The Opened Cage

by S. C. Howe

  Tom stripped off and huddled in the water, still unused to this lack of privacy. It struck him that he had mostly lived a solitary life. There had been a few good school friends, but none of the friendships had survived into his adult years and, at the farm, it had been a case of trying not to be noticed by his contemporaries. After a day’s work he had walked back to his cottage, nodded hello to a few neighbours, shut the door, washed, and then read until it was time to sleep. A few older neighbours had wondered whether they should invite him around to eat, but the young man had seemed so in-turned that they felt rebuffed by his isolation, not sure it was his choice to remain aloof. Now as he started to relax in the water, he knew that that way of life was over, and would be over by choice in peacetime, if there was to be a peacetime.

  Before bathing, Joss had looked round for Nico and smiled to himself when he saw the dog shaking hands enthusiastically with the young orderlies who should have been preparing vast quantities of food. In the vat, Joss lathered himself and then lay back in the surprisingly warm water. In the trenches it felt as though he would never be clean again, or, indeed, stop scratching as the lice and fleas bit and his clothes stank. But now he did feel clean and the water felt indulgent, taking away some of the pain of the carries which bit into muscle, bruised skin and ground bone-ends, like an early arthritis. Looking down at his body, he saw the hardness of muscle and liked it, felt the stirrings in his groin; he needed – wanted – sex. Soaping himself with more care than usual this time, he jumped when a voice cut through the gloom of the hut, telling them to hurry up. Joss hopped out, towelled himself off and picked up a de-loused uniform he had been issued, as he had cast his own mud and blood smeared clothes onto a growing heap. Pulling the tunic and trousers over clean underclothes, he did not notice how the uniform looked, as though it had been tailored for him, or how the others stared enviously at his tall, well-cut figure. Going out into the late sunshine, which was now peach-coloured but spoke of a hard frost later, he sat on a low wall opposite the bathing huts, lit a cigarette and waited for Tom. Scanning the wider area for somewhere they could be private, he spotted the silhouette of a barn at the top of a rise. Tom emerged from another hut, bath-fresh and content. As he went to sit down on the wall, Joss whispered something into his ear and they immediately headed up the track to the barn. The incipient evening sky was turning into a dark translucent blue; a partial silvered moon hung on the horizon. Joss undid the top buttons of his tunic. Their billets were at the bottom of the hill in the farm complex and, with an estaminet – a cafe – close by in the small village, Joss knew they wouldn’t be missed. The barn door was propped open. Entering, they kicked the prop and barred the heavy door with it from within. There was a smell of fresh hay and sun-warmed wood. Cutting the cords on a bale, they shook the sweet-smelling hay – redolent of July’s sun – out beneath them and sank down, hands behind their heads. The privacy was intoxicating. Joss chewed on a straw of hay, turned to Tom and, unusually for him, didn’t quite know how to initiate what he most wanted with the only person he wanted it with.

  Tom sat up, sensing the tension. Joss began patting his tunic pockets.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Tom asked.

  Joss craned his head up and gave a lazy grin. ‘We may need something to ease things along.’

  Tom frowned at him.

  ‘If we decide to go all the way,’ Joss explained, ‘I’ve forgotten to bring anything...you know. I mean, that’s if you want to.’

  ‘Joss...I’ve never done it before,’ Tom said quickly, remembering the mocking, vicious laughs when the farm hands he had worked with had guessed he was still a virgin.

  Joss gently pulled Tom toward him, motioning for him to sit on his reclining body. His expression was serious. Leaning up, he kissed Tom slowly on the mouth. ‘If you want to leave it at this, that’s all right,’ he murmured.

  Tom undid the rest of Joss’s tunic buttons, pushed his hand under Joss’ shirt, felt the hard outline of his chest. Went underneath another layer, felt his smooth skin and the mist of hair, and began kissing him. It was a slow kiss, like savouring wine, as he kneaded Joss’s chest, and a rush of almost painful desire flooded through him. Joss held the back of Tom’s head with the tenderness that belied his large, calloused hands.

