Behind the Lines (32 page)

Rawley climbed down and took the left-hand road. Presently it became a broad boulevard with trees and a cycle track on either side and houses. He reached the iron bridge over the Somme and saw the city before him, tree-shaded quays by the river, and the old houses rising to the great grey bulk of the cathedral.

He walked down the Rue des Trois Cailloux feeling rather like one treading the streets of fairyland. The
civilians, particularly the women and girls in pretty frocks, and the shops containing groceries, high-heeled shoes, fish and game, feminine hats, toys, silk stockings, gramophones and pianos, chocolates, and carpenters' tools, seemed as though they must have been transported from some happy land of fancy, so remote were they from the splintered wood and bricks, mud, filth, and desolation of his recent surroundings.

He wandered slowly through the streets like a spirit revisiting the scenes of its earthly life, watching, as it were from a distance, the busy passers-by, lingering at the shop windows, and automatically returning occasional salutes. He remembered much of the city from his one previous visit, and he found that unconsciously he had begun to retrace his steps of that day not so very long ago that now seemed to belong to another life and another age. He went under the archway and stared across the cobbles at the glass door of the baths; he peered through the glass between the mounds of pastries into Odette's tea-shop. He found the little restaurant where Rumbald, Piddock, Penhurst and he had had that riotous and rather scandalous dinner. In broad daylight in the narrow side street it looked shabby and depressing. And he went down to the canal and sat on the bench under the trees, where he had sat that night in the darkness, listening to the hum of hostile aircraft.

Here he ate the sandwiches he had brought with him. He had been sorely tempted to enter an hotel and order a good lunch. But prudence had prevailed. It would have
been a shameful waste of his diminishing funds, and he had compromised with the temptation by promising himself tea in a tea-shop, which would be equally enjoyable but less expensive. He found a paper shop in a corner of the Place Gambetta, and bought an English newspaper and two paper-covered novels.

He turned into a tea-shop shortly before four o'clock. Several British officers were already having tea, but he found a little table in a corner. A French girl in a diminutive fancy apron came to take his order, and he was dismayed to find himself stuttering with embarrassment; but she was a self-possessed little lady and seemed neither flattered nor disturbed by the effect she had produced upon the shy young English padre. She brought his tea, and it was only some minutes later that he remembered the procedure, and rose, plate and fork in hand, to choose his cakes. The incident turned his thought to the tea-shop in Doullens, where he and Berney on their first meeting had chosen cakes together and had chaffed each other upon their choice. He returned to his lonely table with all his animation gone.

One or two other British officers came into the shop, and lastly a young chaplain. There were no vacant tables, and the man, after a brief glance round, came and sat down at Rawley's little table. “I hope you don't mind,” he said. Rawley did mind, but he murmured politely, “Not at all.” Conversation with a real chaplain would have pitfalls, and he eyed the man covertly as the waitress came to take the order.

Evidently he had not been in France long, for he wore the black tie which had been discarded by most chaplains in the field. Not long ago, Rawley thought, he had worn the roman collar and black stock. He was probably rather green, and that was a point to the good. His own role, he decided, must be that of the old hand who discouraged the talking of shop.

The conversation opened in the English fashion with the weather. The man obviously wanted to talk, and Rawley let him talk. It would give Rawley a chance to finish his tea. When he tired of talking about himself, and began to display some curiosity about his fellow padre, then it would be time for Rawley to excuse himself and leave.

Meanwhile he sat and listened, putting in a word here and there to stimulate the flow. He might learn some useful points that would help him to sustain his role of a padre.

He learnt that his diagnosis was correct. The young clergyman had been in France only three weeks. He had reported to a Headquarters that he did not know the name of and had hung about for several days doing nothing. Then he had been billeted in Amiens, where he had met an older padre who was running a canteen and ministering to the needs of various details of troops in the neighbourhood. The older padre had then been ordered to report to a division in the Line and the younger man, not knowing what else to do, had taken over the canteen, which he was still running. He was enthusiastic and desperately anxious to be of use, but he had received no orders, and so he remained in the billet originally allotted to him, ran the canteen, and held a
service whenever he could scrape together a congregation, which was seldom. He spoke to Rawley as an older and more experienced man. What should he do?

