Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
They sat on the sofa afterward and he explained to her, still with his eyes closed, how the piece of music was constructed and where, in his view, the soloist was going wrong.
When the record finished Elizabeth started to go and change it, but Stuart caught her by the forearm and pulled her back.
“Sit down, Liz. I have something to ask you.”
“Sorry?”
“I want you to listen carefully. I don’t know what you’ll make of me and I’m not sure it matters too much. I’m going to tell you a story.”
As Elizabeth started to interrupt he held up his hand to silence her.
“Once upon a time there was a very attractive girl. She had lots of friends, a very good job, a flat in town, and everyone envied her. Then, as time went on, her friends got married and had babies and this girl became a very attractive woman. But she didn’t get married. The older she got, the more she pretended it didn’t matter to her, but the more, deep down inside, she longed for children and a husband. Part of the problem was that the more she pretended, the more she frightened men off. Because they, poor little creatures, believed her when she said she was happy.”
Elizabeth looked down at the floor. An unhealthy curiosity was fighting the embarrassment that ran in waves up and down her spine. Stuart himself showed no trace of self-consciousness. He looked straight ahead.
“Then one day she met a man who was not frightened at all. He was kind to her and funny and friendly. And when she really thought about it, she knew, deep down, that this was what she had always wanted. And they moved to the country and she had lots of children and they all lived happily ever after.”
Elizaneth swallowed. “And?”
Stuart turned around to face her. “I’m asking you to marry me. I know it’s unorthodox. This is only the third time we’ve met and I haven’t even bothered to seduce you. I’m such a sweet old-fashioned thing. You’re a very unusual woman. I think you’ll find, if you accept my offer, that I’m an equally unusual man.”
Elizabeth stood up. She took a cigarette and spluttered as she inhaled it. “It’s very … nice of you. I’m flattered by the thought, but I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong person. I have a boyfriend. I—”
“He’s married, isn’t he? Let me guess. You see him once a month for hasty sex and a tearful farewell. He says he’ll leave his wife, but we all know he won’t, don’t we? Is that what you want? Is that your future?”
Elizabeth’s voice took on a frozen edge. “You shouldn’t talk about people you don’t know.”
Stuart stood up and threw his arms open expansively. “Come on, we’re both adults, we both know the score. I’m sorry if I intruded on a private sorrow, but this is a very important matter. I have money. Did I mention that? Or is it the sex thing? Do you want a trial run?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, at least give me credit for not having seduced you.”
“What on earth makes you think you could have?”
Stuart shrugged suggestively. “I’m sorry, Liz. I’ve gone too far. I’m going to leave you now. Let’s say I’ve planted a seed. You just do me the favour of watering it from time to time. Think about it.”
He took his coat from the hook in the hall and came back into the room. “Thank you for a marvellous evening,” he said. “And will you water it, that little seed?”
“I … won’t forget. I certainly won’t forget.”
“Good.” He smiled and kissed her on the forehead, then let himself out.
Elizabeth was in a condition of shock for some days. The presumptuousness of what Stuart had said to her felt, in retrospect, like an unwanted physical intimacy; it was as though he had forced himself on her.
She went for long walks in Hyde Park and breathed deeply in the cold January air. She worked till late in the office. She bought, and read, two books about the war her grandfather had fought in. She made resolutions for the New Year. She would smoke less, she would visit Tom Brennan once a fortnight, if he wanted, or, if he didn’t, she would visit someone else of his generation. Somehow she would repay the debt; she would complete the circle.
For the first of her New Year visits to Tom Brennan she hoped she might find out some more about her grandfather. She understood enough about Brennan’s state of mind not to expect a long recollection, or even an anecdote, but she hoped for some reference at least.
She was wearing fewer clothes this time, knowing what the central heating was like in the dayroom. In view of his complaints about the food, she took Brennan a cake her mother had baked. She was struck as she packed it by how much it was like sending a parcel to a man in the trenches. She took half a bottle of whisky as well; at least that was something he wouldn’t have been sent from home. She also, feeling ashamed as she did so, put two mothballs in her handkerchief, so she could hold it to her face and breathe in camphor rather than the cloying smell of urine.
