White was telling one of his tall tales when a soldier bounded in with his ear blown off. There was any amount of blood but he wouldn’t let George see to him. He kept shaking our hands in turn and saying how happy he was to meet us. His name was Harry St Claire, a name he recited over and over, as though it had value. He said losing his ear was the best thing that had ever happened to him. White thought this meant he was under the delusion that he would now be sent home, and assured him that he’d be back on duty within two days, at which the poor wretch cried out, ‘Capital, capital,’ and did another round of handshaking, the blood flying in all directions as he pumped.
His story was a strange one, and being educated he told it well. Some months before, as yet he was not sure how many, he had been a pupil at a school of high repute in the south of England. As clear as he could remember – there was a blue sky and the college cat was stalking the bushes – he had taken umbrage over a fellow of his own age speaking disrespectfully of his mother, a widow woman recently keeping company with a titled gentleman. Mad to defend his mother’s honour, he had challenged the youth to fisticuffs beneath the chestnut trees at the boundary of the playing fields. It went badly for him. In his head he’d retained an image of the cat, the sunlight shivering across its brindled fur; that and the sparkles of his own sweat darkening the hairs on his arm. Then the blackness descended.
Weeks later, he had found himself enlisted and on a ship bound for Malta. He hadn’t the slightest idea of who he was or where he had come from. When required to give his name he had said he didn’t know it, at which he had been written down as Private Knowlitt. This tickled Charles White, who laughed himself into a fit of coughing.
An hour ago, marching back from picquet duty, a shell had landed in the rear of the column and an iron fragment had sliced off Knowlitt’s ear. At the moment of impact – he had dived through the air like a swimmer – he had remembered his name and his former life. ‘I am Harry St Claire,’ he had called out, and now repeated the information, adding, ‘I am the happiest man alive.’
Suddenly, his face whitened. From outside, like the beating of wings, came the dull clapping of the guns. He stared into the distance, his eyes grown huge. Then he dropped dead. George said it was due to exhaustion, that and blood loss.
Myrtle took it hard. She sat with her knees splayed wide, hands held in front of her, tapping the air with invisible sticks, as though the drummer boy had come back to claim his soul. Potter curled upon his stool, hands covering his ears.
White and I slung Knowlitt between our shoulders and dragged him outside. His dead man’s boots slurped through the mud. A fearful detonation cracked the darkness, followed by a flash of sickly light, exposing for an instant the tin glitter of the river below and the slopes sluiced with rain. The world was drowning.
I didn’t go back to George. Instead, I tumbled into the van and got at the photographer’s reserves of Bulgarian wine.
I woke early, the drink having dragged me awake with a dry mouth. I had a cloudy memory of keeping company with a corporal of the 55th with a boil on his neck. He had been willing to swap a watch for a pigskin valise. The watch had gone and there was no sign of the valise, which brought me out of my stupor with a vengeance. I had a small heap of trophies plucked from corpses, wrapped in a cloth and stuffed behind the developing trays. My conscience doesn’t trouble me. The enemy rifle the bodies after an engagement and I reckon I’m doing our dead a service by keeping their possessions out of foreign hands.
I stepped down into a fog as thick as wool. The customary stand-to had begun, but though I could hear the shouted orders and the whinnying of horses, it was impossible to see anything. If I stretched out my arm and held up my hand, my fingers vanished. I was caught in a white bale of mist, through which I heard the solemn ringing of church bells. I reckoned the sound drifted up from Sebastopol and that I had woken on a saint’s day, either that or it was Sunday. Stumbling forwards, I came across a lumpen form slumped before a ghostly leap of flame. It was Potter, swaddled in his greatcoat at the fire, waiting for the pot to simmer. I tapped his shoulder and said, ‘Just listen to those bells.’
He said, ‘You hear them too? I thought they were in my head. I woke dreaming of my wedding day. Beatrice had a speck of soot on the edge of her veil—’
‘Dear me,’ I said. ‘She wouldn’t take too kindly to that.’
