Heart of War (101 page)

Woodruff said, ‘Here's the list of fatigues ordered from us, sir … a hundred and eighty men, fifteen N.C.O.s.'

Quentin growled angrily under his breath. The refrain of one of the battalion's favourite songs passed through his mind …
‘The battalion commander had just a thousand men, but the brass hats buggered them all away
.' This was supposed to be a rest period … in the war everything went round in circles, the same events and emotions, the same heights of exaltation and depths of depression, the same dreary plains between, all passing in ordered and repetitive sequence.

‘Today we have to send home the name of the officer selected to go to the 8th Battalion in India, sir.'

‘I've been thinking about that,' Quentin said. ‘I'm going to send Stratton. He's had a lot of experience in France and they'll probably give him a company out there. They certainly should … the rest of them must all be Territorials. When does he have to leave?'

‘At once, sir. With luck, he might be able to spend Christmas in Hedlington – he has to report to the Depot first.'

‘All right, tell him as soon as you can. I want to see him on his way back.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I hope word of his M.C. will come through soon … Are those men the R.M.O. said have gonorrhea ready? They'll get docked pay, of course, but I want to find out which red light house they went to, and where. We've got to see that those places are properly inspected, so the men don't get these foul diseases, and go sick, when we need them … for fatigues.'

The adjutant said, ‘Yes, sir,' and marched out. Quentin waited. Poor devils. He composed his face sternly.

‘The 12th Division broke and ran, that's why we never got what we hoped for out of Cambrai,' 2nd Lieutenant Wylie said conspiratorially. ‘Our tanks broke clean through at first – then there was no one near enough to complete the job, and the Germans had time to pull themselves together … General Boy Bradford tried to get Corps to send a battalion up at once to hold Bourlon Wood, but the Corps commander
had gone into dinner and wasn't to be disturbed … And when the Germans counter-attacked, our fellows broke.'

Fred Stratton listened tolerantly. Wylie was the son of the battalion's 2nd in command. He had a small and expressive face and loved to gossip. He was barely twenty but had fought with the battalion through the whole Nollehoek-Passchendaele series of battles, and it showed in the downturn at the corners of his mouth, the crows' feet round his eyes, a haggardness belying the youthful down and roundness of his cheeks. He was now very animated, sitting in company headquarters with Lieutenant Fred Stratton, the acting company commander. He was just back from short leave, which he had spent in Paris, enjoying his first sex with a woman, courtesy of a young French war widow picked up at a boulevard café – by the lady, that is.

Fred helped himself to another spoonful of strawberry jam and spread it thickly on an Army biscuit. He'd just had dinner – but strawberry jam was not to be wasted, or allowed to grow mouldy or be eaten by rats – not even Hoggin's; strawberry jam was almost as wonderful as a Blighty. Wylie was talking fast now, gesticulating like a Frenchman. ‘I heard about something else, the worst railway accident in history. No one's supposed to talk about it, but this lady had heard, from …'

‘… another admirer,' Fred said. He was becoming quite at ease with the upper class now. Wylie was an old Harrovian, and his grandfather was a viscount. Fred was aware of these things, and they mattered, but they didn't alter his manner now, as they would have a couple of years ago. He was neither truculent nor subservient. He had not quite lost his Man of Kent accent, but it was barely noticeable now.

The young man said, ‘Well, it might have been … she's awfully pretty … Anyway, there were seven or eight hundred French troops being sent home on Christmas leave. They'd been bolstering up the Eyeties after Caporetto …'

‘We sent a lot, too. The battalion nearly went, I heard … Wish we had … would have missed that last show at Nollehoek, when old Kellaway lost his eye and Boy went napoo.'

