скачать книгу бесплатно
The door to the tower was stiff and would not open. I pushed it hard, too hard, and it flew open, the wind catching it suddenly. I stepped out into the welcome warmth of day, dazzled by the light. At first glance I could see nothing. But then there he was. Big Joe was lying curled up under the shade of the parapet. He seemed fast asleep, his thumb in his mouth as usual. I didn’t want to wake him too suddenly. When I touched his hand he did not wake. When I shook him gently by the shoulder he did not move. He was cold to my touch, and pale, deathly pale. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing or not, and Charlie was calling up at me from below. I shook him again, hard this time, and screamed at him in my fear and panic. “Wake up, Joe. For God’s sake, wake up!” I knew then that he wouldn’t, that he’d come up here to die. He knew you had to die to go to Heaven, and Heaven was where he wanted to be, to be with Bertha again, with Father too.
When he stirred a moment later, I could hardly believe it. He opened his eyes. He smiled. “Ha, Tommo,” he said. “Ungwee. Ungwee.” They were the most beautiful words I’d ever heard. I sprang to my feet and leaned out over the parapet. Charlie was down there on the church path looking up at me.
“We’ve found him, Charlie,” I called down. “We’ve got him. He’s up here. He’s all right.”
Charlie punched the air and yahooed again and again. He yahooed even louder when he saw Big Joe standing beside me and waving. “Charie!” he cried. “Charie!”
Charlie hopped and limped into the church, and only moments later the great tenor bell rang out over the village, scattering the roosting pigeons from the tower, and sending them wheeling out over the houses, over the fields. Like the pigeons, Big Joe and I were shocked at the violence of the sound. It blasted our ears, sent a tremor through the tower that we felt through the soles of our feet. Alarmed at all this thunderous clanging, Big Joe looked suddenly anxious, his hands clapped over his ears. But when he saw me laughing, he did the same. Then he hugged me, hugged me so right I thought he was squeezing me half to death. And when he began singing his Oranges and Lemons, I joined in, crying and singing at the same time.
I wanted him to come down with me, but Big Joe wanted to stay. He wanted to wave at everyone from the parapet. People were coming from all over: Mr Munnings, Miss McAllister and all the children were streaming out through the school yard and up towards the church. We saw the Colonel, coming down the road in his car, and could just make out the Wolfwoman’s bonnet beside him. Best of all we saw Mother and Molly on bicycles racing up the hill, waving at us. Still Charlie rang the bell and I could hear him yahooing down below between each dong, and imagined him hanging on to the rope and riding with it up in the air. Still Big Joe sang his song. And the swifts soared and swooped and screamed all around us, in the sheer joy of being alive, and celebrating, it seemed to me, that Big Joe was alive too.
(#ulink_5c003914-f479-5adb-91ce-aa62649e956a)
I was once told in Sunday school that a church tower reaches up skywards because it is a promise of Heaven. Church towers are different in France. It was the first thing I noticed when I came here, when I changed my world of home for my world of war. In comparison the church towers at home seem almost squat, hiding themselves away in the folds of the fields. Here there are no folds in the fields, only wide open plains, scarcely a hill in sight. And instead of church towers they have spires that thrust themselves skywards like a child putting his hand up in class, longing to be noticed. But God, if there is one, notices nothing here. He has long since abandoned this place and all of us who live in it. There are not many steeples left now. I have seen the one in Albert, hanging down like a broken promise.
Now I come to think of it, it was a broken promise that brought me here, to France, and now to this barn. The mouse is back again. That’s good.
There was a brief time just after we’d found Big Joe when all old hurts and grudges seemed suddenly to be forgiven and forgotten. Forgotten too was all talk of the war in France. No one spoke of anything that day except our search for Big Joe and its happy outcome. Even the Colonel and the Wolfwoman were celebrating with the rest of us up in The Duke. Molly’s mother and father were there too, celebrating with everyone else, and smiling — though being strict chapel people, they didn’t touch a drop of drink. I’d never seen Molly’s mother smile before that. And then the Colonel announced that he was paying for all the drinks. It wasn’t long — it only took a couple of pints — before Farmer Cox began singing. He was still singing when we left; some of the songs were getting a bit rude by then. I was there outside The Duke when Mother went up and thanked the Colonel for his help. He offered us all a lift home in his Rolls Royce! The Peacefuls in the back of the Colonel’s car, and the Wolfwoman in the front, being friendly! We couldn’t believe it, not after all the bad blood between us over the years.
