The First Casualty

by Ben Elton

  Kingsley could feel his feet sinking into the mud beneath him. McCroon was also slipping, sliding down the side of the hole against which Kingsley had jammed him. Only their heads were above water and it was becoming a struggle to breathe. Just in time Kingsley found a firmer footing. It was soft but solid, and without much emotion he realized that he must now be standing upon the body of the headless officer.

  ‘Answer my question!’

  McCroon tried to focus his thoughts.

  ‘There was a row. Next door, Abercrombie and another officer. That’s all I know.’

  ‘You have spoken before of having sighted an officer in the corridor when you visited the water closets. When was that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I don’t have a watch. It was on my way back to my own ward from Hopkins’s.’

  ‘On your way back? That was before Nurse Murray had finished in the ward then?’

  ‘She’d only just started…Look, what does it matter, you fucking fool!’

  ‘It definitely matters. Are you sure?’ Kingsley shouted. ‘Think, man, think.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. She’d only just come in.’

  ‘Describe the officer you sighted.’

  ‘I only saw him from behind. He pushed past me.’

  ‘Describe exactly what you saw.’

  ‘He was an officer! You’re all the same, all cunts!’

  ‘Describe what you saw!’

  Suddenly Kingsley had the man by the throat. McCroon responded to the threat.

  ‘He had a sort of briefcase! Not a big one, a soft, thin little one.

  ‘A music case?’

  Kingsley knew that this was leading the witness but the circumstances were peculiarly urgent.

  ‘Was it a music case?’

  ‘I don’t know what the fuck a music case is. It was an old, thin little brown leather case. That’s all I know.’

  Just then an enormous piece of ordnance exploded overhead. The battle was showing no signs of abating and Kingsley decided he had probably got as much from the witness as he could. He had discovered something new and highly significant:

  McCroon had left Hopkins’s ward before Kitty Murray had done so.

  Kingsley let go of his witness’s throat so that the man briefly slipped below the water. He instantly emerged, spluttering.

  ‘Good bye, McCroon, and good luck,’ Kingsley said. ‘What?’ the man replied, as bewildered at the sudden ending of their acquaintance as he had been at its beginning.

  ‘I said good luck,’ and with that Kingsley scrambled and slithered his way up over the lip of the shell hole, facing back towards the British line.

  There were more and more Tommies rising up out of the trench from which Kingsley had himself emerged a few minutes earlier and it was eerie to see so many of them fall the moment they reached the surface. Kingsley had been fortunate indeed to get as far as he had done. Now he had to get back.

  He put his head down, held up his warrant card and ran. This was not his battle; he had merely visited it. He had a case to solve and the rest of the puzzle lay elsewhere. Fortunately for him, the water in the shell hole had washed a great deal of the mud and gore from his uniform and so his red police tabs were visible once more.

  ‘Police! Police!’ he shouted as he scrambled through the oncoming men.

  Perhaps they heard him, perhaps they saw his warrant card. Either way they did not shoot or bayonet him and he made it back to the line from which the British had begun their assault. For a moment he crouched on the edge of the trench as men pushed past him, moving up into the battle. He could not resist turning back to take one final look at the scene.

  The dead were piled high right across the sea of mud, but the first of the British assault had arrived at the German trenches. He could see them struggling to pass the wire, which the bombardment had failed to destroy entirely, and the German machine-gunners were pumping lead into them at point-blank range. The Germans were suffering heavily too. In order to gain a field of fire their gunners must needs expose themselves, and they were continually being shot from their seats. Another gunner would leap up instantly to take his place. Both sides were fighting like cornered wild animals. Kingsley had never seen such blind courage and on such a scale. It was an awe-inspiring sight.

  Just then he saw McCroon. In the grey light he was raising himself from the shell hole. He had his back to Kingsley and was facing the enemy, clearly intent on rejoining the battle. He had had some time to catch his breath and had no doubt reflected that, being unharmed, he must fight on or risk being shot later for cowardice. He hauled his trunk above the lip and, struggling to bring a leg over, managed to extricate himself from the hole. Then, taking up the rifle of his fallen comrade Hopkins, he advanced once more towards the German guns.

