Stanley must look calm, mustn’t look alarmed. It wouldn’t be from Da or Tom, just from Father Bill, probably, writing to say where Tom was.
‘It won’t bite. It’s only a parcel,’ the mail orderly said, holding out a brown paper package. Stanley composed himself. A parcel. Not Father Bill then.
He walked, puzzling, towards the kennels. The parcel was quite heavy and medium-sized. Stamped ‘APO S11’. That would be the Etaples Post Office stamp. ‘ON ACTIVE SERVICE’ was stamped across the top of the parcel, giving Stanley a little hug of pride, despite his anxiety. ‘PASSED BY 2959 CENSOR’ was stamped above that. There was something familiar about the writing but Stanley couldn’t identify what. A parcel, he thought, though, was a good sign. If it were bad news, it would be a letter not a parcel.
Stanley began to run to Bones’s kennel. He sank down behind it. The dog settled himself on Stanley’s feet. Stanley tore open the parcel. Bones showed a playful interest in the shredded paper wrapper and a look of disdain for its contents. Five buns wrapped in brown paper. Beneath them, something else, heavier. A jar of honey. This small tenderness after so many lonely, brutal months left Stanley helpless. Only Stanley’s Biology teacher had searched for him – she’d found out where he was and she’d sent honey. Stanley’s thoughts, though, weren’t with Lara Bird: they were with Da. Why, when his own Da had done nothing?
Bones looked with disdain at the honey, with interest at the buns, with concern at his master, all three emotions so clear in those expressive eyes.
Miss Bird knew where Stanley was, and she wasn’t cross or she wouldn’t have sent the parcel. Had she told Da? There must be a letter in there too. Stanley scrabbled through the newspaper. There it was, at the bottom. And something else: a pack of cards. Those would be from Joe. Stanley looked at Bones, holding the paper up. In that folded paper lay their fate.
‘What do you say, Bones? Shall we open it?’ Bones hoped Stanley was talking about the buns and dipped his head a little closer towards them.
Stanley’s shoulders fell with relief.
Tom on leave next week? Stanley whipped the paper over to check the date. Written on the 17th – it was 20th today. Tom might be at Thornley now – wouldn’t be back in France for at least two weeks. By then Stanley himself would be at the Front. It was all wrong, all topsy-turvy – Tom in England, Stanley in France. It would be Lara Bird who’d tell Tom where Stanley was, not himself. What would she say? What would Tom do? In turmoil, Stanley read on:
Stanley’s fingers found his pocket and curled around the Bryant & May matchbox. He flipped the matchbox over and over as he revolved all the possible outcomes of what Lara Bird would tell Tom. Yes, he thought; yes, Tom will understand I couldn’t stay at home after what Da did. Stanley revolved the matchbox faster. Yes, Tom would see, Tom would understand.
Stanley’s fingers slowed to a standstill. Live at Nethercott? Agitation about Tom’s reaction was replaced by anger. If Da wanted Stanley back, why hadn’t he done something? Why had it been left to his teacher to look for him? Stanley flipped the matchbox again, faster and faster. Da had never come to Chatham or Shoeburyness or Etaples; there’d been nothing, not a sound from him. Da had never come to find his son, so what was he planning on doing when he left Rocket with Lara Bird?
It would be easy to creep home, to slip back into school life, to live at Nethercott. Stanley could get out of the Army because of his age – that was his trump card; but it wouldn’t help Bones. Bones was Army property and it would be a criminal offence to take him away. No, there could be no going back, whatever Tom or Lara Bird said.
‘Oh, Bones! What do I do?’ Stanley looked up towards the buzzing of the British planes dodging over the German lines. Breaths of fleecy smoke puffed up around the planes, clouds of white, green and yellow in the azure sky.
Bones settled his wet snout on Stanley’s lap. It would be a relief to go back to school, to live at Nethercott. But Bones? No. Bones belonged to him and he belonged to Bones. Whatever they’d got themselves into, they were in it together.
21 March 1918
Etaples
As Stanley walked towards Central Kennels, Trigger came running up, excited and breathless, thrusting yesterday’s Daily Express into Stanley’s hands:
50 MILES OF OUR LINE ATTACKED ON A VASTER SCALE THAN EVER BEFORE
‘Four thousand enemy guns, a hurricane bombardment, Stanley. The Hun wants Paris, that’s what all this is about. Look, he’s got tanks now and more men, more money, more ammunition. Something’s up – that’s why we’re being summoned.’ Trigger’s enthusiasm for action and beating drums never faltered, Stanley was thinking, even if the enemy had more tanks and money and men than the English.
The news from the Front had grown worse each day. More and more officers had applied to the Kennels for dogs but still there’d been no fresh dogs sent out. At Central Kennels, there was an air of quiet desperation.
The Kennel Staff were hurriedly organizing and rearranging the keepers into units, and the units into bigger platoons.
‘Doyle, Rigby, Ryder. Together you form a Dog Unit reporting to the Second Battalion of the Devons, Twenty-Third Brigade of the Eighteenth Division, Fourteenth Corps. You’re under orders to make ready to go forward by rail at dawn tomorrow. For administrative purposes only, you’re attached to a formation of the Royal Engineers.’
‘Second to none,’ said Trigger, beaming, as they paraded at the Orderly Room for an issue of blue and white armlets. ‘The Eighteenth are second to none. We’re lucky, Stanley.’
They moved on to the Quarter-Master’s stores where Stanley, without enthusiasm, collected his ‘small kit’, a blanket and groundsheet, which could also be a mackintosh as it had a collar at one side down the middle.
That evening the news grew worse. The Germans had begun an advance on Amiens. Amiens was the gateway to Paris, a railroad and communications centre, which the Hun needed if he wanted the capital. This morning, too, they’d fired a gun, they called it the Paris Gun, which had a range of over eighty-one miles. They’d fired at fifteen-minute intervals all day, with the first shell landing at seven in the morning, right on the bank of the Seine.
Stanley lay in bed, half listening to the morose, fearful talk of the men in his tent. The name of a particular village, Villers-Bretonneux, kept coming up. Only nine miles from Amiens, Villers had been right in the middle of the line of attack. The attack had been devastating, men said, but the line had held.
‘Ludendorff will hit out again now, any minute now . . . wants to do it before more Americans arrive . . . He’s nervous about the Americans.’
‘They’ll send us up there. That’s where we’ll be going tomorrow, to the Villers sector.’
The gunfire sounded closer than ever before. At the foot of Stanley’s mattress lay two gas helmets, goggles, a steel helmet and one hundred and twenty rounds of ammunition. Why did the Army waste ammunition on someone in the back lines, attached only to a Signal Station? Stanley wondered. The sinister-looking gas masks – his and Bones’s – were twin ghouls gaping at him. Why was there such urgency? Why had they had to turn in with their boots on, and their puttees laced?