Birdsong. Part 37

There was only the sound of digging, which, he could now no longer deny to himself, was hopelessly distant, and the weight of the earth to keep him company. He found matches in his pocket. There was no one to forbid him his craving for light. Somehow he desisted.

He cursed Jack for dying, for not believing in the possibility of rescue. Then his anger faded and his mind narrowed its efforts to the distant rhythmic sound of pick on chalk. While the sound was there it was like the beat of his own pulse. He took his knife from his pocket again and began to knock the end as strongly as he could against the wall by his head.

After four hours of digging Levi and Lamm had made little impact. Levi called up to Kroger that he should come down and replace Lamm.

While he was waiting for Kroger to arrive, Levi sat down and rested. It had become a matter of honour for him to find his brother's companions. Joseph would not have wanted him to be the kind of man who allowed personal grief to deflect him. It was not so much his own honour as Joseph's that was at stake. His actions could restore some dignity to the broken body.

Above the rasp of his breathing, very faintly, he heard a tapping sound. He pressed his head against the wall and listened. It could have been a rat, he thought at first, but it was too rhythmic and too far underground. There was something about the quality of the sound that made it clear it was coming from a considerable distance: only a human being could have had the strength to make the noise carry. Kroger jumped off the end of the rope and Levi called him over. Kroger listened.

He nodded. "There's definitely someone there. Slightly up from here, I think, but roughly parallel. It doesn't sound strong enough to be a pick or a spade. I think it's someone trapped."

Levi smiled. "I told you we should carry on."

Kroger looked doubtful. "The question is, how are we going to get through? There's a lot of chalk between us."

"We'll start by blowing it. Just a controlled explosion. I'll go up and send Lamm down in my place. He can lay a charge."

Levi's face was set in determined enthusiasm. Kroger said, "Suppose this noise is being made not by our men but by one of the enemy who's still trapped?" Levi's eyes widened. "I don't believe anyone could be alive after all this time. And supposing it was, then... " He spread his hands wide and shrugged.

"Then what?" said Kroger briefly.

"Then it would be the man who killed my brother and his two companions." Kroger looked at him unhappily. "An eye for an eye... You're not thinking about revenge are you?"

Levi's smile faded. "I'm not thinking of any specific action. My faith provides me with guidance for anything. I am not afraid to meet him, though, if that's what you mean. I should know what to do."

"We should take him prisoner," said Kroger.

"That's enough," said Levi. He went to the foot of the rope and called out to Lamm to bring him up.

Lamm, who had been on the point of falling asleep, said nothing as Levi told him what he wanted him to do. He prepared a charge and slipped it into his pack, then went down the rope.

The mixture of chalk and soil proved difficult for him and Kroger to excavate. It took five hours before they had made a hole for the charge that satisfied Lamm. Levi changed places with him to help Kroger. They filled sandbags and packed them in tightly behind the explosive.

Kroger stopped to drink some water and eat more of the meat and biscuit he had brought. Levi declined his offer.

He was beginning to feel lightheaded with grief and fatigue, but he was determined to maintain his fast. He worked on furiously, ignoring the sweat that stung his eyes and the trembling of his fingers as he filled the sandbags. He did not know what or whom he expected to find behind the wall; he felt only the compulsion to carry on. His curiosity was linked to his sense of loss. The death of Joseph could only be explained and redeemed if he could find the man still living and confront him.

They laid the wires and retreated to their safe place at the foot of the long incline back towards the surface. They could hear the sound of heavy sh.e.l.ling, varied by mortar and machine-gun fire from the air above. The attack had begun. Lamm sank the detonator and the ground shook beneath their feet. There was a hot, breathy roar that ebbed, then flowed again. For a moment it sounded as though fireb.a.l.l.s of earth and chalk were coming for them through the tunnel. Then the sound ebbed a second time and died into quietness.

