The Return of Captain John Emmett (7 page)

'You were a close friend of John Emmett's, then?'

'Well, the thing is, I
wasn't
a particular friend of his,' Laurence began. 'I was while we were at school, I suppose, but I'd hardly heard from him since; in fact I didn't even know he'd died until his sister—Mary—contacted me. It's just that his family were very kind to me when I was young and so I thought I might help them a bit by trying to find out more about his state of mind.'

'No letter, I gather? Or so the solicitor told us.'

Laurence shook his head.

'Hard. I'm unlikely to add to what you probably know already but I can tell you it was damned odd hearing about the bequest and, of course, hearing it with the news of his suicide.'

'But you saved his life, didn't you?' said Laurence. He wondered how William felt now that the life he saved had been thrown away.

'Not really. In fact, not at all. I just happened to be there. Anyone would have done the same. They did, in fact.'

Laurence recognised English diffidence. No doubt he would have explained it like that too.

'It was in the run-up to the Somme. He was in a covered trench just outside Albert. It was an old one that had been blown in a while back and was being redug. They knew their stuff, those sappers. Though the chap in charge of the sector had come across from HQ at the time because there was some question of whether the earthworks were viable at all. Rightly, as it turned out.

'Emmett had gone down there with a corporal and two other men who were stringing up some cables. It was probably rotten wood that did it. We'd run out of decent material for revetment by then and we were reusing timbers that had been waterlogged. It had been hot and dry for weeks and I suspect the wood had simply dried out too quickly, even underground. You know what it was like.'

Laurence nodded.

'Anyway,' William went on, 'I was just standing there in the sunshine, glad it was all quiet. I can remember it exactly because one of the men had just brought me a flint arrowhead. The whole river valley was full of Iron Age remains. Every time we dug, these things were turning up—stone axes sometimes. Everyone knew I collected them so if they found any odd-looking bits they brought them over. I've still got some.' He waved at a cabinet against the far wall. 'This one was tiny but a beauty; you could see where it had been chipped around the edge as if it had been done yesterday. Perfect. When, bang, there's this God-awful crack and a few seconds of dull rumbling under the feet, and the tunnel's gone. A great puff of dirt comes back out of it, smelling of damp and worse things, to be honest. That damn awful smell.

'My immediate response was that we were under fire and we all ducked down instinctively, but within seconds we realised the tunnel had gone. I started trying to tear at the debris and the earth with my hands, but it was hopeless, the entrance was almost completely blocked. The sergeant called for proper tools and someone went for an orderly. I went in with the sergeant—Tucker, as I recall—and we took turns clearing it. Another lad helped. I think he was the servant of the visiting sapper officer.'

The name Tucker registered almost immediately with Laurence. Although a common enough name, it was also on the list John Emmett had with him when he died.

'It was Tucker who ran the risks, no question; we still weren't entirely sure whether they'd found a shell. Tucker had had his run-ins with Emmett but on that day he was digging like a man possessed to get him out. He reached one of the soldiers in a few minutes or at least got hold of his feet. We pulled him clear but he was in a bad way. Tucker cleared his nose and mouth but apparently he was gone within seconds—the man was his friend, someone said—and then the orderly arrived and had him taken off.

'One of the soldiers dug with anything he could find and while Tucker was still dealing with his friend, I changed places, without much hope really, and I found John there about twenty feet in. Cleared the filth away to help him breathe. The tunnel hadn't fallen in all along its length. The nearest section had come right down and did for the man we'd got to first. Further in the timbers had held on one side and collapsed on the other, so they were at an angle across the trench. John lay under this; the top half of his body was towards us. He was conscious and had air, but his right arm was caught under him, his back and legs were buried by the earth and he couldn't turn his head. Even the timber above him was bowing and there was a steady trickle of soil. I don't mind telling you I was on a hair-trigger to run out of there. I always hated those tunnels, especially re-digs. But slowly I calmed down and realised I couldn't smell explosive or burning.'

William turned in his chair, opened a carved box on the side table, took out a silver lighter and a tobacco pouch and proceeded to fill and light his pipe. He drew the smoke in, slowly and deeply.

