Field Service (25 page)

‘How many are still here?'

‘Sixty-two,' Drake said.

At the height of the work, Reid had commanded almost two hundred men. Recently, since the bulk of the actual graves had been dug and the work had turned to preparing the appearance of the cemetery, this number had been halved. Now he had lost almost forty of those men overnight.

‘Spilt milk,' Drake said. ‘We'll manage.'

‘Of course we will. We always do.' Reid left the men and went to where Benoît awaited him.

Benoît beckoned him into his office, and Reid saw by the way the man avoided his eyes until the two of them were finally sitting facing each other that something was wrong.

‘Your nurses will finally come,' Benoît said. ‘I have been instructed by my own superiors to assist you in any way possible. They have offered to send more men if necessary.'

‘Thank them for me,' Reid said. ‘I doubt it will involve much – not here at the station, at least. The Commission will want to put on its main show at the cemetery itself.'

‘Of course.'

‘Apparently, we're kowtowing to the newspapers and to public demand back in England.'

Benoît did not understand the phrase and so Reid explained himself.

‘But surely that's a good thing,' Benoît said. ‘For the people back in England to see.'

‘It's what Wheeler and his superiors clearly believe.'

It had also been rumoured that other Commission members and an array of invited guests would now attend the ceremony. None of this information had been delivered to Reid directly, and this angered him as much as the lack of forewarning concerning his depleted labour force.

‘They're sending two hundred chairs today,' he said.

‘Two hundred,' Benoît repeated, considerably more impressed by this than Reid.

It had even been rumoured that representatives from both the War Office and the Medical Council were also coming over from London to participate in the event, so great was the demand from the newspapers. And with every one of these tales and rumours, Reid saw yet again how far beyond his own control the ceremony had now moved.

‘They were brave women,' Benoît said. ‘To come here and do what they did.'

‘They were indeed,' Reid said.

‘And Mrs Mortimer has worked hard to achieve all this on their behalf.'

‘She has.'

Benoît busied himself preparing them coffee.

When this was ready, Benoît surprised Reid by taking a bottle of cognac from the drawer in his desk and pouring them both a glass. It was not yet seven in the morning. Soon the whistle would sound at the canal halt and a few minutes later the train would appear.

Finally, waiting until they had both sipped the spirit, Benoît said, ‘They're closing the railway. The branch line and the station. It seems we are soon no longer to serve any true purpose.'

‘Following the completion of the cemetery?'

‘And the others by the river, yes. Temporary narrow-gauge lines can be more easily laid and operated where necessary.'

Reid could think of nothing to say to the man.

Benoît must have long since realized that the line would soon close, but this knowledge had clearly done little to cushion the blow now that it had finally been confirmed.

Reid knew that Benoît had been born only three miles from Morlancourt, and that he had lived and worked there all of his life – almost sixty years.

‘There's a great new plan for the whole country,' Benoît said, sipping his cognac again. ‘Hereabouts, especially. From Paris to the coast, and east into Belgium.'

‘I daresay a great deal was destroyed and damaged,' Reid said.

‘Of course. And now, we are told, each and every one of us must grasp this unique and precious opportunity to build anew for the glory of France in the future. Mile upon mile of lesser lines will become redundant, replaced by new and direct connections and by new and better roads.'

‘Including here?' Reid said. He put down his glass and sipped the bitter coffee instead.

‘The main line will now run directly from Amiens to Saint-Quentin. I am told that I will be offered an opportunity to apply for work in the stations there.'

Every word Benoît spoke pushed him further away from the likelihood of this ever happening. Besides, it was unlikely that he had any intention of leaving his own small kingdom of Morlancourt or of applying for any kind of work in either of these much larger places.

‘Is that a possibility?' Reid said.

‘It would mean going to live elsewhere,' Benoît said. ‘Otherwise how would I get there and back every day once the railway has gone?'

‘You might consider—'

‘Besides, my wife would never leave.'

Reid was glad the brief pretence was over.

‘Twenty years ago, perhaps, ten even,' Benoît went on. ‘But not now. She would never abandon Pierre.'

And neither would you.

‘Of course,' Reid said. It was the beginning and the end of all Benoît's reasoning and argument. ‘Will you retire, then?' he said.

‘I'm fifty-eight. All my wife ever really wanted was to become the grandmother to a brood of noisy, demanding grandchildren. It was once all the consolation she sought for her hard life.' He sipped his coffee and brandy in succession.

‘When will it happen?' Reid asked him.

‘They say within the year. The two others here have already made up their minds to go to Saint-Quentin. They're young men. They have no true commitments here beyond their parents. Besides, both served in the war and both were wounded. We may not provide such grand burial grounds for our own dead, but France has always been a good mother at pushing certain of her children to the front of certain queues. I don't blame them – it's a great opportunity for them. If they stayed in this backwater they would only turn slowly and unhappily into me.' He smiled at the suggestion.

‘It sometimes seems as though the whole world is about to become a completely different place,' Reid said.

‘Oh, I don't doubt it. And nor should you, Captain Reid. We shall all wander amid the ruins and the rubble for a few years more, and then a whole new country filled with prosperous towns and factories and farms will slowly rise up around us. All this suffering must surely one day be repaid. Surely, one day, we shall all see the
purpose
of everything we have just endured.'

Reid said nothing to contradict the man's forced and desperate belief. He wanted to ask Benoît why he insisted on accepting the empty promises made by his own politicians. He wanted to tell him that England hadn't been reduced to ruins and rubble, but that even there things were no better for the ordinary man.

Eventually, Benoît seemed to sag where he sat. He drank the last of his cognac and let out a sigh. ‘Do you think
anything
will ever go back to the way it was before?' he said.

‘Some things,' Reid said, but did not elaborate.