They went back quickly through the low, timbered entrance, crawled, shuffled, and ran back to the top of the dip into the earth below. A cloud of chalk made them cough and retreat for a minute until it had subsided.

Levi told Kroger to stay behind while Lamm went down with him. He wanted Lamm's a.s.sessment of the blast, and he doubted Kroger's whole-heartedness. They went through the hole made by the explosion, digging and enlarging as they went. It had taken them right into the main British listening post. They examined the foreign timbering with quizzical interest.

"Listen." Levi laid his hand on Lamm's forearm.

The sound of tapping was frantic and much closer than before.

Levi was so excited that he leapt into the air, banging his head against the roof of the chamber. "We're there," he said. "We've made it." They had blown away what separated them. Now they had only to dig through and reach with their hands.

In his narrow s.p.a.ce Stephen was rocked by the new explosion. He rolled on to his front and covered his head with his arms against the imagined fall of the world. But although the noise rebounded from the walls, they stayed secure.

He began to kick and buck within the confines of where he lay. The claustrophobia he had kept at bay now gripped him. The thought of men moving freely close at hand and the fear that they might not hear or reach him let loose his panic.

In his thras.h.i.+ng he dislodged earth that had been shaken by the blast. A heavy fall on his legs made him stop for a moment and hold himself tight in selfcontrol. He resumed his knocking with the b.u.t.t of his knife and began to shout as loudly as he could. "I'm here. Over here."

He pictured the men of Weir's company, their cheerful faces grinning beneath their helmets as they hacked their way toward him. Who would they be? Which ones had been sent for him? He could remember no names or faces. There had been Jack, but he was dead alongside him. A vacant-looking man with fair hair, Tyson, but he had died long ago. And these small ones who never seemed to be standing upright, even in the open air, though perhaps they too had been underground with him when the first blast went off.

Stephen felt his mind become extraordinarily clear. It was filled with pictures of the normal world, the world inhabited by women, where people moved in peace and made love and drank, and there were children and commerce and laughter. He thought of Jeanne and of the astonis.h.i.+ng smile that rose like a sunburst to her eyes. The hideous, cramped world of earth and sweat and death was not the only reality; it was a confining illusion, a thin prison from which he would burst forth at any moment.

His thirst and his fatigue were forgotten; he was alive with a pa.s.sion for the world, for the stars and trees, and the people who moved and lived in it. If they could not reach him, he would throw off the walls of the earth, he would scratch, eat, and swallow his way out of them and up into the light.

"Keep going." Levi laughed, a flame in his eyes. His skin was s.h.i.+ning with sweat as he worked his pick into the wall, where they had peeled back the timbers. Lamm screwed up his face under matted hair and squinted at him from the light of the lantern.

"Go on," shouted Levi, "go on."

He was close to delirium as he heaved his pick once more into the earth. In his mind he saw only the features of his dear brother Joseph. How much he had loved him and lived through him; how much he had wanted Joseph to be like himself, but better, to profit from his experience and make something that would honour the n.o.ble nature of his parents and their family before them. Lamm worked on in an urgent rhythm, the slabs of muscle on his shoulders sliding back and forth beneath the drenched grey vest as the pick demolished the intervening earth.

Working ten yards along from Levi, he struck air. He was through. He shouted out. Levi pushed him aside and began to dig frantically with his hands, throwing out the earth behind him like a dog. He called out to the trapped man. They were coming, they were with him.

It was Levi's work, not Lamm's, that had loosened the earth sufficiently at the end of Stephen's coffin for him to be able to crawl out of it, over the fallen body of Jack Firebrace.

On hands and knees he moved back among the debris his own explosion had made. About a yard further along he could see where the tunnel was still intact. It was here that Lamm had broken through. Levi pushed Lamm back and climbed into the British tunnel himself. Tricked by the echo of Stephen's tapping, he turned the wrong way, and began to walk away from him.

Gurgling and spitting earth, Stephen clawed his way forward, shouting as he went. He could see light from some lantern swaying in the tunnel ahead of him. There was air. He could breathe.