'I started excavating round him, hoping to hell the whole thing wouldn't fall in.'

'And you got him out?'

'Well, he was a lucky man in the event; scarcely a scratch on him, but he wasn't doing too well down there. Covered in sweat, ashen in the light of my torch and gasping. Eventually Tucker had to finish the job. I was too big, you see. Tall man, back then ... couldn't squeeze through properly. Every time I moved, I scraped against the sides and brought more stuff down, but Tucker was wiry, almost skinny, he could wriggle about down there. Until we had John out, I thought he must be bleeding somewhere, even wondered if he'd die before we'd got him clear. Ghastly look on his face. But nothing; well, a broken finger and ankle, but nothing major that you could see. It turned out he'd also injured a kidney, which eventually saw him sent back to Blighty, but what he was suffering from right then was fear, I suppose. Simple, unalloyed fear. We weren't supposed to be frightened, not so that it showed. Now when you look back, you can see that fear was the rational response to much of it, but there was another set of rules then, wasn't there?'

Laurence nodded silently. He had never been able to say outright, 'I was frightened.' The band of iron round his chest might have been so tight that pain shot down his arms and his fingers tingled as he laboured to draw in a breath, but he'd always hidden it, or at least he hoped he had.

Bolitho went on matter-of-factly, 'The men could scream for hours out in no-man's land, especially the young ones. Disturb your rest for a bit, rather like a neighbour's barking dog, but eventually you'd learn to sleep through. Officers, though, were supposed to be above all that. You might have been a Sunday school teacher or a corn merchant back home, but get a commission and all your emotions had to be left at the door.' He inhaled on his pipe.

'And there was Tucker,' Bolitho continued after a while, 'who was close to losing his stripes for this and that, working like a dervish to get John out. Absolutely fearless; on his stomach practically keeping the ceiling up with his own body and the whole thing creaking in a way that made you remember how many hundredweight of earth was above it, lying with his body pressed against John, so close that he could have kissed him just by dropping his head a few inches. Yet when we finally pulled John clear, only minutes before the whole damn thing fell in with one last, long rumble, and Smith left in what was now his tomb—pray God he was dead already, not a squeak from him—I saw Tucker was looking at John with a sort of amused contempt and something nastier: triumph, I'd say. And he didn't seem that bothered by the corporal—Perkins was his name, I think—getting it, either, given the man was what passed for a friend.'

'And no bequest from John for him?'

Bolitho tapped at his pipe. 'Unlikely. There was definitely business between John and Tucker. Something going on.'

'Business?'

'Haven't a clue what it was,' William said breezily. 'Just an impression. Antagonism of some sort. Tucker had his finger in various pies. Buying and selling, doing favours, even dead men's effects, some said. He nearly went down over some rabbit-skin fiddle.'

'Rabbit skin?' Laurence wondered whether there was a whole lexicon of army jargon that had passed him by.

'You remember rabbit stew? Sometimes more stew than rabbit, sometimes the men claimed it was rat? Procurement people made a fortune on selling rabbit skins. Hundreds of thousand of pounds from clothes manufacturers to warm the slender necks of shop girls and kindergarten teachers, with fur collars straight from the mess kitchens. Only Tucker had seen the opportunity first and he'd been selling them locally. Argued he thought it was all just rubbish. Got away with it, but only just. His mate, Perkins, who'd enlisted with him and who was definitely part of the scheme, called him Bunny from then on, but nobody else would have dared.'

'How on earth had he got to sergeant?' Laurence asked.

'Well, they were very short of NCOs at the start and he'd been a factory foreman, somewhere in the Black Country, so actually he was quite good with the men—the ones he hadn't taken against—and he was fearless, albeit vicious, or he would have been in trouble before. But there were always rumours. The men said he was a devil with the ladies and we'd nearly had him up on a charge for selling coloured water as a cure for the clap. The lads didn't like getting the lecture from the MO, and Tucker's stuff worked a treat because most of them never had the clap in the first place. First-timers, boys, with nothing worse than a guilty conscience. But we were a long way forward at that time, so there weren't a whole lot of mesdemoiselless in petticoats waiting for Tucker's blandishments. I seldom dealt with him directly but the man was a clever opportunist and, I can quite believe, a brute at heart. And he'd disappear from time to time. I suppose we thought he might have been out poaching.'

