The First of July (19 page)

Kitchener’s been drowned while leaving Scapa Flow. His ship struck a mine. One up for Fritz.

Jean-Baptiste, Amiens,
June 1916

H
E WAS ON WATER. THAT
was certain. The river had taken him back.

Before he woke up for good, Jean-Baptiste remembered bits of time. Men weeping and shouting. Pain. Smells. Foreign women: the first one, all in white, he had thought was an angel and wondered if fish-breath Doré was here too. The arches of heaven rose above him. Then a woman came and they held him down when he fought and put something over his nose and mouth and first his head and then his body spun as he died again.

Time had dissolved and everything became confused. There was his mother, but she turned and was a nurse in blue, hurried but kind-faced, and there was Godet being lifted from the bed beside him, his head wrapped in dark bandages. But it was not Godet, just another dead man. After that the doctor. Vignon. No, not Vignon but Wiener, Wiener, that was it, the German spy, in the uniform of a Frenchman. Of course, like all spies he was deep in their midst, and ruthless, and, thinking of him, Jean-Baptiste was afraid. But he closed his eyes tight and the doctor faded too and he was being lifted and the movement hurt and made him feel sick.

He remembered nothing of how he’d gotten to the hospital nor at what point he’d realized where he was. Once he was traveling in some kind of vehicle and strapped down. The movement had made him vomit. He was hot and confused and he had no recollection of being transferred from that bunk but some time—days?—a week?—later, he had come to. It was the middle of the night, or so he assumed, as it was dark but for an oil lamp and a woman with her head down, writing.

Around him were men, sleeping or groaning—sometimes the woman, a nurse, he now saw, got up and went to one of the blanketed heaps and offered water or a few soothing words. But he had known, instantly, that he was on the river. Beyond the smell of sickness and chemicals, he could smell river. He put out a hand and laid it flat on the wooden wall beside him. There was something like a shiver just detectable beneath his palm; he was in a big boat, a barge, he guessed, judging by its dimensions, but once you’d been on the water you recognized its rhythms.

In the following days, he discovered that he was right. The nurse was from Paris, she told him, undeterred by his refusal to speak, chatting on as she changed the bandages over the wound below his ribs, removing the tube from what she called his
pipi
, and applauding his ability to heal as if it were his own willpower that had kept infection at bay. This was a hospital barge, currently moored on the outskirts of Amiens, she told him, away from the reach of the German guns. “For now,” an orderly had grunted.

His injuries would leave him with very little disability, the nurse said. When he urinated now, he could still see traces of blood, but it was not worrying, the duty doctor said. He had a limp where he’d broken his ankle, but he could walk without aid.

“Clever bugger,” the orderly said. “As long as he keeps his mouth clamped shut, they won’t send him back.”

So then he spoke. Not a lot—what was there to say?

“Good news. Good news. Nearly there, I think.” The doctor announced this as if he were bringing him a present. His face was pale and old. “We’ll soon have you back with your companions.”

Then, out of the corner of his eye, Jean-Baptiste saw the so-called Vignon. This time it
was
him. Not a dream. There was no mistaking it. The senior surgeon was pointing toward the bed and nodding and no doubt telling Vignon how they could soon send Jean-Baptiste back to be blown apart again and what a successful case it had been. Vignon stared at him, looking bleak, but came no nearer, and Jean-Baptiste heard the surgeon say “Talking. At last. Yes.”

And Jean-Baptiste knew he was in danger.

As he lay in bed for weeks, months, his mind had returned all the time to Corbie and his childhood. But now there was Vignon. Flesh and blood. He had seen him again, twice. Once he was at the far end of the narrow ward. He had a feeling that this wasn’t where Vignon normally worked. On the second occasion it was night. He woke from sleep and found Vignon looking at a chart right by his pallet. What had he been about to do? His instinct was to shout out for a nurse. Tell her that Vignon was not what he seemed, not what he said he was. But having been mute for so long, he knew that his mental state would be considered unreliable; and no doubt Vignon had long since destroyed any papers that revealed his true identity.

