Mad About the Boy? (23 page)

The dusk had turned to night when he smelt cooking. He had long since left the village behind and was walking along a lane, black with overhanging trees. A farm track led off the lane and peering into the gloom he could make out the glow of a camp fire and hear the low murmur of voices. The smell was wonderful. Until that moment he'd had no idea how hungry he was. He started towards the fire. Two men were huddled under a tree, cooking something in an open pan. Tramps. They looked up as he approached. Not a friendly look, but the smell of the food drew him on. ‘Hello,' he said, with a hesitant smile. ‘I don't suppose you could let me have some of that, could you?'

A burly man spat into the fire. ‘You're right. We can't. Bugger off.'

‘I can pay for it,' said Stanton, feeling the coins in his pocket.

‘Oh, you can, can you?' The man got to his feet and looked Stanton's lean form up and down. ‘I'll be havin' some of that.' His fist shot out.

Stanton feinted instinctively, guarded with his right and landed a neat upper-cut on the point of the man's jaw. Although there was little strength behind the blow, the man sprawled backwards.

‘Nice hit,' said the little man on the far side of the fire. ‘I can see you've done a bit of boxing in your time.' He caught hold of the burly man, who was scrambling to his feet, fists raised. ‘Cut it out, Spiky. You hit him first.' He squinted through the wood smoke towards Stanton. ‘You talk like a gent. How come you want to eat with us?'

‘I'm hungry,' said Stanton simply.

The little man started. ‘I know you!' He got to his feet, pulled a burning stick from the fire and looked at Stanton by the flickering light. ‘It's me, sir. Corporal Miller.' He looked delighted. ‘I'm Dusty Miller. You remember me, don't you, sir?'

‘Miller?' Stanton was puzzled. ‘is this your section?'

‘All present and correct, sir,' said Miller with a laugh. ‘Not much to look at, are we?'

So this was his company. These were his men.

‘Come and sit down, sir,' said Miller. ‘I just wish I had something better to give you. And you,' he added to Spiky who was muttering beside him, ‘can like it or lump it. The Captain's eating with us and no nonsense about paying for it.'

Miller spooned some stew out of the pan and put it on a tin plate for Stanton. It tasted delicious. Spiky had his own plate but Miller ate out of the pan.

‘I'm sorry to see you've fallen on hard times, sir,' said Miller after they'd finished. ‘We all thought happy times were coming after the Armistice, but you never can tell, can you? Lots of gents came off worse, I know.'

Armistice? What was the man talking about? ‘What Armistice?' asked Stanton, puzzled.

Miller laughed. ‘The one when the war stopped, of course,' he said. ‘I don't know about any others.'

Stanton was desperately tired. The Armistice was too complicated to think about. Perhaps it would all make sense in the morning. He lay down beside the fire and the last thing he knew was Miller putting a coat over him before he drifted away to sleep.

It was a long time before Miller went to sleep. He didn't trust Spiky. Spiky would rob his own grandmother and nobody was going to touch the Captain.

The Captain. Miller looked affectionately at the sleeping man. He'd been one of the best officers in the Royal Sussex, and that was saying something, thought Miller, with a surge of loyalty to his old regiment. He pulled an apple out of his pocket and looked at it doubtfully. He'd never really liked apples since the war. The smell reminded him of gas. He stuck the apple on a stick and put it in the fire. They weren't too bad roasted. Gas! He remembered the Captain shouting ‘Gas!' Very keen on gas drill, the Captain was, and quite right, too. There'd been a lad at Hell's Corner who couldn't manage the straps on his mask. He'd ended up with eyes like ping-pong balls. Dead, of course. Just as well, poor kid.

He rooted in his pockets once more and pulled out a stub of cigarette, lighting it with a twig from the fire. The Captain. He'd always wondered what had happened to the Captain. They'd been given the order to advance on Passchendaele Ridge. It had been miserable weather, nearly as bad as today. But at Passchendaele there was mud, mud and more mud and shell-holes deep enough to drown in. Miller smoked his cigarette thoughtfully, remembering the scene. The machine-gun bullet had hit him in his leg and he'd gone down. That should have been it. On the Somme a bullet in the leg meant a nice Blighty one but at Passchendaele he knew he'd drown before anyone could get to him. He had always hated the thought of drowning. And now he was going to drown in mud. He'd seen enough bodies floating in shell-holes to know what was in store. They all swelled up. Disgusting, it was. He didn't want to drown.

