by Tim Atkinson
‘This is it, then.’
‘Aye, laddie, this is it.’
A bugle sounds from across the parade ground. Suddenly the door is flung open and Jack sprints across the floor.
‘What the—’
‘One step further and you’d have been wearing that door, Mac old fella,’ says Ocker.
‘Sorry, lads!’
‘Christ almighty, Jacko, cutting it a bit fine, aren’t you?’
‘How the devil did you get past the guards?’
‘Ask no questions, get told no lies.’
‘Handed in your rifle yesterday, Jacko, didn’t you?’
‘Aye, aye.’ Jack is frantically stuffing everything he can lay his hands on into his Army haversack. The others put their own bags down to help him.
‘Five minutes,’ comes the call from the sergeant major. A bugle calls. Outside, in the sidings, there is a sudden loud hiss as the troop train gets steam up ready for the journey.
‘Come on, Jack, we don’t want to miss it.’
‘Not after waiting all this time!’
‘You go on ahead, lads,’ Jack says. ‘I’ll see you on board. Save us a space in the omms-n-chevoos … if there’s any left.’
‘Right you are.’ Mac picks up his bag. ‘Well, so long, Ocker ol’ son,’ he pats him on the back. ‘Shame you’re not on this one with the rest of us.’
‘No offence, Mac, but I’d rather not be going in your direction.’
A whistle blows. Metal scrapes as loosened wheels settle on the rails.
‘Right, I’m done,’ Jack makes for the door. ‘I’ll see thee,’ he puts a hand on Ocker’s shoulder.
‘Still don’t understand a word o’ this fella,’ Ocker says to the others. ‘Now bugger off home the lot of you, before you miss the train.’
‘Come on, lads,’ Jack shoulders his haversack. ‘Last on t’train buys the teas.’
In the sidings, soldiers are crowding round the carriages. Troops from neighbouring camps gather at one end of the small station under the watchful eye of an NCO. Slowly the men embark. The carriages fill. A whistle blows. The train moves.
‘Hey, this is a bit of all right, isn’t it?’
‘What is? Seats?’
‘Aye and warmth and windows.’ Mac takes his sleeve and rubs the glass. ‘Bit mucky, mind.’
‘Complain to t’guard, Mac. Tell him you want your money back.’
‘I would do if I’d paid for my ticket myself,’ Mac laughs. ‘But this journey’s on the King!’
Soon the warmth, the deep springs and clean carriage cloth together with the steady motion of the train lull the excited men to sleep. Familiar brown fields and ruins recede as the train slowly travels farther behind the old front lines. Soon there are trees, their branches thick with the dark green leaves of high summer, autumn little more than a vague idea. Within an hour they have crossed the border and are in France. More troops board the train at each stop, and soon there are men sitting in the corridors, or standing in each of the compartments holding on to luggage racks as the carriages sway. The air is thick with smoke. Blake edges closer to an open window. Two hours and a change of train later, they finally reach the ferry.
‘That’s that, then.’ Jack looks at the silhouette of the coast of France and shakes his head. ‘That’s that.’
*
Early next morning, England emerges from the mist, the white cliffs glowing salmon pink in the rising sun. Doors slam at Folkestone station. Words in a familiar language echo on the platform. A third-class carriage has a few spare seats. Mac and Skerritt are asleep within minutes. Blake opts to stand guard – he smiles at the thought – by the door. Soon afterwards, the train is moving – slowly at first, struggling against the weight of a cargo of men who have been so far away and so far below ground for so long: men of the trenches, saps, dugouts, funk holes – and the graves that they have dug, lives made heavy by the weight of Flanders mud that still sticks to them like clay. Gradually, as the sun strengthens, a weight seems to lift and the train gathers speed and they are heading, headlong – a long, dark arrow – for the capital.
‘What’s that?’ A boy, sitting on his mother’s lap on the seat opposite, is looking at Jack’s sleeve.
‘These, you mean, lad?’ He lifts up his arm, pointing to a row of small brass bars pinned to his cuff.
‘Yes,’ the boy says. ‘Those little bars. What are they for?’
‘Wounds,’ Jack tells him. ‘They’re wound stripes.’
