Edmund picked up his cards and spread them out. It was the best hand he’d had and he wondered if he might be lucky this time. He had nothing to lose and the sooner he could get the game over the sooner he could excuse himself and get some useful work done before supper. He shrugged, laid down an eight of clubs and picked up a queen.
The play continued. Carey passed round a pack of Wills and Edmund noticed how he glanced quickly at Mallory’s and Parks’s cards as they leant forward to light their cigarettes at the candle. He saw Hunton notice too and give a brief, sneering smile. Edmund began to play seriously for the first time that evening. As if sensing Edmund’s renewed interest in the game, Hunton lengthened out his turns, giving every decision close consideration, his expression inscrutable.
George, noticing the intensity of their play, was drawn to watch despite his caution. He stood stirring the stew automatically. Parks kept grumbling about his awful hand, Mallory was barely playing but Carey, Edmund and Hunton were leaning forward into the pool of candlelight, avid for the next card.
Edmund decided to call. He had picked up a queen at his last turn to add to the two he already held and he felt that this was the best he was going to get. ‘I’ll see you,’ he said.
Parks showed his hand with a grunt of disgust. Mallory and Carey turned theirs up, Mallory with his boyish, high-pitched laugh, Carey craning forward to see what Hunton and Edmund had. Hunton, with a self-satisfied smile, turned his over with deliberation, one by one. Four kings.
Edmund had been beaten. He laid out his queens saying, ‘Aah, so close.’
Edmund dug in his trouser pocket and pulled out a handful of centimes. He scooped them on to the table; a couple landed on edge and rolled across to the other side. Suddenly it struck him as funny that they had been playing so intently over so little and that Hunton should end up with all his useless loose change: he struggled to control a grin as he said, ‘Sorry, sir; that’s it, I’m afraid.’
Hunton, without missing a beat, said, ‘What about your jacket pocket?’
‘My … Not much in there, sir,’ Edmund said, remembering only a stub of pencil, postage stamps and some string. He started to unbutton the pocket flap and then paused. He felt the crackle of paper and a chill travelled down his back. Hunton’s eyes were on him like a cat at a hedgerow. Edmund put his thumb and forefinger into the pocket, digging down to get the pencil and odds and ends without disturbing the letter: Violet’s letter that had arrived today and that he had been saving to read as soon as he could get a chance to be alone.
‘That’s everything in your pocket, Lyne,’ Hunton said coldly. ‘It’s been won fair and square. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to break your word.’
Edmund drew out the letter and put it down beside the oddments. He could feel that he still had a stupid smile on his face, the drink slowing him down so that his expression hadn’t caught up with what was happening. George, seeing the blue envelope and familiar writing, involuntarily took a step forward and then stopped. Hunton’s hand stretched out and took the letter.
‘Come on, sir; that’s private,’ Edmund said, still clinging to a light-hearted tone as if by treating it all as a joke he could make it so, even though his angry blood was rising to his face, giving him away.
‘Oh, I say,’ Mallory said. ‘That’s not right. A chap’s letters … you know. That’s from Lyne’s sweetheart!’
Parks nudged him to be quiet.
‘What?’ Mallory remonstrated. ‘It’s not right! Play the game! He’s besotted … keeps a picture by the bed and all …’
Hunton glanced over at the embrasure by the bed. ‘Ah yes, I noticed Lyne had a bit of skirt.’
Edmund rose, his hands clenched into fists.
Hunton looked at him with an amused expression. ‘What then, Lyne? Is there something you want to say?’ He smiled. ‘Or do? I think we’ve discussed court-martial offences on a previous occasion.’ Without looking at George, he continued, ‘The trouble with you, Lyne, is that you have no discipline: neither self-control nor control over your men. Perhaps this will help you learn some.’
Edmund, trembling with anger, pushed his chair aside and strode out of the room.
Hunton raised his eyebrows and looked at the others. He folded the letter in two and buttoned it into his own pocket. ‘Get Mallory to bed,’ he said.
