Jack Firebrace’s application for leave to visit his son was turned down. “I’ve thought about it,” said Weir. “I’m sympathetic to the fact that you haven’t been home for a year. But the truth is that with so many men out here now it’s a hell of a job shifting them backward and forward. The roads are jammed with supplies as it is. You’ll have to wait your turn.”
Jack went back underground. The tunnel head in the trench concealed a vertical timbered shaft from which two tunnels had been dug. The first, at thirty feet, had run into trouble with German mining efforts. There had been fighting at close quarters underground. It was better being in clay than chalk. Frequent explosions caused the chalk to fragment; it mixed with water that had seeped down from shellholes in no-man’s-land to make a viscous liquid that was sometimes coloured with the leaking blood of miners who had been pulverized by blasts. Following instructions from his superiors, Weir ordered a second tunnel to be driven at a level of seventy feet. It was, according to the rule book, to be only three feet wide.
“I don’t like it,” said Tyson, who was lying flat on the ground behind Shaw and Evans. “I’ve never seen anything as narrow as this in all my life.” Where they pressed the timbers in a little further back the men had lanterns, but at the face it was dark.
Jack tried not to imagine the weight of earth on top of them. He did not think of the roots of trees, stretching down through the soil. In any case they were too deep now. He had always survived in London by picturing the tunnel in which he worked as a railway compartment at night: the shutters were closed over a small space, you could not see anything, but outside a wide world of trees and fields beneath an open sky was whistling safely by in the darkness. When the space was no more than three feet wide and he had the earth pressing in his mouth and eyes, the illusion became difficult to sustain.
Evans’s hands scrabbled away tirelessly behind him: Jack heard his rasping breath sucking in what oxygen the air-feed had managed to deliver. Evans’s presence was a comfort to him. On the surface he cared little for his ferrety face and sarcastic jokes, but here their breathing and their hearts worked as though in one body.
Shaw came to relieve him at the face. He had to crawl over Evans’s body, then haul Jack off the cross and flatten himself on the tunnel floor so Jack could get over him and go back down the tunnel. Even twenty yards back they could not stand up, but they could crouch and stretch each limb in turn. The air was bitter and the lamps showed the timbering to have been done with reassuring precision.
“Ten minutes’ rest,” said Weir. “Make the most of it.”
“Shouldn’t you be in your dugout having a nice cup of tea?” said Jack. “I bet none of the other company commanders go underground.”
“I’ve got to keep an eye on you lot,” said Weir. “Until this thing’s going_
_properly anyway.”
The men were allowed to speak without deference to the officers underground. It was a way of acknowledging that conditions in the tunnel were difficult. By talking as though they were in a civilian mine they were also able to remind themselves of the differences between them and the infantry; they might be sewer rats, but they were better paid.
“Let’s play Fritz,” said Evans. It was a superstitious game that was popular with the miners though incomprehensible to the officers.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” said Weir. “Be very quiet, if you must.”
“Right,” said Evans. “I say he’s twenty-five, married with two kids. He’s ten feet from the chamber.”
“I say there’s four of them,” said Jack. “They’re in the fighting tunnel now. Ten feet by teatime says we’ll get there first.”
Evans had a scoring system based on the number of feet the tunnel was driven in a day. The purpose of the game was to predict where the enemy was. The winner would see him dead; the loser could only secure his safety by paying the others in cigarettes. Weir understood neither the rules nor the scoring, but allowed it on the grounds that it distracted the men and increased their awareness of the enemy. Turner, significantly in his colleagues’ eyes, had lost five days running, including a game on the morning of his death.
That afternoon Weir had a message to see Captain Gray, whom he found inspecting supplies in the rear.
We haven’t met, have we?” said Gray. “Your men are doing a good job. It must be bloody awful under there.”
“No worse than being shelled. We just don’t want to be caught. Your men are frightened of being blown up from below, mine are scared of being trapped in a tunnel three feet wide with people firing at them. Did you get my request?”
“Yes I did. Of course you must have proper defence. I appreciate that. But you must understand that my men are not used to being underground. Have they done all right so far?”
“Yes, they’ve done fine. But we need a regular rota.”
“And you really can’t spare your own men?”
“Not now we’ve got a lower tunnel. They’re working round the clock. It’s only a patrol at a time. Three or four men would do it.”
“All right,” said Gray. “As you may know, I have some doubts about how useful it is blowing craters for the enemy to occupy, but I’m not going to quibble over your men’s safety. I’m going to ask Wraysford to take charge. You know him, I think.”
“Yes, I do.”
“Sound man?”
“I think so,” said Weir.
“Bit of an odd fish,” said Gray. “I’ll speak to him later. They can start tonight.” Stephen asked for volunteers. “We’ll take a sewer rat to show us the way, but I need two others. We’ll be in a fighting tunnel. We won’t have to crawl.” No one offered. “All right, I’ll take Hunt and Byrne.”
