The Sons of Adam (9 page)

He looked around. Over to his right, he saw a shellhole, deep and – for the moment – safe.

‘Get into the shellhole
now,
’ he screamed, using all his lung power to bend his soldiers to his will. The force of his voice shocked them into compliance.

The men piled into safety. Tom counted them in, then followed.

The German fire intensified. A rising flare lit up the night sky. With the utmost caution, Tom raised his head to look out. First he saw nothing. Then, lifting himself still further, he caught a glimpse of Fletcher’s crowd, shockingly far off, in a crater much closer to German lines, and witheringly exposed. The light of the flare faltered and died. Tom lowered his head, just as bullets began to spatter into the earth above and around him.

He looked at his men, who were sitting safe but terrified in the bottom of their crater. He began to speak, but the men were still distracted and shocked. One of them – Tinsey – was nodding his head and rhythmically chanting: ‘Stupid, fucking, German, bloody –’

Tom struck Tinsey hard on the arm. Tinsey stopped. The other men looked wildly at Tom.

‘Now listen, all of you. You men are to get back to shelter, as quickly and safely as you can.’ Another burst of fire interrupted his words. Tom was sprayed with earth and he assumed everyone else was too. ‘You will leave in pairs and move when I say the word, not before. You will run like hell. If you find any man wounded or hurt, you will not stop. You will just run.’ One of the men was struggling with a big clumsy satchel of hand-hurled Mills bombs. ‘Denning, leave that. Leave it! Just put it down, man. All you others, are you completely clear about what to do?’

They were clear. Detaching the men in pairs, Tom sent them running for safety. The shellhole emptied. Tom was alone.

Particles of chalk moved grittily beneath his tongue: soil put there by a German bullet. Anger lit a fuse in him.

‘You stupid bastards,’ he screamed. He screamed it at everyone. The Germans, Wallace Fletcher, Colonel Jimmy, the good-natured riflemen of his battalion. He was screaming at High Command, whose war this was. He was screaming at Guy, who’d never been under fire and probably never would be.

The shooting was still intense, but it was concentrated on the party further ahead, pinning them down, leaving them unable to move. They’d be finished off by mortar fire, come the morning. Shifting position, Tom noticed his foot knocking against young Denning’s bag of Mills bombs.

His tide of anger rose higher.

He picked up the satchel and began to run.

It was three weeks later. Midday. The battalion had dropped back out of the front line, for two weeks of rest in the pretty village of Le Hamel, just six miles from the front.

Alan jogged along a narrow lane that wound down to a tiny stone-built cottage. His boots scuffed up the white dust that settled gently on the roadside flowers, poppies and saffron weed. As he reached a bend in the lane, Alan’s jog turned into a run. He ran up to the cottage and thumped on its crude wooden front door. From a window upstairs, he heard a voice.

‘Up here, old man.’

Tom had lived, but only just.

His anger had carried him all the way to within spitting distance of German lines. Once there, he’d thrown himself flat and begun hurling Mills bombs like a bowler at some demented cricket match. His fury kept him at it, aiming and throwing with an extraordinary intensity. What he managed to hit, nobody knew, but this much was certain: the fire that had swept over Fletcher’s men became scattered and confused. Fletcher seized his opportunity and raced home with his men: their lives saved.

Once Tom had finished his satchel of bombs, he’d done everything he could. His anger left him. Clarity returned.

Somewhere to the east, dawn was getting ready to light its lamps. Tom was so close to the German lines, he could hear their sentries break wind. Slowly and with infinite care, he’d backed away. As he’d crawled, he must have been hit, because he felt a sudden impact in his left arm, followed a few seconds later by the slip and slither of blood. He’d found a shellhole and tumbled into it. He’d put a dressing on the wound, closed his eyes a moment – then woke at noon with the sun high in a perfect sky and larks singing crystal in the echoing air.

He had no food or water.

The crater around him was hopelessly shallow.

So he’d lain there. All day, all through a golden evening into night. Then when darkness had fallen, he’d begun to crawl home, desperately weak. He would never have made it, except for Alan.

About three in the morning, Alan found him, stretched out unconscious, head pointing for British lines. He’d hooked a hand into his belt and dragged him home.

Alan crashed open the wooden cottage door, and leaped up the rough ladder leading into the loft. Tom lay on his bed, half-dressed, left arm in a clean white sling. He put down a book and smiled. Except for his wounded arm, he looked astonishingly fit and healthy. Soldiering had given Tom (and Alan supposed, himself as well) an extra edge to his physique: more hardness, more confidence. The two men clubbed hands together, a new gesture for them.

It was the first time they’d seen each other since the raid. They were changed men. They’d both experienced danger and death close at hand. They’d both come to understand fully what war might mean.

‘By God,’ said Alan, ‘so now we know what it’s all about.’

