The dancer leapt into the air when the sniper's bullet took him in the head, as if seeking somehow to emulate the high-jumping capers of the old men who'd taught him the Morris, their feet somehow suspended in space, independent of gravity, dancing in the Whitsunday sun, their faces dappled with leaf shadows. A white face, caught in the light of a gibbous moon. Then he crashed into the mud of the trench, his moustaches submerged in a pool of bloody water.

“Shit! Shit! Shit! He told me to keep my head down and then didn't look out for himself. What a waste, what a bloody, fucking waste.”

The sergeant bent down to feel for a pulse in the lieutenant's neck, but the ruin of his skull really told him all he needed to know. He made his way back to the nearest field telephone, and put a call through to the Brigadier General.

“Regret to report, sir,” he said, “Lieutenant Butterworth's dead. Sniper. Took it in the head.”

Brigadier General Page Croft was silent for a moment, and though he could still hear the crackling, he thought for a moment the line had gone dead.

“Sir?” ventured the sergeant.

“It's all right, sergeant. That young man was one of my best young officers. I was going to recommend him for a permanent commission, you know. And he already had an MC.”

Another pause. Then: “Can you arrange to bring the body back for decent burial?”

“'Fraid not, sir. The Hun's got our lads pinned down. We've advanced into one of their trenches, and it's shallow. They've been bombing our wounded. We'll have to bury him right there, sir.”

“Which means no one will ever know where his body lies. Damn bad thing for his relatives, what? Oh, very well, sergeant. Carry on.”

The Brigadier-General put down the phone, lit a Capstan and shook out the match, slowly. He took a deep breath, pulling the tobacco smoke deep into his lungs. Then he exhaled, a blue cloud of smoke that hung in the air like a broken promise, and called for his ADC.

“Butterworth's bought it. Put his head up and a sniper picked him off.”

“But George was always so careful, telling his men to keep their heads down. And he made them dig that trench deep and wide, so they had adequate cover.”

“Yes, ironic, isn't it? He dug that trench so well we named it after him. The Butterworth Trench. We advance a few yards into the Huns' trenches, where they're little more than ditches, and he gets it. Who have we got to send in his place?”

“We've taken a lot of losses in that sector, sir. That's why we put Butterworth in charge in the first place. We wouldn't normally give command to a temporary lieutenant otherwise.”

“Good God, man!” the Brigadier-General exploded, “D'you think I don't know how many losses we're taking? Well find someone suitable and send him up. At the moment it seems there's just a sergeant in charge. He was some sort of trade union johnnie back in Civvy Street. Good enough chap, as a matter of fact, heart of gold like all those miners, and responsible, good at taking authority, but doesn't do to let them have too much of it. We'll be having trouble with them when this show's all over if we do.

“I've told him to organise a burial party right there. But on reflection, we'd better send someone up with picks and shovels.”

“Should I ask the padre if he'll organise some kind of a service?”

“Up there on the line? Of course not, you bloody fool. The Hun'd love that, everyone bowed in prayer while their lot come over the top.”

“Perhaps we could get the rest of the junior officers together for a word in the mess, sir.”

“No, Jones, I don't think that would be appropriate. We're taking a lot of casualties, and if we organise something like that it'd only focus on our losses. Bad for morale, what? If you can point me in the direction of any of his special friends, I'll have a word with each of them, one-by-one, on the QT. Wouldn't do to make too much of a fuss. Don't want another Christmas mutiny.”

The first Christmas, there'd been a football match between the lines, British and German teams had played. There'd been toasts in schnapps. While not exactly a mutiny, everyone agreed it had set a dangerous precedent, that should not be repeated.

Still, the ADC was surprised the Brigadier-General was taking it so hard. He'd served under him for only a short time, but in that time he'd come to realise he kept his feelings tightly under control. Just the other day, he'd been lecturing the officers about not getting emotionally involved with casualties. But the ADC could see Butterworth's death had shaken him rigid.

Why him, of all the losses being sustained in the big push? Butterworth had been a nice enough chap, a bit stand-offish but good-hearted with it, and those miners loved him.

The ADC wasn't from Durham, like most of the men in the DLI. He'd been drafted in to fill a gap, when a lucky shell had landed on the forward HQ. His predecessor had won a ticket back to Blighty, on account of having only one leg now, and he'd been brought forward to take his place, a promotion, even if it was a bit close to the Front for his taste.

Well, not too far forward, thank the Lord. He was a devout man, and he pursed his lips as he thought of the way Providence had kept him out of the meatgrinder, so far. He assumed Butterworth was C. of E. Most of the men were non-conformists.

He didn't approve of dissenters, himself. To his mind, that was what bred the mutinous thoughts he'd sometimes detected in the men. Not that they were cowards or traitors, or anything like that. It was just the way they looked at him, as if they were separate races, as indeed they were. Some had blue scars on their hands and faces, like heathen tattoos. God knows what goes on in their minds.