‘You were wounded,’ the boy nods. It is a statement rather than a question. ‘You’re a wounded soldier.’
Jack smiles.
‘My mummy says that I’m a wounded soldier’ – he turns to see if she is listening – ‘don’t you, Mummy? When I fall down and hurt myself.’ He looks at Jack. ‘Poor wounded soldier, Mummy says. That’s what you say to me, isn’t it, Mummy?’
The woman smiles, and carries on reading.
‘Why haven’t you got any?’ The boy shifts his attention to Blake. ‘Why haven’t you got any wound stripes?’ the boy asks again. ‘Aren’t you a wounded soldier too?’
‘Actually,’ Blake smiles, sliding his book back into his tunic pocket, ‘I’m not a soldier at all.’
‘You’re not a soldier?’ the boy’s screws up his eyes. ‘But you’re in a soldier’s uniform. Are you a pretend soldier, then?’
Jack stifles a laugh.
‘Is he a pretend soldier?’
‘Nay, lad. He’s a …’
‘I chose not to fight,’ says Blake. ‘I don’t believe in violence.’
‘So why were you there?’ the boy asks.
‘I was sent,’ Blake says. ‘I was sent to France to help … in other ways.’ He looks out at the trees and ripening fields of Kent. Oast houses, tucked into folds in the hills, the whole garden of England as seen through the grubby, soot-stained carriage window.
‘Didn’t you believe it was worth fighting?’ the boy says.
‘There’s a lot more to war than fighting, lad.’ Jack looks at Blake.
‘Is there?’ the boy says. ‘Is there any more to war than fighting? Where are your guns?’
‘Had to hand ’em back, lad. Now that the war’s over.’
‘The war’s been over a-g-e-s,’ the boys says, stretching out the final syllable. ‘Why are you only just coming home? Were you taken prisoner?’
‘Like he said’ – Jack smiles at Blake – ‘we’ve been busy … in other ways.’
The boy looks at the double reflection of his face in the carriage window for a while. ‘Where are you from?’ he asks eventually.
‘Freddie, leave the men alone,’ the woman tells him. ‘Stop asking so many questions.’
‘It’s fine,’ Jack smiles at her. ‘It’s no bother.’
‘We’ve just been to France,’ the boy announces. Blake suddenly looks up – a glance at Jack. The two men nod almost imperceptibly at one another.
‘We went to see my daddy. My daddy was a soldier,’ the boy goes on. ‘Daddy was a soldier, wasn’t he, Mummy? He was a real soldier, too.’ He frowns at Blake. ‘He was a wounded soldier,’ the boy says, eyes fixed on Jack’s sleeve. ‘He was wounded to death,’ he adds quietly. ‘He was wounded to death so he could never come home. Isn’t that right, Mummy? We went to see where they had buried him.’
The woman looks down, hiding her eyes as her shoulders silently begin to shake.
‘Well.’ Blake grasps Jack’s hand amidst the smoke and steam of King’s Cross station. ‘Good luck!’
Doors slam. A whistle blows. ‘Go on,’ Blake says. ‘Miss this train and you’ll be in for a long wait for another.’
‘Sure you won’t come with me,’ Jack smiles. ‘For the ride?’
Blake looks at his travel warrant. ‘It’s quite clear,’ he says. ‘Transport to London, no farther. I’ve got to make my own way back from here.’
‘Sorry, lad. Hell of a journey for you.’
‘I’ve got a good book,’ Blake says,
patting the tattered copy of the Bible in his tunic pocket.
‘Come on, son,’ Mac says impatiently.
‘Blakey?’
‘Yes, Jack.’
‘If you do go back …’
‘Back?’
‘Aye. To Toc H, like you was saying.’
‘It’s a possibility,’ Blake says. ‘If Reverend Clayton plans to buy the place and keep it going.’
‘Aye, well … if you do go back, say hello to Katia for me will you? If you see her?’
Blake smiles. ‘Get on the train, Jack.’
‘Yes, man. Come on. Get on the train.’
‘Please, Blakey?’
‘Never mind Katia,’ Blake says. ‘Get on your train. And when you get to Yorkshire make sure you go and see Anna. Sort it all out with her.’
