Susan Hill - Strange Meeting

They realized that he had written, rehearsed and learned his speech by heart. Now that it was over he leaned back in his chair and began to look into their faces for the first time, his eyes moving quickly from one to the other, seeking some response or approval or reassurance – or hostility. He did not know what to expect. He reached for the cigar tin, opened the lid. No one spoke.

‘Gentlemen, do you wish to say anything to me at all? Do you wish to ask me anything?’

Silence again.

‘Then I will ask you to return to your posts and to say nothing to the men of the Battalion. Your new Commanding Officer will make whatever arrangements he thinks fit. I shall myself hope to come round the lines before I go.’

Still silent, avoiding one another’s eyes, they herded out of the dugout into the teeming rain and running mud of the trench. The men glanced up apprehensively as they passed along, and their faces had the sunken-eyed look of suppressed fear. They were huddled in greatcoats and waders, trying to get what rest they could after the previous night’s work of carrying up large quantities of ammunition.

‘He’s right,’ Barton said at once when they reached their dugout. He felt suddenly faint and light-hearted from tiredness and from a sense of shock. ‘He’s right and he’s courageous.’

Hilliard hung up his mackintosh. ‘I think he just wants to be out of it all.’

‘That’s bloody unfair!’

‘No. I think he is right about it but I simply think that he’s been half-looking for something like this, though perhaps without altogether realizing it himself. He isn’t the man he was. He’d never have done something like this last spring when I first came out here.’

‘Then perhaps he has just learned some sense.’

‘It’s the end of him of course. His career, I mean.’

‘Does that matter?’

‘Would it to you?’

‘No.’

Hilliard wondered whether Barton were not right after all, whether the C.O., who stood to lose most, might not simply be courageous, a man of conscience. He said. ‘I’ve always liked him. But he’s in better sympathy with you now.’

‘I know.’

‘And he’s had Franklin for an Adjutant – that can’t have made life easier.’

‘Come now – Franklin is efficient.’

‘I wish you weren’t so bloody charitable!’

Barton smiled, turned over on his stomach, slept.

Two days later Garrett had gone. He took his leave of no one.

It was the end of November.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Very quiet, yes.’ Hilliard set down his torch. ‘They’ll get what sleep they can.’

‘John – I’m afraid. I’m very afraid indeed.’

‘Yes.’ They looked at one another across the dugout. ‘I’d forgotten what it was like – it seems a long time since the summer, such a lot has happened. I’d forgotten this feeling.’

‘Sick.’

‘That’s it.’

‘What about the men?’

‘Oh, Fraser’s gunning for victory, he’s keeping them cheerful. But they don’t give much away, you know how it is. Some of them are looking so tired they ought to be in hospital, let alone sent into battle.’

The near approach of the offensive on Barmelle Wood had redoubled the calls on the front line for fatigue parties, the men had worked from early morning until late afternoon, snatched two or three hours sleep and then spent the nights bringing up ammunition and supplies.

Until early on Thursday evening the rain had continued, the whole area for miles around was a sea of mud. But yesterday it had stopped, a wind had got up, bringing a sweet stench across into their faces and flapping against the sack curtains of the dugout. Now there was a frost. For the first time their clothes had had a chance to dry out.

Hilliard said, ‘We’d better turn in.’

‘I shan’t sleep.’

‘You’ll sleep.’

But Barton shook his head, reached for his greatcoat. An hour earlier Keene, the new C.O., had come down the line and the men had surveyed him, faintly suspicious, disliking changes in command. They had been loyal to Garrett – there were one or two still left who had served under him since August 1914. Colonel Keene made little impression upon them: he was a thin man, softly spoken, apparently hesitant. But a reputation for both thoroughness and toughness had preceded him to the Battalion and the required reconnaissance raids had been carried out, costing the lives of fourteen men. At the final briefing conference he had spoken concisely, had made the battle plan eminently clear to them, asked rapid questions around the table. He had, also and immediately, remembered their names.

‘It seems very straightforward,’ Barton had said, coming back. ‘Is it likely to go off to that eminently reasonable plan of his?’

‘No.’

‘Are we likely to find the time schedule followed down to the last five seconds in that way?’

‘No.’

‘No. I thought not.’

‘But to be fair, it isn’t his plan, it’s come from the Division and they’re always like that; they’re based on early cavalry manoeuvres which often did work as intended. Trench warfare is an entirely different thing, every battle since Neuve Chapelle has been some kind of mess but it will take some years until they learn about it, you see. By the next war, the message will have got through.’

‘There will never be another war.’

‘There will always be wars.’

‘Men couldn’t be so stupid, John! After all this? Isn’t the only real purpose of our being here to teach them that lesson – how bloody useless and pointless the whole thing is?’

‘Men are naturally stupid and they do not learn from experience.’

‘You haven’t much faith in humanity.’

‘Collectively, no.’

‘Individually?’

‘Oh, yes. You’ve only to look around you here.’

‘But you depress me.’

‘I’m sorry. I haven’t your naturally buoyant outlook upon the whole of life. That’s why I need you around.’

‘Me and Sir Thomas Browne!’

‘That’s right.’

‘But perhaps tomorrow won’t be so bad. Perhaps we really are in a stronger position than when you were here last summer. Perhaps it’ll work.’

Hilliard had not replied.

Now, he said, ‘If you are going out, don’t be long. You really need the rest.’

‘I know.’

Barton stepped out of the dugout and looked up. For the first time in weeks the sky was clear and glittering with the points of stars, a full moon shone above the ridge. The frost was thin and here and there it caught in the pale light on the barbed wire, tin canisters, helmets, and gleamed. The night cold had taken the edge off the smell of decay and the air was sharp and metallic in Barton’s nostrils. He moved quietly along the trench. In the next dugout, twenty or so men slept under greatcoats, a jumble of arms and feet. It was very still, no gunfire, no flares.

‘Sir?’

‘Hello, Parkin. All right?’

‘All quiet, sir, yes. Funny that.’

‘Hm.’ Barton leaned against the side of the trench.

‘You haven’t been in a big show yet, have you, sir?’

‘No. Have you?’

‘No.’

Parkin was a year younger than himself, one of the eleven children of a cobbler – which fact occasioned three or four jokes a day about his living in a shoe. He took it with good humour, as though he were still among boys at school, entirely used to the amusement it afforded them. Jokes among the company had become either simple or obscene and childish, as the life became more exhausting and tedious.

Barton said, ‘So we feel the same about tomorrow, then.’

‘Do we, sir? How’s that?’

‘A bit queasy.’

Parkin looked relieved, nodded. ‘I was thinking before you came along, sir – it’s all right here at the moment. Quiet. A bit chilly but I can cope with that. There’s a touch of something in the air – I don’t know, maybe it’s just that the bloody rain’s stopped. But it’s been reminding me of making bonfires and getting ready for Christmas, you know? I was feeling quite happy, just watching out and thinking. Then I got that feeling – like when you wake up and you know something a bit unpleasant’s due to happen and for the time being you’ve forgotten what. I thought – what’s up? Then I remembered.’