A Whispered Name (12 page)

‘To
make that long journey in that short time, Flanagan must have caught a train.’
Anselm ran a finger along the railway line between Étaples and Abeele.

‘And if
that’s right,’ conceded Martin, ‘he must have walked or hitched a lift to
Elverdinghe … some twelve miles north-west.’

‘He
wasn’t going to Elverdinghe,’ corrected Anselm reluctantly, for he didn’t like
playing the front runner. ‘That is where Flanagan was
caught.
If you
carry on the trajectory, he was heading here … back to Black Eye Corner.’

‘But he
got drunk.’

‘Which
is far too convenient,’ insisted Anselm, repeating his earlier point. He’d
glimpsed what may have happened. ‘He brought the bottles with him.’

‘Where
from?’

‘Étaples
… I’m not sure,’ suggested Anselm. ‘But he didn’t find them in a barn.’

‘Why
bring alcohol halfway across Flanders?’

‘Because
it gave him an excuse. Something to say when the army finally caught him.
Because he could use a hangover to hide the time he’d spent with Doyle. I mean
it’s almost convincing —’ Anselm became earnest, giving substance to a speech
he didn’t believe —’Flanagan had ploughed through the mud and hail to save an
officer’s life; he’d snapped under the strain of the noise and the death of his
leader — that was a nice touch — and then he’d got lost and drunk in the
howling night.’ Anselm shrugged his shoulders. ‘Flanagan came back knowing he’d
get caught. He was banking on a merciful court.’

Martin
slipped his jacket back on. He checked the buttons at the cuffs and squared his
shoulders. ‘So what is the picture that emerges?’ he asked, humbly ‘Why are you
troubled by the evidence … the neat story given to the court?’

‘Because
it reads like something planned,’ said Anselm. ‘Because I think that Joseph
Flanagan was in control of that trial. That’s the picture I see.

2

Evening came and Anselm
wandered back to his B&B feeling like one of those students of mysticism
who inhabit a charnel house. Everywhere he’d looked, everything he’d touched,
concerned the dead. He’d bought three books on the Battle for Passchendaele. A
quick glance had revealed only two points of agreement: the maps and the
immense scale of the slaughter. The dispute was restricted to blame and merit.
In the late afternoon Anselm had sought Martin’s advice once more.

‘Why
have two identity tags?’

‘One
remained on the body and the other went to records. Sometimes you couldn’t
bury the dead. Sometimes they were laid in a common pit, so …’

Anselm
had guessed the rest. The tag gave a name to the remains: to help the War
Graves Commission, to warn a farmer in the years to come.

‘…
and, in fact, they still turn up.

How
did you get both of them, Herbert?
Anselm had
thought, letting the receiver drop.
Why wear them? Why offer them to a man
called Flanagan?

Anselm
simply could not escape the shadow thrown by the past, even now, when he
entered a corner shop stacked high with bright magazines, cheap toys, brown
fruit and endless tins. Despite a strong attempt, he failed to engage with the
headlines and the cheap abundance, or the banter of the man propped by the
till. A capital trial was loud in his mind like a play on the radio. He came
out of the shop empty-handed, pondering Flanagan’s last words to the court. ‘I
didn’t run off,’ he’d said.

Then
what did you do?

The
question remained with Anselm, even as he sat in the dark of his room, mumbling
the psalms for Compline, only vaguely conscious that his brothers in Larkwood
were chanting the same ancient words. During the Great Silence, that deep
monastic quiet that Anselm carried within himself, he tried to imagine everyone
from Major Glanville, who’d been grieving for his brother, to Private Elliot
who’d burned his cheek … those faceless names on the page, a convocation of
the damned with six weeks left to live. But he thought most of Herbert, a monk
who’d often slept through Compline, whose Great Silence filtered through to the
morning light, when he’d rise, and smile with quiet gratitude for his life. How
had this advocate of the heartbroken ever sat as a judge in the kingdom of
death?

