No Man's Land Read online

  No Man’s Land

  Reginald Hill

  Preface

  No Man’s Land has been a long time in the making and passed through many changes. ‘So what?’ says the reader. ‘Let’s get on with the story.’

  Quite right, but first I must offer brief but heartfelt thanks: to Caradoc King of A. P. Watt, who sowed the seed and helped winnow many harvests; to Pat, my wife, who typed draft after draft with many helpful comments and comparatively little complaint; and to Marjory Chapman of Collins, who came late to the book and was able to spot where familiarity had bred obscurity and reconstruction awkwardness.

  ‘And now can we have the story?’

  Not quite yet. At this point I could hold you up with a long bibliography, but it has always seemed to me that fiction should authenticate itself. In any case, though I acknowledge a tremendous debt to all those historians and memoirists whose books brought me into at times unbearably close contact with the Great War, nowhere did I come across any concern with my central theme, the fate of those men who, for whatever reason, walked away from the War, and didn’t get caught. Paul Fussell in The Great War and Modern Memory (OUP 1975) refers briefly to the legend of a wild gang of deserters living in the waste land of the old Somme battlefield, but the truth behind the legend, the real story of what became of these men both during and after the war, must still be locked in individual minds and family tradition. I would be fascinated to hear from anyone who can turn the key.

  Meanwhile here, at last, is my fiction.

  DONCASTER

  1984

  R.H.

  Prologue

  THE HORSEMEN (1)

  Britain declared war on Germany on August 4th, 1914. The British Army killed its first German soldier on August 22nd near Mons. Seventeen days later on September 8th, near the Marne, the British Army killed its first British soldier, a 19-year-old private condemned for desertion. Thereafter, for the duration of the war, it continued to condemn them to death at the rate of 60 per month and execute them at the rate of 6 per month. These figures are approximate. Some months were better than others.

  The boy heard the horses while they were still a quarter of a mile away, but he did not waken the man. This desolate landscape was a garden to the country of his mind and he was completely indifferent to its sights and sounds.

  Even when the man awoke, the boy said nothing. By now the tread of many hooves had steadied to the direct approach of a single animal while the others fanned out. All this was perfectly clear to the boy’s country-sharp ears, but the man’s senses were still dulled by sleep. It was hunger that had awoken him; hunger, thirst and the need to piss.

  Dully he wondered why a body which had taken in no more than a few mouthfuls of dirty ditchwater in twenty-four hours should still need to piss.

  The man stood up and stretched his limbs, stiff beneath the ill-fitting khaki uniform with its single lance-corporal’s stripe. Soon in the west the sun would set. Soon in the east the war would rise. Here in this ghastly desolation, they were safe from that at least.

  Then, freezing in mid-yawn, he saw the approaching rider.

  His mind registered that he was.a lieutenant of cavalry riding a big grey. He was less than two hundred yards away, picking his way steadily across the broken terrain.

  The man reached down and seized the boy’s hand.

  ‘Josh, up!’ he commanded.

  The boy obeyed. Told what to do, he would do it, no more, no less.

  Still grasping his hand, the man said, ‘Come!’

  They had rested on the western slope of a low ridge where the ravaged earth had been partially repaired by some patches of spring greenery. The man set off down hill, partly because his weary limbs needed all the help they could get, but mainly because this had once been a defended height and at the foot of the slope lay a huge embuscade of rusting barbed wire. Get this between them and their pursuer and there was hope.

  Then came the sound of more hooves, and trotting smartly forward on the far side of the wire he saw two more horsemen.

  ‘Back up the hill, Josh!’ he cried.

  Panting for breath, the fugitives staggered back up the slope. Even now things did not look hopeless. The officer was still advancing very slowly, apparently caring more about his horse’s welfare than their capture. And the coils of wire still lay between the two newcomers and the slope. Though sunset was still a little way off, the sun was about to take an early night by slipping behind a low bank of dark cloud on the horizon. And once dusk set in, the Desolation would become a strange place of shifting sounds and stealthy movement which put the odds on the side of the pursued rather than the pursuers.

