The Sons of Adam (13 page)

‘That farm there.’

A delighted smile spread across Guy’s face. He released his grip so suddenly that Alan tottered and almost fell.

‘Go on then. Go.’

‘I’m going.’

‘Go to your precious Lisette. You’ll see just how precious she is. Her and your beloved twin.’

And Guy escorted Alan the two hundred yards to the farm. Before they were even halfway, Alan lost his desire to go there. He wanted to see Tom and he wanted to sleep. ‘Lisette will be there for me in the morning,’ he chanted.

But Guy’s determination was fixed. When Alan’s feet stumbled and dragged, Guy lifted him bodily, so anxious was he to get Alan to the farmhouse door. When Guy finally had Alan propped against the doorpost, he left him there, saying, ‘Go on, go in. I’m sure your arrival will be a delightful surprise. I’ll catch up with you later, old man. Toodle-oo.’

The farm door was never locked and Alan let himself in. The range was warm and a couple of cakes, yellow and creamy with egg, were cooling on the sideboard, a wire net over them. Lisette wasn’t there, probably out. Alan felt too happy to think. He was safe. Tom was safe. And nothing else in the whole world mattered.

There was some old coffee cooling in a pot. Alan drank it. The smell jerked at a memory. ‘Mind the bloody coffee’ – Major Fletcher – polished leather boots on a map-covered chest – loping monkey arms – ‘Keep your own bloody head from being shot off – then nothing: just a poor sod with his left arm loose between his knees and all his precious company lying dead about him.

Alan lifted the mesh from the cakes and stole a piece. It was good cake and he ate hungrily, before noticing that the cat was eating hungrily too. He chased the cat off and replaced the mesh. Upstairs, there was a sound: a creaking of floorboards and laughter. Of course! Idiot! Naturally, Lisette would still be upstairs. Why not? It was morning. What better place to be than bed?

Alan went upstairs, using his hands as well as his feet to avoid falling on the steep wooden staircase. The sound of laughter was louder now.

‘Lisette?’ Alan bounded along a corridor and burst through a door. ‘Lisette!’

The word died in his throat. There in bed lay not one person but two. Lisette and, next to her, naked and at home, was Tom.

There was a moment’s silence. All three people were shocked. In that tiny gap of time, nothing had yet been said, no damage done, no lives ruined.

The moment didn’t last.

Alan’s emotions looped again. An indescribable fury surged through him. ‘You bastard!’ he screamed. ‘You thieving, sodding, bloody bastard!’

Alan flung himself at Tom, fists flailing, blind with hot tears of rage. Tom defended himself. Although Alan was hitting with all his strength, he was exhausted and weak, and his lungs were rasping for breath. Tom slid from bed, grabbed his clothes and attempted to hide from the hail of blows. He didn’t fight back.

‘You bastard! You steal every fucking thing that matters to me! Lisette was all I had! All I wanted was Lisette.’

‘Alan, old chap – steady on – I didn’t know you were coming back.’

‘Alain, tais-toi, sois sage!’
cried Lisette, frightened and appealing for calm.

‘Everything that ever matters.’

‘Jesus, brother. There’s no need. You can have her. I didn’t –’

‘I don’t want to have her because you say I can. I don’t want …’ Alan’s attack was hardly serious now. Tom struggled to get his trousers on, keeping Alan at a distance with his stronger right arm. Lisette helped as well as she could.

‘Guy was out there, wasn’t he? Why in hell didn’t he keep you away? He knew I was here.’

‘Guy? He knew, oh yes, he knew. He carried me here.
Carried
me. So I would know who you were. And I know now, all right. I
know
.’

Tom was dressed from the waist down now and had his hands on his boots. ‘Take care, Alan, take care what you say.’

Alan steadied himself with his back against the chalky lime-washed wall. Although his face was purple with bruises, adrenaline had given him more control than he’d had with Guy. His extreme shock and nervous collapse was no longer obvious. It was easy for Tom to mistake him for a man upset, but otherwise in control of his faculties.

