At Some Disputed Barricade wwi-4 Read online

  He reached for a wet rag and was making sure the crowns on Northrup’s epaulettes were clean, when he saw Richard Mason standing in the doorway. His dark face which concealed so much emotion was set in lines of tense expectancy.

  “Hello, Mason,” Joseph said with slight surprise. The last article of Mason’s he had read had been sent from Russia. “There’s nothing new here. You could copy what you put last time, just change the casualty figures.”

  Mason’s mouth tightened in the barest of smiles. He came farther into the room. “Was he alive when you found him?” he asked.

  “No.” Joseph knew in that moment that he would give Mason no information he did not have to. He needed time. He liked Mason personally; they had struggled through the nightmare of Gallipoli together, and then the storm in the English Channel, but Mason was a war correspondent. He would publish the truth of a situation, no matter how hideous, if he believed it served a greater good. Perhaps that was right, but Joseph had already learned how hard it was to judge where a path might lead, and that it was too late to be sorry afterward. Very little was simple.

  Mason was looking at him, eyes unwavering. “Sniper?”

  “Looks like it,” Joseph said. He knew it was a lie, but he needed to learn more before he committed himself. “Why? Are you going to write an obituary for him?”

  Mason smiled this time, but there was no light in it, no humor. “Do you think I should, Reverend? What should I say? Killed in the line of duty, Passchendaele, the eighth of August, 1917. Not exactly individual, is it! I could write that for tens of thousands of men. They’re all unique to those who loved them, someone’s only son, only brother, husband, fiancé, friend.” His eyes widened and his voice became harsher. “What should I say about Northrup? That he was an arrogant fool and his men hated him? His death may save the lives of a few poor devils he’d have sent over the top uselessly?”

  “If you set yourself up to judge one man, then you need to judge them all,” Joseph replied, this time facing him without flinching. “Do you feel you have the right or the ability to do that, Mason?”

  Mason’s mouth turned down in a wry wince. He leaned against the upright of the tent flap and put his hands in his pockets.

  “Of course I don’t. That wasn’t really my point. I notice that you question my right to say so, but not that it is true.”

  “I question your right to come to that conclusion,” Joseph corrected him. “But I don’t really care what you think, only what you say.”

  “And you don’t want me to say that Northrup was an incompetent officer and it’s a blessing for his men that he’s dead?” Mason raised his eyebrows. “His men are saying it themselves.”

  “Possibly,” Joseph agreed. “To each other, but they wouldn’t write it down, or repeat it where his family will hear.”

  “Perhaps that’s the problem?” Mason suggested. “We cover the errors, however disastrous, if it’s going to hurt someone’s feelings, especially if that someone is an officer.”

  “We do it for the dead, whoever they are,” Joseph corrected him again.

  “Ah.” Mason smiled. “That’s the point, isn’t it? Now he’s dead, his mistakes die with him. He’s no more danger, so why cause unnecessary pain?”

  Joseph was beginning to feel cold in spite of the August sun burning outside and the close, overwarm air. “What is it you want, Mason? As you said, the man was arrogant and a fool, but he’s dead. Do you feel some moral obligation to soil his name and make his family’s grief the greater, just because it’s true? What about the families of the men who died because of his ignorance or bad judgment? Do you think knowing that will help their pain?”

  “That’s what it’s about, isn’t it, Chaplain? Pain to other people?”

  Joseph stared at him. The fierce intelligence in Mason’s eyes did not allow him to delude himself any longer. “Part of it, yes.”

  “And is covering their sins the part you’ve taken on yourself?”

  “Northrup’s sins are not my business, Mason,” Joseph told him. “Neither are they yours. He can’t do any more harm now.”

  Mason straightened up. “It won’t work, Reavley. I’m not referring to Northrup’s sins, and you know that. I’m talking about how he died. I saw you look at the helmet. The bullet wasn’t there, was it?”

  “Probably fell out.” Joseph still tried to evade the issue.

