Death of a Hero (35 page)

The train began to slow down at a large junction, and he returned to his present surroundings with a start. The other men were asleep. Well, all the training and presenting arms and saluting by numbers were over and in the past. They were on Active Service. It was an immense relief. Now henceforth he would be facing dread realities, not Regular Army pedants and bullies. As Winterbourne once remarked, one of the horrors of the War was not fighting the Germans, but living under the British.

After picking up more drafts, the train went on, grinding its way heavily through the silent darkness. The men were all asleep. He noticed the carriage was getting stuffy and headachey with foul air. Someone had shut the windows and ventilators while he was daydreaming. That was the old bother – whether in huts or barracks, they
would
try to sleep in foul air. He softly slipped the window open a couple of inches – better already. Wonder why they like a fug? Mental and moral fug, too. Poor devils! All brought up to touch their hats to the gentry, do what they're told, and work. Sort of helots. Yet they're decent enough, got character, but no intelligence. That's the real war, the only war worth fighting, the battle of the intelligence against inertia and stupidity and… Still, the intelligence is not always defeated; we've got here somehow. Yes! and look where we are!

His mind half-sleepily ran off along a familiar track. What's really the cause of wars, of this War? Oh, you can't say one cause; there are many. The Socialists are silly fanatics when they say it's the wicked capitalists. I don't believe the capitalists wanted a war – they stand to lose too much in the disturbance. And I don't believe the wretched governments really wanted it – they were shoved on by great forces they're too timid and too unintelligent to control. It's the superstition of more babies and more bread, more bread and more babies. Of course, all wars haven't been mere population wars. 'Course not – Greek city-states, mediaeval Italian republics, wars of petty jealousy; naval wars for commercial advantages – Pisa, Genoa, Venice, Holland, England; the sport of kings, eighteenth-century diversion of the aristocracy; wars of fanaticism, Moslems, the Crusades; emigration wars like the irruption of the barbarians… There may be commercial motives behind this War, jolly short-sighted ones – they've already lost more than they can possibly
gain. No, this is fundamentally a population War – bread and babies, babies and bread. It's all oddly mixed up with the sexual problem we were battling with so brightly when this little packet of trouble was dumped on us by our virtuous forebears. It's the babies-and-bread superstition. You encourage, you force people to have babies, lots of babies, millions of babies. As they grow up, you've got to feed ‘em. You need bread. We all live from the land. England, and the rest of the world after it, went crazy with the Industrial Revolution – thought you could eat steel and railways. You can't. The world of men is an inverted pyramid based on the bowed shoulders of the ploughman – or the steel tractor – on the land. It's the hunger-and-death business again. “Increase and multiply.” Damned imbecility of applying to over-populated and huge nations the sexual taboos forced on a little crowd of unhygienic Semitic nomads, by sheer force of circumstance. Think of their infantile death-rate! Breed like rabbits or vanish. Doesn't apply to us. We're a sacrifice to over-breeding. Too many people in Europe. A damn sight too many babies. The people could be made to see, are beginning to see it – but the hurray-for-our-dear-Fatherland people, and the priests and the fanatics and the timid and the conservative, won't see it. Go on, breed, you beauties – breed in column of fours, in battalions, brigades, divisions, army corps. Wait till the population of England is five hundred million and we're all packed like herrings in a tub. Lovely. Wonderful. England über alles! But there comes a time when there isn't enough bread for the growing babies. Colonize. Why? Either grow more food or produce more things to exchange for food. England's got huge colonies. Germany very small ones. The Germans breed like tadpoles. The British breed like rather slower tadpoles. What are you going to do with them? Kill ‘em off in a war? Kind. Humane. Kill ‘em off, and grab land and commercial advantages from the defeated nation? Right. And what next? Oh, go on breeding. Must be a great and populous nation. And the defeated nation? Suppose they start breeding harder than ever? Oh, have another war, go on having ‘em, get the habit. Europe's decennial picnic of corpses…

