White Feathers (19 page)

‘Yes, he does look more comfortable, doesn’t he?’ Ian lied.

Toby nodded absently. ‘I’m taking him home with me when I go.’

‘Good idea.’

‘I’ve got a dog at home, a terrier. He’s called Patch because of
the black bit over his eye. They could be friends.’

Ian couldn’t think of a suitable response so they sat in silence for a few moments, then Toby said, ‘I got the milk.’

‘Milk?’

‘Mmm. Mum asked me to, so I did it on the way back.’

‘Oh,’ Ian said cautiously. ‘Right.’ He looked around as Trevor came in and put a finger to his lips. Trevor sat down quietly.

‘I told Mum we should get another house cow, but she reckons Daisy’s enough. Not for me, I said. I love milk, it’s nice and creamy.’

Ian and Trevor looked at each other in dismay, and Ian said gently, ‘Where is it now?’

Toby stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘What?’

‘The milk,’ said Ian. ‘Where’s the milk now?’

Toby gazed around the dugout, a puzzled expression on his face. Then his bottom lip trembled and he started to weep, but soundlessly, and his hands crept up to cover his ears. A dollop of snot slid from his left nostril and plopped onto Foxy’s fur.

‘It was in the pail. I was going to ask if I could save some for Foxy,’ he hiccupped, lowering his hands and running his fingertips protectively over the animal’s fine skull. Then, as quickly as they had started, Toby’s tears stopped and his face took on an eerie blankness as he began to rock slowly backwards and forwards.

Ian felt impotent and utterly wretched. Behind him he heard Trevor mutter, ‘Bloody hell.’

‘Perhaps we could give him some biscuit soaked in water instead?’ Ian suggested, but it was clear that, in his head, Toby had gone somewhere else now.

‘Poor little bastard,’ Trevor spat. ‘That bloody MO’s got a lot to answer for.’

It was Owen who found him the following day, lying curled on his side at the back of the dugout, the underside of his thin forearms slit with a shard of tin — one deep, bloody, deliberate
slice from elbow to wrist on each arm. His fur sticky with Toby’s congealing blood, Foxy lay stiff and lifeless in the hollow between the boy’s thighs and chest.

When Ian and Trevor came in, Owen was sitting on the biscuit box with his head in his hands.

‘What’s up?’ Trevor said, suddenly wary.

‘Toby,’ Owen replied, his voice muffled.

And then they saw. Ian crouched over the body and hesitantly touched the dead boy’s cold cheek. ‘How long?’ he croaked. There was a terrible ache in his throat.

Owen lifted his head wearily. ‘An hour? The fox longer.’

It was obvious to all of them what had happened: Foxy had died and Toby, left alone in the dugout, had either been unable or unwilling to contend with his loss.

Trevor cleared his throat. ‘I’ll get the sarge.’

Self-inflicted wounds were not unheard of in the trenches. Such behaviour, if proved, could result in a court-martial and up to sixty days’ field punishment. Men who harmed themselves deliberately were generally regarded with a minimum of compassion, but those who actually took their own lives were more often than not accorded a grudging posthumous respect for at least having the guts to do the job properly.

But everyone had known Toby was mentally unwell, and everyone agreed he should have been sent home long ago. His death symbolised for them not the shortcomings of the boy himself, but rather the army’s merciless inflexibility, especially among its more senior officers, who refused to recognise a desperately ill, under-aged boy when they saw one.

At Toby’s funeral, Blakely, in a display of sentiment that surprised everyone, ensured that Foxy’s body was interred with
him, and Lieutenant Ross made it known that his letter to the boy’s parents would describe in detail the heroic deeds that had led to his untimely but noble death. After the brief and necessarily formulaic military burial, Toby’s name wasn’t mentioned again; it was as if his death had torn a hole in the flesh of the section itself, and only by keeping his name unuttered could the wound be healed.

A miasma of gloom settled over the unit and stayed there until word came that the New Zealand Division would be withdrawn from Armentières to a location outside Abbeville, a town near the French coast. There, they would receive further training in anticipation of their role in British Commander-in-Chief Douglas Haig’s grand attack against the Germans in the region of the Somme River.

To the original members of the division the break was welcome after more than three months in the line, but for Ian and Trevor, the prospect of redeployment was frustrating: they’d been in the thick of it for only a matter of days and were to be withdrawn already, even if only temporarily. The division’s relief commenced on the 13th of August and five days later command of the sector passed to the Highlanders.