‘… and when they got to Modane, the frontier station, they had to change from Italian to French carriages, but there weren't enough engines, so the stationmaster said he could
only send on so many of the troops and the rest would have to wait. Well, they were in no mood to wait and their officers knew it, so one of them stuck a pistol in the stationmaster's belly and said, “Put on more carriages” – you know, the Hommes 40 Chevaux 8 wagons – and the stationmaster shrugged and ordered more wagons to be hooked on. And all the French soldiers piled in, far more than forty to a wagon, and off they went down the hill. And the engine driver soon had his brakes jammed on hard, but they wouldn't hold the train … it was too big, too heavy, just as the stationmaster had said … and the brakes got white hot and set fire to the wagons, which of course are wooden … and then the brakes failed altogether, burned out, so the train went faster and faster … and the faster it went the more it fanned the flames, and all the wagons were like flying torches – the whole train was a torch, with the soldiers in the wagons screaming, all on fire, some jumping off, at seventy, eighty miles an hour … until finally the train left the rails and burned to ashes – with the soldiers. Then they got hold of every survivor – there weren't many and everyone else connected with the accident, and told them that if they said a word, they'd be shot … the dead soldiers' families were told the men had been killed in action, and lots of them are being given posthumous decorations and citations of all kinds …'

‘'Fraid of another mutiny if the news gets out,' Fred said laconically. ‘Or a revolution.'

A battalion runner poked his head round the blanket covering the door of the cellar – ‘Signal from battalion for Mr Stratton, sir.'

Fred put out his hand. Now what? Old Rowley telling him to keep the men's hair shorter? Another warning about clap in some of the red lamp houses? He read the message:

Lieutenant F. Stratton is posted to 8 W.L.I. with immediate effect. Lieutenant Stratton will report to W.L.I. Depot Hedlington as soon as possible. Report to Bn Orderly Room for transportation and documents immediately.

‘Where in heaven is the 8th Battalion?' he asked the runner.

‘Search me, sir,' the man answered cheerfully. ‘Down by Arras, perhaps.'

‘It's in India, the principal jewel in the British Crown,'
Wylie said with equal cheerfulness. ‘But God knows where, exactly. Anyway, it's better than a blighty for you, Strat. All they do out there is lie on their beds and get natives to clean their equipment and bring them tea in the morning.
And
you'll be a
pukka sahib!'

‘India!' Fred said wonderingly. When he joined the regiment back in '14 there'd been a number of old regulars still serving, both officers and Other Ranks. They all used a great deal of Hindustani, and to him, then, service in India had been the hallmark of the old Army; and, concerning officers, proof that they were real officers –
sahibs
, as they said: not temporary gentlemen, such as himself. One of the most commonly used Hindustani words
was pukka
, and he'd soon learned that it meant ‘real' as against ‘false,' ‘permanent' as against ‘temporary.' And now, by God, he himself was going there, to be anointed as a
pukka sahib
.

Betty Merrit opened her desk drawer, took out a slim red bound volume and turned to the title page where it read –
At the Lip. Poems from France, by Fletcher …
but on the facing page there was a printed dedication:

For my love

When he came home she would make him write those words out in his own hand, add a comma or dash, then the single word – ‘Betty' – and sign it.

She turned the pages slowly
… At the lip …
terrible but beautiful … as mystical as Blake …
Death passed
, tragic at first, then inexplicably lighter, almost happy …
My mate and I;
just the other way round, light at the beginning, with a powerful bite at the end …
Where are the guns that shout all night?

The door handle turned and she quickly, guiltily stuffed the book back and closed the drawer. Ginger Keble-Palmer came in, stooped as usual, and said, ‘Richard says we have to find some less-complicated way to hold and release the bombs. This – ' he tapped the drawing in his hand – ‘will work, he says, but it will be slow and expensive to produce.'

She sighed, and took the drawing. The design had been hers in the first place, and now she would have to start all over again. Damn the bombs! The day would come when the Hedlington Buffalo would be flying to Berlin, but with passengers instead of bombs … and to Rome, Athens,
Vienna. She sat back, while Ginger went to the tall draughtsman's desk and leaned over it, studying the diagrams pinned to it.

He spoke now, without turning round – ‘Someone told me you were the person to whom that new book of war poems by Fletcher is dedicated.'

She looked across, at first upset – what business was it of his? Of anyone's? It was a secret between her and Fletcher, like the mysteries of each other's bodies, shared in Deal that winter night. Ginger had not looked round. She softened. Of course, he had always been fond of her, loved her even; but she had never been able to see him in that way. She said gently, ‘It's true, Ginger.'