He was in the same place at the window. He put his hand in hers and they sat happily together. Elizabeth asked him what he had been doing in the past few weeks and what he had done in the years before that. His answers bore no relation to her questions. He talked about Mafeking night, he talked about his sister in the blackout and how she had fallen off a ladder. He told her he didn’t like the food they gave him.
Occasionally she could tell that a particular question had registered with him, because his eyes showed alarm behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. He would mumble a few words, then either fall silent or resume with one of the stories he knew. Elizabeth began to suspect that she had already heard most of his repertoire.
This time she didn’t press him on the subject of her grandfather. She had made the first vital connection. If he had anything else to say it would come in time; in fact it was more likely to come out when he became familiar with her visits.
She left him with the cake and whisky and said she would be back in two weeks’ time. The matron, Mrs. Simpson, passed her in the doorway.
“I didn’t think we’d see you again,” she said. “Any joy?”
“Well … not joy exactly. I don’t know if he liked seeing me. But I liked seeing him again. I left him a little parcel. Is that allowed?”
“It depends what’s in it.”
Elizabeth had a feeling the whisky would be forbidden. She left before she would have to see it being confiscated.
———
At home that night she did some calculations. It was a task she had been putting off, because she feared the result. With the help of last year’s diary she was able to work out when her last period had been. It had definitely been in progress on the sixth of December, because she remembered being late for a lunch that was marked for that day because she had had to make a detour to find a chemist’s. It was now January 21st. The last time she had seen Robert was not recorded in her diary, but it had been the week before Christmas. She remembered the decorations in the shops. In fact he had come over on his holidays a day early, which was how he had managed to squeeze her in. She had had to go to work the following day, so it must have been a weekday. She narrowed it down to the 21st or the 22nd. Either day was halfway through the cycle, which, if she remembered rightly, was the dangerous time. She tried to remember what precautions she had taken. She had been on the pill for four years continuously and her doctor had advised her to stop taking it. They had then used a variety of means. Both of them were careful, Robert neurotically so in her opinion.
The next morning she bought a pregnancy testing kit from the chemist’s in Craven Road. It was a flat, rectangular piece of plastic with two windows. She took it to the bathroom, then, five minutes later, as instructed, looked at the windows. The blue line across each was firm and assertive. It was not just positive, it was bursting with life.
She passed a day in which her feelings oscillated between joy and despair. Twice she began to tell Irene her secret and twice discretion made her change the subject. She went out for lunch on her own and found her eyes brimming with tears as she ate.
Already she felt an absurd passion for the invisible thing inside her.
In the evening she telephoned Robert. There was no reply, but she left a message on his recently acquired answering machine telling him to ring at once.
She ran a bath and slid beneath the water. She gazed at her lower belly and wondered what microscopic events were taking place there. She was frightened of the physical changes and worried about what people would say; but much more than anxiety she felt exhilaration. Her telephone rang and she sprang from the bath and went dripping through to answer it.
It was Bob.
“I’ve cracked it,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s taken me such a long time. It was perfectly straightforward, really, once I’d figured out how the old codger’s mind worked. Greek letters, French language, and a bit of private code. Elementary, my dear Watson. I can’t swear I’ve got every name right, of course. I’ve marked the odd query. But it all seems to add up.”
When she had overcome her disappointment that it was not Robert, Elizabeth said, “That’s marvellous, Bob. Thank you very much. When can I pick it up?”
“Come over at the weekend if you like. I put a couple of pages in the post this morning. I just did the last two in the book because they were the ones I’d worked on first. They should be with you in the morning if the Post Office isn’t on strike as well. You never know, do you?”
“No. Quite. Well, I’ll look forward to getting those tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Bob. “They’re a bit gloomy, you know. Pour yourself a drink first.”
“You know me, Bob. And thanks again.”
Robert didn’t ring till after midnight, when Elizabeth was asleep. She told him straight away that she was going to have a baby. She was too sleepy to break the news gently, as she had intended. “I won’t tell anyone who the father is. These things can be kept secret,” she said.
Robert was shocked.
“You could sound a bit happier about it,” she said.
“Give me time,” he said. “I’m happy for you, and in time I’ll be happy for myself and the child. Just give me time to get used to it.”
“I will,” said Elizabeth. “I love you.”
