelligent and urbane. I shall leave the rest of him up till things are a bit quieter, I like it so much. The Japanese anthology, of which I manage a paragraph every night before my eyes close (which they do too easily), is beautiful – that world seems even farther off, full of cherry blossom and reeds and still water, snow and wise thoughts. I find I can read absolutely anything (or could, if time permitted) and soak it up and it only refreshes me, whereas music has become almost impossible. We have use of the gramophone for three days out of seven now, because we have to share it with some of A Company. But of all the records you have sent, there is only the ‘Winterreise’ which I can bear at any time – and anything of Mozart. John is the same. Don’t ask me why. I hope all the rest will not be spoilt for leave, or peace-time. Meanwhile, we know the Schubert songs by heart and each of us can always tell when the other is around by snatches of whistling.
You asked if I was very afraid of the thought of a full battle. Difficult to answer because you see I have no real idea of what it will be like apart from tales I have heard and from the academic, tactical lectures. But I have seen enough injury and terrible death and destruction here to have no illusions about it certainly. I shall know how afraid I am when the time comes – some men say they feel only elation, others keep silent, which means they know real terror. But it is these long weeks of trench life, with the constant possibility of accident, which erodes one’s courage worst of all. We have had a pep talk from the Brigadier, and last week, a pep letter came round to all officers and N.C.O.s – entirely unmoving. Yet when we were given our first marching orders at home at the end of our time in the training camp I felt (and we all did) a great rush of blood and glory, a singing in the ears and an eagerness to do or die. It lasted half an hour or half a day, according to how good your memory was for florid sentences!
The food here has got steadily worse and scarcer too. No idea why. God knows what they make the jam of – tree roots I think, and the stuff in the stews is obscene. We get by with the help of John’s parcels, though I must say I wish that they would send less delicacies and frills and some more plain and substantial things too. Last week we had marrons glacés and crystallized pineapple.
John has just come in to say we are to go and see the C.O. yet again. Another trek and it’s raining torrents, which means we shall crowd into the dugout H.Q. and sweat and steam and smell. And it won’t be anything more than boring orders, more work, work, work.
‘Gentlemen, I am here to tell you that we have been ordered to make a further series of reconnaissance raids up to the enemy line as far as the edge of their trenches near Barmelle Wood.’
The C.O. was looking straight ahead of him, his eyes on the patch of air, avoiding any individual face. His hands, which usually fidgeted with papers or cigar tin, were folded in front of him. He looked relaxed and curiously happy, his face was without any of its recent strain and even the skin seemed to have become smoother and taken on a more healthy look.
‘There have been, as you know, five raids from B and C companies in the past week. The information obtained from these has been negligible, through no fault of those concerned. In the course of these raids, the Battalion has lost six officers and thirteen men killed, and two officers and eleven men have been seriously wounded. In addition, B Company lost three men when in a similar raid at Leuillet a fortnight ago.’
He was silent for a moment. Barton and Hilliard sitting side by side and opposite to him in the cramped dugout, each felt the stillness of the other. Something was different, they had come for a routine briefing but the atmosphere was full of foreboding, they heard this news of the planned raids and expected that something more was to follow, the date and details of the expected offensive on Barmelle Wood.
Instead, Garrett said. ‘I have made a decision and it is my duty to tell you all of the nature of that decision. I have said that in my opinion such reconnaissance raids are pointless in terms of strategy and a criminal waste of men. I have categorically refused, therefore, to pass on the orders for further raids of this sort. I will no longer accept responsibility for the fruitless loss of life which they entail. Not unexpectedly, my objections have been overruled. Not unexpectedly, I have been ordered to relinquish my command of this Battalion and to return to England. I expect to leave within the next two or three days. If I am wrong, I am sorry. I would ask each of you to feel entirely free to place upon record your dissent from my opinion on this matter if you wish to do so. But I cannot continue against the dictates of my conscience and my common sense, and I am entirely content that the action I am taking is the correct one.’
They realized that he had written, rehearsed and learned his speech by heart. Now that it was over he leaned back in his chair and began to look into their faces for the first time, his eyes moving quickly from one to the other, seeking some response or approval or reassurance – or hostility. He did not know what to expect. He reached for the cigar tin, opened the lid. No one spoke.
‘Gentlemen, do you wish to say anything to me at all? Do you wish to ask me anything?’
Silence again.
‘Then I will ask you to return to your posts and to say nothing to the men of the Battalion. Your new Commanding Officer will make whatever arrangements he thinks fit. I shall myself hope to come round the lines before I go.’
Still silent, avoiding one another’s eyes, they herded out of the dugout into the teeming rain and running mud of the trench. The men glanced up apprehensively as they passed along, and their faces had the sunken-eyed look of suppressed fear. They were huddled in greatcoats and waders, trying to get what rest they could after the previous night’s work of carrying up large quantities of ammunition.
‘He’s right,’ Barton said at once when they reached their dugout. He felt suddenly faint and light-hearted from tiredness and from a sense of shock. ‘He’s right and he’s courageous.’
Hilliard hung up his mackintosh. ‘I think he just wants to be out of it all.’
‘That’s bloody unfair!’
‘No. I think he is right about it but I simply think that he’s been half-looking for something like this, though perhaps without altogether realizing it himself. He isn’t the man he was. He’d never have done something like this last spring when I first came out here.’
‘Then perhaps he has just learned some sense.’
‘It’s the end of him of course. His career, I mean.’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Would it to you?’
‘No.’
Hilliard wondered whether Barton were not right after all, whether the C.O., who stood to lose most, might not simply be courageous, a man of conscience. He said. ‘I’ve always liked him. But he’s in better sympathy with you now.’
‘I know.’
‘And he’s had Franklin for an Adjutant – that can’t have made life easier.’
‘Come now – Franklin is efficient.’
‘I wish you weren’t so bloody charitable!’
Barton smiled, turned over on his stomach, slept.
Two days later Garrett had gone. He took his leave of no one.
It was the end of November.
‘Is everything all right?’
‘Very quiet, yes.’ Hilliard set down his torch. ‘They’ll get what sleep they can.’
