The Corporal looked from him to Cello, then at the floor, the cold flagstone floor. “Well confirmation usually takes a few days but it can be done sooner if… Though usually the CinC commutes the sentence to…”
“To what?” asked Ben.
“Imprisonment.”
Ben saw hope spring up, though not from the Corporal’s eyes which were still cast down. “See, Cello, see… pal.” He didn’t know how to refer to Cello so he used the word ‘pal’ awkwardly and began to smile.
Cello didn’t smile. “Usually…?” he questioned.
“Yes, but I don know, not bin ’ere that long meself and so I… s not familiar.”
“Well we will know soon wont we?” Ben was a little excited now.
The Corporal maintained his reserved disposition. “You will know, just as soon as it’s made known.”
‘Made known’, seemed a little formal and unforgiving. The ‘due process’ was as cold as the floor.
“While we’re waiting I want a bare cell,” announced Cello suddenly.
“A bare cell!” Ben and the Corporal spoke together, almost as one.
“Yes I want the bed cleared. I don’t want a bed.”
“But…” Ben felt hopeless just then; powerless. “How you gonna sleep?”
“The same way I slept in No Man’s Land, on the ground… floor. I just need a blanket. That will be luxury compared with what I had there. This is all I want.”
He held his cello.
CHAPTER FORTY
A visitor
Solo musicians cannot be interrupted. Watchers will never break a link with the high secrets of classical performance art. Musicians are the soldiers of the composer. Soloists and lead instrumentalists are the Corporals and officers, individual players are the troops, conductors are the Generals and Field Marshals. They are not fighting a battle. They are making a movement or moving an emotion, combining sounds to bring to layered hearts, a kaleidoscope of images and a lifted world.
Some lone musicians do not need an orchestra. They are complete on their own, regardless of where they are playing.
When Cello had been in No Man’s Land he needed his instrument. Now that he had it, he did not need a bed. He even turned away food.
Ben arriving at his door and seeing a bowl of breakfast porridge left on the floor there, saw a shaking man, seated on a stool in the corner of his bare cell. A man with closed eyes controlling the music and letting it take him at the same time. Cello’s hand was quivering as he pressed his fingers high on the strings to make notes.
It was not the shaking man of those times he had spent with Sergeant John Wall. This was a man seeming vulnerable by music which controlled him, jerked him, took his strength. At the same time made him strong. So strong he needed no external assistance.
He needed no ‘friend’.
So Ben stood and felt jobless, yet moved in the heart. The music was giving him strength as well as to the man who played.
Cello stopped playing eventually. Ben did not applaud as a concert audience might have done. He dropped his head in a sort of nodding motion. There was some desultory clapping from other cells however, who formed an unseen audience. “Do you like it?” asked Cello.
“Of course I do. It is your… You are a musician.”
“I try. A musician is never complete. He has to bring in the composer to interpret that person’s mind.”
A pause fell between them.
“What is that thing you do with your hand?” He imitated Cello’s hand, vibrating as he pressed fingers on strings It seemed to him strange to ask about it. But he couldn’t think of anything else.
Cello demonstrated it with his left hand. “It’s called vibrato. It gives the note a resonance, an echo if you like. I don’t use it for every note but I do use it a lot.”
“Yes.” But Ben had no idea what he was talking about. “That’s good isn’t it.”
“Well it is a technique used by all players in the more advanced…”
“You are good, I know; a very good… I think that’s why the President shot himself. He knew how good you were.”
“Why would that make him shoot himself?”
Ben shuffled his boots which he had cleaned since arriving at the logistic area. The music sort of demanded clean boots.
He had no real abilities, no music or art or… real opinion. “I don’t know.”
Being a soldier was not really a skill. You followed orders. Some followed them like lumps. At least that is what the Platoon Sergeant called them, whose limbs were for work and using the rifle. You were a rifle and a bayonet; nothing more. Except when working, which in some cases was done in the manner of a mad man. Leading men to be sent again and again to the same piece of wire to redo and redo it. Until someone got sacrificed just to make the wire firmer.
Perhaps the President; who shot himself, also believed the soldiers were ‘lumps’. Then came a cello player, not a ‘lump’. Somehow that caused the shooting.
That was something worth drinking to. Jack would have loved it. Ben smiled to himself at the thought. Suddenly he missed rum to drink to something. He wished Cello did actually drink rum.
He didn’t drink, or eat; only play music.
Ben sat on the floor, the only place to sit.
They waited; which was a skill that all soldiers did have, though Cello seemed restless, not nervous, unable to shut his mind down in the waiting.
They listened to the other prisoners moving and getting fed and then going out to take exercise. Finally Ben and Cello did also go out.
Meals came from the cookhouse and Cello refused his. Ben did eat; the ubiquitous mess tin of stew, which he didn’t have to go to the cookhouse for. In an act of passing generosity an MP private brought it to him.
The day wore. Very little light came into the cell block.
When Cello was not playing he glanced at his instrument often, perhaps to check it was still there.
