The Blasphemer

by Nigel Farndale

  Afterwards he showered with equal care, working his cracked bar of soap into a lather as the nozzle sipped back the water several times before finding its full pressure. He covered his body with circular motions, across the back of his neck, over his flanks and buttocks, behind his knees, under his testicles. With the plastic shower curtain clinging to his shoulders like an extra layer of skin, he shampooed his hair, dipping his head under the spout and spitting out the soapy water that entered his mouth.

  Once he had dried himself on a crusty towel he changed into a suit and tie, opened his front door, hesitated, closed the door again and walked over to a phone on the kitchen table. After a few rings an answering machine cut in. Daniel’s voice. ‘If you would like to leave a message for either Daniel or Nancy, please do so after the beep.’ The beep was more an electronic whine. ‘Professor Kennedy, it is Hamdi. I have been thinking about our conversation.You asked about angels and I did not give you a very satisfactory explanation. Muslims believe that Allah has created an unseen world, including angels and jinn. I can explain it to you better next time we meet. That is all.’

  In another part of London, behind a bank of digital recording and editing equipment, an MI5 operative wearing a headset made a note of this conversation, her fingers a blur of movement across her keyboard. She took a sip from a small plastic bottle of water and spellchecked what she had written.

  Before closing the door to his flat, Hamdi felt his jacket pocket for the rattle of car keys. He then stepped out on to his balcony and negotiated the metal stairs of the fire escape, carrying his cello case in front of him. His Mini Cooper, parked in front of the block of flats, did not start first time. On the second attempt it revved raucously. Hamdi indicated, pulled out and drove off. Twenty yards behind him, a green Volvo did the same.

  ‘Target now leaving,’ the driver of the Volvo said into a microphone.

  Le Bizet was not so much a separate village on the border of Belgium and France as a sprawling and anonymous suburb of Armentières. The police station, Philip discovered after asking a postman, was off the main road and was now a private house. It had been renovated quite recently, judging by how freshly painted the outside walls were. Its shutters were a vivid yellow. He knocked on the door. No answer. He looked in the window. Dustsheets on the furniture. ‘I think whoever lives here is away for the summer,’ he said as he walked around the back to an enclosed garden with an immaculate lawn over which time-activated sprinklers were hissing.

  ‘Should we be doing this, Dad?’ Daniel said. ‘Aren’t we trespassing?’

  ‘That must have been the wall.’ Philip was looking at a high, moss-covered wall behind a shrubbery. Trees obscured sections of it, but it clearly ran for thirty yards. ‘The post they tied him to would have been in front of it.’

  Sunshine was emerging from the clouds and was slanting through the leaves, dappling the garden. ‘I wonder if you can still see bullet holes,’ Daniel said, taking off his sunglasses.

  Philip scrambled around the back of a greenhouse and on to a flowerbed. There he let out a cry of pain.

  Daniel hurried to his side. ‘You all right, Dad? Did you slip?’

  ‘I’m fine. I’m fine.’ Philip appeared distracted, talking almost to himself. ‘He’s buried here somewhere; I know it. Unmarked and unknown.’ Using his walking stick, the old man pushed back the branches and found the wall overgrown with ivy and bindweed. Daniel came over and held the weed back while his father felt along the wall with his fingers, as if he were a fireman testing for heat. They progressed in this way for five yards before Philip came to an object that was set in from the wall. Under a dark and tangled knot of roots, its shape was hard to determine. Daniel pulled back the ivy with renewed effort.

  It was flat and upright with a curved top covered in slimy green lichen.

  ‘Portland stone,’ Philip said with a nod. ‘Absorbs everything. Can you fetch that torch from the car? Can you also bring that bucket with the scrubbing brush and the detergent? And try and find some water.’

  ‘Was wondering what you had brought them for.’

  When Daniel returned, Philip was feeling the engraving with his fingers. ‘Letters are worn down,’ he said.

  ‘Is it Andrew’s?’

  ‘Don’t think so. Shine the torch.’ Philip was on his knees. ‘Good God! It’s a VC!’

  When they finished scrubbing the top half of the stone they stood back and read the inscription in full: MAJOR PETER MORRIS VC, MC & BAR, DSO & BAR, DFC, MONS STAR, BWM, VM. 2/RIFLE BRIGADE. 1880–1918.

