Behind the Lines (23 page)

The time passed with torturing slowness to Rawley, who maintained his vacant stare at the floor, the restless twisting of his hands and nervous movement of his head. Nobody paid any attention to him. The men played their games, wrote letters, and argued as though he were not there. He could think of no plan of escape; he could only wait on events and seize the first chance that offered itself. At any moment the A.P.M. might return and his examination begin; but he was helpless. He could only wait and hope.

From outside a voice came faintly, “Turn out the guard.” And then a powerful voice bellowed, “Guard! Turn out!” Immediately the guard-room was in a ferment. Men dropped the letters they were writing and the novelettes they were reading, leapt to their feet, seized their rifles, and ran out straightening their caps and equipment as they went. In a moment, with the exception of Rawley, the room was empty.

Rawley too leapt to his feet. Another such chance could not be expected, and in a moment or two the prisoner would be remembered, and one of the guard would return. He snatched up a fork that lay on top of a mess-tin and slit from top to bottom the aeroplane fabric covering the window. He parted the tattered remnants and prepared to vault through, but paused with his hand on the sill. Beyond it lay a brick and rubbish-littered yard, bounded by a high wall and the kitchens of the house. The cooks and fatigue men would probably see him, and even if he got away over the wall, he could
hardly hope in daylight to escape the hue and cry which would be raised.

He left the window and tip-toed to the door. The hall passage was empty. From one end of it came the sound of the cooks' voices in the kitchens; from the other came the rattle of the rifles as the guard presented arms outside in the road. Upstairs a door banged and heavy footsteps sounded overhead. He whipped open the little cupboard door under the staircase and crept inside.

Heavy footsteps came down the stairs over his head, and he lay still till they had passed. Then he crept forward, feeling cautiously ahead with his hands. Dirt and old sacks was all that his fingers encountered and he crept on till the descending stairs which formed the roof barred further progress. He covered himself with a sack, wedged himself under the bottom stair, and lay still.

A moment later steps passed along the passage beside him, and then followed a sharp exclamation and a shout: “Corp! Corporal! Here! That old Frenchy, he's bunked.” The corporal's voice was heard cursing outside, and several pairs of feet ran along the passage. Then the distant shouting told Rawley that the corporal and his men had gone through the window into the yard outside.

He could only trust to his ears to tell him how his chances varied from moment to moment. Men passed to and fro along the passage; footsteps went up and down the stairs over his head; three voices, one dominating one, raised in argument, sounded from the direction of the kitchens; in the guard-room across the passage a
man was cursing to himself as he moved about, only the word “bloody” which occurred very frequently being distinguishable; and occasionally voices sounded distantly from the road or from the yard at the back. But no one opened the little door and looked under the stairs, and gradually the hurried movement ceased. The men were back in the guard-room; he could hear a low growl of voices, doubtless discussing his disappearance, and occasionally a voice was raised so that a string of oaths was distinguishable.

His hopes began to rise and he began to plan the next step. It was obvious that nothing could be done before night. Then, however, with darkness outside, the wandering orderlies and cooks in bed and asleep, and only the guard to elude, it ought to be possible to creep away. His present sense of some security produced relaxation, and he became acutely aware that he had not slept for many hours. He pillowed his head on his arm and dozed.

He was aware vaguely from time to time of footsteps passing over his head and of voices in the passage, and then came a long blank period from which he was aroused by a crash close beside his ear. He started up and struck his head with violence on the stair above. The bump restored him to consciousness of his surroundings, and with pounding heart he lay breathless in the dark, listening. Heavy footsteps were passing along the passage, and then came a second crash that he recognized as the thud of a rifle-butt on the floor. The footsteps died away and he breathed freely again.

He had been asleep for some time, he thought. The house was strangely quiet. No sounds reached him from the guard-room across the passage. Faint footsteps could be heard crunching the rubble of the wrecked garden outside; they rang out more clearly as they mounted the stone steps to the door, and then thudded loudly along the passage beside him, two pairs of them. They halted, moved on a pace or two, and then ceased. The corporal changing sentries, he thought. Faint sounds of movement reached him from the guard-room, and a muttered word or two, and then silence.

