The peace talks between Germany and Russia had finally been concluded. Germany would have more men, more money, more ammunition than ever before. Where was Tom? What would this mean for Tom?
That night Stanley lay awake in his bunk. Around him, the men who’d been given three dogs each were all asleep. Rain rattled on the iron roof like the rat-a-tat-tat of machine-gun fire.
Listening to the rain, Stanley fell into an unsettled sleep. In his dream, water dripped from the tin roof and collected in dark puddles on the floor. The puddles grew and coalesced and began to rise and fill the hut. The water was rising inside Stanley. He couldn’t speak and he couldn’t breathe because the water was in his throat and he was drowning, while above him danced fragments of golden straw. He reached upward through the raven water to them, but his fingers grasped only shreds of sacking.
The next morning the keepers sat in the lorry, ready for the Colonel’s address.
‘Can you hear that?’ said someone. The eerie echo of gunfire was drifting on the wind across the narrow sea from the Western Front.
‘I can’t wait – can you? – for the cavalry, for the beating drums . . .’ said Trigger Doyle. Stanley looked at Trigger aghast. He’d never longed for war, didn’t like to think of one man killing another. France was no more and no less to Stanley than the land where Tom was and Da wasn’t.
Trigger looked at Stanley expectantly. ‘Not one for a natter, are you, Stanley Ryder?’ But he didn’t wait for an answer and shrugged his shoulders, ‘’S all right. We’ll stick together, you and I, and I’ll do the talking.’ Trigger saw it as his job, perhaps, to jolly Stanley along and he never seemed to mind that Stanley didn’t say much.
Bones was good at the Homing Run, fast and with iron stamina. Each afternoon of the last three weeks the dogs had been taken by the Colonel’s orderlies a distance away from their keepers and had had to find their way back alone over ground they didn’t know. First they’d been led away on foot, then in motor cars. Now, for the first time, they were to be taken off in a closed box trailed behind the motor car. At their destination the orderlies would unload them, put a message giving the time of release into their cylinders, slip their collars and instruct the dogs to get on.
The Colonel began to speak. ‘The safe arrival of a message from the back line to the front, or the front to the back, can mean the success or failure of an offensive. Telephone lines can be easily tapped. Wireless communication can be tuned into. A dog, unlike a pigeon, can work at night, in fog, in rain, can swim across a river or a canal or a shell hole. Using a dog as messenger can prevent the tragic and unnecessary death of a human runner. That is why the homing skill has been at the heart of all our training here and today we’ll see which dogs are ready for this most dangerous and vital duty.’
The dogs were driven away. The keepers moved towards their posts. The light changed minute by minute as clouds scudded across the vast mackerel sky. Stanley buttoned his greatcoat to the neck, stamped his feet and blew on his hands, his eyes trained on the horizon and a distant church spire. He could see all the arable land between this estuary and the next. Bones would be eight miles away by now, there, below the church spire. At exactly three o’clock he’d be released. Kennel staff were scattered along the route, ready to watch each dog’s self-control, ability to avoid temptations, to navigate traffic. The Colonel himself would be watching from a sort of raised hide on the salt marsh, so he could see as much of the course as possible.
Stanley checked his watch. Three ten. They’d come into sight any minute, the faster ones first, then the rest in dribs and drabs.
Even when Bones had been taken further away, had to cross higher gates, wider dykes, denser barbed wire, still he’d come back, not taking the road he’d travelled outward, but in a beeline. Yes, Bones was good at homing, but this run would include the Firing Drill, the test he’d found so difficult. Still, Stanley said to himself, it made no difference really, if Bones did well or not.
The minutes inched past. Stanley anxiously scuffed the broad flat leaves of the cord grass at his feet. There, almost beneath his left boot, was the spotty head of a dotted chestnut moth. That was the first dotted chestnut of the year. Stanley beckoned to Trigger. Trigger liked moths too. Chestnuts didn’t like the cold but now it was warmer. The catkins, Stanley was thinking now, might be out on the hazel at Thornley.
Through his binoculars, Stanley could see the first dogs – there! – pouring like rolling surf through the narrow gate on to the railway track. In a wave, breath held, as tense as if it were Derby day and their shirts staked on the outcome, the keepers abandoned their cigarettes and their chatter and pressed their field glasses to their eyes. Birdie was setting fire to the bales. The dogs were clambering on to the bank of the watercourse that bounded this side of the village. That was one dog there – now on the far side of the first field – Bones – his height so distinctive – hurling himself into the water. Stanley pictured him disappearing in the current, surfacing, spluttering, head just above the water, muscular legs scrabbling in the froth.
There he was, the first up on the near bank by the coppiced elm, kingly and calm, loping easily towards the wires which stretched, five high and each a foot apart across the belly of the field. The two largest dogs, Bones and Trigger’s dog Gypsy, were level-pegging it towards the wires – No! – Bones was a nose ahead – enough to make a man burst with pride – now soaring the wires in a swift, smooth stream. Stanley felt a vaulting rush of joy as the pack, all shapes and sizes, breeds and colours, ages and abilities, raced for the field gate, now onward to the hurdles, snouts raised like pointers after game. Bones jumped the first hurdle, and the next, and the next with increasing height and ease.
Flames leaped from the top of Birdie’s bales, danced around the edges. Smoke rolled and billowed out. It was becoming difficult to see but there at the front of the pack was Bones – pausing – head tilted indignantly at the smoke – now flying into the smog – appearing – a gold brown streak, on this side. He was so fast – airborne, sailing, floating – four legs off the ground, on, off, the astonishing reach of his forelegs striking the ground so far in front of his nose.
The dogs had reached the broken marshland, the worst lay ahead. There in the marshland, concealed in the reed and the sedge, lay the ambush, the line of firing infantry with their rifles and the kennel men with their mortars. Bones and Gypsy were nose to nose again – No, now Bones was ahead, fiercer in his longing to come home. Trigger was forgetting himself, waving his cap, woolly black hair flying, pink-faced with shouting. The guns burst into a shattering blizzard of fire and noise. Sparks flew. Swelling puffs of black and grey smoke billowed out. Acrid fumes dispersed on the breeze. What would Bones do? Would he come straight through the storm of blanks?
There he was – he’d pulled up mid-gallop the instant the guns had opened fire. The rest of the field surged past in a frothy torrent. Still Bones hesitated, with that familiar, considering-my-options pitch to his head.
‘No, Bones. Straight through. Straight on. Just go straight on.’
Bones half turned from the guns. Trigger was jumping up and down, victory within his reach. Stanley bit his lip and breathed, ‘Come, Bones, come. Straight to me. Come straight through.’
Bones took a step forward and stopped. He took another step and stopped.
‘Come, Bones, come.’