Chapter Thirteen

Judgement

1

The memory of the pink
nimbus in the mirror wounded Herbert’s mind. Another kind of cloud seemed to
settle upon him, violently contrasting with the strips of sunlight upon the
tiled floor. For a while he couldn’t engage properly with Glanville’s
admonitions. The president repeated everything he’d said at the beginning,
including the Army’s decision that the assumption of innocence would not apply
only this time, mid-sentence, Chamberlayne appeared with a copy of the actual
text. Oakley studied it with a grimace and Herbert turned away drawn to the
lingering beauty in his mind. He sought the window for another torturing
glimpse. A cough from Glanville came like a reprimand.

‘It’s
time to do our duty,’ he said, full of Yorkshire frankness.

The
last word drove Herbert further into himself. Going through the motions he sat
on one of the three school desks that had been arranged in a triangle. The
others took their place in front of him. Their boots faced inward, inches
apart. They looked at each other foolishly Everyone looked their age —
twenty-something and boyish. Pretenders in an adult game. Herbert felt even
younger. He thought of his first day in the playground among the mute sons of
Cumberland farmers. Herbert was from the big house down the road, an outsider. As
he was now.

‘Leaving
aside the time spent guiding Major Dunne to the RAP,’ said Glanville, ‘this
soldier was absent for thirty-nine hours while his comrades were in action. He
was found three miles behind his own lines. His defence is that he got lost.’

They
looked from one to the other. Herbert’s expression was forced, his apparent
concentration a kind of mime. He’d been slipping away back to the trench and
the gore of the Regimental Aid Post. Flanagan had been there too, moments
before his desertion. Herbert had seen him…

‘I’m
unsure of Elliot,’ said Oakley dutifully He looked at Herbert, showing he didn’t
quite understand why this witness’s evidence might be important.

‘He was
the last to see him,’ said Herbert, as if that mattered.

‘You
can ignore the RSM, Elliot and Mr Sheridan, if you want to,’ said Glanville,
cutting through the trees to show up the wood. ‘Flanagan’s statement is all we
need.’

Oakley
nodded, satisfied, and Herbert acquiesced: he’d seen the point coming even
before his attempt to discredit Elliot, while Flanagan had been confirming the
evidence brought against him. The trial was just a public airing of the reasons
for the verdict.

‘To
avoid anyone being influenced by the opinion of his superior officer,’ said
Glanville, a hand on each knee, ‘the junior member goes first, finishing with
the president.’

Herbert
noted the rose wallpaper, the scratched wood panelling to waist height, and he
wondered why the floor was laid with long strips of timber when the hall was
tiled. The family home in Keswick had similar tiling, though it wasn’t black
and white, as here, but varied like a mosaic. Red, blue, green and white, all
waxed by a retired farmer with bad knees. His grandson had been one of the
gloomy lads in the schoolyard.

‘Guilty,’
said Oakley obviously.

‘Guilty,’
said Herbert, tasting ash.

‘Guilty,’
said Glanville, fishing out his pocket watch. A ruby flashed on the chain. He
flicked open the cover with his thumb and started counting the minutes.

‘We can’t
go back in … not yet,’ said Oakley reading the memorandum once more. His
decency was as strong as his sense of duty. ‘It wouldn’t look right.’

‘I’m
inclined to agree,’ said Glanville, snapping the lid closed. With a stamp of
his boots he rose, stretching his long legs. Standing squarely at the window,
his broad back blocked the sun sending a huge shadow across the floor. How had
he survived? The tall ones always got shot sooner or later. In the head.
Snipers got them after breakfast when their prey stood up in the shallower
trenches, forgetting that they had to crouch just that little bit more than
everyone else. It was called being ‘clipped’. The confusion within Herbert’s
skull rolled heavily as though it had substance. This man will die, he thought,
casually A clipper will get him.