‘John – I’m afraid. I’m very afraid indeed.’
‘Yes.’ They looked at one another across the dugout. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like – it seems a long time since the summer, such a lot has happened. I’d forgotten this feeling.’
‘Sick.’
‘That’s it.’
‘What about the men?’
‘Oh, Fraser’s gunning for victory, he’s keeping them cheerful. But they don’t give much away, you know how it is. Some of them are looking so tired they ought to be in hospital, let alone sent into battle.’
The near approach of the offensive on Barmelle Wood had redoubled the calls on the front line for fatigue parties, the men had worked from early morning until late afternoon, snatched two or three hours sleep and then spent the nights bringing up ammunition and supplies.
Until early on Thursday evening the rain had continued, the whole area for miles around was a sea of mud. But yesterday it had stopped, a wind had got up, bringing a sweet stench across into their faces and flapping against the sack curtains of the dugout. Now there was a frost. For the first time their clothes had had a chance to dry out.
Hilliard said, ‘We’d better turn in.’
‘I shan’t sleep.’
‘You’ll sleep.’
But Barton shook his head, reached for his greatcoat. An hour earlier Keene, the new C.O., had come down the line and the men had surveyed him, faintly suspicious, disliking changes in command. They had been loyal to Garrett – there were one or two still left who had served under him since August 1914. Colonel Keene made little impression upon them: he was a thin man, softly spoken, apparently hesitant. But a reputation for both thoroughness and toughness had preceded him to the Battalion and the required reconnaissance raids had been carried out, costing the lives of fourteen men. At the final briefing conference he had spoken concisely, had made the battle plan eminently clear to them, asked rapid questions around the table. He had, also and immediately, remembered their names.
‘It seems very straightforward,’ Barton had said, coming back. ‘Is it likely to go off to that eminently reasonable plan of his?’
‘No.’
‘Are we likely to find the time schedule followed down to the last five seconds in that way?’
‘No.’
‘No. I thought not.’
‘But to be fair, it isn’t his plan, it’s come from the Division and they’re always like that; they’re based on early cavalry manoeuvres which often did work as intended. Trench warfare is an entirely different thing, every battle since Neuve Chapelle has been some kind of mess but it will take some years until they learn about it, you see. By the next war, the message will have got through.’
‘There will never be another war.’
‘There will always be wars.’
‘Men couldn’t be so stupid, John! After all this? Isn’t the only real purpose of our being here to teach them that lesson – how bloody useless and pointless the whole thing is?’
‘Men are naturally stupid and they do not learn from experience.’
‘You haven’t much faith in humanity.’
‘Collectively, no.’
‘Individually?’
‘Oh, yes. You’ve only to look around you here.’
‘But you depress me.’
‘I’m sorry. I haven’t your naturally buoyant outlook upon the whole of life. That’s why I need you around.’
‘Me and Sir Thomas Browne!’
‘That’s right.’
‘But perhaps tomorrow won’t be so bad. Perhaps we really are in a stronger position than when you were here last summer. Perhaps it’ll work.’
Hilliard had not replied.
Now, he said, ‘If you are going out, don’t be long. You really need the rest.’
‘I know.’
Barton stepped out of the dugout and looked up. For the first time in weeks the sky was clear and glittering with the points of stars, a full moon shone above the ridge. The frost was thin and here and there it caught in the pale light on the barbed wire, tin canisters, helmets, and gleamed. The night cold had taken the edge off the smell of decay and the air was sharp and metallic in Barton’s nostrils. He moved quietly along the trench. In the next dugout, twenty or so men slept under greatcoats, a jumble of arms and feet. It was very still, no gunfire, no flares.
‘Sir?’
‘Hello, Parkin. All right?’
‘All quiet, sir, yes. Funny that.’
‘Hm.’ Barton leaned against the side of the trench.
‘You haven’t been in a big show yet, have you, sir?’
‘No. Have you?’
‘No.’
Parkin was a year younger than himself, one of the eleven children of a cobbler – which fact occasioned three or four jokes a day about his living in a shoe. He took it with good humour, as though he were still among boys at school, entirely used to the amusement it afforded them. Jokes among the company had become either simple or obscene and childish, as the life became more exhausting and tedious.
Barton said, ‘So we feel the same about tomorrow, then.’
‘Do we, sir? How’s that?’
‘A bit queasy.’
Parkin looked relieved, nodded. ‘I was thinking before you came along, sir – it’s all right here at the moment. Quiet. A bit chilly but I can cope with that. There’s a touch of something in the air – I don’t know, maybe it’s just that the bloody rain’s stopped. But it’s been reminding me of making bonfires and getting ready for Christmas, you know? I was feeling quite happy, just watching out and thinking. Then I got that feeling – like when you wake up and you know something a bit unpleasant’s due to happen and for the time being you’ve forgotten what. I thought – what’s up? Then I remembered.’
‘I know.’
‘Still – we’re ready, aren’t we? We’ve got the lot up here and we know what we’ve got to do. It’s just a question of getting on and doing it. Maybe we’ll be over there tomorrow night, they’ll have run for it and we’ll be kipping in Jerry’s feather beds. They have everything in those trenches of theirs you know, sir – so they say, anyway. All home comforts. They dug themselves in good and proper.’
Barton watched the man’s face as he talked so quickly, talked himself into some sort of reassurance, he saw the twitching at the corner of his eye, the way his mouth moved. He thought that he ought to say something to him, provide the expected words of comfort and support. He could say nothing. He knew. Parkin knew.
‘The left flank go off first don’t they, sir? Then it’s us. So we’ll get the best view of the first round.’
‘That’s right.’
The Rifle Brigade were to take the first wave, then their own Regiment, with Highlanders in support. The C.O. had drawn the plan on a blackboard in coloured chalks, had pointed white arrows to show the direction of the artillery barrage and blue arrows to show the movement of the lines of infantry. The targets, Barmelle Wood and Queronne, were in bright green. He was a clear map maker, the pattern of it all was engraved in Barton’s memory. He saw himself as a blue arrow.
