Dead Man's Land Read online

  Bloch studied the grainy photograph of a portly Englishman, a major. Like all snipers he knew his Allied uniforms. The man was emerging from the doorway of an official-looking building, a terrible scowl across his face, as if he were about to bawl out some unfortunate subordinate.

  ‘You know who this is?’

  ‘I think so, sir.’

  ‘Really?’ Lux sounded impressed, but Bloch’s cousin Willi was in the navy, and had often talked about this man, as if he were engaged in a personal war with him.

  Bloch read the caption, just to be certain. His English was poor, but a name was a name and he certainly knew this one. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you could recognize him through a rifle scope?’

  Bloch looked at the pugnacious face once more and nodded.

  ‘Good man. Put a bullet through him and it’ll be an Iron Cross First Class and two weeks’ leave, Bloch.’

  But it wasn’t the target or the double points for shooting him that exercised Bloch. He looked back at the ‘X’ marking the steeple and the wiggling traces of the opposing trenches on the map. His real concern was, whatever remained of Le Gheer church, it was firmly on the British side of the lines.

  EIGHT

  Watson stumbled out of the transfusion unit into a glutinous, all-enveloping blackness and paused, waiting for his eyes to adjust. It was as if his head had been wrapped in a thick velvet cloth and it wouldn’t do to break his neck stumbling over the taut guy ropes that played out from the tents in all directions.

  He had no idea how many hours had passed since he first saw that jawless man – what was the name again? Lovell? Lovat? So many names, ranks and numbers, so many abbreviations that only hinted at God-awful wounds. The victims had come thick and fast, in such numbers he was initially forced to transfuse soldier-to-soldier, using syringes lined with paraffin wax to try to inhibit the clotting. It was preferable to the previous method, where the radial artery of one man was inserted directly into the median vein of another, and the flow controlled by sutures and thumb and forefinger, but very hit and miss compared to his new system.

  Eventually, though, he had been able to collect donations of blood for citration from the lightly injured. Soldiers who agreed to be donors were rewarded with a weekend pass to be used before rejoining their battalion. Thus there had been no shortage of volunteers and he had created a small stockpile, which he had citrated, ‘typed’ and put on ice.

  He wondered what that harpy of a sister-in-charge would say if she knew he had allowed the VADs to help draw the blood. And that all the soldiers had called them ‘nurse’. He shuddered to think what acid remarks she would draw up from her well of vitriol.

  As his pupils dilated, Watson looked up at the sky and checked off a few of the familiar astronomical markers that were emerging: the Plough, Orion, and the iconic ‘W’ of the stars of Cassiopeia. This was clearly the same world he had always inhabited, under the same heavens. It simply no longer seemed familiar; he felt as if he had been whisked off to some distant planet, where the earth as he knew it had been subverted and distorted into a hideous simulacrum of the real thing.

  Some way distant, he saw the flash of a star shell, briefly illuminating all beneath it with its sickly, over-white light, before it faded, leaving only an after-image on his retinae. There was still a war going on out there, even under cover of darkness. Although they were miles away, he could smell the trenches on the wind: a devil’s stew of overflowing latrines, unwashed bodies, cigarette smoke, stagnant mud and rotting corpses that clawed at the senses. Those who experienced the revolting aroma up close for the first time, he was told, were often physically sick. Within a week, they no longer noticed; indeed, they had become part of the stench.

  Over to his left he could make out the grim rows of stretchers holding bodies stitched into coarse army blankets. A figure moved among them, sometimes bending down and shining a torch onto a label and writing on a clipboard. One of the padres, no doubt, finding out which of the men belonged to his flock and which to some other shepherd. Chaplains of every stripe, and the orderlies who acted as gravediggers, would be busy the next morning. Watson wondered for a moment how the man’s faith was holding up, but he was too weary to start a theological discussion.

