THE CINDER PATH (21 page)

him had jumped for the birch stick that was still hanging behind the door in the harness-room, and he had seen himself

lashing the fellow across the yard and out of the

gate; no, not out of the gate, through the alleyway and on to the cinder path; but all he

had done was to raise his arm and point towards the

gate, saying, "Get out! And now, not tomorrow, now! You thankless scum."

"Fancy that!" It was Johnny speaking his

amazement aloud again.

H

AD he been in the army only five months?

Wasn't it five years, five lifetimes, five

eons? He was in what they called the new army, the

training section of the reserve battalion.

Battalions were shuffled and re-shuffled. The

sixteenth and seventeenth battalions of the Durham

Light Infantry became the First and Second

Reserve Battalions. There were young soldier

battalions, graduated battalions; a

soldier was passed from one to the other, allotted to a company, and every three months or so the young men were spilled from the battalion on to a ship, and thus

into the mud of France. There was always mud in France; seasons weren't long enough to dry it off.

It was usually the nineteen-year-olds that filled

these drafts, but there had been a rumour flying round

for the last few days that their own lot were ready

for a move, and it wasn't for Durham or

Shields, or Seaham Harbour, or Barnard

Castle, or Ravensworth, but France.

Some of the men had the jitters and had to reassure

themselves by continually saying they were in a reserved company and were simply a basis for reserve battalions,

and that it was just the young "uns who were drafted to the main battalion; they had been given to understand at the

beginning that their unit wouldn't be required to serve abroad.

Who had given them to understand this?

Nobody knew.

Charlie thought he was the only one, at least in his

platoon, of thirty men who longed to be one of the

chosen to be sent overseas-it must be overseas-because

wherever they went here Slater would inevitably go with them.

He had he knew become a different being during

the past five months. And the change wasn't due

to the army; the army could never have made him hate. He could never have opened his mouth wide enough to let out that piercing scream as he stuck his bayonet into a bag

of straw if it hadn't been for Slater. It had

been terrifying when it first happened, it had even

caused him to vomit. Afterwards he had to get

up in the middle of the night and go outside because he couldn't get the picture out of his mind that the bag of straw was

Slater. Perhaps if it hadn't been for Johnny he

might have tried, but Johnny, the escaped pitman,

as he called himself because he had left the pits before the war started, only later to find himself conscripted because he wasn't in a reserved occupation, talked to him like

a brother, a comforting older brother. How many times and in how many different ways had he said, "Hold your hand, lad. Just remember that's what he wants you

to do, hit out at him. An" then you'd be for it, the glasshouse. An' likely he's got mates

there. What he can do to you nowll be nothin' to what

they'll find to fill your days with. I've heard about

some of them bastards. It can't go on for ever. I

only know one thing, Charlie, I wouldn't be say*in

this to you if we were out there, "cos there'd be no more need. I've heard of fellows like him dyin"

suddenly, shot in the back while they're facin' the

enemy. Hang on, Charlie. Hang on, mate."

But how much longer he could hang on, he didn't

know; the situation was becoming desperate because

Slater's latest tactic was to talk at him.

Only yesterday, addressing some of the other

men in the billet he had said, "You know some fellows are unfortunate, they never drop into the right occupation, they're put in a position where they have to kill

animals, you know, like slittin' a pig's throat,

an' God! you should see "em, yellow they turn,

yes, yellow, real nancy-pans! They should have

picked a job like servin" in a shop, ladies

particularly, camisoles "n knickers 'n things

like that, that's just about what they could handle."

Some had laughed, being of the opinion that the sergeant was decent enough on the whole; it was how you took him.

Yes, the sergeant was wily enough to be decent enough on the whole. He spoke civilly to others, he gave

some small privileges, he joked with others, and so

not a few were in sympathy with him.

It was open knowledge now that he had been flogged on the cinder path; in fact some had been given further

to understand that the treatment hadn't ceased when he had grown out of boyhood.

Charlie knew that the whole thing had been blown up

out of all perspective and it would be no use him

trying to alter the picture, even if he felt so

inclined, which he didn't.

They had all been given forty-eight

hours" leave. Was this the sign? Rumours were flying hither and thither.

"What do you make of it?" Johnny asked.

"It could be. Hope to God it is."

"Well, I'm not as eager as you, Charlie, but

I wouldn't mind gettin' out of this. Anyroad,

I'd better go home and see wor lass, and

prepare her. She's likely to go mad, she thought

I was sittin' cushy for the duration. You wouldn't like to come along of us and meet her, would you, Charlie?"

"I'm sorry, Johnny. If I get another

chance I will, but if this is our last leave then I've

got a lot of things to do."

A voice from down the room shouted, "Can't mean

we're goin' across, they give you embarkation leave,

an' they tell you you're for it."

Another answered in a tone deceptively soft

at first, "Who does, the colonel? Does he

send for you and tell you to go and enjoy yourself, lad,

"cos this is your last chance?" The tone rose almost to a bellow now. "Don't be so bloody soft, they

keep these things secret. Five minutes after we

come back Sunday night we could be skited like

diarrhoea into trucks an" off we'll go hell for

leather to the bloody south, an* them

Southerners will be lining the streets and shoutin' "Here come some bloody Geordie

aborigines!" And you know what? They'll get the

shock of their lives "cos they think we still carry spears up here and paint worsels from the eyebrows

right down over the waterfall to the toe nails. The

Scots, they think they're civilized compared with us

'cos their fellows wear skirts."

