Other Paths to Glory (11 page)

‘Yes, well strictly speaking it was a dawn attack, the main one, like Rawlinson’s successful attack on July 4th, remember - ‘

‘Remember?’ cut in Audley testily. ‘I can’t remember what I never knew. It’d be better if you remembered you only spoke generally about the Somme last night. I’m not an expert.’

‘Sorry. The idea was for the assault brigades to form up during the night, when they couldn’t be seen, and then go in just before first light. But before that they needed to capture Bouillet Wood on the right flank of the attack, or at least keep the Germans busy there while the main attack went in to the west.’

The main attack being on Hameau village?’

That’s right. You’ve got to imagine this ridge lying parallel to the British line - Guyencourt on the left, then Cemetery Crossroads, then Hameau village, with the sunken road leading up to Bouilletcourt Farm, then open country and finally Bouillet Wood - Bully Wood. The key objective was Hameau in the centre.’

‘And what about the Prussian Redoubt?’

That was on the very edge of the ridge east of Bully Wood.”

‘Where did that figure in the attack?’

‘It didn’t. It was too strong to be attacked, they reckoned: it was built into the ruins of the Chateau de Bouillet, with ravines north and south - Cobra was parallel to the British lines, just behind the German front line, and the north one, Rattlesnake, was where their reserves used to mass, because it was safe from everything except plunging fire.’

‘So they were just going to leave it?’

They hoped to outflank it eventually, after they’d taken Hameau. But that was to be in the exploitation phase.’

Audley nodded.

‘I see. And where did the Poachers come into all this?’

‘They were in the second wave of the Bully Wood attack, part of the 29ist Brigade. The North Berkshire Fusiliers went in first, but they were wiped out. They overshot the mark and no one really knows what happened to them.’

Audley peered to his left, slowing down to a crawl, then coming to a standstill.

‘Sorry, Paul, but I think we’re here. I’m afraid the Poachers’ great feat of arms will have to wait - that sign says Wellingbourne Lodge - or it once did, unless I’m very much mistaken.’

Mitchell followed the pointing finger, just making out the words ‘Private Road’ on a sign so streaked with green mould from the ancient yew tree overhanging it that the original white and black paint was scarcely visible. Below it, equally green and in addition half obscured by a trailing spray of yew, was the two-line legend ‘Welling Lod’, which put him in mind irresistibly of Piglet’s ‘Trespassers W’ in
Winnie-the-Pooh.

‘Well, here we go,’ murmured Audley as he swung the car into the narrow opening. The General evidently values his privacy.’

The same thought was crossing Mitchell’s mind: the yew at the entrance was the forward sentry of a whole avenue of them, their branches often interlaced above. It was like travelling down a tunnel with air shafts revealing grey sky at irregular intervals; and they were very old, these trees, their twisted trunks thick and hairy with shredded bark. If the General ever decided to raise a regiment of archers there was enough wood here for a thousand longbows.

But now there was light ahead at the end of the tunnel, and a stretch of lawn which seemed vivid emerald after the sombre driveway. It was strange how the yew tree, which in death provided such warm, golden wood for furniture, was so dark and funereal in life, with its poisonous foliage and deadly red berries.

‘Good lord!’ Audley said suddenly. ‘What a beauty!’

Wellingbourne Lodge lay at right angles to them, long, low, and as ancient as the oaks which flamed it. It seemed, indeed, to grow out of the grass as naturally as the trees themselves, its stonework and brick chimneys weathered into the setting, if anything more restrained than the yellows and golds of the autumn trees. The only dabs of contrasting colour were the blooms of the huge old rose clinging to it, seemingly independent of the ground: just as the house grew out of the grass, so the roses appeared to spring out of the stonework.

‘Wonders will never cease,’ murmured Audley. ‘Early Tudor -practically untouched, probably a hunting lodge. And on the site of something very much older - see that dimpled line there to the right of it, by the - it must be a mulberry - and where it turns across the front of the house? That’s the remains of a moat for sure: there was a castle here once upon a time. Or at least a fortified manor. The ground never lies, you can’t put a spade in it without leaving a mark, you know.’

He shook his head wisely.

