A Whispered Name (37 page)

Flanagan’s
execution lay between them like a swinging chain. The details had been
promulgated that morning throughout the Army though everyone at Oostbeke
already knew The men had taken it badly nonetheless, and while few had
cold-shouldered Herbert — that was Duggie’s achievement — they were bitter, to
officers in general and to the administrators to whom Chamberlayne would
shortly become a colleague. All this spleen had spilled into the football match
to be played that afternoon. They were going to win back some pride. It was horrendous.
The men would enter the line with as much guts and determination as ever,
whether Flanagan had been spared or not. But his death had made all the
difference to a game of footy. Did they appreciate that, in the lion’s den at
GHQ? Did they realise that Flanagan’s death just might secure the Lamb ton Cup
for the 8NLI? Chamberlayne would; and he’d bring the insight with him.

‘You’ll
watch the match before you go?’ asked Herbert.

‘Oh
yes. It’s going to be a right old ding-dong.’ He tossed a diary into the crate.
‘I’m told half the Lancashire boys are Irish and they’re out for blood. Behold
the mystery of the British Regimental system —’ he held out his hands in mock
astonishment —’it’s why, small as we are, we’ve conquered half the world; it’s
why we’re so bloody good at what we do. We set brother against brother, father
against son. You can’t beat a family who fights like that. They’re all out to
show they’re better than their own kin. The enemy is neither here nor there.’

Chamberlayne
dropped his crate of belongings on to the floor. The only remaining objects on
his desk were the telephone, the typewriter and the Flanagan file, waiting to
be sent up to Brigade.

‘Did
Tindall provide another death certificate?’ asked Herbert.

‘Did he
hell.’

‘And
the original?’

‘It
stays in the bin, with a few other truths.’

Herbert
was amused by Chamberlayne’s complete indifference to the
modus operandi
of
the administrative machine he was going to join. They’d kick him out just as
surely as they had at Oxford. And he would bow at the door, ever so slightly
higher than the authority to which he was a servant.

‘You
know, Herbert,’ said Chamberlayne, thumbs tucked into his belt. ‘I’m no
different to Doyle.’

‘Neither
am I.’

‘Spare
me the team spirit in my hour of honesty. I’m being serious. The only
difference between him and me is that I will get away with it. I may even get a
medal for neat writing. They’ll catch him eventually’

And
they very well might, despite the support of Lisette Papinau. The military
police were everywhere. Especially in Étaples: it was right by a base training
camp. All it would take was an informer — decent and law-abiding, he meant no
pejorative overtones — and the boy would be brought back to his unit and sent
winging in Flanagan’s direction.

‘Do you
remember Doyle’s number?’ asked Chamberlayne, without much confidence.

Herbert
did, although he’d made no effort to learn it. ‘Six-eight-nine-zero.’

All at
once Chamberlayne flopped into a chair and reached for the telephone. ‘I’ll
just make one last call to Brigade.’

Pause.

‘Murray?
Good morning. This is the eighth Battalion NLI. We’ve just had word that one of
The Lambeth Rifles has bought it.’

Pause.

‘Six-eight-nine-zero
Private Owen Doyle.’

Pause.

‘Haven’t
the faintest idea. Didn’t ask and I don’t care. Someone checked his tags. I’m
just doing the decent thing.’

Pause.

‘A
shell, I presume. There wasn’t much left.’

Pause.

Chamberlayne
looked at the receiver as if it had just belched in his ear. He thought for a
long moment and then said, very clearly ‘Northwest of Glencorse Wood.’

Pause.

‘Sorry,
old son, no can do. The idiot buried both tags in lieu of the body. A sort of
hamster ritual in the garden of war. Hadn’t quite grasped their intended
purpose. A slow sort. You don’t have them at Brigade.’

Pause.

‘Murray
nothing is complicated. It’s as simple as falling off a log. Just inform my
opposite number in The Lambeth Rifles and send a note to Division. They’ll tell
the grave people.’

