The Somme Stations (12 page)

The twins, between them, said:

‘Oh …’

‘Muth …’

‘Ah …’

So making ‘Oh mother’ their favourite expression.

Harvey was very dead, and had apparently been given a new head. He looked to have been clobbered mightily at least
twice, for he had the appearance of a sort of a bug. His left eye was black and swollen, and the right one was quite lost in a bulge of purple-coloured flesh, from which the lashes sprouted at wrong angles, so that it was like a kind of anemone. This eye, which had winked at me, was now locked in a
permanent
wink, as though Harvey had just let on the biggest secret of all. As for the rest of him … all that seemed smaller; and the seawater seemed to me to be acting upon him even as he lay on the dry stones, shrinking him fast before our eyes.

Of the kid’s pack, rifle and cap there was no sign.

He was the first casualty of the battalion. Would he figure in the roll of honour? Could it be said that he’d died in the course of duty?

Come two o’clock we were all back in the Hope, drinking tea – all save Quinn, who’d gone off with Tate to make telephone calls. Fried bread and jam was going for those that wanted it, but at first nobody did. People seemed minded to avoid the subject of the actual corpse, so it fell out that Scholes was the star turn, telling everyone about how he’d turned up the
bike
… Practically tripped over it, he had. It had been half buried in the sand, which Scholes reckoned must have been wind-blown sand. The events of the morning seemed to have galvanised him. Perhaps they’d come as a distraction from thoughts of France, or was he just glad not to have copped it himself?

With his pipe in his mouth, but not lit, Oamer called me over to him.

‘You’re a detective,’ he said, now examining his pipe, ‘what do you make of it? Confidentially, I mean.’

‘The essential data … ’ I said. ‘Our lot were the only men on Spurn when William pitched up. There’s been no lifeboat crew since the military came here; the school is the only civilian operation – it’s a day school and no one lives on the premises. I don’t believe any boat could have landed in that weather. As far as I know all the RE men went up to Kilnsea last night. Their
story is that when they came back, the sentries mentioned that the kid had come by. That was none of their affair, and they went directly to their billets and to sleep. The story from this end is that all the blokes were in by bed by half after ten. I can verify that, since I was the last one to turn in. Every man says he slept through the night, and saw nothing of the kid.’

‘You think
Dawson
slept through the night?’ enquired Oamer.

It was the obvious question, given what had gone on the night before.

I said, ‘He seemed dead to the world when I turned in.’

‘Anything else?’ said Oamer.

I didn’t mention that, whatever the situation at ten-thirty, it seemed unlikely to me that no man had got up in the night to visit the jakes or, more likely, take a piss directly outside the door of the hut.

‘If the bike had been on the sea wall,’ I said, ‘there might be grounds for thinking Harvey had tried to ride it along there, and come off it.’

I didn’t want to say that the kid might have made away with himself by
jumping
in the sea, because that seemed even more of a slander than suggesting he’d be thick-headed enough to bike along the revetment in a storm. There was a small chance he
might
have jumped though (smashing his head against the wall in the process), because he was in a funk about going to war. It might be that he’d been the one who disturbed the papers on the table. Perhaps he’d read of our posting, and of the plucky railwaymen, and knew he wasn’t up to the mark.

Scholes had made a start on the fried bread, which had been prepared by the van driver. He – Scholes – was also scared of going to war, but at least he was open about the fact. He went glooming about the place, but the other blokes didn’t mind that. It made them feel braver. William, on the other hand, with his talk of what he was going to do to the Hun, which
everyone knew was complete rot – he annoyed most of the blokes. I didn’t see how any of it could lead to murder, but I could see how it would lead to rows.

For example, Scholes: being a bit yellow himself, he particularly resented the kid’s war-like talk.

As for Tinsley: he and William were rivals – two young bloods – and made no secret of it.

Bernie Dawson? Sober, he was the straightest of fellows, and good company with it. Drunk, the man was a liability, and he
had
been drunk, and spoiling for a scrap before lights out.

The twins? They seemed at times a pair of wild men, barely kept in check by their older brother. Their feelings about William, or any other matter, were a mystery to me, but William had certainly been unnerved by them.

