THE CINDER PATH (33 page)

is to make as little noise as possible. And if they

start lighting up, well drop where you stand. Good

luck."

TCP 13

They made no answer, they merely nodded, and he

went out and walked slowly along the trench, first to the right speaking to each man as he came to him, then he

retraced his steps and walked to the left.

The last man in the trench was Slater. He was

alone in the section where the trench curved slightly.

Charlie did not stop but walked past him for some

yards to a point where he intended they should climb out and make their way back, or at least join up with

another unit, and as he stood peering over the

parapet into the dusk he tried to still the churning inside him. The menace of the man had been weighing on him

all day and it was never heavier than at this moment. It was with an effort that he made himself turn slowly about and walk back in his direction.

Slater was bending forward against the wall of the trench, his gun at the ready. His eyes were directed towards

the top of the parapet and it was to this he seemingly

spoke as he said clearly and distinctly, "I've

heard of blokes buyin' commissions in the old days

but never one payin' for it with his wife's

whoring."

He was directly behind him, and now

Slater turned his head, but not his body, and looked

at him.

"What did you say?"

"You heard, you're not deaf. You heard . . .

sir." He put emphasis on the drawn-out sir.

"You didn't think you got it off your own bat, did you, you who hadn't the guts to kill a pig? ... I

wouldn't do that if I was you."

Unconsciously, but driven by an inner desire

to stop this devil's mouth in some way, Charlie's hand

had moved towards his holster.

"That would be the finish of you if you did that. . .

sir, too many witnesses about. Anyway, you wouldn't

have the guts. You never had any guts, had you . . .

sir?"

The most terrible thing Charlie was finding about this

moment was that Slater's tone was conversational. He was now saying, "They were all doin' it in their pants in case you named the major, so what was the best thing to do?

Well, as Corporal Packer said-he was

Lieutenant Swaine's corporal you

remember-put you where you couldn't talk. He said

he'd never seen such a flap as was on, or

a promotion got so bloody quick. . . . Didn't

you know that? ... Oh you must have; you never thought you could get a pip on your

own, now did you? As I've always said, you're a

born loser, you lost the lass you loved, you married

a whore, and now you've even lost yourself and your

bloody platoon. A cuckold, that's the name I

think the gentry have for a fellow like you, but to me you're just a loser, a pipsqueak loser."

He was never to fathom out correctly if it was the

shell suddenly bursting near or the fact that Slater

brought his body swiftly round with his gun at the

ready, he was only aware that he was firing his pistol

and straight into the man in front of him. The blast of another shell bursting flung him against the opposite

parapet and he was lying there, the gun still in his hand, still pointing when the sergeant came running into view.

Taking in the truth of the situation straightaway, he

shouted, "What happened, sir? He tried to do for

you?"

Another shell burst, and then both he and the

sergeant were flung down to the bottom of the trench and his face was hanging over Slater's, staring into the mouth and eyes which were wide as if he had died in a moment of

surprise.

"Let's get out of this, sir." The sergeant had hold of his arm and, bent double, they

were running, but before they reached the dug-out another shell burst and the trench caved in behind them.

Then they were inside the dug-out and he was standing upright and shouting orders, yelling them. "No use waiting any longer. . . . Have to make a break for it.

They've got us pin-pointed. Get the lieutenant

up. Come on! Look slippy! Look slippy

there!"

He had killed Slater. He had killed

Slater.

What was the matter with him, why was he yelling like

this? It was only sergeants who did the yelling.

"You can't go right now, go left outside.

Direct the prisoner."

He had killed Slater. He had killed

Slater.

"Come on! Come on, move!"

He was outside now hustling them along the trench

whilst making his way to the front of them. It was at the point where they had picked up the German prisoners

that he ordered them to push the stretcher on to the

parapet, and when Bradshaw protested he shouted him

down, bawling, "Shut up!" then "Get

him up and over! All of you, over!"

Amid the scrambling there were curses and so,

forgetting now that he himself had been bawling, he

ordered, "Quiet! Quiet! Keep

together in two's, follow the stretcher." He did not issue orders for the two men and the wounded, for they would of necessity trail behind.

Quietly now he called, "Sergeant!" and when

the man came to his side he said, "I'll go

ahead of the stretcher. Keep them together, keep them

coming."

"Yes, sir."

It was dark now, except for the moments when the sky

was illuminated by the flashes of gunfire coming from both the north and the south-west of them; there was no shellfire at the moment from the mound. He couldn't imagine that the hill had been taken; for if that had been so a

patrol would surely have investigated the trench.

In the illumination of a Very light he got a

momentary impression of their position. He was on the

right track, the hill lay behind them to the north, their lines were due west, in fact they couldn't be much more than a few hundred yards away.

Another Very light burst now but almost directly

over them, and almost at the same moment the

crossfire began.

"Keep going!" he was yelling again, and the sergeant repeated his order, almost on a

scream. "Come on! Keep going!" but before he

uttered the last word a shell burst to the right of them and they were all lying flat, hugging the earth.

The sergeant came crawling to his side. His

face was near his own and his voice was loud in his ear.

"It's . . . it's our lot, sir; they're aiming

at the hill."

For a moment he didn't answer, the noise about

them was deafening. Then there came a slight lull, at

least from the artillery to the front of them, and the

sergeant's voice came again, saying, "They're

knockin' bloody hell out of the trench, we did it

only just in time,

sir.

