by A L Berridge
‘Look, Corp,’ he said, stooping to drag it clear of the tide. ‘If we put this back it would make a shelter.’
Ryder studied the wagon critically. ‘If we can lift it.’
Oliver was certain. He could see it in his head, an upright platform of eight foot length, the three of them sitting snug and dry underneath. ‘Of course we can,’ he said, thrusting his shoulder to the wood. ‘Of course.’ He heaved with all his might, but the wood ground agonizingly into his shoulder blade and refused to lift an inch. ‘If you help me …’
‘Two’s not enough,’ said Ryder. ‘Not even with Sullivan. But it’s big enough for more.’
He gazed round the deserted sand, then stopped to stare at the cliffs on their far left. Two tall red patches were sheltering under the overhang, each with a black top. From this distance it was hard to tell a bearskin from a feather bonnet, but the dark trousers on the one and the kilt on the other set the matter beyond question. A Guard and a Highlander.
‘Muscle,’ said Ryder with satisfaction. ‘They’ll do, come on.’
The soldiers watched their approach with the faint smirk peculiar to infantry spotting cavalry reduced to their own pedestrian level. All the Guards were big strong men, but the Highlander was almost as tall and their headdresses brushed the top of the overhang. Oliver felt a sudden awkwardness, but Ryder only smiled and said, ‘Evening, gentlemen. Would you like some shelter?’
The Guard’s eyes shifted under the bearskin and noted Ryder’s chevrons. ‘Funny, aren’t you, Corporal?’ he said with an emphatic sniff. Oliver remembered the ‘one rank up’ rule for the Guards and wondered if it applied to private soldiers too.
The Highlander’s beard was only a soft curly fuzz on his cheeks and his gaze had a steadiness that robbed it of any offence. ‘I’ve packs to mind. Is there room for them too?’
‘There will be,’ said Ryder, and explained. ‘What do you say?’
The Highlander stepped straight out into the rain, but the Guard hesitated and looked at his foot. Oliver’s hope sunk at the glimpse of bandage protruding from his boot, but the Highlander had no such qualms. ‘Losh, man,’ he said cheerfully, offering the Guard his arm. ‘It’s not your feet they’re wanting but the strong arms and broad back of you. They’re but laddies, they’ll never do it without you help them.’
The Highlander was scarcely older than themselves but the appeal to his superior strength did wonders for the Guard. ‘Never said I wouldn’t, did I?’ he said defensively, and stepped out with barely a trace of a limp. ‘Come on, then, let’s see it.’
They set off back across the sand. Oliver still wasn’t sure they’d be enough, but Ryder said, ‘Get Sullivan, would you, Poll? We’ll need someone to place the wheel.’
Oliver lowered his voice. ‘But he’s been … He’s been hurt; he can’t lift anything, can he?’
Ryder kept smiling for the sake of the others. ‘Just get him, Poll, I think you’ll find he can.’
It seemed cruel to make an injured man work, but Sullivan almost sprang out of his miserable huddle in his haste to join them, and when he saw what was needed he just spat on his hands and said, ‘You lift it, then, and trust me for the wheel.’ There was a strength in his voice Oliver hadn’t heard since Varna.
They lifted. A Guard next to a Highlander, shoulder to shoulder with two cavalrymen, they lifted together and the wood rose easily in their hands. Sullivan stepped back, the wagon bounced down, and there it was, a long platform more than three feet off the ground, a solid wooden shelter for as long as they needed it. The ground was already ankle-deep in water, but there were five of them to push, and foot by foot they shoved it over the bumpy shingle onto the harder sand, clear of the water, clear of the tide-line, up to the cliff and home.
Ryder gave a little nod. ‘We can do better. Sullivan, your things are soaked anyway, give us your blanket and groundsheet. Polly, I want wood, any wreckage you can find, bring it back and get it under the wagon.’
Oliver hesitated. ‘But it’s wet.’
‘Grab it while you see it,’ said Ryder. ‘Tomorrow there’ll be men crawling all over this stretch moaning they can’t find any firewood.’
