by M. J. Cates
DM: Yes, of course.
GG: Who is this Arch-Duck Ferdinand?
Quentin tore the last page from the typewriter and headed outside.
The morning was uncharacteristically sunny for northern France. Men were kicking a soccer ball about. He stopped by the lieutenant’s dugout and dropped off the typescript—the censors had to approve it before he could print it. The only question was whether there would be time to distribute it before the order came to attack.
For weeks now they had been arrayed nine miles behind the front lines for purposes of rehearsal. The objective was the French town of Lens, which the British (and thus the Canadians) needed for coal and the Germans needed for railways. The Germans had been holding it almost since they first set boot in France. Even from this distance, he could see the Canadian observation balloons tugging lazily at the ends of their wires, snouts toward the enemy.
The wrinkle in the plan was that in order to take Lens they had to first take Hill 70, which overlooked it. It was a ready-made redoubt, the area having been deeply mined for chalk. The Germans had added a warren of dugouts and trenches and barbed wire coiled yards deep and as high as a man. Concrete pillboxes protected a dozen or more machine gun units. Any attacking force risked drowning in its own blood; many would die, many would wish they had.
A group of volunteer scouts, working between the lines under cover of darkness, had confirmed the defensive details. One moonless night they had even managed to capture a fifty-man German patrol, an act of insane bravery for which they were berated by their captain before being decorated with Military Crosses.
The Canadian breakthrough at Vimy had been hailed as a miracle, but it had actually been the result of repeated, detailed, almost brutal rehearsal. Quentin and his platoon had been completely skeptical, resenting it bitterly at the time, but now found themselves glad to do it again at Lens. Of course it wasn’t just the rehearsal. At Vimy they had learned the value of a relentless barrage. Quentin had actually felt sorry for the Germans as the heavier stuff pounded them for days and days. Surely nothing could live through that. When it came time to go over the top, his unit knew exactly where they were going and what to do when they got there.
This time the engineers had constructed a vast two-dimensional version of Hill 70, and marked out the three objectives: Blue Line was the Germans’ firing trench, Red Line was their support trench, and Green Line their reserve trench at the top of the hill. They had been practising positions and advances for an entire month.
They’d drilled and attacked each other, covered head to toe in protective gear, including gas mask and respirator boxes in the murderous August heat. The visors of their masks steamed up in minutes, blinding them. Several men fainted and one died of heat prostration.
All this time they could hear the thud of Canadian and Royal artillery from the front lines, softening up the target. “Giving the bastards a taste of their own medicine,” Lieutenant Pegram had said. “Nice thing about chlorine is, it’s heavier than air. Sinks into those trenches and follows ’em right into those mines.”
Quentin had always thought of Canadians, to the extent he’d thought of them at all, as rural, reasonable, polite. “It doesn’t bother you, sir?” he said to Pegram.
“What, gas? I don’t lose any sleep over it. The Hun is not your normal enemy. Different thing.”
Different thing. Quentin had written the phrase in his notebook, and felt the first threads of a poem weaving around it. This war was definitely a “different thing.”
At Vimy, the Germans had held a five-mile ridge that gave them a perfect vista over their enemy for years. By the time the Canadians had arrived, no man’s land was a cratered, reeking graveyard littered with corpses, bones, teeth and even heads. Every so often a shell would hit and blast the buried once more into the murderous light. Quentin felt himself turning to stone, and knew it was either that or go mad.
If his joining up in Canada had been the first step in planned suicide, it soon became something else. He had had no understanding of how solitary his former life had been until the Canadian Expeditionary Force had ended that solitude. To be suddenly surrounded by crowds of other young men, mostly rough and untutored, had been a shock, and for the first couple of weeks of training he felt sick with regret.
It took several more weeks for him to admit that he was often enjoying himself. Of course, this happiness did not in any way resemble what he had imagined happiness to be. It involved no woman, it involved no literary success; it was a banishment of self. The absence of all reflection is absolute opium, he’d written in his notebook. I inhale it and disappear and find myself, for the first time in my life, at peace.
Even so, during basic training in Toronto he had pined for Imogen, and he was still yearning for her when he was shipped out of Montreal on the RMS Metagama. Through the weeks of drill and bayonet practice and exercises in trench-building he had managed to hold on to his suicidal ardour, his ambition to walk straight into the path of a German bullet. But then he found himself on the foredeck of the Metagama astounded, as so many poets before him, by the immensity of the sea—its power, its million shades of blue and black and green, its lace and froth of foam. He adored its noises, from sibilant whisper to thunderous crash, and wished for Imogen to turn to, his wonder demanding to be shared.
The Metagama was not huge, carrying only two hundred troops. They were not more than a few miles beyond Newfoundland when Reggie Bick, a Leamington farm boy who had attached himself to Quentin, had come running up the foredeck where Quentin was attempting to stave off seasickness by inhaling the wild wet breezes.
“You won’t believe it,” Bick said, taking hold of Quentin by both biceps and shaking him. “There’s girls on board.”
“There are girls on board.”
“There are girls on board. There really are, boss. Supposed to be two dozen of ’em, and every one of ’em’s a nurse. Ain’t that a beautiful thing?”
