The war may be over, but devastating secrets are about to come to light... Of Love and War is a compelling tale of love, guilt and retribution in the aftermath of the Great War from masterful writer, Paul Doherty. Perfect for fans of Pat Barker and Sebastian Barry. 'A powerful and poignant novel with echoes of Birdsong and Gallipoli, [Paul Doherty's] exuberant story of love, guilt and retribution vividly captures the courage and tragedy of the Great War's survivors as the face an uncertain future' - Newcastle Evening Chronicle In 1921, Lieutenant Henry Gilpin is scouring the country seeking out those who, perhaps, did not do their best for king and country in the Great War. In the mining town of Crouden, Jack Aylward's name is on the top of his list. Many men never returned to Crouden from the mud of Northern France; the survivors are tragically altered. Gilpin may exorcise their ghosts, but he brings new terrors with his justice. Kitty Aylward watches in horror as he tears apart the lives of people she has loved and respected. After a wonderful childhood with her constant companions, Billy and Jack, Kitty had finally married Billy but before he left to fight Billy asked for one strange promise: if he should die, she must marry his closest friend. When her husband was killed kept her oath, but now she slowly realises that Gilpin could hold a terrible secret concerning Jack, and Billy's death. What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: 'A tremendous and absorbing read' ' The sounds and smells of the period seem to waft from the pages of [Paul Doherty's] books' ' Five stars '
Release date:
July 11, 2013
Publisher:
Headline
Print pages:
320
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Mysteries of Alexander the Great (as Anna Apostolou)
A MURDER IN MACEDON
A MURDER IN THEBES
Alexander the Great
THE HOUSE OF DEATH
THE GODLESS MAN
THE GATES OF HELL
Matthew Jankyn (as P C Doherty)
THE WHYTE HARTE
THE SERPENT AMONGST THE LILIES
Non-fiction
THE MYSTERIOUS DEATH OF TUTANKHAMUN
ISABELLA AND THE STRANGE DEATH OF EDWARD II
ALEXANDER THE GREAT: THE DEATH OF A GOD
THE GREAT CROWN JEWELS ROBBERY OF 1303
THE SECRET LIFE OF ELIZABETH I
THE DEATH OF THE RED KING
Major Oscar Fairfax drew deeply on his cigarette. He stared through the half-lowered carriage window as if admiring the different greens of the countryside.
The businessman, sitting in the opposite corner, studied the officer closely: the thin face, the furrows around the mouth, the perfectly stencilled moustache along the upper lip, the long nose and those large but seemingly dead dark eyes. A soldier, the businessman concluded, who had definitely fought in the Great War. Very much the officer, with his gleaming boots, light khaki trousers and dark-brown jacket. The shirt and tie matched the trousers; the flat cap and the heavy coat piled beside the officer showed the silver flashes of a major. Similar emblems studded the shiny leather tanned belts across his shoulder and round his waist.
Fairfax glanced across at the businessman, a bored, supercilious stare. The businessman refused to hold his gaze and looked out of the window. The countryside was beginning to give way to outlying farms, the criss-crossed rusting tracks used by the mines and, on a distant hill, the black skeletal scaffolding of a disused pithead. The businessman knew little about the army but concluded the officer was not from one of the Durham regiments, certainly not the Glorious 68th. Fairfax opened his silver cigarette case. He was about to take one out then smiled thinly at the red-faced businessman studying him from head to toe.
‘Do you want one?’
The cigarette case was not within the businessman’s reach.
‘What were you in the war?’ Fairfax asked.
‘In iron and steel,’ the businessman huffed. ‘Supplying our boys with tanks, rifles and bullets.’ The businessman’s fat neck strained like a chicken against his high, white collar. He was about to stretch out his hand and take a cigarette when the case was snapped shut and summarily withdrawn.
Fairfax turned away as if he had already forgotten his companion’s existence. The businessman’s face turned puce at the insult. Out of the corner of his eye he studied the red flashes on Fairfax’s sleeves. They indicated he was part of the military police, an officer from the Provost Marshal’s Office. What on earth was he doing in Durham? Hunting out deserters, men who’d fled the ranks? The businessman had read about such cases in the Northern Echo. The British Army never forgot. The Great War had finished three years ago but the Crown was still hunting down culprits. If only the arrogant bastard would talk! The businessman would love to collect a bit of scandal. Tell his colleagues in Newcastle how he had been the confidant of this enigmatic officer. He took out a blue-dotted handkerchief and blew his nose noisily, a gesture of contempt.