He was right, of course – Ryder usually was – and as Oliver dutifully trudged seawards he began to wonder why. Ryder just knew things. He knew when a horse was ill, he knew about keeping the tents apart in Varna because of disease, he knew how to mix mud and leaves to make a pack that would cool a man with sunstroke. He stuffed straw in his scabbard to stop the metal blunting the blade, and in two days everyone in ‘G’ Troop was doing it. Trotter said he must have been on campaign before, but he couldn’t have, no one had, it was nearly forty years since Waterloo. He might have been in a regiment in India perhaps, but he couldn’t have served his time and come out again, he couldn’t be more than nineteen.
It made no sense, but Oliver went on rescuing slimy pieces of flatboat and when he brought back his last load the wagon had been transformed. Two sides were draped with weighted groundsheets, and the Highlander was securing Sullivan’s sopping blanket to a third. The only open side was against the cliff, but the Guard was stacking packs and saddles to give them further insulation. Sullivan was pillaging them for mess kit, but he straightened as Oliver appeared, and said ‘Come on, Ryder wants the wood.’
It seemed inconceivable in this rain, but Oliver had only followed him a few paces before his nose tingled and he looked up to see a faint grey trail curling under the overhang of the bank. As he rounded a little buttress he saw it in front of him, a dark blue figure kneeling by a hole in the sand that was billowing out smoke.
Ryder looked up. ‘Quick, Poll! Little bits, I need chips of it.’
He tore scraps off a splintered spar, watched Ryder drop them into the hole, then edged closer to see. It wasn’t such a miracle really, the hole was lined with shingle and dry seaweed, but he still held his breath as the tiny flames caught at the wood. One chip hissed and extinguished its kindling, but Ryder threw in another handful of the frondlike weed, struck a Vesuvius and blew it back into life. The overhang kept off most of the rain, a windbreak of rocks repelled the blowing sand, and in minutes the fire was accepting larger pieces of wood and scorching the damp out of them with the strength of its own heat.
Ryder laid wet sticks in a grid across the hole. ‘Did you find my coffee ration, Joe?’
Sullivan threw a handful of green beans in a mess-tin, and Oliver watched as they jumped immediately in the heat. The wet sticks spat and stank, but above them rose the unmistakable smell of roasting coffee.
‘The kettle’s not taken much rain yet,’ said Sullivan. ‘Will I fill it from my barrel?’
‘Ship-water,’ said Ryder, making a face. ‘Good enough for coffee, but we’ll need fresh for the morning.’
Sullivan nodded and emptied his canteen into the big camp-kettle. ‘Give us your barrels, then, I’ll seek us a stream.’ He held out his hand to Oliver.
It was ridiculous. He’d had a bad knock on the head, his back must be in agony, he ought to be under cover trying to get warm. ‘It’s all right, I’ll do it. Give me yours.’
Sullivan’s hand stayed outstretched, but his face grew hard and ugly. ‘Jarvis had me flogged, Oliver. He didn’t have my balls.’
Oliver’s face burned red. ‘I just think … Don’t you think it’s better, Corp? If I go?’
Ryder was wetter than any man Oliver had ever seen, the sunset shining off his soaked tunic as if he were wearing silver. ‘Fifteen minutes, Joe. If you haven’t found by then you’re to forget it and come straight back. All right?’
Sullivan looked quite different when he smiled. He said ‘Thanks, Ryder’, took their canteens, and set off towards the cliff with a strut as good as Jarvis’s own.
‘Flies, Polly,’ said Ryder, his hand reaching out to shut Oliver’s jaw. ‘Now keep stirring, I need to find more wet sticks. When these catch, just let them drop, they’ll add fuel.’
Oliver stirred. Rain flicked on h
is neck and pattered steadily on his back, but the tin stayed dry in the overhang and the beans began to turn brown. The fire was warming his world again, and he wondered how he’d managed to get in such a panic before. The army expected them to use their initiative, they were doing it, and he doubted the French would have managed half so well.
Then Ryder was back, flipping the smouldering sticks down into the fire and slipping damp ones in their place. He wrapped his hand in his wet sleeve to lift the tin, placed the kettle on the newly formed grid, then shook the beans into a rag for crushing.
Oliver watched him covertly. Ryder looked somehow more approachable with his hair dripping and his cheek smeared with charcoal. He’d been friendly, even kind, and his mockery felt no worse than the banter people like Fisk exchanged every day.