“Isn’t that a beautiful thing.”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“Indeed it is a beautiful thing,” Quentin agreed, “if true.”
“How can you speak proper English at a time like this?”
“You asked me to correct you.”
“I know, but still. You should be more excited.”
Quentin had intended to avoid friendship. To make a friend implied that you had a future. At night, turning in his narrow cot, the close air reeking with the smell of the vomit pails, he would curse himself for not being true to his aims. Perhaps he was too gregarious to be a good writer, or perhaps he was just vanquished by loneliness and hurt, but he found himself constantly drawn into conversations with the other men and even, sometimes, enjoying their rude company. The camaraderie of shared misfortune—bad food, overcrowding, stupid officers—was irresistible.
Private Bick had overheard Quentin describing to someone the clarity and calm of Lake Placid, and had edged closer as Quentin talked. Another time Bick was part of a card game after which a curious soldier had asked Quentin to name his favourite book. Quentin had ended up relating almost the entire plot of Madame Bovary, and Bick listened with a rapt expression.
The next day Quentin had been gripping the rail, having just ejected his breakfast into the St. Lawrence, when he had felt a tap on his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Bick said. “I guess you’re not feeling too well.”
“You’re a master of understatement, Bick.”
“I just gotta ask you—quick, while there’s no one else around. Promise you won’t laugh at me?”
“At this moment, neither Fatty Arbuckle nor Charlie Chaplin could get a laugh out of me.”
“Promise, though?”
“Solemn vow. Pain of death.”
“I can’t help but notice that you talk so good. I’m just wondering if I could learn to speak like that. You know—not fancy or nothing—just really getting the most out of it. I love listening to you, man! Would you do me a favour, just while
we’re crossing, of maybe correcting me when I speak wrong?”
Quentin had protested—it would be boring for both of them and would end up irritating Bick—but Bick would not be dissuaded. His eyes gleamed with terrible sincerity, and in the end Quentin said yes, fully expecting he wouldn’t bump into Bick more than once or twice over the entire voyage—an expectation that proved unfounded as the little man sought him out time and again, wanting to chatter about anything at all so long as Quentin would correct him.
“If you was gonna recommend one author—just one author above all others—who taught you how to speak good English, who would you—”
“Charles Dickens.”
“Dickens. Really? But I read that book—Tiny Tim and all that?—and I still talk pretty bad.”
“Read some of the others. David Copperfield, Great Expectations. And it’s speak badly, not talk bad.”
“Speak badly. Why?”
“Because speak is a verb, and when you want to describe a verb you need an adverb, not an adjective. Stick an -ly on the end and you’re all set.”
“Magic. Thanks, Goodchild. See? You already got me speaking goodly. That’s a joke. The goodly, I mean.”
Bick was right about the nurses. There was a contingent of twenty-four on board the Metagama, and a dance was organized for Wednesday night. A list of rules for proper behaviour had been drawn up and much discussed; many wondered if the nursing sisters, too, had been similarly drilled. Quentin had felt somewhat uneasy before the dance, fearing that a few men might disgrace themselves in ways that would bring shame on them all. But perhaps it was the restricted amount of alcohol, perhaps it was being away from home for the first time, or simply that most of the men were so young—whatever the reason, they beheld these young women, most of them by no means beautiful, with something approaching awe.
Quentin was not exempt. Although he admired Imogen for being intrepid in her pursuit of a career in a distinctly male world, he had not previously associated women with the word bravery. All of these nurses were volunteers and, although they would not be placed right on the front lines, they would of necessity be located in extremely dangerous proximity. Already many nurses had been killed or wounded. Sisters: the British-Canadian term implied virginity and vocation, devotion, spirituality, humble if foolish self-sacrifice. The moment they entered the ship’s recreation hall, in their blue-and-white uniforms and their chaste little caps, coming in two by two and smiling at everyone, the men let out a roar of approval, followed by more sedate applause.
There were not enough women to go round, but the nurses were well prepared for dealing with situations in which they were surrounded and outnumbered by men. No nurse would dance with any man twice in a row, nor would any nurse refuse to dance with any soldier.
Quentin was not an accomplished dancer but as this would be his last chance to enjoy this activity on Earth he decided to do so. He did the foxtrot with a woman from Kingston named Watson and, although he did not find her particularly attractive—features too coarse, too much brass in the voice—he could not help but admire her. The damp warmth of her hand on his shoulder aroused him and the instant the music stopped he found himself asking for another dance.
“Sorry, soldier. Orders are to keep moving.”
“Right. I forgot. Well, thank you, Sister.”
“Thank you, Private.”
There was such a crush of men that he was unable to ask another woman to dance until four songs later. This was Nurse Morley, from Bracebridge originally, latterly a nurse at Toronto General. She was petite, making Quentin feel a lurching hulk by comparison, with an impish, witty look to her. She smelled wonderful.
It was pointless to get to know her, and yet he found himself firing questions at her over the music. He learned that her family was originally from Donegal (no surprise there; her shining black hair and wafer-pale skin were perfectly Irish) but she was born in Ontario. She came from a family of five brothers and two sisters, of which she was the youngest. She became a nurse because it was something an Irish Catholic girl might do other than teach or join a convent. Luckily, she told him, it turned out she loved nursing.
