The Runner

      Night bombardment, and the telephone wires cut to shreds, the observation officer had an urgent message to send down the line. Reclus was summoned from his vigil on the fire-step.

      The officer was hoarse from shouting. Men said he had an uncle in the top brass. 'See that he gets it in person,' he said to Reclus. 'I want you to put it in his hand.'

      There were no pilots to chart him through the wasteland, and little light save for the field-battery that revealed in flashes stripped trees, an eviscerated horse, stretches of churned mud powdered with chloride of lime. Reclus could not run for the rottenness of the boards. The going was cold slime, then hard and firm again underfoot. He ducked where he remembered the slack wires. The annunciation of each incoming shell made him stoop and grimace.

      In a bombed out part of the trench, the water was more like slobber than anything. Men were dredging the broken section, turning up unspeakable things. Reclus gulped air through his mouth and waded into the ditch.

      A solitary star-shell rose from the Bosches. Reclus' long shadow contracted as the shell reached its apex, then lengthened again, so that he saw a jerking puppet. Something exploded metres short and he stumbled against the hastily thrown-up earth. Loose dirt tumbled from the split hessian of sandbags and spilled cold on his nape. High-pitched screaming broke the caul of his deafness. Stretcher-bearers passed, smelling of iodine and cordite and piss.

      He moved faster as he left the hottest trenches. Artillerymen, evenly spaced, sent their nightlines twinkling in the damp and stunted blackness. Reclus knew the places in this sector that were enfiladed: his lover had collapsed in blood and shit a week ago at one of them. His tongue was foul in his mouth as he leapt through these unhealthy points. He held his breath as if that might save him from a sniper's bullet.

      In the first glimmer of dawn, Reclus bolted down a transport line towards the transport wagons and the field kitchens. The walking wounded moaned and huddled. Reclus gave one water; another, a damp cigarette. He scurried close to the wagon lines, in memory perhaps of his childhood and the hot breath of horses. Others, without urgent errands, moved like elderly workmen and cast the broken nets of their gaze upon him.

      It was strange, as ever, penetrating the grounds of the chateau. Reclus felt like a visitor from another planet. Waved through by sentries, he made his way to the great hall where the general sat nursing his morning bowl of coffee.

      Reclus stepped to the desk with its maps and ashtrays and handsome chessboard. He shivered with cold after the heat of his run and there was a log fire burning but he was not invited to approach it. Standing to attention, he tried to stretch out the ache in his back.

      The general received the sweat-stained paper. Responsibility so weighed on his brow that he barely raised his eyes. He read the message, frowned, and dismissed its bearer. Closing the door on his way out, Reclus saw the general read the message again, sigh, and move his opponent's queen to take his bishop.


Gregory Norminton

Copyright Notice
The content on glasgowreview.co.uk is © 2008-2009 The Glasgow Review and
individual contributors, and may not be reprinted, reproduced or retransmitted
in whole or in part without the Editor's prior express written consent.