Dead Man's Land (12 page)

‘What’s that?’

‘Find yourself a Canadian nurse. They might be more to your liking. Now if you will excuse me, Doctor, I have to prepare blood for your patient and locate my driver.’

Watson turned on his heel and left before Myles could reply.

It was only when he got back to his room and tore off his collar and tie in exasperation, that Watson realized that, in his hotheaded response, he’d forgotten to ask Myles for a second opinion on those blue flecks in Sergeant Shipobottom’s eye.

Brindle was weeping. He sat on the bed in the transfusion tent, head in hands, his body shaking with grief. Water was streaming off his hair and dripping onto the floor, his clothes were mud-stained and rain-soaked, showing he had been out in the squall that was spitting its last.

Watson, now back in uniform, had entered the ward just in time to hear him emit a terrible wail. Miss Pippery was trying to feed the inconsolable man a mug of hot, sweet tea. Both nurses had some kind of over-smock covering their uniform that appeared to be covered in blobs of dried paint.

‘What’s happening here, Mrs Gregson?’ Watson demanded.

‘We found him round the back of the greenhouse we were meant to paint.’

‘Paint?’ Watson tried to keep the incredulity out of his voice. ‘But—’

‘Ask Sister Spence. It seems poor Brindle here recognized one of the bodies he had to bury. We brought him here to calm down. I suppose we should get rid . . .’ she forced the smock over her headdress, ‘. . . of these things.’ Miss Pippery followed suit.

When Brindle looked up his eyes were crazed by an unsettling intensity. It was the stare of the madhouse. ‘He should not be buried in a mass grave. I told them that. Cornelius deserved better than that.’ He put his unnaturally long fingers over his face.

Watson moved across and laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘You knew Cornelius Lovat?’

He managed to nod between sobs.

‘Look, Brindle, he couldn’t have lived like that. Not with those injuries.’

Again the head came up. ‘You don’t understand. I could have made him a mask. A beautiful mask.’ He mimed an act of creation with his hands. ‘I knew every inch of his face. They make new ones in London, don’t they? At Wandsworth. New faces made of the thinnest copper. I would have done my finest work. He could have been handsome again.’

Watson squeezed his shoulder. The man wasn’t listening. The tissue damage was simply too extensive for him to have lived. Sister Spence had been absolutely correct about that. ‘How did you know him?’

‘From St Martins. He was in the year ahead of me.’

‘You’re a sculptor?’ Mrs Gregson surmised.

‘And Cornelius was a painter. A fine one.’

Watson, to his shame, realized he knew very little about the orderly who had been assigned to him. Many of the drivers and dogsbodies, the stretcher-bearers and the gravediggers, were pacifists of one stripe or another, willing to help win the war, unwilling to kill. But now he looked at those fingers again, tracing a human visage in thin air, he appreciated this man had an artist’s hands. He hadn’t been looking at what was right under his nose. A cardinal sin. He half expected to hear a nagging voice in his ear, telling how he was looking but not observing.

Brindle began to sob once more. Watson released his grip. He kneeled down and whispered a few words in the man’s ear before standing. It wasn’t much, but he hoped it helped.

‘Miss Pippery. Your convictions are showing. If Sister Spence sees that she’ll try and nail you to it,’ Mrs Gregson pointed at her friend’s neck. The gold cross had escaped and was hanging down the front of her VAD shift. Miss Pippery tucked it away. They weren’t allowed to display external signs of their own beliefs in front of the men. It might be a clue to their personality. And they weren’t meant to have one of those.

‘Right,’ said Mrs Gregson, ‘let’s get him out of those wet things and into pyjamas. Then hot-water bottles.’

‘And a bromide sedative,’ suggested Watson. ‘If you will, Miss Pippery?’

But Miss Pippery’s gaze had slipped past him, to something over his shoulder. He turned to see two RAMC-uniformed officers had entered the tent behind him.

‘Major Watson? George Torrance.’ The CO of the Casualty Clearing Station extended a hand. He was shorter than Watson, with a flushed face, a tightly groomed oblong on his upper lip and a generous stomach pushing against his tunic buttons. ‘Good to meet you. May I introduce my adjutant, Captain Symonds.’ The junior officer and Watson also shook hands. ‘Sister tells me you did sterling work last night. It was kind of you to muck in.’

