Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

  After some cheering words to them, Weir went back to his billet and lay down. There had been no word on Stephen from battalion headquarters when he went to check that morning. If he had been alive, he would somehow have got word to him, Weir believed. Even if his own commanding officer had not been formally notified by the medics, Stephen was resourceful enough to have let his friend know.

  Weir closed his eyes and tried to sleep. He would want to write a letter to Stephen’s next of kin, if such a person existed. Some phrases began to form in his mind. He was quite fearless … he was an inspiration … he was my closest friend, my strength and shield. The empty expressions that had filled so many letters home did not seem enough to describe the part Stephen had played in his life. Weir’s eyes filled with tears. If Stephen was gone, then he himself would not be able to continue. He would court death, he would walk along the parapet, he would open his mouth to the next cloud of phosgene that drifted over them and invite the telegram to be delivered to the quiet street in Leamington Spa where his parents and their friends carried on their lives with no care or thought for the world that he and Stephen had known.

  Stephen Wraysford reinhabited his body cell by cell, each slow inch bringing new pain and some older feeling of what it meant to be alive. There was no sheet on the bed, though against the skin of his face there was the rough comfort of old linen, washed and disinfected beyond softness.

  In the evening the pain in his arm and neck grew worse, though it was never more than he could tolerate and it was never as bad as that of the man in the next bed, who could apparently visualize the pain: he could see it hovering over him. Each day they removed more of the man’s body, snipping ahead of the gangrene, though never taking quite enough. When they unplugged his dressings, fluid leapt from his flesh like some victorious spirit that had possessed him. His body was decomposing as he lay there, like those that hung on the wire going from red to black before they crumbled into the earth leaving only septic spores.

  One morning a boy of about nineteen appeared at the end of the ward. His eyes were covered with pieces of brown paper. Round his neck was a ticket, which the senior medical officer, a short-tempered man in a white coat, inspected for information. He called out for a nurse, and a young English girl, herself no more than twenty, went over to help him.

  They began to undress the boy, who had clearly not had a bath for some months. His boots seemed glued to his feet. Stephen watched, wondering why they did not even bother to put up a screen. When he himself had arrived he calculated that he had not taken off his socks for twenty-two days.

  When they finally prised the boy’s boots off, the smell that came into the ward made the nurse retch into the stone sink beside them. Stephen heard the MO shout at her.

  They peeled the boy’s clothes from him and when they came to the undergarments the MO used a knife to cut them off the flesh. Finally the boy stood naked, except for the two brown eye patches. The top layer of skin had gone from his body, though there was a strip round the middle where the webbing of his belt had protected him.

  He was trying to scream. His mouth was pulled open and the sinews of his neck were stretched, but some throat condition appeared to prevent any sound from issuing.

  The MO peeled the brown paper from the boy’s face. The skin of his cheeks and forehead was marked with bluish-violet patches. Both of his eyes were oozing, as though from acute conjunctivitis. They rinsed them in fluid from a douche cup into which the nurse had tipped some prepared solution. His body stiffened silently. They tried to wash some of the grime from him, but he would not stay still while they applied the soap and water.

  “We’ve got to get the filth off you, young man. Keep still,” said the MO.

  They walked down the ward, and when they came closer Stephen could see the pattern of burns on his body. The soft skin on the armpits and inner thighs was covered with huge, raw blisters. He was breathing in short fast gasps. They persuaded him on to a bed, though he arched his body away from the contact of the sheet. Eventually the doctor lost patience and forced him down with hands on his chest. The boy’s mouth opened in silent protest, bringing a yellow froth from his lips.

  The doctor left the nurse to cover him with a kind of improvised wooden tent, over which she draped a sheet. Finally she had time to bring a screen down the ward and conceal him from the others.

  Stephen noticed that she was able to tend the wound of the man in the next bed and even to rebuke him for his noise, but whenever she emerged from behind the screens she would wring her small hands in a literal gesture of anguish he had never seen before.

