Good Hope Road: A Novel (15 page)

ast midnight, and we still waitin’, standin’ in drill formation in the dark. The officers, they keep checkin’ their watches while the cold drizzle drippin’ down our necks. I pull the collar of my too-tight jacket closer, not that it make much difference, as I watch the lights. Flickerin’ and dancin’ through the rain, all along the hill.

‘Artillery fire,’ James mutter. He shifts restless like, lookin’ at his watch. ‘What the fuck are we waiting for?’

I wonder if I should say somethin’, ’bout the wagon train I heard ’bout. The
anciens
were talkin’ ’bout it – the train was hit by shell fire earlier tonight, right on the road we supposed to take to the trenches. That the reason for our late departure – on account of the added cover of darkness, sure, but also ‘cause the officers don’t want no wet-behind-the-ears
jeunes
troops such as us to see the dead and lose our nerve.

‘I hear tell that a supply train—’ I begin, but the words don’t go no further.

James look hard at me. ‘What’s that?’

I clear my throat. ‘They sure lettin’ off all sorts of fireworks tonight for our welcome,’ I say, pointin’ at the lights. I don’t say nothin’ ’bout those blown-up wagons. As if by not tellin’, maybe, just maybe, we not even notice the dead as we pass by.

The rain, she finally stop, givin’ way to a thin, water-filled mist. James nod at the slice of moon, all fuzzy ’bout the edges, and say it as if it gotten hoar frost. I wonder what it mean, hoar frost, but we set out just then, and under strict orders for silence.

We march single file, down wet streets on which the fallen rain shine like oil. Down a quiet side road, and then we branchin’ off, findin’ our way along a narrow hillside trail. The mist lies thicker here, turnin’ the moonshine blue. A light of witches, a night for haints. Verey lights shoot now and again over the sector, givin’ us our bearings – sharp white, even through the mist, like stars burstin’ over the lines. Our breathin’ the only sound, that and the small suckin’ of our boots on the wet mud.

Further, through fog that got the smell of rain-washed earth in it. Until it don’t no more and there a sudden blooded, butcher-shop stink in my nose. We’ve come upon what left of the wagon train. Behind me, I hear James take a sharp breath. Maybe I should’ve told him after all. I slip my hand into my pocket, reachin’ for my gris-gris. My fingers awful cold as I hold on to its familiar rabbit-foot shape.

‘Keep moving,’ Gaillard whisper fiercely.

Somethin’ make me look up, as we pass under a bunch of trees. A horse gone and climbed a tree. I blink, look again, and now I see it just the backside of the animal. Just the hind legs and haunches, sent flyin’ into the air from the force of a shell.

‘Hock and hoof and long plumed tail,’ I hear James recite under his breath. His voice awful calm, like he takin’ stock of what left of the animal.

Someone start to throw up. The
anciens
, they shush him angrily, the Corporal threatenin’ him in a whisper with the
boîte
and worse – all the noise he makin’, the Boche gonna have no trouble findin’ us at all.

‘
Avancez
!’

We fumble past, tryin’ not to see, but searchin’ through the mist all the same to sort out the men, what left of them anyhow, from the torn-up shapes around us. The dead horses, their legs stick upwards, like thin tombstones in the night.

When we get to the reserve trenches, they lie before us dark and silent as a grave. After the ruckus of earlier this evenin’, the sector gone awful quiet, a watchin’, waitin’ silence ’bout the trenches. Every detail seem powerful clear – the mud fallin’ down the sides of the walls, the sound of it; a small, scratch-scratch rodent noise; the first rungs of the ladder, all greased up with mud; the smell of old sweat and damp clay risin’ from the darkness. The
anciens
uneasy too – they veteran soldiers alright, but these here trenches as new to them as to us. Gaillard shift from foot to foot, fiddlin’ with the straps of his sack.

‘
Avancez
’ the Captain whisper, and grabbin’ hold of the ladder, lower hisself down into the trench.

‘
Avancez
,’ Gaillard echoes. He straighten, flash a quick grin and swing down after the Captain. That break the spell and now everybody rushin’ at the ladder. A press of bodies before me and behind, that ladder slippery as hell from the rain, go careful, Obadaiah Nelson, you—

‘
Merde
!’

Someone slip, slam into the man in front, try to grab hold of the legionnaire behind for support and with a powerful crash of tin kettles, cartridge belts and sacks, we lose our footin’, tumblin’ ass over head down the ladder. We land at the bottom, in a soup of wet, sticky mud. If these tunnels look like graves, well, that racket we just made comin’ down, it loud enough to wake the dead. We sprawl there, the breath knocked from us, mud in our hair, all over our faces and gear, the echoes of our grand entrance bouncin’ and clatterin’ down the trench.

I see the pale blur of James’ hand as he try to wipe his face clean. ‘Humpty Dumpty,’ he observe, ‘had a great fall.’

The Captain’s cussin’ us out, fit to go blue in the face. ‘Forward, you idiots, advance!’

We scramble to our feet, slippin’, rightin’ ourselves, gatherin’ up our gear with even more noise, wadin’ through this devil-spawn mud that reach sometimes ankle-deep, sometimes right up to our calves as we press forward. The trenches go this way and that, sharp turns left and right, with all sorts of lesser trenches that lead into the main lines. Our eyes still ain’t used to seein’ down here – just as we get our feet outta a ’specially deep mudhole, bam! there we go rammin’ right into a wall.

