The Evening Chorus (5 page)

Halfway through the letter, James has the inspiration to suggest to Rose that she find a nest of redstarts in England to watch, and that way, by studying the birds with the same degree of concentration as her husband, she would keep him company at his task and they would not really be separated at all. They could share their findings and it would help him make a better study. Her findings might echo his.

Harry Stevens passes behind James on his way to the stove to make tea. He reads over his friend’s shoulder.

“Damn and blast,” he says. “It’s all about the bloody birds.”

James covers his letter with a hand. “Rose likes to know what I’m doing at the camp,” he says. “How I’m spending my time.”

Harry moves away from the table and towards the stove. “I doubt that,” he says.

“How can you be an expert on marriage when you’re not married?”

“That is precisely what makes me an expert.” Harry roots through the used tea bags in a tin on top of the stove to find one that has a little bit of life left in it. “Ask yourself this, Hunter—if you were a woman, wouldn’t you rather receive a letter filled with lovemaking than descriptions of some bloody bird’s nest?”

“You may feel you’re an expert on marriage, but you’re not an expert on
my
marriage.” James lifts his hand and starts back in to his letter to Rose, but he feels a little worm of doubt from Stevens’s words wriggle into his head and settle there.

T
HE CRIES
of the baby redstarts grow stronger every day. It won’t be long before they fledge, and this also makes James nervous. He feels confident about their safety while they are in the nest, but once they leave it, their survival becomes much more difficult. They will no longer be protected by their parents, or by the excellent location of their nest. Instead they will be out in the larger world, which is full of predators and danger.

In his other life, back home, James had often walked by young birds stumbling around on the grass, not knowing enough to move quickly out of his way in case he meant them harm. The period before something learns to be afraid is the most dangerous period of all, because it is then that creatures are the most vulnerable.

First the redstart chicks have to learn to be afraid. Then they must learn to be aggressive towards smaller birds. And finally they will learn to be aggressive towards intruders of their own species so they can defend their families.

O
N THE
day that he receives Rose’s latest letter, James sees a swarm of bees over the river. He actually hears them before he sees them—a raspy noise that is not one continuous hum, but rather the sound of overlapping buzzing, like an engine that is frantically sparking but failing to catch.

The swarm is hovering over the river, a swirling mass of thousands of bees stirring the air. They are closer together as a group at the centre of the swarm, and there are single bees on the outside of the mass—scouts, perhaps, trying to decide in which direction to guide the group. These loose bees make the swarm look as though it is unravelling.

James stands very still. He doesn’t want the bees to see him. He is afraid of being stung. But the bees don’t seem interested in his presence, or that of the birds in the stone wall. They are not even interested in their own flight. They are looking for a place to land. One of the scout bees moves downriver and the swarm follows, flying in a thick, circular motion above the water, and then out over the trees and away.

J
AMES WRITES
a note about the swarm that evening, after roll call. He writes his notes every evening, sitting at his little desk between two sets of bunk beds. The bee swarm hasn’t anything to do with the redstarts, but because it happened in their territory, James feels that he should make note of it. He is meticulous in this regard, trying to observe everything in the vicinity of the redstart nest and taking a written record of it, just in case it comes to matter later, when he assembles his notes into a book.

Davis comes over to him while he’s writing and puts the cardboard box with his model village on James’s desk.

“The tunnel’s nearly done,” he says. “We’re going soon. If I get away, could you post this to my parents at the end of the war? I’ve written their address on the top of the box.”

“You want me to do this?” asks James. He stops short of asking why. He and Davis are collegial with each other, but they aren’t friends.

“Yes. Because you’re here for the duration,” says Davis. “I can depend on that.”

James accepts this answer to his unasked question and turns in his chair to face the younger man. “Are you sure you want to go? You’ll most likely be caught. You could even be shot.”

Davis shrugs. “I don’t want to be here,” he says.

“But you are here,” says James.

“Not for much longer.”

