Lord of the Nutcracker Men

by Iain Lawrence

  “Give me that,” said Auntie Ivy. She stood up and snatched it away. “That's not fit for a boy to play with.”

  “Do you think he really saw a man like that?” I asked.

  “There's no one like that,” she said. “It's not natural.” Then she swished across the kitchen, and pried the lid from the firebox.

  “You're going to burn it?” I said.

  “I certainly am.”

  I didn't argue. The thing was more horrid than maggots, more horrid than leeches or great, hairy spiders. I felt a huge relief when Auntie Ivy flung it in among the coals.

  She took up the poker and stirred the fire into shimmering flames that cast a red pall across her face. She thrust and hammered with it, now at the center, now at the corners, and I imagined that thing crawling inside, squirming away from the poker. Then she slammed the lid down, and the fire crackled and spat.

  “I hate this war,” she said. “Oh, Johnny, I wish it would end.”

  She started crying, and I had never seen her cry before. It wasn't like the proud, silent tears my mother had shed at the sight of my father in his uniform. It was ghastly and frightening, for she shook all over, as though she'd knock herself to pieces. She covered her face with her hands, but still she kept shaking. And then she shrieked like a bird that had been caught by a cat.

  I ran to her. I buried my face in the warm thickness of her purple dress, with the bones of her hip like axe blades chopping at my fingers. She thought I was soothing her, but I was soothing myself. It scared me to see a grown lady cry.

  Slowly, she collected herself. She touched me with her cold, thin fingers: on my shoulder; on my neck. “I'm glad you're here, Johnny,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I'd feel so alone without you.”

  “But you're always alone,” I said.

  “Then lonely, I mean.” She pushed her fingers into my hand. “I get so lonely sometimes. So scared of the war. It's nice to have someone with me when everything becomes too much.”

  I nodded against her; I knew what she meant.

  “It's such a terrible war. Men dying in ditches; men falling in rows to machine guns. I'll go mad if it lasts very long, Johnny. I'll go stark staring mad if it does.”

  She started sobbing again, and I held her. “Don't worry,” I said. “The war won't last very long. Not anymore.”

  Slowly, she stopped crying. “You're a fine boy,” she said. “Thank you for everything, Johnny.” She patted my back. “Now go off and play; I'll be all right.”

  I went out to the garden, to my armies in the mud. The sun shone across the ground, but didn't touch my nutcracker men deep in their trenches. They stood in puddles of water, in dark slits of shadows. It made me think of my father and what he had written, not in his last letter but one before, that all he would see from dawn to dusk was the bit of sky above him.

  I bent back my head and looked straight up, through the branches of the beech tree. The clouds were gray blotches tumbling past to the east, as scattered as cows in a field. They dotted the sky with shifting shapes, with slowly passing fancies.

  I put my hands against my eyes. I made a narrow slit from my fingers and my palms. And the huge field of clouds narrowed to a single furrow, to one lone cloud that bubbled against the blue like paint being swirled in a can. It became a dragon, breathing smoke. Then it passed and another came, a palace with feathery turrets. And I wondered what I would see if I watched long enough. Would I ever see God? His bearded face torn by the wind? His hand reaching down, stretching far to the south, to stir His nest of fighting men?

  The thought seemed huge and scary. And suddenly I was frightened that I would see God, or that He'd see me, so tiny, staring up. Would it anger Him, I wondered, to find me watching, like a face at a window?

  I took my hands down. The passing clouds had made me dizzy, and the trenches of soldiers seemed to turn round the garden. In the middle was the little model of my father, tipped back in the mud, gazing not at the clouds but at me. In his wooden eyes, if he could see, I would be as large as God, filling the sky.

  I had never thought of that before, that I was a sort of god to my little soldiers, the savior of the metal Tommies, the lord of the nutcracker men. I could stir them up however I wanted, and kill them all if I cared. And maybe it was true that whatever happened in the garden happened in faraway France. “Those are very special soldiers, those,” I said.

