The Wood Beyond

He said, ‘When they finally got rid of Sir John French at the end of ’15, it was as if his main fault was not killing off his own men quickly enough. So what they looked for was a general who’d get the job done quicker. French had slain his ten thousands, but Haig was soon slaying his hundred thousands, nearly half a million on the Somme and now another quarter million at Passchendaele. Of course Third Wipers went down as a victory. They gained six or seven miles of mud. Imagine a column of men, twenty-five abreast, stretching out over those six or seven miles, and you’re looking at the British dead. Bit different from Agincourt, eh?’

‘Tell me, major,’ said Pascoe curiously. ‘Feeling like this, how come you took the job of looking after a military museum? In fact, how come you got started on a military career at all?’

For a moment he thought he’d gone too far. The major was regarding him once more with the flintlock gleam in his eye. Then he sipped his tea, brushed his moustache, smiled faintly and said, ‘How come a bright young fellow like you went into the police? Was it the bribes or the chance to beat up suspects that attracted you?’

‘Touché,’ said Pascoe. ‘And apologies for my youthful impudence.’

‘Accepted. Now I’ll answer you. I joined the army ’cos way back about the time of Waterloo, someone decided that the only way to make anything out of my line of Studholmes was to get ’em into uniform and send ’em out for foreigners to shoot at. No one’s come up with a viable alternative since, so on we go, generation after generation, providing moving targets. Rarely get beyond my rank, though my father made colonel. Shot from being a subaltern in ’15 to major, acting lieutenant colonel in ’18. That was one plus for that show – lots of scope for accelerated promotion. If you survived.’

‘Nice to know someone did,’ said Pascoe.

‘Oh yes, he had a talent for it. Lived to be ninety. Still working on his memoirs when he died. I told him he’d left it a bit late, but he said no point in starting till you were pretty sure you were past doing anything worth remembering.’

‘Sounds as if they’d make interesting reading,’ said Pascoe. ‘Talking of which, is there anything you’d recommend to start remedying my immense ignorance about the Great War?’

The major looked at him with one-eyed keenness to see if he was taking the piss. Then selecting a volume from the bookshelf behind him he said, ‘This is about as good a general introduction as you’ll get. After that, if you develop a taste for horror, you can specialize.’

‘Thank you,’ said Pascoe, taking the book. ‘I’ll return it, of course.’

‘Damn right you will,’ said the major. ‘Chaps who borrow your kit and don’t return it always come to a sticky end. Now let’s see if we can’t find somewhere a bit more suitable for your gran than a fireplace, shall we?’

He rose abruptly. As Pascoe followed him out of the office, he said, ‘You run a very tidy museum, sir.’

‘What? Oh thank you. Or do I detect an irony? Perhaps you find tidiness incompatible with a place dedicated to the glorification of war?’

‘All I meant was—’

‘Don’t lie out of politeness, please. Policemen should always speak the truth. So should museums. That’s what I hope this one does. If it glorifies anything it is courage and service. But when the truth is that men were sacrificed needlessly, even wantonly, in the kind of battle your great-grandfather died in, a place like this mustn’t flinch from saying so. We owe it to the men who died. We owe it to ourselves as professional soldiers too.’

They had entered a room at the back of the house, formerly the kitchen but now given over to an exhibition of catering equipment. Studholme pointed through the window into a small paved yard with a single circular flowerbed at its centre. It contained three brutally pruned rose bushes.

‘Looks better in the summer,’ he said. ‘White roses surrounded by lilies. The regimental badge. Used to be an old joke. You always get a good cup of tea from the Wyfies, they even advertise in their badge. Roses, fleur-de-lis; Rosy Lee, you follow? Not a very good joke. Also new recruits are called lilies; passing out, you get your rose. Sorry. Regimental folklore. Set me off, I go on forever. What started this?’

‘My grandmother’s ashes,’ prompted Pascoe.

‘Indeed. The rose bed. Good scattering of bonemeal wouldn’t go amiss there. Or …’ He hesitated then went on, ‘Just say if you think it a touch crass but down in the cellar … well, let me show you.’

