A Man of his Time

by Alan Sillitoe

  The forlorn yet familiar hooting of steam whistles from Radford station swamped him with the reality of what he had done, and he could hardly bear to face his mother without explaining Burton’s perfidy to her, which he could not do. Lighting a cigarette, he decided to put off the encounter by calling at the sawmill to say he wouldn’t be working there anymore.

  ‘I knew you’d enlist, Oliver.’ Brown asked him into the parlour. ‘I told my wife only an hour ago we’d be losing you. “A fine upstanding chap like young Burton is bound to go now that his country needs him,” I said, didn’t I, Doris?’

  She sat in an armchair, as if not at all agreeing with what her husband had said. ‘We’ll be sorry to see the back of you,’ he went on. ‘You’re the best chap we’ve got. But it’s always the best who go first.’ He felt in his pocket. ‘Here’s a little something to help you on the road. And when you come back, as I know you will, you’ll always find work here.’

  Such a time was too far off to imagine, or to hope for. He’d heard Brown talking to the foreman about buying a couple of motor lorries to speed up deliveries, so when he came back there would be no horses left to need looking after. He took the sovereign, shook hands, and turned smartly to go.

  He looked on from the hedge at how busy they were. Thomas plied his fork into a heap of sunburnt weeds at the end of the garden, loaded them on the barrow for burning. Oswald and Burton dug shallow trenches for autumn planting, a reel of string on a stick to get the alignments straight. Burton peered along the line, a twitch of the head. ‘Left a bit. Now a shade to the right.’ He lifted a hand towards Thomas. ‘Weed the marrows when you’ve finished that. I said to the right a bit,’ he shouted to Oswald. ‘Get it straight, can’t you? And Thomas, give them a bit more water from the well.’ He saw Oliver. ‘There’s plenty to do if you’d like to get stuck in.’

  ‘I’ve enlisted.’

  Burton stood at full height. ‘You’ve what?’

  He plucked a gooseberry from the bush and ate it. ‘I’m a trooper in the South Nottinghamshire Hussars. They’ve taken me on as a shoeing smith, and I’ve got to be back at the drill hall in half an hour.’

  Oswald looked up. ‘What did you want to do that for?’

  ‘There wasn’t much left to do. Burton might know.’

  ‘You don’t do that for anything,’ Oswald said.

  Burton recovered himself. ‘You’re a bigger fool than I took you for.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I’ve done it.’

  ‘Don’t go. I’ll buy you out.’ He would get the money even if he had to sell up at the forge. A young man from Woodhouse had signed on a few years ago after quarrelling with his parents, the worse thing he could have done, the sort of disgrace they would never live down, and now it was Burton’s turn to feel the same. But the young man’s father had been able to get him out by paying five pounds.

  ‘There’s a war on,’ Oliver said, ‘and I’m over twenty-one.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with us. War never did anybody any good.’ If only he’d killed me in the wood, Burton thought. No one on either side of the family had ever ‘gone for a soldier’. Had they done so the service of the dead would have been said over them, no other way to outlive the shame.

  Oliver was no longer sure he had done the right thing. ‘I’ve taken the King’s shilling.’

  ‘Give it back. I’ll pay a lot more to get you out.’

  The girls were eating dinner, and Oliver stood in the doorway to tell them what he had done. Mary Ann turned white, all ten more silent than they had ever been in the same room together.

  ‘If he’d come and told me he was thinking of joining up,’ Burton said, an accurate spit at the bars of the fire, ‘I’d have talked some sense into him.’

  Oliver hoped to calm them. ‘Everybody’s enlisting.’

  ‘That’s even less reason to go. You never do what everybody else is doing.’

  Mary Ann, hands to her face, fell half-fainting into the Windsor chair only Burton ever used. ‘Oh, why did you do it?’

  He no longer wondered, propelled by a force he could neither understand nor control. Everyone was going, all the young men and quite a few of the old, and he wouldn’t be left behind, might well have gone even if he had never met Alma.

  ‘Maybe it’s not so bad.’ Thomas held back tears at his mother’s pain. ‘He’s a blacksmith, and they don’t put them in the firing line.’