  He began a slow trudge uphill, towards his billet in the Big House, careful to favour his aching knee. He passed the pack store – once the groundkeepers’ shed – and skirted the rectangular beds of what must have been part of the old monastery gardens, now sad and neglected. He caught the scent of thyme and . . . yes, liquoricey wild fennel. Who knew when this patch would be growing their medicinal herbs or vegetables again?

  The lawned section of grounds just before the stone steps up to the monastery was pitched with the tents that made up the nurses’ quarters. The flap of Sister-in-Charge Spence’s bell tent was open as he passed and he glanced inside. Clearly illuminated by a hooded candlestick reading lamp, she was seated at a chipped wooden writing desk poring over a pile of post, a thick brush and inkpot to hand. She was censoring. Something made her look up and she waved him over.

  Watson hesitated, swaying slightly as a wave of tiredness broke over him. Unnaturally amplified sounds rattled around his cranium: a distant explosion that cracked the night sky, a man coughing his last some yards behind him, the hum of electricity wires feeding the larger tents, the whirring of clockwork from the mechanical oil lamps used elsewhere, the snorting of jittery horses from a nearby livery stable. He felt like closing his eyes there and then. But he shook his head clear, put one foot in front of the other and went across to Sister Spence.

  ‘Major Watson,’ she said as she stood, put the lid on the inkpot and snuffed out the twin candles of the reading lamp, ‘I thought some hot chocolate might be in order. Rowntree’s.’

  ‘That sounds splendid,’ he said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster. He just wanted to get out of his ruined clothes.

  She placed the kettle on top of the Beatrice oil stove and spooned the powder into two enamel mugs, talking as she did so. ‘No milk, I am afraid. I saw your two VADs giving out teas earlier. Very efficient.’ She looked over. ‘I hope that was all they did.’

  ‘They assisted me with transfusions. Sterilizing syringes and the like.’

  The sly smile told Watson that she didn’t believe a word of that, but was prepared to let it pass.

  She realized that decorum was dictating he kept one foot outside. ‘Oh, do come in, nobody is going to think two dry old twigs like us are up to anything improper.’

  Watson wanted to object that he liked to think he still had some sap left in him. But not only would it have been inappropriately forward, looking down at his blood-spattered shirt and jacket, he could see he probably looked positively desiccated. She was right, nobody would imagine him capable of mischief.

  Sister Spence’s uniform, he noted, was immaculate, as was the interior of the bell tent, with its wardrobe trunk for her clothes, an improvised dressing table holding an ebonized mirror-and-brush set, and a wrought-iron washstand with jug and bowl and, on a lower level, two oblong aluminium hot-water bottles. The only incongruous note was struck by a leather Pickelhaube, the infamous spiked German helmet, which hung down next to the Coleman lantern in the centre of the tent.

  ‘A battlefield souvenir,’ Sister Spence said, noticing his interest. ‘I don’t agree with them, robbing bodies is a ghastly business, but it was donated by a grateful Tommy. They can be raffled back home and raise a pretty penny for the medical services. Helmets, medals and those nasty saw-edged bayonets, they fetch the most. And these hideous spiked ones are becoming rare now. Sit there.’ She pointed to a folding chair next to her camp bed and he lowered himself into it. He longed for Brindle to appear and pull his Latimers off; his feet were throbbing. A Turkish bath would be the thing. Whenever he felt old and rheumatic, he sought out Nevill’s on Northumberland Avenue. He could almost conjure the smell of steam in his nostrils.

  The sister appeared to be clairvoya
nt. ‘You know, the monks at the monastery left us one very useful item. A brewery. Oh, don’t get your hopes up, not for producing beer. The wooden vats make for very handy washtubs these days. A good soak works wonders, even here. The orderlies should have hot water ready when you get up there.’

  He nearly groaned with pleasure at the thought of scrubbing his skin almost raw. That and a pipe of Schippers, an indulgence he had denied himself at the request of Emily – she had always loathed the smell on her clothes and in her hair – and which he was now of a mind to resume. However, having no ready supply of his tobacco of choice, he would have to make do with one of his Bradley’s before he turned in.

