by Tim Atkinson
13
Moments later Private Fuller is sitting in the middle of the British Tavern with his hands wrapped round a mug of de Snoek Vlaams bier blond. He is the only customer.
‘You are alone tonight?’ Katia asks him as she starts to clear the other tables.
‘You too, mademoiselle, by the looks of it. Where’s the rest of the family, then, eh? Where’s that pretty little sister o’ yours tonight then, eh? Not here sweeping the floor for you, is she? Or collecting up the glasses?’
The older girl looks down at her hands. ‘She is sick,’ she says.
‘Ha!’ The boy smacks his lips. ‘Love-sick, eh? I seen her making eyes at me.’
‘She has been doing no such thing,’ says Katia. ‘Françoise is a … er, une jeune fille: a girl – only still a girl!’ She looks down at the floor, both hands gripping the table she is clearing. ‘And she is ill.’ Katia looks up. ‘She is in bed.’ She sees a faint outline of a smirk on Fuller’s lips. ‘My mother is looking after her.’ She glares at him. ‘Back in Poperinghe!’
The glasses and beer mugs chink loudly as she gathers them up a handful at a time. ‘It is fine,’ she says, as he makes a move to help her. ‘I can manage.’
Fuller gets up and begins to clear the remaining tables. ‘I am sure you can, mademoiselle,’ he smirks. ‘In fact, I’m certain of it.’
Katia stops and stares at him. ‘Shouldn’t you be getting back,’ she asks, ‘to Remy? It is late.’
‘Nah,’ he says, draining one of the glasses on the table she is clearing. ‘No rest for the wicked!’
‘The … wicked?’
‘Special orders for me,’ he grins. ‘That’s why Ingham knocked me up after hours.’
‘You are working this evening?’ Katia asks. ‘But it is going to begin … snowing.’
‘Yeah, well …’ He shrugs. ‘There’s things only me and Lieutenant Ingham can do, y’know.’
‘I am sure you are right.’ Katia carries on wiping the table she is clearing without looking up.
‘Yeah! I could tell you a thing or two, y’know,’ Fuller says, draining the last of his beer.
‘I am sure you could,’ Katia sighs.
‘Don’t you want to know what we all got up to, then?’ – he smirks – ‘while we was on holiday over in Roselare in the summer?’
Katia stops and wipes her hands on her apron. ‘Got up to?’ she says. ‘You got up to something?’
‘Ah, I thought you’d soon prick up your ears at that little bit o’ news.’
‘What did you – what news?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know!’ Fuller taps the side of his nose. ‘Or maybe it’s more your ol’ man’s business, eh? Maybe he’s the one who’d like to know what Jacko has been up to while he’s away from his intended, eh?’
‘Jacques has been up to … something?’
‘Or someone!’
‘No!’ The girl puts her hands up to her mouth.
‘Bet you’d like to know who it is he talks about in his sleep, an’ all! Whose name do you think he whispers in his dreams, eh?’
Katia closes her eyes and shakes her head.
‘No matter, missus. Scared o’ what you might hear, I suppose. Certainly don’t sound much like “Katia” to me. More like … dunno. Anna, maybe? Wonder who she is, eh! Wouldn’t you like to know?’
‘Please!’
‘As you wish, miss. My lift’ll be here in a minute anyway. I’ll get these for you, shall I?’ He picks up some more of the glasses.
‘Sit down,’ the girl tells him, quietly. ‘Sit down, please.’
‘Well,’ Fuller smirks. ‘As you was so polite about it – saying please, an’ all. How can I refuse?’ Dried smears of spilt wine glisten on the table in the candlelight – a sticky mucous pattern like the slime trail of a slug.
‘James?’ Fuller looks up at the woman. Not unattractive, he thinks to himself. Bit on the skinny side. Not as pretty as her baby sister, but … ‘Would you like another drink?’
A shy smile creeps across his face.
Whatever he is planning, the older Steenvan sister reckons she is equal to it. After all, Fuller is not much more than a boy. But on the other hand, if he knows anything – if there is anything to know – then Katia wants to know about it. She wants to know so much about the man she can’t quite shake from her thoughts, the man she … loves? Does she love him? Does he love her? So many unanswered questions. Jack remains too much of a mystery: an intriguing mystery, but she has to know more, to take the risk, to find out even if she hears things that she would rather not know. Fuller sits down at the table and Katia brings him a bier blond. ‘On the house – is that what you say? On the house?’
