A Whispered Name (13 page)

‘Gentlemen,’
said Glanville rising. His open hand was pointing in invitation to the double
doors as though it were time for port and a cigar, and perhaps a measured game
of billiards; time for honourable men to talk seriously.

3

Oakley flicked through the
Manual of Military Law.
Finally he settled on the offence. Shortly he
moved to the index and then to several other places. Herbert watched, hearing
Glanville’s voice from across the room. The big man was facing the window,
blocking the light once more. He’d been repeating his already repeated
admonitions. Herbert let the words flow over his head. The pages of the manual
brushed against Oakley’s sleeve as he turned here and there like a man trying
to find directions to a secret way out, a passage he thought had to be there,
something he’d read once, unless he’d been mistaken. Suddenly Herbert’s
attention shifted to Glanville’s baritone, for he’d gone off script and was
saying something new.

‘… is
their concern and not yours. Mercy is not in our gift. Division has made it
clear that morale can slip through want of proper discipline. And we can’t
afford to slip in this weather.’

Glanville
turned away from the window and sunlight struck Herbert like a silent
explosion. He screwed his eyelids, seeing pink and purple, and the vague
outline of the big man. A staff officer at Division had leaned on Glanville —
very gently of course — and Pemberton at Brigade had leaned on Duggie, who’d
leaned on Herbert … or had he? Duggie had been ambiguous. All at once Herbert
thought of a rugby scrum, when eight men gripped each other in a ferocious
bind, ready to push in one direction. He’d been a flanker, a man on the outside
edge, the one whose job it was to break away if the ball was lost.

Glanville
sat on a desk lid and made a reflective humph. ‘You know, there was a time when
we branded and flogged our boys. And after branding was abolished, flogging
increased. But now flogging has gone, thanks to our enlightened reformers.’ He
folded his arms, as if to say But what’s left to us now? In fact, he said, ‘As
before the lowest rank gives his decision first, free from fear or favour.’

Oakley
sniffed and flicked through the pages more quickly returning to the index
several times. Glanville watched him with a tremendous pity in his tired,
grieving face. Grieving for what? So much, thought Herbert. The grating of the
charabancs, the platoons in rowdy chorus, the short journeys up the line, and
the all too brief companionship. Oakley let the book cover fall and close.

‘Death,’
he said, with a cough. His head, low on the shoulders, threatened to topple and
fall to the floor among their boots. ‘He may have saved an officer’s life, but
he took advantage of the trust that had been placed in him.’ His eyes moved
boldly on to Herbert. A frightened glare acknowledged that he’d showed his hand
and that the stakes were high.

Instantly
Herbert saw everything with stunning clarity: the room, the three desks, his
two brother officers. He heard the scrape of the sentry’s rifle as he leant it
on the wall, the shoulder strap jingling like a harness. A match struck and
someone laughed. Some birds crashed through the fat leaves of a lime tree. And
Herbert realised among all these acute sensations — almost painful to receive —
that Flanagan’s life lay in his hands, When his turn came, Glanville would say ‘Death’:
Herbert knew it. Oakley had committed himself. The outcome belonged to Herbert.
FGCM. Third officer required.

He
paused, breathing heavily sweat gathering across his back. Duggie had picked
him out; he’d recalled him from the seaside. He’d told him to do his duty …
as if it were a kind of punishment. Duggie had decided to test Herbert’s metal:
by asking him to do what he did not want to do. A rite of initiation. A chance
to demonstrate his utter commitment to the regiment and the Army’s law He
wouldn’t do it. Not in this way … he
couldn’t.
Herbert wanted to
scream, and his throat contracted at the idea that he must speak. Like Oakley
running through the manual for a way out, Herbert summoned the face of Major
Brewitt from Morpeth and the weeping boy waiting for the RMO. He called them
together, along with the greater part of his vanished regiment: he formed a
crowd of the righteous behind his closed eyes to bear witness to his coming
betrayal, to ask their forgiveness, for he was going to spare this man. And
then, as if lit by the strike of a match, Herbert saw Quarters staring out of
the blackness of his mind. He was waiting for the shot, eyes wide with terror.
Herbert hesitated … as he’d done in the rain when the rifle wavered side to
side. Taking a breath, he lunged for a phrase of Glanville’s, that most of them
were reprieved. Holding on to that assurance, he squeezed a finger. ‘Death with
a recommendation to mercy.