  But when they reached the crest of the ridge, the odds shifted firmly back.

  There were two more horsemen making their way up the relatively easy and unencumbered eastern slope.

  One wore a corporal’s stripes; the other, a small moustachioed man, let out a wild hunting cry as soon as he saw them and spurred his horse into a gallop, waving a fierce-looking sabre in the air.

  ‘Run, Josh, run!’ screamed the man.

  Hand in hand they sprinted along the ridge, tripping and stumbling on the uneven surface. It was a vain and pointless flight. The first pair of horsemen had hurried on till they found a gap in the wire and were now on a line to cut them off ahead. The fierce little trooper was coming up at a full gallop on the other side, with the corporal following more sedately. And a backward glance showed the officer still a good way behind but proceeding with a steady certainty which was unnerving.

  The same glance brought their downfall, literally.

  The man put his foot in a hole and went tumbling forward beyond recovery. He managed to let go of Josh’s hand, not wanting to bring the boy falling with him. The loss of contact was as effective as switching off a machine, for when the man had done a head-cracking somersault, finishing upright against a charred tree-stump, he saw Josh standing completely still a few yards away.

  It was the stillness of indifference, but the moustachioed trooper, arriving a moment later, was seeing things through a distorting glass of long-frustrated blood lust. He saw the boy’s stillness as defiance; the fugitives had turned to make a fight of it! Thrusting his sabre straight out before him in the classic charge position, he rode straight at the unmoving figure.

  The man was helpless. Half-stunned by the fall, he had let go of his rifle and it lay out of reach a few feet away. The trooper let out a cry of rage, anger, hatred, directed at he knew not what, as he prepared to let his sabre taste its first blood in this or any war.

  Nearby a rifle cracked three times, or perhaps it was three rifles. The trooper’s scream spiralled out of the range of human hearing, his short thick neck spouted blood like a punched wine-cask and the unchristened sabre was spattered close to the hilt before it fell from his lifeless hand and vibrated point down in the earth close to Josh’s head.

  The man staggered to his feet. He was on the highest point of the ridge and had a clear view in all directions. The trooper, his foot caught in the stirrup, was being dragged along behind his panicking horse. The poor animal was eager to join his two fellows who were also riderless. This was no terrain for wild flight, however. One was already caught in the barbed wire, bucking and plunging ever deeper with terrible screams that sounded more human than the trooper’s death cry. The other was in full flight when it stumbled in a weed-overgrown trench and cartwheeled to the ground with a backbreaking crash.

  Their riders were down some way further back, one lying still, the other in the prone position, firing his rifle at a group of men running forward, crouched low, in the trench system which advanced along the crest of the ridge. It must have been one of these who had shot the man with the moustaches. Nor had it
been a lucky bullet. One of them popped up out of the trench now, taking a snap shot at the firing trooper who jerked convulsively and lay still.

  And now the newcomers came out of the trenches and began advancing at a low crouching run.

  The man looked round. Half way up the far slope, the cavalry corporal had reined his horse to a halt and was peering anxiously upwards into the gathering gloom. But the sound of gunfire had had the opposite effect on the officer. Far from slowing down, he was spurring his horse from a cautious trot into a full-blooded gallop. He had drawn his pistol, and though its puny crack was hardly audible above the thundering hooves, the man saw quite clearly the spurt of muzzle-flame.

  ‘Down, you fuckers! Get down!’

  The screamed command came from behind. The man realized that he and Josh were in a direct line between the cavalry officers and their anonymous rescuers. Grabbing the boy’s arms, he pulled him to the ground. Instantly a fusillade of rifle shots rang out. The horse, hit in the chest and head, collapsed in full stride. The rider flew out of the saddle, hit the ground with a bone-jarring thump and lay quite still. His pistol skittered across the dry clay surface and came to rest a foot away from the man. He reached out his hand to grasp its butt. A boot crashed down on the barrel, forcing the weapon from his grip.

  ‘That’s mine, sport,’ said a deep growling voice, and a huge hand plucked the pistol from the earth.