Major Fairfax had taken out a cigarette and was beating it on the silver embossed lid. He put it between his lips and stared out of the window. He played absent-mindedly with the thick leather strap which drew the window up and down. Smoke from the engine billowed out, rolling down the train. Fairfax watched it rise and disappear against the blue August sky. He remembered the shell bursts above the Somme, columns of white, drifting smoke. He’d often wondered if they were the souls of those killed being wafted up to heaven. An idle thought; the truth was so different. Fairfax closed his eyes. No matter how long he stared at any rural scene, painted or real, the landscape of hell always came back: lacerated, bullet-stricken trees, shell craters, trench holes. Bombs, muffled or shrieking, falling like an iron rain, columns of earth whooshing up and crashing down in a screed of dust and stones. Trenches knee deep in red-coloured mud, smoke-wreathed skies, the mad tap-tap of the machine guns, blazing sheets of orange or deep red, spouts of flame, poisoned gas like liquid mustard drifting across. The only protection for his mouth, nose and eyes had been a rag soaked in his own urine.
Even here, in this carriage, reeking of leather upholstery and cigarette smoke, the stench of war came curling back. That terrible odour of disembowelled, fetid, blackening, swollen, blood-soaked corpses. What time was it? The unlit cigarette slipped from Fairfax’s mouth. What did it matter? In the war, day had slipped into night without his even noticing it. Attack and counter-attack. Barbed wire tearing at face and hands. The dead lying around. A headless corpse, the serene, smiling face of one young man sitting in the trench where he had fallen back, as if preparing for a picnic. And the others! Those who had died lashed to a post, waiting for the order, the grim drill of the firing squad. Fairfax opened his eyes. He no longer saw the greenery but black, barren stumps of trees, stretching up against the sky like the topsails of a sunken ship.
‘I wish you’d stop that!’
Fairfax broke from his reverie. He glanced sharply at the businessman who was pointing at Fairfax’s boot. He’d been hitting it hard against the carriage door. Fairfax picked up the cigarette and lit it even as the shrill blast of the whistle informed him that they would soon be in Caundon. He got up, took his briefcase and traveller’s bag from the luggage net above him, put on his coat and hat, sat down and finished the cigarette. The train slowed down in a screech of iron and steel. Caundon station with its hard stone platform, fretted wooden roof, fly-blown windows and fading posters came into view. Every piece of wood, Fairfax grimly noted, had been painted a dull green, just like an army post. The train creaked to a stop, shuddering backwards and forwards. Fairfax waited, lowered the window further and opened the door.
‘And what did you do in the war, Daddy?’ the businessman asked spitefully.
Fairfax climbed down. He turned to collect his luggage. ‘What did you do, dear?’
The businessman was glaring at him. He knew he was safe, the train would be pulling out soon. Fairfax lifted his head. The businessman wished he had kept his mouth shut as those sombre eyes studied him closely. Fairfax seemed unaware of the train’s imminent departure. He was staring at the businessman, remembering his face.
‘I wouldn’t ask that question again,’ Fairfax declared.
He pulled his baggage out, put it on the platform and made to close the door. He pulled it open again.
‘If you want to know, I shot cowards.’ He smiled, swinging the door backwards and forwards. ‘But the war ended before I could get to bastards like you!’
He slammed the door shut, picked up his luggage and walked down the platform. Stationmaster Thompson came striding up, his untidy white hair clamped by a neat cap, his black waistcoat heavily stained with pipe ash. He paused, pulled out his fob watch, nodded to himself, lifted the green flag and blew hard on the whistle. The train’s pistons screeched, puffs of smoke billowed up as it pulled slowly out. Fairfax stood as if uncertain where to go. Thompson waddled up.
‘Business or pleasure?’ he chortled. It was his standard question to all strangers.
‘Justice,’ Fairfax replied. He opened his warrant card and handed the rail ticket to Thompson.
The stationmaster was perplexed. ‘What do you mean, man, justice?’
‘A joke,’ Fairfax said. ‘For now, the Beaumont Arms.’
‘Ah, the Allertons’ place.’
‘Yes, the Allertons’ place,’ Fairfax echoed. ‘Where is it?’
‘Down the street,’ Thompson replied. ‘This is Caundon. One high street.’ His voice faltered. ‘We are not used to the likes of you. Mind you,’ he added wistfully, ‘we used to be.’ Thompson put the whistle into his trouser pocket, his popping eyes stared down the platform.