‘Oughtn’t you to get some sleep, sir?’
Barton shifted. He was more reluctant to go in than ever, wide awake and afraid. He moved forward and looked cautiously over the parapet. No Man’s Land lay, still and moonlit and beautiful.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I just needed a breath of air. Goodnight, Parkin.’
‘Do you want to turn the lamp on?’ Hilliard said.
‘I thought you were asleep.’
‘No, I was waiting for you. If you want to read…’
‘No.’
Barton lay down, still in his greatcoat. ‘You’re right. “Not a mouse stirring”.’
‘It often happens like this, it’s uncanny. I remember it in July.’
‘But they must know we’re up to something.’
‘Oh yes. Though that fact is never obvious to High Command, whose faith in the Element of Surprise in attack is really very touching. And quite unshakeable.’
‘John, shall I stop feeling so bloody afraid?’
‘Things will get so busy you’ll have no time for it, that’s all I can promise you. But this is the worst bit, this building up of tension.’
‘Like the dentist.’
‘Rather a pale analogy – but yes.’
‘Shall we be due for leave afterwards, do you suppose?’
‘Surely. We might even get home for Christmas.’
‘Both of us?’
‘Anything is possible. Don’t bank on it though.’
‘I’d like you to come to us for Christmas but your family would object, I imagine.’
‘I could come for part of the time. But really we had better not start building castles in Spain.’
‘John, I want you to come and see it all.’
‘Yes.’
‘I want to take you everywhere, show you everything – oh, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t come off for Christmas, we’ll do it sometime. There’s so much… I want it all to look right and be right – I want you to like them all.’
‘Will they like me is much more to the point.’
‘Oh, of course they will.’
‘Of course?’
‘Yes, because they couldn’t help it and because you’re my friend – and because really, they like nearly everyone.’
‘So do you, don’t you?’
‘More or less, I suppose.’
‘Has it always been like that? Has it always been so easy for you to love people? To get on with them, to bring them out, say the right things at the right time? Have you always made friends as you’ve done out here?’
‘I’ve never really thought about it. But that part is easy you know. The big outer circle of friends.’
‘Is it?’
‘Oh yes. It’s the other which is the real luck – what we have. That’s another matter altogether. Things don’t happen like this often in a lifetime.’
‘Have you – do you have other friends who – is it the same with anyone else?’
‘No.’
Hilliard felt a rush of joy and his mouth was filled up with the words he wanted to say, his head rang with them and he could say nothing.
Footsteps went by in the trench outside, voices came softly. Then silence again.
In the end they slept.
At breakfast, just after six, it was dark and still uncannily quiet. The men’s faces were pale, unshaven, their eyes staring. They queued for the bread and rashers of fat bacon, stood or sat about drinking the sweet tea, and there would be nothing to do, once they were in battle order, but stand about again, watching and waiting until their turn came.
Walking along towards the platoon sergeant, Hilliard thought that they all knew there was very little chance of this offensive coming off as planned. In simple geographical terms the odds were against them, even though they had confidence in the strength and accuracy of their artillery. Nobody spoke much above a whisper as the dawn came up. But the sky was clear, pale as a dove’s back, there had been no more rain. Between the trees of Barmelle Wood half a mile away on the ridge, a thin mist parted and for a few moments the November sun came out, so that the morning frost shone silver-white and the whole landscape seemed to spread and thin out and fade in a trick of light.
Holding the hot tin mug of tea, Barton looked up and saw it all and felt suddenly elated; his muscles were stiff from the few cold hours of sleep, he had had a nightmare for the first time since coming to France, full of images of dark green water in which he was drowning, yet now, the knot in his stomach dissolved, he was no longer afraid. He thought of Parkin a few hours before, looked along the line and remembered the hours of work that had gone into the planning of this battle, of the weight of gunpower and manpower behind them, and thought, we can do it, we can do it, Parkin was right, what is there to be afraid of? And the sun has come out, we are in luck. We must be in luck.
He had a vision of them all going over the top of the trench and running forward up the slope, hundreds and hundreds of them.
‘All right?’ Hilliard had come back and was standing for a moment beside him. He looked puzzled.
‘Yes. I really am.’ For he left it, he had a hallucinatory sense of possessing more than one man’s share of strength and confidence and hope. It will be all right.
‘Good.’
‘Look…’ Barton nodded up towards the slope and the wood, to where they could just see Queronne in the lemon-white light.
‘It’s like a Turner canvas.’
Hilliard frowned.
‘No – it is. The sun won’t last but it won’t rain either, and just for now it’s very beautiful. Can’t you see that?’
‘I can see that.’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘You.’
‘No, no, I’m fine. I haven’t felt like this for weeks. Don’t worry about me. You must never worry about me again.’
Filled with unease, Hilliard turned away.
A few minutes later the men took up their places all along the trench. At eight, with a roar like the explosion of a volcano, the barrage began from their artillery. The men reeled with the shock of the noise after what had been such an unnaturally long silence. But then, for some time there was a sense of general excitement as they watched the smoke begin to rise up in the direction of the enemy front line, saw the great flashes of flame and fountains of earth as the guns scored direct hits.
Half an hour later the Rifle Brigade on the left flank came out and began to advance in perfect order. As far as Hilliard could see the plain in front of the slope was filled with men, following the barrage, sweeping on without meeting any answering fire. He felt a surge of hope in spite of himself that it was going to work after all, the Surprise Element, that this would be the breakthrough, they would go up the slope and breach the wood, take over the trenches and gun positions before the Germans had recovered from the bombardment, which was now the strongest he had ever known. He looked at his watch. He wanted to go, to have it over with.
The Rifles were still advancing. They were beautiful, Barton thought, standing a dozen yards away behind Private Flannery, they are perfectly ordered, lines unbroken, graceful as horses. They are beautiful.
As the noise of the artillery got louder his excitement seemed to fill his body, took him over entirely so that, when they themselves began to go up and over the top, he was no longer conscious of anything except the urge to move forward, to keep up this almost hysterical sense of pleasure in what was so obviously a perfect battle, so easy, effortless. He felt as though he were standing outside himself, and was surprised at this new person he had become, surprised at everything. He wondered when he would come to.
