Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'But then one thing has led to another; his story was tied up with other stories and everything became more complicated. Or perhaps I've simply complicated it.

The policeman was one thread, a man shot for cowardice became another and finding you is just a stroke of unnerving luck.'

'And they're al connected.'

'I'm sorry?'

'They're al connected. John Emmett and Private Byers were part of the firing squad. Mulins was the APM there. Emmet was hit hard by it al ... So we end up at this place Holmwood,' he went on. 'It's what journalists do: remember things. Tie them together. However, I was hardly likely to forget those names. I never knew the names of the other soldiers involved but Byers had been in my platoon way back in 1915. And of course you probably already know that I met John Emmett, but not, perhaps, that I liked him. You may know that I defended Edmund Hart? In theory, at least.' He stopped abruptly. The ash fel from his cigarette onto the floor.

Laurence ran his hand through his hair. 'The execution. I've had one other account—from Byers, in fact, and he had tried very hard not to talk about it since.'

'Byers,' said Brabourne, nodding. 'Wel, it was a bad business, in that al capital punishment is bad. The offence and the trial were both mishandled, frankly. And the execution was a complete travesty of justice and dignity. But to set the record straight, it was desertion he was charged with, not cowardice. For cowardice, you have to be within hailing distance of the enemy. Hart never got as far as the enemy. And there was the whole question of shel-shock.' He shook his head slightly. 'Hart had been treated for it the year before. In England. But there were those who said he'd faked it and that went against him. He certainly wasn't deranged enough when I met him to gather the medical evidence. Some doctors were sympathetic; some weren't and would simply hammer home the nail already in the coffin. That and the fact that he'd spent every moment since his arrival trying to leave the regiment and get into the navy. Not popular. Not a man you'd want to join your club.'

'And you? What did you think?'

'He was sane enough. A rather awkward, immature man. Not a leader. Hart repeatedly said he was nervous. But he managed to make everyone else nervous too. The colonel had been hesitant about sending him forward on the day in question but he had no other officer available. In my opinion, Hart was a liability in action.

Not his fault. I didn't care if he was barking mad, neurasthenic or even a fake; he just wasn't officer material, as they used to say, or at least only, and redundantly, right at the end. But there was no question in my mind that he was, at the very least, confused and disoriented the night he disappeared. At the end of his tether; it's just his tether wasn't as long as some people's.'

He stubbed out his cigarette and threw it in the empty grate.

'We were at Beaucourt, late October. Three brigades, a ludicrously complicated plan of attack on enemy positions north of the river: a lot of pencil marks and stopwatches. The battalion moved forward. The men were overloaded with kit: it was a miserable evening; damp, foggy, no good for sleep.' He was lighting another cigarette as he spoke.

'We went forward as the third wave, with the German guns blasting away, and the wire in the fog like the tentacles of some hungry subterranean monster.' He added, almost with wonder, 'It was extraordinary: when the bulets struck the wire they sent diamond sparks into the mist: it was as if this monster we were approaching was electrified.'

Laurence didn't interrupt. He could see why Brabourne had done wel as a journalist.

'It was chaos up there. Hart wasn't in my company—but after a bit I hardly saw anybody anyway. My colonel was kiled; I saw two other dead officers recognisable only by their badges.' Brabourne drew in deeply on his cigarette, exhaled after a few seconds' contemplation and re-inhaled the smoke up his nose.

'At first there'd been something comic about my war. I joined in Monmouth. My father's family came from the South Welsh borders. Found myself with a bantam regiment. Byers too although he was transferred soon after. Al these midget Welshmen: five feet three inches or so. Until then I'd thought of myself as rather average build. Perhaps I was down under some mysterious military acronym: SFO, Short for Officer.'

Laurence guessed the man in front of him was about five feet eight inches.

'Suddenly I was a giant. We could go down an open trench and the men would be undercover, walking upright, and I'd have to bend down for safety. I needed to stoop to hear my sergeant if there was a bombardment. Then, in the first serious action, I put my pipe in my pocket and while we're heads down, crossing no-man's land, my jacket starts to smoulder. Gave me the nickname Fiery, of course. Even when I was moved, the name stuck. Trench humour. It must have run in the family: my brother Diggory started his war in Egypt, shifting mummies to Europe to turn them into paper—using the dead to make paper to replace the shortages caused by kiling people. Though in my family, war was safer than peace. We're both alive. Our father died in 1906 in the Salisbury train crash; his father, a planter, bit of a black sheep, disappeared without trace in the eruption of Krakatoa.'

Brabourne looked quite cheerful as he contemplated his legacy of disaster.

Laurence smiled. He had liked Byers' description of Brabourne and he liked him even more in the flesh.

'I had this sense of being at this realy momentous period in history and, what's more, right at its heart. I thought everyone at home would want to share it. I thought, in my innocence, that it was an opportunity.' He gestured with his cigarette. 'Spectacularly naive. But like everyone, I also thought it would soon be over and I was in a hel of a rush to get stuck in. I wanted to picture modern warfare with modern photography. Then, of course, it al became longer and tougher than any of us had dreamed, and I think taking photographs became a way for me to deal with things that were beyond anything I'd imagined. Or, at least, that's with the wisdom of reflection.' He grinned. 'I'm good on that. I'd had two warnings about taking photographs of sensitive subjects and I stil couldn't resist it.'

'Yes. I heard. About the camera,' said Laurence. He puled out of his inner pocket the photograph that Byers had identified as the firing squad. He slid it over the table and said nothing.

'God.' Brabourne picked it up. 'The very day. Hart. It's my picture. A bad one. It could be before or after. Not sure why I took it at al, realy. The light wasn't good enough.' He looked chary.

'Byers,' Laurence pointed, 'said it was before.'

'Right,' said Brabourne, nodding. 'I think I was mostly concerned with getting my picture before I was lynched. Though it seems to be coming into its own, ghastly as the scene is.'

'You obviously knew Lieutenant Hart,' said Laurence, 'but did you know John Emmett? Before, I mean?'

'Wel, yes and no. I'd never met him until then. But I had been in contact with him over something else.'

'Do you mind if I ask what? If it's not private?'

'It was another slightly frowned-upon activity. We both wrote poetry. Lots of us did—not just those chaps who've made their name now. Battalions of minor poets. I mean, you were hardly going to start producing a novel in those conditions. Emmett thought he'd pul some of the stuff together, circulate it. Same sort of diversion as mine with photography, I suppose. A bit like poor old Owen publishing The Hydra at Craiglockhart. Anyway, it got around. I can't remember when I heard of it—quite early on probably, because I think there were four anthologies and I got into number two. Emmett's mag was caled Distant Constellations to start with, and then in later copies it just became Constellations. But we always caled it DC. A slim first issue. The second was better produced because, I think, Emmett was on sick leave, then there were two more towards the end of the war. He was good. His details circulated by word of mouth and we could use noms de plume if we chose. The subterfuge wasn't because he was afraid, but because he didn't want to be stopped, especialy as some of the poetry got more critical of what was going on.