‘I think Sister Spence and your CCS would have managed quite well without me. It’s a tight ship.’

Torrance smiled under his close-clipped toothbrush moustache. The man might be carrying a few extra pounds, but he was immaculately pressed and turned out. He looked as if he steam-ironed not only his uniform, underwear and his hair but Captain Symonds, too. His voice, though, was abrasive, part honk and part bark. Watson could see why sick men would struggle from their beds for his inspections. ‘You’ve met Caspar Myles, I assume?’

‘I have run into Dr Myles.’ Watson had tried not to bristle, but he clearly gave himself away somehow.

‘I know, I know, somewhat unorthodox. But a fine surgeon. He came to us by accident and, well, we’ve managed to hold on to him.’

‘We are very much looking forward to hearing about the new transfusion methods,’ interrupted Captain Symonds.

‘And it would be my pleasure to show you.’

‘Excellent,’ said Torrance. ‘And perhaps a demonstration for Field Marshal Haig when he comes? Show him we aren’t still in the dark ages at the CCSs. I’m sure we have plenty of subjects—’

‘Perhaps we could discuss this later, Major Torrance? I’m going up to Brigade at Somerset House.’ Watson looked at his watch. Half the morning had gone. He cast a glance at Brindle, now being tucked into bed by Mrs Gregson, while Miss Pippery prepared the sleeping draught. Brindle had offered no resistance to Mrs Gregson; his limbs looked to be made of India rubber. The man was clearly going to be useless for some time. ‘However, I seem to have mislaid my driver.’

Although Watson was quite capable of operating a motor car, it gave him no pleasure, and it certainly wasn’t the done thing for an officer to turn up at Brigade behind the wheel of his own vehicle.

‘Don’t worry, Major Watson. I’ve had enough of whitewash for one day. If it’s only a ride to Brigade you need,’ Mrs Gregson pulled off her VAD headdress and a riot of auburn hair sprang free. ‘I’ll drive you there.’

Bloch looked at the photograph of the man he had travelled across no man’s land and through enemy lines to kill. He did it dispassionately. To Bloch, he was already dead, an inanimate object. A ‘target’, pure and simple. It was one of the first things he had taught himself. Don’t think of them as people. They are walking bull’s-eyes. Don’t wonder if they had families, friends, lovers. Just do the job and get out.

He shifted position slightly, as quietly as he could manage. He had come alarmingly close to being discovered several times. As the hours of darkness drew to a close, men, machines and animals were on the move, making one final hasty journey before the creeping light from the east betrayed them to the enemy. The munitions drays, the food and fresh water convoys, the tumbrils, the medical supply ambulances and the columns of reinforcements, and those being relieved, all took up their daylight positions, for, thanks to men like Bloch and his close contemporary, the artillery spotter, this was a war of armies and services that moved primarily at night.

He had lain in the nave while British soldiers stepped in for a quick cigarette, coming inside in the hope that the glowing tip would not attract the attention of a sniper. If only they knew. Others had relieved themselves against the walls, grunting with pleasure as they splashed noisily, whistling softly as they buttoned themselves up. Once, he heard someone enter and cry to himself, the sobs stifled and then quickly squashed altogether when the weeping man heard a voice.

‘Sir? You in there, sir?’

A sniff. ‘Just coming.’

He picked up other conversations from nearby trenches, meaningless apart from a few clearly enunciated words, often ‘fuck’ or ‘shit’ or ‘bugger’. The smell of tobacco that came from these soldiers made his nose twitch and his lungs ache for some. That was for later, he promised himself, when he was back behind his own lines, writing home to tell them to restock the larder and to alert lovely Hilde that he was on his way back to her.

In between all the dawn activity in and around the tower, he had worked as quickly and as quietly as he could at solving his problem. He had found four fragments of bell rope that, when securely knotted together, he had managed to toss up and loop over one of the exposed beams just below the belfry. That was when the sobbing officer had entered the space, and Bloch had been forced to crouch in the corner, hoping the man was emotionally distracted enough not to notice the twin filaments freshly sprouted from above, swaying like jungle creepers. His hand was on his bayonet, and he was ready to spring forward and open the man’s neck should he show any curiosity. But he hadn’t; nor did any of the other transient visitors.

