The road ahead glares white. He remembers these roads as a loudly nudging line of traffic: the lorries, wagons, mules, motorcycles, and the dust from the endless columns of men. His eye scans for familiar landmarks. There is hardly anything here that he recognizes. Just south of where the four roads meet, right before the ruins of the brickworks, there had been a caved-in barn. The grave had been dug in the field beside. He turns at the junction of the roads, trying to find a feature that he would know.
‘You lost, mate? Need a lift?’ The driver leans out of the window. Harry hadn’t heard the vehicle pull up and the sudden breach of the silence had alarmed him momentarily. There are tarpaulins and stakes and a quantity of mangled barbed wire on the back of the van.
‘Do you know if there used to be a brickworks off this road? A red-brick building with a fallen chimney?’
The driver laughs. ‘Once upon a time. Long ago. You’re at the wrong crossroads, pal, but I know the place you mean. Hop in. I’ll save you some shoe leather.’
He turns the truck and they drive past the black wood.
‘Not a good spot for a picnic, eh?’ says the driver.
‘Not quite,’ Harry replies. The barbed wire in the back of the van rattles. ‘Is that salvage?’
‘A drop in that ocean, aye. They reckon that there’s at least a hundred thousand tons of wire alone.’ He raises an eyebrow at Harry and whistles. ‘And then there’s the ammunition and the bones. It’ll go on for years, you know.’
Harry can’t imagine how it will ever end.
‘This is your place.’
The van brakes and Harry looks out. He recognizes the slump of red bricks, albeit much diminished and matted over with brambles. Nature seems to have an urgent desire to cover it all.
‘If you’re staying in the village, the bar does a passable approximation of beer. You’ll find me there and thirsty most nights.’
The driver honks his horn as he pulls away.
Harry looks about. Suddenly all is stillness and silence again. He tries to rewind and reorientate himself. The barn was on the corner of the side road facing the ruin of the brickworks. There is nothing there now but a pile of timber and tile. The field where they buried them was to the right of the barn. He gets his bearings and tries to refind the angle, rifling mentally through the fixed images. He recalls a line of crosses and sees none. There is nothing but turned earth. Harry’s shoes are clogged with mud and his steps falter, stumbling on pieces of chalk in the soil that resemble bones. He turns in the field, the field that should contain the bones of his brother. There are no signs that they were ever here. He thinks about Mrs Maxwell, wanting a photograph if she could not have a grave. He thinks about Rachel, needing a grave to go to and the horrible hugeness of that word – Missing. He thinks about Edie’s uncertainty. There is no grave for his brother. And, if his brother’s grave is missing, where is he? Harry’s feet slip from under him and he finds himself kneeling in the mud, staring at the empty earth.
16
Harry
Bivouac camp, Talus Boisé, Somme, July 1916
‘Eaton is back. Rose is rushing around like he’s got a wasp up his arse.’
‘Any news?’ Harry asked.
Will shook his head. ‘Not that they’re sharing. They’ve all gone into a huddle. Roberts is screaming down the telephone. Cropper reckons we’re definitely going to get sent up now.’
‘Jesus.’
Harry looked across the field. There was a lot of shouting going on, and a lot of quiet surveying of the men doing the shouting. The bombardment had begun at first light. The sky had trembled with it, the sound of artillery signalling the start of the attack. Francis, with W-Company, had gone up in the early hours of the morning. Harry had sat with Will and watched the light pitch in the sky. The enemy guns had started too. They had hardly spoken, but had smoked their way through a lot of cigarettes. He had felt Will shivering where their shoulders touched.
Greene and Rose were moving around the field between the improvised shelters and groups of men were standing up.
‘Everyone on your feet. We’re on the move.’
‘Any news of W-Company?’ Will asked.
‘It’s chaos up there. A lot of this artillery is falling short. Nobody seems to know whether to move backwards or forwards.’ Second-Lieutenant Rose shook his head. ‘The French attack looks like it’s been a success, though, so we’ve got to push on.’