  Daniel pulled weed from the lower half and continued scrubbing. The stone was still green but more words were becoming readable.

  ‘ “Greater love hath no man than this,” ’ Philip said, reading the epitaph out loud, ‘ “that he lay down his life for his friends.” How extraordinary. I’ve never heard of him. He should be buried in a British military cemetery.’

  ‘There’s a reason presumably. Perhaps he was shot at dawn, too.’

  Philip clenched both his fists and tensed his jaw.

  ‘You all right, Dad?’

  ‘This is precisely why we set up the commission … I’m going to see to it that he is disinterred and reburied with full honours.’ He stared at the headstone for a few moments, lost in his thoughts. ‘They usually buried executed men near to where they were shot, so I’m guessing Andrew is buried here somewhere too.’

  ‘I suppose they weren’t allowed to bury him in consecrated ground.’

  Philip ran his arthritically bowed hand over the curve of the headstone. ‘You still an atheist, Daniel?’

  ‘Course.You still a Christian?’

  ‘I struggle with the question of why God allows … When you think of the carnage of Passchendaele.’

  ‘It isn’t God that allows it, Dad. It’s man.’

  ‘It’s God.’

  ‘Then God is an arsehole.’

  ‘Don’t blaspheme.’

  Daniel was on his knees clearing away more weeds and feeling the wall as he went along. ‘It’s funny, someone else said that to me.’ He tried to recall Hamdi’s name. ‘The Muslim guy I mentioned.’ He stopped pulling and straightened his back. ‘But you can’t blaspheme against something that isn’t there. A blasphemy against man and nature, on the other hand ... Passchendaele was a blasphemy. What I did to Nancy was a blasphemy …’ Noticing a small movement a few yards away, he put a finger to his lips and whispered: ‘Over there. Look.’

  Philip looked to where a rat with a long naked tail was perched, watching them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Le Bizet, Belgium. Second Monday of September, 1918

  HAVING DRIVEN HIS CAR UP TO THE STEPS OF THE POLICE STATION, Major Morris laboriously carries the rifles inside, two at a time again, and places them against a bed in an empty cell.As he is carrying in the last two, he passes Adilah emerging from Andrew’s cell. Each affects not to see the other – Morris looks at the floor, Adilah straight ahead at the studded wooden double doors that lead out to the garden. The APM is the next to emerge from the condemned cell and he carefully closes the door behind him before jangling a ring of large keys until he finds the right one. Morris taps him on the shoulder and, nodding towards the cell with the rifles, says: ‘That door is to be kept locked until five thirty tomorrow morning.You will then lay the rifles out in the garden exactly one yard apart in two rows of six, the first row fifteen feet from the post, the second twenty feet. Is that clear?’

  The APM salutes. ‘Sir.’

  Morris walks out into the garden to inspect the wooden post that has been driven into the ground near the wall. He lights a cigarette with shaking hands and draws on it as he walks to where the hole is being dug. Its yawning mouth demands a body, its soil longs to absorb human blood. Morris stares into it as he smokes quickly, barely holding the smoke down in his lungs before exhaling and jabbing the cigarette back to his lips.When he finishes it, he tosses its stub in the hole. Only now does he turn to the police station and
see Andrew’s pale face at a barred window. The two men regard one another impassively for a moment, each holding up a ghostly mirror to the other. Morris blinks slowly, as if in a trance, strolls up to the window and tosses in the rest of his packet of cigarettes. As he is walking away he hears the prisoner acknowledge this unexpected act of kindness.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Morris does not turn round.

  An hour passes before Andrew’s next visitor arrives. The condemned man does not recognize his old friend. Macintyre has aged twenty years since their arrival together at Ypres the previous year. He is hollow-eyed and chap-lipped. There is a suppurating sore on his neck. His once-round face is gaunt and ashen; his hairline receded, his centre parting prematurely grey. There are corporal’s stripes on the arm of his grimy and tattered uniform and he is wearing a waistcoat made from rabbit fur. He smells rank, as if his flesh is rotting. ‘It’s me,’ he says. ‘Will.’

  ‘You look different.’