‘Lucky man,' he said in a low voice. ‘It's none of my business … one of the girls knew you'd been seeing Fletcher Gorse while he was at the Depot here … I hope you'll be happy.'

‘We will,' she said confidently. ‘I love him.'

‘I love you,' Keble-Palmer said gloomily, ‘but that doesn't mean we'd be happy.
I
would …'

She said, ‘You're sweet … but really, we'll be all right. We agreed that we mustn't get married until we have found out that we have more in common than …' she blushed, ‘well, being in love.'

Ginger said, ‘He's a very good poet … awfully English, like his grandfather, that old poacher down at Walstone … wild … a sort of child of nature …'

‘And I'm American, and tamed, and like everything hygienic and clean and artificial … Is that what you mean?'

Ginger swung round, ‘I'm jealous, Betty. I can't help it … but even if I wasn't, I would worry. There is such an incredible difference in your backgrounds. He can hardly write …'

‘He can write this!' she snapped, banging the desk under which the poems lay hidden in the drawer. Again, she controlled herself, and continued, ‘You really are sweet, Ginger, to worry about me. But it'll be all right. I
know
it will! Everything will be all right when he comes home.'

Ginger said nothing; and Betty thought, he's thinking, as I'm thinking, as everyone must think in these ghastly times –
if
he comes home.

She said, ‘Ginger, let's go up to London, to the Cat & Mouse … tonight.'

He looked astonished, and she went over to the tall desk and put a hand over his, ‘Ginger, I don't love you, but I
like
you, very much. And I'm frightened – for him. And lonely… loneliness is like a cold heavy clammy blanket on me whenever I'm not here with you all, working. I understand now why women do such awful things when their men are in France … Until you get a girl of your own, will you help look after me? Help me look after myself?'

Ginger muttered, ‘Of course, Betty … And I won't bother you again. I'll try and think of you as my sister.'

She squeezed his elbow – ‘Thanks, Ginger … I simply must find the right girl for you. You deserve the best.'

‘But I'm not going to get her,' he said with a wan smile.

Bert Gorse trudged round the exercise yard at Hedlington Gaol, his boots slipping and sliding in the slushy and dirty snow. Visitors today. He wondered who would come to see him. Rachel had come once, two days after the beaks had slammed him in again – fourth time now, wasn't it? And all because he had punched up a big navvy who was heckling Rachel at one of her No-Conscription Fellowship meetings … that was a laugh, if you could see it that way, because he didn't belong to the Fellowship himself any more; and Rachel didn't belong to him! She hadn't actually gone off with Bentley – or perhaps she had, since he'd been put in gaol – but he was sure she would, sooner or later, probably sooner … Old John Rowland might come, but Christ, he'd changed since his son was killed … shrunk inside his clothes, turned twenty years older in a month. And he'd be busy at the farm … seemed like another world they lived in down there, in Walstone and Cantley and Taversham – village greens, cows plodding along the lanes dropping sploshy pats, men touching their forelock to such as John Rowland, Cate, Swanwick …

An elbow jabbed back into his stomach and the edge of a hard hand smashed against the side of his head. He reeled dizzily and two boots stamped down on his feet, the heels grinding in. He doubled over and another elbow jerked up under his nose, which spouted blood. The foot where he had shot himself always hurt, and was now shrieking in silent agony.

The prison warder shouted, ‘Keep moving, you there … number 9876!' He started forward, drawing his truncheon.

Bert reeled on. Bastards … the warder had seen the blokes set on him, although he pretended he hadn't. The man behind him muttered through closed lips, ‘'Ow d'you like your exercise, conchie?'

Bert muttered, ‘It's your lives they're trying to save …'

‘Fucking conchie.'

The warder shouted, ‘Stop talking, there, 9876!' then turned his back. Blows descended on Bert till he fell out, kneeling, retching.

‘Get up!' the warder shouted, turning back. ‘You, 43 … 72 … pick 'im up. See that he gets 'is exercise.'