Ghost Soldier Page 12

  ‘We have to go and capture him.’ Jack was impatient to be off. He dived towards the door.

  ‘Stop!’ Rob looked at Millie. He touched her shoulder. She was in a deep sleep. He couldn’t rouse her to take her with him. He’d put her in danger once before; he wasn’t going to do it again. But he couldn’t let Jack go racing off on his own waving his bayonet in the air.

  ‘We must make a sortie,’ Jack said. ‘When they least expect it.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Rob. ‘I’ll come with you.’

  Nell had stirred herself and came to him. Rob put his hand on her head. Much as he’d love to have his dog by his side, he knew that he couldn’t leave Millie unguarded. ‘Stay!’ he commanded her. ‘Stay here. On guard.’ She stationed herself between Millie and the door as Rob followed Jack out into the darkness.

  Within minutes they were through the bushes and in the coal cellar. Jack had discovered a way to climb up and down the chute that took the coal to the laundry rooms in the basement of the house, and this was his method of going in and out of the clinic.

  ‘These are the servants’ stairs from the laundry room that go right up to the top floor,’ he told Rob.

  Rob nodded. His mother had told him that servants in big houses always used separate stairs to go to and from their rooms so that they didn’t meet their employers on the main staircase.

  ‘There are bolts on the doors on each landing but I unscrewed them so I can get to any floor.’

  Rob followed Jack up the stairs to the top floor. They waited, listening, but the only sound was the sputtering wick of the single lamp burning on a table in the corridor.

  ‘Most of these rooms are offices,’ said Jack. He pointed along the corridor. ‘Was the ghost soldier standing at the window of the room at the end?’

  ‘Yes,’ Rob whispered. He had been in every one of the rooms except the one at the end. ‘I think it’s kept locked.’

  Jack winked. ‘Major Cummings has a spare key in his office’ – he groped in his pocket – ‘but not any more.’ With a flourish he produced it.

  Rob grinned in return. Obviously nobody had paid attention to Captain Morrison’s instruction that a note should be put on Jack’s medical records saying that he was good at stealing things.

  They glided silently to the end of the corridor. Jack eased the key into the lock. By gentle manoeuvring, it yielded with a faint click. Jack clasped the handle. Carefully, carefully he turned it and inched the door open. Rob was poised to flee, expecting at any second to hear a roar of anger. But no sound came to disturb the silence. Now the door was open wide enough for them to enter.

  They slipped inside.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THERE WAS NO one there.

  Rob leaned against the door. His legs were trembling.

  ‘Where is the ghost soldier?’ demanded Jack.

  ‘If he really is a ghost, then he can appear and disappear when he chooses,’ said Rob. His voice sounded unconvincing even to himself.

  Jack advanced into the room, bayonet held out in front of him, just like the soldiers in the park had taught Jed to attack the straw dummies. There was an extended screen in the corner behind the door. Jack wrenched it aside to reveal a wheelchair and some boxes.

  These were the same boxes Professor Holt had carried into Mill House on the first night Rob had seen him. They were empty. What specialist equipment had they contained?

  Jack prowled through the room, examining the items stored on the open shelves and the counter below: bottles and jars and lengths of tubing. He tried the doors of the cupboards underneath, but these were locked. Jack stooped and peered through the keyholes.

  ‘There are papers and notebooks inside,’ he said. ‘I’ll find a key that fits these locks, and then we’ll know what the German spy is up to.’

  Rob went over to a neatly made hospital bed that stood between the two windows. He put his hand on the covers. They were cold to the touch. No one had lain there recently. He looked out of the window. The hut was invisible from here. His efforts to conceal it had paid off. Even with the light of dawn beginning in the eastern sky, it blended perfectly into the surrounding greenery.

  Dawn! Rob remembered that the hospital train was due at first light. Also Millie was alone in the hut. Rob was confident in Nell’s powers as a guard dog, but his sister might be frightened if she woke up to find herself alone.

  ‘I must go back to the shed,’ he told Jack.

  Jack readily agreed to leave the room. ‘Retreat is best at this stage,’ he said. ‘I’ll find some keys and we’ll return and occupy this enemy trench.’

