Covenant with Death

by John Harris

  He dropped us at the bottom of Cotterside Common and we took a tram the rest of the way, and arrived in the High Street to find the air crackling with hatred for the Germans. We’d heard of the loss of the Lusitania in camp – it had arrived, I suppose, through the usual channels of the know-alls of the orderly room, and had spread from battalion headquarters down through company headquarters and on to us. But none of us had taken much notice of it, beyond a feeling of shock and awe.

  We went for a meal at a soldiers’ club and sneaked into a cinema, keeping a sharp lookout for military policemen, and when we came out there were crowds in the street. There was a man on the Town Hall steps waving a banner which proclaimed REPENT. THE DAY IS COME! and shouting burning Old Testament texts.

  ‘I was a sinner,’ he was saying. ‘But I got washed in the blood of the Lamb.’

  ‘You still look a bit bloomin’ mucky,’ someone shouted and there was a burst of laughter.

  Farther along, near Schafer’s shop, which had Huns chalked on the door again, another man was waving a copy of John Bull and preaching violence to a small crowd he’d collected around him.

  ‘Let them suffer too,’ he said. ‘Let the pro-Hun baby-killers take a taste of their own medicine!’

  We listened to him for a while, then Mason touched my arm and we moved away.

  ‘Let’s go and get a drink,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll try and find some girls.’

  He jerked at his jacket and ran his finger over the little moustache he’d started to grow.

  ‘I feel I have the desirability of the lonely young soldier,’ he said, ‘that always arouses the maternal instinct in young girls. One drink, Private Fenner – no more – and then we’ll look for company. Come on.’

  In the Vaults Bar of the Blueberry Tavern next to the Post office, where we inevitably ended up – being Pressmen – the air was electric and already growing noisy. Everybody seemed to be talking about the sinking and a man by the bar was trying to claim he’d expected it all the time.

  ‘What do you expect of a nation that’ll try to poison a Christian enemy’s food supplies?’ he was saying loudly. He carried a silver-topped cane and wore a pair of dark pearl-button boots that didn’t seem to go with his yellowing boater. He leaned on the counter, a little the worse for wear, his elbows in a pool of spilled beer, chivvying the landlord, jabbing with his finger to emphasize a point, his voice gimlet-sharp with insistence as he tried to drive his argument home. ‘All these Germans who were in the country before the war,’ he said. ‘Where’ve they all gone? You can’t kid me they’ve all gone back to Germany.’

  ‘’Course they haven’t,’ the landlord said. ‘They’re in internment camps where they can’t do no harm.’

  ‘That’s what they say,’ the man with the boater said. ‘But that’s all nonsense. I know where they are. Shall I tell you?’

  ‘Go on. Where?’

  ‘They’re in cellars signalling to submarines with wireless sets.’

  The landlord moved uneasily in his position by the beer engine. ‘Wirelesses don’t work in cellars,’ he said uncertainly, as though he weren’t sure of his facts, and the man in the boater slapped his hand to the counter emphatically.

  ‘The sort they’ve got now do,’ he insisted. ‘They work anywhere. They’re sitting there tapping away, telling the Hun where all our food supplies are, all our guns, and all our ships, and all our army.’

  ‘What army?’ the landlord said. ‘Kitchener said we hadn’t got one, and we’ve got a damn’ sight less since Ypres.’

  The man in the boater stared at the landlord patiently, as though he considered flippancy had no place in his conversation. He drew a deep breath and stared round the crowded shelves and at the gilt mirrors behind the bar, the gaudy mezzotints of Minoru winning the Derby and the Guards at Inkerman, and the adverts for Vichy water and whisky, as though he were making a great effort to contain his anger. Then he jabbed a quivering finger at the landlord and began to speak slowly.

  ‘We’ll have even less if things go on as they are doing,’ he said. ‘They’re landing poison in Ireland and the Irish are getting it across here in suitcases with false bottoms. Before six months is up, there’ll be thousands dying in the streets.’

  ‘Can’t see it meself.’ The landlord was unmoved by the picture.