———
The next day was a Saturday and in the morning there was a package from Bob.
Elizabeth put it aside till after breakfast, then opened it carefully with a knife. Bob had reused a brown envelope from an old catalogue or circular, sticking a white label with her name and address over his own.
Inside were two large sheets of thin, crackling white paper. Elizabeth was very excited. From the moment she saw the black ink of Bob’s careful script, she knew that she had found what she wanted.
Gray’s old voice barking down the line from Lanarkshire had been good; the glimpse of memory through the chaos of Brennan’s recollection had been thrilling. But finally she had what she wanted: the past was alive in the spidery letters in her slightly shaking hand.
She read:
I don’t know how the days pass. The anger and the blood have gone. We sit and read. There is always someone sleeping, someone strolling. Food is brought. We don’t read real books, only magazines. Someone is eating. There are always others unaccounted for or absent.
Since Weir[?] died I have not been very close to reality. I am in a wilderness beyond fear. Time has finally collapsed for me. I had a letter from Jeanne this morning. She said two months have passed since we met.
Men come out from England like emissaries from an unknown land. I cannot picture what it means to be at peace. I do not know how people there can lead a life.
The only things that sometimes jolt us back from this trance are memories of men. In the set of the eyes of some conscripted boy I see a look of Douglas or [name illeg. Reeve?] I find myself rigid with imagining. I can see that man’s skull opening as he bent down to his friend that summer morning.
Yesterday a signaller came up to talk and his gestures reminded me of W. I had a clear picture of him, not sprawling in the mud as I last saw him, but emerging from his burrow in the ground, wild-eyed. The image lasted only for an instant, then time collapsed and drifted past me once again.
I have been summoned to see Gray tomorrow. Perhaps he will feel the same.
We are not contemptuous of gunfire, but we have lost the power to be afraid. Shells will fall on the reserve lines and we will not stop talking. There is still blood, though no one sees. A boy lay without legs where the men took their tea from the cooker. They stepped over him.
I have tried to resist the slide into this unreal world, but I lack the strength. I am tired. Now I am tired in my soul.
Many times I have lain down and I have longed for death. I feel unworthy. I feel guilty because I have survived. Death will not come and I am cast adrift in a perpetual present.
I do not know what I have done to live in this existence. I do not know what any of us did to tilt the world into this unnatural orbit. We came here only for a few months.
No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand.
When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them.
We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings.
We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.
FRANCE
1918
Part Six
Stephen put away his pen and notebook. It was nighttime. There was moonlight on the hills above the village. He lit another cigarette and turned the pages of a magazine. There was a pile by the chair of others he had already skimmed. His eyes scanned each page but barely read.
He went outside into the yard behind the little house. Chickens scattered in front of his footsteps.
He went into the lane and began to walk. The road was only partially completed. He felt the puddles and the loose stones beneath his feet. He went as far as the main road and looked around him. The guns were soft and distant; they rumbled like a train going through an embankment.
He stood and breathed deeply. He could hear an owl’s call. He went slowly up and down the lane. The owl reminded him of childhood; it was a noise boys would make with their hands. His own seemed so long ago that it felt as though someone else had lived it for him.
Back in the billet he found Mountford sitting at the table, playing cards with a lieutenant called Tylecote. He declined their offer of a game, but sat in a daze and watched them move the greasy pictures over the wooden surface.
In the morning he went to see Colonel Gray in battalion headquarters two miles away.
Gray sprang up when Stephen went into the room. “Wraysford! How good to see you again. Civil of you staff men to pay us a call.”
Gray had changed little in appearance. He gave the impression of an enquiring terrier with its head on one side. His moustache and hair showed patches of white, but his movements were still swift and certain.
He pulled back a chair and gestured to Stephen, who sat down.
“Do smoke,” he said. “Now then. Are you enjoying yourself with your wee maps and lists?”
Stephen breathed in deeply. “We … exist.”
“Exist? Good heavens, that’s not the sort of talk I’m used to from a frontline man like yourself.”
“I suppose not. If you remember, sir, I didn’t ask to be transferred.”
“I remember very well. In my view you were battle-weary. Mind you, most people were never allowed to reach that stage. A bullet saw to that.”
