The Lost Patrol Page 2

  ‘Fancy a brew, son?’ he flung over his shoulder. It was as predictable as the cigarette, thought Robbie. And just as cack, too. Still, better than doing nothing.

  He took the bubble gum from his mouth and pretended it was a grenade. Miming ripping the pin out with his teeth, he lobbed it over-arm into the field the other side of the hedge.

  It would be wicked if there was an explosion, he thought, watching it fall. Although maybe not. He’d been lectured at length by Harry on the fact that the fields and woods in the area often hid ancient artillery shells that occasionally worked their way to the surface. They would sit just waiting for someone to come along on a tractor or combine harvester, and occasionally they would go bang with spectacular and horrible results.

  That was Harry’s story, anyway. He was most likely just trying to scare Robbie into leaving them alone. That was something else he’d had a lecture about - never to touch any shells he might find lying about. As if, he thought.

  Harry had shown him an empty casing once, all shiny and polished. One of the local farm workers had dug it up from a field nearby and disposed of the insides. On the base had been stamped the year 1917.

  While they waited for Joseph’s small gas stove to boil the water, they sat in comfortable silence, staring out at the sun-lit stones. The shed smelled of engine oil, grass and fertiliser, and was crammed with tools worn shiny with use and age. Against a bench at the back stood a headstone, one corner cleanly broken off. The break ran through the regimental badge and the name of the soldier it belonged to.

  Joseph noticed Robbie’s glance. ‘Got to fix that if I can,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I’ll have to send it off for mending at the regional office. Take weeks, that will. Quicker to do it meself. Terrible if the relatives turned up and only found a hole in the ground, eh?’

  ‘How did it happen?’ Robbie asked. He wasn’t really bothered, but he would have felt unkind taking the old man’s tea and not showing some interest. Maybe Joseph had run into it with the huge petrol mower he used every day. Now that would be a laugh. Harry would go berserk.

  Joseph shrugged with his eyebrows and sighed. ‘Beats me, son. Vandals, I expect. Bored kid, maybe.’ He stared hard at the stone as if it might suddenly leap up and mend itself. ‘Happened yesterday - down by the left-hand chapel.’

  ‘It wasn’t me.’ Robbie said automatically. It was a reflex comment, almost second nature where he came from. Never admit to anything and deny everything. Safer that way.

  Joseph nodded his head and continued staring at the broken stone. ‘I know that, son. I know that.’

  Robbie wondered when someone had managed to enter the cemetery without his noticing. He had been hanging around the steps of the cemetery pretty much all day, apart from a brief break to have lunch, and would have been almost ecstatic to see a strange face arrive to break the monotony. Even if it had been a local kid he could have said hello or something.

  He could manage bonjour, he reckoned. No problem. That and comment ca va? Anything more than that and he’d be into sign language. And probably a serious amount of embarrassment... especially if it was a girl. The thought of the tangle he’d get into trying to chat up one of the locals made him wince; another reason for not liking this place - he couldn’t even get a girlfriend!

  When he mentioned the absence of visitors Joseph shrugged again and busied himself pouring boiling water into the pot. Then Robbie mentioned the man he’d seen near the steps.

  Joseph looked at him, the hand with the kettle momentarily suspended. ‘You sure? I haven’t seen no-one.’

  ‘Positive. A tall bloke. He was standing at the top of the steps, watching me. I couldn’t see him too clearly. Then a car went by and when I looked back, he’d gone.’

  For a long moment Joseph said nothing. Then he gave an almost secret smile, his blue eyes sharp and bright. ‘In that case,’ he said slowly, ‘must have been one of the lads.’

  *******

  TWO

  Robbie frowned. ‘Lads?’

  Joseph shook the battered teapot and reached for the two mugs he kept on the bench. He tipped in milk from a metal canister and spooned sugar from a packet, then poured the tea.

  ‘Yeah - the lads,’ he repeated casually, handing Robbie a steaming mug. ‘They often have a wander round, you know. Must get bored being here all the time. Well, you’d know all about that, I suppose, eh?’

