One Good Turn (5 page)

Ransom felt the flames enclose him, and saw the other man break away. That saved him because the stream of burning oil followed the moving target.

He threw himself sideways, and felt a terrific blow as a bullet glanced off his tin helmet. He staggered, got tangled up in tree roots and tripped. He blacked out for what seemed like the blink of an eye, but, when he came to, for a moment he couldn't remember what had happened.

He seemed to be hanging upside down above a wall of flames. He thought that he had died and gone to hell. Then he reckoned that even the devil could not create the suffering that he was going through.

The devil, he thought, might have plugged up his nose, might have surrounded him with lumps of rotting flesh, but would surely not have shoved the flesh up his nostrils. The devil might have been tempted to burn him, but would surely have dipped him in burning oil. He would not have painted the stuff onto the most faraway parts of his body and set it burning slowly. The devil would not have thought of hanging him upside down over someone's severed head that was bobbing slowly in filthy water. Surely the devil would not have thought to make everything so damn itchy. That was the effect of flames on muddy skin.

No, Ransom thought. This wasn't hell. This was the British Army. This was what he had signed up for. He just had to stick it out.

Then something gave way and he fell into the water.

He slid in so cleanly that his head hit the soft mud at the bottom of the crater and stuck there. The water canisters fell and tangled themselves around his legs and arms. He could not tell what was up and what was down. He just knew that he was drowning. Something bumped into him, but he didn't like to think what it was. Then his legs fell sideways, his head came unstuck from the mud, and he forced himself to thrash around a bit more. His face broke the surface of the water.

He took a few breaths and struggled to the edge of the water. He kicked hard to stop himself from sinking, but felt the weight of his clothes dragging him down.

He heard a sound coming from above and looked up. Dangling above his head was the sleeve of an army tunic. He wrapped it round his arm. Using it as a support, he reached up and found he could grab one of the tree roots. He managed to pull half the water canteens over his head, swapped hands and worked the others off. Then he levered himself up and crawled to safety. The officer with the shot-up face was lying on his back, staring up at the sky. Ransom fell down next to him. He started to shiver and realised how cold he was.

It wasn't that surprising: the clothes had been burned off his back, but the thick mud, wetness and the water canteens that he had been carrying had protected him from the worst of the flames.

What could he wear? He reached down, untied the tunic from the tree root and put it on. Moving about made him feel better.

He crawled back to the officer, who grabbed him and tried to say something. Ransom saw his tongue working through a hole in his cheek and bent his head closer to the man.

'What?' he asked.

'See,' the officer seemed to be saying. He lifted a hand and pointed to Ransom's new tunic.

Deep down in Ransom's mind was a memory of the man he had seen going through his own tunic pockets. That must be what the officer was trying to tell him. The soldier had stolen something from him.

Suddenly he remembered and the memory was like a shaft of warm sunlight. He had been going on leave! He had been given his papers! He was going to get out of this terrible place.

He patted the officer.

'Thank you, sir,' he said. 'Thank you. It's getting dark. I'm going to get you out of here now. We're going back. We'll be all right soon. Right as rain.'

Then he thought that was probably the wrong phrase. He would never think there was anything right about rain ever again.

It took Ransom six hours to get the captain back to the lines. It was impossible to be certain which direction they were was heading in. He just aimed for the gun flashes on the horizon and hoped they were Allied guns.

When he found a row of sandbags, he knew they had made it. He dragged the officer up to the sandbank wall and pushed him to the top. They both fell over together, waking a sentry.

After that, everything was very confusing. The officer was taken off on a stretcher, while Ransom was made to sit on a pile of sandbags and be questioned by a sergeant. Everyone seemed to be making a huge fuss of him, but did not know who he was. They found some leave papers, but they also found someone else's name tag stuffed into a pocket. That created problems.

Then someone said: 'He's got something painted on the back of his tunic. Looks like the letter C

And someone else said: 'Captain Bradshaw did that to some bastard who was trying to get out of the attack.'

'Bradshaw must have brought him all the way back. What's his name?'

'I don't know. Stubbs or something.'

'That's it. The identity tag says he's Private John Stubbs. He must have nicked some other poor bastard's leave papers.'

'All right, all right,' the sergeant said. 'We'll get him back to HQ. If half of this is true, it'll be a court martial for him.'

As the memories flooded his mind, Ransom felt a huge weight lift. Dawn was breaking. From the light that crept in through the airbrick, he could see that it was going to be a fine day.

