The Shell House (12 page)

Fully awake now, Edmund propped himself up, wound his scarf around his neck and pulled on woollen gloves. The dug-out was so cold that his breath clouded the air. He took a sheet of lined paper from his pocket and unfolded it to read the lines he had laboured over, peering in dim light. As this poem contained no declaration, it had been safe enough to show it to Alex while there were other officers nearby. Alex had read it carefully, twice, then nodded and smiled. ‘Yes, I like it. The second line’s a bit of a tongue-twister, but the whole thing—the horse, the man, the Christ-figure—it’s like a photograph.’

Alex was never extravagant with praise, but Edmund knew that he would always be honest. Clutching a stub of pencil in his gloved hand, resting the page against his pocket notebook, he tried out variations of the awkward second line:
Heaped shells
perhaps . . .
Heaped shells, and roofs caved in, and
scattered tiles
. . . that would keep the iambic rhythm, but would mean changing the next line, which would be a pity, as the grimness of the scene was in the littering of corpses along with other waste. Perhaps
left
wasn’t right:
corpses strewn to grimace at the sky
. . .
corpses leer defiance at the sky
. . . no, defiance wasn’t right at all . . . he muttered the phrases aloud, scribbled out, amended, and finally rewrote the line as it had been to start with.

Barnes turned a page of his book; he had moved aside discreetly, hunching his shoulder. Hearing Edmund’s muttering, he probably thought he was praying aloud. Barnes always said the Lord’s Prayer to himself before sleeping, sometimes adding a few requests of his own. Touchingly simple-minded, Edmund thought.

For A.C., he wrote on the back of the paper, then stopped. Always, he came up against the gulf between thought and expression, the unwillingness of words to group themselves for his purpose.

‘What’s wrong?’ Edmund asked, seeing Alex’s wincing expression as he got to his feet.

‘Galloping gut-rot. I’ve already been three times in the last hour—excuse me—’ Alex ducked through the gas-curtain; Edmund heard his feet hurrying away on the boards. He could sympathize, having suffered from diarrhoea himself more than once, as everyone did—it was an inevitable consequence of tainted water, dubious meat and the generally unhygienic conditions under which meals were prepared. The remedy was kaolin and morphine, a thick, chalky-tasting medicine.

When Alex returned from the latrine trench, some ten minutes later, Edmund said: ‘You ought to go along to the MO. He’ll soon sort you out.’

‘With that foul kaolin stuff? I’d rather put up with it, thanks.’ Alex sat at the dug-out table and looked at the heap of papers that awaited his attention. Now that he was captain, he had endless reports to write and memos to send—on subjects ranging from casualty figures to the numbers of spare socks possessed by his company.

It was only on a whim that Edmund went out on patrol that night.

He did not have enough to do: merely giving cover to a wiring party that had gone off without incident. He stood motionless by the loophole, eyes straining, rifle aimed at the German lines, while Faulkner and his party fiddled with barbed wire. Afterwards, when they had crept back in, he felt restless. There was a thorny bush out in No-Man’s-Land, near a miners’ railway track, that he felt sure was used as a sniper’s post. There had been no sniper fire tonight—yet—but he wanted to investigate.

Finding Alex on his way to battalion headquarters, Edmund told him he was going out.

‘I’ll wait,’ Alex said. ‘Take care. Don’t take risks.’

As if he never took risks himself! Edmund thought. He crept forward along Morecambe Pier with Boyce behind. ‘Patrol going out,’ he told the sergeant on sentry duty, then led the way through the narrow, concealed gap. Spreadeagled, he and Boyce made their way across the treacherous expanse towards a huddle of bushes, negotiating an ice-glazed ditch, noting every dip that might offer cover. The ground was rough with shale under his hands and knees; a flare soared and flickered, momentarily lighting the bush Edmund had come out to investigate. His whole attention was focused on the line of rough grass that showed the position of the light railway track. It crossed his mind that a German patrol might be doing exactly the same thing; they could, all unknowing, be creeping towards each other in the darkness. Heart pumping, pistol at the ready, he crawled closer, discovering the bushes to be harmless, a gnarled cluster, smaller than they had looked through the periscope. No crouched figure, no rifle barrel.