Yes, but why so sentimental? Why all this fuss over a few million men killed and maimed? Thousands of people die weekly and somebody's run over in London every day. Does that argument take you in? Well, the answer is that they're not
murdered.
And your “thousands who die weekly” are the old and the diseased; here it's the young and
the strong and the healthy, the physical pick of the race. All men, too, and no women. That'll set up a pretty nice resentment between the sexes – more sodomy and lesbianism. Loud cheers – we're winning. Yes, but, going back to murder – people are murdered all the time; look at Chicago. Look at Chicago! We're allways patting ourselves on the back and looking smugly at wicked Chicago. When there's a shoot-up between gangs, do you approve of it, do you give the winning side medals for their gallantry, do you tell 'em to go to it and you'll kiss them when they come back, do you march 'em by with a brass band and tell ‘em what fine fellows they are? Do you take the gunman as the high ideal of humanity? I know all about military grandeur and devotion to duty – I'm a soljer meself, marm. Thanks for all you've done for us, marm. If violence and butchery are the natural state of man, then let's have no more of your humbug. Violence and butchery beget violence and butchery. Isn't that the theme of the great Greek tragedies of blood? Blood will have blood. All right, now we know. It doesn't matter whether murder is individual or collective, whether committed on behalf of one man or a gang or a state. It's murder. When you approve of murder you violate the right instincts of every human being. And a million murders egged on, lauded, exulted over, will raise a legion of Eumenides about your ears. The survivors will pay bitterly for it all their lives. Never mind, you'll go on? More babies, soon make up the losses? Have another merry old war soon, sooner the better…

O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Thank God I have no son, O Absalom, my son, my son!

Winterbourne nodded uneasily asleep. He started awake as the train slowed down at London Bridge and not at Waterloo. Where am I? Railway Station. Oh, of course, on a draft going out to France…

The draft were turned out at London Bridge, and collected in two ranks on the platform, yawning, stretching, and adjusting their equipment. The draft-conducting officer, a mild, brown-eyed young man on home service after being wounded, explained that they had nearly three hours to wait. Would they like to go to a Soldiers' Canteen and get some food?

“Yes, sir!”

They marched through the empty, muddy streets. It was about midnight. Some one began to sing one of the inevitable marching songs. The officer turned round:

“Whistle, but don't sing. People asleep.”

They began to whistle. “Where are the lads of the village tonight?”

Winterbourne found himself crossing the Thames and, looked once more at the familiar townscape. He noticed that the street-lamps had been dimmed further since he had left London, and that the once brilliantly-lighted capital now lay cowering in darkness. The dome of St. Paul's was just faintly visible to an eye which knew exactly where to look for it. The man next to Winterbourne was a Worcestershire ploughman who had never been to London and was most anxious to see St. Paul's. Winterbourne tried hard to show him where it was, but failed. The ploughman never did see St. Paul's – he was killed two months later.

Curious to march through this unfamiliar London – everything the same, but everything so different. The dimmed street-lights, the carefully blinded windows, the rather neglected streets, the comparative absence of traffic, the air of being closed down indefinitely, all gave him an uneasy feeling. It was as if a doom hung over the great city, as if it had passed its meridian of power and splendour, and was sinking back, back into the darkened past, back into the clay hills and marshes on which it stands. That New Zealander sketching the ruins from a broken pile of London Bridge seemed several centuries nearer.

“
Where are the lads of the village tonight?

Where are the lads we knew?

In Piccadilly or Leicester Square
?

No,
not there! No, not there!

They're taking a trip on the Continong…
”

The foolish words ran in Winterbourne's brain as the men whistled the tune with exasperating pertinacity. It was curious to be so near to Fanny and Elizabeth. He wondered vaguely what they were doing.

“No,
not there! No
,
not there!”

He had sent Elizabeth a telegram from a station on the way up, but probably it had not reached her.

They crowded into the Canteen, and ate sandwiches and eggs and bacon, and drank ginger-beer. It was too late for beer. Our temperate troops didn't need beer at that hour of the night.

