The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1

by Beryl Bainbridge

  Two mornings ago Dr Potter heard that a concert party, made up of men from a rifle brigade quartered in the region of Galata Point, was to visit the camp. It was thought that it would boost morale, the cholera having now seized such a hold and still no date given for departure to the Crimea. Quite what might be offered by way of entertainment wasn’t known, though rumour had spread that two soldiers of the line, previously belonging to a circus troupe in Paris, would be among the performers. Expectations were raised by the hammering into the ground of two stout poles some distance from each other, a length of wire strung taut between the two.

  That evening, having received news of the forthcoming diversion, several French officers invaded the camp and caused Dr Potter inconvenience. According to him, he was fast asleep when the fastenings of his tent were wildly shaken. Rising from his mattress, Dr Potter asked what the commotion was about. He received no sensible reply, beyond being told to hurry up and that he shouldn’t take all night. Puzzled, he emerged into the field, at which the intruders rushed inside without so much as a by your leave, and began turfing his belongings out into the darkness. Someone, either by mistake or from mischief, had told the officers that the tent did duty as a brothel. Dr Potter, still in his night-shirt, demanded an apology, and received none. This considerably upset him, as he has always held the French to be more civilised in their manners than the English. To make matters worse, one of the officers attempted to kiss him.

  I spent the following morning helping to look after the orphaned children, of which there are now twenty or so, five being hardly more than babies. Of this number, half are genuine orphans, both parents having died, the rest unacknowledged by their fathers and abandoned by their mothers. Arrangements are in hand to have them taken back to England, but as yet transportation is not available. I don’t find it easy to be with them, and would rather be doing different work. It’s hard to love other people’s children, particularly such scrawny and ill-featured ones as these. Fortunately, they are chiefly in the care of a good woman, wife of a sergeant, who has recently lost both her offspring from fever. I marvel at her fortitude. She tells me she feels tenderness through pretending the unfortunates are her own, and that I should do the same. She means well, and I hide from her how my heart leaps with terror at the thought.

  In the afternoon one of the little ones crawled too near the fire and burnt its hand. I took it to Georgie, but the moment I entered the hospital tent he waved me away. He was with Dr Hall, principal medical officer of the expeditionary force, who had ridden out from Varna. The sergeant’s wife plastered the child’s hand with mutton fat, and rocked it to sleep.

  When Georgie emerged, he looked subdued. He said Dr Hall was a tyrant and didn’t know how to deal with people. He wanted too much done, too quickly. Nine men had died in the night, two only an hour before the medical officer’s arrival, and he hadn’t had time to write up the necessary reports. Dr Hall had called him incompetent in front of the men. He’d also flown into a terrible bate because most of the orderlies were drunk. He’d said it was up to Georgie to disabuse them of the notion that drink would ward off the cholera.

  Dr Potter said that Georgie should stand up for himself and not allow the likes of Dr Hall to brow-beat him. ‘You should have protested,’ he argued.

  ‘I did,’ Georgie said. ‘But he shouted me down.’

  ‘It’s disgraceful,’ spluttered Dr Potter. ‘You do the work of ten men.’

  Then Georgie, being the way he is, abruptly did an about turn and said Hall was doing the work of twenty men and that he wouldn’t have his job for all the tea in China. Later, he respectfully escorted his superior as far as the dirt road beyond the camp.

  When he returned, Dr Potter suggested he should rest for an hour. At first Georgie said it was out of the question, though he’d been up all night and could scarce keep his eyes open. When he relented, I made to go into the tent with him, but he pushed me away, muttering he must be left alone. I reckon it was because I had my menstrual flow. He has a sensitive stomach for that sort of thing, in spite of being a doctor and used to blood. Five minutes later Dr Potter joined him, and I could hear the murmur of their voices. I do understand that Georgie prefers the companionship of his own sex, men being so afraid of women, but sometimes I almost wish he’d fall sick, so that I could look after him.

