Covenant with Death

by John Harris

  ‘But he’s only twenty-three.’

  ‘Best age,’ I said stoutly. ‘Look at me. I’ve signed on.’

  ‘You’re only a boy yourself.’

  ‘I’m twenty-four.’

  She didn’t seem to hear me and went on dabbing at her nose and eyes, poking her handkerchief up under her glasses and shoving them one-sided, her elbow on the bamboo table, her hair disarrayed by contact with the stiff aspidistra leaves.

  ‘It only seems like yesterday that I bought him his first sailor suit,’ she mourned.

  She sniffed and suddenly looked at me with suspicion, as though she’d only just noticed I’d come back.

  ‘Don’t they want you?’ she demanded sharply.

  ‘Yes,’ I said startled by the change in her. ‘They just haven’t got organised yet. That’s all. We’ve got to report tomorrow.’

  ‘I thought you went to report today.’

  ‘Well’ – when you considered it, it did seem a bit silly – ‘that’s what they told us. They just got us there today to sort us out a bit.’

  ‘Just like the Army,’ she snorted. ‘Where’s your uniform?’

  ‘I haven’t got one.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Nobody’s got one. We don’t possess any. Not yet.’

  ‘Soldiers can’t fight without uniforms.’

  ‘We’re not going to fight yet,’ I said, beginning to lose my temper. ‘They’ve got to train us first. Everybody has to get trained.’

  ‘I suppose you’ve come back for something to eat,’ she went on tartly. ‘We’d better give you a decent Yorkshire tea before we send you back.’

  ‘I’m not going back,’ I pointed out. ‘Well, not tonight, anyway. They’ve got nowhere for us to sleep yet, either. We’ve got to live at home for the time being.’

  ‘Live at home?’ She looked a little embarrassed.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You can’t,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve let your room. A young man from the works came.’

  I wondered if he’d have jumped into my grave as quickly, and said so, and she flared up as she always did when I complained about anything.

  ‘A woman can’t just wait,’ she snapped. ‘I’m a widow, and my boy’s in France. I didn’t know you’d be coming back.’

  ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter,’ I said, feeling a little deflated and anxious to avoid bad feeling when I expected to be leaving soon. ‘I’ll find somewhere else.’

  ‘You can have the attic,’ she pointed out grudgingly. ‘I’ll clean it out for you.’

  I didn’t fancy the attic very much, but it crossed my mind I’d probably be sleeping in stranger places than attics before I was much older, so I said it would be fine. Besides, I thought, it wouldn’t be for long. They’d be moving us into camp before many days were out.

  All the same, as I pushed my belongings up under the eaves that night, I felt I’d been a bit hard done by. I thought I’d joined the Army to save people like Mrs Julius.

  3

  Troops had been garrisoned in the city for years, but they’d been pretty inconspicuous and no one – least of all me – had ever noticed them before. They only appeared for occasional parades out at the barracks and on the days when they provided a band for the park during the summer holidays, or on the one night of the year when the regimental ball was held at the Corn Exchange and officers came from all over the country in their braided red jackets and tight trousers, pushing with their womenfolk through the crowds who waited to see them arrive. But, even then, it was the women with their low-cut evening gowns and jewels and piled hair who caught the eye, not the soldiers.

  Nobody had ever heard of ‘Yorkshire Johnny’, the regimental march, still less troubled to sing it, but for weeks after the battalion was formed it found a new popularity and even became a feature at Ross and McCall’s Empire, vigorously sung by the Choral Society choir, noticeably now without Hardacre in the front row.

  We soon discovered you could get a seat in the pit stalls for nothing if you were a member of the battalion and, what’s more, would very likely be called on to the stage to let the audience have a look at you. And that was always a fitting and riotous end to a night out because the chorus took your arms and sang ‘Yorkshire Johnny’ or ‘We Don’t Want to Lose You, But We Think You Ought to Go’, while you stared sheepishly, blinking and blinded by the footlights, and tried to see your pals or your girlfriend down at the back of the auditorium.

