Two Storm Wood, page 7
She asked if they would like supper and, when Amy nodded, again asked to be paid in advance.
‘What’s the matter with that woman?’ Kitty said when she had gone. ‘Doesn’t she trust us?’
‘Maybe not.’ A dirty glazed window looked out over the yard. Amy took in the condition of the farm: the bleached timbers and bowed roofs, the plaster coming off in chunks from the farmhouse, like a leper’s sores. ‘Unless they need the money to eat.’
The door to a shed stood open. Monsieur Desmoulin was moving around inside, a knife in his hand. He turned away, revealing a row of rabbits hung up on hooks. Some were already skinned, their lidless eyes huge and staring.
Kitty sighed. ‘We should inspect for bedbugs. Madame needs to give us a good bright lamp, if she has such a thing.’
‘I’ll ask her.’
Amy picked her way towards the farmhouse. The rain was light now, but the wind had a raw edge. Monsieur Desmoulin stepped out of the shed: a tall man, slightly stooped, with a lined face. The knife in his hand was stained with blood. He watched Amy for a moment, as if considering a greeting, then turned and shut the door.
Madame Desmoulin gave Amy a lantern from the parlour. The mattress inspection yielded nothing. Supper, which was served in the kitchen at nightfall, consisted of barley bread with dripping and a watery stew of white beans and grisly meat. Monsieur Desmoulin did not appear for the meal. His wife sat at a distance from her paying guests, eating hungrily but avoiding their gaze. There was nowhere any evidence of children.
Afterwards they used the foul-smelling latrine at the far end of the yard, before taking it in turns to wash. Without her clothes, Kitty seemed frailer: her breasts small and hard, her hips hardly wider than a boy’s. Amy watched her from the bottom bunk. The plumpness of her teen years had gone. Now ribs and vertebrae pushed against her pale skin as she bent over the washstand.
‘What are you looking at, Amy?’ Kitty covered her breasts.
‘You.’
‘Why?’
‘No reason.’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Tell me.’
‘You’ll be shocked.’
‘Why should I be?’ Kitty began to dry herself. ‘I’m not a child.’
Amy had taken out the tiepin from her coat and was turning it over in her hand. ‘I was thinking of you with a man. I was thinking of him touching you.’
Kitty turned away. ‘Why?’
‘It’s easier than remembering. Me and Edward, I mean.’ Kitty threw on her nightdress and pulled it down. ‘I warned you.’
‘I’m not shocked.’ Kitty’s chin was on her chest as she slowly did up the buttons. At the final one she stopped, her finger absently tracing the edge. ‘I think about it too.’
Rain was tapping on the roof, drips falling onto the earthen floor. Now and again Amy mistook the sound for a footstep. Since before supper she had seen no sign of Monsieur Desmoulin. She supposed he was out somewhere, setting snares.
‘I’ve never had a sweetheart,’ Kitty said. ‘You know that, of course.’
Amy did not know what to say.
Kitty let down her hair. ‘I saw all those young men going off to the war, and I thought: no, I’ll wait until they come back. I never thought so few of them would.’
When they were younger, Amy and Kitty had forsworn the opposite sex. There had been no open declaration, but it had been understood. Amy was too bookish for the marriage market, and Kitty too tall and awkward. It was better to embrace eternal spinsterhood than wait on the attentions of undeserving men – as long as they did not have to embrace it alone. When Amy broke their unspoken pact by falling in love with Edward, Kitty had not been angry. Instead she had thrown herself into the role of enabler, stepping out with Amy for long afternoons or evenings that were really spent with Edward. She had relished the confidence the lovers placed in her, the secret knowledge that only the three of them possessed. It was, Amy supposed, the next best thing to being in love herself. Was it possible Kitty’s being in France was an extension of that same impulse, that same vicarious need?
Kitty pulled a blanket around her shoulders. ‘You and Edward, when you were alone together, did you …? Were you really …?’
‘Did we go to bed? Is that—’
‘It’s none of my business.’
‘Yes, we did. Did you think we’d wait?’
