The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, Captain. It’s just that…Well, I tried to speak to you at Victoria and then on the boat over and in all those endless trains today. It feels rather as if you’re ignoring me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I don’t ignore brother officers. If you wish to speak to me you only have to present yourself.’

  ‘I’ve tried to catch your eye but…’

  ‘Catch my eye! Catch my eye, man!’ Abercrombie barked. ‘What are you, a chorus girl? This is the army, not the bloody hippodrome. If you wish to communicate with me, come to attention, state your name and explain your business.’

  The moment this conversation had begun, Abercrombie had started walking away from the mess and towards the edge of the village. He had set off at a considerable pace, causing the younger man to scurry after him. The little hamlet was so small that the two of them were already on the outskirts.

  ‘You seem so different,’ Stamford pleaded as they passed the last of the houses, outside of which a couple of officers were lounging in the damp air, smoking their pipes. ‘I thought that we were friends.’

  Abercrombie did not answer immediately. Instead he waved with exaggerated good cheer at the pipe-smoking men.

  ‘Just off to show this young ‘un a real firework display,’ he called out. ‘Sounds to me as if the guns are going to put on quite a show tonight.’

  ‘Every night is Guy Fawkes night, eh?’ one of the officers replied.

  They laughed together as Abercrombie, followed by Stamford, disappeared into the darkness. When Abercrombie judged that he was sufficiently clear of the last ruined dwelling not to be overheard he turned furiously on his pursuer.

  ‘Now listen to me, you bloody little fool! I am not your friend. I am a senior officer, do you understand? I do not know you…’

  ‘But we — ’

  ‘We shared a drink together,’ Abercrombie interjected firmly. ‘We shared a drink together with other officers on the night before we departed. We drank in the bar of the hotel in which we were both staying. That’s what we did. As prospective members of the same battalion it would have been ridiculous not to. However, that does not mean that you can presume an inappropriate familiarity with your superior. Is that clear? ‘

  ‘Inappropriate! ‘

  ‘And it certainly does not give you licence to go about the place making moony eyes at me like some silly flapper.’

  ‘Captain Abercrombie, two nights ago you buggered me from midnight till dawn…’

  Abercrombie slapped Stamford across the face.

  ‘Now you listen to me!’

  A sudden explosion of ordnance above them lit up both their faces. Abercrombie’s was both furious and fearful, while Stamford’s had tears streaming down it.

  ‘Whatever may or may not have happened in London remains in London. Do you understand? People are put in prison with hard labour for doing what you are suggesting we did. If even a rumour of it is heard in the wrong circles a man may expect to be ruined.’

  ‘I would never say anything, I swear…’

  ‘Your bloody face is an open book, man! Every inch of you screams pansy and you look at me as if you were in love.’

  ‘I am in love!’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. You met me three days ago.’

  ‘I loved you before I met you.’

  ‘Listen to me, Stamford.’ Abercrombie’s tone softened, but not by much. ‘Out here, you are a very junior subaltern and I am an experienced captain and something of a lion. It is not possible for us to be friends in anything other than a comradely fashion which is above all appropriate to our ranks.’

  ‘But…I love you, Alan. And what’s more, I’m scared. I need help, I’m not brave like you…’

  ‘I am not brave! I have told you that!’

  ‘But your poetry!’

  ‘I’ve told you I don’t write poetry. Not any more.’ Abercrombie turned away. ‘Please remember what I’ve said, Lieutenant. Good night.’

  Abercrombie began to walk back towards the village, leaving Stamford to weep alone.

