Other Paths to Glory (27 page)

Audley took the wicked-looking thing from him and examined it critically.

‘Well this is certainly in working order - ‘

He jerked the bolt up and back.

‘Smooth as butter - as good as new.’

‘Oh, sure,’ agreed Mitchell.

The trench rifle had been Jarras’ newest toy two years before; he had just finished cleaning it and was looking for somewhere to display it to advantage. It had been Charles Emerson who had suggested the vacant space above the bombs.

‘But he’d got that when I was here before. It came from - ‘

He stopped suddenly, staring at Audley.

‘When you were here
before?
’
Nikki jumped on the word.

Mitchell continued to stare at Audley. At him and through him and beyond him out of the window into the darkness which had fallen over Hameau Ridge. And also through the darkness of the years into which Second Lieutenant Harry Bellamy and his Poachers had passed so long ago.

‘You were here before,’ repeated Nikki accusingly. ‘What - ‘

‘Be quiet, woman!’ ordered Audley.
‘
Yes, Paul - ?
’

‘The age of miracles …’ Mitchell managed to focus on him again ‘… it isn’t past after all.’

AUDLEY SNIFFED
the night air as though he disagreed with him.

‘How much further?’ he said irritably.

‘Not far. Just a few yards,’ said Nikki.

‘Can’t see why we can’t drive up to the door like Christians,’ grunted Audley.

‘Nothing Ted can do about it now except make the best of a bad job.’

‘My orders were precise,’ said Nikki defensively. ‘In the event –‘

‘Precise nonsense. In the event of our doing his job for him - did he reckon that was likely, eh?’

‘He thought it was … possible,’ she admitted. ‘He said you were good at puzzles.’

‘Nor me, mademoiselle, not me.’

Mitchell sensed that Audley was pointing at him now.

‘Paul’s the smart one, not me.’

Mitchell felt an odd feeling of anti-climax.

‘I think I was a bit slow, actually. I should have got it this morning.’

‘Just in time is quick enough, my lad. No one expects better than that in our business, we’re mostly like that little wizard in the Thurber fairy-story, who never knew whether what he was saying was true or false.’

‘”The Gollux”,’ Nikki laughed in the darkness. ‘I’ve saved a score of princes in my time. I cannot save them all” - I’m surprised you know “The Thirteen Clocks”, Dr Audley.’

‘And I’m surprised you know it, mademoiselle. A very Anglo-Saxon tale, I’ve always thought.’

‘Not at all. A French one - as a child I loved it.’

She paused.

‘I loved how the tears of sorrow turned to jewels which lasted, but the tears of laughter turned back to tears again very soon - it was so often true.’

‘And still is, in my experience. But this time Paul has saved your princes, whoever they are - ‘ Audley stumbled in the dark, swearing under his breath. ‘How many yards did you say?’

Instead of answering, Nikki fell back beside Mitchell.

‘And am I still to believe that you are just a soldier, a simple soldier?’

‘Plain cannon-fodder, ma’am.’

It was equally curious how comforting a well-sustained lie could become: he had become quite fond of Captain Lefevre.

‘I just happened to know Emerson and the battlefield, that’s all. Sorry to disappoint you.’

‘But you don’t.’ She reached for his arm. ‘I told my boss that you were what you seemed to be - that you were a soldier. I thought you were perhaps a decoy. He said I was a fool to be taken in so easily. But I was not so wrong after all, I’m glad of that.’

But still not entirely right; and since her most recent coolness had apparently stemmed from a dislike of being conned by a mere male it was now far too late to come completely clean, reflected Mitchell sadly: she’d never forgive him twice … So this was one potentially beautiful friendship he was never going to develop as he would have liked. But then it never could have developed, because she was no more just a pretty French girl than he was any longer an ordinary unattached Englishman.

Strange thought, that: the worm was all bird now.

Bouilletcourt Farm loomed up ahead of them suddenly, a solid nucleus against the starry skyline of the ridge. Mitchell realised with a pang of recognition that they had been walking up that dreaded sunken road which had featured in the accounts of the assault on the strongpoint. At this point, possibly on this very spot, had been the German machine-gun which had scythed down three attacking waves, until a sharp-shooting corporal of the East Anglians had picked off the crew one by one.

‘What’s the matter, Paul?’ said Audley.

