He alternated between two states of mind. On the one hand he clung desperately to some shreds of self-respect, arguing that Lieutenant Peter Rawley, R.F.A., and the unshaven outcast of the devastated area were the same person, and should be governed by the same rules of conduct. There was an outward transformation due to force of circumstances. The inner man was the same. Other circumstances might reverse the transformation. He must keep his self-respect. Were that once lost it would need more than a bath, a shave, and new clothes to restore it.
On the other hand his common sense told him that there should be no connection between these two Peter Rawleys. They lived in different worlds amid different environments. And man was the product of his environment. Morality was a question of geography. There was no fixed universal code. And to all intents and purposes the two Peter Rawleys lived in different continents. The rules of conduct which applied to the one should not apply to the other. The rules of European society were evolved for that society and applied to him no more than to the natives of Central Africa. He was now a deserter and an outlaw; common sense demanded that he should live as a deserter and an outlaw.
The native of Central Africa, living according to the rules of conduct of his society, is content. But the European living in their midst must forget Europe if he conforms to those rules. Rawley could not forget. As he trudged on through the darkness his eyes saw the cheery cottage mess-room, Piddock clog dancing to the gramophone, and poor old Whedbee, spectacles on nose, reading his paper. He saw the gun-pits and the gunners dappled with the shadows of the camouflaged netting. He heard Piddock’s cheerful laugh, Whedbee’s slow, deliberate voice, and Cane’s crisp word of command. He felt again that unexpressed cheerful spirit of comradeship that seemed to say “we are all in this rotten show together; let’s make the best of it—a short life and a gay one.” And now he was out of it all and alone. And he saw the little table beneath an apple tree outside a French village estaminet. He heard Berney’s voice say, “Peter, hadn’t we better be frank.” He saw her eyes in the shadow of her hat, misty, and very tender. “And, of course, I like you, too, Peter—most awfully.”
Alf’s high-pitched voice and atrocious accent dissolved the picture. “Along this ’ere track, maite.”
Rawley dragged his thoughts back to the present and jumped the ditch to a muddy track. The throbbing drone of a night bomber passed over their heads and died away.
“What made you take to a country life?” asked Rawley.
“What cher mean? Bunk from the perishin’ battery?”
“Yes. But don’t tell me if you don’t want to.”
Alf trudged along for a moment in silence. “Oh, I don’t mind tellin’ yer,” he said presently. “You see, it was like this. We was up at Arras on the Ridge. The Canuks had been pushin’ Jerry off the top, and he was crumpin’ everything something awful. Talk about mud! Struth! Ten horse teams got stuck with a half-limber and wouldn’t budge. So we started sending up ammo on pack horses. We had a lot of canvas bags with pockets in ’em. You slung the bag across the horse’s back and put three or four rounds of eighteen-pounder in the pockets on each side. Me and some more blokes was taking up about a dozen pack horses when Jerry opened out. The first two landed on the side of the track and set the horses kicking. The next landed under the bombardier and blew him and a horse into a shell hole twenty yards away. Then things started properly. There was a sausage balloon up that must have been spotting for them. Proper merry hell it was. I was hanging on to a head rope and the bitch was pullin’ my perishin’ arms out. Then Nobby Clarke let go, and his horse came backwards into mine and sent it arse over tip. I rolled out of the way into a shell hole, and when I looked out, there was my bastard streakin’ away like a Derby winner.
“I didn’t worry about that. I stayed where I was till it got a bit quieter. Then I crawled out and had a look round. There weren’t nothing there except two or three dead horses and a lot of crump holes. So I started back. Then I met a battery sergeant-major with some blokes. ‘Where are you off to?’ says he. So I told him what happened. ‘Where are the rest, then?’ says he. ‘Gone on, I expect, sergeant-major,’ I says. ‘Then find your perishing beast and go after ’em,’ says he. ‘What the hell do you mean by coming back before you’ve handed over your ammo to the battery.’
