‘What are we going to do now, Rob?’ he asked, softly. His eyes begged me for an answer I didn’t have.
I shrugged. ‘God only knows, sir. I don’t.’
He eventually nodded. He was a man caught in a sudden void. For two-and-a-half years he had lived in squalor and fear and noise. He had made decisions which meant men died, often in violence and horror. He, like all of us, had shied away from thinking about any sort of future, because that future should not have been allowed. He had lived from day to day; indeed, from minute to minute. Now his future stretched before him in a blinding kaleidoscope of probability. He, like I and everyone around us, was drowning in possibility.
‘I was wondering if you had any plans,’ he said, eventually. ‘Do you have a family to go back to? A wife? Children?’
I squirmed uncomfortably. Greene and I had shared a lot. We had sat on cold, frosty, starlit nights and talked of the day-to-day running of the company. Of the men under his and my command. It was Greene who had recommended me for my sergeant’s stripes two years before. He had seen something in me I hadn’t seen in myself. But we had never really talked in any sort of personal manner.
I remembered his first day as a lieutenant. I remembered a callow, flush-faced boy whose Adam’s apple had bobbed nervously after every word as he had tried to exert his superiority over men who had seen death and carnage to such a degree that their humanity was in danger of being snuffed out forever. I remembered laughing bitterly about him with the lads. I remembered thinking he wouldn’t last five minutes. I remembered being wrong.
Jonathon Greene had proven to be a most unlikely warrior. Tall, thin, and aristocratic, but imbued with a steel most uncommon. He had survived, he had learned his trade of death, and he had adapted. Quickly. He had become the best leader I had known in my long war.
I had helped him as much as I was allowed once I realised the type of man he was. As a corporal, promoted through necessity rather than any latent talent, Greene seemed to see in me someone to emulate. He always asked my advice and often acted upon it. He had quickly become a leader his men respected and perhaps even loved in their rough, raw way. They valued him immensely and they followed him unswervingly. Not just because he was their lieutenant and later captain, but because he was a man they wanted to impress. When he made me sergeant he had simply handed me my stripes and smiled his wry, lopsided smile at me. He had said not a word. He didn’t have to.
He never barked an order, was never short with any of his men, even in the heat of the bitterest battle. Instead, his commands were given in a soft voice and he was always quick with an encouraging smile and a joke.
When he made me sergeant we began to rely on each other more and more, and this reliance turned into something that made our section of the trench a place where each man felt he had a place and his duty was to his captain and his sergeant. The men lived and died safe in the knowledge they wanted to because of Captain Greene. Not so much me, Sergeant Deakin: I knew full well they all thought there were increasingly strange things about me. But Captain Greene? They would have followed him into the mouth of Hell itself just for a glimpse of his smile.
‘I have a sister,’ I replied, eventually. ‘Muriel. Back in Northumberland. She’s married. Got a young boy. I might visit her, I suppose.’ I looked around at the devastation and shrugged. ‘I’ll need to find a job.’
‘No family of your own?’ he persisted.
‘No. My parents are both gone, and I was only eighteen when all this started. There was a girl once, but she’s probably settled down. There’s really only Mu.’
Greene nodded again. We stood in silence for a while, just watching the column.
‘You worked as a Gillie, is that right?’ he continued.
I laughed.
‘I worked on the lands around Rothbury. I wasn’t a Gillie. My dad was the gamekeeper for the Armstrongs. They own everything around there and he, like almost everyone else, was in their service. I helped out. I mostly worked in the stables, did a bit of beating in grouse season, looked after the dogs, that sort of thing. I thought I’d become a gamekeeper eventually, I suppose. But then the war came along.’ I sighed. ‘Last time I was back, everything was different. Not much work. All the women were doing the jobs I used to do and doing it a bloody sight better than I ever did.’
I laughed again and Greene joined in.
‘When did your parents die?’
‘Not long after I joined up. Dad died out in the fields. My mother died a few months later. Mu wrote to me and told me the news.’
I became pensive again. I was a taciturn man in those days. I was worried I might be talking out of turn with my captain, but Greene seemed interested, so I continued.
‘My Mam was a lovely woman. I’m not ashamed to say I shed a tear when I heard the news.’
‘Your father?’ asked Greene, probably already knowing the answer.
I shook my head, briefly.
‘We didn’t really get on, me and Dad. Mu was always his little girl. I think he mostly just saw me as an extra pair of hands. He didn’t want me to join up, that’s for sure. He said I was needed to help him work the land. He was a man who talked with his fists a lot of the time. He wasn’t a bad sort, but we never really saw eye-to-eye. He couldn’t understand why I wanted to go and fight. He never understood why I wanted to leave Rothbury. I think it was because I wanted to be away from him that I joined so early. I wanted to see what sort of man I was, not the sort he thought I was.’
I stared into the distance for a while, not seeing much of that Belgian village. Greene seemed to understand.
‘You joined early?’
I returned to the conversation.
‘Aye. Two days after the outbreak. August sixth, 1914. My eighteenth birthday. Went down to Morpeth and joined the recruiting parade. Told them I was nineteen.’
I laughed, bitterly. ‘My dad was furious. Said I’d abandoned them all. The last time I saw him, he stood at the door and said, “I hope you get killed as soon as you get there.” Then he went out. I left that day.’
Greene saw the look on my face and touched my shoulder. A typical response from a man such as him.
‘He didn’t mean it, Rob. We all say things we regret, at times.’
I nodded, unwilling now to pick at the scabs any longer.
‘I’m sure you’re right, sir. But he had his heart attack and I never got to speak with him again. It doesn’t really matter now, anyway. Not after all this.’
Greene knew what ‘all this’ meant. He seemed to come to a decision.
‘After you’ve been home,’ he said. ‘After you’ve seen your sister and your nephew, if you’d like a job, I have some land I need working.’
I looked at him, shocked.
‘A job?’ I repeated.
He nodded. ‘In Hampshire. It’s my family estate. Mine now. I’d like someone I know who I can trust as my first employee. Someone I know would do a sterling job.’
I was unsure. From my rudimentary geography, I believed Hampshire was a long way from Rothbury. He smiled at my indecisiveness.
‘I’ll give you my details,’ he said. ‘No pressure. Nothing like that. If you want the job, I’ll keep it open until the summer. After that, we’ll see. Go and see your family. If you stay, I’ll understand completely. If not, the job is yours.’