Below the stone, on the freshly-turned chalky soil, there was a plastic wreath of red poppies and laurel leaves, with a ribbon identifying ‘The Royal British Legion’ across it, and an unmarked posy of fresh flowers and greenery.
Benedikt marked the difference between the two tributes: on closer scrutiny, the soil was no longer quite freshly turned, for there were already tiny green things sprouting from it—the delicate spears of young grass and the minute broad-leaved weeds which would eventually reduce General Herbert George Maxwell’s last resting place to uniformity with all his neighbours in Duntisbury Royal churchyard and all his old comrades in dozens of far-flung military cemeteries (that was what ‘Ubique’ meant, after all, wasn’t it?).
But, where the Royal British Legion wreath dated from the original burial judging by the rain-spotted dust which covered it, the posy had been cut and carefully put together only a few hours before.
So there was somebody in Duntisbury Royal who still loved dummy1
So here was the fuse . . . buried two metres deep, and impervious to any mischance now, but still as live and dangerous as any of the thousands of shells he had once fired, so it seemed.
But what shell, of all those thousands, had he fired which had killed him all those years after, so explosively?
And who had killed him, anyway?
Half-blurred, on the edge of his vision through the spectacles, he noticed another stone, but with the same name.
He turned his head towards it:
he peered further to the left, and then to the right . . . they were all Maxwells here—
And there was something else—someone else—on that blurred no-man’s-land—
Benje, the snub-nosed cyclist, was almost at his back, complete with his racing-bike.
“That’s the Old General, the Squire,” said the boy, nodding at the new grave. “We had a big funeral for him, with soldiers— gunners, they were.”
dummy1
Benedikt nodded gravely.
“The IRA killed him,” said the boy. “Blew him up, they did. Dad says they’re a lot of bastards.”
“Yes?” said Benedikt.
But that was one thing they did
II
It might be useful, thought Benedikt. And even if it was not useful, it would be instructive.
But most of all it might be useful.
“You knew the old general?”
The boy Benje started to nod, and then a sound behind him diverted his attention.
The other—the boy who had given Mr Cecil the rude signal—shot out from behind a nearby yew tree on his bicycle, and came to a racing halt beside Benje in a spray of gravel.
Benedikt studied them both. They were two very different types, the boy Benje extrovert and cheekily- aggressive, and the other boy . . . What was his name? He had heard it, but it had escaped him . . . the other boy was black-haired and fine-boned, and altogether more withdrawn. The only thing they had in common dummy1
was their transport: the low-handlebarred, multi-geared racing cycles were identical.
And he had a better introduction to them both there. “Those look good bikes—BSA, are they?” He eased his accent, the better to communicate with them. “You are brothers?”
“Me and him?” Benje threw the question back contemptuously.
“You must be joking!”
“You do not look like brothers—no.” He searched for an opening.
“But you bought the same machines.”
Benje shook his head. “We didn’t buy ‘em.”
“Of course! You were given them.” He knew that wasn’t what the boy had meant.
“No. We won them.” Benje couldn’t let the mistake pass uncorrected.
“In a competition?”
Benje looked at him. “Sort of.” He paused for an instant, then nodded at the tombstone. “We got them from him.”
“From the General? He gave them to you?”
“No—