  Mason walked over to the table and looked down at Northrup’s face. “He was shot by his own men, or at least by one of them. And the others are covering for him. You know that. Are you going to lie, by implication, so they escape with murder?” Now he was looking at Joseph, his eyes searching Joseph’s, probing for honesty. “Does war really change things so much, Chaplain?”

  “I don’t know what happened yet,” Joseph answered him. “I want to find out before I jump to conclusions.”

  “Liar,” Mason said quietly. “You want to find out if it was one of the men from your own village who killed him, so if it was, you can protect him.”

  Perhaps a year ago Joseph would have lost his temper. Now he kept it tightly governed. “I want to find out what happened before I set in motion a chain of events I can’t stop or control,” he said gravely. “Perhaps moral issues are all black and white to you, although I doubt it. I know you’ve been prepared to sacrifice one goal to attain another.” He was referring to their argument in the Channel two years ago, and the implicit fact that Mason would allow some of his own countrymen to be killed in order to save the vast majority. Or was he naïve enough not to know decisions like that faced military commanders every week?

  Mason smiled. The expression softened his face, changing him. “But we are not the same, Reavley. I’m a war correspondent. I can observe, tell stories, ask questions. You’re a chaplain, supposedly a man of God. People think you know the difference between right and wrong. They look to you to tell them, especially now when the world is falling apart. If you won’t stand, Reverend, who will?” There was mockery in his face, but a wry, self-conscious sort of hope as well. He wanted Joseph to have the certainty and the faith he did not. He might have denied it—Joseph believed he would have, because it was too precious to put to any test. Fragile as it was, ephemeral, he would be lost without it.

  “I did more than that before,” Joseph answered him. “And I’m not sure whether I was right or not.”

  “Northrup was murdered.” Mason bit his lip. “If he hadn’t been, you wouldn’t argue the issue now, you’d just deny it.”

  “I’ve only just seen the helmet.” Joseph told the truth, but it was still a prevarication, and the moment he had said it he was sorry. He should have known what to do, if right and wrong were as clear to him as Mason seemed to imagine. And not only Mason. Many of the men thought he should not be confused, as they were. They wanted answers, and felt let down if he could not give them. Priests were God’s authority on earth. For a priest to say he did not know was about the same as admitting that God Himself did not know; that He had somehow become confused and lost control. Life and death themselves became meaningless.

  Mason was waiting.

  “You are not naïve,” Joseph told him. “Your faith doesn’t rest on me. Don’t blackmail me with it. I don’t know what happened to Northrup. Of course his own men might have killed him. It happens. I’d like to know more of the circumstances before I report it to Colonel Hook.”

  Mason’s eyes were steady, unblinking.

  “Why? In case the man who did it is someone you like, whose father and brothers you know? Or are you afraid the morale of the whole brigade will crumble if you tell the truth?”

  “Aren’t you?” Joseph continued. “Or is that what you want? Truth at all cost? Whoever pays?”

  “Who pays if the chaplain condones men murdering one of their officers because they don’t agree with his orders?” Mason asked.

  “Is that how you see it?” Joseph said tensely. “If it’s as simple as that to you, maybe you should be the chaplain. Y
ou seem to have right and wrong very clearly labeled. You know far more about it than I do?”

  Mason shrugged. “No. But I know what the men will say, and so do you. If you let Northrup’s death go, who’s next? I haven’t any faith that what we’re fighting for is worth the price. I think the whole bloody nightmare is madness. If I believed in the devil, I’d say he’s taken over.” He spread his strong, supple hands. “This has to be as close to hell as it gets. But you believe in something. You don’t have to be here. You could have stayed at home and looked after a nice quiet parish in the countryside, comforted the bereaved, and kept spirits up on the home front. But you’re here. Why? Just going down with the ship because you don’t know what else to do? Can’t find a way to admit you were wrong, or can’t face telling the men that?”

  He had touched a nerve. How many nights had Joseph wrestled in prayer to find some sense, some light of hope in the endless loss? If God really had any power or cared for mankind at all, why did He do nothing?

