by Robert Edric
‘Are you all right?’ Reid asked him.
‘It comes and goes,’ Lucas said dismissively, and Reid knew by his tone not to persist.
‘You said my end of things?’
Lucas laughed. ‘All your tidying-up. There’s already talk of commemorative ceremonies, Wheeler presiding.’
‘What sort of ceremonies?’ Reid said, knowing that these had been planned, but convinced that the first of them was still a considerable way in the future.
‘When the cemeteries are complete, I suppose,’ Lucas said. ‘I don’t know – something. He’ll probably want you to retire to a respectable distance from the cemetery walls and gatehouses and then start building hotels for him.’
‘Hotels?’ It was a ridiculous suggestion, however it was meant.
‘For the tourists.’
‘Two women turned up at Morlancourt,’ Reid said.
‘Only two? Consider yourself lucky. The hotels here and in Saint-Quentin are already thriving on the trade.’
After a further few minutes, the pair of them left the station and walked out into the streets beyond.
Everywhere they went there was the clamour of rebuilding and of tradesmen and shopkeepers operating their businesses. Fenced depots filled many of the cleared sites, and soldiers and their equipment were still evident everywhere. The air was filled with the smell of petrol and woodsmoke.
Lucas indicated a table and two chairs set out on the brick pavement ahead of them and they sat down again. A waiter appeared and took their order for coffee and cognac. Despite it being only mid-morning, Lucas insisted on the spirit, saying that the wine at the meal later would be carefully rationed.
‘The word is that Wheeler will be making one or two of his pronouncements,’ Lucas said, draining his glass and gesturing to the waiter for it to be refilled. Reid held his hand over his own. ‘Jessop let slip that he’s in the running for some promotion or other.’
‘In connection with his work on the Commission?’
‘What else? Grand Panjandrum Wheeler. Who knows, we two – you and I, we lowly diggers and scrapers – might find ourselves drawn aloft in his golden wake towards that same shining glory.’
‘But only once we’ve washed the mud off our hands and faces,’ Reid said.
‘And the rest.’ Lucas raised his second glass. ‘To reflected glory,’ he said.
‘Glory in all its forms,’ Reid said, squinting in the sunlight, which set ablaze the liquid in his own raised glass.
6
WORK ON PREPARING the cemetery at Morlancourt had started prior to Reid’s arrival, but the first bodies had not been delivered until he had been in charge there for almost two months. He had arrived at the place alone and unprepared. His workers and all their equipment had followed piecemeal and unannounced, and only with the completion of the repairs to the railway embankment at Chaulnes was any true and organized progress made.
To begin with, Reid had been given a map of the actual ground to be prepared, along with a traced overlay of the eventual shape and configuration of the cemetery. It had been immediately apparent to him that whoever had created the plan to be imposed on the ground had never actually visited the place itself. The cemetery design demanded near-level sections, or land only gently undulating. But the fields and open spaces at Morlancourt contained a small river, and ridges and slopes upon which no truly straight lines could be imposed without considerable groundwork beforehand. In addition, there was a low scarp along its western edge, where the soil was lost and the underlying chalk revealed at the surface.
Only upon his first full exploration of the site did Reid discover that there were several slender paths and a broader rutted track running over the land which were still in regular use by the local farmers and their labourers. These same men created even further delays by insisting on harvesting the sparse remaining winter crops already growing on the site.
Most of the land had by then already been requisitioned by government order prior to being leased to the British. Some of it, Reid later discovered – almost a third of the total site – had been donated voluntarily by the landowners themselves, often because they could no longer find the men to work it.
As Reid had anticipated, local disputes over ownership and long-held rights took up a great deal of his time during those early weeks, and were the cause of his first true conflicts with the Commission members in Amiens.
Men still worked at lowering and grading the steepest of the slopes and then covering the exposed rock with soil excavated from elsewhere at the site. The stream along the cemetery’s eastern edge was cleared of sediment and channelled via a succession of buried culverts in that part of the emerging cemetery. But this in turn had led to neighbouring farmers demanding to have their own water supplies returned to what they had once been. One man insisted that the diversion and channelling of the stream had caused flooding in his dairy yard.
Often these complaints were founded on genuine grievances; at other times the locals made their demands for compensation simply because times were still hard, because they held others responsible for their losses, and because nothing, even now, was as guaranteed or as certain as it had once been for them.
Reid prided himself on having become adept at deciding which of these demands and complaints he might legitimately pass on to the Commission and which he might more readily contest and dismiss himself. It was Wheeler’s unrecorded opinion that the demands should all be dismissed and that everything should remain in abeyance to the greater good.
The major obstacle at Morlancourt, it quickly became clear to Reid, was the remains of the wood along the road to Sailly which, though clearly marked on the original map of the area, was absent from the Commission’s own plan of how the finished site would eventually appear. Almost a hundred graves were marked in their ten perfect rows where the shattered stumps and mounded roots now stood. Reid had insisted on both Wheeler and Jessop visiting the site with him, and afterwards sending him the heavy equipment and additional men required to excavate the stumps. Without mechanical diggers, the removal of a solitary tree took a dozen men a whole day to achieve, and Reid had calculated that there were the remains of almost two hundred still to be cleared.