The Colonel broke the spell on the way home, talking about the war, and how the army should be using more cavalry over in France.
“Horses and guns,” he said, “in that order. That’s how we beat the Boers in South Africa. That’s what they should be doing. If I were younger, I’d go myself. They’ll soon be needing every horse they can find, Mrs Peaceful, and every man, too. It’s not going at all well out there.”
Mother thanked him again as he helped us out of the car outside our gate. The Colonel touched his hat and smiled. “Don’t you go running off again, young man,” he said to Big Joe. “You gave us all a terrible fright.” And even the Wolfwoman waved at us almost cheerily as they drove off.
That night Big Joe began coughing. He’d caught a chill and it had gone to his lungs. He was in bed with a fever for weeks afterwards, and Mother hardly left his side, she was so worried.
By the time he was better, the whole episode of his disappearance had been forgotten, overtaken by news in the papers of a great and terrible battle on the Marne, where our armies were fighting the Germans to a standstill, trying desperately to halt their advance through France.
One evening, Charlie and I arrived home from work a little late, having stopped on the way for a drink at The Duke as we often did. In those days, I remember, I had to pretend I liked the beer. The truth was I hated the stuff, but I loved the company. Charlie might have bossed me about on the farm, but after work, up at The Duke, he never treated me like the fifteen-year-old I was, though some of the others did. I couldn’t have them knowing that I hated beer. So I’d force down a couple of pints with Charlie, and often left The Duke a little befuddled in the head. That was why I was woozy when we came home that evening. When I opened the door and saw Molly, sitting there on the floor with her head on Mother’s lap, it seemed I was suddenly back to the day Big Joe had gone missing. Molly looked up at us, and I could see that she had been crying, and that this time it was Mother doing the comforting.
“What is it?” Charlie asked. “What’s happened?”
“You may well ask, Charlie Peaceful,” Mother said. She didn’t sound at all pleased to see us. I wondered at first if she had seen we’d been drinking. Then I noticed a leather suitcase under the windowsill, and Molly’s coat over the back of Father’s fireside chair.
“Molly’s come to stay,” Mother went on. “They’ve thrown her out, Charlie. Her mother and father have thrown her out, and it’s your fault.”
“No!” Molly cried. “Don’t say that. It isn’t his fault. It’s no one’s fault.” She ran over to Charlie and threw herself into his arms.
“What’s happened, Moll?” asked Charlie. “What’s going on?”
Molly was shaking her head as she wept uncontrollably now on his shoulder. He looked at Mother.
“What’s going on, Charlie, is that she’s going to have your baby,” she said. “They packed her case, put her out of the door and told her never to come back. They never want to see her again. She had nowhere else to go, Charlie. I said she was family, that she belongs with us now, that she can stay as long as she likes.”
It seemed an age before Charlie said anything. I saw his face go through all manner of emotions: incomprehension, bewilderment, outrage, through all these at once, and then at last to resolve. He held Molly away from him now and brushed away her tears with his thumb as he looked steadily into her eyes. When he spoke at last, it wasn’t to Molly, but to Mother. “You shouldn’t have said that to Moll, Mother,” he spoke slowly, almost sternly. Then he began to smile. “That was for me to say. It’s our baby, my baby, and Moll’s my girl. So I should have said it. But I’m glad you said it all the same.”
After that Molly became even more one of us than she had been before. I was both overjoyed and miserable at the same time. Molly and Charlie knew how I must have felt, I think, but they never spoke of it and neither did I.
They were married up in the church a short time later. It was a very empty church. There was no one there except the vicar and the four of us, and the vicar’s wife sitting at the back. Everyone knew about Molly’s baby by now, and because of that the vicar had agreed to marry them only on certain conditions: that no bells were to be rung and no hymns to be sung. He rushed through the marriage service as if he wanted to be somewhere else. There was no wedding feast afterwards, only a cup of tea and some fruit cake when we got home.