Chamberlayne
popped the telephone back on its hook. ‘That should slow the hunters down.’

Herbert’s
mouth had fallen open. ‘What have you just done?’

‘Completed
what Flanagan began. It’s the price of my own escape. Now I can go to Canada
and watch those trees fall without a bomb in sight and without the slightest
stain on my conscience.’

2

Herbert collected his
travel pass from Duggie. In his pocket was the letter from Flanagan to Lisette.
He’d been given leave to visit Étaples, though he had to be back sharpish for
the move to the front on the 18th. They stood awkwardly in the yard. Yet again
the execution linked two men with weighty arms, a hand on each of their
shoulders.

‘Of
course, you’ll miss the match.’

‘Yes,
Sir.’

‘The
Lancashires haven’t a chance. The men could eat nails.’

‘Pity
they can’t bite, Sir. But it’s a sensible rule.’

The dog
with glassy eyes lay by a wall, its tongue hanging out like a tie from the
bottom of a jumper. Hens with red necks strutted back and forth, their chests
inflated with pomp and wrath. Since entering this yard, Herbert had never
looked at the RSM in quite the same way.

‘Remember
what I said,’ counselled Duggie, ‘none of this was your fault:

‘No,
Sir.’

Duggie
swung his arms behind his back, the hands slapping as they met. ‘Please pass on
to this lady my sincere condolences.’ The gesture was a familiar one: that was
how he spoke to the men when sending them towards the green line, knowing many
would not return. He understood that this woman’s war would never end.

‘Of
course, Sir. And thank you, Sir.’

Duggie
sniffed a sardonic laugh. ‘What for?’

‘Your
care of the regiment, Sir. And of me.

‘Go on,
clear off:

Duggie
held out his hand and Herbert seized it with sudden affection. ‘Goodbye, Sir.’

Should
I tell him that I will not come back? Does he know that I no longer belong
beside men like him? That I belong with Flanagan? Does he see the terror in my
own eyes, that I am lost again, as I was when I came upon Quarters, and that I
feel like another Doyle? Back then, Herbert couldn’t tell north from south. But
now the hand on the moral compass had popped off its spool. And if that wasn’t
enough, Herbert felt a most awful weariness: from the killing and the
responsibility of having killed … from the churned up fields, and the endless
rumpled cloth, the grey among the brown and blue. He couldn’t go on. He looked
squarely at his CO and he saw there a savage recognition. Duggie knew these
ghosts, and he was trusting Herbert to drive them out, to drown them in
Étaples.

‘Bring
me back a stick of rock, will you?’

He
spoke to Herbert’s reclaimed honour and Herbert saluted, facing disgrace once
more, only this time beyond repair.

‘It’s
not a French tradition, Sir.’

Herbert’s
hand fell. He could not conceive of a return. The men would be betrayed, yes,
but he had never deserved them. The sight of Flanagan dumped on the straw had
broken Herbert’s resolve. You can’t lead men in that condition. Herbert left
his CO with the shell-shocked dog and the hens, wondering if the
Commander-in-Chief appreciated that shooting your own only helped the other
side.

3

Father Maguire sat at the
improvised table in Herbert’s billet. He’d brought directions to the home of
Madame Lisette Papinau. There was another matter, he mumbled. During the night,
Flanagan had asked the priest to translate into English something he’d written
in his one letter. It had spilled out in Gaelic.

‘A
strange citation, in a way’ said the priest, looking around, Herbert suspected,
for the forbidden bottle. ‘It’s just two lines from a lament by Feiritéar, a
man at home as much in England as in Ireland. He made his choice when his back
was to the wall.’

Herbert
understood him to mean that the same might be said of Flanagan, that soldier
and poet shared the same spirit of Irish identity.

‘It’s
odd, but the first line applies to her, and the second applies to him,’ said
the priest. ‘They’re joined in the one lambent phrase. Maybe I’m just a
romantic old fool, but that’s what I thought.’

