Dead Man's Land

by Robert Ryan

  And if that was not to be, they

  promised a bitter strike.

  Well, you won’t strike, you cannot strike, you will not strike, said the boss,

  For the Lord will hear of it, and it’ll surely

  be your loss.

  Oh, we can strike, we will strike,

  we are ready to fight

  And you can tell the Lord Stanwood,

  his mill will close tonight.

  And if the looms stop turning, he said, stop for even for one day

  If I know Lord Stanwood, you’ll be the ones to pay.

  And a tattler standing by and hearing

  what was said,

  He swore Lord Stanwood he would know, before the sun was set.

  And in his hurry to carry the news,

  he bent his breast and ran,

  And when he came to the broad millstream, he took off his shoes and he swam.

  And the next day the engines were all quiet, the looms were very still

  And be sure that no cotton was going to come out of that mill.

  The same pay for the same work, the women marched and shouted,

  But the men who knew the Lord, a good ending they doubted.

  And the first message came that if they called off this strike, ended their charade,

  Then the Lord would make sure that the sisters, they’d be richly paid.

  But we cannot leave the other girls, we cannot leave them that way,

  For we are honourable women, not ones to betray.

  And after four more days, another note it came

  Would the sisters meet with the bosses, before they all went lame?

  But come alone, it said, and come to the woods at dusk

  For the Lord himself will come along, for meet with you he must.

  And so the two sisters went after sundown, they went down to the woods,

  Only to find no Lord, but seven men in hoods.

  And they grabbed the sisters hard and rough

  And threw them to the ground.

  We’ll teach you to strike, they said, and they began to pass them round.

  Well, the older she pleaded and begged and made them a promise fair

  If they spared her little sister, she would be their mare.

  And so while little Bess watched the seven, gagged so she couldn’t shout,

  They took their pleasures with the older girl, till no man was left out.

  And by the time they had finished with her, there was madness in her eyes

  And they left the sisters in the grove, deaf to their terrible cries.

  And if we hear of any of this again, even hear your very name,

  We’ll be back for little Bess, and she will get the same.

  And to make sure they remembered, remembered what they had done,

  They carved their number on Annie’s skin,

  A stroke for each man who committed the sin.

  And so the sisters left the mills, left with a terrible curse

  And a promise to come back one day and do their very worst.

  This is the true story of two sisters, sisters brave and true,

  They worked the reels in Lancashire, and now they’ll give their due.

  The captain finished singing and cleared his throat, trying to hide the emotion. It always made him choke up.

  ‘Do you know that song, Corporal Tugman?’ de Griffon asked his temporary batman, who was polishing the captain’s boots. Sunderland, his regular servant, had been taken ill. He had asked Tugman to stand in, for the usual fifteen shillings a week, until Sunderland returned. He was not, though, to be excused from other duties in the same way as a proper servant usually was. And no more mention of being promoted to sergeant.

  ‘Not in that version, sir,’ the man replied brusquely.

  They were in one of the officers’ dugouts, an L-shaped sandbag and plank room – the ceiling supported by four impressive timber props – which successive occupants had tried to make homely, despite the instructions from high command that any creature comforts might erode the ‘offensive spirit’.

  There was a gramophone, although only two records were left intact to play on it and most of the centre was taken up by a makeshift billiard table, created from a cut-down door. On the walls were some theatre posters, framed poems, a tester with ‘Home Sweet Home’ and an arrow pointing to the left stitched on it, some Old Bill cartoons and a selection of purloined street signs from local towns and villages. Pride of place was a meticulously painted crest of Uppingham School, executed by an old boy, probably dead by now. On a low, homemade table sat a stack of tatty magazines – mostly Bystander and Punch. There were books, too: well-thumbed and often mildewed copies of Homer and Horace, Henty and Kipling.

  The dugout smelled of lamp and stove fumes, cigarette and pipe smoke, damp socks and chloride of lime from the latrines, but it was relatively dry and, apart from the occasional rat incursion, comfortable. It would be his home for a week, although by the next day he would be sharing it with several other officers – there were four bunks in the shorter section of the ‘L’ – as fresh units arrived. Still, most of his men were spending the night in rubber-lined funk holes or standing up to their ankles in water and mud in the forward trenches. And poor Metcalf was in a wooden box, awaiting the gravediggers’ attentions.

  ‘You don’t care for the song?’

  ‘I don’t, sir. No.’ His eyes remained fixed on the leather he was buffing. ‘Not that version. Begging your pardon.’

  ‘Which version do you know?’

  ‘It’s about a lady who sleeps with a commoner. And it’s Lord Darnell in the version I heard. Not Stanwood, sir.’ He shook his head in dismay. ‘I mean, that’s your brother.’

  ‘Yes, just a little personal joke there.’

  ‘Right, sir,’ he said, not amused.

  ‘They were real, you know.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The two sisters in the song. Pass me my cigarettes, will you? Thank you. Anne and Bess Truelove. She had a baby, Anne. But her mind was gone. They had marked her, you know? Cut a number in her skin, to show how many had taken her. Of course it sent her over the edge. Seeing that every day. The child was brought up by Bess. In Italy. Where nobody knew their story.’

