He had slept the night on a bench in a small park off the city centre. Waking chilled to the bone, frost already beading on his overcoat and glistening on his hair and stubble, he banged his arms around and stamped his feet trying to bring some feeling back into them.

It was still dark but there were traces of light in the sky; it was probably after six. Hard to tell in this godforsaken land, he thought. Trudging forward, his meagre possessions in a cloth bag over his shoulder, East Driscoll shivered against the wintry wind that blew in from the sea. He was in Southampton trying to get passage on a ship home. He'd sold everything he had that was worth anything and could probably afford a cheap ticket on a merchant ship but so few were making the journey these days. There was a war on and his plight was of no interest to anyone out there.

It had occurred to him that he ought to look for casual work until he secured passage; there must be a shortage of young men for heavy work now that almost every able-bodied man and youth had joined up. Women were doing most of the work that was traditionally male preserve. When he applied for vacancies he got the same response. "Join up. We don't want no cowards here." He tried to tell them he wasn't British, it wasn't his fight -  but they weren't concerned. "You're from the colonies. Your boys are fighting over in Gallipoli. What do you mean, not your fight?"

Ahead was a rough portside café, open at this time for early morning dock trade. Grateful for the light and warmth it offered, East wandered in and bought a cup of tea; his money wouldn't stretch much further so he decided to miss breakfast again. Finding a table in the corner, he sat down and leaned his head against the wall, dozing in the warmth as his frozen body defrosted.

A group of soldiers strolled in, laughing and slapping each other on the back. They bought cooked breakfasts and a couple of pots of tea and came over to where he was sitting; it was the only table empty.

"Mind if we sit here with ya, mate?" One young bloke with a ruddy face and gingery fair hair asked.

"No worries, mate," East answered idly.

"You a cobber, sport?" The soldier asked.

"Yeah."

"Bloody oath...fancy bumpin' into you! You with our regiment? 'Bout to ship out?"

East shook his head. "I'm not a soldier."

The other two men exchanged glances. "What you bloody here for then?"

"S'a long story," East muttered.

They sat down and began eating. He looked longingly at the plates laden with warm food. His stomach groaned.

"So where you from?"

"Clare Valley. South Australia. In the country. Place called Turalla."

"Bill here, he's from Tullamore. Spike - he's from Queensland. I'm a Victoria boy. What's your plan?"

"To go home," East answered and drank the last of his tea.

"You don't say! You and a few million other blokes. You know how many Australian boys won't ever be going home again, mate? We were in Turkey. Gallipoli, mate. That name will be engraved on every cobber's heart forever more."

"Gallipoli?" East echoed.

"You don't bloody even know? Where the fuck you been? Last year for four bloody months we sat there on that beach and took the shit they slung at us. We're all that's left. They died in their thousands like animals. All the boys from back home. You wanna go home? Don't make me laugh! Never heard of doing your bit?"

"Do I have to fuckin' die to keep the rest of the world happy? Jesus Christ!" East banged his teacup down vehemently. "I didn't ask to be here. It's not my bloody war. Or my bloody country. What the hell has it to do with us?"

The man called Spike spoke up. "It's to do with what's right, mate. Preserving the world we know. Britain's the motherland. They need us and after this show they'll see that we deserve a greater part in the future."

East laughed ruefully. "The bosses will still be the bosses after you poor buggers are all cold in your graves. I don't fight for any man or any cause but my own," he added.

"That's the talk of a fool - or a coward. No one can stay out of it forever. At some point you have to prove you're a man," the first man spoke again, eyeing East with disdain.

"I'm a man," East stared him out

"Yeah? That so? How do ya sleep at nights then? What will they think of you when you slink back home? Won't be such a big man then when they realize you didn't have the guts to stand up for your countrymen!"

East lurched out, throwing a profanity at them as he pushed back the table, spilling the tea. He had heard enough of this war talk and he was sick of it. He'd lost six bloody years of his life and he wasn't losing anymore. But even as he thought it the words of the men rang in his mind. What was he? He didn't even know himself what kind of man he was or even what had brought him to this place in his life. More than anything else he wanted to clear the confusion in his mind and understand himself. Maybe he never would get to grips with the past again but one thing was sure - it was up to him to make his future.

A convoy of army lorries coming from the port trundled down the road; he stopped to let them pass before crossing. There must be a hospital ship in by the look of it. The lorries were open and he could see the injured men, those deemed well enough to walk anyway, with their pale faces, bandaged or missing limbs, eyes hollow with the memory of the horror they had seen and endured. East stared at them and then recalled himself. He had once been a useless shell of a man and would still be that if someone hadn't cared enough to make an effort for him. Whatever he thought about Grace McAlister, he owed his life to her and her uncle. Maybe it was time he stopped taking from life and started putting things back? Perhaps in that he might reach that place where he could look himself in the eye again and know who he was.

How many of the blokes from home must have goaded each other into joining up on that big adventure to see the world? Those cobbers in the café were right. If East Driscoll turned up in Turalla and tried to go back to the way it had been, they would laugh in his face. The great East Driscoll: too chicken to go to war like the other poor bastards. He wouldn't be so popular with the ladies now. It would be more white feathers and people turning their backs on the street.

In a flash he realised something about himself that he had never considered.  Was he a coward? Had he always kept away from anything that would require him to give something of himself - either with other men or with the women he had known? No bosses. No wife. No kids. No laws. No restraints. He had always thought it was because he had all the answers and that the others were just fools who got sucked into the humdrum world of boring routine and obligation. But maybe he had been wrong all the time. Perhaps he had just refused to grow up and be a real man.

He was selfish and always had been. What he had regarded as independent and free-spirited was just another way of saying he couldn't make the grade like other men. He was incapable of taking responsibility, doing his duty, putting up with what life threw in his way. He had always thought the rules didn't apply to him. Well, in the end they do. If you grow up, that is.

As the day lightened and a grey dawn replaced the black night, East sat by the docks and watched the activity there, deep in thought. He couldn't get work. He was struggling getting a passage. There was really only one alternative open to him, no matter how he fought against it. He was too tired to fight it anymore.

By midmorning he had found a recruiting office and was filling in the application papers. It seemed ironic to him that this newfound skill in reading and writing might be now enabling him to sign his death warrant.

He sat in the small waiting room with a few boys, most of them barely seventeen or eighteen he would imagine. He felt his age as he looked at their smooth, beardless faces. What place did children like this have on a battle line? Even grown men scream for their mothers when the guns start and the push is launched, or so he had heard from the other patients at Craiglockhart. These kids who hadn't even lost their cherry yet should be running wild and chasing girls, not offering their tender flesh to the Sten gun and the gas.

"Driscoll? Which one of you is Driscoll?"

East looked up and nodded at the soldier who had come out of an inner office. 

"You? Then stand to attention and say so. The usual answer is 'Yes, sir!"

East slouched to his feet, fixing the sergeant with a look. The man had only one arm and the left side of his face was badly scarred. It gave a sinister lift to his mouth and made him look as if he was smirking coldly.

"Yes, sir," he mumbled. It seemed to satisfy his interviewer. East thought it unlikely that the sergeant would turn him down on the basis that he had no respect. They just wanted men like him as cannon fodder anyway.

Following the man down the corridor, he was led to a room where he was asked to strip to his underwear, the other boys joining him shortly afterwards. A bored looking doctor came in and gave them each a desultory inspection, grabbing their testicles roughly, and smirking as he asked them to cough. "Not much wrong with you lot," he muttered as he signed the forms.

Shortly afterwards the sergeant, Baxter as he introduced himself, took East into the interview room. "Says 'ere you're from bleedin' Australia."

"S'right."

"What the fuck you doing 'ere, then?"

"My business. You want me to enlist or not?" East answered impassively.

Baxter shrugged. "No difference to me where you come from. Your balls are the same as any other blokes, I reckon." East said nothing. "You just got to answer a few questions. Any extenuating circumstances?"

"What's that mean?" East asked suspiciously.

"It means- 'Is there any reason that you shouldn't be a soldier?' Like you've got dependants or a mental illness or a serious medical condition?"

East shook his head.

"You ever been in hospital?"

"Yeah."

"How long?"

