Covenant with Death

by John Harris

  The news took a little of the edge off the excitement of the approaching offensive.

  ‘They might have let the poor old sod see the lads doing their stuff,’ Eph said. ‘Going in and wiping up the Kaiser.’

  Fortunately for our peace of mind, the leave men came back just then, and Kitchener was forgotten as the excitement started all over again. ‘Leaf’ for the second batch was announced and we rushed for the yellow passes and documents.

  ‘Keep off the girls, Murray!’ Spring said. ‘You know what you’re like, sweetheart, when you get near them.’

  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ Murray said as he threw his equipment together. ‘What was it like at home?’

  ‘All right.’ Spring seemed a little bewildered and suffering from a hangover. ‘A bit different. Things have changed. Or I have. I dunno which it is. I got a bit fed up at times. All they seemed to talk about was making money. They say shipping clerks and clothing-shop assistants are getting together to form companies, there’s so much to be picked up from army contracts.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘It seems more like home out here these days,’ he concluded.

  ‘My kid didn’t know me.’ Someone at the other end of the barn was making his complaint in a high indignant voice. ‘He’d just got used to me when I had to come away again. I was a bit hipped, I can tell you.’

  Locky seemed quieter than before, not quite the old Locky, not quite so imperturbable, and rather grave and thoughtful.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he asked. ‘Any news?’

  ‘Kitchener’s dead,’ I said. ‘We just heard it from the Warwicks.’

  ‘I heard it on the way back. What else?’

  ‘Catchpole said the Irish did it and collected a split lip from Tommy Mandy for his trouble. They’re pals again now.’

  Locky laughed. ‘I mean, has anything been happening here? This damned unit grows on a chap. He finds himself getting anxious for it. Leave’s a bad thing. You end up not quite knowing where your loyalties belong. Come on. What’s been going on?’

  ‘Only the Push. It gets pushier every day.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Tim’s in hospital, with a poisoned hand. He was pleased to get away from the racket for a bit, I think. It gets worse daily and he couldn’t read for it. He’ll be back in time for the big shemozzle, I expect. And Barraclough. He’s gone.’

  ‘Killed?’

  ‘No. He’ll be all right. A shell splinter across the knee. We cobbled him up and sent him to a dressing station. Fritz’s waking up to the fact that something’s on and building roads isn’t quite the sport it used to be. Cloughy was a bit late getting under cover and he got one in the leg. How did it go with you?’

  He grinned and his eyes lit up. ‘I was privileged to be at home for the birth of my son,’ he said. ‘A fortnight after the air raid.’

  ‘What are you calling him?’

  ‘Lockwood. There’s been a Lockwood Haddo around the city for generations. My father’s name’s Lockwood too.’

  ‘Does he have your face or is he fortunate enough to look like Molly.’

  He grinned and I paused before I went on, wondering if I could make it.

  ‘How’s Helen?’ I said.

  ‘Blooming.’

  ‘Did you get to the wedding?’

  ‘What wedding?’

  ‘Frank’s, of course.’

  Locky looked up and gave me a slow smile. ‘Frank didn’t get married,’ he said.

  ‘Oh!’ My heart leapt with sudden, unbelievable, wondering hope. ‘Why not?’

  He shrugged. ‘Various reasons. I expect you’ll hear them in due course. He’s not saying much at the moment.’

  ‘What about Helen?’

  ‘She’s landed some job in London.’ He looked up from where he was sitting on his blanket and handed me a slip of paper, smiling, his eyes quiet and happy. ‘She’s been working down there on and off for some time. That’ll be her address. She’s sharing a flat or something. I think she might be pleased to see you.’

  ‘Will she be there when I go on leave?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. But you can always ask at home.’

  Mason was morose and silent and not very communicative. He seemed to have put on his load again, and was already stooping under it.

  ‘She said she didn’t want to get married yet,’ he told me, even before I asked him. ‘She said wartime wasn’t the best time for weddings.’

  He looked a little beaten and downcast, not quite the old Mason I knew.

  ‘Is that all she said?’ I asked.

