Fallen Skies Read online

  “It’s cavalry country,” MacDonald said cheerfully in his dream. “Can’t wait for the cavalry to come galloping through, can you, Winters?”

  But as Stephen turned to reply he saw MacDonald’s head fly from his body and felt himself thrown from his feet and coated with warm wetness which he hoped was mud but knew that it was not.

  Stephen rolled in his bed, flinging out an arm in protest, but he could not throw off the dream.

  Now he was in a trench. It was in an awful state. His men had just been ordered into it and Stephen was in a rage with the regiment that had left it. The firesteps were exposed, the duckboards had sunk deep into the mud. The men had to wade knee-deep to get from one point to another, there were no adequate dug-outs and they would have to sleep on little shelves scraped out of the side of the trench, with no protection from weather or shellfire. Worst of all, the Huns opposite had the range and location of all the sniper posts and lobbed occasional, totally accurate, shells.

  To order any man to keep watch and to put his head up to fire a rifle was to condemn him to death—and yet an officer must order sentries posted. All Stephen wanted to know was the name of the commanding officer who had left the trench in this state. The only man he hated in the whole world was the commanding officer of the previous regiment. He cared nothing for the Germans, he cared nothing for the hard-faced men at home. But the man he wanted dead was back at St. Omer on leave. One after another his men were shot or torn to pieces by shells and Stephen strode up and down the trench, his anger transporting him beyond fear, screaming the name of the officer who had left him to do all the work.

  He shouted aloud “Johnson!” and the shout shook him from his dream. Half-awake, he remembered the dream and the day it drew on. The trench had been perilous, the regiment before him had been slack and demoralized. Stephen and his men worked all day digging the trench deeper, widening the sides, laying duckboards. Then at night, when they were weary and wet through and cold and afraid, they had to climb out of the trench, which seemed suddenly desirable and friendly. They had to leave it, their only shelter, and go over the top into no-man’s-land on scouting trips for headquarters. Stephen grimaced as he rolled over and dozed, remembering the terror of putting his head slowly, slowly above the parapet, and then easing inch by inch upwards. As each part of his body emerged from the shelter of the trench he imagined a German sniper sighting first on his head, then on his pale frightened face (“Oh please, don’t shoot my eyes, don’t shoot my eyes!”), then on his throat (“Oh God! Not a bullet in my throat!”), then his chest (“Not my chest!”), then his quivering belly (“Please God, don’t let them shoot me in the stomach!”), then his pelvis (an unspeakable prayer this one, Stephen could not even pray for his penis, his horror of castration was too urgent for words), then his legs (a nice clean flesh wound in the thigh, or the foot—“Yes! yes! yes!”). Stephen grunted with longing and slid back into sleep. A Blighty wound to take him safely home and away from this unending miserable horror.

  His final dream was the one that roused him. It started sweetly with the farm, the little farm, and old Perot in his blues, and old Mrs .Perot with an enamel basin under her arm feeding the hens. They had two daughters: Nicole, the bad girl who went into St. Omer at night and worked in a bar and whored on the side; and Juliette—Juliette, like an English girl, with a pale rose complexion like apple blossom, and pale green eyes like apple skins, and pale long hair like wheat straw.

  And the farm was such a miracle. Sheltered by a hill, such a tiny precious hill, just east of St. Omer. A tiny fold of ground but just enough to hide the building from the Hun gunners. And far enough behind British lines for them to be safe; safe and grateful. So when Stephen found his way to the farm on a borrowed horse, riding for the fun of it, Juliette came out with a mug of cider and a smile like an English girl in peacetime. He told Madame Perot that he called the farm “Little England” and she laughed and nodded as if she understood.

  It was fertile land. They kept sheep, a few cows, a pig which lived off scraps to be killed for bacon in autumn, and hens. But mostly they grew crops in fields that were broad and scantily fenced: beets and vegetables and clay-loving crops. Perot would curse the soil when he was ploughing and his one skinny horse pulled against the bogged-down weight of the plough. The army had requisitioned his team of plough-horses, even the old pony which Juliette used to ride. All they had left was the old mare who could barely shift the plough along. He was glad when Stephen came with Coventry, and the two men got before the plough and dragged it for him, like a pair of eager geldings. Stephen and Coventry were glad to do the work. It was like a holiday, like a holiday in the old days at home, when you might go and work on a farm for fun and come home and talk all about it, and josh and say you were a farmer’s lad at heart.

  Stephen smiled in his sleep. The farm—Little England—had a wood where the trees were still sound. The lower branches swept to the ground and grass and small flowers grew in the shade. When he lay back on the grass and looked through the intersecting branches at the sky above he could hear the ground shake with the impact of shells and he could hear the guns like thunder, but know he was far from danger. It was a lovely sound, distant gunfire. Gunfire far, far away, and someone else having to bear it. He loved the branches of the trees, those blessed low branches. Every tree on the Flanders plain within range had been twisted into a corkscrew by shells and fire; but Juliette’s trees grew as if there was no war. Juliette would sometimes come and sit beside him and let him take down her hair and hold her hand. One afternoon Stephen fell asleep with his head in her lap and when he opened his eyes and saw her face he thought that the war was over and he was safely home asleep in an English orchard.

  His dream shifted; Stephen, in his little bed in his dressing room, gave a muffled groan. His dream pulsed like a heartbeat, thudded like a drum beat. He saw Coventry’s intense angry face and his own. He heard himself say—“God damn them to hell! If they have harmed one hair of her head . . .” He felt the mad joy coming, the mad joy that meant he was unafraid, like being drunk, like being lustful. He pulled his revolver from the holster and secretly, in his other hand, Coventry slipped to him his knife. He was running, running down the road to Little England, running silently as if his boots were light. He was through the German lines, behind their lines in absolute peril as the German advance swept forwards to Paris and the Allies withdrew and then withdrew again.

  Stephen did not care; alone of all the English army he was going forward, defying the logic of retreat. And behind him, five of his battalion ran too, from shadow into shade, ran down the road to Little England, already burning for vengeance for what they expected to see. They were losing the war, they knew it. There was nothing to do but to pull back to the coast and hope that the damned Navy did its job and got them off quick. But suddenly, in the middle of ignominious retreat, someone had told Stephen that Germans had gone through to Little England.

  If Juliette were hurt, if she were dead—Stephen felt his heart beat quicker and his feet thudded faster on the mud road. His fear, his constant wartime terror was burned up by his rage. He wanted to rescue Juliette, he wanted her to be safe. But more than anything he wanted to kill the man who had harmed her. His breath was coming in gasps as they reached the bolted front door. No-one ever went in that way. He motioned his men to crouch down, to wait. Coldly and reasonably he told himself that when he had his breath, when his heart had stopped its hammering, he would be ready. And then the animals would be sorry they had crawled in here. Then he would cut them down in his righteous anger. And Juliette and her mother and father would be avenged. They were, in the end, the one thing worth fighting for. At last, after two years of war, Stephen could see why he was there. He was there to protect Juliette. He was there to protect her mother, her father, her sheltered lovely farm. And if he were too late to save her, then the man who had hurt her should die.

  He gestured to the men to follow him around to the back door. The yard was we