  The concert party entered the camp in daylight, marching behind a bullock cart piled high with musical instruments and a quantity of painted scenery. I was at the spring washing clothes when they passed. We have a servant, of sorts, a Greek boy hired by Georgie in Scutari, who is meant to do such tasks, but he is believed to have a woman in another part of the camp and often goes missing. Dr Potter says he ought to be got rid of; Georgie, soft-hearted as always, won’t hear of it. I don’t mind doing the washing; it gives me pleasure to swill the dirt from Georgie’s shirt.

  That evening he insisted we took dinner together, which was his way of saying he was sorry for his earlier brusqueness. He doesn’t usually relish eating with me, on account of my failure to disguise appetite. The boarding school I was sent to taught me the right cutlery to use, yet failed to instil what he calls the correct attitude to the table. At home, if I’m invited out with him and Annie he insists I eat before we go, as I haven’t the knack of picking at food, possibly because I went so short of it in earlier days. Here, thankfully, we have only one dish and a spoon, and are required to devour everything very fast, otherwise the flies settle on it.

  Mrs Yardley and her colonel ‘dined’ with us, as they were staying on to attend the concert. They were obliged to bring their own food, our cooking pot being on the small side and our rations rather low. The provision men don’t come to the camp as often as they once did, on account of the sickness.

  The colonel insisted on sitting beside me, which was annoying as he has a nervous habit of jerking his knee against whoever is placed next to him. He and Georgie discussed what Dr Hall, in the middle of his bullying, had referred to as the infernal muddle of the war. The initial object of the campaign – to prevent the Russians taking Constantinople – having already been accomplished by the unaided efforts of the Turks, he’d heard it was proposed to lay siege to Sebastopol.

  ‘We have to do something,’ argued the colonel. ‘We can hardly turn tail and go home, not after all the flag waving and drum beating.’

  ‘But when?’ demanded Georgie. ‘This year, next year … when?’ In Dr Hall’s opinion the delay was a direct result of the ditherings of the government and the conflict raging within the High Command, neither authority having anything other than the vaguest notion as to the possible strength of the Russian forces. The decision on when to make a move had been shifted on to the shoulders of Lord Raglan, now housed in a cockroach-infested villa in Varna, mind rocking under the realisation that his supplies were wholly inadequate and his army decimated by disease.

  ‘He has only one hand in the muddle,’ announced the colonel. ‘He lost the other at Waterloo, along with his arm.’

  ‘Cockroaches,’ shuddered Mrs Yardley. ‘Now he’ll know what the rest of us endure.’

  ‘I speak confidentially,’ Georgie said. ‘But I was given to understand by Hall that over eight hundred men have perished this month. He recommends our own immediate removal to higher ground.’

  ‘Where the French are,’ said the colonel. ‘And they too are dying.’

  ‘Dulce bellum inexpertis,’ put in Dr Potter. Mrs Yardley promptly nodded earnestly, as though she understood, which stopped Dr Potter from his usual helpful translation and left two of us in the dark.

  The entertainment commenced an hour later. Dr Potter declined to come with us, thinking the word concert implied a diet of music. A makeshift stage, consisting of ammunition boxes, had been constructed close to the lower lake. It was illuminated by a row of lanterns hung along the wire stretched between the previously erected poles, thus dashing the hopes of those anticipating the thrills of a tightrope act.

  The scener
y was both ingenious and artistic, being composed of a folding screen painted on either side, the one depicting the interior of a railway carriage with a window cut in it, the reverse showing a splendid portrait of Queen Victoria with a lion at her feet.

  The concert began with a novel rendering of ‘She Wore a Wreath of Roses’, the ‘she’ of the title, simpering within the railway carriage, represented by a stout soldier dressed in female clothing and wearing on his head an absurd circlet of vine leaves, the grapes dangling about his ears. A second soldier stood in the frame of the window and sang to the plucking of a banjo. Out in the darkness a tambourine jangled.