‘This is where they used to gather,’ he said. ‘All the lads, the boys going off to the front. Not many of them came back. On a morning like this, such memories surface. You half close your eyes and you can see them all: a sea of khaki, the women all tearful, the children running around. Poor buggers thought they were going on a holiday. Full of stories about France, the mademoiselles and what they’d do. Those who returned didn’t talk like that. They wandered back like ghosts. You’d ask them about France; they’d just shake their heads and push by you. You never dared ask: “How’s Tommy? How’s Bill?” If they weren’t there, they were dead. Eventually my turn came. Lost a lad, I did.’
‘Where?’ Fairfax asked. But he knew the answer before it was given.
‘Where do you think?’ Thompson glanced at him. ‘He’s with the legion of dead on the Somme. Couldn’t even find his body. One soldier told me if all the dead came back to life, they’d stand like a field of corn along the Somme. Were you there, sir?’
But Fairfax had picked up his luggage and was already walking down the platform. He didn’t want to talk about the Somme or Ypres, any of those places filled with mounds of ash-grey dead, of corpses swimming in mortar-made pools, unless it was connected with his business, the task in hand. Fairfax never discussed the war. Even his fellow officers left him alone. Fairfax was a man with a mission, that’s why he was here in Caundon.
He went out of the station and realised it stood on the gently sloping brow of a hill. Caundon lay below him. Fairfax looked through the thick, smoke-blackened window of the stationmaster’s office. The large, round clock on the wall showed eleven thirty. Beside it the calendar should have proclaimed the day’s date, 21 August 1921; instead it displayed 8 July 1916 as if Thompson’s life had ended then. Fairfax shifted his gaze and looked down the high street. Two facing rows of terraced houses. Doors opened and slammed. A few children played with a broken pram. Chimneys coughed smoke. At the far end Fairfax glimpsed the pithead with its double arch of pulling wheels, the rusting stanchions, girders and steel ropes. The breeze smelt of grime and coal. A pit lorry, battered and noisy, swung out from the station’s coal yard and clattered back along the street towards the pithead.
‘Mister!’
Fairfax glanced to his left. The station children had been watching this new arrival from their usual vantage point. Three in all. Mary, Michael and Joan Ashcroft. Good Catholic names, their father had boasted, but he was now gone; went to France and didn’t return. Their mother had been left to scrub her steps, wash their clothes and do what anyone else wanted to earn a few pennies. The Ashcroft children spent their time around the station, waiting for arrivals, hoping to beg a penny or two. This one certainly looked rich, his boots were so shiny, everything spick-and-span.
‘Mister, do you have a penny?’ Mary was the eldest; her face was thin and white as any waif, a tattered dress, two sizes too big for her, hung down just above her bare feet. She pulled back her hair from her grimy face and tried to look enticing. Sometimes this worked. People felt sorry.
Fairfax studied her and glanced away. He dropped the cigarette, lifted his luggage and walked into Caundon. Behind him the children fought for the cigarette. Fairfax kept to the middle of the street. He was aware of tawdry curtains and blinds being pulled back, doors opening and shutting. The children playing with the pram had disappeared up an alleyway. He passed the large corner shop, posters in its windows and fruit packed in boxes outside. The large red sign above the door proclaimed ‘Grant’s: Family Grocer’.
‘Edmund Grant,’ Fairfax murmured. ‘The father of Stephen Grant, shot for desertion at La Boiselle, spring nineteen seventeen. I’ll be paying you a visit, Master Grant.’
A door was flung open. A tousled, red-haired man stepped out, dressed in shirt, trousers and battered shoes. He was young with a florid face. He knelt down on the flagstoned pavement and, with a piece of chalk, began to draw frantically whilst talking to some invisible presence. Fairfax gripped his luggage tightly and watched the scene. Ah yes, he thought: Robert Daventry, known to his friends as Bob. Corporal Bob Daventry of the Durham Light Infantry. He walked across.
‘What’s the matter?’ Fairfax asked.
The man lifted his head: dirty face, wild staring eyes. He patted his side frantically and pointed at the door as if Fairfax could see whoever was standing on the step.