  FOURTY-SIX

  A literary discussion under pleasant circumstances

  Kingsley made it back as far as the artillery line before he collapsed. He had had scarcely any sleep for two nights and during that time had been involved in a ferocious trench raid and a full-scale infantry assault. So far the accompanying adrenalin had kept him going but now, in relative safety behind the forward line, he succumbed suddenly to complete exhaustion. The guns were silent for the moment and men and horses of the Royal Artillery lay about him under whatever shelter they could find from the rain. Kingsley had just sufficient energy left to kick apart some ammunition boxes, the broken boards of which he laid upon the mud. On this poor bed and with the cold comfort of a torn and sodden gas cape to shield him from the pouring rain, he slept for two hours.

  On waking he was able to cadge a mug of tea from the gunners, who of course viewed him and his red tabs with the greatest suspicion, and then he began to make his way back to Merville. Having interviewed McCroon, he now had some idea of the direction in which his investigation was heading, but he was also aware that he desperately needed further rest, a wash and some dry clothes if he was to continue to function effectively.

  The ordered chaos in the immediate vicinity of what was a fairly fluid front line, a line constantly vulnerable to enemy counter-attack, was breathtaking in its scale. Everywhere men and horses struggled against the mud and the confusion. Some moved forward, some back. Some were wounded, some whole. All of them, to Kingsley, seemed lost. In search of destinations and formations which had all melded into one in the thick porridge of mud and corpses to which two mighty armies clung.

  It took Kingsley the rest of the day to struggle the few miles back out of the battle zone and towards his billet, and darkness was falling once more when, shivering and exhausted, he fetched up at the Café Cavell.

  Utterly done in though he was, he knew at once that something was up when he saw the faces of the men sitting round the table. They had not fought that day and so had the strength and spirit for sport, and they were smirking and nudging one another as Kingsley called for Madame in the hope of arranging for hot water.

  ‘You have a visitor, ‘ the woman said. ‘She said she would wait in your room.’

  Even in his cold, sodden and exhausted state Kingsley could not help but feel a surge of excitement. He knew only one woman in all of France and Belgium, and only one woman knew him.

  Staff Nurse Kitty Murray.

  Kingsley went upstairs and opened the door. She was sitting on his bed, reading some papers she had brought with her.

  ‘Gosh,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘Well, I must say, you are in a state.’

  ‘Hello, Kitty,’ Kingsley said, and he knew how pleased he was to see her.

  ‘I had thought that when you came I should leap up and kiss you whether you wanted me to or not but I’m very much afraid now that I shan’t. I have on my nicest blouse and you look as if you’ve just crawled out of a very nasty hole.’

  ‘I have.’

  It was a nice blouse. Pale green silk and daringly open at the collar. She was smiling so prettily too. He wished she would kiss him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she asked. ‘
When I got back yesterday I heard you’d been at the château digging up corpses. I came here looking for you and waited till nine but you didn’t come.’

  ‘I was in pursuit of a witness. Why were you looking for me?’

  ‘Aren’t you pleased?’

  ‘I’m very pleased. I just wondered.’

  ‘Well, actually, I do sort of have a proper reason. I have a message from that Military Police sergeant. I must say he seemed much nicer than when I first met him.’

  ‘He gave you a message for me?’

  ‘Well, he wanted to deliver it himself, of course, but you weren’t there and he couldn’t wait all day so he gave it to me. Aren’t I the lucky one? He told me to tell you that there is no record of a Colonel Willow at Staff.’

  ‘No, I had rather suspected there wouldn’t be.’

  ‘It all sounds fearfully sinister. What witness were you pursuing?’

  ‘A soldier, McCroon.’

  ‘Ah, Hopkins’s Bolshevik pal.’

  ‘That’s right. I followed him over the top. I must say, I’ve had easier chases.’

  ‘You’ve been in the battle for Passchendaele?’ she asked, her eyes growing wide with surprise, and also, it seemed to Kingsley, with some excitement.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Coo, you jolly well don’t make life easy for yourself, do you? I heard we took a fearful mauling.’

