The Somme Stations (31 page)

‘I might just go in here for a glass of beer,’ Tinsley said, turning to me.

‘
Afterwards
,’ I said, ‘
wash
it.’

‘What?’ he said, with a strange sort of grin, ‘the beer glass?’

The woman had left the door half open, disclosing an ordinary
sort of living room of a good size with two soldiers – sergeants – sitting in it, smoking cigars, having either just finished their business there, or smoking in anticipation of it. I removed my cap, and watched from the doorway as a woman – an older version of the one who’d been on the windowsill – came into this room from a smaller one to the rear, and spoke to Tinsley. She used some word like ‘assignation’. Wasn’t her friend a pretty lady? An assignation was possible for seven francs, so Tinsley fished about in his pockets for a while, before announcing to the woman, ‘I’ve only got five.’ She didn’t understand, or pretended not to. Tinsley turned and looked at me, his face redder than I would have thought it possible to be, and I handed him two francs.

‘Thanks, old man,’ he said, ‘I’ll pay you back,’ and he added in an under-breath. ‘You know, I’m more shaky than I was on the first day of the Somme battle …’

But he hadn’t been shaky at all before that show, as far as I could see.

‘Per favore,’ he said, turning and handing over the coin to the woman.

‘That’s Italian,’ I said from behind him. ‘You’re in France.’

But it made no difference. While the two sergeants smoked on, he was being escorted into the rear room.

‘I’ll see you in the goat bar!’ I called out. (This was an estaminet with a painting of a goat over the door. We’d walked past it a couple of times.)

I was fishing for cigarettes prior to quitting the house when the madame returned with another woman, about of an age with the one of the windowsill, and a first-class belter it had to be admitted, being small, dark, and dancerish, with an amused expression.

The madame stood her in front of me, and told me the name of the girl was Françoise, so I put out my hand, and we
shook
hands, at which Françoise laughed a little, but only a little. (I
looked sidelong at the sergeants to see if they thought this a funny going-on, but they just continued with their own talk.) Françoise eyed me steadily as the madame gave an account of all the points in favour of her. This was done mainly in French, but sometimes an English expression would break in, such as, ‘You will like her’, at which I thought:
I already do
. I believe the idea was that I would interrupt this speech, pay over the money and go off with Françoise, but seeing I was making no move, the madame came to halt with the question:

‘Oui ou non?’

This was a clever stroke. Even I could understand the enquiry, and to say ‘Non’ would surely appear rude to Françoise … Only I kept thinking of the wife going all that way to Naburn in the rain for me, and I knew I would have to get out of it. I wished I knew the words for ‘I’m sorry but I have another appointment’, and I was trying to think of something along those lines when Françoise took a step towards me, put her hand delicately on the back of my head and, standing on tip-toe, whispered something into my ear. It sounded like the greatest secret ever told – in French. They both stood back and watched me, and then a brainwave came to me in the form of a single word. I recollected it from the time of the battalion’s arrival in France: the word that Captain Quinn would be ever-likely to say if he were French.

‘Malheureusement …’ I said.

Well, it did the job in an instant. Françoise fairly spun away from me and sat down with the two smoking sergeants, who she seemed to know of old. I made the remainder of my excuses to thin air, turned and quit the establishment. Ten minutes later, in the countrified-looking estaminet with the goat painted over the door, I was wondering whether I might in all conscience have gone with Françoise, only with the request: ‘Par main’. It was rather annoying that the phrase had only come to me at that moment.

There was a tap on my shoulder; I turned about, and there was Tinsley, still looking rather flushed.

‘Did you wash it?’ I said.

‘Leave off, Jim,’ he said. ‘… She was very nice. Will you stand me a beer, old man?’

I wondered if he’d be ‘old manning’ me forever, now that he’d lost his ring.

‘She was very polite,’ he ran on, as I called for the drink.

‘Well that’s something,’ I said.