  The old man had lost him. ‘What lads are you talking about?’

  ‘Them, of course,’ Joseph jerked his chin towards the open door, where the regimented lines of stones ran down the slope. ‘My boys.’

  Robbie thought the old man had finally gone off his head. He’d heard him mention the ‘boys’ before, but thought it had been a joke. Now he seemed deadly serious.

  ‘Yeah, right.’ Robbie sipped his tea. Wonder where they keep the coat with the straps and buckles, he thought. Joseph’s finally gone off his box.

  ‘Shouldn’t scoff, son,’ Joseph said reprovingly. ‘I seen ‘em plenty of times over the years. Real as you sitting there. Tin hats, puttees and rifles - the lot. Enough to send a shiver down your spine. Some of ‘em not much older than you. What are you - sixteen?’

  Robbie nodded. He’d have liked it if Joseph had thought he was older.

  ‘Thought so. Lots of ‘em lied about their ages just to get in, see. Big adventure it was, for them, joining up and fighting for their country. Poor young buggers. Never even got to see their next birthday, most of them. But they’ve never done me any harm.’

  Beyond the old man’s shoulder, Robbie saw a half-bottle of whisky standing among the tools on the bench. It was barely a third full. He knew Joseph drank - had seen him stumbling away down the cemetery on a couple of occasions in the evenings - and wondered if the alcohol was taking over. He’d seen it happen before when his own father had sunk deeper and deeper into an alcohol-washed haze, until reality no longer counted or mattered, and his family were like strangers to him. It had been horrible and ugly to witness.

  He felt uncomfortable seeing this side of Joseph. The old man had always been nice to him, and seeing him like this was like a betrayal, as if he’d found Robbie unworthy of the effort to stay in control. Just like his father.

  Robbie quickly finished his tea and got up to leave. He thanked Joseph for the drink.

  ‘No problem, son. No problem,’ Joseph murmured. ‘Glad of the company, to tell you the truth. Won’t be long before I‘m away from this place, though. Then they’ll have to put up with someone else disturbing their peace.’ He stared into space, and it was easy to see that his retirement was looming and he was hating the very thought of it.

  Robbie stepped outside, leaving the old man to his thoughts. What a drag, he thought. Here’s Joseph desperate to stay and I can’t wait to leave.

  He ambled away, following the hedge bordering the field and stopped near the chapel on that side. The house where he was staying with his mother and Harry stood on the other side of the hedge.

  There was no sign of a missing stone, so he walked across the cemetery past the giant cross to the other chapel, near where he’d seen the visitor. At the end of a row of markers he found a blank space, a hole left in the grass as if a tooth had been drawn. In the flower bed lay the broken corner where Joseph had evidently failed to spot it. The grass around it lay flattened and indented where the old man had trodden lifting the heavy stone from its base in the ground.

  Robbie peered down into the hole and saw the outline of the slot where the headstone fitted to keep it upright and in line with all the others in the row.

  He felt strange looking down like this, as though expecting to see something or someone looking back up at him. Stupid, he thought. There’s no-one under there, anyway. He recalled Harry telling him that with all the movement of soil over the years, it was unlikely that many of the remains were still where they had been buried, anyway.

  ‘Probably in the field or halfway down the hill by now,’ he’d grinned. ‘Leave it lo
ng enough and they’ll all pitch up at Etienne’s bar at the bottom. I’d love to see his face if that happened.’ He’d gone off chuckling at the thought. It was the nearest Robbie had heard him get to making a joke. Maybe he’d got a sense of humour after all.

  He wondered why anyone would bother to break a headstone. And why stop at one? Guys he knew back home would go for more if they thought of it at all. A couple of karate kicks and they’d go down easy. Or not. Not that he thought they’d do anything like that here. One or two liked breaking things, but even they wouldn’t touch this place. Not unless they’d been drinking.

  He shivered in the cool atmosphere of the chapel and wandered back to the house. His mother’s cooking smells drifted out the kitchen door, reminding him he was hungry.