‘No news of casualties, then?’
‘If I knew, I’d tell you.’ Rose batted away the midges with his swagger stick. ‘I’m just ordered to get everyone moving.’
‘Buggers are biting,’ said Will.
*
The sky flashed and boomed ahead.
‘Retaliatory bombardment,’ nodded Wilkinson.
‘That’s a big word for you.’
‘Heaney heard Roberts on the phone, reckons that they all ended up falling back. Brigade says it has to happen, though. Roberts was effing and blinding when he put the phone down.’
There was a pile of packs by the side of the road. Medical Corps men were crouched over them and turning through their contents. Water bottles and items of clothing were littered about. The wind rifled through the pages of an open book. There were spoons and wallets and shaving razors on the ground. Harry saw a photograph of a small blonde girl with a dog and then it was gone on the wind.
‘What are they doing?’ asked Will. His voice sounded outraged on behalf of the owners of the spoons and the shaving razors. ‘Whose are they?’
‘I’m guessing that their owners are beyond caring.’
Will frowned at Wilkinson.
‘I’d be glad to give up shaving. There are some advantages to wobbling off this mortal coil.’
They walked on in silence for a while. The trees along the side of the road had lost a lot of their branches. They looked twisted, somehow pressingly tragic, and Harry briefly wished that he could pause and sketch their shapes. There was also a lot of debris – coils of wire, pickets and posts and stacks of corrugated iron sheets. Stragglers sat by the roadside and watched it all pass by.
‘It’s going to get hot today,’ said Taylor.
Harry looked up. A plane droned through the overhead blue and plumes of pink smoke rose on the skyline.
‘I’m not talking about the weather.’
A lorry full of Irish went the other way. Their feet dangled from the rear of the van. One of them had got a drum and was beating a rhythm. They didn’t seem to be in the mood for singing though. A convoy of ambulances followed them, which put anyone off trying to fit a song to the beat.
‘Ruddy long way to Tipperary,’ said Jones and threw his cigarette away.
They were digging in the field by the brickworks, stripped to shirtsleeves and sweating. The digging men went at their task as if they wished to be finished with it.
‘Vegetable patch?’ queried Wilkinson. ‘That’ll be a lovely row of cabbages come Christmas.’
‘Give it a rest,’ said McCabe.
German prisoners were resting by the crossroads while their guards had paused to smoke and pass water bottles between them. They stared at the traffic on the road. Was this then what the enemy looked like? They seemed very small these men and very tired. Their ordinariness struck Harry. They looked more exhausted and ragged than monstrous. A pair of brown eyes made direct contact with Harry’s own. The boy had shorn-short blond hair and stripes of mud down his face. He had a very young, slightly unfinished-looking face, as if his features hadn’t quite set yet. The man next to him nudged his arm and the boy turned away.
‘Poor bastards.’
The wood to the north was being shelled again. Harry could smell it burning. The blackened tree trunks were stark and sharp and didn’t really look like a wood any longer. It reminded him of something from a ghost story, something macabre and Gothic and full of dark meaning.
‘We’d know, wouldn’t we?’ said Will.
Walking wounded were approaching.
Their faces were white with the dust from the road, crusted with sweat. Some of the wounded moved like old men, all lurching concentration. Others quivered and jittered. They stared at their faces, looking for features that they recognized. Will’s hand was on Harry’s arm.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’m sure of it.’
A red cross fluttered from a tree trunk. Behind the ambulances there seemed to be a good deal of frenzied activity going on. Weary men were sitting in silence on the bank. Others had found places to sleep. The whiteness of dressings glared against their bloodied faces.
‘How’s the accommodation?’ asked Taylor. ‘Should I have bought a return ticket?’
‘Most convivial,’ observed Jones.
