Chapter 31
We rise early and in the privacy of the predawn shadows, bathe together in the rain-filled shell crater behind the house.
The tangled garden around us breathes silence.
Not a murmur of breeze to disturb the branches of the elm that twists overhead.
That perfect body which I had first glimpsed here, naked in the moonlight, presses against mine.
We don’t speak. We’ve talked all night and, for now, words appear to have run dry.
We don’t need them anyway. We hold each other, fingers coiling into wet hair, lips lingering together.
I feel exhausted and energised, happy and tearful, full of hope and despair.
Contradictions that only make sense when you know you’re in love.
I once thought that we’d never have this time together.
That before we could consummate whatever feeling there was between us we would be consumed.
That this ever-hungry war must grip us in its jaws and devour us first. Now I’m both grateful and sorry for the night we’ve just shared.
We’ve expressed our love in a dozen ways but love, like war, is never satisfied and I want more.
More nights with him whispering my name, more dawns wrapped in each other’s arms. But the guns and the mud and the slaughter await us, patient as the grave.
‘Thank you,’ he says, holding my face between his hands.
‘For what?’ I smile.
‘For saving me already. For believing that there’s good in me.’
‘You’ve saved me too.’
And he has. Although my ghosts might always haunt me, I can at least face them now without the desire to bury myself in the same Somme soil that is their grave.
Danny has given me this freedom. And he has allowed me to reclaim my old self from the shadows of the past. Sometimes I even feel like the schoolboy I used to be, not all that long ago.
He holds me now as the sun crests the villa and the sparrows that share our attic room explode from their hole in the rooftop. We watch them, a scattershot of dark flecks flying like shrapnel against the red sky. And then they are gone and the world wakes around us.
But the dream won’t let us go. Not quite.
And so we take our time climbing out of the pool and drying off in the warm summer sunlight.
Our clothes lie on an old stone bench nearby, the drab khaki of cap and tunic that can’t be denied forever.
Eventually we dress, but defiantly, Danny pulling my trousers around my waist, me tucking in his shirt, fingers lingering in folds and over buttons.
‘I’m hungry,’ Danny grins, plonking my cap sideways onto my head.
‘You’re impossible,’ I tell him.
And he kisses my nose. ‘I know.’
There’s no food in the house and the only rations we’ve brought with us are a couple of tins of sardines and a few hard biscuits, and so we head out in search of the nearest field kitchen.
We race each other through the quick-waking streets of Albert – or what is left of them – weaving around one another, jumping from pavements, kicking through puddles.
In the end, it doesn’t take long to find a large, greasy-haired man sweating over a huge cauldron set up under an archway.
Porridge grey as dishwater bubbles as he stirs, his fist clamped around a rusty ladle.
A long line of men wait for their portion without much enthusiasm.
‘Come on,’ Danny says, tugging at my sleeve. ‘Let’s see what else is on offer.’
We race on through the town, picking our way over doors and window frames that lie in the road like the shattered remains of giant dollhouses trampled by some monstrous infant.
Boulders of rubble block our path, forcing us into narrow alleyways where black-frocked women gossip in doorways and a little girl in a faded summer dress hugs a billowy white loaf to her chest. Eventually, Danny spots what was clearly once a prosperous boulangerie.
After a little haggling, a chunk of warm bread, some decent cheese, a few hardboiled eggs, a couple of ripe tomatoes, a bottle of milk and four fresh apples are packed up and paid for.
Back at the villa, we take our picnic to the bench in the garden. It’s peaceful here, the bulk of the house muffling the hubbub of the street. Insects chirrup in the long grass while the scent of bougainvillea honeys the air.
Passing Danny the milk, I ask: ‘There’s one thing you never told me last night: how did you finally come to accept who you are?’
He sighs. ‘It was an old friend of my mum’s. Lady Laura Labelle.’ Grinning, he shakes his head. ‘Not a real lady. At least, not in the aristocratic sense. The name on her birth certificate was Alfie Makepeace, but among her friends she always went by her stage name.’
‘A female impersonator?’ I say. ‘Like in pantomime?’
He hesitates. ‘Yes and no. That was her trade and she was famous for it, second only to old Dan Leno when it came to treading the boards as a pantomime dame. But whereas after the show, Dan would take off his wig and frock and become Dan again, Laura really was Laura, even when she wore men’s clothes.
