Other Paths to Glory (2 page)

Mitchell glanced down at the fragment again, struck as he had been so often in the past with the impossibility of computing how much any one piece of that muddy chalkland in Picardy represented in British and German blood and treasure. More than the choicest sites in Piccadilly and the Unter den Linden, certainly.

‘Is this anywhere near Beaumont Hamel?’ asked Colonel Butler suddenly.

‘Not very far. But then nowhere’s very far from anywhere on the Somme. It’s a very small battlefield, you can walk from one end to the other in a day quite easily - ‘ Mitchell stopped as he marked the shadow on the red-haired soldier’s face.

‘Why, do you know Beaumont Hamel?’

Butler shook his head slowly, still staring fixedly at the map.

‘My father was there on July 1st. He was with the Royal North-East Lancashires.’

‘The Royal Lanes?’

Mitchell paused as the textbook facts assembled themselves in his memory. Beaumont Hamel had been another pure nightmare, with the Hawthorn Ridge mine exploded too early and the open slope swept by machine-gun fire from end to end. He couldn’t place Butler’s father’s regiment in that holocaust, but the very fact that Butler was here established his father as one of the lucky ones.

‘They never got past the wire,’ said Butler.

Mitchell knew exactly what he meant, and what he had left unsaid. Like so many other units that terrible morning, the East Lancashiremen had left their dead hanging on the unbroken barbed wire among the dud shells and unexploded Stokes mortar bombs to mark the high tide mark of their hopeless attack: the memory, passed from father to son, was written on Butler’s face.

Audley cleared his throat.

‘So there’s nothing very special about the map, it’s not a rarity?’

‘Not a rarity, no. More a curiosity … But I’m not an expert on the Somme - you’d do better to read Farrar-Hockley’s book, or the Official History if you’ve the time.’ Mitchell paused. ‘Or if you really want to know every last detail you should talk to Professor Emerson. He knows that ground backwards.’

Audley grinned at him suddenly in a lopsided, surprisingly boyish way.

‘Well, if you’re not an expert then he really must know every inch of it.’

He reached down for the map and slipped it back into his case.

‘I’m most grateful to you and I’ll try not to bother you again like this.’

That was a curious way of putting it, thought Mitchell quickly: it was almost as though Audley was deliberately leaving the door ajar for a further visit - again like this. And what was plain was that the man had taken quite a deal of trouble to find out more about him than was strictly necessary for the solution of his little problem.

‘I doubt if I could help you much more anyway,’ he replied guardedly. ‘I only know that map because I’ve seen Professor Emerson use it - he’s your man for the Somme. He’s only just come back from there as a matter of fact -‘

‘From the Somme?’ Audley’s movement towards the corner of the shelves slowed and then stopped. ‘He’s been over there?’

Mitchell began to feel slightly guilty about throwing Emerson’s name back into the conversation, thereby exposing him also to such equivocal characters.

‘Professor Emerson has just returned from France, you mean?’ Audley rephrased the question casually.

The guilt increased. He knew nothing about them because he hadn’t really tried to find out, but had let himself be over-awed all too easily.

‘This is the best time of year to see the ground, after the autumn ploughing,’ he began, groping for a way of bringing Audley back within range of the unasked questions again. ‘But exactly what is it that interests you about the Somme, Mr Audley?’

The disarming grin was switched back on.

‘I’m not writing a book about it, don’t worry.’

‘I’m not worrying. But I’d still like to know what you are doing - and who you are, come to that.’

Audley considered him equably.

‘Let’s say I’m just someone with a piece of German trench map, that’s all.’

He nodded and turned away, leaving Mitchell no alternative but to ask the same question of the red-haired colonel, who as yet showed no sign of following him. Yet before he could re-formulate the question Butler himself spoke, gesturing to the maps and papers on the table.

‘What makes anyone want to write about - all this - nowadays?’

‘Anyone?’

‘You then.’

Coming from Butler it seemed a strange question, and he hardly knew how to handle it.

‘Curiosity, maybe.’

‘Curiosity? You mean morbid curiosity?’

‘No, I wouldn’t say that.’

Butler frowned at him.