“Back I went. But there weren’t no horse in sight and Jerry was crumping the track ahead; so I cut away off to the right and started back again. I done about half a mile when up pops that bleedin’ sergeant-major again. ‘Hullo,’ says he. ‘You’ve been quick.’ I started to explain, but he would’n hear nothing. ‘I know what’s wrong with you, my lad,’ says he. ‘You’re under arrest.’ And he tells another bloke and a bombardier to take me back.
“‘What are they going to do with me, bombardier?’ I says. ‘They’ll shove you in the stragglers’ cage, I expect,’ says he. ‘And then you’ll be for a court-martial.’
“Well, when we came over a hill and I see a lot of huts and a lot of Jerrys in a prisoners’ cage and a couple of our blokes in a little cage beside it, I says to myself, ‘Alf, once you’re in that cage your number’s up.’
“Just before we reached the cage we crossed a road and the bombardier stopped on the other side to arsk a bloke something. While we was standing there a long convoy of lorries come along and so I says to the bloke beside me, ‘Lord, look at Jerry up there!’ He looks up, and I dodges across the road between a couple of lorries. There were a lot of huts on the other side, and the first thing I see is a box with a knife on it and a dixie and a lot of spuds beside it. I whipped off my coat, and cap, sat down on the box and started peelin’ spuds. I kep’ my head down, but I heard a lorry put on its brakes quick and a bloke cursing and blinding, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw the bombardier and the other chap dodge out from between two lorries. They stopped a moment and looked each way, and the bombardier sings out to me, ‘Hey, chum, did you see a chap run across the road just now? Which way did he go?’ I pointed with the knife over my shoulder, and they set off running up the hill behind me. Then I went off quick the other way.”
“And here you are,” said Rawley.
Alf grunted. “Here I bleedin’ well am.”
II
They trudged on through the darkness and the drizzling rain. Far away to the left an occasional moving light showed where one of the straight main roads switchbacked uncompromisingly across the desert. Alf waved a hand in its direction. “There ’yare,” he said. “That’s it. And when we get there we’ve got about another two kilos to the ration dump.”
The track converged upon the road, but they did not follow it to the junction. The road itself, they felt, was unsafe for such as they. Lorries or cars passed intermittently and parties of men might be met too suddenly to allow of concealment. They turned off the track and moved parallel with the road. The going was rough and boggy, but it was safe. More than once, however, they lost direction in the darkness and blundered nearly on to the road or found themselves wandering out into the desert again. Then the lights of a passing lorry would enable them to recover direction.
They halted at length opposite three or four lights, one of which, in the shape of a square, came unmistakably from a window covered with aeroplane fabric. “That’s it,” said Alf.
They crept forward cautiously to reconnoitre. The dark outline of two Nissen huts took shape against the sky. Bordering the road was a low wooden structure like a railway platform. They settled down to wait. Two tiny lights appeared in the distance, disappeared and reappeared some seconds later nearer and larger. The hum of a car reached their ears, and then it flashed past, its headlights mottling the uneven surface of the road with shadows. Then darkness closed in behind it. A dimly lighted lorry rumbled slowly by, and the slap, slap, slap of a piece of loose rubber on one of the wheels was audible long after it had passed. In one of the Nissen huts men were singing. The words rose and fell with the rhythm: “We were sailing alo-ong on moonlight ba-a-ay. . . .” T
he rain still drizzled down; a loose bit of latrine canvas flapped mournfully in the gusty breeze.
Rawley pillowed his head on his arm and dozed. He was brought back to full consciousness by the sound of voices and Alf’s elbow in his ribs. A number of men had come out of one of the huts, and the dark shapes of two lorries stood throbbing beside the platform-like structure on the roadside. There was an exchange of banter between the lorry drivers and the men from the huts and then the throb of the engines wavered and subsided. Dark figures moved in the rear of the lorries, chains clinked, and the backboards clattered down. The work of unloading began. Sacks, boxes, metal drums, cases, and a few stone jars were dumped on to the platform whereon an N.C.O. stood holding a lantern, and a sheaf of papers. At last the work of unloading, checking, and signing was done. The backboards were pushed up and secured; the drivers started their engines and climbed into their seats. A few cries of “Goodnight, George—Goodnight, Charley,” and the lorries rumbled on their way.
