‘Lieutenant Wraxall? Thank goodness, I’ve been searching for you all over.’
I look up at the captain standing on the other side of the table. He has a prim black moustache and very precisely parted hair. His lips are pursed together into a thin line of annoyance. Clamped under his arm is a silver-topped swagger stick, a showy symbol of his authority.
I stand up and salute. ‘What can I do for you, Captain?’
He doesn’t answer right away, simply looks around himself with mild disgust. ‘I thought I’d find you in theofficers’mess. Took a dickens of a time to track you down to this quarter of the camp. Why on earth would you want to be billeted with the men?’
What can I say to that? Would someone like this captain understand that I am more at home with these men than the officers of my own class? That among the Tommies I feel in some way close to Michael, that scholarship boy I’d cared so much for.
‘Sorry about the confusion, Captain,’ I say. ‘Did you want me for something?’
He blinks at me, clearly irritated by my tone. ‘You’re to report straight away to Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher,’ he says, his tone stiff. ‘Your commanding officer wants to see you, Wraxall. Now.’
4
‘Lieutenant-Colonel Gallagher is here, in Étaples?’ I ask, surprised.
The captain looks as if I’ve wafted a dead trench rat under his nose. ‘Nothere.Across the bridge in Le Touquet, of course.’
‘Ah,’ I nod. ‘Of course.’
‘I suppose you might as well come back with me,’ he sighs, pulling the swagger stick from under his arm and examining his miniscule moustache in the reflection of the silver knob. ‘I assume there’s nothing here to delay you.’
It’s not a question.
I follow Captain Beddowes, as he finally introduces himself, out of the hut and through the dusty acres of the dunes. We don’t talk much as we cut around a cheerful rabble of men queueing for the shower stalls, and then dodge a motorised ambulance on the main road towards the bridge. The captain’s silence suits me fine. I’m not only curious as to why the colonel wishes to see me, I’m also puzzled by what Gallagher is actually doing here, on the northern coast, when the battalion he commands – the battalion I belong to – is over 120 kilometres away in the Somme Valley.
As we near the little bridge that spans the river Canche and divides the towns of Étaples and Le Touquet, two guards step forward as if to challenge us. The morning sun is blinding and turning the estuary into a sparkling silver thread. It isn’t until the last moment that the soldiers see the pips on our sleeves. One breaks into a smarmy smile and waves us through.
‘It’s all right, Lionel, they’re officers,’ he says to his mate, and salutes. ‘Sergeant Dennis Paterson, at your service. Do head on over, sirs. Lovely day for it.’
With its gorgeous beaches and luxury hotels to serve as their billets, Le Touquet is reserved for officers only. A privilege that is strictly enforced by this petty little checkpoint on the bridge. The common soldier must make do with the mouldy huts, leaky tents, cold showers, and ear wax-peppered porridge of Étaples. Still, we’re all in this together, right? Officers and Tommies fighting for the common cause? Well, German machine guns and snipers’ bullets don’t discriminate anyway.
We head down to the seafront, Beddowes gradually unstiffening as the miles pass. At one point he proudly waves his stick in the direction of the town park and informs me that, after his duties typing up reports and running errands for the colonel are complete, he’ll often lend a hand down there, digging up a spud or two.
‘They’ve planted this enormous potato crop, you see?’ he says, lifting his chin. ‘Right in the middle of the park. It’s used to help feed the sick and injured. I like to do my bit, of course.’
‘Commendable,’ I nod.
He gives me a sideways look and says drily, ‘Naturally, I’d prefer to be among you young fellows, right at the heart of the action. When I think of the hell those Jerry devils are unleashing on the poor Frenchies down at Verdun? Well, I feel like throwing a rifle over my shoulder, marching right into Berlin, and hanging that damned Kaiser from the nearest lamppost.’
‘Then why don’t you?’ The question slips out before I can stop it.
‘Oh, I would,’ Beddowes blusters. ‘Iwould, if only my lungs weren’t in such rotten shape.’ He taps the silver end of his stick very lightly against his chest. ‘Bronchitis as an infant. Left a permanent weakness. My curse, but there it is... Ah, and hereweare.’
It’s not to one of the grand hotels but to a commandeered seaside casino that Captain Beddowes has delivered me. Without a wheeze from those ‘rotten lungs’, he hurries across a sweeping driveway and up the steps of a fine three-storey building. I follow him between soaring columns and into a marble-tiled entrance hall. The pure dazzling white of the place almost hurts my eyes. In a large salon off to the right, I see wounded officers in pristine pyjamas reading newspapers while nurses flit between their beds, straightening covers and delivering cups of steaming coffee.
‘This way.’ Beddowes guides me up a flight of stairs to a set of large double doors immediately off the landing. He knocks and we stand awkwardly either side, waiting for the summons.
‘Come!’ a voice barks at last.
We enter a big room with floor-to-ceiling windows and a plush purple carpet. Probably the softest thing my army boots have ever walked upon. Sunlight streams between long golden curtains and makes a constellation of the cutglass chandelier hanging from the ceiling. Directly below this sits a toad of a man, dwarfed by his high-backed chair, stubby fingers laced over an ample stomach.
Beddowes approaches and salutes. ‘Lieutenant Wraxall, sir.’
‘Aye?’ The colonel fixes me with a beady eye. ‘Ah yes. At ease, Wraxall. At ease.’
Fierce, bald, short of breath, the red-faced colonel sits behind what looks like an old blackjack table, its green baize worn, the betting boxes now only the ghostliest of outlines. I step forward, all the while imagining what this room must have been like before the war. Duchesses in priceless tiaras and foreign princes rubbing shoulders with conmen and chorus girls, fortunes lost on the spin of a wheel. Now it is lives that are staked at this table, the bets of old men paid for in young blood.