"Dunno. Long time."

"Yer what?"

"I had an accident. Head injury. I was bad for years. But I'm alright now."

"Years? Jesus Christ, we don't take invalids!"

"I'm not an invalid. I'm OK now, I got discharged."

"They won't take you, son. Not if you've got a history of mental illness - they've enough loonies coming back without sending them over in the first place."

"I'm not mad. I was ill. I recovered. Jesus Christ - they only want us for cannon fodder anyway. What difference does it make if I'm going to end up blown to bloody pieces?"

The sergeant laughed bitterly. "Nothing like optimism, is there now? Look, lad. It's bloody crazy, I know, the whole damn thing is fucking crazy - but you didn't hear me say that!" He rubbed his good hand over his mutilated jaw and had another look through the application form. "Well, you wouldn't get any spelling prizes, mate. Says 'ere you used to be a horse wrangler and breeder. How good are you with horses?"

"Bloody good. The best."

"That so? Cavalry regiments aren't so fussy. Can't be, seeing as how they lose men faster than water from a bucket with a hole. The Hampshire Yeomanry - they've got a mounted corps and are off to France to join the 51st. Looking for men who can ride as well as grooms and other whatnots...  fancy that? Plenty of chance of getting blown to smithereens with them!" He laughed at his own joke with a cackling derision.

East picked up the pen and signed on the dotted line, receiving the letter of introduction, his travel permit and a small sum of money to tide him over. "Right you are, soldier! Better say your farewells to the girlies and report to your barracks. If I were you I'd give her a poke tonight. Might be your last chance."

Gathering up the small pile of coins, East pocketed them and took the papers. With a cold stare at the man before him, he nodded and left. His first port of call was to another café where he ate a full breakfast and drank a welcome pot of tea. The food and warmth cleared his brain somewhat. It made him realize what he had done. If he didn't turn up to his regiment in the next day or two then he would be listed as a deserter. He shrugged as he drained his cup and sank his head into his hands. Why would he not turn up? He knew he would never see the sky of his homeland again. It mattered little how he passed the time until it was over.

Trudging down cold and wintry streets, he found the train station and boarded a local train. At least he would have a bed for the night and something in his belly. And he would have earned it himself.

 

"We're not making a sacrifice.
Jesus, you've seen this war.
We are the sacrifice." 

(The Sons of Ulster on the Somme)

The wet sludge of a windy dreary March morning found Corporal East Driscoll splashing through the thick mud to the stables. He had saddled up his mount, a sturdy but unremarkable chestnut mare who had been suffering from colic recently. Having nursed her through it over several days he wanted to give her a gentle exercise and see how she responded.

He had risen early as he always did, dragging himself from the warmth of his bunk amidst the fug of sleeping, unwashed men and shivering as he had thrown on his rough trousers and jacket; he always slept in his combinations, shirt and socks for warmth. The thin blanket was little comfort - his greatcoat made a welcome covering, slung above him too. Leaning down he forced his feet into the boots that were almost rigid with dried mud but aware it helped to seal the hole on the sole and the split in the leather. There was no spare footwear around these days unless you found a body with a pair still intact.

Scratching, aware that he was crawling with lice, he stepped out into the miserable morning and urinated into a puddle by the side of the door. He wouldn't have been the only one. The ground about him stank with the leavings of men who wouldn't take the trouble to cross the area to the washrooms. With a yawn, he placed his cap on squarely and wrapped a flea-bitten wool scarf around his neck, rubbing his fingers together against the cold and wishing again he had a pair of gloves. His hands were cracked and red raw with the cold.

Hanging about the door of the kitchen where the cooks were just beginning to fire up the ovens for the day, he had begged a piece of bread and dripping to eat and a hot cup of tea, exchanging a few lines of conversation with one of the privates there and offering a cigarette which was gratefully received. His meagre breakfast over, he had set off for the stables to check on the horses. His responsibility as head groom was all encompassing -  they had no one who had his knowledge of horses and so he was forced to double as groom, vet and blacksmith all rolled into one, with a troop of young stable hands to assist him. It wasn't a bad life. Compared to most of the men stuck in trenches and rotting away waiting for the day they walked over the top into eternity, he had it easy.

Moving through the stalls, he patted the horses and doled out feed, talking in that soft low voice of his, gentling the animals and drawing some comfort of his own from them.  Time had not made him feel any less alien in this world he had found himself. He wondered whether even going back to Australia would actually make him any more in tune with his fellow men. Somewhere he knew that his displacement had begun in his own head. They had told him he was better - but perhaps he wasn't. How could he be well when parts of his life were still a mystery to him? If he could only understand, maybe he could learn to trust himself again.

The stables contained a wide variety of horses of various sizes and breeds. He was passing through the cavalry wing that morning where the fast moving horses ridden by the cavalrymen and the magnificent show chargers of the General and Senior command were housed, but there were many more humbler mounts in the outlying sheds and paddocks. Horses were still used quite widely on the front even though the story of them in the battles so far was a catalogue of tragic disaster and waste of life. What kind of fools in High Command still insisted on sending a cavalry charge in against the level of gunnery and shell that was in modern usage? Imagine them against a cloud of mustard gas or the raking of rapid fire bullets? East shook his head at the madness of the nightmare that this war had become. 'Lions led by donkeys' was the popular lament; East believed that was a slur on the intelligence of the mule.

But the horse presence was not just there to make more savage fodder for the ever- hungry god of war. Horses constituted an important workforce on the lines: mule teams pulling field kitchens along with battalions on the march, huge draught beasts like the Clydesdales pulling the heavy armaments and munitions supply wagons and solid mounts for riders to convey messages from one post to another. Then there were the mules or hacks that supplied transport for the unhorsed battalions. This was possibly the biggest number of all, running into thousands shifting the huge quantities of supplies that were required to feed and support an army of this vast size in terrain that was often difficult for any other form of transport to negotiate. 

Trains brought in the munitions, rations and equipment and motor transport would move it to depots - but it was the horses and mules that crossed the scarred landscapes to deliver the needs of the army to the actual front line battalions. They brought with them their own problems, though. The daily requirement in forage for a horse was between 16 and 30 pounds; a soldier received a tin of bully beef, half a loaf of bread and a few measures of tea leaves. It was a constant struggle to ensure the horses were fed sufficiently.

East's position as a head groom did not detract from his duty as a soldier; if the big push was launched, he and the other stable lads would be ordered to take a rifle and move along with the rest of the company. If a horse was available he would ride but should it be required for an officer, he would have to dismount and hand it over, to continue on foot - an even more ludicrously dangerous pace to be in a cavalry charge. It was something that East chose not to think about. No doubt it would come to that one day but he could wait - and until then he would simply take each day as it came and try to find something to make life worth living until then.

The horse seemed content to be out of the stable despite the murky morning's gloomy drizzle. He could feel the spring in her step as she smelt the air and felt the breeze, her gait picking up and her forelegs raising briskly. Somehow the animal's sense of freedom and simple pleasure transferred itself to him and he began to enjoy the ride. At a slow pace, he led her through the woods, the spring foliage providing some shelter from the incessant hammering of the rain.

It was quiet apart from the downpour and for a time it was almost inconceivable to imagine that a few miles away men still sat in the filth and the mud of their trenches and the silent guns were still poised ready for the next bombardment. On that wet dreary early morning, East smiled, his body and soul coursing with a rare sense of peace and unity with his surroundings.

Just then he caught a flash of blue from of the corner of his eye. Someone was watching him from the cover of the trees. East surmised that it was most probably a local - but there was always the chance that it might be something else. It was easy enough to wander across the ever-changing frontier and find oneself in enemy-held territory. Reining in the horse, he listened, but could hear nothing other than the regular panting breath of the animal steaming in the damp misty air, and the pitter patter of the rain.

Another flash of colour and he was more unsettled.  A local who was frightened of coming upon a soldier in this remote spot would have cleared out and not stayed around to watch him. Slipping from the horse's back, he slapped its rear to send it a few strides whilst he doubled back around the tree cover, his hand silently withdrawing the knife he carried in his belt as he crept through the undergrowth. His stalker was not expecting to be observed and did nothing to disguise himself further other than to slink back behind a tree and follow the path of the disappearing horse with his gaze.

