Field Service (19 page)

It was a ridiculous and convoluted thing for the man to say, especially considering where they were and the day just past, but, as ever, Guthrie was pleased with himself and these unassailable confections.

The waiter returned with a new bottle, already opened, put it on the table and left before any of them could confront him further. Caroline called out her thanks to him as he disappeared back into the café's dark interior.

Where they sat, the evening sun fell on the wall above them, casting the crumbling brickwork and painted plaster into shadow. The empty building next to them had recently been flattened and the rubble piled in mounds across the empty site. Pieces of shattered furniture and doors and window frames stood waiting to be burned. The children of Morlancourt made this and other similar sites their playgrounds, and several – Reid couldn't tell whether they were boys or girls – ran back and forth across the broken ground. Benoît had told him that the lost building had been Morlancourt's last remaining boulangerie, and watching the running children now and listening to their cries, he found himself wondering what the place might have looked like all those years earlier, before the war had come and pressed its hand upon the place.

Guthrie sipped at the new wine and grimaced. ‘It's every bit as bad as before,' he said, drawing Reid from his brief reverie.

‘What did you expect?' Reid said to him, and he raised his own glass for Caroline to fill.

Then Guthrie rose from his seat. ‘I'm afraid I have to leave,' he said. ‘As you might imagine, I have a great deal to prepare if I am to be ready for Sunday.' It was only Wednesday.

‘Of course you do,' Reid said.

‘Of course,' Caroline repeated. She lifted her hand to the man, which Guthrie took and kissed.

The chaplain took a step away from them, then paused and turned.

‘Oh, I almost forgot to say, Captain Reid.'

‘Say what?'

‘Something else I discussed with Edmund and Captain Jessop yesterday evening.' Guthrie took an envelope from his pocket and laid it on the table in front of Reid. ‘It seems that you are to expect the man from Neuville on tomorrow's train. Chap called Etherington. I hope allowing your sergeant to be so gracious with his favours to the men won't cause you any problems in the matter.'

‘Drake was told there would be only supplies.'

‘I'm sure he was, but believe me, the man is definitely coming.'

More subterfuge?
Reid thought, but knew that to contest anything Guthrie now said would only give him further advantage.

‘Then I'm sure we'll be ready for him,' he said.

‘Even without your labourers?'

‘With them or without them.'

‘Then I shall—' Guthrie stopped abruptly.

‘What? Tell Wheeler?'

‘If you must know, it was Captain Jessop who asked me to let you know.'

‘He could have come himself,' Reid said.

‘I daresay the man has a hundred other, more pressing things to do.'

‘Of course,' Reid said. He rubbed at the earth caked in the hairs of his forearms. He suddenly felt as exhausted as Caroline said he looked.

‘I shall leave you,' Guthrie said, having completed the drama of his departure.

Just go
, Reid wanted to shout at the man.

When he was finally lost to their view, Reid picked up the envelope and opened it. He read it and laid it back down. Caroline gestured to it and he indicated for her to read its few details.

‘He was executed on General French's personal recommendation,' she said. ‘It seems a second charge of Dishonouring the King's Regulations was dropped for the sake of expediency. I don't even know what that means.'

‘Me neither,' Reid said.

‘But you know what they
say
it means?'

He nodded. ‘Besides, French was notorious for never considering appeals. Everyone out here knew that he had become a bloodthirsty embarrassment to the War Office. It was one of the reasons he was replaced by Haig.'

‘I had no idea,' Caroline said.

‘Of course you didn't.'

‘He was a volunteer, Etherington,' she said. ‘William. He'd been hospitalized on three separate occasions.'

‘What, really, does any of that matter?' Reid said.

She waited a moment. ‘At least now his family will have somewhere to come and to remember him,' she said.

‘And all the time they're grieving – all those years to the end of all those other lives – they'll know every detail of what put the man in his grave. It's likely that the men who were called upon to take part in his execution are now dead and mourned and grieved over themselves. Or, if they're not dead, then they're men living with what they did for every day of the rest of their own lives.' He stopped talking, aware that his voice was raised and that he was being watched by others at the tables.

Caroline folded the sheet of paper containing Etherington's details and put it back into its envelope.

Reid took it from her and slid it into his pocket.

‘Sorry,' he said.

‘Please, there's no need. I knew Guthrie had come for a reason. Alexander refused even to sit with him.
Will
you manage? With Etherington, I mean. Without your workers.'

‘With a solitary coffin?'

They sat in silence for a moment, Caroline continuing to pick at the bread, Reid considering the following day. The noise of the playing children grew briefly louder as they ran from the remains of the lost building out on to the empty street.

‘Did Alexander receive bad news?' Caroline said eventually.

‘His wife has been admitted to hospital with suspected scarlet fever. He's concerned for his daughter.'

‘I see,' she said, avoiding his eyes.

‘What is it?' he asked her.

‘Scarlet fever. It has a nasty habit of turning into rheumatic fever.'

‘Is it …?'

‘Sometimes.'

Neither of them spoke for a moment.

Finally, Caroline said, ‘Last winter, I worked at Le Havre. There was an outbreak of influenza. A local man stood at the hospital entrance selling canvas pomanders filled with lavender and spices.'

‘I imagine they were as effective as anything else,' Reid said. ‘Or certainly no worse.' He realized only then how critical this sounded.

‘
Better
in some instances,' Caroline said. ‘Or at least the outcome was pretty much the same.'

‘At Béthune, in the middle of winter, I saw men scoop up wet stable manure to use as poultices to protect against frostbite.'

She poured the last of the second bottle into their glasses.

‘Should it really be this sour?' she asked him.

‘Perhaps we should have asked Guthrie to perform another of his miracles for us.'

‘Cheers,' she said, pulling a face the instant the glass touched her lips.

