The Gates of Rutherford (10 page)

“And where is he?”

“I don't know, sir.”

“In the July attack last year on the Somme, was he?”

“Yes, sir. Both of them. Side by side. First of July.”

“Bloody business. Survive?”

“Yes, sir. He did. His brother didn't.”

The officer held the reins of his mount slackly over one arm as he swept the land ahead with his field glasses. Jack looked the horse over. A wonderful animal, a glowing chestnut, seventeen hands, heavy in the body. Not exactly a hunter. But that was a good thing. People had sent over their finest horses in the first weeks of the war, and most of the highly strung horses had to be shot when they got to the front lines. They literally went off their heads, rearing up and screaming. They had voices like wailing children.

When he had first come down to the front, Jack had seen a major pull in a wild-eyed stallion. The officer had run out onto a track and managed to get hold of the reins. The horse was riderless and spattered with blood. The major had tightened the rein, put his face close to its mouth, stroked its nose, and talked to it. The horse had quieted, though it had still rolled its eyes in terror, foaming at the mouth, chewing at the bit. It was shaking like a tree in a storm, completely insane. The major inspected its legs, torn by shrapnel, and shook his head. He asked for a Greener's—the cattle killer that delivered an explosive charge and put an animal out of its misery immediately—but there was not one to be had. Jack had started to run back to find one, but, looking over his shoulder suddenly, he saw the major take his own pistol from his belt, put the muzzle between the stallion's eyes, and pull the trigger. A horse like that—driven crazy, too finely bred, nerves shattered—did more harm than good.

Jack had not always been close to the fighting. His first job had been at a veterinary hospital near the Channel. He had thought then that he would never see the war, only the results of it. It was a well-run place, something he had not really anticipated. He had supposed that he would be made to go straight to the battles, but—at first at least—it wasn't so. The AVC officer that he was first with blessed the “Butterfly Drives” at home—fairs and fetes and suchlike that raised money. It had helped them equip the hospital better. Jack had watched as bullets were extracted from a grey mare, and helped to bed her down afterwards. “Search the straw,” the officer had told him. “We find nails and all sorts. Bits of caltrops, the spikes they put down in the roads. Bits of cooking utensils, fences. It all gets in the feed. So go through it with a fine-tooth comb.”

He had done so, finding nothing, but standing with the dazed mare until she took some food.

The officer had come back. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Seeing to the mare, sir.”

“God in heaven, man! You can't nurse them. Get on to the next one.” Seeing Jack's face, he had lowered his voice. “Not like home, Armitage. It's not like home, you understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“We've had fifteen thousand horses and mules through here just this year, in just this station. So get a hurry on. Don't dawdle with any one of them.”

Jack had glanced back at the mare as he left, thinking of Wenceslas; the great Shire's doelike eyes, the curve of the huge neck under a collar at harvest time. The way that the horse had trod patiently and slowly, in a dreamlike fashion, never to be hurried. He tried to imagine Wenceslas here; it was said that something that size would have been taken to pull artillery guns. He'd felt his stomach turn over, and that was before he'd even heard a gun firing himself. Not
up close. Not in the thick of it, where fire rained down and the earth and sky changed places.

He'd seen all sorts in those first few weeks. A good strong thoroughbred that kept lying down as they tried to get it off the transport. Every now and again, while down, it tried to gnaw at its flank. Colic. That twisted gut that was hard to heal, even in England. He'd seen saddle sores, neck wounds, broken bones, and eviscerated animals who docilely stood in line, turning their heads to Jack with weary and defeated expressions. They'd done their best, followed men wherever they went. Never understanding why. That was the thing that made Jack's blood boil.
He
knew why. His officers knew why. Everybody knew why except the horses, poor obedient creatures.

Bloody war, bloody war.

He said that under his breath a hundred times a day.

•   •   •

T
he officer lowered his field glasses. “Snow coming.”

“Looks like it, sir.”

