by Alan Cumyn
Witherspoon digests this information without taking his eyes off the page. “So she hates your hide,” he concludes finally. “Now, where’s your latest from Margaret?”
“Actually, I think Emily fancies me.”
“That’s why she’s telling you all about how Margaret loves you?”
Witherspoon is hard to resist like this. His dark eyes press in, and for a moment he makes me feel as if talking like this might somehow bring the better world right to the gates of the camp.
“The last night I was in London, she threw herself at me”
“Somewhat.”
“Somewhat?” “She crept into my bed in the middle of the night. I had to kick her out.”
“You threw the young, pretty one out of your bed the night before returning to the front? Because she wasn’t Margaret?”
Trust Witherspoon to frame the stupidity of it.
“Would you sleep with Beatrice’s sister?” I ask quietly.
“At the moment I think I’d sleep with Beatrice’s dead Aunt Gertrude!” he says gleefully before returning to the letter at hand. “So, Emily is in love with you and is jealous of her older sister. Why would she write to say how much Margaret is pining for you?”
“Because Margaret is pining for me.”
“No! No, no, no,” he says, shaking his head. “That’s too simple and straightforward and honest. We’re dealing with women here. Sisters at that. Emily is writing to torment you because you kicked her out of bed your last night in civilization. And she wants to punish her sister for being happily in love with what’s his name.”
“Henry.”
“Henry the civil service shirker, who’s not only going to have body and soul together after this war, he’ll be employed too and miles ahead of any poor returning sod. Emily can’t even get herself a Henry, so she’s poisoning her sister’s well and persecuting you at the same time.”
Witherspoon wipes his hands with the satisfaction of a great psychological detective. “But,” he continues suddenly, “The young, pretty Emily obviously also still cares for you a great deal, and one encouraging letter from you and she’d agree to marry you in a heartbeat. You’d have someone in the flesh, beautiful, charming, passionate, an artist at that, waiting for you at home when you get out of this hellhole. Instead of pining for her older sister who’s marrying what’s his name anyway. And,” he says, his eyes darkly lit with this last thought, “you’ll have someone to dream about while you’re here. She’ll send you gushing letters and marvellous parcels stuffed with chocolate and bully beef and good English cigarettes. And when you get back to London you can see whether you still like her or not.”
Witherspoon slaps my leg in self-satisfaction. “How did you leave things with this Emily? I hope you apologized over breakfast or something. She isn’t really furious with you, is she? Can it be overcome?”
“I painted her portrait.”
“Excellent!”
“Her nude portrait,” I say quietly.
Witherspoon laughs suddenly, and others now stir and stop what they’re doing to listen in. Card games pause, other fannigans hesitate in their cigarette-rolling, their letter-writing, their mumbling to themselves as they stare off into the gloom or pore over the same tired novel they have read and reread time and again.
“She posed for you in the nude?”
“No. But I painted her that way.”
“You are full of surprises,” Witherspoon says. Then to the others he calls out, “Crome kicked her out of bed, but then he painted her in the nude!” Roars of laughter. “So she really does despise you. That’s why she’s writing to torture you over Margaret!”
“She told me she liked the portrait,” I say quietly.
“Ah.” Witherspoon subsides into silence, then calls out to the others, “The plot thickens!” He snaps his fingers. “Let me see her most recent letter,” he says suddenly. “Margaret’s, I mean.”
“No.”
“Oh, come on. This is too delicious to hoard.”
“It’s not for publication all over the screaming barracks!” He becomes the humble Witherspoon, the apologetic one with the low, confidential voice. “You know how overexcited I get sometimes. Of course I’ll keep it to myself. Completely. I’m sorry, man, sorry.”
Several minutes of this, and so I hand it over finally.
Dearest Ramsay,
What a balm it was to receive, finally, something written in your hand. I can understand that you are unable to say much of your treatment and well-being, but if I may read between the lines it seems that at the very least you are away from the carnage at the Front.
You know my feelings about the war. You know too, I think, some of my feelings towards you. There is no sense in saying any more at this juncture than perhaps to thank God for providing some small personal relief in the midst of international calamity. I think I shall not sleep soundly until you are returned whole in body and the cannons have fallen into slumber.
I could fill pages I suppose of small details of our petty lives. We saw Chu Chin Chow the other night, a show of great whimsy that almost was enough to divert our minds.
And yes, Henry and I are officially engaged, although he seems more eager than ever to overcome his knee injury and enlist in some branch of the fighting service. He feels the lack of uniform keenly. All men like him are made to consider themselves cowards, even though he is doing important Ministry work, as you know. The theatre lobby the other night was lined with red hats checking men’s papers and dragging off those unfortunates without an official excuse for being out of khaki.
Perhaps I have broken some kind of law just setting down that last sentence. We’ve been warned not to say much lest we give away secrets so I will stop.
Please write often and tell me as much as you can, of your feelings especially if the actual details of life must be left out. I sometimes think what is the point of our being here if we cannot share deeply what’s in our hearts with our fellow men — with some special others at any rate.
Forgive me, please, my fumbling and incoherence. I find myself thinking about you for days on end as if I too were a prisoner.
