Field Service (24 page)

‘I heard,' Lucas said, but showed little interest in the matter.

The two men parted an hour later, and rather than return to his room, Reid walked in the last of the day's warmth to where the railway crossed the Sailly canal. He stood on the metal bridge and looked down into the barely flowing water. The sides of the bridge were still warm to his touch, and he waited where he stood, his hands on the parapet, until the sun finally dropped to the distant horizon and then sank into the land, drawing down the darkness all around it.

REID WALKED WHAT
he imagined to be the final mile from the Bray road to the cemetery at Fricourt; now that there was a brief lull in his own work, he had been asked by Wheeler to report on the early excavations there. It was a plot of around two hundred graves currently in its laying-out phase, and was expected to contain a mass grave of men of the Tenth West Yorkshires. The surrounding land was open and sparse.

At the junction of the Maricourt road, a field of irretrievable vehicles lay abandoned, overgrown and rusting in the heat – lorries, mostly, but with gun limbers and a few dismantled artillery pieces among them.

As he approached the field, Reid saw men moving amid all this waste – metal dealers, he guessed, from either Bray or Etinhem. A sudden fountain of sparks and the loud banging of heavy hammers revealed where they were already at work salvaging whatever remained of value to them. He paused at the gateway, where others stood with their horses and carts, waiting to take the metal away.

He asked the men if much remained to be retrieved, and they told him, in their usual guarded manner, that they would make scarcely any profit on what little they were able to take. It occurred to him only then, listening to the men decry their labours, that they were there illegally, stealing the metal rather than collecting it under contract from the Army.

‘Have you been sent?' one of the men asked him suspiciously, confirming this guess.

He reassured them that he had no connection whatsoever with the field of abandoned scrap, and told them of his visit to the nearby cemetery. The men relaxed at hearing this, and offered him water from their clay pots. Reid accepted and gave them cigarettes in return.

‘Where's your car?' one of them asked him.

Reid explained that he didn't have one, and that he'd been given a lift only as far as the lane's end. They offered to lend him one of their horses, saying that the animal would make its own way back to them if he released it at the cemetery gate.

‘It's not
that
far, surely?' Reid said. He had only visited the place once before – a week after his arrival in Morlancourt – and he guessed it now to be close by the next long bend in the road.

The wreckers shared smiles at this, but did not persist.

‘They tell us these places are full of dangerous ammunition, corroded shells and gas canisters,' one man said.

‘But only to keep you away?' Reid said, causing them all to laugh.

Several of their companions arrived, leading horses which dragged large pieces of metal behind them, just as foresters used the animals to clear away felled trunks.

Another of the men told him of the tales they heard of those being killed and maimed by the unexploded shells still being ploughed up as the surrounding land was returned to its original use.

‘Are you not afraid of disturbing something?' Reid asked them.

‘The whole country has been disturbed,' one of them said simply. ‘What is this compared to that?'

Reid guessed by the way those standing beside this speaker fell silent and then briefly bowed their heads that they knew something of the man's own losses during that greater disturbance.

‘Of course,' he said.

A man arrived dragging an engine behind his horse. The others shouted at him that the engine was worthless, that there were hundreds already salvaged and repaired in every garage and workshop within fifty miles of the place. The remark prompted further loud and prolonged laughter and protestations.

Reid thanked the men for the water and resumed his journey towards Fricourt.

Turning the bend in the road, he was disappointed to see that the village was still not in sight ahead of him, and then surprised to see a car coming along the road towards him.

He stood to one side to let the car pass, but as it came close it slowed and then drew to a stop beside him. Reid was surprised again to see Jonathan Guthrie sitting beside the driver.

‘I was on my way to the plot at Fricourt,' Reid explained. He hadn't seen the chaplain since their encounter a week earlier in the company of Caroline Mortimer at the small bar.

‘Walking?' Guthrie said. He took off the goggles he wore, revealing the circles of paler flesh around his eyes and making himself look both startled and ridiculous.

