The Horizon (1993) (33 page)

He thought of the R.E. major who was no doubt watching his handiwork. In mufti he would look more like a prosperous farmer than an explosives expert.

Payne murmured, ‘God Almighty, something worked for once.’

Jonathan glanced at the paling sky. No sun today, it was far too cloudy. It would be wrong to have sunshine. That belonged elsewhere, away from fear; away from death.

He said, ‘Tell Major Vaughan to be ready to move to the first support line. Any minute, I shouldn’t wonder!’

Two more huge mines hurled tons of earth into the air. One appeared to explode immediately behind their front line. The R.E.’s must have been working like moles to get so close, for both sides maintained listening posts for something like this. Some puny sunlight broke through the motionless clouds, but no man’s land remained in smoking shadows, as if the earth itself was ablaze.

There was a momentary lull, and above the far-off artillery fire he heard the sudden shrill of whistles. Six miles of whistles, the scene the same in every trench. He could see it clearly enough: he had been there. The soldiers dragging themselves up from the firesteps and onto the parapet, staggering like old men under their weight of gear and weapons, led and urged on by their officers. A whole division in this sector alone. Very faintly, before the machine-guns took up the challenge, he heard them cheering, wildly, hopelessly, as the well-sited guns found the prongs of the attack and cut into it like a steel wire.

‘Shall I tell the major, sir?’ Wyke sounded breathless,
as if he had been running instead of crouching over the field telephone in its webbing case.

‘Not yet.’ He lifted his glasses and tried not to swallow as a mass of running infantry was caught in cross-fire from below the ridge. Men were falling like slaughtered animals; others pressing on from behind seemed unable to climb over the piles of dead and wounded alike, and they too were seen to fall. A handful of men, almost hidden in smoke, had somehow got through. Jonathan saw their arms jerk like puppets and then they threw themselves down by some tangled wire as their grenades exploded. One of the machine-guns had been knocked out, and like a surging wave another mass of infantry charged through the gap. He was losing the picture as the lines of khaki figures vanished into the smoke, but not before he had seen many others fall, and the bayonets cut down any foolish enough to plead for mercy or surrender.

More whistles, and the artillery was firing again to cover the leading infantry when they reached the breached line. Then more grenades, the handy little Mills bombs that could wipe out anyone left alive in a ruined trench, or be tossed into smoking dugouts to silence any survivor.

The next line of men was climbing onto the parapet, and whistles from the Anzac sector sent more reinforcements into the attack.

Jonathan said evenly, ‘Tell him now, Christopher. Get them moving.’ He had to repeat it for Wyke to hear above the clamour of weapons and grenades. Amidst the carnage and thickening smoke he saw some of the
wounded trying to crawl to safety. One, all alone, was on his hands and knees creeping in a circle, unable to see.

Jonathan could hear Wyke’s voice on his handset, cracking with excitement and perhaps relief.

‘Yes, sir! That’s right, sir! They’re through!
The enemy’s falling back!
’

Patches of red and white flitted through the corpses and destruction: medical corps stretcher-bearers with their familiar armbands. The crawling man tried to turn round as the stretcher-bearers lurched and ducked towards him. Jonathan made himself watch, as he had at the peninsula; he must forget nothing. The man had no face.

Tap-tap-tap
. Such an inoffensive sound above the smoke, beyond the reach of their desperate, struggling figures. Two young men in a private dog-fight. What could they know of this horror?

‘Come on there! Tell off by platoons! Move yer bloody selves!’ Sergeant-Major McCann, concerned as always that his marines would not let him down in the eyes of mere soldiers.

They were slowing down in the cratered waste of no man’s land. Sappers and machine-guns were moving up to the captured trench before the enemy counter-attacked. It would be a long day. Then night would hide it all again, when only the teeming horde of rats would appear to profit from it.

Major Vaughan clumped into the observation post, sweating fiercely. ‘All in position, Colonel.’ He banged his hands together as if it were cold. ‘What a show, eh?’

‘We should be quiet for a bit, Ralph.’ He felt drained,
as if he had been out there where so many had fallen. ‘The ridge should hold off an attack on this sector.’

