Heart of War (45 page)

‘Dago and I'll go with you,' Lucas said. ‘We walk in and Dago says, what he has to say.'

Fagioletti said,
‘Madame, voulez-vous coucher avec nous
– and we all put down our two francs. You sure that's right, Snaky?'

Lucas nodded – ‘I talked with Lakri Woods in D. We put the money down while you're talking, an' you know what that does to a Frog … And that's enough of that van blong, Jessop. You can drink a lot of van blong, or you can fuck Madame Fawnsar, but you can't do both … Then you go upstairs with her. You know what to do?'

Jessop said, ‘'Course I know what to do!'

‘Well, it just comes natural,' Lucas said; but in himself, looking at the boy, he wondered. The woman was a bloody Frog whore, and she'd just want her money and get on to the next man. That was a bloody shame, for Jessop, when you came to think of it. Couldn't be helped.

‘Time to go,' he said.

‘I've got to piss,' Jessop said. He went out of the back door to urinate on the pile of manure in the yard, as everyone else did.

Lucas leaned over to Fagioletti – ‘Listen, Dago, you tell the woman not to hurry Jessop, see? It's a 'orrible thing for a man if he can't get it up, especially the first time. Then he thinks he never will. There was a bloke in B Company in 'Pindi with me, near as young as Jessop, who put his rifle muzzle in his mouth and his big toe on the trigger because of that … blew his brains all over the barrack room wall, and we had to clean them off. Don't want that to 'appen 'ere, do we?'

Fagioletti swelled. Snaky Lucas, one of the oldest soldiers in the battalion, was engaging his, Niccolo Fagioletti's help, in a matter affecting a soldier of the battalion, his battalion. ‘I'll tell 'er,' he said, ‘though I don't know the French for hurry … yes, I do too –
dépéchez-vous
…
non dépéchez-vous.'

They rose from the table as Jessop came back in. The bill was paid and they went out into the darkness. The bakery door was shut. The three soldiers opened it and walked into the light. Madame Fonsard was of medium height, fortyish, with big, sad, blue eyes – a faded northern blonde with work-hardened and cold-chapped hands. She smiled tiredly at them –
‘Bon soir, messieurs. Que voulez-vous?
'

Fagioletti stepped half a pace forward and took out two francs and put them on the counter. Lucas and Jessop followed suit. Fagioletti said,
‘Madame, voulez-vous coucher avec nous?
'

The woman's smile faded. She looked at the door, hesitated, and said,
‘J'ai peur de la police
… your regiment polis.'

‘Tell her I know the Provost Corp,' Lucas said. ‘Spoke to him at dinner. All fixed.'

Fagioletti translated as best he could. Madame went to the door without a word, closed and bolted it, and said,
‘Qui vient le premier?
'

Fagioletti pushed Jessop forward, muttering,
‘C'est la première femme pour lui, madame
…
non dépéchez-vous.'

‘No 'urry?' she said, the smile half-reappearing. She looked at Jessop and took his hand, ‘Come wiz me.'

They listened as the clump of Jessop's boots and the pad of the woman's soft slippers faded up the stairs. Lucas beckoned and pointed upstairs – ‘Boots off!' he hissed. Quickly they took off their boots, and, holding them in their hands, crept upstairs. Two stairs creaked but no one came out of the rooms at the top. They heard faint voices from the room on the right, and Fagioletti stooped to the keyhole. Lucas bent close.

‘She's undressing,' he said.

‘What colour's her bush?'

‘Wait a minute … dark brown.'

‘What's he doing?'

‘Taking off his shirt … trousers … prick's limp as a piece of cooked macaroni … she's lying back on the bed … putting up her legs.'

‘Bloody 'ore!' Lucas whispered furiously. ‘We told the bitch to go slow! First sight of one of them things between 'er legs can frighten a boy out of his wits… looks as if it's a bloody hairy spider going to eat your prick. I've a good mind to go in and …'

‘Hsssh! Wait … Jessop's crying. He's sitting on the bed … I can see his shoulders shaking … She's sitting up now. She's stroking his head.'

‘Never had a two bob whore stroke
my
head! Let me see!' Lucas bent, looked and leaned away. ‘My God, she is! He's resting his head on her tits … she's stroking his cheek … kissing him on the lips … putting his hand on her bush … very gentle …' He pulled away from the keyhole and stared at Fagioletti. ‘She's crying, Dago.'

He bent to look again. This time he stayed a long time. The boy was growing a full, proud erection. The woman was
pressing her wet face to his cheeks, sighing, affectionate, kind. Lucas stood away and up. ‘She's not a two-bob whore,' he said. ‘She's a widow … twice, Lakri said. Come on downstairs, Dago. When Jessop comes down we'll tell him we've changed our minds, and he can have our turns.'

‘And our money, to pay for it?' Fagioletti said anxiously. He didn't want to offend Lucas; but he needed those two francs.

‘She won't take any money,' Lucas said.

‘Can't be French,' Fagioletti said.

Lucas said, ‘And we don't really want her, do we? You got an old woman back home? Save it up for her. Let Madame Fawnsar turn our brave boy into a fine upright British soldier. A lot of women will be grateful to her, if he doesn't get his balls blown off first. C'mon, let's go and play Housey-housey.'

Company Quartermaster Sergeant Spencer, of C, was calling the numbers, and this card he was calling Regimental House: that is, when the number he had to call was ‘One' he didn't call the usual ‘Kelly's Eye, number one,' but ‘Pontius Pilate's Bodyguard' – the nickname of the Royal Scots, the 1st Foot of the British Line. He never called the actual number out at all; if you didn't know the numbers, nicknames, and connected anecdotes of every regiment in the Army, you were never able to fill in your card. Lucas had undertaken to teach Fagioletti what he knew, for a consideration – a packet of Woodbines every day for the next seven days.

