A Fête Worse Than Death (12 page)

‘Quiet there,' hissed Tyburn from in front. He dropped down on one knee and picked something up from the ground. There were six men in the party and we all craned to see what it was. Lying on the Major's outstretched hand was a cigarette end. I looked at it, feeling the hairs on the back of my neck tingle. It had to be German, which meant . . . Tyburn flashed his torch quickly ahead but no challenge came. I realized I was holding my breath, listening for the faintest sound but there wasn't a whisper of noise.

Tyburn shook his head. ‘I don't like this,' he said, keeping his voice low. ‘Boscombe, you take the rear. We'll carry on, but it's obvious that someone's been down here. No talking and keep your ears pricked. If you hear anything, turn the torches off and stop moving.'

I slipped to the rear as we set off again. Should I have suspected anything? I don't honestly see how I could. His manner was perfect – but fortunately, on the surface, things were happening.

It was during the next few minutes that I conceived a hatred for underground passages that I haven't overcome to this day. We moved like ghosts along that tunnel and the loudest sound was that of my own breathing. Far louder than my chalk-muffled footsteps. Ahead I could see the shapes of the men outlined in the torchlight. Breathing. That was the only noise. In front of me Rutledge drew up sharply. Tyburn had stopped, hand raised. We snapped off the torches and waited. The darkness was so intense it almost hurt. I strained my ears, becoming abnormally aware of the tiny sounds of six men standing rigidly still. Breathing . . . And the breathing had an echo.

A hand pushed gently on my chest. It must have been Rutledge. ‘Go back.' It was the faintest of whispers.

The tunnel exploded in light and noise. A blaze of torches flared, showing Rutledge's face as stark as if it were caught in a bolt of lightning. Shouts, running feet, then a thunderous roaring of guns that left me completely deaf with a head full of ringing bells. Rutledge turned slowly, his arms wide, his mouth opening and shutting, shouting, but I could hear nothing. His forehead splintered into darkness and he jerked back like a dropped puppet. I fell to my knees, trying to unholster my revolver, but my numb fingers fumbled on the stiff leather and the gun skittered out of my grasp. I reached out for it, but someone fell against me, pushing me away. I saw his face, mouth open as if he were singing, and it seemed to take me minutes to work out he was screaming. I thrust him away, trying to get the gun. As I lurched to my feet Tyburn waved me on to be killed, but if I was capable of thinking anything, all I thought of was escape. A bullet bit through my shoulder, hurling me backwards. I rolled on to my stomach and crawled, my left arm dragging uselessly beside me. I scrambled to my feet, doubling over to avoid the shots. I still couldn't hear, but the walls of the tunnel kept on puffing out explosions of dust as the bullets struck home. Then I was beyond the dancing lights, running terror-whipped into darkness.

Perhaps you're wondering, as you read this sitting at home in a comfortable armchair, what had happened to my courage. It had gone, swallowed up in the sick taste of fear. The hero of a boy's comic would have rallied the men and led a charge, indifferent to the bullets whistling round his ears. The hero of a boy's comic wouldn't have a stomach of water, a head full of crashing noise and an arm that jagged with pain. He would have a lovely funeral, with a grand tombstone and a posthumous medal. I'm not a hero. On the other hand I'm still alive.

I crashed into a wall and lay stunned for a few seconds. Back down the tunnel I could see flashlights playing over the walls, but none were moving towards me. I got to my feet very cautiously and felt my way away from the lights. I rounded a bend and stopped. Darkness ahead, light behind. I felt my breathing steady and something approaching rational thought returned. I still had my torch. I'd slipped it into my pocket when we'd stopped. I snapped it on, being careful to shield the light with my body. My shoulder was on fire and my head was spinning and I had to think how to walk. Lift one foot. Forward. Down. Lift one foot. Forward . . . The bitter sourness of panic filled my mouth and I retched miserably. I staggered on, forcing my legs to obey me. The dark mouth of a side passage opened up and I half-fell into the shielding blackness, lying across the mouth of the tunnel. I wanted, more than anything I'd ever wanted before, to lose consciousness, but it wouldn't come. I knew I was whimpering in fear, but I couldn't hear or stop the sound.

