The Somme Stations (17 page)

When I was relieved, by Dawson, I went straight to sleep, but dreamt again – this time of the trenches. It appeared that the war invaded sleep as well as the waking hours. I was just dangling about in no man’s land waiting to be shot, looking out for an opportunity to die with no particular feelings about it either way. Corporal Newton came up to me and said, ‘You’re in the wrong place, mate. You ought to be over here.’ Then the red cap, Thackeray, was before me on his horse. A voice – it was Bernie Dawson’s – said, ‘You can tell he’s a bastard just by the expression on his face – on his horse’s face, I mean.’ The horse, and Thackeray, moved off, and I was awake. In the light of the candle stub that still burned by Tinsley’s couch, I inspected the tavern room. Two couches were empty: Oliver Butler’s, and Scholes’s. Oliver Butler would be standing sentry, but Scholes, I knew, did not have a sentry duty that night. He ought to have been sleeping. His kit bag was there, and his rifle ought to have been propped against it, but I couldn’t make it out. Then again, the room was half enclosed in darkness. I went over and picked up the candle, looking harder. I then put on my trousers and my boots; I took up my own rifle, and walked out. No sound came from the direction of the front. I heard a cough, and there was Scholes on the margin of the wood, sitting on a broken tree. He wore his uniform, with tunic unbuttoned. ‘Where’s your rifle?’ I said, walking fast up to him.

‘Under the couch. Why? Did you think I’d make away with myself?’

I leant against the tree.

‘Thackeray gave you a tough time of it.’

‘He tried his best,’ said Scholes. ‘Tried his best and succeeded.’

‘What about the bike?’

‘You’ve heard about that, have you? Evidently, I didn’t find it, but put it on the dune. Fact is …’ he said, finally looking up at me, ‘I
did
come upon it earlier. I’d seen it ten minutes before and I was just wondering what to do about it – if anything. I just knew that some copper would take that line if I spoke up about seeing the bike. That’s the thing about this war, isn’t it? The world’s gone out of balance: there’s no
good
luck any more.’

‘Did you explain that to him? About the bike, I mean?’

Scholes nodded. ‘I think I’m off the hook for now. I told him I’m a policeman myself, I don’t commit crimes. He said, “You
were
. You
were
a policeman. I’m the law now.” I haven’t seen the last of him, none of us has. He means to keep cases on all of us. He has a down on
all
our lot.’

‘Our unit?’ I said, ‘The Northumberlands? Railwaymen?’

But I knew the answer.

‘Volunteers,’ said Thackeray. ‘The New Army. He calls us the militia. He says we might have the grateful thanks of the public, but we don’t have his grateful thanks. He wanted to make that quite clear. He said, “Do you understand?” and he wouldn’t let me go until I said “Yes”. Quinn was decent about it. He took me aside afterwards and said this was all “rather irregular”, and he’d do his best to look out for me.’

I offered Scholes a Woodbine. Two rifle cracks came from the direction of the front. A low rumble followed.

‘No thanks,’ he said, and he looked too depressed to smoke.

‘He plays the cello,’ said Scholes, kicking at the hard mud.

‘Who does?’

‘Quinn. He told me.’

I said, ‘I can just see him doing that.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Frowning over it, you know.’

‘Oh.’

‘Thackeray …’ I said. ‘He has the twins in his sights as well, evidently.’

‘He said they’re a pair of loonies. He’d been told that by our regimental police … Well, they are aren’t they? How did they get past the recruiting sergeant?’

An owl hooted from somewhere among the broken, ash-coloured trees.

I said, ‘It must be fucking mad, that owl, to be hanging about here. Do you remember that one in York station?’

‘That’s just it,’ said Scholes. ‘You’ve got to say
York
station because it’s all gone now … I tell you what,’ he said, looking hard at me, and with a kind of desperation, ‘if Thackeray does come back for me, I’ll tell him what I really know.’

For the first time in his life, Scholes had surprised me.