Where the ground began to slope up the mud gave way to grass here and there. But they could no longer see the men on the right and left flanks because of the denseness of the smoke. Hilliard was separated from Barton and not so far ahead, so that when the rifle and machine gun fire opened up from the enemy guns hidden in Barmelle Wood, he had a better view. He watched their own first line stagger and fall, the men going down one after another on their knees and then, before the smoke closed up, the line immediately behind. It went on like that and after a moment they themselves were caught up in it, and the heavy shells began to come over, the whole division was an open target for the enemy guns. Wave after wave of men came walking into the fire, the ground began to open under their feet, as the howitzers blew up dozens of men at a time.
Hilliard began to try and pull his own section of the line together, as the men fell he began shouting at them to close in, before an attack of coughing from the smoke and fumes forced him to stop, gasping for breath. Four men ahead of him and O’Connor on his right went down in the same burst of machine gun fire and he wondered how it had missed him so neatly. He went on.
After that he lost touch, the men coming up behind overtook his own section and fell in the same places, so that the bodies were piling on top of one another, the shell holes were filled and then new ones opened up, filled again. Once, Hilliard slipped and fell and for a moment thought that he had been hit, but could feel no pain. A Corporal beside him was holding his head between his hands, covering his eyes and rocking silently to and fro. Hilliard crawled over, hunted for his water bottle and got a little of it between the man’s lips, but as it dribbled down his throat, he coughed it up with a great spout of blood, and his head fell forwards. Hilliard left him, got up again. He had no idea how far he had gone, he could see nothing. He thought they had begun to walk into their own artillery barrage, but there was a constant spray of fire from the enemy line. He had a clear picture of the whole English army caught in the neatest, simplest possible trap. Another line of men came up the slope. A Company, he thought, stepping between the – already dead and wounded, walking directly on into the rain of fire, and suddenly, Hilliard wanted to stand up and wave at them, shout, push them back, he saw that it was all useless, that those few who did reach the enemy line would be shot to pieces on their wire. He turned and began to roar at the first man who came towards him but before he was near enough he fell forwards, his knees giving slowly under him and his helmet slipping over his face.
In the end Hilliard gave up and went on because, in the total confusion, it was impossible to know how else to behave. Men were rushing from shell hole to shell hole, completely out of order, trying only to avoid the fire now, and caught every so often running straight out of the way of a bullet into the face of an exploding shell. The cries of the wounded men were drowned in the din but now and again came out piercingly clear in the odd seconds of pause between blasts.
‘Mr Hilliard…’
‘Parkin.’
The man was panting, scrambling to his feet. ‘If you come over here sir, we can get through, there’s a space. We can get into the trees.’
‘Where are we?’
‘To the east a bit, I think, but I haven’t seen any of our own Company for ages. I came back to find someone. Captain Sparrow’s dead, sir, I was going to ask him what to do – I met him, he was sitting down, I thought… Only he was dead. Look, if we go this way.’
They seemed to have lost everyone, to be dodging only among dead bodies and great craters and mounds of turned-up mud and smoke, there might have been no other men left except those who were ahead, still firing the guns. Hilliard followed Parkin, they ducked and ran forward as they could. He wondered again how they were managing to stay alive. Then suddenly they came between the stumps of some trees, dropped down into a shell hole. Parkin scrambled out again.
‘We want to be a bit farther, sir.’
‘Mind we don’t get on to their wire.’
‘No, we’re to the left of it, I think, we’ll be all right in a yard or so.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘Luck, sir, it’s all luck.’
‘You’re right about that.’
‘Here. In this hole.’
‘We can’t stick here forever.’
‘What else can we do for the time being, sir? There’s nothing. We’ve lost touch with everyone, we don’t know what’s going on, do we? We’ve got no orders and if we had what good would they be? It’d be hopeless trying to get back now. We’d much better sit tight and wait till dark and then have a go. This is a balls-up, sir.’
‘Quite.’
‘We’ve lost half the bloody Division.’
Hilliard leaned forward, suddenly giddy, tried to reach for his water bottle.
‘You’ve done something to your leg, sir, look…’
‘No.’
‘Well, it’s bleeding.’
‘I’d have known. It’s blood from all the wounded men we’ve been wading through.’
He lifted his head slowly and it felt like a dead weight. He glanced down. A huge patch of his trousers all round the left thigh was dark with blood. He had a sense of having been in this same place, and with this same wound, before, or repeating the same bit of time over and over again. His head swam.
‘I haven’t got a field dressing, sir, I used it up on someone else. But I’ll go and find somebody, I’ll get help.’
‘There isn’t anybody.’
‘I’ll get a dressing anyway. You can have it put on and then we’ll wait here till this lot dies down and I can try to get you back.’
‘Can you?’ It seemed unlikely. Hilliard was feeling no pain at all, only this sensation of lightness, of floating, so that his eyes would not focus and he heard Parkin’s voice as from a great distance down a tunnel.
‘Come on, sir.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘Get a bit further down in this hole, sir, you’ll be better off.’
Somehow, Hilliard slithered down on his back.
‘How are you off for water, sir?’
‘I don’t know.’
He felt the man put something to his mouth, swallowed twice, and tasted rum from his own hip flask, warm and curiously sweet, trickling down the back of his throat into his belly.
‘I’ll be back, sir.’
He wanted to agree but as he fell further down the side of the shell hole his face came up against something cold and soft and he felt himself sinking into a whirl of blackness and silence.
The first time he regained consciousness, the gunfire was still going on all around him but it sounded now to be mainly heavy shells. The air stank. He lay, trying to make out where he was, for a moment, and then as he came to, wondered what had happened to Parkin. It was almost dark. Hadn’t he been left out here some time in the morning? He sat up and was sick into the ground at his feet. He had been lying next to a dead man and on top of another – or perhaps more than one. A leg had fallen heavily across his own and when he tried to shift himself, the first real pain he had felt shot through his leg from the foot upwards, making him faint again. As he lost consciousness, he realized that he was thirsty. He could not reach around to find his water bottle.
