CHAPTER FOURTEEN

HE SAW THAT LOOK again shortly before Angus’s death. Kenn’s battery was in position near Mametz Wood. Angus, who had emigrated to Canada some years before, had come to France as a private in the Canadian Infantry. Kenn, in writing him, had done his best to indicate his own whereabouts by references to the particularly hot time he was having. Angus replied that he was expecting an equally hot time pretty soon. In this round about way, helped out with trench gossip, Kenn felt sure that Angus was due to turn up in his sector of the line any day. This prospect excited him. He had a great longing to see his brother.

One evening he was sent out with two signallers to establish an observation post for his battery. In the half-dark of the dawn, returning from the observation post alone, he became uncertain of his way. There were many shattered trenches that his electric torch could not find on his map. Presently he came to a place where two trenches crossed. A glance at the map showed a junction at about this point. He had to go straight on. The grey light was coming strong. The eerie zero light. The line was unusually quiet. His face, hollow and frosted from lack of sleep and from hunger, smiled thinly; no consciousness of danger touched him. When the two signallers had left him alone, he had fallen to thinking of Angus. The night, the coming of the dawn—the end of the poaching foray. He knew this grey atmosphere with a deep intimacy. So did Angus. The grey dawn on the face like rime and the stomach flat. A sort of bodiless ease about it, friendly, with the pleasant humour that doesn’t give a damn. As he walked across the trench junction, he hardly stooped his head, and when a vicious phit! phit! spat behind his ears, he turned round. From the opposing bank a pellet of earth the size of a marble trickled down, as if some serpent head had pushed it out.

He realised in an instant what had happened. The bullet had missed him by some fraction of an inch. Instead of fear, he experienced a curious feeling of elation, of detachment. The scene of the rabbit snaring, with the marble of earth running down from under the feet of Joe and Angus, flashed upon his mind. That Saturday afternoon he had gone hunting them through the wood. Joe was in the Lovat Scouts. Angus was somewhere about. He was hunting them again. ‘I must be getting “hot”,’ he muttered, laughing to himself, and turned to go on and found a soldier staring at him.

‘Is that cross-section under observation?’ he asked.

‘Under observation! You can bloody well shake hands with yourself!’ The man’s astonishment was tinged with something like disgust. Apparently no one crossed that trench on his two feet and lived. The sniper up on the slope near Trônes Wood had it taped right to the foot. ‘I have crossed it crawling on my bloody guts, but I’m merely lucky.’

Kenn smiled. ‘Nothing like having a charmed life. Tell me this. Have you seen any Canadians about?’

The fellow blew his breath out. ‘Well, yes, I saw a bunch of them making a road some way back as we were coming up.’

‘I knew I was getting hot,’ said Kenn. …

The following afternoon he got a commission to go foraging in Albert for cigarettes, chocolate, fruit, and anything else his school French would help him to, and ran into the Canadians. They were a set of nice fellows and when Kenn told them that he was hunting his brother, they at once replied that they knew his brother, a crack hand with the mouth organ, all right. One of them volunteered to show Kenn the way, and later led him in the direction of Mametz Wood, and into a strongly fortified trench, which a fortnight before had been in the hands of the Germans. This trench was honeycombed with commodious dugouts fifteen to twenty feet below the ground. Kenn was told to go along until he came to the number he wanted, then to put his head in and shout. Every twenty yards or so there was an entrance with a battalion label fixed to it, and when Kenn came to the right number he entered and went down a step or two until he saw a faint light in the darkness. ‘Anyone of the name of Angus Sutherland?’ he shouted. ‘Yes,’ came the answer. He got down all the steps and on to the unevenly boarded floor. The place smelt strongly of mildew. There was no light other than a single candle stuck on a packing case. Beside the candle a figure was squatting on the floor with a canteen of tea beside him. Kenn’s heart turned over in him. The candle light made great hollows in the face of the squatting figure. The cheek bones stuck out. The eyes were dark and sunken and gleaming. Kenn went right up.

‘Hullo, Angus.’

There was a moment’s complete silence, then softly, on a note of wonder, came the voice he knew, ‘It’s no’ Kenn, is it?’

Angus got to his feet. He was tall and thin and the face emaciated. This change from the round-faced healthy brother of the old days struck Kenn strongly. But what lay behind it struck him desperately.