The man sighed. “The Northamptonshire Yeomanry are waiting west of Arras,” he said. “They're backing up infantry VI corps. Essex Yeomanry are ready, too.” He handed his glasses to Jack. “Have a look.”

Surprised—he had never been given field glasses before—Jack took them gingerly.

“Artillery positions in the village,” the captain said. “The sixth and eighth cavalry are conforming to the advance of the third dragoon guards.”

Jack had been able to see very little. He handed the glasses back. “Cavalry and infantry,” he said.

The captain held his gaze. “Cavalry and infantry, to take out the artillery. To take the village. You understand, Jack?”

What was there to understand? What was there to say? He didn't know why his officer would bother to share the information with him. It wasn't his business. They were sending horses into shellfire. What does a man possibly say to that?

The captain stamped the cold from his feet. His horse transferred its weight, and ducked its head. Its warm breath floated in clouds around them.

•   •   •

A
t eight thirty a.m., the Essex Yeomanry and a squadron of the tenth Hussars passed within a few hundred yards of them, advancing down the slope. At the bottom, Captain Porter had said, was the Highland Light Infantry.

Men from the North Country, men out of mountain country. Jack imagined them down there, in the lull of the snowstorm, turning to see the horses come down the slope that Captain Porter had said was called Orange Hill. It must have been a magnificent, stirring sight.

The cavalry moved in extended order, line upon line of mounted men over the whole hillside. It was a rare moment: Jack's breath caught in his throat. His instinct was to look away, but he followed the lines of horses galloping at breakneck speed. They flung themselves out, racing charcoal lines against the snow, a flying and shifting series of patterns against the white and sepia of the hillside.

There were trenches down there, but crossings had been put down at intervals. The horses took them at speed. Speed, speed. That was why they were wanted. The infantry and artillery were making ground, but the cavalry were thrown like bolts into the furor to forge a quicker passage. Arrows of human and animal flesh and blood to thrust through the defenses. A wild idea, a kind of madness to top all other insanities.

Down the slope, Jack could hear distant cheering from the Highlanders. It was soon obliterated by shellfire and machine gun. Straining to watch, to focus, Jack saw riders falling and their mounts running on into the blasts. The lines and the pictures began to break up, horses suddenly buckling and running head first into the ground, men tossed out of their saddles and dragged under them.

Captain Porter turned away, fretting, cursing. Impotent up there on the top of the hill. A shell burst just below them, sending up a shower of stone and earth. Porter gave Jack the glasses back. “Bastards, bastards,” he muttered.

Jack swept the hillside where the cavalry had gone. As he trained the sights, he inadvertently bit his tongue and drew blood, such was the shock of what he could see. A horse, a small horse, was running about in circles, careering over wounded animal and man alike. On its back was a pack saddle, the kind used to carry machine-gun ammunition. As Jack watched, it was raked by gunfire and ran for a while at a curious and sickening angle, dragging its rear until it labored to a halt, front legs propping its body for a moment until it collapsed.

Jack drew the glasses down. There was a lot of noise behind him. They were bringing up reserves for the artillery. Below them, the Highlanders went forward over the top of the trenches towards Monchy. The village looked red in the snow, a scattering of houses and walls. From the center, the German guns fired ceaselessly. Jack heard a bugle sounding down there, the call of the cavalry. Regrouping, or trying to. They were still going forward.

For a village, Jack thought. For a piece of ground. Over the dead and wounded. He had been held in reserve like this scores of times, but this time there were no horses to tend. They were all down there in this morning's version of hell. Captain Porter ran back, and Jack ran after him, feeling the icy windblast in his face. On the very lip of
the slope, close to where they had just been standing, a shell bloomed like a black and grey flower, the appearance coming before the sound of the blast. It nearly knocked him off his feet. They ran back through communication lines to wagons loaded with supplies. Porter began checking, rechecking, cursing all the while. He was not a cool man. He was not a calm man. Jack thought him human because of that. He saw in the captain's face what he felt himself: rage and impotence.

