Birdsong (49 page)

“So you will go back?”

“I don’t know,” said Jeanne. “I’ve been a dutiful daughter. But I’m drawn to the idea of independence. I like it here in Amiens, in this little house.”

“Of course.” Stephen thought of her age again. “What about your other sisters? Couldn’t they look after him?”

“No. They’re all married. Now, Monsieur, we’re going to have dinner in about an hour. I’ll have to go and see how it’s coming along. I’m not sure if you’d like to rest, or have some aperitif … I’m not used to this sort of thing.” She waved her hand. “It’s somewhat unconventional.”

“Nothing in the world is conventional at the moment.” Stephen smiled. “I’m grateful that you understand that. In the meantime, yes. I’ll have a drink.”

Jeanne smiled back at him. It was the first time he had seen her smile, and he believed it was the most extraordinary expression he had seen on a human face. It began with a slow widening of the lips, then the pale skin of her face became radiant, not with blood as Isabelle’s might have done, but with an inner light that made it shine. At last it reached her eyes, which developed squares of brilliance as they narrowed into trusting humour. It was not just her expression, Stephen thought, but her whole face that had changed into something forgiving and serene.

She said, “There is something Isabelle sent me out to buy when you came before. It smells horrible. It’s called Old Orkney. It’s an English drink.”

Stephen laughed. “Scottish, I think. I know it well.”

Jeanne brought the bottle and jug of water. Stephen poured a little into a small crystal glass and looked around the room while Jeanne went to the kitchen. He could hear the sound of pans and cutlery; a smell of herbs and wine caused a sudden rush of hunger in his stomach. He lit a cigarette and searched the elegant little room for an ashtray. There were a number of small ceramic and china dishes, but he dared not risk them and flicked the ash into the fireplace where he rubbed it in with his foot. For all his new lice-free clothes, he felt lumpish and awkward in this tidy, feminine room. He wondered if he would ever refind his ease and naturalness in normal surroundings, or whether he had now evolved into a creature whose natural habitat included corrugated iron
ceilings, wooden walls, and food hanging in rat-proof parcels from the rafters.

Jeanne had made soup that she served from a bowl on a table at the end of the room. It was supposed to be a fish soup in the manner of Dieppe, near her home in Normandy, she explained, but she had not been able to find all the ingredients she needed in Amiens. Stephen remembered how irritated Isabelle had once been when he said that Amiens was not noted for its cuisine.

“I expect the war has affected supplies,” he said.

“I’m not sure,” said Jeanne. “It may be that the Amiénois are just not interested in food. Would you like to pour the wine? I don’t know if it’s good, but it’s one I’ve seen my father drink.”

Stephen was still not sure whether Jeanne viewed him as a refugee whom someone public-spirited should foster, or if she had simpler motives of friendship. He questioned her as they ate.

She was not generous with information. Her manner had a pleasant shyness about it, as though she felt that the evening was not really permitted by the rules of etiquette and at any moment someone might come in and forbid it to continue. Stephen gathered that she had been kept at home by a sense of duty to her father, who seemed able to impose his will on her as he had on Isabelle. She had resisted his choice of husband more successfully than her younger sister, but he had retaliated by forbidding hers. As he had scared away Isabelle’s soldier, so he had frozen from contention a widowed man who would have taken Jeanne away from him.

Jeanne spoke in very measured sentences; there was something strict in her manner that was relieved by the humour that glimmered behind it in her eyes and in the sudden movements of her long, thin fingers.

Stephen continued to feel a sense of tranquillity in her presence. He found himself happy to listen to her talking, and when she questioned him he was able to reply with a sense of proportion, even when talking about the war.

Then, as it grew late, he began to feel the dread of his return. From the first time as a child when he had been taken from the fields and made to go back to the institution in which he was living, he had feared the moment of separation more than anything:
it was abandonment. The return to the trenches was something he could not bring himself to contemplate. As the time grew nearer he lost the ability to talk any more.

Jeanne said, “You’re thinking of your return, aren’t you? You’ve stopped answering my questions.”

Stephen nodded.

“It won’t last for ever. We are waiting for tanks and for the Americans, that’s what Marshal Pétain says. We must all be patient. Think of your next leave.”

“Can I come here again?”