Now that he could explain what had happened, he was sure to be released. They'd tried the wrong man. The real Private Stubbs was lying dead in the crater by the pillbox. They could find him. Then they could find Sergeant Mitchell.

Not a minute could be wasted. So he started pounding on the door again.

Half an hour later, the sergeant major went to the officers' mess. It was the same room in which the court martial had been held, but now it was much warmer. The big windows were open and scents from the overgrown garden outside blew in.

The officers were eating pork chops, fried eggs, fried potatoes, fried tomatoes and fried mushrooms. The sergeant major made a mental note to head off to the kitchens, after he had done this tricky job, and eat up the remains. It was a privilege of his rank. And a good breakfast, he always believed, helped keep body and soul together.

After he had stood to attention for about a minute, one of the officers found time to look up at him.

'Wallflowers, Sergeant, don't you think? Or stock?'

'Sir?'

'The scent coming in through the door. Haven't you got any poetry in your soul, man?'

'Wallflowers, sir. I spotted a few coming out yesterday.'

'Bit late, aren't they?'

'Self-seeded, sir. Not forced. And what with the rain and that.'

'Are you a keen gardener, Sergeant?'

'My father runs a nursery, sir, out Enfield way.'

'Your father runs a nursery. Your father runs a nursery.'

The officer spoke the words in mock surprise, making the sergeant feel like a fool for giving him too much information. He wondered if he would ever understand the upper classes. Just when you thought they were human, they went and proved the opposite.

'Well, what is it?' the major barked out the question.

The prisoner requests the right to see the padre, sir,' the sergeant said. 'He claims it's urgent, sir.'

'When's the execution?' the major asked the table.

'Tomorrow. Dawn. Someone will have to be up for it, I suppose.'

'Quite.' The major turned his attention back to the sergeant. 'Urgent, eh?'

'Yessir.'

'Well, I suppose if he says it's urgent, it is. Who's padre?' he asked the table.

'You know, Ratface Ratcliffe. Good man.'

'Prisoner's in for a shock. Does he still think he's someone else?'

'Seems quite certain, sir,' the sergeant said.

'Is he mad?' The first officer screwed an index finger into his temple.

'Seems to be getting saner, if anything,' the sergeant said.

'Then he really needs shooting,' the major said. 'Ratface will sort it out. Count on it. Good man.'

Ransom looked at the padre and his heart sank.

The padre would clearly have been happier to interview Ransom from the other side of a desk. Without a desk, he made Ransom sit on the bed, and stood as far away from him as possible. Then he stared at the wall about five feet above his head.

'I think I've worked it all out,' said Ransom. 'When the tunic was burnt off my back by the flame-thrower, I had to look around for a new one. It was tied to a tree root and I just put it on. It must have been Stubbs's. There was a body in the crater without a tunic. Stubbs must have stolen it and left his own lying on the ground. The officer tried to warn me. I understand that now. He pointed at the tunic. He must have been warning me about the C on the back. When I got to our lines, that's what the lads saw. That's what made them think I was Stubbs. Stubbs had stolen the leave papers from me and I got them back off him. It was terrible, sir. He was on fire, but the uniform was so wet, it stopped them burning. Do you see how it could happen, sir?'

The padre rocked on his feet.

'All I see is a load of old rubbish,' he said. 'I never heard so much nonsense in my life. Listen for your own good, now. The truth is seldom complicated. Lies, in my opinion, usually are. The devil spins a web of lies. The good Lord cuts straight through all the rubbish. My advice? Drop all this nonsense. It's cowardly and unmanly, and it's what got you into trouble in the first place. Get some backbone, man. I can't pretend to tell you what the good Lord thinks about you, but I can tell you this: if you admit what you've done, you're in with a fighting chance.'

'But I can't admit something I haven't done,' Ransom said. 'Don't you see? You say admitting my guilt is the only way for me to be saved, but suppose I'm not guilty?'

'Oh, you're guilty, my man,' the padre said. 'Now it's just a question of seeing how you deal with it.'

The padre had been invited to lunch a few miles away, in a pleasant country house. It was far away from the lines, and there were rows of vines in the rolling fields at the back.

The talk over lunch was of morale. Normally it was bad form to talk about the war over a meal but things, apparently, were going from bad to worse.

'It's all very well to say we're helping out the French, but I'm afraid that isn't much comfort when you're up to your neck in mud twelve hours a day,' one man said.