  His mother was down the garden somewhere, singing to herself. He debated tackling the subject of going home over the dinner table. This place was really beginning to get to him; he needed to get back to where there was some life, rather than among all these reminders of the dead.

  As he kicked off his trainers and stepped through the back door, he felt the hairs stir on the back of his neck. He looked back with the uneasy feeling he was being watched, and shivered as he closed the door. He definitely needed to get away from this place.

  *******

  THREE

  Two hundred miles away, in a small village named Paddlebury, in Suffolk, Wilhemina Hendry sat on a bench outside the lodge house where she lived and watched Marcie, her sixteen-year-old great niece, pruning some late roses. Tall and slim, with the same long, blonde hair as her mother, the girl had become, since her parents had died tragically in a car accident three years ago, the daughter Wilhemina had never had.

  They now lived together in the lodge house. If it wasn’t for Marcie, Wilhemina would have given up the struggle to stay on in Paddlebury long ago. But it was the promise the old woman had made to bring the girl up rather than let her be taken into care which drove her on.

  At ninety-six years old, Wilhemina felt frail and tired beyond description. But in her heart and soul she had the strength of a woman many years younger, still able to fend for herself.

  ‘You’ve got greenfly, Aunt Wil,’ Marcie called, shaking a rose stem to dislodge the tiny insects. She liked to keep the dwindling garden in some sort of order, although Wilhemina wouldn’t let her use any of the mowers. Pruning flowers, though, was safe enough.

  ‘Washing-up liquid,’ Wilhemina told her. ‘That always works.’

  Marcie frowned. ‘Really? I wouldn’t have thought that would kill them.’

  ‘It doesn’t. It makes the stems so slippery they slide off.’

  Marcie laughed and went inside to get a bowl of water.

  Left to her thoughts, Wilhemina looked out across the fields and woods surrounding the old Paddlebury Manor. To her it was the most beautiful and treasured place on earth. She had never wanted to leave, and even when she’d been away for holidays, she’d always longed to get back again. She’d spent her whole life here, playing in the woods and fields as a child and, when older, helping manage the estate when her older brother Richard failed to return from the Great War.

  Thoughts of Richard hung over her as always like a distant, dark cloud. She remembered him still as clearly as on the day he had left, resplendent and dashing in his smart uniform and polished, brown boots. He was off, he said, to join in the Greatest Adventure. Others from the village and the estate had gone with him, following tradition rather than orders. Stiff and unfamiliar in their heavy, itchy uniforms and weighed down with back-packs, they had formed up on the village green, shuffling into lines and grinning shyly like boys on a school outing. Then, with a brief word of command, they had tramped cheerfully out of sight down the lane, until only a thin veil of dust remained to show their passing. Few of them had returned, and those who did were scarred by the horrors they had witnessed and by the bombs, bullets and mustard gas they had encountered in the trenches of war-torn France.

  Wilhemina turned her head towards the manor, a large, imposing building at the end of the drive. She immediately pictured the library, still furnished like the rest of the house, but rarely used now she had moved into the small lodge house near the main gate. Around the library’s panelled walls was a line of heavy wooden picture frames of past family members. As well as the paintings there were several small photos, browning with age and dotted with mildew. Mostly they showed Richard as a slim, young man in army uniform, standing beside a large, black car. He was smiling nervously at the camera, a dark moustache casting a vivid slash against his pale face. In his hand was a leather riding crop, a sort of prop, she had long decided, against the nerves he must have been feeling. Although whether the nerves were at having his picture taken or the thought of what he was about to embark on, she wasn’t sure.

  Wilhemina had been watching from nearby while the photographer had set up his wooden tripod and taken the picture. She was twelve at the time, and it was to be the last time she ever saw her brother.

  Since moving into the lodge, she had thought about moving the photos from the library, as they might be damaged by damp. But in the end she had taken only one or two. The rest stayed where they were, to remind the eventual new owners that it had once been a home to her and her brother.

