To End All Wars

by David Tallerman

  Forrester woke gasping. A nightmare—but so vivid. What had Timperley given him?

  “Is it the pain?” The captain was peering at him with faint concern.

  “A bad dream,” Forrester murmured. Now that the memory was fading, he felt foolish .

  “I suppose those are unavoidable,” Timperley observed. “Anyhow, they tell me we’ll be in Le Havre soon.”

  Forrester saw that the portion of day framed by the carriage window was dimming toward evening. Again, he wished he had his watch. It was difficult to deduce the time from so overcast a sky, and he was unwilling to ask Timperley.

  At least the captain’s prediction proved correct. Within minutes, Le Havre station was rising into view. Before they could arrive, however, the train slowed to a shuddering halt, steam cascading along its flank. Forrester anticipated a brief pause while they waited for a platform. Then he became aware of a mounting clamour from behind them and realised that the cargo from the rear cars must be being unloaded. He would have liked to look, but the dusk and the steady rain upon the windows smeared everything into obscurity.

  He was cheered a little when a young private scurried in to bring them more sandwiches, wedges of baguette filled with slices of beef and wrapped in grease-proof paper. Yet even that short-lived respite couldn’t make the delay less interminable. It seemed to him that a good hour had passed by the time they began to move, chugging lethargically into the grandiose interior of Le Havre station.

  On the platform, they were met by another captain, who spoke succinctly and in hushed tones to Timperley. This second captain led them to a motorcar, which drove at speed through streets hushed by night, war, and the foul weather, down to the harbour. The docks were impressive and busy with waterborne traffic. Yet Forrester barely had the opportunity to glance around before they were hustled aboard the ship picked out for them. She was small and clearly not a military vessel, but by then he was too weary to wonder if he should find that detail odd.

  The rain was falling more heavily, and the wind had risen, audible now as a steady banshee wail. It was not the weather Forrester would have chosen for a Channel crossing. His stomach had been sensitive ever since their arrival in Le Havre, and five minutes at sea was all that was necessary to make apparent what was in store for him. The remainder of the journey he spent in being violently sick over the stern rail, with a concerned Sergeant Torrance hovering nearby.

  Forrester knew the hour must be late, perhaps after midnight, when they disembarked at Southampton. He had assumed they’d take him somewhere to recuperate, a hotel maybe, or the military hospital he remembered as being in the town’s environs. He was shocked when they were driven in another motorcar to the station and ushered onto another train. Less surprising was the wait that followed, or the racket from outside that accompanied it. When he asked Timperley what was going on, his response was a curt, “Your guess is as good as mine, lieutenant.” The captain, too, was looking fatigued.

  Forrester had just persuaded himself that they were intended to rest the night on the train and depart in the morning when a whistle sounded and they struggled into motion. Soon they were out of the night-time city and into the countryside.

  What a bitter homecoming , Forrester thought, and wished he could see through the rain-spattered window. However much the trees of England might resemble the trees of France, however alike its hills and villages, he felt in his heart that he would know them to be different. But England was mere darkness, and even memory could pluck no meaning from the shapeless black beyond the glass.

  Forrester returned to his book and read with heavy eyes. He would have been glad to go back to sleep, but between the ordeal of the Channel crossing, his leg, and the bewildering circumstances, agitation had come to outweigh his tiredness. More than once, he noticed Torrance begin to doze and then stir himself, and pitied the poor sergeant. Timperley, meanwhile, spent the time staring glumly at the window. Given how put out he behaved, it was becoming easier to accept that he really knew little more than Forrester did.

  Forrester had been imagining they must be heading east to the capital, a theory that seemed less and less convincing. He could think of no other logical objective, but then he had scant evidence to work with, and as the night wore on and his lassitude deepened, so it grew harder to conjecture. The army did things in its own manner and for its own reasons. Hadn’t he learned that well enough in France? They would tell him what he needed to know when they felt ready, or else they wouldn’t. In the meantime, there was nothing to do except make the best of his situation.

