‘That’s the first straightforward observation I’ve heard either of you make,’ Finlay said. ‘Do you get enjoyment out of all this?’
‘Not at all,’ Grey said. ‘Personally speaking, I’ll do anything to end this conflict successfully without boys dying again. You are angry because you thought your leadership dithering and weak. You should be glad that we are not.’
Finlay turned his wounded attention towards White.
‘Is it satisfying to play God?’
White shifted in his seat, but said nothing.
‘Catholics,’ Grey said. His tone carried more resignation than disgust.
I just wonder, is your boy in heaven or in hell, do you think, Mr White?’
‘Enough,’ Grey said.
‘I mean, do you know?’ Finlay said to White.
There was no response.
‘Is she alive?’
‘We don’t know. She’s disappeared. We can’t be sure,’ Grey said.
‘You lot make me fucking sick.’
‘Enough,’ Grey said. ‘One more insubordinate word and I swear I’ll have you court-martialled and flogged. I mean that, Finlay.’
Tea arrived then and Finlay was grateful for it. He thought about the two men in front of him. He had seen White lachrymose and thought him senile until White had confided the familial sorrow that burdened his heart. He had crawled underground with Grey, risking both their lives in what had turned out to be nothing but a brazenly staged performance.
‘I dreamed Babcock warned me about sabotage.’
Grey gulped tea and laughed. ‘Your subconscious mind must have an ironic bent, Finlay.’
‘Why isn’t the Major here?’
White answered him.
‘He succumbed to his wounds this morning. That note I was passed?’
Finlay nodded.
‘The Major was killed at Vimy Ridge, corporal. It just took him twenty-three more years to die.’
The three men were silent for a moment. For the Immaculate Major.
By now the possibility that Rebecca Lange might not be dead had started to thrill through Finlay like seismic shock. It was all he could do to stop his teacup from rattling on its saucer in his lap.
‘What happens now?’ he managed to say.
White answered him.
‘Colonel Baxter says he’ll have you back. But he doesn’t want you in that kit, Finlay. Wants you to take the officer training course and report to him directly when you’ve successfully completed it. As a subaltern.’
‘What about Borstal?’
‘Baxter probably thinks it’s a school,’ Grey said. ‘Like Repton or Stowe. He is a Scot, after all.’
Finlay was at the door before a final question occurred to him.
‘What will happen to Babcock?’
‘He’ll hang,’ White said. ‘Don’t you think it appropriate that he should?’
Finlay thought about it.
‘He served his country honourably once. He deserves to be shot rather than hanged. You all deserve to be shot.’
From behind the desk, on the other side of the room, they stared at him. Grey said, ‘You’ll do well in the desert, Finlay.’
It was approaching twilight along Whitehall. He walked without destination towards Parliament Square. He passed lamps, heavy with ornamentation, that would remain through the coming darkness unlit. He passed the pale stone of buildings flushed pink by the setting sun through December cloud. Sound eluded him. The world was silent and the broad thoroughfares of Westminster empty. He crossed the square in the shadow of the great gun battery poised to pulverize empty skies above Westminster Bridge and wandered past the House of Commons. He was half-way across Lambeth Bridge when he came to himself, his eyes on the dimpled complexities of the current below and darkness descending around him. To his left, the winter trees along the embankment of the river formed a still and intricate tangle. To his right was St Thomas’s. The hospital described abandonment and ruin in dark geometries of steel and stone. He breathed above the vacant width of the river. The city was growing still and quiet now, reconciled to hiding itself in the lengthening, welcome absence of light.
Later that night he telephoned his mother.
‘She’s alive, you know. Your young lady. Didn’t they tell you?’
‘She isn’t mine, mum.’
But his mother only laughed.
The postcard finally reached him at a camp in Kettering, a month into his officer training. The number of times it had been rubber stamped was an inky tribute to the tenacity of the postal service. That soldiers liked to get mail was a basic tenet of Government thinking in wartime. It always had been. The reverse side of the card carried no message or endearment, just an address written out in a clear and deliberate hand. Its picture showed an expanse of water under a wilderness of sky. A flight of geese gave scale to its vaunting expanse. At the bottom of the picture a legend was printed in small script that read: ‘Lake Michigan, from the Chicago shore.’
A Note on the Author
Francis or F.G. Cottam was born and brought up in Southport in Lancashire, attending the University of Kent at Canterbury where he took a degree in history before embarking on a career in journalism in London. He lived for 20 years in North Lambeth and during the 1990s was prominent in the lad-mag revolution, launch editing FHM, inventing Total Sport magazine and then launching the UK edition of Men’s Health. He is the father of two and lives in Kingston-upon-Thames. His fiction is thought up over daily runs along the towpath between Kingston and Hampton Court Bridges.
Discover books by Francis Cottampublished by Bloomsbury Reader at
www.bloomsbury.com/FrancisCottam
A Shadow of the Sun
Slapton Sands
The Fire Fighter
For copyright reasons, any images not belonging to the original author have been
removed from this book. The text has not been changed, and may still contain
references to missing images.
This electronic edition published in 2012 by Bloomsbury Reader
Bloomsbury Reader is a division of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square,
London WC1B 3DP
First published in Great Britain 2002 by Vintage
Copyright © 2002 Francis Cottam
All rights reserved
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eISBN: 9781448210671
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