The Gates of Rutherford (19 page)

Those cross-sections have names that the locals never gave them. They've been newly christened Hellfire Corner and Clapham Junction, among many; words that describe the mayhem they see, and the havoc of passing along them. The trenches get named, too. Crump and Crete; Gordon Alley and Iberia and Malt and Ibex and Ice. There's a trench line near Ypres called Caliban, never a name more aptly given, christened for the monster in Shakespeare's play. The land changes likes waves on the sea here, and Caliban fits right in: a thing cast up on an unimaginable shore.

They name their craters, too. On 9 April, the King's Own Scottish Borderers went forward from two mine craters in no-man's-land. One was larger than the other, so they nicknamed them Claude and Clarence, like cartoon characters. But there were no real funnies on what came after. Not unless your humor's blacker than the Devil himself.

I ask names a lot. It's a way to put down a marker in the sea of faces. I ask an Australian where he comes from, and what he's called, and he tells me he's from a place right up on Australia's right-hand corner, where the sea is edged by mangroves and his father is always absent, because he's in the opal mines in the burning center of the continent. That the whole family went to Australia from Bristol in England five years ago, to find a better life. And that now he's come back by volunteering. I shake his hands fiercely several times, full of admiration. “Better here than the opal mines, you reckon?” I ask him. “Yeah, mate.” He grins.

No one really tells the truth. Scrape a man's smile off his face and he still stares back at you; he won't say what he's seen. There's gallantry in that silence. He won't tell his sweetheart, either. He won't tell his mother. He'll just say that he went up to see what games were playing outside Arras.

And he'll go on marching, singing “Rule Britannia, marmalade or jam, Chinese firecrackers up your arseholes, bang bang bang” at the top of his voice.

Before he went to sleep—just a short while in the early hours—John imagined all those million dead men wandering the fields of France, ghosts without anywhere to go.

•   •   •

J
ohn and MacKay emerged at the front of the hotel, and a surreal sight met their eyes.

In daylight, Arras was a ghost town, an apparently deserted place, bombarded by the Germans. But at night, under the cover of darkness that protected it from the strafing of enemy aircraft, it came alive. The military emerged from the cellars that ran under the town: catacombs and corridors dug by the Romans two thousand years ago. MacKay told him that there were hospitals down there, but John said he would save that for another day. He wasn't quite ready for that.

They stood on the battered street corner and watched the men go by like fluttering frames in a celluloid film, caught for brief moments by the few lights cast by bedraggled shops and cafés. They were like Charlie Chaplin walking with his uneven gait. But these men, and these mules, and these cars weren't trying to be Charlie Chaplin. Everyone was struggling with some load or other, and the staff cars that occasionally went past weren't trying to be funny as they manoeuvred quietly between the lines of men, or lumped over the potholes in the
road, shaking their occupants. It was a kind of hushed mime of speed, all broken up in places as someone staggered or turned around. Lines came to a halt and restarted. Horses shook their heads to dislodge the flies that flew even at night, so fat and gorged were they with the day's rations on the battlefields. And in and out of the feet of both men and mules and horses ran rats, bloated from the same feed. They got a severe kicking whenever anyone had time to notice them; and then they went rolling away, and picked themselves up squealing, and ran on.

MacKay was standing at the door to L'Universe, and smiling his usual smile. “Funny old world going by,” he commented, as if reading John's thoughts. “But nae one to mull over, Mr. Gould.”

They opened the door.

L'Universe was also a very curious place. It looked like a restaurant, it sounded like a restaurant. It had tables and waiters and food; it had stairs leading up to rooms. Loitering on the stairs, John noticed a few women, and there was a large fat Frenchwoman who seemed to be lording it over a till, and gesturing and shouting as she pointed at the bar. But the customers were all men, and most were in groups that were singing or shouting or talking at full volume. The place was a nightmare of noise, and the sound had a frenzied, manic quality. It was pitched high, and it was sometimes punctuated by a rumble under their feet, or a distant crash that made the framed prints on the wall tremble. But nobody took any notice. It was a feast on the edge of the Styx, John thought.

They saw Harry Cavendish almost at once.

