Which was why he had gone to the front of the battalion to stand in the place of greatest danger at the crest of the ridge. He could have stayed with the colour party where Colonel Ford fretted and continually polished his eyeglasses with his officer’s sash, or he could have taken his proper post at the rear right flank of the Prince of Wales’s Own Volunteers, but instead d’Alembord had gone a few paces ahead of the company officers and now stood, quite still, staring into the cannon smoke across the valley. Behind him the men were lying flat, but no officer could thus take shelter. An officer’s job was to set an example. An officer’s duty was to stand still; to show insouciance. The time would come when the men would have to stand up in the face of the French fire, and therefore the officers must set an example of absolute stoicism. That was an infantry officer’s prime task in battle; to set an example, and it did not matter if his belly was churning with fear, or that his breath sometimes came with a whimper, or that his brain was cringing with terror; he must still show utter calmness.
If an officer had to move under fire, then it had to be done very slowly and deliberately, with the air of a man distractedly taking a meditative stroll in the country. Captain Harry Price so moved, though his deliberate gait was somewhat spoilt when his new spurs caught in a tangle of crushed rye and almost tipped him arse over heels. He caught his balance, tried to show dignity by plucking at his new pelisse, then stood at ease alongside Peter d’Alembord. “A bit of heat in the day now, Peter, wouldn’t you say?”
D’Alembord had to control his breathing, but managed a creditable response. “It’s definitely become warmer, Harry.”
Price paused, evidently seeking some observation that would keep the conversation going. “If the clouds cleared away, it might become a rare old day!”
“Indeed, yes.”
“Good cricketing weather, even.”
D’Alembord looked sideways at his friend, wondering for a second whether Harry Price had gone quite mad, then he saw a muscle quivering in Harry’s cheek and he realized that Price was just trying to hide his own fear.
Price grinned suddenly. “Speaking of cricket, is our brave Colonel happy?”
“He’s not saying very much. He’s just polishing those damned spectacles of his.”
Harry Price dropped his voice as though, in the maelstrom of shells and roundshot, he might yet be overheard. “I put some butter on the tails of his sash this morning.”
“You did what?”
“Buttered his sash,” Price said gleefully. He looked warily upwards as a shell made a curious fluttering noise overhead, then relaxed as the missile exploded far to the rear. “I did it this morning, while he was shaving. I only used a spot of butter, for one doesn’t wish to be obvious. It isn’t the first time I’ve buttered his eyeglasses, either. I did it the last time he insisted we play cricket. Why do you think he couldn’t see the ball?”
D’Alembord wondered how anyone could play such a schoolboy trick on a morning of battle, then, after a pause, he spoke with a sudden passion. “I do hate bloody cricket.”
Price, who liked the game, was offended. “That’s not very English of you.”
“I’m not English. My ancestry is French, which is probably why I find cricket such a bloody tedious game!” D’Alembord feared that he was betraying a note of hysteria.
“There are more tedious games than cricket.” Price spoke very earnestly.
“You really believe so?”
A cannon-ball slammed into Number Four Company. It killed two men and wounded two others so badly that they would die before they could reach the surgeons. One of the two men screamed in a tremulous, nerve-scraping voice until Regimental Sergeant Major Mclnerney shouted for the wounded man to be quiet, then ordered that the dead men be thrown forward to where the corpses were being stacked into a crude barricade. A shell exploded in midair, drowning the RSM’s voice. Harry Price looked up at the drifting billow of smoke left by the shell’s explosion. “One of the Crapaud batteries is cutting its fuses a bit brief, wouldn’t you say?”