He waited what he judged to be ten minutes or a quarter of an hour, and then, disentangling himself from the sack, he crept towards the cupboard door. A faint strip of light that was just distinguishable from the surrounding darkness showed that it was ajar. He halted and held his breath while listening. The stair cupboard faced the guard-room door, and if that door were open any of the guard awake inside might see the cupboard door move. He would have to take that risk.

He waited another five minutes, and when still no sound reached him from across the passage he opened the door an inch.

He could see down the passage towards the rear of the house, but the passage was dark except for a faint glow close at hand which must come from the guard-room. Either the guard-room door was nearly closed or, if it were open, the light inside must be very faint. He opened the cupboard door another inch. Still no sound. He pushed it
a further three inches and cautiously put his head through the opening.

The guard-room door was nearly closed, and the passage was illuminated only by the narrow bar of light which escaped from the candle inside. Rawley pulled in his head and considered the situation.

Should he crawl down the passage to the rear of the house, or up the passage to the front door? Down the passage to the rear seemed the obvious way to take, but somewhere in the rear of the house the cooks and orderlies were sleeping, there would be a door to open, and he did not know the geography of the house. In the front of the house a sentry was posted, but that grave disadvantage was somewhat counterbalanced by the fact that the breeze blowing down the passage had told him that the front door was open, and that he knew the lie of the land. He decided to try the front.

He opened the door a few inches more and crawled silently into the passage. Round the door he went, closing it behind him, and inch by inch past the partly open guard-room door. The sound of a slight movement came from within, and he crouched motionless and listening while debating what to do should someone come out into the passage. He would not be able to get back under the staircase. That door was closed. He would have to leap to his feet and bolt through the open front door.

But no further sounds came from the guard-room, and after a moment's pause he crawled on. It was a laborious progress, for he went on his knees, keeping the toes of his
heavy boots up lest they should scrape on the floor. He rounded the angle of the foot of the staircase and reached the open door. The night breeze fanned his face. Cautiously he rose to his feet. There was not sufficient light behind him to betray him to the sentry on the road. He reached the edge of the top step, shifted his weight to one foot and leaned one hand heavily on the door post. Cautiously he lowered his foot to the next step and shifted his weight to it. He could not distinguish the sentry's form, but he could hear his feet scrape occasionally on the road.

He reached the bottom of the steps and stood on the narrow paved path that was gritty and liable to scrape underfoot. Under cover of a movement of the sentry he stepped off on to the rubble-littered garden. He went bent double and with great care to avoid displacing the fallen bricks, and reached the dividing wall. It was some seven feet high and ragged in places where the coping had been shattered. He chose a spot where the bricks seemed firm and moved a hummock of bricks and mortar to the foot. He was thankful that there was no moon. He could judge of the sentry's movements only by sound, and when he heard the familiar clash of sloping arms he mounted his stepping stone and drew himself up. The scrape of his toes against the bricks was drowned by the sentry's movement. He lay flat on the top of the wall for a few moments and peered into the darkness below him. Another wrecked and rubble-littered front garden lay there. He waited for the sentry to move off on his short beat, and then he lowered himself to the full extent of his arms and let go.

He landed on a pile of fallen bricks and rolled over. The noise made him lie still and listen, but when no sudden pause in the scrape of the sentry's boots on the road occurred he rose, reassured, and picked his way across the little court to the far wall. The gate to his right, leading on to the road, would be too close to the sentry for safety. He climbed the next wall into the next little garden and crept towards the gate, but the gate, a large iron one, hung crankily upon its hinges. There was not room enough to squeeze through, and if he attempted to open it farther it would creak abominably. He climbed the far wall and found the little forecourt beyond filled with a great mound of bricks and timber from a house which had fallen in. The wooden framework of the roof lay tilted across it.

His only course was to crawl over the rubble under the shattered roof; he dared not climb over the crazy beams. The going was slow and precarious. The fallen slates snapped under his weight and tended to slither over the bricks and rubble. Above him the gable timbers and fragments of slates still clinging to the laths showed like leafy branches against the night sky. He slithered gently down the far side of the heap of rubble and crept through the broken gate to the road.