Again Laurence must have looked puzzled because William's expression changed to one of weary distaste.

'You must have come across them. Loners? Men made for killing? Couldn't have enough of it, so went out to find the odd extra German for sport or mementoes?' He ran a finger across his throat.

Laurence nodded. Angels in the sky; bullets deflected by prayer books or cigarette cases; football armistices; berserkers. Battlefields acquired their own myths; he'd rarely found much truth in them.

William went on, 'Still, John had him down for something else. He wouldn't say, or not to me—I was new to the unit then—but he clearly loathed the man. I went to see Emmett once he was strapped up and waiting to go. He was still very pale but quite composed, and he asked me about Perkins, and where Tucker had been when the tunnel collapsed. He was more suspicious than grateful. I told him I hadn't seen Tucker at all until everyone came running and that he owed his life to him. But I got the feeling that John thought Tucker might have had something to do with the accident itself. Perhaps that's a bit strong. He didn't say anything specific and he'd had a bad shock.'

'He didn't like small spaces,' Laurence said. 'He had claustrophobia, I suppose. Even at school.'

'God.' William puffed at the pipe. 'Must have been hell, then. He was two hours down there, at least. Must have seemed like a lifetime. Anyway, a few weeks later everything goes up. John's in hospital, locally until the casualties start pouring in, then shipped home. Never gets a chance to call it with Tucker. Not then.'

'And when he died he left you the money?' Laurence said. 'Do you mind me asking?'

'Of course not. It was as much a surprise to us as I fear it must have been to his family. In fact, when John's solicitors wrote, we asked them what the family's circumstances were. Didn't want to leave them in dire straits. Can't say but that the money was helpful—you can see how it is—but no reason for them to do without. Chap said that he didn't know the family personally but that John had left his people the house they were already living in, which he owned, and most of the rest of his estate. The solicitor seemed to think their needs were covered quite well. Eleanor wrote to the family, too—partly with condolences, partly to try to find out what John had meant by it. No answer.'

Laurence stayed silent, trying to remember if Mary had mentioned a letter.

'They're not in trouble are they—the Emmetts?' William looked concerned.

'No. There's no question of that. His mother and sister would be grateful you saved him, even though the end came as it did. They just—well, his sister mostly, to be honest—wanted to understand.'

William nodded. 'It's a funny thing,' he said slowly. 'I was angry when I heard John had shot himself. There were so many men who didn't come back, and then John makes it, and makes it in one piece, and then ... puts his family through all that. But Eleanor understands it. She saw plenty of men with their nerves gone. She was a nurse; that's how I met her. Shell-shock, that's what they call it now, and it didn't seem to matter how strong a man was before the war; it could hit anyone, any time.' The faintest of smiles flickered. 'Well, not Sergeant Tucker, obviously. War had its own rewards for his sort.'

Laurence thought of Charles, another man whom war suited very nicely. Charles was an ideal officer: not over-imaginative, unflappable and robust. But what happened to those men who had found some pleasure in the fighting and the routines, once it was all over?

As to what pushed him over the edge,' William went on, 'who can tell? I've no idea. He came back from convalescence in England once he was patched up but I never saw him again. I'd been injured by then. We were wiped out, or damn nearly, at Lateau Wood. One leg virtually blown off.' He pointed to the limb, which ended at the knee. 'Other leg went septic. I hovered between life and death—I don't remember a thing—and was nursed by Eleanor, who viewed their having to take off the other leg as a personal insult and wasn't prepared to put up with me dying after all her labours. I don't know exactly what John did when he got back. Seconded to another outfit's my guess.'

'And Tucker?' Laurence asked, not quite knowing why.

'No idea. I expect he survived. His sort tended to. Probably came home with his clap tonic and the Military Medal in his bag.'

William was starting to look tired. Laurence fired off one last question. 'I don't know if you were told but there were another two bequests besides yours. A Mrs Lovell. That doesn't mean anything to you, does it?'