The Cloud Forest

by JH Fletcher

  ‘Where could we go?’

  The war was everywhere: in France and Belgium and Holland, in Germany and Italy, across the Channel in Britain. There was no sanctuary anywhere.

  Sanette was beyond reason. ‘I don’t care where we go. There must be somewhere!’

  It was pointless even to talk about it.

  ‘I’ve got to go back.’

  ‘No!’ Beating her clenched fists upon the bed in an ecstasy of tears, impotent and agonising. ‘You must not!’

  Her English lost to her, she berated him, and fate, in a gush of French and what he knew now was Flemish. ‘Nie! Nie! Je ne le veux pas!’

  Her tears were an expression both of despair and helplessness, while Colin knew he had no choice. He knew something else that he kept from her: if a choice had been possible, he would still have gone back. He hated the war, was filled with fear and foreboding whenever he thought of it, but he would not run out on his mates. No man who was a man could do such a thing.

  4

  The last day, silence a weight upon them both. They tidied the tiny house, leaving the ashes of their happiness in every room. Colin climbed back into the uniform that enclosed him with the grim finality of a prison. They closed and locked the door. Colin stood in the gull-noisy air, watching the fishing boats unloading their catch, while Sanette returned the key to her cousin’s neighbour. She came silently, face tight and still. They walked to the end of the street without looking back. They returned to Calais and boarded the train. Once again, the war tightened its grip upon them.

  EIGHT

  1

  Back at the front, Colin discovered that many things had changed. The spell of fine weather was over and it was raining again. Behind the lines, the trees drooped in woebegone silence, the rain dripping constantly from their bare branches. At the front itself there were no trees, only the churned earth, the rain-pocked water in the shell holes reflecting the grey sky.

  The unit had moved once again: twenty miles to the south this time, which meant that it would be much harder to see Sanette in future. There were a lot of new faces too, while many more were missing: the unit had been chopped up badly while he’d been away.

  On the other hand lots of things hadn’t changed at all. The rats and lice were as numerous as ever; there was just as much danger, as much fear. The planes, though, were completely different. In the past, bad weather had always kept them on the ground but that had now changed. Perhaps flying techniques or the planes themselves had improved, or perhaps no one cared any more, taking it for granted that all of them were doomed to die sooner or later in any case. Nobody on the ground knew or cared either way; none of them knew anything about aeroplanes. The battle planes did not trouble them; they watched as they fought each other, the gaily painted cloth wings of the biplanes weaving this way and that, but the outcome of these aerial combats only affected the blokes who bet on the results.

  The reconnaissance aircraft were different; they hated them because they drew artillery fire down upon them. One such bombardment occurred two days after Colin got back. There were observation balloons to the east, hanging motionless in the sky like omens of death.

  In the night they were woken by the bellow of the quaking earth as the shells rained down. They crouched closer and closer to the trench walls, would have burrowed into the clay itself had it been possible. Above the parapet lights flared, the air itself howled. Explosions, coming one after the other so quickly as to be indistinguishable, rocked them even deep below the surface of the ground.

  It was difficult for the old hands; for the newcomers, it was unbearable. Under such a hail of fire, brains came close to bursting.

  Colin lay with arms and legs together, blood and sinew drawn tight in an effort to present as small a target to the air as he could. He drew deliberate breaths deep into his lungs, trying by effort of will to slow the frenzied gallop of his heart. If a shell landed in the trench …

  No point thinking about it: all of them would be goners.

  A few yards from him, Claude Widdershins, tough as teak, with a pre-war reputation as a street fighter, sat with head raised, glazed and protruding eyes staring into nothing. Shell shock: they had all seen it many times before.

  Another gigantic crash sent plate-sized flakes of mud flying from the walls, the blast savaging the air with its angry claws. No one could put up with this forever. Much more of it and Colin might find himself joining Claude in wonderland.

