The Sons of Adam

by Harry Bingham

  Alan jogged along a narrow lane that wound down to a tiny stone-built cottage. His boots scuffed up the white dust that settled gently on the roadside flowers, poppies and saffron weed. As he reached a bend in the lane, Alan’s jog turned into a run. He ran up to the cottage and thumped on its crude wooden front door. From a window upstairs, he heard a voice.

  ‘Up here, old man.’

  Tom had lived, but only just.

  His anger had carried him all the way to within spitting distance of German lines. Once there, he’d thrown himself flat and begun hurling Mills bombs like a bowler at some demented cricket match. His fury kept him at it, aiming and throwing with an extraordinary intensity. What he managed to hit, nobody knew, but this much was certain: the fire that had swept over Fletcher’s men became scattered and confused. Fletcher seized his opportunity and raced home with his men: their lives saved.

  Once Tom had finished his satchel of bombs, he’d done everything he could. His anger left him. Clarity returned.

  Somewhere to the east, dawn was getting ready to light its lamps. Tom was so close to the German lines, he could hear their sentries break wind. Slowly and with infinite care, he’d backed away. As he’d crawled, he must have been hit, because he felt a sudden impact in his left arm, followed a few seconds later by the slip and slither of blood. He’d found a shellhole and tumbled into it. He’d put a dressing on the wound, closed his eyes a moment – then woke at noon with the sun high in a perfect sky and larks singing crystal in the echoing air.

  He had no food or water.

  The crater around him was hopelessly shallow.

  So he’d lain there. All day, all through a golden evening into night. Then when darkness had fallen, he’d begun to crawl home, desperately weak. He would never have made it, except for Alan.

  About three in the morning, Alan found him, stretched out unconscious, head pointing for British lines. He’d hooked a hand into his belt and dragged him home.

  Alan crashed open the wooden cottage door, and leaped up the rough ladder leading into the loft. Tom lay on his bed, half-dressed, left arm in a clean white sling. He put down a book and smiled. Except for his wounded arm, he looked astonishingly fit and healthy. Soldiering had given Tom (and Alan supposed, himself as well) an extra edge to his physique: more hardness, more confidence. The two men clubbed hands together, a new gesture for them.

  It was the first time they’d seen each other since the raid. They were changed men. They’d both experienced danger and death close at hand. They’d both come to understand fully what war might mean.

  ‘By God,’ said Alan, ‘so now we know what it’s all about.’

  Tom nodded. ‘Yes. It was one hell of a night. Two nights, actually. I didn’t think I’d see a third.’

  Alan nodded. Then his expression lightened and he released Tom’s hand. ‘Anything to bunk off duty, eh?’

  ‘One of my brighter ideas, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Yes, well, everyone has you marked down for an MC now. And a bloody well deserved one at that.’

  He was pleased for Tom, of course. He knew that Tom deserved a Military Cross and would almost certainly get it. And yet … the twins had always been competitive. They’d competed as boys, competed as young men, and now seemed destined to compete as soldiers. And just as it had been Tom who’d more often won their wrestling matches, won their riding contests, won every attractive girl in Hampshire (or so it had seemed), now, once again, it was Tom who’d won the soldiering race. The fact shouldn’t have rankled, but it did, if only a little. Alan smiled carefully, anxious not to let any of this show.

  But the two men were twins and they didn’t only rely on words.

  Tom asked gently, ‘Does it bother you, brother?’

  Alan shook his head. ‘You’re a good officer and a courageous one. It’s right these things are recognised.’

  Tom pursed his lips. ‘Really? I don’t know if I am a courageous man, let alone a good one. I fell into a bloody fury that night. I pitched bombs at Fritz because Fritz was close enough to get hurt. If it had been our own High Command beyond the wire, Haig and French and all those other bastards, then I’d have killed the lot of them instead.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’

  ‘You wouldn’t, you mean. If they wanted to reward decent courageous men with these baubles, they ought to be picking chaps like you.’

  Alan smiled to acknowledge the compliment, but his eyes remained serious. ‘You’re a better man than you give yourself credit for. But it wouldn’t hurt you to fool around less. No one would like you the less for it.’