If he'd been with his section he'd have put a brave face on it. That's what an NCO did. Don't let the men down, Corporal Miller. Drilled into you, that was. But there were no men. Just himself, a wounded leg, the rain drenching the sodden ground, and that terrible fear as the mud grew deeper round him hour by hour.

There was no chance of a stretcher-bearer. Fritz had taken nasty and were machine-gunning the Red Cross lads. Bloody Fritz. Bloody war. Bloody mud.

And then the Captain had arrived. Miller wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. It always got to him like this. Remembering what it was like to wait helplessly for that horrible mud to fill his mouth and his lungs and then to hear the Captain's voice always made his eyes smart. He'd learnt the full story afterwards. The Captain had called for volunteers and taken them out himself. Braving the raking machine-gun fire he'd made three trips, bringing in the wounded. Miller would never forget his gratitude at the sight of the Captain's long, determined face as he pulled him out of that mud and on to a stretcher. When they got back to the lines, he could see the Captain had organized fresh men and was going out again. He had to be stopped. Talk about the pitcher going too often to the well . . .

From his stretcher, Miller had grabbed the Captain's hand. ‘Please sir, don't go. They're all playing harps by now.'

The Captain had grinned. ‘Don't be bloody silly, Miller. I heard someone call out. I can't leave him.'

And that was that. He hadn't come back, of course.

Miller heard the story in a hospital behind the lines the next day. Fritz arranged a truce at long last to clear the wounded and amongst them was the Captain. Apparently he wasn't right in the head any more. He'd found his injured man, been wounded himself, and spent the entire night in a shell-hole, holding up the injured Tommy so he wouldn't drown. The Tommy was dead by the time they found him but the Captain had to be forced to let him go. He'd got the DSO and a bad dose of shell shock. A night out there would drive anyone barmy. Passchendaele.

Miller threw away his cigarette and ate his roasted apple, looking affectionately at the man beside him. Shell shock. It didn't seem like the poor beggar was right yet, not the way he was talking about the Armistice. The fire was dying down. Spiky was dead to the world. He wouldn't give the Captain any more trouble. Miller lay down and, although he missed his coat, was soon fast asleep.

Stanton awoke in the early morning, feeling stiff and bruised. Drifting in and out of sleep, he lay for a little while, his eyes still closed, hearing the sound of men speaking in low voices. Then the voices went away and the only noises were those of the birds and of someone walking round as if they were trying to be quiet. He sat up, saw Miller, and the events of the previous night came flooding back to him.

‘Morning, sir,' called Miller cheerfully. ‘Spiky's gone. There's free bread and soup being given out at Great Syston if you get there before twelve o'clock and he wants some.' He was frying something in a pan. ‘Eggs, sir,' he said in answer to Stanton's enquiring look. ‘The lock on the hen-run up the way isn't all it might be. There's some bread, too. It's only a couple of days old. It'd be wasted on the pigs, that would.' He scooped some on a plate and gave it to Stanton. ‘Tuck in, sir, while it's hot.'

Stanton tried a tentative spoonful and found it surprisingly good. ‘This reminds me of the army,' he said between mouthfuls.

Miller laughed. ‘What I wouldn't give for a cup of army tea right now. By the way, sir, who's Jack? You were saying his name in your sleep.'

‘Jack?' The name brought mixed feelings but it had an oddly sinister overtone. The memory stayed frustratingly elusive. ‘I don't know. Miller – you keep calling me “sir”. Who am I?' Miller looked startled at the question. Stanton smiled and touched the bandage on his head. ‘I've had a bit of a knock and I can't seem to remember anything. Who am I?'

Miller wiped out the dirty plate with a tuft of grass. ‘Captain Stanton, sir. I don't recollect your Christian name. You lived in Upper Ranworth, the next village to me.'

‘That's right.' The words were like a candle in the dark. ‘That's where I live. Upper Ranworth. My house is there. Home.' Miller packed his pan and plate into an old knapsack. ‘Where are you going?'

‘I'm off, sir. You get home. You don't want the likes of me tagging along. No, you can't stop me, I'm off.' He looked for a moment at the outstretched hand Stanton offered him and blinked. ‘Please don't thank me, sir. You got me out of that shell-hole. I'll never forget it.' He broke into a sudden, delighted grin. ‘And you hit old Spiky. I've been wanting to do that for a month of Sundays.'