  Beyond Claude’s motionless figure, Colin saw movement as one of the new boys got to his feet. His slow, almost tranquil movements showed that he, too, had sought refuge in another place. Amid the din of the shells it was impossible to hear anything, but Colin knew that his teeth would be grinding, his hands clenching and unclenching: this, too, they had seen many times before.

  The new boy turned to face the wall of the trench. Colin watched him. Dreamily, he climbed onto the firing step. Another moment and he would have pulled himself up over the parapet and into the charnel-house of the open ground. He wouldn’t last a minute up there.

  Just in time, Colin got a hand on his belt. ‘Where’d you think you’re goin’?’

  ‘I need air.’ Like it was the most reasonable thing in the world.

  ‘Hang on a bit. Soon as the shelling stops, I’ll come with you.’

  The boy took no notice but lifted his hands and tried to push him aside. Colin had no choice; let him go and the kid would be dead within minutes. He set himself, feet spread, and gave him a smack on the side of the jaw which sent him tumbling. He stood over him, fists clenched, teeth set. He would have given him another one, if need be, but the boy was stunned and did not move. Colin went back to his place by the wall and sat down again. He would keep an eye on the lad but, for the moment, he was safe.

  Later that night, the shelling lifted. They listened and heard it start falling further to the rear. They looked at each other and got to their feet, grabbing rifles, bayonets, iron-bladed spades, steel pickets: anything that might come in handy in repelling an attack. The air was heavy with the sulphurous stench of burst shells, but no one had time to think about that. No need for speech, either; they all knew they were for it. The lifting of the barrage meant only one thing: an attack was on its way.

  2

  The storm-troopers, or storm-devils, came out of nowhere. They reached the wire, the machine guns cut them down in swathes, yet enough remained to come on. Somehow they got through the wire, running flat out, men falling, guns blasting, voices screaming. They were nearer, they were here, the front men leaping, clambering, falling into the trench.

  Frenzy drowned all. The blast of grenades drove burning powder into legs and faces; men, screaming or silent, were falling, eviscerated by metal fragments. Ferocity set fire to their brains, their muscles. Their strength was unimaginable as they slashed and hammered the invaders in a never-ending scream of hatred and terror. Life and survival: nothing else mattered. Thrust of bayonet, in and twist, rifle butts hammering, shovel blades hacking, no consciousness of anything but the blood-red frenzy that had invaded the trench with the advancing Germans.

  Life and survival.

  Suddenly, between one breath and the next, it was over. Stunned, stupefied, they stared with glazed and wandering eyes at each other, at the dying impulses of war and death.

  Alive, after all.

  If you could call it life.

  Memories of the Cloud Forest, of Sanette herself, even of the child, were pale echoes now.

  3

  A couple of days off, while the tattered fragments of decimated units were amalgamated, regrouped, consolidated … Whatever the brass chose to call it, what it meant was that so many men had been killed that their units had to be merged if they were to remain functional. How that would help them avoid machine-gun bullets, or disembowelling by one of the Germans’ saw bayonets, or by gas, no one said.

  Gas. Out of all the filthiness that was war, that was the filthiest thing of all. Yet even more important than
gas was Sanette, the coming child, and the doubts that had come from nowhere to overwhelm her. ‘You don’t want it,’ Sanette said. There was desperation in her voice. ‘You don’t want it and you won’t want me and I —’

  He did what he could to soothe her. ‘Of course I want it.’

  He saw she was still unconvinced. She had spent weeks building this structure of mistrust and despair. It was going to take a lot to get her to think differently now.

  ‘I know how you really feel. You feel trapped. Any man would feel trapped. You think I arranged things deliberately —’

  There was only one thing to be done with her. He put his arms around her and …

  She twisted her head, fighting her mouth away from his. ‘There is no need for that —’

  … kissed her, firmly, his lips pressing against hers, shutting off protest, even breath. He felt her still trying to resist him, but he would not let her go. Her clenched fists thumped against his back, once, twice, then her hands opened and her fingers dug into his shoulders. He sensed a sigh as she opened her lips, and he held her closer still, feeling such tenderness for her, for the fragility of her shoulders and arms and flesh, and told himself how everything was going to come right between them after all.