Kitty sat down at the end of the bunk. With her hair down she looked younger, almost like the child Amy had first known. ‘Weren’t you afraid people would find out?’
‘I was terrified. At first, anyway. But then the fear became part of it.’
Kitty frowned. ‘Do you mean, the excitement? Is that …?’
‘No, not that.’ Amy cradled the tiepin between two fingers. The pearl stared up at her, a blind white eye. ‘Being with Edward – it’s hard to explain, Kitty – it was something for me, something I wanted. The time I spent with him, that was when I felt the most free. Every time I saw him, it was like coming up for air.’
Kitty ran her fingers through her hair. In the candlelight it was copper and brown. ‘But when Edward asked you to marry him, the first time, you said no, didn’t you? I never understood that.’
The raindrops from the roof kept up a steady tap-tap-tap, like a pendulum clock.
‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘You didn’t want anything to change, was that it?’
Amy did not answer. She was in the little kitchen in Madingley, finding the sapphire ring in Edward’s waistcoat pocket. It had belonged to his grandmother, he said. She would do anything to relive that moment, to end it differently.
‘Were you afraid being married might spoil things?’ Kitty said.
Amy turned over, hiding her face in the shadows.
Kitty brought her knees up under her chin. ‘I’m sorry. I just want to know what it’s like, that’s all: to be in love, like you were. I’d like to know how it feels.’
In the stables a horse whinnied. Another, further off, responded in kind. The raindrops went on tapping against the floor, as if measuring the passage of time.
‘Try to sleep now,’ Amy said, hoping Kitty could not hear her cry.
Nine
No one would take them. They went from house to house, from yard to yard: everywhere the answer was the same – or the only answer was a shuffle of footsteps and the thud of a closing door. Nobody asked them why they wanted to cross the battlefields, what had brought them to the Ancre. It was as if they already knew. The village stood on the edge of a wilderness, a dark ocean that no one dared cross. Maybe the death of the farmer – the one whose coffin had passed them on their way to the village – made them wary, or maybe strangers were just not welcome.
At last, close to the church, they found a farrier shoeing a mare. He stopped working when Amy showed him a hundred-franc note. For that, he said, they could borrow a mule. It was the best he could do.
The beast was a déserteur from the Canadian Army and used to being ridden. They packed some provisions and headed out of Bertrancourt along what Kitty’s map called La Grande Rue, Kitty taking first turn in the saddle. In a field beyond the last house a handful of women were bent double, planting and hoeing, ankle-deep in mud. They stopped working to stare at the foreigners as they passed. Their silence was infectious, like the stillness of the air. Only the sound of hoof-beats disturbed it.
After half an hour the clouds lifted and the horizons widened so that they could see for several miles to north and south. Amy had expected the country to be more open than in England, but this was different. There should have been patches of woodland, a copse here and there. Hadn’t Napoleon lined his roads with poplars so that his armies could march in the shade? The trees here were stripped of their branches, standing in sparse rows, lifeless trunks bleached white as bone. The slag of earthworks criss-crossed the great expanse of yellowing grass, like lesions.
A mile on, at the hamlet of Beaussart, behind the ruins of a barn, a bonfire burned unattended, acrid smoke funnelling down the road.
‘Are you all right?’
Kitty climbed off the mule. She looked very pale. ‘I think I’m …’ Amy took her arm. ‘I don’t think it did me much good, riding on that animal.’
Amy put a hand on her friend’s forehead. It felt damp. ‘You’re getting a fever.’
‘Just seasick, I expect.’ Kitty rubbed her hands together. ‘I’d like to get warm for a bit.’
She made her way towards the fire, stumbling over bricks and debris. Amy followed, leaving the mule by the road. Beyond the fire stood a farmhouse grander than the rest, with half its roof missing. She looked up at the shuttered windows. The rooms on the other side might still be habitable. She pictured a four-poster bed, mirrors and curtains, dust turning in the air.
In the shadows of the first floor something moved. It made her jump. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t … I think we’re trespassing, Kitty.’
