by Tim Atkinson
Half an hour later, after walking into Poperinghe, he is standing before the dark door of the little estaminet in Peper Straat, waiting, cap in hand, listening to the sound of children on their way to school, to women with baskets on their way to the weekly market, to the deafening screaming in his head. His eyes close and he steadies his breathing.
Never come back no more, boys. Never come back no more.
The camp is becoming a bore, boys. It is becoming a terrible bore.
Shut up the old shop window. Put a notice over the door.
We’re packing our kits for the jolly old Ritz, and we ain’t coming back no more.
Eventually, the cold becomes unbearable. He lifts his arm, closes a fist, knocks at the door. He knocks again. And again. After several minutes of blowing on his hands, he hears movement in the small café. A shadowy figure appears at the door. Bolts are being drawn back and a handle turned. The door opens and there she stands, looking up at him.
‘Jacques!’
‘I’m sorry, lass. I’m so sorry.’
‘Come in,’ she says, stepping to one side. ‘My mother is …’ The girl gestures towards the open door behind the counter. Jack walks past empty tables, round the chairs, and goes through the door.
Monsieur Steenvan appears, still wearing his apron. ‘Priester! ’ he whispers, putting his fingers to his lips. Jack strains to listen to the low mumble of strange words while following Steenvan into the tiny back room as silently as his Army boots allow.
A priest, black as a crow, looks up briefly as he enters. Katia, following them into the room, walks past Jack and takes her father’s hand. Madame Steenvan kneels by her daughter’s body, laid out in an open coffin on the kitchen table.
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.
The priest’s hand hovers over the dead girl’s face, the family all lift their right hands, touching first their foreheads, then breastbone, then the left shoulder, then the right.
Amen.
Jack stares, transfixed, at the girl’s body. Katia’s sister Françoise looks so much smaller, so much younger, than she did when she was … when he last saw her. She looks so peaceful, too. This isn’t death as Jack knows death. The girl is asleep, surely? She is sleeping, merely sleeping.
De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine: Domine, exaudi vocem meam.
Out of the deep … the deep … de profundis. The steep walls of a deep grave, closing in at all sides, pressing slowly against Jack’s chest and making it difficult for him to breathe.
Fiant aures tuae intendentes: in vocem deprecationes meae.
Oh hear the voice of my supplication … the thin, desperate pleading, the silent screaming: Oh God! Oh God!
Si iniquitates observaveris, Domine, Domine, quis sustinebit?
If Thou, Lord, shouldst mark our iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? Jack steadies himself against the jamb of the door. The room spins; he can feel his legs buckle; he grips the door frame with both hands.
Quia apud te propitiatio est: et propter legem tuam sustinui te, Domine.
But there is forgiveness with Thee … Is there forgiveness? Is there really forgiveness? Can Jack be forgiven for what he has done? Can anyone?
Sustinuit anima mea in verbo ejus: speravit anima mea in Domino.
The priest goes on. The remaining words are a blur. Jack can’t take his eyes off the girl: her hair, unpinned, is combed in long, dark waves over her shoulders. It is so much longer than he could ever have imagined. Françoise’s lips are open slightly in a ghost of a smile; her eyes are closed, but seem barely to be closed at all. In fact Jack can clearly see the little bump of her cornea through the tissue-thin skin of her eyelids and her long, dark eyelashes are restless, moving – are they moving? She is sleeping. Dreaming. A sudden hard spasm in Jack’s throat makes him gasp. He tries desperately to stifle a cough.
Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
Corpus Christi, salva me.
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.
Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.
Passio Christi, conforta me.
O bone Iesu, exaudi me.
Intra tua vulnera absconde me.
Ne permittas me separari a te.
Ab hoste maligno defende me.
In hora mortis meae voca me.
Et iube me venire ad te,
Ut cum Sanctis tuis laudem te
in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
The priest stands, gathers some things together in a small bag and unwinds the thin silk scarf from around his neck. Monsieur Steenvan leads him out, past Jack, through the empty shop and out onto the street. Madame Steenvan goes on weeping quietly by her daughter’s body.
