They smoked in silence for some moments. Presently the cockney voice came again, sympathetically: “What are you going to do, mate?”
Rawley blew a cloud of smoke through his nose and laughed shortly. “Lord knows. What do you do?”
“Well, that’s just it; I was just a-thinkin’.”
“Thinking what?”
“Why, that we might be half-sections, you an’ me.”
Rawley’s answering grunt was non-committal.
“You see,” went on the other confidentially, “you want a maite in this gaime. It’s orl rite scroungin’ round on yer own fer a bit, but yer never knows if some of the other crowd won’t find where you’ve hidden your stores and pinch ’em. And it’s lonesome out ’ere at night, I give yer my oath.” He spat and shivered. “No, I reckon you’re ruddy lucky meetin’ me. When I fust come out ’ere I lived on arf a biscuit for two days and drank rain water from a shell ’ole. And the fust two nights it rained like only sunny bleedin’ France can rain, and I lay in a shell hole under a bit of old elephant iron till I got washed out and nearly froze. And that’s what you’d be doing if you hadn’t met me. You ain’t got no bunk, and you ain’t got no grub, and you ain’t got no fags. And I’ve got all of ’em, and what I ’as, my mate ’as too. What do you say?” He came close to Rawley and tapped him on the knee. “Look ’ere,” he went on in a confidential whisper, and pulled something from his pocket, “I’ll show you the sort of bloke I am. That’s ’arf my share, five francs. Kelly, blast ’im, took your fifty-franc note and all the rest, and he give me and Pearson ten francs each. And that’s the bleedin’ truth, if I never speak another word.” He held the tattered note towards Rawley. “There y’are fifty-fifty.”
“What’s your name?” asked Rawley without taking the proffered note.
“Alf. The other naime don’t matter.”
“Well, Alf, put that five francs back in your pocket. It’s payment for the cigarettes I’ve smoked, and for the grub I’m relying on you to produce. And as I’m devilish hungry, the sooner you produce it the better it will suit me.”
II
They set off together in the darkness along the narrow, muddy, pot-holed road. There was no sound except the distant drumming of the guns and the gentle swish of the rain. The darkness hung like a curtain around them, and once only did Rawley see dimly against the sky the skeleton rafters of some shattered homestead.
Presently they left the road and stumbled among foot-high, weed-grown walls and grassy brick rubble slippery with rain. Beyond the flattened village the ground sloped upwards and was covered with coarse grass and pitted with weed-grown shell holes. Alf led the way, and occasionally gave warning of a tangle of rusty wire or of an old half-filled trench that had to be jumped.
He halted finally and said: “Here we are, mate.” But there was nothing to be seen. The flickerings eastwards had either ceased or were hidden by the contour of the ground. The invisible rain rustled mournfully in the darkness. Alf bent down and his dark form was instantly swallowed up. A moment later his voice came muffled from below Rawley’s feet. “Come on; it’s about a six-foot drop.”
Rawley felt forward cautiously with one foot and slithered down through wet grass and weeds into a narrow, muddy trench.
Alf led off again and Rawley followed. Dripping weeds brushed his face and bits of old basket revetment stabbed at his legs. For twenty yards or more they stumbled along, sliding and sticking in the mud, before they halted where the trench was blocked by a fall of earth. A baulk of rotting timber, half-buried in the landslide, bridged low down in the trench a narrow hole, through which Alf crawled. “You stay, mate, till I get a light,” he said, as his head disappeared.
A few minutes later a gleam of yellow light appeared, and Rawley squeezed through the hole, feet first. He found himself in a low and narrow tunnel, revetted with rotting timbers and half-blocked with falls of earth. Alf stood with a battered hurricane lantern in his hand, his body bent to avoid the roof timbers. They squeezed under an outward-leaning pit-prop and its burden of loose earth and revetment and scrambled round a mound of loose earth that all but filled the tunnel. Then down several steps to a curtain of dirty sacking which Alf pulled aside. “ ’Ere we are, maite, ’ome sweet ’ome.”
