‘Only the truth,’ he grunts.
I shake my head. ‘You want him to say that Beddowes making Ollie march caused his death. You want someone official to lay all the blame at the captain’s door so that you can – what?’ I close my eyes. ‘The doctor isn’t going to tell you that, Danny. The most he might say is that Ollie was made to suffer unnecessarily.’
‘So the bastard gets away with it,’ Danny says, throwing off my hand.
‘Let me do what I can,’ I say. ‘Let me try anyway.’
Tears shine in his eyes as Danny tries to look away. Then he suddenly turns and launches his fist into a broken door that lies hanging from one of the ruined villas. Rotten wood splinters and he kicks at the fallen shards. Then, without a word, he shakes out his hand, a few drops of blood flicking against the ground. When I try to reach for him, he pushes me roughly away, insisting that he’s all right. But the look on his face. I’ve seen that rage before, simmering, barely suppressed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, eyes wide as he shakes his head, as if coming out of a dream. ‘Are you hurt? I swear, I didn’t mean to push you.’
Cupping the side of his face, I draw him back to me.
‘Where is all this anger coming from?’ I ask. ‘All this rage?’
He flinches, as if stung. ‘I’m not...’ He looks at me determinedly. ‘Stephen, I promise you, the anger, it’s not...’
‘Not what?’ I ask gently.
In answer, he lifts his own hand and, mirroring me, gently touches the scarred flesh where my ear used to be. It takes all my willpower not to pull away. No one has touched that hideous landscape of skin since the doctor stitched it all back together. EvenIhate to touch it, not because of its ugliness but because of what it represents. A moment in the trenches when everything changed.
We stand like this for a time, in the darkened mouth of the alley, the houses around us pulverised and abandoned. No one at those glassless windows, no one in the gaping doorways. No one to see as he draws me close and wraps his arms tight around me. Tight, until all I can feel is the thud of his heart against my own. I feel safe here. Safer than I’ve felt since that night with Michael in the summer house before we were discovered by my father.
11th June
A black wooden cross gleams in the downpour as rain pummels the rough-hewn coffin below. Finally, the heat of the past couple of days has broken and now, while the sun struggles over the horizon, a bloat of thunderheads blot the eastern sky. After a little persuasion from me, a chaplain from some local regiment has agreed to rise early and perform the service. As he speaks his final prayer and makes the sign of the cross, he invites Danny to step forward.
The entire platoon bows its head.
‘Abide with me, fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide...’
Danny’s voice is sweet yet powerful. I see Percy sniff and wipe his eyes, Arthur Morse brush away what he would probably claim is only the rain from his face. Spud and Taffy stand with hands folded, their eyes downcast. As I listen to Danny, I think of the two of us last night, sitting around a fire we’d built outside the old barn, keeping vigil for Ollie. We had sat apart, perhaps still a little stunned by the intimacy we’d shared in the alleyway. Then Danny had lifted his gaze to the stars.
‘Ollie is the first man I know to die out here,’ he said. ‘Do you ever get used to it?’
Kamerad.My old platoon lying in pieces around me. Captain Danvers, a mangled corpse lying on the ground outside our dugout. A German invader, a boy, claiming a kind of comradeship with me before I ended his life.
‘I don’t know,’ I told him truthfully. ‘Perhaps you never should.’
A clod of earth smacks against the coffin lid and I blink myself back into the present. Danny has stopped singing and the men are lining up to throw their own bit of dirt into the grave. Rain lashes the pine lid, pulping their offerings into dirty smears. The service is over. Soldiers begin to shovel the earth back into place. Private Ollie Murray is dead and buried. It’s time to move on. I thank the chaplain for his time and the yawning clergyman shrugs. For a moment I think of my father in his place, shrugging away the death of a boy as part of some grand unknowable scheme. I think Father would survive very well out here.
‘Sad, of course,’ the chaplain says. ‘But perhaps in a way it’s a blessing. After all, I understand he was only in France a couple of days. Unlike the rest of your platoon, the poor devil never had chance to witness the real horror of this war.’
18
On now to Albert. We are running a little behind Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher’s schedule but we should still reach the town by mid-morning. I have kept my platoon at the rear of the column so as to avoid running into Captain Beddowes. With any luck, the Toad and the Snake will remain at the head of the line and Danny will be spared the sight of them. I glance his way as we leave Authuille and the last resting place of Ollie Murray. He seems calmer this morning. Perhaps helping me with the letter to Ollie’s mother has settled him in some way. We sat in the shelter of my tent just before dawn as I scratched out a few lines in pencil, discussing the phrasing between us.
‘It all sounds so... inadequate,’ Danny said, throwing back his head. ‘How do you do this, Stephen?’
I’d shrugged. ‘Because it’s the least Icando.’
Now, marching on through the rain, he offers me a weak smile. We’re all on our last legs, officers in flowing rain cloaks, infantry splattered with mud. The exhaustion of the past few days, the sleeplessness after Ollie’s death, it’s catching up with us. And yet none of the column look as wretched as the figures coming towards us. An order is bellowed down the line and as one we stand aside to allow motorised ambulances to rattle past. Then, in their wake, the walking wounded, bowed, bloodied, maimed and mutilated, all in their long blue overcoats with the filth-dappled skirts folded back.
‘Jesus Christ,’ Percy says. ‘Who are these poor buggers?’
‘Survivors from Verdun,’ I whisper back. I’d heard that morning of a transport that had been bringing wounded up the line but which had broken down just outside Albert. ‘And keep your tone respectful, Private Stanhope.’