  In consideration of his rank and aristocratic status the viscount had been given a room of his own in what had once been the house of the village priest, a house that had miraculously remained standing whilst the adjoining church had been reduced to rubble. Abercrombie lit the oil lamp which his new servant had thoughtfully procured for him and, taking out paper, pen and ink from a small leather music case, he began to write a letter. A letter to the mother of a fallen comrade, with whom he had been in correspondence ever since the death of her son. In his letters Abercrombie told her how cheerful and how wise her boy had been, how brave he was and what an inspiration to his men. A golden boy in fact, and that was how he must always be remembered, as a golden boy who shone as brightly as the sun and shed a happy light on all who knew him and on Abercrombie most of all. In reply the boy’s mother would tell Abercrombie about the equally sunlit childhood her son had spent, the happiness he had brought to his parents and to all who knew him. What promise he had shown and how big and bold had been his dreams. She told him also how often the boy had mentioned Abercrombie in his letters to her, and how much comfort she and her husband took from the knowledge that the two friends had been together when their son had died.

  Abercrombie unscrewed the lid on his ink jar and filled his fountain pen. A beautiful pen on which were inscribed the words ‘Love always’.

  Dear Mrs Merivale, he wrote.

  But try as he might, Abercrombie could write no more and it was tears instead of ink that marked the page that lay before him. What more could he say? He had told this grieving mother everything he could about her boy and told it many times. Except for one thing. The only thing that mattered and the one thing he could never say. That he had loved her son as dearly as she had loved him and that his love had been returned in equal measure. That never before in all the long history of love had two people loved each other as he and her son had loved. That he and her son had sworn to be together until death did them part and that when death did part them, when Abercrombie cradled her son’s body in his arms for the final time, Abercrombie had died also. Died inside. Never, he believed, to love or even to feel again.

  Finally Abercrombie gave up his efforts to write to the mother of the man whom he had adored. He screwed the tear-stained sheet of paper into a ball and threw it to the floor. Then, having taken a moment to collect himself, he took a fresh sheet of paper from his little leather case and began a second, very different letter.

  EIGHT

  Cold shoulders and a cold supper

  The supper that Kingsley endured on his first evening in prison was in stark contrast to the friendly welcome which Captain Abercrombie had enjoyed. Whereas on his first public exposure to the wider prison population he had provoked a cacophony of derision, now on entering the mess hall shortly after leaving the governor’s office he was met with a sullen silence. Every head seemed to turn as he made his way into the room. Every eye seemed to follow him as he shuffled towards the vats from which the evening stew was being served.

  ‘What do you want?’ the prisoner who had the task of serving the food enquired.

  ‘My meal,’ Kingsley replied.

  ‘Warder!’ the prisoner shouted. ‘Warder, here, please, sir, if you would, sir, please.’

  A uniformed warder approached the bench on which the stew urns stood.

  ‘What’s to do here then, Sparks?’

  ‘I don’t see as how I should have to serve a coward, sir.’

  ‘I know how you feel, Sparks, but the man’s got to eat.’

  ‘He’s a traitor, sir. I won’t serve him, sir. Stick me on the Mill if you will, sir, I don’t care.’

  The warder turned and addressed the assembled hall.

  ‘Will any man serve this prisoner his stew?’

  Of all the hundreds of men sitting on the benches at the long thin tables not a single one spoke. Kingsley was utterly alone, the object of such contempt and deri
sion as he would not have thought possible. A copper and a coward. In the minds of the population of Wormwood Scrubs in the late summer of 1917 a man did not sink any lower than that.

  ‘Perhaps I might be allowed to serve myself?’ Kingsley suggested quietly.

  ‘And perhaps you might be allowed to shut your fucking face until I ask you to open it.’

  ‘You have a statutory obligation to feed me.’

  The warder’s fist smashed into Kingsley’s mouth.

  ‘Try eating with no teeth in your head,’ he shouted as Kingsley staggered but managed to remain upright. ‘Prison rules states prisoners be served! Not serve themselves! If I lets you get hold of that ladle who knows what mischief you’ll make of it! Why, you might use it as a weapon or else a spade to tunnel out with. A fellow as clever as you, Inspector, could probably turn it into a flying machine.’

  ‘You cannot let me starve.’

  Once more the fist flew out and this time Kingsley was knocked properly to the ground.

  ‘I — said — shut — your — fucking FACE,’ the warder snarled. ‘We has food provided, that’s our duty, that’s our job. We has food aplenty but you can’t serve it. No you can’t, them’s the rules. And if you can’t serve it and no man’ll serve you, well, then you might very well starve and personally I don’t know as how there’s a way around it.’