In the noise and movement, he was remarkably still, sitting at a table by himself and nursing a glass of Calvados. He had evidently seen them before they saw him, and he was looking steadily at John. They walked over, edging between tables.

“It's damned good to see you, Harry,” John said.

Harry Cavendish smiled. “Sit down,” he said, gesturing to two
empty chairs next to him. “I've kept these at cost of life and limb, let me tell you.” He pulled the Calvados bottle over to himself, and poured.

John was looking him over. By God, the boy he remembered from the photographs in the family drawing room was all gone. Here was a man. What was he, twenty-two? He looked much older. He was tall, but very slight under the uniform. One leg rested on another chair. Harry nodded at it now. “Thing's playing up again,” he said. “Blasted fucking thing's seized up entirely. Had notice of leave today. I'm Blighty bound, and another operation.” He banged his fist on the leg. “I wish they'd cut the bugger off,” he told them. “Fucking thing.”

“Blighty bound? When?”

“Whenever I take myself out of here. Now. Yesterday. Tomorrow. Whenever.”

John smiled. “Harry, that's great news. Your mother will be overjoyed.”

Harry gave him a curious look. “I daresay.”

“Not at the operation. At your coming home.”

“I understood you. There's no need to labor the point.”

As Harry drained his glass, John glanced over at MacKay. The adjutant was sitting very upright, the drink untouched. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing.

“This is Captain MacKay, Harry.”

Harry leaned forward. “Mr. Gould,” he muttered. “I would appreciate it if you call me by rank.”

It was like a slap in the face. John nodded, though. He could see something very brittle, very ragged, in Harry's expression; hear it in his voice. “I'm sorry,” he replied.

MacKay got to his feet. “Gentlemen, I'm away if you don't have objections.”

“No objection,” Harry drawled. “Guess you've got things to see to, you and your regiment. Flash bang wallop, and all that.”

MacKay frowned. He dipped his head by way of good-bye, and looked at John. “You've all you need?”

“I'll come back and find you.”

“Aye. Good luck if I'm not about.”

John got up and shook his hand. “Good luck yourself.”

When he had gone, John sat down again. Harry was drawing circles in the spilt liquid on the tabletop. “You'll excuse me, too,” he muttered. “Awful day. Lost another beer boy.” He glanced up. “New boy. Eighteen years old. Straight from Eton.” John was opening his mouth to commiserate when Harry's glare stopped him. “Don't apologize,” he said quietly. “You heard how it went out here in April? If you hadn't, write it fucking down, will you? The loss of one man is nothing, you know. Write it for your American friends. In April we lost two hundred and forty-five aircraft. Two hundred-odd crew. Over a hundred were taken as prisoners of war. And what did we do in return? We shot down just sixty-six. Sixty fucking six.”

He was slurring his words slightly. “Flight commander,” John said, drawing his chair closer so that they wouldn't be overheard. “There's a show on tonight, they tell me. Biggest show there's ever been.”

“You know it.” Harry brought his index finger to his lips. “Top secret, old man.”

“Yes, I know it. But I've been there. To the tunnels under Messines.”

Harry at last showed a minor spark of interest. Humor gave a dry luster to his eye, a sardonic squint. “They took you down, did they?” he asked. “Lucky chap. I should like to see them.”

“Yes,” John said. “They took me down just a short way last evening. Strange down there. Under the clay, the ground's white. So white it gives you snow blindness.”

Harry looked away momentarily, fiddling with his glass, then pouring himself another drink. “I should like to see them,” he repeated softly. “We reconnoitered it all. Over and over. Messines.”

Behind them, someone started bellowing to the tune of “If You Were the Only Girl in the World.” John listened a second, then turned his head. Instead of the song's usual words, they were singing, “If you were the only Boche in the trench and I had the only bomb . . .”

“Nothing else would matter in the world today, I would still blow you to eternity,” Harry yelled. He laughed, and the men singing on the other side of the room raised their glasses to him.

John turned back to watch him. Harry slammed his glass onto the table. “Won't do, won't do,” he said. “Shouldn't be here. Should be keeping an eye.”