‘Aye.’
Ripon, when he finally arrives almost a day and a half later, looks exactly as Jack remembers it. The camp is quieter, the parade ground smaller, but in every other respect things could not have changed less than when he was last here, six long years ago. It is as if the war had never happened. Marched alone to the gate on the morning of his discharge, Jack immediately turns left, taking the road to Pateley Bridge, and keeps up the same brisk pace until he is as far away from the camp as he thinks is safe. Slipping from the road into Limekiln Woods for a smoke, he allows himself to look back towards camp for the first time. There is no one following.
After lunch he heads south for a while, feeling conspicuous as his footsteps crunch on the dirt track through the village of Studley Roger. He manages to beg a screw of tea from a sympathetic cottager and seeks the shade of the trees in the afternoon heat, sleeping on his pack as pigeons clatter in the branches overhead and pheasants dart and peck among the dry leaves. By the time he wanders down the hill through the trees to Fountains Abbey, hours later, the light is already starting to fade.
Sitting on the floor in the gloom of the crypt, he lights a cigarette. The sudden flame attracts a dozen pairs of eyes, like moths. From deep within the shadows, the vaulted undercroft is suddenly alive with men, with what remains of men, old soldiers slowly rising like the dead from an afternoon sleeping off their hangovers on damp earth, men yawning and stretching and scratching in the dark depths of the ruined abbey.
Too weary by now to move, Jack leans his head on his bag and drifts into a fitful, restless slumber. Now and then the sudden flare of matches pierces the darkness, punctuating the night as he attempts to sleep. An owl’s screech is a sharp stab of pain pulling him back from the threshold of insensibility. The gentle, soothing, soft whoo-hooing answer from the bird’s mate, perched high in the abbey’s hollow tower, settles his nerves and calms his breathing. And somewhere, in the blackest depths of his dreams, an Irish voice is softly swelling to a song.
My young love said to me,
My mother won’t mind
And my father won’t slight you
For your lack of kind.
And she stepped away from me
And this she did say:
It will not be long, love,
’Til our wedding day.
The hard, damp earth beneath Jack’s hips is suddenly, sharply, desperately uncomfortable. He wakes and turns, slowly. A hundred orange cigarette ends flicker in the darkness like a sudden swarm of glow-worms.
She stepped away from me
And she moved through the fair
And fondly I watched her
Move here and move there.
And then she made her way homeward,
With one star awake,
As the swan in the evening
Moved over the lake.
Now fully awake, Jack rolls a cigarette, adjusts the haversack behind his head and lies back, smoking, listening, thinking.
The people were saying,
No two e’er were wed
But one had a sorrow
That never was said.
And I smiled as she passed
With her goods and her gear,
And that was the last
That I saw of my dear.
The sound of someone coughing echoes round the stone walls. Farther off, a man snores. Jack’s eyelids are suddenly once more very, very heavy.
Last night she came to me,
My dead love came in.
So softly she came
That her feet made no din.
As she laid her hand on me,
And this she did say:
It will not be long, love,
’Til our wedding day.
33
The next morning Jack is up and off before the mist has cleared. Crossing the road, he wanders north, across fields, skirting hedgerows. By lunchtime he has reached Masham, stopping in the main square as the smell of malt and barley from the brewery fills his nose and the clamour of children in the schoolyard fills his ears. He arrives on the outskirts of Edgham later that same day, shunning the centre of the village to turn down Low Lane towards the Backs. His mother’s cottage, a ruin when he last saw it years ago, now has a new roof. Children play with a ball in the road outside; a young woman standing in the open doorway watches while a pig grunts from a sty in the backyard.
‘How do?’
The woman stares. The children stop playing for a moment. Birds fill the sudden silence. ‘My mother …’ Jack nods. ‘This used to be hers.’
The woman doesn’t answer.
‘Aye, well. That were years ago,’ he says. He ruffles the hair of the youngest boy, who wrinkles his nose and smiles.
‘I can spare you some tea,’ the woman says. ‘But I’ve got no brass so don’t ask me.’
