“This biscuit does not constitute a representative sample of the frequency of flies to the surface area of the battlefield.”
“You are concerned with the flies,” says James. His voice comes from somewhere far away.
“The flies are important. If the flies prevent me from eating the apricot jam, then that constitutes a measurable degradation of my spirit. Of my will to fight. Also, the constant irritant of flies prevents me from attending to other tasks that may aid my survival. That’s before we even get onto the transmission of disease.”
“You are saying the flies are the enemy?”
The tea is cold and tastes strongly of chlorine.
“No. My argument is that if one were to devise an equation to predict the outcome of this battle, then the flies would have to be a factor. I wager the flies have never figured in the plans of our leaders. Therefore, one can infer that their method of planning is inadequate for war. They stand on the hill or back at the battleship, and try to influence events with merely their intelligence and their will when clearly a vast range of unfathomable contingencies come between the logic of their battle plan and any final dispatches. Tiny details imperceptible to them decide everything.”
“Such as flies,” says James.
“Yes. The flies indicate two things: firstly, corruption has set in. Secondly, our leaders are guilty of a fundamental error in their attempts to influence the battle from the helm, as it were, by willpower alone. The battle, as we have observed since the landing, is determined by the most complex interdependencies. Only a set of algorithms could accurately predict the outcomes of such a network.”
Should he tell Collinson that he saw a man returned from the dead? Jordison had stood on the prow of the stranded lighter, then stepped out into the water. James had lost track of him in the chaos of the landing, as the rest of the division thrashed through the dark shallows. It could have been a hallucination. If he is to be visited by more hallucinations of such palpable quality, then he is lost. The doctor had warned him about giving in to these moments of vertigo. However, the vision had been indistinguishable from reality. He was swimming at the time, and so entirely awake, and alive to physical sensation. He was tempted to believe what he saw, regardless of what it might mean.
Collinson continued, “Do you know the concept of cause and effect? That I draw upon my pipe and so must exhale the smoke?”
He takes a demonstrative puff of his pipe.
“Our leaders believe they can plot out a battle by anticipating cause and effect. But on the battlefield, to talk about causality is meaningless.”
James disagrees, “A man shoots at me, the bullet goes in me, I die. That is clear cause and effect.”
“Of course. But causation of that type is strictly a local phenomenon: say, between an enemy sniper and yourself or even between you and Hector when you are carrying a stretcher. Or between the guns of a destroyer and the target up on the ridge. We know that you will follow orders, but the effect of that cause is unknown to us: how many men will you rescue? Impossible to say without knowing the landscape, the rate of enemy fire, and your stamina.”
“My stamina as influenced by my intake of apricot jam.”
“Precisely. A battle is more than the sum of its parts. It is a network distributed in space and time. If we had some way of performing the necessary calculations instantaneously, as events in space and time change, then we could theoretically express the war in a series of algorithms, which could then be used to anticipate events on future battlefields.”
“We could count the flies.”
“And then I would know how many pots of jam to open so that I could breakfast in peace.”
Their conversation is interrupted by a rumble rolling down from the high ridges south of their position.
“That is not a storm,” says Collinson.
Hector slides down into their dugout and takes the Zweiss glass from around James’ neck.
“It is the sound of men cheering,” says Hector.
Collinson’s dark eyebrows rise in expectation. “Oh. Have we won?”
The cries of men pour down the gullies like meltwater. Disembodied voices eddy along the runnels, shallow trenches, dunes and swells. Cries of utter release. Cries of absolute relief after almost unendurable hardship and tension.
Hector grabs James and together they stumble down the beach for a better southward view. James has one boot on, and the other half-off and he wants to make a decision either way. Hector looks through the Zweiss. He lets go of James. He stumbles back a step.
“It’s a Turkish battle cry,” says Hector. “We’re dead.”
He hands James the Zweiss and points to the steep bare bluff of the southern ridge. A horde of soldiers pour over the crest, line after line of Turkish infantry, skidding and screaming down three great gullies toward the allied position. Six battalions with the sunrise at their back.
The sun shears across his line of sight, and, magnified by the glass, his retinas flare out. He focuses the glass away from the crest and upon the steep dark bluff. The horde kicks up a long dust cloud; ahead of it, among the thousands of soldiers, he sees the faces of women. Not Turkish women but women he recognizes, from his past. He can’t remember their names but they are familiar to him. The women run shoulder-to-shoulder among the Turkish soldiers, their heads turned back to the crest, straining to retreat even as their legs carry them forward against their will, making their gait unsteady and unnatural.
“I see women,” says James.
Gently, Hector takes the glass from him.
The wave of the battle cry becomes choppy. Here comes the machine gun rattle that knocks under your breastbone. The battleships open fire, their guns clanging like hell’s iron lid. Under the downward stabbing light of shrapnel clouds, legions of attacking soldiers slump to the ground. After days of shelling the haunted rock of the ridges, the shells explode joyously across the faces of the enemy. Losses mount. The bodies of the fallen build up in piles over which thousands of soldiers clamber.