‘It’s astonishing how many of these old places there are. Once I thought I knew every one south of the Thames, but new ones are always turning up - usually when some stupid bastard wants to put a motorway through it.’

He turned, grimacing horribly, then did a double-take as he saw Mitchell’s face.

‘What’s the matter?’

Aware too late that he had betrayed himself, Mitchell was at once in two minds about explaining truthfully - or even trying to explain - the sense of unreality which had assailed him, or shrugging it off and allowing himself to be led like a donkey along any strange path Audley chose.

‘What’s the matter, Paul?’ Audley repeated. ‘Does it surprise you that I should be interested in old buildings?’

‘A little.’

Mitchell tried to buy time with a partially false explanation: with two dead men behind them and last evening’s nightmare a recurrent and fearful memory, anything normal was not so much surprising as incongruous. Even the khaki sleeve on his lap was a reminder of his divorce from the real world. It was his arm in that sleeve, his body in the uniform; but he wasn’t Paul Mitchell any more. This morning Paul Mitchell would have eaten his cornflakes and read his
Guardian
in the train, and then caught his usual bus to the Institute for another slow, quiet day’s research.

Now he was someone else, not even someone real, but an imaginary creation of the man beside him, existing in a world as shadowy as the driveway behind them. Captain Lefevre hadn’t read a paper this morning or listened to the radio; he knew nothing about art or politics or religion, and cared less.

So naturally Captain Lefevre wasn’t interested in Tudor hunting lodges and motorways. Only real people were interested in such things.

‘What would happen to Paul Mitchell if anything happened to me?’

Before he had finished asking the question its answer flashed into his mind: Paul Mitchell was already catered for, already missing in the real world. He would simply stay missing.

‘Why should anything happen to you?’ Audley frowned.

‘Something happened to Charles Emerson - and George Davis.’

But he knew he couldn’t expect the real answer from Audley, and now that he’d answered it himself that hardly mattered.

‘What are we really doing?’

Audley blinked, obviously perplexed by the question.

‘We’re going to see General Leigh-Woodhouse.’

‘But why? How can anything that happened in 1916 - and anything that happened on Hameau Ridge - have anything to do with what’s happening
now?.
It’s crazy.’

‘Crazy?’ Audley sat back, suddenly more relaxed. ‘No, it’s not crazy. Intriguing, certainly - maybe even remarkable. But not crazy.’

‘It’s crazy to think anyone would kill someone because of what happened so long ago - that certainly doesn’t make any sense.’

‘Very unlikely, I agree. But the past is always waiting to revenge itself on the present. Take buried treasure, for instance: that’s a killer for you.’

‘Well, there’s no goddamn treasure buried on the Somme. Just a million dud shells and half a million dead soldiers.’

‘Again - I agree. But the past has a way of catching up on us, as a historian you should agree with that. You wouldn’t be here now if the past hadn’t caught up with you, and that’s a fact you can’t argue with.’

‘But -‘

‘No! Now listen, Paul.’ As Audley spoke the last vestige of flippancy left his voice. ‘There are too many facts relating to each other here for coincidence. Ted Ollivier’s bit of Somme map, and Emerson’s visit to the Somme before he was killed - and his visit to George Davis. And your visit to him and what happened to you afterwards.’ ‘But you said the French - the SDP - are mixed up in it. And Colonel Butler said the French security were out in force. That’s quite different from trying to find out what happened in 1916 - that’s happening now.’

‘Of course it is. And you don’t think I really care what happened in 1916, do you?’

Audley stopped suddenly, smiling. ‘Actually I am rather interested - you’ve aroused my curiosity with your Poachers. But they aren’t important.’

‘So what is?’

‘What is? Well we don’t know yet. But I’m guessing that your Charles Emerson saw something, or someone, that he shouldn’t have done. And I’d guess he saw them somewhere in a place which interested him for a quite different reason - a pure 1916 reason, you might say.’

‘But he didn’t really know what he’d seen?’

‘In 1916 terms he knew - and it excited him so much he started digging here in England immediately, and planned to go back to France as soon as he could. Which was why he had to die, I’m betting.’

‘And you want me to spot the same thing?’

‘That’s exactly it. Because whatever it is, it won’t mean a thing to me, but it will to you. And I’m betting it will excite you just as much.’

