‘We’re for the front again next week, aren’t we, sir?’
‘Are we?’
‘So they say.’
‘You seem to know all about it.’
Preston slapped the thick flank of a horse. It champed on at the hay basket, unperturbed.
‘Well, I shan’t mind, I like being where there’s something going on, I suppose. I get fed up here, waiting around.’
‘Were you at Neuville?’
‘Oh yes, sir.’ He sounded casual. ‘You missed all that, didn’t you? Never a dull moment!’
Hilliard could not take it in. Perhaps Preston had been in one of the quieter bits? But no, none of them had because there had been no quiet bits that summer. Was he unaffected, then? Did he think nothing of what he had seen? Was he blunted, or simply resilient? It could be that he was unimaginative. But you had not needed imagination.
‘You were in Parkinson’s platoon, weren’t you?’
Preston glanced over his shoulder as he reached for the Tilley lamp. It swung, flickering momentarily over the eyes and nostrils of the horses. ‘That’s right, sir. There were just two of us left, me and Andrews.’ He lifted the lamp up and moved it along the line of animals, taking a last look at each of them in turn. As he did so, his expression altered.
‘Most of these have come to us new,’ he said, ‘we lost all the others. They’ve no right to make horses suffer in a war, not the way those did. They don’t choose to come out here, do they? All I do is try not to think about it, so much. It bothers me, thinking about it, sir.’
His voice was the same, the flat, Cambridgeshire accent, and his face looked ferret-like, seen in profile above the lamp. He means it, Hilliard thought, he just means what he says. That he tries not to think about the dead horses.
It did not seem wrong, then, that this should be so. He had forgotten how much he himself had come to like the horses.
‘Had you no ambition to go for the cavalry?’
He had not, for he saw no point to it, in this war, but none of that would have made any sense to the Major.
‘Don’t forget about Captain Franklin’s horse then.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with Captain Franklin’s horse that decent riding won’t put right again.’
‘Preston!’
‘Sorry, sir. Yes, I’ll go and take a look at it now, sir.’
‘All right.’
As Hilliard stepped out of the stables, he heard the splashing sound of a horse beginning to urinate against the stone floor.
Ahead of him, the shadow of a man, standing at the top of the drive.
‘Hilliard?’
Barton.
‘I though I’d walk with you for a bit, if that’s all right.’ His voice was friendly.
Hilliard had thought that what he wanted was to be alone, to go down between the fruit trees and into the dark lane and get his bearings. But now, with Barton standing in front of him, he realized that he did not, that he had had more than enough of walking by himself, of his own thoughts and memories and despair, had had too much solitariness, at Hawton.
He said, ‘Yes, do.’
Barton fell into step with him on the rough farmyard path. Away to the west, a succession of green Verey flares lit up the sky, followed by the guns. Then it went black again, as they came down into the lane facing a belt of trees. Again, Hilliard heard the sound of water.
‘If we go up here and turn off to the left we come into another orchard. It leads across to the church eventually. There’s a bit of a stream.’
Hilliard nodded and they went that way. The air smelled damp, there might be some mist at dawn.
He thought, I should remember this, I should remember everything about it, for it will not last. At once, the atmosphere around him seemed too insubstantial to be remembered, it was nothing, was only a walk between trees and through long grass at night, there were the usual sounds and smells, the hidden movements of small creatures in the undergrowth. There was nothing in particular to remember. And everything.
‘We’re for the front again next week, sir.’
The men always heard rumours and the rumours spread and turned out to be the truth.
Their footsteps swished through the grass. They came nearer to the sound of water.
‘I’m glad you’ve come,’ Barton said easily.
They went as far as the edge of the stream and then sat down, leaning against some willows. Barton lit a cigarette and the sparks flickered upwards through the leaves of the tree. His eyes and the lower half of his face were in darkness, but the line of his nose, with its high, narrow bridge, gleamed bone-white. The tree trunks were like pewter.
Looking at him, Hilliard though that Barton was handsome, and that he would have liked to introduce him to Beth. That thought had never occurred to him with any man before, probably because he had taken so few friends home. But he dismissed the idea almost at once, for Beth was too old, was twenty-four, was plain and about to marry the lawyer Henry Partington. Thinking of the new person she had become, he knew that she would not understand anything about Barton. He was not sure if he did so himself. But he wanted to understand. Beth might not.
‘I didn’t expect it to be like this,’ Barton was saying. His knees were up to his chin, head forward as he looked at the water. ‘I’d heard all the things you do hear about the war. I hadn’t expected it to be such a pleasant life.’
‘We are in rest camp, you know.’
You wait, he should be saying, you wait. But where was the point of that? Barton would find out, soon enough.
‘All the same, it’s a bit like being back at O.T.C. Rather boring. I thought at least we’d be under shell fire or sharing a room with some rats.’
‘Is that what you were looking forward to?’
‘Oh God, no!’
‘Then why say it? And this won’t last forever.’
‘No. I didn’t want to come out here at all, I was in a blue funk. I’d have done more or less anything … but I’m fit and of age, I couldn’t slip through the net. So I suppose I’d better make the most of it.’
