The Children's Book - A. S. Byatt [352]
In Jekyll Copse and Hyde Copse. Nonsense smiles
As shells and flares disorder tidy lines
In Walrus, Gimble, Mimsy, Borogrove
Which lead to Dum and Dee and to that Wood
Where fury lurked, and blackness, and that Crow.
There’s Dead Man’s Dump, Bone Trench and Carrion Trench
Cemetery Alley, Skull Farm, Suicide Road
Abuse Trench and Abyss Trench, Cesspool, Sticky Trench,
Slither Trench, Slimy Trench, Slum Trench, Bloody Farm.
Worm Trench, Louse Post, Bug Alley, Old Boot Street.
Gas Alley, Gangrene Alley, Gory Trench.
Dreary, Dredge, Dregs, Drench, Drizzle, Drivel, Bog.
Some frame the names of runs for frames of mind.
Tremble Copse, Wrath Copse, Anxious Crossroads, Howl
Doleful and Crazy Trenches, Folly Lane,
Ominous Alley, Worry Trench, Mad Point
Lunatic Sap, and then Unbearable
Trench, next to Fun Trench, Dismal Trench, Hope Trench
And Happy Alley.
How they swarm, the rats.
Fat beasts and frisking, yellow teeth and tails
Twitching and slippery. Here they are at home
As gaunt and haunted men are not. For rats
Grow plump in rat-holes and are not afraid,
Resourceful little beggars, said Tom Thinn,
The day they ate his dinner, as he died.
Their names are legion. Rathole,
Rat Farm, Rat Pit, Rat Post, Fat Rat, Rats’ Alley, Dead Rats’ Drain,
Rat Heap, Flat Rat, the Better ’Ole, King Rat.
They will outlast us. This is their domain.
And when I die, my spirit will pass by
Through Sulphur Avenue and Devil’s Wood
To Jacob’s Ladder along Pilgrim’s Way
To Eden Trench, through Orchard, through the gate
To Nameless Trench and Nameless Wood, and rest.
*These coloured identity disks are worn by the Australian soldiers who fought at Thiepval.
53
Basil and Katharina Wellwood had an unhappy war. There was a huge upsurge of anti-German hatred. Katharina’s friends and acquaintances ceased to call on her or to invite her to gatherings to roll bandages or knit for the British soldiers. The fact—insofar as it was known—that their son was a conscientious objector also cast suspicion on them. Their country neighbours were as venomous as their city ones. They were anxious both for Charles/Karl and for Griselda. Basil was also concerned for Geraint Fludd, who was his substitute son in the City. Geraint was somewhere with the big guns. He wrote occasionally—reasonably cheerfully from the Somme, more grimly as his guns crawled through the mud in Flanders. General Ludendorff ordered the German army to retreat to the Siegfried Line in February 1917. Word came back to Britain of his “Operation Alberich,” named for the Nibelung who had abjured Love as he clasped the stolen Rheingold. Operation Alberich scorched the earth, hacking, burning, poisoning wells, slaughtering cattle and poultry, leaving nothing that could be used by an advancing army, French or British. A woman spat at Katharina in the street. Servants gave in their notice. Katharina, already thin, grew thinner.
The letter came. It had a Red Cross and was addressed to “Basil and Katharina Wellwood” in the Quaker style. The Friends’ Ambulance Unit, it said, was greatly saddened to have to report that their friend Charles Wellwood was missing, and must be presumed dead. His courage had been exemplary. He had ventured into parts of the battlefield where many stretcher-bearers feared to go. He had brought in the wounded, English and German, had dressed their wounds and spoken to them with true gentleness. He had appeared indefatigable. He had been much respected, and would be much missed, by his fellow workers and by those whose lives he had saved.
“He is only missing,” said Katharina, in a thin, exhausted voice. “He may come back to us.”
“I don’t think the writer of that letter thought he would,” said Basil. He said
“We have the letter he gave us, to be opened, if—if he died.”
“But he may not be dead.”
“Do you want to leave the letter unopened?”
“No. No. I think it would be right to open it.”
They were afraid of opening it. It would not simply contain assurances that he had always loved them. That was not like Charles/Karl, who