57rter-than

There were Very lights bursting here and there about them, and now Charlie, twisting round on his elbow, shouted down

the straggling line of cowering bodies, "When the next Very bursts anywhere near, jump to your feet and

yell, shout, bawl anything, let them see it's

us."

"We ... we could be blown

to smithereens, sir, the artillery's well behind, they

couldn't get in touch in time."

"That's a chance we'll have to take, Sergeant."

"As you say, sir."

Why was it, even in this moment when he was on the border of death, he asked himself, would the sergeant have questioned the lieutenant if he had given that order?

"Up! Up!" He had jumped to his feet, the

sergeant beside him, but only a few of the men followed suit immediately.

"Wave your arms! Shout! Do you hear? Shout!"

Did he hear someone near bawl, "What's the

bloody good of that? He's up the pole. They'll

never hear us in this?"

"Forward! Forward!"

Naturally it seemed to the men that they were being ordered to walk directly into the midst of the bursting shells, but they followed. An officer had given an order and

it was their duty to carry it out, come hell, high

water, or being blown to smithereens; and that was the fate every man thought awaited him.

Yet as they made straight across the tortured land

being aided by the flashes of artillery that momentarily pin-pointed the potholes, some as big as craters

half full of water in which many of them would have

drowned, so weary were they, it was as if they were following a known path.

When a shell burst near and they were all spattered with earth the sergeant's voice now almost drowned the echo

of it as he yelled, "Keep going! Keep going!"

Then of a sudden the barrage in front of them

stopped, and although the German battery behind them still kept peppering away, it was as if a deep silence

had fallen all around them.

Charlie paused, bringing the rest to a halt as there

arose from out of the ground in the distance dark shadows, darker than the night. He felt rather than saw them

spreading out and he called wildly, "Hello there!

Hello there! I'm Lieutenant MacFell, we

are the his

"Well! what the hell you all playing at standing

there! Come on! Come on! Did you ever see the

likes of it?"

It was as if they had been bidden to come in out of the rain. They came on, the utterly weary men at a

run now, laughing as they dropped over the parapet.

The canvas stretcher was eased gently down into the

trench, and lastly the two soldiers with the three wounded men between them. . . .

Ten minutes later he was sitting in the

very dug-out he had left only that morning,

occupied now not only by a new lieutenant and his

second, but also at this moment by a captain and a

major.

"Have another." They refilled his glass, and the major for the second time in a few minutes said,

"How you got your fellows through that lot I'll never know, but there's one thing sure, you would have had it by now if you had stayed in that line. Those batteries are

cut off but they're going down fighting. They must have had the idea that the whole line was occupied. Well,

their number'll be up soon; the cavalry are going

over in half an hour. Then we are moving on. .

. . Show's going well. You look all in, old

chap."

"It's been a busy day," he found himself

answering in the same vein.

"I'll say. . . . Pity about the lieutenant.

But they'll soon dig that out of him back at base.

He's lucky, it must have just missed his heart.

Well now, we'll have to be about our father's business, won't we?" He turned to his officers and they

laughed with him and repeated, "Yes, sir, about our father's business."

Turning to Charlie again the major now

said, "I'd have a nap until daylight, then you can go back to base with the wounded and

have a wash an' brush up before you return to your

unit. Only God knows where they are now." He

shook his head. Then in the same airy tone he

ended, "Very good night's work. Not only did you bring your men back safely and the lieutenant, but three

prisoners. They might prove to be helpful, and

they don't seem averse to being captured. Strange

fellows. . . . Well, good-bye."

"Good-bye, sir." Charlie was on his feet.

He had managed to salute smartly. The major

had reached the opening of the dug-out when he turned and said, "You'll be mentioned. I think it was a very good effort. Foolhardy, of course, to walk into a

battery but nevertheless a very good effort."

He sat down on the edge of the camp-bed and lowered

his head into his hands. God above! Was he dreaming?

You'll be mentioned. Good effort. And for what? For

corning backwards instead of going forward. But what

else could he have done, he couldn't have left John?

Could he? Well, anyway, he seemingly had done

the right thing according to the major, whose tone had also implied it was just what would be expected of an English officer and a gentleman.

An officer and a gentleman, not a conscript,

and certainly not a man who had been made a

cuckold and been paid for it by being given a pip on his shoulder.

God Almighty! He mustn't think about it, he

must sleep, sleep. But when he slept he would still

think about it, he would never be able to stop thinking about it, not till the day he died. And pray God that would be

soon, because he couldn't live with the pictures in his mind.

Against his closed lids he now saw illuminated

as if by a battery flash, the office and the

lieutenant sitting behind the desk. He heard his own

voice, saying, "May I enquire, sir, when my

name was first put forward?" He saw the hand thumbing through pages on the desk; then the man sauntering to the

cabinet in the corner of the room; he saw the face

turn towards him and the lips mouthing, "Ten days

ago; of course, we go into these things."

Now the lips were moving again. "Your wife runs the farm?"

God! how they must have laughed! They had treated

him like a country bumpkin, a yokel, a fool.

Charlie MacFell the fool. The idiot, and that's

what he had been, otherwise he would have

pursued the thought that

made him enquire as to when his name was first put forward.

Hadn't it struck him as being too much of a

coincidence that the very day after finding his wife sporting with the major he should have been offered a commission?

Hadn't he known in that moment that his hands were being tied?

Yes, he had; but he thought he had tied them himself,