The Somme Stations (25 page)

‘With luck,’ I said, ‘the bath wallah’s going to change the water in a minute. He does that regularly – I’d say about every tenth man gets fresh.’

Roy, in jesting with his brother, had moved a little side on to us. His wedding tackle … it was quite a sight.

‘I’ve never noticed that before,’ said Dawson. ‘… Can’t see how I missed it.’

Then
Andy
Butler stood up in the bath.

‘Good Christ,’ said Dawson. ‘And they say lightning doesn’t strike twice.’

Maybe Oliver Butler had not inherited that particular family … heirloom, so to speak. Maybe
that
was the true reason for the towel about his waist. Anyhow, I knew by his expression that he didn’t like us talking about his brothers in that way.

When I was towelling down after my own bath (the water was just hot enough to make you wish you’d a bit longer than the regulation minute sitting in it), I glanced over at young Alfred Tinsley lying back in the water. He called out to me, ‘What more could the quality want?’

‘Oi,’ said the bath orderly, ‘out!’

Directly he climbed out, Oamer – still fussing about in the altogether – walked up to the lad and pressed a hot towel on him.

Coming into Albert for the second time, the town seemed to have recovered itself somewhat from its earlier state. But it was more likely that I was over my first shock of seeing it.

I had learnt in my months at the front that a house was not necessarily upright, and that it could count itself lucky if it had no holes at all in its roof. In any row of five houses in the streets around the railway station, as many as four might be upright, but there’d always be one letting the side down. You noticed the beauty of the ones that survived. The top floor was always a front-on triangle, with fancy, stepped brickwork. They were tall and thin, four or five storeys high, and most of the life was lived in the basement, which was partly, as I supposed, because almost any house at Albert might fall down at any time. I mean to say … they’d been through a
lot
.

Now that the Boche had been pushed back, the town – like Burton Dump – was out of ordinary artillery range, but still within reach of the big guns. The result was that if you went into Albert not knowing the French word for ‘basement’, you soon found it out: ‘sous-sol’. Take any given shop or business premises. The front might say ‘Boulangerie’, ‘Pâtisserie’ or ‘Notaire’, but there’d be a hand-painted sign in addition pointing down and indicating ‘sous-sol’. The whole town had gone underground.

The other words that any Tommy would pick up quickly were ‘vin’ and ‘bière’. I was walking through the town with
Dawson and young Tinsley when Tinsley said, ‘I prefer wine to beer. The
idea
of it, I mean, since I’ve never really drunk it. See here …’ He pointed to a fancy written panel outside one of the upright houses. It gave the prices of the drinks sold within. ‘A bottle of wine’, said Tinsley, ‘is generally one franc and twenty whatsnames …’

‘Centimes,’ I said.

‘… And you get goodness knows how many glasses in a bottle, whereas
one
glass of beer is a franc – and there’s a lot more wallop in a glass of wine than there is in a glass of beer.’

‘Spoken like a connoisseur,’ said Dawson, who was mooching along behind, hands in pockets. In the washroom, directly after the bath, he’d covered his face in a lather and set about it with a razor. It seemed he’d finally had enough of his not-quite moustache, but when he’d wiped away the soap, it was just as before.

Dawson seemed to be looking for something, and I wondered whether it was the same thing I believed Tinsley to be looking for, namely a place signified by a red light burning low. On the train coming in from Burton Dump, I’d decided – on looking at all the brilliantined hair, the shaving nicks on the chins, and the soap suds hardened into white crusts about the backs of the necks – that such a place was the true goal of every man in the carriage, even the twins.

Of course, most of the blokes in the carriage were not married. I
was
, and so the question of my own intentions came with complications. Whenever I thought of the red light, and how it might look, and where it might be, I thought of the wife. Best thing would be to have a drink, and see what happened. That’s what I intended to do, anyhow, but we couldn’t seem to find the right spot.

We came out into the main square, where the half-wrecked cathedral stood. On the top of the spire, the Virgin Mary, tilted a few degrees below the horizontal, held the baby Jesus.

‘Famous is that,’ said Tinsley. ‘They have postcards with it on.’

‘Having a lovely time on the Western Front,’ I said.

‘It’s known as the Albert Memorial,’ said Dawson, and when he saw Tinsley’s expression – half believing it and half not – he had to laugh.