  ‘There,’ said Tugman, not really listening, giving one last rub on the boots. ‘Bloomin’ shame to go out there and ruin them.’

  ‘Terrible shame to get killed in unpolished boots, Corporal. Just won’t do.’

  ‘Sir?’ It didn’t do to talk about such things.

  ‘Looking forward to tonight? Chance to do something other than a bit of spit and polish? Get one back for the lieutenant?’

  ‘I am,’ said Tugman, without conviction. He didn’t want to think on the death of Metcalf, the hideous randomness of it. ‘Good of you to choose me, sir.’

  De Griffon looked at his wristwatch. An hour or so to go. ‘Well, that’s a fine job, Tugman. I think a drink is in order.’

  Tugman looked doubtful. Rum rations were issued at stand-to, just after dawn or before going over the bags.

  ‘Come on, I know it’s not morning, but it’ll keep the cold out. Gets mighty chilly out there in dead man’s land.’

  Tugman looked uneasy. He wasn’t sure what had got into the captain. It wasn’t like him to be maudlin. But it got them all in the end, the feeling that the end might be nigh. Some men even foresaw their own death, in gory detail. And it came to pass, just as they had described. Had the captain been cursed with a dream or a vision? Some premonition or a prediction, like poor old Shippy. ‘You mean no man’s, sir.’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  De Griffon took out his hip flask, poured a shot for Tugman and handed it over.

  ‘You not having one, sir?’

  ‘In a while, Corporal,’ de Griffon said with a smile as Tugman threw it back. ‘In a while.’

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  Watson was seething by the time he reached the concrete loading apron of the overh
ead railway. He was enraged at the way the nocturnal army had sprung into life at sunset, spilling out onto the roads its battalions of marching soldiers, details loaded with precious water destined for the trenches, ration orderlies humping dixies of hot stew, and the convoys of lorries and carts moving men from rest to reserve and active and back again, all of which contrived to block his way to the front. Going into that mêlée would require the determination and stamina of a spawning salmon.

  He was mad at the idiots who had managed to misdirect a whole company, who were now jamming the roads trying to find the correct village.

  He was angry at the German airmen for wasting an innocent, harmless life. Miss Pippery deserved to die old, with many grandchildren to mourn her.

  He was irritated with Tobias Gregson who, apparently, was on a suicide watch for a man condemned to be shot at dawn and could not help with an arrest till morning.

  And with a Major Tyler, who had agreed to place de Griffon under close arrest. His incredulity, however, was apparent even down the crackly field telephone line. He would detain the captain but not release him to an outside party until someone had explained the situation fully to him.

  Watson, though, was mostly furious with himself, for not being able to solve completely the conundrum that de Griffon presented. It was within his grasp, he was sure, if he just knew which pieces of information to hold on to and which to discard.

  He hauled himself off the motor cycle and looked up at the sky. No rain, thank goodness, but a three-quarter moon playing hide-and-seek with an archipelago of clouds. There would be little or no wind down in the trenches, but the subterranean system could be bitterly cold and damp, so he had swapped his Aquascutum for a British Warm greatcoat.

  ‘Will you be all right, Major?’ Mrs Gregson asked, turning off the machine.

  ‘Yes. I’ll sit with him till your . . . until Lieutenant Gregson comes to place him under formal arrest. Perhaps I can get some answers from him before that.’

  ‘Do you have enough to arrest him? For the Military Police to charge him?’

  A good question. Watson had enough circumstantial evidence of murder; but nothing he would bring to the Bailey with confidence. There was a trail of death in de Griffon’s wake, going all the way back to England, that much was certain. But how to link it to de Griffon’s coat-tails?

  ‘I hope so. At least until we can piece everything together. I’d best get on.’

  The overhead railway was a system for delivering the wounded on stretchers from one of the forward dressing stations. It was actually more like a cable car than a rail system, with the platforms for loading the injured hanging from a steel cable that ran around giant drums and was fed through a series of pulleys en route. Most of the carriage system was sunk into a trench, to protect the wounded from further injury by shrapnel. Some of these systems worked by hand cranking, others by gravity or steam; this one ran on electricity. It was, Torrance had suggested, like a latter-day Roman road – the straightest, fastest way for a solitary officer to get near the front without too many tiresome questions or delays on crowded roads and circumventing hundreds of yards of zigzagged trenches.

  There were two sappers in charge of the railway and, standing idle, half a dozen ambulances and their drivers, ready to ferry the wounded when and if they arrived. Most of the men were sleeping in the cab, heads cushioned on arms folded across the wheel. A couple, however, knowing they were well out of sniper range, were smoking with open abandon.

  ‘Here,’ said Mrs Gregson, handing him an armband. ‘Put this on.’ He slid the white band with a Red Cross symbol on it over the sleeve of his greatcoat. ‘That’ll explain quicker than any words why you are up there. Are you certain you should go?’

  ‘Try and stop me.’