East moved suddenly and lunged, catching the observer and knocking him to the ground. They rolled to the muddy earth and East grabbed his neck, immobilizing him and using his weight to hold him down, the knife poised threateningly at his throat. "What you want with me?" he grunted, spitting out the mud that had splashed into his mouth as they had wrestled. .

It was only then that he realized that the watcher was a child of about ten years' old. Relaxing his hold, he rolled the child over and dragged the frightened boy up by the scruff of his neck. "Why you spying on me? Don't you know I could have killed ya, ya little bastard?"

In a part of his brain he realized that the child could not understand him. His French was almost non-existent and he racked his limited vocabulary for something that he might say to try and calm the boy. "Je m'appelle East," he stuttered out. He knew how to say his name. A girl in a bar had taught him that one night before she let him take her body against a wall in an alley half an hour later. They hadn't really got past the introductions. She had told him she was called Cherry or something and then asked him for five shillings. He had given her one.

"Tu t'appelles ?" he tried again.

The child shook his head and tried to wriggle from his grasp. He didn't reckon he was going to do much harm so he let him go, saw him scrabble to his feet, his blue jacket now thick with mud, and take to his heels along the path. Whistling, East summoned the horse and heard its hooves tapping on the path as it wandered back to where he was. The boy must have been looking over his shoulder at his assailant for he did not apparently hear the approach of the horse - and ran straight into it. Fortunately the mare was not moving at any speed and did not shy up and trample over the boy as she might have done but he still stumbled and fell headlong, his ankle twisting awkwardly beneath him.

Breaking into a run, East reached where he lay and picked him up. The child was still so quiet, no cry or wail to indicate his accident, but he was conscious, face contorted and eyes wild with pain and fear. Laying him down, East took a look at his leg and saw the swelling that was forming on the ankle injury. It was a bad sprain. He could not leave him here.

"Maison?" East asked. The boy's eyes showed no recognition whatsoever. "Tu habites? Maman?" But nothing that he said made the slightest difference. The child would not answer him.

Shrugging, East pulled out a stained handkerchief and stood up. Soaking it in the rainwater that had gathered in the hollow of a fallen tree trunk, he squeezed it out and made a bandage, binding the ankle securely and then hoisting the little boy onto his horse. All the while, the boy had watched him curiously, a few tears slipping down his cheeks but appearing less afraid now. He was a skinny kid with short dark hair and big brown eyes, but his peaky little face and thin limbs suggested he was malnourished or sickly. Dragging from his pocket a crust of the bread he had been given for breakfast, East tore a piece and gave it to the child. At first the boy seemed reluctant to take it but his hunger soon got the better of him and he suddenly grabbed it, eating ravenously.

Moving the horse forward he continued down the path in the direction that the boy had run; the little lad stopped and smiled; he was fascinated by the motion. Taking his chance while the boy was suddenly relaxed, East pointed ahead and at last the boy responded. He nodded.

About five minutes later, the boy suddenly raised his hand and indicated a clearing on the left some distance from the path. Dismounting, East led the horse and boy through the trees in that direction.

At first they appeared to be entering a thicker part of the wood but, as they approached nearer, he realized that there was a little cottage of some kind and that this must be where the boy lived.

"Attention! N'avancez pas!" A woman's voice rang out across the dripping forest. East ignored the command which he didn't understand and stepped forward; the whistle of a bullet zipped past his cheek.

"Hey! Hey! I'm listening..." he held his hands up and backed away, a universal message understood. The little boy stared and made a grunting sound. He was trying to speak.

There was a moment's silence and then the sound of someone approaching, twigs and leaves crunching underfoot. From the trees appeared a young woman dressed in men's clothes but with her long hair plaited. She carried a rifle pointed straight at him and her stance suggested she knew how to use it.

"Anglais? You are English?" The woman asked.

"Yes."

"Go away."

"Do you know this boy?"

"Yes. Off the 'orse. Now!"

"He can't walk. He hurt his leg..."

At that she came forward and took a closer look. "'Ow?"

"He fell down."

"You did it?" She glared.

"No. He fell."

"You touched 'im, I will kill you," she hissed.

"I brought him home. I won't hurt anyone."

"Put him off the 'orse. Go away."

East nodded his assent and lifted the boy down. Placing him gently on a tuft of drier ground, he backed away. The girl waved him off with the rifle; he took the horse's rein and led him back.

"Zank you. If you 'elp him. Zank you. But do not come back 'ere." Without looking back, East carried on walking away, leading the horse behind him.

She stayed on his mind for days while the early spring rains washed the grey landscape and made the world a sea of mud, water and gloom. Sitting at the door of one of the stables staring out into the distance and taking a break to have a cigarette, East Driscoll thought about the beautiful young woman who lived in the woods. It was like some little kid's fairy tale and he half wondered had his brain not been playing tricks on him. Maybe he wasn't right in the head after all.

The woman had been so slender and pretty, her face so perfect, unadorned by lipstick and her dark hair roughly gathered thick plait at the nape of her neck. Why was she there? Who was the boy? She didn't look old enough to be his mother. It worried East to think what might happen to her if the wrong men happened to stumble on the remote cottage. She had a gun but so might they - and the child was a possible weak link. He could imagine a bunch of desperate soldiers - deserters even - coming upon her and ...they'd rape and kill her and no one would ever be the wiser.

It played on his mind. He'd seen how men use women even back home. Most men - even that preacher blacksmith Thomas back in Turalla. He'd got little Nellie up the spout. Alan told him that he'd caught them 'doing' it. Everyone in town had thought it was East that was responsible. He had known that all along. But he'd laughed it off. Even though he would never have touched a little kid like her, he didn't mind the reputation of being the one that all the women wanted. They had done too. It wasn't just the little girls who had been dreamy eyed when he walked past. Most of the women too took their chances to give him the eye and lick their lips coquettishly. He could have had his pick, a different woman every day if he'd wanted. But they were too easy and he wasn't one to knock up little girls or break marriages. But other men didn't care.

If even so-called decent blokes could force a little girl like Nellie to lift her skirts for them, then imagine what men living this life would do if they saw a bit of fresh meat and no witnesses? East shuddered at the thought. He was no saint with women but he couldn't hurt anyone. A woman. A child. An animal. They were all part of nature. They deserved to be treated with love.

Most of his life, East had been an observer of people, but rarely one for assertive action unless someone crossed him. He might have remarked the frailties of men and women but he did not take it upon himself to intervene or act as some sort of protector of the innocent. Usually he just sat back, drank his beer and put it down to the way people were, happy that he had managed to avoid having any ties or bonds to bind him. No one could get to his heart or tie him down so that he became like all the others.

Or so he had thought. It was funny how he could remember all the others but not recall Mrs. McAlister. Yet somehow he knew she was a key that could open the door to some self awareness that he lacked. In the days since he had met the woman in the woods he had had a similar sense that he was destined to learn something from her, too. Why else would fate have thrown this lady in his path?

Throwing the end of the cigarette into a puddle, he watched it fizzle out and then got up and returned to the warmth of the stable, its rich smells adding to the thick aroma of nature and men. He made his mind up to go and seek the woman out again despite what she had said. He decided that he needed to clean himself up first.

Later that day when he had got off duty, East wangled a few handfuls of lime in an old milk tin and a bar of lye. It was late afternoon and the rain had eased off leaving a thin sunlight peeking through the clouds, dappling the foliage as he rode through the forest to the little pond that lay not far from the camp. Glancing up at the sky, he saw the faint trace of a rainbow and he wondered if it was a sign. They said there was a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Was he about to discover that there might be something good out there for him after all?

At the pond, he tied up his horse and stripped briskly, peeling off the filthy lice-ridden clothing, leaving them in a heap. He took the tin and scattered lime all over his body rubbing it in to the places most favoured by infestation: his groin and armpits. It was cold and he shivered but he could see that the treatment worked at once as the lice either jumped off him or were poisoned by the powder. He sat down on a tuffet and had a smoke to let the lime work. When he could stand the cold no more, he took the lye soap and plunged into the icy brackish water, frightening a few water birds, and ducked under before surfacing and soaping himself liberally. It was good to feel clean again. He had forgotten how much he had let his standards drop of late.