THE NEXT MORNING
Reid arrived at the station to see both Caroline and Lucas sitting together on the sunlit platform. He had gone there earlier than usual in the hope of getting some assistance from Benoît in unloading what little was due to arrive.

Upon seeing Reid, Benoît came out of his office and walked with him to where Caroline and Lucas sat talking.

As the two men passed the open doorway of the goods depot, Reid looked inside and was surprised to see Drake and a dozen of his workers also waiting there.

Drake came out to him.

‘We heard,' he said simply. ‘The bloke from Neuville.'

‘How?'

Drake smiled at the question. ‘We live in a barracks,' he said. He motioned to the men starting to congregate around him. ‘More of them volunteered, but I said we'd only need the dozen.' He nodded his greeting to Benoît.

‘I see.'

‘There were one or two who objected, but not
that
many, not considering.'

‘Of course,' Reid said. He thanked the gathering men.

‘We'll wait on your word,' Drake said.

‘They are all soldiers,' Benoît said to Reid as the two of them returned to the platform. ‘It's natural.'

‘I know that,' Reid said.

‘I called on a couple of my neighbours, but then sent them away when your men arrived.'

‘You knew, too? About the body, I mean?'

Benoît nodded. ‘Our own generals …' he said and then fell silent.

They arrived beside Caroline and Lucas.

‘It seems the world and his dog already know,' Lucas said.

‘So I see. I still wish Wheeler had seen fit to deliver the man as part of a normal consignment instead of all this.'

Caroline rose, put her arm through Benoît's and drew him with her further along the platform in the direction of the coming train. She talked with him of his work and then stood with him beyond the shade of the buildings in the full glare of the rising sun.

‘Have you heard any more?' Reid asked Lucas. ‘From home, I mean.'

Lucas sat with his feet apart, his hands on his knees. ‘Since yesterday? No. How did the work go?'

‘All done. I left a few spaces in case any more turn up.'

‘Unlikely,' Lucas said. ‘Besides, according to Jessop, there's soon to be a change in policy and men are going to be buried wherever there's room, closest to where they're found. I suppose it makes sense.'

‘It makes
his
kind of sense, you mean. Jessop's. Ours
still
not to reason why, eh?'

It was clear from Lucas's lack of enthusiasm, and from the lack of his usual resistance to Wheeler and Jessop's ill-considered decisions, that his thoughts remained elsewhere, and so Reid stopped talking.

It was his intention, if the waiting men agreed, to take more of the engraved headstones out to the cemetery. He was keen now, especially knowing what Wheeler planned for the place regarding the arrival of the nurses and the gathering newspapermen, to replace as many of the temporary markers as possible with the stones to suggest a greater degree of completion and permanency. The stones for the men from Prezière would not arrive for some time, but there were sufficient others already stacked and waiting at the station for a considerable difference to be made to the appearance of the cemetery.

Left to his own devices and schedules, he would have preferred to have waited until all the burials were completed before planting the stones, but he understood that other considerations now held sway. Besides, perhaps Lucas was right – perhaps the time had come to stop fighting Wheeler and to finish the work and then simply leave.

It had been Commission policy until now to salvage all the temporary grave markers and then, upon a small payment, to deliver these to the families of the dead.

As far as possible, photographs had been taken of all the known graves, and these too had been sent, also for a small charge, to the next-of-kin. The practice had been stopped only when greater and greater numbers of grieving relatives expressed the desire to visit the actual graves.

In the months immediately after the Armistice there had been a great demand for the replaced grave markers, and they had been retrieved, dismantled, sent, reassembled and then replanted back at home. Sometimes this had taken place in local churchyards with small ceremonies attached, but more often than not the crosses – most little more than two simple pieces of crate-wood with a name and number roughly scraped or scorched into them – had been erected in family gardens and allotments, and on farmland and village greens.

There were still those in the War Office who believed that ‘home soil' cemeteries and a national memorial ground would have been the better option from the very start of the retrieval and burial work.

On one occasion, early in their meetings, Wheeler had declared his support for the plan for a separate cemetery for the three hundred executed men. Afterwards, when the plan was vetoed by Parliament, Wheeler had continued to insist that it was how many in the Army Graves Service had felt at the time.

Lucas nodded towards Caroline and Benoît.

‘He's been here since before six. He and his wife went to their son's grave before he came to work.'

‘Because of what's happening today?'

‘Perhaps. They go together three or four times a week, although I imagine his wife goes every day and keeps it to herself. He was telling me that she still cries every time she sees the stone.'

‘He was their only child,' Reid said.

‘I know. He told me she argues with him. She wants to know why he isn't grieving for the boy as painfully as she is. She accuses him of being unfeeling.'

Reid looked at the man. ‘She's wrong,' he said.

Caroline was still holding Benoît's arm, pointing something out to him on the far side of the tracks.

‘He thinks that when the cemetery's finished there'll be no more use for the station and the government will close it,' Lucas said. ‘Have
you
heard anything?'

Reid shook his head. ‘Only the same rumours. It's just as likely that they'll keep it open and running for the visitors who'll come.'

After that, neither man spoke.

Close to seven, the whistle of the approaching engine sounded, and both men turned to see the plume of smoke rising above the flatness.

Caroline and Benoît came back to them.

‘I make it ten seconds late,' Reid said, causing Benoît to smile and shake his head.

‘Would you prefer me to leave?' Caroline asked Reid. She motioned to Drake and the others, who were emerging from the depot and forming themselves into a line between the doorway and the platform's edge. She reached beneath the bench and picked up a small bunch of wild flowers from the shade there. ‘I thought …'

‘Please, stay,' Reid told her, aware what her presence would add to the occasion, surrounded by all these men.

The train appeared, slowed and drew to a halt.