‘Only from the Bray road.'

‘But still …' Guthrie looked back and forth along the empty lane.

‘You?' Reid said.

‘I've just been to the same spot,' Guthrie said, pointing in the direction of the place.

‘The West Yorkshires?'

‘Colonel Abrahams. He's a friend of my father. Seventh Green Howards. Knowing I was close by, he asked me to pop over and take a look. Infantry, not many, ten or twenty or so. He wanted me to see that they were all safely delivered and then to say a few words. Apparently there'll be no official opening ceremony as such.'

‘And you were given a car?' Reid asked him. And a driver.

‘Seek and ye shall find, ask and ye shall receive. Captain Jessop gave me a chit for the transport depot. When I told them I didn't drive, they threw in the driver.'

The man beside Guthrie leaned forward and raised his hand to Reid.

Reid wondered how much Guthrie already knew of his recent visit to Amiens. He wondered, too, what the man was preparing for the arrival of the nurses at Morlancourt.

‘If I'd known you were coming this way, I could have diverted and given you a lift,' Guthrie said.

A distant loud bang – metal on metal – distracted them both and Reid told Guthrie about the men scavenging amid the abandoned lorries.

‘Stealing, you mean?' Guthrie said.

‘I'm not sure. I suppose they see it as a way of getting back on their feet.'

Guthrie shook his head at the remark. ‘More excuses,' he said. ‘These people take advantage at every possible opportunity. We make every conceivable effort on their behalf, and all they do in return is complain and then do the opposite of what we ask of them. The diggers at Fricourt, and beyond at the Highland cemetery, are mostly locals. You should give thanks that you employ soldiers. Apparently the Germans are also looking to build a cemetery at Fricourt.' He smiled. ‘I'd like to see them get that one past the Commission.'

‘Of course,' Reid said, unwilling to rise to the man's remarks.

More noises distracted them and Guthrie said that perhaps he ought to go and speak to the men. He asked Reid how many he had counted there.

‘I didn't,' Reid said. ‘Count them.'

‘Still …'

‘Besides, I doubt you'd be telling them anything they didn't already know,' Reid said.

‘And perhaps that's precisely why I
should
say something,' Guthrie said.

‘Do whatever you see fit,' Reid said. ‘Though I doubt they'd appreciate—' He stopped abruptly.

‘Appreciate what? Appreciate being told of their wrongdoing by a man like me?' Guthrie touched the collar he wore.

Reid stayed silent for a moment, and then said, ‘They consider it their
right
, their due. Something from which they might benefit rather than lose, for once.'

Guthrie shook his head at this, as though Reid were an ignorant child and he a wise teacher.

Only then did it occur to Reid that if Guthrie
did
confront the men, they might consider him to have been sent to admonish them by Reid. ‘It's not really any of our business,' he said, but with little conviction.

Guthrie remained silent. He looked at his watch and then at the driver beside him, who now sat with his head back and his eyes closed as though he were asleep. Guthrie finally rubbed at the fine dust which covered most of his face. ‘I ought to be getting back,' he said eventually. ‘Let Abrahams know that his happy warriors are all safely settled. He wants me to go and dine with him in Paris. Perhaps a few days back in civilization will help to raise my flagging spirits.'

‘I daresay,' Reid said.

Guthrie looked around them. ‘I sometimes wonder if our continued wandering in this particular wilderness doesn't begin to have an adverse effect on us all. A change of air, of scenery, perhaps that's what's required to encourage us all in our endeavours.' He paused. ‘Edmund told me of the proposition he'd put to you, about your own imminent change of scenery.'

‘Imminent?' Reid said, wishing he'd contained the word and everything it revealed to Guthrie.

‘I told him you were a fortunate man indeed. It was always my own ambition to visit the Holy Land, and is something I shall no doubt undertake when my labours in this neck of the woods are less in demand.'