Wading out, he shook himself and stood about dripping wet and wishing he had thought to bring a cloth to dry himself with. Just then he heard a crack of twigs being crushed underfoot and he swung round to see who was there. Instinctively his hands went to his groin to hide himself from the intruder. He wondered if it was the boy again.

"Who's there?"

There was a silence and then he heard a soft voice. "I am sorry. I did not know you were 'ere..." And for the second time in two days, the young woman surprised him through the trees. Moving into his field of vision, East took up a position behind the horse.

"Wait! Let me dress!" He reached for the clean clothes that he had brought with him and thrust into his long woolen underpants, shrugging on a shirt. Thus covered he stepped out to speak to her. "You spying on me? I left you alone. Why you watching me?"

The woman blushed slightly. "I saw nothing. I was just 'ere one minute." East knew she was lying; her sudden embarrassment told him that. The girl had been there all the time, he reckoned. Well, perhaps she enjoyed what she saw. She wouldn't be the first.

"No worries, love. I've got nothing to hide," he replied with a grin which was not returned. This was not a woman to win over by breezy charm.

"I am glad to see you. I zank you for my brother. You 'elp him. You are kind." She turned as if to go.

"Wait, wait!" East shouted. "Tell me something...why do you live there?" He advanced and few steps until she stiffened and he stopped. "This is a battle ground. If the line falls you'll be in the middle of it. You any idea what an army on the move would do to you?"

He regretted his blunt words as soon as he spoke them and hoped that she would not understand his speech. But her comprehension was better than her ability to reply. "I know. But where do we go? It is our 'ome."

East shrugged. "I don't know. But war does that. People have to leave for safety. Go to the town. Maybe they'll help you."

She shook her head. "Not me. Or my brother. Zey won't 'elp us." But she did not attempt to enlarge on her plight.

"How do you live? Have you got enough food? Maybe I could get you some on the quiet...? Nothing much, but it might help. Tins of meat and some flour...I'll see what I can do."

The girl looked surprised. "Why? Why would you do that? You zink I give you my body for food?" She spat on the ground. "I am not a ....putain...a girl to buy..."

East looked down. "I didn't mean that. I wasn't trying to...I just thought the boy looked thin. You, too. You might need something..."

"Why? Why you care?" The girl responded but her tone showed a little more softness.

"Do I need a reason? Where I come from, people just do things for each other. If your fence is broken, they come and help you mend it. That sort of thing. I don't expect anything back. It wasn't about that..."

She laughed bitterly. "You are Anglais? Zey always want somezing back."

"I'm not English. I'm an Australian. You heard of Australia?"

"Australie? De l'autre côté de la terre? Why are you 'ere ?"

East shook his head. "Long story, love. Another time, maybe. My name's East Driscoll. I work with the horses. I'm with the 51st battalion." He extended his hand to shake hers. The woman looked surprised and took a slight step backwards but then she tentatively stretched out her hand and grasped his.

"Marianne Desailles."

"Pleased to meet you, Mary Ann," East replied with a shy smile.

"Marianne. Not Mary Ann. Enchantée, Monsieur Est," she answered with the ghost of a teasing glance.

"East. Not Est." They both laughed. "Now, you reckon I can get my pants on and make myself halfway decent?" East added.

Marianne smiled and leaned against a tree while he donned the clean trousers and uniform jacket he had brought with him. He thrust his bare feet into the boots, unwilling to reveal to her the socks he had worn before or even to wear any of the infested clothing again.

"Your clothes? Those?" She indicated the discarded pile.

He rolled his eyes. "They're filthy. Full of lice."

"Filthy? What is that? Lice?" she questioned.

East grinned sheepishly. "Dirty? And lice are...." he made a creepy crawly gesture along his arm and then scratched himself. Marianne broke into a peal of laughter and East thought the sun had come out again. It changed her completely into the beautiful carefree girl she should have been.

"Ahhh..sale....et des poux! Donnez-moi...Give me! I wash for you. Now I 'ave somezing I can do. Bring me food. I wash your pantalons!"

"No..." East shook his head. "I can't ask you to do that. They stink. I didn't wash properly for weeks..."

"I don't care. I 'ave wash men's ... caleçons ...I don't know 'ow you say..." And with that she simply picked up a stick and hung the clothes over it before setting off towards the tree cover again. "Demain. Tomorrow. Come. Bring food." And she was gone.

It was late afternoon before he could slip away with his contraband, the saddle bag stuffed with bully beef tins and a few bags of flour. He had even managed to get a few biscuits for the little lad and a cloth full of coffee powder, or what passed for it these days, husks and chicory most like.

Stripping down to his pants, he shaved and washed in a bowl of freezing water but he felt better to be clean for her. He didn't know why. He hadn't been near enough to her for her to smell him unless she was down wind.

Riding through the wood, he felt a sudden surge of excitement at the thought of seeing her again. It was human contact. Once upon a time he had shunned it unless he wished to spend a night with a few of the local men down the boozer or find a willing body to give him a bit of ease. Mostly being alone had never bothered him. His horses had been more than enough companionship. It wasn't the same anymore. His soul seemed to cry out for something and he didn't know what it was.

He wondered why he didn't make more effort with the men in his battalion. He was on nodding terms with many but he rarely said much and they generally left him alone. He was friendly enough with the stable lads but they were boys and it was easy to win their admiration. Like with Alan and Joe. He could be the big man with little boys but when it came to being a man with men he usually backed off and preferred to be solitary. They thought he was wild and tough. Maybe he was just afraid of facing up to the world of men?

With these odd thoughts playing on his mind, he picked his way across the spring greenery on an afternoon that was sunny and clear. It gave a lift to his mood and he almost felt happy. It was a peculiar sensation after all this time.

Dismounting just short of the clearing, he led the horse behind him and tied her to a tree trunk. His arrival had been noted; the boy was out on the step of the cottage watching him shyly. East smiled gently and the boy ran back in to return moments later with his sister. Marianne looked different. Her hair was loose and tumbling down her back with the side pinned up to reveal the tiny perfect tilt of her cheeks. This time she had on a flower-print dress with a scooped neckline. He wondered if she had dressed for him, and then cast the thought aside.

"You came. I 'ave your clothes."

"Got you some food." East hoisted the saddle bags and held it out to her. She took it from him and gave him a little smile. 

"You are tres gentil. Kind."

"No worries. Plenty where that came from, love," he replied. It wasn't what he wanted to say. He had an urge to tell her that she was the loveliest creature he had ever seen in his life. Every feature of her perfect face and slim frame seemed to him a thing of wonder. That here in this hell on earth could live a woman so fair that she was like a princess in a fairy tale. Lost in a deep dark wood with all the forces of darkness around her. He wondered if this is what he had been saved for. To save her. As a woman had once saved him.

He didn't know what else to say. His hat in his hand, he looked about the compound, running a hand over his short cropped hair. "Looks like this place could take a bit of fixing up. You need a hand with anything? Must be hard for a woman and a child alone..."

Marianne shrugged. "We manage. The roof leaks. But we manage."

He looked up at the roof and wiped his hand across his face. "I could take a look, Miss. Madame, I mean..."

"Merci...thank you. I cook. You eat with us? In return?"

East nodded. "Obliged. Got a ladder?"

She found a rickety old ladder and he rooted around in the small barn finding some tools and even a few old slates. He took off his jacket and shirt.  Swinging up, he set to work patching up the holes and clearing the gutter. It felt good to do honest work again. Down below he was aware of the little boy watching him but the child made no effort to communicate. He was the quietest kid East had ever met; he wondered why he was so docile. Was he just not used to people or was it something else?

Finally finished, he scaled down and loped over to the well, hauling up a bucket of water to wash down in. He removed his vest and washed down; he had worked up a sweat even on this spring afternoon. The boy tugged at his trousers and he turned; he was handed a small wedge of soap and a cloth to dry himself.

Nodding his thanks, he cleaned up and redressed before making his way to the tiny cottage where he knocked softly.

"Entrez!"

He stepped in.

