The Opened Cage

by S. C. Howe

  ‘It’s over,’ he said, looking around the troops, the paper rustling in his hand.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘What is?’ said the nearest soldier to Barratt.

  ‘The war – there’s going to be a ceasefire at eleven o’clock,’ said Barratt, re-reading the message just to make sure he had read it right.

  ‘Oh,’ said a private, and scratched the back of his head.

  ‘You mean it’s over?’ said another.

  Barratt stared. ‘Well, yes,’ he said, and the incredulity in his voice made Tom look up from drinking the lukewarm tea in his mug. He could see a stream of thoughts running over the captain’s face.

  ‘What’s over?’ asked Mitchell, appearing from around the fire bay.

  ‘The war,’ said the first soldier.

  ‘The what?’ asked Mitchell.

  ‘The war,’ Barratt said in an uneven voice then cleared his throat. ‘Hostilities are to cease at eleven o’clock,’ he said suddenly in his usual voice. ‘And until then,’ he said glancing at his wrist watch, ‘we sit tight. Does everyone understand that?’

  There was a muffled assent.

  ‘No-one playing heroics,’ Barratt added. ‘I want sentries posted as usual, but only to see there’s no last minute action. Any man risking himself, or anyone else, will be on an immediate charge, is that understood?’

  Another assent.

  ‘Can we go now, Sir?’

  ‘No, you can’t. You’ll wait for orders, like the rest of us. Until eleven o’clock, we do not put our heads above the parapet; we do not throw bombs, or fire guns. We do not provoke the Germans in any way. Is that clear?’ Barratt said, and the tension contorted his face. ‘I want everyone here in ten minutes, you see to it,’ he said to the first soldiers at hand. ‘Now!’

  He bolted down the stairs of his dugout, drained the contents of his whisky bottle into his tin mug and knocked it back, just as one of the young second lieutenants came down the steps, two at a time.

  ‘Is it true, Sir? Is it really over?’

  ‘It will be at eleven,’ Barratt said, strapping on his revolver. ‘And I want you and the other officers to get everyone where we can see them. I want all the men quiet, sitting on their bloody hands if need be! There’s going to be no more deaths, not on my watch.’

  Seconds later, he was back up in the trench, shouting orders to the other officers as the ranks stood around dazed, or started packing personal possessions in a clumsy, disorganised way. Men poured in from each end of the trench and young officers told them to sit, one even directing they sat on their hands, until Barratt hissed that it was a manner of speaking, not an order, you fool. At last, they sat along the fire step, a row of khaki, almost not daring to move.

  Barratt stood to face them. ‘As you now know, there will be a ceasefire at 11 a.m. I want you back along your sectors, holding the line. As I’ve said, no hostile acts. No provoking. Is that clear?’

  There was a unified: ‘Yes Sir.’

  It was raining a fine, cold rain that trickled down; a few of the younger soldiers held their faces up to catch the drops. Along the sector it was quiet, unnervingly so. The sentries strained to hear something, anything, to catch any movement in the bleached, grim November light. There was nothing, just stillness.

  The sergeant who had first recognised him on his return to the Front after the shell had nearly obliterated Joss and himself, squeezed in by him on the fire step.

  “So how’s Deerman coming on?’ he asked.

  ‘Slowly but surely.’

  ‘Deerman saved you, you know,’ the sergeant said importantly. ‘I saw it happen. When that shell got Windy, Deerman spun round and threw himself on top of you. To shield you. A regular hero, that lad.’

  Tom stared at him expressionless; no words came.

  ‘The captain and me saw it first-hand. We was coming back up the line facing you lot and we saw it, close up. Must admit we thought you was both goners – even more so when we tried to drag you away.’

  Later Tom wished he had asked: ‘What do you mean, when we tried to drag you away?’ What had he seen? Instead, he had merely gaped at him, comprehending nothing, understanding everything.

