'He wants ten but he'l settle for seven and a burial party. There were a lot of men on sick, granted, but I knew it would only be a matter of time until he picked on me. And it was. He played about, pretending he wanted X or Y, who turned out to be puking up somewhere or on leave, and then he said, "Oh Byers, just the man.
You like doing officers favours. Wel, you can do this one a favour by shooting straight." Bastard,' Byers muttered, almost to himself.
'That night they bileted us in the farm, the one you can see in the photograph. Nobody slept much, bar Dusty who snored the whole night through. What with that and Watkins reading aloud from his bible, and the cold, and the prospect of what was to come, it was a horrible night. Too long and too short at the same time, if you know what I mean. For once Tucker was in with us. Just lay on his back, no trouble to anyone for once, not sleeping: you could see the glow of his cigarette in the half-dark. Captain Emmett came in about six. He looked pretty sick too.'
And this Brabourne, was he part of the squad, then?' asked Laurence.
'No. He didn't pitch up until we were about to do it. Just in time to take our photograph, I suppose.'
Laurence was puzzled. 'But what was he doing there?'
'I was told that he was part of the trial. The one who's put in to defend someone but never gets them off. But I mean, Mr Brabourne, they might as wel of shot the man right there.'
Laurence saw they'd arrived at the point which he should have clarified to start with.
'And the prisoner was?'
'Mr Hart. Another lieutenant.'
Laurence realised that he'd increasingly expected to recognise the name, whatever it turned out to be, but Hart meant nothing to him. 'Hart?' he repeated, blankly.
Byers looked unhappy. 'Whatever he'd done, and Vince said he'd left them al in a ditch, being shot at, and done a runner and been found stark bolock naked spouting balderdash, he was brave enough in the end. We were hanging around for a while beforehand; that's probably when Brabourne got his picture. It was a dark morning, a bit of snow, not light enough at first. Then Emmett gives us a little speech, though you can tel his heart's not in it: about how sometimes duty asks strange and difficult things of us just as necessary as fighting the Germans. Chin up. Soon be over. That kind of thing. Probably read it in his officer handbook.
'Tucker marches us off. It's stil sleeting and my boots have a hole in them. I remember thinking I shouldn't be noticing this now. The captain comes over, says,
"Al right, lads?" I hear myself saying, "My boots are leaking." It just come out. Captain Emmett gives me a hard look. There's a post, and some rope. Wel, you must know how it goes. Tucker puts me on the end next to him. So as he can have fun watching me, no doubt. Then he mixes the rifles.'
'Mixes the rifles?'
'You must know. Being an officer.' He looked incredulous. 'Shift your rifles about. Of course it means you're not firing with the weapon you're used to. Not that I'd fired more than twice anyway.'
'I'm sorry—I misunderstood.'
But truthfuly Laurence had never given it any thought; it had seemed at first like an uncharacteristicaly humane idea but of course it would be a shambles in its effect. And by the time a man was shooting a felow soldier, his sensibilities were probably past protecting. By the time he'd been six months in France, he would be pretty wel inured to most of war's surprises.
'Then Tucker loads them; supposedly one's a blank, that's what they tel you, but if it was, I knew I wasn't getting it; Tucker was way too chipper with me.
Dusty lights a ciggie behind a hand and Captain Emmett shouts at him to put it out. Then we're al silent. It's just breathing and sloshing as we stomp our feet up and down to keep warm. Watkins starts muttering, "I know that my redeemer liveth." Tucker says, "No he don't, Watkins. Not here." Then Tucker must have heard something because we al have to stand to attention. And then we see them, and I thought I was going to pass out, my heart was racing so fast in my chest. Tucker's looking like it's the best thing he's seen in ages.'
Byers faltered. His shoulders rose and fel a couple of times.
'The lieutenant's stumbling along with his hands tied behind his back. The padre—one of the young ones, gripping his book and not lifting his eyes from the page, though you'd have thought he'd have known the words by heart—walks a little in front of him, reading prayers. The two men who'd been guarding him are either side and the APM—I suppose to execute an officer they needed to do it right—folowing on.'
