Birdsong (20 page)

The dugout shook with the reverberations of a huge shell. The lantern swung on the beam, the glasses jumped on the table, and bits of earth fell from the ceiling. Weir gripped Stephen's wrist.

"Talk to me, Wraysford," he said. "Talk to me about anything you like."

"All right. I'll tell you something." Stephen blew out a trail of cigarette smoke.

"I'm curious to see what's going to happen. There are your sewer rats in their holes three feet wide crawling underground. There are my men going mad under shells. We hear nothing from our commanding officer. I sit here, I talk to the men, I go on patrol and lie in the mud with machine guns grazing my neck. No one in England knows what this is like. If they could see the way these men live they would not believe their eyes. This is not a war, this is an exploration of how far men can be degraded. I am deeply curious to see how much further it can be taken; I want to know. I believe that it has barely started. I believe that far worse things than we have seen will be authorized and will be carried out by millions of boys and men like my Tipper and your Firebrace. There is no depth to which they can't be driven. You see their faces when they go into rest and you think they will take no more, that something in them will say, enough, no one can do this. But one day's sleep, hot food and wine in their bellies and they will do more. I think they will do ten times more before it's finished and I'm eager to know how much. If I didn't have that curiosity I would walk into enemy lines and let myself be killed. I would blow my own head off with one of these grenades."

"You're mad," said Weir. "Don't you just want it to be over?"

"Yes, of course I do. But now that we have come this far I want to know what it means."

Weir began to shake again as the sounds of the shells came closer. "It's a mixed barrage. The field gun alternating with heavy artillery at intervals of--"

"Be quiet," said Stephen. "Don't torture yourself." Weir held his head in his hands. "Talk to me about something, Wraysford. Talk to me about anything but this war. England, football, women, girls. Whatever you like."

"Girls? What the men call their sweethearts?"

"If you like."

"I haven't thought about them for a long time. Constant shellfire is a cure for impure thoughts. I never think of women. They belong to a different existence." Weir was silent for a moment. Then he said, "You know something? I've never ever been with a woman."

"What? Never?" Stephen looked to see if he was serious. "How old are you?"

"Thirty-two. I wanted to, I always wanted to, but it was difficult at home. My parents were very strict. One or two of the girls I asked out for the evening, well they... they always wanted to get married. Then there were the working girls in the town, but they would have just laughed at me."

"Aren't you intrigued to know what it's like?"

"Yes, yes of course. But now it's become such an issue, it's assumed such an importance in my life that it would be difficult."

Stephen noticed that Weir had stopped listening to the shellfire. He was staring down at the glass in his hands, deep in concentration.

"Why don't you go to one of those places all the men go to in the villages? I'm sure you could find someone friendly, not too expensive."

"You don't understand, Wraysford. It's not that easy. It's different for you. I suppose you've been with hundreds of women, have you?"

Stephen shook his head. "Good God, no. There was a girl in my village who'd do it with anyone. All the boys lost their innocence with her. You had to give her a present--chocolate or money or something. She was a simple girl but we were all very grateful. She got pregnant of course, but no one knew who the father was. Some fifteen-year-old youth, probably."

"Was that all?"

"No. There were some other girls. Boys expected to do it. They thought it was unhealthy to store it up. Even their mothers thought so. That's the difference between a Lincolnshire village and a town like--what was your home?"

"Leamington Spa."

"Exactly! The price of respectability." Stephen smiled. "It was bad luck for you."

"You're telling me." Weir began to laugh.

"Well done."

"What do you mean, 'well done'?"

"You're laughing."

"I'm drunk."

"It doesn't matter."

Weir poured another drink and tipped his chair back. "So all those girls, Wraysford, tell me--"

"Not that many. Perhaps four or five. That was all."

"However many. Tell me, was there one you loved? Was there one you did it with again and again?"

"Yes, I think there was."

"Just one?"

"Yes, just one."

"And what was that like? Was it different from the others?"

"Yes, 1 suppose it was. It was quite different. It became confused with other feelings."

"You mean, you... you were in love with her, or what?"

"That's what you would call it. I didn't know at the time what it was. I was just aware of some compulsion. I couldn't stop it."

"What happened with this woman?"

