Birdsong (47 page)

“Yes, but I’m sorry about your brother.”

“It’s all right. I found him, that’s the thing. I didn’t let him lie there. I got him back and now he’ll have a proper burial. There’ll be a grave that people can see. I can come and put flowers on it when the war’s over.”

Stephen was surprised by how confident Brennan was that he himself would survive. As he turned to go, Brennan began to sing softly to himself, an Irish song that he had sung on the morning when they waited to attack. His voice was a grating, persistent tenor and he knew many songs.

All night he sang for his brother, whom he had brought home in his hands.

T
here was an excited party of young officers in the dining room of the Hotel Folkestone in Boulogne. Many of them had been at the Front no more than six months and had stories to tell their friends and families. The war was not going too badly for them. They had witnessed mutilation and death; they had undergone the physical discomfort of cold, wet, and fatigue such as they had never thought themselves capable of enduring, yet they could still see this pattern of service at the Front alternated with regular home leave as something tenable, for a short time at least. They drank champagne and boasted to one another of what they would do when they got to London. They had not been there for the great slaughters of the previous year and could not foresee the mechanized abattoir that was expected in the impassable mud of Flanders in the months to come. The horror of the entr’acte was bearable; they shuddered with the joy of survival, and chafed each other with the exhilaration of their relief. Their young voices rose like the squawl of starlings beneath the chandeliers.

Stephen heard them in his room on the first floor, where he was writing a letter to Jeanne. His hip flask, filled with the last of his whisky at Arras, was almost empty, and the ashtray was full. Unlike the men under his command, who wrote home daily, he had had little practice as a correspondent. The men’s letters, which he read wearily, consisted of reassurances to those at home, comments on the contents of the parcels received, and requests for more news.

Stephen did not think Jeanne needed reassurance about his well-being; neither would she enjoy details of trench life. While he compelled himself not to mention Isabelle, he thought it sensible to write about things common to both him and Jeanne. This meant talking about Amiens and how its people and buildings survived.

What he wanted to say to Jeanne was that she, apart from Michael Weir, was the best friend he had. Since he might be
dead within the month, there seemed no reason not to say so. He wrote: “It means a great deal to me to receive your letters, to have some contact with a sane world. I appreciate your kindness to me. Your friendship enables me to survive.”

He tore up the page and threw it in the wastepaper basket by his feet. Jeanne would not appreciate such things; it was precipitate and vulgar on his part. He needed to be more formal, at least for the time being. He rested his head on his hands and tried to picture Jeanne’s long, wise face in his mind.

What was this woman like? What would she want him to say? He imagined her dark brown eyes beneath their arched brows. They were intelligent, sardonic eyes, and yet they had a quality of great gentleness and compassion. Her nose was similar to Isabelle’s but her mouth was wider, with a darker shade in the skin of the lips. Her chin was sharper, though quite small. The strength of her features, the darkness of her colouring, and the forbidding quality of her eyes gave her a faintly masculine appearance; yet the beauty of her pale skin, not expressive like Isabelle’s but quite even in its ivory smoothness over her face and neck, spoke of extraordinary delicacy. He did not know how to approach her.

He wrote some details of his train journey to Boulogne and promised that he would write from England, when at least he would have something interesting to tell her.

When the boat arrived in Folkestone the next day there was a small crowd assembled on the quay. Many of the boys and women waved flags and cheered as the mass of infantry came up the gangplank. Stephen saw the looks on the faces of the crowd change from gaiety to bewilderment: for those come to greet sons or brothers these were the first returning soldiers they had seen. The lean, expressionless creatures who stepped ashore were not the men with gleaming kit and plump smiles who had been played aboard by the regimental bands. Some wore animal skins they had bought from local farms; many had cut pieces from their coats with knives to increase their comfort or to bind their cold hands. They wore scarves about their heads instead of caps with shining buttons. Their bodies and their kit were encrusted with dirt and in their eyes was a blank intransigence. They moved with grim, automatic strength. They were frightening to the civilians
because they had evolved not into killers but into passive beings whose only aim was to endure.

Stephen felt a hand on his arm. “Hello. Are you Captain Wraysford? My name’s Gilbert. I’m in charge here. Couldn’t make it out with you chaps—bad leg, I’m afraid. Now look, you take these forms and when you get to the station I want you to liaise with the embarkation officer. All the men’s names are here. Got that?”

Stephen looked at the man in bemusement. His body gave off an acrid, rotting smell when he came close to show him the forms.

On the station platform were further crowds of well-wishers. There were tables on which voluntary organizations were offering tea and buns. Stephen walked to the head of the platform and, when he was obscured from the throng by the bulk of the redbrick waiting room, dropped the thick bundle of forms over a low wall.

The train started, men lining the corridors, sitting on their kit, smoking and laughing, waving to the people on the platform. Stephen gave his seat to a woman in a blue bonnet.

Jammed up against the window of the compartment he could see little of England as it went past in flashing squares visible only occasionally beneath the angle of his armpit. The sight of his homeland had not brought any feeling of affection or deep welcome. He was too tired to appreciate it. All he could feel was the pain in his lower back from trying not to bang his head against the luggage rack above. In time, perhaps, he would appreciate the countryside and the sounds of peace.

“I’m getting out at the next stop,” said the woman in the bonnet. “Would you like me to telephone your wife or your parents and tell them you’re on your way?”

“No. No, I … don’t think so. Thank you.”

“Where is your home?”

“Lincolnshire.”

“Oh dear, that’s a long way.”

“I’m not going there. I’m going to …” He had had no plans. He remembered something Weir had once said to him. “To Norfolk. It’s very nice at this time of year.”

