Umbrella (30 page)

– Mister . . . Corporal De’Ath? Stanley, hearing the rising note of Bertie’s interrogative, looks at him, although he is not certain it is he who’s being addressed. He enlisted at the Mitcham Road barracks as Death, the bruiser behind the counter telling the boy in front of him, Clear off – come back tomorrer an’ see if you’re nineteen. As Death he took his shilling and his one-and-ninepence ration money, and as Death he attested that he would fight for King and country. As Death he drilled with a dummy rifle and mimed fifteen rounds rapid fire – and no one thought it queer. He lay in the bell tent at night with the others’ piss dribbling on his face, yet none of them said, I’m pissing on Death. As Death, 5665, private, Royal West Surreys, he marched to Aldershot – officers rode alongside, they wore stiff white collars and tan riding boots, and they dismounted from time to time to kick up the dust with their spurs and flash their monocles in the faces of the raw recruits. Private Death’s father came up from Devon to see him, having finagled a pass in his usual way – and there was some confusion and not a little mirth when he introduced himself to the RSM as Samuel Deer, but that was soon submerged by many, many tin mugs of beer at tu’pence a mug – the grand spiflication continuing all that night, up and down the high street, with his new mates bellowing, He is a deer inall! for Rothschild had lost none of his easy charm. But it was as Death! that he awoke late and hung over, only to be accused of dumb insolence. And it was feeling like it that he did his jankers, took his pannikin up for his spoonful of bodge, choked it down – then chucked it up again. In the huts, at Sandling in Kent, Stanley lay in his bunk loathing the faint chinks in wooden shutters and waiting for the order to Stand to!
Now dress by the right boys and get in line, First by the numbers an’ then by judgin’ the time, For you whips ’em out an’ you whips ’em in
. . .
His cock is in his roughened hand, pulsing: she puts a cylindrical cushion on the high-canopied bed and puts her derriere on this and bades him
whip it in and let it bide a while . . . That’s the way you fix yer bayonets in the mornin’!
But when he told her what he had done, she clawed his neck and screamed at him, You’re dead to me now!
Sausages and mash, liver and bacon – all for fivepence. In barracks they lived like fighting cocks, but when they formed up and the GOC Aldershot came, together with Kitchener, to inspect them, it was as Death that he stood there, eyes front, and watching the baggily grey old men make their way along the line, taking sidelong glances at the gravestone faces. As Death he sneered when the MO lectured the company on the horrors of gon and syph, as Death he sat dulling his tunic buttons with acid, as Death he reported to the QM, who introduced him and six others to their new love –
Vicky
. Death and his section were taught to dash forward when the whistle blew, release the ratchet that secured her front legs so they could be swung open and then fixed by tightening it again. Sitting there, as Death, Stanley
removed
the pins from her raven hair
, and the Number Two ran up and placed her body on top of her legs, her body – her death-dealing body, her 28-pound body. As Machine-Gunner Death he looked on while Number Two fiddled the first round of the belt into the feed block. As Death he flicked up her safety catch, as Death he
grasped her hips and, staring her full in her steely eye, gently touched her trigger.

– Yes – yes . . . Bertie? Stanley has spoken too loudly and the skull-head’s china jaw shatters, tea slops from the lip of his cup to the saucer below – a startled fly sways away and banks between the ham and the jam. – Corporal De’Ath – he steeples his
skeletal fingers –
I’ve no wish to insult you or in any way malign your patriotism, let alone call into question your volunteering – yet permit me to assume, from your presence here alone, that you share a few of our misgivings? There is a
crack
in the human warmth through which
the old house whistles languidly
– Stanley thinks it pretty enough, in its way, what with its mossy mortaring and the drowsy blink of the dark windows, and the nigger spiritual chorus of the yew hedge,
Oh, we do-on’t want to loo-oose you, But we think you ought to go-o-o
. . .
Yes, Stanley says eventually, yes, I do share your misgivings – this show with the Turks has got lots of us thinking.
The crack is sealed, the corkscrews screwed in, the wire strung, the duckboard put down, the sandbag heaved up – it takes five clear feet of hard-packed earth to stop a machine-gun bullet. The magic lantern clacks, the skull-head snaps
. . .