  He was shocked when she stepped forward and threw her arms around him, clamping him tight. His damaged rib protested and he tried not to flinch. ‘I could, you know. I could stop you. If I really wanted to. We’ve already lost Alice.’

  Her body began to quiver, and he put his own arms around her back, the Dunhill leathers creaking as he did so. Her torso was shaking and her breath was hot against his neck. There were tears, too.

  ‘The padre told me Alice knew. About the divorce. It’s . . . difficult to accept that she must have died hating me.’

  ‘No.’ With a studied deliberateness Watson untangled her arms from his body. He made a mental note to intercept the letter than Miss Pippery had written in haste. Mrs Gregson must not see it.

  ‘That’s not true. There was an initial shock when she discovered—’

  ‘That I had lied to her.’

  ‘A necessary deception. I’ve indulged in a few of those in my time. She didn’t die angry, Mrs Gregson. You shouldn’t think that. She spoke to me, she understood, I promise you. Now, I have to leave before de Griffon charms Major Tyler into letting him go. And you crack another of my ribs.’

  ‘Sorry.’ A big sniff. ‘Back to being a grown-up.’

  She took off a glove, and wiped her eyes, giving her bravest smile. Their breaths pooled and mingled in the chill air. He was aware of the sappers watching. They could be two lovers parting. Ridiculous, he knew, but the thought cheered him. He leaned in and kissed her forehead, as chastely as he could. ‘I shall be back tomorrow.’

  A distant rat-tat of machine-gun fire sounded, way south, towards Churchill’s HQ. A Very flare arced up, burning like a lonely firework. There was a ragged volley of shots, then silence and blackness once more.

  A vast darkness lay over the land ahead, cloaking three enormous armies, and men drawn from across the globe, all preparing for more killing and maiming. A locomotive’s whistle hooted a desolate warning, but Watson couldn’t tell from which side of the lines it came. It didn’t matter; it sounded lonely and scared, whichever army it served. It was like despair made tangible. As if in response to the sounds of war, an enthusiastic nightingale started up – his lusty song doubtless a result of trying to compete with the guns – reminding everyone who could hear that the natural world was still out there, and fighting back, despite man’s best efforts to annihilate it completely from this part of the earth.

  ‘Be safe, Major.’

  ‘Just in case, I’ve left some letters—’

  She put a finger to his mouth. It felt incredibly warm against his chilled lips. ‘Shush. They’ll be there when you get back.’

  She removed the digit, leaving a tingling afterglow. ‘They are on the washstand in my room. Just the two.’

  ‘I can guess who gets one.’

  ‘You don’t have to think too hard,’ he admitted. Holmes would want to know he had a good crack at finishing the case.

  ‘You can rip it up when you get back. Tell him yourself. And the second?’

  ‘It’s for you.’

  ‘Me? Why—’

  ‘No, it’s your turn to be quiet. There’re a few favours in there, Mrs Gregson. I can’t think of a better person to ask.’

  Mrs Gregson’s mouth worked but no word came. What kind of favours? Is that all there was? She oscillated between disappointment in the workaday explanation and relief that there might not be more in there, no matter how small. But in the end, she simply felt touched. She reached up and put a hand to his cheek. He didn’t recoil.

  ‘Then you can do me a favour in return.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Call me Georgina.’

  He tried to answer, but there it was again. The finger to the lips. ‘Next time we meet will do just fine, Major Watson. Now go.’

  She watched him walk to the hut where sappers sat, show his armband and point east, towards the front. There was a moment’s discussion before the men shrugged and got to work. The pair strapped a stretcher between two of the hanging supports, which were shaped like upside down ‘L’s, and stood back to let him on. Watson clambered aboard stiffly, although she could tell he was making an effort to seem sprightly. One of the sappers threw a switch, there came the whine of a moto
r and, after a single jerk to overcome the machinery’s inertia, the cable began to run, taking a prone Watson up towards the hostilities.

  As its solitary occupant rattled and clanked off into the darkness and the cable descended into the dark slit of the protecting trench, Mrs Gregson shuddered. As if someone had walked over her grave, as the saying went. Major Watson was a remarkable man. She wished she had known him when he was younger. She remounted the bike and kick-started it to life, unable to shake the terrible sense of foreboding that had descended upon her.

  SIXTY-NINE

  The first crater they came to was rank, the water in the bottom slimy and green. Even in the weak moonlight, they could see gas bubbles forming. Something was decomposing beneath the surface. Man or beast, it wasn’t clear. A rat the size and shape of a rugby ball was scurrying around the edges of the fetid pool.

  ‘Best push on,’ said de Griffon quietly.

  Private Farrar looked longingly over his shoulder, back to the tumbled wire of his own lines.

  ‘Come on there, Farrar,’ said de Griffon in hushed tones. ‘Think about the leave this’ll earn you if we come back with a live one.’

  ‘Sir.’ The voice that came from the blackened face was tiny and devoid of any enthusiasm. The deal they had struck earlier no longer seemed such a bargain, out here in no man’s land. At any second, they knew the sky could burst into revealing light and machine guns spit in their direction. The sense of vulnerability had tightened their sphincters and loosened their bladders. Farrar thought he might vomit.