The Return of Captain John Emmett (48 page)

***

If only he could sleep he knew he would cope better.

Twenty minutes to go.

As the creeping barrage had died away, he found himself with hypersensitive hearing. All around him the shuffling and muttering of weary and scared men. Someone having a piss. A cough, the rasp of metal against a flint, the flat noise of rain falling on waterproof capes, and the occasional innocent snore from the rare soldier who could sleep despite everything. He had indigestion and was trying to find the bismuth that the MO had given him. The MO thought he had a peptic ulcer but could offer no better treatment until Laurence returned to England. A few weeks ago one of the regimental majors had collapsed and died of a heart attack. He'd been complaining of pains in the chest for months. Laurence slipped his fingers between his tunic buttons and rubbed the centre of his chest tentatively through his shirt and vest.

He felt awful: sick and sweaty. His neck ached and he rotated his head a couple of times to ease it. He was conscious of every breath forced in and out. If he couldn't control his breathing, how could he hope to control his behaviour and that of a whole platoon of men? He could hear Sergeant Collins moving up the trench, murmuring; he couldn't distinguish the words but the tone was of reassurance and encouragement. They had two new lads; both said they were eighteen but Laurence doubted they were.

Fifteen minutes.

The barrage had found its new range. He hoped it was accurate. His fingers were tingling and the tips had no feeling at all. He had been turning over the signal whistle in his hands when his fingers lost the ability to hold it and it fell to the length of its lanyard. What would happen if he couldn't keep hold of his rifle when the time came and had to cross no-man's land unarmed?

Ten minutes.

The barrage stopped. He looked along to his right to check that his nearest NCO was ready. He could hardly see him but eventually he did and nodded. He took a furtive swig from the tiny bismuth bottle. He polished his watch face with his handkerchief. His eyes scanned the men closest to him. Who would make it? Jones, the temperance ranter? Gaseley, the loner? The unfit, overweight Pollock
who had successfully lumbered his way in and out of two years of action? Sergeant Collins, once a stationmaster from Bromley? The East End scrap dealer, Levy, only twenty-two and yet already the father of four children? Who else was out there? What else was out there? He had studied the maps, read the reconnaissance reports, but things changed; whole landscapes altered in battle. They had seen aeroplanes, of both sides, crossing the sky during the late afternoon on the day before while it was still light. He could hear that high, distant noise of them even now, their apparently unhurried movements seeming to have nothing to do with what was going on below. Even when one of them was shot down—though they'd seen and heard no firing—and fell to earth in silent flames, he had no sense that a man like himself was being roasted alive.

Five minutes.

He cleared his throat. Licked his lips. He had no saliva. The bismuth clogged his mouth. What if he couldn't blow the whistle? He felt for it again. The pain in his chest was excruciating. He looked up, exchanged grim smiles with Collins who had taken a position down to his left. Watched him pat one very young soldier—was the boy's name Russell?—on the shoulder. Looked at his watch. For a moment the numerals blurred.

Two minutes. He could hear Pollock's adenoidal breathing.

His arm rested on the ladder; momentarily he laid his forehead against it. He could sense every pore, every nerve ending and every alert hair on his body. How could all this suddenly cease in oblivion? It was unimaginable. Please God, he wasn't about to be sick. To his right one man crossed himself and he could see his lips moving in prayer. Now his heart was thudding so hard he could hear nothing else. The field guns stopped. Would they have cut the wire? Would they?

One minute.

Pollock belched. Someone sniggered. He kept his eyes on his watch, steadied afoot on the lowest rung of the ladder, raised the whistle to his mouth and started a prayer of his own. Please God, he said, keep me safe. Please don't let me die.

Ten seconds.

Take someone else this time. Not me. Take someone else. Anybody. I just want to live. Please. Don't let it be me. He looked at the slight, fair-haired boy to his left. At Pollock, gasping, mouth open. Made his glance pass by Levy. Felt Russell watching him. Gaseley's eyes were shut, his face white and inscrutable. Not me. Not now. Please. The whistle was in his mouth; he could feel its vibrations but heard nothing. They started to climb.

