Birdsong. Part 23

Stephen went back to him and began to lift the fallen earth very carefully off his body. He pushed it back toward the face of the blocked tunnel. Weir was moaning in pain.

"Get it off, get it off. We've got to get out."

Stephen, through grinding teeth, said, "I'm doing my best. I've got to be gentle." He was lying on top of Weir, his head toward Weir's feet, as he cleared the debris from his arm. He then had to wriggle back over Weir's bodv, forcing his face down into the earth with his weight. He finally got back so they were lying face to face, Weir's feet toward the wall, Stephen's toward the way out. Weir spluttered on the clay in his mouth.

"Can you make it?" said Stephen.

"I've broken my arm. Maybe a rib too. I'll have to crawl on one hand. You take the bird."

Stephen reached back to the cage. Its flimsy wooden frame had been crushed in the fall of earth; it was empty.

"The bird's gone," he said. "Let's go."

"d.a.m.nation," said Weir. "We can't leave it. We'll have to find it and take it back. Otherwise if the Boche find it they'll know we--"

"For Christ's sake, they know there's a tunnel anyway. That's why they blew it."

Weir spat through his pain. "You cannot under any circ.u.mstances leave a bird free. Ever. It's in the handbook. I'd be court-martialled. Find the bird." Stephen crawled back over Weir's prostrate body. He felt himself close to tears as he searched the murk of the clay with the feeble light of his helmet. A little to the left of the hole made by the fall he saw a gleam of yellow. Gently, he reached out his hand towards it.

He could feel his heart pummelling the floor of the tunnel; his clothes were sodden with sweat. It ran down into his eyes. He held his hand steady, the fingers opening in the gloom as he moved toward the bird. Please G.o.d, he muttered, please, please... When his hand was no more than six inches from the canary he made a lunge for it. The bird took off and its wings brushed the back of his hand as it flew past him. Stephen screamed. His body convulsed and his legs kicked back into Weir's thighs.

"For Christ's sake! What's the matter? You're going to bring the tunnel down." Stephen lay face down, panting, with his eyes closed.

"Keep still," said Weir. "For G.o.d's sake keep still. It's up near me now." Stephen lay quietly, saying nothing. Weir made no movement. Stephen heard him make little whistling noises. He was trying to soothe the startled bird, or trick it into his hand. Stephen was still facing the wrong way. Weir's body was blocking his exit back to the light.

He felt Weir make a sudden movement. "I've got it," he said. "It's in my hand."

"All right. Let's go. You start off and I'll follow."

"I've only got one hand. I can't take the bird."

"Well, kill it. It's only a canary. Come on. I want to turn round. I'm getting cramp. I want to get out of here."

There was a silence. Weir made no movement. Eventually he said, "I can't kill it. I can't do it."

Stephen felt a strange weight in his stomach. "You must kill it," he said. His voice came softly through his dry mouth.

There was another silence. Then Weir said, "I can't do it, Wraysford. I can't do it. It's just a tiny bird. It's done nothing wrong."

Stephen, trying to keep control of himself, said, "For G.o.d's sake kill it. Just squeeze it in your hand. Bite its head. Anything."

"You do it."

"No! It's too risky pa.s.sing it back to me. It might escape again." Weir rolled over on to his back and held his left fist toward Stephen. The bird's head appeared between the forefinger and thumb. "There it is," Weir said. "I'll hold it still while you take your knife and just cut its throat." Stephen felt Weir's eyes boring into him. He reached into his pocket and found his knife. He opened the blade and reached up over Weir's knees. Weir, straining up on his back, was able to meet his gaze as Stephen's head appeared between his shins. The two men looked at each other over the tiny yellow head between them. Stephen thought of the lines of men he had seen walking into the guns; he thought of the world screaming in the twilight at Thiepval. Weir looked steadily at him. Stephen put the knife away in his pocket. He fought back the rising tears. Weir might let the bird go. It might touch him.

"I'll take it," he said.

"You'll need both hands to dig and crawl," said Weir.

"I know."

With his handkerchief Stephen made a sling for the bird. He tied three corners together and left an opening.

"All right. Put it in there and I'll tie it up."

With teeth clamped very tight together he held out both hands to Weir, who released the bird into the handkerchief. Stephen jumped as he felt the battering of wings against the palms of his hands. He managed with fumbling fingers to bring the fourth corner of the handkerchief in to the other three and tie it. He put the knot between his teeth and crawled back over Weir's body.

They began their slow retreat, Stephen pushing back the loose earth and enlarging the tunnel where he could. Weir fought his way with his left hand. In the narrow darkness Stephen felt the feathery weight beneath his face. Sometimes the bird beat its wings and struggled, sometimes it lay still in fear. He saw in his mind the stretched skeleton of the lower wing, the darting movement of the head, and the black, relentless eyes. He tried to turn his mind away from it by thinking of other things, but no other thought would lodge in his mind. It was as though his brain had closed down, leaving only one picture: the fossil shape of a bird, a pterodactyl ribbed in limestone, the long cruel beak with its prehistoric hook and the bones fanned out, their exiguous width and enormous span, particularly the underside of the breakable wing, with its sinewy feathers plugged into the bird's blood at one end, then stretched over the delta that would flap and bang in his face as the frantic creature, in the storm of its true hostility, would bring its vast plucking beak into his eyes.

