While they were waiting at an intersection in the road, a machine-gun limber pulled by a team of twelve horses, all bay, passed by. Da’s preference had always been for bays; he said they took less cleaning. As always, Stanley searched the team of horses in case there was a Thornley horse among them. No, he told himself, a good Thornley horse would be a prize cavalry horse. Trumpet, though, the old cob, would, in his day, have made a good limber horse . . .
Stanley felt a lurch in his gut as he remembered Da whipping Trumpet, so violently there at the edge of the lake, when Da had wanted to race away and avoid his son. It was odd, Stanley thought, his thoughts veering from Trumpet, that Da had taken the trap. He wondered why he hadn’t thought of this before. Was he seeing things more clearly now that the horror of losing Soldier had ebbed, that his feelings towards Da had grown blurry and confused?
He marched onward, Pistol trotting airily at his heels, but Stanley’s unease about the trap grew and tangled itself around his whole being. Where had Da gone that morning, and why?
Misgivings and fears still gnawed away at Stanley as his unit halted at the entrance to a communication trench and stood waiting under the hot sun. He jumped out of his skin as his hand touched a wooden cross. There was a cluster of them to his left that he hadn’t noticed. Stanley moved away towards the duckboard track and the sign saying ‘WALKING WOUNDED’. Four weeks ago he’d marched up to the Front, only to be greeted by Hunter’s ridicule. Corporal Hunter. Stanley glanced towards the crosses, wondering.
He called Pistol aside to allow passage to a Subaltern with a wounded arm and bright white sling. ‘Good luck, sir,’ Stanley whispered.
Without turning or raising his head, the Subaltern grunted, ‘It’s you as wants the good luck, I’m out of here.’
They reached the end of the communication trench. A group of the Black Watch trailed forward, white knees glowing beneath dark kilts. To one side of the duckboard track stood a Lance-Corporal with a group of tired, sweat-streaked, blood-soaked men, groundsheets across their shoulders. He held a sheaf of papers calling out names, one after another. ‘Fraser,’ he called, waited, then called again, ‘Fraser.’ A third time he called the name. When there was again no answer, he scored out the name with a single stroke.
The back line ran in front of Villers and across two valleys, one leading to the banks of the River Somme to the north, the other to the south and the River Luce, Stanley’s guide said. As Stanley made his way along, the friendly Australians smiled at him, greeted Pistol. They had a good reputation at Central Kennels for liking dogs.
All along the line, vast preparations were afoot, convoys of goods being ferried in both directions, while the entire front line, from the wood that was at forward right, to the Roman road at forward left, leading to Villers, flickered with the distant flashes of firing guns. The slope running up to the ridge along which Stanley’s trench ran had valleys whose clefts and gullies would help an enemy creeping up to fight for the high ground. The runners would be having a bad time of it; this slope was a dangerous business.
‘Captain McManus, sir?’ said Stanley as he entered the Brigade Signal Station and looked around with interest. It was larger and better equipped than Hunter’s station. James stepped forward and put an arm round Stanley’s shoulder. There, too, was Hamish. In another corner, by the Fuller-phone, was Fidget, curled up next to his basket of pigeons – untidily, like a straggling towel. It was good to see him, too. James, though warm and welcoming, was brief with Stanley, a little tense, and returned quickly to the Fuller-phone, but Fidget and Hamish led Stanley to his new funk-hole.
Evening, 23 April 1918
Aquenne Wood, near Cachy
Two days passed. More men arrived, more ammunition, more provisions. The certainty of an attack being ordered grew with each new convoy. At Rations-Up, the messenger had a letter for Stanley. It was from Cross Post again, this time in a Church Army envelope, addressed in an elegant and precise hand Stanley didn’t recognize, but which he thought might be Father Bill’s – that at last he’d traced Tom. Since Stanley, too, now knew where Tom was, he took it back with him to his funk-hole to read after tea.
Stanley started: the 8th Division? That was this sector. Part of the 8th Division lay in reserve and part in the front lines. Where would Tom be?
Stanley leaped up, dumbfounded, his heart racing. Da? No!
Da was too old, surely? The Remounts didn’t take men of his age. How old was he? Younger than he looked; fifty, perhaps. Lara Bird’s father had signed up – perhaps they were taking old men now. Stanley spun round to the parados – the rear side of the trench – as though amidst the carts and limbers and troops on the move he might see Da’s white head.
Etaples? Stanley had an overwhelming impulse to abandon his post, to run and run, to search every crack and crevice of France till he found Da, to hear the truth from Da’s own lips about Soldier.
Stanley was standing on quicksand, everything shifting around him. Whatever, he thought, whatever was done or not done, Da was out here because he’d come to find Stanley.
The Remounts. There were 500,000 horses on the Western Front. Stanley smiled. That would keep Da busy. Busy and proud again, proud to be doing the work he loved. Da knew as much about horses as any man, more than any man. Still awash with uncertainties, Stanley sat waiting with Pistol. The tangle of weeds on the parapet glowed a violent yellow against the ominous gunmetal sky.
Two hours later he was still waiting for the man who would collect Pistol, the sky now wild and sinister, lashed with streaks of violet and wine.
Hamish! That was Hamish coming, his familiar bulk filling the height and width of the trench. Hamish greeted Pistol – he always greeted Pistol by way of greeting Stanley.
‘Aye, you’re a good ’un. A cracker of a dog. The laddie’s doing you some good, and you’re doing him no harm either, I’m thinking.’ He tousled the dog’s ears. ‘An’ I’m as likely to get an answer out of you as your master.’ Hamish smiled at Stanley and rose, and they stood together looking up at the sky through the camouflage netting.
Hamish sniffed the air, like a hound. ‘I don’t like the look of that sky one wee bit,’ he said. ‘There’s rain in it, round rain.’ Hamish looked down to the scorched plain below. ‘Tens of thousands of men, Stanley, hiding, like rats. In every crack of this plain. Moved here like pawns from every corner of the globe. Tomorrow she’ll give up her men, spew thousands of tons of steel from her very guts—’
Hamish was interrupted by an infantryman who’d approached from behind.
‘Keeper Ryder?’
Hamish’s serious face softened with a comforting, crinkly smile.
‘He’s here, laddie, to take your wee dog away.’
Stanley steeled himself for a brave and brief goodbye.
‘Come back safe, Pistol. Come back safe.’ He handed the lead to the infantryman. ‘Look after him, sir.’
As Pistol turned the corner up to the access branch, his long snout doubled back along his spine towards Stanley, his tail whirring.
‘Stand-to is at three,’ said Hamish. ‘Zero hour is three thirty. Goodnight, laddie.’