  Barratt looked at his watch again: ten thirty. If time went any slower, surely it would go backwards. He lit another cigarette, drummed his fingers on his tobacco tin. Some of the men tried to whistle but stopped after a few uneven notes as Barratt glared at them. Tom sat on his hands. In his head a voice whined, ‘Go on, have a look over the parapet, then it will sink in. Go on!’ Closing his eyes tight, he tried to squeeze the voice out. ‘If you just take a look, then it won’t just be a ceasefire,’ it went on. ‘It will be for ever. But it all depends...’ Barratt noticed the film of sweat forming on Fielder’s forehead and beckoned him over, moved up as Tom squeezed in at his side. Barratt didn’t look at him but glanced up and down the line, making sure no-one was moving. A few men puffed their cheeks out. It carried on raining. The stillness deepened. Tom felt the ticking of Barratt’s watch. They all sat, watching Barratt. Five minutes to eleven.

  ‘How is it Porter?’ Barratt asked the nearest sentry, his voice cracking so he cleared his throat just in time to disguise it.

  The sentry looked down and shrugged an ‘all right’, then turned back to look out over no man’s land. ‘Hang on a mo!’ he whispered, squinting through the periscope, then handed it to Barratt who snatched it up. In it, he saw German soldiers climbing up onto the parapet. Surely not? Not now! As the minute hand on his watch clicked to the hour, he saw the men wave their arms, accompanied by a sharp crack of machine gun fire vertically into the air. ‘Bye bye, Tommy!’ they roared, and jumped down as one, into their trenches. And it was then, and only then, that Barratt realised the war was really over.

  Joss woke from his torpor in the late morning of Monday, 11th November. There was an urgency in which his name was called; it was his mother’s voice.

  ‘Can I come in?’ she called out from the hallway.

  Joss sat bolt upright, shouted, ‘Yes!’ Gulping water from the mug beside him, he closed his eyes and waited. It was as though his body was permanently waiting for news: news of Tom, even though his mind tried to evade this ever-ready reaction. The door banged open and his mother almost fell into the room. For a second he saw the young woman she must have been: energetic, careless of convention.

  ‘The war’s over, John!’ she cried. ‘It’s over! A ceasefire has been called.’ She bounded over to the window and pushed one of the opening sashes wide open. Bells sounded in the misted November air, ringing wildly, gleefully.

  Joss stared at her, too stupefied to talk. For the last week, he had been sleeping in late because of a heavy cold. The renovation work was finished on the farm and he knew it would soon be time to make his way over, but the warmth of his bed and the easiness of this life at the Hall, and his loneliness without Tom had made him shy away from moving out; this added to a creeping weakness in his muscles. Then he had felt the tell-tale gravel-behind-the-eyes and gravel-in-the-throat on waking a few days previously, and now he was weak-limbed and feverish, with a throbbing headache (viral headache, he heard the doctor saying) clamping his head. There was also a rising sense of nausea coming up from his middle. Swallowing, he forced down the urge to vomit.

  Mrs Deerman brought him a bowl, water and a toothbrush, and a brush for his untidy hair.

  After brushing his teeth and swilling his mouth, he looked wide-eyed at his mother, and, just for a second, she saw the little boy from the past, in bed recovering from mumps or measles. She closed the window, taking care not to make too much noise.

  ‘That means Tom will be coming back,’ Joss said, trying to pull himself straighter still.

  She smiled broadly, her eyes wide open, waiting for that thought to sink in.

  ‘If I get over to the farm, then I can get him back quickly,’ Joss continued. ‘Farming’s a reserved occupation.’ Why the hell hadn’t he thought of that earlier? But how would he ha
ve explained that to a Board? Oh yes, I’ve just bought a farm. There’s no livestock or machinery on it, but I need my mate back. But why had he not thought of all this sooner, instead of lolling around and feeling ill?

  ‘Why didn’t I get him back before?’ he whispered, and his mother frowned down at him in surprise. ‘I could have at least asked to see if the army would let him back.’

  ‘Darling, the farm wasn’t even ready until a few days ago,’ she soothed. ‘They would have hardly allowed him to go back to a non-functioning farm, would they?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What I mean is, until the building work was finished a few days ago, it wasn’t habitable, was it?’

  ‘But I didn’t even ask, did I?’ Joss whimpered and sank down into the bed. Mrs Deerman looked at him more carefully, saw the film of sweat across his forehead and cheeks, how his hair stuck down in darker sweated streaks.