  A loud, deep voice rang out from across the room.

  ‘Ah’ll serve yon prisoner his vittles, sir.’

  The man spoke with the unmistakable accent of the Clyde.

  Staggering to his feet, Kingsley peered across the hall to where he saw a man stand up. A huge man with quite the most startlingly orange hair he had ever seen. Kingsley recognized him instantly, for this man had once been almost as significant a press hate figure as were the leaders of the Irish Republicans. ‘Red’ Sean McAlistair, regional secretary of the dockworkers’ union, a man whose influence in the vast Port of London probably exceeded that of the chairmen of the P&O and White Star lines combined.

  McAlistair had been seated at the far end of the dining hall amongst about a dozen serious-looking men. They were slightly separate from the rest, and the chairs immediately beside them were unoccupied: clearly these people, like Kingsley himself, were set apart. Socialists and trades unionists, strikers imprisoned by a society that was taking an increasingly dim view of those it considered to be putting class war before Great War.

  McAlistair began to cross the hall and prisoners stood aside to let him through. His vast bulk was his protection, that and the group of silent men he had been sitting with.

  Arriving before the bench upon which the vats of food stood, McAlistair held out his enormous hand.

  ‘May Ah trouble you for the ladle, Warder.’

  ‘You want to give comfort to a coward and a traitor?’

  ‘Currently Ah see only a fellow soul in distress, Warder.’

  With much ill grace the warder handed the ladle to McAlistair, who, taking up a tin bowl, served Kingsley with stew and placed a hunk of bread on top of it.

  ‘There ye go now, wee policeman. Here’s your supper. ‘Thank you.’

  McAlistair turned to go and Kingsley spoke after him. ‘May I join you at your table, sir?’

  McAlistair stopped and turned, staring at Kingsley for a moment.

  ‘No y’fuckin’ can’t, ye disgusting little English flatfoot.’

  His words hit Kingsley harder than the warder’s fist had done. ‘Ah’ll see y’gets your food just now because it’s yer right and unlike you, Inspector, Ahm a man who’s powerful bothered about a fellah’s rights.’

  ‘Please, I — ’

  ‘But do Ah look like the sort o’ man who would break his bread with a fellah who thinks himself too good t’fight alongside the coupla’ million British working men currently wearing the King’s colours?’

  The hall was still silent. All eyes remained upon Kingsley, witness to his humiliation.

  ‘Ye wore a uniform o’ His Majesty y’sel’ did ye no, Mr Kingsley? Police blue so it was. Ye wore it at y’trial. Ah saw it in the Illustrated London News, a warder showed me so he did. A police inspector, stood in the dock for reasons of his conscience. An’ Ah got t’thinkin’ how a man like you whose conscience never troubled him in all the years o’police brutality agin the common man had suddenly found one now? All the years o’ strikebreaking and spying, the mounted thugs on their big horses sent agin starving miners. How in all those years of lockouts when coppers in that same blue uniform o’yours stood at factory gates to stop union men from going to their work, all those years o’ great platoons o’men in blue protecting scabs brought in from miles away by absent bosses to break the local union. How in all those years, Mr Kingsley, o’ belonging t’ an organization whose principal reason for existence is not to uphold justice but to protect the properties of the rich who leech upon the labour of the common man who has no property to protect. How is it that your conscience never troubled ye then? The ‘logic’ o’ killing soldiers offends you, it seems, but the logic o’ killing working men, miners, dockers, weavers, printers and the like, that appeals to ye no doubt.’

  McAlistair spoke in a loud, commanding manner, for he was used to addressing crowds at dockside wharves, factory gates and pitheads. He knew how to hold an audience and so, although the ranks of prisoners were again eating their stew, they remained silent and listened.

  ‘I have never killed a working man,’ Kingsley replied, ‘save those I have caused to be hung. And I do not believe that the police have killed above a handful.’