This time he dreamed, and his dream was of swimming with Beth out beyond the point, in the bay at Hawton. The sun glittered and shone on the wrinkled surface of the water and he felt his body striking easily through it, felt a sense of jubilation, as he saw her moving in front of him. But when he caught up she turned, laughing, and it was not Beth after all, it was David Barton and they were not children, though the day was the same one that Beth had helped him swim out beyond the point because he was afraid. Looking back towards the house, he could see his father sitting in the deckchair on the lawn, wearing a panama hat tipped down over his eyes, hands folded in his lap, he could see the gardener going to and fro with the lawn mower. For a long time he swam slowly beside Barton, and then they lay on their backs and floated, looking up at the sky, pale as paint.
‘When we get back we shall have strawberries.’
‘The smell of strawberries is the most beautiful smell in the world,’ Barton said and Hilliard realized that it was true, that everything Barton said was true. He would never forget about the smell of strawberries, now. They went on floating and the sun shone, burning their skin, the house and the cliffs receded.
‘There’s my father,’ Hilliard said.
‘I like him.’
‘You like everyone.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘I can’t, I can’t. I want to be like you but I can’t.’
‘Oh no, you should be quite happy as you are.’
‘Why? How can I be?’
‘Because it’s easy.’
‘But I don’t like myself much.’
‘Oh, you’re all right, John, you’re all right.’ Barton was laughing. A gull flew over their heads, silver as a bullet, they watched it land and begin to rock on the water.
‘I’d like to be a gull.’
‘You are all right as you are. Listen, I know what I’m saying.’
Hilliard heard Barton’s voice in his ears sounding oddly distorted. ‘You’re all right, you’re all right.’ There was something else he wanted to hear, he wanted to know the answer to a question but he could not remember what it was. And where was Beth? Beth had been here with them, and was no longer here, where was she? She had not liked to swim so far out and he felt suddenly afraid, because he and Barton had not looked after her, had been so absorbed in themselves. Beth was a child, she was eleven years old, she needed them to look after her, most particularly because she was plain and afraid of the water.
On the lawn his father still sat asleep in the deckchair and in the sun-filled bedroom his mother stood before the mirror, admiring herself in the lilac dress and coat. For the wedding. For the wedding.
A terrible noise burst through his head.
His leg had gone numb. He was sick again.
Now it was completely dark and quieter, except for the odd burst of a shell somewhere far in the distance. He felt better, found his flask and drank the last of the rum and then ate two biscuits from his iron ration. But there was no water left in the bottle when he found that. He wondered if he could move, to look for one that might have been beside one of the dead men. When he tried, his leg was terribly painful, but after a moment or two he found that he could get used to it. What had happened to Parkin? Why hadn’t Parkin come back with the dressing? His trousers were stuck to the wound with dried blood and when he moved they began to tear away from it. He still had no idea when he had been hit. He hauled himself up on his hands, trying to get out of the shell hole, but it was raining again and the sides were slippery with mud, he could get no hold at all. His leg hurt so badly that he fell back again, his ears roared.
He came to another time to hear himself cry out and there was an answering cry. Someone had come, perhaps Parkin had returned with a dressing, or else it was some stretcher bearers. He did not mind who it was. He called out again. But after a long time, when the answering cry did not come any nearer to him, and when it sounded simultaneously with his own, he knew that it was another man wounded and crying out, probably not even hearing him. They were no help to one another.
Otherwise there seemed to be no life, only death, all around him. The moon had come out for a while and he saw for the first time that he was in fact among a pile of bodies at the bottom of a shell hole, and the revulsion of it made him determine to get up and out somehow, and he found a hold by grasping the shoulders of a dead man and climbing over his back. Once up on to the level ground, he flopped on to his face, exhausted by the pain in his leg and the effort he had made. He smelled a sweet smell and the dream took him again, he was in his own room, the scent of roses came up to him from the garden.
This time it was the rain which brought him round, his head and neck were cold and running with water, his tunic was soaking wet. A Verey flare shot up and as he lifted his head he saw that he was facing out of the wood, looking down the slope in the direction of their own trenches, though they were perhaps half a mile away. He turned over slowly, his leg throbbing, found another biscuit, but when he put it into his mouth, he could not swallow.
He knew now that if he was to get back it would be on his own, there would be no stretcher parties.
Above his head the moon had gone in, the sky was dark and rain-filled again and he did not want to move, he wanted to lie and drown, he could have gone back to sleep and dreamed his dreams of the sun and sea and his mother in the lilac dress, of Beth and David Barton.
Barton.
He sat up, his heart pounding. He was quite clear headed. Where was Barton? He had been further down the line and a little way behind. Hilliard had not seen him since they first went over the top. Where was he? He had to get back, he had to see him.
He got to his knees and tried to stand. Toppled over again at once. In the end he began to crawl, resting and then dragging himself forward, putting his whole weight on his arms, resting again. Several times he lost consciousness, he did not know for how long. From somewhere a shout. He shouted back. Nothing.
He said, ‘Barton.’
He was panting with the effort of trying to go more quickly, he was forced to stop and rest for a long time. But he was out of the wood now and going inch by inch through the mud. Every couple of feet he came up against a body or a pile of bodies, odd limbs or rifles, helmets, packs. A full water-bottle. He ripped the cap off and poured the contents down his throat, crying with the relief it gave him. The next few yards were better, he could get on to his knees for a short way.
Until he came upon Parkin. He did not see who it was until the man’s face was almost under his hand. He was lying on his back, arms stretched out wide and his chest and stomach half torn away. But his face was relaxed, his eyes open and looking up into the night sky, the rain splashed down gently on to him. Hilliard touched his flesh. It was cold, moist. He wondered why Parkin had come so far and whether he had been on his way back with the dressing. But looking behind him he saw that in fact he had only come a few yards out of the wood, it had taken perhaps two or three hours and felt like fifteen miles. He lay down, putting his face against Parkin’s arm, and wept with frustration. Somewhere close by another man was groaning. Hilliard said, ‘Shut up, shut up, for God’s sake shut up!’ But it was only a whisper. He felt helpless. He let his face fall forwards again.
