A Whispered Name (8 page)

If a
FGCM — a Field General Court Martial — passed a death sentence, he said, hands
falling open, the trial bundle hopped up the ladder of military authority: from
Brigade to Division to Corps to Army (A finger counted out the rungs.) At each
stage different commanders appended their view on the
character
of the
soldier … the
evidence
… and whether the
death penalty
should
be carried out. All this paper finally landed on a lawyer’s desk at GHQ who
checked the transcript for any procedural errors. Assuming everything was in
order, the case went before the Commander-in-Chief. He alone decided if a
condemned man was reprieved or not. (Martin’s hand came down the ladder, as if
it held the order.)

‘When
you open the Flanagan file you will see that several crucial documents are
missing.’ Martin pulled a cuff into view ‘Most important of all, there should
be a blue Army Form A three. Ordinarily the C-in-C wrote his decision on the
back page. If the man was shot, the officer commanding the firing squad added
his own endorsement confirming date and time of execution. In this case, that
form has vanished. With it went the doctor’s death certificate … if there was
one.

‘But
gaps in the narrative don’t add up to a meaning,’ objected Anselm, judicially
recalling that he’d often had to handle interjections of that kind at the Bar.
They vouchsafed a percipience to the Bench that was not, in fact, there.

‘No,
they don’t. But a
pattern
emerges if we take a wider trawl of the
records … a pattern that cannot be explained by accidental loss.’

Other
types of document ought to have been filled in. Registers of Field General
Court Martial; an AF B103 Casualty Form; Regimental, Company and Field Conduct
Sheets … and Flanagan’s name was nowhere to be seen.

‘And as
I explained to your Prior, the puzzle doesn’t end with the trial,’ pursued
Martin, leaning back in a kind of controlled slouch. ‘There’s no reference to
Flanagan resuming active service, he’s not listed as a casualty, and his name
was never carved on a monument. In the twenties, civil servants drew up lists
of executed soldiers and memoranda for ministers facing post-war flak … and
again Joseph Flanagan is never mentioned. In terms of a paper trail, he
literally vanished in September nineteen seventeen.’

Listening
to the succession of truancy Anselm found himself looking back to where it all
began, to the primary source — the file he would shortly examine. ‘Assuming
that the original court martial papers formed the basis for the later registers
and memos —’ Martin nodded, tapping the edge of his desk as if it were a piano
— ‘doesn’t that suggest that the file was weeded by someone in the
army
…
back in nineteen seventeen?’

‘Absolutely’

‘And
that whoever did it knew that anyone looking at what was left would be
mystified?’

‘Yes.’

‘But no
one would sabotage a file for the sake of a man who’d been shot.’

‘I
agree.’

‘It
might make sense if he’d lived.’

‘And he
almost certainly didn’t:

Martin
leaned forward, smuggling his elbows into the available space among his books
and papers and the photos of his children. ‘This is why I talk of a meaning. We’re
not dealing with a glitch in the administrative apparatus. It was an attack. A
deliberate wrecking of the machine to leave an enigma. But as to
who
attacked
the file and
why
… I’m sorry but I don’t think we’ll ever find the
answers. My guess is that Father Moore could have told us a tale to bend our
ears.’ His deep brown eyes found Anselm and didn’t waver. ‘Maybe you’ll uncover
his secret. Should you do so, I wouldn’t be alone in thanking you.

That
was the nearest Martin would go to admitting that Kate Seymour had come to the
PRO; and that he knew she’d gone to Larkwood as a last hope. His propriety was
inspiring but slightly incongruous. Kate Seymour had not revealed the one
secret that mattered: Joseph Flanagan was still alive.

Martin became ‘at ease in
his trainers’ as the French say, showing Anselm ‘the Donk Shop’ (submarine
jargon for the engine room) with a mystifying relish. It housed two
photocopiers, a computer terminal and a stack of redundant fax machines. In a
kind of delirium, Anselm pressed a button that would guarantee the
instantaneous annihilation of Moscow We’ve come a long way from throwing
projectiles from a balloon, he mused, following Martin into the room secured
for his research.

