Corporal Moody is signing the paperwork that will be needed to transport the bodies out of here and he turns around at the sound of my footsteps, surprised to see me there.
“Oh, Sadler,” he says. “What do you need?”
“Nothing, sir,” I reply, staring at the corpses.
“Then don’t stand around all day like a bloody idiot. You’re off duty?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good. The trucks will be here shortly.”
“Trucks, sir?” I ask. “What trucks?”
“We ordered replacement timbers for the new trenches and to repair some of the old,” he tells me. “We can take most of the sandbags away once they get here. Reinforce the streets. Go up top and help with that, Sadler.”
“I was just about to get some sleep, sir,” I say.
“You can sleep any time,” he replies, and there isn’t even a hint of sarcasm in his tone; I think he actually means it. “But the sooner we get this done the more secure we’ll all be. Go on, Sadler, look lively, they’ll be arriving soon.”
I climb out, marching back towards the reverse line without fear of being shot; the distance is too far for the German guns to reach us here. Up ahead, I see Sergeant Clayton gesticulating wildly with three men and when I get closer I realize that one of them is Will, one Turner and the other a slightly older man, perhaps in his mid twenties, whom I’ve never laid eyes on before. He has a mop of red hair that’s been shorn close to the scalp and his skin looks raw and aged. All four turn as they hear me approach and I try not to look at Will, not wanting to know whether his initial reaction will be one of pleasure or irritation.
“Sadler,” snaps Sergeant Clayton, looking at me with contempt, “what in hell do you want?”
“Corporal Moody sent me over, sir,” I tell him. “He said you might need a hand with the trucks.”
“Of course we do,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “What’s keeping them, anyway?” He looks down the rough path that has been carved into the terrain and shakes his head, then glances at his watch. “I’ll be at supervision,” he mutters, turning away from us. “Bancroft, make sure you come and find me when they get here, all right?”
“Sir,” says Will, a brief acknowledgement before he turns away and looks down the road himself. I want to talk to him but it’s awkward here, with Turner and the unknown redhead standing between us.
“I’m Rigby,” announces the stranger, nodding in my direction but not extending his hand.
“Sadler,” I say. “Where have you sprung from, then?”
“Rigby’s a feather man,” says Turner but without any aggression in his tone. Indeed, he says it as if it’s a perfectly natural thing.
“Really?” I say. “And yet here you are all the same.”
“GHQ keep moving me around,” he tells me. “I expect they’re hoping I’ll get picked off one of these days. A German bullet rather than a British one, to save them the cost of the gunpowder. I’ve done six nights of stretcher-duty in a row, if you can believe it, and I’m still alive, which I suspect is something of a record. Unless I’m dead and so are you and this is hell.” He sounds remarkably cheerful about the whole thing and is, I assume, therefore, completely mad.
I look down at the ground as the three men continue talking, tipping the toe of my boot hard against the earth, separating dirt from stone, and watching as some of the dried mud flakes off into the ground. There’s no aggression towards the objectors any more, at least not towards those who have agreed to serve but not to fight. There would probably be a lot less sympathy towards those on the farms or in prison except, of course, we never see any of them. The fact is that everyone who is over here is at risk. It was different back at Aldershot. There we could play politics and stir ourselves up into fits of outraged patriotism. We could make Wolf’s life a bloody hell and never feel the worse for it. We could drag him from his bed in the middle of the night and cave his head in with a rock. None of us will survive here anyway, that’s the general belief.
Will is walking around in circles, keeping a fine distance from me, and it’s all that I can do not to run towards him, shake him by the shoulders and tell him to stop all this nonsense.
“Rigby’s a Londoner, like you,” says Turner, and I look up to see that he’s addressing me; I get the impression that Rigby’s already said this and Turner’s been forced to repeat it as all three of them are staring at me now.
“Oh yes?” I reply. “Where from?”
“Brentford,” he tells me. “Do you know it?”
“Yes, of course. My family lives not far from there.”
“Really? Anyone I might know?”
“Sadler’s Butchers,” I say. “Chiswick High Street.”
He looks at me in surprise. “Are you serious?” he asks, and I frown, wondering why on earth I wouldn’t be. I notice Will turning around now at the unexpected question and drifting carefully back towards our company.
“Of course I am,” I tell him.
“You’re not Catherine Sadler’s son, are you?” he asks me then, and I feel a little light-headed to hear her name. All the way over here. In a field in France. With the bodies of Rich and Parks and Denchley decomposing a few hundred feet from where I stand.
“That’s right,” I say carefully, trying hard to maintain my composure. “How do you know my mother?”
“Well, I don’t know her, not really,” he says. “No, it’s my own mother who’s friends with her. Alison Rigby. You must have heard your mother talk of her?”
I think about it and shrug my shoulders. It rings a bell somewhere but then my mother has a network of female friends around the town and I have never taken the slightest interest in any of them.
“Yes, I think so,” I say. “I’ve heard the name, anyway.”
“What a piece of luck! What about Margaret Hadley? You must know Margaret.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “Should I?”
“Works in Croft’s Café?”
“I know Croft’s. But it’s been a few years. Why? Who is she?”
“She’s my girl,” he replies, smiling brightly. “Thought you might have run into her, that’s all. You see, her mother, Mrs. Hadley, who I expect will be my mother-in-law one day, runs fund-raisers for the war effort with my mother and yours. They’re thick as thieves these days, the three of them. I can’t believe you don’t know Margaret. Pretty girl, dark hair. Your mother thinks very highly of her, I know that for a fact.”
“I haven’t been back in a while,” I tell him. “I don’t… well, my family and I, we’re not close.”
“Oh,” he says, sensing perhaps that he might have fallen into difficult territory. “I’m sorry to hear that. Gosh, Sadler, I was terribly sorry to hear about your—”
“It’s quite all right,” I say, unsure how best to pursue this conversation but I don’t need to, because Will is beside us now, separated from me only by Turner, and I’m surprised to see him there, surprised to realize that he is taking such an interest.
“She’s all right, is she, Mrs. Sadler?” asks Will, and Rigby turns and nods at him.
“Last I heard she was,” he replies. “Why? Do you know her, too?”
“No,” says Will, shaking his head. “Only I suppose Tristan would like to hear that his mother’s doing well, that’s all.”
“Pink of health, as far as I know,” he says, turning back to me. “Margaret, my girl, well, she writes to me fairly often. Tells me all the news from home.”
“That must be nice,” I say, glancing across at Will, grateful for his intervention.
“It’s been bloody awful for them, of course,” he continues. “Margaret’s brothers were both lost early on, in the first few weeks, in fact. Their mother was a wreck over it, still is really, and she’s a wonderful lady. Of course, none of them were happy when I lodged my objections to the MTB but I had to stick to my principles, that’s the truth of it.”