He saluted and went off to arrange the burial party.

. . .

Harry Steggles drew a deep breath and launched into the final chorus, while Ralph hammered out the chords on the battered piano in the tumbledown village café which had barely survived the shelling from the German lines:

Ralph ended the song with arpeggios up the yellowing keyboard, pulling his hands away just in time as the patronne crashed the piano lid shut.

“Come along now, gents, please!” she implored, in a parody of the phrases she'd learned from her customers. “Ain't you got no billets to go to? It's five in the morning pour l'amour de dieu!”

Harry and Ralph staggered out of the back room where the nightly sing-song took place. The little Cockney liked his pint, or even the red vin du pays which was less expensive than imported beer, which he'd slop around dangerously as he sang, but his accompanist was fairly abstemious.

“Bit of a change from the Royal College of Music, eh, Ralph,” he shouted into the French night. Ralph had given up correcting his pronunciation of his name, though the other officers had learned to call him Rafe.

“A bit different from yesterday's choir practice, too,” replied his companion. “We never see you there, do we, Harry?”

“Yes, well, them Christmas songs're a bit posh for me. Gimme When Shepherds Washed Their Socks By Night and that's it for me at Christmas, I'm afraid. All that Holly and the Ivy stuff goes right over my head.”

He took a swig from the glass which, somehow, he still held in his hand.

“'Ere, why don't you do that Make Your Mind Up, Maggie Mackenzie? That'd be a bit of all right. Remember when you played it on the organ back in Dorking?”

The big man did, indeed. He was still an orderly then, but when he'd moved from the Duke of York's HQ in Chelsea down to Surrey, he'd played the organ in the garrison church. One Sunday morning, as the troops filed into church, he'd enlivened the situation with a “voluntary” on the old song.

“I got ticked off about that,” he said.

“Bet you did, Ralph me old son. Bet you did. But why not? That's what I want to know. Why does the Sunday moosic 'ave ter be all stuck up an' posh? Tell me that, eh?”

“Precisely, Harry. Better than that regimental march, anyway.”

“Oh I dunno, Ralph. It's a good tune.”

He launched into the RAMC march-past:

“Her sweet smile haunts me still.”

“'Ere!”, shouted an irritated voice from one of the huts they were passing. “Can't you put a bloody sock in it? D'yer know what the bloody time is?”

“No,” quipped Harry in reply. “But I bet you do, eh?” And he doubled up in drunken laughter.

“Sentimental humbug.”

“Eh, what?”

“That march-past tune. I hate it.”

“Aah, it's not ser bad.”

“Look, just because the real army's grabbed all the best tunes, why does the Medical Corps have to be saddled with sentimental tosh like that?”

“So why don'tcha do a better one, you're so clever, Ralph me old mate? You could do it.”

Ralph was about to answer that he might well do that, when they heard the bugler sounding Reveille.

“Bloody 'ell. We ain't turned in yet, an' it's already time to get up.”

The other wasn't listening. Or, rather, the sound of the bugle seemed to have monopolised his attention. He was scribbling on a scrap of paper he'd found in his pocket.

“Wassat then?”

“Oh nothing, really. Just an idea I got. I might make something of it, later.”

“Bloody bugle? That's not moosic, that's sheer bloody torture. 'Ave you 'eard 'im practising of an evening when we go up front with the ambulance wagons? Bloody awful racket.”

“Yes, he's usually playing when we go up that hill. We pause on the brow before we go down into the valley, and it's the last thing we hear.”

“Lars' thing before kingdom come, more like. You make a bloody symphony of that, an' no one'll come ter lissen. Stripe me, mate, if I'm not right.”

“Perhaps. Well, I'm turning in.”

“Night dooty again, inn'it?”

“Yes, but till then I'm going to sleep in the barn.”

“Yeah, what did you say that time? Barns infested . . . ?”

“Barns infested, rats for the use of.”

“Well, there's worse things 'appen at sea, my mum always useta say.”

They both chorused: “But not much!”

Ralph Vaughan Williams went into the barn while Harry Steggles went off to get his breakfast, before joining the morning ambulances going up to the front.

. . .

Mrs Mary Sands shifted uncomfortably in her truckle bed. She was heavily pregnant, near her time, with another wee one to join the nine already sleeping together in a big box bed nearby. She thought of the two strangers who'd come to the village over the hills from Marshall, the frail, beak-nosed Englishman and his maidenly companion, Maud she called herself. A strange pair. No wonder some folk wondered if they were German spies, wandering around the mountains with their notebooks.

But that Mister Sharp was so educating, his speech so old-fashioned and all, that Maud with her big hat to keep off the sun. She'd had to go into Marshall to buy some new things, her old ones being stolen on the train and all. Wicked people there were in the world.