‘Was it the bells that caused the dream,’ he pondered, ‘or had the dream already begun and I merely incorporated the sound?’
I said I would have to leave that question unanswered.
‘I presume you were never married,’ he probed. ‘You not being the marrying sort.’
I told him he presumed rightly, but that I’d lived for two years with a widow woman, until the drink had bloated her out and scuttled my desire.
‘You surprise me,’ he said.
‘I surprise myself,’ I countered, and asked after Myrtle.
‘She cried herself into sleep, and must now be her old self.’
‘Hardly old,’ I corrected.
He agreed I had a point, and fell silent. I thought that was the end of it, but he presently asked, ‘What was it that George did all those years ago … to make her love him?’
‘Did?’ I said. I felt uncomfortable, love not being a word I care to bounce about. I told him he should ask George, not me.
‘He won’t remember,’ Potter said. ‘It’s not as if he’s a man swayed by emotion.’
It hit me that he wasn’t as clever as I’d believed; either that or his old books had finally clamped him tight between their pages. I know about men, and knew George to be softer than most. He could cry like a woman at the mention of his mother.
I said, ‘Possibly he told her where she came from.’
‘Would that be enough?’ He sounded unconvinced. His face kept slipping in and out of the mist.
‘What more would be needed?’ I asked. ‘It’s useful to know one’s beginnings.’
‘There are more urgent things to contemplate,’ he muttered, ‘one’s end for instance,’ and the water having come to the boil, made tea. We drank it to the clump of boots as the fatigue detail set off on the dawn search for wood and water. Close by, a horse pissed, its splatterings diminishing as it trotted on.
‘These are times in which the truth should be told,’ Potter announced portentously. ‘Do you not think so, Pompey Jones?’
‘What truth would that be?’ I asked. His face had vanished again.
‘In this case,’ he said, ‘I’m speaking of pictures.’
I thought he meant photographs, and told him straight that I couldn’t see eye to eye with him. ‘Some pictures,’ I confided, ‘would only cause alarm to ordinary folk.’ I was thinking of the studies of exit wounds taken for the College of Surgeons.
‘I had in mind,’ he said, ‘a view of ships in the Mersey, seen from the hill on which the Washington Hotel now stands.’
He had me utterly confused. Perhaps, after all, George had been in the right of it when he’d held that Potter was leaving his mind.
‘You may remember it hung on the wall in the study,’ he continued. ‘It was moved some weeks before you were barred from the house.’
It was true I’d been banned from visiting Blackberry Lane, though that hadn’t stopped George from seeing me. One night he’d sent a note to my lodgings asking me to meet him on the north side of the Washington Hotel. I’d had every intention of complying, but when I strode down the hill I’d glimpsed yellow flames rolling through the sky above the river. When I reached the Custom House, the blazing sails of ships skimmed like kites across the crimson waters, and it hurt to breathe. Even at this distance in time I recalled the howl of the fire as it hurtled towards the stars. When the tobacco warehouse collapsed and the sparks sprayed out in ostrich feathers, the crowd had burst out cheering. It wasn’t just the conflagration that had prevented me from keeping my appointment with George – it rankled that he’d stipulated the kitchen entrance
rather than the front steps of the hotel. I was finished with being consigned to the shadows. Next morning he was waiting for me by the pump in my street. He’d given me one of his old cameras which I sold later that day for sixteen shillings, as I had a better one of my own.
Potter said, ‘First it was positioned above the desk. You may recollect a blue vase with a fluted neck that stood below it. Then it was found askew on the wall to the right of the door.’
Flummoxed, I uttered not a word.
‘I stayed up two nights … in an effort to solve the mystery. I was not then a man used to going without sleep. In the scale of things it is of small importance, yet I would be grateful for an explanation.’
‘I can’t help you,’ I said, and left him.