The next time he moved, remembering that he had to get back to the dugout to find Barton, the whole of his left leg and part of his side had gone numb, so that crawling was easier, though he did it clumsily. The shells were bursting around him again now but they seemed to have nothing to do with him, and he went on. He only wished there were some other sign of life apart from the crying of the wounded and the blasting of the guns.
It was not until the middle of the following morning that he reached their trenches. As he staggered forwards and then tumbled down the firestep, almost knocking over a sentry, he saw that he was nowhere near his own end of the front line, the men who came along were strangers. It seemed to matter, he wanted to get up and go on, to leave them, find his own platoon. Find Barton. He heard them calling for stretcher bearers.
‘You’ll be all right.’ Who was saying that? A man with a large nose, bending over him. ‘You’ll be all right.’
But it should have been Barton. Where was Barton? Vividly, then, he remembered the first time he had seen him, as he had climbed up the ladder to the apple loft at Percelle, and the sense of that place was so great, he thought that the smell of the old, sweet apples was in his nostrils and he wondered if he were not still there.
Someone put water to his lips but as he was drinking it, he wanted to get up again, he tried to sit and resented the hands of the men who were pushing him back.
‘It’s only my leg.’
‘Yes, sir. You’ll be all right now.’
He was crying, his body ached all over, his head was throbbing.
‘They keep coming in like this. We had another half an hour ago but he died as soon as he got here. How do they do it?’
‘How did he get here? B Company lieutenant, is he?’
‘They got most of the way up, as well – this one must have been near the top of the slope.’
‘I didn’t think there were any of them left.’
‘One or two, I suppose.’
‘Let’s get him up, Hammond.’
‘It’s all right, sir, we’ve got you. You’re all right.’
He heard their voices and saw their mouths opening and shutting and was too tired to take any of it in, he had no idea what they were talking about, forgot where he was and did not care. He felt himself lifted up and the pain in his leg was so bad that he yelled out as they bumped him, beginning to walk along the trench.
Twice they had to get into a traverse or duck down because of shells coming over and exploding nearby. Hilliard wondered how it could be worth their while to send down shells, for how many men were left alive after all those he had seen dead, on his way down here? The stretcher bearers were swearing as they lifted him up again.
‘Oh Jesus Christ!’
‘Sorry, sir. We’ll be as steady as we can. But they keep sending stuff over.’
Hilliard was puzzled. What were they saying? Were they talking to him? Who were they talking to? What was happening? He did not know. He knew nothing.
‘Hilliard.’
The voice came from somewhere else, it had nothing to do with him. And then suddenly it was near, his ears were full of it, he felt the words hitting him in the face like blows.
‘Hilliard.’
He remembered someone saying, ‘Lift him down.’
Who was talking to him?
‘Hilliard.’
He opened his eyes. Captain Franklin’s face came into focus, the same, blank face, behind the gingerbread moustache.
Then he remembered that people had been before, people he knew, his name had been spoken to him. Who had come? There was something he wanted to remember.
‘How do you feel?’
‘I don’t know.’ So he could speak then? ‘Yes,’ he said aloud. Then again, ‘I don’t know.’ And he heard the words quite clearly, that was his own voice. He tried again. ‘I’m in a hospital.’ ‘Yes.’ That was Franklin’s voice. ‘The Battalion’s been moved down here for a couple of days. We’ll be on our way again after that. I managed to get in to see you though.’
Hilliard found difficulty in piecing together the meaning of what he was saying.
‘I’m sorry you had such a knock.’
He did not know exactly what Franklin meant by that, either. He was still uncertain what had happened to him. The nights and days slid into one another like cards and were full of disconnected noises and the pain in his leg. People came and gave him food and drink and spoke to him, he saw them staring down.
Oh God, what had he to remember? What must he try to remember?
He had heard the rain, too, pattering on and on against the windows behind his bed. Rain.
‘You’ll be here for a week or so. They won’t send you home until they think you can cope.’
‘No.’
‘Is there anything you want?’
Was there?
‘Has your mail been getting through all right?’
He did not know. He knew nothing.
The light went pale and then dark again around Franklin’s head, Hilliard tried to focus his eyes and could not. The light went very bright, then broke into millions of shiny silver pins in front of him.
After another week they let him sit up and then he read the letters which had come from his mother and father and Beth, the letters full of formal expressions of love and sympathy, behind which lay whatever they were truly feeling.
‘You’ve got another parcel. You get a lot of parcels, don’t you?’
‘Yes. Would you open it for me?’
She opened it and he made her take things around the ward again, share out figs and chocolates and cigarettes. He wanted nothing at all.
‘There’s another letter today, too.’
He looked at the postmark and the handwriting, and did not open it.
Yesterday a letter had come from the old Major, a short letter dictated to his daughter.
We hear things are improving out there. It’s a good cause. We send our regrets that you’ve had bad luck with your leg. We send kindest wishes for your recovery.
They had amputated his left leg though he still did not believe it, because of the continued pain.
‘Could you close the window? It’s raining on my pillow.’
‘Oh, we can’t have you getting wet!’
She stood up for a moment looking out. She had red hair. ‘Will it ever stop raining!’
Now that he was feeling so much better he did not care about his leg, he cared about nothing. But he wondered whether Franklin would come back and talk to him again, tell him what he wanted to know, tell him all of it.
There was no news. He had no visitors.
They let him sit up in a chair one morning. Then he knew what he must do. The letter had been on his table for ten days. He had to open the letter. Outside it was still raining.
‘Drink your soup, Mr Hilliard. You’ve got to eat and drink now.’
He drank his soup.
‘You’re going home next week.’
In the night the sound of the guns rattled the windows. Still his leg hurt him.
Dear John,
We do not know exactly where you are – whether you are in England yet or still in hospital in France. We have no news of you but we hope that you will get this letter and, when you are better, get in touch with us. We do not know, either, how much you have heard but we beg you, if you have news, whatever news it is, to write and tell us. We have only had the telegram and then a typed letter informing us that David is missing believed killed, but we have received nothing else, none of his belongings. And we had not had a letter from him either, for some time, we were becoming anxious.