He went to see Sergeant Adams to ask which of the diggers would go with them.
“They’re sending up a volunteer right away, sir. It’ll be the man who lost at Fritz.”
It was Jack who, in addition to giving Evans five cigarettes, was required to escort the men down into the tunnel. They took gas masks and attached grenades to their belts. At ten o’clock they went to the tunnel head.
Stephen gave a final look at the sky before following Jack down the shaft. He had never been underground before. He felt a brief wave of tenderness toward the open world under its endless sky, perverted though it was by the twisted rolls of barbed wire over the shell-torn earth in an atmosphere that might as soon bring fragments of metal as breathable air.
The rungs of the ladder that led down the shaft had been made for durability; his hands felt no fine sanding on the splintery wood. They were set at irregular intervals so that it was difficult to achieve any rhythm in the descent. He had to struggle to keep up with Jack Firebrace. At first he was careful not to tread on his fingers, but soon all he could see was the occasional bobbing and gleam of a helmet far below.
Stephen eventually stepped off the ladder where Jack was waiting. For a moment the darkness and silence reminded him of childhood games, when he and the other boys would dare each other to enter some long-closed cellar or disused well. He was frightened by the dank smell of the earth and the implacable weight of matter. The shell craters on the surface were no more than scratches compared to this crushing volume. If it moved or slipped there would be no second chance, no possibility of fighting back or escaping with only a wound. Even Reeves’ younger brother, under the full blast of a howitzer shell, had stood a better chance. Hunt and Byrne looked round uneasily. They carried rifles and had borrowed miners’ helmets in place of their soft service caps. Stephen had a revolver and all of them had grenades, which Weir told them were likely to be their most effective weapon in case of trouble.
Jack spoke in a low voice. “I’ve heard German movement coming this way. We need to protect our men laying the charge and also the lower tunnel, which they won’t know about. We’re going through this entrance here, which leads into a long gallery. Off that there are two fighting tunnels with listening posts. We should all stick together.”
Byrne looked at what Jack described as the entrance.
“I thought there was going to be no crawling.”
“It gets bigger,” said Jack.
Byrne swore and ran his hand along the packed earth and clay. _
“La France profonde,” _said Stephen. “This is what we’re fighting for.”
“Not for one shilling a day I’m not,” said Byrne.
Jack went ahead into the darkness. His eyes were accustomed to working in the murk, and his body moved in a shuffling, automatic crouch.
When they had been going for about ten minutes, the narrow tunnel came to a junction with the lateral gallery that Jack and his company had dug two months earlier. To the right was the entrance to a parallel tunnel which would lead eventually to a chamber in which the men were laying charge. To the left were the two fighting tunnels from one of which they had heard the sound of enemy digging. Byrne and Hunt had stopped swearing. Hunt looked terrified.
“Are you all right?” said Stephen.
Hunt shook his head slowly from side to side. “I don’t like it. Being underground. Being closed in like this.”
It’s quite safe,” said Stephen. “They’re professionals. Look how well they’ve done the timbering.”
Hunt had started to shake.
“It’s not right,” he said. “I’m infantry. I’m not supposed to do this. I’ll take my chances in the trench, not in a bloody hole. What if the earth falls in? Christ.” Be quiet,” said Stephen. Hunt was gripping his arm in panic. “For Christ’s sake, Hunt. You go down that tunnel or you’ll be on a charge. I’ll send you on every patrol until you’ve cut the wire from here to Switzerland.”
Stephen could feel Hunt’s fear begin to infect him. He himself had a long horror of being in a space so narrow that he could not turn round.
Jack disappeared down the entrance to the fighting tunnel and Stephen looked at Hunt’s pathetic face in the darkness. For a moment he pictured the man in his civilian life. He was a labourer who worked on building sites in London and Hertfordshire; he did not want to die forty feet below the ground of a foreign country. Stephen felt a softening of compassion.
He said, “Get in there, Hunt. I’ll follow you.”
“I can’t, I can’t.” Hunt began to jabber.
“If you don’t do it you’re going to get us all killed.” Stephen took out his revolver and cocked it. “You hate the Germans, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve killed your friends. They’re trying to kill you. They killed Reeves and his brother. Wilkinson. Douglas. All your friends. This is your chance to help kill some of them. Get in there.” He pointed the gun at the opening and then at Hunt’s head. He was surprised at his own brutality; he assumed it was caused by fear. Hunt went slowly into the tunnel and Stephen followed. Hunt’s boots were in front of him and he could hear Byrne crawling behind him. If there was a problem he would be stuck. He could not go forward or turn back. He squeezed his eyes shut and swore silently to give himself courage.