Prison routine was only punctured by visitors.
One came late in the day. The Corporal brought him, unlocking and stepping slowly down the corridor, stopping at cello’s door; an officer. But eyes were attracted to the ‘dog collar’ instead of a tie. He was a chaplain as well as a captain. He had a naked head which was balding badly, which most captain’s heads wouldn’t be.
He addressed the cello which was not being played, with some surprise at its presence. “Private Marcus Harris?”
“Yes.”
The chaplain looked from the cello to Ben. “Do you want to talk in private?”
“I’m Private Routledge,” said Ben.
“He is my friend,” said Cello.
“Yes,” said Ben.
The chaplain smiled in a sympathetic way.
“Well… You both… then, should know… Should know, that the Commander-in-Chief, Field marshal Douglas Haig; has confirmed the sentence.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
A lieutenant
Cello and Ben’s eyes flashed naked at each other. The heart is the source of hope, still present while it beats. But the shock as a band of hope breaks from the heart, takes the veil off the eyes.
But even made flimsy, hope can start rebuilding straight away if there is strength to do it. “It’s not over yet Ben.” There seemed an edge of panic in Cello’s voice though.
The chaplain looked from one to the other. “Well… it’s signed now, so there is no way back from that. No appeal is possible I’m afraid.”
“So what happens now then, what happens, because cello is… He didn’t desert. He came back. He didn’t do it.” Ben had caught the tone of panic in Cello’s voice and his heart began to race.
The chaplain held up a hand. “What’s your first name Private Routledge?”
“It’s Ben, Benjamin.”
“Benjamin or may I call you Ben… I’m sorry. This is hard for you both. I am not permitted to speak about the details of the case. I have no jurisdiction in the matter. It is my job to support you at this difficu
lt time.” His voice had a funny sort of purr to it.
“Support, what support,” asked a defiant Cello?
“Well pastoral support.” The chaplain, looked around and his eyes fell inevitably on the cello, propped against the wall. “Ah… do you play?” He even touched it which prompted a sort of defensive movement from Cello.
“Of course I play.” Why would the cello be there if it were not to be played? But he declined to say that. “So when…?” he asked.
The chaplain responded quickly. “I don’t know. I am not entitled to know the details. But I am in residence here and when you want me just ask one of the staff and they will make contact. And I will pay a visit on the night…”
“The night before they shoot me… No thank you… that won’t be necessary.”
“Do you want to pray now, with me.”
“No, I don’t.”
There was a silence of finality, during which the chaplain seemed to take a place with the Court Martial board. “Well I will remember you in my prayers Private Harris, you may rest assured of that.”
“Rest, rest-assured. What do you mean by that? I’m not resting, assured or otherwise. As you can see perhaps. I have no bed on which to rest.”
The chaplain responded with some embarrassment. “Yes I was wondering about that.”
Cello let his embarrassment grow, while he reached for his instrument. He took it across his chest as he sat on his playing stool toying with the strings gently.
“Have you been in No Man’s Land father?” asked Cello suddenly using the Roman Catholic style of address for a man of the cloth.
“I have been in the front line, on many occasions.”
“Yes but have you been in… No Man’s Land… Alone?”
“Well no, no I haven’t.”
“At least you admit it. It changes you, being out there… Alone.”
“I can only imagine.” The chaplain was breaking now.
The atmosphere dropped a little. The three looked at the floor.
Ben needed a smoke. He needed rum. Cello’s strength gave him back a little bulwark of hope. Time surely was on their side. It would take time for the army to do… anything. Afterall there weren’t men marching around who could form a firing squad.
The chaplain, made a swift sign of the cross over Cello then, his duty done; he slunk away.
They had not an idea of how quickly things outside the prison complex could move. Their army, of the trenches and the waiting, was not this one.
But the day wore away. A parcel arrived for Cello to break the evening’s monotony. It was a small book which he did not allow Ben to see.
Ben smoked and went for food to the cook house.
Cello poured over the book with hasty anxiety. Ben asked him casually about it on return.
“Some music and songs and some very new music from a composer who will be England’s greatest…probably.”
“England’s greatest.”
“Yes although he did want to study in Germany. Strange isn’t it. This war is everything. It is the monster of monsters. Yet it is nothing if you were to be on an island in the middle of the ocean. Music, composing goes on; in England, Germany, where ever. Music creates another world.”
Ben felt his mind being stretched. “Another world! Island in the middle of the ocean!” He laughed grimly and ended up coughing. “I wish we were. Then we would be away from all this.”
Looking intently at the book, Cello picked up his instrument, or rather positioned it in the playing mode. He looked at his bow and seemed to dust it with one hand gently. Suddenly he struck the strings with the bow and drew it four times, across and back, across and back. Four low notes erupted, rumbling the walls almost. Cello stopped. “Ha, how was that.”
Ben stood shocked. “Incredible, like a tank perhaps in the war.”
