Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [40]
“Good,” Sam said bluntly. “We’ve lost better men than Prentice, and we’ll lose a lot more before we’re through. I suppose your Christian duty requires that you affect to be sorry. Mine doesn’t.” He smiled bleakly, there was knowledge in it, fear, and a wry understanding of their differences, none of which had ever blunted their friendship. He required honor, laughter, courage, but never a oneness of view. “You can say a prayer over him,” he added. “Personally I’ll go and dance on his grave. He was always a rotten little sod.”
“Always?” Joseph said quickly.
Sam squinted through the smoke. “I was at school with him. He was three years behind me, but he was a crawling little weasel even then. Always watching and listening to other people, and keeping notes.” The shadows around his eyes were accentuated by the lantern light inside the dugout. It was too deep for daylight to brighten anything beyond the first step inside the door, and the high walls of the trench blocked most of that. “I’ve got enough grief for the men I care about,” he added, his voice suddenly husky. He brushed his hand across his cheek. “God knows how many there’ll be of them.”
Joseph did not answer. Sam knew he agreed, a glance affirmed it without words.
There was a sound outside, a child’s voice asking in French if anybody wanted a newspaper: “Times, Daily Mail, only yesterday’s.”
Joseph stood up. “I’ll get you one,” he offered. “Then I’d better go and see to the bodies.” It was his duty to prepare men for burial, and after a bad night there was often no time for anything but the briefest of decencies. Identification was checked, tags removed, and any personal belongings, then the bodies, or what was left of them, were buried well behind the lines. That was the least one could do for a man, and sometimes it was also the most.
He stood up, Sam watching him as he went, smiling. Outside he bought a paper from the boy who looked about twelve, and told him to take it to Sam, then walked back along the supply trench to the Casualty Clearing Station where the bodies had been taken. It was a soft, bright morning now, mist burned off except for the wettest stretches where the craters were still deep. He could hear the occasional crack of a sniper’s shot, but mostly it was only the sounds of men working, someone singing “Good-bye Dolly Grey,” and now and then a burst of laughter.
He reached the Clearing Station and found three men busy. The casualties had not been heavy last night, and there were only five dead. Joseph went to help the burial party because he felt obliged to pay some respect to Prentice, for his own sake. It was a kind of finishing. He was the one who had found him, he had brought him back. To walk away now, and then return to say the appropriate words over the grave, seemed an evasion.
There were two orderlies in the makeshift room—Treffy Runham, small, nondescript, always tidy; the other was Barshey Gee, Charlie Gee’s brother. He looked tired, dark rings around his eyes as if he were bruised, no color at all in his skin. They worked quickly, cracking bad jokes to cover the emotion as they made the dead as decent as possible and retrieved the few personal belongings to send back to those who had loved them. They looked up as Joseph came in.
“Mornin’, Chaplain,” Treffy said with a slight smile. “Could ’ave bin worse.”
“Good morning, Treffy,” Joseph replied. “Morning, Barshey.” He moved straight over to help them. He had done it often enough there was no need to ask what was needed.
Barshey looked at him, eyes haunted, full of questions he dared not ask. Joseph knew what they were: Should he wish Charlie dead, out of his agony of mind as well as body, or was life sacred, any life at all? What did God require of you, if there was a God?
Joseph had no answer. He was as lost as anyone else. The difference was that he was not supposed to be. He didn’t fight, he wasn’t a sapper like Sam, or a doctor, an ambulance driver