The Dead Can Wait (41 page)

Levass said nothing. The ‘wind’ was but a gentle blowing on the skin compared to the hurricane of horror that awaited him. He remembered that troublesome Major Watson being shocked that none of them at Thetford had seen real trenches, genuine no man’s land. He understood now. No second-hand description could prepare you for the sight and smell of the real thing.

Within fifteen minutes the first of the tanks, led out by a warrant officer holding a lantern aloft, jerked out of line and began its tortuous progress towards the shelter of the next wood. The black-and-white Cubist-style paintwork really did disrupt the vision, and, as intended, it was hard to make out where the machine ended and night began. However, the square, silver cans of extra fuel glowed dully at the rear of the machine, remaining faintly visible as the tank turned into the textureless blackness of the sunken road that led north-west, to battle. They needed to be painted in a dull finish.

‘Driblets,’ muttered Levass.

‘I beg your pardon.’

‘It’s what Haig calls it. Use the tanks in driblets.’ He couldn’t keep the scorn from his voice. ‘In three months we will have eight hundred French caterpillars. In four months there will be a thousand of those. A thousand Mark Ones. Imagine!’

‘Careful, Levass. I may not know much about tanks, but I know Haig, Rawlinson and Butler. Brough went because he disparaged the plan of a few tanks and plenty of infantry. Isn’t that so?’

Levass sighed, aware that his views could get him sent back to Paris. And that wouldn’t do. ‘Just thinking out loud. I feel sorry for the men. Untried machines, untrained crew, not enough tanks, not enough time, not enough petrol, not enough range. And Haig expects a miracle.’

‘The Prince of Wales told me he doesn’t expect much from them,’ name-dropped Frogatt-Lewis. The prince had indeed been to see the tanks perform, crushing gun carts and knocking over trees in the tame-bear shows they put on at Yvranch.

‘The Prince of Wales is not running this show,’ said Levass. Which was just as well as the young man didn’t know the meaning of the words ‘secrecy’ and ‘discretion’ – the very night of the demonstration he was sending his father drawings and specifications through the regular post. Luckily they had been intercepted and carried across by Top Secret pouch. Anybody else would have ended up on Foulness.

‘And that promise you just made. How are you going to guarantee them fuel, Levass?’ Frogatt-Lewis asked. ‘I’ve been badgering GHQ about it these past few days. We have to take our place in the priorities, apparently.’

‘We’ll use French fuel. There are dumps at Maricourt and Albert. I can press on the
Bureau Central Interallié
to organize French drivers and lorries to bring it forward. If you wish, I can organize its distribution to each company.’

‘Really?’

Levass nodded. ‘The battle here was to give us French some breathing space. The least we can do is give you some petrol.’

They waited until the last of the dazzle-painted tanks had pulled away and turned into the lane that would take them to Memetz Wood, where they would be parked among whatever was left of the trees and re-netted, leaving only the forlorn crippled machine, abandoned like the little boy in
The Pied Piper of Hamelin
. They could hear the ringing of tools on machinery as the mechanics got to work stripping down the uncooperative engine.

‘Where next?’ asked Frogatt-Lewis.

‘La Briqueterie near Trones Wood,’ said Levass. ‘C Company are bombing up.’ This was one of the best of the Heavy Branch groups, men who had been trained from the very beginning at Thetford. ‘Then to Rawlinson at Heilly, to explain our tactics.’ Sir Henry Rawlinson was the Fourth Army commander and Heilly was his new forward HQ. He was demanding to know how the tanks would be used on the day and what they meant for his infantry. It was a good question.

‘Very well, let’s see how they are getting along at Trones Wood. Should get to Heilly in time for breakfast, eh? One thing Rawlinson doesn’t skimp on.’

‘Unlike his tanks.’

‘Levass! Enough. Driblets or not, we do whatever GHQ wants. It’ll be their heads, not ours.’

Levass smiled as Frogatt-Smith headed for the staff car. Now he had control of the fuel supply, he could do with it as he wished. Heads might roll, but the tank might just live to fight another day. In its thousands.

FORTY-THREE

Dawn was just a vague blush of a promise when the four pilgrims set off for the mainland. Getting Mrs Gregson out through the ceiling had been far easier than anticipated, once Miss Deane had left a half-bottle of Holmes’s brandy where the guard couldn’t help but notice it. His snores kept most of the women in the dormitories of the Workhouse awake all night, although by the early hours they had softened to a mere low rumble, with the occasional rising snuffle.