  Before they left, Rob glanced around one last time. He couldn’t work out what use could be made of this specialized medical equipment.

  And there was something else, something not quite right, nagging in his mind.

  He and Millie were in their usual position by the water tank when the hospital train drew up an hour later.

  This train hadn’t as many carriages as the previous ones, and the nurse and the medical orderlies had time to get off to speak to them. ‘I’ve still nothing to tell you, I’m afraid,’ Nurse Evans said. Bert too shook his head, and even the normally grumpy Chesney looked sorry for them. ‘With the weather worsening, there may be fewer trains coming up.’ Her voice was so gentle it made Rob want to cry. He guessed that she was trying to tell him more than what her words actually said. She was saying that there would be fewer trains, and so less chance of finding his father.

  Millie’s eyes filled with tears. Brusquely she handed her sandwich parcel to the driver and set off in the direction of their cottage. Rob knew that this time she was not pretending to be upset. In his heart he was glad that there wouldn’t be so many wounded soldiers, but he was as downcast as Millie to hear that there would be a reduction in the hospital trains.

  In the afternoon Kenneth called round to see if there had been any news and to ask if he wanted to go fishing. Rob shook his head at both questions. He went inside the cottage and closed the door. He was beginning to appreciate how his mother felt. This is what happened when you came to the end of hope. He and Millie had missed a lot of sleep over the last two nights, so for much of the day they lay on their beds and read.

  Rob couldn’t settle. He didn’t want to look at the war magazines that Kenneth had lent him. None of his military history books interested him. His mind was snagging on a thought just out of his reach.

  In the evening they visited Sandy. Jack had said that he would leave a message in the hut when he’d managed to steal a key that might fit the locked cupboards in room number six. There was no note for them, so Millie took the puppy for a walkabout while Rob looked through the telescope. Visibility was poor. It had been a day of heavy cloud and drenching rain. Rob hadn’t told Millie about being in the locked room with Jack. His little sister had enough to cope with – and in any case, he was trying to make up his mind as to what to do next. The ghost soldier might or might not be real – Rob still wasn’t sure – but what he was sure of was that there was something odd about the top floor of the clinic. He couldn’t discuss it with his mother, for the same reason that he couldn’t tell Millie. And he needed more information before he spoke to any other adult, such as Mr Gordon or Miss Finlay. Rob tried to think what advice his father might have given him. ‘Sometimes you have to do things by yourself,’ he had once told Rob. ‘If a job needs done and no one else is available, then go ahead and do it.’ Here was a job that needed done, and only he could do it. Rob straightened his shoulders as he came to his decision. Aided by Jack, he would go ahead and investigate what was happening. And he wouldn’t stop until he’d found out the secret of Mill House.

  Next day, at Sunday visiting, the rain continued, but Private Ames wanted to walk outside.

  ‘They’re going to fix the lawn for us to play croquet,’ he told them. ‘Would you help me so that I don’t hit anyone with my mallet?’

  Millie slipped her hand into his. He held it to his lips and k
issed it. Then he turned his face to the sky, and tears mingled with the raindrops on his face. When they came back inside, Private Ames went directly upstairs to his room.

  ‘It rains a lot in Flanders,’ the duty nurse said by way of explanation. ‘When it rains here, it causes memories to surface, some of which the men would rather forget. You go off home and I’ll fetch Private Ames a strong cup of tea.’

  While he waited for Millie to put on her boots, Rob wandered down the hallway examining the rest of the photographs. There was one dated 1896, showing the front of the house. A game of croquet was in progress. There was a lady in a large hat standing with a mallet in her hand. She was looking up at the front windows, one hand raised in greeting. There was no one at any of the windows. Who was she waving to? Rob peered closer. His shadow moved over the glass.

  There!

  For a second he saw it. In the end attic window . . . a shimmering figure in white.

  Rob stepped back in shock.

  ‘Would you like a jam sandwich?’ Millie was speaking to one of the patients who was sitting on a bench in the hall, watching her put on her boots.