Once inside the van I set about smartening the shelves in case the photographer returned. Though I had been careful in my handling of the glass plates and the positives, the numerous bottles were in a jumble and the trays not sufficiently clean. The thief who had sat with me the night before had slopped drink on to the work bench. After storing the chemicals in a more orderly fashion I inspected the cameras, of which there were three, one being for portraits and fitted with a Ross three-inch lens, the others of the bellows construction and made by Bourquien of Paris.
Two of the prints were all my own work and I considered them pretty fair examples of the photographer’s art. The first was a study of a heap of amputated limbs; arrayed against a white background, they had the gravity of a still-life. I was pleased with the tuft of grass spraying up from a clenched fist. The second was of the funeral ceremony held in the region we had recently quitted. Removing this second print from its waxed wrappings I examined it for fading. It was acute, the white vestments of the chaplain and the winding cloths of the dead standing out against the stony landscape. Possibly there was a little blurring in the left-hand corner, but it was scarcely noticeable.
And then, even as I looked, it became so, and gradually assumed the shape of a woman. The more I stared, the clearer it grew, until I couldn’t think why I hadn’t seen it in the first place. It puzzled me, for we weren’t encouraged to have women in the pictures, not unless they were ladies, and we hadn’t any of those, and besides, it was thought that people back home don’t like to see the weaker sex in such grim surroundings. I was certain there had been only three women present, one being Myrtle, and all had been grouped well to the rear of the camera. The shape was bulky, matronly; bonnet-strings hung down quite clearly and one hand appeared raised, either waving or beckoning.
I stood there, trying to make sense of it, when an uproar began outside. I opened the doors and the noise of bellowed commands and the tooting of bugles rushed in with the fog. Someone called my name, and peering, I made out the outline of a boy standing there. When the figure came closer I saw it was Myrtle.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘George needs you,’ she said. ‘There’s been orders to march.’
I tried to persuade her inside the van, to be out of the way of the unseen horses and the invisible soldiery running to stand-to. She wouldn’t, protesting it would remind her too much of old Mr Hardy. I thought it was other things she was loath to remember, like the dreams she’d once had of George forsaking all others, so I stepped down into the swirling day and followed her to the hospital tent.
Potter was there, helping to carry medical boxes to the ambulance wagons, of which there were two, one being nothing more than a bullock cart. The talk was that Prince Mentschikoff had launched a surprise attack on the 2nd division and we were required to give support. The bells earlier that morning had tolled to spur on the Russian battalions swarming out of Sebastopol. The strength of the enemy force was rumoured to be immense. Some said that as many as forty thousand men were on the advance.
George started on me at once, issuing orders and telling me to look sharp. I was annoyed, for I was present in a civilian capacity and had neither wish nor obligation to enter the firing line. I told myself I’d go with him a short way and then double back, and later make the fog my excuse.
As it happened, there was only one driver, a bandsman, who could be spared to take charge of the ambulance wagon, George himself having made up his mind to go on ahead to find a suitable place to set up a field hospital. Imperiously, he directed me to the bullock cart – Potter being useless in such matters – and, instrument bag propped before him in the saddle, rode off before I had time to protest.
It took time to get on our way, what with the confusion and the lack of visibility. When finally we were ready Myrtle clambered up beside me. Potter couldn’t find his horse; instead, he hung a lantern on the back of the cart and said he would walk behind. Now we could hear the rumble of the heavy guns, theirs and ours, and closer, the staccato snap of musket fire coming from the slopes above the ravine.
Our progress was slow and lurching. The planks of wood laid down by the picquets had mostly been torn up to be used for firewood, and those that remained had long since sunk into the mud. In places the oak bushes grew thickly, impeding the wooden wheels of the cart. At intervals the mist cleared and the grey columns of marching men could be seen slipping and sliding through the grey daylight.
Myrtle was trembling. I told her not to be afraid, and she retorted angrily that it was cold not fear that made her teeth rattle. Occasionally she shouted out to see if Potter was keeping up, and for perhaps an hour we heard his called response. Then he didn’t answer any more, and I reckoned he’d turned back or else lost his way.