The hut rocked with laughter and Johnny, his mouth

wide, looked at Charlie and said, "Isn't

Bill a star turn? I hope he comes along of us

wherever we're goin"." Then his face sober, he said, "I hope I go along of you, Charlie, wherever you're bound for."

"I hope you do, Johnny. Oh yes, I

hope you do."

The sincerity in his voice came from his heart, forof

all the men he had met in his life he had never

known companionship like that which existed now between this rough looking, rough talking man and himself.

"What you goin' to do with yourself?" Johnny asked now.

"First of all, go straight home and leave things in order there as much as I can; then I've one or two

visits to make."

Johnny, now pulling on his greatcoat, muffled

his words in his collar as he said, "You won't do a skip, will you, Charlie?"

"Do a skip? You mean?" He paused before giving a slight laugh and, shaking his head, he said, "No,

no, Johnny; don't worry about that, I won't

do a skip."

"Good. Good."

He had caught a train to Newcastle,

swallowed three mugs of hot, scalding tea arid

two sandwiches, then made his way to the Otterburn

road to see if he could pick up any army

transport. Within half an hour he was lucky and

got a lift in an army truck which dropped him just

before one o'clock near Kirkwhelpington.

He did not immediately walk from the main road and

into the lane but stood looking about him. The late

November sky was hanging low over the land. It had

cut off the tops of the distant hills and its leaden

shadow was lying on the fields, which were still stiff from the overnight frost. There was snow in the air; he could

smell it. He put his head back and sniffed and

listened to the silence. But was this silence? The very air vibrated with different sounds. The old stones

gripping each other for foothold on the

walls sang; the road under his feet trembled with the

distant echo of marching feet; the cattle standing

silhouetted in the field below him murmured with the knowledge of instinct, "We're going to die. We're going

to die."

His lids blinked rapidly, and he hunched the

collar of his greatcoat further up round his neck.

These were the kind of thoughts he used to think when he stood on the hills alone, wisps of imagination,

words linking themselves together in an effort to explain his emotions. Funny, for a moment he had felt a boy

again, young, alone, lost, yet one with all this, this

aloneness, this wildness, this closeness that gave off the feeling of never ending, eternity past and eternity

to come.

He walked from the road now and on to the bridle

path, on and on, leaping gates, tramping over

fields, going through narrow gaps in stone walls; and

then he was in the copse. He never passed through the

copse but he remembered the day his father died. Yet

today, when the thought touched his mind it brought no

regret, no feeling of guilt. Those feelings had

been washed clean away over the past five months

by Sergeant Sidney Slater.

The farmyard looked clean, in fact

cleaner than he had ever seen it. As he made his

way across it to the kitchen door a voice from the

corner of the yard called, "Bon jour,

monsieur," and he turned and answered brightly,

"Bon jour," then walking towards the man who

instinctively stood to attention, he said in English,

"How are you getting on?" and the man replied slowly, "Oh, very . . . well, sir. Very

well."

"I'm glad."

"You ... on leave, sir?"

"Yes; a very short one."

"Oh." They smiled at each other and Charlie

said, "I'll see you again before I go. The others all right?"

"Pardon. Pardon."

Now Charlie answered him in French, saying,

"Les autres; sont-ils heureux?"

"Oui, monsieur."

There was no one in the kitchen when he entered and he

went through into the hall, calling, "Hello! Hello there!" Instantly the sitting-room door opened and he smiled sadly to himself when Betty, disappointment

evident on her face and in her voice, said,

"Oh, it's you!"

"Yes, it's me."

"You cold?" She stood aside and let him into the room where a big fire was blazing in the open hearth.

"Frozen; there'll be snow soon."

"We had some last week." "Yes."

"What's brought you here today?"

He took off his greatcoat and stood with his back

to the fire, his hands on his buttocks, before he

replied, "I've a forty-eight hours' leave. It

could be embarkation; I don't know;"

"Overseas!" She stared up into his face. "I thought you would be in clerical or something like that."

"Well, they seem to think differently."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes, a bit; I haven't had anything since

early on."

"There's only cold stuff, chicken and a bit of

lamb."

"Only!" He laughed down on her now. "I

never realized how lucky we were with regards to food;

the eggs they dish up there could never have been laid

by hens."

She smiled up at him, a tight, prim

smile; then turning from him, she said, "You'll have a lot to see to before you go then?"

"Yes, quite a bit."

She looked at him over her shoulder, saying,

"I'll get you something."

Left alone, he sat down in a chair to the

side of the fireplace and let his gaze wander slowly

around the room, the room that had been changed from a

comfortable workaday parlour into the imitation of a

drawing-room, a French one at that. There was a

spiderylegged French Louis suite taking up one

corner of the room and next to it and standing underneath a large ornate gold-framed mirror was what his mother

always referred to as her bonheur dujour, never the

writing-desk. Then there was the small nest of tables

and the chaise-longue; the only piece left of the old

furniture was the suite, and this was covered with a

chintz, of which the pattern sported gold garlands and

bows. There wasn't a room in the house which hadn't

escaped her change, except the kitchen and his

bedroom.

When her own money was exhausted she still

defiantly went on buying; and the bills had come

to him until he was forced to put a notice in the

newspaper stating that he would no longer be

responsible for her debts. The rows, the

recriminations this brought forth rang in his ears

even yet. Wasn't it his house she was furnishing?

He'd bring a wife here some day, wouldn't he?

But not until the day he broke the news that he was

in fact bringing a wife to the