‘Thank you, Jacques.’ Katia looks down at the floor, tears in her eyes. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘I …’
She puts her hand on his. ‘I know how you must feel,’ she says. Jack shakes his head.
‘If there’s anything I can … well, you know.’ She nods. He makes a move.
‘Actually.’ She looks up, taking hold of Jack’s sleeve. ‘Actually, there is one thing, Jacques.’
‘Aye, lass?’
‘There is one thing you can do.’
‘What is it?’
‘I don’t want to ask you, Jacques. It is too much to expect.’
‘What, lass? What is it?’
‘My father,’ Katia says. ‘He is not so strong. And the ground is so … hard. It is frozen solid.’
‘Aye, lass?’
‘He will have to dig the hole.’
‘Eh?’
‘There is no one else to do it. Papa, he will have to dig the hole.’
‘What – the grave, you mean?’
‘Yes, yes, the grave. Please, Jacques?’
‘Aye,’ Jack puts his hand on top of hers. ‘Aye, lass, of course I will.’
‘Thank you, Jacques.’ Suddenly the tension drains from her shoulders and her head drops. ‘Thank you so much, Jacques. You are a good man.’
‘I’m not …’ Jack slowly shakes his head. ‘I’m not the man you think I am.’
16
In the middle of the communal cemetery in Poperinghe, a small row of British military graves marks the final resting place of some of the earliest British casualties of the war. Here, and at the far side of the cemetery, is a total of twenty-one Allied burials all dating back to 1914.
‘Goedemiddag,’ Jack calls out as he wheels his barrow along the gravel path. The man stops hoeing briefly and touches his cap, but doesn’t answer.
‘They’re ours,’ Jack says as he walks past the line of simple wooden crosses. Crowding in on all sides are elaborate stone and marble vaults, graves fenced off with rusted ironwork chains and railings and the crosses – explicit, tortured, brightly painted Calvaries and crucifixes. ‘And they’re in a darn site better shape than yourn. Happen you’d better spend a bit o’ time tidying your bit of t’cemetery and leave them graves to us.’
‘You what?’
‘You English?’ Jack stops, surprised.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Well, I don’t know,’ he says. ‘You’re not Army.’
‘Not now.’
‘You used to be?’
‘Aye, of course. And before anyone starts making judgments about what’s smart and what’s not, you could do with a bit o’ spit-and-polish yourself, Lance-Corporal.’
‘Sorry,’ Jack says. ‘I didn’t realise. And I’m not at me best just now.’
‘Who is, these days?’ the man says. ‘Jim Ashbury, by the way. Sergeant Jim Ashbury.’
Jack nods. ‘Patterson, sir. Jack Patterson.’ The men shake hands. ‘So you’re no longer in t’Army, then?’
‘Not any more.’
‘But you’re tending Army graves?’
‘That’s right,’ the man says. ‘War Graves Commission – gardener, second class!’
‘Lord Wargraves’s Regiment!’
‘What’s that?’
‘That’s what we all
call you fellas,’ Jack laughs. ‘Lord Wargraves’s Regiment. Don’t rightly know why …’
‘Probably some dig at the ol’ Major-General,’ the man says. ‘Fabian Ware. Used to be a Red Cross volunteer, searching the battlefields for stragglers and survivors.’
‘Not many o’ them left these days,’ Jack says. ‘It’s all about finding bodies and burying the dead now.’
‘And making sure their graves are cared for,’ says the man. ‘That’s what Ware – Lord Wargraves – wanted. And that’s why I’m here.’ He offers Jack a cigarette. Jack gives the man a light.
‘Anyway,’ he says, puffing smoke into the cold air, ‘I ought to be asking you what you’re doing here. I’m tidying the graves of soldiers. That’s my job. But there are no more soldiers buried here. The cemetery closed in 1915.’
‘To us,’ Jack says.
‘So you’re digging graves for them, now?’
‘You could say that,’ Jack nods. ‘It’s their turf, after all.’
‘I suppose so … apart from this little bit that I’m tending.’
‘Some corner of a foreign field, eh?’
The man says nothing.
‘Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?’ Jack goes on. ‘I mean, did they really think that local cemeteries like these would be enough? That there would be space enough to bury all the casualties of this bloody great war?’
