Tug of War (31 page)

‘He’s Aline’s husband,’ objected Bonnefoye. ‘He’s Clovis Houdart. We can’t get around that. We have the widow’s identification, which I would now
declare to be incontrovertible.’

‘But an identification which is stoutly questioned, let’s not forget, by his son and his cousin,’ the doctor objected. Then, startled, he looked at his watch and exclaimed:
‘Oh, great heavens! I have to tell you – I have a further appointment this afternoon. No, don’t be concerned – we won’t be interrupted. I’m intending to run it
alongside this one. I had a most insistent call from a witness the other day. A man who claims to know Thibaud. An old army colleague. He’s only just recently come across the photograph
apparently but is one hundred per cent certain – aren’t they all? – that he knows our man. As he was able to give me a name and rank – Clovis Houdart, Lieutenant Colonel
– I thought it might be worth giving him a crack at it, bit of extra weight in the scales, one way or another. I wouldn’t see him right away – Thibaud has been disturbed by all
the comings and goings and I thought I’d give him a weekend off. But now – he’s due in ten minutes’ time – we could all go with him to Thibaud’s room and chalk
up one more positive identification. Or not. You never know!’

Approaching Thibaud’s cell he showed signs of nervousness but made a joke and entered following Varimont.

Eyes turned immediately on Thibaud. He was sitting, exactly as before, forlorn, on the edge of his bed, staring into the wall. His hair had been freshly washed and trimmed and he was looking
smart, slender and almost waif-like in white pullover and black cord trousers. Joe’s eyes however were fixed on Didier. He wanted to catch his first reaction. What was he hoping for at this
late stage? A derisory ‘What’s this? No – that’s never Clovis Houdart!’ Yes, he could not deny that was his hope.

But Didier knew the man at once. His eyes widened, he caught his breath. He strolled over to Thibaud and looked carefully into his face. Putting out a finger, he gently traced the line of
Thibaud’s broken jaw and nodded.

He turned to the assembled company. ‘This is Clovis Houdart. Lieutenant Colonel Houdart of the Fifth Army, last encountered serving under General Pétain. Summer of 1917.
Soissons-Auberive sector.’

‘You served in the same company?’ Joe asked.

‘I was just a corporal, called up as a reservist. My age, you know. By that stage they were using even old wrecks like me. There were three generations shoulder to shoulder in the
trenches.’

‘But it wasn’t the first time you’d soldiered?’

‘No, I fought at Sedan. Experience was a help, in fact. I tried my best to calm the troops. Father-figure, you know. “Think this is bad, lads? You should have seen . . .” You
know the sort of thing.’

‘Soissons, you say?’ Joe asked quietly. ‘You were caught up in the Mutiny?’

Bonnefoye and Varimont exchanged looks.

‘I know – I’m not supposed to know anything about that,’ said Joe. ‘But I do. I was in Military Intelligence.’

‘Then you’ll know how low morale had sunk by April of ’17?’ Marmont was pleased not to be called on for an explanation. ‘I was given a squad of boys, fresh meat,
straight off the farm. One day in the front line was enough to send them mad. They couldn’t understand why we’d suffered such an assault, accepted such a stalemate for three years. They
were fighting from the trenches their dead predecessors had dug and occupied three years before. Not an inch had been gained and the trench walls were revetted with the bones of French and German
alike. General Nivelle had built up our hopes. One last push, he’d said. One more concentrated attack and we’ll carry the day. We went into it with spirit but months on we were bogged
down, thousands dying every day. Food disgusting when we had any. No leave. Weeks sometimes in the front line with no reprieve. My lads were given suicidal orders to go over the top. Few ever came
back.

‘But one lad kept coming back. Grégoire, his name was. Seemed to bear a charmed life. You see that every so often. Must have come in for all the luck allocated to his family –
his brothers had all copped it. His parents were dead. No family left. I took him under my wing. Tried to advise him when he went over to the rebels. He lived long enough to get a short leave in
Paris. The men were bombarded at the stations by pacifists. Bolsheviks? Patriots? I still don’t know. But Grégoire and others like him returned and spread the word. Rebellion was
raging through the troops. Unpopular officers were stoned . . . disappeared quietly in the night . . . Trains were commandeered and driven to Paris . . . Desertions increased . . . Forty thousand
men grounded their muskets. The lads said they’d man the trenches, hold the line, but they wouldn’t attempt to go forward another inch until they got what they wanted: peace. Someone
was going to have to sign a treaty. I’ll never know why we weren’t instantly overrun by the Germans. But they never seemed to catch on to what was happening in front of their
noses.’