They shook hands. Four or five figures emerged. Angus pointed to Kenn’s six feet. ‘This is my little brother. When I saw him last he was so high!’ He laughed and introduced Kenn all round. Kenn saw that Angus was a favourite. One middle-aged man with grizzled hair was an inquiring fellow, and hospitality was carried along the flood of his talk. Angus’s voice lifted in excitement and with a Canadian inflection. But after a time Angus and Kenn naturally enough left the dugout to go and have a talk by themselves. ‘We’ll go this way,’ said Angus, and Kenn observed how careful he was to pick a quiet spot where no stray fragment could possibly get them. He was continuously on the watch, glancing hither and thither. When they sat down, Kenn did not like to look at his face.

‘I hope you’re taking care of yourself,’ were his first words. The Canadian inflection was gone. It was the old home voice, anxious, being friendly.

A queer sad warmth came to Kenn’s heart. ‘You bet I am,’ he answered.

‘There’s one thing I want to warn you about. Don’t take any chances. Don’t run any risks. Never mind what they say. If you’re asked to do a job, you’d have to do it, of course, but don’t volunteer. Remember that, whatever you do. It’s a fool’s game. Don’t you do it.’

He became very eager about this.

Kenn offered him a cigarette and as he held out the burning match glanced at his face and saw the nervous ghostly stranger inside.

‘How are you doing here?’

‘All right. Pretty safe here.’ Angus glanced about him. ‘I tell you I’m taking no risks now. I’ve had enough. And remember—don’t you do anything rash. If they want you to volunteer—let them! Don’t you. …’

‘Have you had it rough?’

‘Rough enough. I was pretty good with the rifle—’

‘Remember the time you smashed the heel of the bottle with Cormac’s twenty-two?’

Angus ridged his brows, then remembered the home incident. ‘Yes!’ The drawn skin on his face crinkled. ‘I was good with the rifle, so they made me a sniper up at Ypres. They painted me up all green and then I lay behind a boulder camouflaged by a bush commanding a trench-crossing, potting away at the Germans. It was deadly. God, you couldn’t help getting them. Far easier than rabbits. They knew I was there. Their bullets used to come over the stone, fluffing the shoulders of my tunic. They tried to get me in every way, shrapnel and all. And talking of rabbits, man, it was queer at night. You see I had the rifle trained so that I could even shoot in the dark. Not of course that I did regularly. But after a quiet spell I would have a pot shot, when I knew things were moving, and then, boy, you would hear a squeal, just like a rabbit!’ He laughed.

Kenn laughed too. He knew the rabbit squeal intimately. A blood warmth went over him.

‘Did you stick that long?’

‘Yes, a devil of a long time. How they didn’t get me earlier I don’t know yet. But shrapnel got me in the end—here in the shoulders—look.’

Kenn looked at the patched shoulders of the old tunic. ‘They might at least have given you a new tunic,’ he said. ‘Was it a bad one?’

‘Pretty bad. I was in hospital down at Boulogne for weeks. God, it was fine. I was getting on all right, when the telegram came that Father was dying. I thought nothing more on earth would ever move me to feel much, but dammit, man, the old home came over me, so I went to the c o and showed him the telegram and asked for leave. I never had any leave. I was a fool—but never again. Stick out for yourself—or they’ll do you down.’

‘What happened?’

‘The c o said, “Are you fit to travel?” I said, ‘Yes’— though I had meant not to be fit for a good long time. And I wasn’t fit really. However, never mind. “All right,” said the c o, “I’ll see what can be done.” So I waited, feeling pretty rotten one way or another, but looking forward, too, for I should like to have been at father’s funeral. I mean—but what’s the use of talking? Next day I got my answer. If I was fit enough to travel I was fit enough for the trenches. That night I was sent up to the front line.’

‘Pretty dirty trick,’ said Kenn.

‘Yes, wasn’t it?’ Angus went on talking in quick nervous tones. An unspeakable despondency crept upon Kenn. He got the talk round to home and the river.

At first Angus responded with a shallow interest; then all at once went back completely, with a sort of intimate remembering warmth that was almost intolerable.

Kenn felt his own reaction here as quite unreasonable and he fought it down and swapped word for word. But it was no use. Angus began asking after folk. Kenn did his best, laughing and telling, but there was a nerve thread of pain winding underneath that he had to swathe over or he might touch it and jump. It was the old river in a shadowy land. A land it would never flow out of. It was a nightmare in soft pleasant tones. An intimacy that closed over and suffocated. And Angus had no idea of the impression he was conveying. He was being wise, being cute. Take care, do no more than you must, don’t be a fool. And all the time the river as pure memory, receding … receding … until their talk became forced, their occasional chuckles harsh. Kenn was relieved when a friend of Angus’s came along.

