Passport to Hell

by Hyde, Robin

  The worth of orchids was above the heads of the simple-minded New Zealanders. ‘Surely you don’t grudge a man a few of your flowers?’ growled a one-legged soldier.

  The noble lord drew himself up to his full height, uttering one despairing cry: ‘Ignorance—ignorance—ignorance—!’ and dashed from the ward, followed by an indignant howl of ‘Ignorant yourself!’—in which both parties were perfectly correct. In the ward beyond, the wounded sang, ‘God Save the King’ as the orchidaceous peer fled by. After which the three robbers confessed, and were dragged before his Lordship to make their sheepish apologies. These the peer accepted, though sadly, and departed from the scene of the outrage with but an occasional groan.

  There had been a war on for some time, but never before had he actually gone so far as to notice it.

  There was some corner in his greenhouses that had been for ever England—impregnable, comfortable, valuable, overheated, and as densely ignorant in its own impenetrable self-conceit as any Jackie Abo who ever knocked his block-head up against the rising walls of a civilization, but without Jackie Abo’s excuse.

  That corner was now, beyond prayer or pardon, hopelessly colonialized.

  O si sic omnes….

  ‘Now,’ said Sunshine, not without dramatic effect, ‘you’ve gone and done it.’

  ‘Sunshine,’ whispered her Chocolate Soldier, ‘I wish I could ’a’ had that little glass window-pane out of his eye. For church parades, Sunshine. I wouldn’t mind church parades if I could ’a’ had that little glass window.’

  Sunshine upset a cup of cocoa over him, scolded him, tucked him up again and fled, kissing her fingers as she ran past the robbers. He kept her to her promise that night. Speaking very low, as the time came for the lights over the men’s beds to be lowered.

  ‘Sunshine, what did I say when I was off my head?’

  ‘You came out of your sleep six times, Choc’lit. And now do you want to know what saved your life?’

  ‘Please, Sunshine.’

  ‘Very well. This is what you said.’ And she told him. Starkie dived under the blankets and stayed there. He felt her hand on his shoulder gripping it quite hard through the white coverlets. Her voice was as near hard, too, as Sunshine’s voice could ever be.

  ‘Don’t you think we’d rather you said things like that and stayed alive? Do you think we like seeing them go out? Do you think I like it when they try to hold my hand, and say, “Good-bye, Mum”?’

  He heard her footsteps retreating down the ward, but he stayed hidden under the blankets. Somehow what he had said to her pricked into the blue-skyed bubble of this new world. All filth outside … loneliness, beastliness, tooth and claw. He couldn’t have hoped to get away from that. But it hadn’t seemed very real when he was stooping over the gas-ring, making toast for supper.

  In the morning the man in the next bed said, ‘Let’s have a look at Choc’lit, what colour is he now?’

  He sulked like Ajax in the tent of his bedclothes, only muttering: ‘I’m bloody sorry you nurses ever had to put up with me, anyhow!’ until the day was saved by the arrival of a new convoy of wounded. Helping to carry the stretchers, he came on Sunshine again, just as she came back to the ward from the operating-theatre. A tired, rather wan Sunshine that day, with the smell of iodoform heavy about her.

  ‘Sunshine, I am sorry. I didn’t mean to say anything like that to you. Truly I didn’t.’

  And all she said was: ‘God bless you, old Choc’lit!’ Then absently: ‘How old are you, Choc’lit?’

  ‘Getting on for nineteen. I’m an old man, Sunshine.’

  ‘Ah …!’—softly, and with infinite passion. ‘War …’

  The French girls said that often. ‘Ah, quelle guerre … ah, quelle guerre …’ But with more resignation. Sunshine as if she spat on the very name of war. She ran back to her wounded, and Starkie limped out into the clear morning air.

