No Man's Land Read online

  There was no place for social niceties in the twilight land. The boy looked away indifferently.

  ‘Why was this officer going to shoot you, Josh?’ asked Lothar. ‘Why?’

  Again the long pause, as if the words had much more than a physical distance to carry.

  The answer when it came was incomprehensible.

  ‘So I could be with Wilf in the red sky.’

  ‘And what will you do now, Josh? I think your friends are winning the battle.’

  His hearing was getting better all the time and it seemed that the main noise of conflict had moved away a little. The comparative failure of the Brocken mine probably meant the British were over the ruined crest and advancing behind their barrage towards the German lines.

  The boy stood up. All this time he had been clutching his rifle across his lap. Now he hurled it away with all his young strength.

  ‘No more battles!’ he cried.

  He began to scramble out of the hole on the downhill side.

  ‘Hey, you! Soldier! Josh!’ Lothar called after him. ‘They will kill you, your own people, nicht wahr? Be careful, Kind! How can you hope to get home?’

  The boy stopped and spun round. His eyes were blank no longer, but blazing with emotion.

  ‘Home?’ he screamed. ‘Home? I can’t go home, can’t go home, can’t go home …’

  The words tailed off into sobs, then he turned once more and resumed his scrambling progress.

  And what of me? thought Lothar. Can I go home? What awaits me there? Willi dead, Sylvie dead; the authorities preferring me dead! Well, why not? Let them have their dead hero … For a time.

  Perhaps another time would come when at last the ordinary people drew back from this madness and began to count the cost. Then would be the time for the survivors to emerge, with their rage burning high, joining with their comrades in Russia and France and Britain to cleanse and purify this stinking sty of a civilization!

  He found himself laughing at his own fervour. Playacting again! he mocked himself. Dieter was right. Uncertain of a role, his natural inclination was to turn to melodrama.

  On the other hand, even forgetting the fine speeches and toning down the histrionics, it might be amusing to – survive a little longer, and perhaps even help this youngster who was turning his back on war to survive also.

  ‘Hey, Josh!’ he called after the retreating figure. ‘Wait a little! Wait for me!’

  BOOK THE SECOND

  Desolation

  PART ONE

  THE WARREN

  In June 1917 the offensive of the British Second Army at Messines was preceded by the explosion of nineteen mines placed in tunnels beneath the German lines. The noise of the explosion was heard in England.

  During 1917, over a hundred military executions also took place. Little noise was heard of this in England, though in November, Bonar Law, the Leader of the House, told Parliament that in future dependants of men executed would be told they had died on service.

  1

  ‘That was how I met Josh, five days ago I think,’ concluded Lothar. ‘I had no plan. I threw away my Mauser, found the boy another Lee Enfield. We pretended I was his prisoner. I was content it should end so for me, but I knew there was no such good end for the boy.’

  ‘What’s that mean, sport?’ growled Viney.

  ‘For me, a prison camp till the war was over. But for him, whatever it is you do to your soldiers when they will not fight. Shoot them, isn’t it? From what he has said, I think they have shot his brother already.’

  There was a silence, the first which could be called sympathetic.

  ‘So you decided to help the lad? Why, Fritz?’

  ‘Why not? He had given up the war. I too wished to give up the war. It was not planned. Perhaps that is why we succeeded. No one challenged us that first day. There was much confusion. We hid in an old dug-out that night, then travelled on. After a while I realized we had gone so far, my own uniform would attract attention. So I took this tunic off a dead man. By now we were on the edge of this desolate land. We travelled on till today we were chased by the horsemen. Then we were rescued by you. For which I thank you.’

  ‘Save your thanks, Fritz, till we decide what to do with you,’ said Viney. ‘All right, you bastards. There’s no rank here, everyone gets a say, you know that. What should we do with ’em?’.

  The answer came swiftly from the scab-faced man called Foxy.

  ‘Kill the fucking Hun for a start!’ he yelled.

  ‘I second that,’ said the gingery Taylor who had previously drawn Viney’s wrath. A mutter of agreement, not unanimous but not audibly opposed, ran round the chamber.