Levi heard him. He turned and walked back.

As the tunnel roof lifted, Stephen moved up into a crouch and called out again. The lantern was on him.

He looked up and saw the legs of his rescuer. They were clothed in the German feldgrau, the colour of his darkest dream.

He staggered to his feet and his hand went to pull out his revolver, but there was nothing there, only the torn, drenched rags of his trousers.

He looked into the face of the man who stood in front of him and his fists went up from his sides like those of a farm boy about to fight.

At some deep level, far below anything his exhausted mind could reach, the conflicts of his soul dragged through him like waves grating on the packed s.h.i.+ngle of a beach. The sound of his life calling to him on a distant road; the faces of the men who had been slaughtered, the closed eyes of Michael Weir in his coffin; his scalding hatred of the enemy, of Max and all the men who had brought him to this moment; the flesh and love of Isabelle, and the eyes of her sister. Far beyond thought, the resolution came to him and he found his arms, still raised, begin to spread and open.

Levi looked at this wild-eyed figure, half-demented, his brother's killer. For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other's shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives.

They helped Stephen to the bottom of the rope and gave him water. They lifted him up, and Levi walked with his arm round him to the end of the tunnel while Lamm and Kroger went back into the darkness to bring out the body of Jack Firebrace. Levi guided Stephen's slow steps up the incline toward the light. They had to cover their eyes against the powerful rays of the sun. Eventually they came up into the air of the German trench. Levi helped Stephen over the step.

Stephen breathed deeply again and again. He looked at the blue and distant sky, feathered with irregular clouds. He sat down on the firestep and held his head in his hands.

They could hear the sound of birds. The trench was empty.

Levi climbed on to the parapet and raised a pair of binoculars. The British trench was deserted. He looked behind the German lines, but could see nothing in front of the horizon, five miles distant. The dam had broken, the German army had been swept away.

He came down into the trench and sat next to Stephen. Neither man spoke. Each listened to the heavenly quietness.

Stephen eventually turned his face up to Levi. "Is it over?" he said in English.

"Yes," said Levi, also in English. "It is finished." Stephen looked down to the floor of the German trench. He could not grasp what had happened. Four years that had lasted so long it seemed that time had stopped. All the men he had seen killed, their bodies, their wounds. Michael Weir. His pale face emerging from his burrow underground. Byrne like a headless crow. The tens of thousands who had gone down with him that summer morning. He did not know what to do. He did not know how to reclaim his life. He felt his lower lip begin to tremble and the hot tears filling his eyes. He laid his head against Levi's chest and sobbed. They brought up Jack's body and, when the men had rested, they dug a grave for him and Joseph Levi. They made it a joint grave, because the war was over. Stephen said a prayer for Jack, and Levi for his brother. They picked flowers and threw them on the grave. All four of them were weeping.

Then Lamm went looking in the dugouts and came back with water and tins of food. They ate in the open air. Then they went back into the dugout and slept. The next day Stephen said he would have to rejoin his battalion. He shook hands with Kroger and Lamm, and then with Levi. Of all the flesh he had seen and touched, it was this doctor's hand that had signalled his deliverance. Levi would not let him go. He made him promise to write when he was back in England. He took the buckle from his belt and gave it to him as a souvenir. _Gott mit uns. _Stephen gave him the knife with the single blade. They embraced again and clung to each other.

Then Stephen climbed the ladder, over the top, into no-man's-land. No hurricane of bullets met him, no tearing metal kiss.

He felt the dry, turned earth beneath his boots as he picked his way back toward the British lines. A lark was singing in the unharmed air above him. His body and his mind were tired beyond speech and beyond repair, but nothing could check the low exultation of his soul.

ENGLAND 1979--PART SEVEN.