  ‘I can,’ the man with the boater said. ‘I saw it all the time. Right from the word “go”. And now this. ’Ow many on board?’ He swung round, breaking off the argument he’d started, and poked his cane at Mason who was reading the Lusitania story in the evening paper. Mason looked up and the man in the boater nodded encouragingly.

  ‘Go on,’ he persisted with grisly interest. ‘’Ow many on board?’

  Mason shook out the paper and turned to the main news page. You could see the story plastered across three columns, pushing out of sight the indignation that was still being felt about the gas at Ypres and the nonsense they were talking to make Gallipoli sound like a resounding victory.

  ‘Go on,’ the man with the boater said again. He seemed to be getting a little impatient. ‘Read it, man. I’ve not got my glasses. How many on board?’

  ‘One thousand nine hundred and fifty-nine passengers and crew,’ Mason said. ‘Ninety of ’em kids. Thirty-nine infants in arms.’

  ‘There you are.’ The man with the boater swung round and jabbed his cane at the landlord. ‘Just as I told you. Ninety of ’em kids! It’s a bloody shame! It’s just like the Hun. Where was it?’

  ‘Just off the Old Head of Kinsale. A torpedo.’

  ‘I thought so. They was lying in wait for her. Just like I said. Information supplied by wireless. Tic-tac, tic-tac. Fizz-fizz up a bit of wire. Tic-tac, tic-tac in Berlin. Anybody who’ll use poison gas to fight a war doesn’t deserve any mercy. In South Africa, whatever else you said of the Boers, they fought fairly.’

  ‘Were you there?’ I asked.

  The man with the boater turned to me. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t. I was making horseshoes for the cavalry though. I’ve got a forge near the station. I did my bit, I can tell you.’

  ‘They ought to have given you a medal,’ Mason said.

  ‘I got an illuminated address from the chapel.’ The man with the boater was oblivious to Mason’s sarcasm. ‘And I’m doing my bit again this war. I hate the Germans,’ he said. ‘They don’t fight fair. There’s still a damned sight too many of ’em about in this country. I reckon it’s the German shopkeepers who put the prices up. It’s nothing but an attempt by Schafer and that lot to undermine the country’s economy.’ He jabbed with his cane at Mason. ‘Read some more,’ he said. ‘Out loud. So they can all hear it.’

  Mason turned the page, skirted the sober little announcement that said how pleased the Editor of the Post would be to receive photographs from relatives of dead, wounded and missing soldiers for insertion – free of charge – in the Roll of Honour columns, and went on reading.

  ‘Within sight of the shore,’ he announced. ‘Nearly fifteen hundred victims. They were given no warning. There were about a hundred Americans.’

  ‘That’ll fetch the Yanks into the war,’ the man with the boater said.

  ‘“It is considered to be a deliberate act of policy”,’ Mason read on, ‘“for which the German Government is directly responsible. It had disseminated warnings beforehand in the shipping offices of New York. It is considered to be an act of spectacular brutality which shocks the conscience of the world, and appeals more forcibly to American conscience than even the desolation of Belgium.”’

  The man with the boater slapped the counter with his cane.

  ‘Now what do you say about the Germans?’ he shouted at the landlord.

  The landlord lost his temper and began to shout back.

  ‘Fair play,’ he roared. ‘That’s all I ask for.’

  ‘Fair play! There’s no such thing with the Hun! They don’t want to intern ’em and shove ’em into camps! What good does that do? They want to cut off their ’
ands and feet and leave ’em to die, like they left them people in the sea! Nearly two thousand of ’em, women and little kids! They ought to be all strung up from the gaslamps! Here, outside, in the street! This street! Every street! Anybody with a German name, anybody with German relations! Governesses! Pork butchers! The lot! It’s terrible! Terrible! All them children! We ought to go out and smash up the shops!’

  Almost as though his words had been heard outside, the door was flung back against the wall as he finished and we all turned from the bar to stare at the man who was framed there against the growing darkness. His eyes were wide and excited and he was pointing back in the direction he’d come. Even before he spoke I guessed what he was going to say and I seemed to hold my breath in anticipation.

