Tom Bedlam

by George Hagen

  A massive crater had torn up the road ahead. A wheelbarrow lay flattened on the ground nearby—as if stamped by God's fist. Hartwell kept walking and whistling, but Arthur stared at the object for a few respectful moments.

  When they arrived at the battery command post, a German plane had just shot at five British kite balloons that were anchored by cables to trucks on the field. The explosions were stunning—fireballs rose into an ashen sky while debris floated down. Several men parachuted from their destroyed balloons.

  “Balloonatics, we call them.” Hartwell laughed. “They spot enemy movement, gun positions, and so on. You couldn't get me up there!”

  One of the other bombardiers nodded at the departing plane. “Good shot, whoever that was,” he said, alluding to the German pilot.

  Arthur wondered silently if the pilot might have been another South African, like Max Immelmann.

  The howitzers in Arthur's battery group stood in a line across the open farmland, about a hundred feet apart, nestled in shallow pits and draped in camouflage netting.

  Arthur was assigned the job of giving coordinates by telephone from the command post to the howitzers. A network of wires from headquarters enabled the commanders to dictate targets to each battery. Suddenly, the guns would begin firing, sometimes for as long as sixteen hours. Once Arthur counted an assault of twelve hundred shells fired from his battery. The cries of the bombardiers, the subsequent explosion, and the strong odor of cordite in the air became a familiar trio of sensations. Arthur began to dream it in his sleep—even the smell.

  Hartwell explained to Arthur that, after a week or two, the enemy's spotters would work out the coordinates of their battery, and it would be time to move the guns. Sometimes the Germans would pinpoint their location but wait for an opportune time to retaliate.

  Arthur witnessed such a strike about two weeks after he arrived, and it was then that he realized the danger of his job compared with those of the men in the gun pits. When the shells started whistling around him, four in one minute, the commanding officer ordered his bombardiers to abandon their guns and stand in the fields until the strike was over. Arthur was ordered to stay with Roddy Wilson at the command post to monitor the phone line from brigade headquarters. Lieutenant Vardy supervised them; his infectious laugh and jokes kept them calm during the assault. When two shells came howling towards them, blowing craters about ten yards short of the building, Vardy slurred like a drunk: “One more like that and we're leaving the party!”

  The next shell struck the roof of the house, and timbers began to fall. “No more scotch left, lads! Everybody out!” cried Vardy. The men staggered through a cloud of plaster and smoke as the upper part of the house started to collapse. Arthur began choking in the dust and couldn't see his way out.

  “C'mon, Chapel, no time for a last drink,” Vardy chuckled, pushing him through a doorway. Another shell screamed overhead, and the explosion collapsed the house. Arthur's ears rang with an endless, high-pitched whistle. Suddenly, he felt himself being dragged out of a heap of plaster.

  “Are you all right, Chapel?” asked Hartwell. He nodded back at the heaping ruin of a house. “Wilson and Vardy are dead,” he said. “They didn't make it out.”

  “But he was with me,” Arthur insisted.

  Hartwell's reply was inaudible. Arthur could hear only the pounding of his heart—the machinery of life—a restless, clumsy drumming reminding him that he had prevailed while his friends had perished for no good reason. The difference between life and death had been a footstep, a half second, or Vardy's last joke.

  The other members of the company parted as Arthur, dusted white from head to foot, staggered, phantomlike, back to his barracks.

  VARDY AND WILSON were sewn up in blankets and laid on stretchers. The company crammed into a truck to escort them to the cemetery outside Béthune. The army graves were simple trenches of about fifty feet in length. “What sort of dignity is this?” Hartwell complained to Arthur, looking down at a hole, yards long, with blanketed corpses huddled side by side.

  A soft rain fell while the CO. gave a short eulogy for Wilson and the lieutenant. “Lieutenant Vardy was a good man, fine officer,” he said.

  “Hear, hear,” murmured several in the company.

  One of the British “balloonatics” wandered over and sang “Ave Maria.” He was a tenor, and for a moment his voice seemed to rise above the noise of trucks. Then a few shovelfuls of mud were thrown across the blanketed bodies. The rain stopped, and Arthur gazed across the communal burial site as more soldiers approached, bearing stretchers with blanketed bodies. He counted twenty trucks parked at the cemetery road. More dead. More holes to be dug. And more trucks arriving in the distance.