  ‘Oh, she talked all round the subject. You know how women go on. I spent most of my leave trying to jolly her into it, but I couldn’t.’ He looked up. ‘Will you be seeing her?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. It was a long time since I’d thought of Helen and I couldn’t get used to the idea that she was still free. ‘Locky says she’s going to London.’

  ‘That’s right. She’s got a job down there. Some sort of war work. She said she felt she ought to go. Fen…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I suppose, if you see her, you couldn’t try and talk her round, could you? They’re bound to give leave again when this bloody offensive’s over. Maybe I’ll have better luck next time.’

  ‘You’ve a hope,’ I said. ‘She never listened to me, even when I was trying to push my own case. Besides, has it occurred to you she might have met somebody else?’

  He nodded heavily. ‘Well, she might have,’ he agreed. ‘I don’t know. I asked her, but she wouldn’t say. Probably it’s one of these blasted war-workers who’re scrimshanking back there while we’re stuck out here. They’re all the same.’

  ‘I suppose they are,’ I said. ‘But I didn’t think Helen was.’

  In spite of the approach of midsummer it was a cold morning when the second batch left Rippy, and frail metallic stars glittered overhead as Murray and Catchpole and I made our way to the railhead. Eph Lott and Henny Cuthbert and Tom Creak had all given us letters to post in England.

  ‘If you get a chance, Fen,’ Eph had said, ‘nip down to the Old Light Horseman on Cotterside Common. Mabel’s there. You’ll find her any time. Tell her I’ll be home in a couple of weeks with the next lot.’

  The village street was dark, silent and deserted, but the station, a very small one with a long train waiting in it, was full of dim figures moving about the platform. Peaked caps and rifle barrels were caught in silhouette against the sky, and the murmur of many voices came from the dusk. Now and again a match flared up from one of the compartments and you could see a little group of faces. Over the whole train there was an air of expectancy that transmitted itself to us, so that the excitement that had been growing on us increased and set the pulses galloping at the thought of home.

  The compartment we managed to squeeze into had hard seats and windows that wouldn’t open and the train seemed to be the slowest thing that had ever been on wheels. Murray fretted all the way to the coast.

  Dawn revealed the Picardy countryside, with its patches of red clover and wind-stirred corn, moving slowly past us, and it was after seven when we crawled into Amiens. We were already stiff from sitting wedged together, unable to stretch or move much, and flushed with the stuffy atmosphere and cigarette smoke.

  It seemed to take hours to puff through the valleys of Normandy and it was late afternoon before we began to approach the coast. When the train pulled up at a wayside halt the word had already gone around that there’d be food, and we were hanging from the footboards long before it stopped. There was a surge of khaki towards the solitary café by the crossing; and Murray, the company’s champion runner, arrived way ahead of everyone else and snatched coffee and rolls for us, while the ones behind had to gnaw at ration biscuits and fill their bottles at the water pump.

  It was dark before we reached the sea. Conversation had long since ceased and only the glow of cigarettes in the stuffy compartment showed that it was occupied. Then the train started to speed up
as we went downhill, and Murray opened the window and we all sat up as we caught an immediate whiff of keen salty air.

  ‘It must be Le Havre or somewhere,’ Murray said excitedly. ‘Thank God for that.’

  We began to pass through streets and I could see brick walls and open warehouses in the lamplight. We joggled slowly past trucks loaded with GS waggons, gun limbers and eighteen-pounder guns.

  ‘Going up for the Push,’ Murray breathed.

  Ragged urchins were running beside the train now, begging in their shrill voices for ‘Bullee’ and ‘Biscuit’, and women looked up disinterestedly as they were called at from the windows. It was good to see them, after that childless, womanless land beyond Albert.

  As the train stopped, men poured from it, stretching, noisy, eager to be in England. A tall red-capped MP shouted to us to follow him and turned on his heel as we streamed after him through a gate and down a cobbled street. A strong salt wind came buffeting round the angle of a shed, where I could hear a loose corrugated-iron sheet rattling just above my head, then I saw two tall black funnels and rakish masts, and the leave boat loomed up ahead.