The small canary suspended from his mouth made feeble movements and its yellow feathers protruded from the handkerchief to brush softly against his face. He closed his eyes and pushed onward. He longed for the mud and the stench, for the sound of sh.e.l.ls.

Behind him Weir crawled as best he could. He asked Stephen to stop as he tucked his arm into the front of his shirt for support. He shouted in pain as the two bones momentarily rubbed together.

They reached the ladder and were able to stand up. Stephen took the handkerchief from his mouth and handed it to Weir.

"I'll climb up and send a couple of your men down to help you. You hold on to this."

Weir nodded. He was very pale, Stephen noticed. Then Weir gave the wide, empty-eyed grin that worried Ellis so much. He said, "You're a brave man, Wraysford."

Stephen raised his eyebrows. "You just wait there."

He climbed the shaft of the mine with growing pleasure. Up in the mud, in the yellow light, beneath the rain, he stretched his arms and breathed deeply of the chloride of lime as though it were the finest scent from the rue de Rivoli. He found Ellis waiting nervously near the tunnel head.

"Ah, Ellis, get a couple of sewer rats down there will you? Major Weir's broken his arm."

"Where have you been, sir?"

"Helping out the sappers, you know. You have to show willing. If you ask nicely they'll even build a dugout for you."

"I was worried, sir. Couldn't you have sent someone else?"

"That's enough, Ellis. Just get two men down there. I'm going for a walk. Nice day, isn't it?"

Down the line he could hear CSM Price issuing orders for a fatigue party to begin trench repair work. Stephen smiled. When the fields of Europe were no longer needed for human use and were allowed to sink back into the fires of creation, Price would still be making lists.

"Of course you can go," said Colonel Gray. "This is supposed to be a civilized war now. And we shall know where to find you. Just don't let young Ellis here lead you astray, that's all."

Stephen nodded. "Thank you, sir."

Gray picked up his book and swung his feet back on the desk. He was already a page further into Thucydides by the time Stephen and Ellis left the house that was acting as battalion headquarters.

The next day the train took them into a countryside almost buried by the debris of conflict. To begin with Stephen had found it strange to look up from a sh.e.l.led trench and be able to make out normal country life a few miles back from the line, but after almost three years of fighting the ground had become littered with the light-industrial detritus of war. Gasoline cans, sh.e.l.l cases, wooden boxes, tins, the packages of all kinds of supply goods and ammunition lay on either side of the tracks.

After ten minutes they saw their first green tree, the first trunk not blasted and blackened by sh.e.l.ls, but still covered with brown bark and crowned with branches in which pigeons and thrushes were gathered.

Ellis offered him a cigarette. Stephen took the packet and looked at it. " 'The Flag.' How do you get these things, Ellis?"

"I'm trying to see how many different brands I can get through. Apparently there's some called 'Kitchener's Small Size' that I haven't had yet." The cheap smoke filled the compartment.

Since Ellis had first mentioned Amiens, Stephen had allowed himself to weaken slowly. He had thought he would never return, but he had come to believe that what had happened there was so long ago and was an experience of so peculiar a kind that it had no real bearing on the life he was living. Perhaps there was something dangerous about revisiting places from an earlier time, but he did not feel open to any sentimental feeling. He had only a certain curiosity to see what had happened to the town. Gray told him it had been "knocked about" by sh.e.l.ls.

"Tell me something, sir," said Ellis. "You know those cards the other night. Did you--"

"You don't have to call me sir, you know. As for the cards... what do you think?"

"I think you fixed them."

Stephen smiled. "Of course I did. Even Weir knows that."

"So why does he want you to do them?"

"Because he's frightened."

Ellis looked puzzled.

"Yes, it's strange, I suppose. Weir doesn't believe in anything. He needs something to sustain him. He tries to believe that his own survival is something to fight for. Something to die for, you might almost say."

"And the cards help him?"

"Perhaps. He's a very scared man. He can probably trick himself."

"I see," said Ellis. He spoke with a clipped, abrupt voice. "And when did he first get the wind up?"

Stephen said very gently, "I don't think it's fear in that sense. He's not afraid of gas or sh.e.l.ls or being buried. He's frightened that it doesn't make sense, that there is no purpose. He's afraid that he has somehow strayed into the wrong life."

"I see," said Ellis doubtfully.