  Only then did he let her go.

  He inspected her face. ‘You’re crying.’

  ‘I’ve been so frightened …’

  ‘I told you from the first how much I wanted you to have it.’

  ‘All the time I’ve been afraid you would change your mind, go back to Australia without me —’

  ‘Sshh, now. Sshh.’

  There was only one thing left for him to do, yet once again he hesitated.

  ‘Is it still all right?’

  ‘Of course it is!’

  ‘It won’t hurt the baby?’

  ‘The baby will just have to get used to it.’ Her expression changed as doubt returned. ‘If you’re sure you want to …’

  ‘More than anything in the world.’

  ‘I know it’s showing a lot more now. If you’d sooner not —’

  He saw that he would have to spend a lot of time reassuring her.

  ‘I want to, very much.’

  She looked at him, her eyes studying each of his features in turn as though she had never seen him before. ‘You don’t have to say it —’

  Once again there was only one thing to be done with her. At last, slick inside her, he looked down through her eyes into the Sanette that now he wanted more than ever to touch, to hold, to be whole and at one with, and said:

  ‘I love you.’

  He had said it before, in the heat, but never like this, in seeking to be one with her. It wasn’t easy to say such things, love not a word that sat readily on his tongue, but he sensed that, by saying it, he had at last made contact with that innermost part of her that he desired, not so much to possess, as to touch. He should have said it before but at least he had said it now and Sanette who, for all his words, had still been a long way from him, now came back, so that everything was indeed all right between them again. They were one in their flesh, but also in their hearts and minds. The scalding heat gathered; her back arched, her legs and arms clutched him; they were there together, they were right together, everything and everyone would always be right, together now and forever together now and forever and …

  Silence and stillness, and a slow and wondrous return from that far place where they had both been.

  She smiled drowsily at him, very close. ‘Hallo, my love.’

  ‘Hallo. Hallo to both of you.’

  And again silence. They were closer than they had ever been, closer than he had imagined it was possible for two people to be. He knew that nothing could destroy this, or them, that they were proof against everything that life or the war could throw at them, that what they had was too powerful even for fate or bullets or howitzer shells to destroy.

  ‘Nothing …’

  Her eyes, which had been shut, opened. ‘What did you say?’

  A tendril of dark hair, sweat-damp, curled loosely beside her mouth. He touched it gently with his fingertip. ‘I was saying that nothing can touch us now.’

  Love had to be proof against the steel atrocities of war. He knew it was not so, that a piece of steel striking in the right place at the right speed would kill, love or no love, but he knew, too, that it was not going to happen to him, Sanette or the child, that their destiny was to live in glory forever. It was nonsense but it was true, he knew it was true, and he was willing to dare fate by saying it aloud.

  ‘Of course it can’t.’ Smiling, she lifted her hand to caress the side of his face. ‘Where shall we live, after the war is over?’

  ‘The way things are going we shall be very old and this child —’

  ‘Son,’ she said.

  ‘This son of yours —’

  ‘Ours,’ she said. She was laughing at him: it was all right to say such things now.

  ‘Will have to keep us.’

  ‘Lucky boy.’

  ‘Just as well he doesn’t know what’s in store for him.’

  Even as he said it, he wished he hadn’t. Superstition was all very well when it was a question of surviving the war; the matter of the child and Sanette and their wellbeing was something else. It was wrong to tempt providence.

  ‘Shall we go to Australia?’

  ‘Maybe …’

  Oddly, he found that he didn’t want to think about it. It was enough to tell himself, to know, that he was going to survive the war, but he didn’t want to start planning anything. Plans might be unlucky, which made no sense, but was the way he felt.

  ‘We shall be together forever. Belgium or Australia, it’s all one to me.’