The roof of the tunnel was a foot above his head. He kept repeating to himself the vilest words in the most terrible combinations he could think of; he shaped obscenities against the world, its flesh, and its imaginary creator. Eventually the tunnel widened. They could half-stand. Byrne had taken a cigarette from his pocket and was sucking on it. Stephen nodded to him in encouragement. Byrne smiled.
Jack whispered to Stephen. “We think there’s a German tunnel very nearby. Our men laying the mine are frightened they’ll dig through into their chamber. I’m going up to the listening post. I’ll take one with me for cover. You keep one here.”
“All right,” said Stephen. “You’d better take Byrne.” He watched them move up ahead and turned to Hunt, who was sitting on the floor of the tunnel with his arms round his knees.
He was whimpering quietly. “That narrow bit we’ve just come through. Suppose they blow that. We can’t get back. We’re stuck.”
Stephen sat down next to him. “Listen,” he said. “Don’t think about it. This patrol will last two hours while our men are laying their charge. Two hours will pass. Think how quickly it passes. Think of the times you’ve wanted it to go on longer. It’s the length of a football match by now–we’ve been down for half an hour already.” He was gripping Hunt’s arm. He found that talking to him helped to keep some of his own fear from running over.
Hunt said, “Do you hate the Boche?”
“Yes,” said Stephen. “Look what they’ve done. Look at this world they’ve created here, this kind of hell. I would kill them all if I could.” Hunt began to moan. He took his head in his hands and then lifted his face to Stephen. He had bland, open features with fleshy lips and smooth skin. His pleading, scared face was cupped between large work-roughened hands on which the nicks and burns from countless jobs were scored in the skin.
Stephen shook his head in despair and held out his hand. Hunt took it between his palms and began sobbing. He crawled into Stephen’s arms and laid his head against his chest. Stephen felt Hunt’s lungs pump and blow with the sobs that shook his body. He hoped that Hunt would somehow discharge the terror that had got inside him, but after a minute the noise of his sobbing began to grow louder. Stephen pushed him away and raised his finger to his lips. Hunt lay with his face to the floor, trying to stifle his own noise. Stephen heard the sound of boots coming back from in front of them. Byrne’s lanky figure, bent double but still scurrying, came into view. His tobacco-heavy breath blasted into Stephen’s face.
“Fritz had dug through into our tunnel. Firebrace is thirty yards up there listening. He says you’ve got to come.” Stephen swallowed.
“All right.” He took Hunt by the shoulder and shook him. “We’re going to kill some Germans. Get up.”Hunt got to his knees and nodded his head.
“Come on then,” said Byrne.
The three men set off deeper into the darkness. It took them five minutes to reach the point where Jack was crouching with his ear to the wall. At the end of the timbered tunnel they could see a ragged hole where German diggers had burst through.
Jack raised his finger to his lips, then mouthed the word “Fritz” and pointed to the hole. There was silence. Stephen watched Jack’s face as he listened. He was wearing a faded shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the fabric was damp with sweat. Stephen saw the bristles on the back of Jack’s broad neck where the barber had shaved the hair.
There was the sound of an explosion with rocks and earth falling from behind them. The men stayed motionless. They could hear feet in a tunnel parallel to their own. They seemed to be going away from them toward the British line. Hunt began screaming. “We’re trapped, we’re trapped, they’ve blown the tunnel. Jesus, I knew it, I–“
Stephen clasped his hand over Hunt’s mouth and pushed his head back against the tunnel wall. The footsteps stopped, then started to come back toward them.
“This way,” said Stephen, moving back the way they had come. “Cut them off before they get to our men.”
Toward the end of the righting tunnel, before it rejoined the gallery, the way down which they had come was blocked where the camouflet they had heard had smashed the timbering and dislodged the earth. Stephen and Jack managed to force their way through the debris as gunfire broke out behind them.
“They’re through, they’re through, they’ve come through the hole,” Hunt was screaming.
Stephen pulled Byrne over the rubble. He saw Hunt rolling a grenade before he too made it to the site of the explosion. Rifle fire began at about thirty yards. There were four Germans visible when Hunt’s grenade went off with a dense, shattering report. Stephen saw two of them flung backward and a third twist sideways into the wall, but within a few seconds the firing began again. Stephen climbed on top of the pile of earth and began to fire into the gloom. Byrne found a position and manoeuvred his cumbersome rifle into place. Both men fired repeatedly, guided by the occasional flash of a rifle ahead of them. Stephen reached down to his belt for the grenades. It was impossible to hit anything with a rifle; a grenade would do more damage and might block the tunnel, which would enable the men laying the charge in the parallel tunnel to get out. As he fumbled with his belt he shouted out to the others to throw their grenades. His own seemed to have become entangled. Grappling desperately with his fingers, he was aware of renewed firing ahead, then suddenly of a sensation of having been hit by a falling house. He was thrown backward by the force.