‘The other Minden Light Infantry,' Spencer called. ‘The Chowkidars …'

‘God, what's them?' Fagioletti muttered.

‘Fifty-one – King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry: they was at Minden with us … Forty-two, the Black Watch – Chowkidar's Hindustani for a watchman.'

‘… Right in front of the Red Marines … they marched away and left the girls in a family way …'

‘Forty-nine, Royal Berks,' Lucas said, ‘the Marines march between them and the Scruffy Half Hundredth, Royal West Kents, when they're on parade with the Army … Ninety-five, the Rifle Brigade's old number, ain't got one at all now, that's their regimental march …'

‘Silver Wreath … The Back Badge … Die Hards …'

‘Twenty-four, South Wales Borderers, they have a silver wreath hung on their King's Colour, something to do with the Zulus … Twenty-eight, Gloucesters, fought the Frogs back to back somewhere … Fifty-seven, Middlesex, what their colonel said to them at Albuera … we was there, too …'

Spencer droned on; the bent soldiers scribbled and listened, listened and scribbled. ‘I'll never remember all this,' Fagioletti groaned. ‘How do you learn it?'

‘What else is there to do spending bloody hours in wet canteens in Aldershot, bazaar rum shops in Calcutta, red 'ot barrack rooms in Khartoum? You told me 'ow you used to learn customers when you was a waiter – name and face and family and everything? Well, you do this the same way.'

I will, one day, Fagioletti muttered to himself, through gritted teeth. At the moment though, Spencer might as well be speaking Dutch or Hottentot.

A triumphant yell arose from a corner of the room, by a window – ‘House!'

Lucas looked round – ‘Hatfield, in A. Nineteen years, he's got in … Wonder 'ow young Jessop's getting on … 'Ere, get us another card. Spencer'll call this straight.'

Fagioletti went up to buy a card for the next call, thinking, even ‘straight' isn't all that straight in the Army; for ‘11' was ‘Ladies legs,' and ‘66' was ‘clickety-click' and many other numbers were defined by cockney allusions or rhyming slang.

Cyril Jessop awoke in Madame Fonsard's arms at midnight, to an unearthly rumble and rattle and roar in the street. They jumped out and went together to the window, and stood, arms wrapped round each other, watching. One after another in the damp moonlight twenty monstrous metal beasts, grinding forward on wide caterpillar tracks, guns or machine guns sticking out of their flanks, engines roaring and coughing blue smoke rumbled through eastward. Every house trembled, every window rattled, every man, woman and child, awakened, rushed to windows and doors, and watched in awe and deep-seated fear that could not be assuaged by the knowledge that these fearful engines were on their side. Friendly was a word no one could say: those things could never be friends to any human being.

‘Tanks,' Cyril said at last. ‘We've been hearing of them since September, but I never seen one before …'

She pulled him back toward the high bed, ‘
Viens
, Cyril … you are a wonderful boy … you stay all night … an' come
demain, le lendemain ausii
…'

But the bugles blew at 4 a.m., sounding first the Battalion call, then Company Commanders. The Corps, including the battalion, had been ordered up the line, to the Arras front, to start its march at noon.

Tabora? Ngominji? Lupembe? This was like an Alice-in-Wonderland geography lesson. In the headlines of the past weeks he had read such headings as ROUMANIAN GOVERNMENT LEAVES BUCHAREST FOR JASSY … BRITISH NAVAL PLANES DROP BOMBS ONDILLINGEN… ORSOVA AND TURNU-SEVERIN LOST WITH ALL WALLACHIA … ALLIED TROOPS TAKE DOBROMIR … KUT EL AMARA…ERZERUM… KIONGA… JEDDA… BIARAMULO … GORIZIA… MONASTIR … but where
were
Jassy, Turnu-Severin, Biaramulo and the rest of them? Where
were
those other places whose names had been burned into the conscience and consciousness of all Englishmen these past five months … Butte d'Arlencourt, Mametz, Contalmaison, Fricourt, Bazentin le Petit, Les Boeufs? Perhaps they existed only for the time and place that they had been fought in and over, as, some philosophers believed, objects existed only when observed.

1915 had been the year of disappointment. 1916 looked like being the year of blood. At the end of 1915 there had been a general feeling in Britain that the commanders in France did not know their business. The feeling was probably correct, and Field Marshal French had gone. Now there was agreement that the trouble lay deeper, and was more universal. If progress was to be made against an enemy as powerful as Germany, it was the upper ranks of the country – the direction of the war – that must be examined, and if necessary taken to pieces and re-assembled, better – with new parts, new ideas, new motive power, and above all, new policies.

The House was in committee the Chairman of Ways and Means in the chair, the great silver Mace gleaming under the table. The voice of the Honourable Member for Bury droned on:

May I ask whether it would not be for the convenience of the Committee if we were to adopt the Government Amendments
en bloc
, then recommit the Bill, and work upon it from the White Paper?

The house was half empty. Harry Rowland, seated well back on the Government benches, stifled a yawn. It wasn't an exciting process, but the business of the country could not always be like a battle or a mass fencing match – such as the debate on the 8th: the Great Palm Kernel debate, they were already calling it in the gutter press. He was glad that it could not be so. He had only been a Member for a year, but he recognized that the Commons was like a good club, where bitter political enemies flayed each other on the floor of this holy chamber, then shared roast beef and a glass of wine in the House's dining room.