Danny and I have been away from our sector for almost seventy-two hours. Apart from that moment in the church tower, we haven’t had much time to ourselves. The past three nights have either been spent curled up in exposed ditches surrounded by other platoons or else with me billeted in an officer’s dugout while he sleeps in a cubbyhole nearby. During the day the continuing build-up to the big push has made all but a few stolen moments impossible.
Still, we snatch them when we can. We are taking observations of enemy transport movements from a raised parapet one afternoon when, both reaching for the field glasses, Danny’s hand accidentally brushes mine. We lock eyes and the joy I see in his, the almost indescribable happiness, is like a mirror of my own.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he says. ‘You first.’
Glancing around, seeing we’re alone for once, I pull his fingers to my lips and kiss each in turn. His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat and he closes his eyes. I slide his forefinger into my mouth, run the tip of my tongue across the pad. I feel him tremble. This is reckless, stupid even, but I can’t help myself.
‘Stephen...’ he whispers.
And then a Tommy comes inching along the uneven parapet like a tightrope walker, offering us tea from two battered tin mugs. He’s so focussed on not spilling the mud-brown liquid, he doesn’t notice as I let go of Danny’s hand. Danny takes the cup with hearty thanks and, before lifting it to his lips, gives me the biggest smile.
I live for that smile. It feels like my world.
But these moments are few and far between. There are men and machinery everywhere now. Trundling traction engines dragging behind them yet more guns, monstrous barrels sweeping high above the doll-like forms of the soldiers that continue to pour into the Somme. Even on the hillsides there are vast encampments, every inch of earth covered in canvas. And everywhere, rumours, whispers, reassuring predictions of victory that cannot completely dispel the fear in eyes.
For Danny and me, we often have only snatches of conversation and scribbled notes, like those we passed to each other in the listening post.
‘When can I kiss you again?’ he whispers to me now.
‘Shhhh.’
He takes out a scrap of paper from his tunic pocket and writes. We are sitting close together in a shallow trench, men hunkered down all around us while British and German machine-gunners duel overhead. It’s amazing really, Danny has been in the trenches only a week and yet he’s already used to the sound of the typewriters. Some of the newer recruits aren’t so relaxed, many flinching as the air above us is sliced with metal. But it’s not only these green boys who are affected. My own hands shake a little and I notice a couple of experienced officers having to make fists to disguise their shattered nerves.
Paper rustles into my hand:When?
I shake my head at him and smile.
But honestly, will the time ever come when we can hold each other again? The trenches are now stuffed with fresh bodies ready to be fed into the meatgrinder. There is nowhere that we can be truly alone. Meanwhile, the date for the push is set for the twenty-ninth. Only eleven days to go. By rights, we should get a couple of days rest away from the Front before we’re ordered over the top, but with everything accelerating around us any such leave could be cancelled. That kiss in the church might be the first and last Danny and I ever get to share.
It’s a thought that gnaws at me as we rise to our feet, the guns having finally fallen silent, and start back towards our sector. I watch the swing of his strong hand beside mine, see the crop of curls as he thumbs up the brim of his helmet, notice the parting of his lips as he laughs. I want nothing more than to hold that hand, to brush my fingers through those curls, to feel his lips on mine. But I can’t, because I’m as trapped here as I ever was in that collapsed tunnel. We’re both trapped, hurtling towards a zero hour we can’t escape, without even the opportunity to do and say the things that might make the prospect of our deaths even a little bearable.
‘Do you think they’ll all be there when we get back?’ Danny asks suddenly.
We’ve just passed a wonky sign proclaiming this area MANCHESTER AVE. Only a few hundred yards now to our platoon’s position.
‘I’m not sure,’ I admit. ‘A lot can happen in three days.’
‘I don’t want to bury anyone else,’ he says.
I’ve moved on a couple of paces when I realise he isn’t walking beside me any more. Glancing over my shoulder, I see that, apart from Danny, there’s no one else in this twist of ditch. If I dared, I might give into that ache inside my chest. I could go to him, hold him, press my mouth to his. But he suddenly looks so desolate, so troubled.
‘I don’t want to hurt anyone either,’ he says.
I step towards him. ‘Is that why you didn’t shoot that sniper? Because you don’t want to hurt anyone?’
‘I could’ve bagged him easy,’ Danny confesses. ‘Surprised no one else has, actually. The idiot might be a good marksman, but he stuck his head clean out of that gunner’s nest two or three times. Would’ve been like shooting fish in a barrel. All I had to do was squeeze.’ He looks down at his forefinger, curled as if tensed around a trigger. ‘But I couldn’t. Not like that. Not in cold blood.’
Damn it. If anyone comes traipsing into this trench, let them believe whatever they like. I go to him and take his hand in mine. ‘Danny, I’m sorry, but you will have to. One day, to save yourself or a man from our platoon, you will have to hurt someone. It’s just the way things are out here.’
He looks at me with haunted eyes. ‘But I’m not sure I can, Stephen. Because if I do, then I might not be able to stop. Hurting people.’
‘Danny, what do you me—?’ I begin.
But his gaze has fixed over my shoulder and I stop dead. Turning sharply, I find three men standing at the bend in the trench, their expressions ranging between flinty anger to stark alarm. I drop Danny’s hand. For an absurd moment I wonder if they’ve come to arrest us. Has Beddowes somehow convinced Gallagher of his suspicions and a charge of indecency been brought against us? But then I notice their uniform; these are Royal Engineers, not Military Police. I open my mouth to say something and they each hold up their palm in warning. One comes forward, almost tiptoeing across the duckboards. Reaching us, he says softly: ‘We’ve picked up vibrations around the corner. Sounds like tunnelling. Come with us, tread gently, don’t say a word.’
He gestures and we carefully follow the sappers around the bend. There’s a cluster of men waiting there, more engineers crouched against the wall, ears and stethoscopes planted to the earthen bank and to any scrap of dry ground. They remain so still that they appear frozen in place, like mannequins in a waxwork. When they do move – to incrementally adjust the position of a stethoscope or exchange a glance with their comrades – it’s almost startling. The other men are all ordinary soldiers who, like us, seem to have stumbled into this silent nightmare. If anyone so much as coughs or sneezes, the sappers’ heads snap in their direction and a glare almost as murderous as the threat beneath our feet is offered up.
Danny shoots me a questioning look. Very gingerly, I take out a pencil and slip of paper from my pocket.