“Yes. I’ve been lucky.” Stephen coughed as the cigarette smoke went down into his lungs.
Gray looked out of the window and swung his feet up on to the desk. “Our lot have done pretty well, you know. Terrible casualties on the Somme, but who didn’t? Otherwise not too bad. Both battalions are pretty much back to full strength.”
“Yes I know,” said Stephen. He smiled. “I know quite a lot about troop strengths in this area. More than when I was fighting.”
>
Gray nodded his head quickly up and down and tapped his teeth with a pen. “Tell me,” he said, “when the war is over and the regiment puts up a memorial, what words will we inscribe on it?”
“I don’t know. I presumed there would be a divisional memorial. The regiment would list the actions it was in, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Gray. “It’s a proud list, isn’t it?”
Stephen did not answer. He felt no pride in the unspeakable names.
Gray said, “Well, I’ve good news for you. Your staff attachment is finished. You’re coming back.” He paused. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I … yes, I suppose it is.”
“You don’t look very pleased.”
“I can’t be pleased by anything that carries on this war. But I’m not displeased. I’m indifferent.”
“Now listen to me. Quite soon we are going to attack. On a long front we are going to move rapidly forward into Germany. Parts of the line have already started to advance, as you know. If you want to lead your old company, you can. The temporary OC will become your second-in-command.”
Stephen sighed and said nothing. He wished he felt pleased or excited.
Gray stood up and came round the desk. “Think of the words on that memorial, Wraysford. Think of those stinking towns and foul bloody villages whose names will be turned into some bogus glory by fat-arsed historians who have sat in London. We were there. As our punishment for God knows what, we were there, and our men died in each of those disgusting places. I hate their names. I hate the sound of them and the thought of them, which is why I will not bring myself to remind you. But listen.” He put his face close to Stephen’s. “There are four words they will chisel beneath them at the bottom. Four words that people will look at one day. When they read the other words they will want to vomit. When they read these, they will bow their heads, just a little. ‘Final advance and pursuit.’ Don’t tell me you don’t want to put your name to those words.”
Stephen laughed. “I really don’t mind what—”
When the record finished Elizabeth started to go and change it, but Stuart caught her by the forearm and pulled her back.
“Sit down, Liz. I have something to ask you.”
“Sorry?”
“I want you to listen carefully. I don’t know what you’ll make of me and I’m not sure it matters too much. I’m going to tell you a story.”
As Elizabeth started to interrupt he held up his hand to silence her.
“Once upon a time there was a very attractive girl. She had lots of friends, a very good job, a flat in town, and everyone envied her. Then, as time went on, her friends got married and had babies and this girl became a very attractive woman. But she didn’t get married. The older she got, the more she pretended it didn’t matter to her, but the more, deep down inside, she longed for children and a husband. Part of the problem was that the more she pretended, the more she frightened men off. Because they, poor little creatures, believed her when she said she was happy.”
Elizabeth looked down at the floor. An unhealthy curiosity was fighting the embarrassment that ran in waves up and down her spine. Stuart himself showed no trace of self-consciousness. He looked straight ahead.
“Then one day she met a man who was not frightened at all. He was kind to her and funny and friendly. And when she really thought about it, she knew, deep down, that this was what she had always wanted. And they moved to the country and she had lots of children and they all lived happily ever after.”
Elizaneth swallowed. “And?”
Stuart turned around to face her. “I’m asking you to marry me. I know it’s unorthodox. This is only the third time we’ve met and I haven’t even bothered to seduce you. I’m such a sweet old-fashioned thing. You’re a very unusual woman. I think you’ll find, if you accept my offer, that I’m an equally unusual man.”
Elizabeth stood up. She took a cigarette and spluttered as she inhaled it. “It’s very … nice of you. I’m flattered by the thought, but I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong person. I have a boyfriend. I—”
“He’s married, isn’t he? Let me guess. You see him once a month for hasty sex and a tearful farewell. He says he’ll leave his wife, but we all know he won’t, don’t we? Is that what you want? Is that your future?”
Elizabeth’s voice took on a frozen edge. “You shouldn’t talk about people you don’t know.”