He said hesitantly, ‘Corp? Before you joined the 13th, were you … ?’
Ryder looked up. ‘What?’ His face and voice were both without expression.
Oliver quickly looked back down at the fire. ‘Nothing.’
Above the wind and distant crash of the sea he heard Ryder say, ‘That’s right, Poll. Nothing.’
Sullivan knew better than to waste time hunting for a stream when the beach was full of soldiers who’d have done it before him.
The Light Division were the ones to try. They’d been first to land, and had had time to collect driftwood and do business with the traders. He approached the forward picquet and was immediately confronted by the hulking shape of Private Alfred Flowers, ‘Bloomer’ of the 7th, the Royal Fusiliers.
Most people knew Bloomer. An East End bruiser with a past Sullivan could only guess at, he was what the colonels called ‘colourful’ and the lieutenants called ‘trouble’. Sullivan had played cards with him over rum one night at Varna, and his head throbbed at the memory. So did his back.
‘What’s the game, Joe?’ said Bloomer, grinning. ‘On the shake lurk?’
You couldn’t catch Sullivan with the cant. ‘Shipwrecked to be sure, but I’m after begging water. Is there any this way?’
Bloomer grimaced, an extraordinary elastic movement that brought his lips right up to his nose. ‘Only from the sky. Our boys up top will know, they were on the spy this morning.’
Sullivan looked gloomily at the bank above. The land looked barren and the dark already falling.
‘Leave it till morning if I was you,’ said Bloomer. ‘No gammon, Joe, you look done up.’
Sullivan felt a stab of irritation. ‘And I’m not then. I’m going right now.’
He began to turn, but Bloomer’s lumpy fist closed round his arm. ‘Half a moment, racing-boy, half a mo.’ He put a large finger to his lips, stooped to a bundle stuffed under a rock, and came up with an infantry greatcoat. ‘Get this on you. You’re wet through, you need a proper top-tog.’
Sullivan took the coat hesitantly. ‘Whose would it be now?’
Bloomer shrugged. ‘He won’t miss it. Two cholera, two drowned, one with his skull bashed in from colliding with a gun-boat. He’d be glad of a living body to wear it.’
Sullivan thanked him, and set off for the path. The sky was even darker now, but the coat warmed him and he was not going back empty-handed. He wanted to see Ryder’s face when he came back out of a dark stormy night with three barrels full of clean water. He wanted Oliver to look at him without seeing a naked back smashed open with the crack of a whip. No one else would. No woman ever would. He would carry those scars till the day he died.
And for what? He thought back to that night in Varna, coming back from the card game to find Johnny Welch dying of cholera, then the devil Jarvis roaring on them for taking extra firewood to keep him warm. He was angry himself to be sure, there was drink inside him and he’d thrown the log back with temper, but Jarvis should never have moved to stop him when it was already in the air. The log struck his elbow, and that was it, assaulting an NCO, strip that man down like an animal and flay the skin off his back while the whole regiment watches.
Ryder was after ending the same way. There was something strange about the corporal, something that didn’t fit, and the man Jarvis had spotted it. Ryder could speak rough, but he’d an educated way with him, he was quick with the irony and made Jarvis look an ignorant pig every time he opened his mouth. He was everything Jarvis hated, and sooner or later the bastard would have him. Jarvis broke everyone in the end.
Sullivan adjusted the weight of the water barrels on his battered shoulder and climbed the last two feet of bank to the plateau. At once he saw the sheen of water to his left, a lake surrounded by tall, rustling reeds. It was most likely salt, but the trampled rushes showed at least one other person had been this way, and it would be mad in him not to check. He followed the path, and knelt to scoop up the water in his hands.
One sip was enough, salt and useless, he spat, wiped his mouth, and stood. The surface of the lake was pock-marked with rain, and he paused a moment to look at the distorted reflection of Big Joe Sullivan, the man he used to be. Here was one Jarvis had broken, and devil a bit of fighting left in him now. Those were the grand days, a drop or two of a Saturday with friends, bare fists in the street, then walking back with arms round each other’s shoulders, singing with the joy of it all the way home. Not now. How could you fight a man when you couldn’t look him in the face?
