Covenant with Death

by John Harris

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘That’s the way it occurs to me.’

  ‘Thanks, Fen,’ he said. ‘That makes me feel a lot better.’

  He jerked his tunic straight and pushed his shoulders back. Ten minutes later, blushing furiously and looking shy and virginal, he was deep in conversation with the girl and his evening seemed to be made.

  I took the first opportunity when he wasn’t paying much attention to disappear. I’d decided to go and look up Eph’s Mabel for him.

  The Old Light Horseman was a noisy little place, all mirrors and brown-grained paintwork, jammed to the doors with steelworkers from the mills just behind. The landlord hedged a bit when I asked for Eph’s wife, and it took me some time to get out of him what was wrong.

  ‘She’s took up with another chap,’ he said in the end.

  I suppose Eph was no angel, and he’d probably done more than his share of cheating in his time, but somehow just then, with him still out in France and unable to get home, it seemed pretty hard luck on him. I thought she might have waited a bit.

  I accepted the drink the landlord silently pushed towards me, but there didn’t really seem to be much point in staying, and as soon as I’d finished it I caught a tram back towards the Blueberry.

  There’d been a meeting of some sort of debating society in the billiard room upstairs and they were all in the bar now, youngish, pompous men, who looked well paid and well fed and made me feel shabby in my old uniform; and it occurred to me that while we who’d enlisted would come out of the war as poor as we went in – if we came out – there’d be a hell of a lot who wouldn’t. Every bomb and every shell that exploded added to someone’s fortune. Duty didn’t seem to pay very good dividends.

  There was no one about I knew. In a year everyone seemed to have changed and those who were left didn’t seem to have much time for me.

  They were all busy with their own affairs, with business and rationing and keeping cheerful, with being economical and yet not so economical as to precipitate industrial distress. After all, life had to go on and business had to continue. They were occupied with the fact that the city had had a few bombs dropped on it, and there was a lot of patriotic talk that was a bit nauseating. Overseas, I hadn’t heard much about patriotism. Mostly a man’s attitude seemed to be one of sheepish cynicism for letting himself get caught when so many had stayed behind, but we all knew it hid an immense faith that we were on the point of bringing it all to an end on the Somme. It wasn’t the same sort of hilarious keenness there was here. It was a quiet certainty that at last a plan had been formed, a leader had been found, and enough munitions of war had been assembled, so that with a little luck and a little help from the Almighty we could put an end to the killing once and for all.

  Here, everyone spoke of the offensive as though it were spelled in capital letters. They even talked a different language – English, while mine was a mixture of pidgin French, old soldier’s Hindustani and scraps of Arabic from Suez. There seemed a weird absurdity about the normality of civilian life.

  To shut the rest of the place out a little, I bought a late evening paper from a boy who came round, but the leader was full of bilge about ‘the field of honour’ and ‘our noble allies’, and ‘We will not tolerate the cry of “Peace” until the Hun has been put where he belongs.’ There were tips signed ‘Little Mother’ on how to give up an only son to the Army without too much heart-searching; and sentimental articles about the war from someone called Adsum, who most obviously hadn’t had some.

  Everybody who could set pen to paper seemed to be trying to make us seem smiling morons who found killing Germans a sport a bit like ratting. Nobody seemed to have the slightest conception of the degrading nature of life in the trenches. Half the Army itself didn’t know it, I suppose. The cheerful rhapsodies about Tommies with the glint of battle in their eyes made me squirm.

  Inevitably, a little man with a fistful of Bradburys, who said he was manager of one of the rolling-mills along Cotterside Common, spotted my stained uniform, and it pleased him to buy me a drink while he set out before me just how Haig was going to conduct the coming offensive. He seemed to know all about it and even began to work out for me how long the German reserves could last. He appeared to resent my not being there doing my bit, as though my absence might make just that fraction of difference between failure and success.

  ‘Twenty-six divisions there are going to be,’ he told me. ‘Half a million men. They’ve massed every cavalryman in France for the breakthrough. It’ll be a cakewalk – a picnic. Haig’s got it taped this time all right.’

