scrap dealer, Levy, only twenty-two and yet already the father of four children? Who else was out there? What else was out there? He had studied the maps, read the reconnaissance reports, but things changed; whole landscapes altered in battle. They had seen aeroplanes, of both sides, crossing the sky during the late afternoon on the day before while it was still light. He could hear that high, distant noise of them even now, their apparently unhurried movements seeming to have nothing to do with what was going on below.
Even when one of them was shot down—though they'd seen and heard no firing—and fell to earth in silent flames, he had no sense that a man like himself was being roasted alive.
Five minutes.
He cleared his throat. Licked his lips. He had no saliva. The bismuth clogged his mouth. What if he couldn't blow the whistle? He felt for it again. The pain in his chest was excruciating. He looked up, exchanged grim smiles with Collins who had taken a position down to his left. Watched him pat one very young soldier—was the boy's name Russell?—on the shoulder. Looked at his watch. For a moment the numerals blurred.
Two minutes. He could hear Pollock's adenoidal breathing.
His arm rested on the ladder; momentarily he laid his forehead against it. He could sense every pore, every nerve ending and every alert hair on his body. How could all this suddenly cease in oblivion? It was unimaginable. Please God, he wasn't about to be sick. To his right one man crossed himself and he could see his lips moving in prayer. Now his heart was thudding so hard he could hear nothing else. The field guns stopped. Would they have cut the wire?
Would they?
One minute.
Pollock belched. Someone sniggered. He kept his eyes on his watch, steadied afoot on the lowest rung of the ladder, raised the whistle to his mouth and started a prayer of his own. Please God, he said, keep me safe. Please don't let me die.
Ten seconds.
Take someone else this time. Not me. Take someone else. Anybody. I just want to live. Please. Don't let it be me. He looked at the slight, fair-haired boy to his left. At Pollock, gasping, mouth open. Made his glance pass by Levy. Felt Russell watching him. Gaseley's eyes were shut, his face white and inscrutable. Not me. Not now. Please. The whistle was in his mouth; he could feel its vibrations but heard nothing. They started to climb.
Anybody.
'I remember a sergeant shouting at the men not to bunch up—it was human nature to cling together, a lethal instinct—and then I remember seeing Jones, a Welshman who'd been praying just before we went over, moving ahead of me even while the men to each side of him fel. I passed a soldier caled Levy lying on his back, the top of his head blown away. And then as we came towards the enemy lines, suddenly this German was right in front of me and he saw me and was so close I could see the muzzle of his rifle as it found me. I dropped down and got him as he fired, and a man caled Polock, who was right behind me, was hit. He went down clutching his bely and he just said 'ouf' like a monstrous cushion deflating. I felt guilty and yet simultaneously elated. I thought God had answered my prayer; he'd taken Polock, not me. That was bad enough. But it was worse than that.'
Laurence leaned his head back against a pilar.
'We broke through. We overran their position. It was bayonets for hand-to-hand fighting. But the casualties were terrible. There were two lads, friends who had joined together ... I knew they were underage but we were short of men; it was easier not to ask. One of them was shot only feet from our position. His war had lasted less than five minutes. We never saw the other again. Eventualy we crawled back. Tried to pul in our wounded. A few days later—a lifetime later—we were back in bilets. We'd lost over half of our officers, nearly a third of our men. My men. I was drinking myself to sleep each night.
'A few days later, the colonel sent for me. I was hung-over and I thought he was going to promote me simply through lack of alternatives. But no, he had a telegram. Rather than look at me, he read it through without raising his eyes until he ran out of words, though it was so short he must already have known it by heart. It said that Louise had died giving birth and the baby had died with her. And they had died on the morning I was going into battle. Louise died—I made it my business to find out later—almost at the very hour I went over. When I was begging God to take another life instead of mine. The colonel's giving me a tot of his special scotch and apologising that he can't send me home quite yet and I'm realising that I sacrificed my wife and my son and the whole long life he might have had, just so that I could go on living my pointless existence.'
'Laurence,' Mary said gently but protestingly.
'I know. I know. It's a terrible, cruel, Old Testament God who would accept such an exchange. I know that. But I offered them up.'
'Laurence,' said Mary, putting her hand under his chin and forcing him to look at her. Her eyes were shining brightly. She blinked several times. 'Thousands—
millions —of prayers must have been said by desperate men in desperate situations. You think you were the only one who, faced with horrors I can't even imagine, asked to be spared at any cost? And what about al the mothers and wives and sisters back home? Do you think that perfectly nice mothers didn't hope and, yes, pray it would be someone else's boy? Their friend's son? Their sister's fiance? I prayed and prayed for Richard. I went to church, and I went through the motions of joining in prayers for victory and prayers for peace, but, selfishly, the only thing I wanted was Richard. I didn't care whether we won or lost. When he was horribly injured I prayed for him to survive, when, seeing him now, I should have wished for him to have been spared the living death he has. But I wanted him back. I didn't want to live in a world without him.'
When Laurence didn't answer she said, 'You weren't thinking of Louise then. You weren't suggesting a sacrifice, one for another; you wanted to live. It's a powerful instinct. Then you got the news of Louise's death when you were away from home, under enormous stress, and it's hardly surprising you made a link.'
'It was cowardice. Plain and simple. Not the sort that gets you publicly condemned and shot like Edmund Hart. Mine was the tidy, private sort. His broke out, mine ate into me. My punishment was living. I found it wasn't that important. When Louise died she took a bit of my past—she was, is, part of my memories and of other people's. But when the baby died ... He wasn't part of history, he couldn't be a memory; what he took with him was our dreams. His future ... my future...'