It was simple but clean inside, everything neat and tidy if old and worn. There was one room with a wooden table, a few chairs, a kitchen range and a large dresser; wild flowers and a few plants adorning the window sills and table tops. Herbs hung up drying and there was the smell of something bubbling on the stove. A little wooden ladder led up to the upper story where there was one room, no doubt where they slept.

"Asseyez-vous. Sit." He took his place at the table set for three and she carried over bowls of steaming stew, a casserole of some sort. The bully beef was unrecognisable now with the vegetables and herbs she had added. A loaf of bread lay on the table cut into chunks. It was the tastiest meal he had eaten in many a long day. Hungrily he tucked in as did the others, no one in a mood to talk when precious food was waiting. He finished his plate and she offered him more; he took it thankfully, enjoying the sense of this woman standing by his place and ladling out, fussing over him, filling up his glass of water.

Once the simple meal was over, Marianne excused herself and took her brother upstairs where she must have put him to bed or at least settled him down. Alone he cleared up the empty plates, washing them at the sink and laying them to dry.

"NO! You do not 'ave to wash them..."

East laughed. "No worries. I look after myself. Always did. Never had no one since I was little fella..."

"No family? Why?" Marianne asked. East sat down at the table and thought awhile. She went to a cupboard and took out a bottle, pouring them two glasses.

"Calvados. I never drink. But I think you might like a taste, no?"

He took the glass and tasted the spirit. She sipped a little and pulled a face. "So...your family?"

"My Dad was a drifter....used to come back now and again...mostly when he was down on his luck...no money, ya know? Mum would take him in again and then he'd get bored and disappear...one day he just went for good. Don't know why. Maybe he died or something. Mum didn't last long. Passed away one winter when I was fifteen. Been on my own since."

"'Ow did you live?"

"People were kind. Used to send me food and things. Old clothes. They were like that where I lived. But at fifteen, you're a man in Australia. You just have to get on with it. My Dad didn't give me much but he was good with horses. That was his trade. Irish. Tinker," East laughed.

"Tinker...?" Marianne repeated.

"Sort of like a gypsy."

"Gypsy? Bohémien?"  Marianne laughed wryly.

"Yeah, Irish gypsies. That's why he liked to wander, I suppose. But he knew his horses. They all do. That's what they deal in - horses. Used to take me about when I was a kid. Taught me a few things. Only thing I did know anything about. So, I packed my things and lit out. Went and got a job as a wrangler on a team. Picked it up as I went along. Earned myself some money and bought a few horses. Never liked working for people. Can't stand bosses..."

"Bosses?"

"Ya know...men in charge of you. The masters..."

"Ah...les maîtres. I understand. So you went where with your 'orses?"

"Back to Turalla. Had the old house there. A bit of land from my Ma. It was a ruin but - what did I need? Just a roof and a place for my horses. Started breeding, breaking, buying and selling at the fairs. Pays enough. I'm my own boss. Maître."

The woman sipped her liquor again. "Why did you leave? Why did you come to this war?"

"Long story. Some other time, hey?" He didn't feel inclined to tell her the story of his path to France. It wasn't a subject that he had ever spoken of to anyone. "Now you. Tell me your story."

Marianne blushed. "What is there to say? I was born 'ere. I live 'ere all my life."

"Your brother?"

"Etienne? My mother died when he was born. He was not ... 'ow you say... ? Bien portant... He is ... sourd-muet. He cannot..." she pointed to her ears and her mouth.

"Deaf and dumb? Bloody hell....poor lad..." He should have guessed at the strange noises the boy had made; he had been trying to speak.

"I was ten years old. My father and me look after 'im."

"Where's your Dad now?"

She shrugged. "Mort. Dead"

There was a silence. He didn't know what to say. She had spent her whole life in this little wood and he had crossed the world. But he reckoned there wasn't much between them. They were alone. They didn't know much about anything. Just how to survive.

East drained the rest of his glass and stood up. "I'd better be getting off, Miss..."

"Marianne. S'il vous plaît..."

   "Marianne. Thank you for dinner. Merci. Beaucoup,' he added nervously. He didn't want to leave but it was late. Dark outside. He had no valid reason to stay. She walked him to do the door, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders as she opened the door and he stepped out into the night. They stood on the step in the moonlight.

"Well, then....I'll get off..."

"Oui. Bonne nuit, monsieur..."

East turned to go and then suddenly changed his mind. In a swift motion, he caught Marianne in his arms and placed a kiss on her mouth. It was chaste but it was honest. He was attracted to this beautiful girl and he wanted her to know.

She gasped, her hand flying to her mouth in surprise. He backed away, unsure if he had offended her. Then she reacted. Her arms flew around his neck and she kissed him back. It was his turn to be shocked. It was the last thing he had expected.

"Marianne..."

"East..."

They said nothing more. He grasped her in his arms and they kissed again, this time no longer chaste. He pushed his tongue into her mouth; she sucked hard upon it, as eager as he was. Her hands rucked up his shirt and she felt the warm flesh of his naked back. He took her small breasts in his large rough hand and squeezed the delicate flesh until he felt her nipple peak. In the dark silence of the forest they explored each other, mouths locked, hands wandering, soft sighs as they aroused their desperate need."I want you..." he gasped. "You are so beautiful..."

Marianne put her finger to his lips and pulled on his hand, dragging him to the small byre attached to the cottage where he had earlier searched for implements to mend the roof. She threw a blanket on the floor and stood before him, ripping at her bodice, to bare her breasts before throwing herself back into her arms.

"Are you sure?" He muttered as his hand ran beneath her skirts to drag down the thick bloomers she was wearing.

"Oui...Seigneur...Fais moi l'amour...!"  

He did not understand her words but he understood her passion. Her fingers pulled at the buttons of his trousers and plunged in to drag out his cock and grasp it roughly in her fingers. It was enough. He laid her back and fell upon her, raising her skirts around her waist as she opened her legs and wrapped them round his thighs. His fingers fumbled until he found her soft wet hole and then he pushed himself inside. She rose and fell in his arms, moaning softly. It was quick and raw, both of them too hungry for the touch of each other's flesh to hold back. He ground against her and then pounded fast, hands raking through her wild hair, his lips nipping and nuzzling at every part of her face and neck, biting and licking. They were like two wild things clawing at each other. She stiffened and came, her nails tearing down the skin of his back beneath his shirt; he shuddered and came, falling upon her tiny body in his helplessness.

There was silence. Neither spoke. East rolled back and closed his eyes, still too lost in the sensation even to think. Marianne moved and he was aware that she was sitting astride him; he opened his eyes.

"Tu es magnifique! Je n'ai encore jamais rencontré un homme comme toi!"

Her words struck a chord somewhere in his memory; it was as if another woman had spoken to him in such tones - even if he did not understand Marianne's words.

"Marianne...forgive me...I couldn't stop myself...you're so lovely and so fine..."

She shook her head. "No. I am just a woman. Alone. Lonely. I miss the touch of a man. Do not apologise. It was my wish...I 'ave dreamed of you since I watch you in the water. You are such a man..."

East sat up and leaned against the wooden slats of the byre. "This is not your first time?"

She shook her head. "I am married. My 'usband is fighting in the war. Or maybe dead. Who knows?"

"You're married?" East was stunned by her revelation.

"Oui."

"Who is he?"

"Gerard. Gerard Desailles."

"You love him?"

"He's my 'usband."

"You didn't answer my question," East reminded her, grasping her possessively by her neck.

Marianne sat up and shook her hair out truculently. "Oui. I love 'im. But I need a man. Can you understand that?"

East nodded, stood up and fastened his trousers. "You want a young man to use. Yeah...I understand that..."

"No! No! I do not mean that!"

"You don't love me. You just want me to fuck you. Like she did. Like they all did. Jesus Christ!" He continued dressing and turned to storm out of the barn.

"Who are you talkin' about? Who is she? No, I don't love you. But I like you. Mon Dieu! Be a man! You do not love me! You wanted me too!"

But he was already out of the door and crossing the ground to his horse. Swinging into the saddle, he set off briskly at a trot, leaving her fruitlessly running after him, holding her dress closed against the chill of the spring night.