There had been twelve dead Germans in the gun-pit at the end, and each of the last five had been shot through the head; they must have known what lay in store for them as each one in turn pulled his predecessor away from the gun and took his place. Yet they had gone on firing the gun until the last man all the same.

‘What’s the matter?’ Audley spoke out of the darkness.

‘Nothing,’ said Mitchell. ‘I’m coming.’

Nothing: that was true. To know what had happened was one thing, to feel it in the guts and understand it was another, and it still eluded him. It was his knowledge which had told him where they were, not his instinct.

Nikki led them along a high blank brick wall - this was the back of the enclave of buildings, of course - until they came to a small postern door which opened instantly to her knock. Yellow light flooded out over her, throwing her shadow onto the field behind.

‘
Entrez, entrez - vite, vite.
’

Mitchell hurried after them, stopping to avoid the low lintel and blinking in the glare of the naked light on the wall just above him which illuminated an empty barn. No sooner was he through than the door was slammed shut behind him by a black-uniformed policeman helmeted and armed like those who had interrogated him the previous day.

‘My David - Captain -‘ Ted Ollivier acknowledged them brusquely ‘ - we have been waiting for you.’

‘The hell you have!’ Audley snapped back. ‘And we’ve been tramping halfway across France in pitch darkness because of your crazy order.’

Ollivier brushed aside Audley’s anger.

‘Your message indicated an emergency. What is the emergency?’

‘There’s no emergency.’

‘No - ?’ Ollivier frowned at Nikki. ‘What is this?’

‘No emergency - ‘ Audley was his old cool self again ‘ - so long as you hold your summit somewhere else, that is.’

For a moment Ollivier’s frown embraced them all, then his face became expressionless.

‘We have a deal, David, you and I - and this is not the time for little jokes.’ He paused. ‘You have something?’

Audley nodded slowly.

‘We surely have, Ted. It’s to do with that jampot of yours, the one with the lid screwed down so tight.’

‘Go on.’

‘Screwing the lid down isn’t much use when there’s a hole in the pot -‘ Audley held Ollivier’s gaze for an instant before turning to Mitchell. ‘I think it ought to come from you, Paul. You found the hole.’

The Frenchman’s grey eyes switched to Mitchell with an intensity which took him aback: the reflection of the bulb at his back was caught in the centre of each pupil as a pinpoint of light which seemed to bore into him. For a second he was a rabbit transfixed by the murderous stare of a weasel, incapable of action.

‘Put him out of his misery, man - tell him about the chalk and the cheese.’

Audley’s voice broke the spell.

‘The chalk?’ Ollivier’s eyes clouded. ‘The cheese?’

‘This whole ridge is rotten with tunnels,’ said Mitchell. ‘Like a piece of cheese.’

‘Tunnels?’ Ollivier whispered the word. ‘
Tunnels?

‘It’s a chalk ridge - all this land is chalk. It’s perfect for tunnelling, dry and clean, very little timbering needed. Not like the clay at Ypres. When they were mining and counter-mining each other here they had trouble with noise - they could hear each other digging in chalk much easier - and they had to get rid of the spoil so it didn’t give the game away … But when it came to straight tunnelling behind the lines, it was easy.’

Fought like lions and dug like moles -.
General Leigh-Wood-house’s voice echoed in his memory. And his own words too:
But the Germans used to dig deep
…
They had two years to
dig into the Somme
…

God! How could we have been so dim, so slow to see what the Audleys and the Olliviers could never see because there was nothing to see - what ought to have been all the more obvious to him because they couldn’t be expected to see it: all the other deep and secret paths of the Somme.

Ollivier was looking at him, grey-faced.

‘There are twenty miles of tunnels at Vimy - there’s a whole ammunition train still down there in the chalk, no one dares touch it. They found dugouts full of Germans when they put the motorway through the Hindenburg Line just north of here -they were still down there in the chalk. It’s
all
still down there -tunnels, men, supplies, equipment. The galleries in the chalk don’t fall in, they’ll still be there in a thousand years.’

For a moment nobody spoke, then Audley gave a low apologetic sound, half grunt, half sigh.

‘Galleries under Hameau Ridge, Ted - if there are, then the seismic equipment you’ve had plugged into the ground won’t have registered a whisper, because they were all there readymade.’