  ‘Home!’ Murray said ecstatically. ‘I can smell the sulphur fumes along Cotterside already. They come like attar of roses.’

  They kept us waiting there for some time in a noisy impatient crowd, gaunt, tired men with faces shadowed heavily by the dazzle of arc-lights. Beyond the ship I could see searchlights and the glitter of red and green on dark water.

  They let us board at last and we jostled our way to what we thought was a sheltered spot, but when the ship left the harbour we found we were on the windward side and we had to shiver all night through the crash of the seas and the creak of the rigging.

  With daylight, I saw great white-capped waves foaming up at me and a thin squally rain beating into my face. There was no sign of land, only sea and huddled khaki-clad figures aching to be ashore and home.

  Inevitably, the first sight of England was of a shining rain-wet quay with the arc-lamps still burning dully in the grey daylight.

  Then Murray saw a girl standing with a tray of biscuits and chocolate in the shelter of a doorway.

  ‘Girls,’ he said. ‘Real girls! Hoy, there! Cooeee! How’s tricks?’

  The girl looked up and waved and smiled, and Murray pretended to faint into Catchpole’s arms.

  ‘She understands English, Vicar,’ he moaned deliriously. ‘Now I know I’m home.’

  The train north was jammed with people but we managed to crowd into a compartment with three or four stuffy middle-aged men and women. Nobody moved to make room for us and as the train left the cavernous darkness of King’s Cross, and sped between the packed houses of the northern suburbs of London, we sat perched on the edge of our seats, uncomfortable, tired, glad to be home, but curiously deflated. England looked good but it seemed to have become different somehow in the months I’d been away from it. There seemed to be women everywhere now, driving cars, even driving buses, and they all seemed to have an angelic beauty, every last one of them, that I was sure I’d never noticed before. It was difficult to keep back the tears of emotion.

  Nobody in the compartment made any attempt to talk to us. One of the women was telling her friend that the war was getting more difficult because she could no longer buy tea and sugar.

  ‘It’s a good job they’re going to do something about it soon out there,’ she said. ‘Or I’d just have to give up.’

  Catchpole leaned forward unexpectedly and she shied away from his burly figure in its stained uniform.

  ‘We know exactly how you feel about it,’ he went on in his best public-schoolboy-curate’s voice. ‘But we’re doing our best to put it right. Of course, things go wrong occasionally. It takes its toll.’ He indicated young Murray, who was watching him with a startled expression on his face, looking incredibly young, as though he’d left his soldier’s self behind him in France with the battalion and had become a schoolboy again.

  ‘Take him, for instance,’ Catchpole said, and the eyes of everyone in the compartment swung round to Murray.

  He blushed and his hand went to his collar in an uneasy movement.

  ‘Me?’ he said.

  Catchpole leaned towards him, his face full of concern.

  ‘How’s your diphtheria now, kid?’ he said. ‘Any better?’

  ‘Diphtheria? Me?’ Light suddenly dawned in Murray’s eyes and he grinned. ‘Oh, it’s not too infectious now,’ he said.

  Conversation had ceased and at the next stop the compartment emptied abruptly, and Catchpole stretched himself out on the seat, grinning luxuriously.

  ‘That’s better,’ he said gaily. ‘I discovered even when I was a schoolboy that you can always make room for yourself if you cough and spit a bit and pretend to have consumption.’

  The city seemed much as it always had been. There were still advertisements for summer-holiday resorts on the station and the Oxo and Mazawattee Tea advertisements were still there, though old Kitchener’s face was beginning to look a bit tatty now. He didn’t seem very important any longer, I suppose, now that conscription was on its way. Like the posters, he’d served his purpose and could happily be forgotten. Like old Corker, who’d been one of his soldiers in South Africa, he’d quietly disappeared into the darkness, and even the vast memorial service which was still filling every newspaper you saw made him no better and no worse than the rest of them.

  Schafers’ window seemed to be whole for a change. I’d heard they’d lost two sons in France and perhaps that had managed to convince everyone at last that their hearts were in England and not in Germany, after all.