Anybody.

'I remember a sergeant shouting at the men not to bunch up—it was human nature to cling together, a lethal instinct—and then I remember seeing Jones, a Welshman who'd been praying just before we went over, moving ahead of me even while the men to each side of him fell. I passed a soldier called Levy lying on his back, the top of his head blown away. And then as we came towards the enemy lines, suddenly this German was right in front of me and he saw me and was so close I could see the muzzle of his rifle as it found me. I dropped down and got him as he fired, and a man called Pollock, who was right behind me, was hit. He went down clutching his belly and he just said "ouf" like a monstrous cushion deflating. I felt guilty and yet simultaneously elated. I thought God had answered my prayer; he'd taken Pollock, not me. That was bad enough. But it was worse than that.'

Laurence leaned his head back against a pillar.

'We broke through. We overran their position. It was bayonets for hand-to-hand fighting. But the casualties were terrible. There were two lads, friends who had joined together ... I knew they were underage but we were short of men; it was easier not to ask. One of them was shot only feet from our position. His war had lasted less than five minutes. We never saw the other again. Eventually we crawled back. Tried to pull in our wounded. A few days later—a lifetime later—we were back in billets. We'd lost over half of our officers, nearly a third of our men. My men. I was drinking myself to sleep each night.

'A few days later, the colonel sent for me. I was hung-over and I thought he was going to promote me simply through lack of alternatives. But no, he had a telegram. Rather than look at me, he read it through without raising his eyes until he ran out of words, though it was so short he must already have known it by heart. It said that Louise had died giving birth and the baby had died with her. And they had died on the morning I was going into battle. Louise died—I made it my business to find out later—almost at the very hour I went over. When I was begging God to take another life instead of mine. The colonel's giving me a tot of his special scotch and apologising that he can't send me home quite yet and I'm realising that I sacrificed my wife and my son and the whole long life he might have had, just so that I could go on living my pointless existence.'

'Laurence,' Mary said gently but protestingly.

'I know. I know. It's a terrible, cruel, Old Testament God who would accept such an exchange. I
know
that. But
I
offered them up.'

'Laurence,' said Mary, putting her hand under his chin and forcing him to look at her. Her eyes were shining brightly. She blinked several times. 'Thousands—
millions
—of prayers must have been said by desperate men in desperate situations. You think you were the only one who, faced with horrors I can't even imagine, asked to be spared at any cost? And what about all the mothers and wives and sisters back home? Do you think that perfectly nice mothers didn't hope and, yes, pray it would be someone else's boy? Their friend's son? Their sister's fiance? I prayed and prayed for Richard. I went to church, and I went through the motions of joining in prayers for victory and prayers for peace, but, selfishly, the only thing I wanted was Richard. I didn't care whether we won or lost. When he was horribly injured I prayed for him to survive, when, seeing him now, I should have wished for him to have been spared the living death he has. But I wanted him back. I didn't want to live in a world without him.'

When Laurence didn't answer she said, 'You weren't thinking of Louise then. You weren't suggesting a sacrifice, one for another; you wanted to live. It's a powerful instinct. Then you got the news of Louise's death when you were away from home, under enormous stress, and it's hardly surprising you made a link.'

'It was cowardice. Plain and simple. Not the sort that gets you publicly condemned and shot like Edmund Hart. Mine was the tidy, private sort. His broke out, mine ate into me. My punishment was living. I found it wasn't that important. When Louise died she took a bit of my past—she was,
is,
part of my memories and of other people's. But when the baby died ... He wasn't part of history, he couldn't be a memory; what he took with him was our dreams. His future ... my future...'

He could barely make it to the end of the sentence; his voice was hoarse and he could feel his eyes filling with tears. He wanted to tell her that the earthquake of grief that was suddenly threatening to sweep him away was not about his son. Or that it was not only about him but about everything that was gone, even about Somers and the hollowed-out man who now lay in the corner bed only fifty yards away from them.

'I was so frightened,' he said.

She put her arms round him, knocking some hymnbooks on to the floor as she did so.