‘Cheers!’ The boy takes a gulp, wipes the froth from his mouth and looks at the girl and grins.
Katia puts her hand over his. ‘So what is it that you have to tell me, James?’
He stares for a moment at the back of her hand. ‘Ah, nuffink.’ He pulls away. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘You are playing games with me, James. Don’t. Please don’t.’
‘On yer own are yer, tonight, miss? Behind the bar? No Papa Steenvan here to keep an eye on yer?’
‘James, please.’
‘Oh dear. Oh, dearie me. Oughtn’t to do that, your papa, ought he now? Oughtn’t to leave the pretty Katy on her own here wiv all these men.’
‘I see no men.’
‘Well … man, then.’
‘No,’ the girl looks airily around the room. ‘Still nothing.’
‘Oh!’ He pulls his head back – like a tortoise, she thinks, shrinking back into its shell. ‘Like that is it? Playin’ hard to get, eh? You should teach a bit o’ that attitude to your little sister. Always making eyes at me, she is!’ The boy is worried now. Katia knows what he is thinking. She knows, too, now, that there is nothing whatever to tell – no secrets, no tale of betrayal or of infidelity, no skeleton in Jack’s closet. She can tell. Fuller senses it as well.
‘So what is it that you want to know?’ he asks, glancing around the room as if looking at it for the first time.
‘I am just curious,’ Katia shrugs, ‘about Jacques. We feel we know so little about him. He has been very kind to Papa. You all have, helping us acquire …’
‘Yeah, well, the less said about that the better, miss. You see—’
‘We could not have rebuilt our café here so quickly if it hadn’t been for all the wood and sheets of metal Jacques – you all – have given us.’
‘Ulterior motive, that’s what it is,’ says Fuller.
Katia can tell by the look on his face what the words mean. She smiles to herself, smiles at the thought of the Englishman she barely knows but somehow knows so well. ‘So tell me,’ she goes on. ‘Tell me what you know, James. Tell me everything you know. Tell me what you think about him.’
Fuller is smiling again now, grinning actually – a silly, schoolboy grin as he suddenly remembers the game he is playing and the strength of his hand. ‘That depends’ – he takes another swig of beer – ‘what it is you want to know about him.’
He narrows his eyes through the smoke of his cigarette and looks at her, more carefully now, more aware of what he thinks might be happening, aware of the cards he’s holding. She looks away. It’s late. The street outside the bar is emptying. She can hear the last train for Poperinghe slowly puffing from the station opposite.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘He has been kind, as I said. But …’
‘You wouldn’t mind a bit more than just kindness, eh?’
She blushes, shakes her head. ‘No, no.’
‘No?’
She won’t look at him. ‘We know so little about Jack, that is all,’ she says. ‘Did you know him? Back in England?’
Fuller laughs. ‘Nah. He’s a Yorkshireman, isn’t he?’
‘A … Yorkshire man?’
‘Yeah, bloody northern peasant, Jacko. They’re not much more than savages up there.’
&
nbsp; ‘Savages?’
‘Up north, or oop nerth as they say, the savages.’
‘You don’t like him?’
‘He’s all right. He’s a bloody good digger. Reckon that he must’ve been a sapper.’
‘A sapper?’
‘Engineer. Or labour corps most likely. Dunno. His battalion was disbanded after the Jerries used it for machine-gun practice at the Somme.’
‘In 1916?’
‘Yeah. Well, I say disbanded. Wiped out, more like. He was one of the only survivors, apparently. No one seems to know that much about him.’
‘He is a mystery?’
Fuller looks at her, sizing her up. She is obviously several years younger than Jack – maybe nearer to his, to Fuller’s own age, who knows? The girl’s brown eyes are large and dark, and in the dim light of the bar and with his head now full of beer he can’t make out the little black pupil in the middle of the iris. Her eyes suddenly seem so large that he feels he’s falling into them. She looks away, quickly. Fuller blinks and takes another gulp of beer. ‘Oh yeah, he’s a mystery all right is our Jack.’