  ‘They’ve just flung a brick through Schafers’ window again,’ he yelled.

  We burst through the door, jamming it as we stuck there for a second, our bodies filling the opening, then we were tearing off down Blueberry Street, our boots clattering on the pavement.

  Even before we got to the crossroads we could hear the noise of the crowd – it sounded like the ugly baying of a pack of hounds – and as we turned the corner we saw them filling the street in front of Schafers’ shop.

  It was a new place built just before the war, with smart grained woodwork and tiled shelves, and the window seemed to be full of tinned food. A lot of the crowd were drunk, men and women alike, shouting and shrieking as they swirled like a human tide in the roadway. One little man with a voluminous cap and an unshaven face, who clearly didn’t belong in the district, had made a noose of a clothes-line and slung it over the crossbar of a gas lamp. It wasn’t strong enough to hang a dog, let alone a human being, but he was making a great play with it.

  ‘Shove ’em in ’ere,’ he was shouting. ‘Two at a time! And up they go! Like a monkey on a stick! One, two! Another little Hun gone!’

  Some of the crowd were laughing but most of them, swarming across the tram-lines and holding up the late district trams, were shouting angrily.

  ‘Child murderers!’ they were yelling. ‘Down with the Huns!’

  Schafers’ window, starred by a brick, shone gap-toothed and splintered in the glow from the blue-painted gas lamps, and the pavement was littered with fragments of glass that picked up the light in a thousand jagged flashes of yellow.

  A policeman on the fringe of the crowd was blowing his whistle, and trying to hang on to two men at once, but he seemed to lose his balance and fell over, taking the two men with him.

  There was a flat above the shop but it seemed to have been deserted by the manager who normally lived there and we could see people in the bedrooms filling their arms with clothes and bedding. One woman I saw was carrying a pair of leaping bronze horses which had obviously decorated a mantelpiece, two great metal pieces of violent action that seemed about to jump out of her arms. Downstairs most of the tinned and potted food seemed to have disappeared now, and I saw a man standing in the window passing out what was left of it to his friends. A couple of men were squabbling over a tin of ham, each of them hanging on to it with both hands and heaving it backwards and forwards as they argued at the tops of their voices.

  The driver of a tram behind the crowd was stamping on the pedal of his bell so that the monotonous cracked clang clang clang added to the bedlam of noise. The passengers were crowded at the windows and hanging from the open platform with the driver, staring and shouting advice, and there was a woman with a child on the top deck, who was screaming for the police.

  The crowd was surging about now round the scuffle in the roadway, and people were barged over and fell underfoot. I was separated from Mason, and fully occupied with keeping my balance as I was jammed up against a shop window which I thought was going to collapse at any moment and deposit me and the rest of the crowd round me into a display of elastic-sided boots. The temper of the people in the street was beginning to look uglier all the time and the laughter had stopped altogether now.

  The policeman had got to his feet again and was appealing to the crowd to help him, but no one moved, and I got the impression that most of them were far more interested in the food in Schafers’ window than in the nationality of its owners. Prices had recently gone up again and the Lusitania was just a good excuse to most of them. Nobody was smashing the window of Schemingers’, the chemists, I noticed.

  ‘Bloody German bastards,’ a woman screamed as she appeared in the doorway of the shop with her arms full of clothes. ‘Bloody Hun murderers!’

  As I fought my way free, I saw John Schafer himself arrive. He’d obviously been called down by telephone and he came pushing through the crowd, a white-haired old man with a square-topped bowler.

  ‘What the devil do you think you’re doing with that?’ he snapped at the men squabbling over the tin of ham.

  ‘What the ’ell has it got to do with you?’ he was asked.

  ‘It happens to belong to me, that’s all.’

  The two men stopped arguing. ‘Christ,’ one of them said. ‘It’s the old ’Un bastard himself! ’Ere ’e is, boys!’

  He gave old Schafer a violent shove that sent him into the crowd and in a second he was down on his knees. A girl with her hat on lopsidedly burst out of the milling people and went to his rescue. Someone pushed her away and I saw her go flying. As she recovered her balance, a woman grabbed at her collar, and her dress tore at the shoulder, and I managed at last to fight my way through to the front, elbowing and fisting and kicking.