  Viney turned towards Foxy. In that moment, watching that burly, hard-muscled figure standing there with the arrogant confidence of a pride-leader in every line and lineament of his body, Lothar knew they were safe. The invitation to democratic debate had not been given with any thought of bowing to majority opinion but simply to demonstrate yet again that what he thought was majority opinion.

  ‘That’s what you think, is it? Like I said before, Foxy, anyone wants to kill Huns, that’s where they’re killing Huns – out there! Out there, you get paid to kill Huns, they give you medals for killing Huns. Did someone speak?’

  No one spoke till the big paunchy man with the same twangy accent said, ‘What say you, Viney?’

  ‘You asking my opinion, Blackie?’ said Viney with mock surprise. ‘All right. Here it is. These lads here are on the run from the Army, it doesn’t matter which Army, there’s only one sodding huge Army in the whole world. And they look hungry. Christ, don’t they look hungry! Let’s feed them, that’s the first move. That’s what I say, Blackie.’

  There was no visible sign of opposition, and Lothar and Josh were thrust to the floor in a corner and a little while later handed chunks of cheese and stale biscuits. The avidity with which they devoured them won some small applause and also a little sympathy from men who knew the feeling well.

  ‘Poor buggers is starving,’ said a big red-faced man.

  ‘We’ve all been starving, Heppy,’ said another, less sympathetic voice. ‘What use are they going to be to us, Viney? A fucking Hun and a kid who looks like he’s doolally tap. What use are they?’

  Viney looked mildly at the questioner.

  ‘You want us to start asking what use everyone here is, is that it?’ he asked softly. ‘I’ll tell you what, Strother, there’d be precious few would pass my test!’

  Strother, a squat ugly man, forced a smile in an effort to seem to be sharing a joke rather than folding under a threat, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.

  There was no further discussion.

  The food finished, the two newcomers whose status, despite Viney’s pronouncement of welcome, was clearly still ambiguous, were taken out of the large chamber and thrust into a smaller dug-out which was sealed with a corrugated iron sheet. A foul-smelling blanket had been thrown in after them. Lothar wrapped it round Josh and when the boy put his arms around him, draped the loose end over his own body. Sleep came quickly for the youngster, but Lothar lay awake, bothered by the enclosed space despite his fatigue, and trying to guess what the future might hold for them in this place.

  After perhaps half an hour he heard the corrugated sheet being drawn aside and suddenly a lantern was shining in his eyes and the blanket was pulled off his body.

  It was Viney standing colossus-like astride them. He said in a low menacing voice, ‘Fritz, I hope you’ve not been fucking this lad.’

  Shielding his eyes against the light, Lothar said, ‘He is unhappy, lost, demented even. They shot his brother, his own side. He has suffered more than he can bear and needs peace and comfort and someone to trust. I am his friend. He stays close to me waking and clings tight to me sleeping. I am his friend. That is all I am.’

  Viney stood in thought for a while, then let the blanket fall.

  ‘All right, Fritz,’ he said. ‘So you’re his friend. Be a good friend. But
I’ll be watching you, friend, never doubt that. I’ll be watching you.’

  The light retreated, the corrugated sheet was replaced, the darkness was once more complete. Lothar slept.

  2

  There was a thunderous knocking at his door, a voice calling his name.

  Jack Denial awoke.

  It was half past midnight. He noted the hour without resentment or relief. To be awoken from nightmares to memories was merely to change one kind of pain for another.

  He opened his door. Sergeant-Major Maggs said, ‘Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I thought you might like to hear this straightaway. There’s been some bother in the Desolation, some of them mounties killed. Mr Cowper missing. That corporal, Ackerman, came back alone, I thought you’d want to talk to him.’

  ‘Give me two minutes, Mr Maggs,’ said Denial.

  Quickly he dressed. In appearance and action, he gave no sign of having changed at all since Sally Thornton’s death. His reputation as a cold fish had been considerably enhanced by his refusal to accept an offer of leave or a transfer. Only Maggs from time to time had glimpsed the depth and violence of his grief, and that only in reflected hints, in an involuntary tightening of muscle, hooding of eye, lowering of voice, whenever Viney and the escaped Australians were mentioned.