–
Well, Feydeau, with a few thousand like this young stalwart here, we’ll be in with a chance when the Derby scheme gives way and the Dark Wizard promulgates his Act. Willis, yanking on his beard with both hands, tears a satisfied grin and says, I believe it also, Bertie, which is why the Fellowship would like you to put out a pamphlet of some sort right away. It’s bound to attract considerable attention, and we could use it – if, that is, you’re amenable – as the point of departure for a lecture tour either late this year or early in the new one. Adeline’s strong white hand swaggers past the sugar bowl to fall upon Stanley’s, the grievous twitching of which he only realises as she stills it, not with her pressure but the with the blatancy of this naked clasp. Her fingers stroke the powder-burnt backs of his, her thumb slides over the mound of his . . . — Stanley will never become accustomed to the seemingly casual acceptance of their liaison – not only by the likes of Willis, Bertie and the curse-spot-woman, but also by those in her family home. At Norr, where she had lured him after he had spent only a day with his people, her husband lauded Stanley’s sacrifice, imposed a suit of good American cloth on him and turned upon them an eye not simply blind but indulgent. When Cameron had caught the boy’s nursemaid
sucking on safety pins
, so indignant was she to see them walking in the garden arm in arm, he threatened her with dismissal – and would have sacked her had Adeline not intervened. For all his polish Stanley knew Cameron’s sort – his frank face hid a
gentleman’s relish
that he shared with
the most
appallingly coarse types
. The sergeant of the Buffs he’d burst in on at Bethune, and who simply kept on battering at the drab on the wooden ledge, the two patches of hair on his arse cheeks
thick as fur
. Having been tricked by a snide one into believing the queue of men snaking down the stairs was for loads of eats to which men fresh out from Blighty would have first dibs, Stanley havered between the grunting in the candlelight and the mockery of the Tommies behind the door. The sergeant took his time,
the suck out of her cunny
was his satisfied belch, then he pulled up his breeches by his braces and moved aside to reveal
gaping wet lips, hag hairs, brown-eyed teats
– a likeness of a raddled old woman’s countenance that had nothing to do with the young girl whose body it was. The sergeant had turned to Stanley, his panting subsiding, his belly all shivery – he was neither annoyed nor discomfited and his hand said,
Your turn
. Three weeks later Stanley spotted his corpse in the no-man’s-land of the Hohenzollern Redoubt – the sergeant had
done a somerset into the wire and sprawled there deadstock, all swole up
–
the maggots were having a terrific feed
. . .
—
Stanley frees his hand from hers and tongs a sugar lump from the bowl with his fingers. They say it’s difficult to come by now – fivepence a pound. He puts the lump on his tongue

.
. . she is a sweet thing
, Adeline, in her suit of ash-coloured suede cloth and Russian squirrel embroidered in silk. On her shapely breast lies a redingote of lie-de-vin duvelyn and skunk. When she came into him at the Albany, dressed and ready to go out, Stanley made her say it several times over: red-ing-ote, du-ve-lyn, charmed by the sweet sounds. Now the skunk’s small dead head nuzzles at her buttons,
she should find it a wet nurse
. . .
Steam rises in front of Stanley’s eyes –
They’ve forgotten to fill
’
er up again, the water in Vicky’s redingote is boiling! The steam’ll give away our fucking position –!
Would you like another cup, sir? asks the maid he kissed in the kitchen garden – she has been resurrected with a heavy teapot in her hands. Oh, yes . . . he says, thank you. She pours, then goes, disappearing like her mistress before her around the omnibus prow of the yew hedge. Adeline and the others are engrossed in talk of
some bugger pal, dead in Greece of a gnat bite
. . . — they notice nothing, see not the London Omnibus Company ‘B’ Type, which might’ve been one of Rothschild’s own, that was boarded by the quarante-deux hommes – the lucky ones, just disembarked at Boulogne from the packet boat Invicta – which then carried them gingerly towards Ypres, its soft tyres feeling the potholed road ahead. The ’bus as much its driver was aware that Death was among their passengers. At Poperinghe there’s a change of plan and the machine gunners are turfed out. A staff officer with a dummy pack comes mincing up, followed by his batman struggling under a heavy valise. Stanley’s section is turned south, to march the forty miles to Givenchy, where they are detailed to join the 6th Battalion of the Royal East Kents at Hohenzollern. It is the first time he hears the name of a Minnie and the first time he hears the crashing howl of one being fired. The canister, which is the size of a barrel and packed with explosive and grapeshot, is so very heavy that it
strains
slowly up its
funicular rail
into the late spring sky, appearing between two of the house’s massive chimneystacks and hanging there for so long that
a couple of rooks flap in to perch on it
. . .