“It’s a slaughter,” says Hector. “Thank God for the navy.”
He hands the Zweiss glass back to James. Floating in the dust cloud, a flock of boots, scraps of cloth and arcing chunks of this and that. He focuses on the steep rocky bluff and sees English men and women crawling along the smouldering ground, not Turks at all but the townspeople he evicted in Lewes. He doesn’t remember their names, he was never any good at remembering names, not since the operation. He puts his hand to the back of his head and feels, under his hair, a scar and a ridge of flesh. How could he have forgotten the operation? His hand shakes. The sun spears in through the Zweiss glass again. He sets it aside. Hector takes pity on him, thinks it is the spectacle of the slaughtered Turk that has made him swoon.
After a long weekend of futile war, the allies are eager to see some reward for their efforts, some evidence of victory, and show no mercy to this miscalculated attack. The dead form a rampart which slides down the ridge, and soldiers in their thousands run and scream and throw themselves onto this rampart and die there, adding their bodies to the construction. Rifles jut out of the rampart at all angles, bayonets gleaming in first light like the spines on the back of a single massive creature. Now and then, out of the multitude, he sees a familiar face.
A last shell from the destroyer stops the horde’s advance. Thousands of inert bodies cover the bluff, and a few crawl back toward the crest. After the last echo of the battle, a dreadful quiet ensues. At the water’s edge, the waves ripple soundlessly over the hard ridged sand. He feels weak with apprehension, as if the slaughter is somehow his fault.
James faints. He crumples at the knees and feels the world turn within him and without him. He rolls down the gully, through the thorny bush until he comes to a stop, sprawled on the loose rocky earth, one boot off and one boot on. All around him, placed at even intervals of a yard, open jars of apricot jam form a sinuous line along the entire length of the gully, the mouth of each jar a seeth
ing mass of flies.
20
The general’s motorcade approached from the east, along dusk lanes flanked by high corn. The shout went up around Saddlescombe, and the soldiers cleared out of the estaminet to prepare for inspection. In the barn, Alex Drown finished her shift, washed her hands, and pushed the cap from her head. In the back yard, Tom Bowles knelt at one end of a planed beam and inspected the grain with the good side of his slanted face. Ruth and the children broke from the cover of the copse, running hand-in-hand across a darkening field and in through the back gate of the estaminet; they passed Tom, who did not look up from his work even when his son said his name. Out front, Jane gathered dirty plates and stoked the stove. She put her index finger on a black key of the old piano. She was sure she could play but could not imagine what came after the first note.
Ruth ushered the children upstairs and into a dark bedroom. Agnes stood at the window. The lane below was thronged with silent soldiers. They came from the barn, and from further afield; from the barracks at Plumpton College and the semi-detached suburb of Hassocks, from a grain silo in a hollow below Ditching Beacon, from the field hospitals of Poynings and Pyecombe Golf Club.
“These soldiers have swords,” said Agnes. “And they’re different from the other soldiers.”
“In what way?”
“They are people we used to know.”
The girl was right. The ranks of these soldiers were made up of the evicted. Their uniforms were also different: the tunics were tan or pale green and, instead of pith helmets, these soldiers wore helmets wrapped in cloth. The dark grey greatcoats were familiar enough, but the variation in the height of the line indicated men and women in the ranks. A narrow curved sword hung from their belts.
Ruth found some blankets and set the children down to rest. She did not have to wait long for Alex Drown to return. The door scraped back against the floorboard. Alex’s face showed no recognition that she had company in her bedroom. She kicked off her left shoe, then her right, undressed and got into bed.
Ruth waited for Alex to fall asleep. Then, Alex’s eyelid slid slowly back, the lashes gummy with blood. Her hands shot out, as if they had been bound all day and suddenly freed. “Help me!”
Alex grabbed Ruth’s shoulders.
Ruth said, “We will help each other.”
Alex sat up, cradling the sore side of her head, then levered herself to her feet. In the dark window, her one good eye saw the ruin of her other.
“I’m hemorrhaging again.”
She dabbed at her eye with the corner of her long white nightie.
“There are gaps in my memory. I remember giving the wounded soldiers malted milk. Filling a steel bowl with hot water. Standing dutifully beside the doctor as he operated.”
For safety, Euan held onto Ruth’s thigh. Alex stared at the boy as if he were an enormous rodent.
She said, “These are the children you were looking for?”
“Yes.”
“The ones you hope to save.”
“I will save them.”
Alex calculated.
“They can come with us to the Institute.”
“Will we be safe there?”
“It’s shielded from the Process. The hemorrhaging should stop. And then I’ll be able to help you.”
While Alex dressed, Ruth explained to the children that they were going on a long night walk, following the footpath back to Lewes and around the edge of the douanier’s blockade to Mount Caburn, and then down to Glynde. About fifteen miles by her reckoning. The boy would not make it all the way. He was already tired. She would carry him.