Stanton watched him go, then shook himself. He'd better be going too. Home? Apparently home was a place called Upper Ranworth, wherever that was. Maybe they'd be able to tell him what he'd done. But who were
they
? His parents were dead. He did remember that. Other odd flashes of memory came to him as he walked along in the rain-fresh summer morning. Miller had mentioned Jack. Jack? Of course, he'd known a Jack at school. He had a vivid picture of a crowd of cheering boys sitting round a boxing-ring, while a dark, foreign-looking type stood over him. ‘I say, did I wallop you a bit hard? I didn't mean to go for the KO.' Concern in the black eyes, followed by relief as Stanton got up and the odd realization that they were friends. But who was this other Jack? The one who'd done something so terrible that he shrank at the name – where did he fit in? And what was he was running away from?

Haldean folded up the last of the newspapers and put them back on the hall table. His uncle always took a good selection of newspapers which were left in the hall for the benefit of anyone who wished to inform or entertain themselves over breakfast. He opened the front door, went down the steps and, with his pipe drawing nicely, strolled down to the knot of men waiting by the gates of Hesperus.

There wasn't, he thought, anyone at Hesperus who would be informed, still less entertained, by that morning's papers. Despite Uncle Philip's urgent wish that it could all be kept quiet, there wasn't the slightest chance that Fleet Street would allow the murder of Lord Lyvenden to go unremarked. Even if Lyvenden had been a mere nobody, the
Sensational Slaughter,
as the
Daily Messenger
put it, would have made the front page. When the headline writer could add, as he gleefully had done,
Of Peer,
Hesperus was well and truly in the news.
Diabolical Crime
thundered
The Times. Appalling Tragedy
said the
Express,
adding that Victor, Lord Lyvenden, had succumbed to
ferocious blows
. The
Morning Post
, catering to a more restrained readership, had contented itself with
Death Of Lord Lyvenden
but it was a lone voice of sobriety amongst front pages peppered with adjectives such as
Grim, Gruesome
and
Ghastly
. The
Messenger
had something of a scoop in that, in addition to a photograph of Lord Lyvenden, it also had photographs of Stanton and, Haldean was pained to see, of himself.

It hadn't improved Sir Philip's temper when he saw that, in addition to his other worries, Hesperus was under a state of virtual siege by Fleet Street's finest. The fact that his nephew, from whom he had looked for better things, knew a good few of the reporters personally didn't alter his opinion that they were a pack of scurrilous knaves and vagabonds. ‘Riff-raff' and ‘Jackals' were the kindest terms he had used.

‘Haldean!' called Ernest Stanhope of the
Messenger
, pressing up to the barred gate. ‘Give us some news, old man. We can't get a thing out of anyone in the house and the lodge-keeper won't let us into the grounds.'

Haldean grinned. ‘He's under orders, I'm afraid. I can't do anything about it. The trouble is, Stanhope, that nobody knows very much to tell you, apart from the bare facts that Lord Lyvenden was murdered yesterday and Stanton's still on the run. Where did you get the photo of Stanton from, by the way?'

‘One of our bright lads looked up his address in London and had a word with the porter of the flats where he lives. It cost a few quid, but it was worth it. What did you think of seeing yourself in the news this morning?'

‘Not much.'

Stanhope laughed. ‘Pull the other one. It'll probably sell a few more books for you. Have you any idea where Stanton could have got to?'

Haldean shook his head. ‘I know how he got out of the grounds, but that's all. He ran across the lawn, waded through the river, carried on through the far field where there's usually cows pastured, and then, I imagine, through the woods and on to the Breedenbrook road. I was able to follow his traces some of the way and guessed the rest. Goodness knows where he is now.'

‘Thanks, Haldean,' said Stanhope, scribbling in his notebook. ‘That's something, anyway.'

A shout came from the back of the group, announcing that Superintendent Ashley had arrived. Stanhope abruptly left Haldean and raced to where Ashley was holding court. Ashley, who knew the importance of keeping the Press satisfied, made a brief, polite and uninformative statement before battling his way though to where Haldean was standing by the lodge-keeper's gate ready to let him in.