  She felt a deep sadness settle on her. It had taken all her energy in the early years to keep control of Paddlebury. Especially after the rumours after the war, about Richard’s sudden disappearance in France during the fighting. But she had never believed them, dismissing them as lies. Instead, she had dug in her heels and got on with life.

  Then the family lawyers had moved in, bringing a bewildering array of legal documents and confusing talk. Bit by bit, the control she had felt was rightly hers after Richard had gone had been taken away, and the land around her home had been gradually sold off.

  ‘Unavoidable, we’re afraid,’ the lawyers had explained silkily, waving their official-looking papers. ‘Estate Duties, you know.’

  And Expenses. Expenses to keep the manor and lodge in good condition; expenses to keep the footpaths open and the fences standing.

  Now the final remnants were slipping from her grasp, as building development plans on former fields and meadows crept ever nearer. The latest idea was for a commercial estate on the Common beyond the trees. Wilhemina could still recall when the annual fete was held and where the school children played football and cricket. Now, it was little used except by people walking their dogs and local boys having a kick-around.

  As if confirming her fears, she heard the clatter of an engine and saw a plume of blue smoke rising in the air as one of the huge diggers started up. Monstrous, tracked machines, they felled ancient trees and ripped up bushes with the same ease Wilhemina might have swept the kitchen floor – only with much less care.

  As Marcie came outside and began to douse the roses with soapy water, Wilhemina thought again of her brother, lost all these years. If only Richard was still here, she thought. And Neville.

  Things would have been so different then.

  ********

  FOUR

  ‘What have you been up to today?’ Robbie’s mother asked as she placed his dinner in front of him.

  ‘Not much,’ he replied. Listening to an old man’s weird fantasies mostly, he thought, but he didn’t say it.

  There was a sniff from Harry, and Robbie glanced at him to see if he was just sniffing or... just sniffing. But he seemed intent on watching Robbie’s mother with a dopey smile on his face. It made Robbie feel like a piece of furniture. He felt sure he could have said something pretty choice at times like this and Harry wouldn’t have noticed. His mother would, though. She had hang-ups about bad language and things, and had even taken Harry to task about it.

  He felt like testing his theory. ‘I hung around with the dead most of the day,’ he murmured, and waited for the sharp retort.

  ‘Mmm… that’s nice,’ his mother replied vaguely. She smiled at Harry and placed a heape
d plate before him, turning it so that the meat was nearer than the mashed potatoes. Robbie had never figured out why she did that.

  ‘That must have been a riot,’ Harry muttered, and Robbie was startled to see the man looking at him with a faint smile on his face.

  ‘What?’ his mother asked, suddenly aware of the exchange and wondering what she had missed.

  Harry merely shook his head, the smile lingering.

  He’s not a bad bloke, really, Robbie thought. He looks pretty fit and hard - not like most men his age. Nor has he started going bald or greying... not like Dad did. Although why he’s stuck out here in the middle of France doing this skanky job is a mystery. Maybe he doesn’t like people very much. Apart from Mum.

  ‘Joseph reckons there are vandals in the cemetery,’ Robbie said, grateful to Harry and deciding to change the subject before he talked himself into a corner.

  ‘Vandals?’ Harry paused in his eating.

  Robbie explained about the damaged headstone. ‘There’s a hole where he pulled it out of the ground. He said he can fix it himself - the corner’s broken off, that’s all. I reckon it just fell over.’

  Harry shook his head. ‘Can’t happen. If one fell the lot would go. They’re all slotted into a concrete beam beneath the ground. You have to pull them out individually.’

  ‘Like teeth?’ Robbie smirked. ‘Which ones are the molars?

  His mother frowned and told him to get on with his dinner.

  Harry, however, grinned and nodded in agreement. ‘Yes – just like teeth.’

  Later, as they finished pudding, Robbie said: ‘Joseph talks about the dead as if they’re still out there, walking around and that.’

  His mother looked sharply at Harry. She disapproved of Joseph for some reason. ‘I think Joseph talks too much,’ she muttered. ‘And he - well, you know.’