“Will,” I say, running towards him, relieved that he hasn’t put himself in danger’s way. “There you are at last. I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
“Have you?” he asks, looking up, and in the moonlight I can see that he has been crying; his cheeks are streaked with dirt where he’s tried to dry the tears away and the skin below his eyes is fleshy and red. “Sorry about that,” he says, turning away from me. “I just needed to be alone for a while, that’s all. I didn’t mean to worry you.”
“It’s all right,” I say, sitting down beside him. “I thought you might have done something stupid, that’s all.”
“Like what?”
“Well, you know,” I say with a shrug. “Run off.”
He shakes his head. “I wouldn’t do that, Tristan,” he says. “Not yet, anyway.”
“What do you mean, ‘not yet’?”
“I don’t know.” He lets a deep sigh escape his lips and rubs his eyes once again before turning back to me with a sad smile on his face. “So here we are,” he says. “The end of the road. Was it worth it, do you think?”
“We’ll find out soon enough, I imagine,” I reply, staring into the still water. “When we get to France, I mean.”
“France, yes,” he says thoughtfully. “It’s all in front of us now. I believe Sergeant Clayton would be disappointed if we weren’t all killed in the line of duty.”
“Don’t say that,” I reply with a shudder.
“Why not? It’s the truth, isn’t it?”
“Sergeant Clayton may be many things,” I say, “but he’s not that much of a monster. I’m sure he doesn’t want to see any of us dead.”
“Don’t be so naive,” he snaps. “He wanted Wolf dead, that’s for sure. And he got his way in the end.”
“Wolf killed himself,” I say. “Perhaps not on purpose but through his own foolishness. Only an idiot would go marching up through that forest in the middle of the night.”
“Oh, Tristan,” he says, shaking his head again and smiling at me, the low, quiet way he whispers my name reminding me of the time he had me pinned to the floor after our mock-wrestle in the barracks. His hand reaches out now and he pats me on the knee, once, twice, then lingers a third time before slowly moving it away. “You really are unbelievably innocent at times, aren’t you? It’s one of the reasons I like you so much.”
“Don’t patronize me,” I say, annoyed by his tone. “You don’t know as much as you think.”
“Well, what else am I supposed to think?” he asks. “After all, you believe that Wolf was the author of his own misfortune, don’t you? Only an innocent would think that. Or a bloody fool. Wolf didn’t fall, Tristan. He didn’t kill himself. He was murdered. Killed in cold blood.”
“What?” I ask, almost laughing at the absurdity of his remark. “How can you even think such a thing? For God’s sake, Will, he’d deserted the camp. He’d run—”
“He hadn’t run anywhere,” he says angrily. “He told me, only a few hours earlier, before going to sleep, that he’d been granted his status as a conscientious objector. The tribunal had finally come back with a resolution to his case. He wasn’t even being sent out there as a stretcher-bearer on account of it. Turns out he was quite adept at mathematics and had agreed to help in the War Department and live under house arrest for the rest of the war. He was going home, Tristan. The very next morning. And then, just like that, he disappears. That’s a pretty extraordinary coincidence, don’t you think?”
“Who else knew about this?” I ask.
“Clayton, of course. Wells and Moody, those dark horsemen. And one or two of the other men, I suppose. It was starting to get around late last night. I heard some rumblings about it.”
“I never heard a thing.”
“That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the case.”
“So what are you suggesting?” I ask. “That they took him out and murdered him on account of it?”
“Of course, Tristan. Do you mean to tell me that you think they’re not capable of it? What have we been trained for, after all, if not for killing other soldiers? The colour of the uniform doesn’t matter much. They all look the same in the dark, anyway.”
I open my mouth to reply but am unable to find any words. It makes perfect sense. And then I remember waking in the middle of the night and the noises that I heard, the rustling of the bed sheets, the kicking of the blankets, the shushing and the dragging along the floor.
“Jesus,” I say.
“Now you have it,” he says in an exhausted tone, nodding his head. “But what can we do about it, anyway? Nothing. We’ve done what we came here to do. We’ve made ourselves fit and strong. We’ve trained our minds to believe that the man in front of us who doesn’t speak our language is a piece of meat that needs stripping from the bone. We’re perfect warriors now. Ready to kill. Sergeant Clayton’s work is done. We’re just getting a head start on the action, that’s all.”
He speaks with such anger, such a tangled mixture of dread and fear and hostility, that I want nothing more than to reach out and comfort him, and so I do. A moment later, his head is buried in his hands and I realize that he is weeping. I stare, unsure what to do, and he looks up, guarding one side of his face with the flat of his hand so I cannot see how upset he is.
“Don’t,” he says, between gulps. “Go back to the barracks, Tristan. Please.”
“Will,” I say, reaching forward. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.
We all feel it. We’re all lost.”
“But, damn it,” he says, turning his face to mine, swallowing as he takes me in. “Jesus Christ, Tristan, what’s going to happen to us out there? I’m scared shitless, honest I am.”
He reaches over, takes my face in his hands and pulls me to him. In my idle moments, imagining such a scene, I have always assumed that it would be the other way round, that I would reach for him and he would pull away, denouncing me as a degenerate and a false friend. But now I am neither shocked nor surprised by his initiative, nor do I feel any of the great urgency that I thought I would, should this moment ever come to pass. Instead, it feels perfectly natural, everything he does to me, everything that he allows to happen between us. And for the first time since that dreadful afternoon when my father beat me to within an inch of my life, I feel that I have come home.
BREATHING AND BEING ALIVE
Norwich, 16 September 1919
“MISS BANCROFT,” I said, returning the pile of fallen napkins to the table and standing up, a little flushed now and more than a little nervous. I extended a hand and she stared at it before removing her glove and shaking it in a brisk, businesslike fashion. Her skin was soft against my own rough hands.
“You found it all right, then?” she asked, and I nodded quickly.
“Yes,” I said. “I arrived last night, actually. Shall we sit down?”
She took her coat off, hanging it on a stand near the door before leaning over the table for a moment and speaking quietly. “Can you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Sadler?” she asked. “I just want to freshen up.”
I watched her as she walked towards a side door and I guessed that this café must be a particular favourite of hers as she had no difficulty locating the Ladies. I suspected that she had planned this manoeuvre: step inside, say hello, size me up, disappear for a few minutes to gather her thoughts, then come back ready to talk. As I waited, a young couple entered, chatting happily, and sat down, leaving a gap of only one empty table between me and them; I noticed a large burn-mark running along the side of his face and averted my gaze before he caught me staring. In the far corner I was dimly aware of the man who had come in earlier staring in my direction. He had moved out from behind the pillar and appeared to be watching me intently, but as I caught his eye he looked away immediately and I didn’t think anything further of it.