  ‘I’ve got to be back at the drill hall soon,’ was all he could say. ‘So I should be off.’

  Edith, Rebecca and Sabina began to cry because their favourite brother was not only leaving home but was setting off for war. ‘Oliver’s going to be a soldier,’ Emily sobbed.

  ‘Stop your blawting.’ Burton too felt wrenched by the misery of Mary Ann, who in her moaning saw her firstborn as a young boy, now on his way to being dead forever. Burton knew that soldiers didn’t come back for years, if ever they did, though he couldn’t say so. ‘He didn’t think of any of us when he took that paltry shilling.’

  Oliver’s tears blended with the girls’ on kissing them goodbye. ‘Edith, you’re the eldest now, so look after the others.’ Mary Ann sat quiet and still at this unexpected and bitter disruption to their lives. ‘Goodbye, Mother. I’ll see you as soon as I can.’

  She stood. ‘And when will that be? I won’t see you again. I know I won’t,’ unable to take in how someone as loving as Oliver could have made such a pitiless move.

  His smile withered. ‘Don’t be daft, Mother. Of course you will.’ How many times had the young hero of a Henty novel said familiar farewells to father, uncaring or tyrannical uncle, or mother? The comparison buoyed him as he offered a hand to Burton. ‘Goodbye, Father.’

  Burton pushed it aside. ‘There’s no call for that.’ He wanted to take the hand, yet couldn’t. If he did he might not see his dearly loved son again. Then he thought how terrible it would be if Oliver never did come back, and he had to live for the rest of his life with the knowledge that he had spurned the goodbye hand. He took it, and pressed it with all the love he could decently show in front of the family, as near to tears as he had ever been. ‘Come back to us soon.’

  Oliver kissed his mother again, and went stricken out of the house. At the gate he looked over the yard in which he had played and worked, and waved to his sisters, brothers and mother who stood around the door to watch him go, Burton’s austere face above their heads.

  Walking down the lane, alone at last, relieved that the news had been given, his youthful spirit reasserted itself, and by the time he reached the railway tunnel, wishing he was on the train that rumbled overhead, he was singing aloud, and happy to be on his way.

  FOURTEEN

  ‘You’re lucky,’ the quartermaster said. ‘A lot of men rushing to the colours have to wait weeks for their uniforms and equipment.’ But the Hussars were the darling regiment of Nottingham, and had all they wanted, so he ought to be proud they had taken him. He put on the khaki and fitted a peaked cap. Winding puttees around his legs wasn’t easy – he didn’t see the sense of them – but patience taught the knack. A small metal horseshoe, prongs pointing downwards, was stitched onto the upper left sleeve of his tunic, the distinguishing sign of a shoeing smith which pleased him because most others had nothing to show for their status.

  It took a fortnight to give him the semblance of a cavalryman, training which normally needed twelve weeks. Footdrill and disciplined equitation was almost a pleasure, and learning to care for horses in the military fashion easy. A course of musketry with the Short Lee Enfield was concurrent with how to handle (and kill with) the sword. Fascinated by maps since the teacher had shown one with the height of Misk Hill – that cursed place he had walked to with Alma – he went downhill into town and bought a pocket manual on how to read them.

  The sergeant was surprised at his ability to estimate distances, soon regarding him as a smart enough soldier to join the regiment in Norfolk. ‘You’ll go up through the ranks like a knife through bu
tter once you’re abroad and we take casualties. You might even end up with a commission before this war’s done. Don’t believe all that nonsense about it being over by Christmas. None of us old sweats do.’

  Some troopers were billeted at home, coming on parade every morning, but Oliver needed much of the day and night to care for the horses, and was found a bed at the barracks. Calling once more on the family, the farewell was not so harrowing. He took his civilian clothes for them to look after until he came back. ‘At least I shall have something to remember you by,’ Mary Ann said, seemingly less in despair at what he had done.

  She asked him to have his photograph taken at a studio in town, which he found time to do, the first and only snapshot of his life. When Mary Ann sent Edith to the barracks with handkerchiefs and underwear in a bag he gave her the photograph to take home.

