The New Confessions (15 page)

My main pleasure at Coxyde-Bains—when I had the chance—was to walk on the beach. If one left the orchard and walked down a lane past a farm, one soon came to the dunes. They evoked for me memories of Scotland and, when the tide was out, the huge flat beach recalled the West Sands at St. Andrews in Fife. Sometimes I would walk west towards Dunkirk. On other occasions I would walk east towards Nieuport
and the front line. I would stop when I could just see the revetments and sandbags at the mouth of the Yser River at Nieuport, which marked the position I so often occupied as
l’homme de l’extrême gauche
. At low tide the furthest extension of the wire was often exposed and I was often obscurely tempted to walk on and wade round the double entanglements, then traverse the mile of no-man’s-land and perhaps bypass the German line too. There I might meet my German counterpart: a young private, a little unhappy, uncertain of his future, whiling away his off-duty hours with a morose stroll on the sands at Ostende-Bains. Perhaps we would simply nod “Good morning” and saunter on? Perhaps I might ask him for a light:
Hast du Feuer?
It was a pleasing fantasy.…

One day, I went down to the beach in just such a mood of contemplation. Hands in my pockets, collar up against the wind.

Then I saw, slightly distorted by the reflections on the wet gleamy sand, what I took to be a man running along the water’s edge. Absurdly, spontaneously, I thought: was this my German doppelgänger come to meet me?… I peered at the distorted black shape, trying to separate bouncing solid from bouncing reflection. A man? A small man? He was certainly moving in a curious gait. I seemed to see a cripple, terribly bent over, hunched, traveling along in a fast lolloping limp.

Then as I looked the enigma resolved itself. A dog, rather large, bounding along in a kind of easy half gallop, pausing occasionally to sniff at seaweed or a piece of tide wrack before starting off again. I watched it approach. Then it saw me and changed course. The loose-limbed canter became a pelting, ears-back gallop. I felt uneasy, then fearful. Bloody hell, I thought crazily, what if this is some sort of Hun secret weapon? Killer dogs loosed behind the lines? Mad … rabid.

I looked down at my heavy boots. I’ll kick it in the throat, I said to myself, none too confidently. The dog was three hundred yards away and approaching fast. I threw away my cigarette, turned and ran for the dunes. I was seriously impeded by my greatcoat and heavy boots. I flashed a glance over my shoulder.
Christ!
It was coming at me like a cheetah—head down, tail out. I could hear the skittering thump of its feet on the sand.

“
Help!
” I bellowed aimlessly at the tranquil dunes. “
Bastaaaaaard!
”

The dog was on me as I lumbered vainly along. Jumping up and down, barging into me, tongue lolling, darting forward and back, crouching down like a pseudo-beast of prey in that irritating manner
dogs have when they want some fun. I stopped, threw my head back and gulped air, hands on my hips.

The dog, I saw, was quite big, with untidy gray fur and a blunt stupid face. It looked like a cross of Irish wolfhound, setter and bull terrier. It came up to me, tail wagging, and stuck its nose in my crotch.

“Get off! Dirty bugger!”

I slapped its face away. I felt hot, angry and itchy from my hectic run. I wiped sweat from my eyebrows and upper lip. My peaceful, contemplative stroll had been ruined by this idiot hound, which was now, as far as I could see, eating sand.

I trudged back through the dunes towards the company lines, the dog following. I spoke violently to it (it is strange how we address dumb animals so, is it not?).

“If you don’t leave me alone, I’ll go back to camp get my rifle and shoot you.”

The dog was adopted by the bombers as section mascot. Bookbinder and Pawsey made a great fuss of it giving it tins of MacConnachie stew several times a day. A name was chosen by lottery (I did not participate) and the dog became known as Ralph—Tim Somerville-Start’s choice. I wanted nothing to do with the beast. In fact I was rather superstitious of it—it had come from the direction of the German lines, after all. I refused to call it Ralph, never petted it and every time it shat in the tent, pissed on someone’s shoes, knocked over stands of rifles, coffeepots and mess tins, my voice was loudly raised urging its peremptory execution. But the animal never left me alone. It came to me, it sat by me, it slept as near to me as it was allowed. This provoked considerable jealousy among the others.

“Are you feeding Ralph secretly, Todd?” Pawsey demanded.