Kitty strode on. ‘No one could live here. It’s a ruin.’
Amy stopped. Among the flames, the charred skeleton of a dog lay on its back, limbs pointing stiffly towards the sky. She clamped a hand over her mouth. A memory came to her, something she had read years before, about packs of feral dogs roaming a battlefield, feeding on the dead and wounded. But she was sure it had only been a story.
Kitty was looking back up the road, squinting at something in the distance. The wind had got up, pulling at locks of hair that had slipped out from under her hat. ‘Who is that, Amy? Is that a soldier?’
Amy stepped back. It was hard to see anything through the smoke and the rippling air.
‘I think he’s one of ours. Thank God.’ Kitty raised a hand. ‘I say!’
Amy’s eyes were stinging. She had to wipe them. Through tears she saw a man standing out in the open, several hundred yards from the village, holding a tall black horse by its reins. He wore a khaki cap and a greatcoat.
‘If he’s English, he’s duty bound to help us.’ Kitty waved again. ‘Over here!’
The man did not wave back. Amy remembered the rider outside Acheux. She felt a squeeze of fear. ‘I don’t think he’s seen us, Kitty.’
‘He must have. Why’s he just …?’
A gust of wind blew ash and cinders into the air. By the time they could see again, the man and the horse had gone.
Kitty scrambled back to the road, but the land to the north was as empty as before. ‘Why didn’t he come and help us?’
‘Why should he help us?’ Amy said. ‘He has no idea who we are.’
Beyond Beaussart the road came to an end among a cluster of flooded craters. A route around the side had been reinforced with railway sleepers, uneven and slippery. Their boots and the hems of their skirts were soon caked in mud. Then the sleepers ran out too.
A fork leading off La Grande Rue was supposed to take them east towards the old front lines, but nothing of the kind was visible. The only landmark was a line of tree stumps strung out along low ground to the south.
‘The river should be down there,’ Amy said. ‘If we keep it on our right, it should lead us close to Serre.’
Kitty’s face was flushed and sweaty. ‘I don’t see it. I don’t see a river.’
‘Do you need to rest, Kitty?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t want to get lost out here.’ She was looking towards the east, breathing hard. They were alone, not a living thing moving, even in the sky. ‘This is the place, isn’t it?’
‘The place?’
‘The battlefield,’ Kitty said. ‘I can feel it. I can feel it on my skin.’
Amy held out the map. ‘No. It’s a mile or two from the first German trenches. We’re still behind the British lines, just.’
‘So it’s over there.’ Kitty nodded towards the horizon. The land was undulating but empty. Nothing moved but the grass stalks nearby. ‘That’s where it happened, all that death and …’ She frowned. ‘It feels wrong: there should be … more. There should be something.’
Amy stood at her side. She had imagined this place a thousand times, but in her mind it had always been in turmoil: humming with the impact of shells, with machine-guns and the screams of men. She could hear them in her head even now. But the land before her remained mute, as if turning its back. The emptiness was suddenly unbearable.
As she turned, Amy’s foot struck something hard. From a patch of nettles a smooth grey sphere stared up at her. She nudged the nettles aside with her foot.
‘What is it?’ Kitty said.
Amy crouched down. ‘A rifle bolt.’
The rifle lay on its side, the stock raised, the barrel mostly hidden beneath the dirt. The trigger and the sights were stained with rust. Writing had been stamped into a metal band around the narrow end of the stock, but Amy could not make it out.
‘Is it German?’ Kitty asked.
Amy wiped the band with her finger. She saw a crown above the letters G R. ‘George Rex. This is one of ours.’
She gripped the stock and pulled. The rifle slid out easily, as if willing itself into her hands. It was dense, heavy, but balanced. Holding it, Amy felt strong, almost powerful. She looked along the barrel, lining up the sights on the horizon.
‘Amy, what are you doing?’
‘This must be a Lee Enfield.’
A bayonet was fixed below the end of the barrel. It was long, seventeen inches, and narrow, tapered to a sharp point. Amy imagined the wounds, the pared flesh and gouged bone.