  ‘Lost weight.’ Macintyre has a cigarette tucked behind his ear. He pulls it out, snaps it in half, puts both ends in his mouth, lights them and hands one to Andrew. ‘Look what I got at Wipers,’ he says, pulling out an Iron Cross from his trouser pocket. ‘Here, have a hold of it.’

  As Andrew stares at the medal in his hand, Macintyre stares at Andrew. Both men are acting, as if in the company of strangers. Macintyre begins scratching and says bluntly: ‘Can I have your boots?’

  ‘Help yourself. They never fit me properly anyhow. Hardly worn.’ Andrew gives a weary, off-centre smile. ‘Suppose that was the problem.’

  Macintyre does not laugh. He stares up at the bars of the window and rolls his shoulders as if trying to shake weariness from them. The difference in him is more than physical. Something is missing. He is distracted. Somewhere outside a car backfires. ‘What was that?’ Macintyre says, jumping.

  ‘Must be practising,’ Andrew says, trying to put his old friend at ease. He realizes what the difference is now. Macintyre has lost his sense of humour.

  ‘Asked the quartermaster to send up some scran for you. Stewed beef and sixty pounders. It being your last …’ Macintyre’s voice trails off.

  ‘Thanks,’ preciate it … One of the officers brought me that.’ Andrew nods at a decanter of whisky. ‘Want some?’

  Macintyre takes a deep swig and then starts coughing. ‘Bloody hell,’ he says, handing the decanter over.

  Andrew takes a smaller sip. ‘Heard from anyone in Market Drayton?’

  ‘Wrote to Dorothy when …We thought you’d copped it on the first day.’

  ‘Think I did die that day.’

  ‘You was well out of it. Pissed down for the whole of August. Place turned to liquid shit. Brown for as far as the eye could see. Lot of lads drowned in it. It were November before ...I tell you, mate, if I thought I had to go through that again I’d …’ He points two closed fingers at his foot and mimes shooting himself.

  Andrew tries to recall faces from his platoon. ‘How’s the CSM?’

  ‘Sniper. Three weeks in. I were next to him. There were this crack and then he stares at me with this curious look. As he’s staring, a hole appears right here.’ Macintyre taps the centre of his forehead. ‘When he slides down I can see the back of his head is open.’

  Andrew is shocked. The CSM had seemed invincible, a force of nature, too strong to be felled by a single bullet. He touches his own forehead with his finger and says: ‘What do you think it feels like?’

  ‘Being shot? You don’t feel owt. Blokes I know who’ve been wounded say it feels like being punched – a dull pain. Sharp pain only comes later if you survive long enough to feel it … Sorry, Andy, this ain’t tactful, is it.’

  No one has called him that name in more than a year. It sounds odd to him now. A stranger’s name. He scratches his neck. ‘I’m not afraid. I don’t know why, but I’m not. Not any more.’

  ‘What’s this about you and some French bint then?’

  ‘Her name is Adilah … She’s expecting my child. I’ve asked her to call it William if it’s a boy.’

  The dignity of the answer shocks Macintyre. ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Didn’t realize it were serious like. The lads said … You want to name the baby after me?’

  ‘You’re my oldest friend.’ Andrew takes another sip from the decanter. ‘Can you keep an eye on them for me, Adilah and the kid?’

  ‘Sure.’ As Macintyre says this he begins scratching his belly. One of the buttons on his tunic slips open and he unselfconsciously begins picking lint from his navel.

  ‘Do you swear it?’

  ‘Swear …’ Macintyre buttons himself up again and takes a drag on his Woodbine, nipping the end between thumb and finger. ‘What happened to you then?’

  ‘When we went over the top?’ Andrew doesn’t know how to explain.’I thought I’d died and gone to hell.Then I followed someone. After that I carried on walking. I met Adilah and I knew then there was no going back. I didn’t mean to let you down … Do you hate me for what I done?’

  ‘No one blames you. We’ve all thought of doing it.’ Macintyre stubs out his cigarette. ‘There’s something you should know. I’m the last of the platoon, or I will be when … That means I have to be in the firing squad. Them’s the rules.’

