Field Service (12 page)

‘I was at Étaples soon after Guillemont,' Lucas said, watching the man go, picking up the thread of their conversation and keeping it on the same cold course.

‘
That
place,' Reid said.

‘I saw a boy walk into the sea there. In full uniform and with all his kit, his rifle in his hands. All too much for him.'

‘He drowned, you mean?'

Lucas nodded absently. ‘I sat and watched him at a distance. I shouted to him, to anyone who could hear me, but he just kept on walking until he went under the waves. They found him washed back up later the same day.'

‘There were forever stories of that place,' Reid said. ‘Most of the men I put out of the line on Excused Duties were sent there for a week or so. God knows why.'

‘Probably because it showed them there were worse places to be than the front itself.'

‘It's a possibility.'

Neither man believed this.

‘A good number of the men recruited into the Retrieval units came straight from the Excused Duty rosters at Étaples at the time of the Armistice,' Lucas said.

‘I was always glad to see the back of them,' Reid said. ‘Did you know the circumstances of the boy who drowned?'

‘Not really. Only that he was young, and that that place was all he'd ever known of the war. Apparently, he'd arrived from Dover less than a fortnight earlier.' Lucas leaned forward and sat with his elbows on his knees, his head down. He looked at his bare feet. ‘My heels are cracked,' he said, and then laughed. ‘From standing in water. I've been given some ointment by the MO. He told me I should get fresh air to them as often as possible. I did try explaining to him how difficult that might be.'

A moment later, they heard the clanging of points being switched and turned to watch the Paris-bound engine moving slowly and laboriously towards them, spurting smoke and steam as it came, scraping and grinding, and then letting out a long, exhausted wheeze as it finally stopped alongside them.

The station master reappeared and spoke to the driver. He beckoned to Lucas and Reid and indicated for them to climb up on to the driving platform. The engine pulled no carriages and so they would return to Albert alongside the driver.

‘We could stay on the thing all the way to Paris,' Lucas said, leaning out of the cab to look along the tracks ahead of them.

‘We could,' Reid said, the words more mouthed than spoken.

Beneath them, the station master blew his whistle and waved a flag, and the engine pulled away from the platform as slowly and laboriously as it had arrived and resumed its broken journey.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
, Reid again waited with Lucas, this time at the Morlancourt station for Reid's daily train. Lucas had spent the night in the town and was now on his way to resume the retrieval of the bodies at Prezière.

The train was uncharacteristically late that day, and by twenty past seven had still not arrived. At Reid's urging, Benoît telephoned Saint-Quentin, only to be told that the engine had departed late – he was not told why – and that it was currently somewhere between La Boiselle and the halt at the old Gallaton junction. He conveyed all this to Reid, who in turn told Drake and the waiting men.

Lucas had been sent word the previous evening that Jessop would be arriving in Morlancourt to accompany him to Prezière with the intention of reporting directly to Wheeler on the work there. When Lucas had attempted to raise the subject at the previous day's meeting, Wheeler had refused to include it on the agenda. Lucas had screwed up the note telling him of Jessop's arrival and had thrown it into the gutter where he and Reid were sitting outside a bar.

‘Perhaps
everything
sounds better to Wheeler coming from one of his own,' Reid said to him now. He stood at the edge of the platform and looked along the line towards the distant signal box.

Lucas sat with his head down. Reid guessed he was nursing a hangover, and that this coloured the resentment he felt at Wheeler's behaviour.

It was the first time in three months that the train had not arrived on time, and whatever the reason for the delay, Reid knew that the whole of his schedule for the day ahead would be disrupted.

‘Sit down,' Lucas said to him angrily. ‘You'd have been told if there was anything seriously wrong.'

Reid doubted this, but said nothing.

‘Perhaps it's late because Jessop wants a leisurely breakfast,' Lucas said.

It was an apology of sorts.

Further along the platform, Benoît emerged from his office and came to them.

‘The train is still beyond Gallaton. I spoke to the signalman there. Ernaux told him that there had been a delay in the loading, something unexpected. If they're beyond the signal, then they'll be here in' – he looked at his watch and pursed his lips in calculation – ‘fifteen minutes.'

