Sally Spencer - Blackstone and the Great War

‘ Someone needs to say something ,’ one of the officer statues — Soames — told the other two.

‘I’ve nothing to say,’ replied the second, Maude. ‘Not to you, and certainly not to this Judas.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Hatfield said.

‘For God’s sake, has Eton taught you nothing!’ Soames exploded. ‘You never — under any circumstances — apologize!’

Hatfield nodded, acknowledging the truth of the statement, then took a deep breath.

‘I did the right thing,’ he said firmly. ‘We were all caught up in a cycle of madness, and killing wasn’t just the easy answer — it was the natural one. Somebody had to put a stop to it.’

‘Typical bourgeois thinking,’ Maude sneered. ‘You’re nothing but a costermonger in a bespoke uniform.’

‘That’s enough!’ Soames said forcefully.

‘Enough?’ Maude repeated, surprised.

‘That’s what I said. Whatever happened in the past is over and done with. You and Hatfield are comrades who are going into battle together. You will shake hands, and you will wish each other good luck. And you will do it now!’

Maude hesitated for a moment, then held out his hand. ‘Good luck, Hatfield, old chap,’ he said. ‘See you in Berlin.’

And as Hatfield took the hand, they heard the sound of a whistle blowing — and knew it was time to climb the ladder and step out into a living hell.

The oil in the lamp had run out shortly after Soames, Maude, Hatfield and Carstairs had left, and the dugout had been plunged into darkness.

Blackstone did not know how long he had been there. His aching body screamed that it must be at least half a lifetime, but his mind told him it could not be more than a few hours.

Initially, he had tried to escape, but whoever had tied him to the chair — probably Soames — had made an excellent job of it, and after a while, he had simply given up.

As he sat there, with only the sound of the occasionally muffled explosion to distract him, he thought about his life — the women he had loved and the friends he had seen die. He wondered why his successes seemed to him so modest, and his failures so monumental.

He did not think about the future — he was not sure he had one.

When he heard the footsteps in the trench, he knew that matters would soon be resolved, but he was not sure what that resolution would be — even once the door was opened — because the light which flooded in temporarily blinded him.

‘How are you, Inspector Blackstone?’ asked a voice.

‘As well as can be expected, Captain Carstairs,’ Blackstone replied, as his vision returned.

Carstairs produced a knife. It may well have been the same knife that Maude had threatened him with earlier.

‘We’ll have you free in a moment,’ he said, cutting through the rope which bound Blackstone’s wrists and ankles to the chair, ‘and by tomorrow you should be back in England, with all this unpleasantness left behind you.’

Blackstone stood up, and began to walk around. The first few steps were painful, but then the pain eased as his circulation improved.

‘So you think all this “unpleasantness” will be behind me, do you, Captain?’ he asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ Carstairs said confidently.

‘Then you seem to be forgetting that there’s still the small matter of a murder that I have to clear up.’

‘You’ll never find out who killed Lieutenant Fortesque,’ Carstairs said. ‘No one will.’

‘Fortesque committed suicide,’ Blackstone replied. ‘It’s the murder of Private Danvers I’m talking about.’

‘Danvers was killed by Fritz, and Fortesque was murdered by person or persons unknown,’ Carstairs said flatly.

‘Lieutenant Hatfield will confess,’ Blackstone told him. ‘It might take a while, but, in the end, he’ll spill the whole story.’

‘Unfortunately, Lieutenant Hatfield is dead, as are Lieutenants Soames and Maude,’ Carstairs said.

‘What!’

‘They all died bravely, defending the country that they love. They were heroes.’

‘You sent them out on a suicide mission,’ Blackstone accused.

‘I sent them to capture a German machine-gun position, and — after their deaths — some of the men they had been leading succeeded in doing just that.’

‘How many of our men lost their lives in capturing that position?’

‘I believe it was fifteen.’

‘You believe it was fifteen? You don’t know ?’

‘In the confusion of war, it’s often some time before we have accurate casualty figures.’

‘And will the men who survived — the ones who captured the machine-gun nest — be able to hold it?’ Blackstone asked.

‘Possibly not.’

‘So they’ll die too?’

‘This is war, Mr Blackstone,’ Carstairs said. ‘Men die.’

‘So you’ve sacrificed perhaps thirty men — though it could be more, because you won’t have the accurate casualty figures for some time — in order to save the reputations of three public schoolboys,’ Blackstone said angrily.

‘Sooner or later, all those men would have died anyway,’ Carstairs said, indifferently. ‘Most of the men who are currently serving with me will die before the war is over — myself included. But the regiment itself, though stained with the blood of its fallen, will emerge from the war with its reputation intact — and I will be able to go to my own death knowing that.’

‘You’re insane,’ Blackstone said.

‘Perhaps I am,’ Carstairs agreed. ‘But it is just that kind of insanity which has transformed a small wet country, on the edge of Europe, into the mightiest nation on earth.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You have got what you came for, Mr Blackstone.’

‘Have I?’

‘Indeed you have. You wanted three men, who you might choose to call murderers, to be punished for their crime — and so they have been. They are as dead now as they would have been if they’d been hanged or marched before a firing squad. You should be well satisfied with your work here.’ He paused again. ‘But are you satisfied, Inspector Blackstone?’

‘No,’ Blackstone admitted, ‘I’m not.’

‘Of course you’re not,’ Carstairs agreed. ‘And why aren’t you? Because we both know that yours is a mere tactical victory — that seen in terms of the wider history, you have lost, and the regiment has won.’ He shook his head, almost pityingly, from side to side. ‘So go back to England, Inspector Blackstone — because you can do nothing more here.’

The White Cliffs of Dover had been visible ever since they set sail from Calais, but that had not stopped the enlisted men from crowding on to the lower deck to watch them getting ever-closer. There was some pushing and shoving for a better position as the voyage progressed, it was true — there was even a little shouting and complaining — but, on the whole, it was all good-natured.

And why wouldn’t the soldiers be good-natured when, after enduring all the horror of the trenches, they were finally going home on leave? Blackstone asked himself.

He pictured them turning up at their own front doors, and being embraced by wives and sweethearts.

He could almost hear them telling those same wives and sweethearts that though this was only a leave, and they would soon be going back to France, there was nothing to worry about, because the war would soon be over.

Perhaps they would even believe these assurances themselves, Blackstone thought.

But he had seen quite enough — on his own short visit to the front line — to know that they could repeat the words a thousand times, and it still wouldn’t make them true.