  Andrew blinks and falls into a thoughtful silence. ‘Well, aim straight.You won’t be doing me no favours otherwise.’ He puts an arm on Macintyre’s shoulder. Withdraws it. ‘I’m glad it’ll be you doing it, Will.’

  ‘Better go.’ Macintyre stands and, as they move to shake hands, they fall into an awkward embrace instead. ‘I missed you, mate,’ he says.

  The words hang in the air. Andrew wants to make a joke of them – ‘So long as you don’t miss me tomorrow!’, something like that – but his throat has contracted. He pats his friend on the back and steers him to the door.

  Lieutenant Cooper and Surgeon-Major John Hayes stare at the body on the floor. It is pale, as pale as the pool of liquid around it is dark. Cooper shakes his head. ‘Who would have thought there was so much blood in a man.’

  ‘The rate he was bleeding it must only have taken a few minutes,’ Hayes says, closing Morris’s eyes and checking his watch. ‘Knew exactly what he was doing. Look …’ He points. ‘Cut right through the femoral artery.’ He dabs a finger in the blood. It is cold.

  Brigadier-General Blakemore appears in the doorway with the chaplain. They both grimace when they see Morr is’s body is bloody and naked, apart from the trousers around his ankles.

  ‘Jesus!’ Blakemore says. ‘Cover him up, would you.’

  ‘Is there a note?’ the chaplain asks.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Morris came to see me before he did it, you know. Asked me to bless him. He was agitated but it never occurred to me that he was planning to do this. Makes no sense.’

  All four men are standing in a semicircle around the body, their boots in the pool of blood. Hayes stares at a punch dagger a few feet away that is stuck in the floorboard at a perpendicular angle. ‘Perhaps he wanted to take back some control over his life,’ he says. ‘Was he married?’

  ‘I’ll find out, sir,’ Cooper says.

  ‘Jesus!’ Blakemore repeats with a shake of his head. ‘What a waste.’

  ‘Why do you suppose he did it?’ Cooper asks, directing his question to no one in particular. ‘Now, I mean, with the Germans about to surrender?’

  ‘I imagine that was the problem,’ Hayes says. ‘He must have known he couldn’t go back to his old life. None of us is fit to go back.You can’t turn a man into a killer and then expect …’

  ‘We must find out how old he was …’ Blakemore interrupts. ‘Can you organize a headstone, Cooper? Make it a decent one. Mention his VC.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Where should we bury him?’

  The chaplain frowns. ‘Hadn’t thought of that. Suicides are not supposed to be buried in consecrated ground.’

  ‘I’ll leave that to you, padre.’ Blakemore turns
to Cooper. ‘That reminds me, with Morris gone, we’re going to need someone in charge of proceedings tomorrow morning. Would you mind?’

  ‘Course not, sir.’

  ‘See if you can find a drummer.We should do the thing properly. And Cooper …’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Discipline will need to be tight. The men won’t want to do it. Pick a good RSM.’ Blakemore leaves, followed by Cooper.

  The chaplain and the MO look at the body, then at each other.

  As the daylight wanes, the chaplain visits the condemned man in his cell. He looks like a ghost. His skin is transparent, his eyes blank and unfocused. He is fingering in his hand a lock of hair tied with ribbon, worrying it like a rosary. As the chaplain sits down and folds his hands in his lap, Andrew tucks his shirt into his high-waisted serge trousers.

  ‘I’ve written this,’ he says, handing over a letter. ‘Could you get it to Madame Camier? The address is there.’

  ‘Consider it done.’

  ‘I said Will Macintyre could have my boots.’

  The chaplain lights a lantern and squints up at him from its flame. ‘Is there anything you want to talk about? That is what I’m here for.’

  Though he is not tired, Andrew begins yawning uncontrollably. ‘I’ve always been afraid of rats, but there was one in the hut where they locked me up and when I looked at it I realized it was just a rat.’

  ‘It was probably more frightened of you,’ the chaplain says, trying to stifle a yawn of his own. ‘I’ll keep you company all night, if you like.’

  ‘That’s all right, father.You should get some rest.’

  ‘I have to say, Kennedy, you are showing great courage. I’ve seen some men …’ He pats his knees. ‘But I do think it best to put a brave face on things. Much easier. Are you an Anglican?’