About 2 A.M. they marched back to the station. To Winterbourne's surprise and delight, Elizabeth and Fanny were there. Elizabeth had received his telegram although it was after hours. She had rung up Fanny, and they had gone to Waterloo together, only to find that the train with the Upshires draft was not there. Fanny had used her charms upon a susceptible R.T.O., and he had told them where to go, so there they were. All this Elizabeth poured out in a rapid, nervous, jerky way. While Fanny just clutched Winterbourne's left hand and pressed it hard, saying nothing. They had about ten minutes before the train left. The draft-conducting officer noticed that Winterbourne was speaking to two women, “obviously ladies”, and came up. “Get in anywhere you like, Winterbourne, only don't miss the train.”

“Very good, sir, thank you,” and saluted smartly.

“D'you always have to do that?” asked Elizabeth with a little giggle.

“Yes, it's the custom. They seem to attach great importance to it.”

“How absurd!”

“Why absurd?” said Fanny, feeling that Winterbourne was somehow hurt by the contempt in her voice. “It's only a convention.”

The whole train was filled with different drafts of soldiers who had been ordered into the carriages. Only Winterbourne and the two girls were left on the platform, except for the R.T.O. and one or two other officers. As often happens in railway partings, they seemed embarrassed, with nothing to say to each other. Winterbourne simply felt dull and uneasy, tongue-tied. He was saying farewell, perhaps for the last time, to the only two human beings he had really loved, and found he had nothing to say. He just felt dull and uneasy, dully remote from them. He noticed they were both wearing new hats he hadn't seen, and that skirts were being worn much shorter. He wished the train would go. Interminable waiting. What was Elizabeth saying? He interrupted her:

“Is that the new fashion?”

“What?”

“Shorter skirts.”

“Why, yes, of course, and not so very new. Where have your eyes been?”

“Oh, there were only village women where I've been. I haven't seen a properly dressed woman since my firing leave.”

Tactless! He had spent those few days with Fanny. Dear Fanny! A good sort. She had thought it an awful lark to go on a week-end with a Tommy. She was dreadfully sick of the Staff. Still, it was inconvenient that the only decent hotels and restaurants were out of bounds to Tommies. Fanny felt quite democratic about it. Elizabeth hadn't cared. She lived with a kind of inner intensity which kept her from noticing such things.

They were silent for seconds which dragged like minutes. Then they all began to say something together, interrupted themselves. “Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.” “What were you going to say?” “Oh, nothing, I forget.” And then relapsed into silence again.

Winterbourne found he was slightly intimidated by the presence of these two well-dressed ladies. What on earth were they doing at two o'clock in the morning, talking to a Tommy? He tried to hide his dirty hands.

Damn the train! Won't it ever go? He felt uncomfortably hot in his greatcoat and began to unbutton it. The engine whistled.

“All aboard !” shouted the R.T.O. Winterbourne hastily kissed Fanny and then Elizabeth.

“Goodbye, goodbye; don't forget to write. We'll send you parcels.”

“Thanks, ever so. Goodbye.”

He made for the compartment where a door had been left open for him, but found it full. The luggage-van, piled with the men's rations, was next door. Winterbourne jumped in.

“You'll have to stand!” exclaimed Fanny.

“Why, no. There's plenty of room on the floor.”

The train moved.

“Goodbye.”

Winterbourne waved his hand. He felt no particular emotion, merely an intensifying of the general depressingness of things. He watched them receding, as they waved their hands. Beautiful girls, both of them, and so smartly dressed.

“Be happy!” he shouted as a valediction, in a sudden gust of disinterested affection for them. And then lost sight of them. Fanny and Elizabeth were both crying. “What did he shout?” asked Elizabeth through her sobs.

“ 'Be happy!' ”

“How curious of him! And how like him! Oh, I know I shall never see him again!”

Fanny tried to comfort her. But Elizabeth somehow felt it was all Fanny's fault.

Winterbourne sat on his pack in the joggling van for about ten minutes. It was almost dark. The guard was trying to read a newspaper by the light of a dim oil-lamp. The soldiers who had to see that the rations weren't stolen were already lying on the floor. Winterbourne buttoned up his coat, turned up the collar, arranged a woollen scarf on his pack to make a pillow, and lay down on the dirty floor beside them. In five minutes he was asleep.