I don't know how long I was lying there. Time meant nothing in that intense blackness. I had a bad scare when I heard a faint sound of breathing, then I nearly laughed out loud as I realized it was myself I could hear. Something very like contentment lapped over me as I lay in the tunnel. My ears crackled as sound returned and then, believe it or not, my conscience started to twitch. Should I go back? No! The sick knot in my stomach returned. Forward? I didn't want to move . . . and then I froze as footsteps sounded in the main tunnel. I scrabbled back further into the side passage. A light shone, illuminating men walking cautiously past the entrance. They were English troops. I tried to shout out, to warn them, but my voice wouldn't work. But I knew what was ahead. Half crawling, half walking, I got into the main tunnel, closed my eyes, swallowed hard and concentrated on producing a shout when a wall of sound hit me with physical force. My small store of courage fled and I shrank back, terrified, curled into a ball of fear. I screwed my eyes shut, trying to lose consciousness, but stayed obstinately, unwillingly, awake.

Then I nearly did faint. A hand jerked my wounded shoulder. I suppose I yelled in pain, but the deafness had returned. A torch blinded into my eyes, making me wince. Then the torch was put down, illuminating the man in front of me. I gave a foolish smile of relief as I saw who it was. An English captain, with, oddly enough, the red tabs of a staff officer on his uniform.

I stretched out my hand, but the Captain didn't take it. He was talking to me – questions, I suppose – which I couldn't hear. His face was horribly grim. I tried to smile again, but he wouldn't smile back. Instead he dropped to one knee and took out his revolver. I shrank back, guessing there must be Germans up the tunnel. I strained into the darkness, but couldn't see . . . and realized the muzzle of the gun was pointed straight at my chest. The hammer raised back, then the Captain whirled and fired a shot up the tunnel. I was weak with relief. God knows what he'd seen. I didn't ask and couldn't have heard the reply if he'd answered. And then familiar faces surrounded me. Dixon, Stafford, Keenan. I was safe.

They got me to my feet and walked some way down the tunnel before halting. They seemed to be arguing with the Staff Captain, and the men were evidently unhappy. The Captain was insisting on something, his body tense with conflict. He smacked his fist down into his hand and the men shrugged. Dixon handed over his rifle and a pouch of ammunition. With a nod of thanks the Captain walked back a few steps and crouched down behind a jutting outcrop of chalk, covering our retreat. I spared him a glance as we walked away. So this was a hero. I've never met a man who frightened me more.

I landed up metaphorically, if not literally, on my feet. The hospital where I'd so recently drunk champagne, toyed with canapes and flirted with the great, if not repressively good, received my fairly battered remains. It was heaven. The care was excellent, the nurses exquisite if unobtainable, and the food a dream. Private hospitals weren't uncommon, but this was one of the best. As far as I was concerned the only drawback was that I was going to have to leave. No one could actually want to return to the fighting but this brief period of civilization gave me a loathing of the trenches which amounted to an obsession. I'd lie awake with thoughts of desertion flitting through my head and I honestly believe if I'd had a gun I'd have tried to arrange an accident. A bullet through the foot, perhaps? But I didn't have a gun and I couldn't think of a convincing reason for getting hold of one. And to be found out . . . That would mean a court martial and a firing squad.

The Second Lieutenant in the next bed – Grant, his name was – had no such worries. His hip and thigh were a mass of bandages. ‘Mine's a Blighty one,' he said with horrible cheerfulness. ‘What about you?'

‘No such luck. I'm damned if I'm going back though.'

Grant laughed, secure in the happiness that comes to those missing half a leg. ‘I don't see how you can avoid it, old man. Unless you can pull a few strings and end up on the Staff, you're stuck. Failing that, there's always the RFC.'

The Royal Flying Corps. Now there was a thought. They didn't sleep in trenches. They didn't go over the top. Their quarters were well behind the lines and those quarters were, if rumour was correct, bloody palaces. The RFC . . . Why the hell hadn't I thought of it? If I transferred that'd mean six months at a home training establishment before joining a squadron. Six months! The war could be over by then. I looked at Grant with real interest for the first time. ‘I'll do it!'

‘Hey,' he said, alarmed. ‘Don't be an idiot. It might sound good but it's not all it's cracked up to be, you know. I had a cousin –'

I wish now I'd listened to the story of Grant's cousin. But I rushed upon my fate. ‘Damn your cousin. I've had enough of skulking underground. I'll do it.'

