The Opened Cage Page 6

  It was in the late afternoon that they found a massacred German convoy. Even before they saw it, they smelled it, smelled the acrid burning oil and rubber, and a more awful stench, like overcooked meat. The scale of the battery rolled out before them. About two dozen lorries were smouldering and belching out filthy oily plumes. Crates and charred food supplies lay enveloped in the haze of smoke, against which the sun struggled. Fresh bomb craters pockmarked the immediate area so they stood out chalk-white against the dun and grey.

  Barratt went forward to a blackened lorry-like vehicle and forced the passenger door open. A charred figure with balled up hands and a rictus grin fell out as Barratt jumped back.

  ‘Shit!’ he yelped, in spite of himself.

  Standing back to move the corpse, he gagged as bits of the charred surface sloughed off from the body. Joss caught the look of horror on Barratt’s face, which was quickly extinguished as he turned to them. ‘Get this man buried…You two, Fielder and Deerman – bury him. Over there,’ he shouted, pointing to the other side of the road. They found an intact blanket amongst the strewn supplies. Joss deftly rolled the corpse into a bundle and they moved it to where Barratt had motioned and where two other bearers were already digging. Moving around to the driver’s door, they saw a blackened stump of what had once been a man, still sitting in the driver’s seat.

  Tom stepped back in horror, saw Briggs and the other officers inspecting a covered truck which had careered off the road some yards away; a hastily constructed white flag fluttering helplessly out of the cab window. Barratt was consulting with a lieutenant; Briggs stood with them. Along the road were crates which had obviously been ditched in an attempt to go faster, to get away from the onslaught. The blandness of the items struck Tom: the sacks of potatoes, canned food, letters and trinkets for children and sweethearts, all split open and drifting down the road, spiralling away in little carefree dances and at appalling odds with this acrid centre.

  They carried over the stump of the driver and laid the bits by other charcoal-grey men who had been pulled over and laid out and covered over by the bearers.

  Briggs opened his mouth to speak but Barratt turned back to the rest of his company and bawled. ‘Company… Attention!’

  The men shuffled into line but Tom carried on staring out over the carnage as if he had not heard. Joss noticed just as the sergeant strode forward and roughly pushed Tom back towards the line.

  ‘You disobey another order, lad, and you’ll be on a charge,’ the sergeant hissed. ‘I’ll take it that you never heard.’

  Tom fell in beside Joss, who looked at him with enquiry.

  ‘I didn’t hear,’ Tom whispered, and coloured up.

  ‘The burying party will have to continue,’ Barratt addressed the men. ‘We will bury the dead and we will take any of the wounded with us, if there are any. There are shovels in the truck. Take the dead at least fifty yards from the burning area and do not go near the smouldering area or ammunition,’ he added, pointing towards the burnt centre where bullets still exploded, as though in impotent rage.

  They found a few bodies, some badly burnt and almost brittle, a few seemingly untouched, except for the tell-tale traces of blood that had seeped out of their ears. Tom helped Joss move the bodies, shadowing him again like the new boy at school. Joss moved with the air of knowing what to do, but did not talk. They dug a mass grave pit with the others and soon the bodies were buried. A pall of shame hung over them as they buried the white flag in the pit. They regrouped after stacking the shovels into the truck and one bearer made a rough cross out of a packing case and put it on the grave with a turtle-shaped helmet. No-one attempted to loot any of the food or belongings.

  Tom stood by the roadside staring out over the wide plain, a desert land of destruction, which was now oddly, and wrongly somehow, diffused with an evening, peach-gold light.

  ‘We did this, didn’t we,’ Tom said quietly as Briggs walked over to him.

  ‘Yes, or one of the allies,’ Briggs replied.

  ‘We’re just like animals... No, not like animals. Animals wouldn’t do something like this.’

  ‘No, probably not.’

  ‘So why do we keep doing it?’

  Briggs hesitated then shrugged. ‘I don’t,’ he whispered and walked away.