  It occurred to me that if he knew so much about it, it would be odd if the Germans didn’t too. I’d heard that some fathead in Parliament had given away the date of the offensive, in a speech to munition workers which had got into the foreign papers, and I began to wonder just how much else that had been leaked enthusiastically from one official to another over a bar had found its way to the other side of the lines.

  Then I began to wonder just what our chances really were when the time came, and all the old ugly doubts that Bold had put in my mind with his talk of inexperience started again.

  Were we really in the hands of competent leaders? Were we really the soldiers we thought we were or did we merely blind ourselves with excitement and grow drunk on our own patriotism and faith? I knew what Murray’s answer would have been, but Murray’s answer was never mine, and I began to wonder if Bold and Pine and Blackett and Appleby were the only soldiers among us, and if the rest of us were merely borne along by them, sustained by their skill and our own courage and enthusiasm, and that blind belief we had in victory.

  As my attention wandered, the little man with the pound notes started waving a hand at me, anxious that I should hear him out.

  ‘There’ll be casualties all right,’ he said. ‘But you’ve got to disregard those. There’s a crowd in Parliament who’re all for peace, but we’ll never win while people sit back and look at the Roll of Honour.’

  ‘No, I suppose we won’t,’ I said.

  ‘Plenty of soldiers. That’s what we want. Conscription’s a fine thing.’

  ‘Will you be conscripted?’ I asked.

  ‘No. I’m reserved. But they’re getting the slackers. They’re going to set up tribunals to decide whether the conchies are honest or just plain yellow.’

  I suddenly felt that I didn’t belong there any more. This city was no longer home to me. Home had become an overcrowded village in France, with shattered houses and dusty roads full of troops and vehicles, and lined with all the litter of war.

  I didn’t feel much like the merry assassin my new friend seemed to want me to be, revelling with him in the joy of destroying human life. I’d gone off to war like all the rest of us, under the stress of some tremendous emotion I found hard to explain even to myself on the rare occasions when I stopped to think about it, and I suppose I was still being ruled by it. This little man with his handful of pound notes had long since given it up for some more fashionable feeling, following the lead given him by the newspapers. My background was still summer 1914. His was summer 1916. I was his ghost, the echo of all his early enthusiasm and all that half-hysterical flag-wagging everyone had indulged in as the first small bands of men went off to the war.

  I was glad when it was time to head for the station.

  London was full of Australians, New Zealanders, Indians, Canadians, Belgians in tall forage caps and Russians in dark blue, and even odd nationalities like Serbs, Montenegrins and Portuguese. You could buy Iron Crosses and even spiked helmets at the alley ends, and it seemed fashionable to be seen out with a wounded officer. All the smart women seemed to have one in tow, helping him in and out of taxis.

  Signs were scrawled on the walls and pavements, Strike Now in the West, and Save Verdun. The truth about the Irish rebellion and the fall of Kut in Mesopotamia and the battle of Jutland seemed to be just seeping through, and the general tendency seemed to be a desire to blame
it all on the troops.

  There were military police everywhere, and I was itching to get away from the West End. I thought I might ring Helen up before I went to look for her, but I realised I had no telephone number and guessed that, anyway, she’d probably be at work and unavailable during the day.

  For the best part of the afternoon I hung about Piccadilly, but prices were high for a mere sergeant and all the respectable places were reserved for officers and I hated the damned place. A prostitute offered to take me home, in spite of the early hour, offering me ‘Oriental attractions’, whatever they were, and in the end I went to a matinée of Chu Chin Chow.

  I was looking at the pictures outside when a cavalry lieutenant offered me a couple of tickets because he’d just been given them and he’d already seen the show. I asked the first private I saw if he’d like to join me, and we went in together. He was a nice little man who’d just joined up. He was very impressed by my well-worn uniform and the fact that I’d just returned from France. He said he looked forward to ‘being blooded’, and the phrase sounded strange and pretentious. ‘Bloodied’ might have been a better word, I thought.