Byers was speaking at an increasing speed, his initial reticence having transformed almost into eagerness to get to the end.
'They're bringing him along at quite a lick and the ground's rough and he nearly fals when he sees the place, but the corporal steadies him. They have him tied to the post in a jiffy. He doesn't struggle though he says the ropes are too tight. The corporal has a scarf but Hart won't have a blindfold. He looks at us and he seems a bit puzzled. The lad beside me, he looks down. It's worse for him because he's served under him. Part of me's thinking, at least if his boots is leaking, they won't be troubling him long.'
The look he gave Laurence was almost an appeal for understanding.
'Nerves; it was just my nerves. The MO steps forward, pins a white card or something over his heart. He's shaking his head just a bit, as he backs away. Could of been the sleet melting off his hat. The padre goes on with his "I am the resurrection and the life" stuff and then steps to the side, looking at the ground al the while.
Funny, the things you notice. The APM reads out the sentence and leaves us to it, walking back the way he come. Never looks back. He'd got a car waiting, they said.'
Byers looked momentarily uncomfortable but after a brief hesitation he went on.
'Then Captain Emmett cals out, not loud enough realy, "Ready", and there's the first click and then Mr Hart shouts out, "Goodbye, lads. Shoot straight and for God's sake make it quick." And the captain, he seems startled. Instead of going on, he stops. Then starts again: "Ready, aim, fire." Which we do.
'But the thing is, we don't shoot straight. First off, we're not using our own weapons. Dusty had been tippling out of his flask al night; God knows where he got it but he'd had plenty. Watkins is so busy with his mutterings about Jesus that his aim's al over the place, and the lad next to me whose name I can't remember shoots even before the captain has given the order to fire, he's that jumpy, and he hits the bloke al right, but not in the heart. We can al hear him moaning. Vince fires when he's told to, I think, and so do I, but I'd never even had to shoot a real person, not close up. Hart slumps against the ropes. As for Tucker, he shoots, but after me and he gets him in the leg or the bely or somewhere, and he was a good shot. Famous for it. Wasn't nervous either. It's Tucker's shot that makes him fal forward and the weight of him puls the post with him at an angle and the ropes give way and he's on the ground and we can see he's bleeding. It doesn't take the MO to make it official.
He's alive. We al look at Captain Emmett. Not just us but the padre and the MO and Mr Brabourne. It's the captain's mess to sort out now.'
Laurence felt cold with disgust. The inhumanity of it al.
'Captain Emmett takes his pistol out of its holster. He steps up to Hart, who's moving slightly. He hesitates and it looks like Hart's trying to speak. God knows how. Captain Emmett should have just ended it there and then. But he stoops down and tries to hear what Hart says. Puts his hand on his arm. Then he stands up again, whiter even than he was before. His arm with the gun is just hanging at his side. He looks up towards the MO and Mr Brabourne and for a minute nobody moves. Mr Brabourne looks back. The MO moves forward but stops. Hart's sort of coughing. His leg's twitching.'
Byers swalowed hard.
'Then suddenly Tucker walks across to the captain. He pushes Hart half over with his boot, reaches out and takes the captain's pistol out of his hand. No resistance at al. He shoots Hart, straight in the face. Then he takes Captain Emmett's hand, puts the gun in it, salutes sharpish, and walks back to th
e rest of us.'
Byers fel silent and when he spoke again his voice was husky.
'It was al wrong, al of it. It's why I took it so bad with Jim, it brought it al back.'
He put his spectacles back on and looked defiantly at Laurence.
'Tucker marches us off back to the farmyard. But not before we could al hear someone throwing up, Mr Brabourne, I think it was, but then whatever you say about Mr Brabourne, he'd had guts to be there; he didn't have to be. Could have been the padre, mind you. He was green too. God knows what happened between the officers. We don't see the MO and the padre again; they went off someplace else, and Captain Emmett and Mr Brabourne get back a while later. No mention of any irregularities. Nothing. No comeback I ever heard of against Tucker. Nor against your friend, Captain Emmett. Our secret. But Tucker, when the officers come in, he's standing next to the captain and the captain won't even look at him, when Tucker cals out, "Byers, there's an officer here needs his boots cleaning," and I look down and Captain Emmett looks down and there's blood and brains and stuff al over his foot.'