“One of the first principles out here,” said Rawley, “is not to go looking for trouble. It comes without any looking for. Just sit tight and do what you can. They have forgotten you, I expect. One fine day some brass hat will take his feet off the mantelpiece and have a look at the papers they have been resting on. Then he'll discover you, and they will send you chits and things and bundle you off to some godforsaken spot. My advice is to sit tight and see what happens.

The young chaplain sighed. “It's all rather different from what one expected,” he said. “Very different from a country parish. I am from Yorkshire. What part of the country do you come from?”

“The Channel Islands,” answered Rawley at a venture.

“Oh yes. Beautiful place, I've heard. Let me see, you are in the Winchester diocese, aren't you?”

Rawley nodded and rose. “I must be getting back,” he said, and took his leave.

CHAPTER XXI

I

Rawley paid other visits to Amiens. He had discovered a cinema, and when he grew tired of walking the streets, there he could sit and pass in pleasant forgetfulness some of the hours that hung so heavily on his hands. His improved conditions of life had only increased his desire for further comfort. He enjoyed the mere act of sitting on the little tip-up seats in the cinema, and he thought it worth the price of a beer or coffee to sit on the padded red plush seat of a café. Once he was strongly assailed by a temptation to spend the night in an hotel in a real bed in a comfortable room, and he was only restrained from yielding to it by the realization that it would be tempting Providence in the form of the A.P.M. to sign a false name in the register.

On one of his visits he encountered the young chaplain he had met in the tea-shop. They had a drink together in a café and smoked a pipe. The young chaplain was obviously attracted to Rawley. He was lonely, feeling himself something of an outsider among the officers who came and went on leave, or to and from the Line. And Rawley was glad of somebody to talk to now that he found that it was easy to keep the conversation to safe topics.

One evening as Rawley was walking down the Boulevarde d'Alsace, intending to lorry-jump back to Albert, he met the young chaplain hurrying in the opposite direction. He seized Rawley by the arm. “Come back and
have some dinner with me,” he said. Rawley demurred. “Come on,” the other insisted. “It's my last night in Amiens. I got orders about half an hour ago. You are the very man I wanted to see; I haven't the faintest idea what I have to do, and you can tell me everything. In return I'll stand you a jolly good dinner at the Godbert.”

“Well, if you put it that way,” said Rawley, and he turned back.

They went into the palm-decorated foyer of the Godbert and ordered the meal. “It must be a real good one,” said the chaplain. “We will start with oysters and brown bread and butter.”

“I have no quarrel with that,” agreed Rawley. They worked through the menu together and decided on each course.

“About drinks,” said the chaplain. “I'm afraid that's rather my weak suit. Port and champagne is about the limit of my wine knowledge. I leave it to you.”

Rawley suggested Chambertin, and the chaplain agreed. They were shown to a table in the long-mirrored room where the lights, white napery and glittering glass made Rawley feel that this was the summit of those steps of respectability and civilization that he had begun to climb with the cutting of his ragged beard in the cellar near Albert. At a table close by there was a girl actually in evening dress.

They began with a Martini and then broached the Chambertin. The chaplain grew voluble. “I'm awfully glad I ran into you,” he said. “You see, I'm in an awful hole.
I have got to go off early tomorrow morning. I got orders not more than an hour ago, and when I met you I had just been to the station to see the R.T.O. My train leaves at six-thirty.”

“Where are you going?” asked Rawley.

“Somewhere near Arras, the R.T.O. said. I have to report to the fifty-sixth division.”

“Oh yes, I know them,” said Rawley. “London Territorial division.”

“Are they a nice lot?” asked the chaplain. “You see, I'm rather nervous about going up for the first time.”

“I just happen to know they are London Territorials and that they have quite a good fighting reputation, but beyond that I don't know anything about them. I've never met them. But tell me, what is the trouble? What are you getting all hot and bothered about?”

The chaplain took a gulp at his glass. “I haven't packed up yet.”

Rawley laughed. “Well, that's easy. If you have a pile of stuff you just dump what you can't take, that's all.”

“But I don't know what I ought to take, so I am relying on you to come along and show me.”

