The Absolutist (20 page)

I make my way out of the front trench and into the supervision, where our support lies, those small amounts of medical help we can muster together and some cots for the officers. Beyond here I can smell the food cooking and I make my way towards it eagerly, looking around the ill-kept mess row along the south-west-facing alley of the third line and see mostly familiar faces, some who are new, some who don’t speak, some who never stop, some who are brave, some who are foolhardy, some who are falling mad. Some from Aldershot, before us and after. Some with Scottish accents, some with English, some
with Irish. As I make my way along there is a low murmur of conversation, the suggestion of a greeting perhaps, and I take my helmet off as I reach the mess and scratch my head, not bothering to look at what this leaves under my fingernails, for my scalp is covered in lice, and my armpits, too, and my crotch. Everywhere that they can nest and breed. It repulsed me once but now I think nothing of it. I am a charitable host and we live peacefully together, them feeding off my filthy skin, me occasionally plucking them away and ending them between the pincer-nails of thumb and forefinger.

I take what I can find and eat quickly. The tea is startlingly good; it must have been made fresh only minutes before and it summons up a memory, something from boyhood, and if I work at it I dare say I could bring it to life, but I have neither the energy nor the interest. The bully beef, on the other hand, is atrocious. God only knows what is forced into these tins; it might be badger or rat or some unknown vermin that has the audacity to continue to exist here, but we call it beef and let that be good enough for it.

I force myself not to look around, not to search for him, because in that direction only pain lies. If I see him, I will be too afraid of his rejection to approach, and there is every possibility that in my anger I will simply launch myself over the top later, directly into no-man’s-land, and take whatever is due to me. And if I don’t see him, I will convince myself that he has been picked off in the last few hours and I will throw myself over anyway, an easy potshot for the snipers, for what is the purpose of continuing if he does not?

In the end, food in my stomach, the taste of tea in my mouth, I stand up and make my way back to where I started, congratulating myself on how well I have done; how I never searched for him, not once. From such moments, half-happy hours can be strung together.

Climbing back into the front trench I hear a commotion ahead and, although I have little interest in arguments, I have to pass it to get where I am going, so I stop for a while and watch as Sergeant Clayton, who has grown bone thin in these few short weeks since we arrived, is screaming at Potter, an exceptionally tall soldier who was popular back at Aldershot for his abilities as a mimic. In good times he can do a fine imitation not only of our leader but also of his two apostles, Wells and Moody, and once, in a surprisingly buoyant mood, Clayton asked him to perform his sketches for the entire regiment, which he did and it went off well. There was no malice to it although there was, I thought, an edge. But Clayton lapped it up.

The argument appears to concern Potter’s height. He stands above us all at six feet and six inches in his stockinged feet, but add a pair of boots and a helmet atop his high-domed forehead and then he’s rearing closer to six feet eight. We’re all accustomed to him, of course, but it doesn’t make his life any easier, for the trenches are no more than about eight feet deep and less than four feet wide at their northernmost part. The poor man can’t walk tall with his head above the parapet or he’ll lose his brains to a German bullet. It’s hard on him, although we haven’t time to care, but Clayton is screaming in his face.

“You make yourself a standing target!” he cries. “And when you do that, you endanger everyone in your regiment. How many times have I told you, Potter, not to stand tall?”

“But I can’t do it, sir,” comes the desperate reply. “I try to bend over but my body won’t let me for long. My back aches something rotten on account of it.”

“And you don’t think an injured back is a small price for a head?”

“I can’t crouch all day, sir,” complains Potter. “I try. I promise I do.”

And then Clayton screams a few random obscenities at him and rushes towards him, pushing him back against the wall, and I think,
That’s the spirit. Just unsettle all those sandbags, why don’t you, and put us all in even more danger? Why not throw all our artillery away while you’re at it?

The argument is still ringing in my ears as I turn away from the matinee performance and make my way back to my post, where Tell looks around anxiously, waiting for me, hoping that I’ll appear, for if I don’t, then I’ve probably been stupid enough to let myself get killed in the night and he will have to stay where he is until Clayton, Wells or Moody comes along and agrees to find someone to relieve him. Which might be hours and he can’t leave his post, for that would be desertion and the punishment is a line of soldiers standing before you, their rifles raised, each one aimed at the patch of fabric pinned above your heart.

