Birdsong (24 page)

Weir tried to persuade Captain Gray that the infantry should look after themselves more, or at least have the Engineers' field companies to do it for them, but in return for having the protection of the infantry in the tunnel he found he had agreed to do more and more of their fatigues. He wondered whether this was the price he paid for such generous access to Stephen's whisky.

At the top of his list he wrote "check plates." The loopholes used by the sentries were masked by iron plates, but some of these had been damaged by shells or by the attrition of enemy machine guns and snipers. There was also wire to be maintained, though this was a job from which he had so far successfully excluded his men. The infantry tied empty tins to the wire to act as alarm bells, but they were only ever sounded by rats. When it rained, the water would drop off the wire into the empty tins below. The different rates at which they filled were naturally a source of gambling to the infantry, as one man backed his tin against another, or of superstitious dread at the significance of whose might fill first. Weir heard something different in the sounds. Once, during a period of calm, he sat on the firestep waiting for Stephen to return from an inspection and listened to the music of the tins. The empty ones were sonorous, the fuller ones provided an ascending scale. Those filled to the brim produced only a fat percussive beat unless they overbalanced, when the cascade would give a loud variation. Within his earshot there were scores of tins in different states of fullness and with varying resonance. Then he heard the wire moving in the wind. It set up a moaning background noise that would occasionally gust into prominence, then lapse again to mere accompaniment. He had to work hard to discern, or perhaps imagine, a melody in this tin music, but it was better in his ears than the awful sound of shellfire.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and Weir wanted to sleep before their nocturnal activities began. That night they were to help the infantry carry up ammunition and dig new sumpholes. There would also be repairs to the traverses and walls of the trench, quite apart from the work they were doing underground. Before lying down to rest, he went to visit some of the men. He found them smoking and doing repairs to their kit. The miners' clothes needed particularly frequent attention, and although each man had his own way of sewing, they had all become expert with needle and thread.

After some cheering words to them, Weir went back to his billet and lay down. There had been no word on Stephen from battalion headquarters when he went to check that morning. If he had been alive, he would somehow have got word to him, Weir believed. Even if his own commanding officer had not been formally notified by the medics, Stephen was resourceful enough to have let his friend know. Weir closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He would want to write a letter to Stephen's next of kin, if such a person existed. Some phrases began to form in his mind. He was quite fearless... he was an inspiration... he was my closest friend, my strength and shield. The empty expressions that had filled so many letters home did not seem enough to describe the part. Stephen had played in his life. Weir's eyes filled with tears. If Stephen was gone, then he himself would not be able to continue. He would court death, he would walk along the parapet, he would open his mouth to the next cloud of phosgene that drifted over them and invite the telegram to be delivered to the quiet street in Leamington Spa where his parents and their friends carried on their lives with no care or thought for the world that he and Stephen had known.

*

Stephen Wraysford reinhabited his body cell by cell, each slow inch bringing new pain and some older feeling of what it meant to be alive. There was no sheet on the bed, though against the skin of his face there was the rough comfort of old linen, washed and disinfected beyond softness.

In the evening the pain in his arm and neck grew worse, though it was never more than he could tolerate and it was never as bad as that of the man in the next bed, who could apparently visualize the pain: he could see it hovering over him. Each day they removed more of the man's body, snipping ahead of the gangrene, though never taking quite enough. When they unplugged his dressings, fluid leapt from his flesh like some victorious spirit that had possessed him. His body was decomposing as he lay there, like those that hung on the wire going from red to black before they crumbled into the earth leaving only septic spores. One morning a boy of about nineteen appeared at the end of the ward. His eyes were covered with pieces of brown paper. Round his neck was a ticket, which the senior medical officer, a short-tempered man in a white coat, inspected for information. He called out for a nurse, and a young English girl, herself no more than twenty, went over to help him.

They began to undress the boy, who had clearly not had a bath for some months. His boots seemed glued to his feet. Stephen watched, wondering why they did not even bother to put up a screen. When he himself had arrived he calculated that he had not taken off his socks for twenty-two days.