We made contact with your family at Hawton, who have replied to our letter and told us that you have been wounded and have lost your leg. But the letter took a time to reach us because ours was wrongly addressed. So we are hoping that if you are not still in France the hospital will forward this to you.
John, we have only you to ask for news, you have been with David, and we can only talk of him to you. There is no one else. And you have been close to him, you are sure to have so much to say to us. Please write and we will either come and see you in hospital or where you are convalescing, or at home, or hope, most of all, that you may be able to come to us. Please do that if you can, we feel that we are friends and know you so well already, we should so like to have you here to stay. I cannot write more now, I am too anxious for this to reach you, and I am afraid of distressing you when you are ill.
But by the time he had read it another letter had come, there were two in the same handwriting, the same postmark at which he could hardly bear to look.
I am letting you know that we received a letter from a Captain Franklin – we think he was your Adjutant? He could tell us nothing at all about David except that he was believed killed in the wave of men going forwards into fire at the battle of Barmelle Wood. But he wrote very sympathetically and kindly and now we have had forwarded to us some things of David’s, mainly books and clothing and odd personal belongings. There was also an unfinished letter which he was writing to us perhaps the night before the fighting. He had not dated it. We will not send it to you for fear that it may be lost – we still have no news of you. But if and when you come here to us, we should like you to read it. Unless you have already done so, for we know David shared his letters with you.
We are still hardly able to believe in this terrible thing, because there is no certainty. We hear stories of men who have been reported dead and who have walked in at their own front doors, fit and well, weeks later, and so we cannot stop hoping against hope, just because of this lack of final, certain news. David may be alive in a hospital somewhere?
Then, he wrote to them, because he could not do anything but tell them the truth. He half-thought of inventing a story, as he had done in the past about the deaths of other men, forming the usual, smooth phrases about gallant deaths, killed instantly, having suffered as little as possible. When Fawley had blown out his own brains, he had written such a letter, none of the man’s family would ever know. He thought of it.
He wrote.
I have to tell you that I do not know anything at all, anything, about David, but that it is now very unlikely indeed that he will be alive. There are not often unidentified men in hospital because we all wear tags and these are almost always forwarded to the Division. I do not believe that David can be alive after having seen where he was that day. It is likely, as the Adjutant has said, that he was walking into the line of fire and was shot down. But I do not know.
Please do not think that I am deliberately trying to kill your hopes but it seems best to me that you should know what is the most likely truth.
I am glad that you have now his things at home with you.
I am returning to England in two days’ time now, and will probably be in hospital and then convalescent near Oxford. I am out of the war for good, of course, but cannot look ahead at all. I am feeling better and learning to manage crutches.
Please, I would rather that you did not come and see me in hospital or especially, at home. I would rather wait for a while. But I should like to have a letter if you can write to me and I should like to come and see you when I am able. It will not be for some time. I want to see you in the places I have heard about. I will let you know when it can be.
No, I did not see the last letter, we were very busy for nights before the battle, and we saw very little of one another at all, for talking or reading. There were only a few hours, the night before the battle, when we had a word, and I will tell you of that, though there is little to tell, when I do see you.
It was another hour before they finally pulled away from the harbour. The boat was not so crowded as Hilliard had expected, and he managed to find a corner and ensure some privacy by hemming himself in with cases and crutches. For, more than ever, now, he wanted to be private, set apart, he drew back from anyone who tried to come near to him. Only within himself, he was forced to think, to think. The worst of it was that he did not know. Their letter had made him realize that. He would rather have seen anything, so long as it had been certain.
Would he?
He no longer knew. He wanted to return to the past, nothing more.
After some time, he got a Corporal who was passing to help him up on to his crutches and he tried to walk down the boat to one of the seats by a porthole. Twice, he overbalanced, as the ship rolled, fell and swore. They got him up again. He knew that it was easier here than it would be when he got home. Here, everyone was wounded, men were bandaged, deformed, sick, nobody stopped to stare, everyone had themselves to think about most of all. He dreaded the eyes that would follow him, once he got back. Dreaded everything.
The sea was grey as gunmetal and heaving, under a livid sky. It was snowing and the snow was taken up and whirled about by the wind and splattered softly on to the glass.
He did not want to be back in England.
A gull came out of the greyness of sea and snow, beating its wings and skidding over the water.
He had a sudden complete picture of Barton in his mind, he could have turned and seen him standing there, could reach out a hand and touch him. He could…’
The boat dipped, nose-down, into a trough of dark water, lifted again.
He would be at home for Christmas. Christmas…
He turned and began the painful journey back to where he had left his things.
At Dover the sleet blew down on an east wind into their faces. Some of the men were singing.
‘Is there anything you would like us to bring for you, John? We shall be coming early next week. Is there anything you would have us send?’
‘No, thank you.’
‘Books? Do you have plenty to read?’
‘There’s a library here.’
‘Well, you should take advantage of it, you should be reading, dear, there is always some diversion to be had from a good book, it will take your mind off things.’
‘Yes.’ Then he remembered. ‘There are one or two books I should like.’
‘Well of course, but tell me quickly, dear, I have to be ready to leave at four, the Garnetts are coming to dinner.’ His mother took out the small gold notebook and the small gold pencil.
‘The collected works of Sir Thomas Browne.’
‘B-R-O-W-N?’
‘No, with an E at the end. And The Turn of the Screw by Henry James, and a novel called A Room with a View.’
‘Mr Forster.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Yes, Harrods will have that, certainly.’
‘Harrods will have them all.’
‘Wouldn’t you like something light? I could ask them to find you some more novels.’
‘No. That’s all I want.’
‘Do they feed you well enough? Shall I have Mary bake you a plum cake?’
‘They feed us very well. Don’t fuss now, mother.’
‘Well, it is the least I can do, to make sure you are properly cared for.’
‘I am.’
‘And how long before you will be home?’
‘About another fortnight. But they will let me come for Christmas Day and Boxing Day, before that.’