  They sat up slowly. Joss shrugged off the tunic. Tom started undoing his shirt and undervest, pulling them off as though they burnt, then sat upright, covering his lap. Joss smiled, carefully pulled the tunic away, eased himself around so they were sitting face to face, then looked at him, made the sound of something like ‘Whoa’ as he studied Tom’s strong chest and upper arms, and the kissing became urgent. Then they were exploring the other’s chest and back with hungry hands and thirsty caresses, not seeing the louse bites or the angry red welts from the stretcher halters, only seeing beauty, and maleness, and an answering desire.

  Joss was the first to unfasten the belt of his own trousers, let Tom ease them down, still kissing. Tom drew Joss’s hand to his belt, let him undo it, felt him drawing his trousers and underclothes down, resisted as he realised he was fully on view, but Joss pulled him closer, moved his hand to feel his own hardness, felt Tom relax.

  ‘We may need that help,’ Joss said. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘Of course I do.’ The kissing increased in intensity. ‘I carry salve.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Joss moved back, his dark blue eyes incredulous; he was trying not to smile.

  ‘I use it to stop my hands cracking in cold weather. Remember I used to work on a dairy farm.’

  ‘Hand balm – now that might be an experience...’ Joss looked into Tom’s eyes, his mouth twitching.

  They laughed, and Tom knew then that Joss would have never uncovered his nature before he, Tom, was ready to show it; would never have spurned his first advances, however gauche or clumsy. And he knew that to have been spurned or scorned now would have finished him, made him recoil into the core of himself, hide, perhaps for the rest of his life. Life was changing and he drew it in, like clean air after rain, a new alchemy clearing away the debris of fear.

  As Joss eased Tom back gently into the hay, he looked with unusual seriousness. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he whispered. ‘Are you sure this is what you want?’

  ‘Yes.’ Tom’s answer was clear, surprising even himself.

  And so they made love. Joss guiding him, treating him as if he was made of eggshells, and then, with Tom’s increasing confidence and sensation, made love with a passion, with an intensity of emotion he didn’t know he possessed.

  Outside in the freezing night, Barratt was walking, enjoying the extraordinary quiet of this place when an intense, emotional cry made him look towards the barn. Realisation pinched his face and he walked quickly back down to the billets.

  The next morning it was announced that a medical examination was to be conducted later that afternoon, making Joss stare forward in alarm. It was as they were leaving the farm’s courtyard that Barratt called them over, looking strangely ill-at-ease.

  ‘I need two chaps to go up to Supplies and bring down more medical items, so I’ve nominated you two.’

  ‘When do you want us to go, Sir?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Later this afternoon.’ Barratt looked away. ‘I’ve cleared it with the medics,’ he added, almost savagely.

  As they walked away, Barratt beckoned to Joss to hold back. ‘I can only do this once, Deerman. You do understand that?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Sir.’

  ‘Don’t thank me. Make sure I never have to do that again.’ With that, he turned on his heels and walked off.

  Joss caught Tom up.

  ‘What the matter with Barratt?’ Tom asked as they walked to the estaminet. Joss stared at him. Was he really that innocent?

  ‘Barratt knows we’ve had sex.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The medical exam will show we’ve...you know.’ Joss flapped his hand in uncharacteristic awkwardness. Still Tom peered at him.

&n
bsp; ‘Our sort of sex...they can tell.’

  Tom’s eyes rounded like targets.

  ‘Yes. That.’ Joss’s expression twitched. ‘Without either Barratt or myself saying, he’s told us not to do anything like that again while we’re out here.’

  Tom stopped, looked crest-fallen. Yesterday it had been like meeting himself for the first time. A start. And he was young and his blood was up.

  ‘We’ll just have to improvise.’ Joss gave him a knowing look.

  ‘And when we get out of here–’ both noticed the word ‘when’, ‘we can do it for England.’

  ‘Seriously, we’re always going to have to be careful.’

  Tom shrugged, and then his expression fell.

  That afternoon, they plodded up through the shattered landscape to the supply depot with Nico trotting importantly at their heels. For Tom it felt as though the world had changed, had repositioned for him on a minutely different axis.

  ‘Oh put it away, Jonesy!’ came a loud voice across the barn at a man who had just pulled his vest off and was displaying a sagging gut.

  “Ere! You could brandish that at Fritzy – frighten the buggers into submission!’ shouted another.