‘Important things – things that matter?'

‘I hope so.'

‘And for people like me and my wife – all those people for whom things can
never
be the same again?' Benoît looked at the empty glass he held, and for a moment Reid thought he was going to throw it to the ground, or against one of the walls, but instead he set it carefully down on his desk.

‘Will there be other changes here in Morlancourt, do you think?' Reid asked him.

Benoît shrugged. ‘What can change with the railway gone? We shall just go back to being what we have always been. Perhaps it would have been better for us all if the war
had
come more violently to the place. At least then there would be some
need
for all this grasping of the future.'

It then occurred to Reid that at some of the more recent Commission meetings there had been discussions concerning the employment of local labour to maintain the finished cemeteries. Gardeners would certainly be needed, and occasionally stonemasons and builders. The gates and paths, monuments, memorials and boundaries would have to be tended. The register of burials at each site would have to be kept up to date for visitors to consult. And those same visitors, presumably, would also need knowledgeable guides and somewhere to stay, somewhere to eat and drink, perhaps even someone to drive them back and forth between the new stations and the cemeteries.

He told Benoît all this, but to his surprise and disappointment, the station master showed little real enthusiasm for what he was suggesting.

‘It's worth a try, surely?' Reid said.

Eventually, unable to listen to Reid's speculation on all he was proposing, Benoît said, ‘And your Colonel Wheeler – you truly believe that he would act on
your
recommendation?' He reached out and held Reid's arm for a moment. ‘Please, my dear friend, do not prostrate yourself before the man on my account. These men – our so-called superiors – they see only themselves in all they do. The rest of us – you and I, my son, your soldiers – we are all only profit and loss to them, borrowed honour and other men's glory, that's all. All that truly matters to these men is their own standing in the world, their own reputations, bought with the lives and suffering of others.' He released his hold on Reid's arm, put both hands in his lap and bowed his head.

After this, neither man spoke for several minutes, both of them content to sit in silence and listen to the voices of the men along the platform waiting for the train.

Eventually, a distant whistle sounded. Benoît took out his watch, looked at it, held it to his ear for a moment, and then put it back in his pocket.

‘Six minutes late,' he said. ‘There have been delays at the canal junction all week. The seven-twenty from Calais to Charleville will also be running late, and because of that, the signal at Douai will sit against the drivers for longer than usual to let the mainline trains through. The two mid-morning coal trains in from Liège will run late, but no one will care about them. The drivers won't even bother to try and make up their time.' He smiled at his simple understanding of all this, and at the small, inconsequential problems being encountered by all these other men.

Watching him, Reid saw again how perfectly suited Benoît had grown to the world he inhabited; how that world and all its inter-connected and tightly fitting parts had become an integral part of the man himself; and how, in turn, Benoît had shaped the world around him by the varying measures and degrees of influence and authority he exercised over it.

‘So, you see,' the old station master said eventually, breaking the silence between them.

‘I do,' Reid said.

Benoît rose and opened his door and walked outside.

Reid waited where he sat for a moment, listening to the gentle rattling of the coffee pot where it sat on the iron stove. Powdery ash fell from the stove to the worn floorboards, adding its own sudden smell of scorching to the room's other odours.

LATER THAT DAY
, as Reid arrived back in Morlancourt from his work, he saw Alexander Lucas and Caroline Mortimer sitting together beside the trough at the entrance to the churchyard. As he came closer he saw that Caroline was holding Lucas by his shoulders, and that Lucas was hunched forward, his head down, his hands clasped to his chest. Closer still, and Reid heard that Lucas was crying, the noise muffled by his posture and by Caroline's embrace.

Reid went to them and sat beside Lucas, putting his own arm across the man's back and trying with his other hand to raise Lucas's head from his chest. Lucas tensed at the gesture, and for a moment he remained as he was. But then he relaxed and slowly raised his head, lowering his hands from his chest to his knees. He wiped his face with his sleeve.

Caroline gave him her handkerchief, and when he refused to take it, she wiped his face herself.

‘Elizabeth died,' Lucas said eventually, telling Reid what he had already guessed. Either that, or his daughter.

Lucas dropped the ball of paper he held into Reid's lap. It was a telegram, and Reid flattened it and read it.

Lucas's wife had died two days previously. His daughter, though still suffering, was no worse and was now expected to recover. The message was from Lucas's mother-in-law and said nothing else. No cause of death was mentioned, and no definite diagnosis of what she'd been suffering from. The few stark details seemed devoid of all compassion and understanding, a final cruelty almost. Reading the telegram, Reid was reminded of those he himself had sent during the previous years, all of them containing at least some measure of vague or distant consolation. He folded the paper and put it back into Lucas's waiting hand.

‘I'm sorry,' he said.

Lucas turned to face him, but said nothing. Then he turned to Caroline and thanked her for having sat with him.

‘Telephone someone,' she said. ‘Find out more. Find out about your daughter. Talk to her doctor.'

‘I don't even know where she is,' Lucas said absently.

‘Then let me do it for you. It surely can't be—'

Lucas rose abruptly at the suggestion. ‘No. I mean …' He looked around them, at the churchyard and the empty lane.

‘At least telephone either Wheeler or Muir,' Reid said. ‘Let
someone
know what's happened.'

‘
Them?
' Lucas said. He took several paces away from the bench, stopped and turned. He seemed about to say something more, but then he turned again and walked quickly away from them.

‘I'll find you later,' Reid called after him, feeling Caroline's hand tighten on his arm to stop him from going after the man.

Lucas raised his hand in reply.

Reid and Caroline then sat without speaking until Lucas was lost to sight.

‘I found him here,' Caroline said eventually. ‘Almost an hour ago.'

‘He applied to Muir for compassionate leave,' Reid said.