Ian and James were finally reunited at the train station at St Omer on the way to Abbeville. Ian thought his brother looked haggard and ill, and James told Ian he’d been a bloody little fool for enlisting.

‘Mam wrote and said you’d signed up. I knew you’d been thinking about it, but why didn’t you write and tell me yourself what you were going to do? I gather Mam and Da are pretty upset.’

Ian shrugged uneasily; he hadn’t told his brother in case James tried to talk him out of it or, even worse, written to their parents and told them what he was planning to do. He hadn’t written to Thomas or Keely either for the same reason.

‘You’re a beaut, aren’t you?’ James went on. ‘You could have
thought about the possible repercussions, with all of us being over here now.’

It irritated Ian whenever James spoke to him like this, something he’d forgotten during his older brother’s long absence. He changed the subject.

‘Duncan’s the sweetest little thing. Well, actually, he’s not that little any more. He looks just like you.’

James nodded. ‘I know. Lucy sent me some photographs. How is she?’

‘She’s all right, but I think she misses you a lot more than she lets on. I used to hear her crying in her room sometimes. Your room, I mean. She’s a nice girl, Lucy. Mam and Da give her a lot of support.’ Ian thought he saw the glimmer of tears in his brother’s eyes, and looked quickly away.

‘And Joseph?’ James asked after a minute. ‘How’s he getting on? Mam said he’s riding again.’

Ian nodded. ‘He’s doing really well. He’s got so good on his new leg you can hardly tell it’s a false one. He was supposed to go to Napier Hospital for some sort of rehabilitation but he told them to get stuffed and he’d sort himself out.’

‘Sounds like Joseph.’

‘Da’s offered him permanent work at Kenmore.’

‘That’s good.’

Neither of them said out loud that, after all, someone had to fill the gap left by Ian running off.

Ian asked, ‘Have you seen Thomas at all? Is he here with the division?’

‘Yes, I’ve seen him and no, he isn’t. He’s gone on some training course with the Tommies, something to do with a new triage system, I think. He was unbelievably angry when he found out you’d enlisted. In fact, I’ve never seen him so pissed off.’

Ian let the thrust go. ‘And what about Erin and Keely? We heard
before I left that they’re working together again.’

‘Yes. They were here for a little while, although I didn’t see them, but apparently they’ve been transferred to one of the New Zealand hospitals in England now. I haven’t heard from Keely in a while.’

‘It’s good news about Erin and Joseph, isn’t it?’

James smiled then, a rare, uninhibited smile from before the war. ‘Yes, it’s marvellous. Has there been any word about when Erin might go home?’

‘No, and knowing her it probably won’t be until the end.’

‘I thought she might chuck it in after the
Marquette
.’

‘No, she said in one of her letters that the survivors had been offered the choice, but she’d decided to stay on.’

‘What did Joseph think about that?’

Ian shrugged. ‘Nothing, I think. He seems to understand what her nursing means to her.’

‘She’s got guts, I’ll say that for her.’

‘Yes, she has. And speaking of guts, how’s your friend Captain Tarrant? Been promoted to field marshal yet?’

A flicker of something dark crossed James’s face. ‘Not quite.’

Ian waited for his brother to elaborate, but the subject appeared to be closed.

After that they were able to meet again briefly at the camp at Abbeville on a number of occasions, despite being in different battalions, but the hectic training schedule of the three New Zealand infantry brigades meant the two brothers could never spend much time together. All talk was of the Somme push, and everything the New Zealanders did was in preparation for joining the campaign on the 11th of September.

The division was finally deemed ready, but before it went west again leave was granted. Ian’s battalion furloughed at the New Zealand base at Étaples where they luxuriated in hot baths before heading into town for a feverishly anticipated night out. The
bathhouse was in a large converted factory. A man went in, was issued with soap, a fresh towel and a full set of clean kit, then stripped off his filthy uniform and immersed himself in a vast tank of hot water before scrubbing himself to within an inch of his life. Discarded uniforms were whisked away by French laundry women and deloused, washed, mended, pressed and stored for issue to future soldiers.