Elizabeth was worried about what her mother would say when she told her she was pregnant. Francoise had always been strict about such things, to the extent that Elizabeth had not told her that her boyfriend was married. "He works abroad," she had been able to say, when Francoise had wanted to know why they had never been introduced.

She postponed the moment when she would have to tell her, but by March she was beginning to put on weight. Rather than work it into the conversation during one of her teatime visits to Twickenham, she decided to invite her mother up to dinner in London and make a celebration of the announcement. Part of the reason, she admitted to herself, was to wrong-foot Francoise, to put her on the defensive; but she hoped that her mother would share in her own happiness at the prospect. The date was fixed and the restaurant was booked.

Telling Erich and Irene was also awkward because her pregnancy meant she would be away from work for a time. Erich took the news as a personal slight against him and his son, who, he irrationally believed, ought to have been the father of Elizabeth's children, even though he was contentedly married to someone else. Irene was also displeased. Elizabeth could not understand. Irene was one of her best friends: she took her side in everything. Yet with this most important news, she seemed unable to share Elizabeth's joy and excitement. She muttered a good deal about marriage and the family. A few weeks after Elizabeth had first told her, Irene came into her room at work to apologize.

"I don't know why, but I was a bit put out when you told me about the baby. I expect it's just the old green-eyed monster. I'm very pleased for you, dear. I've already made these for it." She gave Elizabeth a paper bag in which was a pair of knitted woollen socks.

Elizabeth hugged her. "Thank you. I'm sorry I was so tactless. I really should have thought. Thank you, Irene."

When people asked her who the father of the child was, Elizabeth refused to tell them. To begin with they were affronted. "It's bound to leak out, you know," said the ones who had not heard about Robert. "You can't expect the child not to have a father." Elizabeth shrugged and said she would manage. Those who did know about Robert presumed he was responsible. Elizabeth said, "I'm not telling you. It's a secret." Their irritation eventually died down, and with it their curiosity. They had their own business to attend to, and if Elizabeth was going to be silly about it, that was up to her. So, as she had thought, it was possible to keep a secret: people's nosiness was finally exceeded by their indifference; or, to put it more generously, you were allowed to make your own life.

Elizabeth was due to meet her mother on a Sat.u.r.day evening. In the morning she finished reading the last of her grandfather's notebooks, translated by Bob's arachnoid hand. They went into considerable detail. There was a long account of his burial underground with Jack Firebrace and the conversations they had had. Elizabeth was particularly struck by a pa.s.sage, somewhat unclear in Bob's rendering, in which they appeared to have talked about children, and whether either of them would have them after the war. "I said I would have his," was how the exchange appeared to end. Much clearer was the paragraph in which Stephen recalled Jack's love for a son called John.

Having read all the notebooks as well as two or three more books about the war, Elizabeth finally had some picture in her mind of what it had been like. Jeanne, or Grand-mere as Elizabeth knew her, made several appearances toward the end, though the narrative gave away nothing of what Stephen might have felt for her.

"Kind" was the tepid word most often applied to her in Bob's translation; "gentle" made the occasional appearance. It was not the language of pa.s.sion. Elizabeth did some calculations on a piece of paper. Grand-mere born 1878. Mum born... she was not sure exactly how old her mother was. Between sixty-five and seventy. Me born 1940. Something did not quite add up in her calculations, though it was possibly her own arithmetic that was to blame. It didn't really matter. She dressed and made up carefully for the evening. She tidied her flat and poured herself a drink as she waited for her mother. She stood in front of the fire and straightened the things on the mantelpiece: a pair of candlesticks, an invitation, a postcard, and the belt buckle, which she had cleaned and polished so it shone with the glittering fervour it must have had when first cast: _Gott mit uns._ When Francoise arrived she opened a half-bottle of champagne.

"What are we celebrating?" said Francoise, smiling as she raised her gla.s.s.

"Everything. Spring. You. Me." She found the news harder to break than she had expected.