From downstairs came the sound of boots upon the boards, of stools scraping and a shout for beer. The children looked at her nervously. She stroked Euan’s hair.
“The soldiers haven’t bothered us yet.”
A singalong began. A high boyish voice led a chorus of men.
“Omega John’s here,” said Alex. “I’ll have to speak to him.”
“No,” said Ruth. “We will slip out the back.”
But the kitchen was thronged with soldiers in all their gear, helping themselves to the stores. In the centre of the kitchen, Tom stood between his wife and the coarse remarks of enlisted men. It would be too upsetting for the children to leave that way.
They turned around. Alex led them through the fug of the lounge; there were two dozen or more soldiers crammed into the low room, smoking and drinking. The general was Omega John. He was sat at the piano in a pristine uniform, a peaked cap atop his bulbous skull. His lips were thin, the lower half of his face withered and malnourished, his front teeth extruding slightly. His moustache was wispy and immature, yet white with age. His voice was as pure as a choirboy’s, but his forehead was virulently liver-spotted.
“Alex!” He seemed pleased to see her. “Join us. We’re having a good old singsong.”
Omega John ordered the soldiers to clear the table next to the piano, and they brought stools for Ruth and the children. The change that came over the soldiers when Omega John spoke to them was pronounced: they became silently compliant.
Omega John offered his hand to Ruth. It too was liver-spotted, the skin loose, yet the grip retained its strength.
“They call me Omega John,” he said. He raised his bare brows at Alex in expectation of introduction.
“Her name is Ruth, she is married to the bailiff.”
“The seamstress!” said Omega John. “I know your husband. He is very brave. He is taking part in the landing. Can’t tell you when exactly. Classified. But I can tell you, it’s the Dardanelles. We’re having another crack at it. I have a song for you, seamstress. Do you know Little Redwing?” he played a few bars on the piano and the men, recognizing the tune, stood up to sing.
* * *
“The moon shines down
On Charlie Chaplin
He’s going barmy
To join the army
But his little baggy trousers
They need a-mending
Before they send him
To the Dardanelles.”
* * *
Some parts of Omega John had responded to longevity treatment while others had not; consequently, his ageing was unequally distributed. His choirboy’s voice was in marked contrast to his wispy white hair. One knee was heavily bandaged, so he did not use that leg to work the piano pedals. His smile was indistinguishable from a grimace.
“Another verse for the seamstress!” he announced. “In honour of her husband!”
* * *
“The moon shines bright
On Charlie Chaplin
But his shoes are cracking
For want of blacking
And his baggy khaki trousers
Still need mending
Before they send him
To the Dardanelles.”
* * *
He stood to take a bow. He was seven foot tall. He stooped under the plaster ceiling to accept the applause of the men and their call for another song. His uniform was tailored to fit his elongated form, and gathered sharply around the middle with a Sam Browne belt that glistened under the lamplight. The men struck up a ditty in response:
* * *
“That was a very fine song
Sing us another one
Just like the other one
Sing us another one do.”
* * *
He played up and down the keys, making a show of considering which song he would perform next. He leant over to Alex, nodded at her bloodshot eye, and whispered, “You should get your eye looked at.” And he squinted with mock concern at her bloody orbit. Then he attacked the piano keys, playing random notes that gradually were rearranged into a simple order from the lowest to the highest.
“I call that piece ‘Insert sort’. It is derived from a simple algorithm. The order emerges in the higher registers first. Whereas with ‘Bubble sort’–” he jabbed furiously around the keys, the children put their hands over their ears “–the order begins in the
bass notes.” Agnes burst into tears, all of a sudden and unconstrained. Taking pity on her, Omega John switched from the jabbing instrumental of the algorithm to the simple melody of another soldier’s song:
* * *
“Why does she weep?
Why does she sigh?
Her love’s asleep so far away
He played his part that August day
And left her heart on Suvla Bay.”
* * *
In the estaminet, this brief verse moved the soldiers to silence. Some bowed their heads, and prayed to loves of their own.
“Now I’ve done it,” whispered Omega John. “I’ve given it all away.”
Ruth held Agnes’ head against her breast, calming the child.
“Can you stop this?” she asked.
“This?” Omega John gestured at the piano.
“The war.”
“Why would I stop the war when I have gone to such pains to start it?”
He sang a sad song about a long trail winding into the land of his dreams, of nightingales and moonbeams, and a long night waiting for his dream to come true. He played the keys with such delicacy, pressing and releasing each one in turn with deliberate care, as if they were the valves of a lover’s heart. When he finished, he sighed and said to Ruth, “I’m dying, seamstress. I’m very old and it cannot be put off any longer. They say that no one is indispensable but that is not true of me: I am one of a kind. My colleagues have tried to recruit a suitable replacement but to no avail. So this–” his gesture encompassed the estaminet “–is the solution.”
“Let my husband go,” said Ruth, in a low fierce voice.
Omega John laughed.
If Then Page 24