Herbert
couldn’t bear to read them. He took the folded paper and put it with the letter
in his jacket pocket. As he struggled with the button, he felt the Chaplain’s
compassion upon him, as heavy as the hand he’d once placed on his neck — long
ago it seemed, a world away — when he’d collapsed into the reserve trench, his
arm torn and bleeding from the wire.

‘Mr
Moore,’ said the Chaplain, ‘I will go to Flanagan’s people. I’ll tell them
everything: what their son did. Let that be an end for you. He became gruff. ‘The
execution was not your fault. For Joseph’s sake, there’s no room for guilt. Yours
or anyone else’s.’

Herbert
thought he might hit the next person who said that. It was a refrain haunting
him, like the face of Quarters in the mud. Instead he held out his hand, as
Duggie had done to him.

‘Thank
you, Father. For your example and comradeship:

The
priest shrugged his broad shoulders, showing his helplessness before his
responsibilities, but his determination to plod on. Perhaps it was his
remaining innocence that blinded him to Herbert’s intentions. Perhaps the
priest could only see the billet of a soldier who’d be coming back — slightly
disarranged with shaving implements laid neatly on a serviette. He didn’t know
that three small shells were heavy in Herbert’s pocket.

Beneath
low cloud and a sense of rain, Herbert began his desertion, taking the same
route as Flanagan. At Abeele he caught a train to Étaples and then followed the
rights and lefts to an
estaminet
off a main street.

For a
long time Herbert stood on the opposite side of the road, just looking at the
frontage. The woodwork was painted a deep marine blue. Large frosted windows
were etched with geometric designs that revealed nothing of the interior. Two
small vent windows revealed a cellar. Across the top, painted in gold
lettering, schoolbook style, was a brief statement of tenure: ‘Chez Madame Papinau’
. And above this panel were three windows, two of which had their curtains
drawn. It took a while before Herbert noticed that the third framed a face that
was intent upon him. She had the most beautiful countenance he’d ever seen,
though one hand covered her mouth.

Chapter Forty-Eight

1

Anselm received the
insight almost simultaneously to the sting of a bee.

He’d
just finished harvesting the honey crop. Not thinking about what he was doing,
he’d been letting his attention shift and start. One moment it was on Edward
Chamberlayne and his abrupt disappearance from the country he’d served; the
next it was on Joseph Flanagan and the elegiac quality of his life, the
movement from spring, to summer to autumn. Then it shifted to the names on the
war memorial, those nine lives without season. All the while Herbert seemed to
be standing at Anselm’s shoulder, seeking forgiveness. Anselm had just moved
on, heavily to the recollection of Mr Shaw — his joyfulness, his acceptance of
suffering, his two walking sticks, each scratched with the initials of his
grandchildren — when he felt a sharp stab upon the wrist. It had come with the
shock of an unforeseen reprimand, the unjust kind that endures into maturity.

Anselm
winced … and then his mind saw something very clearly indeed.

Harold
Shaw never mentioned seeing ‘Owen Doyle’ again. And yet they’d been in the same
Section, the same Platoon, and the same Company The same Regiment.

Leaving
his bees and jars, Anselm walked briskly to his cell, an intellectual
aggression settling upon him while the poison inflamed his skin. He threw back
the door and opened his bundle of documents, moving instantly to the War Diary
entries for the 8th (Service) Battalion, Northumberland Light Infantry.
Satisfied, he then checked a memo copied from the Doyle file. His intuitions
confirmed, he almost ran to the calefactory and rang the Public Record Office.

‘I’ll
explain later, Martin,’ he said after some rushed courtesies, ‘but could you
please look up the War Diary of The Lambeth Rifles, and fax me every entry for
September nineteen seventeen?’

Back in
his cell, Anselm flicked through one of his books on the battle for
Passchendaele, finally stopping when he found a diagram of the Army troop
dispositions for the attack on Menin Road. He’d wanted to check which unit was
near Glencorse Wood but he hadn’t anticipated what he now saw He stared at the
diagram … this
meant
something … and he couldn’t quite grasp it …
but his mind was leaping onward …