It suddenly seems to James that the camp is divided between men like Davis, who feel it is their duty to try to escape because they long to be elsewhere, and men like him, who make the best of where they are by investing their time in purposeful activities. James looks at the bold printing on the lid of the box. Davis is only twenty. He has parents rather than a wife. His childhood must still be so near to him, so familiar.

“I’ll take care of it,” he says.

“I knew I could count on you,” says Davis. “You’re the most reliable chap in camp.”

Later that night, everyone in James’s room goes to another of the bunkhouse rooms to join a card game. There’s only James and Harry left behind. As they often do, they lie in their bunks, chatting and falling silent. It is an odd feeling to talk to someone without seeing him, but James is used to it now and finds it reassuring to hear Harry’s deep voice rising up to him from the bottom bunk, where his friend lies reading. The Red Cross has sent another shipment of books to the camp, and the prisoners have started a lending library. Harry uses the library on a daily basis, and even though there are a few thousand volumes now, James wouldn’t be surprised if Harry makes his way through all the books by next Christmas, and it is already almost June.

“Do you think they’ll make it?” James says, meaning Davis and the other dozen tunnellers.

“One of these times someone’s bound to get away,” says Harry. “But no, I don’t think it will be them. Not this time. Tunnels take too long. They’re too risky. The Goons probably already know about it.”

“I wish he wouldn’t go. He’s so young.”

“You’re a bit of a mother hen, James.”

“I don’t want him to get shot.” James thinks how awful it will be if he has to post the model village to Davis’s parents because their son has been killed while escaping. It will be a macabre object for them to receive in the post.

“Mostly the tunnellers are not shot,” says Harry. “Mostly they’re rounded up by the dogs and hauled back to camp, where they’re thrown into the cooler for a few weeks. Made an example of for the rest of us miserable sods. All their hard work for nothing. The tunnels get filled back up again. Escaping seems just as much a hobby as your birds or Hickson’s golf course.” He shifts and the frame of the bunk bed wobbles. “I’m going to read now, James,” he says. “Try to stop worrying.”

James lies in his bunk, his hands behind his head, staring up at the darkened wooden ceiling. I wish I were a bird, he thinks. In the forest, perched in the trees at the edge of the river, flying over the water at dusk. He would feel the heat of the sun on the stone wall or the cool of evening’s shadow. He could lift and lower at will, rise over the wire, into the sky beyond the forest, above the war itself. He could soar higher than the planes. He could take himself home.

H
ICKSON, KNOWN AS THE
G
OLFER
, in bunkhouse 2, is constructing a golf course at the camp. He comes to see James at the river the next morning, charging down the slope like a bull after cows.

“Hunter,” he bellows, so loudly that James starts like the birds he’s watching, dropping his pencil on the ground.

Hickson is brawny and big. He is a champion athlete at the camp, always on the winning side at football and cricket. Even though James doesn’t know him well, he imagines that Hickson was very much the same back in England. He knew such boys at school, heavily involved in sport and relentlessly popular. And now, after tiring of practising his putting outside his bunkhouse, Hickson has got it into his head that he wants to construct a nine-hole golf course in the camp.

Hickson slides to a stop beside James.

“Hunter,” he says, “I am in need of your opinion.”

“About birds?” asks James.

“No, no. About here.” Hickson surveys the little bit of ground around them. “In your opinion, would this be a spot of rough, or could I transform it into hole number seven?”

“Rough,” says James without any hesitation at all, because if it’s rough, then it will have less human traffic than a proper stop on the course. “The ground’s very uneven through here, and there are these tree roots.” He kicks at one to give an illustration. There are only a few trees growing by the river, and the roots really wouldn’t be much of an impediment at all, but James does not want a golf course right in the midst of his observation area. It would make the redstarts nervous and possibly scare them away for good.

“Interesting.” Hickson cocks his head to one side and then the other as he regards the tree root. “Oh, look at that beauty.” He bends down and picks something from the ground, stands up, and opens his hand to show James the pebble that lies there.

“A rock?” says James.

