‘Well, I reckon Viney’s got the right of it,’ he said sulkily.
‘To kill a man for sleeping with another?’ enquired Lothar mildly.
‘No. I don’t mean that, I’m really sorry about Nell. He was all right, was Nell. But I can see why Viney was, well, outraged, that certainly,’ said Josh with conviction.
‘Outraged?’ murmured Lothar. ‘Yes, it is true. Outrage can certainly rouse anger. But do you not think, perhaps, that it is fear that breeds fury?’
Josh couldn’t answer this because, as with so much of what Lothar said, he didn’t really understand it. Strother, who was at the centre of another small group close by, suddenly raised his voice with the clear intention of being overheard and said, ‘It’s those Frog women I blame. A man’s gotta ’ave ’is outlets. If we’d done like I said and all dipped our wicks, well, it’d have kept us going for a bit, like. Mebbe old Nell would still be alive and poor old Quacker’d ’ave all his teeth.’
Josh went pale and he would have risen and made for Strother if Lothar hadn’t gripped his arm.
‘Of course,’ continued Strother, ‘it’ll be all right for some. I can guess what little creep and what fucking foreigner’s going to be let out to sniff around that farmyard. They’ll be safe, you see, dead safe. Only one knacker between the pair of ’em, and that’s up the Kraut’s arse!’
Again Josh moved, but Lothar’s grip was like an MP’s manacle.
‘Sit still, Josh,’ he said in a quiet but carrying tone. ‘At home we have a saying: No need to fight a man with the smell of death upon him.’
This resort to soldiers’ superstition rather than physical violence was nicely judged. Strother paled and his companions fell silent. The Cockney then began to assail the German with obscene abuse, demanding to know what the fuck he meant. Lothar sat meekly under this scurrilous onslaught, knowing that every soft reply and sympathetic smile rubbed salt into the other’s raw fear.
‘Can you really smell death on him?’ whispered Josh in naïve awe as they finally settled down for the night.
‘Only the fear of death,’ murmured Lothar. ‘He is a simple peasant, that one, and this is how the masters have always controlled the peasants – through their fears. I am ashamed to be doing the same.’
‘Ashamed? After all them things he said about you? And me too!’
‘Let us hope that he was in part telling the truth, Josh. Let us hope that perhaps we will go out to the farm.’
It was a hope Josh hardly dared utter. Everything depended on Viney, he saw that. His defence of Viney’s action that night had been at least partially motivated by his awareness of how much his own happiness depended on the big Australian.
He fell asleep and tossed uneasily in an erotic nightmare in which Nell’s naked black body turned into Nicole’s, capable of arousing him even in death.
Close by him, Lothar did not sleep. He was certain in his own mind that Viney’s discovery of the affair between Quayle and the Indian had been no accident. Strother had promised revenge and the outcome must have exceeded his wildest expectation. But his appetite was more likely to have been whetted than sated. Lothar had a sense of destructive forces being let loose which could turn the Warren into a microcosm of that greater destruction they had all fled.
The next morning Viney sent for him. The Indian’s body had been removed in the night and now no trace of the violent incident remained either in the Warren or on Viney’s face.
Before the Australian could speak, Lothar said, ‘Last night, was it Strother who told you about Quayle?’
The cold green eyes regarded him. It was like being watched through ice by some alien creature of the deep.
‘You’d better watch what you’re saying, Fritz.’
‘Why? Will I end like poor Nell?’ mocked Lothar. ‘It was Strother, wasn’t it? He told you so that you would carry out his revenge on Quayle. You obeyed. Think about it, Viney. Monster you may be, but at least be your own monster!’
For a moment he thought he’d gone too far, but the Australian after a visible effort of control said, ‘Lecture over, Fritz? Then let’s get down to why I’ve sent for you, shall we? There’s two things. First is, I’ve decided to let that Pommie officer go.’
The green eyes were focussed tight on Lothar’s face as if challenging a reaction. It is a life for a life he’s offering, thought the German. Cowper’s for the Indian boy’s.
But he merely nodded an acknowledgement.