  It was Tom’s turn to smile. He looked at his watch. ‘Talking of fooling,’ he said, ‘I’ve a little fool who’s waiting for me right now. But I’ll be back for supper, if you’d care to share it.’

  ‘A fool? You mean a – a girl? Good God, you don’t have a girl here, do you?’ Alan was shocked, then embarrassed, then annoyed with himself for being either.

  ‘A girl? Maybe.’ Tom laughed. His open smile and shiny unmilitary hair seemed like reminders of an already lost age, those untroubled years before the war.

  ‘Good God, you do!’

  ‘Yes, and do you know, you ought to find someone too. I can tell you, if there’s one consolation for a horrible spell in the trenches, then it’s an afternoon in bed with a little French fool.’

  Alan blushed slightly. He was embarrassed by this kind of conversation, and he disliked it when he heard officers talking about prostitutes as though they were horses. ‘I’m not sure I could. Not with a …’ Alan let himself tail off rather than speak the word ‘prostitute’. ‘I don’t mean to be preachy.’

  ‘It’s true, though, all the same. There’s nothing to beat the comfort of a pretty French fool. I’m being perfectly serious. If you ever wanted me to help, I’d be happy to.’

  ‘I’m amazed you’re able to –’ Alan blushed. ‘Sometimes I come back from our time in the front and I find myself hardly able to eat, let alone … let alone, do that.’

  ‘I don’t always. But you can lie in a girl’s bed without making love and there’s still a damned lot of comfort in it … In bed, you don’t have to act the British officer. The girls here do understand, you know. It’s not as though they’re ignorant of what war does to a man.’

  Still blushing deeply, Alan asked, ‘Look, do you … ? God, I don’t mean this badly, it’s just I really don’t know. When you … do you … ?’

  ‘I don’t pay, no. My pretty little fool doesn’t charge me, but I imagine she sees other men and if she does, she probably charges them. It’s only sex, you know. She doesn’t love me and I don’t love her. When the war ends, I expect she’ll marry a French farmer and be faithful to him all her days … I think she wants to help the war effort. This is her way and it’s a damned good one, if you ask me.’

  Alan’s blush had settled down and made itself at home. Rose pink had made way for tomato, which had given up and handed over to beetroot. ‘I see. Thanks. I didn’t mean to … I wasn’t trying to …’

  ‘You weren’t trying to admonish me, I know.’ Tom got up, smiling. He squeezed the other man’s shoulder with understanding. ‘I’ll see you later. For supper.’

  Alan nodded stupidly. ‘Of course. Later. For supper.’

  Tom pulled a clean shirt over his damaged arm, ran his hands briefly through his curly hair, twinkled a smile – and left.

  18

  The trouble with fate is that it leaves no tracks. Fate never looks like fate. It doesn’t come crashing into a person’s life with heavy bootprints and a smell of burning.

  Instead, fate lives in the little things. A child’s fondness for blackberry pudding. A father’s slight unfairness between two boys. The chance results of battle. A tiny scrap of purple and white medal ribbon.

  And that’s a pity. Because danger noticed is danger avoided. Because what is invisible can nevertheless be lethal. Because even the smallest things can grow up and destroy a life.

  On 2
5 September 1915, the British mounted an assault at Loos. Six divisions attacked and were halted by devastating machine-gun fire. The following morning, in an effort to maintain momentum, two further divisions – fifteen thousand men, all of them volunteers – were sent forward in broad daylight, in parade-ground formation ten columns strong. The German gunners were simply astounded. Never had an easier target presented itself. They blazed away until their gun barrels were burning hot and swimming in oil. The men fell in their hundreds, but they continued to advance in good order, exactly as though all this were part of a plan, unknown to the enemy, but certain of success. And then the survivors reached the German wire. It was uncut, unscathed, impenetrable. Then and only then did they retreat.

  Tom got his medal: the Military Cross, a little strip of white and purple stitched to his uniform tunic. He was proud of it, of course, but it sank quickly into the background. It no longer seemed important. But it was.

  Alan and Tom heard about the massacre at Loos from Guy, on one of his rare visits to the reserve lines. It was a chilly day at the start of October. Alan and Tom had been lying on the roof of a dugout, smoking and watching an artillery team sweat as they dug in one of their thumping 60-pounders.