‘At the end she said “termine” or “terminez”, or something.’

‘Right,’ I said, nodding.

‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing that she said that?’

‘Well, it depends which one it was.’

Tinsley blew out his cheeks.

‘Anyhow,’ he said, as I passed him his beer, ‘I’m a man about town now.’

‘
What
town?’

‘I mean … man of the world.’

‘Get that down you,’ I said, indicating the beer, ‘it’s nearly train time.’

We rode back towards Albert in what might have been the very same carriage we’d come out in. As before, Tinsley sat over opposite me, and he had to crane around, while I looked directly forward, at the retreating dark spire of the Amiens cathedral. Our afternoon out had been the next best thing to an afternoon of home leave, of which there still seemed no prospect. Also as before, almost every man in the carriage smoked. Not Oliver Butler, however. He was facing me, and of course eyeing me too, from halfway along the carriage. It was as though he had read the letter I had in my pocket, but he could not have done. I’d guarded it closely since its arrival. The wife had unearthed the one kind of event at Naburn Lock that could have caused the sort of reaction to any mention of the place that I’d
seen from Butler, namely a death. For a surety, he knew what had happened to this Matthew Waddington, and it was odds on that either he’d done for the bloke himself, or the twins had. The twins were favourite, of course, the pair of them being cracked, but I doubted they could do anything without their brother knowing. The next question was whether or how this connected to the death of William Harvey. Had Harvey known anything of the Naburn business, and threatened to speak out about it?

And then had
Scholes
known what Harvey had known? And had Oliver Butler put a bullet into him on that account?

Alfred Tinsley was leaning towards me. He had something to say, but he wasn’t saying it. The carriage was lit by low gas, giving just enough of a blue-ish light for me to see that the smoke over the men’s heads was mainly old; that it was stale smoke from past-cigarettes, signifying that most of the occupants were now asleep.

‘Jim,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Why did you give up the footplate?’

I recalled, for Tinsley’s benefit, the hot summer’s evening when I’d run that engine into the shed wall at Sowerby Bridge. I’d done it while employed as a fireman (well, passed cleaner anyhow) on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway. I told Tinsley of the two hours of questions from the Shed Super that had followed, explaining to Tinsley, as I had explained to the Super, that my mate had told me the brake had been ‘warmed’, but that it had
not
been, with the consequence that the steam sent into it on my first application of the brake immediately condensed, and the thing did not work.

‘Did the Super not take the point?’ said Tinsley.

‘He did seem to,’ I said, ‘but then I got the chop.’

Tinsley sat back, looking appalled. Oliver Butler, I noticed, was not asleep. But at least he was looking out of the window
– at the dark French countryside, which was going past at the rate of about twelve miles an hour – and not eyeballing me.

Tinsley now leant forward again, then turned sideways … so that he too was looking out of the window, and I believed that in that instant he’d changed his mind about something. We began to run over some points, and since we were going so slowly, a great and prolonged clattering was set up.

‘Tom Shaw would go nuts,’ Tinsley said, looking at me once again.

‘Why?’

‘At this crawl.’

‘Traffic’s heavy to the front,’ I said. ‘The driver’s kept back by signals, you know that.’

The rattling did not let up. Presently, I asked, ‘Why does he not enlist, do you suppose? Your man Shaw, I mean?’

‘Somebody’s got to drive the expresses,’ said Tinsley. ‘The government directs all the railways now …’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t believe they’d
let
him go.’

I doubted that, but kept silence.

‘He’s not a coward, Jim,’ Tinsley said, leaning forward again, in a confidential tone. ‘He’s not afraid of crossing the top brass. I’ve known him pull some pretty bold strokes.’ As he spoke, we were leaving the points behind, coming back to a clear length of line. ‘Why, he’s capable of anything, is Tom Shaw.’

A match was struck somewhere along the carriage, and I said, ‘I suppose he doesn’t smoke, does he?’