‘Second thing is, I want you to go out with Patsy here to take a look at that Frenchwoman’s farm, have a talk with her, see how the land lies.’
Lothar was taken completely by surprise.
‘You mean you wish to check if she is to be trusted?’ he said.
‘Naw. I reckon she’s all right. I’ve had Patsy and Blackie keeping an eye on the place for the past week or so, and no one’s strayed even as far as the village, so she ain’t in no hurry to talk with the authorities, is she? Time has come to remind ’em they’re not forgotten. But it’s no use him making contact seeing as he don’t speak the lingo. He’ll show you the way, though.’
When Lothar told Josh where he was going, the boy rushed straight to Viney and begged. ‘Please, Viney, can I go as well?’
Viney laughed and went towards him and ruffled his hair.
‘Not this trip, Josh. No room for billing and cooing this trip. We’ll see what we can do later, mebbe.’
Coming from Viney, this amounted almost to a promise, and Josh waited in an agony of impatience for the recce party to return. The news was both good and bad. Both men affirmed that, in their judgement, Madeleine Gilbert had been as good as her word and had made no attempt to pass on news about the Volunteers to anyone else. What was bad was that the state of the farm and its buildings was very bad indeed and any hope of using it as an immediate source of fresh produce was out of the question. Indeed, Lothar argued that without help he could see no way for the inmates to be in a fit state to survive beyond the following winter.
‘You mean you’d like us to support them?’ enquired Viney.
‘Why not? We have manpower without useful labour. And we have a plentiful supply of basic provisions.’
‘At the moment, sport,’ interposed Blackie Coleport. ‘And we risk our fucking lives every time we go out looking for more.’
Viney relapsed into thought.
Josh held his breath and tried to will the big man into agreement. Not for the first time he wished that the constant and apparently instinctive antagonism between Lothar and Viney did not exist. These men were the most important people in his life and he wanted them united. Lothar he loved and respected and trusted. Viney was very different, much less close to him, but in some ways much easier to understand. The man’s directness and power and even his use of physical violence were not without their appeal. Viney’s behaviour could be frightening, it was true, but Josh had never felt himself directly threatened. Indeed, he’d always felt that Viney was very much on his side in most things, and this reliability added a pleasing physical dimension to the strong spiritual trust that drew him so close to Lothar.
Once again, Viney didn’t let him down.
‘Here’s what we’ll do,’ he said. ‘We’ll lend a hand like you say, till we see how things get on. Three should do to start with. So let’s see; who’ll it be? Fritz, I think you’d best be one of ’em. Heppy, you’re a big strong lad. You’ll do. And for the third, let’s see.’
He made a pretence of studying the assembled men closely, then his broad face split in a huge grin and he said, ‘Young Josh, I suppose it had better be you, else you’ll just be running off again.’
Josh answered the grin with a radiant smile and had to hug himself to hold in a squeal of joy. But others felt far from joyful and made little effort to hold in their emotions.
‘Only three? Why only three, Viney?’ demanded someone.
‘Yeah. Or at least, let’s ’ave a proper roster, so we all gets a turn,’ cried Strothe
r.
‘We know what kind of turn you want, Strother,’ said Viney. ‘I said three and three’s enough. We don’t want the Desolation out there looking like Melbourne at eight o’clock on a Monday morning! As for a roster, that means starting from scratch each day. You get nothing done that way. Continuity’s what you need. So I’ve picked my three and there’s an end. Heppy’s got the muscle. And Fritz speaks the lingo, and as we all know he’s a clever cunt, so he’ll get things sorted. And Josh here, now Josh is a country lad, born and bred, and I’ll lay odds there’s nothing he can’t do around a farm, so that’s all right too!’
It seemed marvellously and perfectly all right to Josh and he was surprised and distressed to discover that Lothar did not seem to share his enthusiasm.
‘Nothing Viney does seems to be right for you!’ he burst out. ‘Why can’t you give him credit?’