‘I’m having my cup of beef tea!’ he shouted. ‘Having a cup of beef tea on a Saturday morning. Just sitting there by the table. Old Millsey comes in! Shot through the left hip, Millsey was. Pierced his bowels. He got tangled on a wire, along with the rest, like dead flies on flypaper. “Millsey”, I said, “what the hell are you doing here? I buried you.” I did, you know. Grabbed his corpse from the wire, him and the rest. Put them in a ditch, one of those great mortar holes. I shovelled the mud over. Now he’s returned, like the others come back, just when I’m having my beef tea. So I bring him out here. I’m drawing a map.’
Fairfax stared down at the haphazard drawing on the pavement.
‘That’s why I carry plenty of chalk,’ Daventry chattered. ‘Buy it at Grant’s. I always show them where they are buried. Then they leave me alone. If they don’t, I’ve got a shovel. I take them out to the woods and I––’
‘Attention!’ Fairfax barked.
Daventry shot to his feet, stiff as a ramrod, heels together, arms slightly out, hands down to his side, head slightly up.
‘At ease, Corporal Daventry!’
‘You heard the officer,’ Daventry shouted at the invisible presence. ‘At ease!’ Daventry spread his feet and put his hands behind his back.
‘Who are you talking to, Corporal?’ Fairfax asked.
‘Old Millsey here. We were in a fire trench. Captain George, he’s the one that got his head blown off, well, that was a week later. He says, “Millsey, go over there towards the wire, see what’s happening.” Old Millsey leaves, crawls on his belly, he does. He has to have a good look, hasn’t he? Up he gets. That’s when the sniper got him.’ Daventry’s face became puzzled. ‘Captain George was really upset. He said that there were at least three snipers. Anyway, sir, as I have said, Millsey took it in the bowels and, of course, he got stuck on the wire and none of us dared move. Terribly hot, sir. All we had was some old brandy and that made our thirst worse. Millsey took hours to die. We got drunk on brandy, roaring with thirst, till some Australians came and relieved us.’ Daventry abruptly recollected where he was, his face and body fell slack. He glanced fearfully at Fairfax. ‘What’s the matter, sir? Why am I here?’
And, before Fairfax could stop him, he flung himself at the door and disappeared inside. Fairfax let him go. He was about to continue his walk when a door further up the street opened and a priest stepped out. He wore a battered trilby, his black suit was rather shiny. He carried a shabby Gladstone bag. He paused, took off his hat and came forward, hand extended.
‘We don’t often have strangers here. I’m Father Tom Headon, parish priest of St Bede’s. Caundon,’ he added proudly, ‘has its own Catholic church and school.’
The priest was small, thickset with a florid face and bushy white hair. It was a friendly, open approach but the light-blue eyes were guarded as if he was trying to stifle his suspicions.
Fairfax grasped the priest’s hand slowly as if he had been debating the matter. He shook it coldly. ‘Why didn’t you ask me, Father, who I was? You know my insignia. You’ve served in the army yourself, haven’t you? As a young chaplain. Weren’t you at Spion Kop in South Africa?’
‘You seem to know all about me.’ The priest put his hat back on and switched the Gladstone bag from one hand to the other. ‘Do you have the gift of second sight, Major Fairfax? Major Oscar Fairfax, isn’t it, from the Provost Marshal’s Office in London?’ The priest’s face and tone had turned chilly.
Fairfax was enjoying himself. He tapped the briefcase against his knee then put it down on the pavement. He was about to take his cigarette case out but thought again.
‘At a guess, Father, you’ve been visiting Widow Kavanagh. Sixty years old, isn’t she? With rotting lungs? You’ve taken her the Sacrament?’
The priest’s face was now hard set. He took a step closer and stared up at the impassive officer. ‘I’ve met you before, Major Fairfax.’
‘I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure, Father.’
‘I mean I’ve met your type before,’ the priest said. He scratched his unshaven cheek. ‘Yes, I’ve been to see Widow Kavanagh. I’ve given her the Eucharist and, before four o’clock this evening, I hope to have visited all the sick in Caundon. A good number of them are Catholics. They come from Scotland, Ireland or Northumberland to work in the mines. They are decent, hard-working people. They would like to have a proper wage and good houses. Most of the men fought for King and country, many of them did not come home.’
‘So, you know why I am here, Father?’
‘I can guess why you are here. Colonel Morrison . . .’
‘Ah yes, Colonel Morrison. I must go and have a chat with him as well.’
‘He hinted at why you have come. Sniffing out sin, Major? Searching out defaulters?’
Fairfax studied the priest’s rubicund face, the hard eyes, the firm set of lips and jaw.
