We left the hut, closing the door quickly behind us. George could not run, but with my bad knee I was not much better. We started making for the first dish, with the promise of the shelter beyond it. Through the mask all the colors looked as yellowy as an old photograph, but George looked back at me and pointed out something, a band of darker yellow lying in the air across our path. Phosgene, I thought—that was the yellow one, not mustard gas. Phosgene didn’t get you straight away, but if they mixed it with chlorine, it was a lot quicker. I pressed the mask tighter against my face, as if that were going to make any difference.
It took an age to reach the shelter, with the distance between the sound mirrors seeming to stretch out cruelly. Just when it began to cross my mind that perhaps the shelter did not exist, that it was some figment of George’s concussion-damaged imagination, I saw the low concrete entrance, the steps leading down to a metal door that was still partly open. A masked guard, who might have been the same man Ralph and I had spoken to earlier, was urging us down the steps.
When the door was tight behind me, I whipped off my mask and said, “Give me yours, George—it’ll do for Ralph.”
George nodded and dragged the mask from his face, which was slick with sweat and dirt where the rubber had been pressing against his skin. “Good man, Wally,” he said, between breaths. “You’re a brave sort.”
But the guard would not let me leave the shelter. The red light above the door was telling him that the gas concentration was now too high to risk exposure, even with a mask.
“I have to go!” I said, shouting at him.
The guard shook his head. No arguing from me was going to get him to change his mind. We had been lucky to make it before they locked the shelter from the inside.
Looking back on it now, I’m sure Ralph knew exactly what would happen when I got to the shelter—or he had a pretty shrewd idea. What he said to George kept ringing in my head—about how the younger man would still be able to get some of that music down when the war was over. It was like one runner passing the baton to the other. I don’t think he would have said that if he had expected me to come back with another mask.
Because there was no wind that day, the gas alert remained high until the middle of the evening. When it was safe, I went out with two masks and a torch, back to the hut, just in case there was still a chance for Ralph. But when I got to the hut, the door was open and the room empty. Everything was neat and tidy—the box back on the shelf, the headphones back on their hook, the chair set back under the desk.
We didn’t find him until morning.
He was sitting in one of the seats attached to the steerable locator we had driven past on our way in. He must have known what to do because he had the headphones on, and one of his hands was still on the wheel that adjusted the angle of the receiver. The other chair was empty. The flattened disk was aimed out to sea, out to France, a few degrees above the horizon.
The thing was, they never did tell me what killed him—whether it was the gas, or being out all night in the cold, or whether he just grew tired and decided that was enough war for one lifetime. But what I do know is what I saw on his face when I found him. His eyes were closed, and there was nothing in his expression that said he’d been in pain when the end came.
Now, I know people’ll tell you that faces relax when people die, that everyone ends up looking calm and peaceful, and as an ambulance man I won’t deny it. But this was something different. This was the face of a man listening to something very far away, something he had to really concentrate on, and not minding what he heard.
It was only later that we found the thing he had in his hand, the little piece of pink paper folded like an envelope.
Four days later I was able to visit George. He was in bed in one of the wards at Cranbrook. There were about five other men in the ward, most of them awake. George was looking better than when I’d last seen him, all messy and bandaged. He still had bandages on his head and arm, but they were much cleaner and neater now. His hair was combed, and his moustache had been trimmed.
“I’m glad you’re still here, sir,” I said. “I was frightened you’d be transferred back to Dungeness before I could get to see you. I’m afraid we’ve been a bit stretched the last few days.” I had to raise my voice because Mr. Chamberlain was on the wireless in the corner of the ward doing one of his encouraging “one last push” speeches.
“Pull the screens,” George said.
I did as I was told and sat down on the little stool next to his bed. The screens muffled some of Mr. Chamberlain’s speech, but every now and then his voice seemed to push through the green curtains as if he were trying to reach me personally, the way a teacher might raise his voice to rouse a daydreaming boy at the back of the class.
“You’re looking better, sir,” I offered.
“Nothing time won’t heal.” He touched the side of his head with his good arm, the one that wasn’t bandaged. “I’ll be up on my feet in a week or two, then I’ll get my new posting. No use for me in Dungeness anymore, though—my hearing’s no longer tip-top.”
“Won’t it get better?”
“Perhaps, but that won’t make much difference in the long run. They’re getting rid of the sound mirrors. We always knew it was coming, but we thought we’d be good for another year. It turns out that the new system won’t need men listening on headphones. The new breed will stare at little screens, watching dots move around.”
Mr. Chamberlain said something about “over by Christmas,” followed by “looking forward to a bright and prosperous Nineteen Thirty-Six.”
“And the music, sir?” I asked.
“There won’t be any more music. Wherever it came from, whatever it was that let us hear it …it’s gone now, or it will be gone by the time they tear down the mirrors. Even if it’s still coming through to Dungeness, there won’t be anyone there who can hear it. Best to forget about it now, Wally. I’ve no intention of speaking about it again, and with Ralph gone, that only leaves you. If you’ve an ounce of common sense—and I think you’ve rather more than an ounce—you’ll say no more of this matter to any living soul.”
“I’m sorry about Mr. Vaughan Williams, sir.” I’d called him Ralph all the time I had known him, but sitting next to George I found myself coming over all formal. “He was always kind to me, sir, when we were doing our ambulance duties. Always treated me like an equal.”
“He was a good man, no doubt about that.” George said, nodding to himself. Then he patted the bedsheet. “Well, thank you for coming to visit, Wally. Knowing how busy you ambulance chaps are, I appreciate the gesture.”
“There’s another reason I came, sir. I mean, I wanted to see that you were all right. But I had something for you as well.” I reached into my pocket and withdrew the folded piece of pink paper. “We found this on him. It’s one of your transcriptions, I think.”
“Let me see.” George took the paper and opened it carefully. His eyes scanned the markings he had made on it, the scratchy lines of the staves and the little tadpole shapes of the notes. There were lots of blotches and crossings-out. “Did you see him do this?” he asked, looking at me over the edge of the paper.
“See him do what, sir?”
“He’s corrected me! You wouldn’t have noticed, but not all of those marks were made by me! The beggar must have sat down and taken the time to correct my transcription of my music!”
“When we were on our way to the shelter, sir?”
“Must have been, I suppose.” George shook his head in what I took to be a mixture of dismay and amusement. “The absolute bare-faced effrontery!” Then he laughed. “He’s right, though—that’s the galling thing. He’s bloody well right!”