‘Where you hear that then?’
‘Cookie. He heard it from the CSM. They always do it before a big attack. Encourages the rest of us.’
‘I heard that one of the rifles in them firing squads has a blank in it. You don’t know which one it is.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘It bleedin’ is.’
The day has darkened. The clouds overhead are bulging and inky black. A moustachioed captain appears at the mouth of the trench, his young face framing old eyes. ‘This Oxford Street?’ Without waiting for an answer he makes his way forward, followed by a muddy-faced unit wearing the insignia of the Sheffield Pals. He turns to address them. ‘You’re going to have to wait here for a minute, men, while I find out from BHQ where they want us to go.’ He turns to Andrew’s platoon. ‘Where’s your officer?’
Five extended arms silently direct him to the dugout.
Macintyre offers a cigarette to one of the new arrivals and they light them off a single shielded match. An official photographer, as identified by his armband, begins setting up a wooden box on a tripod, an Imperial quarter-plate camera. ‘Come on then, you two,’ he says, pointing at Andrew and a man from the new unit. ‘Big smiles for the folks back home.’
Andrew feels a comradely arm move around his shoulder. He smiles tensely at the camera, the whiteness of his eyes exaggerated by the dried mud splashes on his face. A fissure in the cloud affords a moment of watery sunlight and this coincides with the clatter of the camera shutter. As the two men pull apart, their eyes meet briefly. They grin shyly at one another and return to their own platoons.
The photographer asks Andrew his name.
‘Private Andrew Kennedy, Eleventh Shropshire Fusiliers.’
‘And his name?’
‘Don’t know.’
As the photographer heads over to the other platoon, the captain emerges from the dugout. ‘Right, men,’ he says. ‘On we go. Next stop Piccadilly.’
‘Piccadilly is back that way,’ Colour Sergeant Major Davies says, cocking a thumb over his shoulder.
‘Is it? Right, men, about face, back the way we came.’
Andrew lays his head on a sandbag and tries to get some rest, but once again sleep proves impossible. There is a constant rattle of discarded tin cans moving against each other. The rats are turning them over. The parachute flares they saw in the distance the night before are overhead now. One rocket hisses waveringly into the air directly above them. It leaves a trail of smoke as it begins its spinning descent. Andrew can hear Germans singing ‘Wacht am Rhein’ and calling out in nasal voices: ‘Hey, Tommee!’ and ‘Wake up, Tommee.’ He gives up trying to sleep and rewraps his sodden puttees, working up from ankle to calf. Star shells are also illuminating the waiting night, silhouetting the corkscrew spikes across no-man’s-land.
An hour before the attack, the weather sours. Black rain. And as the squall intensifies, so does the British bombardment. The German guns answer back, though none of their shells is landing near the waiting infantry. What does land, with a clatter, feet away from where Andrew stands, is a mortar bomb, a ‘plumb pudding’ fired in error from a British reserve trench thirty yards behind them. Andrew stares at it, transfixed. Heat waves are rising off its metal casing. It is the size and shape of a football, with its solid tail still smouldering. A powerful smell of cordite reaches his nostrils, but the bomb does not explode. Other men who have also been staring at it dive for nearby funk holes, and Andrew joins them. Colour Sergeant Major Davies pounds around the corner and orders an evacuation of the trench. They wait in a communication trench for an engineer to arrive and take out the fuse. In shock at their near escape, the men begin laughing. Even the CSM manages a smile. ‘Well, there you go, lads,’ he says. ‘Charmed bleeding lives.’
At zero hour, the ground undulates as a mine explodes half a mile away. Where Andrew is standing, he can feel its shock waves in his bones. The barrage that has been raging for three weeks stops abruptly. The dense silence that follows pounds in Andrew’s head, pressing against his eardrums. He thinks there is ringing in his ears, but it is the first wave going over the top – dogs trained to respond to a whistle – and the sound is followed by the zup-zup-zup of distant machine-gun fire. The British bombardment begins again, with shrapnel shells arcing through the sky overhead, and Andrew and Macintyre take it in turns to look through a periscope at the long, jagged line of flames bursting from the ground fifty yards in front of the advancing troops. What was it they had been told? Advancing troops must follow the flames ‘like a horse follows a nosebag’. Running. No longer weighed down by 66lb of kit. Lessons have been learned. The creeping barrage has begun. The German machine gunners will not survive it.