  He caught her eye and tried to comfort her. His own wounds were healing quickly and the pain was almost gone. When the doctor came to inspect them, Stephen asked him what had happened to the boy. He had apparently been caught by a gas attack some way behind the front line. Blinded by the chlorine, he had stumbled into a house that was burning after being hit by a shell.

  “Stupid boy didn’t get his mask on in time,” said the MO. “They have enough drills.”

  “Will he die?”

  “Probably. He’s got liver damage from the gas. Some postmortem changes in his body already.”

  As the days went by Stephen noticed that when the nurse approached the screen behind which the gassed boy was lying, her step would always slow and her eyes would fill with foreboding. She had blue eyes and fair hair pulled back under her starched cap. Her footsteps came almost to a halt, then she breathed in deeply and her shoulders rose in resolution.

  On the third morning the boy’s voice came back to him. He begged to die.

  The nurse had left the screens slightly apart and Stephen saw her lift the tent away with great care, holding it high above the scorched body before she turned and laid it on the floor. She looked down at the flesh no one was allowed to touch, from the discharging eyes, down over the face and neck, the raw chest, the groin and throbbing legs. Impotently, she held both her arms wide in a gesture of motherly love, as though this would comfort him.

  He made no response. She took a bottle of oil from the side of the bed and leaned over him. Gently she poured some on to his chest and the boy let out a high animal shriek. She stood back and turned her face to the heavens.

  ———

  The next day Stephen woke to find the boy had gone. He did not come back in the evening, or the next day. Stephen hoped his prayers had been answered. When the nurse came to change his dressing, he asked her where he was.

  “He’s gone for a bath,” she said. “We’ve put him in colloidal saline for a day.”

  “Does he lie against the bath?” Stephen asked incredulously.

  “No, he’s in a canvas cradle.”

  “I see. I hope he’ll die soon.”

  In the afternoon there was the sound of running feet. They could hear the MO shouting, “Get him out, get him out!”

  A bundle of screaming blankets was carried dripping down the ward. Through the night they contrived to keep the boy alive. The next day he was quiet, and in the evening they tried to lever him into the body cradle to get him back in the bath. His limbs dangled over the sides of the canvas. He lay motionless, trailing his raw skin. His infected lungs began to burble and froth with yellow fluid that choked his words of protest as they lowered him into the stone bath outside.

  That night Stephen prayed that the boy would die. In the morning he saw the nurse, pale and shocked, making her way toward him. He raised his eyes interrogatively. She nodded in affirmation, then burst into shuddering tears.

  ———

  Stephen was allowed to go outside in the afternoons and sit on a bench from which he could watch the wind in the trees. He did not talk; he had no urge to say anything. Soon he was walking again, and the doctors told him he would be discharged at the end of the week. He had been there twenty days.

  “Visitor for you,” said the fair nurse one morning.

  “For me?” Stephen spoke. His voice uncurled in him like a cat stretching
after a long sleep. He was delighted by the unaccustomed sound. “Is it the king?”

  The nurse smiled. “No. It’s a Captain Gray.”

  Stephen said, “What’s your name?”

  “Nurse Elleridge.”

  “Your first name.”

  “Mary.”

  “I want to tell you something, Mary. Can you come here for a moment?”

  She went over to his bed, a little reluctantly. Stephen took her hand.

  “Sit on the bed for a second.”

  She looked round doubtfully but perched on the edge of the bed. “What did you want to tell me?”

  “I’m alive,” said Stephen. “That’s what I wanted to tell you. Did you know that? I’m alive.”

  “Well done.” She smiled. “Is that all?”

  “Yes. That’s all.” He let go of her hand. “Thank you.”

  Captain Gray came down the ward. “Good morning, Wraysford.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “I hear you’re walking. Shall we go outside?”

  There were two wrought-iron benches set against the wall of the hospital, which overlooked a lawn that dropped down to a cedar tree and a large stagnant pond. Occasional figures were moving tenderly about the grounds with the aid of sticks.