He knew that it was Vignon who had brought him here from Royaumont, a hospital in the old abbey dealing with acute cases and run by Scottish ladies. It didn’t take much imagination to see why he had done that. Jean-Baptiste knew who he really was. With Jean-Baptiste alive, Vignon was in danger. The doctor knew he had recognized him, knew he had seen Herr Wiener hidden within Dr. Vignon’s French uniform.

Here, at Amiens, Vignon could keep an eye on the invalid. Could make sure he didn’t recover. With Jean-Baptiste dead, Vignon could continue his real work, and what a fine job he had for it: dealing with men straight from the front, from every kind of regiment, hearing where medical supplies were being sent and field hospitals were being established. Under the cover of his work, he would see the pattern of future campaigns, the success or failure of current ones.

The third time he saw Vignon, he was handing the nurse some tablets and nodding his head to indicate Jean-Baptiste’s bed. He wanted to refuse to take them, but the nurse was his favorite, Émilie. The day before, she had whispered admiring comments about his body and his returning vigor as she washed him, lingering with her coarse washcloth, and the effect had been to exclude any doubts he had as to whether he was still a man. So he took the pills and later his fever returned, the ache in his loins made him vomit, and when he urinated the urine was brownish-pink. The next time he was given them, he spat them out the second the nurse had gone.

It was fear that drove him to write the letter. He couldn’t say he had fought to live: he had simply been fortunate to survive; but now that he had survived, he wasn’t going to let himself be murdered by his mother’s seducer, a German spy. He asked for a pencil and paper and after a couple of reminders nurse Émilie brought them, looking a bit sour.

“Writing to your sweetheart?”

He shook his head. “Hardly.”

She looked pleased.

He didn’t yet know who he was writing to, but his words were plain.

The doctor who calls himself Captain Vignon is not what he seems. He is a German born in Berlin.

He looked down at his words; they could be the ravings of a lunatic or an aggrieved underling.

I have seen his documents. His real name is Wiener. He is a spy.

The nurse kept passing, easing her way down the narrow gap between the two rows of bunks. Several men had left to return to their regiments, but Émilie had told him something big was coming now. They were clearing all possible hospital beds.

“You’ll be off in the next group, I expect,” she said. “They need every fighting man they’ve got. We’re going to blow those Germans out of our country once and for all.”

He wondered what she thought they’d been trying to do for the last two years. Why did she think the hospitals and cemeteries were full?

It was intolerably hot, even with the tiny portholes open. Every time another motor launch passed, the barge moved slightly and a little air entered, but she fanned herself ostentatiously. He knew she was trying to see what he was writing and he tipped it away from her.

Eventually, the next time she rustled past, he reached up and tugged gently at her apron. She squatted beside him, plumped his unplumpable pillow.

“Is there someone in charge of these barges?” he said.

“Captain Allisette is the doctor here.”

“I thought I saw Captain Vignon.”

“No. Allisette. He’s on another barge—Vignon. He helps sometimes if Allisette is called away, and vice versa. I prefer Vignon, although he is melancholy.” Her voice dropped, and she said, coquettishly, “He’s very handsome, don’t you think? But then you know him from before, of course?”

He must have looked startled, because she said “Well, you suddenly arrived and he insisted on you having a bed. No space on his barge. Most men here are just being taken straight from clearing stations to Paris or Amiens. They’ve been injured a day or so before we get them. They’re not like you.” Her small hand slipped under the covers and like a hesitant small mouse moved down his body.

“You’d been at Royaumont for weeks. If anything, you should have been sent to a convalescent hospital. You were already almost in Paris. Why bring you back up here if he didn’t want to care for you himself?”

He almost told her, but he didn’t trust her to keep his secret. Her hand had reached its destination. The gentle efficiency with which she cupped her fingers around him still had something of the nurse about it.

“But there surely must be someone in charge of the whole set-up here?”

She made a face. “For heaven’s sake.” Her grasp tightened, more from irritation than trying to arouse him, he thought. “That’ll be Colonel Marzine, I suppose. He inspects us from time to time. He’s old. Finicky. But he’s a real doctor.”

“So where is he?”

“Now? Haven’t a clue. At the old asylum in Amiens, I expect. Anyway, you can’t go summoning up the colonel just on a whim.” She gave him an indulgent look and kept stroking. He was hard now and longing for her to go on.