The light from the open door of a hut fell upon four men staggering under the weight of a folded tarpaulin. They heaved it on to the wooden platform and pulled open the stiff folds. The sergeant held a lantern whilst they dragged it over the pile of rations and tied it down. Then the men clumped back towards the hut.
The watchers saw the corporal of the guard and heard the mutter of his voice as he read the guard orders to the sentry by the light of the open door. Then the door closed, and only the dull light from the windows shone through the darkness. Later these too were extinguished, and the sound of voices tailed off and ceased. Only the scrape of the sentry’s boot on the road or the bump of his rifle butt as he ordered arms broke the silence.
Alf nudged Rawley. “What about it?”
“Yes. I think so,” whispered Rawley.
They discarded their tattered ground sheets and crept towards the wooden platform. They moved cautiously, inch by inch, for the night was very quiet, and they had to feel their way over the rough ground in the dark. They reached the shelter of the platform and halted. Peering under it they could distinguish the dark bars of the sentry’s legs on the road beyond as he shuffled his feet and hummed a tune. The platform itself was some three feet above them as they lay prone in the mud and opposite them the tarpaulin was secured by a lashing through an eyelet and round one of the platform supports.
Rawley rose on one knee and untied the lashing. “I’ll go under and pass out the stuff,” he whispered. He raised the tarpaulin over his head and cautiously rose to his feet. Inch by inch he wriggled himself over the edge on to the platform.
It was very dark under the tarpaulin, and he had to trust to his sense of touch. He knew that as long as he remained on that side of the platform and kept reasonably flat, the bulge of the tarpaulin, caused by the pile of rations, would mask from the sentry on the road any undulations caused by his passage. He was as it were in dead ground. But the shifting of box or case, quite apart from the danger of noise, might cause a movement of the tarpaulin or an alteration of its shape that might attract the sentry’s notice. He must move only such boxes as did not actually support the tarpaulin.
His hands, feeling forward in the darkness, encountered the rough, hairy wood of a box. It was a small box, about three feet long and unopened. He had no means of knowing what it contained. He tried to lift it, but lying on his chest with his elbows to the ground he could use only a fraction of his strength. He dragged it an inch towards him, but the noise of its scraping on the planks, magnified in the confined space under the tarpaulin, made him hurriedly desist and lie motionless with straining ears.
But the sentry had not heard. Rawley heard the crash of his rifle butt as he ordered arms and stood at ease; then, after a few moments, he paced off again, humming. Rawley resumed his blind exploration. A bulky sack was the next object his hands encountered, and they told him that it contained bread. He took from his pocket the jack-knife he had salved and slit the coarse fabric. But even with bread he had to be careful. He found that when one or two loaves were removed the others tended to roll into the vacated places with quite audible bumps.
He started back with four loaves, but he found that with each arm stretched out encircling two loaves he could not get his elbows to the ground to support the weight of his body as he crawled. He had to leave two behind. He realized that the whole job would be a far slower one than he had anticipated.
Alf raised the tarpaulin as soon as he felt Rawley’s body moving under it. He nodded approval of the bread and placed each loaf noiselessly in one of the sacks they had brought. Then Rawley went back and returned with two more loaves. It took him nearly half an hour to fill their sack with loaves.
Alf twisted up the top of the sack and put his mouth close to Rawley’s ear. “That’s enough bread,” he whispered. “I’ll take this back a bit and hide it in case we have to make a run for it later. See if you can find some tins of butter and Maconochie, mate. And don’t forgit one of them jars of rum.”
Rawley nodded and disappeared again under the tarpaulin. He dared not tackle the unopened cases; he wanted to find an open one from which he could take the tins one by one. He found a large square tin, no doubt containing tea, but remembering that thin tins of that nature are liable to produce sudden noises, he left it alone. Then his fingers touched the cool smooth side of a rum jar. He must take that, but the problem was how to move it. He crawled up beside it, and turned on his back. Cautiously he tipped the heavy jar over until it rested on his stomach; then with his knees slightly bent to form a cradle for it, he crawled backwards by means of his elbows and heels.
