Field Service (6 page)

Reid didn't recognize the latter and so she sang a verse of it for him.

‘I'm none the wiser,' he said when she'd finished. He saw what pleasure she derived from singing and he complimented her on her voice.

‘I was in the choir at home,' she said. ‘In Lincoln.'

‘The cathedral?'

She laughed at the suggestion. ‘My parish church. Shortly before I last left home, a subscription was started for a memorial to be set into one of its walls.' She looked away from him as she spoke.

‘Benoît tells me there's talk of something similar here,' he said. ‘Once the new bell's cast. He's probably leading that committee, too.' He looked along the lane to where Benoît and his wife were walking home.

‘Were many killed from here?' she asked him.

‘I don't know. Benoît lost his only son. I daresay the names and numbers are well enough known by now to keep the masons busy for some time to come.' It only then occurred to him that her husband's name would in all likelihood be included in her own local memorial.

‘I suppose so,' she said. ‘Today the visiting curé told us all that we should never stop giving thanks for the fact that this place was largely spared. He told everyone it was their own personal miracle. He said that the Lord had wrapped His hands around the place and kept it safe from harm.'

‘I see,' Reid said. He imagined Benoît listening to the words.

‘A woman got up and walked out at hearing him,' Caroline said. ‘Everyone waited for her husband to go after her and fetch her back, but he never left his pew. I could hear him crying from where I was sitting at the rear.' She rose briefly to exchange greetings with a solitary woman who passed beside them. It surprised Reid to hear her speak French so fluently, and he remarked on this when she sat back beside him.

‘I was here for four years, remember,' she said. ‘Many of our orderlies were French.' She leaned forward and searched along the street. Most of the sparse congregation had dispersed by now, but a few still lingered in the sun. ‘I was hoping to see Mary.'

‘Your companion? Wasn't she at the service with you?'

‘She told me she preferred her own God.'

‘Is it not the same one, then?'

‘She called them Papists.' She laughed at the remark. ‘Besides, she's been unwell ever since she arrived.'

‘Oh?'

‘She says she can find no
purpose
in life.'

It was clear to Reid that Caroline did not want to discuss the younger woman at any greater length.

‘I should have come to find you,' he said. ‘To show you the plans for the nurses' graves. It's just that, as yet, there's very little to see. Only their names and numbers on a plan which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the place itself. We're still waiting to hear for certain where our Cross of Sacrifice and Stone of Remembrance are to be positioned.' He had finally received the rudimentary plan for the nurses' graves from Wheeler, having told him of Caroline Mortimer's arrival.

‘Someone told me recently that the French are considering using concrete crosses,' she said.

‘Concrete on a metal frame. For their concentration cemeteries, yes.'

‘But concrete – it seems …'

‘It seems French, that's all.'

She smiled at this. ‘Sergeant Drake told me that the graves in the British burial grounds were being laid out to resemble units on parade, facing east towards the enemy. And that whatever else the final planting-up includes, roses will be planted so that at some part of every day the shadow of one of those roses will fall on to every British grave.'

Now Reid smiled. ‘Those of us in charge on the ground are convinced that the Commission has an office somewhere marked “Fanciful Notions”.'

‘Still …'

‘Yes, still …'

‘Drake was kind enough to show me over the ground,' she said. ‘I lied and told him you'd said it was all right for me to see where the nurses would eventually be laid to rest. I went to him after walking to the centre of the place.'

‘Was it any help? I mean, did it make anything clearer to you?'

She considered this. ‘The place was much larger than I'd imagined. I suppose that's to be … well …'

‘We've found a good spot for the women,' Reid said.

‘Drake showed me. I asked him when the bodies were coming, but he didn't know.'

Reid closed his eyes in thought. ‘Wheeler thought sometime in the next month. I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything more definite. It's a plot beside the stream, close to one of the paths. Wheeler also said there was talk of a separate memorial for them.'