  ‘Good morning, ladies,’ said Guy, sitting down beside them without invitation. ‘Good to see our front-line troops straining every sinew.’

  ‘Go to hell, Guy,’ said Tom, neither looking up nor changing posture.

  They chatted briefly about trivia, but it wasn’t long before Guy began venting his frustrations with the assault at Loos and the conduct of the war more generally. ‘Sir John French was a bloody fool – a decent chap but totally useless. Haig’s not like that. On tactics, gunnery, supply lines, all that kind of muck, he’s absolutely first rate, the very pattern of a modern general. But – my God! – he’s obsessed with attack. He literally doesn’t care about casualties. I’ve seen him in the bloody map room, hearing about the losses at Loos, the slaughter of the 21st and 24th, and his only reaction was to make changes to the ammunition supply arrangements. Not a hint of anything else. Nothing.’

  ‘Poor bastards,’ said Alan. ‘It makes it worse somehow that they were all volunteers.’

  Guy nodded. ‘And damn short of officers now. Men too, of course, but the officers did the decent thing and made sure they got even more thoroughly killed than the men. They’ll be scouring the other divisions now, looking for chaps. Either of you boys fancy a change?’

  Alan and Tom glanced at each other, sharing the same thought, but it was Alan that spoke it.

  ‘Neither or both, Guy, neither or both.’

  The conversation ended there that day. Guy was soon off – efficient, reliable, thorough. But the issue wasn’t over, not by any means.

  A few weeks later, when Alan and Tom had returned to the front line and after enough rain to make everyone miserable, Major Fletcher came splashing down the trenches in search of Tom.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Creeley. Duckboards are a bloody mess, slipping and sliding like a bloody vaudeville act. Get ’em sorted out.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘On second thoughts, you may not need to bother. The company’s been asked to find an officer to make good the losses for the 21st and 24th divisions. The word from on high is that you’d be just the chap. MC and all that. The men’ll respect you from the off.’

  ‘You want to transfer me?’ Tom’s voice was shocked, but also belligerent.

  ‘Not want to, old boy. God knows who they’ll give me in your place. Some bloody milliner from Bristol, I expect. Thinks a bayonet is a bloody crochet hook. Not forward march, forward stitch, more like. But no use in arguing. We answer to the King, the King answers to God, and God answers to Sir Douglas Haig. Yes sir, no sir, at the double sir.’

  ‘I won’t go.’

  Fletcher suddenly caught the tone of Tom’s voice, the glare in his eye. Fletcher’s tone changed as well. ‘If you’re told to go, you will go, Creeley. And when you speak to me, you will address me as “sir”.’

  ‘Yes, sir, but may I say that I won’t go anywhere without Montague. I don’t mind going anywhere, but I go with him or not at all.’

  ‘You do not tell me what I may and may not do, Creeley. I’m putting your name forward to Colonel McIntosh tomorrow morning and to hell with you. And sort out those bloody duckboards.’

  Tom let Fletcher go, then burst from his dugout.

  ‘Watkins,’ he yelled, ‘Watkins.’

  A corporal came running.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Get those bloody duckboards sorted out. They’re sliding around like a vaudeville act. And if anyone asks for me, tell them I’m seeing the medics.’

  He began to climb over the parapet to the rear, preferring the relatively open country between the trench systems to the muddy darkness of the trenches themselves. It was an unnecessarily dangerous route, but Tom was in no mood for caution.

  ‘Yes, sir … Should I tell them what’s wrong with you?’

  Tom was already mostly gone from view, but he turned round to yell his answer. ‘Certainly you should. You should tell them I’ve got a bloody arse for a cousin.’

  He disappeared into the night.

  And if there had been any doubt before, there was none left now. Fate had set her trap. The three men – Alan, Tom and Guy – had acted as they were bound to act. What followed, however disastrous, was certain to happen. Only a miracle could save them now.

  19

  At two in the morning, a motorcycle roared up outside a pleasant residential street in Arras. Late in October, the gardens were nothing more than a collection of black and dripping twigs, bounded on the street side by iron railings. Out in the street, a silvery motor-car stood in quiet splendour.

