Birdsong (55 page)

By his side was his revolver. When hope was finally gone he would fire: up through the palate, into the coiled mess of consciousness and memory. There was a perverse appeal in the thought that he would complete what no enemy had managed.

When they had grown used to their despair, they began to talk again. Stephen asked Jack if his company would try to send more men down to rescue them.

"I don't think so," said Jack. "They'd find it difficult to shift this amount of spoil even if they did. They'd have to blow it out and that would risk bringing in the roof and making it worse. Also it's too close to our own line for comfort. They'll say a prayer at the service on Sunday and put us down as missing."

"You can't blame them. The war's almost over."

Jack said, "Are you afraid to die?"

"I think so." Stephen was surprised to hear himself say it. "I was lucky that I didn't feel fear above the ground, except at the obvious moments. Now I feel... alone."

Jack said, "But you're not alone. I'm here. I'm someone." He shifted his weight against the rubble. "What's your first name?"

"Stephen."

"Shall I call you that?"

"If you want."

There was a pause, then Jack said, "It's strange, isn't it? That I should be with you at the time I die. Of all the people I've known in my life that it should be you."

"Who would you choose to be with?" Stephen found himself interested, even though he was weighed down by the thought of his own death. "Which human being out of all those you have met would you choose to hold your hand, to hold close to you in the beginning of eternity?"

"To be with, like that, always, do you mean?"

"Yes. The other half of you."

"My son," said Jack.

"Your son. How old is he?"

"He died two years ago, of diphtheria. His name was John."

"I'm sorry."

"I miss him. I loved him so much." In the darkness of the tunnel Jack's voice came up unexpectedly in the lament he had denied himself at the time of John's death; so close to his own time of dying, he was freed from restraint. "I loved that boy. Every hair of him, every pore of his skin. I would have killed a man who so much as laid a hand on him. My world was in his face. I was not so young when he was born. I wondered what my life had been about until he came along. It was nothing. I treasured each word he gave me. I made myself remember each thing he did, the way he turned his head, his way of saying things. It was as though I knew it wouldn't be for long. He was from another world, he was a blessing too great for me."

Stephen said nothing, but allowed Jack to sob quietly into his hands. Jack did not seem resentful, even in his grief. His flat, guileless face with its narrow eyes looked wonderstruck, incredulous that such a love had been permitted him. When he was calmer, Stephen said, "You talk almost as though you had fallen in love."

"I think I did," said Jack. "I think it was almost like that. I was jealous of him. I wanted him to love me. I would watch the way the women played with him. I was pleased that he was happy, but I knew that really it was our games that were best. I knew it was the times with just the two of us that were the best, the purest things on earth."

Jack talked about the boy's innocence and how it had changed him. He could not find the words for it, and began to weep again.

Stephen put his arm round his shoulders. "It's all right," he said. "I'll get you out from under here. Somehow I will get you out and you'll have other children. John won't be the last."

"No. Margaret's too old now. She couldn't have another."

"Then I will have them for you."

When Jack had composed himself again, he said, "I don't suppose you'd choose to die with me beside you. I'm not much good to you."

"You'll do very well," said Stephen. "Who knows? Our own choices might not be so good as those that are made for us. I've met men I would trust in the mouth of hell. Byrne or Douglas. I would trust them to breathe for me, to pump my blood with their hearts."

"Did you love them best? Would they be the ones you'd choose?"

"To die with? No. The one time I've felt what you describe was with a woman."

"A lover, you mean?" said Jack. "Not your own flesh and blood?"

"I think she was my own flesh and blood. I truly believe she was." Stephen seemed to go into a trance. Jack said nothing. Then, as the minutes passed, he tried to rouse himself.

"We must find a way out of here," he said. "Back to the shaft's no good, so we should go forward."

"What's the point? There are just the tunnels there that end in blank walls."