So long that, had he been inclined, Stanley could have suggested to his companions they draw lots in order to decide which way they should run for cover. He says nothing, only watches, faintly bemused, as the Minnie at last
moans down
. . .
– Will ye have a gasper, Stanley? – Yes, thank you, Willis, don’t mind if I do . . .
and falls short
on the rockery, lifting all of its artfully arranged stones, stunted shrubs and winsome alpines almost as high as the parabola it has just described. The rockery is now suspended: an earthy cloud trailing filthy plumes that lazily rearranges itself into a rippling curtain of dirt that whips across their faces and the trellis behind them. Looking up from the lit tip of his cigarette, Stanley sees the deep funnel of the crater – the rockery has been obliterated, gone also is the housemaid, who, making her way along the brick path that runs between two stone soubrettes, liaised with the Minnie at the point of impact. The tray she was carrying – buckled and scorched – slams back down on to the table from which it was but lately removed, and a dark stain of tea, milk and water spreads through the damask – shattered crockery is smeared with jam, the skins of crushed grapes
slugupon
Adeline’s bleeding hands. Of the maid nothing remains – her corpse, Stanley imagines, will have been subsumed into the yielding wall of the crater, where it will occupy its own neat cubbyhole, death and interment having been achieved simultaneously. – Would you mind passing the ashtray, Bertie? More vampiric rooks limp from the eaves of the house — and there is further bestial aftermath, for, from where they have been crouching in the leopard-skin shadow of a silver birch, passing a fag from cupped hand to cupped hand, the other two members of the section come running – caddies, dragging between them the ammo box. The trestle table, the tea things, the cloth, the napkins and their silver rings – all are swept aside. With a virile vim Stanley
never guessed
’
e
’
ad innim
, Willis opens the legs, then, with equally astonishing zeal, Bertie attaches the Vickers. Set beside the steadiness of the conchies, the machine gunners clearly have a case of the jitters – but is it any surprise they’re nerve cases? While the others have been conversing and taking tea, they have had to withstand this drum fire:
Boom-boom! Boom-boom!
Always in fours, a bloodthirsty giant’s timpani,
Fee-fi-fo-fum!
The 5.9s come soaring over the house,
Fosse
8
, trailing their smoky cloaks. Jack Johnson! Stanley cries to stiffen his men’s resolve, An’ we all know where ees bin! He throws himself prone and grasps the Vickers’s grips, Willis feeds the belt into the block, and Stanley cranks the cocking lever. The black bastards keep on coming, their pulsating rush gaining inexorably in power and intensity, until, with a final vicious swipe, they impact on a potting shed, a five-bar gate, the lush meadow beyond it and the duck pond beyond that. Bertie bellows, Two francs says you can’t get the fuckers on the mortar! as he pulls the tatty notes from his breast pocket. Willis shouts, I’ll match ’im! Stanley calculates the range at around a hundred and thirty yards – he pulls on the trigger and the gun pushes back at him, a monotonous battering of recoil, ten rounds every second, so that his arms shake, and his fingers twitch and his teeth chatter. Slowly he takes the muzzle across a thirty-degree traverse, squinting through the sights as rounds nibble away at the corner of the house and clip the yew into shapelessness. Stanley is aware of a dangerous harmoniousness between the machine gun and him – he has an intimate knowledge of every nick and bump in its wooden grips, while above the roaring of the barrage he can still hear its
rat-a-tat-tat rag
. It’s no use, though – his rounds are driving short into a grove of oak that is steadily being reduced to kindling. We’ll have to reposition! he orders the section at the end of a long burst — and Adeline abandons the cover of the low wall to go forward and reconnoitre.