‘You mean you didn’t?’

‘No.’

‘Will you tell
me
?’

‘I will not.’

I lit my Woodbine, and at the very moment of the match striking the box, I heard another sound. We both turned about, and there was a figure in the trees. He held a rifle, not in the firing position, but I had the idea that he wouldn’t have to adjust the position of it so
very
much to loose one off. It was Oliver Butler. I called after him, but he just turned and walked back towards the tavern, in the doorway of which stood Oamer, half dressed, and with folded arms, looking somehow like a mother about to reprimand her children for staying out late.

As we – that is, the 17th Battalion of the Northumberland Fusiliers in its entirety – made towards our assembly point for the big push, marching in fours along a straight, dusty road, some of the blokes were looking at the flowers growing in the margins of the fields of hard mud. Mustard flowers were identified and certain kinds of poppy. But Alfred Tinsley, walking alongside me, was looking beyond the flowers and instead gazing into the field on our left, where he had some time ago detected a railway line, albeit a little one. As we pushed on, the railway line gradually coincided with our road. The rails were newly laid, and had been put down directly on the baked grey earth. They were only two feet apart.

‘There you are, Jim,’ said Tinsley, indicating the line. ‘That’s
us
.’

He meant that we would soon be working on it, or one similar – or he hoped we would. If we came through the push, we would certainly be applying.

That morning, when we’d set off from our latest billet, Oamer had read out a circular, beginning: ‘Particulars of NCOs and men required with experience of railway operating and railway workshops, and the following railway trades …’ It was signed, Oamer had told us, by Captain Leo Tate, that cheery Royal Engineer late of Spurn Head. It appeared that narrow-gauge railways were the coming thing on the Western Front: the latest way of taking men and materiel to forward positions.
The line accompanied us, in a companionable sort of way, for perhaps half a mile of our tramp, then we diverted towards our assembly point while the track aimed itself at one of the broken woods on the horizon.

Also that morning, Oamer had told us that Sergeant Major fucking Thackeray of the Military Mounted Police had written to Captain Quinn saying he meant to question once again some or all of the section. It seemed he was based at Albert, where the military police detachment of the Fourth Army had its headquarters – so he was handily placed for making our lives a misery. We had been informed, in turn, that Quinn had written to the army legal service requesting representation for any men so questioned – and it was made quite clear to us once again that Quinn believed the death of Harvey to be an accident; and that he did not approve of Thackeray’s continuing with the matter.

Some lorries came past us, some London buses, and I thought: yes, the front line is the terminus. The buses got a cheer, although we didn’t know who was in them. It was just the thought of every last British thing being pitched in against the Boche. We were to take the pressure off the French at Verdun, or something of the sort. After the buses, the artillery blokes kept coming: six horses at a time, harnessed in pairs and kicking up dust, a man riding each left hand horse, the gun and the ammunition limber being towed behind. According to Tinsley, it was no way to take artillery forward. Narrow-gauge railways were the answer.

Our assembly billet was a little cluster of ruins on the margin of a worked-out limestone quarry. After the stew had been served out from the hot boxes, the blokes had spread out in the quarry, playing football, cards, dice, reading, larking about. From the direction of the front came the continual crashing that had evidently been going on for days, the idea being to do for Fritz for good and all this time: cut his wires, bury him in
his dugouts, generally scare the shit out of him, and leave him defenceless before our charge at his trenches. The sound came in waves, as did clouds of haze, sometimes of a pinkish colour, sometimes yellow-ish. None of it was gas, but only dust, floating in the light of a beautiful summer’s evening. As a battalion we were to be ‘in reserve’ for the push. This meant we would not be in at the start, which would be at half past seven in the morning, but would move forward later – after a leisurely breakfast, sort of thing. Captain Quinn, addressing us, had been very clear about our role in the coming fight:

‘We are to wait for the breakthrough; then we are to move forward to open up communications between our lines and the positions won. We are to do this by the rapid prolongation towards the enemy lines of saps already prepared by the Royal Engineers …’ At the end, he’d said that Oamer would answer any questions we might have, then he’d fled the scene, sharp-ish.