Shortly afterwards, Mother received a letter from the Wolfwoman saying it had been a marriage of shame; how she had thought of dismissing Molly and only decided against it because, whilst Molly was clearly a weak and immoral girl, she felt she could not in all conscience punish Molly for something that she was sure was much more Charlie’s fault than hers, and that anyway Molly had already been punished enough for her wickedness. Mother read the letter out loud to all of us, then scrunched it up and threw it into the fire — where it belonged, she said.
I moved into Big Joe’s room and slept with him in his bed, which wasn’t easy because he was big and the bed very narrow. He muttered to himself loudly in his dreams, and tossed and turned almost constantly. But, as I lay awake at nights, that was not what troubled me most. In the next room slept the two people I most loved in all the world who, in finding each other, had deserted me. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I thought of them lying in each other’s arms and I wanted to hate them. But I couldn’t. All I knew was that I had no place at home any more, that I would be better off away, and away from them in particular.
I tried never to be alone with Molly for I did not know what to say to her any more. I didn’t stop to drink with Charlie any more at The Duke, for the same reason. On the farm, I took every opportunity that came my way to work on my own, so as to be nowhere near him. I volunteered for any fetching and carrying that had to be done away from the farm. Farmer Cox seemed more than happy for me to do that. He was always sending me off with the horse and cart on some errand or other: bringing back feed from the merchants maybe, fetching the seed potatoes, or perhaps taking a pig to market to sell for him. Whatever it was, I took my time about it and Farmer Cox never seemed to notice. But Charlie did. He said I was skiving off work, but he knew that all I was doing was avoiding him. We knew each other so well. We never argued, not really; perhaps it was because neither of us wanted to hurt the other. We both knew enough hurt had been done already, that more would only widen the rift between us and neither of us wanted that.
It was while I was off “skiving” in Hatherleigh market one morning that I came face to face with the war for the first time, a war that until now had seemed unreal and distant to all of us, a war only in newspapers and on posters. I’d just sold Farmer Cox’s two old rams, and got a good price for them too, when I heard the sound of a band coming down the High Street, drums pounding, bugles blaring. Everyone in the market went running, and so did I.
As I came round the corner I saw them. Behind the band there must have been a couple of dozen soldiers, splendid in their scarlet uniforms. They marched past me, arms swinging in perfect time, buttons and boots shining, the sun glinting on their bayonets. They were singing along with the band: It’s a long way to Tipperary, it’s a long way to go. And I remember thinking it was a good thing Big Joe wasn’t there, because he’d have been bound to join in with his Oranges and Lemons. Children were stomping alongside them, some in paper hats, some with wooden sticks over their shoulders. And there were women throwing flowers, roses mostly, that were falling at the soldiers’ feet. But one of them landed on a soldier’s tunic and somehow stuck there. I saw him smile at that.
Like everyone else, I followed them round the town and up into the square. The band played God Save the King and then, with the Union Jack fluttering behind him, the first sergeant major I’d ever set eyes on got up on to the steps of the cross, slipped his stick smartly under his arm, and spoke to us, his voice unlike any voice I’d heard before: rasping, commanding.
“I shan’t beat about the bush, ladies and gentlemen,” he began. “I shan’t tell you it’s all tickety–boo out there in France — there’s been too much of that nonsense already in my view. I’ve been there. I’ve seen it for myself. So I’ll tell you straight. It’s no picnic. It’s hard slog, that’s what it is, hard slog. Only one question to ask yourself about this war. Who would you rather see marching through your streets? Us lot or the Hun? Make up your minds. Because, mark my words, ladies and gentlemen, if we don’t stop them out in France the Germans will be here, right here in Hatherleigh, right here on your doorstep.”
I could feel the silence all around.
“They’ll come marching through here burning your houses, killing your children, and yes, violating your women. They’ve beaten brave little Belgium, swallowed her up in one gulp. And now they’ve taken a fair slice of France too. I’m here to tell you that unless we beat them at their own game, they’ll gobble us up as well.” His eyes raked over us. “Well? Do you want the Hun here? Do you?”
“No!” came the shout, and I was shouting along with them.
“Shall we knock the stuffing out of them then?”
“Yes!” we roared in unison.