  They had found the motorbike combination abandoned on the edge of the Desolation where the terrain became impossible for anything but a tracked vehicle. And there the trail had ended. Denial knew better than most that it was likely to be a permanent end, for he guessed what his superiors and the General Staff refused to acknowledge, just how vast a population of deserters had taken refuge in the Desolation and elsewhere.

  But a greater force even than duty now energized his whole being. Hate.

  Corporal Ackerman’s mad flight had carried him a good way towards the edge of the Desolation before the thickening light and his horse’s fatigue had combined to negate his riding skill and good luck. A foreleg plunged through the spokes of a half-buried gun-carriage wheel had brought man and beast crashing down. The man rose, the beast couldn’t. Pausing only to shoot the crippled animal, he had continued on foot, unmanned more than he would later care to admit by what had happened; and he had not stopped for rest till he found himself once more in countryside where the trees had leaves on them and the earth bore crops.

  Eventually in the early hours of the morning he found himself in the presence of Jack Denial.

  ‘These men who attacked you,’ prompted Denial.

  ‘Yes, a dozen of them, maybe more,’ exaggerated Ackerman. ‘They came swarming out of nowhere, out of the bowels of the earth, that’s how it looked. Well, it did, really it did, sir.’

  He defended his fanciful phrase with the indignation of one who had seen it and had been amazed.

  ‘Describe them,’ said Denial.

  ‘Well, they was scruffy, dead scruffy,’ said Ackerman with all an NCO’s distaste for this condition. ‘Sort of rugged and wild-looking, more like a bunch of pirates than anything. There was one big brute, nigh on seven foot tall he looked. Well, six and half anyway, and broad to match. He looked like he was in charge.’

  ‘Did they say anything?’

  ‘They was dead quiet at the start, but there was a bit of shouting at the finish. It was just noise, sir. Get down! and Shoot! that kind of thing, I couldn’t make it out proper.’

  ‘But the accent, you could make that out, perhaps?’

  Ackerman looked puzzled.

  ‘I mean, did they sound Scottish, say? Or Welsh?’

  ‘Oh, I get you, sir. No, not Scottish. But come to think of it, there was a little bit of a twang. More like them New Zealanders. Or them Aussies, perhaps.’

  Denial nodded. Sergeant-Major Maggs opened his mouth to speak, but the captain closed it for him with a glance.

  ‘And your comrades, they were all killed?’

  Ackerman hesitated. Dawes he was sure of. The troopers on the far side of the ridge he hadn’t been able to see, but the screams of that horse had been enough. They’d been down; there’d been rifle fire. They must have been dead. Certainly he’d be mad to give even a hint that he might have abandoned his fellow soldiers in dire straits.

  But his hesitation had already done some damage.

  ‘You don’t seem certain, Corporal,’ said Denial gently.

  ‘Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir. What I mean is, the lads were definitely dead, sir,’ said Ackerman trying to retrieve his position. ‘But Mr Cowper, sir, they shot his horse from under him and I saw him go arse over tip, begging your pardon, whether he was actually hit himself, I couldn’t say, but he seemed in a fair way to breaking his neck when he fell, and in any case, he was right in the middle of them bastards and they didn’t look like they was going to let anyone get up and walk away.’

  He spoke defiantly. Denial’s unblinking gaze filled him with the unpleasant sensation that every scrap of truth and evasion and supposition was being separated inexorably into its proper pile. But all the APM said was, ‘Thank you, Corporal Ackerman. You’d better go and get some rest.’

  After the corporal had gone, Maggs said, ‘I’ll see if I can rustle up a mug of char, sir.’

  He returned with two steaming mugs ten minutes later. Denial sipped the scalding liquid carefully.

  ‘I don’t like the sound of this, sergeant-major,’ he said after a while. ‘This smacks of organization. Pirates, the corporal called them. He may be right. Take a scattering of fugitives, organize them, and suddenly what you have is a band of brigands, a focal point for disaffection.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Sergeant-Major Maggs politely. His interest in the present case was much more personal, as he suspected was Denial’s also.

