Birdsong

by Sebastian Faulks

Only Weir had been with him into the edges of reality where he had lived; only Weir had heard the noise of the sky at Thiepval.

He cursed himself for his last act of impatience towards Weir.

He tried to make himself cry but no tears would come to express his desolation or his love for poor mad Weir.

Gray’s voice softened when he saw that Stephen was trying to respond. ‘I know what it means when you’re left alone, as though no one else has shared what you have.

Her nerve failed her and she cut off the line.

There was a calendar on the wall with a picture of a kitten in a basket.

The hair was not so much grey as colourless. It lay flat and unwashed against his skull.

It was better to have some source of happiness than none, though, wasn’t it?

The image lasted only for an instant, then time collapsed and drifted past me once again.

The guns were soft and distant; they rumbled like a train going through an embankment.

He stood and breathed deeply on the air. He could hear an owl’s

Nothing is beyond redemption.’

Jeanne’s long thin body stood to welcome him. Her pale arms were held out, pulling up the round breasts that rode like mysterious white flowers on her ribcage in the uncertain light.

Riley had heated up some tinned stew, but had managed to find a fresh cabbage to enliven it.

‘As you know,’ he said, ‘we have an agreement to help each other, though as far as I can see there has been little give and take about it.’ He had a pale face with a receding chin; he favoured familiar domestic phrases and proverbs in the hope that they would make his arguments seem more palatable.

Stephen looked up at the sky above him. It was a clear, pale blue with a few high clouds. The tarpaulin-draped entrance to the burrow was dark.

Evans lay tight against the tunnel wall, like an unwashed and unqualified doctor listening for signs of hostile life.

He could remember this compassion, but he no longer felt it.

By the jagged light that burned into the earth he saw the flailing limbs and flying parts of cloth and kit, helmets, hands and spitting chalk that ricocheted round the hollow tube, taking the human detritus with it in a roar of condensed fury.

He lay on the tunnel floor beneath the fields, and still he was not dead.

The captive sound eventually diminished. He listened for it to be replaced by the familiar sound of human agony, of men whose limbs had been removed from them or whose brains were going free from their skulls.

Then, as the last pieces of displaced earth settled in the tunnel, he heard a long thick sigh; it was a sound he had never heard before, but he knew that it was the noise of several men expiring simultaneously.

It was the old good luck, the contemptible voodoo of survival.

He tried to move them because he felt the agony would keep him from dying.

He could feel the weak hand picking at the soil that trapped him, and he felt a sense that it was right that he should be rescued by someone he had himself saved; he felt confident that Stephen would deliver him.

Jack breathed in tightly between his teeth. ‘You must understand. I’ve got a fever now. If you leave me for long I won’t survive.’ Stephen saw the anguish in Jack’s face. It was not the physical pain: he was weighing his own life against the chances of saving any of his friends. ‘I don’t want to be alone for long,’ he said.

He cursed his life and the shards of chalk that pierced his knees.

There was nowhere to go; in front were only thousands of tons of France.

By his side was his revolver. When hope was finally gone he would fire: up through the palate, into the coiled mess of consciousness and memory.

Jack said, ‘Are you afraid to die?’ ‘I think so.’ Stephen was surprised to hear himself say it. ‘I was lucky that I didn’t feel fear above the ground, except at the obvious moments. Now I feel … alone.’

‘Who would you choose to be with?’ Stephen found himself interested even though he was weighed down by the thought of his own death. ‘Which human being out of all those you have met would you choose to hold your hand, to hold close to you in the beginning of eternity?’

knew it was the times with just the two of us that were the best, the purest things on earth.’

‘You’ll do very well,’ said Stephen. ‘Who knows? Our own choices might not be so good as those that are made for us.

While a primitive fear kept stirring in him, the pain of his body and the lost illusions of his life made him wish for the conclusion to come.

In the muscular efforts of Stephen to save him, the way he patiently submitted himself to the weight and the pointless striving, Jack felt a sense of rightness and calm.

sangfroid.

‘We are going to die now,’ he said. There was no more composure in his voice, only a wretched, childlike fear.

Jack began to moan softly. Stephen had heard the sound many times; it was the low, primitive cry he himself had made when he was carried in to the surgeon. Jack was calling to his mother.

sucked at the puddle on the floor. As he neared the end of the task he feared that he might die before it was completed. He slowed down and rested more. He checked his own pulse.

It made him laugh, mad-eyed and bearded, like a hermit in his cave.

he trained his irritation to be subservient to his continuing protectiveness.

He was struck by its faithful indifference to everything but its own rhythm.

Shocked by pain back into half-consciousness, Jack spoke to him at last. ‘What I’ve seen … I don’t want to live any more. That day you attacked. We watched you. Me and Shaw. The padre, that man, can’t remember his name. If you’d seen, you’d understand. Tore his cross off. My boy, gone. What a world we made for him. I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad.’

Stephen found himself persuaded by Jack. What made him want to live was not a better argument, but some crude lust or instinct.

There was something in what happened between us that made me able to hear other things in the world. It was as though I went through a door and beyond it there were sounds and signals from some further existence. They’re impossible to understand, but since I’ve heard them I can’t deny them. Even here.’

temporary storm. Levi took his shoulder. ‘All right, Kroger?’ He looked into Kroger’s clever, doubtful face. He saw no real agreement, but at least there was acquiescence.

being enclosed still ran through him. He reasoned with himself that since the worst had happened, and he was now buried alive with no room to turn round, then he should no longer be afraid. Fear was in expectation, not in the reality.

At some deep level, far below anything his exhausted mind could reach, the conflicts of his soul dragged through him like waves grating on the packed shingle of a beach.

Far beyond thought, the resolution came to him and he found his arms, still raised, begin to spread and open.

Love is more important than the flesh and blood facts of who gave birth to whom.’