“An eye? A watch, you mean?”

“I should be keeping a watch,” Harry confirmed. “It's all I do. Don't you know that? All I can do.”

John realized that Harry was very drunk indeed. But he held it well. He was rigid in his seat, with a small sad grin on his face. “Got signed off,” he said. And for the first time he looked like the teenager in his mother's photograph, wide-eyed, innocent, and surprised.

“You did?” John prompted.

“Bastard,” Harry responded. “Medico . . . medical . . . signed off. Bastard. Been here two hundred years longer than him. Up from Oxford on an officer cadet scholarship. Jumped up little office boy. Frustrated horse doctor is what he is. Should be operating on nags. Nags and dogs. You see? Knows it all. Thinks he does. ‘Pulmonary disorder,' he says. ‘Heart dysfunction.' As if that's a proper word. It's something he made up to bloody annoy me. Think I don't know? Something made up to trot me off. They must reckon I'm getting in the way. No use to them. So they make something up. . . .” He winced, and shifted his leg. “He was a bloody bastard with a long face. Like . . .” He gave a great gust of ironic laughter. “Match his customers, he would. Face like a horse.”

“Is that what he told you?”

“That's what he told me. I'm useless. Infected leg and . . . this.” He thumped his own chest. “Idiots. Idiots. Medical board.” And Harry hung his head.

John had felt his stomach plummet, just as if something icy had gripped it. Harry had a heart disorder and an infection. He ought to have been on a train out of here tonight, not sitting by himself getting drunk. And John could see that Octavia's son was nursing something even worse than the losses of his squadron and the news of his own illness. He wondered what it was. “Tell you what,” John said, leaning forward. “Let's take a turn outside. It's noisy in here. I can hardly hear you. Why don't you lean on me a little way? Let's go look see what the world's doing. Fresh air.”

Harry gave a twisted smile. “Fresh air?” he repeated sarcastically. Then he seemed to change his mind. He swung his leg from the chair and pushed himself awkwardly upright.

“Hang on,” John said, holding out his arm.

Harry hesitated, and then put his arm round John's shoulder. “Lead on there then, if you like,” he said. They threaded their way unsteadily through the tables towards the door, and as they walked Harry muttered to himself. “Cannon to right of them, Cannon to left of them, Cannon in front of them volley'd and thunder'd. . . .”

John pushed open the door with one shoulder. The cooler night air rushed in on them, but Harry had been right. It was not fresh at all. The wind had changed direction. It suddenly reeked of decay and cordite. “Into the valley of death,” he agreed, “rode the six hundred.”

•   •   •

T
hey went out down the road, and sat down some way off from it, at the side of a large house that would have looked reasonably normal had it not been lacking an upper floor. Only the gable ends stood up in the night air. Through the open windows in the half
light, John glimpsed a surreal set piece, as if the occupants had just gone away for a moment, or into a back room. There was a large dining table, and a fireplace set for a fire. A tablecloth was still on the table, set with plates. But most of the books had scattered from the large mahogany bookcase, and lay on the floor. He looked upwards and saw a fringe of curtain draped over the brickwork as if for decoration. He and Harry trudged onwards into what had been the garden.

There was no such strange order here. The place was a tangle of bricks and lopsided trees, shattered at the top and looking for all the world as if some giant animal had been gnawing at them. John let go of Harry, and the younger man slumped down on the ground. John sat next to him.

“Do you think the world is hollow?” Harry asked, after a minute or two of strained silence.

John looked at him, perplexed. “That's a strange idea.”

“Isn't it, though, Harry agreed. “I get a lot of strange notions. I think . . . So we make the tunnels. All these tunnels that we're going to surprise the Boche within the next twenty-four hours. They say that there's twenty-two mine shafts and tunnels all the way along Messines Ridge. All full of bloody explosive. And you know, we've tunneled, and they've tunneled, and sometimes they've met.”

“Yes,” John agreed. “They fished someone out the other day. His party had been caught, and the enemy exploded a bomb down there. He'd been there with thirteen other men, and it took four days to reach them, and he was the only one who came out alive.” He paused. “Four days in the dark.”