Oliver Butler … He seemed to have
me
in his sights, not William Harvey. When he’d come to my aid against Dawson, I’d thought that might indicate a change in our relations, but evidently not. At any rate, he was glaring at me from over near the stove at that very moment. But I didn’t see what he could have against Harvey. The kid would be beneath his notice.

I kept all this back from Oamer, together with the disturbance of the papers on the table; the beer glasses; the door of the stove. Somebody – or two people, in view of the glasses – had been up in the night, and that was fact. Why did I keep all this back? To give me time to think, and out of loyalty to the section. I would be fighting alongside these men in France within a matter of days. Also because … well … was the fellow questioning me above suspicion? Who
did
Oamer write his letters to, not being a married man, and having, as far as was known, no sweetheart? And why wasn’t he an officer? What kept him back? Was it something known to the army brass? All his usual jollity seemed to have drained out of him as he stood before me.

The glare Butler was sending my way had redoubled. He
didn’t like to see me so thick with the NCO.

‘Another thing,’ I said. ‘Did the kid come past the sentries with his pack and his rifle?’

‘His pack’s still at the farm; that’s where it was left, as arranged. On his bike he carried his rifle and his haversack, with a bite to eat in it and a map of the farms. He had both on him when he passed the sentries.’ Oamer was still examining his pipe, as though it belonged to another man altogether. ‘It’s going to be the devil of a job to get to the bottom of this,’ he said. ‘Half the battalion’s already in France, and we’ll be there ourselves in no time.’

What he meant, I thought, was that a lot more deaths were coming, in comparison with which the present one would no longer signify.

‘That’s this war all over,’ I said, without quite knowing what I meant.

‘One trouble compounds another,’ said Oamer.

I fancied that I saw water in his eye, and it occurred to me that he and I had been the only two in the unit not openly hostile to Harvey. The kid liked army types – not pressed men, so to speak, and not railwaymen. I was ‘army’ in that I was a copper. (Yes, plain clothes, but the Chief
would
parade us every once in a while on the main ‘Up’ platform of York station, much to the amusement of the other blokes.) Oamer had been in the Territorials, and was an NCO. He was a military man in spite of not looking the part; in spite of not being naturally suited to it. Harvey was perhaps a similar case in that he’d gone into a world where bravery was all in spite of not being overly brave. That took courage. He’d worked hard at keeping up an illusion – which, perhaps, accounted for that water in Oamer’s eye.

Butler, Scholes, Dawson and Tinsley were near the stove. All had now made a start on the grub. The twins sat on the edge of the stage. Andy was playing with his rifle in a gormless
sort of way, and Roy was smoking.

Butler addressed every man in the room – although he was eyeing me in particular – as he said, ‘What do we think then, boys? Suicide?’

Dawson nodded to himself. Scholes did likewise, muttering, ‘Made away with himself, that’s it.’

Tinsley said nothing. He was inspecting his cap. On the stage, Roy Butler stared straight ahead, and continued to smoke as his brother – larking about – repeatedly banged him on the arm with the butt of his rifle. A great engine roar came from beyond the window. The breakfast van was starting up, and taking William Harvey back to Hull, along with the empty food boxes.

I arrived back at our house in Thorpe late in the evening. Only a few chinks of light showed in the village, and both the pubs were closed even though it was not yet ten o’clock. On walking through our front door, my first duty, after kissing the wife, was to be taken into the children’s bedrooms. They had been expecting me, and would on no account go to sleep until I arrived. Harry climbed out of his bed, and met me in the hallway, holding a candle.

‘Dad,’ he said, ‘what do you think of
The Count of Monte Cristo
?’, asking the question as though it was a matter of the greatest urgency and importance, and the trouble was that he’d actually read it himself, after a fashion, and been very taken with the whole idea of it.

I ruffled his hair, and said, ‘Ask me another’, and he didn’t see the joke at all, but just walked away.

I followed the boy into his room, saying I was saving the book for France, at which he bucked up slightly. His room was fuller of books than I remembered. Harry was shaping up as an intellect. I went through to Sylvia’s room; she was half asleep. She opened one eye, and, looking at me rather narrowly, said, ‘I’ve been talking to Daisy Backhouse about you.’ Daisy Backhouse was the daughter of Lillian and Peter. ‘She says your best bet is to get wounded.’