He was now nearly fifty yards from the sentry, and the night was dark. He turned to his left along the street; another fifty yards should bring him to the open country. But he went slowly and cautiously. There might be other sentries in the street, and a sentry at night standing motionless against a wall is invisible from a distance of a
few yards. He moved slowly and stopped often to listen. Once the lights of a lorry drove him from the road, and he crouched behind a broken wall till it had rumbled past, but though a light shone dimly here and there among the shattered buildings, he encountered no more sentries and passed the last few houses of the town in safety.

He was in a part of the country that was unfamiliar to him, and he could only follow the road along which he had come that morning in a car. It was a good fourteen miles, he estimated, to the ration dump where he had been captured, and he had to make a detour around huts and take cover when any vehicle approached; for it was probable that his escape had been made known to the troops in the immediate neighbourhood. The night seemed interminable as he tramped along, hour after hour, through the darkness, lit only by the faint flicker of gunfire on the eastern horizon, while the chill night breeze wafted to his nostrils the pungent scents of death and decay from the shattered country around him. The drizzling rain had turned to sleet and was silently covering the road with a thin carpet of white.

Dawn found him cold and wet, still trudging along the straight switchback road. The snow and sleet had ceased to fall, and his boots left wet black imprints on the road. Slowly the grey light strengthened over the snow-powdered landscape and revealed two low black Nissen huts crouching on the slope ahead. They looked forsaken and forlorn in that featureless desert, but he recognized in them the ration dump that had been the scene of his
capture. Away to the right, converging on the road, was the track that he and Alf had followed. He cut across country to it and was soon out of sight of the dump; but it was well after midday when he stumbled through the flattened village by the well and ploughed through the melting snow and mud up the slope to the old trench and Alf's boudoir.

CHAPTER XVI

I

Alf sat on his frowzy wire-netting bed with his bare arms clasped about his shins. His scraggy bearded chin rested on his knees, and a half-smoked cigarette drooped from the corner of his mouth. A lock of dark tousled hair hung down over his contracted brows. His bright bird-like eyes were fixed on Rawley. Rawley, also in shirt sleeves, lay stretched full length upon his bunk, his eyes fixed broodingly upon the damp clay wall of the dug-out, his long-stemmed pipe clenched between his teeth.

For a week and more he had not been outside the dug-out except now and then to draw water from the well, or to bring in firewood, and even these necessary duties he performed only after blasphemous protest. His former restless energy had gone and was replaced by slothful moodiness. The oil lamp hanging from the great roof timber threw a yellow beam across the greasy, food-stained table and litter-strewn floor. The dug-out was filthier than on the night he had first entered it. He gave neither help nor encouragement to Alf's half-hearted and sporadic efforts to tidy it.

For the moment they had food in plenty. Alf had brought back the stores which Rawley had taken from the ration dump, and some days later Kelly had organized a raid on an E.F. canteen. After he and his immediate followers had taken what they wanted, the other outcasts had been
allowed to help themselves. Rawley and Alf had filled two large bread sacks, and Rawley had seen to it that several tins of tobacco were among the booty. Ever since he had sprawled on his bunk, smoking and brooding. Sometimes he picked up a tattered magazine, only to fling it away after reading a page or two, and then he would refill his foul pipe while his eyes glowered sombrely at the damp clay wall before him.

Without unclasping his hands Alf worked the cigarette into the other corner of his mouth by moving his lips. “What's the use of gettin' chovey about it, chum? It ain't 'olesome,” he said. “I always says it's a pore bleedin' heart what never rejoices.” He removed the cigarette and spat on the floor. “Come on,” he went on in a wheedling voice, “ 'ave a bit o' life. 'Ave a bit o' guts.” He hopped off his bunk and relighted his cigarette-end in the flame of the lamp. Then he perched again on the bed and began to sing: “She was po-ere but she was honest; the victim of a rich man's whi-im.” He broke off to screw up his face and waggle one finger in his ear. He withdrew the finger, examined it critically, and went on again with gusto: “It's the saime the 'ole world over: it's the poor what taikes the blaime; it's the rich what take their pleasure. Ain't it all a bleedin' shai-ime.”