Stuart stood up and threw his arms open expansively. “Come on, we’re both adults, we both know the score. I’m sorry if I intruded on a private sorrow, but this is a very important matter. I have money. Did I mention that? Or is it the sex thing? Do you want a trial run?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, at least give me credit for not having seduced you.”
“What on earth makes you think you could have?”
Stuart shrugged suggestively. “I’m sorry, Liz. I’ve gone too far. I’m going to leave you now. Let’s say I’ve planted a seed. You just do me the favour of watering it from time to time. Think about it.”
He took his coat from the hook in the hall and came back into the room. “Thank you for a marvellous evening,” he said. “And will you water it, that little seed?”
“I … won’t forget. I certainly won’t forget.”
“Good.” He smiled and kissed her on the forehead, then let himself out.
Elizabeth was in a condition of shock for some days. The presumptuousness of what Stuart had said to her felt, in retrospect, like an unwanted physical intimacy; it was as though he had forced himself on her.
She went for long walks in Hyde Park and breathed deeply in the cold January air. She worked till late in the office. She bought, and read, two books about the war her grandfather had fought in. She made resolutions for the New Year. She would smoke less, she would visit Tom Brennan once a fortnight, if he wanted, or, if he didn’t, she would visit someone else of his generation. Somehow she would repay the debt; she would complete the circle.
For the first of her New Year visits to Tom Brennan she hoped she might find out some more about her grandfather. She understood enough about Brennan’s state of mind not to expect a long recollection, or even an anecdote, but she hoped for some reference at least.
She was wearing fewer clothes this time, knowing what the central heating was like in the dayroom. In view of his complaints about the food, she took Brennan a cake her mother had baked. She was struck as she packed it by how much it was like sending a parcel to a man in the trenches. She took half a bottle of whisky as well; at least that was something he wouldn’t have been sent from home. She also, feeling ashamed as she did so, put two mothballs in her handkerchief, so she could hold it to her face and breathe in camphor rather than the cloying smell of urine.
He was in the same place at the window. He put his hand in hers and they sat happily together. Elizabeth asked him what he had been doing in the past few weeks and what he had done in the years before that. His answers bore no relation to her questions. He talked about Mafeking night, he talked about his sister in the blackout and how she had fallen off a ladder. He told her he didn’t like the food they gave him.
Occasionally she could tell that a particular question had registered with him, because his eyes showed alarm behind the thick lenses of his spectacles. He would mumble a few words, then either fall silent or resume with one of the stories he knew. Elizabeth began to suspect that she had already heard most of his repertoire.
This time she didn’t press him on the subject of her grandfather. She had made the first vital connection. If he had anything else to say it would come in time; in fact it was more likely to come out when he became familiar with her visits.
She left him with the cake and whisky and said she would be back in two weeks’ time. The matron, Mrs. Simpson, passed her in the doorway.
“I didn’t think we’d see you again,” she said. “Any joy?”
“Well … not joy exactly. I don’t know if he liked seeing me. But I liked seeing him again. I left him a little parcel. Is that allowed?”
“It depends what’s in it.”
Elizabeth had a feeling the whisky would be forbidden. She left before she would have to see it being confiscated.
———
At home that night she did some calculations. It was a task she had been putting off, because she feared the result. With the help of last year’s diary she was able to work out when her last period had been. It had definitely been in progress on the sixth of December, because she remembered being late for a lunch that was marked for that day because she had had to make a detour to find a chemist’s. It was now January 21st. The last time she had seen Robert was not recorded in her diary, but it had been the week before Christmas. She remembered the decorations in the shops. In fact he had come over on his holidays a day early, which was how he had managed to squeeze her in. She had had to go to work the following day, so it must have been a weekday. She narrowed it down to the 21st or the 22nd. Either day was halfway through the cycle, which, if she remembered rightly, was the dangerous time. She tried to remember what precautions she had taken. She had been on the pill for four years continuously and her doctor had advised her to stop taking it. They had then used a variety of means. Both of them were careful, Robert neurotically so in her opinion.
The next morning she bought a pregnancy testing kit from the chemist’s in Craven Road. It was a flat, rectangular piece of plastic with two windows. She took it to the bathroom, then, five minutes later, as instructed, looked at the windows. The blue line across each was firm and assertive. It was not just positive, it was bursting with life.