Frequently, Myrtle urged me to go faster, and even leaned dangerously forwards, pummelling her feather fists against the rump of the stumbling horse in a vain attempt to make it speedier. She wanted to find George. I wasn’t against it, for now I reckoned the hell that awaited was in some degree preferable to the one left behind; at least I wouldn’t be alone.
I tried to make an adventure of it, pretending I was a child again, sneaking through Ince Woods hoping to snare rabbits, but the trees were too small and the frantic crack of the guns blew away the black crows of my boyhood.
Once, when the fog shifted to reveal a fountain of flame spurting upon the horizon, I conjured up the sunset spreading across the sky beyond the humpbacked bridge, and in the puffs of gory smoke belching along the rise imagined I glimpsed the eucalyptus leaves quivering above the stream.
Dreaming thus, suddenly there came a crackling and tearing of undergrowth somewhere to our right, and there burst into view a triangle of men in greatcoats and bearskins, rifles held at the hip, bayonets fixed. Then broke out a clamour of such ferocity that my eyes started in my head. I thought it was all up with me, for above the frenzied grunting and shouting and caterwauling came the whine of shot. The cart trundled on, the horse straining and panting to be out of the din.
It was over in less than a minute and we were through it, unharmed, and it grew quiet again, as though a door had slammed shut. It might have been a dream, but for the bodies lying all around. When I turned to look back I saw one of our Fusiliers sitting upright in the mud, eyes wide open and the top of his head sliced off like he was a breakfast egg. Behind him stood a Russian holding a pistol at arm’s length; it was aimed at my heart. Even as his finger tightened on the trigger the cart lurched sideways and toppled over, flinging me into the bushes. Miraculously, Myrtle fell alongside.
After what seemed like hours I lifted my head and peered through the fretwork of branches. The seated soldier had fallen on to his back and the Russian had gone. Then the firing and the shouting began again, but this time at a distance. My lids were clamped shut but still the detonations flashed behind my eyes.
I stretched out and pulled Myrtle close. Quiet as a mouse she curled against me. Her cap had come off and her hair, stiff with dirt, spiked my cheek. I didn’t succeed in penetrating her. She let me stroke her cleft but bridled when I attempted greater intimacies. I didn’t persist, it not being a matter of importance. All I’d ever wanted, as regards Myrtle, was the recognition that she
and I were of a kind, seeing that fate had tumbled the two of us into Master Georgie’s path.
After a while I stood and tugged her upright. Magpies swooped about our heads. The mist had all but cleared and drizzle spattered the ground. The horse lay on its side, haunches pinned down by the cart. It was still alive though I suspected both its hind legs were broken. I loosened the fingers of the dead fusilier and took up his rifle. When I placed the muzzle against the animal’s forehead Myrtle turned away. The gun didn’t go off; possibly the powder was wet. Searching through the other corpses I chanced on a revolver and dispatched the horse without further delay. I decided to keep the rifle too, for its bayonet was in place and I reckoned that in close combat steel was superior to lead.
A dozen or more Russians were spilled round the cart. I opened the coat of one to see if there was anything of value inside, but Myrtle was watching me, so I tugged it off altogether and struggled into its folds. There was a leathery smell and the homely odour of sweat. For good measure I jerked free the metal canister that hung at his belt and downed his vodka ration in one swallow. For the first time that day the blood ran warm in my veins. I would have worn his bearskin too if I hadn’t feared I might be mistaken for the enemy.
What to do next – that was the puzzle. For all I knew the Russians were in the rear as well as ahead. From the ridge a mile distant came the roar of cannons and the pitter-pat of musket fire. There was nothing to see from the top of the rise save for the sky burning red in patches. The fog still rolled across the valley, covering the road and the stone barrier. Beyond the unseen river, steep walls of rock jutted out of the mist and soared sheer to the ruins of Inkerman.
Myrtle settled it. She said, ‘I’m going on. I have to find Georgie.’
I said, ‘I doubt you’ll ever find him.’
She shook her head stubbornly. ‘I will … I must.’
The Novels of Beryl Bainbridge Volume 1 Page 45