“Christ, Sadler, I thought you’d never get here,” he cries, breaking away now and tapping me on the arm for good luck. “Everything all right beyond?”

“Fine, Bill,” I reply—Tell is another who prefers to be addressed by his Christian name; perhaps it makes him feel that he is his own man still—and then step forward to dig my feet into position and pull the box-periscope down to eye level. I’m about to ask him whether he has anything to report but he’s already gone and I sigh, narrowing my eyes as I look through the muddy glass, trying to distinguish between the horizon, the fields of battle and the dark clouds up ahead, and do everything in my power to remember what the fuck it is that I’m supposed to be looking out for anyway.

I try to count the days since I left England and decide that it is twenty-four.

We took the train from Aldershot to Southampton the morning after passing out and marched along the roads towards the
docks at Portsmouth, families coming out on to the pavements to cheer us on to war. Most of the men revelled in the attention, particularly when some of the girls in the crowd jumped forward to plant kisses on their cheeks, but I found it difficult to concentrate when my mind was still so focused on the events of the previous night.

Afterwards, Will had dressed quickly and stared at me with an expression unlike any I had ever seen before. A mixture of surprise at what we had done, tainted by an inability to deny that he had been not only a willing participant but the prime mover. He wanted to blame me, I could see that, but it was no good. We both knew how it had begun.

“Will,” I began, but he shook his head and tried to climb the bank that surrounded us, tripping over in his eagerness to get away and sliding back down before he could get a stronger foothold. “Will,” I repeated, reaching out for him, but he shrugged me off impatiently and spun around, glaring at me, teeth bared, a wolf ready to attack.

“No,” he hissed, disappearing over the top and into the night.

When I returned to my bunk, he was already in his bed, his back turned towards me, but I knew that he was still awake. His body was rising and falling in a controlled way, his breathing heavier than normal; it was the movement and respiration of a man who wants to give the impression of sleep but does not have the acting skill to be entirely convincing.

And so I went to sleep myself, sure that we would talk in the morning, but when I awoke, he was already gone before Wells or Moody had even sounded the bell. Outside, after roll call, he took his place in the final march far ahead of me, in the centre of the pack, that claustrophobic spot he usually hated, surrounded by newly anointed soldiers to his left, right, fore and rear, each one providing a defence, if one were needed, against me.

There was no chance to talk to him on the train either, for he made sure to sequester himself by a window in the heart of a noisy rabble and I was some distance away, confused and agitated by this clear rejection. It was only later that night as we sailed towards Calais that I found him alone by the railings of the boat, his hands gripping the metal tightly, his head bowed as if deep in thought, and I watched from a distance, sensing his torment. I might not have approached him at all had I not been convinced that we might never get another chance to talk, for once we stepped off the boat, who knew what horrors lay ahead of us?

My footsteps on the deck alerted him to my presence and he lifted his head a little, his eyes open now, but he didn’t turn around. I could tell that he knew it was me. I kept some distance between us, looked out in the direction of France, took a cigarette from my pocket and lit it before offering the half-filled case to him.

He shook his head at first, then changed his mind and took one. As he put it to his lips I handed mine across, thinking that he could take the light, but he shook his head once again, abruptly, and dug in his pockets for a match instead.

“Are you frightened?” I asked after a long silence.

“Of course I am,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

We smoked our cigarettes, grateful that we had them so we wouldn’t be obliged to talk. Finally he turned to me, his expression sorrowful, apologetic, then looked down at his boots, swallowing nervously, his eyebrows and forehead knitted together in despair.

“Look, Sadler,” he said. “It’s no good. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“It couldn’t …” He hesitated and tried again. “We’re none of us thinking straight, that’s the problem. This bloody war. I
wish it was all behind us. We haven’t even got there yet and I’m wishing it was over.”

“Do you regret it?” I asked quietly, and he turned, his expression more aggressive than before.

