The Sons of Adam (14 page)

Again and again that night, Tom relived the incident. He never once regretted firing on Guy, but his fingers curled round the butt of his revolver and he imagined a hundred times the same incident with a different outcome: Guy struck not in the thigh, but in the chest; Guy not harmlessly wounded, but killed outright.

Tom stayed on duty for the first sentry shift. So much had happened, he needed time to think. Somewhere in the afternoon’s fighting, he had crushed his pack of cigarettes, but he carefully extricated a couple of the flattened paper tubes and delicately reconstructed them into something smokable. He lit up, throat aching for the taste of warm tobacco.

‘Mr Creeley?’

‘Yes?’

By the brief flare of his match, Tom could see a man’s face – silver-haired but young, grey moustache beneath youthful blue eyes.

‘Captain Morgan. Just sent across from the Warwickshires to give you lads support.’

The two men shook hands and Tom handed over the last of his battered cigarettes, lighting it before passing it across.

‘Support?’ said Tom, mumbling through his cigarette. ‘God knows we need it.’

‘Look here. I’ve got some rather rotten news. I’d best spill it. The brigadier wants to sweep the Boche off the salient for good. His idea is, if we can storm their machine-gun posts, we can dare to risk a general assault.’

‘The brigadier is a murderous bloody-minded lunatic’

Captain Morgan laughed, embarrassed at Tom’s bluntness, but hardly denying the charge. ‘Your name came up,’ he said.

‘Came up to do what?’

The captain grimaced. ‘The guns.’

‘To storm their machine guns?’

‘Yes. I think it’s a damn fool idea myself, but the brigadier seems blessedly keen on it.’

‘It’s lunatic.’

‘I’m terribly sorry, old fellow – bearer of bad tidings and all that. The brigadier wanted you to take a dozen men. Use your own initiative on how to proceed, then get started at once. I’ll follow with a full company to support you the moment you’ve put a stop to those guns.’

Morgan handed over a packet containing written orders that confirmed his summary. Tom read the papers, then tossed them away.

‘My initiative? My initiative tells me that the brigadier’s lost his bloody marbles.’

The captain swallowed. Even to a newcomer, it was fairly clear that the brigadier’s orders were virtually impossible to fulfil.

‘I can’t say I don’t feel for you, old man. I’d have put my own name forward, except that I really don’t know the ground here. I must say, I thought the chap who put
your
name forward was a bit of a bounder. It’s not really the sort of thing that one fellow volunteers another fellow for.’

‘Who put my name forward?’

Captain Morgan paused. He had said more than he should and was kicking himself for it. ‘Look, I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s really not my –’

‘But you did. Who was it?’

Captain Morgan paused again, taking a long drag on his cigarette. He burned the tobacco down half an inch, then dropped the butt fizzing into the mud. ‘All right, old man. I wouldn’t normally say, but given the circs and everything … It was a chap called Montague. Mr Montague. I didn’t get the first name.’

‘
Mister
Montague?’ Tom was horrified. ‘A subaltern, my age?’

‘Yes. What? You have a lot of Montagues, do you?’

‘Not a major? We have a lieutenant and a major Which one?’

‘Lieutenant, old man. One star on his shoulder, that’s all. Positive sighting and all that. Definitely lieutenant.’

‘His leg? Was he wounded in the leg at all? A bad flesh wound, very recent? This afternoon?’

‘He was sitting down, old boy. I didn’t see his leg. But wouldn’t he be in hospital with a wound like that? He wouldn’t be sitting around with the brig, I don’t suppose.’

‘No. I suppose he wouldn’t.’ Tom was more shocked than he could give words to. There were two German machine-gun posts. One of them had been dug into the site of a deep shellhole, built up with sandbags and well wired all round. The other was one of the German gun posts that had survived pretty much undisturbed all through the fighting. The post had been built of poured concrete, ten feet thick and laced through with railway ties and steel bars. Attacking the posts was a short walk to suicide, nothing less.
And Alan had wanted it.
More even than the probability of his impending death – a fact which Tom treated as certain – what shocked him was that Alan wanted it.

Captain Morgan looked at Tom with a depth of feeling in his eyes. Beyond the makeshift parapet, some two hundred yards away the white concrete gun post shone pale in the moonlight. ‘I’m terribly sorry, old man. I do wish you the very best of British luck.’

‘Thank you.’

‘There’s nothing I can do, is there? Nothing you need?’

Tom shook his head. ‘Just … Look, for reasons I can’t explain, it matters to me very much indeed – more than I can possibly say – who suggested my name this afternoon. You’re perfectly sure it was a Lieutenant Montague?’

Pause.

In the distance a couple of shells boomed, and there was an answering snap of rifles.

‘Look, I was at Sandhurst four years ago, made captain last year. I know when to salute the pips and when to look for a salute myself. I’m absolutely positive, old man. I’m sorry.’

Tom nodded.

Another handshake. ‘I’d best leave you to it, then.’ Morgan began to walk away. A Very light shot up into the sky, and hung there, slowly dropping. The gloomy trench filled with its glow.

‘Excuse me, Captain,’ called Tom.

‘Yes?’ Morgan turned.

Tom held out his crumpled cigarette packet. ‘I’ve managed to crush these. You don’t have any by chance?’

Morgan felt in his tunic pocket. He had a packet of Woodbines intact and just slightly damp from a shower of rain earlier. ‘Take these, old man. You’re welcome.’

We’re the boys of the New Arm-ee.

We cannot fight,

We cannot shoot,

What bloody use are we?

But when we get to Berlin

The Kaiser he will say,

Hoch, hoch, mein Gott!