Kitty was watching. ‘They used rifles to mark the graves sometimes, didn’t they?’
She was right. The clump of nettles could have concealed a grave – a soldier buried by comrades close to where he fell.
‘We should look, in case there’s something with a name.’
A rifle used as a grave marker would not be loaded. Amy gently tugged at the bolt. It would open the breech – she knew that much. But the bolt would not budge. She raised the rifle towards the sky and pulled the trigger, expecting the same result.
The weapon leapt in her hands. She was not prepared for the noise, a compressed fury that ripped through the silence, a shock that she felt like a blow to the heart. Kitty let out a cry and stumbled backwards.
‘I’m sorry,’ Amy said. ‘I thought …’
The echo rolled around the sky. Then, inexplicably, it deepened and grew louder. Amy looked up. A fat drop of rain landed on her face. ‘Thunder.’ She set down the rifle. ‘We’d better find shelter.’
She had already spotted a cluster of sandbags on the lee of a small rise. It marked the entrance to a shallow trench, earth piled up on either side. She went in first. After a few yards the trench became deeper, with duckboards underfoot.
‘Amy?’
‘Down here.’
Kitty tugged at the mule. It was reluctant to follow. ‘It’s just a ditch.’
‘A communications trench. They lead up to the front lines. That’s why there’s no wire.’
The rain was coming down harder. Dragging the mule, they headed along the cutting, which zigzagged as it passed through the remnants of a copse. In places the walls had collapsed, forcing them to scramble over heaps of loose earth; in others the saturated duckboards had disappeared into the water. After a few minutes they reached a broader, deeper trench with its flanks shored up with wood.
‘This is a support line,’ Amy said. ‘There might be a dugout here somewhere.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Edward explained it to me.’
Fifty yards on she found a flight of steps cut into the earth. At the end was the entrance to a dugout. A sheet of corrugated iron, listing to one side, shielded it from above.
Kitty caught up with her. She stared into the hole.
‘It’s a shelter,’ Amy said.
A gas curtain hung from the lintel, turning in the wind.
‘But what if there’s—’
‘Come on, Kitty, we’ll catch our deaths.’
Amy went down a few steps, eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness. She found a flat space ten feet below, littered with broken timbers. Below that, another flight of steps descended deeper into the earth. The air was heavy with the smell of decay.
Kitty was shivering. Amy sensed it was important to keep her steady, to reassure her that there was no danger. ‘We should have something to eat,’ she said. ‘Are you hungry?’
They crouched on the steps. Amy had a loaf of barley bread and some dry sausage. She set about slicing it up with a penknife. She could make out the interior of the tunnel: stained timbers, sandbags, bits of rubbish, rags. A short, pointed spade – an entrenching tool – lay discarded two steps below.
She listened to the rain: the sound compressing as it funnelled underground. Timbers creaked, as if they were slowly coming alive. She bit into a piece of bread, thinking about the way the rifle had felt in her hands, thinking she might have kept it. A memory of Corporal Staveley coalesced in her mind, the unclosing mouth, the peeling, blistered skin. He said men still lived underground in no-man’s-land. But Staveley had lost his mind. He had visions of the Devil and talked to himself.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw something move, but it was only her own shadow on the walls.
‘Did you see that?’ Kitty pointed towards the bottom of the steps.
‘It’s just …’
Dirt and grit fell down the back of Amy’s neck. She reached for her torch and shone it above her head. The timbers seemed secure. Then she noticed the points of yellow light behind them.
Kitty screamed. ‘There!’ She jumped to her feet, knocking the torch from Amy’s hand. It tumbled into the darkness, end over end. Amy scrambled after it. Something caught on her boot. She fell forward, landing hard on her front.
The torch was lying in the dirt a few inches from her face. In the beam she saw them, swarming up the steps: rats, long and black, streaming up from the depths of the dugout. She felt their slick bodies nudge past her, their scaly claws, their tails on the back of her outstretched hand. A shudder convulsed her. She rolled over. She wanted to scream, but what good would that do?