  He could spend hours now in the green and level stretches of English parks, and became a chocolate lion among the children—who hopped about near him, fearless as sparrows. Soon, whenever he appeared in the park, there was a shriek of, ‘How’s your penny-pocket, Choc’lit Soldier?’—and he scattered coppers among them with all the dignity of Haroun-al-Raschid. The English children were the first he had known since his own outlaw childhood, and their red-cheeked faces and blue eyes were like pictures out of a nursery-rhyme book. They wore short socks, buttoned gaiters, brown stubby-toed sandals, straight fawn coats and fur muffs in which their paws curled up as neatly as the red baby squirrels—who, to Starkie’s enchantment, tore up trees in the park and chattered at him molto con agitato.

  A little maiden of two summers would wander up to him and demand attention, slavery, and creature comforts as engagingly as Titania making free with the excellent Bottom. Sometimes nurses or even parents—magnificent, self-possessed creatures—would pass by with their children. But it was war-time; he wore a blue coat, and his crutches sprawled beside him on the park bench. Nobody ever struck him with word or look.

  Old gentlemen handed him cigarettes, and seeing the crutches, peered at him mistily, looking for the stumps of limbs. ‘Poor young fellow! Terrible business, all this.’ The mothers, their close-buttoned, fur-trimmed splendour fawn-coloured as the English trees in early autumn, nodded and smiled at him. In this little circlet of England, with a white and delicate sunshine brittle as frost-spears among short grass and brown trees, and with Sunshine to supervise his time in the hospital ward, Starkie was happier than he had ever been before.

  Now that a ghost of his old strength was beginning to come back to him, he was worried at having no pay-book. But the men of his own battalion didn’t let him wander about broke. Padre Spearman walked into the ward one day after the final examination which set him free to go on leave, shouted his name, and produced a letter which contained a fair packet of money from the boys in France. They all knew he hadn’t owned a pay-book for well over a year.

  Two days later he got a wire commanding him to report at Headquarters, London. Headquarters still gave an uneasy little twist of fear in his memory. He didn’t intend to go at first, but he had a long talk with Sunshine, and she was very wise and dictatorial about it. ‘Of course you’ll go, Choc’lit.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you’d ever write to a fellow, Sunshine? You girls haven’t the time.’

  ‘You know perfectly well I’ll write to you.’

  ‘Then we are friends, Sunshine?’

  ‘Yes—friends.’

  The clear pity in her eyes made her look older than she was. He would remember her for ever like that—her white uniform against the buff walls of the hospital, the brown hair just showing under her cap. She kept her word, too. Months afterwards, she was still sending him cigarettes and little letters.

  In the doctor’s office Starkie got a lot of good advice about what not to do in London, and the two little packets of preventives handed over to every soldier discharged on leave from the English hospitals. So it had all begun again. He said good-bye to them—nurses, doctors, sick men lying under their monstrous iron cradles, and Sunshine. Then he stumped away down the hospital drive.

  18 London and Laurels

  SOME city, and some fog. Everything draped in black, as if you were perched up on the old hearse already. Everything at a standstill except the pubs—where you can still get a drink, thank God, before going on to Headquarters! Well, what do you expect to find roosting around the Brass Hats’ chicken-coop but the Villains, dozens of ’em, great big chaps scared of nothing except having to go and do a spell in the trenches? Can’t come in here, my man; you’re drunk, you are. Say, Captain, I’ve an appointment here with the General, he told me to come here; if you don’t let me in he’ll wreck this show, see? Stunned, is he, Captain? Well, Stark, still fighting, I see. Yes, General, still fighting. Well, remember you’re not in the trenches now. You’re in London. Come back here at two o’clock sharp and report at my room. And see that you’re sober.

  Better
than the Villains, the General is. Got a funny look in his eye, all the same. Wouldn’t trust any of them farther than I can see them. Russell Square; bed and breakfast, five shillings. Beg pardon, ma’am, can I get a bath right away? I’ve got to see a General at two o’clock, and I don’t look much of an oil-painting coming in out of that fog of yours.

  Say, if the father of that lance-corporal had known what he was going to act like when he grew up, he’d have had to get himself created, not begotten. Nobody in his right senses would go and beget a lance-corporal that acted like the Grand Cham, and his buttons not properly shined, either. Ever heard of Lance-Corporal Bacon, you little runt? On Gallipoli we used to carve your sort up with our bayonets, we did, and eat you off the end, but we gave up the practice because our padre said you was altogether too hog-fat for the insides of decent men, and, by Christ, he was right! Now you get out of the road, I’ve got to see the Colonel.