  I tried to talk to him, but he seemed as much a stranger as all the others, and in the end we sat the show out in silence and parted afterwards with barely a nod.

  By the time it had reached evening, I was debating again how I’d find Helen. Suppose she’d arranged to meet someone, I thought. Suppose there was another man? Suppose she just didn’t want to see me? But Locky and his wife had both insisted that she did, and I found myself on a tram heading out towards Finchley. I’d no idea how to get to where she lived, but a friendly Bobby helped me, walking with me all the way from the tram-stop, and telling me about his son who was in the Navy and what a trial he was to his mother when he came home on leave.

  The address on Locky’s slip of paper turned out to be a shabby old mansion that seemed to have been divided up into flats. For a long time I stood outside staring at it, before I opened the door. I’d been travelling all night and I’d have been glad of a welcoming face.

  There was a strong smell of cabbage inside and, while I was still wondering where to start, a door opened alongside me and a woman appeared with a cigarette in her mouth.

  ‘Who’re you looking for?’ she asked in a rasping gin-rich voice.

  ‘Haddo,’ I said. ‘Helen Haddo. She shares a flat somewhere here with a friend.’

  ‘Haddo?’ she said. ‘Don’t know that name,’ and I was immediately aware of a sickened feeling in my stomach. I felt sure I ought never to have come. All the way out on the tram, I’d been trying to convince myself Helen had meant what she’d always said – that she really would be pleased to see me.

  I’d even wondered what Bold might have done under the same circumstances and been reassured by the knowledge that, being what he was, he’d probably have done the same thing. I found it a great comfort just then to recall that Mason had said I grew like Bold.

  As I was about to turn away, the woman put a hand on my arm.

  ‘Hold on a minute,’ she said. ‘Isn’t she a new girl? From up north somewhere?’

  My heart leapt at once.

  ‘Small girl? Fair hair?’

  ‘That’s her,’ I said. Suddenly I didn’t care very much whether I was wanted or not. I just wanted to see Helen.

  ‘Top floor, son. Straight at the top of the stairs.’

  I flew up the first flight two at a time, in spite of all my kit. I’d brought everything with me, not wishing to go back north again and hoping against hope I might not have to. My rifle banged on the newel post as I swung round on the landing and the voice of the woman below came up to me, boozy but not unfriendly:

  ‘Steady on with the paint, son!’

  By the time I reached the top flight, and could see the glass-panelled door at the top, ominously dark and silent, I’d slowed down a bit. Uncertainty was creeping in again and I was doubtful of my reception once more.

  My boots thumped heavily on the uncarpeted stairs and I stopped on the little landing and tapped gingerly on the glass.

  For a long time there was silence, and I thought the woman below must have been wrong, then I heard a door open inside and someone singing. It wasn’t possible to recognise the tune but I knew at once it was Helen and I was consumed with the desire to turn and run. If she was singing, I thought, she obviously wasn’t in need of cheering up.

  A key turned in the lock and the door opened.

  Helen stood for a moment, staring at me, her face blank and startled, her mouth open a little, then her features seemed to crumple and I saw there were sudden tears in her eyes. The next second she was in my arms, her face against my cheek, and I knew she was crying.

  ‘Oh, Fen,’ she was saying, clinging to me with a strength that was frightening. ‘It took you so long.’

  For a long time we stood there, neither of us saying anything. There didn’t seem to be anything to say. I knew then what a benighted bloody fool I’d been. This might have happened eighteen months before if I’d only had some sense, if only I hadn’t been blind.

  How long we just stood, not speaking, I don’t know. Then Helen pushed me away.

  ‘Your buckles are sticking in me a bit,’ she said.

  The ordinariness of the comment seemed to break the spell and we were able to laugh. She took my rifle and pulled me through the door, slamming it after me. The flat was small and seemed to consist only of a bedroom-cum-sitting-room, a kitchen and a bathroom, but it was lighter and more cheerful than I’d expected in that dingy old house, and you could see over the roofs towards a patch of green in the distance that looked like a park.

