Umbrella (38 page)

into the cacophonous four-beat b’-b’-b’-boom! that should have preceded it. Stanley is scared – and his fear is a hungering: he could
eat the hornbeam for a joint
, the tangle of undergrowth at its roots
for a salad
. He could
crunch up
Vicky’s three spare barrels in their webbing bundle – and
shovel down a box of ammo for puddin’
. He could eat and eat and eat – no one, he wagers, has ever before experienced such a
shameless voracity
. He will consume the dead Mutton Lancers and the straggling back Scots Guards, he will
help myself
to the ruins of a small farmhouse and its shattered outbuildings despite their already having been feasted upon by the Hun’s artillery. He will feed his way across the broad and churned valley, then munch his way up the chalky rise, snaffling the bodies of the fallen, using their bayonets to pick his teeth, until he reaches the wire,
rolls into it and kips the kip of the stuffed. Then . . . later . . . no enemies any more, only the sweet . . . sweet enema of putrefaction: Bliss!
Ah, well lads! Corbett shouts the second the barrage lifts. S’pose we better get forward and put up the ol’ um-ber-ella! And forward they go, inching their way snail-like around giant clods and raw gouges until they reach the cover of the remaining brick walls —
a lovely situation for Vicky
, what with a smooth bit of tiling to set her legs on, and the bottom half of a window to poke her muzzle through. Dark burgundy dapples on broken red pantiles, there’s a botheration of greenbottles around some two-days-since dead thing – and, for all that, miraculous damsons still whole on the one remaining branch of a scythed orchard, and Vicky
rat-a-tat-tat-trilling
with pleasure between his hands as Feldman, legs spread and top-to-tail, feeds her the belt. It would be pretty cushy were it not that even with his pack off Stanley cannot help but wrench his head up and around to the left, where some invisible object compels his attention. As they reach the end of each belt, back goes his shoulder, round and up swings his head. Now, now, Stan, says Corbett, keep steady at that range – and he crawls forward to check it. Stanley understands wherefrom comes his compulsion: for hours and days now,
weeks slotting into the canvas pockets of months
– so that the entire year and a half trails across the foreign field – he has lain on his belly listening to the incoming sing over the machine gun’s drumming, and his spasmodic assessments of whether – and if so which way – he should go for cover have left him with this permanent crick, this, and his
magnificent powers of espial
: the Tommies’ queer superstition is also Stanley’s addiction to counting by threes – three fags, three shells, three lots of food, three nights, three days, three brass, three rats, three cups of vino, three tots of rum,
with three of any-bloody-thing it’s always the third that’s got your number
, so watch out for it,
keep counting
, always keep counting. They fire continuously for hour upon hour, the bullets spitting in a jet low across the valley. Every fourth round is a tracer to help them keep the range – but the day is so bright these are barely visible. They change one barrel and then the second – they run out of water for
Vicky’s redingote
by about ten thirty and, with no source readily available, take it in turns to piss in her reservoir. The smell of hot urine intensifies
the Devil’s fart
of the cordite, the sweetly rotting
flesh
of
fruit
– and
men
. Terror
gathers
in the gun’s grips and
shudders
through him with the recoil – it might be safer, he thinks, if he were to flit back through the wood with Luftie on the ammo run – although the truth is that for Stanley there can be no danger of death, no dark patch spreading across the tiles. His asinine moniker has put paid to that – each new man who joins the Death squad has this impressed upon him: ’E’s a fucking ’uman rabbit’s foot, the Lance ’ere, or a Cornish pixie – go on, lay yer ’and on ’im, ’e won’t mind . . . There can be no danger of death when it’s death who’s the danger, a transposition that sets Stanley off on another futile train of thought: Why is it that he has this overpowering need to match things up, to put a box of matches in one pocket if there’s a box in the other, to ensure there are the same number of rifle cartridges in each of his pouches, to wind on his puttees with an equal number of turns? And it isn’t only things – ideas, fleeting apprehensions, the ghosts of formerly finer feelings that flit across the waste land of his terror, all must be married up so that they precisely match:
two-equals-two-equals-two
, an iteration of equivalence that he fervently believes will cancel out the lethal threes. Vicky giggles about this: rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat, and she sings also:
We’re
’
ere because we’re
’
ere because we’re
’
ere
, as she tickles the backs of Stanley’s hands with her trigger guards. And, despite the absence of the land ironclads and the presence to the west of a river lazing through its bends, there is a similar neat vee in the chalky bluffs against which the machine gun cries out, and so he is enabled to make the necessary pairing between
Norr
and . . . here
. Three years have passed since he stood by the window of the empee’s country house and
Wallie, Wallie, Wall-flowers, Growing up so high – All these young ladies, Will all have to die
. . .
The men in their creamy-linen uniforms spoke, as he recalls it, of
Bulgaria
and certain alliances and the Irish – it was always the
poor fucking Irish
,
dying for a post office or a sessions
– and here is Stanley
Death raining down death
on a Daimler he cannot see but which he is busily disassembling, his bullets methodically shearing off one mudguard, then the next, drilling out the spokes from the wheels, unbolting those wheels from their axles, hammering the chassis into scrap, and finally pulverising its engine into all its component parts.

