The Soldier's Final Mission

Cigarette smoke and rum, horses and sweat – the familiar smells of race-day. To Thomas Buchannan, the all-encompassing rumble of the crowd seems louder than it would have been before the war, as if to overcome the absence of lost comrades. An occasional voice rises above – equally unintelligible. The colours of the women’s dresses are vivid in defiance of the Austerity. His own standard issue de-mob suit is easily lost in the chaos. Thin waists, bony legs with pen lines up the back, since black-market stockings are such a luxury. It’s not right. He scratches at the scarred skin around his missing eye. Women need meat on their bones.

A young girl tugs on the skirts of her mother. She looks about seven, the same age as his darling Anna would be. The pain in his chest is almost enough to stop his breath. For a moment, her brown hair turns to blonde curls; Anna had her mother’s hair. He pictures her eyes, pale blue like his own, and the nose that thankfully was her mothers.

The horses assemble at the starting line. Lean muscle beneath shiny coats. The crowd falls silent with the same dense absence of sound that pervaded the trenches before they were ordered over the top.

The gun fires. He ducks for cover. His strangled cry is lost to the roar the crowd. Heart thumping, he scrambles to the safety of a nearby hedge.

The Cheltenham track has melted away in favour of the scene he relives every night: the smoke and noise of no man’s land, the stink of death and desperation.

“No,” he gasps. German guns fire all around him.

He fumbles in his pocket. It is not his gun he finds but the little black book, his lucky talisman, and his vision clears. Instead of German soldiers, he sees the truth. Enthusiastic racegoers cheering their horses home.

He remembers why he is here, and although shaken, he pushes himself to his feet.

Why did he bend to pick it up, the strange, black notebook abandoned in the mud of no-man’s land? The bullet that grazed his face and took his eye then buried itself in his best mate’s chest. Some fool told the captain he’d jumped between the bullet and his friend. They gave him a bloody medal for it. He’d thrown it into the Chelt.

Plush carpets cushion his footfalls as he slips into Cheltenham Hall. He stares at the book in his hands with equal revulsion and reverence. It saved his life and answered his prayers. It also killed his friend.

Now, he has only minutes left. When the race is over, and the crowds retreat, this hall will come alive with music and dancing.  Champagne will flow, for the winners, at least.

He shies from his reflection in the mirror at the end of the hallway. All he has lost is etched into the scars that riddle one side of his face. To have survived the beast that is war only to find he has lost everything seems a cruel twist of fate. His wife dead. His daughter gone. He never got to say goodbye. He bites his lip against the sudden rise of grief. His estate and all his money stolen from him by that bastard in the fancy suit. What did a duke need with his meagre assets? He had taken what remained of his life, and any chance of joy… or so it seemed.

He tries the door. It’s unlocked, as the book promised it would be. In the corner of the room sits a safe. Thomas stifles the urge to stare and lunges forward. The book presses against his palm, while his index finger marks a place. The contents are memorised, but he opens it anyway.  The heavy stench of war makes him shudder. Inside, on that one page, yellowed and stained with mud and worse, the writing is neat and clear. Its colour is the same rusty crimson as dried blood.

Who wrote it? He only knows that the message it contains is his last hope. His one chance to right the wrong done to him.

His hands shake. The rightness of his actions seems incontrovertible, yet guilt sits like a rock in his stomach. Thomas Buchannan is a soldier and no thief. He is merely recovering what is rightfully his.

The next intake of breath is long and slow. Carefully, he follows the book’s instructions. The metal door of the safe is cold and unyielding.  

“Easy does it now,” he murmurs.

 The door swings open with the softest creak of protest.

Thomas exhales as the cabinet reveals what was promised, stacks of notes in five-hundred- pound bundles. He counts them again, despite his haste. He can’t believe it. Twenty thousand pounds!

Outside, he hears the muffled cheers of the crowd. Every second he delays, the danger grows, and yet he hesitates. The Duke only owes six thousand pounds. Is it a sin to steal from a thief?

Thomas pictures his wife Eliza’s smile, a smile that lit up the world, passed down to their only child. Sweet Anna, taken away like so many others to escape the threat of German bombers. No records had been kept. With this money, he would find her. If there was any excess, he could build for her the life she deserved. Only three years old when she last saw him … would she still remember?

He fills the pockets of his government-issue suit. 

The empty safe slams shut with finality.

He stands, giddy with accomplishment. After four years of separation, he longs to see his daughter and hear her prattle, as children do, about nothing of consequence.

Heavy footsteps, several pairs of them, ends this fantasy. God’s breath! Too slow, he’s been too slow.  He should have counted his haul later, but hindsight is as useless now as his missing left eye. He must think. His daughter’s life is at stake; the chance for them to be together.