An old
oak desk faced a window overlooking the lake and the great, weeping tree.
Posters of past exhibitions coloured the walls. The focus belonged, however, to
a sort of exile standing forlorn in the corner.

‘It’s a
friendship plant,’ said Martin, scratching his head. ‘Everybody hates it. Remember,
just dial forty-eight if you think I can help.’

Anselm
pulled back the chair and sat down.

A beige
file marked ‘Private Flanagan WO 71/001A’ lay on the table beside a telephone.
Written in pencil on a faded green sticker was the instruction ‘Closed until
1992’. Anselm opened the cover. The first item that caught his eye was a yellow
slip of paper with his name on it — a computer generated ticket showing who was
in possession of the nation’s heritage. The second item was far more
interesting: another file, labelled ‘Private Owen Doyle’, the soldier whose
tags had been worn by Captain Herbert Moore.

Chapter Eight

The Court Convenes

1

After a desultory
breakfast Herbert left his billet and walked down the misty lane towards the
old village school of Oostbeke. He passed the monastery, glancing through the
open gate in the wall at the cracked flagstones that led to the white door.
Pressing on, he came to a low barn on his right that was open on one side, its
back to the direction of the wind. A burly carpenter was hammering together two
pieces of wood. The mallet fell like percussion as he sang a song from
The
Mikado.
‘The flowers that bloom in the spring’ — whack-whack — ‘breathe
promise of merry sunshine’ — whack-whack — ‘As we merrily dance and we sing’ —
whack-whack — ‘we welcome the hope that they bring’ whack-whack — ‘of a summer
of roses and wine.’ Whack. Whack. Whack. Behind the carpenter was a pile of
crosses, neatly stacked. To one side an assistant crouched on one knee,
slopping white paint on the finished article.

The
school was set back from the road with a playground in front. Morning sunshine
lit the haze around the square brick structure. White shutters, damp with dew,
seemed to float upon the walls. A framed air vent at ground level glimmered
with an oily light. The prisoner was in the cellar, it seemed. Herbert thought
of the Tommy locked up and trapped. So vivid was his evocation of the damp
concrete walls, the window of morning mist, the sound of the sentry’s stamping
feet behind the bolted door, that he suffered a wave of nausea. He didn’t want
to weigh another man’s worth; to judge the performance of his fibre, as though
he were cloth. No one wanted to sit on a court martial, though none would admit
why: it brought you close to your own fears, your own weakness, your own
capricious nerve — one day strong, another weak. All soldiers feared the
incidence of a bad day when, for once, backbone really mattered. If you failed
the test, well, no matter who you were, you ended up in a cellar by an oil
lamp. He breathed deeply nodded at the guard and pushed open the heavy door.

To the
left Herbert saw a room lined with benches, beneath which were hooks fixed no
higher than his chest. Two greatcoats had been laid out, each with their
sleeves joined as though they were carved knights upon a sarcophagus. Herbert
brushed against one and it slid to the floor, revealing a book in the inside
pocket. The title was visible:
Military Law Made Easy.
Herbert knew it
well. A lifesaver, written by Lieutenant Colonel S.T. Banning. There were exam
papers at the back, with answers. Briskly hardening his mind, Herbert strode
down the tiled corridor towards the hum of modulated voices.

Herbert
didn’t know any of the other officers, save the prosecutor — Edward
Chamberlayne, the adjutant of his battalion and Duggie’s administrative
Captain. He’d been thrown out of Oxford for indolence, a distinction that he
wore like a decoration. His eyes were strikingly clear surrounded by a dark
line of shadow, a feature that suggested he was a minor principal in an amateur
operatic society. He introduced the other members of the court: Major Robert
Glanville, the President, and Lieutenant Graham Oakley the junior officer. They
were gathered by a window which, incredibly still had net curtains. Through the
grey lace Herbert could just make out a stretch of distant woodland. Far away
the guns thumped like a racing heart.

‘Before
we settle down to work,’ said Glanville, ‘I’ll just remind you of some basic
drill. I’m pure Yorkshire and I’ll make myself plain.’