Grant looked at me queerly, then shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. What d'you mean, skulking underground? You weren't in a tunnelling company, were you?'

‘I might as well have been. I was the fool who discovered the Augier Ridge tunnel. I was in the first party.'

‘I say, were you?' That was my first indication of how big an affair this was going to be. The admiration in Grant's eyes was gratifying. If we'd been in an
estaminet
he'd have bought me a drink. He propped himself up on one arm. ‘D'you know who's in the private room at the top of the ward? Captain Whitfield himself. That's why
She
keeps going in there.' I didn't need to ask who he meant. There was only one
She
in our constricted world. ‘Nothing but the best for The Man Who Saved The Western Front. They say he's up for the VC for what he did. If all staff officers were like him, we'd have shoved Fritz back to Berlin years ago.'

‘You think so?' I picked up a four-month-old magazine.

‘No, really,' persisted Grant, who seemed to have taken The Hero's cause to heart. ‘They say that Fritz was going to flood through those tunnels and if it hadn't been for Captain Whitfield they'd have done it. And he's a staff officer, too.'

‘Well?'

‘Well, you know the old joke. If bread is the staff of life, then the life of the staff is one long loaf.' He waited for me to laugh but I didn't oblige him. I'd heard that one before. ‘But honestly,' said Grant, who could have been the chairman of whatever board it is which awards medals, ‘you have to admire him. He held them off single-handed and they had to dig him out of the rubble.' He looked up as a door opened further up the ward.
She,
as Grant would have said, came out of the private room which contained Captain Whitfield. ‘Isn't that so, Madame?' he called.

She
walked towards us and paused by Grant's bed, straightening out his pillow. ‘Isn't what so, Mr Grant?'

‘That Captain Whitfield's a hero? Boscombe here was in the tunnels with him.'

‘But yes, it is true. I wanted to see you, Monsieur Boscombe. Your kit has arrived.' Her accent gave her voice a delicious tang. ‘I saw to it myself. One of the orderlies will bring it up for you.' She reverted to the topic of the moment. ‘The brave Captain, he is recovering I am glad to say.' She must have sensed my scepticism, for she became quite delightfully French. ‘We all owe him – oh, so much! If the Boche had come down those tunnels then the British would be thrown back to the sea and it would all have been over.'

‘They probably wouldn't have made it,' I said. ‘After all, we don't know the tunnels went to the chateau.'

‘But they do, Monsieur Boscombe,' she said earnestly. ‘Remember, it was my home. I had no idea where the tunnels went to, but Papa told me they stretched for miles. We used them to store wine but that is not why they were built. It was the war of Louis the Fourteenth, you understand? When your Marlborough was fighting here and we French and English were on different sides. The great Sebastien Vauban, the most famous engineer of his day, stayed at the chateau and planned the fortifications. My brother, he liked to explore them, but me?' She gave a dazzling smile and a shrug. ‘I do not like the dark. They are all blocked off now, with the bombs the Boche threw. It is better, yes? You were lucky to get out, Lieutenant Boscombe.'

‘I was pretty unlucky to be down there in the first place,' I said. ‘I could have sworn we didn't make a sound and yet they were waiting for us. I know this Front's lousy with spies. I'm willing to bet we were dropped in it.'

‘Dropped in it?' she enquired.

‘Betrayed,' I said, translating.

She glanced round the ward quickly, as if to avoid being overheard. ‘But yes, there is much in what you say. I heard . . . but no. It was private talk. But I can tell you this, Monsieur Boscombe, that before too long some of your officials will want to talk to you, to find out what you know.' And that was my first hint that things really weren't all they seemed. I asked her for more details, but she refused to say anything. ‘Just get better, Monsieur, and before long you will be fighting again. And you will come to another of my parties, yes?'

‘Wow,' said Grant as she walked away ‘She even
smells
like a woman. What was all that hush-hush stuff about spies?'

‘God knows,' I said, picking up my magazine again. I'd had enough of Grant. I remember there was a cartoon on the inside cover showing an RFC officer with a girl on each arm, lamenting that the war was interfering with Ascot. That was the life for me. Six months at home . . .