There was a litter of kit by the side of the road as they went into the sunken lane: helmets and packs and water bottles. Harry saw a leather case that looked like Francis’ camera and then he was scrambling over all the kit. Groundsheets and mess tins and webbing fell away as he stretched. His hands trembled as he grasped. It was a pair of binoculars.
‘You that keen for a close-up?’ asked Yates. ‘I think I’d rather look away.’
Harry shook his head as he looked at the pile of once-upon-a-time possessions. He wondered how long it would take to tidy all of this up at the end.
‘Like a ruddy church jumble sale,’ suggested Wilkinson.
‘Only less crochet and chipped cups.’
A gunner by the entrance to a dugout was picking a tune on a banjo. He nodded to them as they passed. They tried to whistle along but their lips were too dry and the effort was given up. The gunner’s melancholy notes followed them down the sunken road.
The ground seemed to lurch as a shell struck ahead. ‘Is that ours or theirs?’
Will shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course it bloody does!’
There was a flicker in the sky ahead and Harry felt his heart beat faster. Sweat prickled down his back. Francis hadn’t seemed afraid as he’d gone up that morning. He’d got on his businesslike face, as Will called it. He had checked his kit carefully and shaken both their hands. He had looked older by the electric light. Will had tried to hug him, but Francis had shrugged him off and told him not to be soft. ‘I’ll be back when I’ve ended the war,’ he had said.
‘Smartly now,’ the shout came. ‘Get a shift on.’
‘Are we late for our date?’ asked Taylor.
‘I am all abuzz,’ said Will. ‘My nerves are all tingling and my belly’s full of butterflies.’
The earth walls narrowed and the noise ahead increased. It was a great drone, a deep bass noise that seemed to be coming both from above and from the ground under Harry’s feet. They were going on in single file now. With an explosion ahead, Harry found himself thrown against the trench wall. There was grit in his eyes and in his mouth. Though he knew that he was holding the line up, he had to stop for a moment, rub his eyes and spit it all out. The earth wall trembled behind him.
‘Loads of this is our stuff falling short,’ Yates shouted behind.
They were moving forward faster now. The bottom of the trench was muddy and Harry found it difficult to keep on his feet. There was a sound like a great rending, an enormous noise of shipyards and foundries and cathedral bells all pushed together and amplified. The ground quaked with it and he felt it vibrate his bones and drum in his diaphragm. It was as if the very earth were being torn apart. Above the bass note there were whistles ahead, almost madly shrill, and a rattle of machine guns. Smoke was rising, white and black, and there was a flashing and an acrid smell. He looked back at Will. Harry saw him mouthing words but the noise took them away. His eyes said everything, though.
The line ahead was moving at a pace. ‘We’re going straight over,’ Taylor yelled. ‘It’s already started.’
They were coming up to the front-line trench now. It was blown out in lots of places. Harry saw newly churned-up earth, dropped rifles and slumped men. Men were cowering and screaming and crouched over wounds; some were wild-eyed and others were crying. He looked at all the faces, wanting and not wanting to see Francis. The rhythm of the machine guns was loud. He could see the steps where the men ahead were going over. Rose was at the top of the ladder, his arm beckoning on and then diving away. Shells were falling behind them, the earth erupting. Harry was panting now, the rattle and the screaming roaring in his head. He placed his foot on the ladder and realized he was screaming too. He reached backward and gripped his brother’s hand. Will’s hand was shaking, Harry could feel the pulse in his palm, and then their fingers were pulled apart. His heart was in his throat, his throat clogging, choking with it. He stumbled forward into the smoke.
17
Harry
Guillemont, Somme, August 1921
‘The village (razed to the ground) was finally captured by the British in September 1916,’ Harry reads. ‘Today no trace whatever remains of the houses, the sites of which are indistinguishable from the surrounding fields. The whole area was devastated and is now overrun with rank vegetation. After its capture it was strewn with wreckage of all kinds – stones, bricks, beams, agricultural implements and household furniture from the shattered farms and houses. The fine modern church, Gothic in style, which stood in the centre of the village, has entirely disappeared.’
