The Somme Stations (11 page)

‘I don’t see
your
fucking stripe,’ he said.

Well, we were right back in the Bootham Hotel, with Oamer in place of the Chief. The difference was that the Chief could lay out any man. I walked towards Dawson; he walked towards me. I heard the ocean creaking, the wind ramming the walls, the strange whirlings of hot air within the stove. Part of me thought: I’ll be in France within the week. I had my passage booked. Giant fucking Saxons will be waiting to put my lights out. For a certainty, one of them’s going to succeed – and the condemned man doesn’t have to take lip from anyone. As we closed, Dawson said, ‘Here comes the constabulary,’ and
he was holding his pint glass in such a way that I couldn’t tell whether he meant to drink from it or crown me with it. I ducked back; he ducked back; I came forward again with fists raised; Dawson came forwards likewise, but then he ducked
back
again for no good reason, slipped and cracked his head on one of the barrels.

‘You’ll pay for that, copper,’ he said, and I was caught between laughing and looking out for a bit of assistance, because Dawson had smashed his glass in the fall, and he was coming at me with the jagged edge of it.

‘You should never drink,’ I said.

‘It’s the likes of you that drive me to it, copper,’ said Dawson.

I looked down at my hands, and spat on them as we closed again. I didn’t know why, but I’d seen the Chief do it. I put my fists forward, and the broken glass, which Dawson happened to be swinging at that moment whisked against the edge of my right hand. There was a line of blood over the two outermost knuckles. Dawson had seen it; he looked … I would say surprised. I don’t believe any other man in the hall had noticed the blood, but a moment later it was just … people in motion, the room turning round, boots trampling on the broken glass, the roaring of the storm all around. I couldn’t get a belt in at Dawson, and he couldn’t get one in at me. The two of us were muffled by others … and it was Oliver Butler who was between us: Oliver Butler and Oamer, and I believed that even young Tinsley was involved. But it was Butler who’d come in first, and kept Dawson from me.

Dawson sat down on the edge of the stage, dazed, shaking his head. Oamer walked over to him, and a deal was struck between them. Dawson would have one more pint then go off. Meantime, Oliver Butler walked (dead straight, for he could hold his beer) over to his brothers, who were wrestling near the stove – which seemed to have been brought on by the sight of the other scrap. Butler said, ‘Time for the boys to turn in now,’
and a deal was struck there, too:

‘One more go on t’ ’oops, Ol,’ said Andy, or Roy. (They called their brother ‘Ol’, his full name being too much of a mouthful in their rapid patter.)

The two hurried back to the board, and played again in the way they’d started out the last time. Andy pitched his three hoops as Roy yelled, ‘Missed, Andy-lad … Missed Andy-lad … Missed Andy-lad,’ then Roy started
his
turn. When the first hoop missed, and Andy shouted, ‘Missed, Roy-boy!’ Oamer held up his hands:

‘We’ll take the rest as read, I think.’

They paid him no mind, and completed the ritual. Oliver then asked them, ‘Do the boys need to pay a visit?’

The pair clapped their caps on their heads, then one of them turned and opened the door. When they saw the storm, they both said ‘Oh mother!’ before dashing out into it with great enthusiasm. A few minutes later, they came back laughing (and sodden), and trooped off to the back rooms, with Oliver Butler following.

‘Rum,’ observed Oamer, who was standing near the stove, pipe in hand, and I wondered what it would take to stir him up. Nothing had done so far.

At quarter after ten, he and I put out the lamps, all except one, and when Oamer went off to his kip, I settled down by this remaining light with the
Yorkshire Post
, since I was too squiffed for
The Count of Monte Cristo
, which I had in fact yet to start reading.