He was a strapping young fellow, with fair hair, blue laughing eyes, and so clear a voice that the true Canadian accent sounded very attractive. A full-bred Canadian, and the sort of figure Kenn could imagine being picked for a gymnasium exhibition or the Olympic Games. He liked him at once, though feeling a little shy of him. For in some inexplicable way he recognised that not only did this Gus Mackay understand Angus’s condition, but looked after him with a delicate reticence.

When they had chatted about their respective jobs for a while, Gus said, ‘Oh, say, let us forget it! What I want to hear is more about the old country. My name is Gustavus—after the great Gustavus Adolphus!’ His smile lit up his eyes with sunny humour, ‘I am a Mackay out of the Mackay country— Strathnaver. I have an ancestor who fought with all the other Mackays—and a few of you—out of the Province of Cat, in the wars of Gustavus Adolphus. Do you know,’ he said, turning to Kenn, ‘that Angus here didn’t know what the Province of Cat meant!’

For an instant the eyes held Kenn, and then the Canadian-born clansman laughed. ‘Say, you’re not too sure yourself! And you call yourselves Highlanders!’

‘The Province of Cat,’ continued Gustavus, ‘was the Province of Caithness and Sutherland, and at one time it was the roof of Scotland. When this little affair is over, I’m going back with Angus and, from the highest of the granite peaks of Ben Laoghal, I’m going to show him our ancient heritage. That’s the one little trip we have promised ourselves. That so, Angus?’

‘Yes,’ said Angus. But the sound was thin as the expression on his face, which was concerned with its own problems again.

The eyes of Kenn and the Canadian met—and parted instantly.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ said Kenn quickly. ‘I’ll make an offer. We may not know much about the history, but we know a lot about the ground itself. We’ll take you up our river and we’ll show you all its pools, and we’ll poach salmon, and we’ll watch the sun rise behind the Orkneys from the top of Morven or Ben Laoghal. How’s that?’

‘That would be wonderful! Absolutely wonderful! Is it a promise?’

‘Yes,’ said Kenn.

‘Why you smiling?’ asked Gustavus.

‘I was thinking,’ said Kenn, ‘about the first time I ever saw Angus land a salmon. It was at a pool called Achglas.’

‘Ach-glas—the grey field,’ said Gustavus.

‘Yes, there is a field below it,’ Kenn nodded. ‘It was once cultivated, too. You can see the broad swathes still. All that’s on it now is the cry of the curlew and the peewit.’

‘The curlew and the peewit! The words used to make my grandmother homesick. Hear that, Angus? The cry of the curlew and the peewit. Incantation of the old Druids!’

Kenn turned from this high note and in an ordinary voice, quiet as if he were asking for a fill of tobacco, said to his brother, ‘Do you remember that time? They were at the heather-burning. We lay for a while on the Hawk’s Hol, and then went on and down to Achglas. There was a fish under the ledge and you made me try to see him in the brown water.’

‘Yes,’ said Angus, But he did not seem to care about remembering. As if all this talk were now taking up too much of his time. It made him restless. The smile on his face crinkled the drawn skin.

Kenn went deliberately on to relate to Gustavus the story of the landing of the fish, but, when he came to a memory that roused Angus, the effect upon himself was again that of touching a raw nerve. And once Angus looked about him with a sudden start as if in the short absence of thought something might have crept nearer. For there was no reality in the river. There was no reality outside the world in which he was. And the wariness and cuteness served merely to emphasize how inevitable and unending was its maze, with the trapped mind doomed to dodge about for ever.

Kenn got to his feet. Gustavus immediately began making arrangements for another meeting, then shook hands with Kenn and left them.

‘Well, I’ll have to get along. What are you doing for a bit?’ Kenn asked.

‘Nothing, but—’

‘Come on over to the battery with me now. We’ll have a good feed.’

‘No, no, thanks. And you’re not cutting across that way? There was heavy shelling there lately—and there’s no cover.’

‘Oh, it’s quite safe. Come on, we’ll be all right.’

‘No, I’m going back. I’m taking no chances. And look here, you should take care. …’

Kenn listened, but could not look at his brother. A dreadful awkwardness came upon him, and at the same time a desire to speak. They shook hands. ‘I’ll come again,’ said Kenn, with a desperate smile, and walked off. Out of earshot, he began to curse. He cursed the mud and what came in his way. Disappointment was earth in his mouth.