‘What I mean is,’ said Alan, speaking as distinctly as he was able, ‘that Guy has been right about you all along. You have some fine things about you, no doubt, but in the end you’re the sodding little gardener’s boy. Please get your hands off my girl and get out of here.’

‘Alan, for God’s sake, be careful. Some things can’t be unsaid, you know.’

‘Alan,
s’il te plaît,
calm down, I’ll make you coffee, I’ll explain.’ Lisette implored Alan for calm, but the situation had travelled too far.

Alan tried to pull a revolver, but he managed to snag the barrel as he pulled it from its holster, and the gun clattered uselessly to the ground. Tom snatched the gun up and tossed it out of the window into the cattle trough below.

Alan lurched to the doorway and steadied himself on the doorpost. ‘Guy is my brother. You’re a gardener’s boy who fucks my girl.’ He shook his head. ‘And by the way, I’m never going to drill in Persia with you. Why would I? As far as I know, the concession belongs to the Montague family. It doesn’t belong to the fucking staff.’

He stumbled away, slipping on the fourth step of the staircase and crashing all the way to the bottom. He dragged himself back to the village, found an empty bed and fell into it. He was asleep within three seconds of his head hitting the pillow.

And here was the odd thing.

He slept well. He slept without dreams, without pain, without fogginess or delirium. It was a strange way to sleep the day the world collapsed.

Tom buttoned his shirt. His hands were shaking violently. His face was ash.

‘I didn’t know you were friends,’ said Lisette, begging pardon from the world. ‘I didn’t know … he was such a nice man, I really adored him.’

‘Don’t worry. Not your fault,’ said Tom in French, before adding in English, ‘Damnation. I had no idea he … Dammit,
dammit.’

Tom sat on the bed and tried to calm down.
Guy is my brother. You’re a gardener’s boy who fucks my girl.
He pushed the words away, but what Alan had said was too big to be so easily dismissed.
I’m never going to drill in Persia with you. Why would I? As far as I know, the concession belongs to the Montague family. It doesn’t belong to the fucking staff.
Tom breathed heavily, trying to calm himself. Alan was shocked. Alan was upset. Alan was talking rot –

‘Will he be all right?’ said Lisette, interrupting his thoughts.

‘Look, he’s just come from battle. It’s awful up there. He’s a sensitive sod at the best of times, and as for girls, he’s never … well, I don’t think that before you, he’s even –’

‘No, never. I had to teach him everything.’

‘Shit!’
Tom was doubly angry because he felt guilty. He’d known Alan was seeing Lisette and until recently he’d been careful to avoid seeing her too. But the last three days had been from hell. Tom had known that Alan had been hit, but, like Guy, he’d had no end of a time finding out where Alan was and in what condition. When he’d finally heard that Alan was essentially fine, his relief had been overpowering. In some strange way, Tom had felt drawn to seek out Lisette, the one other person who had been truly intimate with Alan. He’d gone in search of her and charmed his way into her kitchen. He’d had no intention of making love with her, but Tom wasn’t very strong-willed in the matter of sex and, in any event, with Alan safely in hospital, it didn’t seem to matter all that much. He should have known better.

They were quiet a moment. Then Lisette kissed Tom on the earlobe. He smiled and stroked her shoulder.

‘Do you go with many other men?’ he asked.

She thumped him gently on the bicep.
‘Cochon.’
Pig.

‘But really?’

‘Some. A few.’

‘For money, I suppose?’

‘Usually. Not with him. Never with him.’

‘With me?’

She shook her head.

‘He had no idea, none at all … Look I’ll give him time to get over all this. Explain it. I’d better not see you again. I won’t if it means upsetting Alan.’

‘What is that about brothers? You are or you aren’t?’

Tom explained briefly, ending by saying ‘Guy’s his blood brother, I’m his real brother. He knows that. In solemn truth, he knows that.’

‘And will it be all right?’

