The First of July (15 page)

Benedict, France,
1915–1916

B
ENEDICT HAD TAKEN A COMMISSION
in the Royal Field Artillery and continued with the plan Theo had once laid out for them both. The winter of 1914 was spent in the mud on Salisbury Plain or in the schoolroom, being taught math. Theo had gone from Brooklands, where he’d learned to fly, straight to training at Hendon.

Theo was sent out to Ypres almost as soon as he had finished training, while Benedict had a home posting in a garrison manning the southern defenses. The two short letters Benedict received from Flanders were of tales of derring-do that were hard to reconcile with the photographs of devastation that appeared weekly in the newspapers, or with the early casualty figures—or, at least, hard if you didn’t know Theo.

Each of Theo’s letters ended with a few musical notes instead of a signature. The first one had puzzled him until he realized it was the opening bar of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” The second was in response to his reply, telling Theo he was finally being posted overseas—to France. These notes were more recognizable, not least because the bar end was a tiny soldier. It was Gilbert’s “The Soldiers of Our Queen.” Theo scrawled across the bottom, “I’m to France as well. Shall we meet?” And then he quoted from the song: “Upon the battle scene they fight the foe together.”

It seemed unlikely. When he’d gone home and told Lettie that Theo was now a pilot, she had looked puzzled.

“Weren’t you and Theo going to join together? In the same regiment?”

He’d come close to lying, to providing a reason that wasn’t about Theo’s inability to think except in the moment. A promise, made by Theo, was not a binding commitment, more a measure of his current mood.

The next letter began with with a small angel with a cockade, blowing a trumpet with fat cheeks: B
b
. B
b
. B
b
. E
b
. E
b
—“La Marseillaise.”

I know where you are, you secretive, virtuously discreet son of a gun, and I’m billeted near you chaps. Based at Doullens. Kept meaning to write again but you know how it is. Flying all hours. There’s a sort of joy in it that’s like playing Bach when Brewer’s away. A good machine, a good plan of operation, and then skill and luck. Found this bijou residence—Harmony Cottage we call it. But the two chaps I was sharing with have left. One’s back at H.Q. with promotion and a staff officer’s job, the other’s got chicken pox. Now we are one—or however the rhyme goes. I was dreading some starchy fellow being foisted on me. How do you fancy moving in? Might not be for long, but we could shift your stuff stat. It’s practically a palace. Well, actually it’s a one-roomed hovel, but we live in great style. We’ve got a well. Cabbages, more or less. We’ve even got a bedstead: what they call a
“matrimoniale.”
Took it in turns. But you and I could share, being old friends. I’ll fumigate it. You won’t catch the dreaded pox. And I can show you my masterwork. Seriously. It’s a cantata. Or will be. On aeroplanes, on flight.

A moment with your guard down and happiness could catch you just as unexpectedly as a sniper’s bullet, Benedict thought, and was full of fear.

Yet he had settled into a billet with Theo at the cold, single-story farmhouse; and with a third man, a pilot called Dougie who also stayed from time to time, they made a strangely happy household. One of them had a hammock, one took the iron bed, and one slept on a horsehair mattress laid on empty ammunition boxes. Dougie had insisted on planting seeds he’d brought from home and promised a garden next spring. To Benedict’s surprise, Theo really was writing a cantata, although there was nothing religious about it. Read on the page, it was strange and brilliant, sometimes lyrical, sometimes almost violent. Could it be played? He wasn’t sure. When he had any hours free, Theo would sit and work at it, the oil lamp catching him in its halo of light, tapping out the rhythm with a pencil held in mittened hands. If Dougie wasn’t there to observe him, Benedict could lie, half sleeping in the hammock, watching him with wonder. Theo. Theo. Theo.

Theo was injured at Christmas.

It was a rare occasion that they were all there, so they made something of a party of it. On that evening, Dougie had brought a friend along, a dour Scotsman. Benedict didn’t get the feeling that Theo had known him that long, but he brought some good whiskey with him and they had some French
pinard
, the rough red stuff all the
poilus
carried, and some brandy. By the time they decided to cook something, they were all pretty drunk. The Scotsman had spent time in India and insisted he could make the standard-issue bully beef into some exotic Indian dish.

