I’m applying the last of the bandages when I realise that Ollie has stopped trembling. I glance up from my kneeling position to find the boy’s sweat-soaked head cradled in Danny’s lap. Some of the platoon has gathered around us, Percy Stanhope, Robert Billings, Taffy Colston, and old Spud Pearson among them. A shimmer in his eyes, Pearson turns away, perhaps thinking of his own grandson who I know is not much younger than Ollie Murray. But like Ollie, the rest are listening to Danny. His voice is low, hardly more than a whisper, but it is rich and full and, in that moment, it seems to soothe the fear and pain of a dozen men.
‘The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me,
There he is, can’t you see, waving his handkerchief,
As merry as a robin that sings on a tree.’
I work automatically, finding some fresh socks in my own kitbag and drawing them gently onto Private Murray’s feet. He doesn’t so much as wince. He simply closes his eyes and listens, as we all listen, rapt and comforted. Danny sings on, making a lilting lullaby of that old music hall number.
‘The boy I love is up in the gallery,
The boy I love is looking now at me.’
I turn my gaze away from him and pack up my kit.
It feels safer that way.
11
The village appears to be nameless. It had a name once, clearly, but what locals remain here seem unwilling to speak it, as if the memory of their community is too painful for them to bear. My guide steers me along broken pavements, past a church with a hole cratered out of its side, into a street where all the east-facing buildings have been completely obliterated. Ladder-ribbed dogs run riot in the ruins, scattering a nest of rats that flow like black oil into the mouth of an open cellar. Meanwhile on a doorstep that has no house attached, a cat watches us pass with a gaze of idle interrogation.
‘You’re in luck,’ my guide tells me. ‘There is a fine villa on the Rue Saint-Denis that is still more or less in one piece. We can accommodate you and some of your brother officers there. For a small fee, of course.’
‘You can take that up with the quartermaster,’ I tell him.
‘Naturally, naturally,’ the man nods. ‘And if Monsieur le Capitaine wishes for any extras, well that can be easily arranged. Some wine and good cheese, perhaps? Apples from my orchard? A little brandy, maybe? Or perhaps something even better to warm your bed?’
We have reached the end of the street he named: a collection of what must have been fashionable villas only a handful of years back. Now they lie in silence, their brightly-painted shutters locked against the world. I look up between gutters swagged with vines. A summer night sky, still blue and cloudless, soiled by smoky smudges drifting in from the Front.
‘Where did these families go?’ I ask.
The man puffs out his chest. He has told me that he is the local baker, though these days he has various jobs, mostly servicing the needs of any passing regiment. When I led my men into the village an hour earlier, the baker had been on hand to greet our platoon with a tray of lemonade. A bill was produced as we took our final sip and I paid it from my own wallet. Now he tugs self-importantly at the lapels of a threadbare jacket, as if he were the mayor of this abandoned place.
‘Most fled to Paris when the Germans crossed the Marne in September of fourteen,’ he says. ‘The rich had other houses there, you understand? No need for them to return, even after Ypres when we held back the Hun and all this trench madness began. Though I must tell you, the son of the family that lived in this house?’ He glances at one of the darkened buildings. ‘I knew him well, little Raoul Letardeau. He was a good child and grew up to be a brave man. You know he left his family and their fine house in Paris and took a taxi to the battlefield at the Marne so that he might fight for his country. Imagine that! The government had abandoned the capital, but a young knight rides ataxiinto the heat of war. Ah, it’s a good story, though the ending is not like a fairy tale. Raoul was cut to pieces on his first day. Not enough of him left to fill even half a coffin.’
What was I doing in the September of ’14, only two years ago? I try to think. Games of clock golf with friends in our garden, long evenings drawing in the summer house, getting my uniform ready for the new school term. The war had begun to intrude upon us, of course. A few masters had signed up and marched off heroically, some of the older boys too. We expected them home by Christmas. My mother fretted and my father prayed over the unimaginable casualty lists that were reported in the papers. But then the slaughter after Marne became too immense for any newspaper to contain and, nameless, the dead lost some of their reality.
The only truly troubling thought I had known back then was the certainty that I was not made like other boys. I could appreciate the prettiness of the village girls, but those weren’t the figures that came to me in my dreams. And I lived in fear of being found out.
‘So, what about it?’ the baker asks.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Any extras I can get for you? Food, drink... some company?’ He clucks his tongue against the roof of his mouth. There are hundreds of officers in town and he has many such calls to make. ‘Let me know, Monsieur le Capitaine, and I’ll jot it down in my little order book.’
He takes out a wad of yellow paper and slides the stub of a pencil from behind his ear. ‘Nothing, thank you,’ I tell him. ‘And it’s Monsieur le Lieutenant. Anyway, here’s my squire, he can get me anything I need.’
‘Squire?’
The baker glances at the solid form of Danny striding down the street. In his arms he bears my writing case, its top protected with some kind of cloth on which sits a steaming covered bowl.
‘He looks a good-enough dogsbody, I suppose,’ the baker grunts. ‘Well then, you just push open that door, Lieutenant, and find yourself a place to sleep. There’s nothing worth stealing, so we don’t worry about locks.’
With that, my guide bustles off, treating Danny to a sullen glare as they pass each other.
‘Was it something I said?’ Danny asks, joining me on the step of the villa.