Hunt stood on Stephen’s body and levered himself up so that he could throw his grenades through the space where Stephen had been standing. He and Byrne let off three each in quick succession with a long rolling sequence of explosions that caused the roof of the tunnel to cave in twenty yards away. The German rifles stopped firing and Byrne, who had picked up some words of German, heard a command to evacuate the tunnel. With Jack leading the way, they dragged Stephen along the tunnel back toward the gallery, cursing and grinding as they doubled up their limbs with the muscular effort of pulling the extra weight of his slack body. In the gallery they met other diggers coming up from the tunnel and four men who had been laying fuses in the explosives chamber.
There was a commotion of shouting and misunderstood reports of what had happened. The men took it in turns to drag Stephen along the tunnel back to the foot of the ladder. His rifle banged up and down on his chest and his hot slippery blood made it difficult for the tired men to keep their grip.
They emerged to find chaos. Further shelling had caused casualties in the trench and had destroyed the parapet over a length of fifty yards. They took what cover they could find. Byrne dragged Stephen’s body to a relatively unscathed section while Hunt went in search of help. He was told that the regimental aid post, supposedly impregnable in its dugout, had been wiped out by a direct hit. Stephen lay on his side, with the wood of the duckboards against the skin of his face, his legs bent up double by Byrne to keep him out of the way of men moving up and down. His face was covered with dirt, the pores plugged with fragments blown into them by the explosion of a German grenade. He had a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder and had been hit by a rifle bullet in the neck; he was concussed by the blast and unconscious. Byrne pulled out his field dressing kit and emptied iodine into the hole in Stephen’s neck; he found the tapes that pulled open the linen bag and freed the gauze dressing on its long bandage.
Rations came up at ten o’clock. Byrne tried to force some rum between Stephen’s lips, but they would not open. In the bombardment, priority was given to repairing defences and to moving the wounded who could walk. Stephen lay for a day in the niche dug for him by Byrne until a stretcher-bearer finally got him out to a forward dressing station.
Stephen felt a profound weariness. He wanted to sleep in long draughts of days, twenty at a time, in perfect silence. As consciousness returned he seemed able to manage only shallow sleep. He dipped in and out of it and sometimes when he awoke he found his body had been moved. He was unaware of the pattering rain on his face. Each time he awoke the pain seemed to have intensified. He had the impression that time had gone into reverse and he was travelling back closer to the moment of impact. Eventually time would stop at the moment the metal pierced his flesh and the pain would stay constant at that level. He yearned for sleep; with what willpower he could muster he forced away the waking world and urged himself into the darkness.
As infection set in, he began to sweat; the fever reached its height within minutes, making his body shake and his teeth rattle. His muscles were convulsed and his pulse began to beat with a fierce, accelerated rhythm. The sweat soaked through his underclothes and mud-caked uniform.
By the time they transported him to the dressing station the fever had started to recede. The pain in his arm and neck had vanished. Instead he could hear a roaring sound of blood in his ears. Sometimes it would modulate to a hum and at others rise to a shriek according to how hard his heart was pumping. With the noise came a delirium. He lost touch with his physical being and believed himself to be in a house on a French boulevard in which he searched and called the name of Isabelle. With no warning he was in an English cottage, a large institution, then back in the unremembered place of his birth. He raved and shouted.
He could smell the harsh carbolic soap of the orphanage, then the schoolroom with its dust and chalk. He was going to die without ever having been loved, not once, not by anyone who had known him. He would die alone and unmourned. He could not forgive them–his mother or Isabelle or the man who had promised to be a father. He screamed.
“He’s shouting for his mother,” said the orderly as they brought him into the tent.
“They always do,” said the medical officer, peeling back the field dressing Byrne had applied almost thirty hours before.
They put him out of the tent to await transport to the casualty clearing station or death, whichever should come first.
Then under the indifferent sky his spirit left the body with its ripped flesh, its infections, its weak and damaged nature. While the rain fell on his arms and legs, the part of him that still lived was unreachable. It was not his mind, but some other essence that was longing now for peace on a quiet, shadowed road where no guns sounded. The deep paths of darkness opened up for it, as they opened up for other men along the lines of dug earth, barely fifty yards apart.
Then, as the fever in his abandoned body reached its height and he moved toward the welcome of oblivion, he heard a voice, not human, but clear and urgent. It was the sound of his life leaving him. Its tone was mocking. It offered him, instead of the peace he longed for, the possibility of return. At this late stage he could go back to his body and to the brutal perversion of life that was lived in the turned soil and torn flesh of the war; he could, if he made the effort of courage and will, come back to the awkward, compromised, and unconquerable existence that made up human life on earth. The voice was calling him; it appealed to his sense of shame and of curiosity unfulfilled: but if he did not heed it he would surely die.