It’s why I always thought of her as her, never him.
Anyway, she’d visit me on the fair pretty regular and we’d talk about my mum and the old times, and gradually she got me to open up.
Said she’d always known who I was and that it was nothing to be ashamed of.
That there’d been people like us all throughout history, and that we’d still be around right up till the final curtain was brought down on the human race. ’
Danny smiles and grips my hand. We go on eating in silence for a while, enjoying this sliver of peace while we can.
‘So was it all for nothing?’ he asks suddenly.
He’s broken the last piece of his bread into crumbs and is feeding morsels to the sparrows who have returned from their morning forage.
They mob around his boots, fighting and pecking at each other.
‘All that work, all the risks we took, just for our reports and warnings to be ignored by those two morons. What was it for, Stephen?’ He spreads his hands, dusting off the last of the bread. ‘What’s any of it for?’
I might have had an answer for him once.
The rules, the protection of civilisation, the defence of a sane world.
But when sanity is brushed aside simply because a plan has been made and it would be too much effort to alter it now, then there is no answer.
We are all just quarrelsome birds squabbling over scraps.
‘Oi oi, lock up your daughters, it’s Lieutenant Wraxall and Private McCormick!’
We shift guiltily apart on the bench and glance over our shoulders.
Barrelling through the French doors come Taffy, Spud, Robert, Percy and the rest of the platoon.
I sigh and stand up as they all stagger to a halt on the terrace and offer their salute.
I tell them to stand at ease, then give a nod, and like a gang of overexcited schoolchildren, they begin pulling off their uniforms and tearing across the garden, making for the deliciously cool waters of the shell crater.
I look at Danny and see my sadness reflected back at me.
The time we’ve enjoyed together here is over.
The remainder of the day passes mostly in rest and recuperation.
Danny and I hadn’t slept much last night and so we too catch up on some much-needed rest. Only now two floors of the villa separate us, me alone in the attic, Danny on a cot downstairs with the other men.
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, I lie on the bed we shared and hold my sketch of him above my head.
The broad smile, the freckles bridging his nose, the close-cropped curls, the sweeping planes of his body.
It’s a good likeness and therefore too dangerous to leave lying around.
Only I can’t bring myself to destroy it.
Not completely. Instead I go to my writing case and, taking the India rubber from one of its drawers, begin to erase Danny’s features.
Just enough so that, if anyone chances upon it, he won’t be recognised and I might claim that I sketched some Greek or Roman statue from memory.
It hurts my heart to do it – to obliterate that face I love so much – but I know it’s for the best. When a knock sounds at the door, I answer hoarsely, ‘Yes? Come in.’
Captain Jackson steps into the room, his intelligent gaze moving slowly around the attic, from bed to chair to window to writing case, until finally it reaches me. He looks tired, worn down by the march out of the trenches.
‘Good evening, Lieutenant.’
I salute. ‘Evening, sir.’
He nods and I stand at ease. ‘I’ve just heard from HQ that we are expected to pitch up in a place called Briquemesnil tomorrow. A lorry will collect us at dawn. Not entirely sure what it’s all about, but I suppose it has to be connected with the push.’
‘No rest for the wicked,’ I say drily.
‘Then we must be very wicked indeed.’
The captain gives a wry smile and turns to go before hesitating, his palm planted against the doorframe. When he speaks again, he doesn’t turn back to face me. ‘Did you and Private McCormick enjoy your evening?’
A flush of heat spreads across my face. ‘Sir, I’m not sure—’
‘Don’t sound so frightened, Lieutenant,’ he says softly.
‘I... I believe you may have heard some of the stories they tell about me? The hero of the Marne who fought like a tiger and marched back under machine gunfire to save one of his men. Sergeant Peter Greenway, all caught up in barbed wire and certain to die. Rescued by his commanding officer and carried back to the British line like a babe in arms.’ He grips the doorframe tight.
‘Peter died a year later in a casualty clearing station at Ypres. Pneumonia. An enemy I couldn’t save him from. ’
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmur.
‘He was my...’ Jackson’s head sags. ‘He was my Danny, Stephen. My world. So please believe me when I tell you, you don’t have to be frightened of me.’
There’s a flutter at the hole in the ceiling. The sparrows have returned to their nest in the rafters.
‘Thank you, sir,’ I say.
The captain nods and closes the door behind him.