Ten minutes pass as the men of the 11th Battalion listen with colour-drained faces to the continuing patter of enemy machine guns. A commotion is heard in the trench ahead of them. Muffled shouting. Boots being sucked by mud. Stretcher-bearers wearing Red Cross armbands appear with a wounded soldier. Andrew steps to one side to let them past. There is no blood on the man. ‘What’s his trouble?’ someone shouts.
‘That mine,’ the second stretcher-bearer says over his shoulder.
‘He was bracing himself and the shock wave snapped his legs. Daft bastard.’
‘Lucky bastard,’ Macintyre corrects.
First light has still not punctured the nimbus clouds when the CSM gives the order to move up to the next trench. With the rain ricocheting off their helmets, the men scuttle like crabs, crouched over and moving from one side of the trench to the other as they follow its dogtoothed line. In the darkness up ahead there is scuffling and shoving. They make way for a steady stream of stretchers bearing wounded men from the first and second waves. Their eyes are cloudy, their skin pale. Andrew can smell the vapour of warm human blood following in their wake and, like a bullock spooked in an abattoir, he begins to shake. When a corporal with a blood-spattered face pushes blindly past him, he gags.
When they reach the front trench, the quartermaster comes round with an earthenware flagon marked SRD – ‘Service Ration Depot’ officially,’Soon Runs Dry’ unofficially – and pours rum into shaking tin cups. As soon as he has drained his, Andrew yawns uncontrollably. Feeling as if his bowels have turned to water, he wishes he had been able to go this morning. He opens and closes his hands to relieve the tingling sensation in them. He feels numb. More than anything he feels he needs more time – another year, another month, another day, even another hour. To take his mind off the attack he rechecks his kitbag. He unpacks his three days’ rations, his folded waterproof sheet, his water bottle and entrenching tool, his four grenades, his ammunition pouches and his bandolier, before packing them all back in again. His box respirator is missing. He realizes he has it around his neck. Without taking it off, he tries to wipe clean the goggles set into the Phenate-Hexamine helmet, making the glass squeak – they are clouded over from the inside and will not come clear. The cloudiness reminds him of the wounded men he has seen. Their eyes.
When the order comes to stand by the scaling ladders, Andrew’s pulse quickens and he feels his testicles contract. He is breathing heavily. Macintyre hears him and tries to smile reassuringly, but the smile comes out as a grimace. Andrew can see the fear entering his friend’s heart too. ‘Lice,Will,’ he shouts. ‘Chats is the name for lice.’
‘Right,’ Macintyre shouts back. ‘Thanks.’
Andrew sees the CSM pacing up and down, shouting orders, but he can no longer hear him. Blood is roaring in his ears. He needs to urinate. A feeling of inertia is creeping over him. He’s no longer sure he will be able to climb the ladder. All his fears, he knows, lie over these sandbags – fears not of pain but of annihilation, of ceasing to exist, of unimaginable emptiness. Yet for weeks he has been willingly drawn to this moment, pulled towards this line – on the overnight crossing from Southampton to Le Havre, on the cattle train from Étaples, on the road to Ypres, along the trenches to no-man’s-land …
The name
terrifies him. No-man’s-land. A land where men do not belong.
‘Fix bayonets!’ the CSM orders in a rising growl.
There is a scrape of steel along the trench. Andrew’s hands are shaking again and it takes him several attempts to align the hilt of his bayonet to the rifle’s lug. He leans forward on to his rifle to set the weapon firmly and give it a quarter turn. His eyes close. When he opens them again he sees a rat squatting behind an ammunition crate. He stares at it. It stares back, its eyes two black beads. It runs a paw over its snout, as if scratching an itch. Andrew closes his eyes again. He can taste vomit in his mouth. He spits it out and opens his eyes. The rat has gone.
‘Put one up!’
Bolts are drawn back and .303 bullets loaded into Lee-Enfield chambers. Andrew presses his back teeth together to stop them chattering and, quite unexpectedly, gravity falls upon him.