The sergeant major nodded. “Good. Very good. Then we shall need you.” He was pointing his stick now into the crowd, picking out the men. “You, and you and you.” He was looking straight at me now, into my eyes. “And you too, my lad!”
Until that very moment it had honestly never occurred to me that what he was saying had anything to do with me. I had been an onlooker. No longer.
“Your king needs you. Your country needs you. And all the brave lads out in France need you too.” His face broke into a smile as he fingered his immaculate moustache. “And remember one thing, lads — and I can vouch for this — all the girls love a soldier.”
The ladies in the crowd all laughed and giggled at that. Then the sergeant major returned the stick under his arm. “So, who’ll be the first brave lad to come up and take the king’s shilling?”
No one moved. No one spoke up. “Who’ll lead the way? Come along now. Don’t let me down, lads. I’m looking for boys with hearts of oak, lads who love their King and their country, brave boys who hate the lousy Hun.”
That was the moment the first one stepped forward, flourishing his hat as he pushed his way through the cheering crowd. I knew him at once from school. It was big Jimmy Parsons. I hadn’t seen him for a while, not since his family had moved away from the village. He was even bigger than I remembered, fuller in the face and neck, and redder too. He was showing off now just like he always had done in the school yard. Egged on by the crowd, others soon followed.
Suddenly someone prodded me hard in the small of my back. It was a toothless old lady pointing at me with her crooked finger. “Go on, son,” she croaked. “You go and fight. It’s every man’s duty to fight when his country calls, that’s what I say. Go on. Y’ain’t a coward, are you?”
Everyone seemed to be looking at me then, urging me on, their eyes accusing me as I hesitated. The toothless old lady jabbed me again, and then she was pushing me forward. “Y’ain’t a coward, are you? Y’ain’t a coward?” I didn’t run, not at first. I sidled away from her slowly, and then backed out of the crowd hoping no one would notice me. But she did. “Chicken!” she screamed after me. “Chicken!” Then I did run. I ran helter-skelter down the deserted High Street, her words still ringing in my ears.
As I drove the cart out of the market, I heard the band strike up again in the square, heard the echoing thump thump of the big bass drum calling me back to the flag. Filled with shame, I kept on going. All the way back to the farm I thought about the toothless old lady, about what she had said, what the sergeant major had said. I thought about how fine and manly the men looked in their bright uniforms, how Molly would admire me, might even love me, if I joined up and came home in my scarlet uniform, how proud Mother would be, and Big Joe. By the time I was unhitching the horse back at the farm, I was quite determined that I would do it. I would be a soldier. I would go to France and, like the sergeant major said, kick the stuffing out of the lousy Germans. I made up my mind I would break the news to everyone at supper. I couldn’t wait to tell them, to see the look on their faces.
We’d barely sat down before I began. “I was in Hatherleigh this morning,” I said. “Mr Cox sent me to market.”
“Skiving as usual,” Charlie muttered into his soup.
I ignored him and went on. “The army was there, Mother. Recruiting, they were. Jimmy Parsons joined up. Lots of others too.”
“More fool them,” Charlie said. “I’m not going, not ever. I’ll shoot a rat because it might bite me. I’ll shoot a rabbit because I can eat it. Why would I ever want to shoot a German? Never even met a German.”
Mother picked up my spoon and handed it to me. “Eat,” she said, and she patted my arm. “And don’t worry about it, Tommo, they can’t make you go. You’re too young anyway.”
“I’m nearly sixteen,” I said.
“You’ve got to be seventeen,” said Charlie. “They won’t let you join unless you are. They don’t want boys.”
So I ate my soup and said no more about it. I was disappointed at first that I hadn’t had my big moment, but as I lay in bed that night I was secretly more than a little relieved that I wouldn’t be going off to the war, and that by the time I was seventeen it would all be over anyway, as like as not.
A few weeks later the Colonel paid Mother a surprise visit, whilst Charlie and I were out at work. We didn’t hear about it until we got home in the evening and Molly told us. I thought something strange was going on as Mother was unusually preoccupied and quiet at supper. She wouldn’t even answer Big Joe’s questions. Then when Molly got up saying she felt like a walk, and suggested both Charlie and I came with her, I knew for sure something was up. It was a very long time since we’d been out together, just the three of us. If Charlie had asked me, I’d have said no for sure. But it was always more difficult for me to refuse Molly.