“Do I regret what?”

“You know what.”

“I’ve said, haven’t I? It’s no good. Let’s just act as if none of it ever happened. It didn’t really, if you think about it. It doesn’t count unless it’s, you know … unless it’s with a girl.”

I laughed; a quick, involuntary snort. “Of course it counts, Will,” I said, taking a step towards him. “And why are you calling me Sadler all of a sudden?”

“Well, it’s your name, isn’t it?”

“My name’s Tristan. You’re the one who always says how much you hate the way we’re referred to by our surnames. You said it dehumanizes us.”

“And so it does,” he replied gruffly. “We’re not men any more.”

“Of course we are!”

“No,” he said, shaking his head quickly. “I didn’t mean that. I meant we can’t think that we’re regular men now; we’re soldiers, that’s all. We have a war to fight. You’re Private Sadler and I’m Private Bancroft and there we are and that’s an end to it.”

“Back there,” I said, lowering my voice and nodding in the direction from which we had come, the direction of England, “our friendship meant a lot to me. At Aldershot, I mean. I’ve never been good with friends and—”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Tristan,” he hissed, flicking the end of his cigarette overboard now and turning on me furiously. “Don’t speak to me like I’m your sweetheart, all right? It sickens me, that’s all. I won’t stand for it.”

“Will,” I said, reaching out to him again, meaning nothing by it, simply hoping to stop him marching away from me, but
he slapped my arm aside in a rough fashion, rather more violently than he had intended perhaps, for as I stumbled he looked back at me with a mixture of regret and self-hatred. Then he pulled himself together and continued to walk back towards the deck, where most of our fellows were gathered.

“I’ll see you over there,” he said. “None of the rest of it matters.”

He hesitated for a moment, though, turned around, and seeing the expression of pain and confusion on my face, relented a little. “I’m sorry, all right?” he said. “I just can’t, Tristan.”

Since then we have barely spoken. Neither on the march to Amiens, when he kept a clear distance between us, nor as we advanced towards Montauban-de-Picardie, which, Corporal Moody reliably informs us, is the desecrated region where I stand with my eyes to the mud-smeared glass of my box-periscope. And I have tried to forget him, I have tried to convince myself that it was just one of those things, but it’s difficult to do that when my body is standing here, eight feet deep in the earth of northern France, while my heart remains by a stream in a clearing in England where I left it weeks ago.

Rich is dead. Parks and Denchley, too. I watch as their bodies are taken out of the trenches and as much as I want to turn away, I can’t. They were sent on a wiring party last night, over the top, to lay thick reams of barbed wire in front of our defences before the next spate of shelling began, and were picked off one by one by German snipers.

Corporal Moody is signing the paperwork that will be needed to transport the bodies out of here and he turns around at the sound of my footsteps, surprised to see me there.

“Oh, Sadler,” he says. “What do you need?”

“Nothing, sir,” I reply, staring at the corpses.

“Then don’t stand around all day like a bloody idiot. You’re off duty?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. The trucks will be here shortly.”

“Trucks, sir?” I ask. “What trucks?”

“We ordered replacement timbers for the new trenches and to repair some of the old,” he tells me. “We can take most of the sandbags away once they get here. Reinforce the streets. Go up top and help with that, Sadler.”

“I was just about to get some sleep, sir,” I say.

“You can sleep any time,” he replies, and there isn’t even a hint of sarcasm in his tone; I think he actually means it. “But the sooner we get this done the more secure we’ll all be. Go on, Sadler, look lively, they’ll be arriving soon.”

I climb out, marching back towards the reverse line without fear of being shot; the distance is too far for the German guns to reach us here. Up ahead, I see Sergeant Clayton gesticulating wildly with three men and when I get closer I realize that one of them is Will, one Turner and the other a slightly older man, perhaps in his mid twenties, whom I’ve never laid eyes on before. He has a mop of red hair that’s been shorn close to the scalp and his skin looks raw and aged. All four turn as they hear me approach and I try not to look at Will, not wanting to know whether his initial reaction will be one of pleasure or irritation.