I’m not going to let the CSM down. I’m not going to let Dorothy down. I’m not going to let Will down.
He holds out his hand towards Macintyre. It is no longer trembling.
Macintyre takes it in his and presses it hard. Comrades shaking hands. ‘When we go over, Andy …’
‘What?’
‘Try not to trip me up with your big clumsy feet.’
Andrew manages a smile. If this is to be the hour of his death, he thinks, he will meet it with a steady eye. Like a man. Like a soldier. He feels the heat of the rum and, with it, a surge of adrenalin. A new bombardment begins. It is more nerve-jarring than previous ones and so heavy the air liquefies – a heavy liquid, dense and metallic. Andrew tries to imagine he is back at home in Shropshire, caught in a lightning storm. He also tries to count the gaps between the flashes and the rolls of thunder like he did as a child, but the explosions are so loud he is unable to get beyond three – so loud that for one moment he cannot even recall his own name. Private something. Kennedy. Private Andrew Kennedy, 11th Battalion, Shropshire Fusiliers. There are no gaps in the thunder now anyway. It is rolling in unbroken waves. And the displacement of air caused by the shells overhead catches the whole of the line in a hurricane. At every report Andrew feels as if his scalp is being removed. Under his boots the earth is shuddering, ecstatic tremors that carry up his legs. In his confusion he imagines he sees the top of the parapet moving. It is only the terrified rats fleeing. They have become hysterical. Andrew looks at Macintyre and realizes what he feels for his old friend, at this minute, on this day, is something approaching love. Something beyond love. Macintyre shouts at him but his words are drowned out. Andrew can see his friend’s lips move and tries to shout back but he cannot hear himself. He wants to tell Macintyre that they will keep together. Instead, he grabs his hand again. They will go over the top hand in hand, as they had gone to Sunday school. Andrew watches the subaltern stand on a firestep, a Webley revolver in one hand and a whistle in the other. He watches the whistle reach the officer’s lips and his cheeks puff out as he blows. But he does not hear the sound. Others do and begin scrambling up the ladders. As Andrew follows them, still holding Macintyre’s hand, the weight of his kitbag almost pulls him backwards. Then it comes to him: anger. He hears a voice saying: ‘Shit, shit, shit.’ The word is repeated again and again. He realizes it is rising from his own throat, increasing in volume until it turns into a shouted noise, a battle cry. They are all doing it, hundreds of them along the line as they scale the ladders. They are swearing to give themselves courage, as they have been trained. Dogs responding to a whistle.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
London. Present day. Three weeks after the crash
THOUGH SHE WAS LEFT-HANDED, THE SLING AROUND HER LEFT ARM meant Nancy had to hold her toothbrush with her right. In the days that had passed since the seaplane fell out of the sky, she had learned to do this with dexterity. She had also learned not to turn her head more than was necessary. As she brushed, she studied her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her eyes were still puffy from sleep, or lack of it, and her neck and shoulders were still creased – the imprint of tangled sheets. They still had a ghost of a tan.
Daniel was also studying her reflection, from the doorway. ‘It stimulates the brain,’ he said.
Still facing the mirror, Nancy waited until her toothbrush clicked off automatically before answering. ‘What does?’
Daniel took a bite out of his toast and chewed on it slowly, holding the plate near to his chin to catch crumbs. ‘Brushing your teeth with your wrong hand. It’s like showering with your eyes closed.’ He took another bite and spoke with his mouth full: ‘Why don’t you let me brush your teeth for you, until your shoulder is better?’
‘I’ve told you, I can manage.’
There was accusation in the tone of her voice. Daniel hesitated before speaking again. ‘How did you sleep?’ he asked.
Nancy ran a finger over the bump that marked the break in her collarbone, dabbed her finger into a contact lens carton, used a finger from her other hand to pull down the skin below her eye, tilted her head back and inserted the lens. After she had fitted the other one, she washed her hand, turned the tap off and jiggled her fingers dry. She was still staring at her reflection, running out of silence. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Painkillers not working?’
‘No, the painkillers are working. It’s the sedatives that aren’t working.’ One-handed, she twisted the top off a plastic bottle of mouthwash, took a swig, sluiced and spat. ‘I’m going back to the doctor’s today to see if I can get something stronger.’