Mrs Gregson and Miss Deane slipped out into the night, crossing the fields and the plank bridges over the ditches. With the moon playing peek-a-boo with the clouds and only the stars to guide them, it was a treacherous crossing. At one point Mrs Gregson’s foot slipped into a slimy ribbon of water. She felt it slop over the top of her Glastonburys.

‘Oh, damn!’

‘Ssshhhh,’ said Miss Deane, at which point her sole, too, slipped on the rotten board and she went ankle-deep into mud.

‘Oh, double damn!’

‘Shhusshh,’ hissed Mrs Gregson, and the pair spent a few minutes snorting away suppressed giggles.

Having freed themselves and waited to ensure their noisy submersion had not attracted anybody, they squelched on.

‘I have some spare stockings you can have,’ said Miss Deane. ‘The boot will dry out soon enough.’

‘I think I’ve picked up a fish. Something is moving in there.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Miss Deane.

‘No?’

‘No. It’s probably a frog.’

Mrs Gregson gave a small squeal and clamped her hand over mouth. The pair hurried on. When they reached Holmes’s signal cottage, an uncharacteristically cross Watson was waiting. ‘We could probably have hired the band of the Coldstream Guards to come across with you. It would have been less noisy.’

This only made them laugh more.

Watson closed the door behind them and, while they stripped off wet shoes and stockings, he fed them brandy.

‘I’m going to get some dry socks from my room,’ said Miss Deane. ‘I’ll be as quiet as a mouse.’

‘Don’t be long,’ warned Watson.

When he returned from seeing Miss Deane out of the front door, Mrs Gregson hugged Watson tightly, which caused Holmes some amusement.

‘I’m sorry I got caught,’ she said. ‘I should have been more careful.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Watson. ‘We knew it was a risky undertaking.’

‘Keep your voices down,’ said Holmes with a hiss. ‘Have you quite finished with him?’

Mrs Gregson nodded. ‘For now.’ She held out her hand. ‘Mr Holmes, so very pleased to meet you properly at last. Georgina Gregson.’

He took her hand. ‘The pleasure is mine. Watson speaks highly of you.’ There was a twinkle in his eye.
‘Very
highly. Ah’ – he released his grip on her fingers – ‘I see you are naturally or instinctively left handed,’ he said. ‘But you use the right for most things, except . . . the violin?’

‘The cello,’ she admitted. ‘But I haven’t played in years. Not since before the war. How . . .?’

Holmes glanced at Watson with a little smirk of triumph. ‘The thumb musculature, Watson. It stays very distinctive in one who has played since they were a child. Now, drink this.’ Holmes offered her a tumbler of brandy. ‘Miss Deane has made up some food for us. I have it in my knapsack. Do you really need that bag?’

Mrs Gregson was busy examining Holmes’s wall of bird sightings. ‘What?’ She looked down at the tapestry carpetbag she had brought. ‘Sorry, yes. I can manage. Who did this painting?’

‘Miss Deane. Really, Mrs Gregson, we aren’t here to admire the art,’ snapped Holmes impatiently. ‘Here.’

Mrs Gregson took the brandy from him and drank it down, suppressing a cough as it seared its path to her stomach. ‘How long is this crossing?’

‘From where we join it,’ Holmes replied, ‘it is just over three miles. In bright daylight, perhaps an hour or an hour and a half, shore to shore. But we have to cross the island to the starting causeway first. And we can’t use the roads. And it will not be fully light for the first part of the journey. Three hours at least.’

Watson looked at his wristwatch. That meant it would be around breakfast time before they reached the mainland. Probably about the time that the balloon would go up about their disappearance. There was one thing that might work in their favour. Montgomery might think nobody would be crazed enough to try to navigate the Broomway. ‘It will be tight,’ was all he said.

Mrs Gregson suppressed a yawn. ‘Then we had better get started.’

A movement behind her indicated Miss Deane had returned. She handed a pair of thick woollen socks to Mrs Gregson. ‘Best I could manage.’

‘They’ll do. Nice geese,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

‘I don’t mean to be rude,’ Mrs Gregson said, as she rolled on the socks, ‘but you are coming because . . .?’

‘Because it was the price of your freedom, Mrs Gregson. And because without Mr Sherlock Holmes, Foulness will become even more unbearable.’