Write!
Yours in captivity,
Margaret
Witherspoon absorbs it all in deepest silence. The card games, the cigarette rolling, the reading and staring and mumbling all resume.
“What are you going to write?” he asks finally, in a quiet little voice, not quite like his own.
Dear Margaret,
Paper is in great demand so I will not waste this sheet on the ugliness of life here. I wrote a letter to you once before going into battle — it seems ages ago now. But it’s with my pack still, I imagine, buried in mud if it hasn’t yet been blown to bits. In it I said that if I were at all whole and not a hound of hell as I have become (thanks to this God-fearing war) then I would urge you to forget about Boulton, to marry me, to be my muse and wife and confidante and the mother of whoever our children might be. So you see, those are my feelings, blunt as I have laid them out, but the hopelessness of stating them seems even more profound now than it did on the other side of the Kaiser’s guns.
So, dearest Margaret, keep your Boulton out of the war, and love him as much as you can. But whatever happens please write back to me — your words are oxygen to my blood in this forsaken spot.
With love, Ramsay
Seven
Hard before dawn the damn rooster split the air with his squawks and screams, and I sat up suddenly in bed as if bombs were falling. For a moment I didn’t know where I was. Nothing looked familiar: the needlepoint portrait “Our Lord & Saviour” on the wall, slightly sinister in the shadows despite the woolly white lamb and the calm blue eyes; the faded flowery chintz curtains trembling in the cool morning breeze; the white chest of drawers with the silver mirror lurking in the corner. Briefly, I imagined I was back at Stokebridge Street in London, that either Margaret or Emily was going to come through my door, perhaps with a tray of breakf
ast. That I could set my life here and wait in drowsy comfort before being dragged back to the present.
Then I heard Lillian and her father downstairs and forced myself out of the warmth of the sheets and into some proper clothes. The heat of the summer felt so broken it might never have existed or was at best a vaguely remembered sensation, the tailings of a dream. I hurried down the stairs and greeted father and daughter in the kitchen, which looked chaotic: the floor and counters were strewn with boxes and crates of
dishes and glassware and old pots and pans, with cutlery and cutting boards and hand-knitted table mats from generations past. It would all have to be moved, sold or given away.
Lillian was frying bacon over the old black wood stove, and the smell of that and of the coffee percolating beside it ran through me like the memory of riches. I kissed my wife on the neck and asked how she had slept.
“I almost fell asleep,” she said without turning around.
Mr. McGillis was at the counter with a screwdriver, scraping the rust off an old apple corer. He too looked as if he had not slept.
“I wish I didn’t have to rush back to work. I should probably stay here and help with the” — I stumbled over the word. What was going on? A move? An eviction? — “transition,” I finally said.
“There’ll still be plenty to do when you get back,” McGillis muttered.
Still Lillian did not turn around.
I walked outside. Sam, half-asleep on the porch, thumped his tail at my approach but did not lift his head. Some chickens were pecking in front of the house. I didn’t know if they were supposed to be there or not. The whole world, even the outhouse, carried a silver coating of dew, and a careful mist hung low in the trees and bushes, brushed the tops of the fence posts and turned distances ghostly. When I got back inside Lillian had poured warm water in a basin and set out my shaving things.
“Will you come back tonight?” she asked. Her eyes were low, as if my face might be somewhere on the floor.
McGillis kept scraping at the apple corer.
“Of course. I don’t want you to overwork here.”
I reached for her, but she turned back to the bacon. She lifted the cast iron pan and poured the grease into an old mug on the stove. So I left her and wet my face, then quickly lathered the soap. This was McGillis’s shaving spot, and the little mirror hanging on the wall was about half a head too high for me. I tilted it this way and that and managed to somehow see to scrape myself clean. Then I towelled off and dumped the water down the sink. I had to step around my father-in-law, who remained intent on cleaning up the apple corer.
“Why don’t you just throw that out?” Lillian said to him.
“It’s still good. Somebody could use it.”
“Who?”
He didn’t lift his head.
Lillian’s father would not sit with us. I gobbled down the toast, bacon and eggs while Lillian sipped her coffee. It felt as if the food was falling into an empty well, as if I’d never be full or satisfied. Soon enough I had to go. Lillian held on to me for a time just a few paces from the spot where I had kissed her that evening, not quite a year before, when McGillis had given his permission and we were alone for a moment.
When I marched off for the train the air felt cool and fresh in my lungs, the sun washed the fields in a brilliant shine, and the entire morning seemed to propel me away from that sinking farm.
Witherspoon is going to escape. The news is passed to me in a whisper as I dig holes for fence posts in wet sod. The shovel is wet too; my legs are wet; the sod seems to extend into my foot, up my leg, into my blood and bones the wearier I get.
I stay quiet. A guard stands behind us not eight paces away.
Two feet down and water starts to seep into the hole. My shovel blade disappears into the mud. I listen hard, but can’t hear anything more than the pelting of the rain, the grunts and mutterings of famished, exhausted men.
