Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'It seems to me,' he continued, 'that one might argue that man has evolved to be a warrior; indeed, few generations have escaped that role. Of course, I was not there,' he gave a respectful nod to Laurence, 'but I judge, from speaking at length to many of the recent war's more invisibly injured, that what was hard for them was a lack of clarity—in orders, aims, even as to whether engagements had been won or lost, and the constant anticipation of random catastrophe. The realisation that the traditional skils of the top-class fighting man—strength, courage, dexterity with his weapon and so on—might not be rewarded, not even by a heroic death, but rather, that a man's fate depended almost entirely on the inequities of fortune. It exploded profound understandings of what it meant to be a soldier.'

Laurence stared out of the window where crimson Virginia creeper blocked a ful view of what was obviously a lawn beyond. After a matter of probably a few seconds but which felt like several minutes, Chilvers seemed to throw him a lifeline:

'Have you read your Homer?'

'At school.' However, he'd known men who had their Homer with them on the battlefield. He'd heard less talk of Homer's inspirational qualities as the war ground on.

' The Iliad gives us an impeccable account of battlefield injuries. No machine-guns, no tanks, no aeroplanes, but the injuries themselves—those ancient and terrible descriptions—and their prognoses, are absolutely accurate. Injuries to the brain, piercing wounds to the liver, known even then to doom the afflicted. But what does Homer not show us?' Laurence knew no answer was expected and Chilvers moved on without pausing for one: 'The casualties die swiftly, if dramaticaly, and at the end of each day the living usualy retrieve their dead, then get back to a campfire and their comrades. No mention of mutilation or lifelong physical disability there.

No shel-shock.'

Laurence finaly found his voice. 'There wasn't much mention of al that in The Times, either.'

Chilvers gave a dry laugh, dispersing the intensity. 'True, but then The Times was for fathers and commanders of earlier wars: the mouthpiece and the vindication of the establishment. The Times was information, The Iliad a celebration. The Iliad was a romance stiffened by historical fact. The Times was fact with fiction as emolient.

'You'd be surprised at how many men I see, men who thought war would be something like Troy. Not the regulars, of course; they were emotionaly better suited to the stresses of conflict, and not so much the conscripted, who were either resigned or resentful. But in the volunteer there is shock, bewilderment, even a sense of betrayal. They couldn't compare their war to the Zulu wars, not that half-naked men with spears didn't have a trick or two to teach them. The Boer War was fought against God-fearing farmers, not a proper army, and, anyway, we won. Their grandfathers could have told them a thing or two about conditions in the Crimea, but many of those old combatants were never able to speak of it at al. So these young men go off with a few weeks of basic training, and three thousand years of Homer in their pockets and, more dangerously, in their heads and, in every sense of the phrase, they come to grief. When they get home, reeling with Homer's deceptions, the Times readers at the breakfast table tel them they've got it al wrong.'

Al those barely contained arguments he'd had with Louise and her parents, Laurence thought, with him trying to control a degree of anger and exhaustion which they didn't deserve. They had no idea. Any of them.

'In this war,' Chilvers said, 'men weren't fighting for the King or for Britain and certainly not for "little Belgium", but for apple blossom in a Kentish orchard or the smel of caulking ships on the Tyne, or the comradeship of a Rhondda pithead. Men find it easier to risk their lives for provincial loyalties.'

'Or because they have no option,' Laurence said. It was odd, though not unpleasant, to find himself on the receiving end of a wel-honed lecture, but he could hear a note of bitterness in his own voice. 'And they returned to find that the things they thought they were fighting for suddenly seemed hopelessly sentimental and irrelevant.'

Chilvers made no reply and Laurence continued, brusquely, 'I didn't join myself until late 1915, when I could see conscription was imminent.' He felt ashamed for lying unnecessarily.

He failed to say that the circumstances which led him to do so began when when, after a single, clumsy sexual encounter—his first—which he thought Louise had found distasteful and which she certainly tried her hardest to avoid ever afterwards, she had become pregnant. Perhaps it had damaged their relationship more than it had their prospects. They were engaged at the time and he was working for her father. He could not tel Louise, much less her furious mother, how much he had wanted her: the curve of her lip, the fine bones of her ankles in white stockings, the womanly smel of the back of her neck, under the weight of her pinned-up hair, so different from the flowery perfume she wore or the hot linen scent of her dress. Feeling her under him, as he pressed deep inside her, he had felt complete. Neither Louise's obvious discomfort, nor even his own dawning shame could diminish the deep joy of it. As a result, they simply brought forward their marriage, but she miscarried soon afterwards. Having married her, he swiftly felt an appaling need to escape.

For the first months he was amused, watching her set up the smal but handsome house bought with her family funds. As the countries of Europe issued ultimatums and mobilised their armies, he looked on as she chose curtains and furniture with her mother, selected a housemaid or a lapdog, played the piano and invited her friends round. Al the while he had a sense of his life becoming immeasurably smaler. He knew his own horizons were not vast when he met Louise and he disliked himself for being unable to enjoy her complete happiness in making them both a home. She was not even particularly demanding; there was simply an implicit invitation for him to admire her domestic skils. He had acquiesced in everything.

His first positive, independent action in marriage had been to lie to her and tel her he had received his papers. They had been married just eighteen months. She never knew that he had volunteered.

So he had gone and, despite the news coming in from the front, he sat on the train to Dover almost exhilarated at the opportunity of war. Al that folowed had seemed entirely merited by this first act of treachery.

'You were working until then?' Chilvers asked, breaking into his daydream.

'In my father-in-law's business. My wife is dead,' Laurence added quickly to cut off any possible question.

'I am sorry,' Chilvers said, and paused.

After some seconds he spoke again.

'But we must speak of your brother.' He took out his pen and wrote down the details of the fictional Robert's name, date of birth. 'You said in your recent letter that he had been in a sanatorium in Switzerland and that his own doctor has died, so I assume you have no access to his records? Never mind, sometimes it is easier to come to these cases without preconceptions. I am sure we can track them down if we need them, but military medical records are, I have found, lamentably inadequate.'

Laurence felt a lessening of tension. One major hurdle had been cleared easily.

'Regiment?'

It had taken Charles and Laurence some time over the previous week to place Robert in a suitable regiment. 'Instant pitfal, this,' Charles had said. 'You can count on someone's cousin having been in the same outfit, however obscure it might be, and that same cousin being clapped up in Holmwood. You know how it is with cousins?'