The Sons of Adam Page 10

  Silver stream

  S’adi (Sheik Moslih Addin, 1184–1291)

  33

  Alan stumbled from the dugout into the first chilly signs of dawn. Missing, presumed dead. The world was colossally altered. Alan could have lost both legs with infinitely more calmness than he could bear this hideous truth. Tom was missing, presumed dead.

  A sentry was standing on the makeshift fire-step, his face blank with tiredness. ‘Any sign of life out there?’ Alan asked him. His voice was harsh and the pain in his lungs still seemed to be as bad as ever.

  ‘No, sir, nuffin’.’

  ‘Any wounded at all? Any cries for help?’

  ‘Well, sir …’ The sentry shrugged, as though the request was incomprehensible. ‘You’re always going to get wounded, like, I s’pose. Can’t say as how I listens to ’em overmuch.’

  Alan wanted to strike the man hard in the face. His right arm actually ached to do it.

  ‘I’m going out,’ he said. ‘Please try not to shoot me when I return.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  The sentry had wanted to add something about the folly of leaving the trench as dawn approached, but there was an aggression in Alan’s manner that stopped him. Alan scrambled over the parapet and wormed his way incautiously forwards, right out to the heart of the battlefield’s horrors. The ground was littered with fragments of wire, shell canisters, human beings. A human face, detached from its skull, had floated to the surface of a puddle, and lay face up, leering at the sky. Alan noticed nothing; cared for nothing. He reached the spot where he thought Tom’s raid had come to grief and began to call out.

  ‘Tom? Tommy? Tom Creeley?’

  He was being desperately foolish. He was within simple sniping distance of the German lines.

  ‘Tom? Tommy? Tom Creeley?’

  There was no sound at all, no human voice, no groan. The German rifles, which could have blotted him from existence in a second, held their fire.

  ‘Tom? Tommy? Tom!’

  There was no answer. How could there have been? Tom had assaulted the German guns. The guns had spoken. Their word was final. Tom was missing, presumed dead.

  34

  Headache.

  A crashing, pounding tyrant of a headache that swallowed all other sensation, all other feeling. For a long time, Tom lay with his eyes closed, aware of nothing but the monster raging in his head. But slowly, inevitably, life came back. Life and, with it, awareness.

  Awareness of being alive. Awareness of pain mixed with numbness all the way up and down his left leg. Awareness of finding himself safe when everything in logic said he should have been dead.

  He squeezed his eyes open. Above him there was a plank ceiling, sturdily and neatly constructed. Candlelight flickered on the boards. French mud poked between the cracks. The ceiling was a pleasure to look at. Tom let his mind wander among the only objects in his little universe: his headache, the pain in his leg, the planks overhead.

  But life and understanding continued to return, bringing horror in their wake.

  There was light coming from somewhere: a candle. Tom rolled over to look at it. It was stuck to the top of a British helmet, beaten crazily out of shape. Tom stared. The helmet was his, but why was it so badly misshapen … ? He felt his leg: it was badly wounded. The pain grew stronger.

  He remembered more.

  He remembered Stimson being blown away and Shorty Hardwick bloodily scythed to the ground. Stimson’s body had been between him and the shooting. Quite likely, Stimson’s death had been what allowed Tom to survive the onslaught almost unscathed. Poor bloody Stimson …

  He closed his eyes again, possibly slept some more. When he woke up, his headache was still bad, but his mind was clearer. Clear enough to understand that the plank ceiling above his head was too neatly built to have been made by British hands. Clear enough to understand he was a prisoner of the Germans. Clear enough to remember that it was his twin, his brother, Alan Montague, who had wanted all this, who had sent him out to die, who had wanted him dead.

  The friendship that had been the best thing in his life had turned to ash.

  35

  Every night, for four nights, Alan searched for Tom.

  He came to know no man’s land as no one was ever meant to know it. He found corpses, he found dying men, he found the wounded of both sides. The dying men he shot or drugged into insensibility with morphine. The wounded he dragged laboriously back to the trenches, before squirming out once again. He called a thousand times for Tom. He abandoned caution. He stood up on moonlit nights. He used the light of flares to survey the shell-ruined landscape. He shouted for his lost brother at the top of his voice.

