If Then by Matthew De Abaitua

Author:Matthew De Abaitua [de Abaitua, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-85766-467-9
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2015-07-27T04:00:00+00:00

16

Another landing. A star shell drifts over the dark waters of the bay. Soldiers wade through the shallow waves, kicking up foam and moonlit phosphorescence. Army boots make no sound on sand. The men advance across the beach without footfall.

After an hour and a half of dreamless, blanketless sleep, James wakes. He uses a half-gill of water for a shave, and waits for the tea-dixie to come up. Next to him in the dugout, raindrops quiver upon Jordison’s broad face. The Lancastrian is of yeoman stock, with a wide jawbone, sandy-straight hair and a broad trunk; when he withdraws his head into the collar of his greatcoat, the flesh under his chin concertinas neatly. Above the shaving line, his upper cheek is fringed with down; below the shaving line, the patchy beginnings of a tawny beard. His young face shows the contours of the old man to come.

The aura of the star shell reveals dark mounds in the silver sand, some sleeping, some dead.

Using the shovel as a bier, Jordison and James drag bodies into a pile. It’s more of a clearance than a burial, the work of the Divisional Sanitary Officer and not fit for the stretcher bearers of the 32nd Field Ambulance. But there is no sign of a sanitary officer. In the landing, military planning has become as improvised and fragile as the spider’s webs hanging in the scrub, newly-woven and quivering with dew.

Jordison whispers prayers. Behind every pull and heft of the shovel, sand spills back into place.

James doesn’t remember any prayers, so he asks Jordison if he has any family.

The Lancastrian shivers and withdraws his wide face deeper into his coat. Some of the men show a reluctance to speak. Part of it is exhaustion. Part of it is lack of water. But there is something else behind their silence. Shock. Superstition.

“I have Ruth,” says James. “No one else. Do you have a wife?”

“My wife works in my place in the mill,” says Jordison. His voice is hoarse, his thoughts slow to stir. “And three children too. We had ’em soon as we married, and a bit before. One after the other, Irish triplets. When I enlisted, she said she’d be glad to see the back of me.”

“I didn’t talk to Ruth about enlisting. We both knew I had to go. It was the thing I least wanted to do, you see.”

Along the beach, Hector rouses the rest of the men from their hoggish snoring. It is the middle of the night. It will always be the middle of the night. With his spade, Jordison turns over the severed head of a Gurkha, the face pushed clean off. The yeoman lets out an involuntary groan of pity and lament.

“This poor sod. This poor, bloody sod.”

It is not quite four in the morning. They do not dwell on the details of their work. The stretcher bearers shovel thistle-clutched topsoil onto the burial mound. Crickets abrade their hind legs and share data.

“You don’t have any children?” asks Jordison.

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