What a bloody fine lot

Are the boys from the New Arm-ee.

The song in one of its many versions drifted from the slimy dugout steps like the smell of something pleasant. The dugout was one of those captured from the Germans. It was well-built and, as far as these things ever were, comfortable. After a short pause, the song changed to something more melancholy.

Tom swallowed hard. Faced directly with the fact of his imminent death, his long-held attitude of carelessness began to desert him. He didn’t want to die. He was desperately keen to live. Perhaps he’d live through the night only to find himself court-martialled in the morning. But he didn’t care. He wanted to survive this night. After that, he’d take his chances.

And yet his death wasn’t the worst of it. Alan was. Of all people on earth, Alan Montague had put his name forward for the mission at hand. Tom knew he should never have slept with Lisette, yet Alan’s response was so coldly murderous. It was the worst side of Alan, multiplied and exaggerated. This was Alan the nobleman’s son, snobbish, self-righteous and detestable.

Tom felt like a stranger in a strange land.

He walked down the dugout steps. There were thirty men crammed down there, exhausted from the day’s fighting. Of the thirty, only three or four had had the energy to sing, and then only because there wasn’t enough space in the dugout for everyone to lie or even sit.

The men saw the look on Tom’s face, and they fell silent, immediately apprehensive. Those who were awake shook the ones who weren’t. The dugout came to life and the men stood leaning against the oozing walls or sat on rough wooden benches or on the ground. Light came from a pair of German acetylene lamps, which filled the dugout with their thick petrol fumes. The air was utterly foul, but homely. A couple of rats sat chewing something in the corner.

‘Raise your right hands, boys … Your right hand, Thompson, not both of them.’

The men silently obeyed.

‘Now lower your hands if you have nippers, any children at all.’

Sixteen hands remained aloft.

‘Put them down if you have a wife … I said a wife, Appleby, not a girl you screw when you’re in the mood.’

Ten hands plus Appleby: eleven.

Tom nodded. ‘You men come here, the rest of you carry on.’ There was complete silence, except for a low muttering as men clambered over each other to exchange positions. (‘Sorry mate’, ‘Careful, that’s my fucking hand you’re treading on’, ‘I’d’ve married the old cow, if I’d known’ …) Eventually the eleven men found their way to Tom – or eleven boys, to be more accurate, since their average age must have been under twenty-one. Tom’s orders required him to take a dozen men, but he’d disobey. A troop of fifty men couldn’t take the guns, and he’d be damned if he’d have more blood on his hands than he absolutely had to. Tom took eleven matches from the box in his breast pocket and broke the heads off two of them. He jumbled the sticks and poked the ends out between his thumb and hand.

‘Each man take a match.’

The men obeyed, and two ended up with the broken-headed sticks: one sandy-haired, stout but strong, and with a confident look to him; the other was a typical inner-city recruit, poorly fed, short – hardly even five foot four – with a long, pale face. Tom didn’t recognise them. Because of the casualties it had suffered so far, the company had been strengthened with other men of the battalion, men Tom didn’t yet know.

‘Sorry, lads, I haven’t got to know your names yet.’

‘Stimson, sir,’ said the sandy-haired lad.

‘Hardwick, sir. The boys call me Shorty,’ said the other.

‘And what would you like me to call you?’

‘Shorty, sir, I suppose. Seems more natural now, like.’

Tom nodded. He took Morgan’s cigarette pack from his pocket and offered the two lads cigarettes. They all three lit up.

‘Now I’ve got good news for you both. I’ve chosen you for a mission, which is going to be difficult and dangerous, but which will mean a medal for each of you, and a thumping great amount of home leave, if I can possibly arrange it. Here’s what we have to do …’

Alan woke up in pain.

Somewhere there was danger; horror even.

He grabbed his revolver and held it out into the darkness, breathing heavily. He listened for shooting. There was nothing, only the continual thunder of distant guns. Half a minute passed. Alan tried to remember where he was.

He felt around him. He was lying on a straw mattress on an iron bedstead.

He could remember Guy sitting with him for some time during the day – or had it been the day before? He was still muzzy and couldn’t remember. He could hear the rustle of straw under him and the quiet sounds of the village beyond the window: a horse grazing, a mechanic trying to start a motorbike. He groped for a match, lit it, then found a candle and lit that.

He stared around the little room, looking for danger. There was nothing. He uncocked his revolver and laid it down.

But waking up had brought no peace. His heart was still beating a hundred and twenty beats to the minute and the sense of appalling tragedy was still with him. He’d have blamed his dreams, except that his sleep had been dreamless and the sense of disaster was stronger now he was awake.

Alan remembered his quarrel with Tom. Pain and anger flashed through him. Tom’s conquest of Lisette had seemed like a deep and deliberate insult. Although Alan had been three-parts delirious when he’d assaulted Tom, he was still deeply angry. But the flash passed. The quarrel was just a quarrel. Tom would apologise and mean it. Alan would take back everything he’d said and he’d mean it too. The quarrel was nothing.

Alan’s heart was racing with something else, something worse, something permanent. For a moment, he didn’t understand. And then he did.

Tom!

Something had happened to Tom.

Alan leaped from bed, found his trousers, groped round for his boots, but couldn’t find them. He remembered that Guy had taken them in an attempt to stop him from wandering, but there was a pair of hobnailed peasant’s shoes lying in the stable below and they would do. He grabbed his tunic, found the shoes, and ran out into the street. His body was absurdly weak still, especially his lungs, but his co-ordination had improved. He walked carefully across to the offices of the transport captain, hoping to borrow a horse.