‘Good-oh,' Lucas said, settling himself back against the cool wall, stretching his legs, closing his eyes and folding his arms across his chest.

‘Yes, “Good-oh”,' Benoît said, amused by Lucas's response.

‘And Ernaux said nothing else about the delay?' Reid asked him.

But Benoît just shrugged. It would have been impossible for him to have contacted the train itself at one of its manned halts and to have spoken to the guard directly.

‘You heard the man,' Lucas said. ‘Fifteen minutes. You can stand down, the bloody show's been delayed.'

Reid smiled at the remark and went to join him in the shade of the station canopy.

Benoît returned to his office, promising to let Reid know if he heard anything more.

‘I heard about the boy,' Lucas said. ‘Your little funeral service.'

‘It was Drake, mostly,' Reid said.

‘The man who told me has got two brothers soon to be buried over at the Suzanne Number Three. He said he wanted to imagine the same kind of thing being done for them there. He's a good man. Every leave I give him, he goes straight to the cemetery to see where they'll be. He's the last of the family. He's talking about staying over here when his time's up.'

It sometimes seemed to Reid as though all these stories were like small white clouds floating and slowly evaporating across a vast warm blue sky.

‘I wonder what Jessop really wants,' Lucas said, his eyes still closed.

‘To be told that you've retrieved the bodies, identified them, and that they can now be safely registered for burial, I should imagine,' Reid said.

‘Another happy ending, then.'

Before Reid could respond to this, he was distracted by someone calling his name, and both men looked along the platform to see Jonathan Guthrie coming towards them.

‘That's all we need,' Lucas said. He pulled his cap low over his brow and pretended to be asleep.

Guthrie arrived in front of them. ‘No train?' he said.

Reid told him of the delay.

Lucas gave a snore and pretended to wake up. ‘Oh, it's you, Guthrie. And I was having such a wonderful dream.'

Guthrie looked at him suspiciously for a moment, and when he turned back to Reid, Reid avoided his eyes.

‘Oh? A dream about what?'

‘I was back at home, with my wife and daughter, in the garden. It was warm, like today, and we were in the shade, just like here, and my wife was laying out food and drink, and my daughter was climbing on me, insisting that I play with her. I doubt I could ever imagine being happier.'

Reid considered how this contrasted with what Lucas had told him the previous day.

‘Then it was a good dream, indeed,' Guthrie said, still with a note of suspicion in his voice, as though suspecting Lucas were about to play a joke on him. ‘I envy you, Lieutenant Lucas. I truly do. As, I imagine, do many others.'

Lucas, unprepared for the remark, could not answer him, caught in his own small deception. He rubbed a hand over his closed eyes.

‘How long now until you return to them?' Guthrie asked him.

‘My service commission's up in eight months, next spring.'

Reid again sensed his friend's reluctance to say more on the matter.

‘And then what?' Guthrie said. ‘I mean, what will you return to, your profession?'

‘I was an architect,' Lucas said. ‘Recently qualified. I was what's called a late starter.'

‘I see.' Guthrie turned to Reid. ‘The train – will the delay affect your work?' he said.

‘I daresay. Perhaps I'll get Drake to crack the whip a little harder.'

Only Lucas laughed at the remark.

Guthrie stood apart from them. ‘I saw Caroline Mortimer yesterday evening,' he said. ‘She was with the unfortunate girl. She told me what happened, what you did. The girl herself showed me the cap badge and the flowers she had been given.' Everything he said betrayed his anger at what had happened in his absence, at his exclusion.

‘And?' Lucas said to him.

‘I merely wish Captain Reid here had seen fit to include
me
in the whole affair, that I had perhaps been given some advance notice of what he was about to undertake – without authority, I might add.'

‘There was no time,' Reid said. ‘I only learned of the man's arrival an hour before he came.'

‘Nevertheless, I might still have been informed. Proceedings might have been delayed. Surely I might have contributed something in my capacity as—'

‘Your capacity as what?' Lucas said.