  ‘Yes, I rather think we did.’

  ‘Well, you’d better get your togs off, Captain.’

  ‘My togs?’

  ‘Yes, and be quick about it too. Look at you, you’re shivering pretty badly, and here’s us standing round chatting. If you’re not careful you’ll develop a fever. So come on, chop chop. I’ll get some water.’

  Nurse Murray marched smartly from the room and Kingsley began to undress. He was shivering and he had not remotely the strength to consider the social niceties. He was in his wet and filthy underwear when Murray returned with towels and a basin of hot water.

  ‘All your togs,’ Captain. Those long johns are dripping wet and besides, they look like they could march into battle on their own. Coo. Pretty lively on the nose too! Pongo! Come on, look sharp now, I am a staff nurse, you know.’

  Feeling only slightly self-conscious, Kingsley did as he was told and removed his underwear. Nurse Murray dipped a towel into the hot water and began to wash him. For Kingsley, who had recently experienced nothing but extreme physical discomfort, it was a wonderful thing to be cleaned and ministered to by such a deft and charming young woman. He had just closed his eyes and begun to luxuriate in the unfamiliar tenderness of the sensation when she brought them open again, wide with surprise.

  ‘Golly. That is a big one, isn’t it?’ she said, while with absolute confidence and candour she began to flannel his private parts. Kingsley could think of nothing to say in reply.

  ‘Quite scary really, now that I see it in the light. Did I really get that in my mouth?’

  ‘Uhm…’

  ‘Gosh. I think I should get a prize!’

  ‘Kitty,’ I don’t think I have ever in my life met so frank a girl as you.’

  ‘Woman, Captain. I’m twenty-two and a woman. One of the ways men diminish women’s status and our contribution whilst simultaneously entrenching their quasi-paternal male authority is to call us girls. Girls go to school,’ Captain. Women tend the wounded, make the shells and drive the ambulances.’

  And, occasionally, brazenly wash the private parts of near strangers, Kingsley thought to himself.

  ‘Well then,’ he said, ‘you’re a very frank woman.’

  ‘And you’re a very handsome chap. Did you know that,

  Captain? I expect your wife has told you. Has she? Don’t be modest. I’ve thought about you heaps since the other night when we made the beast with two backs outside in the soft refreshing rain. Do you think I’m pretty? Do say you do even if secretly you don’t.’

  ‘I think you’re very pretty.’

  ‘Good-oh. I shan’t ask again, I just wanted you to say it.’

  ‘You don’t have to ask me, Kitty. I’ll say it anyway, happily. I think you’re very, very pretty and also rather splendid.’

  ‘Ta very much.’

  He meant it too. He could not help himself. She was splendid. Perhaps it was the awful experiences he had been through; perhaps also there was a touch of the ‘quasi-paternalism’ of an older man for an idealistic young girl, a notion that Kitty no doubt would have resented hugely. Perhaps it was simply because she was beautiful and funny and entirely refreshing. Probably all those things and more, for there was no doubt that at that moment Kingsley felt an enormous affection for Kitty Murray. He did not love her. He could not love her, for he loved Agnes and Kingsley did not believe that a man could ever truly love more than one woman at a time. To love someone new it would first be necessary to cease to love one’s old love and Kingsley had certainly not done that, and he believed he never would. But he liked Nurse Murray enormously, so very much indeed that the sensation was rather like love. And she was very, very pretty.

  ‘Shall I get my togs off too then?’ she asked. ‘Just to make it even Stephens?’

  She asked it with her usual chirpy brashness but Kingsley could see that she was blushing. The last time they had been in such a situation it had been in near-total darkness. Kingsley was charmed and perhaps slightly relieved to discover that even the surprising Nurse Murray had some limitations to her candour.

  ‘I don’t know that you should,’ Kingsley replied hesitatingly.

  ‘Thought you said I was pretty?’

  ‘You are, extremely.’

  ‘Well then,’ she replied.