‘If there are?’ Ollivier grasped fiercely at the straw of uncertainty. ‘You mean you don’t know that there are these tunnels?’

‘My God - Ted everybody who could have told us has conveniently had his mouth shut, don’t you see?’ rasped Audley.

‘Then how do you know?’ Ollivier persisted obstinately. ‘You haven’t a shred of proof, that is what I can see. You have a theory - not a suspicion, only a theory. So I must go to the President and say “M’sieur Ie President, there are twenty miles of tunnels in the chalk outside Arras, and Hameau Ridge is made of chalk too, so you must pick up the hot phone and say “I’m sorry, my friends, but tomorrow is not convenient” - is that what I must tell him?’

‘You can tell him that, sure. And while you’re about it you can tell him why Charles Emerson had to die - and George Davis and Etienne Jarras - and I’ll give you odds on that peasant of yours in the ravine, too, the picker-up of unconsidered trifles who maybe picked up one thing too many.’

‘All right.’ Ollivier held up his hand. ‘So why did they have to die?’

‘Probably all for the same reason. But Emerson’s the one who matters, because he - ‘ Audley stopped, turning again to Mitchell. ‘I’m sorry, Paul, I keep on stealing your thunder. You tell him how the Poachers took the Prussian Redoubt.’

Mitchell drew a breath. It was decent of Audley to want him to have his moment. Except that it wasn’t his moment, it was Emerson’s … Except that it wasn’t Emerson’s moment either: it belonged to men who had been dead and lost for half a century under the edge.

‘They got into the German tunnels - ‘

He no longer saw the Frenchman, another image in his brain was momentarily stronger than present reality, so strong that it dried up all other words and thoughts.

‘They must have come round the north of the wood, where the ravine starts. In fact they must have run right into the British barrage as they came into the ravine - that’s where the entrances to the German tunnels must have been. And there were quite a few miners in “D” Company -
‘
A miner
’
s never afraid of the dark
…

‘
-
even only a handful of determined men in those tunnels could have caused chaos underground - ‘

And by God, they had been determined, those volunteers of the Somme, making up in sheer courage what they lacked in military skill - remember the Tyneside Irish who had broken through in Sausage Valley on the first day of the battle and had disappeared just like ‘D’ Company, fighting to the last far behind the German lines.

‘ - they would have been enough to block the tunnels, anyway. And that would have stopped the Germans getting their reserves up to the redoubt during the bombardment. Instead they probably had to start blowing up their own dugout entrances there. That’s why their gunners started shelling their own people, maybe - they wouldn’t have known what the hell was happening - ‘

The Germans had been brave, too. Their enemies in the rear and underneath them, shelled indiscriminately by both sides and then attacked by the Poachers from Bouillet Wood, they had fought it out to the last man.

And in dying had kept their secret for half a century.

‘
Captain
! Ollivier’s voice cut through Mitchell’s dream. ‘How do you know this? How do you know it?’

Mitchell stared at him stupidly. How was it possible to know something with certainty yet without certain proof; it was dead against his whole training.

‘Man - didn’t you see the look on his face?’ snapped Audley. ‘Look at him now - that’s the look I’ve been waiting for, and I’ll bet that was the look on Emerson’s face too.’

But it was the look on Ollivier’s face - doubt and puzzlement struggling with acceptance - which roused Mitchell out of 1916.

‘It was the shotgun.’

‘The shotgun?’ Ollivier frowned. ‘What about the shotgun?’

‘You said it was slightly damaged in the car explosion - you said the gunsmith almost wept because of it.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So it was
undamaged
before the explosion - that’s why Jarras didn’t buy it when it was offered to him: he couldn’t afford it.’

Ollivier looked at him intently.

‘It wasn’t damaged much, that’s true …’

‘The weapons they dig up out here are almost always rotted and rusted to hell, though.’

‘
So - ?
’

‘Almost always. But there is one way a weapon can survive and not rot: if it’s in a deep dugout or a tunnel. We saw one less than an hour ago, a British trench rifle. Etienne Jarras bought it off the foreman of a motorway construction gang - and he’d found it in a German dugout they broke into on the Hindenburg Line, a deep one. The entrance must have been blown in when we broke through in 1918. There wasn’t a mark on it, it was as good as new.’