  There was still the crackle of rifle fire. The man raised his head to see the cavalry corporal galloping away full tilt, crouched low against his horse’s neck.

  ‘Bastard’s away, Viney,’ said someone.

  ‘All right. Save your bullets. Going at that speed, he’ll probably break his neck anyhow.’

  ‘This one’s alive, Viney,’ said a man kneeling by the officer’s body. He was almost as big as the one called Viney, but much flabbier. He had a knife in his hand.

  ‘Shall I finish him?’ he asked.

  The man called Viney hesitated.

  ‘Naw,’ he said finally. ‘Later, may be. On your feet, friends.’

  The man stood upright and helped Josh to his feet too. The recent excitements seemed to have touched the boy not at all. His wide clear eyes regarded their saviours with an indifference his companion could not share. They were a wildlooking gang, in dirty ragged clothing and with unkempt hair and unshaven faces. They were also very well armed. Only one thing was clear about them; in stillness or in action there could be no doubt who was their leader.

  He addressed himself to the huge, muscular man standing slightly apart with a stillness which matched Josh’s, but which possessed a brooding, menacing quality completely absent from the boy’s.

  ‘Who are you?’ he said.

  The man registered the question with a flicker of his hard green eyes but his only reply was to say to the fat man with the knife, ‘Bring them,’ and walk away.

  Immediately, the man’s arms were seized and he found himself being half dragged, half carried, over ground too rough and dark for safe progress but which his captors seemed to treat as a sunlit pavement. Turning his head, he glimpsed two similar trios, one supporting the officer, the other Josh. He called the boy’s name reassuringly a couple of times and received in reply the back of a hand across his mouth with such force that his teeth dug into his upper lip and the salty taste of blood bloomed on his tongue.

  They travelled, he guessed, for rather more than a quarter of a mile, then halted. But the pause had not been long enough for him to get any bearings before he was forced forward again, this time only a couple of paces, when the ground opened up beneath his feet and he went crashing and sliding down what felt like a flight of rough-hewn steps. No time to get his breath. He was dragged and pushed along a narrow corridor, down another short flight of steps, through a doorway into what felt like a large chamber. From the sound of breathing and the stench of unwashed bodies, it was fully occupied. A door was closed. The darkness was complete.

  ‘All right?’ said a voice.

  ‘All right.’

  There was the sputter of a match which grew into the large flame of a hurricane lamp, at first flickering fitfully, but soon settling down to cast a dim, even light. Around the chamber, which was perhaps sixty feet by thirty, other lamps were lit, and the fingers of flame conjured fierce, lupine faces out of the dark, between twenty and thirty of them. They regarded the newcomers with hostile curiosity.

  ‘You promised us food, not more mouths, Viney,’ growled one man.

  ‘Well, I fancy a slice of this poncy officer,’ said another. ‘He should be nice and tender considering what them bastards feed themselves!’

  The speaker, a slight wild-eyed man with his right cheek one broad suppurating scab, began to posture before the lieutenant, making exaggerated salutes and crying in a strangulated voice, ‘Yessir! Nosir! How’d you like to be cooked, sir? Stewed, fried, or baked in a pie, sir?’

  ‘Stow it, Foxy,’ growled Viney. ‘Someone take this joker away and keep him safe till I want him. Not you, Foxy. Taff, you look after him.’

  The lieutenant, now conscious enough to look alarmed, was dragged from the chamber by a small dark man.

  Viney slowly stripped off his battledress tunic. It was growing hot in the crowded room. Beneath it he wore a grubby singlet against which his pectoral muscles strained. Across the biceps of his right arm was tattooed a brown and gold butterfly, strangely delicate in such a place on such a person. The boy Josh could not take his eyes off it.

  Someone tossed Viney a long beer bottle with a screwtop. He twisted it off, put the bottle to his lips and took a long suck.

  ‘Thirsty, son?’ he said to Josh. ‘Try some of this.’

  He passed the bottle over. Josh drank.

  ‘Your mate too,’ said Viney. ‘He looks as if he could do with it.’