  I looked down at my armies, at the Tommies and the Frenchmen; I glared at the long row of nutcracker men. They were more like toys than any of the others, but their silver helmets, their gnashing teeth, made them furious and wicked. I found a stone and threw it at them.

  I threw another, and another, and when I'd run out of stones I threw handfuls of mud. I nearly buried the trench, then dug it out and started again. The nutcracker men fell on their backs, on their sides; they were blasted right out of the trench.

  I pressed the mud into balls, into nine-pounder shells. And they burst when I threw them, into tiny bits of shrapnel that skittered across the mud. And the sun went down as I hurled my shells, as I grunted with the effort.

  It was cold enough that the mud felt like ice on my fingers, and froze my hands into claws. It was quiet enough that I heard a flock of rooks cackling in the woods. The sun blazed crimson across the fields of Kent.

  In France, my father would be standing to his gun. Right then, he'd be stepping up to the platform, laying his rifle on the sandbags of his parapet, and that same crimson fire would be burning behind him.

  I didn't shout or make the sounds of the shells. I just kept on going, stooping to scrape up the mud, standing to throw it. The sun-fire dwindled away, and the moon came up, bright as a lantern, and I hurled my shells in a silvery darkness where the only sound was the little thump of them hitting.

  I had scraped a huge crater all around me when the sergeant appeared, leaning on the wall. He looked older by years, by centuries. His uniform was torn to shreds in places, and he seemed to have shrunk inside it. His cap was crushed, his face a shadow that I couldn't see. He shivered behind the wall, then groaned—a long, sad moan.

  My little wooden dad, split in two and joined again, stood not far from him, in a crease in the trench that kept him safe from my bursting shells. He was still bandaged round the waist, and he looked as gray and battered as the soldier at the wall.

  “Is that James there?” the sergeant asked. I nodded. “You're keeping him safe,” said the sergeant. “Is that what you're doing?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You're like the angel standing there. Silvered by the moon.”

  “What angel?” I asked. “The Angel of Mons.”

  I had heard of that, early in the war. Hundreds of soldiers had seen that vision.

  “He was huge, Johnny.” The sergeant talked in a voice that was like the whisper of wind in winter's trees. “A fiery angel tall as a church; taller, even. He formed from the clouds with the sunbeams shining through him.”

  The sergeant turned his head up to the moon. It was a white blotch cracked by the shadows of the beech-tree branches. “I was lying on the ground, in a field of grass. The Huns were only yards away. And I saw him there.” His arm reached up. “A flaming sword in his fist, his wings all wreathed with fire. He turned the Germans back; he stopped them in their rush for Mons.”

  “Did he save you?” I asked.

  “He saved us all. He saved the war.”

  The sergeant was more like a spirit than a person. The moonlight made him seem unreal and pale as water. He lowered his arm, and it shook against the stones.

  “I didn't want to die,” he said, and groaned. “What have I done that I should suffer like this?”

  He terrified me. The mud shells dropped from my hands. I glanced at the house and took a step backward, too frightened to turn my back.

  “No!” said the sergeant. “Don't leave me.” He groped through his pockets, through his tunic and trousers, spilling the thing
s that he found in a row on the stones. As his head tilted down, the moonlight shone past the peak of his cap, onto his cheeks and their thin, pale whiskers. His face was gaunt and bony, and I was sure it was Murdoch; I knew it was Murdoch.

  He waved me toward him, but I didn't move.

  “Johnny, please.” He winced and lurched sideways. His hands grabbed at his leg. Then he closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again there were tears dribbling down to his whiskers.

  “Look, Johnny. Take what you want.” He swept his hands across the things on the wall. “Take it all if you want.”

  I could see a penknife, his pipe, a handkerchief wadded and dark. His hands went back to his pockets, back to the wall. Something glittered as he set it down, and I took a step closer. His identification tag lay on the stones, its chain broken open.

  “Take it,” he told me.

  I went to the wall and reached out for that tag. It had polished itself in his pocket until the metal glistened and shone. I touched it, and his hand clamped onto mine. He held me there, and I was too scared to shout.