‘Thank you,’ Jack smiles. ‘That’d be grand.’ The stone flags of the kitchen floor are cracked, but scrubbed. ‘Oh.’ Jack looks down at his boots. ‘I’m sorry, lass.’
‘You’re worse than t’children,’ she scolds, then smiles. ‘Walked far?’
‘From Ripon,’ he says, unshouldering the heavy canvas haversack from his back.
‘You a soldier?’ the woman asks, looking at the stencilled number on the canvas bag.
‘Aye,’ Jack says. ‘Well, used to be.’
‘Sit down then. I’ll mash you some tea.’
‘Thank you,’ he says, pulling out a chair.
‘Save you having to light a fire in t’woods at any rate,’ the woman says, putting a kettle on the plate by the stove.
‘Aye,’ he nods. ‘Wouldn’t want to attract attention from the estate.’ His hands ache as they close round the hot tin mug. He closes his eyes and drinks.
‘You from t’village, then?’
‘Actually, no. Officially, I’m from t’next parish. That’s where I enlisted,’ he says. ‘Although I had plenty o’ pals here.’
‘Thought I didn’t recognise you,’ the woman smiles. The cries of the children in the road outside come and go as games begin, stall, break up and then begin again.
‘Sounds like war out there,’ Jack smiles. ‘Did your husband … ?’
The woman shakes her head. ‘He were never released,’ she says. ‘Tried. Wanted to. Bloody desperate to get away, he was. But the estate wouldn’t sign to let him go.’
‘Aye,’ Jack nods. The estate. The big house. Anna. Her late mother.
‘Aye, well.’ Jack pushes back the chair. The woman watches as he makes his way to the door. It is already dark when he steps outside, but he knows which barns will be empty, where the best straw will be kept. Climbing the steep hill and ignoring signs and fences, scaling the drystone walls and jumping across near-dry streams, he finds a place to sleep. And in the morning, he knows where he will find her.
He knows better than to go to the kitchens of the big house, unannounced. A friendly escort, that’s what is needed. But the keeper’s cottage is empty. Going back to the woods, Jack soon comes across the pheasant hatchery, but the birds have already been fed. The keeper could be anywhere, and time is running out. Staying close to the hedges and ducking down behind stone walls, he skirts the
edge of the estate and ends up at Home Farm. The dogs, on chains, bark fiercely at first – but then tails wag and wet tongues loll. Hens scatter. Pigs rear their fat heads above the side of pens before flopping back into the cool mud.
‘You’re not wanted here, Patterson.’ The shotgun is broken, resting across the man’s forearm, but loaded – both barrels. Sun glints off the brass caps of the cartridges.
‘Oh, aye?’
‘No. Got long memories, people here, tha knows.’
‘Was I ever welcome here?’
‘Probably not. But there’s no one left alive now with a good word for thee, nor ever had.’
‘I can believe that.’ Jack laughs. But it is anything but funny. ‘So how did they find out?’ he asks.
‘Well, Miss Anna’s mother …’ the man checks himself. ‘Lady Agnes, I mean – God rest her soul. Not the whore …’
Jack suddenly takes two big strides towards the man. He steps away quickly, cocking the gun.
‘If yer think I’m frightened o’ that thing,’ Jack nods.
‘It’s loaded.’
‘I know.’
‘I’ll use it.’
‘You won’t.’
A cock crows from the other side of the farmyard.
‘Her mother …’ Jack says quietly. ‘Don’t talk of her like that.’
The man spits on the farmyard floor, a green-brown gobbet of phlegm stained with the tobacco he’s been chewing. ‘At least Lady Agnes made something of the girl.’ He wipes his mouth. ‘More than your whore would ever have done. More’n you would ever have done an’ all,’ the man says. ‘Not that you hung around long enough to find out.’
‘I’m telling you.’ Jack stares at the man, unblinking. ‘Don’t talk of her like that.’
‘Why’s that then?’ a voice calls from the other side of the yard. ‘Wrong to speak ill of the dead, is it?’
‘Harrison!’ Jack turns, keeping both men in his sight and an eye on the only exit.
‘Welcome home, Jack,’ the man grins. ‘After all these years.’