Eventually, with his rifle strapped across his back, he had grasped the bell ropes and hauled himself up, using the wall for leverage as sparingly as possible in case he dislodged a stonefall, until he was able to drag himself up onto the platform. Then, once the burning in his hands had subsided and his shoulders stopped complaining, he had pulled up the bell ropes and coiled them on the floor of the belfry. He had taken off and smoothed out the greatcoat next to the coils, unpacked his rifle, water bottle and rations and lain down on the coat in front of the westerly opening in the belfry’s stonework – once delicately louvered but now a gaping hole – gradually making himself comfortable.

He was still lying there when dawn aimed its first gun-grey rays of light at Somerset House, and, through the telescopic sights, he could clearly make out all the features of the sentry standing at the front entrance.

He smiled to himself. Half a chance, that was all he needed, and Lux’s special target was a dead man.

The showers had abated and the clouds slid away in a single smooth action, like a dark curtain being pulled aside to reveal the blue underneath. For once the air smelled of nothing more than the oils and spores released by wet earth and turned soil, and it reminded Watson of travelling briskly down the Surrey lanes in the aftermath of a rainstorm on a spring day, the hedgerows dotted with green shoots, ploughed fields steaming in fresh sunshine after the squall had moved on. He could almost hear the clop of hoofs, the encouragements of the trap driver, feel the old excitement as they faced solving another enticing puzzle together. Such a simpler world back then. The world, he reminded himself, that most of these young men imagined they were fighting to save.

He leaned against the wing of his Crossley 20/25 staff car while he waited for Mrs Gregson and lit one of his Bradley’s, breathing deeply of the slightly sweet smoke. Women’s tobacco, Holmes had called the blend, but Watson liked the contrast – his choice of cigarette was light and refreshing, his pipe of Schippers muscular and invigorating.

The only activity around him was the grim scurrying back and forth of the blank-eyed burial parties and the attendant chaplains, so instead he watched three slow pusher observation biplanes crawl overhead, almost stationary against the pale sky, making their stately way towards the German lines. He thought of ducks, flying towards the waiting guns of hunters. Beyond them, though, at a far greater height, he could just make out three other cruciform shapes, hovering like kites. Perhaps the lumbering spotters had some guardian angels. He hoped so.

And what of Staff Nurse Jennings? Did she need an unseen protector? Watson knew that he was out of step with modern times and that war created a new, shifting morality, as tricky as the Grimpen Mire to negotiate. Even so, there was something distinctly unpleasant, venal even, about the cold way that Myles had told him that the young nurse was a target. Perhaps the language was misleading; it was possible his ardour was making him tongue-tied and verbally clumsy. He recalled how he had fallen in love with Mary Morstan so readily and how hard he had found it to express his feelings with anything approaching eloquence. It could be that Myles was merely making sure, in his own stumbling fashion, he had no rival for the nurse’s affections.

And his terrible spur-of-the-moment, second-hand slander of the Canadian nurses’ morals. Sister Spence’s disapproval of their dancing was hardly reason enough for him to make his own sweeping assumptions about their behaviour. The thought made him blush. He felt like a traitor to the Dominion, which was sending thousands of men and women across to the war every month. Conscious that he might have made a fool of himself, Watson had left the blood for Shipobottom with Miss Pippery, along with a hastily written note asking if he and Myles could meet to ‘clear the air’ that evening upon his return. Snap judgements were all very well, but he would have to work with this Myles for a few days at least. He really should give him the benefit of the doubt.

‘Right, Major, I’m ready.’

He turned and was greeted by an extraordinary sight. Mrs Gregson had donned a most bizarre outfit, a heavy leather belted coat over a long leather skirt, which was split to reveal a pair of britches. She caught his expression. ‘My motorcycling clothes. Messrs Dunhill of Conduit Street.’ She gave a little curtsy, pulling out the lower part of the garb. ‘Modest yet practical.’ She produced a bright green headscarf from her pocket and began to tie it around her head.

‘Isn’t that rather . . . conspicuous?’ Watson asked.

‘Ah, Major, I can tell you don’t know about the Green Women of Pervyse. I think you should sit in the front,’ she said as he made to climb into the rear. ‘I’ll explain why in a moment. You there! Orderly! Know how to crank a car?’