“Take him with us?” asks Milton. “Why the hell would we do that?”
“Because he’s a prisoner of war,” says Will. “What do you suggest we do. Let him go?”
“No, of course I don’t bloody suggest we let him go,” says Milton sarcastically. “But we don’t need a weight like him around our necks. Let’s just get rid of him now and be done with it.”
“You know we can’t do that,” says Will sharply. “We’re not murderers.”
Milton laughs and looks around, indicating the number of dead Germans at our feet; there must be dozens of them. As he does so, I see the German boy looking, too, and I can tell from his eyes that he recognizes all of them, that some were his friends, that he feels lost without them. He is willing them back to life to protect him.
“Was habt ihr getan?” asks the boy, turning and looking at Will, who—perhaps he suspects it—will be his protector, since he was the one who discovered him.
“Be quiet,” says Will, shaking his head. “Sadler, can you take a look around and find some rope?”
“We’re not tying him up, Bancroft,” insists Milton. “Stop playing the bloody saint, all right? It’s tedious.”
“It’s not up to you,” replies Will, raising his voice. “He’s my prisoner, all right? I found him. So I’ll decide what’s to be done with him.”
“Mein Vater ist in London zur Schule gegangen,” says the boy, and I look at him, willing him to stay quiet, since his appeals are only adding to the danger of the moment. “Piccadilly Circus!” he adds with fake cheer. “Trafalgar Square! Buckingham Palace!”
“Piccadilly Circus?” asks Milton, turning on him in bewilderment. “Trafalgar fucking Square? What’s he talking about?” Without warning, he slaps him hard across the side of his face with the back of his hand, so hard that one of his rotten teeth—we all have rotten teeth—flies out and lands on one of the bodies.
“Jesus Christ, Milton,” says Will, advancing on him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“He’s a German, isn’t he?” asks Milton. “He’s the bloody enemy. You know what our orders are. We kill the enemy.”
“Not the ones we’ve captured, we don’t,” insists Will. “That’s what separates us, or it’s supposed to. We treat others with respect. We treat human life with—”
“Oh, of course,” cries Attling, joining in now. “I forgot, your old man’s a vicar, isn’t he? You been drinking from the altar wine too long, then, Bancroft?”
“Shut your mouth, Attling,” snaps Will, and Attling, a coward, does that very thing.
“Look, Bancroft,” says Milton. “I’m not going to argue with you. But there’s only one way out of this.”
“Will is right,” I say. “We tie him up now, we hand him over to Sergeant Clayton later and let him decide what’s to be done with him after that.”
“Who bloody asked you, Sadler?” asks Milton, sneering at me. “Of course you’re going to say that. Bloody Bancroft says the moon is made of cheese and you say pass me the crackers, someone.”
“Shut your fucking mouth, Milton,” says Will, advancing on him.
“I’ll not shut my fucking mouth,” he replies angrily, looking at the two of us as if we are so inconsequential that he might swat us away with as little concern as when he hit the German boy.
“Bitte, ich will nach Hause,” repeats the boy now, his voice breaking with emotion, and all three of us turn to him as he very slowly, very carefully, moves one hand towards the top pocket of his jacket. We watch him, intrigued. The pocket is so small and thin that it’s hard to imagine there could be anything in there, but a moment later he removes a small card and holds it out to us, his hand trembling as he does so. I take it first and look at it. A middle-aged couple smiling at a camera and a small blond boy, standing between them, squinting in the sunlight. It’s difficult to make out the faces as the photograph is rather grainy; it’s obviously been in his pocket for a long time.
“Mutter!” he says, pointing at the woman in the picture. “Und Vater,” he adds, pointing at the man. I look at them and then at him as he stares up at us beseechingly.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” says Milton, grabbing him now by the shoulder and pulling him back towards him, taking a few steps back in the mud so that Will, Attling and I are standing on the opposite side of the trench to him. He pulls the pistol that Sergeant Clayton gave him from his belt and flicks it forward, checking that it’s loaded.
“Nein!” cries the boy loudly, his voice breaking in terror. “Nein, bitte!”
I stare at him desperately. He can’t be more than seventeen or eighteen years old. My age.
“Put that away, Milton,” says Will, reaching for his rifle now, too. “I mean it. Put it away.”
“Or what?” he asks. “What are you going to do, Vicar Bancroft? You going to shoot me?”
“Just put the gun down and let the boy go,” he replies calmly. “For God’s sake, man, just think about what you’re doing. He’s a child.”
Milton hesitates and looks at the boy and I can see that for a moment there is a degree of compassion in his expression, as if he is remembering the person he used to be before all this started, before he became the person standing before us now. But the German boy picks this moment to lose control of his bladder and a heavy stream of piss darkens the leg of his trousers, the leg pressed closest to Milton, who looks down and shakes his head in disgust.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” he cries again, and before any of us can do or say another thing, he lifts his pistol to the boy’s head, cocks the trigger—“Mutter!” cries the boy again—and blows his brains over the walls of the trench, splattering red across a sign that points eastwards and says FRANKFURT, 380 MEILEN.
It’s the following night before Will approaches me again. I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept in forty-eight hours. I must have eaten something rotten, too, because my stomach cramps are growing more severe by the hour. For once, when I see him, I don’t feel any excitement or hope, just tension.
“Tristan,” he says, ignoring the three other men sitting near me. “Can we talk?”
“I’m not well,” I say. “I’m resting.”
“It’ll only take a minute.”
“I said I’m resting.”
He looks at me and his face grows a little kinder. “Please, Tristan,” he says quietly. “It’s important.”
I sigh and pull myself to my feet. I wish to Christ I could resist him. “What is it?” I ask.
“Not here. Come with me, will you?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, simply turns around and walks away, which irritates me in the extreme but of course I follow him. He doesn’t walk in the direction of the new reverse trench but further down the line to where a row of stretchers lie next to each other, the bodies atop them covered with the jackets of the fallen men.
Taylor is under one of those coats; twelve-eight.
“What?” I ask, when he stares back at me. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’ve spoken to the old man,” he tells me.
“Sergeant Clayton?”
“Yes.”
“About what?”
“You know bloody well about what.”
I look at him, unsure for a moment what he means. He can’t have told him what we have done together, surely; we would both be court-martialled. Unless he’s trying to blame me for it, have me removed from the regiment? He sees the disbelief on my face, though, and flushes slightly, shaking his head quickly to disabuse me of the notion.
“About the German boy,” he says. “About what Milton did to him.”