‘We lost sixty thousand men on the first day of the Somme … But of course - you’re not interested in the Somme, I remember. So what are you interested in?’

‘The Hindenburg Line.’

‘Why that?’

‘My grandfather was killed breaking through it, near Bellenglise on the St Quentin Canal. He commanded the 1st/6th West Mercians.’

Butler looked at him for a moment.

‘This professor of yours, Emerson - where would he be at the moment?’

The abrupt change in questioning wrong-footed Mitchell. ‘Why do you want to know?’

‘You say he’s the expert on the Somme. And you say you aren’t.’ Butler’s voice was expressionless. ‘Is he at home?’

The man was as bad as Audley.

‘You tell me why it’s so all-fired important and I’ll tell you where he is. Colonel.’

Butler shook his head.

‘We can find out easily enough, you’ll simply be saving us time, that’s all.’

‘You sound like a policeman, Colonel.’

Butler’s lip curled.

‘Then perhaps I am one, Mr Mitchell.’

‘But you don’t intend to tell me?’

‘Our business is official, not personal - will that do?’

Emerson would curse him, thought Mitchell impotently, but there was no point in refusing. Anyone who could penetrate the Institute would make short work of tracing someone.

‘His telephone number is Parley Green 21242.’

‘You mean he’s at his home?’ The colonel’s eyes were as devoid of expression as his voice. ‘You’re sure? ‘

‘There’s a call-box in the entrance hall…’

The hell with it, though; he was tired of being interrogated.

‘He was at home this morning. He said he was going to work there all day.’

‘Thank you, Mr Mitchell.’ Butler half-turned, and then stopped just as Audley had done. ‘Your grandfather commanded the West Mercians in 1918 … What did your father do in the last war?’

Again an abrupt change in the direction of the question. Only this time Mitchell had the feeling it wasn’t accidental; indeed, that none of the questions had been unplanned, but that the whole script had been planned with some obscure objective of their own in mind. And how many of the answers had they known in advance?

‘He worked on a farm in Wiltshire,’ he replied evenly, trying to match Butler’s tone.

‘He was a conscientious objector - a pacifist.’

He stood for a time, staring at nothing. Then he picked up the phone on the windowsill.

‘Can you get me Parley Green 21242, please?’

There had been a question on Butler’s face at the end, but he hadn’t turned it into words, so there was no telling whether it was the right one. But then when he thought about his grandfather, a colonel at twenty-six and a dead hero at twenty-seven, and his father, who’d reached the rank of under-cowman at the same age, he wasn’t sure what the right question was. Or that the answer would be in any book, even the one he was writing.

The phone rang.

‘Your call, Mr Mitchell - there’s no answer. It sounds as though the phone’s out of order. The line’s dead as a doornail, sir.’

AS HE INVARIABLY
did when he came home by train, Mitchell finished the last lap of his journey by the short-cut along the towpath.

Actually it was no longer a short-cut, because he had outgrown his schoolboy habit of cutting through the goods yard, squeezing between the last line of hoarding and the beginning of the iron railings, and sliding down directly on to the path by way of the river bridge embankment. But it was still the coolest and most pleasant route in summer and the quietest and most relaxing one in winter, giving him an undisturbed quarter of an hour in which to consider the day’s events and the evening’s possibilities.

This evening was ideal for short-cutting: dark, but not too dark, with the towpath lamps catching the mist as it rose from the dark river like steam and picking out the puddles ahead; in fact just light enough to walk and think without fear of stepping off into the water, just dark enough to discourage casual walkers, and just chilly enough to drive courting couples under cover.

Only for once he regretted the reflexes which had automatically taken him along it, rather than among the bright lights and distractions of the town, because the day’s events had been disturbing and the evening, like all evenings since his arrangement with Valeric had broken up, was very likely to be a drag.

And the bloody inescapable thing about this was that the drag was neither his nor Valerie’s, but entirely in Mother’s mind, probably because her married life had been such a succession of contrived tragedies that she was no longer able to identify a happy ending when she met one. For Mother, boy meets girl had to be one extreme or the other - happy ever after or paradise lost. She just couldn’t accept that rather than get married, girl wanted to become a publishing tycoon and boy wanted to write a book on the Hindenburg Line.