The train rattled on toward Amiens and Stephen felt his pleasurable antic.i.p.ation increase. Ellis was not the man he would have chosen as a companion but he was determined to be kind to him. Weir was resting in a rehabilitation centre near Arras. He had hoped for a trip home, but injuries like his had been viewed with suspicion since the early days when the infantry had taken to sticking their arms in the rapidly unwinding winch gear in the hope of serious damage.

Ellis took out a writing pad and began a letter home. Stephen gazed from the window. The sounds of war were leaving him. Unlike Weir, who stood imprisoned by imaginary sh.e.l.l sounds in the quiet bedroom of his parents' house, Stephen found himself able to forget.

What had he been like seven years ago? What world had he lived in, what heightened, dazed existence? It had seemed coherent at the time; the powerful feelings it had set loose in him, inflamed each day by the renewed pleasure of his senses, had appeared to make up something not only comprehensible, but important. In his life at that time he felt he had come close to understanding, even proving something, though what that thing was he could no longer say.

"What are you going to do in Amiens?" he asked Ellis.

"I don't know. I've never been on leave before. I don't know how much of normal life goes on. I'd like to go to a theatre, perhaps. What ought I to do?" Stephen shrugged. "Most people want to get drunk first, then go to a brothel."

Ellis frowned. "I don't think I should like that."

Stephen laughed. "Which? The getting drunk?"

"No, the... other."

"I think you're supposed to. The army thinks it's good for your health to go with a_ _woman regularly. The brothels are sanctioned by the military police."

"Well, will you go?" said Ellis challengingly.

Stephen shook his head. "No. I've no interest at all."

"Well then. Neither shall I," said Ellis.

"Who are you writing to?"

"My mother."

Stephen smiled. "I probably asked you at the wrong moment in that case. But I shall definitely go to a bar. You must let me buy you some champagne. That's how we'll start."

Stephen did not at first recognize the station as the train slunk in. He was braced for memories, but none came. On the platform he looked up at the vaulted roof and then down toward the concourse. He and Isabelle had left from another platform on the far side of the station. He remembered a green door he had stared at from the carriage window as they waited to depart. He looked across the tracks and saw it, just as it had been.

It was midafternoon when he and Ellis emerged on to the cobbled forecourt of the station. It was an overcast day, but with the first signs that the six-month winter might be starting to relax its grip. It had stopped raining, and the breeze did not sting them with cold.

They walked up toward the cathedral. Some of the buildings bore the marks of sh.e.l.lfire. Only a few miles behind allied lines, Amiens had suffered according to the tide of the war. The recent allied advances had made it safe for the first time: there were no bombardments, and the local businessmen were trying to profit from the new calm in the Somme region. Shops were reopening; the eight o'clock curfew on bars and restaurants was lifted.

Stephen looked with fierce interest at the streets he remembered. Despite the occasional missing wall or patch of blackened masonry, they remained for the most part unchanged. He had not actively recalled them in the seven years he had been away; he had thought little about the town. Yet as he walked up the familiar ways, the streets remembered themselves in his mind.

At a corner was a half-timbered building through whose open window Isabelle had once heard a tune that had excited her, though not her husband's friend Berard. To his right, down a narrower pa.s.sage, was the restaurant to which he had so often gone for lunch. Perhaps his favourite seat would still be in the window; it was possible the same Parisian would be behind the bar.

"Ellis, do you mind if we go down here? There's a cafe I remember."

"As long as it has champagne. Is it the Gobert? That's the one that was recommended to me."

"I can't remember what it's called. It was run by a man who used to have a cafe in the Place de l'Odeon in Paris."

They stood outside and Stephen peered through the window. The wooden stalls had gone. There was a bare counter on one side, and on the other some cheap-looking tables and chairs. He pushed open the door, a light piece of wood with netting over the gla.s.s that grated on the stone floor as it turned. There was no one inside. They went up to the bar, behind which were some understocked shelves. A bald man with a lined, exhausted face and a greasy ap.r.o.n came stiffly downstairs and through a small door at the end of the room. He had a cigarette attached to his lower lip. He grunted a greeting. Stephen ordered two beers.

"Do you know what happened to the man who used to own this place?" he said.

"He's in Germany. A prisoner. They were rounded up in nineteen fourteen."

"Who were?"

"All the men in Amiens. When the Germans occupied the town." Stephen took the beer. "You mean every man in the town was taken to Germany?"

The man shrugged. "Only the stupid ones. And the cowards. The rest made their own arrangements."

Stephen said, "And what about you?"

"I was too old to be of interest to them."

"What's he saying?" said Ellis.

"He says the man who used to run this restaurant was deported to Germany. It's a bleak little place, isn't it? It used to be very lively, full of students and so on." Stephen put down his beer gla.s.s among the uncleaned rings on the zinc counter. He had suddenly understood what had happened to all the students who used to shout out their orders and fill the air with their strong cigarette smoke. Those who had not died at Verdun would now be gathering for the attack on the river Aisne under their inspirational new general.

"Let's go," he said. "Let's find somewhere else."

"Why? I was just beginning to--"