  ‘And there’ll be food. As I said, no milk, but we have plenty of eggs. And bread. Here you are, Major.’

  She handed over the drink. As he went to take it, he noted his shaking hand with some surprise. It felt as if it belonged to another man. Yet there it was at the end of his arm, agitating the chocolate in the tin mug, as bad as any delirium tremens he had ever seen. There was something else, too, a pressure building in his chest, and the sensation that only by screaming at the top of his lungs could he release it.

  ‘And this,’ said Sister Spence firmly.

  It was a hefty tot of rum in a blue crystal liqueur glass, which he took from her and threw back, coughing as it caught in his throat. He felt the pressure behind his breastbone ease as the fiery alcohol coursed down to his stomach.

  ‘Better?’

  He nodded. ‘You know, it wasn’t until I saw the hospital tents from the ship, rows of them along the clifftops, that I began to appreciate the scale of what is happening out here.’ It had been a continuous line, running, so he was told, all the way from Calais to Boulogne. ‘Then, when I saw the trenches from the air—’

  Sister Spence interrupted him. ‘Personally, I think it helps if you try and block out what our Major Torrance calls “the bigger picture”. Oh, it’s all very well getting that if you are a general. But I feel we should concentrate on the case before you at any given moment, as if it is just a singular event. If you try and take in what is happening across Europe . . . it could drive a man quite mad. A lack of imagination can sometimes be a blessing.’

  Watson thought he didn’t lack for imagination, but even so, he had trouble contemplating the vastness of the medical operation, about how one could multiply this one hospital by one hundred or one thousand, and the tally of young men wounded, maimed and killed that would be at the end of the equation. And Europe was just one theatre and one side of the conflict – there was the Eastern Front, the Dardanelles, Egypt and the Middle East, Africa . . . Perhaps it was the terrible mathematics of such slaughter that had been trying to force its way out of his chest earlier.

  ‘Don’t worry, Major. I have had word that our sister CCS is up and running after its attack. We’re full. And Major Torrance and Captain Symonds will be back presently, so we’ll be up to full strength with doctors. Tomorrow will be an easier day for all of us. Physically, I mean. More rum?’

  He shook his head and sipped the chocolate. They could hear the sound of a badly tuned piano drifting in from a billet in the reserve line, somewhere close by. It took him a few moments to recognize the sombre first movement of Godin’s ‘Valse Septembre’ before the wind shifted and the tune was gone. ‘Bad news?’ he asked.

  She looked puzzled. ‘I’m sorry? Was what bad news?’

  ‘The telegram. That paper has a very distinctive colour and texture. Was it bad news?’ He could see it on the table, next to the mail. It was still twisted like an over-sized sweet wrapper. She had waved and throttled it at the transfusion tent when she and Mrs Gregson had exchanged words. ‘It’s a Keeper of the Privy Purse telegram, isn’t it? Their Majesties regret . . . I’m sorry, perhaps I shouldn’t intrude.’

  It was bad form, but curiosity had the better of him. There had to be some explanation for her earlier behaviour.

  Sister Spence turned her gaze on the telegram briefly, and her chin shook momentarily. ‘It’s about my brother. Suffered a relapse at a hospital outside Boulogne, the day before he was due to be shipped back to England.’

  Watson closed his eyes for a second. It was an effort to open them again. The lids felt as if they had been coated with lead. Was he, after all, too old for this? Should he have listened to the nay-sayers? To Holmes?

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  She gave a brief incline of the head and drank some of her beverage. ‘They are all somebody’s brother or son, Major. Or husband or sweetheart. Or father. Every last one. I’m not unique.’

  ‘But you are, in that you know what “relapse” means.’

  A sigh. ‘You know about that, too, do you?’

  ‘It’s one piece of terminology that has stayed with me. I came across a case at Bailleul. He managed to get into the medical stores one night. He found the digitalis.’

