Pat Barker - The Ghost Road

20 October

Another mammoth march. Lousy rotten stinking job too, rounding up the stragglers. Forget leadership.

This is where leadership ends and bullying starts. I heard myself hassling and chivvying like one of those bloody instructors at Étaples. Except at least I'm doing what I'm bullying other people into doing.

I turned on one man, mouth open to give him a really good blast, and then I saw his face. He was asthmatic. That tight, pale, drawn worried look. If you're asthmatic yourself you can't miss it. He might as well have been carrying a placard. I fell in beside him and tried to talk to him, but he couldn't talk and march at once, or creep rather — he certainly wasn't marching. That's the thing about asthma: it creates the instant brotherhood shared humanity routinely fails to create. I got him into the horse ambulance, well propped up, gripped his wrist and said goodbye. I doubt if he saw me go. When you're as bad as that nothing matters except the next breath.

The curious thing is as soon as I saw his face, my own chest tightened, just because I'd been reminded of the possibility, I suppose. So far, touch wood, there's been no trouble. But I'm a bit wheezy tonight.

Singing very ragged by mid-afternoon, a lot of men marching in silence, it had become a test of endurance. But then suddenly, or so it seemed — we'd been marching half asleep — we found ourselves with green fields on either side, farmhouses with roofs on, trees with branches, and civilians. We'd marched right through the battlefields into what used to be securely German-held territory. Women. Children. Dogs. Cats. I think we were all amazed that the world had such creatures in it. A lot of wolf whistling at the girls, and nobody inclined to be fussy. 'Girl' soon stretched from fourteen to fifty.

I'm writing this at a kitchen table in a cottage. Outside is a farmyard with ordinary farmyard noises.

Honking geese are a miracle. Though we move on again soon. They're questioning civilians in the next room, Owen's French coming in handy. And at this table, until a few weeks ago, a German officer sat and wrote letters home.

22 October

Still here, but not for much longer. We move on again later today. Not even the pouring rain that puckers the surface of the pond — with its official ducks and unofficial moorhens — can remove the feeling of serenity I have. Chest a lot easier, in spite of the damp.

24 October

More marching. I have visions of us marching into Berlin at this rate. Nearest village was shelled last night. Five civilians killed. When did we stop thinking of civilians as human? Quite a long time ago, I think. Anyhow, nobody's devastated by the news. And yet the people round here are friendly, we get on well with them. Only there's a slight wariness, I suppose. They hated the invasion, nobody doubts that, but the Germans were here a long time. An accommodation of some sort was reached. And the German troops in this area anyway seem to have been very disciplined. No atrocities. The respectable young ladies of the village are very respectable young ladies indeed, despite having spent four years in the clutches of the brutal and lascivious Hun. And the shell-holes that lie in the orchards, fields and roads round here — great gaping wounds — were made by our guns. The bombardment was very heavy at times. Some of the children run away from us. And yet we're greeted everywhere with open arms.

Still can't get used to ordinary noises, especially women's and children's voices. It must feel like this coming out of prison.

25 October

Owen is to be court-martialled. Mainly because he speaks French better than anybody else and all the local girls make a bee-line for him, not just thanking him either, but actually kissing him. I caught his eye while all this was going on, and thought I detected an answering gleam. Of irony or whatever. Anyway the Great Unkissed are thoroughly fed up with him and have convened a subalterns' court martial. Shot at dawn, I shouldn't wonder.

Wyatt, meanwhile, is visiting a farmhouse on the outskirts of the village where lives an accommodating widow and her equally accommodating but rather more nubile daughters. At this very moment, probably, he's dipping his wick where many a German wick has dipped before it. (A frisson wasted on Wyatt, believe me.)

But this morning I saw a woman in the village with sunlight on her hair and one of those long loaves of bread in her arms and there was more sensuality in that moment than in all Wyatt's humping and pumping. Out of bounds, of course. Perfectly respectable housewife doing the shopping.

26 October

This morning I went to one of the local farms to sort out a billeting problem. The woman who runs the farm had accused some of the men in 'C' company of stealing eggs. They denied it vociferously, but I'm sure she's right. After calming her down and paying her more for the eggs than they were worth, I noticed a boy with red hair staring at me. Not staring exactly, but his eyes met mine longer than was strictly necessary. About sixteen, I suppose. Perhaps a bit older. He was walking across the yard clanking a bucket of pig swill, and after I'd taken leave of Madame (his mother, I think ) I followed him into the fetid darkness, full of snuffling and munching, pigs rooting round with moist quivering nostrils, trotting towards him on delicate pink feet. After he poured the swill in they squealed and guzzled for a bit, then raised their heads, watching us calmly from under long fine white eyelashes as they munched. I scratched their backs and tried to talk to him. Chinks of sunlight came in through gaps in the tiles, a smelly greenish wetness under foot. He spoke rapidly and I got very little of it — schoolboy French no use at all. I spun back-scratching out as long as I could, then departed, wondering how much of that initial look I'd imagined.

Nothing particularly attractive about him — dead white skin, splodgy freckles, curious flat golden brown eyes — not that it bothered me. After two months without sex I'd have settled for the pigs.

I met him again later, near the church. There's a lane runs past the churchyard, a low stone wall on one side, a canal on the other, one of the many canals that run through this area. A rather dank gloomy stretch of water, listlessly reflecting a dense white sky, fringed by willows with limp yellow leaves. He was sitting with his big, red, raw-knuckled hands clasped between his knees. The red hair glowed in the greyish light, not bright red, not auburn, a dark, flat, burnt-looking colour.

He was very obviously lingering. He greeted me with a smile and tapped his mouth, making smoking movements. I gave him a Woodbine and stood by the canal, a few feet away, looking up and down to make sure we weren't being observed. He made smoking movements again and pointed to the packet. When I didn't immediately respond, he pointed again and said something in German. I thought, My God. Have you really got your head stuck so deep in the fucking pig bucket you don't know which army's up the other end? I suppose it should have disgusted me, but it didn't. In fact it had the opposite effect — I'd have given him every packet I possessed. I handed them over and he got up and led me into the trees. It took a while finding somewhere sufficiently screened. I showed him what I wanted. He leant against the tree trunk, bracing himself on his hands. I pulled down his trousers and drawers and started nosing and tonguing round his arse, worrying at the crack to get in because the position hardened the muscles. A smell of chrysanths left too long in water, then a deeper friendlier smell, prim, pursed hole glistening with spit and, on the other side of that tight French sphincter, German spunk. Not literally — they left a bit longer ago than that —but there nevertheless, the shadowy figures one used to glimpse through periscopes in the trenches, and my tongue reaching out for them. I thought,