‘Do you always tell people everything you’re feeling?’
Barton looked round at him in surprise. ‘Generally. If I want to. If they want to hear.’ He paused and then laughed. ‘Good Lord, we’re not at school now, are we?’
Hilliard did not reply.
‘Besides, it’s the way we were brought up. To say things, tell people what you feel. I don’t mean to force it on anyone. But not to bottle things up.’
‘I see.’
‘It’s my father mainly. He’s pretty busy so we might easily go through life seeing hardly anything of him. He makes a point of seeing each of us alone, for a while, every week, find-out what we’re doing, asking if we’ve anything to tell him, you know? It’s a bit like having an appointment in his surgery really!’
‘He’s a doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘When you say “we …” ’
‘There are six of us. Three brothers older than me, two sisters, younger. We all came tumbling one after another though, so we seem much of an age. It’s good that way, especially now. We’ve always been close, of course, but when you’re small children you just take that for granted, don’t you?’
Do you? Hilliard tried to decide. Yes, he had been close to Beth. But that had changed, now they were older, separated.
He said, ‘I have one sister.’
‘Younger?’
‘No, she’s twenty-four.’
‘Is she married?’
‘She – not yet.’
‘Tell her to get a move on, then you can have all your nephews and nieces – you’ll enjoy that.’
‘Shall I?’
‘Oh, of course. I do. I get on with my sisters best, I think. Both of them are married now.’
Barton slid down the tree-trunk into the grass, resting on his arm. ‘No, I withdraw that, there’s really no difference between any of us, we all live out of one another’s
pockets. And the brothers-in-law now. They’ve just been absorbed into the family! I shan’t like it being out here and not seeing any of them. We’re all so split up now.’
‘Haven’t your brothers joined up?’
‘One’s got exemption because he has tuberculosis. Dick’s in the R.A.M.C. but he’s gone out to Egypt. My youngest brother’s in prison.’ He talked about them as though he had never in his life found any reason to keep things back. Hilliard was slightly embarrassed.
‘He’s a conchy. I nearly was, but then I realized it was nothing to do with conscience, it was just because I was frightened and wanted to get out of coming to France. Edward’s different, he really means it. He put up a terrific fight, and he’s having a rotten time, it isn’t much fun for him. I’m better off than he is, at the moment.’
What he felt most of all was envy of Barton. He tried to picture what it would be like to have a family, to whom you were so close, about whom you could talk so lovingly, people you missed every day, and admitted to missing. What would it feel like? What kind of people were they, all these Bartons? What did they say and do together?
‘I suppose you didn’t much want to come back either, did you? Especially since you already know what it’s like?’
‘I don’t …’ But there seemed no way he could begin to explain, not without telling everything about himself. He had never done that.
Barton had moved forward and was leaning his arm down into the stream. ‘This is pretty well dried up,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder how long since it rained?’
Something seemed to click inside Hilliard. It was all right. Barton was all right. He could talk, after all, could tell him anything.
‘I didn’t mind coming back,’ he said, ‘it was so bloody awful at home. I couldn’t stick it. Not that I forgot what it had been like out here – I had nightmares about it. Nobody ever forgets. But I couldn’t bear to stay on at home, to stay in England at all, it’s … I can’t explain. I wish I could tell you.’
‘Tell me,’ Barton said simply. He still lay on his stomach, hand dabbling gently in the water. His legs were very long, reaching back through the grass towards Hilliard.
He had been waiting for someone, just as Garrett had waited for him. Waiting for Barton. Though he had not known it. Long ago, he would have talked to Beth. Not now. There had never been anyone else close enough.
‘Go on. Tell me.’
Hilliard did so. It was not difficult, after all.
When he had finished, Barton lay without moving, his head resting on the grass now, both arms outstretched. Hilliard wondered if he had fallen asleep. His own voice seemed to have gone on for so long, he had never talked so much. But if he expected some comment, none came. For a long time, they were both silent. A breeze came from somewhere behind them, rustling the willow leaves like silk. A few of them drifted down on to Hilliard’s shoulders and into the water.
He did not want to have to move from here. All the anxiety he had felt for so many weeks, longer than he could really remember, had left him, but the effects of the wine he had drunk earlier were quite gone, too, this inner warmth was different and strange to him, it had come because of Barton. It was a thought he could not yet cope with.
Twenty-four hours ago he had been asleep across two wooden chairs, on a boat in the English Channel. It seemed years away, he had been another person. How often was he going to feel like that? He almost said his own name out loud, into the quiet orchard, as some kind of reassurance. ‘John George Glover Hilliard. Born 10 April 1894. Only son of George Alfred and Constance Hilliard, of Cliff House, Hawton, Sussex, England.’
He remembered the clear, black lettering on the label of the valise in the apple loft.
‘What’s your name?’
Barton rolled over lazily. ‘David.’ He had answered at once, because it did not seem an unusual question, though it was, for Hilliard knew the Christian names of very few of the officers here, and would not have thought to ask. He had no occasion to use them, and more, the question would have been regarded as an impertinence. For that matter, he himself might have reacted in the same way. Yet he had said, ‘What’s your name?’ to Barton. He was glad to have done so, glad he knew.