‘Can we
do that?’ jabbered Oakley ‘If we can, well, I follow suit. God, I didn’t know
we had the right:

Glanville
raised a calming hand and said, quietly ‘Death.’ He leafed through his notes
until he found Army Form A3. Turning to the schedule he carefully wrote DEATH
beneath the word GUILTY Leaning back to get an overall impression of the
document, as if to judge its neatness, he said, ‘I’ll add the recommendation
suggested by Mr Moore.’

Eleven
minutes had elapsed. For along while they sat in silence, then Glanville
explained that his little brother had once let a kettle boil until it melted on
the stove.

4

The trial was over. Joyce
and Elliot were released. Sheridan stood in the playground smoking. Flanagan
was left in the cellar. For completeness, Glanville added the court’s
decisions to his own notes, duplicating the entries on Army Form A3. The
military urge to think in triplicate made him hesitate. Frustrated, he then
signed every page of the record, checking his watch as if a train might depart
at any moment. His fastidious attention to the passage of time struck Herbert
as suddenly heart-rending, for it contained an acknowledgement that his
remaining days were few, that they were precious, even here, in this terrible
place of terrible duties.

Chamberlayne
banked his papers and books and left without saying anything to Herbert, though
they shook hands — part of the ritual that had begun with the other members of
the court. Silence lay in the room where the two greatcoats lay upon the low
benches beneath the rows of hooks. Glanville and Oakley stood at different
windows, each straining to see nothing in particular. Herbert was between them,
feeling helpless and adrift. Oakley was the next to leave. He gripped the
collar of his coat and threw it over his shoulder. Another shake of hands all
round, and then Glanville was left facing Herbert.

‘You
didn’t waver, old man,’ he said, placing a huge hand upon Herbert’s shoulder.

Herbert
thought he might sob, that tears of protest and remorse might fall, but he kept
his lips hard across his teeth. Father Maguire had done much the same; his hand
had touched Herbert’s neck with a scalding pity.

‘I didn’t
warn you that it’s always worst for the number two,’ said Glanville. ‘You were
the pig in the middle, in this animal business of keeping the pack in order.’

Herbert
nodded.

‘I’m
sorry,’ said Glanville, checking that his chest buttons were seated properly
with the regimental emblem upright. ‘Those liberal reformers left in place the
one penalty that really mattered, and promoted its significance and use. But,
you know, there really is no other way Not until this bloody awful war is over.’

The big
man blocked the doorway shrugging his greatcoat into a comfortable position.
When he turned to accept Herbert’s salute, the bulge of the book in his inner
pocket was barely noticeable.
Military Law Made Easy.
Herbert’s father
was on familiar terms with the author: Lieutenant Colonel S.T. Banning. They’d
been at Sandhurst together in balmier days.

Chapter Fourteen

Anselm rose at 8.00 a.m.,
a full two hours later than his brothers at Larkwood. He found a high-street
café and ordered eggs and bacon, relishing the temporary abandonment of
monastic routine. He read a tabloid and listened to a radio blaring from the
kitchen. It was just wonderful, if ultimately unsatisfying. After two cups of
boiled coffee he walked briskly to Kew Gardens. Within fifteen minutes of his
arrival the Flanagan file was back on the desk that overlooked a lake and a
weeping tree.

The
court deliberated for forty-two minutes, almost twice as long as they’d spent listening
to the evidence, concluding that Flanagan was ‘GUILTY’. The subsequent
sentencing procedure occupied a similar period: thirty-nine minutes. In all the
trial had lasted one hour and forty-five minutes. The hand with the brown
crayon had drawn a magisterial line through the entire evidence of Lieutenant
Alan Caldwell, the officer who’d given evidence on Flanagan’s character. In
the margin it was noted: ‘This is hearsay upon hearsay and should never have
been admitted before the court!!!’ He was right:

Alan
Caldwell had
never met
Flanagan; he couldn’t know, for himself, about
Flanagan’s nerve problems in April and June. Despite the angry brown line the
red crayon had underlined the word ‘nerves ‘twice and corrected two errors, one
of orthography the other of punctuation. The red had ignored the brown, thought
Anselm, dwelling upon their respective functions, fearing the power of that
last hand.