“Yes, if you like. Count the days and the weeks. Keep yourself safe. It sounds as though with your new job you won’t be in action so much. Be careful.”

Stephen said, “You may be right.” He sighed. “But it’s been so long, so very long. I think of the men I was with and—”

“Then you must stop thinking about them, the ones who have died. You did your best for them and there’s nothing more you can do. When it’s over you can remember them. Now you must concentrate on getting yourself through it. Another casualty won’t help those who have died.”

“I can’t do it, Jeanne, I can’t do it. I’m so tired.”

Jeanne looked at his pleading face. He was close to tears.

“I have given everything,” he said. “Don’t make me go on. Please let me stay here.”

Jeanne’s smile came again. “This is not the talk of a man who led his soldiers on the Ancre. A few weeks behind the lines, where there’s no danger. You can manage that.”

“It isn’t the danger. It’s the effort. I can no longer bring my mind to it.”

“I know.” Jeanne put her hand on his. “I understand. But you must be strong. I’ve made up a bed for you because I thought you might want to stay. I’ll wake you in good time in the morning. Come on now.”

Stephen followed her reluctantly to the door. He knew he would go back the next day.

T
he assault on the Messines Ridge was planned hard and in detail. Veterans of the previous July were mean with the human life at their disposal.

“I’ve good news for you,” said Gray when Stephen reported back to him. “There’s time before your new appointment for you to organize a large raid on the enemy trenches. It’s part of the new, cautious regime of knowing our enemy. Reconnaissance.” He tried unsuccessfully to still the twitchings of a smile.

“I see,” said Stephen. “And will it make much difference to our grand strategy if we discover we are facing the forty-first regiment rather than the forty-second?”

“I very much doubt it,” said Gray. “But my orders are to contribute to the intelligence gathered along the line. I think your company is coming out of reserve this week. It’s good timing for a frontline soldier like you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Gray laughed. “All right, Wraysford. Relax. What I actually want you to do is lead an attack on the canal to the left. We need to get a foothold there. It’s just a local attack. You go up at dawn with the rest of the battalion. We have support from our Black Country friends later in the day. Is that a bit more to your liking?”

“It seems a more useful way of dying than while examining the cap badges of the men opposite.”

“Good man, Wraysford. Keep going. I knew you would.”

“And how do
you
keep going, sir?” said Stephen.

Gray laughed. “It’s my Scottish blood. We’ve barely started, yet.”

The men went up the line once more, through the long communication trench and into the mired slit of land beneath the sandbags. Apart from raids and patrols, they had not attacked for nine months, and there was nervousness and argument among the men who were detailed to place the scaling ladders against the trench wall. All morning was the sound of hammering and
sawing as the wood was cut and positioned at intervals against the parapet. Stephen had the impression that for all their forebodings of the big offensive in Belgium that was reportedly so dear to General Haig, they had somehow thought they would not themselves be involved in another trudge into the hurricane of guns.

———

Jack Firebrace watched the preparations when he came back from his shift underground, and they brought back memories he had until then successfully closed down. He remembered how he had prayed for the men who would go over on that summer morning and how he had trusted in their safekeeping. This time he had no prayers to offer.

He went into the large dugout at the head of the deep mine where his company was temporarily sleeping. He made tea and drank it with Evans, then took out his sketchbook. Since Shaw’s death there were no more pictures of him. Jack had taken to drawing Stephen instead. From the moment he had pitched into his arms, back from the dead, Jack had been intrigued by him. Now he had made drawings of his large, dark head from many angles and in many poses—with his big eyes open in incredulity or narrowed in determination; of the smile with which he chafed his own officer, Captain Weir; of the blank, remote expression, as if his memory had failed, with which he had dismissed Jack when he had gone to report for sleeping on duty. He could not remember John’s face well enough to draw it.

———

The wait for the attack was short, but no less difficult for that. Stephen talked to the platoon commanders who would go first up the wide-spaced ladders into the uncertain world beyond.

“You mustn’t waver,” he said. “What is waiting for you can’t be changed, but if you hesitate you will needlessly endanger the lives of others.”

He saw Ellis licking his lips. There was sweat on his pale forehead. The bombardment was starting up and it was beginning to shake the earth from the roof of the dugout.