  When he finally finished the Gould yellow-back—it ended no better than it had begun—Forrester at last started to doze fitfully. Discomfort warred with fatigue. He would drift off and wake with a jolt, to find that either Timperley or Torrance was asleep, though never both of them together. That gave him the disconcerting impression of being constantly surveilled, yet even his resulting unease couldn’t keep his eyes open for more than a few minutes at a time.

  Then Forrester woke again and the sky outside was grey rather than black. Sunrise was not far off. They had travelled all through the night; he was certain he’d have woken if they’d stopped for more than a short interval. That must mean they were somewhere in the north, perhaps so distant as Scotland.

  Soon after, they drew in at a station, and he strained and failed to read a name through the drizzle trickling upon the window. He could, though, make out the forms of men moving on the platform, and when one passed close, he recognised a soldier’s cap.

  Once they’d ground to a halt, Timperley got up. He looked haggard and bleary-eyed. “I’ll go and see what’s what,” he said. When he returned minutes later, his face was taut. “They advise me we’ll be here a while. Wherever here is. I’ve requested that they bring us some breakfast, but apparently that’s too much to ask. How are you feeling, lieutenant?”

  “Hungry,” Forrester replied. For the first time since they’d crossed the Channel, the notion of food didn’t nauseate him.

  “And the leg?”

  Forrester considered. “Stiff. Still sore.”

  “I’d like to check it over. Might as well, while we’re waiting.”

  Forrester dutifully rolled his trouser leg, trying not to wince as the coarse cloth snagged on the bandage. Timperley knelt, stripped off the existing dressing, made a quick inspection of the damaged flesh, and then pressed a fresh dressing in place and rebound it. “What’s the pain like?”

  “Not good,” Forrester admitted. The protracted journey had left the limb feeling bruised through, with a horrid, steady throbbing under that.

  “Then,” Timperley declared, “we shall have to give you something for it.”

  Forrester wanted vaguely to protest. The doctor’s manner bothered him. Yet what actual grounds did he have? And he was so very tired, to the extent that the world seemed smudged and not quite real. Instead, he nodded dumbly, and made a fumbling effort to tidy his trousers and to furl his shirtsleeve.

  The captain hunted in the recesses of his bag for the syringe in its leather case. At some point, Timperley must have refilled it, for the tube was opaque with yellow fluid. “Don’t worry, lieutenant,” he said, “this won’t do you any harm.”

  And in truth, Forrester hardly felt the needle break his skin. The deed was over in an instant. He settled back into his seat and strained his eyes against the rain, endeavouring to make sense of the figures moving about behind the glass.

  Despite the faint lightening of the sky, doing so was no easier than before. In fact, it was as if the window had been smeared with petroleum jelly. Forrester rubbed at his eyes, but that only made matters worse.

  The pain, at least, was altogether gone. Timperley’s concoction had done the trick, he thought, as darkness denser than the twilight outside washed in sluggish waves upon him, pulling him under by degrees.

  Chapter Five

  T wice he came near to wakefulness.

  The first time, he found he couldn’
t open his eyes, and his surroundings seemed removed at a great distance. He thought he could make out a rhythmic clack that might be the mechanism of a train, but he felt nothing, as though he were cocooned in cotton wool. Rather than try and concentrate, it was easier and more agreeable to slide again from consciousness.

  The second time, he did open his eyes. There was grey light, and a roof close above him, of metal or possibly canvas; his view was swimming and it was hard to judge. He perceived motion, heard a rumble that might have been an engine. Keeping his eyes open was unpleasant, so he shut them. He lay for a while listening, and other noises came: the crow of a cockerel, what sounded like loud hammering far off, and the wet whirr of wheels in mud. But staying awake was too demanding. He let himself sink once more.