How many lovesongs had she given him? Must be nigh a score. He'd liked her Lord Lovel. It was a wonderful thing, to be able to catch the old airs on paper like that. It looked more like spider scratchings to her when he showed her the notebook, but then he'd sung it over, and she could hear the old song, almost as if she was singing it herself, though his voice was not so rough as hers, being a city-bred man and all.

He'd given her five dollars for the children, which was kind of him. He made a point of saying it wasn't payment for the songs. Said they were beyond price, which was true.

Mrs Gosnell come over this day to sing as well. No, check. The moon is nearly down, must be yesterday now. Gave him two songs. She don't know as many as me, but she's good enough, the way she do them. And that fiddler, Mister Mitchell Wallin, he played him some tunes, but I think they were a bit wild for Mister Sharp, he were shaking his head and cursing to himself, seemed like, scribbling in his book and then crossing it all out and starting over.

He's no singer, that Mitch, but he has a few good 'uns, and Mister Sharp noted them down all the same. Think my Broken Token's better nor his, though, a lovely lovesong, the two parted lovers joined together by a silver dollar split and shared between 'em. His ain't a patch on mine, though I do say it myself.

Wonder if he's asleep yet, over to Miss Fish's at the school settlement house? He'll be jolting over the hill in the two-mule buggy to White Rock tomorrow, a hard journey for a man as frail as he, needs a good night's sleep. But city folk don't keep God's time like country people, to bed at dusk and up with the dawn. Most like he'd be still waking.

He was. Cecil Sharp was on Miss Fish's verandah, smoking his pipe before turning in. The night was quiet, here where you could hardly hear yourself think for the two-note piping of the red cardinals during the day. Must be past midnight.

That Mrs Sands was a fine young woman, well 45 I think she said, but not so worn out as some of these mountain girls, with a fine crop of songs. She'd promised three more for this day. That old fiddler was a bad singer, though I got  four from him. It was hard to make head nor tail of his fiddling, though, the battered old instrument held low on his chest, the bow scraping away over the metal strings ringing out like cracked churchbells, the unstopped ones droning along like bagpipes.

A far cry from the English Morris.

And a long way, here in Appalachia, from the Western Front, where most of his dancers were while he stood on a southern verandah, taking the night air before turning in. People said it was dangerous, up here in the mountains, but it must be far worse to be on the Somme, like Butterworth and Lucas, huddling in a trench with the German shells coming over, fighting hand-to-hand for a yard of land. And the North Carolina hills might be raw and rough, but the people were gentle, raising their hats and extending a friendly hand when your paths crossed, pleased to share their old lovesongs with you: “But surely you will tarry with us for the night.”

The youngsters enjoy the old songs as much as the older people, which is different from England, where the youngsters scorn their parents' culture. They've been cut off from the world here for several centuries, and the railroads and wireless haven't got here yet. It'll happen, soon enough.

And the missionaries have a lot to answer for, the way they are imprisoning their voices in those dull, Presbyterian Yankee hymn tunes. They've invited us to join with them Sunday night, but we'll try to excuse ourselves. Still, it would be hard to do this work without their help.

That Miss Edith Fish is a nice enough old dear, not half so prim and proper as she looks, a hard old thing. It's good she's teaching them to read and write. But their theology is hard to take. A pity they can't leave them to their country ways, which have endured for centuries.

You can't separate out the songs from their lives. They're not entertainment, something more central. That old lady, shaking her head when she forgot the words: "Oh, if only I were driving the cows home I could sing it at once."

That boy, creeping in to listen when I was noting them down, and then launching into the song when the old lady fumbled over the words. And appreciating them: "I always like to go where there is sweet music." How old was he? Fifteen? No, less.

He moved back to the bedroom Miss Fish had set up for him, wincing as he put his weight on his foot. Doctor Packhard was coming to look at it, which was just as well, since there'd be some walking later, when the mountain tracks got too much for the jolt-waggon, and we had to follow behind as the two mules struggled in the mud. Aptly named.

He winced again. Still, it was better than the gout, just a bit of a strain, when he turned his ankle on the rocky part of the road. He'd walked 14 miles on it, that day, which can't have done it much good.

Another hot night, though there was a touch of thunder in the air. It was the same all over America, apparently, a real heatwave. Some rain might cool it down a bit, and Maud can get out her oilskins. She'd had to buy them in Marshall, but they didn't sell umbrellas. Didn't seem to understand what they were for.

No fear of floods, up here in the mountains, but it had been bad down in the valley, apparently. Six people drowned when the river broke its banks.

That woman poling her punt across the waters, still muddy from the floods. Gaunt features, though handsome, probably in her thirties, but looked older.

The bed creaked as he got into it. In hers, the other side of the curtain that veiled them from each other, Maud heard him settle down to sleep. He should take better care of himself, she thought, as she turned on to her side.

It seemed scarcely seconds before she was woken by the rooster crowing nearby, the sun burning down bright and hard, from a sky like burnished sapphire.