Behind the Scenes at the Museum (8 page)

By the time they opened the telegram that Lillian read aloud to Rachel, ‘Regret to inform you that Albert Barker was killed in action on July 1st, 1916. The Army Council sends its sympathy,’ both Lillian and Nell had already been in mourning a week.

A mortar had taken out Albert’s gun emplacement; the shell had landed right on top of the heavy howitzer sending the bodies of the gunners flying outwards so they landed in a star shape around what was left of their gun. The only mark on Albert had been a line of blood and grease on his sun-burned cheek and he had a beatific smile on his face like a child that’s just seen its mother in a crowd, and you would have wondered what had killed him until you lifted him up and saw that the back of his head was missing.

It seemed strange to Frank that Albert looked perfectly all right but was dead and Jack, who was covered in blood from head to foot so that he looked like one of the martyrs of the early church, was alive. That all three of them should turn up at the same dressing-station that day seemed perfectly natural to Frank at the time – the coincidence was, after all, no stranger than the fact that the only corpse he had seen all day (apart from the soldier at the bottom of the mud crater who’d been there several days) was that of Albert. Jack didn’t speak to Frank; in fact Jack passed right by the dead Frank without seeing him, the blood still streaming down his face.

When Frank had fallen down his crater Jack had in fact still been only a few yards in front of him. Jack had just kept on walking; he walked all the way across No Man’s Land, mortars exploding around him and machine-gun bullets tracing past his head until – to his great surprise – he found himself right up against the barbed-wire fencing of the German trenches. Even then he didn’t stop but just walked right through the wire as if anaesthetized and carried on until he came to the next barbed-wire barrier. He wasn’t even surprised at the sight of all this wire, even though they had been sending shells over for days to destroy it. Suddenly, unexpectedly, Jack found himself in a German trench and he walked along it until he came to a neat little dug-out and thought how much better constructed this was than Malcolm Innes-Ward’s dug-out. Jack had forgotten that Innes-Ward was dead and half-expected to come across him round the next corner. He didn’t though, instead he’d found the dug-out and huddled in the dug-out were three German privates, young boys. One was very blond, one was very tall and one was very stocky and Jack laughed because they reminded him of a music-hall act he’d seen at the Empire before the war when three young men, who looked just like the German privates, had danced and sung a song that Jack couldn’t remember now. They’d done a funny routine where they kept passing a top hat from one head to another and the audience had loved them. What was the song? Jack wished he could remember. He stood there laughing, half-expecting one of them to produce a top hat, but noone moved so in the end Jack raised his Lee-Enfield and fired off the clip. In turn, each private flung his head back and then slid down the sandbagged wall of the dug-out and the last one had such a look of surprise on his face that Jack laughed again and thought that wasn’t a bad routine either. He turned and walked away from them, knowing that he’d never remember the song now.

Nell and Jack almost got married that leave; they discussed getting a special licence; Jack was only home for a week, but somehow the days went quicker than they’d expected. Jack was reluctant – not because he didn’t love her, he said, but because he didn’t want her to be a widow. Nell could hardly say that she’d rather be a widow than a bereaved fiancée for a second time, so she didn’t argue.

Just before Jack went back to the Front they went to see
The Battle of the Somme
at the Electric Cinema in Fossgate. Nell was looking for Albert, convinced that his smiling face would pop up on the screen, even though she would have had a dreadful time coping with it if he had. All the Tommies were smiling and laughing as if the war was a great joke. ‘A lark,’ that’s what Albert had said. Of course, they were smiling for the camera, you could almost hear the cameraman saying, ‘Give us a smile, lads!’ as the columns trudged past on their way to the Front. They all turned and waved and smiled as if the Somme was no more than a day’s excursion. The film showed a lot of preparation – the troops on the move, the barrages of guns. You saw the guns firing and in the distance you could see little puffs of smoke like clouds. Because there was no sound, the Somme seemed like a very peaceful battle. Nell watched as the big guns were loaded up by men in shirt-sleeves and braces and a little lump formed in her throat because she remembered the day Jack had fixed the bench in the yard.

Then there were a lot of shots of German prisoners being offered cigarettes by British Tommies, and of the walking wounded of both sides limping through trenches, but there wasn’t very much of the actual battle in between. In one shot you saw men being given the order to go over the top and they all went except one man who got to the top of the parapet and then slid gently down again. There was a shot of dead horses and the caption said that two dumb friends had made the final sacrifice, but on the whole the battle of the Somme didn’t seem to have many dead and you were left wondering where they were. (So in some ways, of course, it reflected Frank’s experience of the Somme.)

Even Nell felt it was an unsatisfactory account and when the lights went up and people started shuffling out of their seats, both Jack and Nell sat there a little longer and Jack leant across and said in a very quiet voice, ‘It wasn’t like that, Nell,’ and Nell said, ‘No, I expect it wasn’t.’

And then Jack was gone, not to the Front but to Shoeburyness. Frank was mystified – somehow or other Jack had got himself attached to the new dog training school down there and was going to become a handler in the Messenger Dog Service.