But that was not what was worrying him now - in fact it was not even important, only irritating. What was important was his failure so far to raise Professor Emerson at Parley Green in order to warn him about the afternoon’s mystery men, and to apologise in advance for his big mouth. It might not matter at all, because Emerson wasn’t the sort of man to take offence so easily, but that only made him feel more guilty. So if the phone was still dead he’d just have to get the car out and drive over there himself after supper, no matter how much it offended Mother.

As it undoubtedly would offend her. And as he’d now reached the first of the weir bridges he had only another five minutes in which to frame an explanation …

He moved to one side to allow a wide berth to two men he could see approaching from the other side of the bridge, the first he had seen since he had come down to the riverside. The water, he noticed, was not quite as high as might have been expected after the previous day’s rain, with no more than half the curved weir gates raised. But then it had been a dryish autumn so far.

He needed an explanation for Mother - it would be no good telling her about the enigmatic Dr Audley and his uninformative colleague, because she’d only make a great dramatic production of it straightaway. But a mention of the professor would be like a red rag to her; she was quite irrationally jealous of the poor man.

‘Mr Mitchell?’

One of the two men checked his stride as they came alongside him.

‘Eh?’ Mitchell looked at him in surprise, fearful for an instant that he was about to be asked for the price of a cup of tea. But the educated voice and respectable overcoat reassured him. This was evidently a day for strangers.

‘It is Mr Mitchell, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. But I don’t believe -
oooof
’

Two hands grasped him from behind simultaneously, the first gripping his arm at the elbow and pulling him towards the railings while the other, in the small of his back, turned him sideways, face to the river. Their combined force slammed him into railings brutally. His briefcase was wrenched from his fingers.

Oh, God!
he thought despairingly, terrified not for the £20 in his breast-pocket, but for the three months’ work in the briefcase,
muggers - mindless thugs who would as soon
empty its contents into the river as give it back to him once they had found it all to be valueless
–

‘Please don’t - ‘ he gasped. But the words were cut off as the man who had spoken to him grabbed his free arm, bending him double over the top rail so that his feet almost left the ground.

The hold on each of his arms tightened, but the pressure on his back slackened as the hands there shifted down his body to the inside of his thighs. He found himself staring down uncomprehendingly at the olive-green water six feet below him, where it first rippled against the closed weir gate on his left and then slid in a smooth cataract into the open one directly beneath. The roar of the weir was deafening.

Even before the hands on his thighs betrayed his assailants’ intention the sight and sound of the water had sounded an alarm signal in his brain, tensing his body into rigidity.

Not his briefcase - oh, Christ! Not his briefcase and not muggers -

Then he was flying up and over, arms and legs released, flailing and kicking wildly against nothing, darkness and light whirling and the water and noise coming up to meet him - exploding in his face - dragging him downwards. His knees struck the concrete lip of the weir spillway and he was instantly swept over it, his shoulder striking the first leg of the bridge with a bone-cracking shock. He felt himself tumbling and rolling helplessly, and then something slammed into the pit of his stomach - one moment he had been part of the torrent, and the next it was bursting over him, battering him and filling his eyes and nose and mouth. He fought the unbearable pressure on his lungs until his chest seemed full of fire and consciousness was only pain.

Then, unbelievably, he could breathe and breathe and breathe, each breath a wonderful burning agony. He was still somehow suspended in noise and darkness and water, but in an incomprehenisible bubble of air.

Where am I?

There was a slimy hardness under his cheek and under his fingers. He groped slowly over the slime until he felt a solid object - a stanchion of some sort? A pillar?

God! He was still under the bridge - under the bridge and wedged in the angle of a supporting pillar and an iron cross-girder, wedged like a piece of river flotsam. The lower half of his body was held against the upright by the solid cataract of water racing through the open gate, a stream now buffeting him and cascading over him in a great arch of spray. But the upper half was lying in the protection of the closed gate, in the mere trickle coming from underneath it; it had been that diverted spray caused by his own body which had been drowning him as he struggled instinctively to raise his head above it, and only in beginning to lose consciousness had his mouth and nostrils dropped into safety below it.