Terror sinks icy claws into his chest.  It also clears his mind. He must not lose now. Stay calm, stay cool – these words he’d repeated many a time when the air was thick with bullets. Carefully, he pats his pockets flat – they must not betray their treasured burdens. 

The door opens. Resplendent in full regalia, the Duke of Wellington himself steps in.  He’s tall as Thomas remembers him, though the ugly scar on his cheek is new. Beady black eyes skim over him as if they don’t remember. Cruel rather than intelligent. With him is the Cheltenham Races president.

“What are you doing here?” Wellington demands.

Remember me, you thieving bastard?

Thomas imagines himself saying it, wishes he could, but, “I apologise, my lord.” He doffs his cap to the gentlemen and bows low.  “This is Rhodes’ study, isn’t it? I’m supposed to meet with him regarding a bet.”

“Rhodes is next door.” Wellingtons eyes are so black Thomas cannot find the pupils.

“My mistake.” Thomas smiles, the picture of apologetic embarrassment. “My thanks for your help. Good day, good sirs.”

He bows his way past the gentlemen and fights to keep his pace and demeanour casual.

When he is out of earshot, he releases a pent-up breath.

A trio of musicians strike up a boisterous melody. Couples take enthusiastically to the dance floor. He slips through them unnoticed, his shabby demob suit just one among many. He smiles, touches his cap to the ladies he passes, and weaves through a crowd that becomes more oppressive with every step. Sweat beads his upper lip but he dare not wipe it off.

Someone might notice.

Finally, there’s a gap in the pulsing throng.  He squeezes through, hands in pockets, clutching his coat tightly.  Beyond the hall,  crisp, English air cools his lungs and soothes his mind. He knows there’s not a moment to lose.

The twenty-thousand pounds sits heavy in his coat, and on his mind.

He remembers the shingle on the red brick wall of a private investigator In Cheltenham, one who had already found children lost in the mass evacuations. He could find Anna, and they could be happy again.

Women’s laughter, high and sweet, echoes over the crowd, and he remembers Eliza. He can almost feel her skin beneath his hand. He strokes the book in his pocket. Children laugh as they play hide and seek around the cars, chasing each other through small gaps in the crowd. How Anna would love race day…

At last he is beyond the ornate iron gates of Cheltenham racecourse. Beneath his worn shoes the cobblestones feel cold and hard. He almost laughs. Now that he’s rich, he can finally buy new ones. And a new house, suitable for a little girl to grow up in. He couldn’t bring her home to a leaky shack and the three other desperate men he dossed with.

“Hey, you!”

Thomas puts his head down and keeps walking. The words cannot be for him, but it is an almost physical pain to defy his instincts to run.

“Thomas Buchannan!” the voice yells.

Thomas’ blood turns to ice in his veins. What a relief it is to give into the instinct that served him so well in war. He reaches into his pocket to cradle the little black book. It saved his life before, it can do it again.

He drops into the ditch by the road and runs doubled over for several yards before he scrambles out onto the grass on the other side. He was brought up in this country. He knows every inch of it, everywhere a soldier might hide.

Fuelled by fear, he leaps over a hedge and lands in a forward roll that brings him to a crouch. He scrambles awkwardly along to where he knows there to be another ditch that will take him to where he needs to go.

The ground rumbles to the beat of hooves. A warning gunshot cracks the air.

Thomas’ heart pounds. Instinctively, he reaches for the gun he doesn’t have. The emerald grass turns to mud and blood before his eyes. He struggles through. Air rasps in and out of his open mouth.

He hears the screams of the fallen.

“Anna!” he gasps. “Anna, I’m coming.”

The German cavalry are almost upon him. He hears the horses’ laboured breathing, the clink of metal on harness. Suddenly, he knows he is going to die.  He has a sense of finality he’s never felt before, not even the day he lost his eye.

He hears a cry, the anguished cry of a man damned. It echoes hauntingly through the hills.

He pulls the deceiving, horrid little black book from his coat.

“Take it!” he screams, and holds it in front of his chest as though in offering as payment for his life.

But it is the Duke, not a German soldier, who pulls his horse up on the other side of the hedge.

“Thomas Buchannan,” he sneers as he aims his rifle straight at Thomas’s chest.

“You weren’t there,” Thomas whispers. “You weren’t there! I lost everything. I lost it all for my country!” Tears leak from his eye. “I just want my daughter. I want my Anna back.”

Wellington glares coolly down the barrel.

“Where is my twenty thousand pounds?”.

“You stole from me!” Thomas cries. “You stole my life.”

The gunshot’s echo hangs in the air long after it should have faded. For a moment, the smell of mud, death and desperation clings to the countryside. The ghostly thunder of hooves seems to fade like a half-remembered myth into a fire’s dying coals as blood seeps from the body of Thomas Buchannan and pools by a small black notebook in the grass beside him.

With an indifferent shrug, the Duke dismounts to pick it up.