She passed a day in which her feelings oscillated between joy and despair. Twice she began to tell Irene her secret and twice discretion made her change the subject. She went out for lunch on her own and found her eyes brimming with tears as she ate.
In the evening she telephoned Robert. There was no reply, but she left a message on his recently acquired answering machine telling him to ring at once.
She ran a bath and slid beneath the water. She gazed at her lower belly and wondered what microscopic events were taking place there. She was frightened of the physical changes and worried about what people would say; but much more than anxiety she felt exhilaration. Her telephone rang and she sprang from the bath and went dripping through to answer it.
It was Bob.
“I’ve cracked it,” he said. “I’m sorry it’s taken me such a long time. It was perfectly straightforward, really, once I’d figured out how the old codger’s mind worked. Greek letters, French language, and a bit of private code. Elementary, my dear Watson. I can’t swear I’ve got every name right, of course. I’ve marked the odd query. But it all seems to add up.”
When she had overcome her disappointment that it was not Robert, Elizabeth said, “That’s marvellous, Bob. Thank you very much. When can I pick it up?”
“Come over at the weekend if you like. I put a couple of pages in the post this morning. I just did the last two in the book because they were the ones I’d worked on first. They should be with you in the morning if the Post Office isn’t on strike as well. You never know, do you?”
“No. Quite. Well, I’ll look forward to getting those tomorrow.”
“Yes,” said Bob. “They’re a bit gloomy, you know. Pour yourself a drink first.”
“You know me, Bob. And thanks again.”
Robert didn’t ring till after midnight, when Elizabeth was asleep. She told him straight away that she was going to have a baby. She was too sleepy to break the news gently, as she had intended. “I won’t tell anyone who the father is. These things can be kept secret,” she said.
Robert was shocked.
“You could sound a bit happier about it,” she said.
“Give me time,” he said. “I’m happy for you, and in time I’ll be happy for myself and the child. Just give me time to get used to it.”
“I will,” said Elizabeth. “I love you.”
———
The next day was a Saturday and in the morning there was a package from Bob.
Elizabeth put it aside till after breakfast, then opened it carefully with a knife. Bob had reused a brown envelope from an old catalogue or circular, sticking a white label with her name and address over his own.
Inside were two large sheets of thin, crackling white paper. Elizabeth was very excited. From the moment she saw the black ink of Bob’s careful script, she knew that she had found what she wanted.
Gray’s old voice barking down the line from Lanarkshire had been good; the glimpse of memory through the chaos of Brennan’s recollection had been thrilling. But finally she had what she wanted: the past was alive in the spidery letters in her slightly shaking hand.
She read:
I don’t know how the days pass. The anger and the blood have gone. We sit and read. There is always someone sleeping, someone strolling. Food is brought. We don’t read real books, only magazines. Someone is eating. There are always others unaccounted for or absent.
Since Weir[?] died I have not been very close to reality. I am in a wilderness beyond fear. Time has finally collapsed for me. I had a letter from Jeanne this morning. She said two months have passed since we met.
Men come out from England like emissaries from an unknown land. I cannot picture what it means to be at peace. I do not know how people there can lead a life.
The only things that sometimes jolt us back from this trance are memories of men. In the set of the eyes of some conscripted boy I see a look of Douglas or [name illeg. Reeve?] I find myself rigid with imagining. I can see that man’s skull opening as he bent down to his friend that summer morning.
Yesterday a signaller came up to talk and his gestures reminded me of W. I had a clear picture of him, not sprawling in the mud as I last saw him, but emerging from his burrow in the ground, wild-eyed. The image lasted only for an instant, then time collapsed and drifted past me once again.
I have been summoned to see Gray tomorrow. Perhaps he will feel the same.
We are not contemptuous of gunfire, but we have lost the power to be afraid. Shells will fall on the reserve lines and we will not stop talking. There is still blood, though no one sees. A boy lay without legs where the men took their tea from the cooker. They stepped over him.
I have tried to resist the slide into this unreal world, but I lack the strength. I am tired. Now I am tired in my soul.
Many times I have lain down and I have longed for death. I feel unworthy. I feel guilty because I have survived. Death will not come and I am cast adrift in a perpetual present.