The room was suddenly silent. Then, slowly, sound crept back in. Laurence was aware of a clock ticking and a squeak each time Byers moved in his chair. His own grated as he pushed it back. Incongruously he could hear a blackbird somewhere outside. Byers was looking down and absent-mindedly tapping his pencil on his desk. Slowly Laurence picked up the more remote noise of metalworking and someone shouting.
'Thank you for teling me,' he said. 'You're a brave man. It can't be easy to go back over it.'
'None of us were brave, ever,' said Byers. 'Bravery's when you've got a choice.' He blinked as if finding himself somewhere he didn't quite expect. 'I'm not a man for fancies but sometimes I think we were cursed after. Dusty was gassed, I heard. Not in an attack but by some stupid lamp in a dugout. Probably too drunk to notice. Vince's body was never even found after the last push at Ypres. I heard Watkins went raving mad after his twin brother was kiled, and he was locked up. The padre was done for when they took a big German dugout. Some wel-meaning lad tels him there's a little shrine in the corner stil with a cross. Padre rushes in, marveling. Booby-trapped. Blew him to kingdom come. And the APM, a hard man, they say, survived the war, went back to the police here in London—he was the copper the major knew. Just the other week he was shot by some vilain with a grudge. I saw it in the paper. Now you tel me Captain Emmett's done himself in. I'm not even surprised; it was a stinking business from start to finish.'
'Yet you're stil here.'
But even as he spoke, Laurence was considering the reach of coincidence. Most of the casualties Byers had spoken of were straightforward, but if the assistant provost marshal had been murdered the balance seemed to shift.
'Right,' said Byers. 'Wel then, that leaves me and Tucker and the MO. Who knows about the young one whose name I've forgotten and the one with the shakes. Tucker's alive and kicking, of course. Alive, at any rate.'
'Our secret,' Byers had said. But not many shared it now. He didn't tel the younger man that the MO had died.
'Enid's brother-in-law, Ted, who'd served with him, said Tucker came out and took himself back up to the Black Country. Hasn't managed to hold down a job, though, I hear. So perhaps the war did get him in the end? Ted's a Birmingham man and he saw him a year or so back, though not to speak to. Had a wife al along, did Tucker, and some kiddies. The devil looks after his own's al I can say.'
'And Mr Brabourne?'
'Never heard of him again. Doubt he made it through. Like I said, he was a schoolboy on a spree. Right out of his depth.'
Laurence wondered about Tresham Brabourne. In ideal circumstances, advocates at courts martial were chosen from those who'd had legal experience before the war but circumstances were seldom ideal. With a military manual, a so-caled Prisoner's Friend might try to construct a defence. It was surprising, though, that an officer hadn't been represented by someone who'd been a barrister in civilian life. However, if they'd been in a hurry, and his family either hadn't been notified or hadn't been wel connected, then someone like Brabourne might be the best the accused could hope for. Al the same, he had accompanied a man he'd defended, presumably to the best of his ability, to a horrible death. He didn't have to be there. That made him a bit more than the careless boy that Byers took him for.
Could Brabourne stil be alive? Rumour had it that if a man defended the accused too energeticaly, he found himself on al the worst sorties afterwards. Simply defending Hart might have shortened the odds on young Brabourne's survival.
When he looked at his watch, Laurence was embarrassed to see that over an hour had passed. He jumped to his feet, apologising.
'No matter,' said Byers, although he looked relieved. 'I'd said I'd never talk about it again but now I have. It doesn't change anything. The major knew, of course, and I'd spoken of it to Jim, but I've never even told Enid. I don't want her to know the man I was then. I'm only talking of it now because the major brought you in. Al my anger's gone Tucker's way but the war just gave Tucker his head. Yet who else is there? The system? The generals on both sides? The Kaiser? The hothead who chucked a bomb at that duke in Serbia? Truth is, I don't even know who to blame. It's the same with Jim's death. A great unknown enemy out there that I can't even hate properly.'
