Shoulder the Sky (46 page)

"No, sir."

"I see. I suppose your calling allows you to do that."

"Yes, sir."

"Go on, then. If you go to the front line, take care. It's going to be a rough night."

"Is anyone going over on a raid?" He gulped. It was too soon. Far too soon. Yet what difference did it make? Whenever it was, it would come, and then that would be the end. The sweetness and the burden of friendship ached inside him like a physical pain. It would serve nothing to delay it.

"Are you sure you're all right, Reavley?" Fyfe repeated.

"Yes, sir."

The colonel nodded and made a small gesture with his hand. "Glad you're back. The men need you. Young Rattray was wounded. Not too bad."

"Yes, sir. Is he still here?"

"Hospital in Armentieres."

"Thank you. Good night, sir."

"Good night, Reavley."

Outside in the dark he walked over the mud to the beginning of the supply trench and down the steps. It must have been raining again because there was water under the duckboards and he heard the rats' feet scuttling and the heavy plop and splash of their bodies as they slid off.

He made his way towards Sam's dugout. He half hoped he would not be there. It would delay what he had to do. He passed the Old Kent Road and turned along Paradise Alley. Now and then a star shell flared up, lighting the trenches ahead, and then he heard the stutter of machine guns. He recognized the pattern.

He went down the familiar slope and called out.

Sam came to the door, pushing the sacking curtain back, his face in the glare alive with pleasure to see Joseph.

"Come in! Have some hot brandy and mud! I've got chocolate biscuits." He held the curtain open and stepped back.

Joseph almost refused. What if he put it off another day? He knew the answer. He would make it worse, that's all. He would have behaved like a coward, and Sam did not deserve that.

He went down the step into the small, cramped space he knew so well. The pictures were the same, the books, the wind-up gramophone, a few records he had heard a dozen times, and the red blanket on Sam's bed. The hurricane lantern was lit, warm yellow, touching everything with a golden edge.

"You look like hell," Sam said cheerfully. "I heard about Culling -ford. That's a damn shame. He was a good man. Is your sister going to be all right?"

"In time." Joseph sat down on the pile of boxes that had always served as a visitor's chair.

Sam was heating up tea in a dixie can. He added a generous dash of brandy, then pulled open a box of chocolate biscuits. There were five left. He gave three to Joseph and took two himself. "And your brother?" he asked.

"Fine. I went to Gallipoli on an errand for him."

Sam's eyebrows shot up. "Gallipoli? No wonder you look like that. They say it's worse than here."

"No it isn't. But it's as bad." Joseph had to be honest. "Well, maybe the chaos is worse. They don't seem to have thought before they ordered the attack. Poor devils didn't even know there were cliffs there."

Sam swore quietly, not with rage, but with pity at the waste of it.

Joseph could not turn back now. "I found a war correspondent out there. Outstanding writer, not a novice like Prentice."

Sam's eyes were wide. "And?"

"And he intended to write it up exactly as he saw it, no excuses, nothing softened," Joseph replied.

Now Sam was motionless, his body stiff, his hands clenched around his mug of tea. "You say he intended to. He changed his mind?"

Joseph looked at him carefully. He could see the fear in his eyes,

but he knew beyond any question that it was not for himself but for Joseph, for what he might have done that he could not live with. How well Sam knew him! And accepted him.

"I tried to persuade him not to in Gallipoli, and I failed," he answered. "He left and I caught up with him on board a ship from Gibraltar. We were sunk by the Germans, and ended up in the same lifeboat."

Sam continued to stare at him, waiting.

"I tried again to persuade him," Joseph said. "There was another man with us, a crewman, wounded, and one who died. Mason and I were rowing the boat, trying to keep it into the wind as long as we could. And when we couldn't hold it any longer, we turned and ran before the storm." He took a deep breath. He had to say it now. "When Mason said he would publish his story, I stopped rowing. I sat in the stern and watched him struggle with both oars. I'd have let him go down, all of us, the crewman as well, rather than have him publish it."

"But he changed his mind," Sam said softly. "He must have, or you wouldn't be here. And you believe him?"

"Yes." He saw the doubt in Sam's face. "Not because of what he said. We got becalmed in a fog. A ship came by, destroyer, I think. Mason stood up to hail it. Andy yelled at him not to, but it was too late. Mason didn't listen. The wash of the destroyer caught us and Mason overbalanced and went into the water. Andy went after him." He found it hard to say, even now. "I had the oars. I turned the boat and went back. Got Mason out, but we lost Andy' His throat was aching and his voice was barely audible. "That.. . that's what changed Mason, not really anything I said. Andy was typical "Tommy', his brother's keeper .. ."

Sam nodded. He did not need to speak. Suddenly the dugout seemed very small and close.

"Sam ... I know you killed Prentice," Joseph said in the silence. "And I know why. Mason told me what he was doing, because he didn't know he was dead. He said it was all in his schoolboy code but you could read that, couldn't you?" He did not wait for an answer it was in Sam's eyes. "I don't know whether I would have done the same or not. A fortnight ago I'd have said no. Now I'm not certain. I couldn't kill Mason with my own hands, but that's an equivocation. I was willing to stand back and let him die, which comes to the same thing. And I liked him. We tended the wounded together on the beach at Gallipoli. He was a decent man, not an arrogant, self-serving bastard like Prentice."

"But.. . ?" Sam's voice was hoarse, his eyes full of inner pain.

He did not deserve to have to listen to Joseph excusing himself, talking about Prentice's murder, as if that would make what he said any easier.

"But you killed him," Joseph said. "There are other men here, young men who are offering their lives to save what they believe in, a decency they trust, who know he was killed by one of us. I wish to God I'd covered it some way, but I didn't, and now it can't go unanswered."