They’ve been at it for nigh on four hours when on the stroke of twelve Jerry’s Maxims stop. Immediately after this Luftie comes back with the order to cease fire themselves – watch hand
slim-stroking butterfly feeler
, silence –
hateful
. How many rounds have they loosed? Two-hundred-and-fifty per box, eight boxes each run back from the forward depot, an ammo run every quarter-hour making for thirty-two thousand . . .
Am I right, sir?
The silence is hateful: Vicky’s nose tilts to the ground – the men swoon as smoke pools, then flows from the battlefield, they are listening to the
thud-thud
-pumping of their young hearts, hearing all their component parts. They are
licking
. . .
kissing
the tarnished casing of lockets,
hissing out
their own smoke as the blood
rush-ush-ushes
through their battered ears. The vanguard of defeat has already invaded them
fucked-up francs-tireurs who straggle ahead limping, crawling, dragging themselves back into the battle of life
. . .
One little Scots gamecock bob-flits-whirrs from shell hole to ditch to tree stump for a couple of hours, before arriving at their position with his kilt in tatters. He collapses against the remains of the scullery wall and lying there lifts his remaining hand to his black cracked lips over and over again
miming
. . .
what?
Is it a request for the water they cannot spare – or the valiant urge to
tootle
his
bugle?
With superhuman toughness he’d managed to strap a tourniquet around the stump of his blown-to-bits hand
or else he’d’ve gone long since
. . .
Feldman, spooked by the Jock’s sightless eyes and his dirge
of amansamansamans . . . wants to: Finish ’im off – in kindness – but Corbett says, In justice any man who’s come through that has earned the right to take his chances. So the disagreement nags between them as the greenbottles give up on the other thing to trickle across to the Scotsman’s nostrils, to pour over his mouth and eyes . . . — A long time of this, until Feldman puts the bins to his eyes and, seeing two or three Union flags jerking about part-way up the ridge, says, We’ve taken their frontline, lads, p’raps the support ’as . . . then trails off, the bins dropping on their lanyard. He lifts them again, shakes his head disbelieving – and they fall again. He lifts them –. For fuck’s sake! Corbett cries, Now you an’ ’im both! – because they’re in time, Feldman and the Jock, lifting and dropping their arms. Corbett snatches the bins and the lanyard rucks up the front of Feldman’s tunic –
He looks like a kid getting ragged
.
Wiv
’
is blond curls and periwinkle eyes you’d never peg
’
im for a Jew boy
– took all he got with
remarkable pluck
. . .
Eldest son of a schneider from
up the Mile End Road –
tho’ you’d never guess that either:
made of himself a well-spoken coke and oil merchant in Shadwell
selling direct to the public
–
but
the dandiprat took it personal
when the Contemptible points his old white-gloved hand, so up he goes for his shilling . . . His daddy? Mortimerfied oy-yoy-yoy! Rocking back and forth on his bum, forgetting his thimble drill
. And now
where’s the hand that wore the glove? Feeding fishies
wiv its bleedin’
manicure
– and here’s Solly, such a face on ’im that Luftie’s stopped filling Vicky with the piss-pan to laugh at him. Corbett ain’t laughing, tho’, Oh my sainted fucking aunt diddlin’  ’erself with a cruci-fucking-fix, he says
by way of comfort – that being the way of it with him
. . .
Tenderly he untangles the lanyard from Feldman’s buttons and lifts the bins from around his neck. The section don’t speak as they pass the bins from hand to hand. Later, Stanley remembers
amansamanferall . . . amansamanferall
. . .
and the whistling of the stretcher parties emerging from the wood. To begin with it is impossible to take it all in – probably just as well. The eyepieces are the viewfinder of a handheld stereoscope: it should therefore be possible to change the card, or remove them from his powder-stung eyes altogether to reveal the parlour at Waldemar Avenue, Gladstone’s plaster noggin, the Solar lamp on the table with its dangling prisms, the cottage piano and his sisters’ samplers – anything should be possible, not this: the figures elbow to elbow so closely are they packed, on their knees,
praying maybe
to the womanly breast of the hillside
. The boys concertinaed in their khaki sacks at the end of this
spiffing company sports day – will there be prizes? Fifty francs and a silver cup for the bull’s eye?