  ‘Oh, Ah think you’ll find it’s more than that, Inspector. And that’s not including them as die in misery and need for want o’ the rights that are denied them. So no, I shan’t sit with ye, sir. I wouldn’t piss in your mouth if your tongue was on fire. Good day.’

  The big red-headed man turned on his heel and went back to his table, where his companions quietly applauded.

  Kingsley took his stew and sat in a vacant space, causing those nearby instantly to gather up their bowls and move away. Alone with his thoughts, he knew that the big trades unionist had had a point: Kingsley had lived all his life in a society in which there were any number of logical contradictions. Britain’s power over the populations of its Empire. Capital’s power over labour. Men’s power over women. Kingsley had spent his life sworn to protect so much that was unjust, immoral, illogical, why was this war so different? Once more Kingsley could only give the answer of proportion, of scale. He could accept the exploitation of a generation whilst he could not accept its murder.

  Of course, for Kingsley all such considerations had become entirely academic. He was lost to the world where his thoughts and opinions mattered and from this point on the only issue that would occupy his mind was survival.

  NINE

  Old acquaintances

  After his lonely supper Kingsley was taken to a cell. A cell he was to share with three other men.

  The men had been hand-picked by a senior warder, a man named Jenkins whom Kingsley had met before.

  ‘Remember me, Mr Kingsley?’

  Kingsley peered at him through the gathering gloom.

  ‘Ah,’ he said with sinking heart, ‘Sergeant Jenkins.’

  ‘Not sergeant any more, Mr Kingsley. It’s Warder Jenkins now, Senior Warder Jenkins.’

  ‘Congratulations, Senior Warder Jenkins. You have clearly thrived in your new profession.’

  ‘Yes. It seems that not everybody thinks themselves too good to work with me.’

  ‘I did not think myself too good to work with you. I merely thought that your skills were not best suited to the work of criminal investigation.’

  ‘Oh, is that so? Well, we’re not so bloody high and mighty and damn yer eyes now, are we, Inspector?’

  Kingsley did not recall being high and mighty with the man or indeed damn yer eyes, he could only remember being…logical. He had found himself burdened with a detective sergeant whom he considered a slow, dim-witt
ed brute. He had therefore had the man removed from his department and recommended that he be found work of a more menial nature. It did not surprise him to learn that the man had ended up in the Prison Service.

  ‘I was finished in the police after you wrote me up, Kingsley. They recommended that I lose my stripes.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear it.’

  ‘You weren’t then, Inspector, but I’ll bet you are now. Oh yes, I’ll bet you are now. And you’re going to get a lot sorrier, mark my words. Strike off the prisoner’s chains,’ Jenkins ordered. ‘Unlock the cell.’

  The chains were removed from Kingsley but he took little relief from it as the cell door opened.

  The three men with whom Kingsley was expected to co-exist grinned with evil intent as he entered the tiny room. What teeth they had between them shone and the five good eyes sparkled in the smoky light of the warder’s paraffin lamp. Electricity had yet to come to this particularly dark corner of Wormwood Scrubs.

  ‘Hello, Inspector. Remember me?’ said the first shadowy figure. Remember me? It was a question which Kingsley had suddenly come to dread.

  ‘Yes, I remember you. I remember all of you,’ Kingsley answered.

  It was only now that the full horror of his situation truly dawned upon Kingsley. Up until this point there had been so much else to think about. The loss of his family, his job, his world. The endless efforts to explain himself. The white feathers in the streets, on his pillow. Up until this point his life and the protest with which he had ruined it had mattered. His existence had had some purpose.

  Not any more.

  Now, he had no life. The man he had been only the day before had effectively ceased to exist. What existed in its place was a cornered human animal. Bare-toothed prey caught in the steel jaws of the most vicious of traps. Kingsley had been cast, alone and utterly defenceless, amongst his most bitter enemies. He had come to live with the men whose lives he had destroyed. Surely the devil himself could not have designed a worse predicament, and yet Kingsley knew that he had designed it for himself.