He thought of her constantly. Her slender body and her pert breasts, the soft silken skin of her body, her mouth so full and sweet and that long hair. At night the sensation of her cunt, so tight and wet, her frantic, hungry grasping for him, the rush of desire so blinding that he could scarce remember how they had moved from formal politeness to intense erotic pleasure. All he wanted to do was see her again. Why had he left in such a rage? He barely knew her; she hadn't lied to him. He had desired her and she had given her body to him willingly. Why had he reacted so violently to the idea that he was a mere plaything, a young stud to gratify her desire? What was wrong with that? He was young and lusty - wasn't it every man's dream to find a beautiful woman who wanted sex but nothing more?

Lying in his bunk at night staring into space, he knew that the answer was somewhere just out of reach. He could almost work it out. There was something pricking at his memory, nagging and prodding. It was something to do with the place and the act and another time. Marianne's honest answer that she loved her husband and had simply turned to him for comfort had struck a bitter chord that resonated in his soul. Why? What did he want that he could not have? Why did he feel so rejected?

East knew that if he could answer those questions then he would have found the parts of him that were missing.

So he went back. A few weeks later just as the sun was setting, he knocked on her door. She opened it and said nothing, just opened to let him enter. Etienne was by the fire playing with a little kitten. Marianne rummaged around and made a little bed for him by the hearth from a straw pallet and some blankets. The boy did as he was told and settled down; she dimmed the lamp.

In the near dark, they stood and watched each other. He saw the rise and fall of her breasts as she breathed; she saw his eyes cloudy with desire. His body hardened at the mere sight of her; hers loosened and turned liquid at his imposing masculinity dominating the tiny space of her humble home. She waited until the boy slipped into sleep and then took a candle on a holder and climbed the ladder to the floor above. Still in silence, East followed her.

It was a small gallery with little more than a mattress but it was clean and fresh, the sheets washed and the blankets aired. Setting the candle on the narrow windowsill, its flickering light sending leaping shadows along the walls, Marianne slowly removed her clothes. He had never seen her naked before. The warm soft light lent an unearthly glow to her white flesh. She was as he had imagined. Perfect. Milk white, lithe and small, the soft curling hair between her legs framing her fragile sex, the folds like a flower in bloom.

She lay back on the pillows and displayed herself openly; he stripped and lay beside her. Their hands reached out tentatively and they touched; first finger tips, the hands interlocked and then the journey of discovery. She lay passively while he caressed and looked; let him push her legs wide and inhale her fragrance, let him place a deep tongued kiss on her petalled lips, searching for the taste of her. He felt her shudder and gasp at his bold approach.

Marianne tended to him as he had to her, worshipped his cock, her tiny buttocks displayed to his gaze as she gave her lips to his manhood; he swept his hands over her naked rump and traced the slit, from the pink pursed ring to her hidden pearl now peeking from its sheath, red tinged and wanting. His fingers entered her and she writhed against them; he gasped as she sucked in rhythm to his probing motion.

She rose above him still trembling with her orgasm and as he supported her, lowered herself down on his aching cock. The sensation of her grip sent shock waves through him; he barely restrained himself. Over and over she bore down on him, leaning on his chest her long tresses trailing his flesh, her nails digging in his shoulders. East could stand no more and he tossed her back and plunged between her thighs, half mad with pleasure and need, but still trying to hold himself from the frenzy of their first time together. This time it was deep and tender for all its passion. This time he did not pull away. This time he lay curled upon her belly and he realized that he was crying silent tears.

Marianne did not ask him what ailed him. She just wiped them away and stroked his head as if he was a little child. 

He awoke to light streaming in his face. Marianne was lying in his arms. They had made love until almost dawn; he had meant to leave but they must have fallen asleep. A noise made him turn his head and he saw Etienne watching them curiously. They were naked sprawled out above the blanket. "Go away...!" East muttered, reaching for the blanket to cover them. Then he realized that boy could not hear, so he made a shooing gesture; the boy shrank back and scrambled down the stairs.

Searching for his clothes, East dressed, aware that he should be on duty by now and could be disciplined if his absence without warrant was discovered. Marianne stirred and rolled over, stretching and yawning. "Tu t'en vas? You go?"

He nodded. "I'm late already..."

"You come back?"

"If you want me to," he replied softly.

"I want you..." she reached out and clung to his shoulders, a deep sigh emanating from her. "But you must understand, mon chéri...this is not love. I do not know what it is...but it is not love...I can give you any part of me but that..."

He closed his eyes at her words. Love. He knew love. He had loved. But he had not been loved back. The realization cut through him like a knife. Another woman had said words like these to him in the past. His memory shifted - but still hovered just out of the grasp of his fingertips.

"Not sure I'm capable of love anymore, Marianne. But I'll take care of you while I can. I promise."

He held her close for a moment and then broke away, kissing his fingertips and placing them on her kiss-bruised lips. The little smile she gave him and the moue of a returned kiss gave him a jaunty feel. His body was loose and satisfied and this woman cared for him. It was as if a bridge between him and the world had suddenly appeared before his eyes.

For the first time in as long as he could remember, it felt good to be alive.

The months passed and the spring advanced; wild flowers sprang up and carpeted the forest floor. It mirrored the joy that East found each time, he steered his horse through the now familiar paths to Marianne's cottage. Etienne was no longer wary and would wait for him along the route, smiling broadly as he swung him up to ride before him and they continued back home. The boy loved to follow East around; he would help him with small tasks as East worked on the odd jobs around the place, watch him tend to whichever horse he was riding that day, join him for a bathe in the little pond nearby. East thought he was rather like a pet kitten; the child even made a purring noise when he curled up at his feet by the fire at night. It wasn't like the hero worship he had taken for granted back home. This was a different bond. This child needed a father figure and East needed to be a carer. It was time he reached out and took a chance for someone else's sake.

Marianne seemed to grow more radiant every day, the former careworn aloofness that she had used to keep the world at bay now set aside. She had a man to protect her and she could relax and bask in his affection. And there was affection. Real affection. Apart from the nights when they came together and gave each other pleasure beyond imagining, there was a quiet friendship growing. One day, Marianne's husband would return or he would leave, East knew that. There was no future for them. But there was a present. And they both intended to live that to the full.

But East knew that the days were running out. A big push was in the offing; it was the worst kept secret in the army. Daily, fresh troops arrived to wait in camps a few miles from the front for their turn to fill the holes in the line once the shooting started. Munitions and armaments were piled up; supplies were being deposited every day. Cavalry men and horses were training round the clock. No one knew quite where the central prong of the attack might be but that there would be a major assault and a pivotal battle somewhere along the Somme was not in any doubt. It was only a matter of time.

And so on that June evening, on the last day of that glorious month, East decided he would warn Marianne that he might not be around so often for a while. If he could persuade her, he intended to take her to the town and find her a room. He had a little money saved and that would do to keep her and the boy safe until they could dare come back to their little home. He waited until dinner was over and they had all gone down for a stroll to the water's edge.

Dragonflies hovered above the pond, darting to catch tiny insects or take a sip of water. It was still warm and humid although it was already evening. East and Marianne settled down on a rock, Etienne playing nearby with a pile of leaves and a few ants. East told her of what he knew and how he would like to provide for her until the danger was passed.

"I am not welcome there," was her reply to his offer of temporary resettlement in the town, as she played nervously with the edging of her cardigan.

"Why not?" East answered.

He watched her bite her lip and roll her eyes, playing with a strand of hair that had fallen from the thick plait she wore that day. It was evident that she could not meet his eyes. "They think I am dirty."

She knew the word now. She knew many words now - even East had picked up some basic French vocabulary from their time together and was making some improvement in the language. "Dirty?" East repeated.

Marianne hunched her shoulders and then dropped her elbows forward to rest on her knees. "When my father died, I was left alone with Etienne. I 'ad no money. The men from the town used to come. They paid me. But if I ever went into the town, the same men would spit when I walked past and their wives would turn their backs. But they still came knocking in the night. That is 'ow I met Gerard. He knocked one night - but he fell in love with me. I fell in love with 'im. I didn't know that it could be good with a man. I thought it was supposed to hurt. That you just let them do it..." She put her head in her hands for a moment. East listened.