  Let that man alone, he’s dangerous. Knock on the door. All clear ahead.

  God, one General at a time isn’t bad, even if he has got an eye like the point on a jack-knife; but what about six all lined up in a row? Maybe they’re going to do their own arresting for a treat. It’s not fair—six Brass Hats, all solemn as images and staring at me; nowhere to look, either, but the hole in the carpet. Sit down and smoke if you like. Thank God for a fag, anyhow! Full war record.

  Three hours. Iron lips moving in a stiff sort of smile. That’s right, all your papers are here. At least you’ve been telling the truth; now go outside and wait till you’re sent for.

  Come in, Stark. Sit down again. You’ve been a good soldier, and we want to do what we can about you. Back crimes washed out, all fines refunded, back pay restored, and the Major at Le Havre has agreed to drop his case against you. Now we want you to return to New Zealand. You’ve done your bit here.

  I want to go back to the trenches. I want to see my mates.

  Disability … the Captain up in the board-room will tell you the same thing. All right, go and let him take a look at you. Breathe in … yes, that chest of yours hurts, doesn’t it? Now mark time at the double. Well, soldier, you can’t call that much of an effort; you’d look pretty silly after the first ten miles on a route march, wouldn’t you? Trenches nothing. There’s your chit. Take it down again to the General.

  Doctor’s report is final, Stark. It’s New Zealand for you, and you can be a recruiting agent if you like when you get there. God, I’m not going back home in the middle of this war and leave my mates thousands of miles away. General, I can’t go back to New Zealand. I’ll get five years straight on end if I do. They’re looking out for me. What for? Something over a woman, sir. Now they’ll think I’ve raped a bit of skirt or committed bigamy, but it can’t be helped. Well, fourteen days’ leave, Stark; but take care what you get up to. You’re a very sick man still. After that you can go back to camp. What do you know most about? Bombs? Well, fourteen days’ leave in London, then you’re appointed a bombing instructor at Sling Camp.

  Ever been kissed by a General? That was the Froggy one in blue clothes. The rest just shook hands hard and proper; but the Froggies put their hands on your shoulders, and before you know what’s struck you—whack, there she goes, first on one cheek, then on the other! Guess that’s what the Froggies do when they turn the other cheek, and they’re that quick off the mark you haven’t any time to nip in and stop them. Well, that’s the first time ever I was kissed by an Army officer, and I’m content to let it stay at that. Makes a chap come out red in the face, and gives that lance-corporal cause to snigger behind his fat hand.

  A brand new pay-book, though, with a big credit balance. First thing, money sent back to the boys in the trenches. Then there’s four of the boys want to take their girl friends along to see the Rosary—and Flo’s not a bad little kid, either, when you meet her for the first time and she swings those long black-stockinged legs of hers. How much do you think the seats at the Rosary break you for? Five shillings? Don’t laugh. Fourteen bob a time, and when we sold a horse to see who’d pay for the lot of us, I was the one. Cost me about four pounds ten to get us into the Rosary.

  I never had any luck gambling since I lost that gold we took out of the dead man’s money-belt on Gallipoli; while I kept that I couldn’t go wrong over a bet. And now we’re here, everybody’s crying. It’s a story about a blind chap…. God, you’ll find plenty of them trying to pick their way around hospital. They fit you out with a little white cane, and then everybody knows they’ve got to be nice to you unless they’re in an awful hurry. Let’s get out of this and take a look at the river, Flo. I hate sad plays.

  Dirty Dick’s is down in the East End, and you never saw anything like it before—not outside London. The tale is that a man and his wife poisoned each other at their own wedding-breakfast down here, and when you get down into the room where they did it—it’s a cellar sort of place underground—everything’s left just as it was when they smiled across the wedding-table. There’s plates and spoons and forks—gone rusty—and things that might have been fruit and wedding-cake lying about, only they’re all blue-mouldy, like the food we found in the cupboards near Armentières after the Boche shells had wrecked the place. The breakfast-room in Dirty Dick’s is all bunches of grey, silky cobweb, and people pay a penny a time to have a look down there. In the next room you can get something to drink. Juniper berries is what these old London girls go for, and beer or whisky for the soldiers.