"She left."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I went home one day and she hadn't even left a note or a message."

"Were you married?"

"No."

"What did you do?"

"Nothing. What could I do? I couldn't pursue her. I let her go." Weir was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "But when you... you know, with her, was it a different feeling, a different experience from with the girl in the village? Or is it always the same?"

"By the time she left I don't think I was thinking about that. It felt more as though someone had died. As though you were a child and your mother or father had vanished." Stephen looked up. "You must find out for yourself. Your next leave. Or maybe we can get you down the line somehow. One of my men will know."

"Don't be ridiculous," said Weir. "Anyway, this woman. Do you think of her now? Do you have a keepsake?"

"I had a ring that belonged to her. I threw it away."

"Don't you ever think of her when you're lying here at night hearing the guns outside?"

"No. Never."

Weir shook his head. "I don't understand. I'm sure I would." There was a momentary stillness outside. The two men looked at each other in the dim light, their faces grey and weary. Stephen envied the innocence still visible beneath the strain that showed in Weir's open features. He felt he had already lost all connection with any earthly happiness that might persist beyond the sound of guns. The scattered grey hairs at his temples and above his ears seemed to remind him that he "So," he said. "Before the war. Were you lonely?"

"Yes, I was. I was still living with my parents, I didn't seem to be able to get away. The only thing I could think of was to join the army. My father knew someone in the Engineers, so that was it. I joined up in nineteen twelve. You were right. I liked having a role. And I liked the comradeship. It was as simple as that. I had had no friends before, and suddenly I found that I had, if not the friendship, then at least the company of hundreds of men of my age. When I was commissioned I found that some of them even looked up to me. It was a grand feeling."

"You've done well," said Stephen. "They respect you."

"No," said Weir dismissively, "they'd follow anyone who--"

"I mean it. You've done well with them."

"Thank you, Wraysford."

Stephen poured more whisky. He always hoped it would make him sleep, but in fact it made little difference. If sleep came it was as a gift and was as likely to come after tea as after alcohol.

"My men don't respect me," he said. "They respect Sergeant Price. They're frightened of him, anyway. And they do what the corporals tell them, Smith and Petrossian. But I'm irrelevant to them."

"Nonsense," said Weir. "You're in there with them just as much as any other subaltern. You go on patrols. They must admire you."

"But they don't respect me. And they're right not to. Do you know why? Because I don't respect them. Sometimes I think I despise them. What do they think they're doing, for God's sake?"

"You're a funny chap," said Weir. "I remember a major I met outside Ypres, on the salient, who--"

The door to the dugout was pushed open. It was Hunt. "You'd better come, sir," he said to Stephen. "Shell in our section. There's a lot of casualties. Reeves, Wilkinson, I think."

Stephen took his cap and followed Hunt out into the night.

The sandbags that made up the parapet had been blown away on a front of about twenty yards. The wall of the trench had caved in and barbed wire had been blown back and was hanging over the churned earth. There was a sound of groaning. Stretcher-bearers were trying to clear the debris to get to the wounded men. Stephen took a trenching tool and began to dig. They pulled out a man by his shoulders. It was Reeves. His expression was more vacant than usual. His rib cage was missing on one side where a large piece of shell casing stuck out from under his breastbone.

A few yards further on they disinterred Wilkinson. His dark profile looked promisingly composed as Stephen approached. He ran through his mind for Wilkinson's personal details. He remembered. He had just married. He worked as a bookmaker. There was a baby on the way. He prepared words of encouragement as he came alongside. But as the stretcher-bearers lifted him, they turned his body and Stephen saw that his head was cut away in section, so that the smooth skin and the handsome face remained on one side, but on the other were the ragged edges of skull from which the remains of his brain were dropping on to his scorched uniform. He nodded to the stretcher-bearers. "Take him away."

Further on was another casualty, Douglas, whom he had seen that morning and thought indestructible. Douglas was alive and had been left leaning against the trench wall. Stephen went up and sat beside him.

"Cigarette?" he said.

Douglas nodded. Stephen lit one and put it in Douglas's mouth.

"Help me up," said Douglas, "just so I can sit." Stephen lifted him further with his arm round his shoulders. Douglas's blood was pumping from a shrapnel wound in his shoulder.

