“Yes, sir,” he said, following me as I walked towards the door. “Will we be likely to see you again in Norwich?”
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, turning to smile at him. “I rather think this will be my one and only visit.”
“Oh dear. We didn’t disappoint you that much, I hope?”
“No, not at all. It’s just… Well, I don’t imagine my work will bring me through here again, that’s all. Goodbye, Mr. Cantwell,” I said, extending my hand, and he looked at it for a moment before shaking it.
“I want you to know that I tried to fight, too,” he said, and I nodded and shrugged. “They said I was too young. But I wanted it more than anything in the world.”
“Then you’re a fool,” I said, opening the door and letting myself out.
Marian took my arm as we made our way across to the station and I was both flattered and upset by the gesture. I had waited so long to write to her, spent so much time planning this meeting, and here I was, ready to return home, and I still had not steeled myself to tell her about her brother’s last hours. We walked in silence, though, and she must have been thinking the same thing, for it was only when we entered the station itself that she stopped, removed her arm and spoke again.
“I know he wasn’t a coward, Mr. Sadler,” she said. “I know that. I need to know the truth about what happened.”
“Marian, please,” I said, looking away.
“There’s something you’re not telling me,” she said. “Something that you have been trying to say all day but haven’t been able to. I can tell, I’m not stupid. You’re desperate to say it. Well, we’re here now, Tristan. Just the two of us. I want you to tell me exactly what it is.”
“I have to get home,” I said nervously. “My train—”
“Doesn’t go for another forty minutes,” she said, looking up towards the clock. “We have time. Please.”
I took a deep breath, thinking, Will I tell her? Can I tell her?
“Your hand, Tristan,” she said. “What’s the matter with it?”
I held it out flat in front of me and watched as the index finger trembled erratically. I watched it, interested, then pulled it away.
“I can tell you what happened,” I said finally in a quiet voice. “If you really want to know.”
“But of course I want to know,” she replied. “I don’t believe I can go on if I don’t know.”
I stared at her and wondered.
“I can answer your questions,” I said quietly. “I can tell you everything. Everything about that last day. Only I’m not sure that it will offer you any solace. And you certainly won’t be able to forgive.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, sitting down on a bench. “It’s the not knowing that is most painful.”
“All right, then,” I said, sitting next to her.
THE SIXTH MAN
France, September–October 1916
HOBBS HAS GONE MAD. He stands outside my foxhole and stares down at me, eyes bulging, before putting a hand over his mouth and giggling like a schoolgirl.
“What’s the matter with you?” I ask, looking up at him, in no mood for games. In reply he just laughs even more hysterically than before with uncontrollable mirth.
“Keep it down!” cries a voice from somewhere around the corner and Hobbs turns in that direction, his laughter stopping instantly, and he makes an obscene comment before running away. I think no more about it for now and close my eyes, but a few minutes later there’s an almighty commotion from further down the trench and it seems unlikely that I will be able to sleep through it.
Perhaps the war has ended.
I wander in the direction of the noise, only to find Warren, who’s been here about six or seven weeks, I think, and is a first cousin of the late Shields, being held back by a group of men while Hobbs cowers on the ground in the very definition of supplication. He’s still laughing, though, and even as some of the men move to pick him up, there’s an expression of fear on their faces, as if they’re not entirely sure what might happen if they touch him.
“What the devil’s going on?” I ask Williams, who’s standing beside me, watching the proceedings with a bored expression on his face.
“It’s Hobbs,” he says, not even bothering to look at me. “Looks like he’s lost the plot. Came over to Warren while he was asleep and took a piss on him.”
“Jesus Christ,” I say, shaking my head and reaching into my pocket for a cigarette. “Why on earth would he do such a thing?”
“God knows,” shrugs Williams.
I watch the entertainment until two of the medics arrive and coax Hobbs to his feet. He starts babbling to them in some unfamiliar dialect and they take him away. As he turns the corner out of sight I hear him raise his voice again, shouting out the names of English kings and queens from Harold onwards in perfect order, a hangover from his schooldays perhaps, but his voice grows fainter around the House of Hanover and disappears altogether just after William IV. He’s taken to the medical tent, I presume, and from there will be shipped back to a field hospital. He’ll either be left there to rot or be cured of his ailment and sent back to the Front.
Thirteen of our number gone, seven left.
I return to my foxhole and manage to sleep for a little while longer, but when I wake, just as the sun is beginning to go down, I find that I am shaking uncontrollably. My whole body is in spasm and although I have been cold since the day I arrived in France, this is something entirely different. I feel as if I’ve been laid out in a snowdrift for a week and the frost has entered my bones. Robinson finds me and is taken aback by the sight.
“Jesus Christ,” I hear him say, then, raising his voice, he calls out, “Sparks, come and take a look at this!”
A few moments of quiet, then a second voice.
“His number’s up.”
“I saw him not an hour ago. He seemed all right.”
“Look at the colour of him. He won’t see sunrise.”
Soon, I’m transported to the medical tent and find myself lying on a bunk for the first time in I know not how long, covered with warm blankets, a compress placed about my forehead, a makeshift drip tied to my arm.
I float in and out of consciousness, waking to find my sister, Laura, standing over me, feeding me something warm and sweet-tasting.
“Hello, Tristan,” she says.
“You,” I reply, but before I can continue the conversation, her pretty features dissolve into the far rougher, unshaven visage of a medic, one whose eyes have sunk further and further into the back of his skull, giving him the appearance of the walking dead. I lose consciousness again, and when I finally come to, I find a doctor standing over me, and next to him, unable to control his irritation, is Sergeant Clayton.
“He’s no good to you,” the doctor is saying, checking the fluid in my drip and tapping the tube sharply with the index finger of his right hand. “Not at the moment, anyway. Best thing for him is to be shipped back home for convalescence. A month or so, no more than that. Then he can come back.”
“For God’s sake, man, if he can convalesce there he can convalesce here,” insists Clayton. “I’ll not send a man back to England for bed rest.”
“He’s been lying here for almost a week, sir. We need the bed. At least if he goes home—”
“Did you not hear me, Doctor? I said I will not send Sadler home. You told me yourself that he’s showing signs of improvement.”
“Improvement, yes. But not recovery. Not a full recovery, anyway. Look, I’m happy to sign the documentation for the transfer if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“This man,” insists Clayton, and I feel his fist slamming down hard against the blanket, bruising my ankle as it connects with it, “has nothing wrong with him, nothing compared to those who have already lost their lives. He can stay here for the time being. Feed him up, rehydrate him, get him back on his feet. Then send him back to me. Is that understood?”