  Soon they were marching again. The sky was now midnight blue yet towards the front line it was smoky and yellowish, as though a municipal fog had nuzzled its way across the sea from the cities, and settled. As they walked further, the smell of cordite and the sour stench of burning rubbish and burnt-up men lessened. Sometime later, Joss squeezed Tom’s shoulder; Tom opened his eyes with a start and the realisation that he had been walking while more or less asleep. He saw they had stopped in another farm courtyard that looked unreal under the moon’s strange daylight. Sounds were muffled and distant; actions were slow and dreamlike. Tom looked up and saw age-worn stone steps going up to a granary, saw a half-used haystack, the abandoned drays and carts, and his heart ached for new dreams of their farm, for the possibilities that might never be. He tried thinking back to his childhood but his memories were vague, like ghosts rippling on the edge of memory. A glimpse of a woman who used to lean down to him when he was two or three, and whisper into his ear, ‘Now go on, Thomas, stop clinging’, and memories of his hands being prized from her skirts. Memories of a young man who used to scoop him in the air and laugh at his shrieks of joy. Then, later – how much later? – the same man with his face screwed up, hissing ‘the bitch’ and not seeing the boy with large, anxiety-ridden eyes backing away from him. Memories of screaming arguments, of slamming doors, and an older man, his grandfather, catching him up and holding him high, so his booted legs dangled, of being hurried out of a room.

  Forward to a walk when he was about six and a half years old, with Tom holding his grandfather’s hand as they walked in a summer’s meadow. Down a low bank, the wide old Severn glided silently past, its fringes of meadow-sweet and loosestrife nodding cream and purple amongst darker foliage.

  ‘Grandpa?’

  Memories of his grandfather looking down and smiling.

  ‘Yes, Tom?’

  ‘Was it my fault?’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Mummy said I was the fault.’

  His grandfather had looked away. ‘I’m sure that’s not what your mummy said. You misheard, Tom.’

  ‘No!’ said Tom, running in front of his grandfather and turning round to face him, his little booted feet apart. ‘She said, “You’re fault, Thomas Fielder! You!” and motioned with his forefinger in a sharp stabbing gesture at his chest. “You’re the fault!”

  For a second his grandfather had merely stared at him, then, thinking quickly, squatted down and said, ‘Don’t you think she said you were a little soldier?’

  Tom searched his grandfather’s face, then pushed his forefinger into his cheek and considered. ‘What’s sholder?’

  ‘Soldier.’

  ‘Stholder.’ Tom’s first front teeth had gone and his permanent teeth were just coming through, which leant the lisp.

  ‘A soldier is a very brave little chap,’ said his grandfather.

  Tom’s face lit up. ‘Like me!’

  ‘Yes. Just like you!’

  ‘Grandpa’s stholder?’

  ‘That’s it. Grandpa’s Brave Little Soldier.’

  They walked happily now, swinging hands, and the sunlight glittered like diamonds on the river.

  ‘Is Daddy coming back?’ Tom asked, looking up.

  His grandfather sighed. ‘No Tom, he’s gone to heaven.’

  They walked on a little further. ‘Wha’s heaven?’

  ‘It’s where the angels are, and where we go when we pass on.’

  ‘What’s ‘pass on’?’

  ‘When we stop being alive.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because we all stop being alive at some point. Otherwise some people would be thousands of years old.’

  Tom giggled. ‘No they wou
ldn’t!’

  His grandfather looked at him with wide eyes. ‘Oh yes they would!’

  Tom laughed happily. ‘You’re silly!’

  ‘Grandpas are allowed to be silly.’

  ‘So, when’s Daddy coming back?’

  ‘Daddy won’t be coming back, Tom.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because he’s in heaven.’

  ‘Is Mummy in heaven?’

  His grandfather looked awkward. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘So she will be coming back?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Tom stopped; his face a quickening cloudscape of emotions. ‘Why? Was it my fault?’

  His grandfather stooped down to him. ‘Nothing was your fault, Tom. Nothing. Your Mummy and Daddy love you very much, but they can’t be with you.’