The unsuitable dogs were sometimes sent back, the lucky ones back to the Dog Homes or their owners, but more often than not they were simply shot. Jack had sleepless nights thinking about some of these dogs – one little dog haunted him still, a gentle spaniel the colour of chestnuts called Jenny, petrified out of her wits by the grenades and eventually shot behind the parade ground. Even now, back at the Front, Jack could see the little dog’s big, soft eyes turned to him in disbelief at what was happening to her. When he remembered Jenny, he’d reach down and feel Betsy’s warm coat and in forgiveness she would roll over and push her wet nose into his hand.

Jack knew that Frank felt he’d betrayed him. The dogs were an easy number, the kennels were far enough behind the lines to be safe, at least a lot safer than the firing-trench, an opinion voiced frequently and vociferously by Frank to anyone who would listen. He often wondered how Jack had swung it until Jack told him it was Innes-Ward’s brother who’d got him the job. ‘You’re a jammy bugger,’ Frank said when he came upon Jack one time. Frank was in a support-trench but followed Jack up to the firing-trench where Jack was taking Bruno to help lay a telephone line. The dog had the reel of cable strapped to its back and trotted off, its ears up, its tail wagging, for all the world as if it was going for a daily run in the park. Part of the line stretched across a corner of No Man’s Land and Jack lay flat on his belly across the parapet whistling encouragement to Bruno, all the while trying to ignore Frank, who wouldn’t shut up. ‘I’m going to die,’ Frank was telling him over and over again. Frank was back from the dead and had to worry about dying all over again. His faith in the imminence of his death was unwavering now, ‘I’m going to be blown to pieces while you and those bloody dogs are going to be all right. Then you’ll go home and marry Nell and everything’ll be grand for you and I’ll be cold slime in the earth and you know why? Because you’re a lucky bugger and I’m not.’

Jack was concentrating on the big dog as it accelerated the last few yards towards him.

‘You’d be more worried if a sniper got that bloody dog than me,’ Frank hissed as the heavy dog bounded over the parapet and Jack hugged it and said, ‘Good lad, Bruno,’ and gave it food from his pocket. Jack said nothing because there was nothing he could say, for it was true. Bruno meant more to him than Frank.

Frank continued to hover belligerently by his side, waiting for Jack to say something that would make him feel better. But the only thing that would make Frank feel better was knowing he wasn’t going to die and there wasn’t much Jack could do about that. He took the reel of cable off Bruno’s back and put it in his haversack. Then he lifted the flap on his jacket pocket and took out something small and oddly shaped and put it into Frank’s hand. For a second Frank thought it was a dog’s paw until he looked at it and saw it was too small for a dog. ‘Rabbit’s foot,’ Jack said, ‘for luck,’ and then he turned on his heel and said, ‘Bruno,’ and dog and man had walked up the trench and taken a right-angle before Frank could think of anything to say.

Jack thought a lot about what Frank said; part of him felt ashamed that he didn’t care about anyone much any more, and another part felt set free by the certainty of death. The idea of going back home and marrying Nell, becoming a father, growing into an old man, was so absurd, so unlikely, that it made him laugh. He could see it – coming home from work, Nell rushing around in an apron putting tea on the table, digging an allotment in the summer evenings, taking his sons to a football match – he could see it all right, but it wasn’t going to happen to him. It would have been no life with Nell anyway; he’d liked her at first because she was so soft – soft and quiet and gentle – but now that softness seemed like stupidity. If he thought about a woman now it was Lillian. Lillian had a bit more life about her – with her lovely slanting eyes, like a cat, and the feeling you got that secretly she was laughing at everything as if she knew what a piece of nonsense the world was. He thought about other people too, of course, lying awake in the darkness. He thought about Malcolm Innes-Ward and he thought about the little dog Jenny and the baffled look in her trusting eyes. But most of all he thought about Albert.

He thought about Albert and a hot day a long time ago when they’d been swimming in the Ouse. Albert flopped on his belly on the bank, glistening with the water like a fish and said, ‘Frank and I taught each other to swim here, just at this spot,’ and Jack sat up and looked at the skin on Albert’s back that was more beautiful than any woman’s. Albert laughed a muffled laugh because his face was buried in his arms. Jack said, ‘What’s funny?’ as he looked at Albert’s shoulder blades quivering with laughter. You could easily imagine that at any minute the little nubs of wings would push through the satin skin over his shoulder blades and Jack had to stop himself leaning over and stroking the bones where the wings would sprout and said again, ‘What’s funny?’

But Albert leapt up and dived back in the river and Jack never did discover what had made Albert laugh. Maybe it was just happiness. Albert had an extraordinary capacity for happiness. When they parted company, Albert to go up Park Grove Street, Jack to continue along Huntington Road, Albert shouted after him, ‘We had a right good day, didn’t we?’ and afterwards, after Albert was dead, Jack realized that Albert collected good days the way other people collected coins, or sets of postcards.