  She stared down into her mug and her features softened into a very different Sister Spence. ‘Henry had no genitals left. It sounds like some terrible music-hall song, doesn’t it?’ The voice was thin and fragile, hollowed out by grief. ‘They were blown clean off by some freak of ballistics that left the rest of him intact. He was twenty-two. Can you imagine? He would have thought his life over. Heaven knows where he got a pistol from, but I suspect they won’t enquire too deeply about that. I think “relapsed” is a little easier on the families at home than “suicide”, don’t you?’

  ‘At least while the war is on, I believe it to be a kindness, yes.’

  She looked up at him, blinked away a film of moisture and fixed him with a hard stare. Her words recovered their brittle glaze. ‘Major, I may have been a little firmer than usual this afternoon . . . yesterday afternoon . . . because of the news about Henry. But that has no bearing on my attitude to your VADs. I won’t have them. I won’t have Canadian nurses either.’

  ‘Why ever not?’ He had come across some fine examples from the Dominion at hospitals both in England and Egypt.

  Her face pinched up once more. ‘Dances, Major, dances. The Canadians are allowed to go cavorting with officers. To walk out with them. To attend tea parties and dances. It unsettles my girls. It’s bad for morale.’

  ‘You could always let your nurses have a cavort or two.’

  She frowned at such flippancy. ‘I quote Matron-in-Charge Challenger: are we here to go dancing or save lives?’

  Can’t one do both, he wondered, but the fight wasn’t in him. He felt woozy. Alcohol on an empty stomach, perhaps.

  ‘And a lot of these VADs hold dangerous political views. I don’t want them to poison the minds of my nurses.’

  ‘What sort of political views?’

  ‘Radical suffragettes.’ She said it with a sneer.

  ‘You don’t believe in suffrage?’

  ‘Your Mrs Gregson—’

  Why did she keep using that possessive? ‘She isn’t mine.’

  ‘Mrs Gregson strikes me very much as the sort who would have all treated equally. Nurses and VADs. Do you really think a servant should have exactly the same vote as her mistress?’

  Sister Spence was clearly a great believer in hierarchy and the natural order of things.

  ‘Actually, I do. Just as the valet’s opinion counts as much as his master’s views.’

  She looked surprised. ‘How terribly modern of you.’

  Watson smiled to himself. That’s not what Emily would have called him. Quite the opposite. But he had adopted some of her more progressive ideas. ‘I should be going, Sister. Thank you for the chocolate. Most welcome.’ He stood, a little unsteadily. ‘As was the rum.’

  ‘Good. I’m sorry if I was rude. You see where politics can get us? I meant no offence.’

  ‘None was taken.’

  ‘Can I offer a word of advice, Major? Medical advice. Just an observation.’

  ‘I am a newcomer hereabouts, Sister, advice would be most welcome.’

  ‘You have to concentrate on the viable ones. You can’
t save them all.’

  ‘We tried to in Afghanistan.’

  ‘There weren’t as many,’ she said coldly. ‘Nor were the injuries anything like as heinous, I’ll wager. Staff Nurse Jennings told me about the poor chap with half a face. I went to see him. There was no possibility on God’s earth he could have survived. And I think you knew that. It goes against all our training and ethics—’

  ‘He’s dead? Lovat?’

  ‘I am afraid so.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘In the mortuary tent awaiting burial, I would imagine. Why?’

  ‘He’s evidence.’

  ‘Of?’

  He explained his suspicions about the wound and the smell of garlic. That something abominable was being used to inflict such disfiguring wounds. Wounds that would always prove fatal.

  ‘You’ll have to take that up with Brigade. There are channels for such information.’

  ‘I thought as much. I’m now beginning to wonder if I imagined it.’

  Nonsense.

  He yawned and determined to ignore the bogus inner voice.

  ‘Good night, Sister. Sleep well.’

  ‘I will, once I have read some more of these,’ she tapped the stack of letters, ‘and suffered yet more very bad poetry indeed. Sometimes I think I should leave the war-sensitive material in and scribble out the doggerel. It would be a blessing for the recipients.’