‘Oh? Is that likely? I don't think—'

‘Like almost everything else, nothing's been decided for certain yet. If I hear anything more … To be honest, at present Wheeler's more concerned about the imminent arrival from Neuville of an executed man.'

‘Is he against it? Personally?'

‘He gives that impression. The Commission overall has been in favour of their inclusion from the very start.'

‘I imagine most of the poor souls …' She tailed off.

‘Besides,' Reid said, ‘Parliament has spoken. And I daresay all our elders and betters are growing weary of the constant outcries and assaults they must for ever fend off.' He stopped abruptly and then signalled his apology to her for this gentle outburst.

Neither of them spoke for a moment, and then Caroline touched his sleeve briefly and said, ‘Did you know someone?'

Reid nodded absently. ‘I knew
of
a man. A boy. Ninth Devons. He's buried at the Dartmoor cemetery. He'd already absconded six times before he was caught and charged and tried. Twice while on Active Service. He was given every opportunity. It seemed to me at the time that everyone involved simply ran out of patience with him. He was barely old enough to be here. They should have done the decent thing and sent him somewhere out of harm's way.'

They were interrupted by the appearance of Mary Ellsworth, who came quickly, running almost, round the corner of the lane leading to the rear of the church. She seemed surprised to find them so suddenly in front of her.

Reid rose to greet her and offered her his seat, but she stopped a few yards from them and came no closer. She seemed wary of the pair of them. Or perhaps wary of Caroline Mortimer only because she was in Reid's company.

Caroline, too, rose from the bench. She went to Mary and held both her hands. She told her to join them.

‘I didn't know where you were,' Mary said accusingly.

‘I told you yesterday. I was at the service.'

‘I meant afterwards. I was waiting for you to return.'

‘I met Captain Reid. We were talking.'

Mary Ellsworth looked back and forth between them as though doubting what Caroline had just told her.

‘Is something wrong?' Caroline asked her. ‘Has something happened?'

Mary pulled herself free and took several paces away from her. ‘I wanted to see you, to talk, that's all,' she said.

Reid sat back down, hoping to put her at her ease.

‘Are you coming?' Mary said to Caroline.

‘Soon,' Caroline said. ‘I wanted some air.'

Clearly angry that the older woman had not done as she'd asked, Mary Ellsworth turned and walked briskly away from them.

‘Perhaps you should go to her,' Reid suggested as Caroline watched her leave.

‘I'm not her guardian,' Caroline said, though not unkindly. ‘I've been away, in Amiens. I only returned last night. She wanted to come with me, but I told her I had work to do and that she ought to stay here.'

‘Work in connection with your nurses?'

She shook her head. ‘The bodies of six women were found in a grave at Acheville, beyond Arras. The Registration officer in Amiens sent word to me. It turned out they were nuns and novices from a convent in Liège. Their own graveyard was lost to them during the war and these six had been buried in the plot at Acheville. They'd all been exhumed and identified by the time I arrived. I could have returned immediately, but the few remaining sisters invited me to stay the night and I accepted. Mary can be very demanding.'

‘I can imagine. Has she found out anything more about her fiancé?'

‘Nothing positive. The resident superintendent at Vignacourt—'

‘Vesey – Peter Vesey,' Reid said. ‘I know him.'

‘He apparently had four graves assigned to men with the same surname, but none of their details matched up with Mary's fiancé. Same regiment, but different companies and dates.'

‘It's more common than you'd imagine,' Reid said.

‘So, once again, her hopes were raised and then dashed.'

‘Did she go to Vignacourt?'

Caroline shook her head. ‘When I told her I wouldn't be able to accompany her, she insisted on coming to Acheville with me. I told her to go alone, that the journey would be straightforward. To be honest, I didn't want her with me at Acheville. If the women there had turned out to be nurses, then I would have had things to do. You know how it is. It's why she's angry with me now. I don't blame her. I doubt if she truly knows herself what she wants or expects from any of this.'