‘I suppose, at the time, they hoped they wouldn’t have to dig many more.’
‘If only …’ Jack sighs. ‘Have you seen Lijssenthoek?’
‘Seen it?’ the man replies. ‘I’m based there. We all are.’
‘What, at Remy?’
‘That’s where we’re all billeted,’ the man replies. ‘And Lijssenthoek – that’s our playground.’
‘You what?’
‘That’s where we get to experiment with shrubs and plants,’ he says.
‘So you really are a gardener?’
‘Hardly,’ the man laughs.
‘But …’
‘Oh, I can do this,’ he says. ‘Dig, plant, sow. I can even propagate now. Got our own nurseries at Remy Sidings … you must’ve seen the greenhouse.’
‘Aye, yes, aye.’
‘It’s a big affair.’
‘You’re telling me!’
‘Chap even comes across from London, no less.’
‘What – to make sure they all stay put?’
‘Who?’
‘This lot.’
‘No, no – don’t be daft. Chap from Kew Gardens. Comes to give us instructions, teach us what plants to put where.’
‘Oh, aye?’
‘Yes. They’re thinking Papaver rhoeas should do well in this local soil – you know, ‘In Flanders Fields’ and all that.’
Jack shakes his head.
‘Poppies!’ the man says. ‘And then maybe calendula and one or two dwarf polyanthus – to brighten the place up a bit, you know.’
‘Aye, well,’ Jack smiles. ‘That sounds well and good, but it’s all Dutch to me, I’m afraid.’
‘Latin, actually,’ the man laughs.
‘Oh aye?’ Jack says. ‘Heard a bit too much o’ that just lately …’
‘Really?’
‘Funeral,’ Jack says. ‘Well, start of it. I didn’t go with them to t’church.’
‘No?’
‘No. There were the priest spouting the usual claptrap … except it wasn’t this time ’cos it were in Latin.’
‘Not a religious man yourself then, Jack?’
‘No. Not me. Not for me, all that life after death and stuff.’
‘No?’
‘No. Seen a bit too much of it, I have.’
‘Haven’t we all?’
‘And as for the bloody padre … Glorious Resurrection?’ Jack sniffs. ‘I do that every day wi’ me blinkin’ shovel!’
‘I must say I don’t envy you chaps.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing, though.’ Jack’s voice is shaking now. ‘Vile bodies – the Holy Joe’s got that bit right. Oh, Jesus Christ!’
‘Steady on, soldier. Pull yourself together.’
‘I’m … sorry.’ Jack takes out his handkerchief. ‘Anyhow, this won’t get the grave dug, eh?’ He blows his nose and tries to laugh, tries to forget, tries to imagine that it’s just another hole to dig, another trench, another sap.
‘That’s all these things are anyhow,’ he says to himself as much as anyone.
‘You what?
‘Holes in t’ground.’
‘Oh, aye.’
‘You dig a hole, you dig another, join the two together, meet up with your fellow digger – trench, sap, graves. They’re all just cold, wet ways to hide, to keep your head down for a while.’
Or for her, for Françoise, now, for ever.
‘Come on then,’ says Jim, picking up Jack’s wheelbarrow. ‘Let me give you a hand.’
17
The snow melts and then it rains, continuously, rains for days, filling up old trenches, overflowing shell-holes and making the mud cling more jealously than ever to the sticky corpses that the search teams are exhuming. The greedy, green-black Belgian earth with its bitter harvest is transformed into some shape-shifting monster from the marsh, jealously possessive of the lives it swallows. It refuses to yield up even the smallest bones without a struggle. And there are many, many struggles.
Jack is struggling himself, even in sleep. Struggling waist-deep in the green slime, or struggling to get a foothold on the sodden Menin Road marching towards the front line; struggling to pick his way through the piles and piles of horses, smashed wagons and the scattered debris of extinct men and beasts. Struggling too, once he awakes, to come to terms with what has happened.
