—

Jack, head bowed, gaze inward, sat in an exhausted attitude, one hand dangling between his knees and the other holding the nagging wound in his breast. His interrogator, Danny Turner, had left, and Otis had gone downstairs to fetch some food, whilst Jack was left nursing the exposed nerves of his mental wound which was a hundred times more painful than the physical one.

The man was hard, damned hard. Danny, the diminutive name, was, Jack suspected, preferred as sounding more disarming than Daniel. Wasn’t he himself Jack to his friends but John Clermont Moth when he wanted the edge on somebody? Had it been necessary for Turner to prise out every detail of Cully’s death?

Otis had protested on his behalf. ‘Danny, surely you can take my word that we can trust Jack?’

‘Nothing personal, Jack, you know that; but we have to know everything, we have to check.’

‘It’s all right, Otis,’ Jack said. ‘The man needs to know and it is time that I told somebody.’

‘Is it because he is related to George Moth, Danny?’ Meaning: Or is it because of Jack’s familiarity with me and you have a streak of jealousy? And because you were sceptical so that I almost needed to beg for him to be got away.

‘Anybody who has anything to do with the special police branch is bound to be suspect. You understand, Jack? Your father is no fool, he has not penetrated the organization, and it is my job to see that he never does. Look at it from my point of view. You are friendly with Victoria and Otis, your father offers Nancy Dickenson work, then Otis comes to me and says that Superintendent Moth’s son wants help…’

‘All right!’ Irritably because she had discovered that at one time or another she, and Victoria herself, had not been above suspicion. It was only when Otis and Victoria had shown themselves loyal by becoming conspirators in the ‘Underground’ movement that they were trusted.

There were others involved but they worked in separate cells where the only link was Danny Turner who had organized the escape routes to America and Dublin. America, having become involved in the war, was now cut off as a safe haven. The only route now was to Southern Ireland.

‘All right! But I feel cheapened that you cannot take my word for a close friend.’

‘Why don’t you go out for a while? Go downstairs and sit in Lou’s.’

She refused. ‘For God’s sake, Danny! Aren’t I part of this?’

Jack had looked sharply at her oath. She was severe and forceful. Like Victoria Ormorod – who in one character had cleaned the sleeve of his coat and smiled at him across the table on Southsea Pier, then metamorphosed into the fierce Red Ruby – so now it was with her protégée, Otis. The only similarity between this Otis and the silk-clad woman at the Cavendish – she who had devoured oysters with truffles, and soft fresh figs with such sensuousness – was the beauty of her face and figure.

He hated to think of the years that she had lived in this cramped little flat with its gas meter and its stairway directly on to the street, with its below-stairs smell of pastry and meat and apple; he hated to think of her donning the grey skirt and dark-blue blouse to go out every morning. And he hated to think that perhaps the good-looking Danny Turner, with his deceptive devil-may-care air, might have ruffled the white counterpane of the bed that was visible from where he was now seated.

Objectively, Jack, who had experience of questioning and cross-questioning, had been able to admire the man’s technique whereby one minute he was asking seemingly casual questions and the next shooting a question that stuck like a barbed arrow into Jack’s agonizing memory of Cully’s death, until in the end Jack had said, Why don’t you let me tell it in my own way. And he had done so, telling not the astute Danny Turner, but relating the whole dreadful episode to Otis.

‘You remember you sent me some socks and those Floris chocolates?’

Danny Turner’s sharp eyes flicked to Otis as she nodded.

‘I gave Cully the chocolates and he sat and ate them one after another with his back towards the rest of our little group, like a child. That’s what he was. He did things like that all the time. Although he was large he had a mental age of a young boy. Certain parts of him had never developed beyond that age, so that he had no beard and his hair and skin were almost babyish.’

‘Why did you call him Cully?’

‘His name was Cullington.’

‘I thought you said that you had been to see his parents who were called… Pearce, wasn’t it?’

‘They weren’t his true parents, though they brought him up.’

‘I see.’ Danny Turner smiled disarmingly. ‘Sorry, Jack, tell it your way.’

‘Some of the men tricked him into doing foolish things – a bit of amusement for them. It was something that riled me, and as I’m bigger than most men, I’ve always been able to use that to intimidate if I wished.’

Danny Turner smiled encouragingly.

‘Normally I don’t wish.’

That part of his story took ten minutes, building up for Otis his picture of Cully, of his childlike pleasure at possessing a weapon, and the danger to his own platoon when it was loaded.

‘Nobody who ever saw him could possibly have said that it was feasible for him to be in the army.’

‘So, by the time you went into this battle, you were the boy’s… what? Friend? Guardian?’

‘There were five or six of us, all trying to keep him out of trouble.’

‘But you didn’t succeed.’

‘No, no. We did not succeed. We failed most horribly – I failed.’

‘You shouldn’t take the blame of it on yourself, Jack. The blame lies at the door of whoever took the thirty pieces of silver to certify that Cully was fit and able.’ Danny Turner’s voice was gentle and sympathetic.

‘I’m not necessarily taking the blame – I am saying that we failed to protect a child from himself.’

‘In the heat of battle, Jack? Nobody could have done more.’ Otis’s voice was as sympathetic as Danny’s. He had already told her part of the story; even so she found his anguish hard to be with.