  He didn’t tell anyone he had signed on to serve overseas, as had the whole regiment. If he was killed, so be it. He didn’t much care. That was in the future, and though he might hope for death he couldn’t imagine it would happen, because what you wanted you never got. Someone who went to the Boer War to get himself killed because of a disappointment in love had survived the bloodiest battles, while another had gone to fight saying he would never be killed and died of fever in a Bulawayo hospital, proving there was something more than yourself with a say in what happened. All you could do was keep whistling, and go on with your work.

  They had difficulty getting the horses into the wagons, until Oliver coaxed the most placid up the ramp, and the rest followed. As a blacksmith he was wanted urgently in Norfolk, so was on his way with other troopers and their remounts. He arranged each horse in the cattle truck, for them not to face passing trains head on, and when they seemed snug enough took off their bits and slackened the girths.

  Four hundred and fifty-two officers and men had already gone, entrained with their horses from the Low Level station on 14 August. Several thousand people had gathered to see their heroes off, unlike their unobserved departure.

  The corporal split the party into shifts of two hours, keeping a couple of men on hand to make sure the horses came to no harm. Army beasts were more fractious than those Oliver had dealt with so far, either due to hard treatment and the uncertainty of their lives, or from too many changes of master.

  Wanting never to see Nottingham again, he was impatient at the slow train huffing towards Grantham. A ration box between the seats made a table for their game of ha’penny brag. He could afford to lose a coin or two, change from Brown’s sovereign still rattling in his pocket, and in the ups and downs of the game he won a shilling.

  ‘Lucky at cards, unlucky with women.’ Kirkby, a saddler who had worked at the same sawmill, had a long pale scar ending in a whiter circle of skin as big as a florin, where somebody had gone at him with an awl during an argument in one of the sheds. ‘I don’t know how you do it, Burton. Must be the aces up your sleeve.’

  ‘I’d rather be lucky with women.’ Time off from King and Country was taking him painlessly away, but he was riled at Kirkby calling him Burton. ‘It just happens, like everything else.’

  ‘As long as you’re lucky at something,’ Kirkby said. ‘I know a few poor bleeders who don’t have any in all their lives.’

  Oliver looked at scenery little different to that at home. ‘It says we’re at Sleaford. They seem to be shunting us all over the place.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’ The corporal opened a tin of corned beef, a tongue-wetting aroma when air hissed out. Hardtack biscuits and a tin between two filled their stomachs. ‘My mother used to make a stew for the whole family out of one like this.’ Beardmore the carter had done five years as a Territorial. ‘Sparetime soldiering kept me on the straight and narrow,’ he told them, his smile almost diagonal. ‘And the perquisites were welcome. But one tin of bully for six had to be enough, though we loved it when Mam put carrots and onions in as well, and the fattier the better. These biscuits’ll break my teeth, if I’m not careful.’

  ‘You’ve got to crumble them with your fingers.’ The corporal opened his clasp knife. A thatch of black hair came almost to his eyes, Oliver wondering how good he would be when using his brains. Tim the Ostler, if ever there was one, though he knew his trade in most respects. ‘You put it in your fodder box, but don’t swallow till the spit’s melted it, or you’ll get toothache terrible.’

  ‘It’s a good thing an old sweat like you’s with us,’ Kirkby said, ‘to tell us how to go on.’

  ‘He wasn’t very clever at getting the horses on board,’ Beardmore said. ‘A good job Burton put us right.’

  ‘Shut your fucking mouth,’ the corporal said, ‘or you’ll be on a charge when we get to Diss.’

  ‘Try any of that, and you’ll go flying off the train, when it speeds up a bit,’ Beardmore said. ‘You shouldn’t swear in front of enlisted men. It’s against regulations.’ The trucks jerked at the sound of a whistle. ‘What else is there to eat? My guts are still rumbling.’

  ‘We’ll be boxed up in here for weeks,’ Kirkby said.

  ‘As long as we’re on the train we aren’t working,’ Beardmore laughed. ‘It suits me down to the ground.’

  Kirkby looked at Oliver. ‘How about another of them lovely fags?’