Now, almost four months later, the majority of these still stood along the Sailly road. The bulldozers and diggers had come, but only for a short time, and had proved largely ineffectual in the confined space, frequently breaking down and needing to be returned to Saint-Quentin for repair. Their replacements had come erratically, and then only after long delays.
There had been comparatively little damage to the land surrounding Morlancourt until the final months of the war, and because the ground had not been repeatedly churned and reconfigured over the preceding years, much of the overlying earth was compacted and dry, and the strata beneath it still lay in solid layers.
Only where the land to the south approached the Somme with its flood plain, marshes and porous channels did water remain a problem for other burial grounds, and Reid knew well enough from his meetings with the engineers what changes and delays were now being caused there by repeated flooding and seepage. The Canadians at Cerissy, for instance, had been forced to reconsider the whole of their first chosen site because of the unstoppable rise of the groundwater there.
The slow progress in removing the trees at Morlancourt remained a constant source of friction between Reid and Wheeler. Recently, however, there had been talk of leaving what remained of the small woodland intact and of acquiring a further small field above the lane to Etinhem to accommodate the graves. The delays in completing these changes remained Reid’s greatest frustration, and in the meantime Wheeler insisted on the continued removal of the peripheral trees in case the plan proved unsuccessful.
Where the woodland remained undamaged, it was an attractive feature of the site – especially on the crown of the slight rise above the Sailly road. With its mix of oaks and beeches at its centre, it reminded Reid of the Gloucestershire village whe
re he had lived and played as a boy, and where he had later walked with his father before the man’s early death.
Elsewhere on the designated land, the levelling of its lower contours and the filling in of hollows proceeded more quickly and easily, and Reid was soon able to see how the finished pattern of graves would eventually come to look over large areas. He recognized the great virtue in the simplicity and uniformity of the Commission’s plan. And as Wheeler frequently reminded him, the visiting relatives would see only what they had come to see and nothing of what had been there before their arrival.
As spring had turned to summer, and as the work had finally started in earnest, it had become a habit of Reid’s to wander over the whole of the site upon the completion of each day’s work – both to see exactly what had been accomplished by his workers and to gauge his overall rate of progress. Most of what he saw on these solitary walks pleased and impressed him. The recently dug and refilled graves were as yet bare and stark across the dark earth, but already there was an emerging notion of that greater order.
Only beyond the eastern edge of the cemetery had the war left its lasting mark on the ground at Morlancourt: a line of four large, perfectly spaced craters along the course of a track connecting the station with the lock gates beyond Vaux. Perhaps the track had once been targeted as a link between the two places – though neither had been of any true significance other than as easily traversable ground for retreating troops – but it was more probable that the shells had fallen randomly. In all likelihood, the craters, long overgrown and already filling with rubble from nearby ruins, had been there since the war’s earlier incursion. Reid frequently found himself reading the ground like this – something still done more by instinct than by any necessary calculation.
Each crater possessed a low rim of surrounding earth, and all that would be required of the farm labourers who might eventually be sent to reclaim the lost ground would be for this loose soil to be shovelled back into the hole from which it had been blasted.
Upon completing these evening excursions, and often finding himself walking as the sky all around him darkened with the setting of the sun, Reid would return to his lodgings and look out along the few streets of Morlancourt and wonder how often its inhabitants – many of them only recently returned to their homes and livelihoods – looked along those same streets and gave thanks for what, amid so much destruction elsewhere, had survived of the place. He wondered, too, how many of those people cursed him for what he was now there to undertake.
On one occasion, Reid had returned to his lodgings later than usual, and as he’d walked home he’d been surprised by the sudden appearance of a dozen draught horses galloping up to him on the other side of a hedge through the thickening darkness. The animals had come snorting and neighing to the hedge, and the rising drumming of their hooves had sounded to Reid exactly like the noise of a distant, rolling barrage. He guessed the horses had only recently been released from their own day’s labours and were running off their hours of constraint. The first of the creatures had shied away upon seeing him there, and the rest had then turned and galloped back across the open field.
7
CAROLINE MORTIMER CAME out of the Morlancourt churchyard and stood in front of Reid where he sat beside a stone trough. ‘I went to the vantage point you recommended,’ she said. She positioned herself between Reid and the sun, enveloping him in her shadow.
He had been half-asleep when she’d spoken to him.
He shielded his eyes to look up at her.
Behind her, others from the congregation made their way out of the church and through its small burial ground. The church roof had recently been repaired using sheets of corrugated iron. All of the shattered windows had been boarded over and the door replaced, but the simple squat structure remained sound enough to be used. There was already a fund being built up to strengthen the tower and to replace the solitary damaged bell, which now pealed with a dull, flat note.