We went down to the brook, just like we’d done in the old days whenever we’d wanted to be alone together, where Molly and I had met up so often when I’d been their go-between postman. Molly didn’t tell us until we were sitting either side of her on the river bank, until she had taken each of us by the hand.
“I’m breaking a promise I made to your mother,” she began. “I so much don’t want to tell you this, but I must. You have to know what’s going on. It’s the Colonel. He came in and told her this morning. He said he was only doing what he called his ‘patriotic duty'. He told us that the war was going badly for us, that the country was crying out for men. So he’s decided that now is the time for every able-bodied man who lives or works on his estate, everyone who can be spared, to volunteer, to go off to the war and do his bit for King and country. The estate will just have to manage without them for a while.” I felt Molly’s grip tighten on my hand, and a tremor come into her voice. “He said you’ve got to go, Charlie, or else he won’t let us stay on in the cottage. Your mother protested all she could, but he wouldn’t listen. He just lost his temper. He’ll put us out, Charlie, and he won’t go on employing your mother or me unless you go.”
“He wouldn’t do that, Moll. It’s just a threat,” Charlie said. “He can’t do it. He just can’t.”
“He would,” Molly replied, “and he can. You know he can. And when the Colonel gets it into his head to do something, and he’s in the mood to do it, he will. Look what he did to Bertha. He means it, Charlie.”
“But the Colonel promised,” I said. “And his wife did too before she died. She said she wanted Mother looked after. And the Colonel said we could stay on in the cottage. Mother told us.”
“Your mother reminded him of that,” Molly replied. “And d’you know what he said? He said it had never been a promise as such, only his wife’s wish, and that anyway the war had changed everything. He was making no exceptions. Charlie has to join up or we’ll be out of the cottage at the end of the month.”
We sat there holding hands, Molly’s head on Charlie’s shoulder, as evening fell around us. Molly was sobbing quietly from time to time but none of us spoke. We didn’t need to. We all knew there was no way out of this, that the war was breaking us apart, and that all our lives would be changed for ever. But at that moment, I treasured Molly’s hand in mine, treasured this last time together.
Suddenly, Charlie broke the silence. “I’ll be honest, Moll,” he said. “It’s been bothering me a lot just lately. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t want to go. But I’ve seen the lists in the papers — y’know, all the killed and the wounded. Poor beggars. Pages of them. It hardly seems right, does it, me being here, enjoying life, while they’re over there. It’s not all bad, Moll. I saw Benny Copplestone yesterday. He was sporting his uniform up at the pub. He’s back on leave. He’s been a year or more out in Belgium. He says it’s all right. ‘Cushy,’ he called it. He says we’ve got the Germans on the run now. One big push, he reckons, and they’ll all be running back to Berlin with their tails between their legs, and then all our boys can come home.”
He paused, and kissed Molly on her forehead. “Anyway, it looks like I haven’t got much choice, have I, Moll?”
“Oh Charlie,” Molly whispered. “I don’t want you to go.”
“Don’t worry, girl,” Charlie said. “With a bit of luck I‘ll be back to wet the baby’s head. And Tommo will look after you. He’ll be the man about the place, won’t you, Tommo? And if that silly old fart of a Colonel sticks his lousy head in our front door again when I’m gone, shoot the bastard, Tommo, like he shot Bertha.” And I knew he was only half-joking, too.
I don’t believe I even thought about what I said next. “I’m not staying,” I told them. “I‘m coming with you, Charlie.”
They both tried all they could to dissuade me. They argued, they bullied, but I would not be put off, not this time. I was too young, Charlie said. I said I was sixteen in a couple of weeks and as tall as he was, that all I had to do was shave and talk deeper and I could easily be taken for seventeen. Mother wouldn’t let me go, Molly said. I said I’d run away, that she couldn’t lock me up.
“And who’ll be there to look after us if you both go?” Molly was pleading with me now.
“Who would you rather I look after, Molly,” I replied. “All of you at home who can perfectly well look after yourselves? Or Charlie, who’s always getting himself into nasty scrapes, even at home?” When they had no answer to this, they knew I’d won, and I knew it too. I was going to fight in the war with Charlie. Nothing and no one could stop me now.
