“And what did you tell him?” Joseph asked.
The man swallowed. “Told him Ashton seemed fine to me when he went over. Just like anyone else, nervous . . . but, then, only a fool isn’t scared to go over the top!”
Joseph thanked him and moved on. He needed to know who else was on the patrol.
“Captain Holt,” the next man told him, a ring of pride in his voice. Word had got around about Holt’s courage. Everyone stood a little taller because of it, felt a little braver, more confident. “We’ll pay Fritz back for that,” he added. “Next raid—you’ll see.”
There was a chorus of agreement.
“Who else?” Joseph pressed.
“Seagrove, Noakes, Willis,” a thin man replied, standing up. “Want some breakfast, Chaplain? Anything you like, on the house—as long as it’s bread and jam and half a cup of tea. But you’re not particular, are you? Not one of those fussy eaters who’ll only take kippers and toast?”
“What I wouldn’t give for a fresh Craster kipper,” another sighed, a faraway look in his eyes. “I can smell them in my dreams.” Someone told him good-naturedly to shut up.
“Went over the top beside me,” Willis said when Joseph found him quarter of an hour later. “All blacked up like the rest of us. Seemed okay to me then. Lost him in no-man’s land. Had a hell of a job with the wire. As bloody usual, it wasn’t where we’d been told. Got through all right, then Fritz opened up to us. Star shells all over the sky.” He sniffed and then coughed violently. When he had control of himself again, he continued. “Then I saw someone outlined against the flares, arms high, like a wild man, running around. He was going toward the German lines, shouting something. Couldn’t hear what in the noise.”
Joseph did not interrupt. It was now broad daylight and beginning to drizzle again. Around them men were starting the duties of the day: digging, filling sandbags, carrying ammunition, strengthening the wire, resetting duck-boards. Men took an hour’s work, an hour’s sentry duty, and an hour’s rest.
Near them somebody was expending his entire vocabulary of curses against lice. Two more were planning elaborate schemes to hold the water at bay.
“Of course that lit us up like a target, didn’t it!” Willis went on. “Sniper fire and machine guns all over the place. Even a couple of shells. How none of us got hit I’ll never know. Perhaps the row woke God up, and He came back on duty!” He laughed hollowly. “Sorry, Chaplain. Didn’t mean it. I’m just so damn sorry poor Ashton got it. Holt just came out of nowhere and ran after him. Obsessed with being a hero, or he’d not even have tried. I can see him in my mind’s eye floundering through the mud. If Ashton hadn’t got caught in the wire he’d never have got him.”
“Caught in the wire?” Joseph asked, memory pricking at him.
“Yeah. Ashton must have run right into the wire, because he stopped sudden—teetering, like—and fell over. A hell of a barrage came over just after that. We all threw ourselves down.”
“What happened then?” Joseph said urgently, a slow, sick thought taking shape in his mind.
“When it died down I looked up again, and there was Holt staggering back with poor Ashton across his shoulders. Hell of a job he had carrying him, even though he’s bigger than Ashton—well, taller, anyway. Up to his knees in mud, he was, shot and shell all over, sky lit up like a Christmas tree. Of course we gave him what covering fire we could. Maybe it helped.” He coughed again. “Reckon he’ll be mentioned in dispatches, Chaplain? He deserves it.” There was admiration in his voice, a lift of hope.
Joseph forced himself to answer. “I should think so.” The words were stiff.
“Well, if he isn’t, the men’ll want to know why!” Willis said fiercely. “Bloody hero, he is.”
Joseph thanked him and went to find Seagrove and Noakes. They told him pretty much the same story.
“You going to have him recommended?” Noakes asked. “He earned it this time. Mordaff came and we said just the same to him. Reckon he wanted the Captain given a medal. He made us say it over and over again, exactly what happened.”
“That’s right,” Seagrove nodded, leaning on a sandbag.
“You told him the same?” Joseph asked. “About the wire, and Ashton getting caught in it?”
“Yes, of course. If he hadn’t got caught by the legs he’d have gone straight on and landed up in Fritz’s lap, poor devil.”
“Thank you.”
“Welcome, Chaplain. You going to write up Captain Holt?”
Joseph did not answer, but turned away, sick at heart.
He did not need to look again, but he trudged all the way back to the field hospital anyway. It would be his job to say the services for both Ashton and Mordaff. The graves would be already dug.
He looked at Ashton’s body again, looked carefully at his trousers. They were stained with mud, but there were no tears in them, no marks of wire. The fabric was perfect.
He straightened up.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly to the dead man. “Rest in peace.” And he turned and walked away.
He went back to where he had left Mordaff’s body, but it had been removed. Half an hour more took him to where it also was laid out. He touched the cold hand and looked at the brow. He would ask. He would be sure. But in his mind he already was. He needed time to know what he must do about it. The men would be going over the top on another trench raid soon. Today morale was high. They had a hero in their number, a man who would risk his own life to bring back a soldier who had lost his nerve and panicked. Led by someone like that, they were equal to Fritz any day. Was one pistol bullet, one family’s shame, worth all that?