"Gerard.... 'e say to me that I don't have to live like this. He would look after me. And he did. We were married. In the town. I wanted them to see! Now I was a respectable woman too. But, they still turned their backs. Gerard's father owns the bakery. He say 'You not my son any more!' No one would give 'im a job. So he 'ad to go to Amiens and find work in a factory. He said when he save money, we can go too. But then the war came and he become a soldier. Two years already. He come back once or twice."

East took her hand and raised it to her lips. "It don't matter about the people in town or what they say. I'm taking you there until me or your old fella comes back. You and the boy can't stay here. Ya got that?"

Marianne turned and smiled at him. "They will see you and they will tell Gerard..." she protested weakly.

East shrugged. "He doesn't want you dead, love. You do what you have to. What would he do to you if he found out?"

"Gerard is a real man. He knows. You are right. He would not blame me."

Something crossed East's mind. It had been months now. He should have been thinking. "What if I gave you a baby? How would he cope with that?"

She leant over and took his hand, placing it flat-palmed on her belly. "You already have, mon amour. It is too late to wonder about maybe now..."

The news hit him like a bullet driving through his body. They had made a life together. Whatever happened now, part of him would live on. Like his father before him, his rover's blood would be spread far and wide - but he would be long gone before it flowered. It gave him comfort to know that somewhere a child would one day run about and see a different day. He hoped it would have a better chance than he did.

They sat on side by side as night fell and talked quietly together. At one point, Marianne laid her head on his shoulder and sang softly in his ear, words he did not know but that resonated in his heart. He closed his eyes and remembered what it felt like to long for someone who could not be yours. Almost without thinking he found himself singing a song he had once known:

If I had the wings of an eagle
o'er the lands far below I would fly
I would fly to the side of my loved one
And there I would lay down and sigh

He gathered Marianne into his arms and stroked back her hair as he sang soft and low in her ear:

I'd take you into my arms and protect you
Surround you with love all your life
For though miles may divide us...
It's your touch I think of tonight
It's your touch I think of tonight

They lay together that night and he loved her gently, suddenly overcome by the thought of the tiny life growing deep inside her body in this time of death and destruction all about. Somehow things were making sense amidst the madness. We all have our time and even when it has passed, God gives you the chance to start again. It is called the future and perhaps you take part in it through the lives of your children.

East crept back in the pre-dawn to the barracks and found a scene of organized chaos. Orders had just come in and they had mere hours before they were to go forward, on the wings of the battalion's advance. With a sinking dread he knew he had left it too late; there was no opportunity now for him to take Marianne and her brother to safety in the town. In desperation he called to Curly, one of the younger stable lads whose thin, grimy hair was as straight as straw and gave him a roll of francs wrapped in a hastily written note:

Get out. Go to town. I will see you there.   East

The boy sped off. He was half way down the path when the ground shuddered with the first blast of the guns. Curly was fifteen, had lied about his age to join up, and was scared to death. Taking a quick look at the wad of currency and his mind was soon made up. Throwing the note into a ditch, he changed direction and made his way south, away from the line and the battle. His only thought was to survive.

Propped up and leaning on the pillows, East lay back and read the newspaper that someone had passed to him. It was weeks old but it was still news to him. He didn't know how long exactly he had been there in the hospital as he had no idea of the date today. But he knew the day when it had all begun. July 1st. That date would always be etched upon his heart.

The paper was reporting on the events of the first few weeks of the battle that was raging even now. Men were still dying daily in their thousands. He found it hard to believe that his memories of the horror could be real; that any scene so foul could exist in the world of men. He had been lucky. Lucky. He wondered why he had been spared when all about him every man he knew, every single comrade-in-arms, was lying shattered, blown to pieces, crushed by the fallen horses. His recollection of the scene was little more than a blur of red and fire and smoke - and noise so loud he had thought his head would burst.

He had lost count of the number of horses and men to whose heads he had put his revolver to put them out of agony. In his mind he had lost the ability to tell man from beast, just the terrible screams of dead and dying. That is what had saved him. He had dismounted to tend to a dying horse and had thus disappeared below the elevation of the enemy guns. While the foolhardy heroes of his battalion tried to ride their way into paradise against the shattering wall of guns, he had crawled from body to body trying to do what he could. Mostly he could only hasten death. When his own revolver was empty he took a man's own and used it to give him peace. Many, the ones still lucid, had begged him to shoot them - and thanked him as they died.

He thought he would never get the images from his mind as long as he lived.

Somewhere on that July day, a bullet had hit him. There had been a terrific crack above his head, a jolt in his left shoulder, and at the same time he had watched in an amazed, detached sort of way as his right forearm twisted upwards of its own volition and then hung limp. Crumpling to the ground he had suddenly been filled with a surge of happiness. It had been a physical feeling almost, consciousness of a reprieve from the shadow of death, no less. That he had just taken part in a wicked failure, that he had really done nothing to help win the war, these things were forgotten - if ever indeed they had entered his consciousness. There was nothing more now that any man could demand of him. His victory against himself had been won.*

East Driscoll had lain there in that place for two days before a team sent in to look for injured had found him. His wound had been relatively uncomplicated; the bullet had passed right through and, although the bone was smashed, it was not a life-threatening injury of itself. But loss of blood and the diseases that so quickly spread where dead bodies rot in the summer heat had caused a massive infection and he had only just escaped losing the entire arm. For weeks fever had gripped him and he had hovered between life and death. But he had lived. A whole man still.

For much of the time he had lain among the bodies, East had been conscious and awake, just slipping into fitful sleep from time to time. But his mind had had much to think on. It was alert and clear, more so than at any time since he had had his original accident. Clarity was revealed in all its painful truth. The sheer mind-numbing horror of the battle had shocked his fractured brain back to life. What place did his trivial problems have in the world he was now facing? What had happened in the past was no longer horror to a brain that had seen the devastation of the battle of the Somme.

He had relived it all. His life in Turalla, how he had been his own boss, free from care and the world had been his plaything if he had wanted it. Then he recalled the day he had first met Grace. When that damned ostrich had got loose and they had galloped together over the plain in its wake. How she had looked at him those following weeks and how he had known what she wanted - what he wanted, too. And then the night she had come to him and what she had taught him of the passion that could exist between a man and a woman. Taught him, East Driscoll, the man who had thought that all he had to do was smile and pull a girl into his arms for her to let him lift up her skirt and take his ease. Grace McAlister had shown him that the pleasures of the flesh were so much finer than the sordid business he had indulged in up till then.

With tears coursing down his cheeks he remembered how he had loved her and how her presence had caused his heart to sing and his face to almost crack in a foolish grin. Galloping across the plain together on one horse, tempting fate that they might be observed, dancing to the strains of his old gramophone- a waltz that had never meant so much sense to him before while he looked into her eyes and had found love. His high spirits that made him lie back on the ground and just laugh helplessly for the joy of life. He had loved her so. His beautiful Grace, so proud and fine, so spirited and clever.

But it had not all been good. He remembered the pain of being snubbed by her cold fish of a husband, treated like a servant on his own land. Her refusal to listen to his pleas that they should declare themselves and that she should leave her husband for him. She had told him that he was a child to think it could ever work between them, that she would never leave her husband, that what they had was not love but passion - and that was a different thing entirely. His mind brought back the halting letter he had dictated to Alan, how she had ignored it and then the rage in which he had gone to the dance to have it out with them all. He had been drunk and disorderly, boorish and uncouth. He had shamed her before the town and her husband. He had shamed himself.

And so he had ridden off into the night, drunk himself into oblivion and then fallen. And that is where his memory ended. But he knew the rest. Grace had loved him all along - but she had been a realist. A young man like him who couldn't even read and write had no place in her world nor had she, an elegant lady, any in his. Time would have caught up with them both - her most of all. She would have aged and he would have lost his naïve infatuation, started looking around at pretty girls and broken her heart. Grace had been so much more mature than him in more than years. He had deserved what happened - but she had not.