Joe’s voice broke into his monologue, an interested fellow soldier going over a battle plan. ‘Might have something to do with the discreet though disastrous attempt by the British
top brass to distract them from the French lines. They knew the dangers of the Soissons-Craonne sector. We made a feint – a push to draw the German forces away from the French and on to
ourselves. And our effort to help out resulted in the appalling losses of the third battle of Ypres. You may know it as Passchendaele. We were suffering alongside you, Didier.’

Had he heard? The content of Joe’s short speech would normally have been provocative enough to stoke a whole evening’s conversation and argument. But Joe’s tone seemed to calm
him. Marmont turned, his attention caught, and spoke directly to him, needing to explain himself, a link established with this friendly stranger who seemed to understand him. An elderly doctor and
a young policeman were a less acceptable audience, it seemed, than a man who had survived Ypres. ‘Don’t blame them. They weren’t traitors! Poor buggers just wanted the noise to
stop, to be able to go home. They wanted the war over by the fastest means. They had honour. They loved their country. They still had within them an unquenched spark of independence and the spark
flared into something uncontrollable up on that ridge near Craonne.

‘And this is where our hero comes into the story.’ He indicated Thibaud who had heard not a word. ‘I expect you wonder why on earth I’m rambling on, wearying you with my
memories. Where I’m going with this.’

‘Nowhere good,’ thought Joe, but he assumed an attitude of entranced listener. Not difficult as he was fascinated to hear more of Clovis from someone who had known him on the
battlefield. Instinctively, he moved forward a few paces, steady and unthreatening, positioning himself in front of Varimont and Bonnefoye, focusing all Marmont’s attention on himself.

‘Top brass kept the lid on but it couldn’t last. Nivelle was sacked and Pétain was brought in to clear up the mess. Better food, more leave and promises got the men back at it
again. But there was a stick as well as a carrot in this equation. We were going to be made to pay . . .’

Joe felt an icy trickle of foreboding along his spine.

‘An example had to be made. Thousands of mutineers were arrested and court-martialled. Over twenty thousand were found guilty. Whole companies, every man jack of ’em. Four hundred
were condemned to death. Fifty were actually executed. They say fifty . . . ‘He shrugged his shoulders. ‘And the rest! Nobody ever declared the retributions carried out in fields and
ditches. And the red-tabs who organized all this – not worth our spit!
Becs de puces! Peaux de fesses!
’ The
poilu
’s crude curses burst from him. ‘They made us
kill our own men using firing squads made up of their fellows.
“Pour encourager les autres!”
they said.
“Pour l'exemple!”

‘They drew lots to decide who would be punished! Can you imagine that? Can you? Lining up and shuffling forward to take your life or your death from a tin cup! Funny though – I
don’t know if many noticed, but the lads who were picked out for execution had something in common. They didn’t count for much with anybody. Lads with no family to make a fuss about
their execution afterwards. Lads like my Grégoire.’

Joe didn’t want to hear any more but they all listened on in awful fascination.

‘I was put in charge of the squad detailed to execute him. He took it bravely . . . wouldn’t have expected anything else. I sat with him all night holding his hand and praying before
that dawn. I’d done everything. Pleaded with the commanding officer. Offered a substitute . . . Deaf ears. “Orders . . . orders . . . nothing we can do . . .” You’ve heard
it.

‘We fired. Of course, we all shot wide. I damn nearly swung round and put my bullet through the commanding officer who was officiating. Wish I had. Grégoire didn’t drop. He
was wounded in the shoulder but not dead. And then the CO stepped forward, cursing us, and drew his pistol. It was routine. It was expected. But it still churns my guts. The swine put it to
Grégoire’s head and shot him.

‘It was a pistol just like this.’

Marmont pulled a Lebel service revolver from his pocket, took a step towards Thibaud and held the gun to his temple.

‘And this was the officer.’

They waited, helplessly, for the shot, the
coup de grâce
so long anticipated.