“It’s a good feeling, helping people—maybe a selfish feeling, in the end.”
“Selfish?”
She shrugged, the blue fabric of her uniform shifting at the shoulders. “I probably wouldn’t do it if it didn’t make me feel good, so I guess it must be counted as selfish. Are you a Yank?”
Quentin nodded. “From Rochester. And sometimes Lake Placid—upstate New York.”
“You’re not selfish then—to join up when you don’t have to. Why did you?”
For some reason, this girl with her open Irish features compelled honesty. “It seemed a good way to get myself killed.”
She searched his face. “Don’t be silly. Death’s for other people, haven’t you heard?”
“I heard it was for everyone eventually.”
“Exactly. No need to rush it, then. Do you have people you’ll write to? Who’ll write to you?”
“My father. I actually enjoy his letters—which is a bit surprising, considering he’s usually annoyed with me. And my friend Jack, who sends me poems to criticize. I thought I was going to be a writer, but poetry’s beyond me these days. I mostly send him lists of complaints.”
“I imagine it’s a bit hard, writing poems in the army.”
“It is for me, anyway. But perhaps I’m not really a writer.”
“Well, you’ll just have to get through this war and find out, won’t you.”
The music stopped and several men were crossing the floor in their direction.
“I’d like to see you again,” Quentin said. “On board, I mean. Just to talk. Would that be all right?”
“It would be fine with me,” she said, “but I don’t know how we could arrange it. They keep us pretty sequestered.”
Quentin spoke in a rush: “I’ll be on the foredeck every night at 9 p.m. sharp. Come, if you can. If you can’t make it, well, have a safe journey—and a good life.”
“You too, Private Goodchild,” she said.
“Will you tell me your first name?”
“We’re not supposed to.”
“Mine’s Quentin.”
“Margaret,” she said, and turned with a smile to a beefy lug named Higgins who spoke with a stutter and always lost at cards.
Quentin wandered out on the foredeck alone. The breeze was cold, the stars bright. He looked down at the furrowed sea, the white foam maps that formed and dissolved on its surface and formed again, and wondered why he had responded so easily to this young nurse. Was he prone to falling in love with any female who smiled at him? What would that say about his feelings for Imogen?
He returned to this spot at exactly nine o’clock the following night, when the moon was high. An iceberg gleamed a brilliant slippery white on the black of the sea and he wished that Margaret would come before it slid out of view but she did not. He returned each night thereafter and waited patiently and contemplatively, but still she did not come. Whether this was her choice or the result of a tyrannical matron he had no way of knowing. No other nurses appeared on deck either, in moonlight or daylight. They were kept as separate and apart as if they were sequestered in a convent somewhere amidships.
* * *
—
When the Metagama entered the harbour of Devonport, England, it was met by a pair of tugs that nudged it like twin sheepdogs toward shore. The soldiers and nurses disembarked separately and were herded toward their separate fates. Quentin endured a further round of training at West Sandling and by the time it was over he found that he could think of Imogen without pain. She was not “waiting” for him, as were the wives and fiancées of so many of his barracks mates. He had no one to go back to, but neither did he have anyone whose loyalty he had to fret over. Some of the lads struggled with the most corrosive jealousy. “None of that for me,” he told himself.
And now on this sunny day in northern
France a few miles south of Lens he stopped by the quartermaster’s pens and untethered Gerhard the goat. A friend in supplies had fashioned him a leash from a destroyed bridle. He attached it to Gerhard’s collar and led him out of the pen. There followed a twenty-minute walk during which it was impossible to go more than a dozen yards without a soldier stopping to pet the goat, or tug its ear. How ya doing there, boy? Howzit going, eh? Quentin would never have believed the power of a mascot had he not seen it first-hand. The men seemed genuinely heartened to see this scrawny, rickety creature still out and about. Gerhard’s legend was well known among the troops but some of them liked to hear it again. Is it true they found him in a blown-out dugout? Yes, it was true. Is it true he jumped a Fritzie and stopped him shooting one of our guys? Could be, Quentin would say, but I didn’t see that myself. I bet it’s true, they’d say, wanting to hear only remarkable things about their pet.
On the way back from walking the goat Quentin bumped into Lieutenant Pegram.
“Can we go to press, sir?”
“We can. But best get it out on the double, Goodchild—big doings afoot.”
“Yes, sir.”
After he had printed up the paper and put it in the hands of the runners, Quentin rounded up Pratt and Stokely from his platoon and the three of them set out in search of a real meal. Pratt fancied himself a worldly sort, though until this war he’d never been out of Wawa, Ontario. He had suffered a chest wound at Ypres—Quentin had seen the hideous snaking scars—which had netted him a couple of months’ recuperation in England before he got shipped back to France. Despite his injuries, Pratt walked with the stolid, unhurried gait of a Buddha, and insisted they take a small road into a village that wasn’t even on their map.
They soon realized they were skirting the edge of an older battlefield. Stokely immediately had to step off the road and hunt for souvenirs.