  The third time, Forrester came round properly, albeit by slow gradations. Before he had felt sick, a queasiness permeating from the pit of his stomach. Now he was merely listless and uncommonly tired. He was lying in a bed, and he had been undressed, his clothes replaced with cotton pyjamas. His mouth tasted bitter, and he was glad to find a tumbler of water beside the bed, a pitcher next to that. He drank down two full glasses.

  The room was plain, the walls plastered rather than papered. In the opposite corner, a wardrobe and chest of drawers were arranged in a right angle. Above the chest of drawers was a shelf, currently empty, and to its left were two doors, one larger than the other. Forrester guessed that the smaller, in the leftmost wall, might lead off into a bathroom. The sole window, behind him, was high and narrow. What light it allowed was drab and feeble, and the main illumination came from an oil lamp set on the bedside cabinet, currently turned down low.

  Forrester had no way to divine the hour. It could as easily have been mid-morning or early evening. He had an impression of having slept for a long time, but that was likely a side-effect of Timperley’s sedative. At any rate, he felt rotten. And while he was tempted to blame that squarely on whatever Timperley had pumped into him, Forrester suspected there might be something more fundamentally wrong. For all that he was fully awake, he felt apart from his surroundings. His body and forehead were clammy, his throat and lungs scoured. Combined with the pain in his leg, those symptoms were enough to make him quite dejected.

  He lay motionless. Rest is best , he thought, and then the idiotic rhyme battered inside his skull, like a moth trapped in a lampshade. The truth was that he’d have preferred to get up and explore, but he ached, he was weak and ill, and it was good to be immobile. Rest is best , his thoughts clamoured endlessly, and Forrester couldn’t bring himself to disagree.

  Time passed. The light at the window dimmed to a square of charcoal grey. He was close to dozing again when he heard the rap of boot heels on creaking wood and then three rough taps on the door. “Are you awake, sir?”

  “I’m awake,” Forrester conceded, and promptly set himself choking.

  There was a rattling from the other side of the door, and it swung inward. A young man in uniform filled the entrance. Forrester discerned a sergeant’s chevrons on his arm. “Sorry to disturb you, sir,” the sergeant said.

  His voice was harsh, with a flattening of the vowels and exaggeration of consonants that made each word snappish. His face had, somehow, the same properties: thick, dark hair, beetling brows, and the rigorous angles of nose and cheeks gave him an incessant glower.

  With an effort, Forrester stilled his heaving lungs. “You’re not disturbing me,” he said, though the statement was undermined by the wet rattle from his chest.

  “The major asks if you’d be up to coming downstairs for a talk?” the sergeant enquired.

  Forrester didn’t feel well enough for a meeting, yet nor did he like the prospect of relinquishing an opportunity to gain some answers. “I think so. But am I to meet the major in my nightclothes?”

  “Your uniform’s off being washed, but there’s a fresh one in the wardrobe,” the sergeant explained. “Should I stay and give you a hand with changing, sir?”

  “I’m sure I can manage,” Forrester told him, swinging his legs out of bed. The bare boards were cold under his naked soles.

  The sergeant paced into the room, snatched up two objects that had lain invisible against the foot of the bedstead, and propped them beside Forrester: a pair of crutches. “These may help.” Then he hurried out, closing the door behind him.

  Forrester soon regretted his impetuosity. Just getting his new clothes out was a trial; undressing and changing was nigh impossible. The crutches were more hindrance than help, and yet he couldn’t stand without them. In the end, he piled everything on the bed, sat down, and made a go of it that way. When he was finally done—and he could easily believe his labours had wasted a quarter of an hour—he called, “I’m ready.”

  The door opened. “One thing first, sir,” the sergeant said as he pulled a glass vial from a pocket. “The major requests that you fill this. Standard practice for all new patients.”

  It took Forrester a moment of incomprehension to appreciate what he was intended to do with the vial.

  “There’s a water closet there,” the sergeant confirmed, tilting his head toward the second, smaller door. Then, registering Forrester’s crutches, he moved to open it for him.