  On the drive back to La Bourse, the others broke the silence. Gregory Norkin showed Arthur his good-luck charms—a saltshaker and a girlfriend's bracelet. He tossed salt over his left shoulder at every meal and kissed his thumbnail whenever Bombardier McCormick swore.

  McCormick told Arthur he had joined the South African Army to avoid working for his father, a butcher. “Pigs' feet, pigs' intestines, pigs' heads, pigs' tails—pigs as far as the eye could see. And the other day I saw Garson pissing into a bush with his trousers down, and I thought I was back on the farm!”

  MCCORMICK'S PROFANITY WAS TIRESOME, Norkin's nervous habits irritated everyone, and Hartwell's willingness to risk a bullet wound seemed foolhardy to the rest of the crew. Iris would have described them as brutes, brats, and dandies. Arthur, however, was constantly amused by their company, for he was privy to a world that was his alone, a world his family would never know.

  One day, when two trucks arrived with a supply of shells for the howitzers, Arthur saw a familiar face. The captain in charge had a drooping mustache and a languid manner. He grinned at Arthur. “Chapel? Is that you?” he said.

  “Sir?” replied Arthur.

  “Remember me, Chapel? Boyle, your Latin teacher. Captain Boyle, I should say!”

  “What a pleasure, sir,” replied Arthur, earnestly, as he helped unload the ordnance. Watching Arthur work up a considerable sweat carrying the hundred-pound shells, Boyle advised him to slow down.

  “You won't get a medal for this kind of effort, Chapel,” he said. “Look, you're a bright lad. They could use you in one of the medical units. Why don't you leave this sort of work for the slobs? I could put in a word—”

  “I don't want any help, sir,” Arthur replied. “I got here by myself. I'll be fine.”

  “Fine?” echoed Boyle, skeptically. “I was fighting in the trenches for about three months when I was shot,” he explained, rolling up his right trouser leg. “It wasn't funny when the infection set in. Thought I'd die.”

  Hartwell stared dubiously at the small scar. “From that?”

  “Yes, from that” snapped Boyle. “It's not the hole that kills you, lad. It's the infection. Unfortunately for me, I recovered. The lucky ones lose a leg or a hand and go home.”

  Hartwell sneered. “Coward,” he muttered, walking away.

  “Have you seen any sign of Wally Hill, sir?” said Arthur.

  “He died a few weeks ago. Hit by a shell. I wrote the letter to his parents.” Boyle's tone was frank, but he didn't anticipate Arthur's shock. The boy stared, uncomprehendingly as if he'd been punched by some unseen force.

  Recognizing this reaction, Boyle reached forward and put his hands on Arthur's shoulders. “I'm sorry, Chapel, I'd forgotten that you've only just arrived. We've lost a lot of boys like Wally. I'm afraid that's what happens here.” He glanced sharply at Hartwell. “Heroes and cowards. Dying every day.”

  “How about a fellow named Georgie Goode—”

  The schoolmaster interrupted Arthur's question before he could finish. “Please don't ask me about all of your acquaintances, Chapel.”

  Boyle then changed the subject to the new minister of war, Geoffrey Mansworth, who was arguing in Parliament against further negotiations with the Germans. This, the captain said, would probably
extend the war for another year. “You'll see, Arthur, that we become something of an abstraction to the politicians and those”—he paused as if the words were distasteful—“stoking the home fires—they think it's all rather fun.” He removed a mailbag from the truck and threw it into Arthur's arms, then consulted a piece of paper in his jacket pocket with a frown.

  “I can recall Cicero, but I have the damnedest time remembering modern poetry. This one's by a British soldier—a fellow named Siegfried Sassoon.” He handed it to Arthur.

  While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud.

  Boyle shrugged. “When I hear the patriotic nonsense, I find that passage rather a relief.”

  “What's the point of it?” Arthur asked.