The street outside is silent now. The last of the townspeople have gone home. Doors are closed for the night; windows shuttered against the coming snow.
‘I suppose’ – Fuller lets out an enormous belch – ‘I suppose I’d better be on my way.’ But he makes no move to go.
‘But there is so much that I need to know.’ Katia moves her chair a little closer, leans her elbows on the table and looks up at him, sighing. ‘And I thought, I really thought that you might be able to help me.’
Fuller coughs on the cigarette he’s just relit. He knows what she wants, or thinks he does. And she knows what he wants. One of them can give the other what they’re asking for and knows it; the other wants the prize but can’t deliver.
‘I might,’ he says at last. ‘Depends.’
‘Depends? Depends on what?’
‘Depends on what I might get in return.’ He raises his eyebrows.
‘What you might get?’
‘Well, information like that don’t come cheap, y’know.’
‘Wait!’ She holds up a hand.
‘Oh no, miss, I didn’t mean—’ Fuller suddenly looks worried, thinking that he may have gone too far. But the girl is simply pausing to make sense of what he’s saying, taking time to think about the words he is using.
Downing the rest of the beer, Fuller decides to regain the initiative. While Katia is looking across the table at him, he makes a quick lunge forward. Before the girl can pull away his open mouth is pressed against her lips and she can taste the last mouthful of beer on his tongue. Standing up, she manages to push him off, wiping her mouth on her hands and her hands down her apron as she backs away.
‘Telled you I wouldn’t do it for nothing,’ Fuller slurs. ‘And that, mademoiselle …’ He makes another clumsy move towards her. ‘That is only the beginning.’
‘The beginning, you say?’ she shouts, throwing a tea towel hard into his face. ‘No! That is the ending. Now go. Please. Leave now. I am sorry to have troubled you and I will ask no more of you.’
‘But I wanna ask so much more o’ you.’ He tosses the towel to the floor and grabs her by the wrist. She twists away but he doesn’t let go.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he breathes, pulling her closer, smelling of beer. ‘We all know what Jack-the-lad gets up to here of an evening when he’s off duty. We know what he does, what you both get up to. And we’re jealous, eh? Want a bit o’ that ourselves, don’t we?’
‘Let me go!’ the girl shouts. ‘Help! Helpen! Aidez-moi!’
He pulls her towards him. For a thin, wiry boy he is remarkably strong. She can feel his moist breath warm on her skin. His hands begin to fumble underneath her petticoats; he clearly doesn’t know what he is doing. She stamps the sharp point of her heel into his foot but he doesn’t flinch.
‘Now that’s not very nice, miss, is it?’ he says.
‘Please, James. Stop this madness. This is stupid. Jack will …’
‘What will Jacko do, miss?’
‘He will KILL YOU!’ she suddenly screams. As the echo of her voice dies away, there is the rumble of a truck pulling up in the darkness of the street outside. Katia sighs heavily.
‘Oh dear,’ he says. ‘What rotten timing. Well, my chariot awaits.’ He lets her go, and his words settle like dust in the silence. And then, suddenly, he’s turning to the door. ‘Well, it’s been very nice, mademoiselle,’ he says, ‘but I’ve got work to do, me.’ He looks at her. ‘You looks tired, darling. Best get back and get some sleep, eh?’ He winks.
Katia gets up and smooths her dress; she walks across the bar and then unlocks the door. The cold night air hits Fuller like a punch and as he hears the door quietly bolted behind his back, he has a sudden urge to turn around and put his fist through the glass. But the truck is waiting, its engine running.
Katia picks up the empty beer glass, wipes the tables, turns off the oil lamps and blows out the remaining candles one by one.
War Diary or Intelligence Summary:
Army form C. 2118
1920
DIVISION MAIN DRESSING STATION—Remy Siding Map Sheet 28; Grid reference: L.22 d.6.3
January 1st – Observed as holiday.
The New Year’s Honours Gazette contained the following awards: D.S.O. – Major T.H. ROBBINS; D.C.M. – 23378 Sgt. J.K. TOWNEND; 24789 Drummer T. HODGE; 4493 O.L. PARTRIDGE. M.S.M. – 2761 R.S.M. W.R. MITCHELL; 5611 C.S.M. W. TITLEY; Mentioned in Dispatches – Lt. Col. H.K. ANDREWS D.S.O.; Major H.H. HOWELLS M.C.; 2/Lt. M.V. MURRAY; R.S.M. N.H. ATKINSON.