  Tom took this in, and slowly his freckled, rounded face collapsed, and he began to cry bitterly. His grandfather held him, rubbed the centre of his back, remembering the night his son had turned up in the middle of the night, with Tom wrapped in a blanket, crying that his wife had left them. Remembered the succeeding weeks when he would visit his son, and find Tom increasingly unkempt and hungry, and his son sitting in a rocking chair, addled with alcohol. How he had hoisted Tom up and walked out of the house with him when he found the boy sitting on the floor, pushing a stick around in a pool of vomit, with his father passed-out at his side. There had been arguments and cajoling, and, sometime later, Tom’s father came to live with them. Tom had memories of this young man sitting in a chair by the fire, speaking to him kindly, or staring at him, befuddled, as though he didn’t know who he was. Then Tom had come home from the infants’ school one afternoon and his father was gone, and his grandfather had been crying.

  Now further on to this sunny June afternoon by the Severn. When Tom’s crying had subsided into hiccups, his grandfather had hoisted him onto his shoulders and, spotting a swallow dipping along the river, pointed this out to the little boy, who waved his arms around in the sunlight. Tom could never remember asking about his parents again. For the next ten years they had lived a peaceful life: Tom trotting around with Gramps in the early years, then talking and explaining world events to his grandfather with an earnestness only an eleven or twelve year old can muster. Memories came back to him of the studious, older boy, respectful and quiet, who ran errands for his Granddad with unselfconscious grace.

  Then that shattering, awful day when he was taken out of class at Grammar school and told his grandfather had died suddenly of a heart attack that morning. The world collapsed around him. Events swirled. There were recollections of being taken to a school friend’s house and his friend’s mother fussing around him as he had sat numb and mute, staring ahead. They housed him until his future could be settled. Then the solicitor requesting that he attend his offices in Worcester, and being told he had inherited his grandfather’s house; surprising, as he always thought they were in a rented cottage. Apparently it had been left from one generation to the next, for over 250 years. Tom being only sixteen, the solicitor had been appointed his guardian, by direction of his grandfather’s will. Tom was allowed to go back to the cottage; there were neighbours who vouched for his competence and who agreed to look out for him, which they did with a thoughtful distance. Tom was older than his years, his neighbours had said, more serious than people a decade older, and he didn’t seem to need them.

  The reality was that the gaping void from his grandfather’s death had stunned him into a state of near automatism. The appalling realisation he would never see him again, never hear his voice, never speak to the man whose kindness had never once faltered had floored him; it was too painful to contemplate, and so Tom had withdrawn into himself. The old childhood anxieties flooded back, and he found himself questioning the idea of fault once more.

  Giving up school, as he could no longer afford to stay, he found a position on a farm as a labourer, on the farm of a man whose sister was friends with the mother of the school friend who had taken him in – it was that sort of place. The other farmhands referred to Tom as a ‘that stuck-up bastard’. To them, Tom was absurdly reserved. They’d yell ‘Tally Ho!’ as he walked past, or work in pointed silence when one of them was assigned to a task with him. Bit by bit Tom’s wavering confidence had crumbled, until he really did think, like the child who tried not to be noticed by his parents, that there was something profoundly wrong with him.

  So, back in the trenches in early 1918, with a spiteful sleet cutting in from the east. Tom eased himself to a sitting position. The account had taken a long time, and Joss had sat quietly, listening.

  ‘I was left with a feeling of just being all wrong,’ Tom explained.

  Joss shook his head. ‘You’re the most un-wrong person I know.’

  ‘Is that a word?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Un-wrong.’

  ‘How could any child think that about themselves?’ Joss asked.

  Tom shrugged. ‘I think I was the reason my parents had to get married. It was a shot-gun wedding.’

  ‘That was their responsibility. Not yours.’

  ‘I think my mother must have been very frustrated by her lot. I can’t really remember much about her, but I suppose my being born landed mostly at her feet. They were very young when I was born. Too young.’

  Joss went to say something, but decided against it. ‘And you had a very hard time because of it,’ was all he did say.

  ‘There’s people a lot worse off than me, believe me, Joss. I had the best grandfather anyone could have had. He was a lovely person. A very decent human being.’

  ‘So was it straight from the farm to the trenches?’