  ‘Sir,’ he said impatiently. ‘Could it have been him, do you think? Description fitted.’

  There was no need to specify who was being referred to, and Denial did not pretend puzzlement.

  ‘Australian, possibly. Big, possibly. Corporal Ackerman’s ear is not testable and he was in a mood to exaggerate, I think,’ mused Denial. ‘No. It’s all too vague, Mr Maggs. Put it out of your mind, right out of your mind.’

  But Maggs had seen the tensing of the fingers and the rapid flicker of a pulse under the jaw-line, and he smiled as he saluted and took his leave.

  3

  Lothar awoke. Josh had turned in the night and pulled the blanket off him and he was cold. In addition his bruised and exhausted body had stiffened as he slept and his muscles ached as he tried to flex them.

  But it was neither cold nor pain that had awoken him. It was a sense of something changing permanently in his life, an altered state deeper and more distant far than the lunatic events of the past few days. He rose and pushed aside the corrugated sheet shutting off the dug-out. He made as little noise as possible in order not to wake Josh, but he was less successful with the men posted to keep an eye on them.

  As he crawled through the gap he’d created, a hand seized his hair and forced back his head and a voice borne on a breath like a sewer said hoarsely, ‘Where’d you think you’re going, Fritz? Going to slit a few throats and win yourself a medal?’

  Though he’d heard it only once before, Lothar recognized it as belonging to the man called Strother who’d asked what use the newcomers were.

  ‘I wish only to relieve myself,’ he said.

  ‘Well, get back in there and piss in your pocket, chum!’ said Strother. ‘Next time you sticks your nut out here, I’ll crack it in half. Comprenny?’

  A match spluttered in the dense gloom and a lantern bloomed into light.

  ‘What’s up here, Strother?’ asked another familiar voice.

  ‘Nothing I can’t deal with, Hepworth,’ said Strother. ‘He says he wants a piss, I’ve told him to piss off back in there.’

  He laughed harshly at his witticism, his ugly face twisted grotesquely in the lamplight.

  The man with the lantern proved to be the red-faced man who’d remarked sympathetically how starved they were.<
br />
  He now said, ‘If the poor bugger wants a piss, let him go. It’s bad enough round here without encouraging more stink.’

  ‘It’s your funeral, mate,’ said Strother.

  He released Lothar’s hair and he crawled all the way out.

  ‘Come on, Fritz,’ said Hepworth. ‘Follow me.’

  He was a big thickset man, and Lothar noted once more how his complexion had retained its ruddiness despite this subterranean life which seemed to have turned most of the rest pale grey.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Hepworth. ‘Latrines. Your lot did a right job when they dug this place out, I’ll give ’em that.’

  The remark confirmed what Lothar had-already guessed. This was an old German HQ complex-No English or French would have delved so deeply or supported so strongly.

  But it was badly dilapidated now. The planks which had lined the walls had in places disappeared either through decay or, more likely, by being ripped off to provide firewood. And the once efficient systems of lighting, ventilation and, by the vile stench which greeted him, sewage disposal had obviously broken down.

  Hepworth caught his grimace of distaste and laughed sourly.

  ‘Couple of days in the Warren and you’ll not notice the stink, Fritz,’ he said.

  ‘The Warren?’ said Lothar, his excellent English for once failing him.

  ‘Aye. Place where rabbits live,’ explained Hepworth. ‘Though it’s not fucking rabbits we share it with. Get out of it, you bugger!’

  He swung his booted foot at a shadow which had detached itself from the wall. It was a rat, one of the biggest Lothar had ever seen. It skipped nimbly aside, paused a few feet away, its eyes gleaming in the dim lamplight as it seemed to debate whether to retreat or attack, then slipped away into the darkness.

  Lothar swore in German and Hepworth said grimly, ‘Not what you’re used to, Fritz? Best have your piss quick afore he brings his mates back for a look.’

  Hastily Lothar obeyed. He had just finished when there was a sudden uproar in the central area of the Warren, a babble of voices cut through by a sharp cry of pain.’