‘I give him plenty of credit,’ said Lothar mildly. ‘All he says is true, I give him credit for that. Also, I give him credit for picking us because he knows he can trust us in this matter. The rest he sees either like Strother who would attack the women, perhaps, and certainly cause trouble; or like Arnold Tomkins who would certainly run off if he got the chance. Oh yes, I give Viney credit.’
What he did not add, because he had no desire to overtax Josh’s mind or his loyalties, was that Viney’s action had set up another barrier between himself and the men, causing resentment, reinforcing their sense of his ‘otherness’, and even putting him in a different time-scale by reversing the deserters’ inverted day.
But it was worth almost anything to be going out into the fresh air in daylight, to enjoy a living countryside – not to mention the company of attractive women.
So he surprised Josh by laughing out loud and hugging the boy warmly, saying, ‘Yes, you are quite right, Knab’! It is religion which examines motives rather than works. Here we are not religious and I am most truly and deeply grateful to our good lord and master for his excellent kindness!’
12
The next day Viney announced his decision about Lieutenant Cowper. There were no objections. Strother’s malice seemed to have been temporarily slaked by Nell’s death, and even Fox whose hatred of officers seemed almost pathological remained quiet. Blackie Coleport, Taff Evans and a taciturn Canadian called Pritchard were given the job of taking the. officer to the other side of the Desolation and releasing him.
There were no fond farewells. The young lieutenant was merely told, ‘You’re going’, and next thing he was gagged, blindfolded, with his hands bound behind his back, and stumbling up the tunnel to the surface.
Even under these constraints, the delight of breathing through his nose the cold night air was beyond compare.
There was a breeze which was in his face as they set out, and he tried to keep a check of their progress relative to it so that if it proved to have been constant that night, he might have a rough idea of backtracking their route. After ten minutes he gave up. Either the wind was gusting from all directions or their route was too circuitous to be remembered.
One man followed him close, his hand on the rope which bound his wrists. He guessed that one of the others scouted ahead while the third guarded their flank. Occasionally monosyllabic instructions were whispered in his ear and he quickly learned to obey them instantly. From time to time he was commanded to lie down and he lay with his face pressed close to the earth, sometimes for minutes on end, until the unrevealed danger was past.
But at last they came to a stop which had no sense of danger in it. This was confirmed when after a few moments he heard Coleport whisper, ‘All right ahead. You all right, Taff?’
‘Yes, boy.’
‘Good-oh. This’ll do nicely then. Well, Lieutenant Cowper, old mate, this is where you resign from the Volunteers. Give our love to the GOC.’
‘Shouldn’t we undo his wrists?’ enquired Evans.
‘Nah! He’s got his legs, ain’t he. We don’t want him wandering around too fast, raising the alarm before we’re safely away, do we?’
‘But he’s got to be able to see at least, Blackie,’ protested Evans. ‘Else he could kill himself falling down a shell-hole, and where’s the point of it all been then?’
‘All right, you soft-hearted Celt,’ said Coleport. ‘You and Pritch take off now. I’ll loosen his ropes so he can get himself free with a bit of effort. Then I’ll spin him around a bit, just to make sure he don’t know what direction we’re taking.’
‘OK,’ said Evans. ‘Goodbye, Mr Cowper. Take care now.’
Cowper heard the sound of the two men moving away. And then he heard Coleport’s voice soft in his ear.
‘Sorry, Cowp, old son. I don’t care what anyone says, you’re too much of a fucking risk to be set loose.’
He tried to cry out against the pain of the knife which drove up beneath his ribs but the gag was too tight. Blindly he lashed out with his feet in the direction from which the blow came, but he kicked nothing but air. Curiously it was the blindfold which troubled him most. The sky and the stars were there to be seen just beyond that thin fold of cloth. He shook his head violently to free himself from it, but it was no use. He was falling into a blackness beyond all hope of light.
Coleport caught up with the others. Evans said, ‘I hope he’s all right.’
‘Oh, he will be,’ said Coleport cheerfully. ‘Officer material, sport. Them bastards are always all right.’