"What's that white on my leg?" he said.

Stephen looked down. "It's a bone," he said. "It's the femur. It's all right, it's just bone. You've lost some muscle."

Douglas's blood was all over Stephen. It had a peculiar smell, not unpleasant in itself, though cloying in such quantity. It was fresh. It was like the smell in the back of a butcher's shop, only stronger.

"Is Tom all right?" said Douglas.

"Who?"

"Tom Brennan."

"Yes, I think so. Don't worry, Douglas. Hold on to me. We'll get you some morphine. Try and stop this bleeding. I'm going to put something on your shoulder. It's just a field dressing."

As he pressed it to the wound he felt Douglas's flesh slipping under his hands. A rib or two had collapsed and his hand was going in toward the man's lung. He stopped the pressure.

"Hunt!" he shouted. "For Christ's sake get a stretcher here. Get me some morphine."

Douglas's blood had run up inside the arms of Stephen's uniform. It was on his face and in his hair. His trousers were saturated. Douglas was hanging on to him.

"Have you got a wife, Douglas?"

"Yes, sir."

"Do you love her?"

"Yes."

"Good. I'll tell her. I'll write to her. I'll tell her you're the best man we've got."

"Am I going to die?"

"No, you're not. But you won't be able to write a letter. I'll tell her all the things you did. The patrols and so on. She'll be proud. Where's that morphine? Hunt, for Christ's sake! You love your wife, Douglas. You'll see her again. Think of her when they get you to hospital. Hold on to that thought. Don't let go of it. It's all right, it's all right, they're coming. Hold my arm there. That's right. I'm going to take that cigarette or it'll burn you. Don't worry, I'll give you another one. There you are." Stephen did not know what he was saying. He was almost choking on Douglas's blood. By the time the stretcher-bearers reached them Douglas had lost consciousness. They levered the inert body up, trying not to make the wound worse. As they moved off there was a screaming metal sound overhead. Another shell landed with an explosion of light. For a moment Stephen saw the whole line of the trench, straight for twenty yards, then dogtoothed to prevent blast, then straight again. He saw the land behind it stretching out for miles; trees, a distant farmhouse. For an instant it was cairn: rural France lay bathed in radiant light. Then, with the earth and shrapnel flying, he was blown forward. The rear stretcher-bearer had been hit in the head. Douglas lay tipped out on the duckboards. Stephen, unhurt, shouted, "Get him out. Hunt! Get him out!" Feeling the stickiness on his face, he held his head in his hands and called out, "Get this man's blood off me."

*

When they were relieved at the front, Stephen's company had three days' rest in Béthune, a town much liked by the men because of the friendliness of the French girls and the large number of bars and estaminets. Stephen was billeted in a doctor's house on the edge of the town. It had a formal front garden with gravel triangles and small yew hedges. Although there were five other officers, Stephen had his own bedroom for the first time since the war had started. It overlooked the lawn at the rear of the house, a patch of coarse grass with some untended flowerbeds and a horse chestnut at the end.

It was midafternoon when he finally went off duty. He laid his kit on the polished floor, pulled off his boots, and sank on to the bed, which had been made up with clean sheets. The smell of dried herbs rose up from the bedclothes. It was always impossible to sleep at first, he found, because his body relaxed so quickly that the muscles jumped and woke him. The medical officer had given him a_ _box of pills, but they made him sleep so heavily that he didn't want to take one until the night.

The fatigue he felt was in his limbs and organs, an aching heaviness like gravity. His mind remained clear. Although he had little idea of time, the burned images of the preceding days lived in his memory with static clarity. He saw Weir's anxious open face, desperate for reassurance; Wilkinson's soft, beautiful lips in profile and the absence that was the other side of his face; Douglas's blood, the smell of which still came to him, though he had died of his wounds, pouring himself away through the slats of the duckboards; the casing of the shell, the manufacturer's serial number legible if he had cared to read it, that stuck out from Reeves's heart. The others they had buried next day when the shelling finally lifted, the wooden crosses sent up from stores, little piles of stones laid by their friends. In the wonderful quiet, when the German guns had stopped, they heard the song of a blackbird.