  “If you take that, you can't tell how you got it. You can't tell anyone.”

  His hand was colder than the mud. It was bruised and scarred.

  He pressed on my hand. “You never saw me. I was never here.” Then he snatched up his pipe and his handkerchief, and he stuffed them back in his pockets as he stepped away, turning. He went off in his shuffling limp, off among the dark trees of the forest; in moments he had vanished.

  I ran the other way, across the garden and into the house. “He was here,” I shouted.

  Auntie Ivy came out from the parlor. “Who was here?” she asked. “Not Mr. Tuttle?”

  “Murdoch,” I told her.

  “Gracious!” Her black shoes banged on the floor as she ran to the window, faster than I would have thought possible. “Where?” she said.

  “He's gone now,” I said. “But he stood right there.” I pointed through the window, into the garden. “He told me about the angel, how the angel saved him.”

  “There's nobody there,” she said, her temper rising.

  “And he gave me this!” I cried, holding out the silver tag.

  It dangled on my fingers, swinging from its chain. I let it slow as Auntie stared at it, her eyes agog.

  She took it from me, got her specs and put them on. The metal twinkled as she held it near the light. “Well,” she said. “Johnny, you're a simpleton.”

  The name on the tag was Thomas Cade.

  CHAPTER 15

  December 17, 1914

  Dearest Johnny,

  I am sorry that I have been writing such miserable letters lately. I would do anything at all to turn back the clock and take back that carving I sent, that dreadful crawling creature. I must have been off my head to do that, and I have been kicking myself ever since to think of the distress I must have caused you. It was one thing to set out to tell you the truth about the war, but another thing altogether to weigh you down with all my fears and worries.

  I'm sure your auntie has already taken away my horrid man, so I won't ask her to do it. One day I'll tell you what inspired me to make that figure, but I think that day can wait until I'm home again, and for a long time afterward too.

  You can rest assured that I am no longer in any danger. The war seems to have settled into a bit of a lull, so I'm back to watching the sky. I spend hours at it, I'm afraid. It sounds rather like an utter waste of time, but all of us find endless interest in the clouds. The little wispy ones make us think of bedsheets and flannel. The puffy ones of rabbits. And the big bubbling ones, the thunderheads, take on all manner of shapes. It's like having a lantern show up in the sky, but a magical one where you'll see whatever slides you care to see. Just now there's one of you.

  I imagine that Fritz is watching the clouds as well. I think of Fatty Dienst—remember him?—and how he must be sitting right now in the German trench looking at those same clouds. I imagine that he sees sausages and mounds of greasy minced beef. But maybe not. I wonder if he thinks of London as much as I do, if he thinks about his little shop and how you used to go to see him. Remember how he made you laugh? I don't understand how we could end up fighting against each other, but there it is. The gods must be cruel, as they say.

  Well, there I go again. I'm sorry, Johnny. You must think I'm a miserable old geezer, always complaining about this or that. But in truth it's not so bad, not nearly as awful as I've been making it out.

  Believe it or not, a billiards table came yesterday. We had a little tournament down in the dugout, a little singsong afterwards. Why, it's almost like a holiday.

  I'm as healthy as ever, and very well fed. There's not a day that I don't tuck in to a tin of plum-and-apple jam. And I'm among the finest lot of lads I could ever hope to find.

  So I shan't trouble you anymore with stories of shells and bullets and things. It's enough to tell you that I'm healthy and happy, and thinking of you always.

  Enclosed is one little soldier. Nothing special about him.

  All my love,

  Dad

  I was almost scared to see the new soldier. I held it, feeling through the paper, trying to guess what it looked like.

  “Well?” said Auntie Ivy. “You'd better open it.”

  I wanted to wait. There was another letter from my mother, and I asked to hear it first. I closed my eyes.

  I hope to come to see you soon. I can't make any promises, but I'll do my very best.

  “There!” said Auntie Ivy. “That should put a smile on your face.”