Rawley followed him past the curtain and found himself in a medium-sized dug-out. A big beam ran across the middle of the roof and was supported in the centre by a great baulk of timber whose base rested on a thick plank half-embedded in the earthen floor. Against the post stood a rough table on which at the moment rested a dirty piece of newspaper, an empty bully-beef tin with jagged meaty edges, and much candle grease. Beyond it stood a crazy wire-netting bed with rumpled brown blankets, and pegged by match stalks to the earth wall above were a number of stained photographs of actresses, torn from illustrated papers. The whole place was indescribably dirty and had a musty, earthy, garlicky smell, like the lair of a wild beast.
Alf put the battered hurricane lamp on the table and looked around him with a grin. “ ’Ere we are,” he said. “ ’Ere we are. The well-known society gent, Mr. Alf Hitchkins, in his boudoir—some-bleedin’-where in France.”
The lamplight revealed him to Rawley as a short wiry little man with long unkempt dark hair curling over his ears, bright and rather humorous eyes set in a grimy face, and several days’ growth of beard like a strip of black crêpe round his narrow jaw.
“Now for some grub,” he said. He went to the other side of the dug-out and pulled down a dirty piece of sacking that was pegged into the earth wall. Behind it was a hole some six feet deep by four feet in height, forming an alcove. From a corner he dragged a battered bucket, with holes punched in it, and set it up on two bricks on the floor of the alcove. Into this he put some scraps of paper and splintered wood.
“You’re not going to light that thing in here, are you?” asked Rawley. “We shall be smoked out.”
Alf watched the paper blaze up and the wood begin to crackle, and then turning on one knee gave a large wink. “This bug ’ouse might ’ave been built for Hindenburg hisself,” he said. “Every modern convenyince. Fireplace and chimbly. The only thing it ’asn’t got is a barf room.”
He took a fair-sized tin with a wire handle from under some rubbish, filled it with water from a petrol tin, and hung it over the blaze by means of a rusty bayonet. Then he cleared the table by tipping the rubbish on to the floor. He set out a tin of bully beef, four rather mouldy army biscuits, a battered enamel mug, and an old mustard tin.
“It’s the cook’s night out, and the kippers ’avent come cos it’s early closin’ dye, but I’m stunnin’ the fat ’eaded Fray Bentos.” And he set to work with a jack-knife to open the tin. A small handful of tea thrown into the boiling water completed the preparations.
They sat on upturned boxes on either side of the rickety table and ate the beef from the tin with the aid of pocket knives.
“Where do you draw your rations?” asked Rawley, as he sipped his nearly black tea from the mustard tin.
Alf transferred a lump of bully-beef from the point of his jack-knife to his mouth.
“Scrounge it,” he answered, masticating vigorously. “There aint ’arf a lot of stuff lying around these old trenches. I’ve got a nice little stock of bully, and I had some jam too, but that’s all gone. Oh, it aint ’arf bad out ’ere. We live like perishin’ fightin’ cocks sometimes, I give you my word. Why, a few weeks ago the boys ’ad a raid on a canteen at Morpas. It was one of Kelly’s stunts, and I come back ’ere with a perishin’ bread sack bulgin’ with tins of crab, and pork and beans, and Maconochie, and fags by the ’undred. Proper Christmas day in the workus, it was.”
Rawley broke one of the board-like biscuits by hammering it on the post beside him and dropped a piece into his tea to soften. “Who is Kelly?” he asked.
“Kelly! Why, he’s the perishin’ Fairy Queen. A bloke what’s a sight too free with his dukes—so it don’t do to argue with ’im.”
“I see,” s
aid Rawley. “Sort of unofficial O.C. devastated area. A deserter, I suppose?”
Alf nodded and went on between spasms of mastication. “He’s an Aussie. They say he shot a perishin’ red-cap down at Etapps. I ain’t never seen his billet ’cause he don’t encourage visitors, but they say he lives like a bloomin’ duke, down there in the old Jaeger Redoubt—armchairs, brass beds, and a pianner—proper Buckin’am Palace it is, from all accounts.”
Rawley refilled his teacup by dipping the mustard tin into the can of tea on the fire. “Stuff he’s looted from round about, I suppose,” he remarked.
Alf nodded. “And then he’s got ’is lidy friends in Armeens. They brings ’ome some passionate Percy, and while he’s gettin’ on with the love-making, Kelly socks ’im one and takes the dibs.”