Cello dropped his bow and looked with a little despondency at Ben’s inability to lift himself above the war.
“It’s the beginning of a new concerto. Dramatic isn’t it?”
“Certainly is.”
“My mother sent it. She knows the composer and thought I would like it.”
Ben couldn’t speak. Music was a mystery. He had caught a glimpse of the music written in hand in the book Cello had received. It was a kind of mystery that it had arrived. But the arrival of the actual cello had been as well. Ben was happy about his part in that. So he didn’t question or look further into the mystery.
That it made Cello happy was something also of tiny satisfaction for him and gave birth to some new little bandage of hope.
He journeyed back to his billet without the need to salute any officers.
His night was interrupted. “They need you at the prison.” He recognised the MP Corporal who had found him.
He ran breathless and was admitted to Cello’s cell.
It wasn’t even dawn yet.
A lieutenant was inside with Cello. They had some pieces of paper. Cello looked over his shoulder as Ben stopped at the door. “It’s today… well soon,” he said casually. Then went back to studying the paper.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
No birds
“There’s a song I want them to sing first.” Cello again spoke over his shoulder. “You can sing as well. And the Lieutenant has agreed to it.”
“A song. Cello what’s happening?”
“They are despatching me today, don’t really want me around I guess, not after what I said. So I’m being shot at dawn, which I guess is in about, what.” He consulted the lieutenant’s face. “One hour sir?”
The Lieutenant straightened but didn’t respond except for a slight nod.
Then cello, with a false brightness turned away from him paper in hand. “But first we will have a song!”
“A song.” Ben went back to the word.
“Yes the officer has agreed to instruct the firing squad in it… and lead it himself. That’s decent isn’t it?”
“Cello!”
“BEN, DON’T BE AFRAID. I’m ready.”
Ben had seen death too often perhaps for this. It took his stomach away; this calculated and prepared and deliberate death was not like the others.
“Here’s a copy of the song.” Cello held out a page, handwritten. The lieutenant had taken a copy for each of the firing squad, in a matter-of-fact way. “It’ll be like church parade. But instead of an organ I will play my cello.” Cello was actually smiling.
Ben couldn’t speak any more. Whereas before he had wondered about his dirty boots against the purity of the music, now he had no inside, no stomach or heart. Though a dull feeling emerged in his gut, below his stomach. With Cello being so calm he couldn’t scream out in some mad way as the Lieutenant Colonel had done when he was President. Ben couldn’t have a breakdown, not now. He wasn’t the one about to be shot.
An escort of MPs appeared in pre-dawn quietness.
The other prisoners had not succumbed out of the silence.
They slumbered on oblivious during this time of the night that demanded sleep more than any other. Or if they were awake they ignored the world, perhaps in fear.
Cello’s little procession did not show fear. It was not a time for that. The fear came before in the preparation, the anticipation.
Or should have done.
Ben’s stomach was still twisted. As he walked, it was twisting even more.
It was a strange procession. The MPs were leading, with Cello in between two of them. Instead of carrying arms at the shoulder, he carried his cello, which was larger than an arm, a weapon-like arm. But somehow it held some threat. Perhaps because of its unusual size.
The Lieutenant came next, followed by Ben. They moved as though their shoes were somehow muffled. They crept, wordlessly, secretly. There were no prisoners watching, as they usually did when Ben came to see Cello. The patrol passed all the cells and went out through the bottom door.
The chaplain did not keep to his word and met them at the door, adding one more who took up a place at
the back of the line.
They turned away from the logistic area, away from the village complex, or town that had been reduced to a village along a rubble road, then down a track with high walls on each side.
Cello looked up to search out any approaching sun, or grey smudgy dawn. He noted that no birds sung, unlike when he had buried Sergeant John Wall. John Wall had died. He would die. There was no hope of that not happening. But his hope lay in the music, in one more thing that he had to do in that regard.
The small road became a track and the walls widened.
A scene awaited them, a small farmyard, a rubbishy type of backyard where the lives of previously useful implements met their end and waited to rust. War had intervened and now a sand-bag wall was placed towards one side where a high stone wall bordered the yard. At the other side a section of soldiers who carried shouldered arms, stood in a group smoking.
“Still no birds then,” commented Cello.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Harmony
The squad ground out their Woodbines to prepare for their secret mission. They unslung their rifles.
The Lieutenant walked across to them apologetically and stopped them in the unslinging.
The MPs stopped Cello’s little team at a short distance from the men with rifles.
A low grey light of the coming dawn enabled them to see each other better.
Cello had been carrying his instrument balanced in the crook of one arm lengthways, not up and down like a rifle. Yet he unslung it from his arm and rested the small stake that protruded from its base on the ground. He looked towards the sand-bag wall then unbidden he picked up the cello again and walked over to it. The MPs, Ben and the chaplain watched. They had no control.
He needed something to sit on or he could play standing up.
The Lieutenant had finished passing the sheets around to the squad and talking to them. They looked uncertain but they still kept their rifles slung.
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