  Was Northrup’s murder just one more ugly and senseless tragedy for him, for his family, and most of all for the man who had pulled the trigger? Or would it be the catalyst for a general mutiny against the senseless daily slaughter?

  Joseph could divert the attack against himself by attacking Mason in return, but it answered nothing, and Mason would know it, just as he knew it himself.

  “You seem to think I should be the judge of what to do,” he said slowly. “And yet you have decided for me, before either of us knew what happened, or what result will come from pursuing it.”

  “I know what result will come from not pursuing it,” Mason told him. “And so do you. Either you tell Hook, or I do.”

  Joseph did not put him to the choice. If Hook had to be told, it would be his way.

  “You’re quite sure, Captain Reavley?” Hook said unhappily. He was a lean man who had been spare to begin with and was now almost gaunt. He had been twice wounded, and the way he stood betrayed every so often that his shoulder still ached.

  Joseph had said only what he had found, without drawing conclusions. “Yes, sir.”

  “Any idea who is responsible?”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid Major Northrup angered quite a few of the men.”

  Hook gave him a dour glance. “He angered the whole bloody lot, Reavley. That isn’t what I asked.”

  “I have no idea which of the men is responsible.”

  Hook stared at him. His eyes were shadowed. He had seen too many of his men die, and he was helpless to do anything but go on ordering them forward in endless attack after attack. He wanted to avoid this one further pointless grief. He sighed. “See what you can find out when you have the chance.” He waited, trying to gauge if Joseph understood him.

  “Yes, sir.” Joseph came to attention. “As soon as I have the opportunity.”

  Hook relaxed a little. “I’ll write to his father. I should do it myself. Thank you, Reavley. You can go.”

  Two days later, on the tenth of August, the rain burst like a monsoon over Ypres and Passchendaele, running in rivers down the slopes of the slight hills, filling the trenches till men were waist-deep in it. The fields became quagmires, latrines flooded, stores were ruined and swept away. In every direction one looked was water and more water.

  Men made jokes about collecting animals.

  “Anybody give me two cows for two rats?” Cully Teversham asked hopefully.

  “Two cows for twenty rats?” George Atherton improved the offer, then laughed with the odd, jerky sound he always made.

  “Oi’d give you all the sodding rats in Belgium for two cows,” Tiddly Wop Andrews retorted.

  “I’ve already got all the sodding rats in Belgium!” Geddes said bitterly.

  Into this morass came General Colin Northrup to mourn the loss of his son. He arrived in the middle of the afternoon, climbed out of his car, and stood in the torrential rain as if completely unaware of it, his back ramrod stiff, his face ashen.

  It was Joseph’s task to meet him. Apart from his obvious grief, and his rank, the general was instantly recognizable because of his physical resemblance to his son. His coloring, the angle of nose and jaw, the steady blue eyes were all the same. Only his mouth was different. There was none of his son’s indecision in it, none of the hesitation or lack of fire.

  Joseph saluted him and received a smart salute in return.

  “If I can be of any service to you, General Northrup, I am at your command. May I extend the condolences of the whole brigade, sir. We all feel his loss.”

  “I’m sure you do,” Northrup said quietly, his voice raw with hurt. “I understand he is the second commanding officer you have lost in a short space of time.”

  “Yes, sir.” It seemed ridiculous to equate Northrup with Penhaligon, but only to Joseph who knew them both and had liked and admired Penhaligon. He struggled to find anything to say that would be even decent, let alone helpful. He understood grief. He had lost his wife, Eleanor, in childbirth in 1913, and his son as well, then both his parents had been murdered by the Peacemaker’s agent the year after. God knew how many of his friends had also died since then. There was not a man here who could not name a dozen they had lost. He knew no one could ease this man’s grief, but he could at least not insult him with dishonesty. “It always hits the men very hard. I’m sure you know that they often cover their feelings with jokes. It’s the only way to hold on to sanity.”