“Come here, boy, here, here,” Teague would call. The dog never budged.

“I think Todd must have some special dog-smell,” Kite said. “See how Ralph is always trying to snuffle at his balls?” Much laughter at this.

“Some sort of Scotch affinity with the beasts of the field,” Bookbinder said.

“Scots or Scottish. Scotch is whiskey,” Druce said.

“Thank you, Druce,” I said. “Look, I want to kill the damn thing. I hate it.”

“Och aye! The fury of the Pict when roused,” Somerville-Start said.
“Perhaps we should see how Ralph reacts to the pipe band. Here, Ralph. Here, Ralphie boy. Biscuit.”

Ralph went to him. He was always lured by food.

There was a certain amount of tedious, though good-natured, mockery of my accent, which at that time was quite marked and in strong contrast to the others in the tent. I was something of the odd man out in more ways than this. Teague and Somerville-Start had been to the same school. Most people in the battalion came from schools in the South of England. Most knew of each other’s schools, had friends at them, had played sports against them. No one had ever heard of Minto Academy. I kept my answers to their questions vague. Also, they were all older than me. Pawsey, the next youngest, was nineteen. Druce and Teague were the oldest, both twenty-four. They were all English too, and at first, to my untutored ears, they all seemed to speak with one voice, like a gang of Chinese.

Howard Pawsey was tall, thin, with straight hair parted in the middle. Every time he bent his head, two wings would fall across his brow. To my increasing annoyance he had developed a habit of sweeping only one back and leaving the other dangling. He had a weak chin.

Tim Somerville-Start was fair, fresh-faced, broad-shouldered and incredibly stupid. He and Julian Teague were longing to fight the enemy. They were the self-appointed warriors among us. Teague was more complex in his zeal, though. He had very curly hair forced back over his head to form regular waves, as if they had been created by curling tongs. He had a square face, a thick neck, a small moustache and small restless eyes. He was most unhappy that we had been posted to a quiet sector.

Noel Kite had blond thinning hair and a handsome lean face. He had the easy insouciance of the very rich. The material problems of his life having been taken care of, he cultivated a languid incuriosity about everything. Cynicism seemed to be the most vehement emotion in his repertoire.

Maitland Bookbinder was a curiosity: plump, lazy, genial, an old Etonian—one felt he should have been in the Guards. When asked what he was doing in the 13th, he said merely that he had wanted a change.

Leo Druce was the only one I instinctively liked, and at the same time was the most enigmatic. He wore his toffee-brown hair brushed straight back, glossy with a specially prepared, scented pomade. He had fine, almost delicate features, which sat oddly with his deep bass voice.
He was clever, cleverer than all of us, and this was why I was drawn to him. Druce was a lance corporal, in charge of the section. The rest of us were privates. We were distinguished from all the other enlisted men in the British Army by possessing two letters in front of our army serial number. PS: Public School. I was PS 300712.

“Where are you going, Todd?”

It was Louise.

“Down to the beach.”

“Maike sure you’re bick by six.”

“Could you hang on to Ralph for five minutes, please, Louise? Just till I’m out of sight.”

Louise took hold of Ralph’s collar.

“For God’s sake, min, you mustn’t call me Louise!”

He looked hurt, as he crouched holding a straining, panting Ralph.

“What if the colonel heard? Don’t be so bliddy selfish.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Right, that’s bitter. Off you go. Ah’ve got the dog.”

It was the end of March 1917. It was a cold, windy, but clear day. The trees were bare; only the hedges were in bud as I walked down the lane towards the dunes. We had been based at Coxyde-Bains for over five months. Almost a year had passed since that dire weekend at Charlbury. My eighteenth birthday had come and gone, unacknowledged by everybody, a week since. The war seemed as if it would go on forever, and as far as I was concerned it seemed we would be at Coxyde forever too, guarding our stretch of dunes.

I had seen the enemy through binoculars, strolling around the parapets of their trenches in the evening. Nobody took cover in this quiet sector. Our trenches were immaculate: clean, strong, with beautifully carpentered fire steps and paneled dugouts. At every firebay stood red buckets of sand and water, and all our equipment was oiled and greased against the corrosive effects of salt in the wind off the sea. We, the troops, were sleek, well fed, and well rested. Only Teague and Somerville-Start fretted. Indeed, Teague seemed almost unhinged with frustration. He repeatedly asked Colonel O’Dell to put him up for a commission in another regiment, but O’Dell always regretfully refused. He had seen the battalion’s ranks casually plundered for years and was not prepared to allow further privations.