‘Had we better be getting back?’
‘I suppose so, yes.’
But for some time neither of them made a move.
‘I imagine it was fairly painful?’
Hilliard glanced up, startled. Barton was looking with interest at the red, rough-edged scar along his left thigh. It made him want to conceal it hurriedly, he felt ashamed in some odd way, it seemed a blemish, a flaw, for which he was accountable. The only people to look at it until now had been the doctors, and that was not the same thing. He himself had examined it, peering at it closely as he used to peer at scabs and bruises on arms and knees when he was a small boy, charting their progress from blue to brown to yellow, watching the thickening of the skin. He touched this shrapnel wound with the pads of his fingers, sitting on his bed at Hawton, and now Barton was looking at it with the same kind of curiosity.
‘You’ll see a lot worse than this,’ Hilliard said shortly, reaching for his pyjamas.
‘But that’s not the point, is it? I’ve never seen any shrapnel wound before, this is the first.’
‘You must have seen plenty of gore in your father’s surgery.’
‘That was different. Isn’t this different, for you? It’s your own injury, that’s the one you know about, that’s the one that counts. Only by that can you assess what other people suffer, surely. By the damage to your own flesh, by the amount of pain you feel.’
Hilliard thought, how does he know?
‘What happened?’
‘Not sure. Some bit of metal flying through the air.’
‘Oh come!’ Barton was laughing at him. ‘How did it happen?’
‘I’ve told you, I really don’t remember too clearly. One minute I was making my way along the trench, trying to get past a pile of pit props someone had left in the way – it was pitch dark – then a shell dropped somewhere behind us and it was a bit flying off that caught my leg. Nobody else was hurt. It all happens so quickly.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Most of it comes about just like that.’ Hilliard snapped his fingers. He thought of the deaths and injuries he had seen, not in battle but caused by the single, random bullet, by a careless accident, by sheer bad luck. One shell coming out of nowhere, through the blue sky of a May morning, singing down into a corner of a trench where Higgins was frying bacon and talking to a couple of men from Glazier’s platoon. All killed. Then nothing more that day, only the warm sunshine and ordinary jobs. Sergeant Carson had had his arms blown off demonstrating a new type of hand grenade at the Training Camp. So many pointless, messy, inglorious deaths, ‘just like that’. He resented them more than anything.
‘Will it disturb you if I keep the lamp on for a bit?’
Hilliard smiled. ‘I can sleep through most things.’ And so will you, he thought, glancing across to where Barton lay reading, The Turn of the Screw, propped on his elbow.
‘Oh, God …’ He spoke before he could stop himself.
‘What?’ Barton laid down the book at once. ‘What’s up?’
The last time he had lain in bed like this and looked sideways at the man beside him had been the night before he was sent home from the hospital, the night Crawford had gone away, without giving him anything to help him sleep, so that he had had to lie and hear the noises, look at the rows of humped shapes and feel the pain in his own leg, like a deep burn. Then, the Field-Gunner had stopped crying and spoken suddenly across the space between their beds, half-delirious, had begged Hilliard to talk to him, to help him, help him, to take him away.
‘Who are you?’ he had said. His face could not be imagined beneath the white bandages. ‘I don’t know … Please … what time is it? What time is it?’
‘Just after twelve.’
‘Is it day?’
&nb
sp; ‘No.’
‘Where is it?’
‘This is the hospital.’
‘No, no, where is it?’
Uselessly, he had said, ‘Shall I get the nurse to come?’
But the Field-Gunner seemed not to hear, he lay muttering words Hilliard could not catch, except now and then a fragment about ‘the green light, the green light’. Then, for a few moments, he had surfaced, his voice became clear and quite steady. He said, ‘Who are you?’
‘Hilliard.’
‘Artillery?’
‘No, I’m an infantry lieutenant. Look, you’d better get some sleep now, hadn’t you? If you can. I don’t think you ought to talk.’ He turned over himself.
The reply had come out high and urgent, half a cry. ‘Oh God, don’t go away, talk to me. They keep going away. Don’t you go. Please, talk to me, talk to me.’
Hilliard could not. He knew that he should have got out of his own bed and sat on the chair beside the Gunner, touched him, given him a drink, let the man know that he would stay there, would listen to whatever it was he had to say, to the incoherent words about the green light. He could not do it, he was too afraid. He had rung the bell and after a long time one of the nurses came, hurrying because they were busy that night, seven men had just been brought in, the survivors from an underground explosion near Artois, she had no time to sit with the Field-Gunner.
‘Try and keep him quiet. You can do as much for him as I can, just at the moment.’
Her footsteps went away. The Field-Gunner began to cry again very quietly, as though he had given up hope.
Remembering it now Hilliard’s stomach seemed to come up into his mouth, he thought, ‘I fail people.’ He did not know what had happened to the Gunner, and it would be impossible to find out. He could not forget the sound of his voice and the sound of his crying.
He got out of bed again, rinsed the tumbler and drank some water. It was lukewarm. Barton was still watching him.
‘Hilliard?’