by Andy Remic
Jones smiled. “No, I don’t think so. My only memories of him when I was a kid are of him shouting, that loud commanding voice—a bit like yours. And I remember his silly drooping moustache. It made him look like a clown. To a kid’s eyes, anyway.”
Bainbridge, who was carefully sewing a tear in his coat, looked up, his eyes squinting in the candlelight. “How’s the shoulder?”
“Tender. I’m a disgrace to them. My family, I mean; aren’t I?”
“Yes.”
“Your honesty overwhelms me.”
Bainbridge grunted, and snapped the cotton thread with his teeth. “Any lad who rolls around in the gutter after filling his gut with whisky is bound to disgrace his family, all right? By its very nature, whisky is a dirty drink that makes men do things they wouldn’t otherwise do.”
“But most men drink whisky,” said Jones. “It’s normal to want a sip.”
“Night after night? Bottle after bottle?”
“Well . . .”
“And there were the women, as well, you ——ing bumbrusher. And the gambling. You’ll still have to face that Tyson when you get back to Blighty.”
“You sure delivered his men a good thrashing,” laughed Jones, and Bainbridge smiled, happy to see the young Tommy in such good humour. “How many teeth did you knock out?”
“It was just a shame you weren’t awake to see it,” said Bainbridge, scowling a little.
“Well, you did okay in that fight on your own!”
“No thanks to you. But seriously, Jones, that Tyson is a nasty piece of work. He’ll want his money the minute your boots touch the cobbles. And he’ll come with weapons next time, and a full divvy of men.”
Jones sighed. “That’s why I’m here, ain’t it? To earn a pretty penny so I can pay off those nasty debts that embarrass my mother so.”
“Yeah. And to save your scrawny neck.” Bainbridge packed away his sewing case carefully and rubbed his eyes. “Time for sleep, mate. Another day, another battle.”
“Another battle,” whispered Jones, and stared at the ceiling.
The morning was clear and fresh. A breeze blew in from the east, and the sun was hidden behind high, white clouds. Bainbridge had a tin of toffee which he shared with a small group of privates, and as they readied themselves at the base of the trench ladders, he shouted over to Jones, “Save me some of your cigarettes, lad.”
Jones gave a mock salute and Bainbridge laughed. “It’s a fine day to be alive, ain’t it? A bloody fine day.” He stuffed his mouth full of toffee, grinned, cast away the tin, and as the whistles sounded, scrambled up the ladder and over the bags with the rest of the infantry.
They advanced on Thiepval Ridge. Bullets cracked and roared, mortar shells exploded, and men went down screaming with shrapnel in their eyes. They were running, crouching low, and an explosion ahead separated Bainbridge and Jones. Dropping into a trench with another six lads, Jones jabbed his bayonet through a Hun’s heart, stepped over the body, saw a pistol come up—but one of the lads behind fired his rifle over Jones’s shoulder. The crack deafened him. The officer was punched from his feet, splashing onto the sodden duckboards.
Suddenly, Jones felt a shiver crawl down his spine. He glanced left. There, in the midst of the battlefield, were three large, bulky, swirling-ink figures. They were watching him. His mouth fell open, limbs suddenly freezing, fear itching his scalp. Slowly, one of the figures lifted its arm and pointed at him. The limb looked like bark, fingers like twigs. Jones blinked. The figures flickered. They looked like Hun but were not. Their faces were more elongated, seemed to have muzzles like dogs, with long, curved yellow fangs.
Jones blinked again, and they were gone.
“Go on!” screamed an officer, pushing him. “What you standing there for?”
Jones stumbled forward clutching his Lee-Enfield.
They charged along the trench. More Tommies came over the side, and ahead, the Hun were fleeing. A Tommy called Jackson fired his rifle, shooting a Hun in the back. He glanced at Jones with mean eyes.
“He would have done the same to us,” he said.
Jones nodded, but all he could picture were the yellow fangs.
By nightfall, it was over. The ridge had been taken, despite ferocious fighting by the German defenders, and the lines advanced. Bainbridge, cheek scorched from a rifle blast, roamed the trenches looking for Jones, calling out the Tommy’s name and asking privates after the soldier’s whereabouts.