“What, after we have finished this meal!” exclaimed Rawley. “What sort of time do you think I shall get back to Albert, pray?”

“Must you go back tonight?” asked the other coaxingly. “I can put you up if you like. There are two beds in my billet. You must come. There are dozens of other things I want to ask you about.”

Rawley laughed. “I don't see why you cannot ask them now, but if you really want me to I will go along to your billet for a little time. I'd be a swab to refuse that after this excellent meal you have given me.”

They left the Godbert and walked along the quiet Rue des Jacobin. It was a clear cold night, and the stars glittered metallically above the darkened streets. “What a hardy chap you must be!” exclaimed the chaplain, who was muffled in a thick British warm. “Aren't you perishing without a coat?”

“Not a bit,” answered Rawley. “I hardly ever wear a coat these days,” he added more truthfully.

They turned into a dark and narrow street between tall, cliff-like houses. Their footfalls rang out noisily on the ornamental pavement. The street was deserted at that hour, and no ray of light escaped from the rows of long-shuttered windows. The chaplain halted before a brick-arched doorway. “Here we are,” he said.

The door opened a few inches in response to his knock, and then at the sound of his voice was opened more widely. Rawley mounted two steps and stood in complete darkness. The door closed behind him, a switch clicked, and he found himself in a large ponderously-furnished hall, somewhat dimly lighted by a shaded electrolier. The chaplain led the way up a carpeted stair. He turned down a long corridor dimly lighted by a little oil lamp on a table, and threw open a door. “This is my billet,” he said. “Not too bad—considering.”

Rawley found himself in a large and lofty room. Facing him were two long French windows, curtained
with lace, through which could be seen the white blistered paint of the closed shutters beyond. Heavy plush curtains undrawn hung on either side of each window, and there was a frill of the same thick material along the top. Two beds, with heavy maple panels at head and foot, stood against one wall, with a thick tapestry bell-pull between them. A huge maple press, a marble-topped chest of drawers, and a dark green plush armchair, and a table covered with a plush cloth, completed the furniture.

Rawley moved slowly across the threshold. “No—not too bad,” he echoed with a smile. “Better than you are likely to get with your new division, anyway.”

The chaplain dragged a new-looking valise from the bottom of the press and set to work to pack. He would not allow Rawley to help him. He was to direct operations, he said. And so Rawley sat in the armchair, smoking his pipe and giving advice.

“What do I do about paying for this billet?” asked the chaplain, looking up suddenly.

“You don't pay,” answered Rawley. “You fill in a billeting return which goes to some French authority, who pay the money and claim from the British Government. It goes in every week, I believe.”

“But I haven't got a billeting return and I've never had one?” answered the chaplain.

“Somebody has been doing it for you, then—Town Major, or whatever they have here, I suppose. Whom do you draw your rations from?”

“I really don't know. My man always brings them.”

“Then I expect he tells the ration people about the billet also. By the by, where is your servant? Are you taking him with you?”

“Oh, no. I don't think so. He belongs here. He's a permanent base, or whatever they call it. But I don't know where he sleeps. He comes in every morning and gets my breakfast, and again for lunch at midday.”

Rawley filled his pipe. “Don't you mess with anyone then?”

“No. Bull brings my rations and cooks them for breakfast and lunch, and I usually get an evening meal somewhere in the town. He looks after the canteen for me, too. And I want to talk to you about that. You see, I haven't seen Bull since midday and he doesn't know I'm going. And I shall be gone tomorrow when he comes again. You see, I give him the money and he borrows a limber from somewhere and buys the stuff for the canteen, and he bought a new lot yesterday. And that was what was bothering me when I met you. I can't take all that stuff with me, and I thought I should just have to leave it and not be able to tell Bull about it either. That's why I wanted you to come back here. I thought that if you stayed here for the night you could see Bull tomorrow morning after I have gone, and you could tell him about the rations and the billet and all that. And I thought perhaps you would do something about the canteen stuff for me—either take it up to your people or get Bull to sell it out and then collect the money. In either case, you're welcome to it. I have made a good few hundred francs out of it which I
am taking up to this division to start something there. But I can't take the stock, and you would be doing me a good turn if you would take it off my hands.”