  ‘But you’ve been down with this,’ she continued. ‘You couldn’t have done anything.’

  The next moment he was vomiting painfully into the bowl, splashes soaking his face as the acrid vomit hit the warm water.

  After sending for the doctor, Mrs Deerman found Joss feverish and talking nonsense. She sat on the edge of bed, stroking his hair as he gabbled about guilt and why he hadn’t asked them, again and again. Several times, he was sick into a basin, straining so much his face became red and sweat-stained, while his stomach clenched until it bought up only bile. The doctor arrived looking harassed, and checked Joss’s pulse, his temperature, checked his back and chest, as Joss had slumped up against him and asked why he – Joss – had not done something sooner. Mrs Deerman had shaken her head when the doctor had looked at her with inquiry. And so Joss raved and sweated for several days and the doctor recorded a stomach infection and a heavy, virulent cold, but not Spanish influenza, to Mrs Deerman’s deep relief. Roger had brought back descriptions of its emergence in the base camps. The doctor was not concerned over Joss , said that a healthy strapping lad like himself (albeit a bit disabled) would fight it off easily. Even so, the best nurses were engaged and sat with him through the worst and he sweated and strained day after day, vomiting uselessly into the basin until he finally slept. One morning he was woken by a nurse and taken to a warm bathtub and washed down. The nurses were drying his hair with vast towels in front of the bedroom fire, when Joss finally refocused on life. His face felt jowly and full of mucus, and he was gravel-sore around the eyes. His limbs and joints ached and his mind swam, like being drunk but without any sense of euphoria. However, within a few days he was sitting up in bed, complaining about his confinement, demanding the windows be opened to allow some fresh air in (which they were for twenty minutes and then shut on Mrs Deerman’s strict orders), and organising Tom’s release to which Mrs Deerman was a willing participant. All sorts of communications were sent from Woodham Hall to HQ to Battalion to Company to Base Camp, and finally to an overworked young captain who sent for Tom, who was scrubbing down the dormitory floor.

  ‘Seems you’re very much in demand, old boy,’ said the officer, whom Tom had never seen before, as he handed him his papers. ‘Looks as though the agricultural world can’t do without you. Off you go... Don’t hang around or we might all want to join you.’

  The last few weeks in France for Tom had been the sort of confused mess only a large organisation can manage. There had been a lot of sitting around behind lines. At first it had all gone swimmingly, with the packing up being done amongst the excited chatter of younger soldiers and a number of swear words amongst the older one, but soon they were all waiting to go. Go where, no-one was quite sure, but anywhere, away from the cold mud and the stench. By early afternoon, the cookers had been packed up and moved out in the rain. Tom had leaned against the parapet wall, watching. It was like witnessing the moving-off of an enormous school outing by over-zealous teaching staff; clearly, the young officers were as highly strung as the ranks, trying to control their excitement by shouting at the men. At last, they moved off in the dying light of a premature evening – the thick rain cloud hadn’t cleared. It seemed appropriate to Tom that they should leave like this, as though the sky and the earth were silently weeping.

  Waiting was what they had done most at Base Camp and, this was Tom’s resounding sense of the war. Waiting, endless waiting, punctured by the horrifying activity of battle. Now it was only the letters from Joss that gave sanity to these days, which were spent in fatigues. Tom was detailed to scrub the dormitory floor and clean out the latrines for his hut every day, a task he undertook with unthinking diligence, sensing that this was somehow part of leaving. The camp was on a bitingly cold coastal plain in northern France. Billeted in purpose-made huts, they crowded around the pot-bellied stove in the centre of the room for vestiges of warmth against the keen east winds. There they waited, either reading, writing home, whittling away at bits of wood, or sleeping on the uncomfortable beds that jangled whenever the occupant moved. There had been regular, ribald observations about some men’s nocturnal habits, the ‘dangle jangle’ it had been termed. The sheets were threadbare and the blankets were scratchy, but it was a relief compared to the sodden filth they had become accustomed to. Through all this jest and the tense tedium of waiting, Tom had asked Joss to send him some farming manuals so he could use his time usefully (so like Tom, Joss had thought, remembering how he would read up on anything concerning First Aid in the trenches, way above and beyond duty.) And that was how Tom made it through those dull November days waiting in that characterless camp, not realising how much activity was being spent on his behalf in Worcestershire.