We found a basement estaminet just off the Square that looked all right – not red lamps but green ones, which, together with dark blue, none-too-clean tablecloths, gave an underwater look to the place. It seemed to draw quiet types. A couple of privates talked in low voices in one corner; a couple of officers did likewise in another. As we descended the stone steps, a tired-looking woman said, ‘English menu’ in a strong French accent and held up a little blackboard. She looked at us, waiting. The odd thing was that it was all written in French, except for the odd word that stood out in capitals like ‘ENGLISH SHIPS’ which, odds on, was ‘English Chips’, since it went next to ‘Oeufs au plat’.

‘Bonsoir, madame,’ I said, and the woman nodded back. She wanted us to get on with the ordering.

‘What
is
oeufs au plat?’ asked Alfred Tinsley.

‘Eggs on a plate,’ I said.

‘Where else would they be?’

‘
Fried
eggs. So in English it’s egg and chips.’

‘I’ll have that,’ he said, and we all asked for it.

The woman made no move, but nodded. She was still holding up the little blackboard, still looking worn out.

‘For dreenk,’ she said.

The menu said ‘Notre Vins’, then came ‘Vin Blanc 1ff’. Below that was written ‘Cidre’, and no price.

Tinsley said to me, ‘Ask her if she has Vin Supérieur.’

He’d set his heart on this, having seen signs about the town announcing that it was only ten or maybe twenty centimes dearer than the ordinary stuff. I asked the question as best I
could, and I could not make out the answer.

We sat down at the table next to the officers. They were only junior officers – one pip and two pips. Two pips was out of the Quinn mould. He was saying, ‘That’s final to my mind … But then again …’

We started in on the wine, which came in a bottle without a label, and without a cork – a dodge that most French barkeepers seemed to think they could get away with. I took a sip, while Alfred Tinsley drank off his glass in one go. He sat back, and said, ‘My eye! Is that what wine’s meant to taste like?’

‘No,’ I said.

Dawson passed me a Woodbine, before offering one to Tinsley.

‘Go on then,’ said the lad, and he set about trying to enjoy a cigarette for the second time in his life.

Dawson re-filled Tinsley’s glass, and the kid knocked half of that back straightaway as well. After taking a draw on the fag, he eyed it as though there was something wrong with it. But it was just the same as all other Woodbines.

‘I think a cigar might be more my style,’ he said.

He seemed determined to go all-out this evening – and in all directions. Then he said, ‘Why does Oliver Butler say all that stuff about Oamer? Making out that he’s, you know, funny? A sort of nancy, I suppose is what he’s saying. He’s so keen to throw blame for what happened that I’m beginning to think he might have done for Harvey himself – him or his loony brothers.’

Watching Tinsley, I was wondering again about the torn number of the
Railway Magazine
. It was the only thing about him that I couldn’t explain. Tinsley drained his glass, and this time took the liberty of re-filling it himself. ‘Oamer’s brainy,’ he ran on, ‘that’s the only thing different about him. Did you see him coming up on the train? He was reading the fattest book I’ve ever clapped eyes on.’

‘
The Count of Monte Cristo
,’ I said.

Taking another belt of wine, Dawson said, ‘I’ve got a book called
The World’s Best Books
. It’s awfully good. I’d read about half of it but then the war started.’

Dawson looked up and said, ‘It’s not the same as reading half of the world’s best
books
, you know.’

Re-filling my own glass – Dawson, who’d seemed miles away, had barely touched his – I said, ‘I’d stick to the
Railway Magazine
if I were you. But Alfred … How did one of yours end up getting burnt in the stove at Spurn?’

‘Eh?’ said Tinsley, setting down his glass, ‘How do you mean?’

I thought:
If he’s lying, he’s doing it pretty well.

The English Ships came, and Tinsley got stuck in, but Dawson was still in his daze.

‘Look alive,’ Tinsley said, and Dawson started eating.

The grub seemed to revive him, and when we’d finished eating, Dawson was all for quitting that particular basement, and finding another with a bit more life to it. So we paid the bill, and walked up into the dark street.

