The First of July(98)

“Can’t you move him?” he said. “He’s plumb in the way.”

“He’s ill.”

“He’s blithering dead.”

I put my hand up to Isaac’s mouth. I couldn’t feel or hear a breath. I touched the side of his neck, wondering if that was a faint shiver of a pulse but knowing it was my own heartbeats I could sense.

“Isaac,” I said in a whisper. “Isaac. Please.”

I pulled on his hand as if to wake him from sleep.

“Isaac,” I whispered and put his hand back across his chest. My jaw ached and my eyes burned as I looked down on my friend. Thinking that he had, in his way, fought to the end. Thinking that really he’d had enough of it. Maybe he’d turn out to be the lucky one.

I would have said a prayer, but who knows what words his people used. So, with my hand on his arm, I said:

Samuel Meyer, 14 Meyer Street, Stepney, London East.

And I said it three times.

Then I took his red tag from around his neck. He had the six-pointed star that they wear too, but that he kept with him. I left him with his cycle, the two of them curled up, facing each other, and looked back only once to make sure it was true.

I stood for a second. I touched my bayonet, then found myself stroking Nora’s crossbar because I knew now, for certain, that I would abandon her sooner or later. Then I shrugged Nora back into place. I thought of dumping her once and for all. I could say back at the depot that she’d been blown off my back, but it didn’t seem right. Not yet.

I set off as fast as I could, because the message of Isaac’s that I was carrying seemed likely to save other men’s lives. If I hadn’t been in the Army, I might have thought the other message was some secret code, but I knew for certain that they simply didn’t want to issue a pair of large boots. They’d have to make them specially. They’d cost. I expect Private Johnston was hobbling his way toward Montauban and the Germans, his monster feet crammed into size tens even now; judging by the size of them, he’d be a nice big target. For all the supply section knew, he’d already be dead and they’d wouldn’t have wasted money on a pair of size thirteen boots.

So I set off toward the trees, but by an indirect route. I don’t trust open ground, and I didn’t like the silence from the wood. So this is it, I’m thinking, I’ll get this over and then I’ll get back and have a think about Isaac. Now I’m just François Faber and it’s 1909 and I’m carrying my cycle to the finish.

But somewhere between the two—between the lane and the woods, out in the sunlight, somewhere not far from the river, Isaac had said, but a long way from anywhere you’d want to be—I see the German and he sees me and when it counts I can’t disentangle myself, or the rifle I haven’t fired since training, from Nora’s embrace. There’s just time to think you’ve had it this time, Frank Stanton, and so I do.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE


Benedict, France,

July 1, 1916, Midday


THE CYCLIST BOUGHT IN WITHIN minutes of them seeing him emerging where the track broke off. Their gun far back, deep in the trees, was silent; Benedict had given the order to cease fire at 0728 hours to allow the infantry to move forward. The infantry boys were, for a while, blasting away with the Lewis, drawing German fire on the copse, which severed the telephone wire.

It had been gloriously cool under the trees but hot in the clearing where the gun stood in freshly dug chalk. Two of the gunners had taken their shirts off, their backs oily. These were thin, sinewy men, and every time they lifted the shells, you could see every muscle working. Their bodies were young, perfect machines, every action coordinated. He let himself see the beauty in them.

He’d been about to send one of them back for further orders. He could easily spare a man, and it could only be a matter of time, he thought, until the next shell came closer. He’d noticed German spotter planes coming toward them, but on every occasion RFC pilots had scared them off. They’d been even quicker with the German balloons, which were hardly in the air before falling in a mass of flames. Were any of these planes Theo, he had wondered?

That’s when he saw the messenger through his field glasses. The cyclist. The ridiculous cyclist, carrying his cycle on his back. He was emerging from a track that was protected by a raised bit of earth and a stunted hedgerow. He looked to either side before coming out slowly into the open, his body bowed. Smith had seen him too. He moved forward slightly, though still within cover of the trees, and waved to try to show their position.

“Stupid fucker, ’scuse my French, sir,” Smith said. “He’s still got his blooming rifle strapped to the machine. What the hell’s he thinking?”