  If there’s one thing calculated to ruin a soldier when he’s had a few to drink it’s that moving staircase affair down in the Underground—the Tube, they call it. You go down a long sort of passage, all lit up, and you’d think it only takes a minute to get out again, but there’s where the Tube people get the better of you. Want to know how long I was down in that spooky hole? Seven hours! First the little electric trams dashed past so quick that I couldn’t get on ’em before they were tearing off again; and then, when I did catch one and hopped off at the other end, I see this moving staircase in front of me and try to walk up it and get to the outer air, where it’s Christian in spite of the fog, and you can get something new to drink. Well, I bit the dust about a hundred times. Every time I started to walk up the staircase it rose up and knocked me down, and by the time I was half-way up my shins were bleeding and I had all the skin off my forehead. Finally a soldier gives me his arm and holds me still while that rotten little staircase takes me up by itself. Everybody’s laughing at me. No more Underground for Starkie, I’ll tell you that much!

  Aren’t you going to stand a girl a drink, soldier? The London girls are pretty too, and good sports—with their big curly feathers, their quick tongues, and their bright eyes. Little Florrie Courtney’s as nice a girl as you could want to meet. I did meet her in a pub, but all the same she and me would have been married if the parson hadn’t kept us waiting so long in the church. We got right into the church, we did, down in Holborn. Florrie had a new hat which I bought for her, and she looked like one of those old Gibson Girl posters we used to see at home.

  But I guess both of us were a bit restless—me in particular; and the parson didn’t come and didn’t come. So then the boys got talking. ‘Come along out of it, Doug.’ ‘You’ll think better of it when you’re sober again, old man.’ ‘What’s the good of a girl marrying a soldier, anyhow? If the girl’s fit to be married, it’s a moral the soldier ain’t.’ So I picked up my hat and fled, with Florrie’s girl friends all pointing the finger of scorn at me and shooting out their lip like the Bible says, and when we got to the open air I found the boys were perfectly right. I felt a lot better knowing I wasn’t married after all. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Florrie, she was the gamest little sport you could wish to meet, and pretty; but I dare say a soldier’s life is too full of ups and downs for matrimony, especially mine.

  Hear that far-away sound right up in the clouds? No use giving yourself a stiff neck, you won’t see anything until the searchlights go on, and maybe not then. That’s the hell mes
sengers. That’s what all the soldiers call the Zepps here in England. They wait for dark nights like this, and then they’re up above you with their bombs. August, 1917, and they’re well into their stride. Seem to know what part of London they want to hit. It’s weird in the blackness, with the sirens shrieking like mad and the searchlights beginning to clamber up the sky like those beanstalks in the fairy-story, pale and long and moving across one another.

  The sound of the bombs falling is an awful shriek like a fire engine’s, and when they register a hit the walls are splintered and the roads torn up. They use worse stuff over England than over the French towns. They hate England more than all the rest put together. Everybody runs for shelter, but I keep out in the open, because that’s the way we’re trained in New Zealand in case an earthquake happens. Out in the open’s dangerous, but it’s the best chance you’ve got, we think. For one that gets killed in the open there’s twenty buried in a wrecked building or caught in the flames.

  When it’s over you see people creep out again, and they’re very cheerful. It’s always: ‘Well, that dirty Hun didn’t do so much damage, after all.’ In the mornings you always read in the newspapers that the raid was unsuccessful. I never knew about a successful air-raid in England yet—not from the newspapers. All men are liars—but they aren’t all such liars as those newspaper fellows. In town we live on saccharine tablets instead of sugar, but wounded men on leave get extra, and I always send mine back to Sunshine at hospital. The idea of going to Sling Camp isn’t any too popular with me—I hate the thought of taking orders from N.C.O.s. I don’t know why it is, but there’s something about an N.C.O. which gets me fair on the chin; and what’s more, from the way they look at me, I don’t believe they like me either.