Behind the Lines (7 page)

“It's not that,” he protested. “You see, I didn't know these girls would be—”

“I quite agree,” broke in Rumbald heartily; and he did not bother to lower his voice. “They're a pretty moth-eaten crowd of hags. Where did you get this bunch of tarts from, Pen?”

Penhurst said that they were the best he could get at short notice, and added something coarse to the effect that faces were not everything.

“Oh, well, if Pete can't make up his mind I'll start,” said Rumbald. He took a thin, fair-haired woman by the ear. “I'll have you, skinny Lizzie.”

Penhurst announced that he would have the fairy with the chippendale legs.

“Come on, Pete,” urged Rumbald, “pick your stable companion and let's get on with the grub.”

Unless he played the part of a spoil-sport there was nothing for it but to do as they suggested; but it was a cad's trick to force his hand like that. He chose one of the two younger women, a girl in a shoddy black frock with a wan, pinched face. She looked as though she needed a good meal, and he saw by the momentary flash of fierce joy in her hard eyes that he had guessed aright.

The unchosen three immediately ceased their beguiling smiles and glances, and began putting on their hats in a business-like manner. The market was closed for that day. Penhurst moved among them, distributing a few consolatory notes, and shepherded them to the door.

Rumbald called for drinks all round. They sat down at the table, and the girl in the black-and-white striped frock brought in soup. Rumbald was in excellent spirits, and although most of his remarks must have been unintelligible to the ladies whose knowledge of English was limited, they squealed appreciatively at each of his sallies, though without interrupting the important business of eating the meal.

Rawley, who had recovered from his first feeling of nausea, felt only sorrow for his partner, and was anxious to amuse her, but he could think of nothing to say. As the champagne circulated, however, his awkwardness slipped from him, and presently he found himself talking and even making jokes in his indifferent French. Glasses were filled and refilled. The room grew hot and noisy. This sort of thing was really quite amusing when one was warmed up to it. The girl in the black-and-white striped frock was placing a dish on the table, and he saw Rumbald's great red hand creep out and tickle the back of her knee. She slapped it away with a whispered “
Méchant
!”

Penhurst's companion was laughing heartily, and her chair was tilted back. Suddenly, assisted possibly by an unseen boot, it tilted too far, and she disappeared over backwards, and lay with kicking legs on the floor. The
other girls screamed with laughter. Rumbald rose to the rescue, with his face modestly hidden in a table napkin, though one large eye peered unblushingly from behind it; and after some horseplay the girl was re-seated right way up on her chair to Rumbald's spirited chanting of the ribald verses, “She was poor but honest.”

Glasses were refilled. Rawley had already, during the past few hours, drunk more alcohol than he had drunk before in any three days. It gave one a comfortable, contented feeling. Rumbald was right. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die. If that were true of anywhere, it was certainly true of Amiens in war time. Though Rumbald, the old satyr, had not yet seen a round fired in anger. But he damn soon would. Wise fellow, then, to make the most of things.

He glanced approvingly at Rumbald, who was doing some fooling on the floor with a wine-glass and his partner's beaded hand-bag, and drained his glass. He refilled it, and refilled his partner's glass, and he experienced an unfamiliar trembling when her hand, with its long, pointed nails, came out and rested upon his knee.

Rumbald moved to the piano and they danced, stopping only to replenish glasses and when overcome by laughter. They all talked loudly and laughed uproariously at anything or nothing, but particularly at Rumbald's absurd antics as he sat thumping out syncopated airs at the piano while his partner held a glass to his lips.

Rawley found the lights and heat and noise bewildering; he was conscious only of circling round and round in a
bright, warm haze with the sickly scent of cosmetics in his nostrils; till suddenly he became aware of Rumbald with his cap on the back of his head counting out notes to the girl in the black-and-white striped frock. He stumbled across the room, dragging his note-case from his breast pocket with fumbling fingers. “Let me pay my whack,” he cried, pulling out a fifty-franc note.

Rumbald waved it aside. “My show, Pete. Absolutely my show—mine and Pen's. From now on we carry on independently. Meet in a couple of hours at the car—Hôtel de la Paix.”