‘Close in! Close in!’ the corporals hiss, tryin’ to get us to go single file, to close up the gaps in the column, but men keep gettin’ lost, turnin’ into the communication and sap trenches that go branchin’ off from the main trench, stumblin’ in this mud that clings like molasses, bunchin’ up here, held up there.

A sudden noise up ahead, a squelchin’ of many pairs of boots. My heart start to hammer as I strain to see. We in the French part of the sector, I
know
we in the French part of the sector but all the same, I grip my rifle close. It grows louder, the racket, and now the battalion we replacin’ come stompin’ into sight.

‘Thanks for showing up at last, assholes’, they growl. ‘You’re three hours late! Make yourselves at home.’

The sour, unwashed smell of them as they push past, their gear knock us in the stomach, poke us in the eyes, and then they gone, melted into the night.

Home is a rabbit hole of rickety dugouts and half-fallen parapets. The mist has thinned somewhat and moonshine fall pale and blue on torn sandbags, twists of bobwire, empty cartridges and shell holes filled with scummy water that got the stink of piss and worse ’bout it. There the chemical bite of chloride of lime, but ain’t no amount of it that can hide the stink that lie ’bout these forward trenches – a foul, crap-hole, rotted-meat stench.

‘
Reposez
-
vous
,’ the Captain orders.

‘What, here?’ Karan asks alarmed. ‘There’s
shit
everywhere.’

‘It builds character,’ Gaillard answer for the Captain. ‘
Reposez
-
vous
,’ he advise, takin’ the sack from his shoulders. ‘Get some rest.’

We settle down best we can, wet, dirty, pickin’ out the clumps of earth fallen down our jackets, tryin’ to get the stickiness off our fingers, squattin’ small so we don’t touch no more of the slime that coat the floor of the trench than we need to. The stink, such a stink! I take out that block of cheese from my kit and hold it to my face, grateful for the sharpness it send up my nose.

A Verey light shoot high into the sky, risin’ white over the lines. I’m blinded for a moment by the sudden brightness, and now I see faces, gear and parapet, standin’ out sharp against the night. A crackle of rifle fire and a faint cry of ‘
Aux armes
!
Aux armes
!’ somewhere out to our left.

A couple of bullets come whinin’ over our heads and hit the wall of the trench. We throw ourselves down into the slime. ‘
Merde
!’ Someone pick up his rifle and start firin’ blindly over his head. That send all of us into a right panic and we all firin’ now, at no target we can see, to the front, to the left, even to the back – who knows where the goddamned Boche be? The corporals and captains yellin’ for us to stay down damn it, stop firing,
stop firing
you idiots, and slowly the shootin’ die away as we figure we ain’t in no immediate danger.

My heart still thumpin’ somethin’ fierce; my knuckles hurt from grippin’ so tightly on my rifle. Sentries are chosen from among the
anciens
to stand guard in the outposts while the rest of us huddle together like frightened pups and try to get some sleep. Them lights, they keep shootin’ into the air, rifles cracklin’ in small bursts all night, from one part of the sector to the next.

Raydon • 1932

obody watching Jim saunter through the room, hands nonchalantly in his pockets, would have guessed just how out of place he felt. They’d thrown balls at home, back when his mother was still around. He remembered her and Ellie arranging armfuls of flowers in the huge brass urns and crystal vases that were all packed away now in the cellar, as the band hired for the evening set up in the corner, the single notes and snatches of music echoing through the house as they tuned their instruments. He remembered the carpets rolled up and stacked away, the trucks with trays of food coming round to the back entrance, and the way the lights glittered in the ballroom, magnified in the gilt-framed mirrors around the walls, infusing the diligently waxed floors with an overlay of gold. Later in the evening, watching on tip-toes from the windows of the washroom upstairs as the guests arrived, and then lying awake, listening to the sounds of music and laughter from the rooms downstairs.

Grand as they’d seemed to him then, those evenings had been nothing like this affair tonight, of that he was certain. He wondered again just how he was supposed to find Madeleine in this crowd. ‘A gala,’ she’d said, and while he’d known it wouldn’t be just her and him, he sure as hell hadn’t anticipated this monkey show.

‘Peacock parade,’ he corrected himself dryly. It was hard to miss the theme of the evening, from the appliquéd motifs on the waistcoats of the staff, to the massive topiaries flanking the entrance to the mansion that had been trimmed and moulded into dancing peacocks, tails fanned high.

He glanced at the palm trees that lined the walls. Inside the Garland mansion it was already summer; a lush, tropical summer, not of these hills but some exotic haven. The palms were arranged on either side of the room, their fronds arcing together in a luxurious canopy below the white-and-gilt moulded ceiling. A sparkle of starburst from among the foliage: fairy lights; brilliant, tiny, each no larger than a thumbnail. Paper lanterns were strung along the walls and windows, dozens, hundreds of them, painted elaborately with peacocks, their colours lacquering the room.

‘Sir?’ A waiter politely proffered a drink-laden tray.