‘Really?’

‘Quite badly. Then they’ll send you home.’

‘Tell Daisy Backhouse she’s being far too gloomy, and she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.’

‘I might tell her the first part,’ Sylvia said, and then: ‘Give me a kiss anyway. I’m rather tired.’

‘She seems to have become rather a cool customer since I saw her last,’ I said to the wife, as she turned down the gas on the landing.

‘It’s how she hides her feelings,’ said the wife, who, after having a last look in at Harry, returned to the Count of Monte-bloody Cristo. ‘You
have
had it for a year, Jim; it
was
a special edition and he did buy it with his own money.’

Later, in our own bedroom, the wife made herself available to me. Well, she was doing her bit for morale, but it was an awkward business, which might have gone off better had she produced my coming-home present – two bottles of Smith’s purchased at the employee’s preferential rate at the Co-Operative Stores – before rather than after. As we sat side by side on the bed, she let on that, what with half my wages (which the North Eastern Railway was paying at the full rate), the separation allowance, and her own pay from the Women’s Co-Operative Guild, she was better off than ever. So there were no worries on that front. She then asked me about life in the billets.

I said, ‘On Spurn Head, you mean?’

‘So that’s where you were?’

‘You better forget I said that.’

I told her what had happened to Harvey, angling the account to make it look like suicide.

‘The poor boy killed himself,’ she said obligingly, then, ‘I’m not going to think about it any more.’

She started talking about her own work. She herself was still in favour of the war, so she wasn’t a peace activist exactly, but the concern of her committees was that the war should be fought ‘fairly’.

‘What does that mean?’ I said, and she told me it meant that men or their wives should not lose out by enlisting, and that the food price rises should be kept in check. She had also helped to set up – together with the Church of England Men’s Society (or some such outfit of do-gooders) – a ‘Soldiers and Sailors Buffet’ in an old carriage that had been shunted into place at the bay platform number eight at York station.

I said I didn’t like the sound of the Church of England Men.

‘Why ever not?’ said the wife.

‘There ought not to be any of them left. They ought all to be in France.’

‘Their average age is fifty.’

‘Oh.’

‘And some of them are
awfully
handsome, considering.’

This, I knew, was my cue to have another go at love-making; and a more satisfactory result was obtained this time.

The next day, I went into town with the wife, and she marched me straight up to Walton’s, the outfitters on Parliament Street, where they had mannequins in the window showing officers’ service dress. Officers, the wife informed me, were able to choose their own colours for their shirts and ties, within reason. She’d been in and asked about this. She thought the set in the window would suit me. It was labelled ‘Mustard’.

‘But I’m not an officer,’ I said.

‘But you will be.’

It was a bright day, if cold, and York seemed full of slackers. Of course, it always
had
been, but you noticed them now there weren’t supposed to be any. They’d all have some tale about why they’d put off joining the colours; special circumstances would have urged them to hold back: ‘I’m worried about me old mum, you see. She can’t be left for a minute.’ The usual loungers stood at the gates of the Museum Gardens, smoking away, and not in the least put out by the sight of men going past in uniform, because there were plenty of those, York being a garrison town. All the
pubs were open, I was relieved to see, but they had funny little notices posted on their doors, these being to do with new regulations of the York Licensing Justices. They would be closed by nine – and this was why Thorpe-on-Ouse had been dark the night before. The shops were all trading normally, if anything looking busier than before. There were more flags about, but fewer horses (horses had been commandeered) which meant more motor vehicles. I looked at the city in a different way. The Victorian War memorials meant something more to me now. In truth they made my stomach lurch, and the beauty of the whole place, with its picturesque buildings, chiming churches and festive air seemed something precious, something that might soon be lost, or lost to me at any rate. The cocoa smell was in the air from the chocolate factories, and that too made me feel nervous, but then it always had done for some reason. The scene in every street reminded me of the postcards sold from Field’s, the stationer in Stonegate, which showed York scenes and were all inscribed ‘Old York’, whether they showed the particularly old buildings or not.