But I couldn’t concentrate, so I examined my cut knuckle. The cut would be practically gone by morning. My mind was full of thoughts of France. I stood up, rounded up the stray glasses and put them near the barrels on the stage. The stove was still burning, and the door was open. I closed it, in case sparks might blow out. Oamer had left the message from Captain Quinn about our posting, and the list of valorous railway
-men folded together on the table top, and I didn’t touch those. I then made for the warren of rooms at the rear. The men slept on their groundsheets with greatcoats over, and folded tunics for pillows. I searched out an unoccupied room with a lit candle in my hand. All the doors were ajar, or not there at all, and it was like a little exhibition of sleeping men. Young Tinsley and Dawson were both well away in the first two booths, while Scholes slept with a sort of smile on his face – music running through his head, perhaps, and not thoughts of France. I’d not seen him smile since the day of his enlistment. One thing Oamer and Butler had in common: their quarters were neat, and they both kept hair brushes by their pillows. The next room was empty, and that was because the twins had shared, and they both occupied the next one along. They lay down next to each other, but were not asleep. They had
not
made pillows of their tunics, and their discarded uniforms lay in a trail between the door and where they lay. There was a candle stub between them, and as I looked in (neither saw me, I was certain of it), one of the pair blew it out.

‘I see it’s gone dark in here,’ said the other.

‘You can’t
see
in the dark,’ said the first, and that set them both spluttering with laughter.

My own room smelt of distemper; it held three pasteboard boxes full of old screws. It had a little window, too. I looked through it, and the storm was still there.

I was woken by the sound of a motor; I stood and walked over to the window. There was a guilty look about the weather, as though it was aware of having overdone it the night before. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see the tangled wrecks of half a dozen ships on the sand, but there was only the gentlest breeze, a milkiness to the waters, and a War Department van pulling to a halt. It was the breakfast bloke from the farm. I was bursting for a piss, but otherwise feeling not too bad,
considering. I pulled on my boots and walked out, past the gallery of sleepers. All the blokes seemed arranged as when I’d turned in, down to the trail of clothes leading between the door of the twins’ room and the twins themselves.

The bloke had the back of his van open and the hot boxes were stacked in there.

‘Want a hand bringing it in?’ I said.

‘Aye,’ he said, in a thoughtful sort of way.

‘Hold on, I’ll just go to the jakes.’

Three minutes later we set about it.

‘How’s Cobble Farm?’ I enquired, as we loaded the stuff onto the trestle table.

‘Well, it’s covered in shit,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I like it.’

Two empty beer glasses stood on the table. I thought I’d cleared the lot away the night before – I was
certain
I had done. Also, I had left the two papers – Quinn’s message and the list of valorous railwaymen – together, but they were now separate on the table top.

‘Bit blowy last night, eh?’ the bloke was saying.

The stove door was open as well, yet I’d closed it the night before. It was all ashes in there – all except a scrap of paper at the front. I fished it out. There were printed words on it: ‘London, E.C.’, then, underneath, ‘Telephone – 2087 HOLBORN’. The address was familiar, somehow. I looked up at the stage. All the kit bags and rifles were there as before.

‘Oh,’ the food bloke was saying, ‘question from the sentry blokes up top: did the kid get here all right?’

‘What kid?’

‘Kid on a bike.’

‘William Harvey? He’s at the farm.’

‘No, pal.
I
was at the farm, and I had the barn to myself.’

‘He was meant to go there.’

‘Well
he
thought different. He came by the sentry post here last night, or this morning anyhow – half past midnight sort of
time. Said he was under orders to rejoin his unit after completing a special duty. He was on a push bike. Hold on … Did he not pitch up?’

The blokes were filtering in from the back rooms, putting on their tunics: Oamer, Scholes and Oliver Butler. A little while later came the twins and Alfred Tinsley, all fixing their caps on their heads. Roy Butler had a fag on the go. ‘Anyone seen Young William?’ I called out, and we went through it all again. He wasn’t
supposed
to be here. When Dawson appeared, he admitted to feeling ‘pretty cheap’; otherwise he was amiability himself. Had he seen William?

‘No, mate, I’ve been asleep.’