'You're exaggerating,' another said. 'We just have to make sure we don't slack off. It's natural after three years of fighting to want a bit of a break, but that's when the Hun is at his most deadly. He'll sense weakness and strike. That's why we need to keep on attacking. If we get somewhere, good show. If not, it shows the enemy, and the men, that we still mean business. Standing around in all this mud – that is what saps their strength. It gives them time to brood.'

The padre gave a loud bark that got everyone's attention. 'That's exactly right. The stories the men come up with to try and get off the hook!'

'Come on, Ratface, what have you heard?'

'I was in to see a fellow this morning. I have never, ever come across a worse case of pure evil in my time as padre. This little private soldier injured himself to try and get out of the last big push, was caught, and had to be prodded into action at gunpoint. He must have got away, and killed another private to steal his leave papers. Then the officer who caught him in the first place, found him, arrested him and led this wretched little oik all the way back to the lines – even though he's got half his face blown off.'

'Sorry to butt in, sir, but who had their face blown off? The criminal or the officer?' A serious-looking captain at the far end of the table had spoken. He was leaning forward and his brow was wrinkled with concentration.

'What?' the padre said, annoyed by the interruption. 'The officer. But that's not the point. Since then, instead of trying to make peace with his maker, this coward's made up a story that's like one of those Shakespeare plays. People were getting dressed up in the wrong tunic and being mistaken for someone else. If you believe him, he saved the officer's life and more or less carried him back to the lines. I ask you. It gives cowards a bad name, what?'

'Amazing story,' the serious-looking captain said. 'The thing is, Padre, it does rather fit in with a story I heard.'

'What? You mean someone else helped him make up this nonsense?'

'No. It's more serious than that. I suppose this man you saw is going to be tried?'

'Oh, he's been tried and found guilty. He'll be shot tomorrow. Didn't I say?'

'It's just that . . . I heard that an old friend of mine, Bertie Stokes, had been shot up pretty badly, so I tracked him down at the field hospital. He's in a frightful state. Half his face was shot off, and he claims he was attacked by a man he was trying to arrest, and then he was saved by another private. A real hero, this private, by all accounts. He dragged Stokes back across no-man's-land. He'd be dead otherwise. Anyway, it took him most of a morning to tell me this. He was woozy with the morphine the medics had given him, but I could tell he really wanted to tell me. Just before he passed out he said: "Shake his hand for me, will you, and tell the silly sod he put on the wrong tunic."'

The padre looked startled and said: 'This is a joke, isn't it?'

'Absolutely not. Go and see Bertie. He's in the field hospital right now, but you better be quick. They're short of beds and are moving them into casualty clearing station as quickly as they can.'

The padre was a simple man. When he had gone in to visit the man in the cellar, he was sure he was guilty, because the British Army said he was guilty. Now he was not sure, so he saw it as his clear duty to talk to the wounded officer, Captain Bertram Stokes.

He reached the field hospital by mid-afternoon, but there had been an attack on a place called Glencorse Wood. It had not gone well and it was impossible to talk to anyone.

At last, the padre found a nurse on a break. She was leaning against a water tank, smoking.

'I say,' the padre said, nodding at the cigarette. 'I don't know about that.'

He regretted it straight away. The eyes that turned towards him were a hundred years older than the nurse. She blinked slowly, and looked away into nothing.

'I'm looking for a man. He was in here quite recently. Captain Stokes was his name. Shot up in the face,' he added.

'A lot of men come through here and a lot of them are shot in the face. I don't know the name of a single one of them,' the nurse said. 'But if he came in a few days back, he'd have been moved back to the casualty clearing station.' She pointed away from the front. 'It's that way.'

It was dusk by the time the padre reached the clearing station. It was in a small Belgian town far away from the fighting and shelling.

Compared to the field hospital, the casualty clearing station was calm and organised. It was located in a very old warehouse. The main storage area was being used as the ward, with the offices serving as operating theatres.

The nurse seemed to take an age to go through the records. The padre thought it would have been quicker to have checked every bed. When they did track down Captain Stokes, they found that he was being operated on.

'That means a wait,' the nurse said. They make sure they're unconscious before they operate, of course, and some of them take hours to come round again.'

The padre was hungry, but he took a seat by the empty bed in the huge hall and settled down. Then he had an idea. He found another nurse and asked if there was a telephone in the building. He had a very important message for his headquarters.

He was shown to a telephone. After a few minutes the operator connected him.

'I say, this is –' he began.

Then the line went dead.