He smiled at her to put her at her ease.

“I just wondered.” With his own hand he reached out and touched her breast which, even through layers of starched cotton, felt young and firm.

She looked behind her. There was one man propped up on an arm, in the far berth, smoking an illegal cigarette.

“Too much thinking,” she said, pulling her hand out and straightening the sheet. She always did that to end a conversation. She stood up. “We need to get you back to the front.”

That night he slept badly. The old dreams. Good times, terrible times, Godet’s head, Doré’s mouth, Émilie’s hand.

In the semi-dark, there was Vignon at the base of the ladder into the forward ward. He was a silhouette: just a cigar tip alternately glowing brightly, then fading. Jean-Baptiste could smell it and he knew it was him and knew Vignon sensed he was awake. He stayed alert until the doctor disappeared.

A bit later, the night nurse came and offered him a powder to help him settle. He took it, but the fever, pain, and nausea he’d had a week ago returned. Had Vignon prescribed this little elixir, he thought? Of course he had.

In the morning, exhausted and still feeling sick, he knew he had to get the letter to somebody in authority. He had nowhere safe to keep it. He pulled it out when he thought no one was looking and scrawled a signature with the pencil, making sure it was entirely illegible.

Vignon might be responsible for the deaths of more Frenchmen, but right now he, Jean-Baptiste, was worried about himself.

There were two nurses, Émilie and Nurse Thibault, a former nun. The nun talked little but took deep and audible breaths a lot.

“She was in a sighing order,” Émilie had giggled on one of her friendlier days.

There was Victor the orderly and, of course, Captain Allisette. Who could he ask to deliver his letter? Who could he trust? He didn’t even have an envelope. Every one of them would read it, except perhaps Captain Allisette, who would probably just throw it away unread.

He could smell and hear Amiens. The remaining casualties were to be removed one by one on the next day. He was walking now, becoming stronger than he let on, and Émilie, cheerful as her duties came to an end on this trip, agreed that he could be helped up to the deck to walk by the quayside.

The light almost blinded him; he had to turn his head away. The firm land beside the river seemed to lurch, to move beneath his feet, and he was almost grateful for Émilie’s possessive grasp on his arm. Soldiers and bargees passed him, carrying massive loads and scarcely glancing at the nurse and her patient. There was no way Émilie was going to let him walk away, no way he could find a senior French doctor to hand over the note in his pocket. With her hovering, he would look like a questionable informer. Then he saw the British officer, sitting on a bollard by the river, sketching. He was a major. It appeared to be the boats and, indeed, him and Émilie that the man was drawing. There was no alternative but to act.

The officer looked up as they came within voice range.

“You don’t mind?” he said, in good French, indicating his drawing.

Émilie straightened her veil. Jean-Baptiste simply shook his head. Then, as Émilie tugged on his arm, an act of desperation, he pulled free of her, bolder now that he knew the officer spoke French.

“Sir, please. Could you deliver this for me?” He had it out of his pocket, thrusting it forward. “It is of the utmost importance. Please, sir.”

He could see first surprise, then amusement, in the man’s face. Clearly he would refuse. He thought he was being asked to post a love letter—Jean-Baptiste could see it in his face. He sensed Émilie’s anger beside him.

The British officer looked down, his expression now puzzled, then grave. Where he had folded the letter, Jean-Baptiste had written
Colonel Marzine, Hôpital Militaire d’Amiens
, in his best writing.

“Sir. I have no one else.”

The officer looked him straight in the eyes. He’s seeing if I am mad, Jean-Baptiste thought.

“Is it a complaint? About your treatment?”

“No. No, I swear.”

The major put out his hand without a word. He just nodded.

“How dare you?” Émilie asked as she dragged him back to the barge. She let go of his arm completely and he staggered. “How dare you. I should report you, using a British officer to deliver your
billets-doux
. What will he think of you? Of us French?”

“It wasn’t—” he began. Yet as she pushed him back on board, he looked at the sun and the gulls, and then upward to the vast cathedral, and felt something like hope or joy. Something he hadn’t felt for months. He dropped his gaze to the tall brick houses of the quayside, and then he saw the café table. There was Vignon, standing by the barges, staring back at him as he lit a cigarette.