Tom nodded. ‘Yes. It was one hell of a night. Two nights, actually. I didn’t think I’d see a third.’

Alan nodded. Then his expression lightened and he released Tom’s hand. ‘Anything to bunk off duty, eh?’

‘One of my brighter ideas, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Yes, well, everyone has you marked down for an MC now. And a bloody well deserved one at that.’

He
was
pleased for Tom, of course. He knew that Tom deserved a Military Cross and would almost certainly get it. And yet … the twins had always been competitive. They’d competed as boys, competed as young men, and now seemed destined to compete as soldiers. And just as it had been Tom who’d more often won their wrestling matches, won their riding contests, won every attractive girl in Hampshire (or so it had seemed), now, once again, it was Tom who’d won the soldiering race. The fact shouldn’t have rankled, but it did, if only a little. Alan smiled carefully, anxious not to let any of this show.

But the two men were twins and they didn’t only rely on words.

Tom asked gently, ‘Does it bother you, brother?’

Alan shook his head. ‘You’re a good officer and a courageous one. It’s right these things are recognised.’

Tom pursed his lips. ‘Really? I don’t know if I am a courageous man, let alone a good one. I fell into a bloody fury that night. I pitched bombs at Fritz because Fritz was close enough to get hurt. If it had been our own High Command beyond the wire, Haig and French and all those other bastards, then I’d have killed the lot of them instead.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

‘
You
wouldn’t, you mean. If they wanted to reward decent courageous men with these baubles, they ought to be picking chaps like you.’

Alan smiled to acknowledge the compliment, but his eyes remained serious. ‘You’re a better man than you give yourself credit for. But it wouldn’t hurt you to fool around less. No one would like you the less for it.’

It was Tom’s turn to smile. He looked at his watch. ‘Talking of fooling,’ he said, ‘I’ve a little fool who’s waiting for me right now. But I’ll be back for supper, if you’d care to share it.’

‘A fool? You mean a – a girl? Good God, you don’t have a girl
here,
do you?’ Alan was shocked, then embarrassed, then annoyed with himself for being either.

‘A girl? Maybe.’ Tom laughed. His open smile and shiny unmilitary hair seemed like reminders of an already lost age, those untroubled years before the war.

‘Good God, you
do
!’

‘Yes, and do you know, you ought to find someone too. I can tell you, if there’s one consolation for a horrible spell in the trenches, then it’s an afternoon in bed with a little French fool.’

Alan blushed slightly. He was embarrassed by this kind of conversation, and he disliked it when he heard officers talking about prostitutes as though they were horses. ‘I’m not sure I could. Not with a …’ Alan let himself tail off rather than speak the word ‘prostitute’. ‘I don’t mean to be preachy.’

‘It’s true, though, all the same. There’s nothing to beat the comfort of a pretty French fool. I’m being perfectly serious. If you ever wanted me to help, I’d be happy to.’

‘I’m amazed you’re able to –’ Alan blushed. ‘Sometimes I come back from our time in the front and I find myself hardly able to eat, let alone … let alone, do
that
.’

‘I don’t always. But you can lie in a girl’s bed without making love and there’s still a damned lot of comfort in it … In bed, you don’t have to act the British officer. The girls here do understand, you know. It’s not as though they’re ignorant of what war does to a man.’

Still blushing deeply, Alan asked, ‘Look, do you … ? God, I don’t mean this badly, it’s just I really don’t know. When you … do you … ?’

‘I don’t pay, no. My pretty little fool doesn’t charge me, but I imagine she sees other men and if she does, she probably charges them. It’s only sex, you know. She doesn’t love me and I don’t love her. When the war ends, I expect she’ll marry a French farmer and be faithful to him all her days … I think she wants to help the war effort. This is her way and it’s a damned good one, if you ask me.’

Alan’s blush had settled down and made itself at home. Rose pink had made way for tomato, which had given up and handed over to beetroot. ‘I see. Thanks. I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t trying to …’

‘You weren’t trying to admonish me, I know.’ Tom got up, smiling. He squeezed the other man’s shoulder with understanding. ‘I’ll see you later. For supper.’

Alan nodded stupidly. ‘Of course. Later. For supper.’

Tom pulled a clean shirt over his damaged arm, ran his hands briefly through his curly hair, twinkled a smile – and left.

The trouble with fate is that it leaves no tracks. Fate never looks like fate. It doesn’t come crashing into a person’s life with heavy bootprints and a smell of burning.

Instead, fate lives in the little things. A child’s fondness for blackberry pudding. A father’s slight unfairness between two boys. The chance results of battle. A tiny scrap of purple and white medal ribbon.

And that’s a pity. Because danger noticed is danger avoided. Because what is invisible can nevertheless be lethal. Because even the smallest things can grow up and destroy a life.