  Tom smirked. Felt almost happy, and then wondered at that. Did it have to take a war to kick over the traces, but then why should that matter? In the next second he could be dead. They all could. Was it that thought that gave such a new freedom, a new personal courage?

  ‘A lorry’s leaving in the next ten minutes!’ came a loud voice from the door.

  ‘It’s going to Beauterre,’ Briggs called out, ‘if anyone wishes to go there.’

  Tom was looking round quickly for a matching pair of socks, tried to ease his right foot into far too small a sock.

  ‘I’ll have a word with the girls in the laundry,’ Briggs said, noticing Tom’s struggle.

  ‘Thanks, Sir!’

  Holding up an enormous pair of drawers from the nearest pile, Joss whistled.

  ‘Bloody hell. How would you walk up the trenches if your arse was that wide?’ he marvelled. Tom grinned as he shrugged on his tunic.

  ‘Walk sideways perhaps?’

  Briggs returned with a few pairs of matching socks. ‘One of these pairs should fit,’ he said.

  ‘Briggs!’ Barratt’s voice came sharply through the barn door. Briggs started like a rabbit under a sudden torch beam and left the barn.

  ‘They would do Briggs a favour if they let him join the ranks,’ Joss said.

  ‘I get the impression that his family wouldn’t allow that.’

  Joss considered then nodded.

  A truck chugged up to the doorway and there was a stampede as men piled up into the back and, as it lurched to start, they were flung about, momentarily caught off balance. The swearing was unbelievable.

  Outside Barratt’s allotted room, Briggs sat alone.

  It was a 15-minute drive to Beauterre: a small town in a flat plain. Before the war, it had been a self-contained market town, but in a square close to the old market site, most of the buildings had been damaged by shelling, and they were mostly used for temporary billets. It was difficult to imagine what these buildings had previously been used for, as they had a pervasive warehouse feel to them, coupled with that of a terminus where troops were off-loaded or regrouped. The few villagers left busied themselves with billeting, providing food and laundering clothes. Shops had changed their stock to selling snacks, postcards and trinkets. It reminded Joss of a small, waterless port with its eyes now turned to visitors. It was a dusty place with little vegetation, except a few tired-looking trees.

  ‘Beautiful Earth,’ snorted one of the men. ‘Bit of a bleedin’ misnomer.’

  Along the uneven road that led to its centre, they passed a little girl and boy both dressed in unkempt, oversized clothes holding out wooden bowls. The little girl thumped her bowl with a spoon as the truck went by and shouted ‘Please! Please!’ Her voice was quickly lost in the engine noise and both their forms obscured by exhaust fumes. Those who could, threw any coin change out of the back and the children fell on the money like starving poultry. Further along, a soldier canoodled with a young woman against a doorway, his hand finding its way up her bare thigh.

  The soldiers in the truck seemed beside themselves with insults and craving, but the couple carried on regardless. The truck turned into a side road so narrow that the old buildings met overhead and washing hung from one side to the other. They came to a halt outside a large estaminet, its windows running with condensation.

  ‘Ah Briggs,’ said Barratt as Briggs walked into his room. ‘Come in and sit down.

  Briggs sat.

  ‘It has been noted that you are getting over-friendly with some of the ranks.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Running errands, getting socks for example.’

  Briggs’ jaw clenched.

  ‘There’s being concerned Briggs, and there’s ingratiating oneself. My officers conduct themselves with a dignity that is expected of them at all times. Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes Sir.’ Briggs felt his face grow tight; he was Stiffy Briggins again, the swot they used to laugh at at school.

  ‘I don’t want to go on at you Briggs, but you see my position? If the men don’t feel they can look up to their officers, then morale falls to pieces.’

  ‘Yes Sir.’

  ‘For goodness sake man, don’t look as though I have mortally offended you,’ Barratt snapped; the defeat on Briggs’ expression was painful to see.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Barratt tapped a pencil on the desk then hastily poured himself a whisky. ‘Would you like one?’

  Briggs hesitated, then remembered the only time he had been drunk and how he had made a fool of himself. ‘Better not, Sir. But thank you.’

  Barratt’s expression grew kinder. ‘By all means care about the men, but remember to keep a distance, that’s all I am trying to say.’