But let that go. Let it go you must. Otherwise the anger got the better of you. It distracted you, took the strength out of your legs. You would feel your balance go, your legs begin to buckle, just because your body refused to absorb any more. It could abandon itself under you, become a foreign object that didn't obey your brain.

That had happened to him in the first weeks he was out here. There had been a canal boat loaded with wounded going up the Somme. Seeing them, Jack had felt his stomach turn to water. He had turned away and vomited, and soiled himself like a child. “Never let that happen again,” an officer had told him. He remembered, and obeyed. Always, always after that. Remembered that it was his job to stand up and do what he was told, and do it quickly.

And not think.

And not think.

Captain Porter looked at him now, wiping sweat from his face. “Going down now,” he told Jack. “Get ready. D'you hear me?”

•   •   •

I
n Rutherford, the day was almost silent.

Jenny and Mary left the kitchen at eight o'clock, and walked out into the drizzling rain, mackintoshes wrapped around them that had been borrowed from Mr. Bradfield's store. “They're used at the shoots, so I don't want to hear any complaints about the smell,” had been his peremptory instruction. “They'll keep you dry.”

They had thanked him. Behind his frigid exterior, he had a heart after all. But they knew better than to indulge in any conversation.

Miss Dodd had looked them over just before they went out. “Getting soft in his old age,” she whispered to herself. “Never heard of back in the day. Once, he wouldn't have even noticed you.”

“I suppose he hasn't got that many of us to notice anymore,” Mary pointed out.

“That'll change when the war's over,” Miss Dodd replied briskly. “All this is temporary. Remember that, and don't get above your station. If you start being familiar, they'll soon get rid of you no matter how long you've been here.”

Mary doubted that, but she said nothing. There were no staff to be had in any of the surrounding villages. Girls didn't go into service so much anymore. There was better money to be in the mills, or in the munitions factories over in Leeds and Bradford and Liverpool, even if it was deadly work. She said as much to Jenny as they walked along the footpath down to the tenant farm.

“It's good you aren't a munitionette,” Jenny told her. “Else you'd have a canary baby.”

“A what?”

“Canary baby. The babies from munitions girls come out yellow.”

“Get away with you.”

“They do. Real bright yellow.”

“That's jaundice, then.”

“It's something in the explosives.”

“What, that goes into their bodies?”

“And comes out in the babies.”

“Bloody hell,” Mary muttered. “Best not think about it, lass. I won't.”

They walked briskly, or as briskly as Mary was able. It was a very
pretty path down to the farm, crossing the river at the footbridge near the parkland gates. The farm was in the opposite direction to the village, and they turned along the lane. Last autumn, a new surface had been put down, a tarmacadam, obliterating the old dusty track that had wound this way among high hedges. The land rose a little, and, looking back, they could see the village in a dip in the land, and the chimneys and roof of Rutherford just visible above the beech trees on the drive.

Mary caught Jenny's arm. “Stop a minute,” she said. “Catch my breath.” She propped herself against the dry stone wall, gazing upwards at the scudding clouds in the sky. The two girls listened to the sparrows quarreling in the hedges and the grass of the fields, and in the drooping, rain-sodden cow parsley. “I wonder what David's doing now,” Mary murmured.

“He's not in that place anymore?”

“Thiepval? No.”

“Did he send you any poems this time?”

“He's sent none since the Ancre last autumn.”

“He'd like to be here, I bet.”

“That he would.”

Mary looked away, over the fields. Half of her wanted to know every detail of David's life in France. Half of her wanted to know none at all. He was such a softhearted man, and his first letters had been one of the reasons that she finally fell in love with him. But the war had changed him. He didn't talk about it. And as far as she knew he didn't write about it.

She could still remember him stealing the books of poetry from the library; finding him there one day, tucked in a chair, a volume of Keats in his lap. How guilty he had looked when she had come into the room, as if he was wolfing down the master's brandy, or
pocketing the silver! All that blushing over a book of poems. He was so slight, so narrow-shouldered: you wouldn't have thought that he could have ever made a soldier.