  ‘Mud,’ the man said. ‘So much mud. Ain’t never seen so much mud in all me life. An’ me from a farm an’ all. Don’t know what to do with so much mud. Can’t get rid of it no how.’

  Millie smiled at him. ‘We put our boots by the fire, and then when they dry we take the mud off with a stiff brush.’

  But the soldier didn’t appear to be listening. ‘Caked in it, so we were. And ’twasn’t mud ye could walk in. If ye fell in a crater hole, then there were no way out. Bogged you down. Drowning in mud, so we were. An’ the horses too. Once I saw them trying to get a horse out. Four hours they tried. Brought up a harness and everything. But wasn’t no use. Couldn’t budge it. “Get me a gun,” the officer says. Then one of the lads – a boy, he was – crouched beside the horse and put his arms around her neck. “Ah, Bessie,” he says, “it’s time for the long goodbye. You’ve been a good pal and seen us through thick and thin, and I wish I was going with you, so I do.” An’ he starts to blubber like a baby.

  ‘They’d to haul him off. He’d a tight hold of her mane and they’d to prise his fingers loose and lead him away. And his head was down, his shoulders heaving. And the officer says, “Well, I’ll not ask any man to do a deed I cannot do myself.” And he steps up to the mark with the gun ready.

  ‘Pitiful beast knew what the end of the story was as well. Just lay there. Rolled her eyes back and waited for him to pull the trigger.’

  ‘The officer shot one of the British horses?’ Millie’s eyes were popping out her head.

  The man rambled on. ‘D’ye know there’s even an army instruction how to do it. Best way o’ killin’ a horse. In the manual, so it is.’ He put an imaginary gun to his temple. ‘Bang!’ he said.

  ‘I don’t think I like that story,’ said Millie. ‘Have you got another one you’d like to tell me?’

  ‘The poor horses. They were our friends, no doubt about it. Pulling the guns and the carts and the food and the ammunition. But we weren’t theirs. Oh no. Falling in their traces from overwork. And so one day I decided I’d had enough. We’d got caught by a clump of land mines, and a few of the lads disappeared. Gone’ – he snapped his fingers – ‘like that. And the subaltern who was with us got badly hit. Feet blown off. And so I reckoned I’d just leg it out of there while I still had legs to do it. And I took off my hat and flung it down, and everythin’ else too. Pack and gear and trench spade and sandbags. And then I threw down me rifle, and the subaltern, he says: “You’re on a charge for that, soldier. I’ll have to escort you to Military HQ at the earliest opportunity.”

  ‘And I laughs, ’cos the sub, he ain’t got no legs left fit for walkin’. So I says, “You gonna march me to the barracks?”

  ‘And he laughs too and says, “I guess you’ll have to carry me.”

  ‘So I light him a fag and sit and chat to him a bit, an’ we talk about how I’d have to lock myself up and then shoot myself too for gross misconduct, but then I ain’t got no rifle to do it with ’cos I threw it away. And then, after a bit, I notice that I’m the only one who’s doing the talkin’, and I realize he’s gone somewhere else – to the better place the chaplain talks about. So I close over his eyelids and hope he’s seeing more pleasant things than I am.

  ‘And I go back up the line to the captain, and I report what happened to us, and he says: “It’s a war. Men die. Pull yourself together. Where’s your rifle, soldier?”

  ‘So I looks at him, and then I hears myself screaming and I don’t know what I’m saying and it’s all a bit crazy.

  ‘And this captain is definitely going to have me shot. But I think, Well, that’s OK, ’cos I don’t want to be there no more. I want to go to wherever the subaltern went to.

  ‘So among the boys waiting to be executed for cowardice, I’m the only one who wants to get shot. But do they shoot me? Oh no. It’s the bleedin’ British Army, so they don’t do things that makes sense. No siree. I’m the one they decide to keep alive.’

  Rob signalled to Millie that it was time to leave.

  ‘Isn’t the British Army supposed to shoot only German soldiers?’ Millie asked.