He wondered as they made their way back if he could have got away with stealing the bastard’s pocket watch. It was a fine kind of timepiece, silver-plated and elegantly engraved. He’d helped himself to it when they first caught Cowper but Viney had insisted that all the officer’s possessions, revolver apart, be returned to him.
Nah! he told himself. He’d been wise not to take it. Viney would’ve spotted it for sure, and then there’d have been hell to pay. He reckoned Viney had made a mistake in wanting to let Cowper go free, but you didn’t let Viney know you were correcting his mistakes, not if you had any sense you didn’t! Anyway, what the hell did you want with a watch when time meant fuck-all to you!
Captain Jack Denial rubbed at the faint layer of tarnish which had formed on the case of the watch. Opened, it shone as bright as ever.
To Augustus, with love from his father.
The body had been dead only a few days when they found it. So they had kept him alive for several weeks before taking him out, bound, gagged and blindfolded, and slipping a knife under his ribs. Why?
In the same pocket as the watch there was a badly creased sheet of paper, covered with pencilled writing on both sides. One side was easy to read – easy in the mechanical sense, that was. It contained Cowper’s letter to his wife. Did she still nurse hopes that he was alive? Denial wondered. Or had she accepted his death and was now to have him resurrected and killed again all in a moment? Perhaps the kindest thing would be to destroy the letter.
But Jack Denial was not in the habit of destroying evidence. And there might come a time when the faint and much less legible scribblings on the other side of the letter could be very important evidence indeed.
With infinite patience he pieced together the letters and words that Augustus Cowper had scribbled both as a pastime and an aide-memoire in the days between his ‘trial’ and his hoped-for release.
30–40 men – Viney’s Volunteers! – says he didn’t mean kill nurse.
Denial paused here and closed his eyes. So it was confirmed. And Cowper had recognized him and challenged him. Oh, the brave, foolhardy young man.
Meant to kill me, I think. Thank God for the Graf!
What the devil could that mean?
Warren in old Hun command HQ. Location?
Some excitement. Contact with French peasants? Not too far from edge of Desolation?
Names: Coleport (Aus.) Strother (Cockney) Josh? (young lad-North Country) Hepworth (York.) Quayle (Devon) Do I want these men killed?
Screams last night. Someone dead? Can I trust them? Or try to
escape?
And then the last entry of all.
Tonight Von Seeberg told me. But he’s not coming – says it will be all right – but I wish
Jack Denial carefully put the paper into a cardboard file which already contained many scraps of paper and threads of information and went to report to his superior at Divisional HQ. Advancing as the front retreated, with the small gains of the Somme and the larger of the German withdrawal to the misnamed Hindenburg Line, Headquarters was now situated in an industrialist’s country house, grandiosely called the Château d’Amblay, a couple of miles north of Barnecourt. It was from this same HQ that an RFC supply truck had set out across the Desolation. Its driver had been found by a cavalry patrol some time later with a bullet through his head. But of the truck, its contents, or its passenger, Corporal Tomkins, an HQ clerk, there’d been no sign. This too was all meticulously recorded in Denial’s file.
His superior was an understanding man with a growing sympathy with Denial’s view that the problem of disaffection in the British Army was not one which could be cured by pretending it didn’t exist. If you made lunatic demands on the mental, physical and spiritual resources of men, in the end something must break, argued Denial. Desertion was the tip of the iceberg. Once let the feeling that a majority of men felt the same way spread and what you got next was mutiny. Denial had been regarded as slightly less of a crank as reports of what had been happening in the French Army since the fiasco of Nivelle’s Chemin des Dames offensive spread. Over fifty divisions had been involved in a refusal to go up to the front and at one point early in June only two reliable divisions stood between the Germans and Paris.
The General Staff response was predictable. It couldn’t happen to us, our chaps are good stolid Anglo-Saxon stock, none of your volatile Latins! Anyway, most of the trouble was caused by bolshevik agitators riding on the purely temporary crest of the soon-to-be-reversed Russian revolution, and their filthy dogma would find no breeding ground in the minds of men brought up in the traditions of the world’s oldest democracy.
No Man's Land Page 18