‘What happened was, quite suddenly, we came upon a dug-out with about six or seven of the enemy. It was as though for the first time he realized what was happening around him. He began to cry. We had recently been attached to a new unit composed of the remnants of several others. The officer was a brute. He had a reputation for harshness that he seemed to cherish. After an earlier battle he was reputed to have had men flogged for want of bravery. He was called Roper, which I had thought was because of the floggings – but that was his name. He was probably the most stupid and most vicious officer I ever had the misfortune to serve under. Any man who had served under his command would understand how it was that the Cullys of this world can be certified fit for active service, and how it is that there are men who will justify the sacrifice of 30,000 men to recover a couple of miles of territory.’

There was a small clunk and the gas-fire stopped hissing and the row of yellow flames disappeared. At once the room seemed to drop ten degrees in temperature. Familiarly, Danny opened a small tin on Otis’s mantelpiece and took out some penny coins which he dropped into the slot meter beside him. For a moment Jack’s attention was diverted by that small act indicating as it did that Danny Turner was no stranger to Otis’s rooms.

Soon, though, as he began to pour out his story, he looked only inwards at the images that his memory had obliterated during those long weeks in hospital.

Cully stood before Roper, his face streaming tears and the inner seams of his khaki trousers becoming dark and soaked. ‘I can’t! Don’t make me, I’m afraid, sir. They’m Germans and they wants to kill me,’ and so on, sobbing and becoming incoherent.

Roper, his revolver already in his hand, pointed it at Cully’s lower belly. ‘Bloody, pissabed! Half-witted bastard! Two seconds and you won’t need any bloody Germans – I’ll kill you myself.’ Jack, with his own rifle and bayonet as though petrified and fused to his hands, shouted, ‘Come on, Cully. Come on. It’s all right, they’re gone.’ Roper, with spittle of fury spotting his chin, had cocked his revolver. He fired into the air. ‘One!’ In spite of the screaming of injured men, and the rattle of machine-guns, that single report as the bullet left Cully’s rifle seemed to Jack to silence all other noise.

Roper, with a small hole in his cheek and an enormous one behind one ear from which spilled grey matter, twisted and fell as Cully also sunk to the ground, crying hysterically like the terrified child that he was.

Head bowed, with three fingers on her brow and thumb on her cheek, Otis covered her eyes. Danny Turner, his face showing the stress of listening to Jack’s anguished voice, stared at his own knees and drummed his fingers.

‘They wouldn’t let me see Cully at first, but when I insisted that I was going to act as Prisoner’s Friend at his Court-Martial, I was allowed a single visit. Because I was not an officer it was deemed that I could not act in that capacity. However, after a day or two of argument, somebody took the decision that in the interests of fair play, a private who was a qualified lawyer would serve better than an officer with no experience in law.’

Cully stood – as he had been told to stand by Jack – to attention, answering questions truthfully. The proceedings had not taken long. Cully not only admitted cowardice in the face of the enemy, but that he had shot his own commanding officer.

Both charges carried the death penalty.

The presiding officer agreed with the defence that the man was obviously not of high intelligence, but he had been passed as fit for service, and low intellect was not a suitable defence against either charge.

And so Private Cullington was sentenced to be shot by a party of riflemen. There were no grounds for appeal, and in the interest of humanity the sentence should be carried out at first light on the day following the trial.

‘I had one more visit. I don’t think that he had any idea of what had happened or what was going to happen. I ask you, how does one say: “Listen, Cully, they’re going to take you out and shoot you in the morning. Is there anything you would like me to say to your mother? Would you like a swig of rum to help you through?” What can you say to a boy like Cully in those circumstances?’

Danny Turner’s voice was thick. ‘I’ve heard enough.’ Jack halted him with his hand. ‘No. You have to hear. Not you, Otis. Why don’t you do as Danny says and go down to the shop?’

‘I’ll stay. If you and the boy went through it, it’s not much to ask that I sit and listen.’

‘The execution party which went out with picks and entrenching tools thought that they were a party of coal-picking volunteers. It was not until they reached the coal-mine and they saw the post and rope that they realized what it was that they had volunteered for. There was no going back, or they too would find themselves facing grave charges. Mutiny? Or carry out a death sentence on one’s own comrade? What a choice. From the outcome, it is likely that either every man suffered a fit of tremors, or he determined that he would not carry this particular death on his conscience.

‘Cully received wounds in every part of his body except where they would prove fatal. It fell to the officer in charge to give Cully the bullet of grace through the temple.’

‘Were you there?’

‘It was the least that I could do. It took less than ten minutes. Within hours the execution party was back in the thick of battle, doing mad heroic deeds, blindly winning medals. I was wounded, but I don’t remember how.’

There were a few long-drawn-out moments of silence. Then Jack said quietly, bitterly, ‘Well, Mr Turner, do you understand why, whatever you decide, I shall never again take aim at a fellow human being? Do you?’

Danny Turner stood up purposefully and held out his hand. ‘Nothing personal, Jack. I am doing what I have to do to protect the rest. It’s my job.’

There was a moment when it looked as though Jack Moth would not take his hand.

‘Isn’t that what we all say? It’s my job.’ Swallowing his bitterness, he grasped the proffered hand.

‘Join the pacifists of the world, Jack.’