“A golf ball,” says Hickson. He tosses the pebble gently into the air, catches it, tosses it again. “The centre of the golf ball, to be more precise. It’s weighted perfectly. Now I’ll wrap it with twine and then cover it with leather from one of the old footballs. I’m learning to stitch like a seamstress,” he says, grinning at James. “You’ll have to come and have a go when the course is done.”

“Yes,” says James, although he has no intention of golfing. Watching his redstarts is a full-time job. “Will this be rough, then?”

Hickson has moved his attention from the tree root to the pebble. He’s still tossing it up and down in the air. “If you think so,” he says. “I defer to your expertise.”

James watches him charge back up the slope, full of purpose and on to his next task. He is perhaps more dedicated to his pursuit of sport than James is to his redstarts, and that thought cheers James. Even though Hickson is the sort of person James steered clear of in civilian life, they are on the same side here in the camp. They are both attaching themselves to life here rather than seeking to escape from it. They are both, as Ian Davis put it, here for the duration.

T
HE
G
ARDENER
works the patch of ground in front of his bunkhouse. From the sandy soil he is trying to coax lettuce, tomatoes, onions, carrots, as well as dahlias, chrysanthemums, and tulips. He is but one of many gardeners in the camp. The vegetables they are able to cultivate will be welcome additions to the food the prisoners receive in the Red Cross parcels, and for this reason, gardening is popular among the men. Vegetable and flower seeds are sent via the Red Cross, and the Royal Horticultural society back in Britain has even allowed POWs to sit gardening exams so that, after the war, they may find employment doing what, during the war, was undertaken out of necessity.

The Gardener has sat the exam and received his qualifications in absentia. Although a trained geologist, he told James that he preferred gardening now, and that he couldn’t imagine not preferring it when he resumed civilian life again.

When James isn’t at the river watching the redstarts, he likes to sit on the steps of bunkhouse 2 and watch the Gardener work his little plot of soil. It is heartening to see the vegetables and flowers take their shape through the spring, rising up towards maturity under the Gardener’s careful ministrations.

There is more than one garden outside bunkhouse 2 and more than one gardener at work when James drops by to drink his mug of afternoon tea on the steps. There are two other prisoners in their small plots. One of the men James does not know well, but the other is Carmichael, a tall, lanky fellow, awkward at sport but skilled at persuading the poor soil of his plot to yield an astonishing array of vegetables. He’s whistling softly as he hoes a row of onions.

James waves to Carmichael and drops down on the steps of the bunkhouse.

“Have you given the birds a tea break too?” asks the Gardener, straightening up from his work of hilling the beans.

“I take my break at a different time each day,” says James. “That way I can know what’s happening when I’m not there. The redstarts have a routine. They don’t vary it much.”

“Like all of us,” says the Gardener. He comes over and sits down on the steps beside James. “Give me a mouthful, Hunter.”

James passes his tin-can mug of tea to his friend.

The bunkhouses are numbered according to their proximity to the Kommandant’s office; the smaller numbers are those closest to it. From the steps of bunkhouse 2, James has a good view of the Kommandant’s office window, and he’s surprised, when he looks up at it, to see the Kommandant looking back at him.

The Gardener passes the tin can back to James.

“I’d prefer the birds to Carmichael,” he says. “He’s been whistling that same bloody tune for hours now.”

James cocks his head to the side and hears the short, familiar musical phrase that he can’t quite place begin its loop again. And in that moment, when he tilts his head to listen, the German guard who is standing against the wall of the bunkhouse not twenty feet away unbuttons the holster of his Luger, walks up to Carmichael, and shoots him through the temple.

T
HE NEXT
morning, James is back at his post at the river when two guards rush down the slope towards him.

“
Mitkommen
!” one of them says, grabbing James by the arm and pulling him up the rise.

He can’t think what he has done, why the Kommandant would want to see him again. But James is not taken to the Kommandant’s office. He is led to the main gates of the camp and to a large black sedan parked there.