This one offered no other estaminet, I was sure – just the tall houses, looking tense, waiting for another shell to come flying in. But there was no indication of the battle going in the east, save the occasional rumble of what sounded like thunder, and a faint discoloration on the sky. I looked along the road, and a little old man had appeared there. The males of Albert generally
were
little old men, or blokes otherwise crocked – they’d have been in the French army otherwise. But this bloke
was
in uniform, even though he carried a very un-military carpet bag.

We stood near the street corner, and Dawson and Tinsley were after drifting
around
that corner. Tinsley was prattling about cigars: ‘The time for a cigar is after dinner,’ he said, ‘and we’ve had dinner so it’s time for a cigar.’

Well, he was already canned. Dawson was jingling the
change in his pockets while puffing on a fag. His cap was tipped right back, and a line of insect powder showed luminous in the crease of his tunic.

‘Just want to take a peek around the corner, Jim,’ he said.

He sloped off, and the little old man was coming up fast. He wore a uniform at least a size too big for him, and of a washed-out, greyish colour. It featured a black brassard with lettering on it, but he wasn’t a military policeman. As he approached the white light of the lamp, he spoke, and it was a hard Yorkshire voice.

‘Who’s that man, bringing the King’s uniform into contempt?’

It was the bloody Chief.

‘It’s Dawson,’ I replied, being in a state of shock, ‘the bloke you had a run-in with …’

‘Might have bloody known.’

‘Chief,’ I fairly gasped, ‘what …?’

I meant ‘What are you doing here?’ ‘Where’ve you just come from?’ ‘What’s this queer sort of uniform you’re wearing?’ and ‘Why have you bloody
shrunk
?’ Shaking his hand, I read the lettering on the brassard – read it out loud in my amazement: ‘VTC’. Was it some part of the army? But the Chief was sixty-five. He couldn’t be with the colours. He couldn’t be at the front either, but he damn near was.

‘Volunteer Training Corps,’ said the Chief, and he looked sidelong, embarrassed. As he moved his small, scarred, gingery head, his cap seemed to stay still, being too big for him.

‘But … what’s in the bag, sir?’

‘Don’t “sir” me. I’m not an officer, am I?’

He indicated the three stripes on his arm. I smiled at him, and it was the first time ever that I’d been amused by the Chief without also being nervous.

‘You’ve just the two,’ he said, indicating my own stripes. ‘Your missus’ll be up in arms about that, I suppose. She’ll be
storming the bloody War Office.’

The Chief was trying to address me after his old fashion, but he wasn’t quite up to it. Then I recalled that he ought to have
known
that the business on Spurn had held back my promotion.

‘Didn’t you get my letter, Chief?’

‘
What
bloody letter?’

Behind me, Alfred Tinsley was returning from around the corner.

‘Just had the nod from Dawson, Jim,’ he said. ‘He’s found a likely place down there. Will you come along now or shall we see you later?’

This was a pretty half-hearted sort of invitation. Were the pair of them fleeing the Chief? Then again, it would be obvious to anyone that the Chief and I had a lot to talk about and so might be better left to ourselves.

I said to Tinsley, ‘Right-o, we’ll see you shortly.’

The Chief was eyeing me. ‘The army’s given you a pair of shoulders at last.’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘I know how to stand now.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far, lad,’ said the Chief. ‘Look, for Christ’s sake, let’s get a belt of booze.’

So I indicated the estaminet I’d just come out of.

When we came to the bottom of the stairs, the woman didn’t hold up the little blackboard for the benefit of the Chief. She could immediately see that here was a man who didn’t really eat, but lived on smoke and alcohol. I asked her for a bottle of white wine, and took the Chief over to the table I’d quit ten minutes before. The bar was a brighter, bluer place now, with a few more Tommies in, and a stream of chatter and clinking glass.

‘How long have you been out here?’ I asked the Chief, pouring wine.

‘Getting on for a fortnight,’ he said, taking a box of cigars from his tunic pocket.

‘And before that you were in York?’

‘Aye,’ he said, ‘worse luck.’

Again this sounded a wrong note. The
old
Chief didn’t go in for that self-pitying tone. I thought again of the letter I’d written him – the one I’d given to Oamer for posting at Romescamps. Had Oamer deliberately kept it back? He certainly wouldn’t have forgotten to deliver it. Then again letters from the front very often went astray, as did letters sent to the Chief. Any communication without the immediacy of a bullet could take its chances as far as he was concerned. I’d seen him start the fire in the police office with unopened correspondence.