  The laughter and cheering that accompanied the first and second verse was enthusiastic enough, but when it came to the last—

  And once again I see that brow,

  No bridal wreath was there …

  (here the banjo player snatched away the coronet of grapes and planted a pair of women’s drawers in its place)

  The widow’s sombre cap conceals

  Her once luxuriant hair;

  She weeps in silent solitude

  —the words were entirely drowned in the merriment of all concerned. So great was the hubbub that the songsters were obliged to enact it all over again, with the audience joining in the chorus, though the words were different. When I asked Mrs Yardley about this she said the army had their own version and didn’t I think the original lent itself to double entendre.

  This so puzzled and occupied me – I wondered whether the women’s drawers gave a clue – that I scarcely took notice of the next two items on the programme, one of which was a military song and the other a juggling act, the latter performer being booed off the stage and his skittles thrown after him. This cruel response was possibly due to the circumstances in which we find ourselves; far from home and stalked by death, there is a need to be heard.

  The ballad that followed had a curious and wondrous effect on Georgie. It was called ‘Saved by a Child’ and was very suspect, about a man grown tired of being bound to the earth and earthly things, sitting in a church watching a child. The man couldn’t bring himself to pray, on account of being world weary, until the child’s singing began to melt his sophisticated heart.

  Half-way through this sentimental verbiage, Georgie reached for my hand. He doesn’t drink any more, so I was startled. I didn’t respond, not right away, in case I put him off. He whispered, ‘Myrtle, dear Myrtle, forgive me.’

  ‘For what?’ I asked.

  ‘For everything,’ he said. ‘I give you so little time.’

  ‘Your work is important, Georgie.’

  ‘That’s no excuse,’ he said, and added, ‘I’ll come to you later.’

  Then I pressed his hand, out of love, not forgiveness.

  In the interval, mad with happiness, I ran to fetch Dr Potter from his solitude. He was searching himself for lice by the light of a candle. Impressed by my gaiety, he shook his clothes into place and agreed to join the party. Georgie shifted his seat to afford him room, leaving me squashed against the colonel who was drinking wine from the bottle. His knee jerked worse than ever, but what did I care?

  We were a quarter of the way through the second half – Dr Potter was slapping his stout thighs with delight and carelessly swigging the colonel’s wine – when the fire-eater came on. He was dressed in a spectacular tunic of scale armour embroidered on the breast with a green dragon belching flame. Underneath he wore tights, and some bright sparks shouted out they admired his legs. With his wig of black ringlets and the rouge on his cheeks, he could have passed for a girl, and a handsome one at that, if it hadn’t been for his moustache, which was curled up into two stiff points. He was featured within the railway carriage, where he set ablaze a length of tow placed on a plate before him. ‘Pardon me,’ he called out, ‘while I partake of a light supper,’ and forking the burning stub into his mouth, puffed out fire. He did this twice, and chewed the tow all up, or, at least, we never saw him spit any out. He did the same with some sealing wax, and bits of scarlet dripped to his chin and went on burning, which was more satisfactory. Then an assistant came on carrying a bag labelled gunpowder and proceeded to help him off with his tunic and wig. He had dark hair underneath and a pale smooth body. The gunpowder was genuine enough; an officer, picked at random, was hauled up to confirm its authenticity.

  The fire-eater hunched his shoulders, poked his head forward, tortoise fashion, and stretching his arms out sideways stood as though prepared to carry our Lord’s Cross. In each fist he clenched what was pronounced to be an onion. The assistant, taking his time, opened the bag, made a show of peering inside, and shuddered. The fire-eater hollered out that he was feeling the chill and urged him to hurry. A heap of powder was poured into the hollow between his shoulders, then, like a farmer sowing seeds, his accomplice trailed the blue-grey dust the length of those spread arms. Finally, he turned the fire-eater round so that his back was to us. A lighted taper was handed through the cut-out window. The assistant took it, held it aloft for all to see, and slowly brought it down.

  The audience had gone quiet – you could hear the frogs croaking in the reeds beside the lake. I peeped to look at Georgie. He was craning forward, frowning.