  “Well, Chapel,” Boyle replied, “what's the significance of a man fighting for his country when he might be mown down like a blade of grass? Machine guns, bombs, chemicals. This uniform turns us from souls into statistics.”

  After Boyle departed, Hartwell joined Arthur.

  “Friend of yours?”

  “Teacher.” Arthur nodded.

  “Probably shot himself in the knee,” said Hartwell. “The French Army executes men who do that. Imagine him driving around the countryside reading his poetry while others die—it makes me sick.”

  Arthur said nothing. He didn't understand Hartwell's bravado any more than he understood Boyle's disgust; but he admired them both for believing in something. He yearned for some conviction of his own.

  ENTRENCHED

  IT IS ONE THING TO BE FORGIVEN IN A LETTER, BUT TOM HADN'T anticipated the heat of Eve's anger in person. As he sat before her in the glorious conservatory at the Mansworth residence in Bedford Park, she served him tea with barbed generosity.

  “I recall your preference for sugar in your tea, or did I misconstrue that too all those years ago?” she murmured. “Forgive me,” she added, after a pause. “That was unfair.”

  Tom said nothing, deciding that she was entitled to at least one up-percut.

  Eve was still the embodiment of grace. Her perfect almond eyes simmered at him as she offered the sugar from a silver tea bowl, freshly baked scones, and jam tarts. A brilliant mosaic of color emanated from the garden beyond the enormous windows; inside, the walls were painted a warm lemon, the furniture upholstered in soft yellows and golds. Eve told him that the small framed landscapes on the walls were by Corot, part of her collection. Everything in the room was carefully chosen, expensive, tasteful, and arranged to best effect. It might have been Mansworth's house, but this room was Eve's, all right.

  “This is a beautiful home,” he began.

  And your home?” she asked. “What's it like?”

  “Worn,” he replied. “Full of things needing to be repaired but comfortable. The children—they're adults now—have worn the edges down. The garden is nice,” he said, “in a wild sort of way, though not as pretty as yours.”

  This compliment failed to defuse the tension in the air. He was a living reminder now of her loss of pride, and Eve valued her pride above most things.

  “I've done my best, considering …,” she said.

  “Considering?”

  She tilted her head, as if he was being unspeakably dense. “When one is deceived early in life, one is at such a disadvantage.”

  “I understand,” he conceded.

  “I doubt it.”

  “Eve,” Tom began, “your father told me, rather bluntly, that you would attract many better offers than I could make. Furthermore, he told me that I wasn't welcome in his house.”

  “So, in deference to his edict, you chose to elope with my sister?”

  “Lizzy found me at the station,” he replied. “Would you have been happy to ride around some dusty little town in a dogcart, counting pennies and tending patients? Giving piano lessons to little children? Would you have been happy with such a life?”

  “Did I seem so incapable of sacrifice?” Her voice broke as she said this. “Was I so shallow, to you?”

  “Eve, I loved you both. You spoke of making me a success in London, and just now, when I walked up the steps to this house, I said to myself, ‘This looks like the house for Eve. She must have found precisely what she wanted in life.’ Was I so wrong?”

  “Yes!” she cried with the full force of her emotion. Her reply must have shaken the house, because Tom heard a door suddenly open and the footsteps of a child racing down a hall, followed by the hushed admonishments of an adult. Wiping her eyes clear, Eve abruptly changed her tone. “You're probably right.” She glowered. “I was better off. I married a fine man, and I have a beautiful daughter.”

  From the double doors of the conservatory, a young woman's face appeared. She was about fifteen, solemn, and she stared at the two of them for a perplexed moment.

  “Josephine? Come in!” said her mother. This prompted an approving sound from the governess, who appeared in profile at the doorway. So the girl entered, walked straight up to Tom, and curtsied.

  “Josephine, this is your uncle,” said Eve.

  “How do you do, Josephine?” said Tom.

  She had high cheekbones, wild red hair, and a bold stare. She looked more like Lizzy than like her mother, and she seemed to take the measure of Tom quickly, delivering a frank reply: “I am sorry to have interrupted. I heard an argument and assumed my father had come home.”