“What! Do you mean he goes into Amiens and lives with women there!”
“Lord, yes! And brings two or three tarts out ’ere when the red-caps get busy in Armeens. He’s a proper coughdrop, he is—he and his perishin’ bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard!”
“Yars. That’s what we calls ’em. They’re his mates he brought with him from Etapps. About half a dozen of ’em, and they ain’t arf a ’ot lot neither. They all mess together in the Jaeger Redoubt, and they’ve got Lewis guns, Vickers, and bombs, and thousands of rounds of ammo. It would take a bleedin’ brigade to clean them out.”
From force of habit Rawley took his pipe from his pocket, and then remembering that he had no tobacco, he put it back. But Alf jumped up from his box and thrust his arm into a hole in the revetting boards. He returned to the table with one hand held behind his back, and then, in the manner of a conjurer, made some elaborate passes with the other hand, and finally produced a dusty half-packet of ration tobacco from behind his back.
“No, I say,” said Rawley. “I can’t take that. Is that all you’ve got?”
“Go on,” persisted Alf magnanimously. “I smoke fags.” And he took a half-smoked cigarette from behind his ear and lighted it at the candle.
Rawley filled his pipe with the dry dusty mixture in the packet and drew at it appreciatively. “How do you—that is we—stand with regard to Kelly and his push?” he asked.
“We keep out of their perishin’ way,” answered Alf. “But when he has one of his field days—cleanin’ out a canteen or something—after he and his lot have taken their fancy he lets us other chaps muck in.”
“Who are the other chaps?”
“Why the chaps that don’t belong to Kelly’s bodyguard There’s several of us livin’ round ’ere in these old trenches mostly working in pairs. But I never took to any of ’em, and kept on me own.”
“And you and the other chaps have nothing to do with Kelly?”
“Not more than we can help.”
“But you were with him tonight. You said it was Kelly who took my money.”
“Yars. He copped me and Pearson for a fatigue.”
“Fatigue! He makes you do fatigues for him?”
“Yars. Carrying water this was, only he heard your perishin’ footmarks on the pavé and he shoves me into a hole and tells Pearson to arsk you for a light; and then ups and socks you with a bit of sandbag.”
Rawley nodded thoughtfully. “We must get our own back on Mr. Kelly one of these days,” he said.
“I’m with you there, mate,” agreed Alf. “Only he carries a gun and I ain’t forgot about that perishin’ red-cap at Etapps.”
Rawley yawned and pulled back his cuff, only to remember that his wrist watch had been taken. “How the deuce do you ever know the time!” he said. “Though I suppose it doesn’t matter out here.”
“No, nor the date neither,” agreed Alf. “But I know both,” he added with an air of pride. From his breeches’ pocket he fished a battered Ingersoll tethered by a greasy lanyard to his braces. “Brigade time is eleven fifty-three pip emma,” he announced. “And the dite is”—he peered at a small calendar that hung among the pictures of actresses above his frowsy bed—“is the thirteenth.”
“I might have known it,” remarked Rawley cynically.
“Now don’t get down’earted, mate! ’Ere you are, spending a holiday in Sunny France for nothin’. Why, you’d pay quids to come to a plice like this in peace time!” And he began to whistle cheerfully “Roses in Picardy!”
To his amazement Rawley leapt from his box and, with a face white with passion, shouted: “For God’s sake stop that row.”
“Orl right, orl right,” answered Alf in an injured tone. “I thought a little music might cheer you up.”
Rawley plumped down again on the box. “Never whistle that tune again,” he said vehemently. “Never let me hear it again.”
Alf produced a pile of sandbags from his dump of salvage, and with these and a mud-caked spare blanket Rawley made his bed. He pulled off his field boots and put a sandbag on each foot. As he took off his tunic his thumb slid into the little waist-band pocket and encountered crisp paper, and it was then that he remembered that he had absent-mindedly put the change from a fifty-franc note there. He transferred the notes quietly to his breeches pocket. He was glad they had escaped the fingers of Kelly; they might be very useful later on. He regretted the loss of the other money, but still more he regretted the loss of the wallet that contained it; for behind a mica shield in one flap was a photograph of Berney. He took off his collar and tie, and was ready for bed.