‘I should hope so!’
He did not want to think about Christmas. Constance Hilliard rose.
‘You look very beautiful, mother. You always look very beautiful.’
She inclined her head, smiled at him, as Royalty would smile. She wore a dark fuchsia dress, full-skirted, and with a coat of deeper, more purplish red, a hat with purple feathers. When she walked away, the other men in the room looked up from their books and letters, watched her go.
Hilliard turned back to the window.
It was an old house, someone’s mansion given over for the duration of the war, so that they sat among beautiful pictures and tapestries on beautiful chairs at beautiful tables. Down the long lawn between the beeches, a man swept up the last of the leaves. It was growing dark, the sky was full of great, scudding clouds. He knew no one here and had made no friends, he spoke as rarely as possible, so that they watched him and formed their own judgements, assumed that he was shell-shocked or unable to accept the loss of his leg. Men left, others came. Hilliard sat by the window, watching the sky and the black trees. He thought endlessly about Barton.
But when the books came he could not bear to read or even to open them, he only stared at the covers and kept them in a pile on the locker beside his bed.
He woke one morning and wondered what he was waiting for, how long it would take before he ceased to feel simply dazed, as though life were suspended forever and had no longer anything to do with him. When would it begin?
He did not read the newspapers, he knew nothing about the war. He did not want to know.
Colonel Garrett came to see him. They had nothing to say to one another. Hilliard sat in dread of the moment when he would mention Barton’s name but when it came, it was strangely easy, Garrett spoke of him and he listened and it was all remote, they might have been talking about some other person, nothing of the truth was touched upon. But he was glad when Garrett went.
My dear John,
Thank you for your letter, which pleased us so much and we are all delighted that you are truly feeling better and managing life without so much difficulty. Though it must still be very bad – we suspect that you are being heroic!
We are so much longing to see you. What will the arrangements be? We hope you will be able to stay here for a few days or even longer. Come now, you will, won’t you? We know you cannot have anything more pressing. You are not to think of the future at all just now, you are still convalescing and everyone is going to make sure that you are looked after and not troubled at all by anything. If you are on the train, then someone – I hope it will be Harold – will meet you at the station, which is about two miles from the house. But can you manage the train? Perhaps someone is to drive you up by motor car, in which case please let us know and we will send you a careful map, as we are rather hard to find.
Kindest regards to your family and love to you from us all. Oh, you cannot think how much we look forward to seeing you, how much this will mean to us! Or perhaps you can? Yes, I think so.
No, we have had no further news and have all accepted now that we shall not do so. It is very hard.
Take great care of yourself, John dear, and we are all longing for next week to come.
He had thought that he might not even be able to look out of the windows of the train at the countryside, for he remembered what the places would look like, he began to recognize them – a village, the name of the previous station, a particular belt of trees and then the lie of certain fields. Pheasants ran in great bevies from out of the hedgerows and across ploughed fields as the train steamed by, their tails trailing long and copper-coloured in the evening light.
But when he did look, he felt at once happy and soothed, he was coming here, he was seeing it and all of a sudden, he leaned forward, his eyes unable to keep up with it, he wanted to take in every inch of land, every branch of every tree.
The sky here was wide and pale in the late afternoon sun which flooded down, glancing between the acres of beech trees. It was beautiful. It was exactly as David had described it.
The train pulled in to the station, he had to start getting himself up, there was the tedious business of crutches and doors and luggage. A man and a woman helped him, and then a porter came down the tiny platform.
‘Excuse me – Mr Hilliard?’
Who was this? One of them? A young man, in a cap.
‘Dr Barton sent me down to meet you – he’s been called out with his own car. He was expected back but it was easiest for me to come down rather than risk your waiting about. I’m George Bennett – my father farms the land adjoining the Doctor’s house.’
He had picked up Hilliard’s case, they were walking slowly down the platform and out into the sunshine.
Hilliard said, ‘David told me about you.’
‘Oh yes. Yes. We’ve known one another since boys, of course.’ He came up to the open car. ‘I put the hood down. It’s been warm here today – a bit too warm, bad sign for so early, but you can’t help making the most of it. If it’s too cold for you…’
‘No. I shall like it. It’s fine.’
The air smelled sweet and dry. It was very quiet here. Hilliard felt as if he were going through the pages of a book, following a map to a country he had always known.
Bennett put his things on to the back seat. He said, ‘They’ll all be waiting for you. Everyone’s there, you know. Dick’s home on leave. Had they told you?’
The car started, drove very slowly out of the station yard down a slope, turned into a lane.
‘Hob Lane,’ Hilliard said. George Bennett looked surprised.
‘That’s it.’
‘Leading to Woodman’s Lane.’
‘You’ve been here before then?’
‘No.’ But then he thought that that was not true, he had been here, he had spent hours here with Barton, as they had talked in the apple loft and the tents and dugouts and billets, he could walk down the lane and paths for miles around. He knew it.
‘No. I haven’t been here before.’
The car turned up the lane and then they were driving into the sun.
‘This is all my father’s land, on either side of here. You can’t see our farmhouse, it lies in the dip beyond the beeches there.’
The engine was grinding slowly up the hill. Then, they came out between the trees and saw the whole valley, sloping up gently to east and west. The sky was vast, darkening behind them.
‘There’s the house.’
Hilliard looked up, and ahead.
ТЕЛЕГРАМКанал с обзорами, анонсами новинок и книжными подборками
Книжный Вестник
Бот для удобного поиска книг (если не нашлось на сайте)
Поиск книг
Свежие любовные романы в удобных форматах
Любовные романы
О психологии, саморазвитии и личностном росте
Саморазвитие
Детективы и триллеры, все новинки
Детективы
Фантастика и фэнтези, все новинки
Фантастика
Отборные классические книги
Классика
ВКОНТАКТЕБиблиотека с любовными романами, которая наверняка придётся по вкусу женской части аудитории
Любовные романы
Библиотека с фантастикой и фэнтези, а также смежных жанров
Фантастика
Самые популярные книги в формате фб2
Топ фб2
книги