Bathed, shaved and attired in fresh uniforms, Ian’s section felt like new men; Ian himself had already almost forgotten what it was like to be clean, to feel his hair, unencumbered by mud and grease, lifted by the breeze and his hands, feet and backside free of sticky grime and filth.

He turned to Owen and remarked, ‘You know, you don’t look too bad, clean.’

‘Oh, well, thanks very much.’

‘No, I mean it. You look much younger and quite handsome.’

Owen screwed up his face in mock suspicion. ‘You’re not one of those pansies, are you?’

‘Piss off,’ Ian replied mildly. ‘No, it’s just that when we first met I got the impression you were quite a lot older than me. Now, all spruced up, you don’t look it at all.’

‘Well, I turned twenty-five in March, but since Gallipoli I seem to have developed a much older face. Can’t think why.’

Trevor joined them, his own face scrubbed pink and his dark hair slicked racily back. ‘Ready?’ he asked them eagerly.

‘God,’ said Owen, wrinkling his nose, ‘has Fritz shelled the local perfume factory?’

‘No, it’s skin tonic. One of the lads lent me some.’

‘It’s very subtle.’

‘I like it,’ replied Trevor, ignoring Owen’s sarcasm. ‘You’ll be sorry when those pretty French girls come flocking around me and you’re sitting all by yourself sobbing into your beer.’

Owen snorted. ‘We’ll see.’

By the time they got into town it was late afternoon. Owen expressed a desire to go down to the waterfront to look at the fishing boats, then visit a couple of the town’s spectacular Flemish churches, but Trevor convinced him, admittedly without too much effort, that they should all go to an
estaminet
first for a meal and a few drinks.

Accompanied by Reg White and Jock Dow, two privates from their section, they found a likely-looking establishment almost immediately, although it was already full and the
proprietaire
, with the glimmer of profit in his eye, had to fetch extra seats. He arranged the stools around the table, waved his patrons into them and pointed to the blackboard menu propped on the bar.

‘It’s in bloody French,’ complained Reg.

Owen said, ‘Yes, well, we
are
in France.’

Ian asked, ‘Can anyone read it?’

‘I can, a little,’ replied Owen. ‘Enough to stop us poisoning ourselves, any way. I hope.’

He turned to the
proprietaire
and asked for beer but was informed in very heavily accented English that, sadly, the beer had just run out. However, would the
monsieurs
like
vin rouge
instead? Owen said yes and the Frenchman, nodding and smiling ingratiatingly, took their orders and scurried away. Owen didn’t blame him; his country was being blown to kingdom come and an appalling number of his countrymen had recently been pulverised into the mud at Verdun, so who could blame him for grasping at the prospect of a small financial profit?

He returned with a large tin tray bearing five carafes of red wine and five stubby glasses, which he set on the table with a flourish. ‘Are the
messieurs
ready to order yet?’ he asked obsequiously.

By the time their meals arrived they’d disposed of more than half the wine and were feeling quite relaxed, talking at the tops
of their voices over the din of other diners and waving across the room at acquaintances.

‘So what do you teach?’ Ian asked Owen, his mouth full of delicious, meltingly fresh fish.

‘History. Sort of fell into it, really. I read history at university for a year but then I got bored and chucked it in and travelled around doing a bit of farm labouring here and there for a while. I was in Dannevirke for a few months and I met the local schoolmaster in the pub one day and we got to talking and the upshot of that was I ended up teaching at the school there.’

‘Will you go back to it after this?’

‘I don’t know, really. I enjoy working on the land. There’s a certain satisfaction to it.’

Ian nodded enthusiastically. ‘It’s a good life,’ he agreed.

‘’Course, we might be all dead soon,’ commented Jock dourly.

Trevor wiped sauce off his plate with a chunk of bread. ‘God, Dow, you’re a miserable bastard.’

‘No,’ replied Jock stoically, accustomed to being had on about his pessimism, ‘I’m just realistic.’

‘Well, be realistic tomorrow. We’re on leave tonight. Let’s make the most of it, eh?’

And they did. By the time they’d finished their food, which even Jock had to admit had been ‘fairly’ good, they were well on the way to inebriation. They paid for their meal and wandered unsteadily out into the night.

‘Right,’ said Trevor, leering and rubbing his hands together. ‘Where’s the sheilas?’

They meandered down quaint, cobbled streets towards the waterfront where, Trevor insisted, there were bound to be whores.