He begs to differ on one score: two years on from the guidebook’s publication there is a village here again, of sorts, and a new church. It is a village built of corrugated iron and wood cladding, the church a Gothic arch of curved metal. It is a fine modern Nissen hut. People are scraping out gardens between their iron houses, there are rows of cabbages and chickens peck. He notices white lace curtains hung at the windows and the face of a young girl, her nose pressed against the glass. He raises his hand in a hello, but the girl’s eyes slide solemnly and offer no acknowledgement. The houses remind him of the huts that they spent time in on Salisbury Plain. It has the air of a prospector settlement, its people brave pioneers scratching a mark in the wilderness. They are ploughing out, reclaiming the land around the village. He wonders if they are ploughing through bones.
The attack of 20 July was officially deemed a failure. Those who could had retired; those who couldn’t would be brought back that night. ‘This operation did not work according to plan,’ Lieutenant Rose wrote in the official battalion diary. He had told Harry that over a bottle of whisky a week later, framing the phrase with fingers that were seconds later over his eyes. They lost almost all their senior officers. Rose hadn’t looked to be in the mood to have a glass raised to his promotion.
Noise issues from one of the huts and, stepping closer, Harry sees that it is a bar. The name, Au Bon Retour, is painted in tidy white lettering above the lintel. Inside, he takes in the corrugated iron walls and the framed photographs of the village before the war. Paper garlands droop from the ceiling and a tricolour is hung from the far wall. The bar itself is a sideboard with bottles and potted geraniums set upon it. He orders a whisky and recognizes a man down the bar as the driver from earlier. Harry points at a bottle and the driver nods.
‘So this is what it was all for, eh?’ says Harry as they clink glasses together.
The driver introduces himself as Alfred. He is helping clear the land for the cemeteries and hasn’t been back to England since the end of the war.
‘The Irish brigades finally took this place in the September,’ Alfred tells him. ‘Only there was no village left by then. What they found was the tunnels – this great network of subterranean passages and shelters under where the village had been. It was like a fortress, a maze. Is it any wonder that it took months to take it?’
Harry thinks about the lace curtains and the vegetable gardens and wonders what it must be like to live in a place that is surrounded by so much bone-filled land. He wonders if the tunnels are still there beneath his feet.
‘It will be a village again,’ Alfred goes on. ‘They mean to remake it.’
There is a party of farmworkers at the next table, slappi
ng down playing cards and talking loudly. Their cigarette smoke is thick and sweet, and they gesticulate widely, as they would in the fields. Alfred smiles at their frequent outbreaks of laughter. Harry downs his whisky and thinks about the ploughed earth.
‘What did you want by the Briqueterie, then? Did you find what you were looking for?’
‘I was looking for a grave,’ Harry says. ‘There used to be a row of graves there. One of them was my brother.’
‘You should have said so,’ Alfred replies. ‘They were moved last summer and brought up to the cemetery here. I helped with the exhumation. You were nearly there when I picked you up on the main road.’
Harry realizes that he is gripping on to his chair. He stares at Alfred’s hand on the glass and imagines it on a shovel. He pictures Alfred’s shovel digging down. He wants to shake Alfred’s hand.
‘Will you draw me a map?’
‘I’ll do better than that.’
18
Harry
Guillemont, Somme, August 1921
‘Captain Fielding.’ Alfred makes the introductions.
‘Heavens, it’s Ralph. Can you forgive my hands?’ Captain Ralph Fielding holds up his earth-ingrained palms in a gesture of surrender, and then offers Harry a handshake.
‘Harry Blythe, Private.’
Ralph shakes his head and says, ‘None of that here.’
Looking at the field of graves that surrounds him, Harry can see why rank doesn’t matter to Captain Ralph Fielding. The field is level and rather full.
The Photographer of the Lost Page 10