‘That wise?’
Still facing the mirror, Nancy spoke to her reflection: ‘I haven’t had a proper night’s sleep for three weeks. When I do manage to sleep I have nightmares. When I’m awake I have panic attacks. Yes, it’s wise.’
They both turned as Martha’s voice carried from her bedroom: ‘Daniel, come quick! You’re on the telly.’
‘Call me Daddy,’ Daniel said as he arrived in the bedroom with Nancy. A map of the Galápagos Islands was being shown on the breakfast news. A dotted line indicated the flight path of their plane. A reporter was mid-sentence: ‘… Islands, birthplace of Darwinism, of the theory that only the fittest survive. It was here that …’
‘Turn it up,’ Nancy said. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘… has revealedd that the mayday transmissions from the seaplane were never received, and a combination of factors meant its disappearance went unreported. According to the inquiry, the pilots had anticipated a further delay, having already been forced to wait twenty-four hours for bad weather, and so had left the details of their flight plan open, reclassifying themselves as “unscheduled”. And because the seaplane came down close to the Galápagos Islands, air traffic controllers tracking its progress on a radar in Ecuador assumed it had arrived at its destination and landed safely on water. The four surviving passengers owe their lives to the bravery of one man.’ A photograph of Daniel in his academic gown came up on the screen.
‘It’s you, Daniel!’ Martha said.
The reporter continued: ‘Daniel Kennedy, a thirty-eight-year-old scientist, swam fourteen miles in twenty-one hours. He was not available for comment but one of the other survivors had this to say …’ A tall African-American man appeared on the screen. He was grinning. ‘Don’t know how he done it. Seems no one in Ecuador knew the plane had gone down. I’d have died out there if he hadn’t come back for us. Man, I was gettin’ very cold. I saw one old guy get eaten by sharks right in front of us. He’d fallen off the floats. One minute he was there, the next the water was red with blood. I’m telling ya, it was horrible.’
‘Another of the survivors spoke to us from Boston this morning.’ Susie came on the screen, her face marbled with pink lines where her scabs had recently been. ‘I owe my life to Professor Kennedy,’ she said, not looking directly at the camera. ‘My husband Greg was one of the ones who didn’t make it. He’s with the Lord now. It was the cold that … that … We’d only been married for …’ A sob interrupted her words.
The reporter came back
on the screen. ‘That was the moving testimony from—’
Daniel had pointed a remote control at the television and switched it off.
‘Hey,’ Martha said. ‘I wanted to see the end of that.’
Nancy turned to Daniel. ‘Did you know they had finished the inquiry?’
Daniel raised the slice of toast but instead of taking another bite he stared thoughtfully at where it had sweated on to the plate. ‘Someone from breakfast television rang yesterday for a comment about it,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t think of anything to say.’
‘Were you going to tell me?’
‘I was … I, of course, but …’ Daniel stroked Martha’s hair. ‘You have enough to think about.’
‘Poor Susie.’
‘Poor Greg. He asked me to tell his parents that he was at peace. I’d forgotten about that. You weren’t given any numbers for the other survivors, were you?’
‘You could ring the people at the airline. They should have them.’ She turned to Martha. ‘You should be getting your uniform on. We’re going to be late. Do you want peanut butter or Marmite sandwiches for lunch?’
It had been Daniel’s decision to buy a bigger house than was needed, or than could be afforded on his salary alone should Nancy choose to give up work after having another baby. He had assumed that they would. A boy preferably. Instead, over the years, the couple had colonized a spare room each as a study. Even Martha had her own study, which doubled as a playroom. Each year the couple spent money on a house project: a roof terrace; a loft conversion; the solar panels. The most recent building project had been the most ambitious. They had extended into their side-return next to the kitchen and knocked through the wall separating it from their dining room. This had left them with a single open-plan room where the family spent most of their time together. One wall was windows and exposed brickwork, the other was hung with three large frames containing original film posters for Jules et Jim, Le Notti di Cabiria and La Notte. Despite its size and its chrome and glass minimalism, it was cosy, thanks in part to concealed spotlighting and the small, potted bay trees decorated with fairy lights which stood in each corner of the room.
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