When they finally prised the boy's boots off, the smell that came into the ward made the nurse retch into the stone sink beside them. Stephen heard the MO

shout at her.

They peeled the boy's clothes from him and when they came to the undergarments the MO used a knife to cut them off the flesh. Finally the boy stood naked, except for the two brown eye patches. The top layer of skin had gone from his body, though there was a strip round the middle where the webbing of his belt had protected him.

He was trying to scream. His mouth was pulled open and the sinews of his neck were stretched, but some throat condition appeared to prevent any sound from issuing.

The MO peeled the brown paper from the boy's face. The skin of his cheeks and forehead was marked with bluish-violet patches. Both of his eyes were oozing, as though from acute conjunctivitis. They rinsed them in fluid from a douche cup into which the nurse had tipped some prepared solution. His body stiffened silently. They tried to wash some of the grime from him, but he would not stay still while they applied the soap and water.

"We've got to get the filth off you, young man. Keep still," said the MO. They walked down the ward, and when they came closer Stephen could see the pattern of burns on his body. The soft skin on the armpits and inner thighs was covered with huge, raw blisters. He was breathing in short fast gasps. They persuaded him on to a bed, though he arched his body away from the contact of the sheet. Eventually the doctor lost patience and forced him down with hands on his chest. The boy's mouth opened in silent protest, bringing a yellow froth from his lips.

The doctor left the nurse to cover him with a kind of improvised wooden tent, over which she draped a sheet. Finally she had time to bring a screen down the ward and conceal him from the others.

Stephen noticed that she was able to tend the wound of the man in the next bed and even to rebuke him for his noise, but whenever she emerged from behind the screens she would wring her small hands in a literal gesture of anguish he had never seen before.

He caught her eye and tried to comfort her. His own wounds were healing quickly and the pain was almost gone. When the doctor came to inspect them, Stephen asked him what had happened to the boy. He had apparently been caught by a gas attack some way behind the front line. Blinded by the chlorine, he had stumbled into a house that was burning after being hit by a shell.

"Stupid boy didn't get his mask on in time," said the MO. "They have enough drills."

"Will he die?"

"Probably. He's got liver damage from the gas. Some post-mortem changes in his body already."

As the days went by Stephen noticed that when the nurse approached the screen behind which the gassed boy was lying, her step would always slow and her eyes would fill with foreboding. She had blue eyes and fair hair pulled back under her starched cap. Her footsteps came almost to a halt, then she breathed in deeply and her shoulders rose in resolution.

On the third morning the boy's voice came back to him. He begged to die. The nurse had left the screens slightly apart and Stephen saw her lift the tent away with great care, holding it high above the scorched body before she turned and laid it on the floor. She looked down at the flesh no one was allowed to touch, from the discharging eyes, down over the face and neck, the raw chest, the groin and throbbing legs. Impotently, she held both her arms wide in a gesture of motherly love, as though this would comfort him.

He made no response. She took a bottle of oil from the side of the bed and leaned over him. Gently she poured some on to his chest and the boy let out a high animal shriek. She stood back and turned her face to the heavens.

The next day Stephen woke to find the boy had gone. He did not come back in the evening, or the next day. Stephen hoped his prayers had been answered. When the nurse came to change his dressing, he asked her where he was.

"He's gone for a bath," she said. "We've put him in colloidal saline for a day."

"Does he lie against the bath?" Stephen asked incredulously.

"No, he's in a canvas cradle."

"I see. I hope he'll die soon."

In the afternoon there was the sound of running feet. They could hear the MO

shouting, "Get him out, get him out!"

A bundle of screaming blankets was carried dripping down the ward. Through the night they contrived to keep the boy alive. The next day he was quiet, and in the evening they tried to lever him into the body cradle to get him back in the bath. His limbs dangled over the sides of the canvas. He lay motionless, trailing his raw skin. His infected lungs began to burble and froth with yellow fluid that choked his words of protest as they lowered him into the stone bath outside.