  Whatever you had, you shared. His father might well have kept them to himself, but Mary Ann said you must give what you could when asked for something. Soldiers were your mates, not beggars, and he passed them out, though the corporal huffed and told him to keep it, Oliver thinking that some people were born unhappy.

  ‘I’ll make it right with you.’ Kirkby held a match for them. To use only one, he waited till the flame was about to burn out, then spat on two fingers and held the charred piece, and while the flame consumed the rest of the wood he was able to light the last cigarette. ‘When we get to where we’re going I’ll be put on saddling.’ Smoke towards the window bounced back on him, a cloud he waved away. ‘It’ll suit me, because I’ve always done it. Do you know what it takes to make one? All you’ve got to remember is: eight stitches to the inch. That’s what I was taught. I can hear my father now. In fact I’ll never forget the old bastard till my dying day. He bawled it when he set me to work at thirteen, and I made a mess of things. “Eight stitches to the inch.” Smack – right on the chops. “Did you hear me, you careless lump?” Smack, again. “Eight stitches to an inch, not one more and not one less.” Thump. And if I didn’t get it exactly right from then on it was a boot up the arse, after the biggest bang of all on the napper.’

  ‘As for me,’ Oliver said, ‘it was seven nails to a horseshoe. The old man didn’t care if I couldn’t count up to ten, as long as I knew what seven meant. Not that you dared get it wrong, with him hanging over you like the Sword of Damocles.’ He held out the rest of his Gold Flake, and by the time they were passing Ely the compartment was filled with comforting smoke. ‘Have one now, Corporal?’

  He let go of his sulk, and puffed amicably with the others. ‘Parents?’ he said. ‘I’ve shit ’em. They’re all the same, though they can’t bother us anymore. That’s one thing the army’s good for. My father’s in jail, and serve the bogger right. He tried to murder my mother. I ought to kill him when he gets out in five years, but I shan’t want to know the swine. I don’t fancy swinging, anyway. All I do know is that if they put him in the army he’d frighten the Germans to death.’

  None had been up a whole night before, so those not looking out for the horses dozed, the corporal’s head against the window, mouth open as if never to wake again. The air vibrated from an orchestra of rhythmic snoring, and Oliver as the only man with a watch was left to call the changes of shift, which gave him little rest. He stayed alert, till prodding them awake when they got to Diss.

  Arms piled on the gravel of the siding, they unbolted the doors, easier than expected to get the horses off. Oliver found the trooper sent to meet them smoking his pipe in the station-master’s office. He looked up: ‘You’ve come, then?’

>   ‘Doesn’t it look like it?’

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, and you’re none too soon. So many horses have gone sick. I hope those you’ve brought don’t start pining for Sherwood Forest like the others.’ He stretched, and knocked the ash from his pipe, which Oliver thought was going to take all day. ‘I’ll give you a hand to get them off.’

  ‘They’re out already.’

  The cavalcade trotted to Palgrave leaving a trail of dung they had been too nervous to let go on the train. ‘There’s a good breakfast waiting for you,’ the trooper shouted into Oliver’s ear. ‘Coffee as well, piping hot, as long as it ain’t all gone. The eggs are fresh and the bacon’s good, and the bread ovens have been working full-time. But now let me tell you what you’ll really have. Bully beef, hard tack that the navy threw out and, oh yes, if you’re lucky, a bit of mousetrap cheese. But there’s all the tea you can swill down, cauldrons and cauldrons of it – without sugar.’

  ‘What bleddy concert party did they pick you out of?’ Beardmore called.

  Only the names were different to the area he had left but, having marched, entrained, and ridden to get here, he felt so carefree as never to doubt he would come back safe from the war. He wondered whether The Golden Treasury had been put together in the village they trotted through, so bright and homely in the early dawn that he regretted not having brought the Sunday School prize from home, though in the next letter he might ask his mother to post it.

  He was happy at the jingle of harness, occasional neighing, shouts and handclaps from children at the doors and bedroom windows, urging them on as if they were the most important people in the world which, he smiled, they were, at the moment. Out of doors was the only place to be, however dozy he felt after all night in the close air of the carriage. The early breeze was a treat to freshen the senses, a trace of cloud to look down and wish them well.