  And then, eschewing further discussion, she undressed in front of him, not slowly or seductively as Agnes was wont to do but briskly, almost officiously, folding her garments quickly and neatly as she removed them. Nonetheless she avoided meeting Kingsley’s eye and it seemed to him that, despite her aggressively modish disregard for the accepted norms of behaviour, beneath it all Kitty Murray was as shy and self-conscious as anyone might be in such a situation, and that she resented herself for it.

  As she undressed she talked.

  ‘I heard that you have managed to prove Private Hopkins didn’t do the deed,’ she said, taking off her shoes. ‘I was so pleased. Told you he was innocent, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  She was unbuttoning her blouse now.

  ‘Terribly clever of you, comparing the bullets like that. Who would have thought it?’

  Under her blouse she wore a delicate, cream-coloured silk slip. Crossing her arms and gripping the hem she pulled it up over her head. She had on no corset or brassiere, and Kingsley saw everything as the lacy garment rose. First her navel, then her small shapely breasts, then the hair under her arms as she raised her elbows above her head. He wanted to put his nose into it and breathe deeply.

  ‘So will they release him?’ she asked, draping the silky slip across the back of a chair. She was now naked from the waist up, fine-boned and exquisite. Her bobbed hair fell no further than just below her ears. Kingsley had never before seen a woman’s neck, shoulders and breasts thus exposed. Always in his past experience there had been unpinned, cascading hair partially obscuring the view, which was lovely too, of course, but this clearer, starker style was undeniably erotic. Kitty’s petite frame, with its small, dainty breasts, slim shoulders, distinct collar bone and delicately curved neck, seemed to have been made to be crowned with just such a spartan coiffure.

  ‘They’ve released him already,’ Kingsley answered, ‘and now he’s dead. Killed in action before Passchendaele this morning.’

  ‘Coo. How’s your luck,’ eh? Poor chap.’

  She pulled up her skirt and began to unfasten her drawers. She leaned forward slightly to do so and her little breasts hung down before her. Kingsley wanted to reach forward and take one in each hand. He did not do so, although it would have been idle for him to pretend that he was not aroused
; he was naked himself and the evidence stood out before him.

  ‘I wanted to ask you,’ Kingsley said, ‘did you ever read those poems that Lieutenant Stamford gave you?’

  ‘Actually I did,’ Kitty replied, wriggling out of her drawers and unfastening her belt. ‘Very strange. I was expecting all patriotism and naïve glory and in fact it’s the opposite — mud, blood, disease and death, really gloomy, disillusioned stuff.’

  Now she undid her skirt, letting it fall to the ground, and stood for a moment naked save for her gartered stockings. Then she picked up the skirt and placed it neatly on the chair.

  ‘Shall I leave my stockings on?’ she said. ‘Some chaps really like that and I must say I think it’s rather a jolly look. Terribly French, don’t you think?’

  ‘Kitty, how many ‘chaps’ have there been?’

  ‘Twenty-four. I keep notes. I am a bad girl, aren’t I?’

  ‘A bad woman.’

  ‘It’s all right if I call myself a girl, that’s totally different from when a man does it. What about you then? How many lucky, lucky, lucky little flappers have you pleasured, monsieur?’

  ‘I don’t know. Five or six, I think.’

  ‘Does it bother you that I’ve rutted with so many chaps?’

  ‘Yes, I think it does a little, if I’m honest. I suppose I should like to have been more special.’

  ‘You are special. I’m here, aren’t I? And I very rarely order the same dish twice. If I didn’t believe that romantic love is a myth I think I could fall in love with you.’

  Kitty took from her bag the big rubber sheath.

  ‘There certainly isn’t anything romantic about the way you go about making love, is there, Kitty?’

  ‘Ah-ha. That’s a man talking, you see. How would it be if I got preggers, eh? I’d be in a fearful fix. You men don’t think about that very much, do you? Not your problem.’

  With that, Kitty reached up and, taking his face between her hands just as she had done beneath the trees, she kissed him long and fiercely, pulling him down on to the bed beside her.

  When Kingsley had arrived at the café he had thought himself good for nothing and ready to drop but the sensation of Nurse Murray’s taut young body against his had totally revitalized him. Despite the ever-present guilt, he was incapable of not returning her kisses with equal intensity.