Tom nodded, kicking his bare feet out on the unvarnished floorboards. He was annoyed with himself for his stupidity, but he was furious with Guy for provoking things. Anger boiled inside him, hot and dangerous.

‘Well? It will be all right?’

Tom sighed heavily. ‘Yes. It’ll be all right.’

And once again, he was wrong, dead wrong.

It was getting to be a habit.

It was the following day: 19 August.

Tom was back in the support trenches when the fighting resumed. He was making a report to brigade staff, short of sleep, and stained with sweat, blood and dirt. The sound of fighting ended the brief conference. Tom excused himself, received a brusque, ‘Carry on then, Creeley,’ and raced on up the line.

It was an evil day. It felt like the first cold day of autumn, with enough rain to have soaked everything and given the air a biting edge. A wicked little breeze carried the smoke of guns over the battlefield, until everything was seen through the greenish, cordite-smelling glow. The wet chalk was slippery and unreliable. The way ran uphill and the trench bottom had become a gutter for rainwater, mud, rats, and blood.

Tom made his way up the trench, fast but with care. He passed two men digging it out, trying to repair a collapsed parapet, and another man who was heaving a Lewis gun into place at the bottom end. Tom charged on past, and, going too fast round a corner, clattered into none other than Guy, who’d been running fast in the other direction.

It was an extraordinary coincidence: not that they should meet, but that they should meet in a trench. Guy, as a staff officer, hardly ever entered a front-line position, still less during a time of heavy combat. But, Tom remembered, the divisional telephone exchange had been completely smashed during earlier shelling, and he supposed the divisional staff must have been desperate to obtain a reliable picture of action on the ground.

Both Private Hemplethwaite, in charge of the Lewis gun, and Privates Jones and Carragher, who were then shovelling out the fallen trench, saw what happened next. The two officers had a blazing argument. The older officer was trying to push past and the younger man was physically restraining him, pushing and throwing him back against the wall of the trench. The noise of the shelling was too loud to catch any words, but it was clear that they were shouting at each other.

The younger man began hitting the other. Hard, forceful slaps, which the other man defended himself against by putting his arms to his face. The older man kept trying to get past. The older man didn’t once offer any violence at all to the younger.

Then it happened.

All three men were absolutely unanimous on the fact. The younger man drew his revolver. He pointed it at the other man’s head. The older man drew back, making a gesture of surrender. The younger man was still shouting. He seemed extraordinarily angry. The noise of battle continued to drown the sounds. Then the younger man lowered his gun until it was pointing at the other’s groin, or thereabouts. There was a shot. The shot was perfectly deliberate and at close range. A bloody rosette leaped into the khaki flannels. The older man jumped backwards as the bullet tore into his thigh. The younger man, a lieutenant, holstered his revolver, took one last furious look at the other and tore onwards up the line. Dark blood began to soak down the older man’s leg.

And that was it.

Tom raced away up the trench. Guy came staggering down, his face white as a sheet, incoherent with shock, anger, and fear.

The fighting remained fierce until nightfall.

On a few bloodstained acres, too many men lay dead or dying. The air was heavy with the weight of shells and bullets. For the first time since coming to France, Tom found himself longing for the bullet wound that would send him home to England, away from the fighting.

Night came.

Tom posted sentries, praying that the Germans were as exhausted as their opponents. He desperately wanted whisky, but was pleased not to have any. This night of all nights, he’d be too likely to get drunk, when the last thing he needed was a muzzy head.

He was furious with Guy.

Furious.
Far from relieving his feelings, the incident in the trenches had simply added to his fury. He’d shot Guy and hadn’t even killed him. Tom’s anger remained hopelessly unsatisfied, but his action had now put him into a position where Guy could, and quite likely would, have Tom court-martialled. There was only one sentence for firing on a superior officer and that was death. Tom knew that there were witnesses and he certainly wouldn’t be able to rely on their discretion. Perhaps Tom’s outstanding war record would make a difference, but Guy was a major and so often these things depended on rank …