Birdsong (43 page)

Stephen laid the letter down on the rough surface of the table, in the grooves of which the rat's blood had dried. Then he rested his head in his hands. He had received an answer to the simple question that had intrigued him. Isabelle no longer loved him; or if she did, she loved him in some distant way that did not affect her actions or her feelings for another man.

When he looked into his reserves of strength he found that he could bear this thought. He told himself that the feeling they had had for each other still existed, but that it existed at a different time.

Once when he had stood in the chilling cathedral in Amiens he had foreseen the numbers of the dead. It was not a premonition, more a recognition, he told himself, that the difference between death and life was not one of fact but merely of time. This belief had helped him bear the sound of the dying on the slopes of Thiepval. And so he was now able to believe that his love for Isabelle, and hers for him, was safe in its extreme ardour--not lost, but temporarily alive in a manner as significant as any present or future state of feeling could be in the long darkness of death.

He put Jeanne's letter in his pocket and went out into the trench, where Ellis came sliding along the duckboards to meet him.

"Quiet, isn't it?" said Stephen.

"Tolerable," said Ellis. "I've got a problem. I'm trying to get a working party to go out and bring back some bodies. It's pretty quiet, as you say, and we may not have a better chance."

"So what's the problem?"

"My men wouldn't do it unless I went too. So I said I would. Then they insisted on having at least one miner with them, but the miners' CO says it's nothing to do with them and in any case they're fed up with doing our fatigues." Ellis's white, freckled face was agitated. He pushed the cap back from his forehead to show a puckered hairline from which the gingerish hair had started to recede.

Stephen smiled vaguely and shook his head. "We should all go. It doesn't matter. It's only death."

"Well, will you tell Captain Weir to get one of his sappers out with us?"

"I can ask him. Perhaps he'd like to come too, now that his arm's better."

"Are you serious?" said Ellis crossly.

"I don't know, Ellis. There's something about you that makes me quite unsure. Get your working party ready for twelve o'clock. I'll see you in the next firebay." Weir laughed drily when Stephen made the suggestion.

"There'll be rum," said Stephen.

Weir's eyes opened in interest.

Then when the moment came it brought a sudden fear and unreality. They could never be prepared to look at death in the crude form that awaited them. Stephen felt, as he had done before at moments of extreme tension, a dislocation in his sense of time. It seemed to stutter, then freeze.

At noon on the firestep in gas masks. Taste of death, smell of it, thought Stephen. Coker slashed sandbags into gloves. "Wear these." Firebrace and Fielding of the miners, Ellis, white like milk, Barlow, Bates, Goddard, Allen of the infantry; Weir taking rum on top of whisky, unsteady on the step of the ladder.

"What are you doing, Brennan?"

"I'm coming too."

They tracked out toward a shellhole, the sun bright, a lark above them. Blue sky, unseen by eyes trained on turned mud. They moved low toward a mine crater where bodies had lain for weeks uncollected. "Try to lift him." No sound of machine guns or snipers, though their ears were braced for noise. "Take his arms." The incomprehensible order through the gas mouthpiece. The arms came away softly.

"Not like that, not take his arms _away." _On Weir's collar a large rat, trailing something red down his back. A crow disturbed, lifting its black body up suddenly, battering the air with its big wings. Coker, Barlow shaking their heads under the assault of risen flies coming up, transforming black skin of corpses into green by their absence. The roaring of Goddard's vomit made them laugh, snorting private mirth inside their masks. Goddard, releasing his mask, breathed in worse than he had expelled. Weir's hands in double sandbags stretched out tentatively to a sapper's uniform, undressing the chest in search of a disc which he removed, bringing skin with it into his tunic pocket. Jack's recoil, even through coarse material, to the sponge of flesh. Bright and sleek on liver, a rat emerged from the abdomen; it levered and flopped flatly over the ribs, glutted with pleasure. Bit by bit on to stretchers, what flesh fell left in mud. Not men, but flies and flesh, thought Stephen. Brennan anxiously stripping a torso with no head. He clasped it with both hands, dragged legless up from the crater, his fingers vanishing into buttered green flesh. It was his brother.

When they got back to the safety of the trench, Jack was angry that he and Fielding had been made to go, but Weir pointed out that there were three men from their company unburied. Goddard could not stop vomiting, though his stomach was long since empty. When he was not retching, he sat on the firestep, weeping uncontrollably. He was nineteen.

Michael Weir had a rigid smile. He told Fielding and Jack they were excused fatigues for a week, then went to Stephen's dugout in the hope of whisky.

"I wonder what my father would say," he said reflectively. "Of course they're all 'doing their bit,' as he put it." Weir swallowed and licked his lips. "It's just that his

'bit' and mine seem so different."

Stephen watched him and shook his head fondly. "You know what I really dreaded?" he said. "What frightened me was the thought that one of those men was going to be alive."

Weir laughed. "After all that time?"

Stephen said, "It's been known." He had a thought. "Where's Brennan? Did you see him when we got back?"

"No."

Stephen went along the trench looking for him. He found him sitting quietly on the firestep near the dugout where he and half a dozen others slept.

"I'm sorry, Brennan," he said. "That was a terrible thing for you. You needn't have come."

"I know. I wanted to come. I feel better now."

"You feel _better?"_

Brennan nodded. He had a narrow head, with thick, black greasy hair on which Stephen was looking down. When he turned his face up, its features were calm.

Stephen said, "At least wash your hands, Brennan. Get some chloride of lime on them. Take some time off if you want to. I'll tell your sergeant you're excused fatigues."

"It's all right. I feel lucky in a way. You know last July when I fell off the firestep when the mine went up and I broke my leg? Then watching you lot go over the top. I was lucky."

"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.

*

There 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 red-brick 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 glass-topped 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.