‘Bit farther along,’ he whispered to Boyce. ‘There’s a ditch along the track—’

At that moment the shelling started. Not only here—something was happening to the north, towards Ypres. Flares and alarm lights performed their eerie dance in the sky, with greenish flickers. The British guns were answering, raking the German front line. Looking to his left, Edmund pressed himself close to the ground as a shell whined over to thud and splatter well behind their own front line. Time to get back in, he gestured to Boyce; the ditch could wait. Running in the darkness, then flattening themselves in the light of a new flare, they made their way, zigzagging shell-holes. He slithered into Morecambe Pier, and turned to make sure Boyce was behind him. ‘Well done, sir,’ said the sentry, ducking as earth and coal-dust showered them. ‘That was our back trench got hit just now.’

Edmund nodded. Staring into the half-light he made his way along the sap to where he knew Alex would be waiting for him. The air was full of dust and the acrid smell of cordite. He wondered if anyone had the stove lit, for coffee.

‘Stretcher-bearer! Stretcher-bearer!’ someone was yelling.

Alex was there by the periscope, still looking out to the German lines. Edmund touched his arm. ‘Alex? Nothing there, but we couldn’t stay around for a close look once the shelling started—’

The head turned, and Edmund stepped back. It was not Alex but Willerby, a young lance-corporal—tall, skinny, hardly old enough to shave. ‘No, sir, it’s me. Captain Culworth wasn’t well—bad stomach cramp, he said. Told me to wait here in his place.’

Edmund stared, heard the yell: ‘Stretcher-bearer! Now!’ and heavy footfalls. The latrine trench! He turned on his heel, slithering on the iced duckboard, and met Faulkner coming from the next bay.

‘Sorry, sir. Culworth’s been hit. Bad. I’ve sent a runner to Captain Greenaway.’

But Alex is here. Where I left him. He said he’d wait.
Blindly, Edmund followed Faulkner into the communication trench; saw the stretcher-party bent over their load. The man they were lifting to the stretcher was making terrible sounds—rasping moans, no strength to cry out.
It can’t be Alex. I left him
waiting for me. He must be there, waiting still
—

‘Let me—’ Edmund’s voice was hoarse; he dropped to his knees. He saw Alex’s eyes wide open, unrecognizing; head arched back in a rictus of pain. ‘Alex! Alex! Where are you hurt?’ Alex opened his mouth but did not speak; he was breathing in short, painful gasps.

‘What terrible bad luck,’ Faulkner said. ‘He was in our firing-bay not five minutes ago.’

‘Alex!’ Edmund pleaded. The icy air could not overcome the stench from the latrines. Tenderly, he touched Alex’s face, and felt it clammed with sweat.

‘Stand back, sir.’

The bearers lifted the stretcher, tilting it. Alex’s face contorted, but it was Edmund who cried out—a long, keening wail that he had not known himself capable of making, that seemed to come from some desperately wounded animal. He saw astonished eyes looking at him. And now Captain Greenaway was here—too many bodies cluttering the space. He took Edmund firmly by the arm.

‘Go back to your post. Culworth is being taken care of.’

‘But I’ve got to go with—’

‘I’ve given you an order—we’re not having a discussion about it.’ He leaned closer and spoke in an undertone. ‘Pull yourself together. Think of the example you’re giving the men.’

Edmund stared back at him, tears burning his eyes, then managed a ragged salute. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘That’s better.’ Greenaway patted his shoulder. ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

Faulkner steered Edmund back to the fire-step. ‘I’m sorry, sir, really I am,’ he said softly.

Did he know? Did they all know?

‘Go and take over from Willerby,’ Edmund said coldly.

Galloping gut-rot! Edmund could not get it into his head, what had happened: the arbitrariness of those two events coinciding so cruelly—a stray shell and a dash to the latrines. Alex! Brave Alex who was never afraid, who never thought of his own safety, who could have been injured twenty times over in a trench raid, in an assault, in a feat of daring . . . Edmund, supposedly checking the sentries along C Company’s front, made his way unseeing. Again and again he saw Alex waiting where he had left him by the periscope; saw the bent shoulders and the head turning to him, the face that was not Alex’s.
Wait —
wait there! Don’t go back
—

As soon as he was relieved, an interminable two hours later, Edmund went to look for him. An ambulance stood outside the casualty clearing station, a small collection of tents. Dismay tugged at Edmund as he realized that Alex would most likely have been taken away to the base hospital in Boulogne, but the news was worse.

‘He’s too ill to be moved,’ a Red Cross nurse told Edmund. ‘You can come in for a few minutes, that’s all.’