I do not know what I have done to live in this existence. I do not know what any of us did to tilt the world into this unnatural orbit. We came here only for a few months.
No child or future generation will ever know what this was like. They will never understand.
When it is over we will go quietly among the living and we will not tell them.
We will talk and sleep and go about our business like human beings.
We will seal what we have seen in the silence of our hearts and no words will reach us.
FRANCE
1918
Part Six
Stephen put away his pen and notebook. It was nighttime. There was moonlight on the hills above the village. He lit another cigarette and turned the pages of a magazine. There was a pile by the chair of others he had already skimmed. His eyes scanned each page but barely read.
He went outside into the yard behind the little house. Chickens scattered in front of his footsteps.
He went into the lane and began to walk. The road was only partially completed. He felt the puddles and the loose stones beneath his feet. He went as far as the main road and looked around him. The guns were soft and distant; they rumbled like a train going through an embankment.
He stood and breathed deeply. He could hear an owl’s call. He went slowly up and down the lane. The owl reminded him of childhood; it was a noise boys would make with their hands. His own seemed so long ago that it felt as though someone else had lived it for him.
Back in the billet he found Mountford sitting at the table, playing cards with a lieutenant called Tylecote. He declined their offer of a game, but sat in a daze and watched them move the greasy pictures over the wooden surface.
In the morning he went to see Colonel Gray in battalion headquarters two miles away.
Gray sprang up when Stephen went into the room. “Wraysford! How good to see you again. Civil of you staff men to pay us a call.”
Gray had changed little in appearance. He gave the impression of an enquiring terrier with its head on one side. His moustache and hair showed patches of white, but his movements were still swift and certain.
He pulled back a chair and gestured to Stephen, who sat down.
“Do smoke,” he said. “Now then. Are you enjoying yourself with your wee maps and lists?”
Stephen breathed in deeply. “We … exist.”
“Exist? Good heavens, that’s not the sort of talk I’m used to from a frontline man like yourself.”
“I suppose not. If you remember, sir, I didn’t ask to be transferred.”
“I remember very well. In my view you were battle-weary. Mind you, most people were never allowed to reach that stage. A bullet saw to that.”
“Yes. I’ve been lucky.” Stephen coughed as the cigarette smoke went down into his lungs.
Gray looked out of the window and swung his feet up on to the desk. “Our lot have done pretty well, you know. Terrible casualties on the Somme, but who didn’t? Otherwise not too bad. Both battalions are pretty much back to full strength.”
“Yes I know,” said Stephen. He smiled. “I know quite a lot about troop strengths in this area. More than when I was fighting.”
Gray nodded his head quickly up and down and tapped his teeth with a pen. “Tell me,” he said, “when the war is over and the regiment puts up a memorial, what words will we inscribe on it?”
“I don’t know. I presumed there would be a divisional memorial. The regiment would list the actions it was in, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Gray. “It’s a proud list, isn’t it?”
Stephen did not answer. He felt no pride in the unspeakable names.
Gray said, “Well, I’ve good news for you. Your staff attachment is finished. You’re coming back.” He paused. “I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I … yes, I suppose it is.”
“You don’t look very pleased.”
“I can’t be pleased by anything that carries on this war. But I’m not displeased. I’m indifferent.”
“Now listen to me. Quite soon we are going to attack. On a long front we are going to move rapidly forward into Germany. Parts of the line have already started to advance, as you know. If you want to lead your old company, you can. The temporary OC will become your second-in-command.”
Stephen sighed and said nothing. He wished he felt pleased or excited.
Gray stood up and came round the desk. “Think of the words on that memorial, Wraysford. Think of those stinking towns and foul bloody villages whose names will be turned into some bogus glory by fat-arsed historians who have sat in London. We were there. As our punishment for God knows what, we were there, and our men died in each of those disgusting places. I hate their names. I hate the sound of them and the thought of them, which is why I will not bring myself to remind you. But listen.” He put his face close to Stephen’s. “There are four words they will chisel beneath them at the bottom. Four words that people will look at one day. When they read the other words they will want to vomit. When they read these, they will bow their heads, just a little. ‘Final advance and pursuit.’ Don’t tell me you don’t want to put your name to those words.”
Stephen laughed. “I really don’t mind what—”