In the churchyard, many of the slabs and memorials had been removed and lay stacked against the wall. Benoît had explained to Reid how these would soon be put back over the burials they commemorated. The path that encircled the low mound upon which the church stood came down to wrought-iron gates and the trough beside which Reid sat.
An old, undamaged yew stood taller than the building itself and cast a circle of impenetrable shade over the ground beneath it.
‘Were you inside?’ Caroline asked.
‘I’m afraid not. But I still enjoy sitting and listening to the hymns.’ He moved to one side, allowing her to sit beside him. He nodded to the people he recognized. Benoît appeared with his wife and, as usual, told Reid what he had missed by not attending the service. Benoît’s wife pushed her husband to one side and told Reid to take no notice of him.
Reid searched among the other locals for those few of his own workers who attended the services. A dozen or so soldiers came out and congregated by the stacked stones, smoking and trying to attract the local girls with what little French they had learned. He knew that others among his team of diggers would come to the service held in the early evening. Most of the remaining men would still be in their beds; and some, he knew, would be sleeping further afield in Albert or Saint-Quentin, where they had spent the previous evening. He turned a blind eye to these ‘Sunday leaves’ and insisted to Drake that he did the same. Drake agreed, but only reluctantly, and the concession remained a constant marker in the ever-changing balance of expediency and regulation between the two men.
‘We sang in French,’ Caroline said. ‘“All Creatures That On Earth Do Dwell” and “Worthy Is The Lamb For Sinners Slain”.’
Reid didn’t recognize the latter and so she sang a verse of it for him.
‘I’m none the wiser,’ he said when she’d finished. He saw what pleasure she derived from singing and he complimented her on her voice.
‘I was in the choir at home,’ she said. ‘In Lincoln.’
‘The cathedral?’
She laughed at the suggestion. ‘My parish church. Shortly before I last left home, a subscription was started for a memorial to be set into one of its walls.’ She looked away from him as she spoke.
‘Benoît tells me there’s talk of something similar here,’ he said. ‘Once the new bell’s cast. He’s probably leading that committee, too.’ He looked along the lane to where Benoît and his wife were walking home.
‘Were many killed from here?’ she asked him.
‘I don’t know. Benoît lost his only son. I daresay the names and numbers are well enough known by now to keep the masons busy for some time to come.’ It only then occurred to him that her husband’s name would in all likelihood be included in her own local memorial.
‘I suppose so,’ she said. ‘Today the visiting curé told us all that we should never stop giving thanks for the fact that this place was largely spared. He told everyone it was their own personal miracle. He said that the Lord had wrapped His hands around the place and kept it safe from harm.’
‘I see,’ Reid said. He imagined Benoît listening to the words.
‘A woman got up and walked out at hearing him,’ Caroline said. ‘Everyone waited for her husband to go after her and fetch her back, but he never left his pew. I could hear him crying from where I was sitting at the rear.’ She rose briefly to exchange greetings with a solitary woman who passed beside them. It surprised Reid to hear her speak French so fluently, and he remarked on this when she sat back beside him.
‘I was here for four years, remember,’ she said. ‘Many of our orderlies were French.’ She leaned forward and searched along the street. Most of the sparse congregation had dispersed by now, but a few still lingered in the sun. ‘I was hoping to see Mary.’
‘Your companion? Wasn’t she at the service with you?’
‘She told me she preferred her own God.’
‘Is it not the same one, then?’
‘She called them Papists.’ She laughed at the remark. ‘Besides, she�
�s been unwell ever since she arrived.’
‘Oh?’
‘She says she can find no purpose in life.’
It was clear to Reid that Caroline did not want to discuss the younger woman at any greater length.
‘I should have come to find you,’ he said. ‘To show you the plans for the nurses’ graves. It’s just that, as yet, there’s very little to see. Only their names and numbers on a plan which bears no resemblance whatsoever to the place itself. We’re still waiting to hear for certain where our Cross of Sacrifice and Stone of Remembrance are to be positioned.’ He had finally received the rudimentary plan for the nurses’ graves from Wheeler, having told him of Caroline Mortimer’s arrival.
‘Someone told me recently that the French are considering using concrete crosses,’ she said.
‘Concrete on a metal frame. For their concentration cemeteries, yes.’
‘But concrete – it seems …’
‘It seems French, that’s all.’
She smiled at this. ‘Sergeant Drake told me that the graves in the British burial grounds were being laid out to resemble units on parade, facing east towards the enemy. And that whatever else the final planting-up includes, roses will be planted so that at some part of every day the shadow of one of those roses will fall on to every British grave.’
Now Reid smiled. ‘Those of us in charge on the ground are convinced that the Commission has an office somewhere marked “Fanciful Notions”.’
‘Still …’
‘Yes, still …’
‘Drake was kind enough to show me over the ground,’ she said. ‘I lied and told him you’d said it was all right for me to see where the nurses would eventually be laid to rest. I went to him after walking to the centre of the place.’
‘Was it any help? I mean, did it make anything clearer to you?’