  The Blueberry was full of people and the landlord looked up and promptly began to tell us about the Zeppelin raid.

  ‘God knows what it’s coming to,’ he said. ‘A man can’t sleep peacefully in his bed at night any more.’

  I persuaded him to let me use the telephone and I went to ring Helen.

  Locky’s wife answered, apologising because the maid had disappeared into the munitions works.

  ‘How are you, Fen?’ she asked cheerfully, and it was a pleasure to hear a sane, calm voice.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said, and went through the usual polite rigmarole of asking about the baby.

  ‘I expect you’re looking for Helen, aren’t you?’ she said suddenly, stopping me in mid-sentence. She seemed to have been expecting me and I guessed that Locky had been doing a little spadework on my behalf.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘Is she there?’

  ‘I’m afraid she’s not. She’s already left. She’s in London. Do you want her address?’

  ‘No, I’ve got it.’

  ‘There’s a train at midnight if you’re interested,’ she said. ‘When were you thinking of going?’

  ‘At midnight.’

  She laughed. ‘Fen …?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I think she’ll be pleased to see you.’

  When I got back to the bar, the landlord, affable in a celluloid collar and dickey and a ready-made black bowtie, was pumping Murray and Catchpole for the date of the offensive.

  ‘When’s it going to be?’ he was saying.

  ‘When’s what going to be?’

  ‘The Big Push?’

  ‘The Big Push?’ Murray asked cagily. Just before we’d left Rippy we’d had a special lecture from Ashton and been told to say nothing to anybody. ‘What Big Push?’

  ‘The offensive on the Somme.’

  ‘What, this offensive that’s going to make the world safe for freedom and democracy?’ Catchpole demanded innocently.

  ‘Is it going to be on the Somme?’ I asked.

  ‘Didn’t you know?’ The landlord looked surprised. ‘It’s going to be the biggest battle in history! Where’ve you been? Everybody here knows. End of June, they say, and it won’t be before time neither. There’s a lot to be avenged. There’s the Lusitania and poor old Kitchener and a few others. We’re only waiting for the kick-off.’

&n
bsp; ‘Kick-off?’ Catchpole snorted. ‘It’s not a game of bloody hockey.’

  ‘Well, you know what I mean! You want to look sharp or you’ll miss it.’

  We didn’t stay long in the Blueberry. It was pretty obvious we didn’t see things the same way. The Defence of the Realm Act, brought in to stop any spread of alarm and despondency, seemed a bit unnecessary to me. I thought everybody seemed thoroughly keen.

  We shook hands outside and promised to meet on the leave train going back. Then Murray took me home for a meal and his mother stuffed us full of food she must have been saving from her rations ever since he’d left home; and brought out all the family photos and Murray’s Chatterbox annuals for me to see, talking nervously while he blushed furiously and told her to stop. ‘What’s the Big Push going to be like?’ she asked anxiously.

  ‘Bigger than the last one,’ Murray replied with a grin.

  In the evening he dragged me round to a dance at the tennis club on the corner. The place was full of young men in new uniforms who hadn’t yet been out of England, and Murray, in his stained and faded khaki, soon got the girls round him. Then the girl from next door appeared and his face fell. She seemed to be a very normal girl, reasonably pretty and not very intelligent, but Murray seemed to be reduced immediately to an advanced state of nerves.

  ‘That’s her,’ he said.

  ‘She looks very nice,’ I said. ‘Aren’t you going to speak to her?’

  ‘Soon,’ he said. ‘In a minute. Give us a chance!’

  The old fire-eating over-confident Murray seemed to have vanished. He was talking faster and louder already, and pretending not to look at the girl who’d just appeared. ‘I’ve been trying to make up my mind to ask her to marry me this leave,’ he said.

  ‘Good luck,’ I said.

  ‘Only I’m not very old and her mother’s not so keen.’

  ‘It seems to me, if you’re old enough to go roaring up and down France,’ I said, ‘risking your neck every time you go in the line, you’re old enough to know your own mind about a few other things too.’