Elizabeth Speller: The Return of Captain John Emmett

'My immediate response was that we were under fire and we al ducked down instinctively, but within seconds we realised the tunnel had gone. I started trying to tear at the debris and the earth with my hands, but it was hopeless, the entrance was almost completely blocked. The sergeant caled for proper tools and someone went for an orderly. I went in with the sergeant—Tucker, as I recal—and we took turns clearing it. Another lad helped. I think he was the servant of the visiting sapper officer.'

The name Tucker registered almost immediately with Laurence. Although a common enough name, it was also on the list John Emmett had with him when he died.

'It was Tucker who ran the risks, no question; we stil weren't entirely sure whether they'd found a shel. Tucker had had his run-ins with Emmett but on that day he was digging like a man possessed to get him out. He reached one of the soldiers in a few minutes or at least got hold of his feet. We puled him clear but he was in a bad way. Tucker cleared his nose and mouth but apparently he was gone within seconds—the man was his friend, someone said—and then the orderly arrived and had him taken off.

'One of the soldiers dug with anything he could find and while Tucker was stil dealing with his friend, I changed places, without much hope realy, and I found John there about twenty feet in. Cleared the filth away to help him breathe. The tunnel hadn't falen in al along its length. The nearest section had come right down and did for the man we'd got to first. Further in the timbers had held on one side and colapsed on the other, so they were at an angle across the trench. John lay under this; the top half of his body was towards us. He was conscious and had air, but his right arm was caught under him, his back and legs were buried by the earth and he couldn't turn his head. Even the timber above him was bowing and there was a steady trickle of soil. I don't mind teling you I was on a hair-trigger to run out of there. I always hated those tunnels, especialy re-digs. But slowly I calmed down and realised I couldn't smel explosive or burning.'

Wiliam turned in his chair, opened a carved box on the side table, took out a silver lighter and a tobacco pouch and proceeded to fil and light his pipe. He drew the smoke in, slowly and deeply.

'I started excavating round him, hoping to hel the whole thing wouldn't fal in.'

'And you got him out?'

'Wel, he was a lucky man in the event; scarcely a scratch on him, but he wasn't doing too wel down there. Covered in sweat, ashen in the light of my torch and gasping. Eventualy Tucker had to finish the job. I was too big, you see. Tal man, back then ... couldn't squeeze through properly. Every time I moved, I scraped against the sides and brought more stuff down, but Tucker was wiry, almost skinny, he could wriggle about down there. Until we had John out, I thought he must be bleeding somewhere, even wondered if he'd die before we'd got him clear. Ghastly look on his face. But nothing; wel, a broken finger and ankle, but nothing major that you could see. It turned out he'd also injured a kidney, which eventualy saw him sent back to Blighty, but what he was suffering from right then was fear, I suppose.

Simple, unaloyed fear. We weren't supposed to be frightened, not so that it showed. Now when you look back, you can see that fear was the rational response to much of it, but there was another set of rules then, wasn't there?'

Laurence nodded silently. He had never been able to say outright, 'I was frightened.' The band of iron round his chest might have been so tight that pain shot down his arms and his fingers tingled as he laboured to draw in a breath, but he'd always hidden it, or at least he hoped he had.

Bolitho went on matter-of-factly, 'The men could scream for hours out in no-man's land, especialy the young ones. Disturb your rest for a bit, rather like a neighbour's barking dog, but eventualy you'd learn to sleep through. Officers, though, were supposed to be above al that. You might have been a Sunday school teacher or a corn merchant back home, but get a commission and al your emotions had to be left at the door.' He inhaled on his pipe.

'And there was Tucker,' Bolitho continued after a while, 'who was close to losing his stripes for this and that, working like a dervish to get John out. Absolutely fearless; on his stomach practicaly keeping the ceiling up with his own body and the whole thing creaking in a way that made you remember how many hundredweight of earth was above it, lying with his body pressed against John, so close that he could have kissed him just by dropping his head a few inches. Yet when we finaly puled John clear, only minutes before the whole damn thing fel in with one last, long rumble, and Smith left in what was now his tomb—pray God he was dead already, not a squeak from him—I saw Tucker was looking at John with a sort of amused contempt and something nastier: triumph, I'd say. And he didn't seem that bothered by the corporal—Perkins was his name, I think—getting it, either, given the man was what passed for a friend.'

'And no bequest from John for him?'

Bolitho tapped at his pipe. 'Unlikely. There was definitely business between John and Tucker. Something going on.'

'Business?'

'Haven't a clue what it was,' Wiliam said breezily. 'Just an impression. Antagonism of some sort. Tucker had his finger in various pies. Buying and seling, doing favours, even dead men's effects, some said. He nearly went down over some rabbit-skin fiddle.'

'Rabbit skin?' Laurence wondered whether there was a whole lexicon of army jargon that had passed him by.

'You remember rabbit stew? Sometimes more stew than rabbit, sometimes the men claimed it was rat? Procurement people made a fortune on seling rabbit skins. Hundreds of thousand of pounds from clothes manufacturers to warm the slender necks of shop girls and kindergarten teachers, with fur colars straight from the mess kitchens. Only Tucker had seen the opportunity first and he'd been seling them localy. Argued he thought it was al just rubbish. Got away with it, but only just.

His mate, Perkins, who'd enlisted with him and who was definitely part of the scheme, caled him Bunny from then on, but nobody else would have dared.'

'How on earth had he got to sergeant?' Laurence asked.

'Wel, they were very short of NCOs at the start and he'd been a factory foreman, somewhere in the Black Country, so actualy he was quite good with the men

—the ones he hadn't taken against—and he was fearless, albeit vicious, or he would have been in trouble before. But there were always rumours. The men said he was a devil with the ladies and we'd nearly had him up on a charge for seling coloured water as a cure for the clap. The lads didn't like getting the lecture from the MO, and Tucker's stuff worked a treat because most of them never had the clap in the first place. First-timers, boys, with nothing worse than a guilty conscience. But we were a long way forward at that time, so there weren't a whole lot of mesdemoiseless in petticoats waiting for Tucker's blandishments. I seldom dealt with him directly but the man was a clever opportunist and, I can quite believe, a brute at heart. And he'd disappear from time to time. I suppose we thought he might have been out poaching.'

Again Laurence must have looked puzzled because Wiliam's expression changed to one of weary distaste.

'You must have come across them. Loners? Men made for kiling? Couldn't have enough of it, so went out to find the odd extra German for sport or mementoes?' He ran a finger across his throat.

Laurence nodded. Angels in the sky; bulets deflected by prayer books or cigarette cases; footbal armistices; berserkers. Battlefields acquired their own myths; he'd rarely found much truth in them.

Wiliam went on, 'Stil, John had him down for something else. He wouldn't say, or not to me—I was new to the unit then—but he clearly loathed the man. I went to see Emmett once he was strapped up and waiting to go. He was stil very pale but quite composed, and he asked me about Perkins, and where Tucker had been when the tunnel colapsed. He was more suspicious than grateful. I told him I hadn't seen Tucker at al until everyone came running and that he owed his life to him.