lie exhausted in their trenches and bleeding to death.
By stand-to the next morning I knew for sure that Charlie would not be coming back, that all my stories had been just that, stories. Pete and Nipper and the others had tried to convince me that he might still be alive. But I knew he was not. I was not grieving. I was numb inside, as void of all feeling as the hands that clutched my rifle. I looked out over no-man’s-land where Charlie had died. They lay as if they’d been heaped against the wire by the wind, and Charlie, I knew, was one of them. I wondered what I would write to Molly and Mother. I could hear Mother’s voice in my head, hear her telling Big Joe how Charlie would not be coming back, how he had gone to Heaven to be with Father and Bertha. Big Joe would be sad. He would rock. He would hum Oranges and Lemons mournfully up his tree. But after a few days his faith would comfort him. He would believe absolutely that Charlie was up there in the blue of Heaven, high above the church tower somewhere. I envied him that. I could no longer even pretend to myself that I believed in a merciful god, nor in a heaven, not any more, not after I had seen what men could do to one another. I could believe only in the hell I was living in, a hell on earth, and it was man-made, not God-made.
That night, like a man sleepwalking, I got up to take my turn on sentry duty. The sky was filled with stars. Molly knew the stars well — the Plough, the Milky Way, the Pole Star — she’d often tried to teach me them all when we were out poaching. I tried to remember, tried to identify them in amongst the millions, and failed. As I was looking up in wonder at the immensity and beauty of it all, I found myself almost believing in Heaven again. I picked one bright star in the west to be Charlie and another next to him. That was Father. They were together looking down on me. I wished then I had told Charlie about how Father had died, for there would be no secrets between us now. I shouldn’t have kept it from him. So, unspeaking, I told him then, saw him glisten and wink at me, and knew he had understood and did not blame me. Then I heard Charlie’s voice in my head. “Don’t go all dreamy on lookout, Tommo,” he was saying. “You’ll fall asleep. You can get shot for that.” I widened my eyes, blinked them hard, and took in a deep gulp of cold air to wake me up.
Only moments later I saw something move out beyond the wire. I listened. There was still a ringing in my ears, so I couldn’t be sure of it, but I thought I could hear someone, a voice, and a voice that was not inside my head. It was a whisper. “Hey! Anyone there? It’s me, Charlie Peaceful. D Company. I’m coming in. Don’t shoot.” Perhaps I was already asleep and deep in a wonderful dream I wanted to be true. But the voice came again, louder this time. “What’s the matter with you lot? Are you all fast asleep or what? It’s Charlie, Charlie Peaceful.”
From under the wire a dark shape shifted and moved towards me. Not a dream, not one of my make-believe stories. It was Charlie. I could see his face now and he could see mine. “Tommo, you dozy beggar, you. Give us a hand, will you?” I grabbed him and tumbled him down into the trench. “Am I glad to see you!” he said. We hugged one another then. I don’t think we ever had before. I cried, and tried unsuccessfully to hide it, until I felt him crying too.
“What happened?” I asked.
“They shot me in the foot, can you believe it? Shot right through my boot. I bled like a pig. I was on my way back and I passed out in some shell hole. Then by the time I woke up all you lot had gone off and left me. I had to stay put till nightfall. Seems like I’ve been crawling all bloody night.”
“Does it hurt?”
“I can’t feel a thing,” Charlie said. “But then, I can’t feel the other foot either — I’m frozen stiff. Don’t you worry, Tommo. I’ll be right as rain.”
They stretchered him to hospital that night, and I did not see him again until they pulled us out of the line a few days later. Pete and I went to see him as soon as we could. He was sitting up in his bed and grinning all over his face. “It’s good in here,” he said. “You want to try it sometime. Three decent meals a day, nurses, no mud, and a nice long way from Mister Fritz.”
“How’s the foot?” I asked him.
“Foot? What foot?” He patted his leg. “That’s not a foot, Tommo. That’s my ticket home. Some nice, kind Mister Fritz gave me the best present he could, a ticket home to Blighty. They’re sending me to a hospital back home. It’s a bit infected. Lots of bones broken, they said. It’ll mend, but it’ll take an operation, and then I’ve got to rest it up. So they’re packing me off tomorrow.”
I knew I should be pleased for him, and I wanted to be, but I just could not bring myself to think that way. All I could think was that we’d come to this war together. We’d stuck together through thick and thin, and now he was breaking the bond between us, and deserting me. Worst of all he was going home without me, and he was so unashamedly happy about it.
“I’ll give them your best, Tommo,” he said. “Pete’ll keep an eye on you for me. You’ll look after him, won’t you Pete?”
“I don’t need looking after,” I snapped.
But Charlie either hadn’t heard me or he ignored me. “And you make sure he behaves, Pete. That girl in the estaminet in Pop, she’s got her eye on him. She’ll eat him alive.” They laughed at my embarrassment, and I could not disguise my hurt and discomfort. “Hey, Tommo.” Charlie put his hand on my arm. “I’ll be back before you know it.” And he was serious now, for the first time. “Promise,” he said.
“You’ll be seeing Molly, then, and Mother?” I asked.
“Just let them try and stop me,” he said. “I’ll wangle a bit of leave. Or maybe they’ll come and see me in hospital. With a bit of luck I could get to see the baby. Less than a month to go now, Tommo, and I’ll be a father. You’ll be an uncle too. Think of that.”
But the evening after Charlie had left for Blighty I wasn’t thinking of that at all. I was in the estaminet in Pop drowning my anger in beer. And it was anger I was drowning, not just sorrows: anger at Charlie for abandoning me, anger that he was to see Molly and home, and that I was not. In my befuddled state I even thought of deserting, of going after him. I’d make my way to the Channel and find a boat. I’d get home somehow.
I looked around me. There must have been a hundred or more soldiers in the place that evening, Pete and Nipper Martin, and some of the others among them, but I felt completely alone. They were laughing and I could not laugh. They were singing and I could not sing. I couldn’t even eat my egg and chips. It was stiflingly hot in there and the air was thick with cigarette smoke. I could hardly breathe. I went outside to get some air. That brought me very quickly to my senses, and I gave up at once all idea of deserting. I would go back to camp instead. It was the easier choice — you can get shot for desertion.
“Tommy?”
It was her, the girl from the estaminet. She was carrying out a crate of wine bottles.
“You are ill?” she asked me.
Tongue-tied, I shook my head. We stood for some moments listening to the thunder of the guns as a heavy barrage opened up over Wipers, the sky lit up over the town like an angry sunset. Flares rose and hovered and fell over the front line.
“It is beautiful,” she said. “How can it be beautiful?”
I wanted to speak, but I did not trust myself to do so. I felt suddenly overwhelmed by tears, by longing for home and for Molly.
“How old?” she asked.
“Sixteen,” I muttered.
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