  Briggs went to clear his throat. Barratt looked up expectantly, but the silence went on for too long and the moment when Briggs might have confided passed, like water disappearing into sand.

  ‘Enjoy your time off, Briggs.’

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’ Briggs walked out of the hut, over the fields and away from the camp.

  ‘You’ve heard of getting totally blotto?’ said Joss between mouthfuls of omelette (sumptuous, frothy doorsteps with enormous chunks of ham). ‘Well, we can get blotto on grub.’

  In half an hour, they had devoured two plates of fried eggs and chips, as the owner of the estaminet, a ruddy-faced, bulky woman with large red arms, threw handfuls of roughly-hewn potato into a pan on the stove. The sound of hissing fat, the smell of frying eggs and potato held their attention so they did not see the group of soldiers assembling around their table.

  ‘Are you comin’ then?’ one asked, grinning at his mates. Joss peered up through forkfuls of food.

  ‘Going on the town,’ another explained as though Joss had not understood his meaning. ‘Go visitey the mademoiselles.’

  Tom looked at them as though they were joking.

  ‘It don’t cost much,’ said another. ‘A shilling for a good fuck.’

  ‘No thanks,’ said Joss. ‘I want to eat.’

  ‘You can do that after,’ said the first soldier.

  ‘Wiv your accent, mate, you could go officer class,’ said the other. ‘You get more minutes, costs more though.’

  Joss smiled up at them. Tom’s heart was starting to bang in his ears.

  ‘Thanks, anyway,’ said Joss. ‘But I really do need a good feed.’

  The soldiers looked at them then shrugged and slouched off.

  ‘Probably can’t get it up,’ Tom heard one of them saying as they went out onto the street. ‘Probably got the pox or summat.’

  Tom stared at Joss and a big grin split Joss’s face.

  ‘They didn’t guess,’ Tom said.

  Joss wiped his mouth with a large and rather grubby handkerchief. ‘Why should
they?’

  ‘People talk. You’d be amazed at how quickly private business gets around.’

  ‘Perhaps we should just have a big snog in front of them and be done with it,’ Joss said irritably. ‘Anyway, I don’t want to get a dose, thank you. And I bet you a good percentage of that lot will be caught out at the next dangle parade.’

  Tom cleared his throat. ‘Have you ever been with a woman?’

  Joss stared up, surprised. ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t you want to try?’ Tom felt himself rushing towards a precipice, felt compelled to go on.

  ‘No.’ Joss studied him. ‘I’ve never felt the slightest physical attraction to women. I like many women I’ve met, but I’ve no sexual interest in them,’ he continued, his tone had an unmistakeable stoniness about it. ‘You could offer me all the prostitutes for free and I very much doubt anything would even stir down there... Anything else you’d like to know?’

  ‘No. I’m sorry I shouldn’t have asked.’

  ‘And how about you?’ The voice was still clipped.

  ‘Well, I think you know the answer to that. You were the first person I’ve ever been with.’

  Joss looked at him carefully. ‘Do you want to sow a few wild oats? Is that what this conversation is about?’

  Tom sat back in his chair, his expression stricken. ‘No. Of course not.’

  ‘Good. Because I’m not very good at sharing. I want you for me. And vice versa.’

  Tom felt an odd sense of warning, mixed with a deep ripple of desire, so he shifted in his seat to try and hide it. Joss went back to shovelling the food into his mouth, forking in another huge mouthful of chips, concentrating entirely on food to forget everything else. But the memories crept back of Base Camp where there had been a semi-institutionalised brothel with the redcaps ordering the line savagely as men waited outside a row of tin sheds. Within, soldiers copulated furiously with overworked young women. Joss had hung back, hearing the various grunts, groans and gasps from within the sheds, and looked at the constantly exited men doing up their flies as they emerged sweaty and hair awry from their few minutes, and knew it was as empty as the sex he had found in London. Then there had been the random, short-arm inspections at Base Camp on blustery, lowering afternoons where they had stood with trousers around their ankles – the dangle parades – and an embarrassed young subaltern examined them for the clap, with little idea, it seemed, of what he was supposed to be looking for. It had left Joss uneasy with the lust which periodically surged around his body out of the front line, and which he knew he needed to keep hidden. He had found eating helped. It sated. Locked out, in part, some of the other needs within him.