With a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he finally walked to the hospital. Bainbridge knew it should have been the first place to check, but he hated hospitals, their chemical stink, their moaning inmates, and he knew that by visiting the hospital first, it could have almost been an omen—an admission to himself that Jones had been wounded—possibly killed—and so, when he finally dragged his boots through the mud and appeared in the wooden building’s doorway, he found himself relieved to see Jones sitting up in a chair, thigh heavily bandaged, the bandage soaked with blood, his face tightly drawn and teeth gritted in pain.
“I always seem to find you here, lad,” said Bainbridge, grinning, pulling up another chair, and trying to blank out the sounds of dying men in nearby beds, and even on the floor.
“That’s because I’m always ——ing wounded,” snapped Jones. “A ——ing bayonet wound to the leg! They say it’s not serious, but it hurts like holy ——. I see you didn’t get wounded! What’s wrong with you? Touched by God or something?”
“Hmm. You’re lucky you didn’t throw a seven. Maybe if you’d stuck with me, some of my angelic luck would have rubbed off,” beamed Bainbridge, pulling out a packet of Woodbines and tapping one free.
“No coffin nails in here!” snapped a passing nurse, her face stern.
“Bloody hell, is nothing sacred?” growled Bainbridge.
For a few minutes they sat in silence, Bainbridge playing with his unlit cigarette and studying the heavy curtains behind the bed. In the distance a crump exploded; the noise was strange, muffled, alien to this hospital environment and quiet groaning and dimmed lights.
“I’ve had enough,” said Jones, eventually, wincing and gripping the muscle around the bandage.
“What, of your leg? You’re damn lucky they ain’t cutting it off!”
“No, of the war. The killing. I preferred my life before. The taste of whisky sweet on my tongue, a long-legged blonde sweet in my bed . . .”
Bainbridge nodded, feeling the mood sour beyond even his eternal optimism.
“Smoky died today,” said Jones.
“Smoky! Damn, he was a fine lad. How did that ——ing happen?”
“Shrapnel. Caught the full shrap from a stick grenade. I was behind the poor chap and he shielded me from the blast. But it could have easily been me, Bainbridge. Do you see? Then, no more women for Jones, no more whisky and willing, open legs.”
“You’re not to bloody give up now, soldier,” snapped Bainbridge. “You hear me? I’ve heard men talking in the trenches, their mouths full of gypo. They’ve given up, half of them. They only go over the bloody top because they’re scared of being shot as bloody deserters by some ——ing brass hat . . . and that’s no way to go. You can’t fight when you’re absorbed in defeat, Jones. You can’t take an enemy trench when you’re wondering if the next bullet is meant for you!”
“I know that.” Jones gritted his teeth again. “But this is my second injury in battle. I’m wondering if the third will be my last, understand?”
“And if you think like that, then you will get stiffed,” said Bainbridge, his voice cold. “There’s no room for cowardice on the front lines; you know it and I know it. Don’t lose your balls now, Jones. Don’t lose them, like those other blokes.”
Jones reached out, his hand gripping Bainbridge’s shoulder with passion. “I’m a soldier, Charles. I’ve been over the bags, what? Seven times? I’m not a stay-at-homer, I’m no coward, and I still have my mind. I’m alive. But I want to stay that ——ing way, I want to
go home, marry, and have children. I want to watch my children grow up into healthy men, women! I want to grow old before a roaring fire and drink brandy every night and go back to work in the bank. I was a clerk before this, you know?”
“You’ve told me,” said Bainbridge.
“Well, now I understand. I’m a clerk. I’m an unwilling soldier—yeah, so I had thoughts of grandeur, heroism, I wanted to clear my name, to be rid of the image of drink and women and gambling . . . but I was wrong to join up. I was running away, running away from responsibility and debt. There’s no heroism here, Bainbridge. You are different, though, Charlie, it’s as if you . . . as if you ——ing enjoy going over the top! Christ, you don’t have any fear. You charge in there with your Enfield thundering and you’re a ——ing hero.”