He stops to light a cigarette. A small ‘thud’ in the distance is the signal that another unexploded shell has just been detonated – by the ordnance teams? Or by the enemy? One of ours or one of theirs? Jack could never tell. Not like the other men who seemed to know by the sound of the bang whether it was coming for them … or for the enemy. Yellow-green smoke curls against a boiling sky bubbling with black-grey clouds. On the far horizon, darker plumes drift high into the heavens like the clouds of incense burning by the open coffin in the Catholic church in Poperinghe.
Silence.
Birds sing again now – the first sign of spring. But Jack no longer hears them; his ears are shelled to near-destruction. But he remembers them; he can remember their song. And when he sees them, chest feathers ruffled, beaks wide open, he can hear them, hear them in his head. So the songs still exist.
When he sees her, too, he can hear her. When his eyes close, he can feel her, smell the mix of soap and sunshine on her skin. When he wakes in the morning at Reveille, for a blissful moment she is there and he can feel what the world was like when she was still a part of it, imagine a world with her walking at his side, her small hand in his hand, her shy smile, her blue eyes. And then he feels again the fear of losing her. His eyes close and he sees her leaving, getting smaller and smaller. In the worst of his nightmares she lies dead, in her mother’s coffin. And in the morning, when he resumes his digging, all the corpses, every empty shell of a skull, will wear her face whenever he lifts them on his shovel.
He is dreaming again. A barge floats past, the water gently slapping the sloping, wet, black sides of the boat. Jack knows that he should be getting back to camp, but the river just here is filled with eels; the black waters teem with slick silver slivers of life. A ration-barge passes slowly in the darkness, water slap-slapping at the stern. Once it’s safely out of sight Jack creeps back to the reedy riverbank to collect the bounty from his baskets. Dawn breaks, and in his head he hears the fluting of a blackbird; then the big thrush that always sang as night fell near the rest camp safe behind the lines at Heilly Station.
Was he really deaf to the dawn chorus by the time he was rebadged and sent back here to Ypres? Hadn’t his ears recovered from the pounding of artillery bombardments during those few brief weeks back home on l
eave after the catastrophe of July 1916? Had his nerves not been soothed listening to the rattling murmur of the River Ure over moss-covered limestone, catching the whine of the curlew on the breeze like the sound of a minnie-woofer echoing across endless, empty moors or the swifts screeching overhead like shrapnel shells? Had he not closed his eyes and heard her again and felt the sound twisting like a bayonet in his guts, seen her tears as she is taken from him, taken away, taken from the lifeless body of her mother almost twenty years earlier? He can see the small, red mouth opening and closing like a fish. But he cannot hear her cry.
A barn, a warm, dry barn. Jack curls up each night of his last leave like a fox on a bed of fresh straw. Listening, even in his sleep; hearing the sound of anything at all that is unfamiliar, quick to wake and to make good his escape, should it be necessary. But he is running out of hiding places.
One last week at home before returning to the Front, this time, for ever. One last listening to each tiny rustle of nocturnal activity in the fitful, restless sleep of the great silences of hillsides and of moorland, hemming him in on all sides. The scratching of rats in the rafters; the foreign tongue of jackdaws and crows carried on the breeze from the enemy trenches.
It is night. Out hunting, Jack’s senses are balanced like a trigger, responsive to each snap of paw on old twigs, each soft pad, pad, pad of a rabbit on dry leaves. He hears the sleeping breath of a pheasant, roosting in the low branches of a tree. Suddenly, the bird is exploding with the noisy energy of shrapnel just above Jack’s head as he pulls the wire noose tight around the scrawny neck of his next meal.
No. Jack’s ears aren’t the problem. He can still hear; it is listening that is troubling him. He hears everything. Just like he sees everything, has seen everything. But his mind is editing, selecting, amplifying and modulating every tiny airborne vibration. Like now, like the slop, slop, slop of water on the improvised punt floating in the small bomb crater he is searching.
‘Watch yourself, Jacko!’ he hears as he scrambles onto what is little more than a floating door, pushing himself clear of the steep sides. Ocker hands him the pole. The idea, of course, not being to use it to move as much as to prod, prod, prod the murky depths of this man-made pond until it touches something, something less yielding than the mud, something reaching out from years ago for rescue.