Laurence had a sense that there was something Byers had withheld from his account. 'And there's nothing else you want to tel me?' he asked.
Byers was rotating a pencil in his fingers; it twirled like a propeler. Suddenly he lost control of it and it spun across the room. Momentarily Laurence folowed its trajectory with his eyes. It hit the wal. When he looked back, Byers seemed not to have noticed; his fingers were stil moving.
'Isn't that enough?' he said.
Laurence put his hand out and after a moment's hesitation Byers shook it. The rain had stopped and men were struggling to get a large safe on to a palet as Laurence walked across the yard. There was no sign of Major Calogreedy.
He strode out through the open gates and turned left. The Thames was brown, with foam from one of the industrial works forming a pale scum along the pilings.
It was chily down by the river. Laurence could smel the dankness of the water and the smoke of a thousand afternoon coal fires.
As he walked back along the Thames, he found himself hoping that Leonard Byers' marriage was a comfort to him. On the point of leaving he'd asked him whether he would ask Mrs Byers' brother-in-law where Tucker could be found. Byers doubted he knew—but he gave him the name of the pub he'd been told Tucker drank in: The Woodman.
'I've never been there, never been north of London, but he said that's where to go if I was ever up in our Birmingham works and wanted to look Tucker up.
That was his idea of a joke.'
Chapter Nineteen
He was impatient to see what Charles could unearth so rather than wait until their usual rendezvous, Laurence scrawled a note to him with the few details he had about Hart and Brabourne in the hope Charles might find out something by Thursday, when they were due to meet. He didn't even know Hart's first name. He kept the thrust of the story to himself; he was interested to see its effect on Charles when he retold it in person.
Seeing Calogreedy and Byers caught up in their working lives, Laurence had felt guilty. Recently he'd hardly picked up his own work. That was the trouble with his research: too solitary, too quickly set aside. His publishers were easy on him and, in a sense, the smal income Louise's money had provided was a trap. It was time he did something more demanding. Not in business like Calogreedy and Weatheral, and certainly not a return to coffee trading. What did begin to attract him was going back to a classroom, not the tutoring he'd done after leaving Oxford, but something more structured. He wondered whether he could get a beak's job at a good school.
On Thursday night Charles's club was almost empty. They both chose lamb chops with Cumberland sauce. The lamb was beautifuly tender and sweet but Laurence scarcely noticed as he struggled to recal every detail of what
Byers had told him. When he had finished, his friend whistled through his teeth.
'We had a private who faced the death penalty for sleeping at his post but the colonel was never going to let it be carried out. It was enough the lads thought it could be. Kept the rest awake. But bad for morale, these things. Shooting an officer. Rotten luck that old Emmett drew the short straw. They usualy made a subaltern do the dirty work. As always. Byers give you anything else?'
'That was it,' Laurence said. 'Resentful but frank.'
Charles said, 'I heard there was a point when the powers that be wanted to quash the rumours that there was one rule for officers and another for the men.
From what you say, this Hart seems to have been the best they could do for an example. Don't imagine it would have happened if his people had known the right people.' He stopped and gave it some thought, then said, 'Damn odd about the batman's cousin, don't you think?'
'There's something odd al round. I keep thinking there's something I'm missing,' said Laurence. 'John seems to have been making amends for things that happened in the war. Leaving money to Bolitho after his terrible injury, unburdening himself to Dr Chilvers. Various people seem to have noticed an improvement in his mental state towards the end of his life. It seems unlikely Mrs Lovel's son was part of either the trench colapse or the execution of Lieutenant Hart, although he might have been involved in the court martial, I suppose. But he was apparently close to his mother, and never told her about it. So what is John's connection with Lovel—or even Mrs Lovel herself? It's quite possible there was something else there that he was trying to put right. John served for over three years. God knows what else happened. And what about the unknown Frenchman?'
The Return of Captain John Emmett Page 16