Parks heaved Mallory up out of his chair. He was still shaking his head and muttering about ‘a man’s personal affairs’.
‘Come on, old boy. A bit of shut-eye for you.’ Parks put Mallory’s arm over his shoulders and led him over to the scullery where they had their beds. He pulled the curtain across the doorway and didn’t re-emerge.
Carey said quietly, ‘Are you going to return it, sir?’
‘Oh for God’s sake, Carey, I’ve a perfect right to read any letter I like, to censor them, to destroy them if I see fit.’
‘But still, sir …’
‘He had a lesson coming.’
Carey fell silent.
Hunton said, ‘You can serve the food now, Farrell.’
George complied, avoiding eye contact. As he waited for the men to finish eating, he covertly watched Hunton: his thick moustache laden with greasy gravy, his cold, watery eyes, his concentration on his food and the precise way in which he cut his meat. He couldn’t bear the thought of those thick, stubby fingers touching Violet’s letter; it filled him with disgust. He wondered where Edmund had gone. In the moment that he had stepped forward, when Hunton took the letter, he had seen Edmund notice him and put out his hand as if to stop him. Had it been a gesture to keep him out of Hunton’s way? Alongside his outrage and his hatred for Hunton, George felt relief that Edmund seemed to have wholly put aside his suspicions after finding him looking at his things, and accepted him again.
When the officers had finished eating George began to clear away. As Hunton rose to leave he said to him in passing, ‘Don’t think you’re off the hook. Your name will be on my list one of these days.’ Carey followed Hunton out.
By the time he’d cleared up, he found that the stew had dried out and was sticking to the dixie. He added water and was scraping at the sides of the pan when Edmund came back.
‘Ah, Farrell, it’s you.’ He looked relieved to find only George.
‘Would you like some food, sir?’ George asked tentatively. ‘The others have eaten.’
Edmund came over and glanced into the pot. ‘Is that what it is? Well, I’ll have some anyway,’ he said with false jocularity.
George dished out a portion but Edmund sat without eating, his face drawn.
‘Do you think we’ll be going forward soon?’ George ventured.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised if we reserves weren’t brought forward tomorrow night.’ Edmund sought the man-to-man tone he’d used to reassure the boy before. ‘I shall be right there with you men. Don’t worry, we’ll be all in it together.’
George felt a mixture of excitement and apprehension. Terrifying though the thought of an attack was, he was sick of the waiting game and hoped that he might at last fire his rifle instead of cleaning it. He thought that he would write home tomorrow and say that they should watch the papers for a mention of his regiment involved in action. At the thought of the family, he remembered his conversation with Edmund about making sure his mother would get his pay, come what may. Chalky had told him that when they knew in advance that there was going to be fighting, a corporal came round with a sandbag to collect everyone’s valuables. A sandbag. It didn’t seem very secure to him. ‘Would you look after my pay book, sir?’ he blurted out. ‘I should feel better about it if I know you have it, rather than it being all muddled with everyone’s stuff in a sandbag that could easily go missing.’
Edmund looked surprised. ‘Of course, Farrell,’ he said. ‘If it would ease your mind.’ He wondered what the family’s circumstances were that gave Farrell such a bee in his bonnet about making sure that the money would reach them. He had talked to infantrymen who said the dire arm
y food was better than they got at home: maybe for Farrell as for so many others civilian life was a struggle of a different kind. Well, God knows he had learnt tonight what it meant to lose something that was important to you. He took the pay book, poured himself a whisky and said, ‘I won’t be needing you any further tonight. Go and find yourself a drink.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ George turned to leave and caught sight of Violet’s picture, reinstated in its usual place. He felt a stab of misery at the thought of her letter in Hunton’s pocket. He walked quickly from the room. He wanted to get out into the cold, clean air.