  Josh passed the bottle to the man, who drank deep. It was good beer.

  ‘Now you’ve wet your whistles, let’s hear you use them,’ said Viney. ‘Introductions first. I’m Viney. I’m in charge here till someone proves different. Now it’s your turn, sports. Name, rank, number to start with. No bullshit. Jildi!’

  A huge finger pointed at the man in the lance-corporal’s tunic.

  He shook himself free of the restraining hands and said in a formal military voice, ‘I am Lothar von Seeberg, Feldwebel, which is, I think, sergeant of field artillery …’

  ‘A Boche?’ cried someone incredulously. ‘You’re a Boche?’

  ‘I am German, yes,’ agreed Lothar von Seeberg.

  ‘In British uniform? You Hun bastard!’

  The voice rose to a scream of rage and suddenly the wild-eyed man with the scabby cheek flung himself on to Lothar, long-taloned fingers scrabbling for the throat. The German went backwards with his attacker locked astride him. From the ring of onlookers there rose an animal cry of encouragement and expectation.

  ‘Stop it!’ cried Josh. ‘Stop it!’

  Lothar had no time to register pleasure at this rare sign of independent thought from Josh. All his strength of body and mind was needed to ward off this new attack and he was so drained by his recent struggles that he did not know if it would suffice.

  Josh was too firmly held to offer any physical help and he could only stand and watch with sudden tears streaming down his face. But Viney stepped forward and seized the scab-faced man by his hair, dragging him upright.

  ‘All right, Foxy, turn it in!’ he cried. ‘No one fights till I say fight! Hold still, I tell you, or you’ll end up bald as a baboon’s arse and only half as pretty.’

  The man called Foxy stopped struggling but snarled, ‘He’s a sodding Boche, you heard him, Viney.’

  ‘You want to kill Germans, you should’ve stayed in the line,’ said Viney. ‘Not that I’ve anything against killing Germans, but not in the way of patriotism, you follow me? You better had!’

  So saying, he contemptuously thrust the scab-faced man away from him and turned his attention to Josh, who as the threat to Lotha
r faded was relapsing into his near-catatonic indifference.

  ‘Are you a Hun too, sonny?’ enquired Viney in a kindly tone.

  The boy did not speak but continued to stare at the tattooed butterfly. Lothar from the ground gasped, ‘No. He is English.’

  ‘A Pom, is it? All right then. Why’re you getting so het up about a Kraut, son?’

  ‘Perhaps they’re man and wife. He’s a pretty little thing,’ quipped a voice from the onlookers.

  Viney turned a terrible face on the speaker.

  ‘That’s plenty of that, Taylor,’ he snarled. ‘I’ve told you before about that. You follow me, sport?’

  There was a silence, unbroken except by the hard breathing of the separated combatants.

  ‘I said, do you follow me?’ repeated Viney.

  ‘It was just a joke.’

  ‘Mebbe. There’s some jokes I don’t much like, Taylor. I won’t say it again. Either you shape up or ship out.’

  There was no answer, though the man called Taylor, a square-faced gingery man, looked bitterly resentful. Viney returned to Lothar.

  ‘Right, Fritz. Time for explanations. Never hang a man till you’ve heard what he’s got to say, that’s the Aussie way. You seem to speak pretty fair English, better than half of these jokers, I’d say.’

  ‘I have relatives in England. Cousins. I have spent holidays with them.’

  ‘Spying! I told you he was a fucking spy!’ cried an unlikely-looking patriot.

  Viney sighed and said, ‘Stick a bung in it, for Christ’s sake! Sorry about that, Fritz. You were explaining yourself before we hanged you.’

  Emboldened by the albeit grisly humour of the man’s tone, Lothar said, ‘And you, will you then explain yourselves to me?’

  There was more angry muttering but Viney only grinned.

  ‘Fair do’s, is that it? I don’t rightly know if I could start explaining myself. How about you, Blackie? You’re usually right handy with explanations.’

  The fat man who had wanted to slit the officer’s throat smiled broadly without altering by a shade the steady cruelty of his eyes.