Rawley thrust the note into his breeches pocket, clapped Rumbald on the back, and went in search of his partner. He helped her into her cloak, and she held up her pitiably wan and painted little face for him to tuck the wisps of hair under her hat. Then they went out into the street.

It was very dark, and he had no notion of his whereabouts, but she tucked her arm into his and led him along. He was annoyed with his legs; they seemed to have suddenly grown longer. His feet would keep hitting the ground when he thought they were still three or four inches from it, and it made him stumble as though he were drunk. The cool night breeze that was blowing cleared his head a little, and he recognized an open space they crossed as the Place Gambetta. She led him to a dark, narrow street and stopped suddenly before a door. She ran up the three steps and opened it with a key. “
Entrez, cheri?
” she said.

He leaned against the wall without replying, and she repeated in English. “Cum-en, Darlin'.”

He shook his head, and blurted half sullenly, “Not tonight, Josephine—
Pas
ce soir
.”

She came quickly down the steps and laid a hand on his sleeve; but he shook her off.

“Oh, you won't lose by it,” he assured her, and thrust his hand into his pocket. His fingers closed over the note that Rumbald had refused, and he thrust it into her hand.

She looked at it quickly and cried, “
Merci bien, M'sieu. Vous êtes très gentil
.” But he was already several yards from her. She shrugged her narrow shoulders and went back up the steps; and he heard the latch click, and the door close behind her.

He took off his cap and allowed the cool breeze to play about his forehead. Absolutely chucking money about, he thought—fifty francs, nearly two pounds. No doubt she needed it—poor half-starved little slut.

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. He saw again the lights and white paint and littered dinner table of the little restaurant. It moved round and round as it had done when he danced. Faster and faster it moved, till nothing but whirling streams of lights were visible. His stomach rose suddenly, and he was violently sick.

A few minutes later he wiped the sweat from his brow and went on. His brain was excessively active. “My God, what a night,” he thought. “Sick in the street—like a Saturday night drunk! Swilling oneself with poison! Paying through the nose to horseplay with filthy little
sluts. That was Rumbald's idea of a good evening. My God!”

III

He trudged on through the silent streets that radiated from the cathedral. Little firefly lights came and went in the darkness. One flashed suddenly and blindingly in his face, and a husky female voice said, “Naughtee boy! What would mother say!” The flash-lamp swung round and illuminated the little white powdered face and dark, inviting eyes of her who held it, as though to say, “Don't buy a pig in a poke. See what you are paying for.”

He shook his head at her and passed on. Other flash-lamps threw their beams upon his uniform, and other husky voices murmured facetious greetings from the darkness at his elbow. Couldn't one get away from these women anywhere in Amiens? What a reputation British officers must enjoy with the civil population! And no wonder, when even married men like Rumbald couldn't keep straight.

Distantly from above sounded the pulsating drone that distinguished the German night bomber, and the pale fingers of three or four searchlight beams went questing silently across the calm night sky above the dark housetops, pausing now and then uncertainly and then moving on again.

He trudged on through the darkness aimlessly. It would be useless to return to the car so soon. Rumbald had said two hours. He wandered down a winding black canyon
and emerged on the deserted quays, where the stars lay reflected in the black water of the canals at his feet. The pulsating drone of engines still sounded fitfully from the north-east.

He sank wearily on to a bench beneath a tree and sat with hunched shoulders listening to the night breeze rustling the leaves above his head. Suddenly the ground and the seat shook as though kicked by a giant foot, and the tapering
flèche
of the cathedral leapt into view for a moment, black against a dull red glow, and was gone again. The familiar muffled crash of the explosion followed and the distant pattering of falling masonry and glass.

He followed the gropings of a searchlight beam with lazy interest. He wondered if the bomb had dropped anywhere near Rumbald. It would be funny if it had landed on the very house and taken off the front as had happened to many houses he had seen near the Line. The surprised Don Juan scrambling out of bed in a room with only three walls and hurriedly pulling on his breeches in full view of the street would be a comic sight.