Edmund nursed his whisky for a while, staring into space. He still half wished that he had hit Hunton. He hated the way Hunton had looked at him, knowing he had him over a barrel. He hoped that in the sober light of day, Hunton might give the letter back. He desperately wanted to read it and be reassured that Violet was all right. Suppose she was ill or finding the loneliness and worry too much of a strain? Now he would have to wait and fret until another letter came, and who knew when the post would catch up with them? He had waited weeks before now and then a bundle had arrived all at once. It would be a bloody torment. Hunton was a vindictive bastard! The fact that the others had shown their disapproval of the shoddy trick would go against him too; Hunton would assert his authority at all costs and would now be even more incensed to feel he had been shown up. There was nothing he could do but wait.
He flicked through Farrell’s dog-eared pay book. He saw that George had filled in the page marked ‘Will’ as he had suggested. He read:
In the event of my death, I leave my fishing rod to my brother, Ted Farrell, my prayer book that was a school prize to my father, Frederick Farrell, and all other belongings and money due to me I give to my mother, Maggie Farrell, all of Leonard Street, Keswick, except for my book of illustrated songs which I give to Kitty Ashwell of The Post Office, Main Street, Keswick.
Signed: George Farrell, Private 1893, 8th November 1914
Edmund was touched by the personal bequests of these simple belongings. He got up from the table and stowed the pay book away and then lay on his back on the bed. He found himself reading the same page of his novel over and over, his mind divided between listening to the guns and wanting Violet.
12
EARTH
The next night, as predicted, they went down to the fire trench. After labouring most of the night alongside Turland and two regulars, helping to repair a part of the trench that had collapsed, George took his turn on sentry-go around four. He looked out over no man’s land, staring into the flare of Verey lights until his eyes ached and phantom after-images flowered in his head. He methodically scanned the long slope of the field for movement, staring at the monochrome scene until he knew every plane of shadow cast by the few shattered trees, every dip and crater, every hummock: khaki and feldgrau all one in the greyness before dawn.
Exhausted by the digging and revetting, and numbed by the cold, George’s anxiety that he would succumb to sleep grew. He knew the penalty, and that he had used up any credit with Sergeant Tate long ago. He chewed the inside of his cheeks in an effort to stay awake. He counted backwards from a hundred. The rise and fall of the flares was hypnotic – he drifted for a moment and came to with a start, realising that he had been dreaming of the spluttering gas mantle of the parlour lamp at home. His father was lighting it: the gas sucking the match flame and the white ball glowing into life, casting a pool of light on to his mother’s hands setting down plates on the table. He jerked his head upright and hastily scanned the field again. He took his Imperial Service badge and put the pin through his collar without fastening it, so that it rested against his neck: if his chin dropped in sleep, it would jab him and wake him.
Turland and two of the regulars, Smith and Wilmott, were talking quietly about the rumour that the Prussian Guards, who were reputed to be crack shots that fought to the death and took no prisoners, had replaced the Bavarians in the enemy line. Everyone agreed that an attack would come soon: the previous day, Taubes had flown over the rear areas trying to spy out the guns and estimate the range for their artillery. The ensuing bombardment left everyone in no doubt about the enemy’s intentions.
George peered into the gloom, working his way along the entanglements in front of the trench, looking for German scouts sent out to check the state of the wire. A patrol had gone out earlier to mend any gaps and the awareness that he must take time to discriminate between friend and foe made him hesitant and jumpy.
A quick movement, seen from the corner of his eye, out to his left among the bodies, made him hunch and recoil. The Alleyman’s snipers were positioned in saps, dug from their lines out into no man’s land, and he feared that one had crawled forward to lie behind the cover of the bodies of the dead. In the moment that he took aim, a flash of something round and white rose in front of him. Before he could loose off a round, he saw not a human face but the flat heart-shaped face and dark eyes of a barn owl as it swooped towards him and passed silently above his head.
He let out his breath with a sound that was half a laugh and half a sigh of relief, and turned to see the bird glide away to resume its quartering over the ground between the line and the wood. It slid into the mist, undisturbed by the warring factions below: men reduced to the level of creeping, burrowing creatures. Its freedom made it seem eerily powerful. His mother called it ‘the white old woman of the night’ and believed that an owl perching on the roof of a house meant that a death would follow. He had felt the draught of its wings in its low flight. Did it mean something that it had passed him so closely?