We walk back in our ragtag single file, guards at the front and in the rear as hunched and rain-chilled as the rest of us. I try to make out Witherspoon. Is he ahead of me? Most of us are indistinguishable, like so many soggy brown rats. But Witherspoon is so tall and walks with an unmistakable bobbing gait. He’ll be missed immediately, I think. When’s he going to go?
He must be behind me. I half-turn once, then stop myself — no use drawing attention. Just ahead of me is Collins, walking with his head down as he does now after his time in Strafe. His left eye has started to water and must be infected, but he will not go for Kranke. He’s convinced the doctors would purposely blind him, and probably he’s right. Witherspoon will be in for it as well if he gets caught.
Does he have extra food on him? Did he manage to get a map? A weapon of some kind?
Where is he?
The guards aren’t watching particularly, but there’s nowhere to go — fields stretch empty and desolate in every direction, with hardly a bush or fence post for cover.
So I lower my head, slog along and try not to think about it. But that is impossible. We’re several days from the Dutch border, that much at least we know. Several days for a fit man, rested and fed.
Weeks maybe for the likes of us.
As we pass along a lane I look up just in time to see Witherspoon huddled in the bordering hedge. He winks at me, and I have no time to react. For a moment it’s insanely difficult to not acknowledge him in some way. But then I’m past. My ears prick up, but I hear no whispered remark, nothing out of the usual. Someone coughs several paces back, but we are all hacking and wheezing these days.
We just keep walking. I wait and wait for the call of alarm, for the rifle shot, but we remain a soggy, smelly, moving mass of fannigans with our guards in tow, dulled themselves from work and weather. Maybe half a dozen of us could have slipped into the hedge and we wouldn’t have been seen.
Back through the black and sorry gates of camp. Blasphemy assembles us as usual in front of the compound and begins the count. He is nearly asleep on his feet, and as he is walking past the back row Napier slips in from the middle, then forward again when Blasphemy makes the turn. Collins is talking to Agony about something — the schlechtes Wasser — the bad water, I am guessing. He holds his stomach in a pantomime of being sick. Agony listens for a moment, then unleashes a barrage of verbal abuse which Collins docilely absorbs. When it is done and Blasphemy is now on the front row with his counting, Collins starts up again about the schlechtes Wasser.
His voice is small and respectful and he keeps his runny eyes tilted away, as if Agony might slap him, which is quite possible.
Everyone else is silent, except for Blasphemy with his mumbling count.
Another torrent from Agony. Collins bows his head. Danke, danke! he says and steps back, then salutes the lamppost behind Agony. He turns back to all of us.
“The water is perfectly good!” he announces. “Any illnesses we have must be the result of our poor personal hygiene habits. We will all wash more vigorously and try to keep vermin away!”
Blasphemy finishes his count and makes his report. The rain whips across our faces now. It is just as cold on them as it is on us.
Turn and go, I think. Dismiss us.
But Agony looks too long. He squints out from left to right. We never stand this still for him. We’re never this polite.
“Come on, for Christ’s sake!” I mutter — just loud enough for my voice to carry. “Let us get in and dry off.”
“What are we waiting for?” Napier chimes in. “Noah’s ark?”
The men begin shuffling, slapping their hands against their chests and legs. That’s better, I think. Don’t overdo it.
“Steady up, men!” Collins barks out, just before Agony explodes. We come again to a reluctant attention, then Agony launches into one of his favourite themes, the Fatherland’s march to victory. Collins does his best to keep up.
“It doesn’t matter what we throw at the German soldier,” Collins translates, “one German division is enough to slaughter millions of En
glish mercenaries. Look at what has happened at the Somme! And the French at Verdun — pathetic. The Allied generals might as well open mass graves for their own men and march them in. That is what is happening now at every battle. We are the lucky ones, yes, we received mercy. Nod your heads, lads. Yes, look grateful.”
We are grateful. There is no recount. Agony works up our enthusiasm for the Vaterland for just a few more minutes, then we are on our own at last, trying to contain ourselves.
On the hill a few hundred yards away from the station I heard the whistle and the rush of the train as it approached from the south. I sprinted into the railway yard, past the dusty parking lot and through the old building and got there in good time, just as the train was pulling in. There wasn’t much of a crowd: a few ladies in fine hats obviously heading off to town for a day of shopping, some other businessmen on their way back from their own country weekends, a couple of rough lads in working clothes perhaps going in to try to find a job for a few days. I already had my ticket. I had plenty of time and the sun shone so brilliantly just over the trees that I had to shade my eyes.
I suddenly felt no hurry at all. The ladies and gentlemen and rough lads boarded. I stood staring at the warm, blue hills. The engine puffed and snorted. It was a perfect morning for a train ride.
The conductor called, the train lurched ahead, I stepped aboard. The wind chilled my cheeks.
Last fall, catching this very same early train, I’d felt swimming at sea in a rock suit to be leaving Lillian behind. Why was I now in such a godawful hurry to put distance between myself and my wife?
I kept my eyes fixed on the platform. It was passing more quickly now, becoming a blur, rapidly running out. At the last moment I leapt off and staggered a step or two, then recovered myself. A few seconds later the last passenger car was past, then the caboose. The train disappeared around the bend, its black smoke curling still into the sky above the distant hills.