  “Yes.” Northrup swallowed. “Yes, I know that, Chaplain. I don’t expect to see the loss I feel in anyone else, nor will I mistake levity for lack of respect. They did not have time to know him as I did, or what a fine man he was.”

  “No, sir. We have a dugout for you, if you’d like to stay, but I daresay you would prefer to see his grave, and then decide for yourself what to do next. When you are ready, I’ll show you. It’s…it’s quite a decent place. We have very good men there.”

  Northrup’s face was set so hard the muscles in his jaw quivered and a nerve ticked in his temple. “Show me my son’s grave, Captain Reavley.”

  Joseph obeyed. It was over a mile’s walk through the drenching rain, but Northrup was too lost in his grief to be aware of physical discomfort. When they reached the place, which was filled with makeshift crosses, its earth newly turned, they stood in silence. Joseph already knew where Major Northrup’s grave was among the thousands. He took the general to it, then left him alone with his thoughts. Joseph, too, had agonizing memories that made him appreciate solitude. Half the men who had left England with him lay covered in this earth.

  He waited until the general moved at last, stiffly, as if all his body ached and his joints pained him. Northrup could not have been more than in his early fifties, but he seemed an old man.

  “Thank you, Captain,” he said courteously. “He was my only child.”

  There was no answer to give that had any meaning. Joseph treated it with the dignity of silence.

  The battle continued unabated. Joseph sat in his dugout, the endless rain beating unheard on the roof above him. It was difficult to keep the water from running down the steps and inside.

  He had already written the day’s letters of condolence, five of them to the same small village half a dozen miles from St. Giles where he lived. He did it now almost as if in his sleep. He could no longer think of anything individual to say, even though he had known each of the men.

  Now it was time to answer his own mail, the first chance he had had in several days. He picked Matthew’s letter off the top of the pile. It was general news, gossip about people they both knew, what was on in the theater or the cinema, a book he had wanted to read but could not find, an art exhibition everyone was talking about. It was not the facts that mattered but the pleasure of hearing from him, the familiarity of the phrases he used; as for everyone, it was the contact with home and people he loved.

  He wrote back with all the harmless news he could think of, the bad jokes and the opinions, the rivalries and the generosity.

>   He replied similarly to his sister Hannah at home in St. Giles. She, of course, had written to him about the village and the people they both knew, but mostly of her children and the odd scraps of news about her husband, Archie, at sea in command of a destroyer.

  She described the late summer trees, the gold of the fields, how untidy the garden was, and regretted that she could think of no way to send him raspberries, which were now ripe.

  He smiled as he thanked her. Then he told her about Tucky Nunn, and asked her particularly to do what she could for his mother. Not that there was anything, but one had to try.

  He wrote also to Hallam Kerr, the vicar in St. Giles who had been so utterly useless last year when Joseph had been home recuperating from injury. Then Kerr had sputtered platitudes, out of touch with any kind of real emotion. By the time Joseph left, Kerr had begun to grasp reality and find the courage to face it. Since then he had matured into a man who was usually adequate, and sometimes superb, but good or bad, he no longer ran away or hid in meaningless ritual answers.

  He could not offer Kerr advice, nor did he need it; he simply reaffirmed friendship.

  The most difficult letter to answer was the last he had received from Isobel Hughes. In 1915 her husband had been killed and Joseph had sent his condolences along with the official notice of bereavement. She had written back to thank him, and a warm and honest friendship had developed between them. Often he had found he could tell her of his feelings more openly than he could anyone else. Her answers, her faith in him and her easy, natural stories of her own life, hill-farming in Wales, had been a balm to him on many long and bitter nights.

  Her last letter had woken in him almost a sense of betrayal. He was aware how ridiculous that was, and yet it was taking time for the smart to go away. He had never met her, and yet he had been taking some part of her affection for granted.

  Now she had told him, perhaps a little awkwardly, maybe not soon enough, that she had met a young man, invalided out of the army, and was falling in love with him, and he with her.