  As the gunpowder flashed, the crowd jerked in shock; a fuzz of blue flame sizzled along each arm as far as the fire-eater’s fists; smoke curled out of his uncurling fingers and tatters of burnt onion dropped to the stage. He didn’t appear to have hurt himself, though he kept his hands held up when he took his bow, like children do when their palms have been whipped.

  The colonel said it was a damn dangerous thing to try, and there was no trickery in it. He was lucky not to have had an arm blown off. Had the fellow lost his nerve and lifted his head by a fraction, his hair would have caught fire. I turned to gauge what Georgie made of it, but he wasn’t there. I asked Mrs Yardley if she had seen him and she said he’d rushed off thinking he recognised someone.

  The concert party finale thrilled us all. The troupe, minus the fire-eater and the juggler, and swelled by a dozen or more soldiers of the Rifle Brigade, clambered up on to the boards and stood to attention while they lustily sang of death in battle. Dr Potter blew his nose violently, a sure sign he was moved, which was unusual bearing in mind his aversion to melody. It was the boy bugler’s plaintive accompaniment to the twice-repeated line, Enough they murmur o’er my grave, He like a soldier fell, that stirred the heartstrings most.

  How strange it was to be encamped in a foreign land, Queen Victoria plumply gazing into the mist-wreathed night, the voices ringing out beneath the hidden stars! How portentous the message, how wrapped in sentiment the cheapness of life!

  Dr Potter thanked me for forcing him to be there. He said it was good for men to weep. He and Mrs Yardley swayed as they walked. We tripped over two figures on the ground, one still moaning, the other cold. The colonel strode off to alert the stretcher bearers, but when they came they were staggering in drink. ‘At night all cats are grey,’ quoted Dr Potter, and clung to Mrs Yardley for support.

  I left them as soon as politeness allowed. Once in the tent I cleaned myself as best I could, wiping my armpits and other, more secret places. Then I extinguished the lantern light and waited. Georgie is coming, I whispered.

  I fancied I could smell onions, though it may have been the memory of the fire-eater’s act that haunted my nose.

  I waited a long time. The human noises died away and the frogs croaked again. Sometimes I floated off and walked through a garden in Cheshire, belly swollen, fingers snipping off blown roses. I could hear the clack of Annie’s knitting needles. Once, Mrs Hardy hovered above me, demanding to know what I’d done with the tiger-skin rug. A pearl of mercury slid down my eyes, but it was only a diamond of light shining through a hole in the canvas.

  When at last I rose and emerged into the open, the mist was rolling away across the lake and dawn streaked the sky. Not a yard distant a man and a woman lay on their backs in the dew, she with her legs splayed wide. They we
re sleeping, not dead, for their mouths gaped open and both were snoring. A dog had its snout in Dr Potter’s cooking pot tipped from the fire.

  Georgie was in the medical tent, fast asleep on a straw mattress behind the instrument table. His arm was flung out across the chest of the fire-eater, who, covered in a hospital night-shirt, the rouge still hectic on his cheeks, lay on the bare ground beside him. This close, I knew him; it was the duck-boy. He had a blister on his lip and blobs of sealing wax spattered his beard.

  Behind me a sick man called out for water. He was trying to raise his head, the claw of his hand raking the air. I took no notice and slipped away. He swore after me.

  When reveille sounded I found myself at the lake, though I have no recollection of walking there. By now the crimson flush above the hills had faded into shining day. I stood, resentment wriggling like a worm within my breast. It had been my conceit that it was enough to give love, that to receive it would have altered the nature of my obsession. When passion is mutual, there is always the danger of the fire burning to ashes. Rather than lose love it was better never to have known it.

  A crane sailed down the sky and landed in the reeds. It frightened me that the child who had trailed Master Georgie at a distance was now treading on his heels, clamouring to be noticed. I knew I was in the wrong; Georgie had made no promises, raised no false hopes, and yet … and yet—

  A voice called out, ‘My dear, what a night. Wasn’t it amusing?’ and Mrs Yardley, her hair spilling from its pins and her face creased, waded through the grass. The crane splashed upwards. Then, remembering the sick soldier craving water, misery overflowed and I wept.