‘He’d either slipped or been blown down the slope. Blown, I suspect, because he’d got quite a way in. He was already up to his chest. We tried to get him out, but even forming a line and holding out a rifle we couldn’t reach him. He could just get the tips of his fingers on the butt, but his hands were slippery with mud and they kept sliding off. I could see if we went on trying somebody else was going to slip in. And Scudder was panicking and… pleading with us to do something. I have never seen anything like his face. And it went on and on. He was slipping away all the time, but slowly. I knew what I had to do. I got the men lined up and told him we were going to try again, and while he was looking at the others I crawled round the other side, and fired.’ Manning closed his eyes. ‘I missed. And that was terrible, because then he knew what was happening. I fired again, and this time I didn’t miss.
‘We spent the rest of the night there, in that hole. It was very odd. You know, I don’t think any of the men would have said, “You did the wrong thing. You should have let him die slowly.” And yet nobody wanted to talk to me. They kept their distance.’
A long silence. ‘His mother wrote to me in hospital. To thank me. Apparently Scudder had written to her and told her I’d been kind to him.’
Rivers said firmly, ‘You were.’
Manning looked at him and then quickly away. ‘We were relieved the following night. I reported back to Battalion HQ and they expressed extreme displeasure. Apparently we’d been a bulge in the line. We’d been sitting in the wrong shell-holes. They were having dinner, veal and ham pie and red wine, and suddenly I realized they weren’t even going to offer us a fucking drink. I had Hines with me, he was dead on his feet. So I leant across the table, took two glasses, gave one to Hines and said, “Gentlemen, the King.” And of course they all had to struggle to their feet.’ He laughed. ‘And then we got the hell out of it before they could work out how to put an officer on a charge for proposing the loyal toast. We staggered down that road giggling like a pair of schoolboys. We were still laughing when the shell got us. I got this. Poor old Hines… I crawled across to him. And he looked straight at me and said, “I’m all right, Mum.” And died.’
Rivers stirred. He was about to speak when he heard bugles in the streets. ‘Let’s have the curtains open, shall we?’ he said.
He pulled the heavy curtains back, and grey dawn light flooded into the room. Manning flinched. He got up and joined Rivers by the window, and was just in time to see a taxi drive along the other side of the square. Rivers opened the windows, and the sound of birdsong filled the room.
‘You know,’ Manning said, ‘when Ross told me they sounded the all-clear by driving boy scouts with bugles round the streets in taxis, I didn’t believe him.’
They watched the taxi leave the square. Manning said, ‘I used to find a certain kind of Englishness engaging. I don’t any more.’
FOURTEEN
Sarah was coming. The thought buoyed Prior up as he walked along the Bayswater Road to the underground station. Only when he was on the train, staring sightlessly at his reflection in the black glass, did his thoughts turn to Spragge. He hadn’t seen him face to face since that evening in the park, but he’d suspected more than once that Spragge was following him. Possibly it was just nerves. His nerves were bad, and the intolerable sticky heat didn’t help. The gaps in his memory were increasing both in length and frequency, and they terrified him.
Like the undiscovered territory on medieval maps, Rivers said. Where unknown, there place monsters. But a better analogy, because closer to his own experience, was No Man’s Land. He remembered looking down a lane in France. The lane had a bend in it, and what was beyond the bend was hidden by a tall hedge. Beyond that was No Man’s Land. Beyond that again, the German lines. Full of men like himself. Men who ate, slept, shat, blew on their fingers to ease the pain of cold, moved the candle closer, strained their eyes to read again letters they already had by heart. He knew that, they all knew it. Only it was impossible to believe, because the lane led to a country where you couldn’t go, and this prohibition alone meant that everything beyond that point was threatening. Uncanny.
Something about the lifeless air of the underground encouraged morbid thoughts. Above ground, in the relatively cool, coke-smelling air of King’s Cross, he felt more cheerful. Please God, he thought, no gaps while Sarah’s here.
He waited by the barrier, sick with excitement. The train slid to a halt, grunted, wheezed, belched, subsided into a series of disgruntled mutters, and then all along its length doors swung open, and people started to get out. The sheer excitement of knowing he was going to see her stopped him seeing her, and for one terrifying moment all the women on the platform were Sarah. Then his mind cleared, and there was only one woman, walking straight towards him.
He caught her in his arms and swung her off her feet. When, finally, he set her down they stared at each other. He noticed the yellow skin, the dark shadows round her eyes, the fringe of ginger hair which was not her own colour, but some effect of the chemicals she worked with.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘You look beautiful. But then you always do.’
He took her bag and steered her towards the taxi rank.
‘Can’t we go on the underground?’ she said, pulling back.
He looked surprised.
‘I’ve never been on it.’
Her face lit up as she stepped out on to the descending staircase. She was too excited to talk until they were on the train, and had stopped at several stations, and the first novelty of hurtling in a lighted capsule through dark tunnels had worn off. Then she turned to him and said, ‘You look a bit tired. Are you all right?’
‘It’s the heat,’ he said. ‘I haven’t been sleeping well.’
‘You will tonight.’
He smiled. ‘I was hoping not to sleep at all tonight.’
But that was too direct. She smiled but looked away.
‘How’s your mother?’
‘The same. The shop’s not doing too well. No demand for second-hand stuff these days.’
‘What about Dr Lawson’s Cure for Female Blockages and Obstructions? I bet she’s doing a roaring trade in that.’
‘Geraway, man. It’s all sixpenny ticklers these days.’
‘Is it?’ Prior asked innocently.
She smiled and eventually laughed.
‘How was your trip home?’ she asked after a while.
‘Not bad. I met a few old friends.’
‘Did you tell your mam about me?’
He hesitated.
‘You didn’t,’ she said.
‘I prepared the ground.’
‘Billy. You think she won’t like me, don’t you?’
He knew she wouldn’t. He had a very clear idea of the sort of girl his mother wanted him to marry. One of those green-skinned, titless girls who wore white lawn blouses and remembered their handkerchiefs. The Ministry was full of them. The extraordinary thing was he did find them attractive, though not in a way he liked. They woke his demons up, just as surely as making love to Sarah put them to sleep. ‘It’s not that,’ he said.