'Laurie, whatever you believe or part of you believes, the best thing you could do in your son's memory now is to live. Work. Explore. Marry again one day. Have more children. Forgive yourself. Laugh from time to time.'

She kissed him on the forehead and held his head to her. He could smell her, wonderfully warm and familiar.

'But not to you or with you?'

'No. Not with me. Not now. But you're still quite young. Don't punish yourself for being frightened in intolerable circumstances. I don't mean to sound like a prig but when so many are dead like John or, like Richard, as good as dead, you have a chance to be part of this new world, unnerving though it is. I wish you would. And I hope you'll always be my friend. I need a special friend.'

'I'd like that,' he said. She handed him a ridiculously small, embroidered handkerchief that had been carefully ironed. He pressed it first to one eye then the other without unfolding it. He no longer cared whether he looked stupid.

'The rest—it's not quite as easy as you think. I can't see it another way; I can only learn to live with it. And I'll try. I'm thinking of going back into teaching. Apparently they're terribly short of schoolmasters and they're using men in their sixties and seventies to make up numbers. They need some new blood. I might even be quite good at it. I've been asked if I'd be interested in a History post at Westminster. They want to see me next week. They need someone to start next Lent term.'

'That's marvellous,' she said with real enthusiasm. 'I think you'd be brilliant at it. And we could meet and talk, and go to see Charlie Chaplin, even—and eat respectable crumpets and walk in Green Park. One day soon I'll move to London. It's hopeless living with Mother and she has Aunt Virginia who is the mainstay of her life. From London I could see Richard more often. I could work for a living. I want to do that. Anyway, if I stay in Cambridge, I'm going to wake up one day and find I've turned into a stuffed owl or a weasel inside a glass dome.'

'A weasel?' He ran his fingers through her hair. 'I don't think you're very weaselly, Miss Emmett. More of a mongoose: intelligent, mischievous and loyal.'

'Destructive and noisy, but good for keeping down vermin?'

'All useful skills in their place.' He laughed. 'I love you, weasel or not,' he said.

'Thank you,' she said and kissed him one more time, gently but with certainty. 'If it wasn't for Richard,' she began.

He put his finger up to her lips. 'Don't,' he said. Then pulling her to him, he buried his face in her hair. 'I love you,' he said again.

There was no longer any game to play so honesty could not damage him. She whispered something back into his shoulder but he didn't catch it and it didn't seem to matter.

Having gone to his interview straight after lunch, at which the Board of Governors at Westminster School made clear his appointment would be a foregone conclusion, Laurence came out as the bells of the abbey were chiming three. As he passed through the Sanctuary, pupils stood aside to let him by. One or two smiled tentatively. This would be his life from next year onwards, he thought with pleasure. It was the second week of December, the last day of term and excited boys of all sizes teemed around him in black jackets and stiff white collars.

He went home to change out of his smartest suit, then left his flat in a panic, afraid that his sister would be standing bemused and alone on Victoria Station, not knowing how to reach her hotel. The second post had arrived. He went through it quickly, discarding an obvious bill. A letter from Charles lay on the hall table with a parcel. He tore it open, though it was clearly meant as a Christmas present. G.K. Chesterton's
The Wisdom of Father Brown.
He laughed, left the book on the side table and took the handwritten envelope, only opening it when he was sitting on the bus.

Two buses arrived together, both of which were crowded, so he was lucky to get a seat. Outside it was already dark. Seen through the condensation running down the windows, London was merely a blur of red and yellow lights. He rubbed the glass with his coat cuff. Through the smeared, wet circle he saw they were at the back of Buckingham Palace, where the traffic had almost ground to a halt. He couldn't see whether the royal standard was flying. Perhaps the King and Queen were already at Sandringham; he thought that was what they always did at Christmas. He looked at his other letter. It turned out to be a dinner invitation from a Mrs Tresham Brabourne. He was caught by surprise; so the boyish Brabourne was married. At the bottom of the card, Brabourne had added his own postscript: 'If you would like to bring Miss Emmett, please do so.' Laurence smiled to himself.