Dawson sat alongside me on the top edge of the quarry. Tinsley was with us, and we were trying to pick out the York station men.

‘There’s the porters, see,’ said Dawson, and he pointed to six blokes sitting or lying on the ground, all smoking.

‘What’s the skill of being a porter?’ asked Tinsley.

‘Skill?’ said Dawson. ‘None.’

‘But not every man who applies is taken on,’ said Tinsley, ‘so there must be something to it.’

It was a good point; Dawson was forced to consider it.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘when I was taken on at York, I was interviewed by Braithwaite.’(Braithwaite was the deputy station master, and now a platoon commander of ‘B’ Company, and no doubt somewhere in one of the clusters of officers among the men below.) ‘He asked me: “How do you know when you’ve come to the end of a train?”’

‘
I
know,’ said Tinsley.

‘I hadn’t bargained on being asked that,’ said Dawson, ignoring Tinsley, ‘so I said, “You come to the guard’s van.” Braithwaite said, “But how do you know when you’ve come to the end of the guard’s van?”’

‘I know
that
,’ said Tinsley, and again Dawson ignored him:

‘So I hazarded a guess: “Would it be by the red light hanging off the back of it?” and that was the right answer. Braithwaite then asked me, “How do you address a male passenger of the superior classes?” I said, “Sir”. He said, “And how would you address a male passenger of the inferior classes, a chimney sweep, for example?” I said, “Sir also”. Right again. I knew I was getting everything right, because Braithwaite was getting really annoyed. He didn’t much like me, you see. He asked me, “And why must you address all passengers, of whatever class, in that respectful manner?” Now I’d been warned of this by Palmer.’ (He indicated one of the smoking porters below.) ‘Palmer told me that if you answer that question, “To get tips off them”, you’re out on your ear. Palmer had been coached up in the right answer by one of the older lads, and he passed it on to me, so I looked Braithwaite in the eye, and I gave it him straight: I said, “Because you are the public face of the Company. If you are rude, or scruffily turned, the Company is likewise; if you smell of drink, the Company smells of drink; if you’re smoking on duty, the Company is smoking on duty. “All right, all right,” said Braithwaite. He’d had enough of me by then you see, but of course he had to give me the job.’

We all looked down at the quarry. I saw the twins, playing some scuffling game of their own. They looked like two dogs: mongrels of a long-legged sort.

‘Two of the top link drivers from the North Shed,’ said Tinsley, indicating two blokes in a football game.

‘I wonder what your man Tom Shaw is doing just now?’ I said.

Tinsley looked at his watch: ‘He often takes the eight forty
to London, so he might just be coming into Doncaster. Wherever he’s going, he’ll be going
fast
.’

‘What if he’s in the pub?’ said Dawson. (And I believed it was the first time he’d heard of Tom Shaw, but he’d caught on fast.)

‘What if
who
is?’

The voice came from behind; someone had crept up on us: Oliver Butler, of course.

‘We’re talking about engine drivers,’ said Tinsley.

‘I can’t stand ’em,’ said Butler. ‘You’ll find that all guards hate all drivers.’

‘Why?’ asked Tinsley.

‘The guard must ask permission to go onto the footplate, but the driver can climb up into the guard’s van whenever he likes. Where’s the fairness in that?’

‘It’s the driver’s train,’ said Tinsley.

‘Wrong,’ said Butler. ‘It’s the guard’s train. He holds a document saying so on every trip.’

Tinsley said, ‘But without the driver there wouldn’t
be
a trip.’

However, the question of the ownership of a train was put paid to by the blowing of a whistle in the quarry. We were to make for our billets, and lights out.

‘Anyhow,’ said Dawson, pitching the stub of his cigarette into the quarry below, ‘we’re all in the same box now.’

I don’t believe that any man slept that night – not properly.