A Whispered Name (40 page)

Anselm
and the Prior followed the banks of the Lark where it ran between the Old Abbey
walls and the orchard in St Leonard’s Field. Larkwood’s flock searched the
grass for windfalls, several raising their heads to contemplate what may be a
mystery for the thinking sheep: their masters were dressed remarkably like
themselves: a bulk of white with some black bits here and there.

‘Given
what you witnessed in the cemetery,’ the Prior said, ‘and given what Kate
Seymour revealed to you, John Lindsay is not in fact a man at peace with his
past. It’s an awful thought.’ Anselm, but has he punished himself continuously
since nineteen seventeen … for the death of Joseph Flanagan?’

It was
possible.

Anselm
had met this kind of self-hatred before and it was unforgettable. No doubt the
Prior had, too. People can harm themselves and all who approach them because
they won’t or can’t allow themselves to hear a message that places love over
the law which condemned them. It’s a kind of integrity that ultimately saps
away their life. Mr Lindsay exemplified something so very human and so very
tragic: the greater one’s sense of guilt, the harder it is to forgive oneself,
to live completely freed from past debts.

The
Lark raced between its failing banks. Anselm stopped to check the shoring with
his foot, nudging the rotting timber, and remembering Mr Shaw He had not
closed his eye to what he had done, and yet … the names scratched on his
sticks revealed the nature of the pilgrim: he was a man who had loved much, and
was much loved. Where did Lindsay stand between these extremes of visionary
peace and blind torment?

‘What
now?’ asked Anselm. ‘How do we find Mr Lindsay? The café must have changed
hands years back.’

Interesting
as Martin’s discovery might be, 1923 was a long time ago. France was a big
place: if John Lindsay had stayed there, he’d probably moved. Few people stay
in the same spot for decades. And he could easily have come back to England any
time after 1945.

‘Call
Les Ramiers.’

‘Why?’
Anselm couldn’t see the point. And he couldn’t imagine what he’d say.

‘It is
a silent presence in this entire affair,’ replied the Prior. ‘No reference is
made to the community in any of the papers you obtained. And yet, this is the
monastery to which Herbert returned after the war, and he never left it, save
to come here. Mr Shaw was driven past its spire on his way to the barn. The
execution site is only a mile from its walls. I simply don’t believe that John
Lindsay — this strangely reformed payer of past debts — could live nearby and
never come to the place where Joseph Flanagan was executed. And if he did go
there … well, maybe those walls of ours provided a refuge from things no man
can understand. Isn’t that what a monastery is for?’

Anselm made the call after
lunch. He wasn’t quite sure how to frame the question without sounding foolish.
When Père Sébastien, the Prior of Les Ramiers, came to the phone, Anselm said
the bare minimum, which was all that was necessary.

The
Prior had been right again; and this time for all the right reasons.

Chapter Fifty-One

In Memoriam

1

Herbert did, of course,
march up the misty road that vanished into the air, but he did not die — not in
the following days, during the attack on the Menin Road (though Joyce did), nor
in the following month (early October) when the 8th supported the Anzacs at
Broodseinde —when Elliot said, ‘Excuse me, Sir,’ extinguished a cigarette on
his boot and shot himself in the head. It was the dreadful fulfilment of a
promise made long ago, when he’d stood in front of a flare gun.

No one
on the ground knew the full cost but most of the Gheluvelt Plateau was
eventually secured. All they had to do was press on. German morale had to
collapse. It was a matter of certainty. That was the word from Intelligence. So
the 8th, like the rest, kept the faith. And still Herbert did not die, not even
in late October during the hail of rain and metal, when his Company drowned in
shell holes that filled with water as they were made, or were shot in the mud
like Quarters.’ or were simply blown off the earth, like Stan Gibbons, ‘Pickles’
Pickering.’ Tommy Nugent and ‘Chips’ Hudson. Herbert lived, though his pistol
and rifle were jammed with mud, though his ammunition was covered in slime. He
crawled into battle.’ up to his elbows in a kind of putty that clung to his
skin and clothing. He lived, though strafed, and pounded by rain and debris; he
kept moving forward, his hands finding a shattered root, a house brick, or the
soft corruption of the dead.