  The Germans heard and saw him, of course. Alan could hear the German sentries echoing his call – ‘Tom! Tom Creeley!’ – followed by bursts of laughter and the muttered sing-song voices of the Bavarian regiments. By removing cartridges from the ammunition belts of the machine guns, they could even get their guns to rap out the same rhythm. ‘TOM, Tom-MEE, Tom CREEEE-LEEE!’ But there was no rifle fire, and even the machine guns didn’t seem to be directed at him. From kindness, compassion, or perhaps just indifference, the Germans let the lunatic Englishman roam up and down the devastated land.

  36

  ‘Komm, Tommy, komm!’

  Tom had hardly regained full consciousness before he was plunged further into nightmare.

  With his good leg on one side and a burly German arm helping him on the other, Tom was escorted down a maze of trenches to a field hospital. He was given a brusque examination and a tetanus injection. Then he was marched off to a farmyard where four other British prisoners were being held under guard, before all five of them were marched further into German-held France.

  By the time they reached the prisoner-of-war holding camp, Tom was on the point of collapse. His wounded left leg felt as though it were on fire, and big surges of pain washed up and down his body, like an ocean tide trapped in a goldfish pond. The camp consisted of a group of gloomy tin huts encircled by barbed wire. There was a brief search at the gate – Tom’s cigarettes were removed, over his objections – and he was sent to a hut marked with the Red Cross. A nurse took a quick look at him, decided he wasn’t going to die in the night, and let him collapse exhausted onto a straw pallet. He closed his eyes but couldn’t sleep. Depression assailed him.

  He was a prisoner of war.

  Alan had tried to kill him.

  On either count, he’d have preferred to die.

  37

  Alan abandoned the search, which had become increasingly dangerous, increasingly pointless. Furthermore, he was exhausted beyond description. He didn’t in all honesty know if his body and lungs could bear another night of it. And then there was Guy. Alan got word of Guy’s wound and the hospital where he was being treated.

  Alan faced facts. It was time to leave the front, to leave the battle, to give up on Tom for ever.

  Two days later, Alan arrived in Rouen, at the school-turned-hospital where Guy was being treated. He made his way stiffly to the correct ward. Guy’s bed was empty: tumbled white sheets and nothing else. Alan stepped across to the booth where the ward sister sat.

  ‘Bonjour, madam. Je cherche Major Montague –’

  Alan was about to continue, but the sister half turned to point, saw the empty bed, then interrupted.

  ‘Oh, là là! Comme il fume!’

  She indicated a door out into what had once been the schoolyard. Alan walked out and found Guy sitting at ease in a cane chair, his bandaged leg covered with a thin green blanket and resting on a couple of packing cases marked ‘War Materials – Urgent’. He was wrapped in a cloud of cigar smoke and a three-day-old Times lay half read on his lap.

  ‘Guy!’ he said, feeling somehow anaesthetised and shell-shocked all at once. ‘How are you?’

  The brothers embraced, as well as they were able, given Guy’s awkward sitting position.

  ‘Not bad, old boy, considering. Damn thing aches like the devil
, that’s all.’

  Although he had come to Rouen specifically to see Guy, now that he was here Alan could only think of Tom and Tom’s death, and the urgency of letting everyone in the world know, including Guy. But etiquette forbade him from raising the topic just yet. Guy was unwrapping some dressings and pointing out where the bullet had entered and where it had left, and exactly what damage it had done along the way. Alan found himself unable to understand anything his brother was saying. He didn’t even care particularly. The wound was minor and Alan had seen too many serious ones to be much perturbed.

  ‘How did it happen?’ he asked, when it was his turn to say something.

  Guy shrugged the question away. ‘One of these things,’ he said. ‘Came clattering round the corner on my way back to the dressing station and ran right into the damned brigadier. He wasn’t best pleased with me, spattering his nice clean khakis with blood. Wanted a great big council of war that afternoon, and ordered me – ordered me, mark you – to get the wound cleaned and dressed, then report back to him for his precious get-together. I can tell you the doctors were a bit narked. They wanted to send me straight here; thought the brig’s attitude was a bit rich, frankly.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose.’