Stephen spoke with the calm of experience, but it did not help
him. The fact that he had done this before was no guarantee that he could do it again. When the moment came he would have to confront the depths of himself once more, and he feared that he had changed.

The bombardment was only for a day. It was trained, so the artillery had assured them, with scientific precision based on accurate aerial reconnaissance. There would be no uncut wire, no unharmed concrete redoubts spraying lazy waves of death over the turned fields.

Weir came to his dugout at midnight. His eyes were wild and his hair disarrayed. Stephen felt dismayed at the sight. He did not want to catch the other man’s fear. He did not want him to breathe over him.

“This noise,” said Weir. “I can’t bear it any more.”

“You’ve been saying that for two years,” said Stephen sharply. “The truth is you’re one of the most resilient men in the BEF.”

Weir pulled out cigarettes and cast his eyes around hopefully. Stephen reluctantly pushed a bottle toward him.

“When are you going over?” said Weir.

“Usual time. It’ll be all right.”

“Stephen, I’m worried for you. I have this foreboding.”

“I don’t want to hear about your foreboding.”

“You’ve been a marvellous friend to me, Stephen. I’ll never forget when we lay in the shellhole and you talked to me and—”

“Of course you’ll forget it. Now just be quiet.”

Weir was trembling. “You don’t understand. I want to thank you. I just have this premonition. You remember last time we did the cards and you—”

“I fix the cards. I cheat. They don’t mean a thing.” Stephen could not bear the conversation.

Weir looked startled and downcast. He drank deeply. “I know I shouldn’t be saying this, I know it’s selfish of me, but—”

“Just shut your mouth, Weir.” Stephen was shouting, his voice caught with the beginning of sobs. He put his face close to Weir’s. “Just try to help me. If you are grateful or something then try to help me. Christ Jesus, do you think I want to do this? Do you think my life was made for
this
?”

Weir recoiled under Stephen’s indignant saliva.

He began to protest, but Stephen was now rolling with anger. “All those boys of eighteen and nineteen who walk out in the morning and I have to go with them and watch. Just please for once try to talk about something else.”

In his oblique and drunken way Weir was as passionate as Stephen. “This is something that has to be said, and I don’t care if it’s tactful. There are things more important than that. I want to thank you and to say good-bye, in case—”

Stephen took him by the lapels and lifted him to the door of the dugout. “Fuck off, Weir, fuck off out of my way and leave me alone.” He pushed him and sent him sliding face down into the mud. Weir clambered up slowly, glanced back reproachfully at Stephen as he picked the slime and filth from his front, then made his solitary way along the duckboards.

Alone, as he had wanted to be, Stephen began the journey down into himself that would end at dawn. He looked carefully at his body and remembered the things his hands had touched; he looked at the prints of his fingertips and laid the back of his hand against the soft membrane of his lips.

He lay down on the planks of the bed and felt the touch of the woollen blanket against his face. It was a feeling he remembered from childhood. He closed his eyes tight and thought of his earliest memories of his mother, of her hands, the sound and scent of her. He wrapped himself in the cloak of his remembered world, hoping he would be safe in it where no shells or bullets could reach him. He swallowed, and felt the familiar feeling of his tongue and throat. It was the same flesh he had had as an innocent boy. Surely they would not let anything happen to it now. His renewed love of the world made the prospect of leaving it unbearable.

An hour before dawn Riley came to him with water he had boiled for shaving. Stephen was pleased to see the smart little man with his obsequious manner. He had also been able to brew a large pot of tea. Stephen shaved carefully and put on the belt that Riley had shined for him.

When he went out into the trench he found that the rations had come up on time and some of the men had cooked bacon for breakfast. He had to move carefully in the dark, watching his feet on the duckboards. He found CSM Price checking the kit. Price’s
methodical manner helped him; it was as though it was just an ordinary day. Then he spoke to Petrossian, the corporal in his old platoon. His familiar, swarthy face looked up at Stephen as though in hope of delivery. Stephen looked away. He came to a group of men who had not been over the top before, Barlow, Coker, Goddard, and some others huddled by a ladder. He stopped to talk to them and even in the darkness he could see the strange look on their faces. It was as though the skin had been drawn tight across them so that they glowed. They were incapable of responding to his words; each had gone down alone into himself, where time had stopped and there was no help.