  You could always reckon on getting a free drink in a pub or even a free meal; and people liked to stop you in the street and shake your hand, and old ladies got into the habit of thanking you touchingly for offering your life to protect theirs. Proud wives and mothers of men who’d enlisted were embroidering fire-screens, and cushions for the horsehair sofa in the front room, with the white rose that was the regimental badge as a centrepiece and the flags of all the Allied Nations as a surrounding frieze, while the City Guild of Mothers’ Unions was busy stitching a silk battle standard which was to be draped in the cathedral with all the other torn and dusty banners that hung there.

  The flags were everywhere now, of course. Hanging from houses and in all the shop windows, with pictures of the King and Queen, and the Commander-in-Chief, Sir John French, and Albert of the Belgians. Union Jacks, white ensigns, all the Dominion standards. The French and Belgian tricolours. The Russian Imperial emblem. The Rising Sun of Japan. We didn’t run to the flags of Serbia and Luxembourg and Montenegro, because most people round where I lived had never heard of Serbia and Luxembourg and Montenegro until a few weeks before.

  As the summer drew to a close, playgrounds and open spaces all over the city began to fill up rapidly with men as the Army reached out for every available training ground. Every rifle range in the district had been commandeered and new ranges were springing into existence all the time. They even had one in the crypt of the Cathedral. Volunteers who’d been turned down for the City Battalion found their way into other units, and businesses were being denuded of managers, clerks and other employees. Hardacre, who’d appeared among us once or twice at the Drill Hall, outcast and gloomy in his humbler capacity as a newspaperman looking for a story, suddenly vanished and we heard that he and Dicehart had finally persuaded some less pernickety unit to accept them as soldiers and they’d gone gaily off to war, satisfied at last to be doing their bit.

  Schafers’ shop window was broken again, and when they boarded it up someone wrote Huns! Remember Mons across it. With the pictures of the dead and wounded beginning to appear in the Post, it didn’t pay to have a name like Schafer just then, and anybody who disagreed was a traitor and a ‘Little Englander’ and was soon told so.

  Kitchener’s face was everywhere by this time, a little younger than was true, perhaps, painted in flat washes that showed him as he’d been at the time of the South African War, with that great handlebar moustache of his and pointing finger, and those glowing magnetic eyes that seemed to follow you everywhere you went. There were never any rude words written by the kids on that one, I noticed. There wasn’t even any point in drawing whiskers on it because it already had a far better set than anybody could have added with pencil.

  He was still at the War Office, laying the law down about what a rotten little army we had, issuing his commands and concocting his appeals: An addition of a further 100,000 men to His Majesty’s Regular Army is immediately necessary in the present grave national crisis … or: Lord Kitchener appeals to ex-non-commissioned officers of any branch of H.M. Forces to assist him now by re-enlisting for the duration of the war …

  There was a neat placard on every public vehicle to supplement the official posters covering the windows of post offices and council buildings and occupying large spaces in the columns of the Post and the Clarion. It appeared on the windscreens of motor cars and was plastered on the sides of buses and trams. It was flashed on cinema screens and exhibited outside theatres. It was on tram tickets, i
n the windows of private houses, in the pulpit and on the stage; in neat little letters on leaflets and in great big letters on gigantic posters: YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU.

  There was something about it that made it personal enough for a man to look over his shoulder. YOUR KING AND COUNTRY NEED YOU, it seemed to say, not HIM. Nor him. Not the clerk on his way home, arguing about the price of plums over the barrow by the arches. Not the miner in the flat cap round the corner with his face in a pint pot. YOU. And you felt a little prouder for having answered.

  It didn’t take me long to realise that my chief concern was not so much the battalion as the company I was in. Even in those early days I rarely passed beyond its boundaries, and I lost touch with friends who’d found their way into other companies. With our officers we’d been lucky. Although they knew no more about soldiering than we did, at least they seemed willing enough to learn, and for sergeants we had two crafty Reservists, Bernard and Twining, and Corker, who’d been a lance-sergeant in the Buffs twelve years before.

  Corker had gone off to war cheerfully, looking for a cushy billet where he could run the same sort of rackets he’d worked from his box at the door of the Post Editorial entrance, where he’d been in the habit of putting money on horses for anyone who wanted a flutter, and buying cigarettes for the subs on night duty and selling them at a copper or two over the odds. His attitude to the war was easy-going and cheerful, and, while he made an honest effort to turn us into soldiers, it was half-hearted because he wasn’t an educated man and he had no one above him with the experience to direct his labour into the proper channels. Then one morning a strange new voice appeared, high and shrill, and rasping like a file through the iron girders of the Drill Hall roof.