  ‘I wish you could stay longer,’ she told him.

  ‘So do I.’

  But could not. They did what they could, making love several times as though that would ensure they would never be parted again.

  ‘It’s lucky you can have only one baby at a time,’ she said. ‘Otherwise I might find I was having a dozen, the way you behave.’

  ‘I behave?’ He raised his eyebrows at her. ‘You’re saying you’ve had nothing to do with it?’

  She smiled up at him. ‘All I do is lie here.’

  ‘Then you’d better lie there some more.’

  The affirmation of life, endlessly repeated, in the face of death.

  4

  More attacks, all along the front. More guns, shells, deaths.

  Colin grew closer to Wally Bart. It was a taciturn relationship — neither of them found it easy to put their feelings into words — yet somehow they managed.

  In Wally’s case, too, what had been intended as no more than a casual relationship with the blonde Jeannine had blossomed into the promise of permanence. He liked to talk about her, when he was in the mood. Nothing too personal, for which Colin was grateful. Occasionally, too, Wally talked of the future.

  ‘Get through this lot in one piece, I thought I might settle down here, not go back to Oz at all.’

  Like Colin, Wally was an orphan. He’d been raised in a home, as far as he knew had no rellies at all. There was no reason for him to go back.

  ‘You’re in the same boat as I am,’ said Wally. ‘You’ve got no one back home, either.’

  Colin did not answer. It was true he had no family, yet he felt that his case was different because he had the Cloud Forest.

  He found it hard to talk about, so there, for the moment, they left it. Yet the subject was not dead; one night, the two of them sharing a spell of sentry duty, Wally brought it up again.

  ‘I reckon Jeannine and me’ll get married, when the war’s over. If we do, I’ll probably stay on in Europe. Why don’ you do the same? It’d be good to have a mate, in a new country.’

  ‘I could, I suppose.’ But was not keen, and it showed.

  ‘What’s back there? You got a woman or somen?’

  ‘Nothing like that.’

  ‘What’s to stop you, t
hen?’

  There was nothing, or everything.

  ‘That special place you was tellin’ me about, that Cloud Forest … I don’ s’pose that’s got anything to do with it?’ Wally had always been perceptive.

  ‘Dunno,’ said Colin. Nor did he, but accepted that it might be possible.

  ‘Tell me about it again.’

  Colin looked out at no-man’s land: the broken tangles of wire, shattered stumps of trees, the grey and tortured earth. The slow day was dying. The first parachute flares soared up from the Boche lines. Waste of effort: it wasn’t dark enough for them to serve any purpose yet; but what difference did that make in a war that, like life itself, seemed utterly without purpose? With the slow ebbing of the day, mist had begun to silver the edges of the shell holes. From where they were standing, it looked like a living creature as it slithered its way into what remained of the light, swirling in silver tendrils, blotting out the humped and furrowed land.

  Beyond the wire, the mist, the broken and contorted earth, Colin saw the fern-clad mountain rising towards the stars. There were trees everywhere, their canopies so far above his head that they almost hid the sky. There was the clink and rasp of frogs from the brown and breathless pools in which clumps of reeds lifted stems as sharp as needles. The rough bark of tree ferns, rimed with moss, was moist beneath his hand. The image was so clear and close that he looked down at his open palm in the fading light, scarcely believing that it could be dry.

  Another flare soared upwards to explode with a muted bang and cascade of falling stars. Now it was dark enough for the descending lights to cast shadows. In their midst Colin saw the eyes of the painted figures arrayed along the wall of the stone gallery. They turned their heads; their eyes watched him, like the dead whose weapons had menaced him so long ago. Like them, the paintings of the forest were silent in a world where silence had been done to death along with all else.

  The images of the past embraced him, as did the marsh gas stench of the mist lying in ambush around the shell holes. The images were so strong, so clear, that it was all he could do not to follow them out of the trench’s shelter and into the open spaces where death waited.