That night Stephen prayed that the boy would die. In the morning he saw the nurse, pale and shocked, making her way toward him. He raised his eyes interrogatively. She nodded in affirmation, then burst into shuddering tears. Stephen was allowed to go outside in the afternoons and sit on a bench from which he could watch the wind in the trees. He did not talk; he had no urge to say anything. Soon he was walking again, and the doctors told him he would be discharged at the end of the week. He had been there twenty days.

"Visitor for you," said the fair nurse one morning.

"For me?" Stephen spoke. His voice uncurled in him like a cat stretching after a long sleep. He was delighted by the unaccustomed sound. "Is it the king?" The nurse smiled. "No. It's a Captain Gray."

Stephen said, "What's your name?"

"Nurse Elleridge."

"Your first name."

"Mary."

"I want to tell you something, Mary. Can you come here for a moment?" She went over to his bed, a little reluctantly. Stephen took her hand.

"Sit on the bed for a second."

She looked round doubtfully but perched on the edge of the bed. "What did you want to tell me?"

"I'm alive," said Stephen. "That's what I wanted to tell you. Did you know that? I'm alive."

"Well done." She smiled. "Is that all?"

"Yes. That's all." He let go of her hand. "Thank you." Captain Gray came down the ward. "Good morning, Wraysford."

"Good morning, sir."

"I hear you're walking. Shall we go outside?"

There were two wrought-iron benches set against the wall of the hospital, which overlooked a lawn that dropped down to a cedar tree and a large stagnant pond. Occasional figures were moving tenderly about the grounds with the aid of sticks.

"You seem to have made a pretty good recovery," said Gray. "They told me you'd had it."

He took off his cap and placed it on the bench between them. His crinkly hair was a glossy brown colour still unmarked by grey; his moustache was neat and trim. Although Stephen was pale, unkempt, and showing grey hairs in places on his head, his face retained a youthfulness that Gray's had lost. The light in his large eyes still promised something unpredictable, while Gray's expression, though animated, was steady. He was a man who had mastered himself, and although his manner was informal he was manifestly the superior officer.

Stephen nodded. "Once they got rid of the infection I made good progress. The wounds themselves were not that bad. This arm's going to have slightly restricted movement, but otherwise it's all right."

Gray took a cigarette from the case in his breast pocket and tapped it on the end of the bench. "You've got two weeks home leave from the moment you leave this place," he said. "After that you're being promoted. I want you to go on a course at Amiens. Then you'll have a spell on brigade staff."

Stephen said, "I'm not going."

"What?" Gray laughed.

"I'm not going home and I'm not going on some staff job. Not now." Gray said, "I thought you'd be delighted. You've been in the front line for over a year, haven't you?"

"Exactly," said Stephen. "A year of preparation. I don't want to leave at the vital moment."

"What vital moment?" Gray looked at him suspiciously.

"Everyone knows we're going to attack. Even the doctors and nurses know it. That's why they're trying to get those men walking."

Gray pursed his lips. "Perhaps, perhaps. But listen, Wraysford. You've done well with your platoon. They haven't achieved much yet, but which of us has? You've kept them together under fire. You've earned a rest. No one's going to say you're shirking anything. For God's sake, they gave you up for dead only three weeks ago. Did you know that? They dumped you with the corpses." Stephen was appalled by the idea of being separated from the men he had fought with. He despised the war, but he could not leave until he had seen how it would end. He had become, in some way he did not understand, wedded to it: his small destiny was tied to the larger outcome of events.

"To begin with," he said, "I have no home in England. I wouldn't know where to go. Would I loaf around in Piccadilly Circus? Should I go to the seaside in Cornwall and sit in a little cottage? I'd rather stay in France. I like it here." Gray smiled with indulgent curiosity. "Go on. And promotion? You don't want that either? It would mean promoting Harrington instead."