He heard somebody screaming. A lost soul amongst the dead, waiting for help, for anyone who might care.

He took a mug from Payne, unaware of his troubled expression. He could smell the rum without effort, and knew that he must ensure that his men had their ration a little earlier than usual. But just for the moment he needed solitude, if only to convey that he, at least, did care.

At the end of that June day Jonathan received his orders from Division. The Fifty-First would remain in reserve.

The attack had been a complete success, and the advance along the whole front had been at least two miles. For that modest accomplishment they had paid the price of twenty-five thousand lives.

The two girls sat on the grass in the walled garden and admired the baskets of strawberries they had picked throughout the afternoon. Alexandra Pitcairn swept her chestnut hair from her face and plucked at her blouse. ‘We’ve done well. I’ll take some up to the hospital later on.’

Her companion, Kitty Booth, was dark and vivacious, like a fairy-tale gipsy girl. She had her skirt pulled up over her knees and said, ‘What wouldn’t I give to be able to strip off everything and run naked into the sea!’

Alexandra smiled. She had always liked Kitty even though they came from very different backgrounds: she was not afraid of hard work, and had turned her hand to anything she could get when everyone had been against her. She had met a young corporal when the county regiment had had a couple of battalions under canvas at Eastwood Farm. It must have seemed like another world to her, as she had been only a naive eighteen when the
soldiers arrived. All those young straight-backed men in uniform, parading and marching, walking out in Alresford where there were a few ale houses and inns.

Kitty and her corporal had fallen in love: as simply as that. Her father, the police sergeant in Alresford, had seemingly been in favour. A regular soldier with prospects, he said, she could have done a lot worse. They had spoken with the vicar, exchanged letters with the corporal’s parents. It was all arranged.

Then without warning the regiment had been ordered to France. Two months later the corporal was killed in action, and a few months after that Kitty gave birth to a little girl.

Everything had changed for her, and infuriated by the shame it might cast on his career in the county police her father had turned her out of the house.
I’ll have no slut in my home!

If Kitty still brooded about that she never mentioned it. Alexandra’s father had, characteristically, offered her a room, and in exchange she had worked about the house. It was perhaps the first time that Alexandra had seen her father in a different light, not merely a dedicated country G.P. but as a radical, and a man above all who cared for his fellow human beings whether they were sick or well. It was fortunate that she had still been living at home, otherwise she knew some of the more spiteful gossips would have suggested that the doctor was keeping a woman ‘who was no better than she ought to be’, after the death of his wife.

Kitty had always opened her heart to the doctor’s daughter, although she did not visit so often now that she
had a respectable job in the town working in a milliner’s shop, where her ready smile had become a great asset to the owner. Her newborn child had not lived long enough for Kitty to know it. Like her dead corporal, it was something that remained locked in her heart, still precious and private.

In town, as here in this small village, the gossip surrounding her had died. After nearly three years of war hers was not the only loss of innocence, and there were too many families concerned with their own bereavement to condemn her one indiscretion.

She lay now on the grass with her chin propped in her hands.

‘Thought you were going out today, Alex?’

‘I was going down into Alresford, to buy some perfume if there is any.’

Kitty’s bare legs moved back and forth like scissors, and her eyes were thoughtful.

‘So there
is
a fellow then.’

‘Is that what they say?’ She was used to Kitty’s directness; maybe that was why they had always got along. But it was a shock all the same.

‘Tis what
I
say.’ She blew some of her hair from her mouth. ‘You can tell me, you know that. Should, after all we’ve been through together.’

Alex put a strawberry to her lips. ‘It’s quite silly, really.’

‘Was that why you were going into town? To see him? What’s he like? What does he do?’

‘He’s – he’s a soldier, Kitty. But he’s not here, he’s gone over. You know.’ Kitty was so worldly, she
thought with a sudden rush of embarrassment. Younger than herself by about five years, but she always felt so uninformed and ignorant by comparison.

Kitty said, ‘I know, right enough,’ and the silence was suddenly grave. Then her mood changed again like quicksilver, as it always did. ‘And you want him, is that it?’

To her own annoyance Alex knew she was blushing. ‘I don’t know. I never really knew how it could be. How I could feel . . .’ She tried to put it into words. ‘I just want to see him again. He’s never bored with what I say, and he’s good to be with . . .’