A black shadow fleeted over the water. Reeds crackled behind and he spun round, but there was no one to be seen. The nearest picquets were right up on the crest, no one else close, it must have been some kind of animal left behind after the trading. He walked back more warily through the reeds, hoping it was nothing with teeth.
It had hands. They came flying at him, one smacking round his throat to stifle his cry, another clutching at the greatcoat, then he was bang on his back and the pain screaming through him as the rough ground tore at his scars. The man was on top of him, the reeds closing over them both, hiding them from the picquets, from the darkness and the world.
Sullivan fought. The man who thought he’d never fight again found his hands forming claws as he scrabbled upwards at the face pressing down on his own. His nails scored feebly at the cold cheek, warm blood under his fingers, then a hand swiped at his own face, once and his head banged the path, twice and he hardly even knew. His throat was squeezing, chest burning, his flailing hands missed the face and fell back on the path, stones and mud under his nails. Still he fought, scratching up the dirt, ripping into it, and his mind never noticed he was fighting only earth, never saw the moment his hands stopped moving no matter what it ordered them, never heard the clear clean snap as his neck broke. His mind was fighting alone in a black hole that got smaller and smaller till it was nothing but a pinhole, and then died.
Ryder looked up at the cry of a seagull, then back to the growing darkness of the beach. He was cold and filthy wet, his ears numb from the wind, but there was still no sign of bloody Sullivan. He said, ‘Get the others, Polly. The coffee will stew if we leave it any longer.’
They came quickly enough, the limping Grenadier almost hopping in his eagerness to reach the fire, and Oliver filled their mugs with dense black liquid that breathed a second of steam before the wind caught and blew it away. The warm metal tingled Ryder’s fingers as the blood moved again, and the coffee itself seemed to burn as it went down. No one took it back to shelter – they were scalding themselves in their haste to drink before it cooled – and the silence in which they finally lowered their mugs was almost religious.
‘There’ll be more,’ Ryder said, laying the kettle in the open to catch the rain. ‘Polly, you can make another pot while I go and find Sullivan.’
‘Off the beach?’ said the Highlander. He turned to study the plateau above them, black and forbidding in the darkness. ‘Then I’ll come with you a step. I need to stretch my legs.’
If he stretched them any more he’d be taller than the Guard, but Ryder understood the intention and was grateful for it. ‘Thanks, Redshank.’
‘Mackenzie,’ said the Highlander firmly
. ‘My name’s Mackenzie, but I get Niall from most folk.’
The name lay between them like a card on a table, then Ryder said, ‘Well met, Niall. I’m Harry Ryder,’ and turned to Oliver. The boy said ‘Charlie Oliver’, then flushed and added, ‘Well – Polly.’ The Grenadier looked at him with an air of deep suspicion, and said just ‘Woodall’. After a moment, he muttered ‘Dennis’.
A great wave crashed behind them, an outbreak of shouting greeted another boat ploughing through the surf, and Ryder became acutely aware of how wet he really was. He thrust his mug at Oliver, said ‘Won’t be long’, and turned to stride down the beach. God help Sullivan if anything had happened and he was trapped out in this.
After a few paces Mackenzie appeared by his side. He didn’t speak, he was just being there and comfortable about it, and Ryder found his presence reassuring. They walked together along the empty First Division stretch, but the cliffs were still twelve feet tall and Sullivan could never have climbed up from here. Ryder looked ahead to the flags of the Light Division and began to walk faster.
‘What’s that?’ said the Highlander, and stopped quite still. His voice had the flatness of a statement, and Ryder followed his gaze to the cliff. It was still high, no trace of a path, but Mackenzie was looking at a dark shadow at its base, a lump that was the length of a man.
Ryder’s throat dried. He walked closer, and there were the white stripes of a 13th Light Dragoon dazzling down the grey overalls that melted into the dark. He knelt with dread to look at the face. The red veins were blue, the jaw sagged open, the eyes mercifully closed, it was a shell of a thing that had once been Joe Sullivan and a man he knew.
‘His neck’s broken,’ said Mackenzie. ‘Look, it’s loose.’