January 2nd – Hockey Match against 3rd Royal Welch Fusiliers. Battalion won by three goals to nil. ‘C’ Coy ordered to assume escort duties for 121 P.O.W. Coy and to leave immediately.
January 3rd – 22198 L/Cpl. PATTERSON and 34677 Pte. KEEGAN returned from local leave.
January 5th – Further five O.R.s reported sick with Spanish Influenza. Company concert party ‘The Sandbags’ gave a performance in the recreation hut.
January 7th – Salvage operations resumed in T.7 and T.8 together with dismantling of surplus Nissen huts. Battalion Lewis Gun Officer (2/Lt. H.J.K. MERRICK) inspected Lewis Guns of companies.
January 8th – Arrangements made for isolation wards to be established at the field hospital for the treatment of victims of latest Spanish Influenza epidemic. Lt. J.K. LEVISON and 3 O.R.s admitted to hospital.
January 10th – Companies paraded at Grand Place, Poperinghe and marched to Salvation Army hut for Church Parade (all denominations).
January 15th – The Battalion played the 5th Rifle Brigade at Association Football, winning by 4 goals to 3.
January 20th – Baths parade, Poperinghe.
14
‘Shall we give t’pub a miss tonight?’ Jack shouts to the men in the back of the van. ‘Get straight back to Pop?’ There is a loud groan.
‘You’ll be in trouble, Jacques – if yer missus discovers you’ve been to Ypres without calling in to say hello.’
‘Especially as you missed saying bonne année in person, what with going on leave to St Omer an’ all.’
‘Yeah, did you bring ’em your presies, Jacko?’
‘Damn! They’re back at Pop in me haversack.’ Jack slows the truck to a crawl as they cross the moat through the wide gap in the ramparts. ‘Right you are then, lads. Just the one, mind. Road’ll be like a skating rink if we leave it too long.’
They drive along Menen Straat and park in the open square of the Grote Markt. The thin wire cordon sanitaire has shrunk now to the perimeter of the Lakenhalle and St Martin’s Church. Building work is under way on the corner of Dismuide Straat and a forest of scaffolding now clads each of the few remaining walls of the cathedral. Heavy timber buttresses shore up the campanile. They pass a cart loaded with small children, a big oak table, four chairs and several mattresses. Another family returning home.
‘Busy here tonight!’ There are men e
verywhere, darting in and out of shadows or striding quickly down the road, others laughing, talking loudly, hailing friends. ‘And there must be a small fortune to be made in scrap,’ Ocker says, ‘judging by the fancy strides these coves are wearing.’
‘Aye – where there’s muck, there’s brass,’ Jack says. ‘Wonder where they’re all going.’
The bar, when the men arrive, is deserted. Neither of the Steenvan girls is there and the barmaid, Margreet, pours the men their drinks as they huddle round a table in the corner. Someone gets out a pack of cards.
‘You in, Jack?’
‘Not tonight.’ He shakes his head and pushes back his chair. Ocker shuffles the pack and deals the others in.
‘So where is she?’ Jack asks as he walks back to the bar. Margreet smirks at him and shakes her head. ‘Waar is ze vanavond? ’ The woman leans her elbows on the bar, cradling her head in her hands and smiles. ‘Er … waar is Katia vanavond? ’ he says again.
‘Wat is er mis met mij? Ben ik niet goed genoeg?’
‘Nowt, lass. There’s nowt wrong wi’ you. I just wanted to know—’
‘Françoise is not well,’ Margreet says in near-perfect English.
‘Still?’
‘Still,’ the woman gives an exaggerated nod and a smirk, then starts idly wiping the surface of the bar, forcing Jack to move his elbow. ‘And then there is Katia …’
‘Katia? What’s matter wi’ Katia?’ Jack suddenly looks worried.
‘She is fine.’ The woman waves away Jack’s frown, keen to carry on annoying him. ‘She was … how do you say? Digging. Yes, she was digging.’
‘Digging?’
‘Mm!’ she nods her head slowly. ‘Digging for information.’
‘Information?’ Jack pushes his cap back and scratches his head.