  ‘Ex-Guards,’ Murray informed me with a touch of awe in his voice. ‘He was doing some job in one of the works along Cotterside. He’s come to be company sergeant-major.

  To Murray, honour and tradition were right and proper things to have about us. Most of us had been only brushed by the feel of glory: Murray was daubed all over with it. Even to the more martial among us, this period while we were living at home was a reprieve that meant a few more days with wives or girlfriends, but to Murray it was a restless time of waiting, when he occupied himself with preparing himself for service, training his body with long walks and his mind with proper study for the stern duty ahead.

  He’d spent all his spare hours in the public library with the regimental history and was proud to discover that our parent unit had been among the last out of the battle at Minden and had held a position on the right of the line at Waterloo. He was a little disappointed that we didn’t possess the prefix ‘Royal’, but was satisfied to learn that, after having had it refused them when they’d claimed it following some bloody skirmish in the Peninsular War, the regiment had thereafter elected to remain steadfastly republican. He was itching to go and stand in a square or relieve Lucknow or charge the Russian guns with the Light Brigade or something, and add another scroll to the sacred flag nobody had ever seen but which bore the names of twenty-odd towns and villages in various parts of the world where the regiment had earned fame on the battlefield.

  ‘Ex-Guards,’ he said again in an awed whisper. ‘He ought to get things moving.’

  ‘Perhaps too fast for some of us,’ I said. ‘Does your mother know yet that you’ve joined up?’

  He looked a little uncertain of himself, as though he weren’t sure whether he were a man itching to get his hand on something lethal and do damage with it, or still just a boy, scared stiff his mother would find out he’d done what she’d forbidden. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘She thinks I go to the office every day.’

  ‘Are you going to tell her?’ I asked.

  He grinned sheepishly. ‘Thought I’d wait,’ he said. ‘I’ll be eighteen soon and then she can’t stop me.’

  Murray had all my sympathy. I’d long since ceased to enjoy living at Mrs Julius’ and reporting each morning by bus to the Drill Hall. It was a bit like being at the office, and I’d discovered that damned attic at Morrelly Street was a dark and cheerless hole to spend an evening in when I hadn’t any money in my pocket. Mrs Julius had long since decided that the fitful allowance they gave us for rations wasn’t half enough, and her patriotic affection had diminished rapidly, and the meals she served up had taken a decided turn for the worse.

  ‘All right! All right! All right!’ The sharp Guards voice stopped all the chattering as though it had been cut off with a knife, and we all swung round, standing in groups in the grey interior of the Drill Hall, nervous of this intruder into what in such a few short days had already become a normal part of life. We were still new enough to be scared of fierce-looking strangers and edged closer together, anxious not to do the wrong thing; and the new company sergeant-major marched between us, the only one of us in uniform, not asking us to get out of the way as we’d been used to from Corker and the others, but using his bony shoulders against anyone who wasn’t quick enough, his hands clasped firmly behind his back on a cane; a tall sullen sliver of a man, thin as a lath, with a narrow pale face and a ginger moustache.

  ‘All right,’ the high hectoring voice went on. ‘Let’s ’ave you. Let’s ’ave you in your sections. Y’oughta be there by now, didn’t you? You shouldn’t need tellin’, and I shan’t tell you again. My name’s Bold. Patrick Bold. Son of Mrs Bold, of Streatham. Bold by name and Bold by nature. So you’d better watch out. Let’s ’ave you outside – AND SHARP, TOO!’

  There was something in that stentorian voice and ramrod figure that made you leap to attention – authority and three hundred years of pride and skill; and we literally charged through the door to reach our appropriate places.

  ‘Come on, come on, jump about a bit!’ Bold’s voice was like a terrier snapping at our heels, chivvying us, worrying us, nagging at us, so that we instinctively shied away from it whenever it came too close.

  Between them, Bold and Corker got us sorted out in the roadway in sections, and the crowd of small boys which had taken to hanging round the Drill Hall doors was joined by a dozen or more housewives and a few men from the pub and from the brassworks belching smoke at the end of the road. By the time they’d got the usual stragglers in their proper places, the street was crowded with interested spectators, and people were hanging out of the upper windows shouting encouragement.