  ‘Not to mention that I was wearing your dratted tunic. I’ve had the thing cleaned, of course: you don’t want my blood all over it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes? You do want my blood on it?’ Guy raised his eyebrows.

  ‘I mean no.’

  ‘Are you all right, old fellow?’

  ‘Guy, look, I need to tell you right away. You may not know. It’s Tom. He’s dead.’

  Guy’s face was initially impassive, before changing to something a little more sombre and concerned. He laid his cigar aside. ‘Killed? Alan, I’m so sorry. It’s a tragic loss.’

  Guy’s words were so blank, so vague, that Alan felt a sharp jab of anger. ‘Tragic loss? For God’s sake, it’s beyond tragic. It’s a bloody disgrace. It’s a shame. It’s a damned bloody crime, that’s what it is.’

  ‘A crime? Alan, I did what I could. The brigadier was absolutely intent …’ Guy’s words faded out. He realised he had boobed and Alan was suddenly on the alert.

  ‘You were there? By God, of course you were. The brigadier’s council of war. You were there! When it was decided. You were there and you didn’t stop it.’

  Guy drew heavily on his cigar and sank back in his chair, as though to invoke the protection accorded to invalids. ‘I couldn’t stop it, could I? I’m a major. The brigadier’s a brigadier. It was him that gave the order.’

  ‘But you knew the position. You knew that those gun posts were impregnable.’

  ‘And so did the brigadier. He knew it every bit as well as I did. Better.’ Guy had sat up again and his cigar was idle in his hand.

  ‘But you’re on the staff. You could have spoken out. You could have leaned on him or had somebody from HQ lean on him.’

  Guy plucked at his collar, as though checking that it was straight. He was one hundred per cent engaged on the conversation. His normal languid confidence was nowhere to be seen. ‘The brig’s mind was made up. You know these types. Field Marshal Haig could have yelled at him and it’d have made no difference.’

  ‘But you didn’t try. Because it was Tom, you didn’t try.’

  Guy’s voice rose in answer. ‘The fact was that Tom was the very best officer for the job. If anyone could have pulled it off, he could have. I thought it was a stupid mission and said so – not in so many words, of course – but if it was going to go ahead, then we chose the right man.’

  Guy finished his sentence too quickly, as though with a consciousness that he’d boobed again. He plucked at his collar a second time. Alan noticed his brother’s discomfort and fastened on to it.

  ‘We chose? We? Who’s we? You and the brigadier …’ Alan paused only for a moment. Now, all of a sudden, with Tom not here, Alan was seeing something in Guy that Tom had always seen. It was as if that old intuitive communication was working one final time. ‘You suggested his name,’ he said in a whisper. ‘The brigadier announced his bloody stupid plan. You probably argued against it. But when the brigadier insisted, you suggested Tom. Don’t deny it, Guy. I know. I know.’

  ‘He was the best officer for the job. He was the outstanding choice.’

  ‘Oh, that’s true, I don’t doubt that’s true.’

  ‘It needed dash and pluck and sheer bloody-minded aggression. That was Tom.’

  ‘You hated him, Guy. He always said you did. And I never … I never … By God, you killed him. I’ll never –’

  Alan shrank back, as if from a carcass. His mouth puckered in disgust. A couple of nurses were walking across the bottom of the schoolyard, their uniforms brilliant white in the afternoon sun. A doctor came running to catch up with them. His coat was white, but it was stained with blood, and didn’t catch the sun in the same way.

  Alan was about to walk away, but Guy leaned out of his chair to grab his brother’s arm.

  ‘Wait! There’s something you don’t know.’

  Alan wavered a moment, as Guy hesitated. ‘What? What don’t I know?’

  ‘My wound. I didn’t tell you how it happened.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Guy! One little flesh wound and you think you’re a bloody martyr! Grow up!’

  Alan began to leave and this time Guy didn’t attempt to stop him. ‘Just remember, you don’t know everything,’ he shouted. ‘If you knew, you wouldn’t blame me. I did what I could.’

