Elizabeth Speller - The Return of Captain John Emmett

'Thank you.'

John thrust the flask in the less bulky of his pockets. He opened the door, then paused.

'You will tell her everything?' he said.

'You have my word.'

It was certainly cold and he was glad of the scarf. He had once owned one like it, a long, long time ago. He wrapped it round his neck and ears, stuffed his hands in his pockets and started to walk uphill, unsteady on the frozen, roughly ploughed ground. General Somers waited for some minutes, the engine idling unevenly. Then, when John had climbed over a stile and looked back to wave with his right hand, clutching the cross-bar with his left, he turned the car and drove slowly away, bumping down the frozen track.

As he drew closer to the copse, John could see that although it contained a few bare sycamores and elms, it was mostly fir trees, which made it dense even in winter. For so long he had avoided thick undergrowth, afraid of what violent surprise might be concealed there. But there was nothing to hurt him here. The war was over. It was all over.

A slight wind stirred the upper branches. It had been achingly cold in the open and the grass crunched underfoot; once he was in the trees, he had some protection. The ground was softer here and covered in pine needles. By the time he reached the tower, he was slightly breathless; the bitter air, coming on top of the months of virtual confinement, had left him slightly out of breath. All the same it was good to be out of doors.

The tower loomed above him: dark brickwork with greenish streaks running upwards from the base. Had he been here before? He walked right round it and found a single door, heavily padlocked and offering neither protection nor imprisonment. He looked up; the empty, mullioned windows reflected the red sun, giving the impression of afire burning at the heart of the building, while orange-streaked clouds moved slowly overhead. With his head tipped back he had a momentary illusion of the tower falling. He looked down and steadied himself with his fingertips on the damp brickwork. He inhaled deeply and the effort made him cough.

He sat down with his back against the tower. The hefty material of his coat would protect him for a while from the iron cold behind and beneath him.

So much cold in his life. He turned his collar up. He wondered where he had left his gloves. The sky, which had been so blue, was turning a soft violet; the fields were losing their colour. Rooks were wheeling about the tallest elms. After some time—he had no idea how long he had been there—he saw a single star come out. Venus. The next time he looked there were hundreds; thousands, in a clear night sky. He could still identify the constellations his father had shown him as a child on night walks in Suffolk. It was August—the dog days, his father had said, stroking the panting Sirius on the head. High above him was Pegasus, the winged horse, with Orion the hunter and Canes Venatici, the hounds of the hunt. He felt the close hug the old man had given him as a consolation for his sudden terror of infinity; safety smelled of tobacco and elderly terrier.

How proud his father had been to see him an officer. He thought again. That was wrong; his father had never known of his choice but he had made it, hoping to please him. To make up for leaving him, just like everybody else, and going so far away. War was something his father would, at first, have understood, had he lived to see it. But what followed would have been incomprehensible.

A half-moon shone over the monochrome landscape. Miles away, a few lights marked an unknown hamlet. Had he fallen asleep? His breathing was shallow and his chest hurt slightly. He couldn't really feel his feet. He felt in his pocket for paper and a pencil. Hadn't he had a pencil when he set out? It was gone.

Instead he found the hip flask and, opening it with stiff fingers, he took a drink; it was brandy, which made him shudder but warmed him. He set the flask beside him, felt in his other, heavier, pocket and drew out a package wrapped in cloth, which he set on his lap. The rooks had quietened now. A pale barn owl skimmed across the fields, suddenly swooping to reach its prey. From time to time small creatures scrabbled in the darkness around him. Not rats, he hoped. Then a larger animal passed behind the tower: a badger or a fox, maybe, busy in this other world. He was glad to be here. He knew it was where he should be.

He thought of Eleanor. Her hair, her smell, her comfort. He remembered walking with her in France. He had been sitting on a bench outside the hospital. She came out, put up a hand to the side of his face.

'Oh you're so cold,' she said. She rubbed her hands briskly up and down his arms.

'May we walk?' she said. 'Are you comfortable enough?'

'Of course.'

Her head was swathed in a hood and she had a thick man's coat over her uniform, coming down to her boots. She pulled gloves out of a pocket.

Looking at her made him feel warm.

'Come on, race you to—wherever it is we're going.'

She ran ahead clumsily, laughing, and then she was gone. He called her name.

He opened and closed his fingers a few times to get his circulation going. Both hands. Both perfect hands. He poured some brandy on them and rubbed his palms together. She wasn't here. He looked at his fingers, spread widely and white as bone and opened his coat; he was not so cold. Then he unwrapped Miles Somers' scarf, folded it and set it down carefully a little way from his legs. He felt bad enough about stealing the photograph and package from the Somers house, but he didn't want to keep the scarf from its rightful owner too.

Then he took the small comb out of his pocket. He could hardly see the initials but he traced the unicorn with his finger. AM: Agathe Meurice. He set it down softly on the scarf.

He pressed his head back against the stonework and closed his eyes. He thought of other unreal worlds, other decisions, other possibilities: the shadows of faraway lives that had, briefly, crossed with his; of Eleanor, of a mortally wounded soldier trying to speak, and of a small boy startled by the cry of a red kite; but finally of his own hand in the dry comfort of his father's as they gazed up at the summer sky one Suffolk night.

When the shot came, the rooks rose outward from their roost with coarse cries of alarm, but in a few minutes they returned, settling back into the bare branches until the first light of dawn.

Afterword

'Craven fear is the most extravagant prodigal of nervous energy known. Under its stimulus a man squanders nervous energy recklessly in order to suppress his hideous and pent up emotions and mask and camouflage that which if revealed will call down ignominy upon him and disgrace him in the eyes of his fellows. He must preserve his self-respect and self-esteem at all costs.'

Bily Tyrel, a military doctor and victim of shelshock, in evidence to the Southborough Committee. Report of the War Office Commission of Enquiry into 'Shel-Shock'

(London, 1922), quoted by Ben Shephard in A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century.

Only three British officers were executed in the First World War. On the other hand, over 300 British and Commonwealth private soldiers met this fate, although of the 3,080 death sentences handed down, most were commuted.