He laughed softly at the absurd picture his mind had drawn, and glanced upwards as the liquid lucka-lucka-lucka-lucka of aerial machine-gunning came from overhead. But there was nothing to be seen except the halo of a searchlight beam on the edge of a cloud.

The night breeze was cold. He turned up the collar of his trench coat and continued his wandering. The cafés were closed. The streets were deserted and dark, except for the little flash-lamps which still winked hopefully here and
there. At this hour it seemed that Amiens provided only one amusement for the stranger within her gates.

He found his way back to the now darkened yard of the hotel and sat in the silent car and smoked pipe after pipe. When at last the other two men did appear, he was warned of their approach by the hearty voice of Rumbald singing the Robbers' chorus from
Chu Chin Chow
. Penhurst was as mournful as his companion was cheerful. He started up the engine sullenly and switched on the headlights. Rumbald fooled round the car and began working the Klaxon horn violently like a mischievous urchin.

Penhurst turned on him in cold fury. “Stop that bloody row for Christ's sake!”

Rumbald desisted after one more provocative wail. “Must get your lousy old 'bus going, Pen,” he said cheerfully. And he began to move violently every lever and switch within reach. The engine coughed and was silent.

Penhurst, who had one foot on the running-board, seized Rumbald savagely by the cross strap of his Sam Browne. “I'll twist your flaming neck if you don't keep your blasted hands off things,” he hissed.

Rawley dragged them apart. “You come in the back with me, Rumbald,” he said. Rumbald did not want to go in the back seat; he wanted to drive. “Not if I know it,” cried Rawley.

There ensued a lot of drunken foolery on the part of Rumbald, and a stream of blood-curdling invective from Penhurst, till Rawley lost all patience. He hauled and pushed Rumbald into the back seat. “My God!” he cried in
exasperation. “Tight as you are, I swear I'll slog you both if you don't shut up.”

He was very doubtful of Penhurst's ability to drive, and he was relieved and a little surprised when they reached the outskirts of the city without disaster. But Penhurst, though not sober, was competent; and once on the open road he drove with a cool, suppressed fury at a pace that would have been suicidal had he been either less sober or less drunk. Occasionally the lime-washed cottages of a village leapt up white in the headlights, walling the road narrowly for a few seconds, to fall away as suddenly as they had arisen, leaving windy darkness on either hand, and the racing pool of light ahead chequered with the shadowed inequalities of the road.

Rumbald made one sudden effort to gratify his wish to drive, and was repulsed by an icy douce of vituperation from the fell Penhurst, and was urgently dragged back into his seat by an exasperated Rawley. He complained almost tearfully of their unkindness, but fell asleep in the middle of his jeremiad.

The familiar buildings at the cross-roads leapt up in the headlights and were gone, and a second later it seemed Penhurst brought the car to a standstill in the village. The now maudlin Rumbald was bundled out and Rawley followed. Penhurst called “Goodnight,” turned the car dexterously, the headlights in their swinging arc revealing for a second the white walls and shining windows of sleeping cottages, guns and limbers standing beneath cardboard scenic trees, and a silent sentry with white face
and glistening eyes and bayonet, and then the darkness rushed in again and he shot like a rocket back the way he had come.

Rumbald began to sing mournfully, but the words ended in a gasp as an elbow drove into his body. “Shut up, you fool,” whispered Rawley hoarsely. “We don't want the sentry to know you are bloody drunk. Shut up!” He put his arm round the huge, sagging body and piloted it towards his billet.

By the meagre light of a candle stuck in the brass cottage candlestick on the marble-topped chest of drawers Rawley pulled off Rumbald's boots as he lay like a stranded whale on the square French bed. They were field-boots and required much tugging before they came off and lolled drunkenly together by the low wooden valance of the bed. And all the time Rumbald talked sentimentally, though to Rawley, kneeling on the clean, red-brick floor, his head was out of sight below the horizon of his prostrate body.

“Damn good of you, Pete—to look after me—like this. Damn good of you,” he murmured. “Do same for you—one day.”