"It would give us something to do, rather than just wait to die. We could try to make a noise. If you can manage to carry me again. Take off your breathing set. That's just getting in the way. And take mine off too. Leave them down there." Stephen knelt down and helped Jack on to his shoulders. He tried to conceal his despair. Clearly it was pointless for them to go back the way they had come; they had seen two of the three forward tunnels blocked. The third one, according to Jack, had taken the worst of the blast so was not likely to lead them miraculously into clean air and sunlight.

There seemed to Stephen something frivolous about their hope as they laboured back into the darkness. They were facing death and they could find nothing better to do. He felt they should have passed the time more constructively; they should have readied themselves in some way for the end instead of indulging in this boyish hope.

It seemed to please Jack, however. When they reached the crossroads at the second lateral gallery Stephen set him down and flopped to the ground beside him. His chest rose and fell as he squeezed the air into his lungs. Jack had closed his eyes to overcome the pain from his legs which, Stephen noticed, had developed a cloying smell of blood.

Jack smiled when he opened his eyes again. "Only one thing for it. Try the third prong of the fork. Where those other poor buggers went." Stephen nodded. "Give me a moment to get my breath back. I suppose we might as well. At least then we'll know... "

He trailed off, still not quite able to say the obvious thing.

Jack did it for him. "That it's the end."

The thought did not perturb Jack. He was beginning to welcome the idea of dying. While a primitive fear kept stirring in him, the pain of his body and the lost illusions of his life made him wish for the conclusion to come. He loved Margaret still, and would have chosen to see her, but she belonged to a different existence from the one he now inhabited with such unwanted intensity. She would die, in any event. The things on which he had based his faith had proved unstable. John's innocence, the message from a better world, had been taken from him. Any meeting he might have with Margaret and any rekindling of love he might feel would also prove illusory. Love had betrayed him, and he no longer wished to be reunited with his life. He felt tranquillity at moments when his pain left him. There was no consideration beyond the body in the darkness of the tunnel; what was done by them in the earth with their hands and legs and voices was the boundary of it all. In the muscular efforts of Stephen to save him, the way he patiently submitted himself to the weight and the pointless striving, Jack felt a sense of tightness and calm. They came to the beginning of the right-hand tunnel and Stephen had to go down on all fours to guide them through the ragged entrance. By the light of the fading lamp Jack looked up at the inadequately supported roof and was silently critical of the work of the men who had made it. It was not as high as a fighting tunnel ought to be. Soon Stephen was crouching. After a few more yards he needed to rest again.

It seemed to Jack that the sensible thing would be for Stephen to leave him while he pressed on in the hope of whatever miracle it was they were looking for; but Stephen did not suggest it. Stephen appeared to Jack to be filled with a kind of perverse determination; the harder their progress became, the more set he would be on carrying his ungainly burden.

The force of the explosion in the third tunnel had taken a different course. It appeared to have narrowed it by sucking it in from the sides. As Stephen went down on his knees to continue, he lifted Jack on to his back where he was able to hold the lamp. It swung to and fro, giving uneven flashes of light to their progress. Jack let out a scream as a cold hand brushed across his face. Stephen stopped and Jack twisted the lantern to look. An arm was sticking out from the wall of the tunnel. The body to which it was attached was buried behind it. They pushed onward. Jack saw a trousered leg sticking out from the earth. They stopped to inspect it.

"It's Evans," said Jack. "I recognize his sewing in the cloth here. He was my mate. We did shifts together."

"I'm sorry. We knew he'd gone, didn't we?"

"It doesn't matter," said Jack, "He's better off out of it. We've all gone now. Shaw, Tyson, Evans, Jones, and me. The whole of our little group." As they crawled on Jack lost his sangfroid. He began to tremble and to brush imaginary hands from his face. He felt the cold-reaching clasp of all his dead companions.

He was in a gallery of ghosts. The souls of all who had died, his friends and their companions; the spirits of the men they had killed, the German bodies that had been hurled upward in the exploding soil above the great mines they had laid: all the needless dead of the long war were grasping at his face with their cold hands. They reproached him for having killed them; they mocked him for being still alive.