‘Where the bloody hell do you think you’re going?’

He looked at the artillery man who was barring his way. He had been about to pass in front of the lean barrels of sixty-pounders. He apologised. The fellow looked in his face. ‘Righto, mate!’

Kenn went on. The feeling of being hunted began crawling up behind himself. That’s what really happened in life. The fellow who was cocksure got it in the neck while the fellow who was always ill or dying or dodging the issue lived to ninety. Himself and the Canadian might get blown to blazes, while Angus would go on missing the packet that was behind his ear. … The mood of fatalism began to settle on him. His eyes started staring in front. A crash behind him, however, and he was flat as a rabbit, holding his breath and trembling. The truth was he was going windy! He swore at that, in oaths that were unusual in his mouth. His eyes were now over his shoulders, quick and alert as a hunted beast’s, but with something cunning and malignant in them purely human.

He no longer cared about Angus’s condition. If the fellow went like that, well he could go, God damn him.

This bitterness stayed with him a whole week and generated its own humour, a detached, reckless, but human and kindly humour. He found himself doing things for the other fellows with an easy generosity. He was skating on the surface of himself, and discovered an airy freedom in the exercise. When the skin of ice cracked he pulled his foot out pretty smartly. Occasionally his whole body would convulse, and with a thick oath his mind would seize his body and throw it before thought could come along.

Angus inhabited his mind, but not visually. There were moments, however, when he saw him without, as it were, pausing to look at him, when in fact he himself was doing something or listening to a fellow and ready to answer back laughing. And the way he saw him was always the same. There was a great black wood and Angus was moving about just outside it but in its shadow, with the alert preoccupied movements of neither the hunter nor the hunted but of an in-between state. Kenn never paused to think this out. He saw him anyway from behind, the back of the head or, at most, the listening side face with its pallor in the shadow. For the point was that he had forgotten Kenn, had forgotten everyone, precisely as he used to forget Kenn in a moment of desperate or defeated salmon-poaching.

Whether in these last days he was thus brushed entirely from Angus’s mind, Kenn never found out. Did the actual Angus, the living, hunted, miserable figure (and not this shadowy mythical one) have occasionally his throw-backs to real intense memories? Sharp bodily convulsions, when the mind cried out, cried back, cried like the frightened curlew down the straths of the past? Not a vague memorizing, but like the peewit, pee-z-wit, the two-fold wing-beat fierce and sibilant, thickening in the throat, pee-th-wit! as it flashed to earth?

   

When Kenn saw the Canadian coming, he knew it was all over with Angus. Weakness beset him in a warm blood-flushing. The pith melted from his flesh.

Yes, it was over.

‘We went through a hellish barrage. He was pretty badly shot up.’

Kenn looked at the Canadian, who avoided his eyes. His features, normally so frank and clear, had a congested shame in them.

‘You did not get back then for your rest?’

‘No. As you know, everyone was shoved into that last push. We were rounded up and sent back. Right into it.’

‘Did he live long?’

‘Oh God yes,’ said the Canadian. His whole body winced. ‘Shrapnel in his back and legs. He was lying out in front of us. We could see him. We said to the officer we would go out for him. He said it meant death. Heavy machine-gun fire. We said we would go. He handled his revolver. He said he would shoot anyone who made a move to go.’

‘What sort of officer?’

‘Bloody young whipper-snapper.’

There was silence.

‘Did he lie there all day?’

‘Yes,’ said Gustavus. ‘We could have saved him. We should—have—saved him. … In the dark, I brought him in. But he had bled too much.’

‘Did he live long?’

‘Another ten hours.’

It was a long time.

They saw sufficient corpses any day to make death common enough. Perhaps the apprehension of this particular death had been drawn out too long.

Kenn slid down through his legs without any feeling of discomfort. Better sitting anyway. A trifle sick, that was all. He smiled to Gustavus with a sardonic, glancing brilliance. The brilliance gathered into tears that ran down his smiling face.

He was now staring in front of him, breathing heavily through his nostrils, his chest swelling, like one taking ether gas. Then his chin drooped to his chest.

The Canadian looked down at the figure, the tears, the rasping sobs, the hands with their backs to the mud. The head rolled from side to side. ‘Ah Christ!’ muttered the mouth bitterly.

The Canadian leant back hard against the trench for a little. Then he turned and walked away.