Look at her!
her skirts dragging through the muck, her proudly hatless head held high. There is no fear in her – she has the strange unfathomable conviction that
For aught the Parthian arrows fly, Swallows teeming against a pale-rose sky
she will come through the whole splendid show without so much as a scratch on her – only her abundance of dark curls looser and freer. As another Minnie comes barrelling over, she stands, and, pulling the pistol from her pretty hip, fires the Very light directly at it. A single rifle shot slices through the din –
she
spins
,
tumbles
,
goes over-rowley
into the wire, which coils around her, cocooning her in its galvanised thorns, until all that can be seen of the sleeping beauty is
her blood-dimpled moonface – her jellied eels
lie on the garden wall. Stanley rises and floats back to the madness of the tea party . . . Bertie sits there – erect yet disjointed – a folded pad of muslin soaked with his own piss tied across the hole where his nose used to be. Willis, ignoring the mustard tongues that lick at the cups and saucers, presides over an engorged teapot. Crowdie? he asks, and, without waiting for Stanley’s reply, tilts and pours out the thin brownish gruel so that it surges across the table carrying
dollops of mutton fat
. . .
Y’know, Bertie observes, your country needs not you at the Front, it – she – needs you here. Stanley looks sharply at him: the anti-gas pad has gone and Bertie holds a cigarette
the way a southpaw holds a pen
. I must report, Stanley says curtly, to GOC Aldershot by stand-to tomorrow morning. If I don’t report there, I’ll be arrested, tried for desertion and shot. Willis, with an affecting casualness, has removed his
false
teeth
– both sets – and now balances them
atop a splendid
honeycomb
. He takes a biscuit and
dips it into his cup of crowdie
. We need someone, Bertie persists, who would be prepared to flout the authorities, who would take up the mantle of the early Christians. At the Front, we appreciate, such gestures are quite, um, inutile – but here, with the NCF’s assistance, it seems to me that if the weight of public opinion were to be brought to bear effectively, this would militate against anything too beastly happening – these are still men, y’know, not monsters quite yet. Willis sucks and slobbers on his biscuit, Stanley bends to unbuckle the unfamiliar gaiters. – D’you mind, ol’ man? Stanley nods in the direction of the tin of Fellner’s whale oil and Willis passes the spermaceti across. Unlacing his boots, removing them and then stripping off his stockings, Stanley commences the salving of his rotten feet, which are
the colour of
brisket five days old
. — Moving behind Adeline’s face in such a way that their eyes no longer align, for a splinter of a second Audrey sees the corner of her visual field, and this makes her aware of how, while her cheeks rest in Adeline’s, and her nose slots into Adeline’s, the fit can never be exact –
there will always be these slippages
. That Adeline loves Stanley, Audrey does not doubt – she knows this from the inside, knows it by the frequency with which she darts looks at him, her eyes seeking his. Knows it also because when Willis or Bertie says anything she perceives as a threat to
her Mowgli
, Adeline
daggers
at them. Adeline loves Audrey’s brother more than she understands, and in this regard Audrey has a relation with her closer even than this: her weary chest rising and falling inside the young woman’s magnificent bosom, her slack skin sucking away from Adeline’s taut. Audrey has always loved Stanley
more than I knew
– what was it Gilbert said,
A loaf of bread, a flask of wine, And thou beside me in the wilderness
. . .
It is Stanley who is always beside her in this wilderness,
my
bumps-a-daisy
,
my
blue boy
. How Audrey would love to unbuckle his gaiters, take off his boots and stockings and rub the whale oil – which is what, they say, helps – into his poor feet. He sits there at the table sunk in his awful funk and overwhelmed by the tea things’ inability to move of their own volition: the Dundee cake digging into its willow-pattern plate, the butter knives staking out the napery, the fine cups lined up – all have arrived here post-haste, rushing to outflank each other: teaspoon countering saucer, side plate checked by butter dish. From Nieuport to Ypres to Aubers to Arras, snaking through Picardy and across the River Somme, then looping past Soissons and on to Verdun. Whence came that epochal moment that everyone present – not only Audrey and her little brother – realised that this was how it would be
henceforth
and forever
: this inexorable
grinding together
of the manslides of field grey, blue and brown? Whence arrived the apprehension that it is to this that they are fated: the taking of more tea, the exchange of Stottertante, the spreading of Heldenbutter, followed by the cramped movement into a reserve place at the table for a few days before
the entire
bloody business
of the tea party without end
begins again
. . .
On the Partie Réservée à la Correspondence of the card he had sent from Amiens before his only leave – a photographic card that showed Le Jardin Anglais de la Place Montplaisir, with massy crests of poplar, petrified fountains of willow fronds – he had scrawled, Tickler’s jam, Tickler’s jam, How I love old Tickler’s jam, Plum and apple in a one-pound pot, Sent from Blighty in a ten-ton lot,