  Now Josephine turned sharply to her mother, as if to make clear to whom her remark was directed. Eve took this barbed comment without flinching. Tom guessed that she was quite proud of her daughter's spirit.

  “I have a daughter named Margaret in Africa,” he said. “You might pass for sisters. She's twenty-eight, but she was very like you at your age.”

  “I should like to meet her very much,” the girl replied. “It would be like seeing my future, or jumping ahead a few chapters to learn the ending of my own story.”

  “Hardly the ending, Josephine,” Eve laughed. “Don't be morbid!”

  “Who knows?” insisted her daughter. “Some people are struck down in their prime, Mother. Juliet was dead at fourteen, Joan of Arc was burned at nineteen. Anne Boleyn was beheaded at twenty-eight. Mary Queen of Scots was—” Her eyes danced at the thought of all this tragedy.

  Josephine's young governess interrupted the exchange to remind her ofher abandoned schoolwork.

  “Say goodbye, Josephine,” said Eve.

  Josephine curtsied to Tom once more, issuing a weary sigh. “Goodbye, Uncle.”

  Eve showed Tom around the house, which was full of heavy, dark antique furniture, swords and pikes crossed on the walls, and seventeenth-century paintings of generals gathered on hilltops—the sorts of pictures that honored victories and careers. She explained how she had met Mansworth while visiting Cornell in London.

  Mansworth and Cornell had been in the same London circle. Mansworth had served as an officer in the Second Battalion stationed in Bermuda and returned when his father became too ill to run his munitions factories. The factories produced two modern innovations: cordite and lightweight carbines with rifled barrels. These two novelties would change warfare forever; men could shoot one another from greater distances without the clouds of smoke that gave away their positions.

  Cornell attempted to court Eve, but Mansworth made the stronger impression, so much so that, when Professor Harding died, Eve settled her father's affairs and moved to London. She learned, however, that although Mansworth was considered a catch, many people disliked him because he was cold and aloof. Eve set to work on Mansworth; she advised him on matters of dress and encouraged him to make charitable donations, which helped broaden his social circle to include politically and socially influential friends.

  At his side, Eve became Mansworth's “charming half.” Her popularity made him a more welcome guest, just as his business acumen made him an authority on the logistics of warfare. When he proposed to her, she accepted, believing that the transformation of his character was half complete.
>
  “The prime minister attended our wedding—he was a friend of Geoffrey's father,” Eve explained. “But I agreed to marry Geoffrey because he reminded me of you, Cor tez. Something about his features, his silences, his secrets. Like you, yet not like you at all. Your secrets seemed to be private sorrows, his secrets— Well,” she sighed. “I don't know what they are. His job requires secrets, but since his assignment as war minister, I am privy to less of his life than ever before. Geoffrey is not the man I hoped he'd become.”

  She didn't look at Tom as she said this. It was a concession of defeat, and he suddenly understood the vehemence of her earlier fury.

  “Perhaps he can still redeem himself,” Tom suggested. “I have a favor to ask you both, in this regard.”

  Eve blinked at him. “A favor? You and I have hardly reconciled, and you come to ask me a favor?”

  “Will you let me atone for the past?” he asked.

  She pressed her index finger to her lip, then smiled. “If you'll admit that you behaved like an absolute pig by running away with my sister.”

  This he did and then explained his son's situation, concluding, “Only the minister of war could bring Arthur out of combat.”

  “You're assuming that Geoffrey and I speak of such things,” she reminded him.

  “Eve, I'm sure that, if not for you, he wouldn't be war minister.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “It's too late to flatter me, Cortez.”

  “I must beg you, on behalf of your nephew—”

  “You're not in a position to beg me for anything,” she cried. “Every one of Lizzy's letters was like a stab to my heart! How happy she was with you!”

  She put her hand to her mouth in embarrassment for this outburst and fled from the room. A moment later a maid appeared to escort Tom out.

  RAIN WAS FALLING as Tom took a cab back to his hotel. He let one hand linger outside the window, thinking of Lizzy and Eve. Was it his fault that Eve had spent more than twenty years mourning his departure? And if Lizzy had remained in England, would she be alive now? What had he done to the Harding sisters?