  The girl was brandishing an umbrella now, magnificently undeterred, and I saw her set about the crowd round old Schafer who was now crouching on his knees as they kicked and pummelled him with sticks.

  As I broke free, a man got hold of the girl, but I swung him round and knocked him flat on his back. Someone jumped on me from behind but I tucked my head between my knees and he went clean over my shoulders on top of the first man.

  My cap rolled away with him and I lost it, then suddenly there seemed to be policemen everywhere and the looters were dropping their prizes and running. The woman with the clothes was arguing violently with a sergeant and the woman from upstairs with the bronze horses was being bundled towards a waiting van. I pulled another shouting man away from the girl by old Schafer, then someone grabbed her round the waist and seemed to be trying to pick her up. As I tried to stop him, he swung his arm back and his elbow caught me in the mouth, and I tasted blood and lost my temper. I hit him on top of the head with my fist, and as he turned, I punched him as hard as I could in the nose and he reeled away, his hands to his face howling blue murder.

  Then suddenly the street cleared and there were only the crowd on the pavement and the policemen bundling their captives into a van, complete with their loot. The people in the shop doors were jeering at them and shouting.

  ‘Bloody Germans,’ they were yelling. ‘Leave ’em alone! It serves ’em right!’

  I saw a police inspector in a round pillbox hat grab at the coat of a man who was running away with a tin of biscuits under his arm and pull him up short. The man lost his balance and the tin of biscuits went flying, skating across the pavement, sweeping the splinters of glass before it in a shower. Then, as he swung round and landed on his back, his feet in the air, a thin whippet-like dog came out of the crowd from nowhere, and grabbed hold of the inspector’s trouser leg.

  The inspector shook his foot in an irritable way, jerking it quickly backwards and forwards, so that the dog was whipped round and round, still growling.

  ‘For God’s sake,’ I heard him say with an irritated desperation.

  ‘It’s got German sympathies,’ someone yelled. ‘Sprechen sie Deutsch, Inspector! Hoch der bloody Kaiser!’

  The man in the inspector’s grip struggled to get up, but the policeman held him down, still kicking violently with his foot to shake off the dog hanging on to his trouser leg. Then the inspector’s hat fell off and went rolling among the glass splinters in a curving run, and someone trod on it. Finally, another
policeman took a swinging kick at the dog, which went off into the crowd yelping like a house on fire, and the inspector straightened up and handed his catch to a sergeant. He was marched away through the crowd, who had turned their hatred of the Germans on to old Schafer as a policeman helped him to his feet.

  ‘Baby-killers,’ they were shouting. ‘Rapists!’

  The man who’d been shouting over the bar in the Blueberry was waving his cane. ‘Huns! Boches!’ he was roaring. ‘Child-murderers! Who left the kids from the Lusitania to drown?’

  I turned to the girl and, taking my jacket off, dropped it over her shoulders where her dress had been torn.

  ‘Better put this on,’ I said.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. She brandished her bent umbrella and laughed. ‘Well, I helped a bit,’ she said.

  Then she pushed the hair from her face and I saw it was Helen Haddo.

  ‘Helen!’ I said.

  She gave me a quick hug that was excited more than anything else, and held me like that for a second. Her eyes were bright and her face flushed, and she looked as though she’d been thoroughly enjoying herself.

  ‘What the hell were you up to?’ I asked angrily. ‘Joining in that lot?’

  Her smile died and her eyes flashed. ‘You surely didn’t expect me to stand back and see them beat the life out of an old man, did you?’ she retorted.

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘Of course not. All the same, you ought to leave that sort of thing to me. It’s not your cup of tea.’

  She opened her mouth to start disputing it with me, and I decided to get her away to where I could speak to her in peace. If she was in an argumentative mood, I’d found, I always needed a little calm to talk her round.

  ‘Let’s push off,’ I said. ‘They’re in an ugly mood still.’

  ‘I don’t care!’

  ‘Well, I do. I’m supposed to be fighting Germans, not this lot.’