The bins take Stanley’s bugged eyes probing into hollows, roving over spurs, and everywhere they go they discover more and more bodies – not hanging on the wire but reclining into it, so very dense are the coils those methodical Teutons have laid down. Amansamanferall . . . Amansamanferall . . . grates the dying Scotsman, Amansamanferall . . . Luftie, when it’s his turn with the bins, begins to weep, and Stanley says: They put this one on to take the pressure offa Frenchie down the line, but Frenchie – he has the right idea: when they ordered ’im back into the line ’e shot ’is own fucking officers – and Corbett says, Now, now . . . and there might have been some bother if the first of the stretcher parties hadn’t come along at that point, and a second lieutenant who was with them – and who seemed
the very soul of decency
– said that Fritz had very decently stopped firing so they could go and bring in the wounded – which is how Stanley comes to be tearing up a stretch of duckboard on to which he thinks they might be able to roll a tubby private of the Second Royal Welsh who’s taken a couple of rounds in the thigh – but no bones broken or arteries busted, so all things being well he’s a chance of making it if they get him back. A fighting chance if Feldman will only stop larking about – not that there is any joy to it, it’s more that the set-up of the Jerry trench has pushed him over the edge. Look at this, Lance! he cries. And this – and that! calling Stanley’s attention to the electrical wiring running from neat porcelain to neat porcelain along the trench wall. We know about it already, you daft bugger! Stanley cries. Don’t you remember the deep dugout? — The deep dugout, splendidly dry and with only the faintest odour of mouse droppings. Stanley had found a real china plate piled with slices of black bread and white onions, and set beside this a clear glass bottle – on the label a bunch of cherries
lusty
in the pulsing light still being generated by an unseen and thrumming generator. Heedless as yet of Feldman’s crack-up, Stanley had seated himself at the table and crammed down the coarse food with little sips of the cherry brandy . . .
kleine Boche stands on me tongue wielding ’is Kleinflammenwerfer
. . .
Solly wouldn’t keep still, kept diving into adjoining burrows to rummage in the bedding. – Feather quilts! he cried. Pillows! and returned with a single-page newssheet he said he could read on account of German not being that different from the Yiddisher lingo,
Yes, yes, it revealed to him – sweethearts under linden trees, that spanking-hot summer . . . freshly brewed lager-beer with cloves . . . snatches of these simple boys’ souls, who, from Bavaria and Franconia, had got themselves planted here in the soil that clung to the roses of Picardy
. . .
There were pistols and rifles still in the dugout – and plenty of their brand-new Stahlhelms, such had been the frenzy of their retreat. Stanley had not been interested in these, although he took a couple of their potato-mashers, the superiority of which . . .
everyone knows
. In the dugout he had felt a bowel-loosening apprehension – the dense, cool air pressing in on him – and when, despite the ceasefire, there came the soft crump! of a falling shell, fear infiltrated his mind . . .
a dirty plume
. He’d rolled a cigarette with a corner of the newssheet and some coal-black tobacco, then
availed myself of the facilities
that, outrageously, had been plumbed in, so that, rising from the shapely seat, he was able rejoice in the
fly
away,
little brown bird
as he carefully wiped his arse with more of the Gothic type, discovering it to be unexpectedly kind to his piles. — Up top Solly has come upon the Welshman – who screams as Stan kicks the board in under him. Come and give me a hand, you daft fucker! Stan cries, knowing there’s little point because Solly’s all the way over now,
dog-faced, gnashing . . . paws a blur as he scampers this way and that
along the trench, from traverse to traverse, climbing up on to the neatly carpentered fire step to yap about their craftsmanship: You can always rely on a German, he howls, to d-d-d-doo-doo-doo the b-b-best he c-c-can with the t-t-tools available. Stanley’s hands tic to his wire cutters and the grenades in his belt – in that instant he resolves to ditch the Welshman and if necessary lay Solly out, if that’s what it’ll take to get him back . . .
Too late!
because Solly has mounted the fire step and pulls himself from arms to knees, gibbering upright, low-angled afternoon sunlight striking him together with twenty or so 7.92-millimetre rounds from a Maschinengewehr 08 that must have loitered behind in a reserve trench, its craftsmen resolved to
bide their time
and
do the best they could with the tools available
. Leisurely – Solly Feldman’s death,
so very slow
. . . While Stanley has never been one of those machine-gunners who enjoy comparing
the attractions of the Vickers .303 with those of her
kissing cousin
, the enfilade that buzzes over the trench, then burrs back to capture Solly and hold him in its kinetic embrace, leads him to consider – even as his comrade’s arms windmill crazily – that Jerry’s may be the better weapon.
See, see!
how it clasps him to its
leaden bosom
, reluctant to let him fall, although there’s hardly anything left but a
tattered red rag
. In the stretched moments as Solomon Feldman flaps into extinction, Stanley dwells upon this: that never before in his interminable nineteen months of service at the Front has he witnessed the impact of machine-gun fire. His fingers clenched on the trigger, Vicky
trembling in my grasp, spitting and gasping inches in front of my face
– yet theirs was never
an exclusive relation
, there were always these
others
with whom they were
joined
by the
bullets
. Solomon Feldman
has his Heimatschuss
an’
’e’s gone west
. Pointless to think of getting the Welshman back now – Stanley has seen enough to know . . .
his time approaches
. Instead, he turns and legs it along the trench, hoping there’s just the one Maschinengewehr covering this section. Where the trench makes a sharp right-angle a sap runs back towards the British lines, and he takes this bend for home, potato-mashers bouncing on his hips – rifle butt one side, Colt the other, both