There was a tartness to the reply, but Holmes ignored it. They were all on edge. ‘We each need to select a walking stick,’ he said, pointing at the ones he had collected. ‘Ladies first, I believe.’

The initial leg of the journey took them out across the cluster of buildings that made up the hamlet of Churchend, heading east, threading through the darkened cottages, away from where they knew there were sentry posts along the main spinal road that ran – with various diversions – north to south across the island. A low moon threw a slanting light, forming a latticework of shadows across their path. It made focusing difficult and within the first five minutes each member of the group had stumbled at least once. It wasn’t difficult to imagine the owl that hooted at them was laughing at their clumsy progress.

‘I didn’t want to do this,’ said Holmes, rummaging in the old knapsack he had found in a cupboard in the cottage. ‘But needs must.’ From it, he produced a torch. He had wrapped it in some flimsy material ripped from the cottage curtains to diffuse the beam. It gave enough light to show them the dark snakes of the drainage ditches and the planks for traversing them, but still progress was slow. Watson noticed that the streak of paleness in the east was strengthening to something more definite.

Something darted from a hedgerow, a fox, and Holmes stopped suddenly, causing the others to collide into him. He hushed them quiet.

A door in one of the nearby cottages opened, throwing a blade of light across a garden, and they heard a grumbling voice. The four fugitives paused mid-stride, not daring to breath. The man relieved himself loudly against the wall, too lazy or befuddled by sleep to even make the outhouse. The stream slowed to a trickle and the man grunted and went back inside.

From far away a foghorn sounded, like the long lowing of a cow. There might be mist or fog out at sea, perhaps even a haar, the dense North Sea fogs that rolled across the waters and land, like a nomadic, earth-bound cloud. Or like the fog bank that had rolled over Dartmoor that fatal night, many years ago now; a distance that gave Watson vertigo to think of it, of all the time that had passed. The thought of the hound, the fog, the terrible fate of Stapleton in the mire made Watson’s throat go dry.
You won’t be coming out of that sinking mud. Not alive, Watson. Not alive.
Perhaps this was a foolish undertaking after all.

‘We must pick up the pace,’ urged Watson.

‘And risk turning an ankle?’ Holmes replied. ‘Caution is needed on this stretch. We head for the farms at Rugwood, then out to Asplins Head.’

‘We can cut across here,’ said Miss Deane. ‘See? Over the fields. It will save us some time. I used it when carrying my painting equipment.’

‘Very well,’ said Holmes. ‘Lead on, Miss Deane.’

Watson heard Mrs Gregson mutter something under her breath, but it was lost on the wind.

Levass watched the sun come up over a shattered landscape. The village of Heilly no longer existed, apart from mounds of dusty rubble and domestic debris, such as twisted bedspreads and splintered cooking ranges. Every road and lane had abandoned vehicles or smashed carts thrown carelessly to one side. The air was thick with the aroma of breakfasts and the fumes from the cooking fires of thousands of men, hidden from view in trenches or farmhouses, scattered over hundreds of square miles. It was likely at least some of the smoke and smell was coming from German stoves, a few miles away. But in twenty-four hours’ time there would be no bacon, sausages, corned beef, Maconochie or cigarettes for breakfast. It would be a tot of rum and over the bags, as the opposing armies got back to the business of killing each other.

Both sides knew something was coming. The British guns, practising their range, had continued right through breakfast, but had fallen silent at last, as if to allow Levass a chance to enjoy a cigarette and some tentative tweets of birdsong in peace.

He was leaning on the staff car, trying to empty his mind of the madness of the meeting he had just attended. Sixteen tanks to XIV Corps, to be split into twos and threes. Eighteen to XV Corps. Eight to III Corps. Six to fight with the Canadians, in two groups of three. The rest to be held in reserve. What rest? That total was more tanks than they had working. Each tank commander would be given map references and timetables and be expected to rendezvous with his infantry support at his ‘point of deployment’. A creeping barrage would signal the start of the push, slower, more thorough than the disastrous one of 1 July, which had failed to cut the German wire. The idea was that any German coils that remained untouched on that September morning would be crushed into the mud by the tanks.

‘And what will the barrage do to the ground the tanks are meant to cross?’ Levass had asked, much to Frogatt-Lewis’s displeasure.

The gruff General ‘Tommy’ Tankerton had turned his eyes on him, his comically huge moustaches quivering. ‘The tank will be deployed. We were promised machines that could cross any ground. Well, we shall see.’