He was trembling so much that Stephen had to put him down. He lay in the darkness sweating and shaking with fear, the pain of his leg momentarily forgotten.

"We are going to die now," he said. There was no more composure in his voice, only a wretched, childlike fear.

Stephen sat opposite him and rested his head in his hands. "Yes," he said. "I think this is the end."

Jack closed his eyes and rolled on to his side. He wished that the fever he had fought to hold at bay would now come and make him sleep.

Stephen said, "I don't mind dying. God knows, with all these men dead we couldn't ask for anything better. If I could have one wish before I went it would be for a small glass of water. The thought of streams and pools and gushing taps is all that's keeping me going, just the thought of them."

Jack began to moan softly. Stephen had heard the sound many times; it was the low, primitive cry he himself had made when he was carried in to the surgeon. Jack was calling to his mother.

Stephen felt Jack's shivering body and his soaking shirt. He had nothing dry with which to cover him: his own clothes were saturated with the sweat of carrying and digging. He tried to make Jack comfortable, then left him and crawled up the tunnel. He wanted to be on his own. He planned to find a place where he could lie down. There he would try to sleep and hope not to wake again.

He kept crawling forward till he came to a larger area, a space perhaps created by the blast. He rolled on his side and pulled up his knees to his chest. He prayed for oblivion and, despite the pain in his arm, he fell asleep. For many hours the two men lay separated by a few yards, each in his own unconsciousness.

When Stephen awoke, the damp smell and darkness made him think he was in his dugout. Then he stretched and encountered the walls of his narrow tomb. The lamp had gone out.

He cried softly to himself as his memory returned. He moved his injured arm, and as he searched for a grip with his left hand to lever himself up, he touched what felt like cloth.

He recoiled, thinking that, like Jack, he had discovered a corpse, some grim cadaver with whom he had been lying unaware for hours. But the material was coarser even than the weave of army clothes. He felt in his pocket for the electric torch he had been given at the tunnel head. In its weak beam he explored the material further with his fingers. It was a sandbag.

He sat up and pulled at it. He had to brace his legs against the side of the tunnel to shift the weight. Eventually he was able to work it back a few feet toward him. He saw that there was another one behind it. This part of the wall appeared to be built from sandbags. They were packed in too neatly and tightly to have been blown there by the blast, so presumably they had been placed there by the miners at some stage.

Sandbags, in his experience, had only one function, which was to absorb blast, whether from shells or bullets. Presumably they had felt this part of the tunnel to be particularly vulnerable. If so, then they must have known that there was a countermine nearby; and if that was the case, why had they continued to work there? He would have to ask Jack.

At the back of his mind was the shadow of a thought that there might be something behind the bags. Although it was probable that they were there for extra protection, it was just possible that they might lead into another tunnel. But if so, why had Jack not known about it?

Stephen crawled back to where he had left Jack. He found him curled up and shivering. He took him by the shoulder and tried to shake him awake. Jack shouted incoherently. It sounded to Stephen as though he was saying something about a shield.

Slowly Stephen was able to restore him to himself. He rocked him gently and called his name. He felt cruel bringing him back to the facts of his Jack looked up at him imploringly, as though asking him to disappear. Stephen knew that to Jack his face was a reminder that he was still alive.

"Listen," he said. "I found a sandbag up there. What do you think that means?"

"A full one?"

"Yes."

Jack shook his head weakly. He did not respond. Stephen took him by the wrists and squeezed them. He put his face close to Jack's, where he smelt the rotten air that he expelled from his lungs.

"Is it just to shore up the wall, or what? What do you people use them for? Come on. Answer me. Say something." The flat explosion of his hand against Jack's face made a magnified sound in the narrow space.

"I don't know... I don't know... It's just a bag. We used to fill them when we dug the tube. The Central Line. Inside the big shield. We stopped at Bank."

"For God's sake. Listen. Why sandbags in the wall? Here in France, in the war, not in the underground railway."