“I’m not a—”
“Don’t say it. I know; I’ve heard your speeches before. But the men, they look up to you. You’ll be promoted; mark my words. The brass are watching you. But this life isn’t for me, and that’s just a fact.” Seeing the look of sadness on Bainbridge’s face, Jones continued, “Don’t worry; I’m not about to desert.” He gave a bitter laugh. “I’ll serve out my time, even if it means going back to Blighty in a wooden box. But don’t preach to me about cowardice, because out here in the trenches there’s no such ——ing thing . . . if a man is scared, he’s got every right to be scared. Look around you! Fear isn’t cowardice, Charlie. Any man who’s been over the bags and through the stiff’s paddock simply can’t be a coward.”
They were interrupted by a nurse on her observation round, and she took Jones’s temperature, pulse, and blood pressure and Bainbridge stood and moved to the window, looking out, still playing with his cigarette. When she spoke, her voice was soft, husky. Jones looked into her eyes, admiring her femininity. It had been a long time since he had been close to a woman. Far too long. But she turned briskly away, moved to the next patient, and performed her duties. She did not have time for soft words when men were dying around her.
“Thank you, nurse,” whispered Jones, and put his head in his hands.
The hospital was sometimes quiet, but not tonight. Men moaned and whimpered, some cried out. The building was not far enough behind the lines to kill the sound of the crumps, the guns, the whizz-bangs.
Distant, muffled explosions kept Jones awake long into the early hours.
When he finally fell asleep, the smell of disinfectant strong in his nostrils, he dreamt of the war and No Man’s Land and a forest of blackened trees:
He was in the trench, alone. He looked left and right, across the muddied, stained duckboards, eyes searching hopefully for some other soldier, some friend to accompany him over the wire. But there was nobody there. He was alone, and frightened.
“I am not a coward,” he told himself. “I will do my duty for King and Country!” But the words seemed hollow in own ears, weak and false and filled with a sadness that went down to his marrow.
The whistles sounded, ghostly echoes from some eerie otherworld, and Jones gripped his rifle tight, clambered up the ladder, over the wire, into No Man’s Land and the enveloping darkness beyond.
Silent, black, burnt trees surrounded him—and ate him whole.
Turning to look back, Jones could no longer see the trench. It had gone. There was no way back home.
Guns roared in the distance, mortar shells exploded, kicking up great mushrooms of earth and shattering broken trees, which cracked and fell. Jones ran, advancing on the enemy lines, and tanks suddenly loomed out of the darkness around him, their stinking, choking fumes making him cough and choke and retch, and he was in their centre, they were advancing together across the field of the slain, and the tanks’ heavy iron tracks crushed twisted corpses and blackened sulphur trees down into the mud, their great iron eyes merciless in this, their terrible onslaught. Jones knew this was only a dream, strained from his fevered imagination, tortured from his soul by the horrors he had witnessed . . . but even in dreams friends can die, in dreams it is a thousand times worse, in dreams they can die over and over and over again with no hope of peace or redemption . . .
Jones ran on, left behind the foul tanks that were floundering, engines sparking and grinding, unholy weapons of destruction.
He was near the centre of the battlefield, where the corpses were thickest. Flies were black in the air, the stink heavy in his throat, and he fell to his knees beside a stump of blackened deadwood, his rifle forgotten as he heaved and retched, vomit splashing his clean uniform, staining him with its impurity.
When the pain passed, he glanced up, saw a corpse nearby, and it was Bainbridge. Jones froze in shock.
The sounds of battle froze also.
A complete silence filled the air, the scene, the world.
For a moment, it appeared Bainbridge had been carved from wood, ebony timber, but then the image came into focus and Jones could see his friend’s eyes had been pecked out by the crows. He looked strangely at peace despite this mutilation. His rifle was grasped in unmoving, blood-speckled hands, dry holes in his chest where bullets had ripped away his life. He appeared peaceful in death. A statue. Staring into the tombworld with his ruined eye sockets.
“Why?” asked Jones, dragging himself to his feet. “Why us?”