‘Are you going to denounce me, Father, from the pulpit? I am the King’s officer. I carry his commission. In fact, I am fulfilling one of Christ’s commandments: “To bear witness to the truth”.’
‘Do you read the Gospels, Major? Even Satan can quote Scripture.’
Fairfax laughed, his eyes twinkling in amusement. ‘So, that’s who you think I am, Father, Old Nick himself.’
‘No, I don’t.’ The priest was about to turn away but then, gripping the bag, tilted the rim of his hat back as he searched for words. ‘Colonel Morrison has a great library.’ He glanced up at Fairfax. ‘He always lets me borrow a book or two. Have you ever heard of Matthew Hopkins, Major?’
‘The Witch-Finder General?’
‘Yes, Major Fairfax, the Witch-Finder General. During the seventeenth century he used to prowl the Essex villages and accuse this person or that of witchcraft, stir up hysteria, release pent-up wrongs and hurts, shatter communities before he went hunting somewhere else.’
Fairfax decided to take out a cigarette. He lit it slowly.
‘Are you a witch-finder, Fairfax?’
‘No, Father, but something like it. I come to search out hidden, serious sin.’
‘Sin? So you believe in God, Major Fairfax?’
‘I used to – before he was killed on the Somme.’
‘It’s August now.’ Kitty Allerton sat on the edge of the bed and made herself comfortable. ‘The weather’s remained fine but rather cloudy. Mother’s well but dreamy-eyed, a little weepy at times. Jack’s fine. He won’t help out here. He says he was born a miner.’ She laughed. ‘He insists he will die as one. We have a good life. The pay in the mines has not yet improved but there are rumours. Jack told me about a man called Sankey who’s recommended that the mines be taken over by the government once and for all. Jack and the lads still play football. They meet every Saturday with the Dead Hand Club in the snug of the far corner of the bar.’ She shifted her gaze. ‘Sometimes I stand and watch them. I feel you very close. School’s going well and the papers are talking of great changes there. Father Headon says that, later on in the year, after the harvest is in, he will call a meeting. The schoolroom’s not much, still in the parish hall. The same desks with the same faded blackboard, crumbling chalk and cracked globe. Some of the children come in without shoes. In winter it takes some time to get the boiler going. Silly, isn’t it? In a mining village you’d think there’d be no lack of coal.’ Kitty Allerton paused and re-arranged the folds of her thick grey dress. ‘One of the women found an old catalogue from London, one of those big stores. The fashions have all changed. Look at my dress just above the ankles!’ Kitty stretched out a foot and waggled one brown polished shoe. ‘And the hairstyles! Eeh, we did have a good laugh! I tried to copy them. I think you’d like it.’
Kitty turned and stared at the faded mirror on the dresser. You do look like a schoolmarm, she thought. Her jet-black hair was parted down the middle and rolled into bobs round her ears, the white collar of the dress especially starched by her mother.
‘If you were here you’d ask me why I am dressed like this. Well, it’s Saturday and we have a visitor. Ten days ago a letter came from the War Office about a Major Oscar Fairfax. No one knows why he is coming here. I asked Father Headon but he just shook his head, said it was none of his business. Jack looks a little worried. Mind you, you know the way he is. Furrowing his brows and screwing up his eyes. When I mentioned Oscar Fairfax’s name he just scratched his head, muttered something and turned away. Everyone else is fine,’ Kitty chattered on. ‘Jim Cunningham makes everyone laugh. He says Karl Marx – do you know who he is? Anyway, Jim was saying in the bar last Saturday night that Marx is the new Holy Ghost. He still insists on blaspheming outside church. Bob Daventry, poor man, is still seeing visions. Every so often he goes out in the countryside and digs. Dr Martin says if he doesn’t improve he may have to go to a hospital near Sedgefield. And the German, Ernst Kurtz – he has settled down here! Rather sweet on our Betty, he is. She’s the girl who helps in the bar. She was only knee high to a buttercup when you left. Tom O’Neill is the same as ever and Len Evans is a policeman.’
Kitty stopped and listened to the sounds of the small hotel her mother managed. Clanking from the cobbled yard below. The splash of someone using the water pump followed by the shrill blast from the minehead.
‘Jack will be coming home soon, Billy.’
‘Kitty!’
The battered door opened. Her mother came through. She looked as anxious as ever. Kitty noticed how pale her face was, wiry grey hai. . .
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