  Docking at a small English port in late November, Tom stared out from the deck, one of the first waves of men to be demobilized. Standing at the top of the embarkation ramp, he looked at the scene in front of him. The lights from houses built up from the inner harbour were shining like rippling banners in the evening sky. Behind them, the sea was at high tide and lapping gently against the harbour wall. It had stopped raining and the sea was a metallic silvery blue, and the horizon a smoking peach illumination, which merged with a deepening darkness of a night-time centre. At the end of the pier, the harbour light was winking intermittently. All this careless light and colour startled him after the dark of the front line where even a lit cigarette tip could mean death. Tom pulled himself up to his full height, took in a deep breath and walked slowly down the gangplank and his new life. Emerging into the main street, he flinched as a raw wind blew against him, sending litter spiralling into rain-worn bunting. The lights of shop fronts glowed out buttery and yellow, supremely inviting. At the nearest post office, he sent a telegram to Joss with the words: ‘Back in England. Back with you tomorrow. Tom’. As he walked away, he regretted not being more expansive, loving even, but he could not have – people might intercept the card and read it – they dared not be so open. He gave a bitter snort. They had to hide their feelings around everyone else but themselves, especially at times of high emotion such as this. But did he feel highly emotional about anything? Even during docking, when he saw the rim of cliffs emerging, he had felt oddly flat, as though there was another hurdle to get through, as though he could not relax, let go, sit back and feel safe. The truth was he was stunned with fatigue, and a small worm of anxiety ate into the edges of his mind: that this was an armistice, a ceasefire, not a negotiated end. There had been the leave-taking with Barratt, who had shaken his hand when they had parted, said it had been a pleasure having someone of Tom’s dedication in his company, he thanked him for sticking it out with him. Tom had to look away, and then walked out quickly into the cold afternoon light, and the world had seemed suddenly quite different, and more lonely. Pulling out a piece of paper from his trench coat, he looked at the address he was given for cheap lodgings and walked resolutely through a drizzle, which had just started and was turning into sleet, his greatcoat flapping like some monstrous bird as he passed a mass of preoccupied men and women who walked, heads down.

  The demob pr
ocess for him had been surprisingly efficient and easy, and included a delousing, a bath and the issuing of a certificate stating he was vermin-free. Then he had been given a set amount of money, a train pass and a cheap suit, which sagged underneath the greatcoat he kept because he was so damned cold. Walking along he noticed a chandlers and stopped to look at the warm clothes in the window.

  The wind was finding its way through his coat to the thin, cheap cloth below and he shivered. He pushed his way through the door and into equable warmth. Before long, several piles of clothes were forming along the counter. Four thick mariner’s knitted jerseys with collars that turned down (one for Joss); three pairs of thick, dark green corduroy trousers, one of brown – well-cut but not too closely fitting – the memory of Roger Deerman’s tight breeches made it clear to him that it was far better to travel than to arrive, so to speak. Next, two densely woven mariner’s jackets (one for Joss, they were similar but different); two strong pairs of boots of pliant leather, several pairs of thick, knitted socks, long johns, pants, and vests like short-sleeved shirts. Never again would he be cold. It had taken most of the one-off payment the army had given him.

  ‘Are you going on an adventure, young man?’ asked the chandler, an elderly man with a dignified bearing.

  Tom smiled. ‘Going home.’

  The old man looked puzzled.

  ‘I don’t want to be cold again,’ Tom explained.

  ‘Ah, you were out there, were you.’ It was a statement rather than a question. The man looked at him with understanding and pulled a long woollen scarf from one of the top shelves behind him. ‘On the house,’ he said, and stuffed it into the paper bags containing the clothes he had folded earlier.

  ‘Is there anywhere I can I change into some of these new things?’ Tom asked. The old man motioned towards a changing cubicle. Minutes later, Tom emerged, now a well-dressed rural type in clothes emphasising his handsome, dark masculinity. As if on cue, a young woman walked into the shop and did a double take, eyeing him openly for a moment, then she seemed to remember herself and hurried on.