Half an hour later, breakfast had been eaten at the trestle table, but Oamer did not feel able to light his pipe. By all accounts, nobody had seen the boy, or heard any disturbance in the night. All the blokes looked grave, except the twins, who were out of hand as usual, occasionally laughing. Quinn then appeared, together with his opposite number, Leo Tate. As they entered, Quinn was saying to Tate, ‘And this morning not a cloud in the sky! Couldn’t be more splendid!’

But the moment he saw us, he was in fits, and he told Oamer to fall us in. Quinn held a cap in his hand. It bore the badge of our battalion, and the man who’d lost it would find himself on a charge. Quinn had discovered the cap near the sea wall, or, as he put it, ‘Captain Tate’s revetment’. It was one of the small-sized ones, and it was a disgrace that no name was written inside it, but this was not such a disgrace really: every man was supposed to have written his name on the band of the cap, but the ink would be repeatedly wiped off by sweat. Quinn surveyed us. Every man present undoubtedly had a cap on his head. Quinn enquired, ‘Corporal Prendergast, where’s Private Harvey?’

So Quinn, too, had expected the lad to be with us.

‘If I might have a word with you about that, sir,’ said Oamer.

We were put at ease, and I heard snatches of the conflab. Oamer explained that the boy had come past the sentries in the small hours.

‘Well yes, I know that,’ said Quinn. ‘The sentries told us all about it when Captain Tate, myself and the other officers came back from the village. He’d gone through a little while before.’

I thought: they must have been going some at Kilnsea, to be returning at that hour.

‘He was under a misapprehension as to his orders, sir,’ said Oamer.

‘So it appeared to me,’ said Quinn, ‘so it appeared to me. But he’s not here now, you say? How is that possible? Once on Spurn, he can’t have left it. I mean, the only way off is via the sentries … except by
boat
, of course.’

He eyed Oamer sadly for a while, before saying, ‘I think we’d better have a scout about.’

As Oamer was giving orders for the search, I saw Quinn looking down at the cap in his hand. He looked up and said to me – since my eyes just happened to meet his at that moment – ‘You know, there’s
blood
on the inside of this cap.’ I thought of the bit of Latin on the cap badge. Oamer had translated it for me: ‘Whither the fates call.’

Under the high blue sky, we combed the peninsula – us and the RE men both. We searched individually, so that every man was alone with his thoughts, and I wondered how many were inclining my way – towards a suspicion of foul play.

I searched both sides of the peninsula up towards the Narrows, and there were two more of the kids from the school practising semaphore. I watched, mesmerised, as they whirled their great red flags into position and then froze, blank-faced, before whirling them into a different position.

It was about half after midday when I heard the first shout, which came from Scholes. He’d found the bike – it had evidently been lying in a dune a little way inland of the revetment.
We all had a look at it for a while, leaving it in place for whoever would be investigating (our regimental military police, as I imagined). Then, on Quinn’s orders, we spread out again for a further search.

The second shout went up half an hour later, and it came from Oamer, who’d been walking along the revetment. He was bending over and looking into the sea. He bent rather than crouched – bent as a woman does, and I could see his great, khaki-covered arse. Walking fast over the dunes towards him, I thought: you don’t normally look at the sea in that way. Oamer was making rather a dainty inspection, of the sort more suited to the examination of frog spawn in a village pond; he was next to one of the iron bollards, the one with a length of rope attaching to it. I followed the rope with my eye as I took up position next to Oamer, and looked where he looked.

In the water, the rope held the just-submerged body of Harvey by virtue of having twisted itself once around his middle. It held him with no effort in the beautifully clear water, which slopped against the sea wall in a relaxed and casual sort of way. The motion of the waves would carry Fusilier Harvey two feet or so away from the wall, then two feet back – out and back, out and back, but never more than two feet either way. Oamer was saying nothing, but breathing hard, either because he was concentrating, somehow, on the body in the water, or just because he was not in the peak of condition. Five minutes later, we had the entire unit around us, and Harvey was stretched out on the sea wall.