The
Canadians took Passchendaele in November. That was where the blood-letting
slowed to a drip. When Duggie took the battalion out of the line, it was down
to half its strength. At the command level, all the new OC Companies who’d come
to Oostbeke were dead. By a hideous irony there was no one left to punish for
the refusal to organise Flanagan’s execution. Except for Duggie. The whole
debacle hardly seemed important now Chamberlayne paid a visit to the rest camp.
He didn’t have any jokes left. He said that, according to one report, there was
no chance of holding the Passchendaele Ridge if there was an organised
counter-attack. Apparently ninety thousand men had simply disappeared — no
bodies, no tags, nothing. Altogether, casualties were over two hundred and
fifty thousand. ‘What now?’ asked Duggie. A new show, further south: an attack
at Cambrai. ‘Blimey it just goes on and on,’ said Duggie. And the dog? Not very
well. Keeps slobbering in public.

‘What’s
my replacement like?’ asked Chamberlayne with something like envy.

‘Dead.”
replied Duggie. ‘In life he was a stickler. When an enquiry came from London,
he told me you must have thrown half of Flanagan’s file in the bin. The
paperwork was a complete mess, he said. I didn’t believe him for one moment.’

Herbert lived through
another mess in the spring of 1918. A massive German offensive was launched
across a fifty-mile front. The expected but unthinkable decision was made:
Passchendaele was to be abandoned. So was Messines. And the Salient itself.
And so.’ in a daze of obedience, all the ground bought in blood between July
and November was ditched in three days. They fell right back to the canal this
side of Ypres. ‘“A coherent and defendable position,” ‘cited Chamberlayne on
another day out. He’d made notes while the strategists thrashed out a plan. ‘Why
didn’t we think of that?’ moaned Duggie. Of course, he wasn’t surprised at the
move. No one who knew Ypres was surprised. It was obvious: a Salient is
always
a death trap. As Chamberlayne mounted his horse, he confirmed a rumour
flying through the officers’ mess: this withdrawal to the canal had been first
suggested by a general way back in 1915.’ for all the same reasons, but no one
had listened … he’d got the sack. The Salient. God, what a place. What did we
defend it for? Almost everyone Herbert could remember lay buried out there.

The 8th
was topped up, as and when, with fresh faces. They held the new line with
distinction as Jerry made his last, violent roar. Herbert was mentioned in Despatches.
There was talk of an MC for some other act of soldiery but he didn’t get it. He
lived, right up to the armistice in November 1918 and the return of the
regiment to England, though Herbert missed the boat. And throughout, around his
neck, hung the identity tags of 6890 Owen Doyle.

2

Herbert’s failure to stay
with his unit constituted an act of desertion, but he was quite sure that
Duggie would not convene a Court of Inquiry or refer the matter to Evans, the
new Brigadier. (Pemberton had been killed by a burst of shrapnel at Polygon
Wood.) They said goodbye in Étaples, of all places. Herbert then retraced his
steps to Oostbeke where the Divisional Camp was being gradually dismantled.
The outline of the mock-battlefield where the Menin Road attack had been
rehearsed could still be made out. The coloured tape markers had been left
flapping on the ground. Herbert walked among them thinking, strangely of
Elliot, the one soldier who’d never forgiven him. The fields were terribly bare
and dry and a cold wind whistled through the hop frames. Looking around him,
Herbert began to weep with a quite awful sound like laughter. He could not
contain himself, The loneliness of the land was in his soul. His shoulders
heaved with an immeasurable sorrow and all the dead men he’d known seemed to
turn round in his memory and ask, ‘What’s up, Sir?’