He told himself that such a close encounter was hardly surprising; the plague of mice and rats supplied rich pickings to attract such hunters. Men now slept in the barns and outbuildings where the owls used to nest, forcing them into the broken cottages and burnt-out homes that families had deserted. Both men and birds were displaced, adapting to an unnatural world changed by war. He tried to shake off his sense of foreboding but found himself continually listening, hoping that he wouldn’t hear the bird’s hoarse and dismal cry.
He was glad when, shortly before dawn, the corporal came down the line to rouse everyone for stand-to. George stamped his feet, trying to get some blood back into them, and flapped his arms against his body. Men who had been sleeping in the straw-lined ‘caves’ under the parapet crawled out, emerging with faces dirty and frowsy with sleep. They hawked and spat, passed along the bucket to piss in, jammed on their caps. Further along the trench, the corporal was having trouble waking Addison, a small, sickly man who had been an estate agent’s clerk in Civvy Street. He prodded him with his boot until he stirred and then hauled him out, set him on his feet and pushed his rifle into his hands before carrying on around the corner of the traverse.
The men checked over their weapons, working the bolts and fixing bayonets: the clicks and scrapes of metal on metal the only sounds save for the occasional crack of rifles further down the line, like the last crackle of a dying fire. The ensign followed in the corporal’s footsteps with a mess tin of rum and the men took their measure gratefully. George shook his head as the spoon was offered.
‘Go on, lad. It’ll warm you through,’ Smith said to him.
George laid aside his promise to his father, which he had only made in order to reassure him that he wouldn’t get into trouble. Well, he couldn’t get into much more trouble than this. He spluttered and coughed as the strong taste took his breath away. Smith laughed at him and slapped him on the back. His stomach rumbled as the warmth spread through him and he longed for the relative shelter of the wood and the chance to fry up some bacon. Even the most basic comforts of a coke bucket and a rasher or two seemed a refuge.
They took their places at the parapet, spacing themselves equally, and laid their rifles on the lip of the trench. Haycock and Rooke were out of sight, somewhere beyond a series of tight traverses. George was between the two regulars, Smith and Wilmott; Addison and Turland were further down with regulars who
se names he didn’t know spaced in between them. Even from here, George could see that Addison was shaking. He hoped that the tremor that he could feel inside, a kind of breathless shivering in his chest and guts, wouldn’t spread to his hands and knees and show on the outside. Beyond the traverse on the left he could hear Edmund’s voice as he worked his way down, speaking to each man in his section. George tried to get a hold of himself and checked for the umpteenth time that he could easily get to the clips of ammunition in pouches and pockets.
The sky was lightening to a foggy grey dawn, revealing more clearly the stubbled ground at the trench edge and the barbed wire beyond it, beaded with dew. A milky mist lay over the field, thicker on the lower slope where the land dipped away slightly to the line opposite. The enemy guns started up, shelling the woods to stop support coming through. Shrapnel shells passed overhead, with a noise like steam escaping under pressure, to explode and rattle amongst the trees in puffs of black smoke like ink blots against the whiteness. The sound was rolling along the whole length of the line, the air growing thick with lead and steel. At an order, the sentries kept their posts but the others got down, taking cover and burrowing into the funk holes. George squatted on the fire step next to one of the hollows with his arms over his head. He stared at the walls of earth, barely held back by posts: sticky clay soil, compacted by the weight of sandbags, bulging between supports or in places fallen away and collapsed into the wet trench itself to form a viscous sludge. He was frozen with fear.
He felt someone shaking his shoulder and looked up to see Edmund standing over him. His mouth was moving but George couldn’t hear or even guess what he was saying. Edmund moved on to talk to Wilmott. The sentry was shouting something, and around him the men were taking up their rifles and climbing on to the fire step. George followed suit, checking again that the bolt would move and was free of mud.
The Moon Field Page 18