The guns started again, making Jones flinch. Machine guns in the darkness, their hollow cackles filling the air and mocking Jones with an eternal metal song. And he watched, with open mouth, as a line of Hun climbed from their trench and advanced towards him, grey hands grasping rifles, grey faces twisting and contorting, as if their very flesh were hot wax, continually melting and shifting. They had no features, these blank German soldiers, and their limbs were twitching, snapping backwards and forward, their knees bending the wrong way, as they broke into twisted, deformed runs, and Jones fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face, screaming as their rifles lifted and, as one, opened fire on him . . .
Jones awoke in the early hours of the morning, shivering violently. He reached down, wincing at the pain in his injured leg and dragging the blankets back up over his body. He lay there waiting to warm up, and thought back to his dream, the short glimpses of nightmare he could still remember. He could remember the guns, even as he was suddenly aware that the guns, real guns, were firing now, distant, muffled. It was a night offensive, and Jones wondered if Bainbridge had gone over the bags.
He shuddered.
Placing his hands together, something Jones had not done since he was a child, he whispered, “Please, Lord, keep Charles Bainbridge safe from the bullets and the shrapnel, bring him back to the trench alive. Let the trees watch over him. Amen.”
He closed his eyes and allowed sleep to gently take him.
Again, his dreams were haunted.
Woodland Dreams.
23rd. October 1903.
WHEN THE CHILD returned home, his mother scolded him for his dirty clothes and cut cheek, had warned him to keep away from the woods, especially the ancient Devil Wood to the east. She made him promise to play in safer realms.
The following weekend, after he had been put to bed and the sun was dropping behind the mountains, bathing them in crimson, he had pushed open the sash window and climbed down the thick ivy which covered that side of the cottage. He paused by an open window, listening as his father muttered to himself as he read from a large, battered Bible. Through cool air, he walked down green lanes lined with trees, down narrow winding roads, quiet and beautiful. Reaching the edge of the woods, he eyed the trees with suspicion. Here, they seemed normal. Oak, ash, and sycamore, mixed in with towering pine, upper branches swaying gently, leaves rustling. An idyllic scene.
But as the boy stepped through this outer barrier, picking his way carefully through the undergrowth, once more he felt he was being watched. And as the sun finally fell, and moonlight bathed the woods, everything seemed outlined in silver. It was utterly beautiful, and utterly terrifying.
What had his mother called it? The Devil Wood. He shivered. Why wou
ld she call it that?
With rising fear but a grim determination, the boy found the narrow path with some difficulty and began his journey through fields of twisted oak. As he progressed, so the trees became older, larger, more twisted, winding in upon themselves like great deformed beasts. It grew yet darker, the canopy blocking out most of the moonlight, and the gloom frightened the boy, for he had never travelled in the woods at night. Everything was louder, had more clarity. The crunch of his shoes. The sounds of small animals foraging. The creak of ancient boughs.
Halting in a clearing, the boy crouched and listened. To his left a creature, probably a badger or fox, was snuffling in the leaf carpet.
Up ahead was totally silent. The silence of the tomb.
Again came the unnerving feeling he was being watched. Not by an animal, or even necessarily a person; but something that lived in the woods. Something terrible.
It began to rain, and water dripped from the leaves as the boy finally reached Clearwood. He moved swiftly to the sprawling bracken and again attempted the climb, this time with more care, taking the time to find stronger roots and testing his weight before trusting them with his violent tugs.
He progressed.
The hill was steep, and the boy had seen it from the distance where it rose, a carpeted bump in the fabric of the land. His father called it Hunter’s Hill, but the boy did not know why, and found his father much too daunting to approach with such questions.
The call of a tawny owl made the boy jump, and he paused, then concentrated more on his slow climb until he finally stood, triumphant, cheeks glowing, sweat damping his back—a victor over the bracken defences!
The land now levelled, and the boy wandered between stands of silver birch, looking about him in awe.
Drifting clouds obscured the moon’s light for a while, and the boy waited in the damp gloom, then moved forward at a reduced pace. When finally the moon reappeared, he found himself beside a wound in the ground; and looking left and right, he realised it was a long, winding trench. It connected to a high cliff. Impassable. Below him, filling the trench, was an insane tangle of deadwood, which must have accumulated over decades. Instinctively, he knew he had to cross.