At Victoria Station, Stephen pushed and fought his way out
into the street. He wanted to see no more soldiers but to lose himself in the great blankness of the city. He walked briskly up through the park to Piccadilly, then slowly along the north side. He went into a well-stocked gentlemen’s outfitter near the foot of Albemarle Street. Many of his clothes had been lost in transit a year before and he needed at least a change of shirts and underwear. He stood on the planed floorboards looking into the glasstopped cases with their extensive displays of coloured ties and socks. A man in a morning suit appeared behind the counter.

“Good morning, sir. Can I help?”

Stephen saw the man’s eyes run down him and register his uniform and rank. He also saw, beneath his formal politeness, an involuntary recoil. He wondered what it was about him that repelled the man. He did not know if he smelled of chloride of lime or blood or rats. He reflexively put his hand up to his chin but felt only a minimal scratch of beard that had grown back since he had shaved in the Hotel Folkestone.

“I want some shirts, please.”

The man went up a ladder and pulled out two wooden shelves which he brought down and laid in front of Stephen. There were white, stiff-fronted shirts for evening wear and collarless cotton striped for day. As Stephen demurred, the assistant brought more shelves down with shirts of every colour and fabric they had in stock. Stephen gazed at the array of pastel colours, the great arc of choice that the man fanned out in front of him, their buttonholes finished by hand, the pleats of the cuffs nipped and pressed, their textures running from the rigid to the luxuriously soft.

“Excuse me, sir. I must just attend to this other customer while you make your choice.”

The assistant backed away, leaving Stephen confused by the decision and by the man’s attitude to him. With the other customer, a large man in his sixties in an expensive overcoat and homburg hat, he was much more effusive. After several items had been charged to his account, the man wandered out of the shop, heavily, without acknowledging Stephen. The assistant’s smile froze, then faded, as he returned. He kept a certain distance.

Eventually he said, “I don’t wish to hurry you, sir, but if you’re
not happy with our choice it would perhaps be better if you tried elsewhere.”

Stephen looked at him incredulously. He was about thirty-five, with sandy hair receding on either side and a neat moustache.

“I was finding it difficult,” he said. His jaw felt heavy as he spoke. He realized how tired he was. “Excuse me.”

“I think perhaps it would be better if—”

“You don’t want me in here, do you?”

“It’s not that, sir, it’s—”

“Just give me these two.” He picked out the shirts nearest him. Ten years ago, he thought, he would have struck the man; but he merely offered him the money and left.

Outside, he breathed deeply in the thick air of Piccadilly. Across the street he saw the arches of the Ritz hotel, its name lit up in bulbs. Women in trimmed fur coats and their escorts in sleek grey suits and black hats went through the doors. They had an air of private urgency, as though they were bent on matters of financial significance or international weight that would not even permit them to glance toward the ingratiating smile of the doorman in his top hat and gold frogging. They disappeared through the glass, their soft coats trailing behind them, oblivious to the street or to any life but theirs.

Stephen watched for a moment, then walked along with his service valise toward Piccadilly Circus, where he bought a newspaper. There had been a financial scandal and an accident at a factory in Manchester. There was no news of the war on the front page, though later, next to the readers’ letters, was a report on Fifth Army manoeuvres and warm praise for the tactical expertise of its commander.

The further he walked, the more isolated he felt. He marvelled at the smoothness of the undamaged paving stones. He was glad that an ordinary life persisted in the capital, but he did not feel part of it. He would have been embarrassed to be treated differently from ordinary civilians by people in a country he in any case had not lived in for some time, but it seemed strange to him that his presence was a matter not just of indifference but of resentment. He stayed the night in a small hotel near Leicester Square, and in the morning took a taxi to Liverpool Street.

There was a train to King’s Lynn at midday. He had time to go to a barber and have a haircut and shave before he bought a ticket and wandered up the platform. He climbed into a half-empty train and found a seat at leisure. The upholstery of the Great Eastern Railway was plush and clean. He sank into a corner seat and took out a book. The train jerked and clanked its way slowly out of the station, then began to gather speed as it left the low, grimed terraces of northeast London behind.

Stephen found he could not concentrate on the book. His head seemed too clogged and numb for him to be able to follow the simple narrative. Although there was some stiffness in his limbs he did not feel the ache of fatigue in any physical way; he had slept reasonably well in his small hotel room and breakfasted late. His mind, however, seemed hardly to function at all. He was capable of doing little more than sitting and staring at the landscape that went by. The fields were lit by a spring sun. The occasional narrow stream or river went quietly through them. On the rise of hills he could once or twice make out the grey spires of churches, or a cluster of farm buildings, but for the most part he saw only this flat, agricultural land, apparently uninhabited, whose deep, damp soil was going through the same minute rotations of growth and decay, invisible but relentless, that it had done for centuries beneath the cold, wet sky by day, by night, with no one to see.

Yet as the train clattered onward it seemed to sound a rhythm in a remote part of his memory. He dozed in the corner seat and awoke with a start, having dreamed he was in the Lincolnshire village of his childhood. Then he found he was still asleep: he had only dreamed that he had awoken. Again he found himself in a barn in a flat, pale field, with a train going by. A second time he awoke, in some fear, and tried to keep himself conscious; but again he found that he had only dreamed his awakening.

Each time his eyes opened he tried to stand up, to lever himself off the plush seat of the carriage, but his limbs were too heavy and he felt himself slide under again, just as he had once seen a man in his company slip on the duckboards of the trench into an uncovered sumphole, where he had drowned in the clinging yellow mud.