  Forrester struggled through, tapping the door shut with the tip of one crutch. Glancing about, he noted a toilet, washstand, and tin tub, and that the chamber had its own tiny window, which gave onto a steep bank of rooftops. Forrester’s initial reaction had been to doubt that he’d be able to perform the required function on demand. But he realised now that his bladder was achingly full, and that the challenge would be rather in imposing a measure of restraint.

  Task successfully accomplished, it occurred to him that if the sample was for the purpose of medical checks as he assumed, they would be asking him for blood also. Only then did he become aware of the faint ache in the crook of his left arm. Sure enough, when he rolled the sleeve, he discovered a pinprick of red amid an areole of bruising. It must have been done while he was under the influence of Timperley’s concoction.

  Back in his room, Forrester handed over the vial, and the sergeant returned it to his pocket. Then he led him through the other door and on down a tight, slant-roofed corridor, hesitating after every few steps for Forrester to catch up on his crutches. The corridor was undecorated, with a number of doors off to either side, and ended in a flight of stairs, which proved particularly onerous for Forrester. More than once he had to rely on the sergeant’s assistance.

  They descended a single floor, to another passage. This one was decidedly different: lushly carpeted in brilliant red, with portraits and rococo designs of fruits and flowers in plasterwork along the walls. “Where are we?” Forrester wondered.

  The sergeant, a little way ahead, said without looking back, “This is Sherston House.”

  “And where is Sherston House?”

  But the sergeant had halted outside a panelled door, and now was knocking. From inside, a voice exclaimed, “Come in.”

  Opening the door, the sergeant motioned for Forrester to enter.

  Forrester felt sudden trepidation, as though he were a schoolboy summoned to the headmaster’s office. He was feverish and fatigued; the ordeal of dressing and the journey down had drained whatever energy he’d recovered from his enforced sleep. But it was too late for second thoughts. He stepped inside.

  The room, an office, was stately but not large. The space was deeper than it was wide and receded toward a broad window and a desk, with bookcases occupying the left-hand wall and what remained of the rear. On the third wall hung three landscape paintings in gilt frames, all of them hunting scenes and distinctly dour. The scenery they portrayed, bleak moorlands under disastrous skies, might have been Scottish.

  Behind the desk sat a man wearing officer’s casual dress, in a leather-bound chair the same maroon shade as the walls. The man was older than Forrester, perhaps around forty. His walnut-brown hair was sprinkled with grey about the temples. His countenance was ba
sically austere, but the effect was softened by his eyes, which were gentle and alert, and by the unruliness of his moustache and striking eyebrows, which lent him a reassuring air of eccentricity.

  He acknowledged Forrester with a slight smile, one that made its way easily to those placid brown eyes. “Do sit down, Lieutenant Forrester,” he said.

  Forrester crossed to the chair before the desk, manoeuvred awkwardly into it, and fumbled to prop the crutches beside him.

  The officer waited patiently. When Forrester had settled, he said, “Let me introduce myself. My name is Major Forbes, though you may call me Doctor Forbes, or doctor, or, if the informality doesn’t bother you, simply Forbes. I’m the senior medical officer of this establishment, Sherston House, where in all likelihood you’ll be staying for the next weeks.”

  For some reason, this seemed to Forrester a lot to take in. “It’s good to meet you, doctor.”

  Forbes smiled once more. It was remarkable how the expression softened his entire face. “That will suffice for the moment, but I really do prefer to be called by my name. Let’s hope you soon feel comfortable in doing so. In the meantime, will you permit me to put aside your rank and call you Forrester?”

  Forrester, who had warmed immediately to the major, nearly said, Call me Raff, that’s what my friends use . But the informality seemed inappropriate, if not to this particular situation then to their respective roles. “Of course.”

  “So,” said Forbes, “I imagine you must have your share of questions. Would that be a fair assessment?”

  “It’s definitely been a curious few hours,” Forrester admitted.

  “Insomuch as I have any right to, I can only apologise for the manner in which you were conveyed here. I’m sure that, from your perspective, it wasn’t the most usual of journeys. ”