Alf’s approval of this find was unstinted. He nodded his head emphatically several times, and in elaborate dumb show drank the health of the sentry on the road.
Rawley disappeared again under the tarpaulin. He crawled up beside one of the rough wooden cases, and guided by his sense of touch, inserted the blade of his jack-knife under the lid. He increased the pressure gradually, but the board did not move. A sharp jerk might do it, but that would almost certainly splinter the wood with an audible crack or produce a loud squeak as the nails were prised up. There was nothing for it but to explore farther in the hope of finding an opened box.
He began to burrow in among the cases and sacks and tins and crates. It was very slow work. The old civilian jacket he was wearing caught frequently on the corners of cases and held him, and he had to be particularly careful in moving his feet lest his boots should strike against a box or tin. But his perseverance was rewarded. Somewhere he judged near the middle of the dump he found several open cases partly full of tins. In the darkness he examined the contents by his sense of touch. In one case there was no mistaking the peculiar shape of bully beef; another held round flat tins that might contain either butter, salmon, crab or dubbing. In another the tins were round and long; that might mean jam or pork and beans. He took a sample of each and started back.
In the dim light they examined the booty, Alf kneeling in the rank grass and Rawley lying flat on the platform, with his head protruding from the tarpaulin. They classified it as one tin of butter, one tin of jam, one of pork and beans and one of rabbit. Alf nodded approval, and Rawley went back for more.
Inch by inch he wriggled in again among the sacks and cases, and reached the place where his outstretched hand should have touched one of the open boxes. Crates, sacks and cases hemmed him in, but none of them were open. In the dark, with only his sense of touch to guide him, he had gone astray. Somewhere within a yard or two of him must be those open boxes, but they were as completely lost as if they had been dropped into the sea, and he was seeking them on the ocean bed.
He lay still for a moment and tried to think out to which side he had strayed—to right or left. The planks of the platform on which he lay did not fit closely together; there were gaps between them through which blew chilly draughts, and now as he lay over one such crack he saw the coarse grey grass and earth below slowly dawn in the headlights of a car approaching along the road
. The long shadows of the grass shortened and lengthened and moved this way and that as the car bumped over the pot-holed road, and the light increased rapidly like a stage dawn, till he could see worms twisting and glistening in the powerful flood.
He took his eye from the crack and tried to distinguish the dim shape of sacks and cases about him, hoping that enough light would filter through to allow him to find those open cases before the car passed. Then he realized that the car had stopped. The light had ceased to grow stronger; nor did it wane. The grass shadows were motionless and clear-cut like stage scenery. The low hum of the engine flared up and ceased. He heard the clatter of the sentry’s rifle and the smack of his hand on the butt. Then followed the unmistakable clash of a car door being closed and the scrape of feet on the road.
It was time for him to go, he felt, but with those strong headlights flooding the tarpaulin the slightest movement would be noticeable. The footsteps were passing to the right, towards the huts, but he could still hear the scrape of the sentry’s feet near him. He wondered what Alf was doing. Judging from the direction of the shadows of the grass and platform supports the car stood a few feet from the end of the platform, and its headlights would therefore light up all the ground beneath the platform and part of the back as well.
Voices sounded from the direction of the huts, and then came the tramp of several pairs of feet. The voices grew clearer. “Well, we’ll just have this off and check up that chit and then I will get on,” said one.
He heard men stumbling and moving on both sides of the platform, and he realized with chill that they were untying the lashings of the tarpaulin. Heavy boots clumped on the platform and made the boards vibrate beneath him. Then a strong beam of light revealed the upper part of the crate beside him, and he lay like a watcher in a dark valley when the sun is on the mountain tops. They stripped off the heavy tarpaulin; a sergeant swung a lantern, and he lay there uncovered like a wood louse when a brick is removed.
Behind the Lines Page 16