“It cleanses your gut,” he’d said. “They’d all be dead of gut rot, those Indians, without it.” He had packages of bright-colored powder he waved at them. “You can smell the spice on them. Those women—fine, fine-looking lassies, and what they don’t know about pleasing a man could fill a book.” He looked happy for the first time since he’d arrived.

“You’ve got that wrong, old chap,” said Dougie. “You mean what they
do
know could fill a book.”

The Scotsman seemed put out by this. Some of the yellow powder trickled out of the package. Theo bent down, scooped it up, and threw it in the skillet, licked his fingers, made a face, and laughed. He was enjoying himself. With Dougie and the Scot, Theo was a different man: a coarser, older man. Yet at one point he’d pulled out his half-written cantata and hummed the opening bars to them, conducting himself and an imaginary organ. Dougie had yawned and flapped his hand at him.

“Enough—you sound like McIver’s bagpipes.”

Benedict was sent to bring up onions from a string they’d found in the cellar. The smell beneath the house was rank, and his head was reeling as he levered himself up again through the trap door. With bright yellow hands, Theo started opening the cans of beef, digging in the tip of a bayonet. It was one they used to poke the fire.

“Bloody quartermasters,” said Dougie, slurring now. “Sadists. The stuff tastes like excrement, and they seal it up so we can’t even get at it.”

Theo was trying to roll back the lid. The can’s contents smelled nauseating. Afterward, Benedict was certain he’d felt the sharp pain in his own hand, had even lifted it to support it with the other arm, before he heard a sudden gasp from Theo.

“Blast it.” He held his hand up, blood dripping from a cut in the web between the thumb and finger. The parting of the flesh was visible.

Dougie laughed. “Drip it in, man. It’ll add flavor.”

“It damn well hurts.” Theo pulled out a cloth from under the bed and wrapped it around the injury. “
You
dig the bloody stuff out.”

And they’d eaten the beef, which tasted rather better with the Scotsman’s strange powders. But Benedict felt giddy and had a throbbing headache from the wine and the whiskey. He fell asleep on the floor. When he got up to be sick in the night, someone had removed his tunic and boots and put them tidily over the foot of the bed. But the tunic smelled of vomit even after he’d sponged it.

The next day, Theo had gone on duty early and Benedict left for two nights in Albert. When he returned, he was surprised to find Theo on the bed, sitting against the wall, flushed and sweating, his eyes bright. His shirt was open, moisture shining in the hollow at the base of his neck.

“For God’s sake, you’re ill.” Benedict felt a slight sense of panic, and pain seemed to leap from his fingers. “And you smell to high heaven.”

“My fucking hand,” Theo said, but with no rancor.

“Let me see.”

“No. If you see, I’ll have to see, and I won’t like what’s there.”

But he fell back, hot and exhausted, and let Benedict unwrap the layers of grimy cloth. The wound smelled. It was puffy and red, and bluish streaks ran up his arm.

“For God’s sake, Theo. You need to see the M.O.”

“No. I just need to rest it. I’m not having some sawbones take my arm off. I need to fly.” His face creased in pain.

Benedict fetched some water, held Theo’s head while he was sick, although only bile came up as he retched. He felt the fine, wet hair on the corded muscles at Theo’s neck, and the tremors that occasionally ran through his body; he saw the mauve eyelids. And all the time his own hand, which was supporting Theo, throbbed and burned. Then he tried to rinse the cut, but Theo gasped every time he touched it. Finally, he fetched him a small brandy, and after a while Theo let him dab the injured hand. Eventually Benedict just held the suppurating hand in his own on the cleanest cloth he could find; it was actually his undershirt. The day got darker, Theo fell into a restless sleep, grimacing from time to time, and Benedict lay down beside him, occasionally propping himself up to wipe Theo’s brow and always feeling the radiant heat of his skin down the full length of his body.

In the morning, Theo didn’t even open his eyes. His hand smelled worse than ever. “I’m supposed to be at Doullens,” was all he said.

Benedict left him, went outside and found a couple of soldiers from the tented billets down the road. One he sent off with a message. Then with the help of the other man, they half-lifted, half-dragged Theo to the nearest aid station. When he was eventually seen, even the tired young medical officer made a face.

“Septic case,” he said. “We’ll send him on as soon as possible. Find him a bed. He should be in the hospital.” He put a clean dressing on the cut, then turned to another unconscious soldier.