  The soldier nodded. ‘I thought that was the plan too.’ Then he paused, as if thinking about this. ‘But now I don’t think that’s such a good plan, either. I’ve seen German soldiers. Dead and alive. And it’s a funny thing . . . When they’re alive they look like Germans, but when they’re dead . . .’ He stopped speaking for a moment. ‘Little girl, when the Germans are dead, they look the same as us.’

  And the man put his hands over his face and began to weep.

  Rob took Millie by the hand. ‘Mummy’s waiting for us at home.’

  ‘I need to go,’ Millie told the soldier, ‘but I’ll come and visit you.’

  ‘You will?’ He spread his fingers to look at her. ‘That’ll be a first, then. No one ever visits me – not twice, anyway. No one ever listens to what I say.’

  ‘I don’t know if you should visit that soldier again,’ Rob told Millie as they walked home.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because . . . because Mummy might not like it.’ Rob knew that was a lame response, but he couldn’t think of an appropriate answer.

  ‘I think Mummy would like it,’ said Millie. ‘It’s the sort of thing she’d do herself if she . . . if she was . . . the way she used to be.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s a good idea,’ Rob told her. ‘That man says things that are odd.’

  ‘I think he says things that are true,’ Millie replied. ‘Maybe that’s why nobody visits him, why nobody wants to listen.’

  Rob looked down at his little sister. Had she fully understood that it was their own men, British soldiers, who’d been waiting to be executed? Because they were scared, or maybe ill inside their heads? Weren’t you allowed to be scared during a war? It didn’t seem right somehow.

  ‘He shouldn’t speak like that, even if it is true.’

  ‘Why do you say that, Rob? Why are we told to always tell the truth, while grown-ups decide that they can tell lies?’

  Rob was silent.

  ‘Maybe if someone listened to him, he’d get well again,’ said Millie.

  ‘This is different. We are in the middle of a war.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Millie. ‘But maybe if everyone listened to that soldier, the war might stop.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SEVERAL DAYS PASSED before Jack left them a note in the hidden hut to say that he had a key for the cupboards in the room at the end of the corridor.

  I got a key. Cum on Saterday when its dark.

  While Rob waited impatiently for the end of the week, thoughts chased themselves endlessly around his mind. The lady wearing the big hat in the photograph dated 1896 must be the mother of Edward, the young soldier in one of the other photographs hanging in the hall of Mill House. She was waving to someone inside the house. May
be the person at the attic window – the small figure in white – was Edward as a young child, watching his mother from his nursery window. That would make Edward around twenty-four years old when he’d gone off to the war in 1914. Rob decided he’d have a proper look at the photograph next time he was at Mill House. Any photograph he’d ever seen had blobs and spots on it. Perhaps he’d only imagined a figure at the window. There was also the night when, coming back from the hut with Millie, he’d seen that blur of white at the attic window. And then there was what he’d seen through his telescope . . . But stories about the ghost at Mill House were being told in the village long before he’d seen the face of the dead soldier. Rob’s head ached as he tried to work out what was real and what wasn’t.

  And . . . there was that something else; something which floated just under the surface in his mind, slipping away when he tried to reach for it.

  It wasn’t until Saturday night, when he was in the shed looking at the house through the telescope, that it was suddenly startlingly clear what had been bothering him.

  ‘It doesn’t add up,’ Rob said aloud.

  ‘What doesn’t add up?’ Millie was kneeling on the floor playing with Sandy.

  ‘I see it now!’ Rob’s voice rose in excitement. It was like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle clicking into place. ‘The windows aren’t right!’

  ‘What’s wrong with the windows?’ Millie came to join him.

  ‘Look!’ Rob moved to let his sister onto his fire step. ‘There are six rooms on the top floor and they have two windows each. I know because I’ve been in every one of them. Six times two equals twelve. There should be twelve windows on the top floor of the house.’

  Millie put her eye to the telescope. From right to left she counted the number of windows: ‘One, two, three . . . eleven, twelve, thirteen. Thirteen!’ she exclaimed. ‘There are thirteen windows on the attic floor.’

  ‘Exactly! When Jack and I were in the end room, I thought there was something odd about it, but I couldn’t work out what it was. It only has two windows when it should have three. Inside the house there is no thirteenth window!’