  ‘I was with the farm for about eight years. The farm manager took me under his wing and trained me up to take over as steward when he retired, so I must have been doing something right. But then the war started and the farm owner decided that his son was going to have that position, and I was conscripted.’

  ‘Seems bloody unfair.’

  Tom shrugged again. ‘If I was in the father’s place, I would have done exactly the same thing. Who wouldn’t?’

  It was still dark when Joss woke, needing to urinate. Tiptoeing between the rows of sleeping men, he found his way to the barn door, went outside and pissed long and gratefully against the back wall. Nico followed and cocked his leg against an old pump. Eager to go back to the warmth and relative comfort of his bed, Joss found his mattress easily as Tom was sitting up.

  ‘Did I wake you?’ Joss whispered in the dark.

  ‘No. I’ve been awake for hours.’

  ‘Do you want to talk outside?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Picking their way through the sleeping men, they crept outside, with Nico clattering behind them. Wispy clouds raced across the sky, some arched like the leaping shape of panthers, others like a pattern of exploding Very lights. It was exceptionally mild, reminiscent of a warm night in high summer.

  ‘I wanted to walk away,’ Tom said as they sat down on the wall, ‘when we were at that ambush site.’

  ‘And been shot?’ Joss asked, sitting against him. Nico shuffled backwards and sat bolt upright between them, and then, as if he hadn’t really been trying to get between them, scratched his ears.

  ‘I didn’t think of that.’

  They lit cigarettes: Player’s Navy Cut, Tom’s favourite.

  Joss looked at him; there was a pinched, new expression on his face. ‘You should think of it. It sounds almost suicidal to me.’

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘If you walk off, either the Germans will shoot you, or you’ll be shot as a deserter from this side.’

  Tom’s expression closed in. ‘And who wouldn’t want to walk away from all this?’

  ‘If you feel that strongly, you can try registering an objection. You might be listened to.’

  ‘I don’t want that.’ The sharpness in Tom’s voice made Joss look at him again.

  Tom was glaring in front of him.
How could he say ‘I don’t want to leave you? I can’t live without you?’ Wouldn’t that be piling another layer of responsibility on to Joss? ‘I’m only staying because of you’ was an awful responsibility to fling at someone.

  Joss smoked the cigarette outwardly for a moment, lost in thought, then flinched and immediately cupped his hand around the lighted tip. It struck him that in a world after – ‘after’, was that possible? – this war, soldiers would know other front-line soldiers by this tic.

  ‘What’s shaken me is that I always thought I wanted to be a stretcher-bearer so I wouldn’t have to kill anyone,’ came Tom’s voice. ‘But it’s also because I don’t want to die.’

  ‘Who does?’

  ‘I wish I was like you,’ Tom said suddenly.

  ‘What, simplistic?’

  ‘No. You have a better way of looking at things.’

  ‘You mean I don’t punish myself?’

  ‘If that’s it, yes...

  Joss’s face was serious, unusual. ‘You will stop this dance with death thing, won’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  It was the definite way Tom said this that gave hope. Although, lurking in the back of his mind, Joss knew that with any addiction, intent and reality didn’t often converge.

  A light went on in the officer’s billets. Tom and Joss fled.

  ‘Now gentlemen,’ said Barratt to them late the next afternoon. ‘You will be told about bathing and changing of clothes.’

  There was an arrangement with a closed-down brewery a mile or so away, which heated water for the men in old vats. As they marched through the awakening countryside in the patches that hadn’t been blown apart, they started whistling, singing bawdy trench songs. The officers did their best to stop this, but in the end gave up, because as one group was quelled another began singing in a different part of the line; it was like trying to swat clever flies.

  Delicate threads of grass showed up in a discarded bale of straw, and in a few hawthorns that marked the line of an otherwise destroyed hedge, the first shimmer of blossom settled like fine snow on the bare twigs. Then the sun rose higher and it was clear, and felt almost like summer without the leaves. Inside the brewery, it smelled of old apples and malt. Men were feeding the boilers with coal and bundles of wood, while young refugee women took away piles of shirts and underclothes to launder in a nearby wash house. There were whistles and a few lewd suggestions, which stopped abruptly when Briggs walked into the barn.