  “You seem to have made a pretty good recovery,” said Gray. “They told me you’d had it.”

  He took off his cap and placed it on the bench between them. His crinkly hair was a glossy brown colour still unmarked by grey; his moustache was neat and trim. Although Stephen was pale, unkempt, and showing grey hairs in places on his head, his face retained a youthfulness that Gray’s had lost. The light in his large eyes still promised something unpredictable, while Gray’s expression, though animated, was steady. He was a man who had mastered himself, and although his manner was informal he was manifestly the superior officer.

  Stephen nodded. “Once they got rid of the infection I made good progress. The wounds themselves were not that bad. This arm’s going to have slightly restricted movement, but otherwise it’s all right.”

  Gray took a cigarette from the case in his breast pocket and tapped it on the end of the bench. “You’ve got two weeks home leave from the moment you leave this place,” he said. “After that you’re being promoted. I want you to go on a course at Amiens. Then you’ll have a spell on brigade staff.”

  Stephen said, “I’m not going.”

  “What?” Gray laughed.

  “I’m not going home and I’m not going on some staff job. Not now.”

  Gray said, “I thought you’d be delighted. You’ve been in the front line for over a year, haven’t you?”

  “Exactly,” said Stephen. “A year of preparation. I don’t want to leave at the vital moment.”

  “What vital moment?” Gray looked at him suspiciously.

  “Everyone knows we’re going to attack. Even the doctors and nurses know it. That’s why they’re trying to get those men walking.”

  Gray pursed his lips. “Perhaps, perhaps. But listen, Wraysford. You’ve done well with your platoon. They haven’t achieved much yet, but which of us has? You’ve kept them together under fire. You’ve earned a rest. No one’s going to say you’re shirking anything. For God’s sake, they gave you up for dead only three weeks ago. Did you know that? They dumped you with the corpses.”

  Stephen was appalled by the idea of being separated from the men he had fought with. He despised the war, but he could not leave until he had seen how it would end. He had become, in some way he did not understand, wedded to it: his small destiny was tied to the larger outcome of events.

  “To begin with,” he said, “I have no home in England. I wouldn’t know where to go. Would I loaf around in Piccadilly Circus? Should I go to the seaside in Cornwall and sit in a little cottage? I’d rather stay in France. I like it here.”

  Gray smiled with indulgent curiosity. “Go on. And promotion? You don’t want that either? It would mean promoting Harrington instead.”

  Stephen smiled. “Even that, sir. I think there will be other opportunities for promotion. I don’t think the killing is going to stop directly.”

  “Probably not,” said Gray. “But listen, Wraysford, these are my orders. There’s not much I can do about it.”

  “You could speak to the commanding officer.”

  “Colonel Barclay?” Gray shook his head. “I don’t think so. He plays it by the book. I think he wrote the book.”

  Stephen was encouraged. The idea of the unorthodox clearly appealed to Gray, for all his dapper appearance and military keenness.

  The two of them were silent. A lorry brought stretcher cases to the side of the hospital and two orderlies went out to help. Some of the men they unloaded were fit only to die; the worst wounded were always left to last by the stretcher-bearers on the grounds that they were less likely to be of future use. It must, Stephen have reflected, seem like a self-fulfilling judgement to those who lay in shellholes, waiting, watching the infection begin.

  “Do you know where we’re being moved?” he said.

  “Yes I do,” said Gray. “Though I’m not supposed to tell you yet.”

  Stephen said nothing, but opened his hands in a slight shrug.

  “Albert,” said Gray. “Then we’ll have precise instructions. Brigade headquarters will be in a village called Auchonvillers, if that’s how you pronounce it. The colonel called it Ocean Villas.”

  “I know it!” said Stephen excitedly. “I’ve been there. It’s just by the river Ancre. I know the area well. And I speak French. I would be—”

  “Indispensable,” laughed Gray.

  “Exactly.”