Turning
to the final page of Major Glanville’s notes, Anselm paused. There, under the
heading ‘Sentence’, was the all important phrase: ‘DEATH — with a
recommendation to mercy’.

Herbert
had said the decisive word, along with Major Glanville and Lieutenant Oakley.
Anselm read it several times, as he’d once read Herbert’s signature on the
flyleaf of the Manual of Military Law: almost in a daze, feeling now that
something he valued had slipped away from him: the simplicity of his memory of
Herbert. Anselm quickly averted his mind from the painful thought, not wanting
to acknowledge it, hoping it might disappear if he looked elsewhere. He opened
the manual at the sentencing section. It actually
began
with ‘death’
before descending to penalties for the living. This was a severe code for a
severe time, he assured himself. Herbert and his companions had been trapped by
an arcane law and a war that hadn’t ended by Christmas three years earlier.

But
Herbert had said the Word, and the Word had an effect.

That
much was clear from the remaining documents in the file: there was a sequence
of memoranda from the commanders at Brigade, Division, Corps and Army each
commenting on whether ‘the extreme penalty’ might be carried out. But, as
Martin had observed, it seemed that any document that might reveal the outcome
of the trial, explicitly or by implication, had been deftly removed.

The
review process would have begun at battalion level with Flanagan’s Commanding
Officer, Lt. Colonel D. Hammond. That first recommendation was missing. Anselm
therefore moved to the next level, Brigade, and the opinion of Brigadier
General Anthony Pemberton who, on the 3rd of September concluded:

I am doubtful if
the evidence is sufficient for a conviction on desertion, but an example is
required to show that no soldier in the British Army can abandon his comrades
when they are in action.

The heavy red crayon had
got to work again. Decisive factors were being isolated in the mind of this
ultimate judge: so far, he’d marked out ‘alcohol’, ‘wine’, ‘drunk’ and
(inadmissible) ‘nerves’. Now he’d underlined ‘example is required’. He didn’t
seem troubled by the Brigadier’s opening doubts on sufficiency Anselm tried to
visualise the moral undergrowth that needed to be cleared before one could move
from inadequate proof to exemplary justice. For the Brigadier — and the judge —
it was manifestly wide open. Couldn’t see a blade of grass, never mind a tree.

The
next day on the 4th September, Major General Boyle at Division had expressed a
similarly unencumbered view: ‘I do not know this man but I think he should be
shot.’ Anselm almost laughed with horror.

The
papers, with their gathered weight, then landed on the desk of Lieutenant
General Cooke at Corps HQ. An underling of sorts had typed up a chit: ‘I
recommend that the sentence of Death in the case of No 4888 Private J.
Flanagan, 8th Batt. N.L.I….’ and the commander had added, with admirable
economy ‘… be carried out.’ No reasons, no head scratching. Just decisive
leadership.

Anselm
was beginning to sense the life behind the structure. He pictured a rider or
driver taking the bundle to the next echelon of authority, General Osborne,
commander of the Ninth Army Perhaps it was the altitude of his importance, but
the general was not a man to be influenced by the unanimous judgement of his
subordinates. On a large sheet of paper he’d written, neatly and in the centre
of the page, ‘The sentence of death can reasonably be commuted to five years
imprisonment, to be suspended. This man has a clean record. The plea of mercy
has merit.’

And at
this point, on the 10th of September 1917, the trail went cold … or coldish: for
while there was no text recording the actual decision of the
Commander-in-Chief, no order from Division to Brigade requiring a firing party,
no certificate from Dr Tindall, RMO, confirming death upon execution, there
remained a single but monumental clue.