The restaurant she had chosen was one that been recommended by a friend of Robert's. It was a small, dark place in Brompton Road that specialized in northern French cooking. It had benches covered in scarlet plush, and brown smoky walls with oil paintings of Norman fis.h.i.+ng ports. Elizabeth was disappointed when they first arrived. She had expected something brighter with a noisy clientele more appropriate to an evening of good news.

They studied the menu as the waiter tapped his pen against his notepad. Francoise ordered artichoke and sole Dieppoise, Elizabeth asked for mushrooms to begin with, then fillet of beef. She ordered expensive wine, Gevrey Chambertin, not sure if it was red or white. They both drank gin and tonic while they waited. Elizabeth ached for a cigarette.

"Have you completely given up?" said Francoise, seeing her daughter's nervous hands.

"Completely. Not one," Elizabeth smiled.

"And have you put on weight as a result?"

"I... well, a bit I think."

The waiter arrived with the first courses. "For you, Madame? The artichoke? And for you the mushrooms? Which of you ladies would like to taste the wine?" When he finally left them and they had started to eat, Elizabeth said awkwardly, "I have put on a little weight, I think, but it's not because of giving up smoking. It's because I'm expecting a baby." She braced herself for the response. Francoise took her hand. "Well done. I'm delighted."

Elizabeth, with tears in her eyes, said, "I thought you'd be annoyed. You know--because I'm not married."

"I'm just pleased for you, if it's what you want."

"Oh yes. Oh yes. It's what I want all right." Elizabeth smiled. "You don't seem very surprised."

"I suppose I'm not. I noticed that you'd got a little heavier. And that you'd stopped smoking. You told me it was a New Year's resolution, but you'd never managed to keep it before."

Elizabeth laughed. "All right. Now aren't you going to ask who the father is?"

"Should I? Does it matter?"

"I don't think it does. He's happy about it--well, happy enough. He's going to help support it financially, though I didn't ask him to. I think it'll be all right. He's a very nice man."

"That's fine then. I won't ask any more."

Elizabeth was surprised by how calmly Francoise had taken the news, even if she had guessed and therefore had time to prepare herself. "You don't mind that your grandchild will be born to a woman who isn't married?"

"How could I mind?" said Francoise. "My own mother wasn't married to my father."

"Grand-mere?" Elizabeth was amazed.

"No. Grand-mere is not my real mother." Francoise looked tenderly at Elizabeth. "I've often meant to tell you, but somehow there seemed no need. It's so unimportant really. Your grandfather married Grand-mere, Jeanne, in 1919, after the war. But I was already seven years old then. I was five by the time they first met!"

"I _thought _it didn't add up! I was doing some sums after I'd been reading his notebooks. I put it down to my bad maths."

"Are there references to someone called Isabelle in these books?"

"A couple, yes. An old girlfriend, I a.s.sumed."

"She was my mother. She was Jeanne's younger sister."

Elizabeth looked wide-eyed at Francoise. "So Grand-mere was not really my grandmother?"

"Not in the flesh, no. But she was to all intents and purposes. She brought me up and she loved me like her own child. Your grandfather went to stay with a family before the war. He had an affair with Isabelle and they ran away together. When she discovered she was pregnant, she left him and eventually went back to her husband. Years later, during the war, your grandfather met Grand-mere in Amiens. She took him to see Isabelle again, but Isabelle made Grand-mere promise she would not tell him about the baby."

"And the baby was you?"

"That's right. It was a silly subterfuge. I don't know. She just wanted to spare his feelings. He didn't find out until he was about to marry Jeanne. I was sent to Jeanne from Germany, where I had been living, because my real mother had died. She died of flu."

"Of flu? That's impossible."

Francoise shook her head. "No. There was an epidemic. It killed millions of people in Europe just after the end of the war. Isabelle had always said that if anything should happen to her, Grand-mere was to bring me up. That was agreed between them when she first went to Germany with the man she had fallen in love with. He was a German called Max."