I’ve had two long years to think on why I decided like that, on the spur of the moment, to go with Charlie. In the end I suppose it was because I couldn’t bear the thought of being apart from him. We’d lived our lives always together, shared everything, even our love for Molly. Maybe I just didn’t want him to have this adventure without me. And then there was that spark in me newly kindled by those scarlet soldiers marching bravely up the High Street in Hatherleigh, the steady march of their feet, the drums and bugles resounding through the town, the sergeant major’s stirring call to arms. Perhaps he had awoken in me feelings I never realised I’d had before, and that I had certainly never talked about. It was true that I did love all that was familiar to me. I loved what I knew, and what I knew was my family, and Molly, and the countryside I’d grown up in. I did not want any enemy soldier ever setting foot on our soil, on my place. I would do all I could to stop him and to protect the people I loved. And I would be doing it with Charlie. Deep down though, I knew that, more than Charlie, more than my country or the band or the sergeant major, it was that toothless old woman taunting me in the square. “Y’ain’t a coward, are you? Y’ain’t a coward?”
The truth was that I wasn’t sure I wasn’t, and I needed to find out.
I had to prove myself. I had to prove myself to myself.
Two days later, two days of parrying Mother’s many attempts to keep me from going, we all went off together to Eggesford Junction Station where Charlie and I were to catch the train to Exeter. Big Joe had not been told anything about us going off to war. We were going away for a while, and we’d be back soon. We didn’t tell him the truth, but we told him no lies either. Mother and Molly tried not to cry because of him. So did we.
“Look after Charlie for me, Tommo,” Molly said. “And look after yourself too.” I could feel the swell of her belly against me as we hugged.
Mother told me to promise to keep clean, to be good, to write home and to come home. Then Charlie and I were on the train — the first train we’d ever been on in our lives, and we were leaning out of the window and waving, only pulling back spluttering and coughing when we were engulfed suddenly in a cloud of sooty smoke. When it cleared and we looked out again, the station was already out of sight. We sat down opposite each other.
“Thanks, Tommo,” said Charlie.
“For what?” I said.
“You know,” he replied, and we both looked out of the window. There was no more to say about it. A heron lifted off the river and accompanied us for a while before veering away from us and landing high in the trees. A startled herd of Ruby Red cows scattered as we passed by, tails high as they ran. Then we were in a tunnel, a long dark tunnel filled with din and smoke and blackness. It seems like I’ve been in that tunnel every day since. So Charlie and I went rattling off to war. It all seems a very long time ago now, a lifetime.
(#ulink_afbc9e7e-b43a-53ef-b56d-82e0537da4fe)
I keep checking the time. I promised myself I wouldn’t, but I can’t seem to help myself. Each time I do it, I put the watch to my ear and listen for the tick. It’s still there, softly slicing away the seconds, then the minutes, then the hours. It tells me there are three hours and forty-six minutes left. Charlie told me once this watch would never stop, never let me down, unless I forgot to wind it. The best watch in the world, he said, a wonderful watch. But it isn’t. If it was such a wonderful watch it would do more than simply keep the time — any old watch can do that. A truly wonderful watch would make the time. Then, if it stopped, time itself would have to stand still, then this night would never have to end and morning could never come. Charlie often told me we were living on borrowed time out here. I don’t want to borrow any more time. I want time to stop so that tomorrow never comes, so that dawn will never happen.
I listen to my watch again, to Charlie’s watch. Still ticking. Don’t listen, Tommo. Don’t look. Don’t think. Only remember.
“Stand still! Look to your front, Peaceful, you horrible little man!” …“Stomach in, chest out, Peaceful.” …“Down in that mud, Peaceful, where you belong, you nasty little worm. Down!” … “God, Peaceful, is that the best they can send us these days? Vermin, that’s what you are. Lousy vermin, and I’ve got to make a soldier of you.”
Of all the names Sergeant “Horrible” Hanley bellowed out across the parade ground at Etaples when we first came to France, Peaceful was by far the most frequent. There were two Peacefuls in the company of course, and that made a difference, but it wasn’t the main reason. Right from the very start Sergeant Hanley had it in for Charlie. And that was because Charlie just wouldn’t jump through hoops like the rest of us, and that was because Charlie wasn’t frightened of him, like the rest of us were.