‘She'd be better off back at home,' Reid said.

‘Wherever she was, I doubt things would be any different. Besides …'

‘Besides, you appreciated your time alone at Acheville?'

‘I did. I promised I'd return before I left for England. The place is half-destroyed, but the nuns are carrying on with their lives there as though nothing has happened. It has always been a nursing convent. I went to prayers with them. I knelt on the bare earth and listened to them whispering and murmuring all around me for an hour. They are growing vegetables again, and breeding ducks and rabbits. They collect frogs from nearby ponds. The oldest of the six dead was ninety, the youngest only fourteen. The sisters dug their new graves and reburied them. Several of them worked in the hospital in Arras. I had French nuns with me at the casualty clearing station at Abbeville, and later at Roisel. They were afraid of nothing, those women.'

‘Unlike—'

‘Yes, unlike Mary, who now, it seems, is afraid of almost everything she encounters.'

It wasn't what Reid had been about to say, but he let the remark pass.

After this, she held out her hand to him and said she ought to go after Mary. Less than ten minutes had passed since her abrupt departure.

‘Of course,' Reid said, rising again. He'd hoped they might have spent longer together, but again he said nothing.

‘Will you come and visit me?' she said.

‘Of course.'

She took a step away from him, then turned and saluted, and he had already half raised his arm when she laughed and lowered her own.

He watched her go, seeing her pass in and out of the light and shadow of the lost buildings as she moved along the street, pausing occasionally to exchange greetings with the few villagers still gathered there.

TWO DAYS LATER
, Reid was waiting on the platform when Alexander Lucas and a dozen or so others climbed down from the train carrying that day's deliveries. Lucas saw him and came to him through the congregating men.

‘En route to Prezière,' he said. ‘Jessop's arranging for transport from here. I spoke to him earlier. According to him, the lorries should already be waiting.' He looked beyond the station to where Reid's men were again gathering on the verge.

‘Nothing so far,' Reid said.

‘Which is precisely what I expected.' There was neither anger nor disappointment in Lucas's voice.

They were then approached by Drake, who complained that Lucas's men were getting in the way of the train being unloaded.

‘And the station master in Amiens complained that we were in the way of your coffins being loaded,' Lucas said.

Drake smiled and shook his head.

Reid told him to set their own men to work.

‘I have half a ton of equipment. Picks and spades, mostly,' Lucas said. ‘I'll tell my crew to stay out of the way until your stuff's off.'

‘The driver will insist on sticking to the schedule,' Reid warned him.

‘And then spend three hours back in Amiens doing nothing?'

‘Probably.'

‘Most of what we need will be on the lorries,' Lucas said. He shouted instructions for the dozen or so others who had come with him.

‘Is that all of you?' Reid asked him, surprised to see so few men.

Lucas left him briefly and went to the rear of the train, where he now told his own labourers to help the men unloading the coffins. There was friendly competition between the two groups.

When Lucas returned, he took Reid's arm and guided him into the empty waiting room. Sparrows flew from side to side across the low ceiling. The room was dimly lit, cool in the morning shade, and filled with the dust which rose from its bare boards.

Lucas sat opposite Reid on one of the simple benches and the two men lit cigarettes. It was clear to Reid that Lucas had brought him away from the others for a reason.

‘Have there been new discoveries?' Reid said. ‘At Prezière?'

Lucas opened the case he carried and took out a rolled map and several folders fastened with string. He unrolled the map and showed it to Reid.

‘This is you,' he said, tapping a finger at the centre of the sheet. ‘And here's Prezière. At least, here's where it once was.'

‘How many bodies do you expect to recover?'

‘Our latest estimate – accounts vary – is between thirty and forty.'

‘So many? I didn't think there'd been any major engagement there.' Reid studied the map more closely, trying to remember where and when the lines had come and gone in those last confused months. ‘At Hargicourt, perhaps, when everything was overrun. But Prezière? Do you have any witnesses?'