What were they fighting for anyway? The issues were so very big, and at the same time so very small and immediate. of the firing line, are you? You’ve been up here a couple of weeks; you should be in turn for a step back any day. Me too, thank God.”
Joseph faced forward, peering through the gloom toward no-man’s-land and the German lines beyond. He was shaking. He must control himself. This must be done in the silence, before the shooting started up again. Then he might not get away with it.
“Pity about that sniper over there,” he remarked. “He’s taken out a lot of our men.”
“Damnable,” Holt agreed. “Can’t get a line on him, though. Keeps his own head well down.”
“Oh, yes,” Joseph nodded. “We’d never get him from here. It needs a man to go over in the dark and find him.”
“Not a good idea, Chaplain. He’d not come back. Not advocating suicide, are you?”
Joseph chose his words very carefully and kept his voice as unemotional as he could.
“I wouldn’t have put it like that,” he answered. “But he has cost us a lot of men. Mordaff today, you know?”
“Yes ... I heard. Pity.”
“Except that wasn’t the sniper, of course. But the men think it was, so it comes to the same thing, as far as morale is concerned.”
“Don’t know what you mean, Chaplain.” There was a slight hesitation in Holt’s voice in the darkness.
“Wasn’t a rifle wound, it was a pistol,” Joseph replied. “You can tell the difference, if you’re actually looking for it.”
“Then he was a fool to be that close to German lines,” Holt said, facing forward over the parapet and the mud. “Lost his nerve, I’m afraid.”
“Like Ashton,”Joseph said. “Can understand that, up there in no-man’s-land, mud everywhere, wire catching hold of you, tearing at you, stopping you from moving. Terrible thing to be caught in the wire with the star shells lighting up the night. Makes you a sitting target. Takes an exceptional man not to panic, in those circumstances ... a hero.”
Holt did not answer.
There was silence ahead of them, only the dull thump of feet and a squelch of duckboards in mud behind, and the trickle of water along the bottom of the trench.
“I expect you know what it feels like,” Joseph went on. “I notice you have some pretty bad tears in your trouser
s, even one in your blouse. Haven’t had time to mend them yet.”
“I daresay I got caught in a bit of wire out there last night,” Holt said stiffly. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other.
“I’m sure you did,” Joseph agreed with him. “Ashton didn’t. His clothes were muddy, but no wire tears.”
There were several minutes of silence. A group of men passed by behind them, muttering words of greeting. When they were gone the darkness closed in again. Someone threw up a star shell and there was a crackle of machine-gun fire.
“I wouldn’t repeat that, if I were you, Chaplain,” Holt said at last. “You might make people think unpleasant things, doubts. And right at the moment morale is high. We need that. We’ve had a hard time recently. We’re going over the top in a trench raid soon. Morale is important . . . trust. I’m sure you know that, maybe even better than I do. That’s your job, isn’t it? Morale, spiritual welfare of the men?”
“Yes . . . spiritual welfare is a good way of putting it. Remember what it is we are fighting for, and that it is worth all that it costs . . . even this.” Joseph gestured in the dark to all that surrounded them.
More star shells went up, illuminating the night for a few garish moments, then a greater darkness closed in.
“We need our heroes,” Holt said very clearly. “You should know that. Any man who would tear them down would be very unpopular, even if he said he was doing it in the name of truth, or justice, or whatever it was he believed in. He would do a lot of harm, Chaplain. I expect you can see that...”
“Oh, yes,” Joseph agreed. “To have their hero shown to be a coward who laid the blame for his panic on another man, and let him be buried in shame, and then committed murder to hide that, would devastate men who are already wretched and exhausted by war.”
“You are perfectly right.” Holt sounded as if he were smiling. “A very wise man, Chaplain. Good of the regiment first. The right sort of loyalty.”
“I could prove it,” Joseph said very carefully.
“But you won’t. Think what it would do to the men.”
Joseph turned a little to face the parapet. He stood up onto the fire step and looked forward over the dark expanse of mud and wire.
“We should take that sniper out. That would be a very heroic thing to do. Good thing to try, even if you didn’t succeed. You’d deserve a mention in dispatches for that, possibly a medal.”
“It would be posthumous!” Holt said bitterly.
“Possibly. But you might succeed and come back. It would be so daring, Fritz would never expect it,” Joseph pointed out.
“Then you do it, Chaplain!” Holt said sarcastically.
“It wouldn’t help you, Captain. Even if I die, I have written a full account of what I have learned today, to be opened should anything happen to me. On the other hand, if you were to mount such a raid, whether you returned or not, I should destroy it.”
There was silence again, except for the distant crack of sniper fire a thousand yards away and the drip of mud.
“Do you understand me, Captain Holt?”