  He shouted, but Alan didn’t respond.

  At the bottom of the schoolyard, the same two nurses were walking back the way they’d come, slowly. The hospital was full of the stink of death.

  38

  The cardboard scale wavered and sank.

  Tom stared at it with hungry eyes. His fellow prisoner of war, a Canadian from his uniform, cut a crumb off the left-hand slice of bread and transferred it to the other pan. The scale levelled out. The Canadian removed both slices and laid them on a cloth. There were five slices, all precisely equal. The Canadian withdrew his hands.

  Tom reached for the slice nearest him, no matter that there was a woodchip clearly lurking in the black dough. The Canadian waited till everyone had chosen, then took the one piece remaining. The other men moved away. Tom didn’t.

  ‘Got the sawdust, huh?’

  Tom shrugged.

  ‘New?’

  Tom nodded.

  This was his fourth day in Hetterscheidt, a prisoner-of-war camp a little way outside Düsseldorf. The camp was a bleak place of tin huts, bare earth, barbed wire, and guard posts. A thousand men lived there, sixty men to a bunkhouse. A stand of a dozen cold taps constituted the washing facilities for the entire camp. All men were made to work long hours and under constant supervision from the German guards, known as Wachposten. Tom himself had to smash rocks as raw material for a nearby soda factory.

  But the accommodation wasn’t the problem. Nor were the taps. Nor was the work.

  The food was.

  One loaf of bread each day between five men and that was it. Nothing else. Tom was hungry already. For the first time in his life he’d encountered men close to starvation and he had just joined their ranks.

  ‘You can get to like the sawdust too,’ said the Canadian, folding his cardboard scale away into his bedding. ‘It’s something to chew on.’

  There was something about the man that Tom instantly liked and trusted. ‘Tom Creeley,’ he said, holding his hand out and introducing himself properly.

  The Canadian looked round with a smile. ‘Mitch Norgaard,’ he said. ‘Hi.’

  They exchanged the information that prisoners always exchanged. Norgaard had been in Hetterscheidt since December 1915. Although in a Canadian regiment, Norgaard was actually an American citizen. He’d signed up because his mother was Belgian and he’d been appalled by the outrages committed by some German soldiers in Belgium during the first few days of the war.

/>   ‘So I figured I ought to sign up and let them commit outrages against me as well. I guess my plan worked even better than I hoped.’

  ‘You’re a Yank? I thought –’

  ‘Yeah, yeah. The Canadian regiments weren’t allowed to admit us. Well, they weren’t. But they did.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  Tom filled Norgaard in on his own story: regiment, date of capture, work detail.

  Norgaard nodded. ‘Red Cross?’ he asked.

  Tom shook his head. ‘Missing, presumed dead,’ he said.

  ‘You’re kidding.’ Norgaard’s expression became deeply serious, as though Tom had just admitted to a terminal illness, which in a way he had. Most prisoners survived by supplementing their prison rations with parcels sent by the Red Cross from Geneva, but if you were recorded as ‘missing, presumed dead’ then the humanitarian bureaucracy had nothing to offer. ‘Thanks to your Royal Navy, Fritz can’t feed himself properly, let alone look after his prisoners. You won’t survive without food parcels.’

  Tom shrugged and yanked at his waist. His belt was already fastened one notch tighter than normal and his trousers already beginning to balloon.

  ‘Friends and family?’ pursued Norgaard. ‘You should write. Get that “presumed dead” horseshit sorted out.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘What the hell do you mean, no? You must have someone.’

  Tom swallowed. He knew how serious his situation was, of course. But Alan had tried to kill him and he would be damned if he’d beg for help from the Montague family now. There was still his father, of course, but Tom knew how close Jack Creeley was to the Montagues, and writing to Jack was hardly different from writing direct to Sir Adam. He shook his head.

  ‘I won’t do it,’ he said. ‘I’d sooner die.’

  39

  It was the first cold day of autumn. There was only one fire in the room and Alan was cut off from its warmth by a long wooden table and the three well-padded bottoms that sat behind it.