  I wish I could spend a week or more, and take you away at the end. But the arsenal is bursting at the seams. The work goes on round the clock. The best I'll be able to do is spend a night with you and your aunt. Oh, Johnny, it's so very long ago that I sent you off to Cliffe. I certainly never dreamed that so much time would pass before I saw you again. We told each other that the war would be over by Christmas, and we'd be together then. We never thought that Christmas might not come. But if I'm not with you, and if the two of us aren't with your father, it certainly won't be Christmas.

  “She says she loves you, of course,” said Auntie Ivy. “Now open your soldier, Johnny.”

  Auntie squinted through her glasses as I tore away the paper. She looked like someone pulling a Christmas cracker, expecting a fright when it banged. Then I pulled the soldier out, and she smiled. “Now that's better. That's the sort of thing I expect to see from your father.” She laughed. “Playing billiards, indeed.”

  Stiff and chunky, bright with paint, he was more toy like than the others, something close to my nutcracker men, my very first soldiers. He held his rifle at his side, and he grinned a real grin—a beaming smile. It was a tiny rifle that he carried, so I knew right away what my father had sent: a model of his happier self to replace the gloomy one he'd made before. But this little figure wore a scarf tied above his service cap, the ends sticking up like a rabbit's ears.

  I thought it was rather silly, but I was so, so pleased to see it. Auntie Ivy clapped her hands and laughed.

  “You'll have to show that one to Mr. Tuttle,” she said. “He would like to come and see it, I think.”

  But I was too busy to go and see him on a day that I didn't have to. School had finished for the holidays, and I spent every moment in the garden. From breakfast to lunch, from tea until supper, I battled with my soldiers. In rain and cold I crouched there, hoping it was really true that whatever happened in the garden would happen again in France. If there was the slightest chance of that—if there was any hope at all—the war might end by Christmas, and my father might come home. From dawn until dusk I bombarded my nutcracker men, until the ground all around them was broken and torn. Then I ran my Frenchmen up against them, over and over, again and again. My little wooden dad, his bandages off and his wounds healed, watched the war from his trench. The British never attacked; only the Frenchmen. And they slaughtered the nutcracker soldiers.

  Sarah was gone.
Her mother had taken her north to Suffolk, to the little town of Bury St. Edmunds. They had left on the last day of the school term, and Sarah hadn't said goodbye.

  The sergeant I didn't see until a week before Christmas.

  It was the nineteenth day of December, a Saturday. Neither I nor Mr. Tuttle had talked of ending our lessons, but they were winding down. Distressed that no boy had come forward to admit to hurting his roses, Mr. Tuttle was only waiting for Christmas to submit his resignation. And I was still too ashamed to tell him the truth.

  That afternoon, I got a shock to see him packing his belongings. He had half a dozen tea chests in his front room, and was filling them with his little trinkets. One whole wall was bare, except for the picture of his wife.

  “Are you really leaving?” I asked.

  “I am,” he said. “If nothing changes.”

  “Because of your roses?”

  “Because of the principle,” he said. “I've set a course and I have to follow it. That's the measure of a man, after all: to see things through no matter how distasteful, no matter what others think.”

  “But what will happen to your roses?” I asked.

  “They'll grow wild, I suppose,” said Mr. Tuttle. “I'll take a cutting, of course, and try to start over somewhere else. But the rest?” He was packing his figurines, rolling each one into a white cloth. “If they survive the winter they should do quite well. They'll spread from my garden into the fields, from the fields to the forests, all across Kent.”

  “Like an army,” I said.

  “Yes. A beautiful, red-coated army.”

  From there we slipped into our lesson, the army of roses becoming armies of men. Mr. Tuttle distressed me by talking of wars that went on for years and years. There were some, he said, that went on so long that they were ended by the grandchildren of the men that started them. “Imagine that,” he said. “Your father comes home an old man. You grow up and go off to the war, and then you come home and have children. And years from now your children grow up and go to fight in the same trenches as you and your father.”