Kitty was on her knees beside her, one sun-warmed arm around her shoulders. ‘Tell Kitty, Alex love. You’ve done more than enough for me. Maybe I can repay some of it now.’ She paused, examining the lovely, innocent profile. ‘He hasn’t – well – you didn’t—’

‘No. I never have.’ She thought wildly of the blinded officer who had attacked her. Maybe that was how it always was, all she would ever know. ‘I’ll be an old maid, you’ll see.’

‘Oh, don’t be daft, girl!’ Kitty studied her, weighing the words and the moment, not wanting to stem the rush of confidences. ‘You’re thinking: maybe he won’t come back, maybe he’ll be killed, is that it? Afraid you’ll be all alone again.’

And I have been alone, more than anyone will ever know.

‘I want him.’ She gazed intensely at Kitty, with eyes that were clear green in the sunlight. Like the sea, Kitty thought, although she had never seen it. ‘What is it like?’
She saw the younger girl’s mouth twitch. ‘Don’t mock me, Kitty!’

Kitty took her hand in hers and patted it as she would a small, uncertain animal.

‘Like nothing else. My Bobby and I used to do it in the fields when he could get out of camp. He used to make me so excited I couldn’t wait, I wanted it that bad.’ She watched the fine colour flood Alex’s face. ‘There now, I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?’

‘No. I’m just shocked with myself. I didn’t know, you see, and I still don’t.’

‘Where’s your soldier live? Somewhere you’d not be known?’

Alex laughed with amusement and despair.

‘He lives here.’

Kitty released her hand and exclaimed, ‘That one who was here? The colonel?’ She breathed out noisily. ‘My God, girl, you’ve got a nerve, an’ I love you for it!’

Alex said quietly, ‘He’s had a bad time. Far worse even than my father realised. At first I thought he was afraid of going back, but I don’t think so now. He’s troubled about something, and he thinks his men might suffer because of him.’

Kitty stood up as the church clock chimed. ‘Must get back, I promised to take the baker’s kids for a walk when they come out of school.’ She paused in collecting her baskets. ‘You’re entitled to some happiness even in this rotten war, Alex. Just be careful, and listen to me.’ She walked away, and then paused. ‘If you only knew what it was like, and how much I envy you!’

For a long time Alex remained there, watching the sun
on the red-brick walls, going over what she had said, how she had been able to discuss something so private. Even thinking about it made her cheeks burn.
I couldn’t wait, I wanted it that bad
.

She turned suddenly as her father came out of the back door, his spectacles on the top of his head, and she knew she was blushing again, as if he could read her thoughts.

The doctor glanced around vaguely. ‘Oh, she’s gone, has she?’

‘Is something wrong, Daddy?’

‘Quite the reverse, my dear.’ He held up a London newspaper, which she knew the army dispatch riders always brought him when they could. ‘There’s been another battle. Near Ypres, as far as I can make out.’ He did not see the anxiety on her face as he lowered his glasses to peer at the front page. ‘It’s official. They drove the enemy back and the General Staff say that the German army is almost beaten, and after this victory will be . . .’ he squinted closer to read the exact words, ‘will be little more than a disorganised rabble!’

He smiled at her. ‘Thought you would like that.’ He folded the paper under his arm and tugged out his watch. ‘What about some tea before I go out again?’

She scarcely heard him. There had been no mention of the Royal Marines at all. He was safe. It was almost over.

She thought of her talk with the irrepressible Kitty, and was surprised to discover that she was no longer ashamed.

The Royal Marines commandant-general slammed through the doors of his Caxton House office and thrust
an aggressive hand out toward Major-General Loftus, who stood up as he entered.

‘God damn it, Herbert, I’m sorry to have kept you waiting!’ He hurled his cap and swagger-stick onto a chair. ‘I’ve been all this time at the damned War Office. Looking for somebody who actually understands what’s going on in Flanders, and in this damned coalition government, is like looking for a pork chop in a synagogue!’ He calmed down slightly but he was still fuming. ‘Care for a drink?’ He stabbed a bell button and a marine appeared in the doorway in seconds.