  She helped me off with my pack, and we merely stood and stared at each other, both of us struck dumb and unable to stop smiling. She’d had her hair cut, I noticed, in some more modern style, and she was dressed in a white blouse and a dark skirt that showed her figure.

  I’d never realised she was so lovely. She looked as though she didn’t belong to my world – as, of course, she didn’t. Her world was one of cleanliness and laughter and happiness, and mine was full of dirt and noise and boredom, and I realised suddenly she’d always had so much more to offer me than I’d ever known. But she looked different, somehow, more fashionable – the influence of London already, I supposed – quieter, more responsible and older, and I was scared she wasn’t the same person. Then I saw her eyes flooding with tears again and she put her arms round me.

  ‘Oh, Fen,’ she said as she released me. ‘Why didn’t you ever come before? Why didn’t you ever write to me?’

  I gestured feebly, not certain myself why not, now that it seemed so clear I should have done. ‘There was Frank,’ I said.

  Her brows came down and she became angry at once, her eyes flashing.

  ‘Mark Fenner,’ she said. ‘There was never Frank. Frank thought there was Frank, but Frank always did, didn’t he? Damn him, he always seemed to be in the way when I thought I’d got you to myself!’

  I grinned. This was more like the old Helen. I hadn’t made a mistake, after all. She hadn’t changed inside.

  ‘I tried to tell you in half a dozen ways that it wasn’t Frank,’ she said sharply. ‘But it isn’t the girl who has to make the running. You ought to know that. I couldn’t take you on one side and knock it into your thick skull with a hammer, could I?’

  I pulled her into my arms again and kissed her fiercely. She pushed me away and stared at me, her eyes on mine, large and shining.

  ‘You’ve changed,’ she said, smiling. ‘You’re more authoritative.’

  ‘I’m a sergeant,’ I said. ‘Sergeants have to be authoritative.’

  ‘It suits you.’

  ‘I’ll have to tell Bold you approve. I’ve been modelling myself on him, as the best example I could find.’

  ‘You’ve lost your shyness, I think.’

  ‘Not much chance of shyness when you’re living in a barn with thirty or forty others.’

  She put her
head on one side and stared at me. A strand of fair hair fell over her nose and she blew at it as she always used to, in the way that always delighted me so much.

  ‘Remember the night of the riots after they sank the Lusitania?’ she asked.

  ‘Will I ever forget it?’ I said. ‘I ended up doing C.B. for Bold, and never saw you again properly afterwards.’

  ‘You were like this that night too. That’s how I always tried to remember you.’

  ‘I’ll keep it up. Strangely enough, I don’t find it so hard these days. There must be something in what Bold’s always said about me.’

  She put her arms round me again and held me tight, her cheek against mine.

  ‘Oh, Fen,’ she said. ‘We’ve been such fools.’

  ‘Not you,’ I said. ‘Me. I’m the fool.’

  ‘Molly always told me what happened to you. Locky’s letters were full of you and she always passed it on. She knew, you see, like Locky did. I might have written to you but you never wrote to me and I thought there might be someone else.’

  ‘There never was. There never will be.’

  She suddenly realised we were still standing in the middle of the room, and she laughed.

  ‘I don’t know why we’re standing here,’ she said. ‘Go and sit down. I’ll get something to eat.’

  I sat on the bed which had been arranged with cushions to look like a settee and she disappeared into the kitchen to put the kettle on the stove. She was a while preparing the food and the flat was warm and I promptly began to doze. We always fell asleep when we were left alone. Tim Williams always said we’d make wonderful tenants for overcrowded houses after the war. After we’d dropped off, he said, the family could stand us up in the corner and give the bed to someone else.

  I dreamed of warmth and womanly sweetness, but the dream grew darker and I woke in confusion. Things were banging round me and the air seemed hot and stuffy and I thought I was in a dugout and the roof had come in on me. I started to lash out, then I saw Helen kneeling alongside me, gently holding my arms.