Throughout
the unspeakable horrors of the Flanders campaign.’ Herbert’s attention had
frequently returned to a sound in his memory — the singing of the monks in a
language he could not understand. In the early evening, drawn by that
remembrance.’ Herbert knocked on the guesthouse door of Les Ramiers. He was
still dressed in his uniform and Doyle’s identity tags were still around his
neck. No one asked any questions, though he’d expected a fairly gentle interrogation
on his background and why he was still in Flanders. The Guestmaster, it
transpired, was a chatterbox on English Rugby League, with a particular
interest in the fortunes of the Wigan team. He led Herbert to a room
overlooking the road that ran towards the school. A note on the wall told
visitors that the maximum stay was a week. Seeing Herbert’s consternation, the
Guestmaster explained that everyone had a tendency to run away from things they
ought to face. The monastery, he promised, was not that kind of refuge. The
peace and quiet wore off after you’d lived with yourself for a while. And other
people, he added, darkly It was ultimately a school for prayer, he said. With
that thought, he withdrew Alone, Herbert sat at the window, his eyes on the low
bank of trees and the pink light in the greater distance. With a stab of
feeling like homesickness, he remembered gazing at the sea from his hotel room
in Boulogne.’ when he couldn’t write to Quarters’ mother, when he’d written
instead to Mrs Brewitt; that period of simple suffering — almost innocent it
seemed, now — before he’d been called back to sit on a court martial. ‘Third
officer required.’ As he’d stared at the sea then.’ Herbert now gazed upon the
woods beyond Oostbeke. Between those two obscene executions the whole world had
spun off its axis.

On the
sixth day, when ambling around the enclosure, Herbert saw a monk by a compost
heap. His head was almost perfectly round and with his thick round glasses he
seemed to be a phenomenon of where humanity met mathematics. He raked leaves
on to a pile and then prodded them with a long stick. There were no flames to
be seen, though smoke rose in sudden gusts. Herbert joined him and for a long
time they just watched the heat in the mulch. Though they did not speak, a kind
of mutual confidence grew between them, and Herbert said, with feeling.’ ‘Father,
what do you do here?’

The
monk gave the leaves a stir and they crackled quietly ‘We tend a fire that won’t
go out..’

They fell
silent again. The monk pushed his stick deep into the pile, letting the air in.
‘Captain, may I ask you a question?’

The
mention of his rank told Herbert that the community must have talked about him.
For a moment, he was unnerved. ‘Yes, of course.’

‘Are
you a tormented man?’ The gardener’s face was very still and all the rounder
for that.

‘I am.”
replied Herbert, bowed and broken.

‘Have
courage,’ he murmured. ‘Approach the darkness in your heart, a darkness that
needs more than enlightenment.’

Part of
Herbert’s consciousness, a remnant of who he once was, almost fainted at the
words. The impact of the whole war on him was summed up in that phrase. He’d
seen the annihilation of a civilisation. He’d lost faith in its past and its
future. He simply could not articulate the desolation he felt: there was no
possible connection between the world he’d known as a boy and the one he must
face as a man. He looked elsewhere now, hungry for something permanent; another
land whose sound he once heard behind a white door.

Before
leaving the next morning.’ Herbert went to the chapel where he’d once prayed
for Flanagan’s release; and where — to call a spade a spade — his prayer had
not been answered. He sat between the two statues, those guardians of the
sanctuary, and realised — well ahead of any informed intention or even the
evocation of a desire — that one day he would join these silent men.

3

While mulling over the
words of the gardener, Herbert taught English in a small school near
Poperinghe. The thought of travelling any great distance from Les Ramiers
destabilised him. He had become a loiterer, neither in the world nor of it.
But, inevitably letters from home urged Herbert’s return: his parents were
troubled at his self-imposed exile. And so in June 1919 Herbert crunched up the
gravel path to Whitelands. He paused to look over the treetops — for the house
was high on a bank — and he could see lush green fields dotted with sheep, and
the Coquet winding towards the purple moor-grass of the Cheviots. It was an
enchanting vista; but it was no longer home, if it ever had been.

Constance
and Ernest threw a party. Friends came from near and far, including Keswick. When
everyone had gathered in the dining room.’ Herbert’s mother handed him a gift:
a typed, bound volume of all the letters he’d sent home since 1915. Everybody
clapped while Herbert flicked through the pages: ‘The rations came up on
limbers       the wooden huts were stamped F. J. Lewis of Alnwick’; ‘No—man’s—land
is just covered with litter …’; ‘The Lambton Cup is ours!.’ Herbert’s eyes
blurred and he toasted dear, absent friends. He could find no other phrase.