I myself was happy enough. I seemed to be in a kind of agreeable limbo, stuck in a society and a place that made few inconvenient demands
on me. I had no idea what the future held and at the time I did not care. I had even seen my first dead man, a sergeant in A Company who had been run over by a Commer truck bringing in two tons of potatoes to the cookhouse. I had changed physically too. I had reached what I later discovered was to be my full height—five feet nine inches, I had filled out and was now thickish set with a solid, well-muscled body. The moustache I had started growing the weekend I left Charlbury was a familiar feature in my shaving mirror each morning: thick, dense, neatly clipped, glossy. I looked older than my years. The main bugbear in my life was the dog, Ralph, which as the weeks passed seemed to become perversely more fond of me. Never had a man shown less feeling for an animal than I, but my very indifference seemed to act as a goad. Even while eating bread and jam from Teague’s fingers, the dog would pause—munching—and glance round to confirm I was in the company.

I walked down the lane towards the dunes. Behind me I heard a rattle of pebbles and a familiar hoarse panting. I looked round. That blunt terrier’s snout, those moist idiot eyes. Louise must have let him go too soon. I picked up some stones and threw them at him. One hit his rump and he squealed. His tail wagged with masochistic pleasure. I set off. He trotted three yards behind me.

I climbed up a sand path that led to the crest of the dunes. It was a cloudy day, shadowless, with a diffused silver light. The tide was out. I sat down, lit a cigarette and stared at the pewter sea. Life was settled, routine, ordered—but I was in turmoil. I was in love again. In love with a girl called Huguette.

In our first stint in the Nieuport trenches we had been called back twice to brigade reserve at Wormstroedt. Wormstroedt was a large village, or a small town, some twenty miles behind the front line. Before the war it had enjoyed modest prosperity owing to the siting there of a tobacco factory. This was now empty, one wing of it destroyed by bombardment during the German advance of 1914. Here, we were billeted in tall airless rooms smelling strongly of tobacco. We slept in low wooden beds, sixty to a room like a vast dormitory. Leave in Wormstroedt was perferable to our off-duty hours in St. Idesbalde, if only because we were freer to roam around. There was a cinema set up in a tent in the shattered main square and a good dozen cafés and restaurants. Men of the 13th tended to patronize a large
estaminet
conveniently close to the factory. It was run by an extended Belgian family who were doing well out of the war. They had been swift to adapt to the
tastes of the British soldier. Fried eggs and chipped potatoes were the staple diet, and it was not unusual for us to order up to six fried eggs at a time. You could also eat bread and pickled mackerel, or bacon, or brawn, bread and margarine with jam or cheese, rice pudding or sponge pudding with jam. They even made tea—and this was Huguette’s job. The tea was brewed in large copper vats and liberally sweetened. Milk was added by punching holes in several tins of condensed milk and dropping them into the stewing tea. The paper labels floated off the tins to form an unusual, brightly colored scum on the surface.

Huguette was the daughter, or cousin, or niece of the owner. I think she was sixteen or seventeen. She was plump; even at that age a tender double chin hung damply below her jaw. She was dark-haired and had a distinct moustache of tiny fine hairs on her top lip. But she was pretty in a sulky, spoiled way. I can see her now, impassively puncturing condensed milk tins with something that looked like a steel marlinespike and tossing them over her shoulder into the sandy pool of simmering tea without a backward glance.

The
estaminet
was capacious and always crowded. Over a hundred people could fit into it without difficulty. On my first visit I waited at the head of the queue while Huguette milked a new batch of tea. She had been working all day. Her shapeless lime-green dress, tight in the armpits, was damp with fresh sweat I could smell it, clear and thin, through the strata of odors—smoke, grease, egg, tea—that suffused the atmosphere. I stood beside her, estimating the size of her breasts, inhaling it. Her sharp smell seemed to prod at my lungs like a stick. She stirred the tea vat with a three-foot wooden ladle. The condensed milk cans clanked dully in the dun liquid.

“
C’est formidable
 …” I said. “
Le thé. Pour le soif
”