‘Wherever I go, I'll still be burying the dead,' Reid said, again wishing he'd remained silent.

‘And a noble and much—' Guthrie began to say, when he was silenced by a further loud bang – an actual explosion this time; a small one, perhaps, but definitely an explosion – from the direction of the field around the curve in the road.

Both Reid and Guthrie turned to look. The driver woke with a start and stood up to scan the nearby land. In the distance, a thin plume of pale smoke rose into the air above where the wreckers worked.

Other than the driver dropping back to his seat, none of the three men spoke or moved for a moment.

Then Guthrie said, ‘As you say, I imagine they well understood the risks they were taking.'

‘Perhaps we should go to them and see if anyone's injured,' Reid said.

‘We'll know soon enough,' Guthrie said.

Several minutes later, a slow-moving horse and cart appeared on the road ahead of them, four men sitting abreast on its plank seat.

They came without any apparent urgency to where Guthrie and Reid awaited them. Arriving alongside the car, one of the men Reid had spoken to earlier showed them his loosely bandaged, bleeding hand.

‘Was no one else injured?' Reid asked the men.

All four of them shook their heads.

‘Where are you taking him?'

‘To the doctor at Fricourt,' one said.

‘And after that to Mametz to make a claim for compensation,' another added, at which all four men burst into laughter.

The man with the bandaged hand unwound the cloth to show his injury to Reid. Blood pooled in the man's palm and was smeared along his forearm.

‘Can you move all your fingers?' Reid asked him. He had asked fifty other men the same question.

The man clenched and opened his fist several times, causing fresh blood to flow. He refastened his bandage. Reid guessed the blood would be even more in evidence by the time the men arrived in Mametz.

After that, the driver of the cart shook his reins and the horse continued on its slow journey.

When the men were beyond hearing, Guthrie said, ‘See?' He then told his driver to start the engine and continue their own journey back to Amiens. ‘I daresay I shall see you in Morlancourt very soon,' he said to Reid as he slid the goggles back over his eyes.

‘Of course,' Reid said.

The car left him, making a faltering, chugging sound as it gathered speed along the road. Reid stood and watched it go. He looked in the direction of the smoke, but it had already thinned and drifted and was now barely visible where it rose off the land.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
, the whole of Morlancourt knew about the imminent arrival of Caroline Mortimer's nurses.

Reid learned this from Benoît, who came out of his office the instant Reid arrived on the platform. Again, as during the previous few days, there were no bodies to be unloaded, only further supplies and materials sent by Wheeler in advance of the forthcoming ceremony.

It seemed to Reid as though the demands and diversions of only a week earlier had all now either ceased to exist or were being held in abeyance by Wheeler until the women were delivered and then buried. Everything, he realized, was reaching its natural conclusion in the place, his own authority and tenure there included.

He saw from the docket Jessop had sent him the previous evening that the load being delivered to them that particular morning included several hundred folding chairs, plank walkways, scaffolding and a marquee complete with all its poles and ropes, and he saw immediately how much extra work was involved in the unloading and then setting-up of all of this.

Having emerged from his office, Benoît waited while Reid told Drake and the waiting men what to expect. There were fewer men than usual, and Drake explained to Reid that those who were absent had finally received their discharge papers and were refusing to continue working at the cemetery. There had been no reasoning with the frustrated, impatient men, and no orders had come from Commission Headquarters insisting that they continue.

‘The men in charge don't want any more riots,' Drake said softly. ‘They've pushed people too far and now they're paying the price.'

‘They could at least send us some new arrivals,' Reid said, already calculating how to complete the work now being demanded of him with this reduced workforce.

‘There's no stopping some of them once they've got their travel warrants in their hands,' Drake said. ‘They'll all be waking up drunk in either Boulogne or Calais some time later this morning. And this time tomorrow, they'll be doing the same in Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. I doubt if any of them will ever pick up a spade again.'

Reid smiled at the remark. As usual, Drake seemed considerably less concerned by the loss than he was.