“He can’t lose the hand; he’s an organist,” Benedict said to the M.O.’s back. The doctor turned slowly and looked at him, as if he’d said something obscene.

Benedict thought, he
hoped
, no news was good news. Men died swiftly from septic wounds, but Theo was healthy. He lived as well as anyone could here; and there had been no filthy and fatal shred of uniform carried inward by a fragment of exploding metal. He had bled copiously—didn’t that mean the germs were borne
out
of the body, not into the bloodstream? But it hadn’t looked like that when Benedict had last seen him. He had waited with him until they loaded Theo onto a wagon. His eyes opened, apparently with effort.

“I couldn’t go on without you,” Theo had said, but his eyes seemed no more focused than his thoughts.

A fortnight later, Dougie was injured crash-landing and was sent back to England for good. Two subalterns from the Lancashire Fusiliers replaced him at Harmony Cottage but were hardly ever there. Meanwhile, Benedict had been promoted to acting captain, which meant slightly more pay and the responsibility of packing up his predecessor’s effects. He returned to the cottage as little as possible. When he did, the roof was leaking, the stink from the cellar was worse, and it was warmer and not much wetter outside than in.

It was a slow and grueling winter; the losses were constant, and the recruits who came out to replace the dead or injured gunners had less and less training, and more and more of the shells seemed to be duds. The heavy guns being moved into position slipped off the tracks laid for them, shattering the ice over pits of mud, and the men were reduced to shuffling bundles of scarves, balaclavas, shaggy jerkins, and double layers of dirty puttees. Benedict looked no better and had a rash on his chin from the chafing of damp wool. He heard nothing of Theo and dared not ask.

In March, a parcel and a letter arrived. The large box appeared to have traveled all over France: Christmas cake, stewed plums, glacé fruits, some mustard-colored fingerless gloves, and a letter from his sister bringing news from home. She had become engaged. “Fancy that!” she wrote.

His name is Robert, he is in the Navy. A naval surgeon. Before the war he worked at Plymouth Hospital. He is a little older than I am (and I am hardly a girl!) and a widower. Father frets about that, but I think he’s more worried I won’t be here every day to care for Mother and him. I met Robbie at Abbotsgate. You know—the Sydenham place? It’s a convalescent hospital now. The new baronet, the mysterious Sir Harry, whom no one’s ever seen apparently, is, despite his mysteriousness, serving somewhere in France just like you, and his wife is American so is back there. But I’ve been helping out. At least, I hope I’m a help. One never knows. But now Robbie’s rejoined his ship at its base in the North. I do hope you can both get some leave next time you are back, as I know you will like him. Dear Benedict, I am so terribly happy. I had long thought of myself as a spinster and I pray every night that such good men as you and Robbie will both be safe.

Her happiness was infectious. He was opening the other letter, not recognizing the writing on the envelope, while still imagining his sister as a married woman. With children, he thought. He would be an uncle.

The other letter was from Theo—and his writing had changed. It was large and uncontrolled.

Ben, Master Gunner,

The wanderer returns, dispose of the funeral meats.

Lost my finger—hence this writing like a girl—and the top joint of another and a bit of flesh around my thumb. Near thing, actually. Lucky to have the hand, the medics say. Apparently it was dying on me. But it died, I didn’t, so seems a good swap. Don’t remember much of it. Have a very passable claw—two and a half of my nicer fingers and some thumb. But the good news is I’m being returned to my squadron. It was touch and go, I can tell you. First with me, then with some knife-happy colonel who had designs on my entire arm, then with the RFC. I saw a long dreary life ahead using my good hand to stamp leave passes. But now they say I can still fly. Probably because so many other chaps have gone west. They need all the pilots they can get, even ones with one and a half hands. So if this gets to you at Harmony Cottage aka Notre Repos, tell Dougie to get some Scotch. Home is the hunter, home from the hill.

There was no cheerful musical notation to start or end the letter.

He felt numb where he knew he should feel happy. Theo had made it. Was coming back: coming back to do the thing he loved. He would fly. He would be Theo. With any luck, they would both return home one day. But Theo would never, could never, play the organ again. The pain and grief Benedict felt was all-consuming and at the same time ridiculous, because Theo himself seemed to have no regrets for the loss of his vast gift as long as he could fly.