The Old Vengeful

'Straight over the cross-roads,' said Paul tightly.

The road continued for a little way, then dropped and twisted down the southern slope of the ridge, affording her glimpses of a river valley, of fields and trees and distant roofs below.

'On the right there—you can pull in under the bank.' His voice was conversational again. 'You come with me, Elizabeth

—you stay with the car, Aske.'

It was, as he had said, quite a small cemetery, cut into the hillside out of the sloping fields: in size it was more like the little village churchyard in which Father lay, than the hecatombs of the war dead which she had seen in photographs; but there was no church, and the lines of identical tombstones were ordered with military precision, rank on rank up the slope, as in a well-kept garden.

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Elizabeth followed Paul up the centre aisle, towards a small kiosk-like building which was open on the side facing them, having to trot to keep at his heels. When they reached it Paul opened a tiny metal door and drew out a book wrapped in a plastic envelope from the niche behind it. She watched him in silence as he pulled a biro from his inside pocket and signed the book, then offered both to her. 'Name and date please, Elizabeth.'

Elizabeth studied the list, and was surprised to see how many names from this summer there were on the open pages—

even from this same month, and several from this very day—

who had found this place in the middle of nowhere, and this book.

And there was space for comment, too—

' My grandpa brought me here, and told me about it' —

' I was here in 1918, and I remember' —

But Paul had written nothing except the date and his name—

plain Paul Mitchell—so Elizabeth had no stomach to do more than the same—plain Elizabeth Loftus.

'What about me, then?' said Humphrey Aske, from behind her.

Elizabeth looked towards Paul, quickly and fearfully. 'Paul

—'

'Yes, of course—' he blinked just once, as though the late afternoon light was too strong for his eyes '—you are here, I suppose, so you must sign. You're right.'

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Humphrey Aske signed the book—just name and date—and meekly gave it back to Paul, who wrapped it up carefully and replaced it in its niche.

'Sometimes I get to be rather a pain,' said Aske simply.

'Yes.' Paul addressed the ranks below them. 'And sometimes I fly off the handle, and particularly in places like this . . . Because everyone's obsessive about something—' he caught Elizabeth's eye '—with your father it was the Vengeful. . . but with me . . . someone once said to me, she said . . . 'one minute it's a field of cabbages, but with a machine-gun you can turn it into a field of honour with a single burst'.'

They walked down the aisle together, and it was only at the end of it that Paul spoke again.

'The stories are all here, but we haven't time for them—the regiments and the names . . . they were older in 1914 than 1918— there's even a general here, from 1918, who was younger then than I am now . . . two great British armies, so alike and yet so different—one so small, and the other huge—

separated by four years of war, that's all.' He shook his head.

'But we've got to get on—'

He led them back to the car in silence, and she couldn't take her eyes off him.

'Turn round and get back to the cross-roads, and then turn left, along the crest.' It was hardly an order, more an instruction, and almost a courteous one.

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'And then where to?' Vendresse had also taken the sting out of Humphrey Aske.

'To a place called Coucy-le-Chateau. About twenty miles, mostly on side-roads. I'll direct you.'

'What is there to see at Coucy-le-Chateau?' asked Elizabeth.

'There's a village . . . and a ruined castle.'

'A medieval castle, you mean?'

'Yes. But the ruins are more modern—ancient and modern, like the hymns in the hymn-book.'

'What d'you mean, Paul?'

'I mean, there was once the greatest medieval tower in Europe there—there still was in 1812, anyway . . . the great tower of Enguerrand III of Coucy, who was a contemporary of our King John—he was also excommunicated by the Pope, like King John, I believe . . . But General Ludendorff blew up Enguerrand's tower in 1918, before he retreated, to remind the French he'd been there.'

They had turned on to the crest road, the fabled Chemin des Dames itself. Elizabeth's eye was drawn to a huge French war cemetery, with a sign to a German one nearby.

'Not that he hadn't been reminding them already,'

continued Paul. 'He'd had the Paris Gun—the one that's always wrongly called 'Big Bertha'—stashed in a wood