Square-faced
with a large moustache, the major towered over everyone in the room, his
uniform bulging across the arms and chest. There was a far away kindness in his
expressions, as though he might announce the founding of a public library or
the donation of brass instruments to form a band. For all the Yorkshire
credentials, his accent had the smoothness of a Sandhurst alumnus.

‘Have
either of you sat on a court martial before?’ asked Glanville. Oakley and
Herbert shook their heads.

‘A
pity. Have you seen an execution?’ Another joint shake of the head.

‘Good.
Now put that out of your mind.’

Herbert
had of course seen a firing party from another regiment heading off in the
half-light before dawn. He’d stood beside Duggie several times when Routine
Orders were read out by Chamberlayne to the four companies of the battalion,
informing them that a court martial had taken place and that the sentence had
been ‘duly carried out’. The words always unsettled Herbert. All the details
were given: name, rank, regiment, offence, place of trial, date of execution
and, worst of all, the exact time — to the minute. It evoked the picture of an
officer with a stopwatch and notepad. After each public reading Duggie had said
a death sentence would be imposed on anyone who committed a like misdemeanour.
The major was wise to have sensed these unspoken memories, and to have named
them at the outset.

‘First
things first,’ said Glanville, hands on hips. ‘This lad will be undefended. It’s
our job to make sure he gets a fair crack of the whip. If he has a defence it’s
up to us to ferret it out. Understood?’

Oakley
and Herbert nodded.

‘Second,
the assumption of innocence doesn’t apply He’s deemed to have deserted his
unit. It’s a General Routine Order. Correct, Chamberlayne?’

‘Almost,
Sir.’ The Adjutant made a bow with his head, as he’d probably done to his
tutor at Oxford. ‘As a court, you are bound to assume that the accused intended
the natural and probable consequences of his actions. If the accused absented himself
to avoid a special or dangerous duty, that act raises a presumption of
intention to so avoid. You are entitled to act on that presumption unless the
accused can prove other-wise’

‘That’s
what I said,’ replied Glanville, ‘only in a more memorable fashion.’

‘Of
course, Sir.’

‘Third,’
resumed Glanville, ‘a couple of years back, a lad pleaded guilty to desertion
and was promptly shot the following week. Since then we take a not guilty plea
whether the accused holds his hands up or not.’

As
Herbert tried to reconcile the implications of these last two decrees, Oakley
said, ‘I’m sorry, Sir … you mean we presume that he’s guilty, make him enter
a not guilty plea, and then see if we can find a defence to undermine our own
presumption?’

‘I do.’
He examined Oakley with a smile — the remote smile, Herbert thought, of a
professional soldier faced with the mystification of a volunteer. ‘There’s a
logic to it, Lieutenant, if you think about it long enough.’

Oakley
looked like he’d only recently come out of the firing line, perhaps the night
before — it left a mark on a soldier for several days: a kind of pallor and
exhaustion of spirit. He had a broad forehead and his mouth sloped down
slightly at the sides. Not having a neck of any significant length, his head
seemed to be balanced on his shoulders.

‘I hope
you don’t mind my asking, Sir,’ continued the Lieutenant, ‘but why is there no
Prisoner’s Friend for the defence?’

‘The
lad doesn’t want one,’ replied Glanville.

‘And a
CMO … a Court Martial Officer?’

‘There
aren’t enough to go round.’ Glanville smiled again, remoter still to the
disquiet of the civilian mind. In a soothing tone — or perhaps he was lightly
mocking his own masters — he said, ‘Fortunately we’ve got Mr Chamberlayne to
keep us on the straight and narrow.

The
prosecutor made another bow with his head. (As far as Herbert knew, prior to
his expulsion from Oxford, he’d been reading Greats.)

Herbert
strongly suspected that Oakley’s questions were derived from a hasty reading of
Lieutenant Colonel S.T. Banning. That showed diligence, at least. But it also
demonstrated one of the realities in this endless war: most of the
college—trained officers had been killed, very early on, in fact; the
volunteers or conscripts who filled their place had little if any idea of
military law or procedure. But what did that matter? Desertion was a terribly
simple
offence.