  ‘Give it ’em, boys! Down with the Kaiser!’

  ‘You’re in the wrong mob, Eph,’ someone called. ‘Dooley’s Gang hangs out on the Common!’

  Eph Lott grinned and waved, a smart figure in a fancy waistcoat, yellow-and-black boots, celluloid collar and a furry Homburg. He never seemed to do much except stand in his place, surrounded by scowling minions who fetched him cigarettes and pushed to the front in the pubs to buy him his sandwiches when they dismissed us at midday.

  ‘Don’t you worry,’ he shouted back. ‘I didn’t make no mistake.’

  ‘Shut your row,’ Bold told him immediately. ‘And face front! Yes, you I mean,’ he roared as Eph looked round, startled, for the criminal. ‘YOU! FATTY! You with the fancy boots and red face. Git yourself moving and take that grin orf your dial, do! This is the Army, not the Vaults Bar of the Pig and Whistle.’

  It was surprising how fast Eph could move when he had to.

  Bold glared after him and began to walk slowly down the line, his hands behind his back, eyeing us one after the other as though he detested the sight of us. His face was hard, as though there was no flesh under the skin, only iron-like bone and muscle; but there was humour about his mouth and, in spite of its tightness, it was curiously not mean. In front of Tom Creak he stopped dead, with a shocked look on his face, as though he’d found someone without his trousers.

  ‘You ain’t shaved,’ he breathed, horrified.

  Tom smiled. ‘Every other day,’ he pointed out, ‘’cept on Sundays when I go to chapel.’

  ‘In the Army,’ Bold told him, his jaw thrust out, his voice low and vicious, ‘you shave every
day. Every day, see? – and twice on Sundays.’

  ‘Oh! All right!’ Tom gave Bold a beaming smile that showed his willingness under the circumstances to change the habit of a lifetime, and Bold’s face went red, the colour flooding up from his collar and over his prominent cheekbones.

  ‘All right?’ he said. ‘All right? What kind of answer’s that? What’s your name?’

  ‘Tom Creak.’

  ‘Tom Creak, eh? Not Kaiser Bill or Wee Willie Winkie? Just Tom Creak. Mrs Creak’s little lad. Well, Tom Creak, just remember that these ’ere stripes and this ’ere crown on this ’ere arm ain’t there just because I scored three goals and a foul for the Rovers. I slaughtered the enemy in thousands in South Africa. I earned ’em in the field, and I’m entitled to the respect what goes with ’em. I’m Sergeant-Major Bold to you lot, see? SERGEANT-MAJOR!’

  He turned on his heel and faced us, and we instinctively stood up straighter and stuck our chests out farther.

  ‘Right,’ he snarled. ‘You’re now going over to the Rovers’ ground at Hendrick Lane where you ’ave in the past been in the ’abit of disporting yourselves among the cup-tie crowds. This time, though, it’ll be different. At great trouble and expense the colonel’s ’ired the ground so you can start your first day’s squad drill. And, for a change, you ain’t goin’ to ride there on trams or in motorcars. You’re goin’ to march there, see? So do me a favour, will you? See if you can all manage to arrive at the same time.’

  It was more like a ramble than a march. We set off enthusiastically enough, every one of us feeling himself a hell of a fellow, but there were more than a few who seemed to have trouble in getting their feet to the ground at the same time as everyone else. Before we’d turned the first corner the whole column was changing step – one file after the other – so that ripples seemed to be running up and down the column like waves on a beach, and we were all complaining, apologising and treading on each other’s heels.

  Corker marched at our side, shouting the step in his raucous boozy voice in an effort to make a presentable job of it, and at first we tried to keep our eyes firmly fixed ahead in the approved style. But there were too many children running alongside and getting in the way, too many jibes from the carters sitting on their vehicles that had to be answered. Miniature Union Jacks were waved in our faces and an old man with an accordion trotted alongside us trying unsuccessfully to play ‘The British Grenadiers’. Then, as we passed a couple of halted trams, the drivers started to stamp rhythmically on their bells and the motorists who’d been drawn up by a policeman to let us pass began to pump the bulbs of their horns, and a frightened horse started to kick its shafts to pieces.