Staring into that blue sky above, he wished he could live long enough to go back and tell her that he was sorry that he ruined her life. She might have been shrewd enough to know that all they could ever share was an illicit love but, when she had seen the damage that her affair with him had caused, she had dealt with the aftermath in a way that he had not done. She paid for her 'sin' by sacrificing her name and her future to nurse the shell of a man she had once loved, still loved, aware that her quiet devotion and the acceptance of her share of the blame in the whole tragedy would never be understood by anyone.

And what if she had some night used his body while he had babbled on like a child unaware of what she was doing? Did he blame her in her loneliness and frustration? Like he himself, or Marianne - didn't she deserve the comfort of his flesh for all she had suffered, however strange and disturbing the image was to him now? But that was the oddest thing of all. Her act no longer seemed like a foul perversion. In his feverish brain, he saw it for what it was - a declaration of love cried out to the heavens when it was too late.

East returned to the paper and his scanning of the reports and the watered-down accounts of the battle, sanitized for the people back home. Some of the comments angered him, some made him shake his head but here and there a nugget of truth shone out like a candle in a thick dense wood:

...The first day of the offensive is very satisfactory. The success is not a thunderbolt, as has happened earlier in similar operations, but it is important above all because it is rich in promises. It is no longer a question here of attempts to pierce as with a knife. It is rather a slow, continuous, and methodical push, sparing in lives, until the day when the enemy's resistance, incessantly hammered at, will crumple up at some point. From to-day the first results of the new tactics permit one to await developments with confidence. (Official statement - Army HQ, Paris, July 3rd 1916.)

 

...A perceptible slackening of our fire soon after seven was the first indication given to us that our gallant soldiers were about to leap from their trenches and advance against the enemy. Non-combatants, of course, were not permitted to witness this spectacle, but I am informed that the vigour and eagerness of the first assault were worthy of the best traditions of the British Army.

We had not to wait long for news, and it was wholly satisfactory and encouraging. The message received at ten o'clock ran something like this: 'On a front of twenty miles north and south of the Somme we and our French allies have advanced and taken the German first line of trenches. We are attacking vigorously Fricourt, La Boiselle, and Mametz. German prisoners are surrendering freely, and a good many already fallen into our hands (John Irvine, Daily Express 3rd July, 1916)

 

...Good progress into enemy territory. British troops were said to have fought most gallantly and we have taken many prisoners. So far the day is going well for Great Britain and France. (Herbert Russell - telegram to Reuters 1st July, 1916)

 

...There was no lingering about when zero hour came. Our platoon officer blew his whistle and he was the first up the scaling ladder, with his revolver in one hand and a cigarette in the other. 'Come on, boys,' he said, and up he went. We went up after him one at a time. I never saw the officer again.  He was only young but he was a very brave man... (Private George Morgan 1st Bradford Pals)

 

...The officers were in the front. I noticed one of them walking calmly carrying a walking stick. When we started firing we just had to load and reload. They went down in their hundreds. You didn't have to aim, we just fired into them. (Captured German machine-gunner)

 

..A German doctor taken prisoner near La Boiselle stayed behind to look after our wounded in a dugout instead of going down to safety. I met him coming back across the battlefield next morning. One of our men was carrying his bag and I had a talk with him. He was a tall, heavy, man with a black beard, and he spoke good English. 'This war!'  he said. 'We go on killing each other to no purpose. It is a war against religion and against civilisation and I see no end to it!'

 

...It was an incredible sight, an unbelievable sight; they galloped with their lances and pennants flying, up the slope of High Wood and straight into it. Of course they were falling all the way because the infantry were attacking on either side of the valley furthest away from us and the cavalry were attacking very near drooping to the ground with no hope against the machine guns because the Germans up on the ridge were firing down into the valley where the soldiers were. An absolute rout. A magnificent sight. Tragic.

(2nd Lieutenant F.W. Beadle Royal Artillery)

It was September before East Driscoll was sufficiently recovered to visit the site of his battalion's previous encampment. He was shortly to be discharged from the army. His injuries, although not permanently disabling, had been serious enough for him now to be thought unsuitable for combat and, as the use of the cavalry had been finally proved to be a complete and utter waste of life, his company had been broken up - the little that remained of it, that was. But he had to go back and find Marianne first before he was shipped out.

There was the matter of his child to settle. He had some money that had been given to him on his discharge - pay owing and a small sum to tide him over for the first few weeks of civilian life. It wasn't much - but he meant for her to have it all. He would manage somehow.

In his weeks in the hospital, East had had time to think. Some day soon, Marianne's husband would return and she had made it clear that then he would have no place in her life. Child or no, there was nothing else he could do for her then let her be free to try and rebuild her life again. They had been lovers but that was all. She belonged to another man and he himself was not ready for the real commitment that a life with a woman would demand of him. This he now knew. Grace had taught him that. He and Marianne could not have made it together - there was too much between them in the end.

First off, he went to Albert, the nearby town, but he could find no sign of her and her brother there. The local people that he spoke to in various shops knew who she was alright but they had not seen her in months, they said. His heart sank with dread. Had she refused to take his help and remained there in that exposed location throughout the campaign?

Later that day, he reached the old familiar path that led to her cottage. The area was different now. The path had been trampled down by the movements of men and there was clear evidence of occupation in the woods. People had camped out there and lived rough. All the signs of deserters. Nothing he saw made him feel any better.

He came upon the cottage and it appeared untouched at first. Smoke was curling from the chimney. His heart stopped its rapid thud and began to return to something like normal when the door to the cottage opened and out walked a young man. He was thin and gaunt, dressed in an old brown worsted pair of trousers with a grey vest beneath his braces. His hair was unkempt and he was unshaven, his dark swarthy complexion in contrast to his youthful leanness. This must be Desailles. The man had lit a cigarette and was drawing deeply on it as he paced the step, when all at once he must have sensed a presence and he looked up sharply.

East and he faced each other and said nothing. He knew that this young man had little doubts about his business there by the expression on his face, one that lay somewhere between sorrow and mistrust. East decided to speak. Neither had any use for pretence.

"Marianne? Etienne?"

Desailles took another drag of his cigarette and then flicked the stump away from him onto the ground below. He walked slowly down the steps and motioned for East to follow him. Across the compound they went until they came to the trees on the right, into which he plunged. A few yards more and there was a tiny copse. There were two freshly dug graves with  simply fashioned wooden crosses. Desailles knelt down and rested his hand on the one that read 'Marianne', his head hanging low and his dirty fingers caressing the wood. "Ils sont morts."

Dead. East sank to kneel by the other man and heard himself sob, a deep groan of bitter pain. For a few moments, he struggled against it, but then he gave in to his emotion and let the tears pour down. He felt Desailles' hand on his shoulders and the two men remained in that pose, in genuflection before the woman and child they had both loved. There was no rivalry or need to explain. Real tragedy reveals the true nature of what matters in life. The other things have no place there.

"How?" East muttered when he finally composed himself, wiping the back of his hand across his face.

Desailles shrugged. Perhaps he did not understand the word.

"Comment?" East tried to find a way to explain.

"Je ne sais pas. Je les ai trouvés la gorge tranchée." He made a slicing motion with his hand. "Des soldats? Des déserteurs? Qui sait? 

"Marianne?" East did not know how to ask the questions - had she been raped? Had he known about the child?

 "Violée. Il y avait tant de sang...At that he broke down too and stopped speaking, just rocking backwards and forwards, his arms wrapped around himself.

East paused. Violée? Violated. Raped. Sang? He knew that word. He had heard it often enough in the hospital. Blood. So much blood...

"Je regrette...no, that's not what I mean...Je suis désolé... désolé..." East tried to say something to reflect what he was feeling - but nothing seemed adequate. He had heard enough to imagine the scene that this man had discovered. What could anyone say in response to that?

"L'aimiez-vous?" Desailles' voice, gruff and tortured, addressed him.

He understood that. He knew the meaning of the word aimer. "Oui," he replied honestly.

"Vous a-t-elle aimé?"

"Non. Elle vous aimait." East replied. 

Gerard Desailles nodded and rose to his feet. Dragging a packet of cigarettes from his pocket, he offered East one and they smoked together in silence at the foot of the graves. Comrades.

There was one last duty East Driscoll had to undertake before he left for Australia, at last ready to face the world he had lef