‘And then?’

Audley shrugged.

‘That’ll be the moment of truth, I’m hoping. Because when you see what he saw I think I’ll see what he missed.’

The first thing Mitchell noticed about General Leigh-Wood-house was that his head was like a billiard ball, so shiny that it caught the light from the standard lamp behind his high-backed chair.

The second thing was that the General’s aura of kindly good humour shone as brightly as his bald head and that his almost toothless smile of welcome had an authenticity which went beyond conventional good manners.

And the third thing, and the least surprising one, was that the General was as courteous as he was decrepit: although he required two sticks and a great deal of exertion to rise from the chair - the parchment-thin skin was drawn tight over the knuckles, conveying the hidden effort behind that simple action - rise he nevertheless did.

‘Dr Audley and Captain Lefevre? Come in, gentlemen - take a pew.’

He waited patiently until they were seated before subsiding back himself.

‘Now what can it be that you want to see me about?’

The implication was clear that as far as the General was concerned it was both a pleasure and a surprise that anyone should want to see him about anything.

‘But first you must have a drink - sherry or whisky? Will you see to it, Captain?’

The slender, bony figure pointed towards a small table bearing decanters and glasses.

‘You will excuse me if I don’t join you. I am rationed to one glass a day, and I do prefer to take that in the evening, but do please help yourselves -‘ he chuckled ‘ - and I shall content myself with the vicarious pleasure of watching you drink.’

Thank you. General,’ said Audley. ‘Whisky, Paul - not too much.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ echoed Paul. Somehow he felt more disgracefully a fraud than ever in the General’s presence.

‘Good.’ Worse still, the General was examining him carefully now. The Royal Tank Regiment, eh?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Where stationed?’

‘Germany, sir.’

‘Leave, eh? Or duty?’ The bright old eyes twinkled behind the spectacles.

‘Duty,’ said Audley. ‘Special duty.’

‘Special duty?’ The twinkle faded a little. ‘And what special duty brings you both to me, of all people?’

‘Do - did you by any chance know a Professor Charles Emerson?’

‘Charles Emerson?’ General Leigh-Woodhouse’s eyebrows lifted above his spectacles. ‘Why, yes - I know Charles Emerson. That is to say I knew him.’

The frail hand patted a creased copy of
The Times
which lay on the top of a pile of books beside him.

‘I was reading about his death just a few minutes ago - a shocking tragedy. Why do you want to know?’

‘You knew him well?’

‘Not well. He came to see me last year about a book he was writing. Asked me some questions and then went away again. He struck me as having his head screwed on the right way - they were sensible questions.’

‘What about?’

‘A bit about the Somme - I was wounded in Bouillet Wood there. And some more about the fighting up the Ancre in ‘17. He certainly knew his stuff, there wasn’t much I could tell him he didn’t know better already.’

He chuckled modestly. It was certainly true, thought Mitchell, that Emerson really did know more about the battles on that front than those who had actually taken pan in them. What was more unusual was that here was someone - and a general at that - who accepted the fact without rancour.

‘But has he come to see you more recently? As recently as last week?’

‘Ah - now, he did try to -‘ the General wagged a finger ‘ - you’re quite right there. But I was away in Oxford staying with my daughter - no, not my daughter, my granddaughter.’

He smiled broadly.

‘And now you’ll be thinking I’m getting gaga - which may be true, but not for that reason. It’s just that my granddaughter is the image of my daughter at that age. Married to some sort of biologist, she is - a decent type all the same … Let me see, now - I only got back here the day before yesterday, and my housekeeper told me he’d called and that he said he’d be coming back to see me again, poor fellow. I was rather looking forward to it, too. He understood about the First war, did Emerson - fought in Italy himself during the last lot, and some of that wasn’t unlike the First war, you know. The Anzio fighting, for instance.’

He paused suddenly.

‘But that’s funny -you’re the second person I’ve told this to. Practically the selfsame questions. And certainly the same answers - only yesterday.’

For once Audley didn’t come back directly. Perhaps for once, thought Mitchell, Audley was moved by the same conflicting emotions as he himself was feeling, disappointment swallowed up by relief.