‘Oh, he has the odd one,’ said Tinsley, and I was beginning to think once again that Tom Shaw did not exist. Yes, I had seen a photograph, but that might have been of anyone. I took one of my own cigarettes, and offered the pack to Tinsley. He took one, for perhaps the third time in his life, and we were back on another lot of points, clattering as before.

‘Even Tom Shaw has to obey signals,’ I said.

‘Signals, yes,’ said Tinsley. ‘But he’ll pay no mind to the running office. If he wants to get in somewhere ten minutes ahead of time, he’ll just do it.’

‘He ought to join up,’ I said.

‘Oh, I expect he will in
time
,’ said Tinsley, giving a queer sort of smile, and I wondered: Does that mean that Tinsley will start
speaking
of him as an enlisted man, Shaw being a product of his imagination? Or was the smile meant to signify that he was letting go of a myth that had supported him? Then again, Tinsley didn’t seem the fantastical sort.

We were once more clear of the points, gaining speed a little. Tinsley leant forwards again, closer than before. He blew smoke to the left, so it didn’t go in my face, and said:

‘I did for Harvey, Jim.’

I eyed him for a while, then shifted my gaze to Oliver Butler sitting beyond. He seemed half asleep. Tinsley and I sat on the right hand of the carriage; there was nobody on the seats immediately to our left.

‘I thought you knew,’ he said, ‘… when you asked me about the magazine.’

I gave a single shake of the head.

‘I got up at about one in the morning – ’

‘To be sick?’

Tinsley frowned, as though offended by the notion.

‘I got up to go to the jakes,’ he said, looking again at the slow unwinding of shadows beyond the window. ‘I’d shipped a lot of beer of course, but it was … more than a piss that I needed. I went over to my kit bag to get some paper, Jim. All the bags were up on the little stage, you recall, up with the rifles … and when I opened the bag up, I was looking for my
Railway Magazine
.’

‘Hold on,’ I said, ‘you were never going to use that for – ’

‘Not on your life, Jim. I was hunting for some newspaper
that I kept specially, but I knew the magazine – it was the November 1915 number – had been on the top of the bag, because that’s where I’d put it – on the top so’s not to get crushed. Only it wasn’t there. So I was half looking for the newspaper, and half fretting about the magazine, thinking perhaps I’d put it by my bed after all, or left it at the farm …’

I nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘Just then, Harvey walked in, and he’d been about for a while, because he had a glass of ale in his hand that he’d taken from one of the barrels. He wasn’t the same with anyone his own age as he was with the older blokes, you know. He’d put on swank about his dad who’d got a medal in Africa. He hated the railways, Jim. They’d made a slave of his old man. His dad was nothing, you see, just a casual somewhere in the Company …’

(At this I wondered whether he too had mixed up the two ‘fathers’ of Harvey, not that it made any difference.)

‘Harvey was only on the railways for the uniform – for the blooming gold braid, shouldn’t be surprised. He’d always meant to enlist as soon as he was of age, and then the formation of the battalion was announced, and he came in. Only of course, he wasn’t up to it, and that made him angry. At least, he was angry with me, Jim.’

The kid was white, but he seemed to have mastered himself pretty well.

‘Harvey was giving me a bit of a slanging, saying I didn’t have the looks of a soldier, calling me a railway nut, but I paid him no mind. He’d turned up the lamp on the table, and he was looking at the notice Oamer had left there, so he could see we had our marching orders, that we were going out, and I think it knocked him, Jim, because he
knew
he wasn’t up to it. Anyhow, he took another pint, and downed it fast.’

‘In a different glass?’

Tinsley shrugged. ‘Think so.’

The two glasses on the table.

Tinsley blew smoke as though he wanted to get the stuff away from himself as fast as possible.

‘I admit, Jim, I might have said something along those lines …’

‘Along what lines?’

‘Something like, “Well, now we’ll see who’s up to snuff, and who gets the horrors at the sight of a bayonet”.’