He opened a door onto a steep flight of stone steps.

‘Cold, damp and miserable down there,’ said Studholme. ‘Couldn’t think what to do with it. Cost a fortune to cheer it up. Then I thought, why bother? Go with the flow, isn’t that what they say? Not original, of course. Imperial War Museum does something similar, but I reckon for atmosphere, we’ve got the edge.’

‘I’m sorry …?’ said Pascoe.

‘My fault. Rattling on again. Bad habit. Here, take a look.’

He pressed a switch in the wall. Below lights came on, not bright modern electric lights, but the kind of dull yellow flicker that might emanate from old oil lamps. And sound too, a dull basso continuo of distant artillery overlaid from time to time by the soprano shriek of passing shells or the snare-drum stutter of machine-gun fire.

‘Go down,’ urged Studholme.

Pascoe descended, and with each step felt his stomach clench as his old claustrophobia began to take its paralysing grip.

At the foot of the steps he had to duck under a rough curtain of hempen sacking and when he straightened up, he found he was standing in a First World War dugout.

There were figures here, old shop-window dummies, he guessed, now clad in khaki, but their smooth white faces weren’t at all ludicrous. They were death masks, equally terrifying whether belonging to the corporal crouched over a field telephone on a makeshift table or the officer sprawled on a canvas camp bed with an open book neglected on his breast.

In the darkest corner, face turned to the wall, lay another figure with one leg completely swathed in a bloodstained bandage. Close by his foot two large rats, eyes glinting in the yellow light, seemed about to pounce.

‘Jesus!’ exclaimed Pascoe, uncertain in that second if they were real or stuffed.

‘Convincing, ain’t they?’ said Studholme with modest pride. ‘Could have had the real thing down here with very little effort, but didn’t want the local health snoops down on me. Everything you see is authentic. Kit, weapons, uniforms. All saw service on the Western Front.’

‘Even this?’ said Pascoe indicating the sleeping officer’s book.

‘Oh yes. My father’s. Not a great reader, but he told me that at that time in that place, it was a lifeline to home.’

Pascoe picked up the book.

‘Good God,’ he said.

It was a copy of the original Kelmscott Press Edition of William Morris’s The Wood Beyond the World.

‘What?’ said Studholme.

‘This book, it’s worth, I don’t know, thousands maybe. You really shouldn’t leave it lying around down here.’

‘Spoken like a policeman,’ said Studholme. ‘Didn’t realize it was valuable to anyone except me. Still, kind of johnny who comes down here isn’t likely to be a sneak thief, eh?’

‘Spoken like a soldier,’ said Pascoe opening the book and reading the inscription: To Hillie with love from Mummy Christmas 1903. It was clearly a well-thumbed and well-travelled volume. Lifeline to home, Christmas, mother, childhood …

‘Take your time,’ said Studholme. ‘Bit more dust round here won’t be noticed, richer dust concealed, eh? But if you feel it’s too macabre, there’s always the rose bush. I’ll leave you to have a think.’

He turned and vanished up the steps. Carefully Pascoe replaced the book on the dummy’s chest, taking care not to touch the pale plastic hand.

‘So, Gran, what’s it to be?’ he said to the urn which he’d placed by the telephone. ‘Up there with the flowers or down here with the roots?’

He’d already made up his mind, but some pathetically macho pride prevented him from going in immediate pursuit of the major. Next moment he wished he had as one of the passing shells on the sound tape failed to pass, its scream climaxing to a huge explosion with a power of suggestion so strong that the whole cellar seemed to shake and, simultaneously, the lights went out.

Coincidence, or part of Studholme’s special effects? wondered Pascoe, desperately trying to stem the panic rising in his gut.

The telephone rang, a single long rasping burr.

His hand shot out to grab it, hit something, then found the receiver.

‘Hello!’ came a voice, tinny and distant. ‘Who’s that?’

‘This is Pascoe.’

‘Pascoe? What the hell are you doing there?’