Joe didn’t think Marmont was savouring the moment – there was no triumph or gleam of vengeance in the man’s face, nothing but disgust, loathing and pain. ‘I lost my rag.
I rushed him and clobbered him with my rifle butt. Glad to see he bears the scars. Hope it hurt like hell. I spent the rest of the war in a punishment squad. Shouldn’t have survived. And I
thought this bugger must be dead. Lieutenant Colonel Houdart. And then I saw his photograph in a newspaper a week ago.

‘There are two bullets in here. The first’s for him and the second’s for me. Gentlemen that you are, I count on you to do the decent thing and just give me time to turn the gun
on myself, will you?’

They stared, unbelieving, at Clovis Houdart’s expressionless face, chlorine pale, a fragile thing against the black gun barrel. A vein throbbed in the temple and Joe wondered for how many
more beats it would pulse with life. Each man knew that there was a soldier’s steady hand on the pistol, a determined finger on the trigger. The skull would shatter before a move could be
made towards him.

Into the silence Joe’s voice spoke, light and conversational. ‘If that’s really what you want, then I’m sure we can do as you wish. And you will go, knowing you have our
sympathy and our understanding because, Didier, we’ve heard your story. And these tears running embarrassingly down my face in an unmanly way are for Grégoire and all the other poor
sods who suffered.’

For a second Marmont’s eyes flicked sideways to Joe. Joe pressed on: ‘But isn’t there another name we should be hearing? John – your grandson, John! How old is he? Six
months? John.’ He repeated the name with deliberation. ‘He too plays a part in all this.’

Marmont directed another look at him in dawning surprise. ‘Grégoire,’ Joe said again respectfully, acknowledging with a nod of the head the presence of the dead soldier in the
room as an honoured guest, ‘Grégoire is remembered. He stands with us. For as long as you are with us to tell us his story. But Grégoire is the past. And John is the future.
John will never hear your words of suffering – of explanation. What will he grow up knowing of his grandfather? That he was a brave soldier who gave his all for his native land, who survived
against overwhelming odds to hold him in his arms and tell him stories, or – that he is a man never spoken of in the family? A man surrounded by silence and mystery until one day someone
tells him his grandfather murdered a defenceless lunatic and then turned the gun on himself. Will he understand, do you think?

‘Look at your target. Take a good look at him. There’s nothing there, Didier. You might just as well fire your bullet into that pillow. Don’t sacrifice your honour, your years
of suffering, your grandson’s memory of you, for this empty shell. Give me the gun. And that’s an order, mate! And, Didier, let’s make it the last order you ever take from an
officer. From an officer who’s listened, understood and suffered alongside.’

Marmont made no move to lower the gun but his eyes were looking from Clovis to Joe and back again.

The first sign of indecision.

Encouraged, Joe spoke again, taking his time. ‘Look – in the circumstances, I’m supposing you haven’t made any plans for the rest of the day? Well, I have but I’ve
decided to put off my departure today to take you out to dinner. My niece, on whom you seem to have made quite an impression, would insist. This calls for a bottle of the best. Not champagne
perhaps but a Château Latour. And here’s a joke – we’ll put it on the expense account of the British War Office! Mean buggers! I’ll tell them it was drunk to celebrate
two lives saved. Yes, a Latour. I’m sure they’ll have something good to eat with it?’

Confidently, almost casually, Joe started to cross the room.

He reeled back as the gun crashed out once and then again, deafening in that small space. Bonnefoye threw himself to the ground, drawing his pistol as he dropped. Varimont cursed loudly. Joe,
shocked, found himself unable to move forward. He began to cough and sneeze and then burst into nervous laughter as he flapped at the snowstorm of feathers descending on all their heads.

The old man stayed for a moment, frozen, staring at the unseeing Thibaud. The officer’s face was only inches from the blackened pillow which had taken the blast but he registered no
emotion. Marmont shook his head and looked at his gun, uncomprehending. But Joe understood. Understood that the gap between the height of emotion to which the old soldier had hauled himself and the
depths of bathos to which he knew he must plunge could only be bridged by an explosive reaction. The two bullets were always going to tear their lethal way down the barrel and Joe thanked God that
Didier had, in the end, had the strength to divert them by a few inches.