Guthrie stiffened. ‘In my capacity, Lieutenant Lucas, as a Man of God. I would have thought that much at least was obvious, even to you.'

‘
Even
to me?' Lucas said. ‘Of course. And I don't suppose it ever occurred to you for a single instant that whatever you might have added to the proceedings, Man-of-God Guthrie, would have been precisely what no one else there wanted.'

‘I don't think—' Reid began to say, before being cut off by Guthrie.

‘Why, Lieutenant Lucas? Because once again – and by no one's consent except your own –
you
, and you alone, know what is best for everyone concerned? You, and you alone, know best what everyone else
needs
at times like this?'

‘It was all something of a makeshift event,' Reid said as Guthrie drew breath. ‘
Nothing
was planned.
No one
knew what was needed, or even what the outcome of the thing was likely to be. I had no idea that Drake and the men would do what they did. They did it for the girl, Mary, not because … because … The truth is, it was done out of
need
, out of simple, straightforward need, and out of common decency and humanity. It was done for her, that's all.' He stopped abruptly, conscious that he had been shouting.

Further along the platform, several men came out of the goods shed to see what was happening.

‘Of course,' Guthrie said eventually. ‘My apologies. Perhaps you misunderstand me, Captain Reid. I simply—'

‘What did she say to you?' Lucas said to Guthrie.

‘Sorry?'

‘The unfortunate girl – Mary Ellsworth – what did she say to you when you saw her with Caroline Mortimer?'

‘I don't … I mean, she was clearly overcome by the occasion. She said very little. As you might imagine, the conversation was mostly between Caroline and myself.'

‘I'll bet it was,' Lucas said. ‘And so all this self-righteous indignation today is on your own account and not hers?'

‘This is intolerable,' Guthrie said, looking to Reid for his support.

‘No, it isn't,' Lucas said. ‘I'll ask you again – what did Mary say to you?'

Guthrie remained silent for a moment. ‘She told me she was grateful for everything Captain Reid and his sergeant had done for her. She's little more than a grieving child. Of course she was grateful.'

‘Now she's a child,' Lucas said to Reid. ‘He'll be telling us next she doesn't know her own mind.'

‘I'll say no such thing,' Guthrie said. He turned his back on the two men and walked away from them towards Benoît's office, where he stopped and looked along the tracks.

Reid waited until Lucas looked at him and then he shook his head. ‘Stop pushing him,' he said.

And then, before either of them could speak again, Lucas's arm started to shake. With his other hand, he reached up and pulled Reid closer to him so that he was hidden from Guthrie, who continued looking in the other direction. Then he clasped his shaking arm and held it tight at the elbow.

‘Talk,' he said to Reid, his voice betraying a slight stammer. ‘Just talk.'

And so Reid resumed talking to him, his voice low, telling him of the problems the delayed train was likely to cause him. And then, when he could think of nothing else to say on the subject, he warned Lucas of the problems
he
was creating by his continued hostility towards men like Guthrie, Jessop and Wheeler, and the likely consequences of this. And as he spoke, he saw that Lucas's trembling arm slowly became still and that he was finally able to release it.

‘Finished?' Lucas said, smiling.

‘Forget I said it,' Reid said. He motioned to Lucas's arm, and in response, Lucas raised and then swung it.

‘The MO says it's nothing. Apparently, time is a great healer.'

‘It's been—'

‘I know,' Lucas said. He took out a cigarette and lit it, holding it up for Reid to see. ‘See?' The rising smoke wavered only slightly in the still air.

Along the platform, Guthrie turned and came back to them.

‘The train's coming,' he said. He pointed to the distant thin plume of steam. ‘Edmund sent word to me that there would be some Surreys on board.'

‘Is that why you're here?' Reid asked him.

‘It is.' Guthrie unfastened his pocket and took out a Bible, from which hung a slender scarlet ribbon.

‘Do you want to say something before we unload them?'

Guthrie looked around them. ‘Perhaps in the shed,' he said.