For the
next twenty minutes they talked about the show they’d all been a part of —
mainly in terms of the weather, because that is how a British soldier handles
tragedy.

‘God
left a tap running,’ said Glanville, swinging one leg on to the other. ‘It
rained almost every day last month.’

‘All
but three,’ confirmed Oakley.

‘Just
like home,’ said Herbert, on cue.

No one
mentioned the massive casualties. That would have been indecent. And the
raising of their memory would have been stained by the purpose of this assembly
at Oostbeke — to judge the one that had got away After a glance at his watch
again, Glanville sharpened his pencil with a pocket-knife. Out of the blue he
began to reminisce about the day his little brother let a bath overrun.

‘The
downpour destroyed a seventeenth-century ceiling in the room beneath.’

He
sighed, noted the time on his record of evidence and wrote GUILTY in the third
column of Army Form A3. Examining his writing on the pale blue paper, he said, ‘Come
on, let’s get on with it.’

2

When the members were
seated once more, the sentry marched the convicted man back into court. If
Flanagan had retained any hope, Glanville snuffed it out by calling for
evidence of character. It was the Army way: you weren’t told the finding of the
court. Herbert couldn’t remember why Banning’s lifesaver hadn’t dealt with that
one because it didn’t turn up in the exams. But if the members took further
evidence, you’d obviously been convicted.

‘Here
is the relevant conduct sheet,’ said Chamberlayne. Herbert sensed contempt in
the courtesy The dark rings around the prosecutor’s eyes grew still darker. ‘It
is without any endorsement of significance.’

Glanville
examined the columns with a degree of surprise. Apart from four days confined
to barracks for dumb insolence, his record was clean.

‘You’ll
appreciate that this soldier saved the life of his Company Commander,’ said
Chamberlayne with a hint of irony He nodded as he might have done when the Dean
of his college threw him out. ‘That individual is now in England. You will
remember that this soldier’s platoon commander — Mr Agnew — is dead. As a consequence
there is no one left to speak upon this man’s character, save a second
lieutenant who is currently hospitalised. He has provided this brief statement.’

‘Please
read it out loud,’ said Glanville. The genuine interest struck Herbert as
farcical. It wouldn’t really affect the sentence … and that thought swirled
his consciousness and he blinked as if sand had struck his eyes.

Chamberlayne
angled a scrap of paper towards the light. “‘I have been with the battalion for
six weeks. I’m reliably informed that Private Flanagan’s behaviour has always
been commendable. He has been with the battalion since nineteen fifteen. As a
fighting man he is of average worth. He fulfils his duties without particular
distinction. In April he reported to the MO regarding his nerves, though the
battalion was out of the line. He made a similar complaint in June. He has
never caused concern under fire.” It is signed by Lieutenant Alan Caldwell.’

‘Thank
you, Captain,’ said Glanville.

Pointedly
Chamberlayne handed the testimonial to Herbert who, in a show of diligence,
studied it with a puckered brow The handwriting was slanted and neat with two
mistakes, one of punctuation and the other of spelling. A flush of nerves in
spring and summer, thought Herbert, trying to understand its significance. And
a trial in autumn. He passed it to Glanville who licked his pencil and wrote ‘Exhibit
A’ in the top right-hand corner. Fastidiously he made a reference on his notes,
glancing between the two.

‘Have
you anything to say Private, beyond what you’ve told us already’

Flanagan
didn’t reply He was among clouds that were losing their colour, above a low
tree-line of vivid green, a congestion of living colour, so unlike the
desolation of the front, of the torn and shattered land, the endless brown of
exhumed soil and the white chalky mud. ‘No,’ he said, staring directly at
Glanville. Unintentionally he’d dropped the ‘Sir: And in that one error he
showed himself to be, in the smallest possible way beyond the authority of the
proceedings.

Glanville
closed the court and the sentry stamped forward. Herbert hardly saw Flanagan
swivel on the heel, but he heard the confusion of boots on the tiles and the
gritty flags outside.