Sam looked crumpled, hurt more than he knew how to deal with. "Are you going to turn me in?"

"No," Joseph said softly. "I can't do that. I can't even tell you that you were wrong, only that the army will see it that way. They have to." He had tried to think of the words ever since he had decided what to do the night he had visited Mrs. Prentice, but it was no easier. "Next time there's a big raid, like later tonight, you can go over the top with the others." His voice cracked, but he could not stop. "Find someone dead who looks near enough like you, or whose body is beyond recognition, and change identity tags with him." He was shivering. "You'll live, and Sam Wetherall will be missing in action." He wanted to say he was sorry, that he would have done anything he knew how, but none of it would help. He wanted to close his eyes, not look at Sam's face, but he could not do that either. "If I can work it out, so will others. Before that.. . please .. . go .. ."

Sam did not speak for several moments. He stared at Joseph, searching.

Joseph wanted to answer, but he could not go back on the decision, or all it meant. Nor could he tell Sam's brother the truth. No one else must know. It was not his own survival or morality that mattered, it was Sam's. With passionate, consuming intensity, he wanted him to live. He wanted the gentleness, the anger at wrong, the courage, the pity and the laughter to go on.

"You'd have died to silence Mason?" Sam said at last. "And taken the crewman as well?"

"Yes." There was no hesitation.

The hunger eased from Sam's face. It was what he needed to know. He held out his hand.

Joseph took it and gripped it hard, so hard it hurt. Then he stood up and went outside, tripping over the step, his eyes blind with tears.

It was a big raid. Thirty men went over the top, through the wire and into the German trenches. Joseph went right to the front and spent the night on the fire-step until there were wounded, then he did what he could to help. One of them was Plugger Arnold, but it was only a flesh wound in the thigh.

"Glad to see you back, Chaplain," he said, gritting his teeth as Joseph tied the bandage tight and then hoisted Plugger on to his back, his muscles screaming in protest. There was little room here to turn a stretcher, and he could not carry one alone anyway.

Half an hour later it started to rain. Then their own heavy artillery began. There was a lot of cursing, because it meant that the German heavy stuff would reply. They always did. This stretch of the line would get it hard. There would be casualties, and a lot of digging and shoring-up to do in the morning.

The raiding party came back just before dawn, with three German prisoners, five of their own wounded, six dead. One of those was Sam. The lieutenant who had led the party told him.

"I'm sorry," he said wearily. "It was a hell of a mess out there. I know he was a friend of yours. The body's over there. I'm afraid he must have taken a pretty direct hit with a grenade or two. I only know it's him because of the tag. At least it was quick. Better than being hung on the wire." And he moved away to be with his men, the injured, the shocked, others who had seen their friends blown to pieces.

Joseph knew it had had to happen, and somewhere inside him he was at peace that it was accomplished. Sam had accepted and done what was necessary. But there was also a gnawing loss, an emptiness that was always going to ache, like a missing limb. But first he had to look at the body and still the horror in his mind that it could, in hideous irony, really be Sam. Sam was the only one who would have seen the black laughter in that! God! How he was going to miss him!

Joseph found it hard to make his way between the stretchers and the bodies lying on canvas, or duckboards. His legs were shaking. It was almost daylight now. The sky above was streaked with light drifting banners of cloud.

The bodies were all badly injured, but one was so torn apart, both legs gone, one arm shattered and the head half blown away, that all one could be sure of was that he had been at least average height, and had had dark hair. It could have been Sam.

Trembling, sick with fear, Joseph picked up the dog tag and read Sam's name and number on it. Now his whole body was shuddering. He reached for the one good hand, the left hand. Would he recognize it? He stared at it, trying to be certain. Then he saw the pale indentation on the third finger where there had been a ring, a plain circle, a wedding ring. Sam had never worn a ring. Relief swept over him, breaking out in sweat over his body. He was dizzy, the makeshift room swaying around him.

Someone grasped him from behind, holding him up, steadying him.

"You all right, Chaplain? Pretty bad, eh. Poor devil."

Joseph wanted to say something, but his voice would not come. He gulped for breath, fighting the sudden nausea.

Someone passed him a cup of tea, hot and laced with rum. It was vile, made in a dixie that had held a Maconachie as well, but he drank it and his balance returned.

"Thank you. I'll... I'll have some letters to write. Lots of letters."

He conducted all the funerals, just brief words over white crosses in the Flanders clay, a few quiet men standing to attention, the sound of guns in the distance, the banners of sky like lead above them, as if their shoulders held it.

Sam's was the last. Joseph stood there alone after the others had gone. He did not realize anyone else had stayed until he heard Barshey Gee's voice.

"Oi'm real sorry, Captain Reavley. The major was a good man."

"Yes." Joseph found it hard to speak. "He was my friend."

"Did you ever foind out who killed that newspaper wroiter?"

"Yes. It's taken care of."

"Knew you'd see to it," Barshey said quietly. "Debt settled then."

Joseph turned to look at him. There were tears on Barshey's face, but he was smiling. He stood smartly to attention, and saluted the cross that said "Major Samuel Wetherall, killed in action, 25 May 1915'.

New York Times best selling author

ANNE PERRY lives in Portmahomack,

Scotland, and her well-loved series featuring

Thomas and Charlotte Pitt was adapted for television. THE CATER STREET

HANGMAN

was watched by millions of viewers when it was broadcast by 1TV. Also available from

Headline is the critically acclaimed

William and Hester Monk series.

Praise for ANNE PERRY's novels:

'lA] surpassingly excellent historical and psychologically intricate mystery'

Publishers Weekly

"We don't have a Dickens today, but Anne Perry is every bit as good' Northern Echo

Nurse Mary Evans Picture Library. Beach CORBIS. Soldiers running Hulton Archive. Couple saying goodbye Getty Images. Gallipoli landing