Holt turned slowly. A star shell lit his face for an instant. His voice was hoarse.
“You’re sending me to my death!”
“I’m letting you be the hero you’re pretending to be and Ashton really was,” Joseph answered. “The hero the men need. Thousands of us have died out here, no one knows how many more there will be. Others will be maimed or blinded. It isn’t whether you die or not, it’s how well.”
A shell exploded a dozen yards from them. Both men ducked, crouching automatically.
Silence again.
Slowly Joseph unbent.
Holt lifted his head. “You’re a hard man, Chaplain. I misjudged you.”
“Spiritual care, Captain,” Joseph said quietly. “You wanted the men to think you a hero, to admire you. Now you’re going to justify that and become one.”
Holt stood still, looking toward him in the gloom, then slowly he turned and began to walk away, his feet sliding on the wet duckboards. Then he climbed up the next fire step and up over the parapet.
Joseph stood still and prayed.
<
* * * *
MOTHER’S MILK
Chris Simms
Just a glimpse across the graveyard at a hundred yards and he knew that milking her dry would pose no problem at all.
To an ordinary person she was a sad-looking woman in her forties, fat thighs bulging as she bent forward to replace the dying flowers before the gravestone with a fresh bouquet.
But to Daniel Norris she stank of need. The need for company. The need for human warmth. The need for someone to lavish kindness upon. So acute was his ability to sniff out and exploit vulnerability, she may as well have held a loudhailer to her lips and announced to the cemetery, “In sickness and in health, please, God, give me someone to care for.”
He slid into the shadow of a moss-furred crypt and waited for her to pass. As he stood there out of the weak October sun, a breeze whispered between the graves and a shiver ran through him. The ugly clacking of two crows squabbling in a nearby yew tree masked the sound of her approaching steps, but he soon heard the crunch of gravel as her stout legs took her back towards the gates, hair dull and brown, head held up in an attempt to bravely face the grey afternoon.
As soon as she was out of sight he hurried over to the grave she had just left. The headstone was new. He sneered at her tacky taste. Shiny black marble topped by two maudlin cherubs trumpeting a silent lament to an unhearing God. His eyes scanned quickly over the inscription, letters chiselled out then painted with a layer of fake gold. Something about her babies now being with the angels. His eyebrows raised in slight surprise: He had assumed it was a husband and not young ones she’d lost. Not that it mattered to him. He knew she was alone in the world.
He studied the large and expensive bouquet. If this was the weekly ritual he suspected, she had plenty of cash to spare. He rubbed his hands together in the chill autumnal air. Wealthy widows were particularly easy to fleece.
* * * *
Several days dragged by as he eked out an existence between dimly lit boozers and dingy bookies, their floors littered with torn paper slips. A win on the dogs on Friday provided some much-needed cash for the weekend. He combed his grey-flecked hair and put his blazer on over his only decent shirt. Then he treated himself to twenty Bensons, leaving the dented tin of rolling tobacco in his hostel room before heading to the Tap and Spile.
During a visit earlier in the week he’d read the small sign above the door and noted the licensee was a single woman. Jan Griffiths. He’d watched her from a shadowy corner, noticing the lack of wedding ring as she pulled the pints while keeping up an easy flow of conversation with her regulars. He’d liked her dyed blond hair, throaty laugh, and sparkling blue eyes.
Now he walked into the pub with an easy roll in his step, one hand in his pocket. Confident and at ease with his place in the world. He slid his thin frame onto a barstool, nodded at her with a wolfish half-smile, then watched as she registered the expression. He knew it never failed to pique the interest of her type.
“You look like the cat who’s got the cream,” she stated, a wary curiosity in her voice.
“Do I?” he said, taking the twenties from his pocket. “Just got some good news on a business deal I’m in town for. A bottle of your best champagne, please.” Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
She smiled, pleased to be filling the till so early in the evening. “I’ll need to get it from upstairs. How many glasses would you like?” she replied, eyes moving to the empty seats behind him.
“Well, I’m hoping you won’t make me drink it alone. So, two, please.”
She smiled again, turning on her heel and looking back at him over her shoulder. “Never can say no to a bit of bubbly,” she said archly, hips swinging slightly as she headed for the stairs.
Peeling the cellophane from his cigarettes, he looked around the cosy
pub at the scattering of drinkers quietly sipping their pints. A warm glow spread across his chest. “Nice place,” he said to himself, thinking he could get used to it.
She reappeared a minute later, bottle of Moet standing upright in the ice bucket in her hands. “One bottle of bubbly.”
He watched as she took the foil off and then expertly prised the cork loose with a soft pop. A small gush of foam emerged and his eyes wandered to her generous cleavage.
“So what’s the business deal?”
He glanced up, realising she’d seen where his eyes had strayed. She didn’t seem bothered. “Oh, a new retail development in the town centre,” he replied. During his first recce round town he’d spotted a large commercial property for sale. “The one next to that big Barclays.”
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