Alex was the only patient; the other beds stood empty. This, Edmund knew, did not indicate a lack of wounded, but meant that an attack was expected shortly and everyone fit enough to be moved had been sent on. Alex lay alone in the bitterly cold tent. His skin, always pale, had a strange waxy look, glossed with sweat. He shivered under several blankets. Edmund gazed, desperate and useless, unsure whether Alex recognized him. Alex’s head turned restlessly from side to side, his eyes unfocused; he made a small, painful sound with each breath. The nurse straightened his bedclothes and felt his pulse, frowning. Edmund wished she would go away, or do something more likely to ease Alex’s suffering.

‘It’s me—Edmund!’ He knelt by the bed, touched Alex’s face and felt first cold clamminess, then pulsing heat. Alex twitched his head as if shaking off a fly; he had retreated to somewhere deep inside himself. ‘Can’t you give him something?’ Edmund demanded of the nurse.

‘He’s had morphine.’ She was a kind-faced woman of perhaps thirty. ‘I can’t give him any more.’

‘How badly injured is he?’ Edmund asked bleakly.

The nurse indicated that they should move away from the bed. He got to his feet and followed her; she spoke in an undertone.

‘It’s very bad, the doctor said—extensive damage to internal organs. He’s not likely to survive the night. I’m sorry.’

Edmund clenched his fists in his greatcoat pockets and bit his lip. Absently he felt the trickle of blood, tasted it, swallowed hard.

‘I’m sorry,’ the nurse said again. She paused. ‘You’re not related?’

‘Friend,’ Edmund said. The inadequate word sounded like a flat lie.
We are lovers—we are linked body
and soul
, he wanted to tell her, as if such a declaration would save Alex.
I am him and he is me. If he dies, I will
die too.
He stood in the tent opening. It was sharply cold, and a sprinkling of frost lay over the grass at his feet, outlining every blade. He saw his breath as clouds in the air—it was so easy, breathing, taken for granted until you saw someone struggling with every inhalation. The sky was lightening over the dull landscape and the heaped hills of slag. Alex must not die here. Alex must not die anywhere.

‘God—please God—let him live,’ Edmund muttered, taking a few steps out into the open. He was not used to praying, not any more. As a boy he had attended church every Sunday and taken part in daily prayers either at home or at school, hardly questioning what he was taught, thinking of God as a benign, watchful presence in his life. Alex had changed that; he had challenged Edmund’s belief as he challenged everything conventional. ‘Belief in a heavenly after-life keeps people docile and undemanding in this one. I don’t intend to be docile; neither need you.’

And Edmund, unable to reconcile his Church of England upbringing with what he had discovered about his sexual leanings, had been glad to discard God. Now, though, in his desperation, he yearned for the comfort of a father-figure who would listen and heed and intervene. He closed his eyes and tried to pray as he had never prayed before. ‘God—dear God. Let him live. He must live.’

But Alex alive was reduced to an incoherent mass of pain, unable to speak, or hear words of comfort. Edmund looked towards the German lines, seeing the dawn sky flushed pink, rising to clearest deep blue, with a crescent moon fading in the light. He saw the beauty of the dawn, and resented it; of all things he did not want beauty to mock him. Not now, while Alex was dying. And how could he ask God for help, a God he had rejected and defied?

The idea slipped into his mind and lodged there. Alex’s suffering was a punishment for his homosexuality. And his own punishment was this: to be forced to stand by, helplessly, while his lover passed through torment and out of his reach. Alex had tried to demolish God, but maybe God, the God of love and forgiveness, would still save Alex.

‘Lord,’ he prayed again, silently, ‘forgive me, please forgive me. And him. If you let him live, I’ll believe properly again. I’ll break off with him—I will. I’ll go home after the war and marry Philippa and produce an heir for Graveney.’

Footsteps crunched towards him. ‘Bit parky for standing around.’ It was a Red Cross orderly, making his way to the tent. ‘You all right, sir?’

‘Yes, thank you—good morning,’ Edmund said, and waited for the man to go on his way before continuing his silent conversation. ‘Are you listening? Let me tell you again. I swear it solemnly.’ He closed his eyes and felt the pain of loss sharpen inside him with a new twist. ‘If you do as I ask, if you spare him, I will give him up. I will end it with him.’ His fingernails dug hard into his palms. ‘I promise. That’s my bargain.’

Inside his head he heard a phrase from one of the Reverend Tilley’s sermons:
Thou shalt not tempt the
Lord thy God
. Edmund had never quite understood what it meant—
could
God be tempted? But God could not lose, though the crazy logic of the bargain was compelling.