Alf blew out the candle, rolled himself up in his frowzy blankets, and cried “ ’Appy dreams”; but for a long time Rawley lay awake watching the dying embers glowing in the darkness and listening to Alf’s heavy breathing and the scurryings of rats.
CHAPTER XIV
I
Rawley awoke cold and stiff the next morning. The warm light of flames flickered on the dark-brown earth-wall of the dug-out, and the dancing shadow of Alf as he knelt before the brazier was bent grotesquely where the head and shoulders overlapped on to the ceiling.
Rawley put on his tunic and pulled on his boots. He thrust his hands into his breeches’ pocket and with tousled hair stamped up and down the narrow space. Another tin of bully-beef and two of the hard, unappetising biscuits constituted breakfast, but the strong, hot tea was very welcome. He felt his stubbly chin and eyed his grimy hands as he warmed them on the tin of hot liquid, but there was no water to spare for washing. The source of supply was a well in the flattened village they had stumbled through the night before, and in the dug-out Alf had enough for drinking purposes only.
After breakfast, however, they set out carrying the three petrol tins possessed by Alf and an old and bleached canvas bucket of which he was very proud. Rawley followed him through the hole under the landslide into the grey daylight of a rainy autumn morning. They clambered out of the muddy, weed-grown trench and set off for the village. A cold, blustering wind drove the rain in their faces. Alf had a tattered ground-sheet tied with string about his shoulders, but Rawley could only turn up the collar of his tunic about his collarless neck.
In daylight the place was even more depressing than at night. They were descending a gentle slope into a wide depression, bisected by a narrow and half-obliterated road. The low weed-grown banks of old trenches straggled in all directions. Here and there wooden stakes or bent screw pickets grew forlornly from the barren soil, and tangles of barbed wire lay like black cobwebs on the tortured earth. To the right, in the lowest part of the depression, the narrow road petered out, and the brimming shell holes lay in such profusion as to produce the illusion of a vast net—countless circles of stagnant, scum-covered water strung together by narrow strips of barren soil. A few ragged walls and blackened tileless rafters marked the site of a village, and half way up the slope beyond, the bleached and ragged trunks of a leafless wood stood gaunt and dead, like hop-poles beneath the low, grey clouds. The only distant view showed the same desolate country undulating in a dreary tundra to the rain-swept horizon.
The two men, trudging through the mud, seemed to be the only living things in t
he landscape, and when a solitary bird rose ahead of them and shot away on the wind, Rawley exclaimed, “By jove, there’s a pigeon!”
Alf pulled his dripping ground-sheet closer about his shoulders. “Going back to the perishin’ Ark,” he growled.
They reached the village through which they had stumbled in the darkness of the previous night. By daylight it was but a few parallelograms of ragged, foot-high walls, though here and there a blackened rafter or a bent and rusty iron bedstead protruded from the weed-grown rubble of brick and plaster. Alf led the way to the well, and they filled the three cans with water. Then Rawley stripped to the waist and washed as well as one can in a leaky canvas bucket without soap or towels. He put on his damp shirt and sodden tunic, and they plodded back up the slope.
II
These first few days in the devastated area were active ones for Rawley. He had no desire either to meditate upon his position or to speculate about the future. The time that elapsed before sleep came to him each night in the tomb-like darkness of the dug-out was all too long for that purpose, and he realized that the hours of daylight must be fully occupied if the fruitless thought cycle of bitterness, desperation, and despair was not to daze his reason.
He threw himself feverishly into task after task. Many journeys were made to the lifeless wood on the hillside, and the splintered branches were dragged to the dug-out and stacked for firewood. The accumulated filth of months was swept from the dug-out floor, stuffed into a sack, and emptied into a shell hole. Some measure of comfort was introduced into the cheerless den. Among Alf’s gleanings from that once populous trench system were a pair of wire-cutters, some rusty nails, and an old German saw-bayonet; and with these simple tools Rawley constructed shelves on which to stow their belongings, a wire-netting bed for himself and—his greatest triumph—an easy chair with wire-netting seat and back.
Behind the Lines Page 14