  “Tell me about it, then.”

  “It’s nice countryside. Not flat, more like downland, I think you’d call it. Good fishing in the Ancre—not that I ever caught anything. Open fields with some large woods and copses. Quite heavily farmed for crops and vegetables. A lot of sugar beet, I think. The villages are dull. The railway from Albert stops at Beaumont. There’s a pretty village called Beaumont-Hamel.”

  “You won’t see much of that. It’s a German fortress. What else?”

  “That’s about all. There’s a problem, though. It is hilly. It depends who has the high ground. You wouldn’t want to attack uphill; that would be suicide.”

  “I don’t suppose we want to attack at all, but we have to draw the fire from Verdun. If they break through there we’re finished.”

  “And will we attack uphill?”

  “The Boche have been there for a year. I don’t suppose they chose the low ground.”

  Stephen said nothing, then, “And who else is going?”

  “It’s mostly the new boys, Kitchener’s Army, just a few regulars like ourselves to stiffen them up.”

  “They’re sending them to attack there?” Stephen was incredulous.

  Gray nodded. Stephen closed his eyes. He remembered from the day he had spent fishing the way the ground rose from the river. He had a dim recollection of a large wood on a hill that lay beneath a village called, if he remembered rightly, Thiepval. He knew what the German defenses would be like after a year of preparation; even after a week they built better trenches than the British. The thought of waves of businessmen and labourers, factory hands and clerks in their first taste of war going up to meet them was absurd. They would not allow it.

  “Had second thoughts?” said Gray. “Piccadilly Circus is not such a bad place. You’d get a decent meal at least. You could go to the Café Royal.”

  Stephen shook his head. “Do you think you’ll be able to do something for me? Persuade them to let me stay?”

  “Anything is possible. It’s always easier in the long run to tell a commanding officer that you are offering him troops rather than taking them away. I can tell his second-in-command, Major Thursby.”

  “And what about the staff job? Can you delay that, or send someone else?”

  Gray said, “If you make yourself indispensable. And if you toe the line a bit mor
e.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Gray coughed and ground out his cigarette under his heel. “You’re superstitious, aren’t you?”

  “We all are.”

  “Officers are not superstitious, Wraysford. Our lives depend on strategy and tactics, not matchsticks or card games.”

  “Perhaps I’m still a private at heart.”

  “Well, stop it. I’ve seen that rubbish in your dugout. The wee carved figures, cards, and candle ends. Chuck it out. Trust to preparation and good leadership. Trust your men. If you want something supernatural go and see the chaplain.”

  Stephen looked down. “I’d never thought of Horrocks as particularly supernatural.”

  “Don’t be funny, Wraysford. You know what I mean. If I help you, you’ve got to repay me. Cut out the mumbo-jumbo and believe in yourself.”

  Stephen said, “I don’t really believe in that stuff, you know—cards and fortunes and so on. But everyone does it.”

  “No they don’t, Stephen. You do it because of what happened to you when you were a child.” Gray’s voice had softened a little.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know your life history, but I think children need to believe in powers outside themselves. That’s why they read books about witches and wizards and God knows what. There is a human need for that which childhood normally exhausts. But if a child’s world is broken up by too much reality, that need goes underground.”

  “What ridiculous Austrian quack—”

  “Be quiet.” Gray stood up. “I’m your company commander. I’m supposed to know things you don’t. If I help keep you here at the Front, God help you, you will do things my way in future.”

  He held out his hand. Stephen shook it briefly and went back into the hospital.

  “You mad bastard, Wraysford,” said Michael Weir. “You mean you chose to stay when you could have gone home?”

  “Home?”

  “You know what I mean. England. It’s so lovely at this time of year. I used to go and spend Whitsun with an aunt who lived in Sheringham on the coast of Norfolk. In late May the air was so pure you could get drunk on it. The fields and hedgerows were alive. It was the most beautiful time. And there was a little pub in Burnham Thorpe where—”