Before we ever came to Etaples, all of us, including Charlie and me, had had an easy ride, a gentle enough baptism into the life of soldiering. In fact we’d had several weeks of little else but larks and laughter. On the train to Exeter, Charlie said we could easily pass for twins, that I’d have to watch my step, drop my voice, and behave like a seventeen-year-old from now on. When the time came, in front of the recruiting sergeant at the regimental depot, I stood as tall as I could and Charlie spoke up for me, so my voice wouldn’t betray me. “I’m Charlie Peaceful, and he’s Thomas Peaceful. We’re twins and we’re volunteering.”
“Date of birth?”
“5
October,” said Charlie.
“Both of you?” asked the recruiting sergeant, eyeing me a little I thought.
“Course,” Charlie replied, lying easily, “only I’m older than him by one hour.” And that was that. Easy. We were in.
The boots they gave us were stiff and far too big — they hadn’t got any smaller sizes. So Charlie and I and the others clomped about like clowns, clowns in tin hats and khaki. The uniforms didn’t fit either, so we swapped about until they did. There were some faces from home we recognised in amongst the hundreds of strangers. Nipper Martin, a little fellow with sticking-out ears, who grew turnips on his father’s farm in Dolton, and who played a wicked game of skittles up at The Duke. There was Pete Bovey, thatcher and cider drinker from Dolton too, red-faced and with hands like spades, who we’d often seen around the village in Iddesleigh, thumping away at the thatch, high up on someone’s roof. With us too was little Les James from school, son of Bob James, village rat catcher and wart charmer. He had inherited his father’s gifts with rats and warts and he always claimed to be able to know whether it was going to rain or not the next day. He was usually right too. He always had a nervous tic in one eye that I could never stop looking at when we were in class together.
At training camp on Salisbury Plain, living cheek by jowl, we all got to know each other fast, though not necessarily to like one another — that came later. And we got to know our parts, too, how to make believe we were soldiers. We learnt how to wear our khaki costumes — I never did get to wear the scarlet uniform I’d been hoping for — how to iron creases in and iron wrinkles out, how to patch and mend our socks, how to polish our buttons and badges and boots. We learnt how to march up and down in time, how to about-turn without bumping into one another, how to flick our heads right and salute whenever we saw an officer. Whatever we did, we did together, in time — all except for little Les James who could never swing his arms in time with the rest of us, no matter how much the sergeants and corporals bellowed at him. His legs and arms stepped and swung in time with each other, and with no one else, and that was all there was to it. He didn’t seem to mind how often they shouted at him that he had two left feet. It gave us all something to laugh about. We did a lot of laughing in those early days.
They gave us rifles and packs and trenching shovels. We learnt to run up hills with heavy packs, and how to shoot straight. Charlie didn’t have to be taught. On the rifle range he proved to be far and away the best shot in the company. When they gave him his red marksman’s badge I was so proud of him. He was pretty pleased himself, too. Even with the bayonets it was still a game of make-believe. We’d have to charge forward screaming whatever obscenities we knew — and I didn’t know many, not then — at the straw-filled dummies. We’d plunge our bayonets in up to the hilt, swearing and cursing the filthy Hun as we stabbed him, twisting the blade and pulling it out as we’d been taught. “Go for the stomach, Peaceful. Nothing to get hung up on in there. Jab. Twist. Out.”
Everything in the army had to be done in lines or rows. We slept in long lines of tents, sat on privies in rows. Not even the privy was private, I learnt that very quickly. In fact nowhere was private any more. We lived every moment of every day together, and usually in lines. We lined up together for shaves, for food, for inspections. Even when we dug trenches, they had to be in lines, straight trenches with straight edges, and we had to dig fast, too, one company in competition with another. We poured sweat, our backs ached, our hands were permanently raw with blisters. “Faster!” the corporals shouted. “Deeper! You want to get your head blowed off, Peaceful?”
“No, Corporal.”
“You want to get your arse blowed off, Peaceful?”
“No, Corporal.”
“You want to get your nuts blowed off, Peaceful?”
“No, Corporal.”