  Tom stopped the motorbike, slammed the garden gate open, and struck the lion’s head knocker on the front door with three or four crashing blows. A few seconds passed without response, and Tom struck again, smashing the stillness of the night.

  ‘C’est qui, ça? Mon Dieu, je viens, je viens.’

  From outside, Tom could hear the heavy door being unlocked, and as soon as the last lock was turned, he thrust the door open and entered. He strode past the housekeeper – sleepy, outraged, in dressing gown and curling papers – and stormed upstairs. He didn’t know which room he was looking for and flung open doors and slammed them shut again, until he came to the front room of the first floor. There was Guy, in pyjamas and his uniform tunic, standing at his dressing table, checking his revolver. As the door crashed against the wall, Guy turned with his hand just inches from his gun.

  ‘Stay right there,’ cried Guy. ‘Don’t advance another step.’ His hand was on the gun now, altering its position on the dressing table so he could snatch it up easily.

  ‘Leave the gun alone, you fool,’ said Tom.

  ‘Why have you come here? Who gave you permission to leave your post?’ Guy was backing away from Tom, towards his bedside, where a candle flickered smokily.

  ‘It was your idea to separate me from Alan, wasn’t it? You can’t bloody leave things alone, can you?’

  ‘It wasn’t my idea to slaughter the 21st and 24th. The poor bastards need officers. The idea at HQ is that we should give them chaps with a decent fighting record. Chaps like you.’

  ‘Alan’s every bit as good as me and you know it. Better. He looks after his men better than I do. He’ll keep his head better if it comes to an offensive. I personally don’t give a damn which division I serve in. I don’t care which pointless battle I’m sent to die in. But I will not be separated from Alan. Will not. Not by anyone and least of all by you.’

  Guy had grown calmer now that his fear of an outright assault had passed. Something like his customary smirking crept back into his manner.

  ‘It wasn’t me that made the decision, was it? And though we need to bring in new officers, we don’t want to unsettle existing battalions, let alone take two officers from a single company. So it’s you or Alan, but not both. And
that isn’t my decision, it’s Haig’s. You can go and argue it out with him, if you want. He’s just four streets away.’ He gave Tom the address.

  Tom ignored the sneer. He paced around the room, which was of a pleasant size and pleasantly furnished – a far cry from the squalor of a front-line dugout. Tom fingered the silver-backed hairbrushes, which lay next to the revolver on the dressing table.

  ‘Alan thinks you don’t really hate me,’ he murmured. ‘He thinks it’s just an act you put on. But I know you better than that, Cousin Guy, and it’s because I know you that you hate me.’ Tom’s fingers had wandered from the hairbrushes to the gun. His thumb flicked the safety catch off, on, off, on, off, on.

  ‘Leave that,’ said Guy unsteadily.

  ‘I know who you are, Cousin Guy,’ said Tom again. He lifted the revolver, took the safety catch off and cocked it. He pointed it straight at Guy’s head. Guy was on the far side of the room, but it was an unmissable distance.

  ‘Put that down,’ said Guy, dry-mouthed. ‘Put it down. That’s an order.’

  ‘Down? Like this?’

  Tom lowered the gun until it was pointing at Guy’s groin. The barrel gleamed dully in the meagre candlelight. The aim didn’t waver by even a fraction of an inch. Guy stood, mouth open, perfectly still, slightly on tiptoe, as though he could deceive the bullet into passing underneath him between his legs. Tom, meantime, looked hardly threatening; meditative, rather; calm. After a second or two, Tom dropped the gun back on the table behind him. The heavy metal clattered loudly on the waxed mahogany. Guy relaxed. His mouth closed and he came down from tiptoe.

  ‘You think I’m asking you a favour for my benefit,’ continued Tom, as though nothing had happened. ‘You think I’m asking because I can’t bear to be without Alan. That’s not true. Of course I want to be with him. He’s worth a hundred others, and he’s worth ten thousand like you – but he needs me, he needs me if he’s to survive this war. I don’t know why, but that’s how it is. You can do whatever the hell you want to me, Cousin Guy, but if you want to keep your brother, you’ll keep us together.’