Shoulder the Sky_ A Novel - Anne Perry [46]
“Did you tell Prentice how you felt?” he asked.
Bert shook his head. “None o’ his damn business, beggin’ your pardon, Chaplain. Don’t talk to the loikes o’ him about things loike that. He weren’t one of us.”
Joseph already had a good idea exactly who had been in the area, or could have been so far as they were not known to have been somewhere else. Most men would be able to prove where they were on the front line, and most stretcher-bearers, medical orderlies, or other troops would have been no further forward than supply trenches, more probably in an advance first-aid post, or dugout.
And someone must have seen Prentice, possibly given him permission and assistance to go over the top. Which raised the question as to why he had been there at all! Had it been his own idea, or had someone suggested it to him, or even lured him there? Whatever Joseph asked, he must do it so discreetly no one suspected anything but an interest in informing Prentice’s family of what had happened, and of course General Cullingford in particular. He still had to do that, at least as a courtesy. Someone else might have given him the bare facts.
He must ask his questions quickly, or his reasons would no longer be valid. One did not pursue the fate of any one man for more than a few days, there were too many others. The whole regiment was his concern.
He asked Alf Griggs quite casually where Prentice had been the afternoon beforehand, almost as if it were of no interest to him.
“First-aid dugout, Plugstreet way,” Alf told him, lighting a Woodbine and shaking his head. He was a small, dapper man with the art of finding anything anybody wanted, at a price. “Bleedin’ nuisance ’e were,” he continued. “Followed the quartermaster around like a starvin’ dog for I dunno ’ow long, till ’e got told ter get out of it, or ’e’d be carved an’ served up fer dinner ’isself. Dunno w’ere ’e got ter after that.” He drew on his cigarette. “Wot does it matter, Chaplain? Poor sod’s gone west anyway.”
“Just to give his family some idea of how he happened to get killed.” Joseph was horrified how easily the lie came off his tongue. “Not so easy to understand when it’s a journalist rather than a soldier.”
“That one is not so easy ter understand ’ow ’e didn’t get trod on long before!” Alf said with a curl of his lip. “Nasty little sod! Beggin’ yer pardon, Reverend, but bein’ dead don’t make a man good, just means ’is badness don’t matter anymore.”
Joseph thanked him and went along the relatively straight route of the second-line trench to the stretch known as Plugstreet, after the nearby village of Ploegsteert. He found the first-aid dugout where a couple of stretcher-bearers were sitting having a smoke. A third was dozing, his feet sticking out in the weak sun, his boots unlaced. Near him the mud under the duckboards was nearly dry. The rain had stopped and the sky overhead was hazy blue, and just at this moment the guns were silent. There even seemed to be fewer rats than usual.
Lanty Nunn opened his eyes. “Allo, Chaplain. Lookin’ for someone?”
Joseph squeezed his way past and sat down, making himself comfortable. “Only trying to find out a bit more about how the journalist got killed,” he replied. “I expect the general will want to know—and his family. It’s not as if he had been a soldier.”
“It’s not as if ’e’d bin any damn use at all!” Lanty retorted.
Whoopy Teversham, who had been half asleep, sat up on his elbows. He had bright ginger hair and features like rubber, able to assume any expression. “Chaplain, you don’t want to tell the poor bastard’s mother ’e was a pain in the arse,” he said cheerfully. “Anyway, Oi expect she knew! Hell-bent on getting the story that’d make his name,” he went on. “Into everything, asking questions. Oi thought he was going to write it up like he’d saved the Western Front single-handed. He wanted all sorts of facts and figures; wounded, gassed, sent home to Bloighty, where and how the dead was buried. Guess he knows that now, eh?” He laughed abruptly, and