Through the Lonesome Dark

by Richardson, Paddy

  ‘Sounds like you’ve been giving Josette presents and now Marie wants the same treatment.’

  ‘Naught to do with Marie.’

  He looks shifty, a tad embarrassed and now Clem’s curious. ‘What’ve you been giving her?’

  ‘That’s between me and Josette.’

  He watches Tam slipping out without him and he can’t help but feel a bit put out by it, though the truth is he’d rather be walking on his tod and trying out his carving back in the quarters after what happened with Marie the last time. She’d asked for more money and he’d handed her two more francs. She’d taken them without so much as a word then laid herself down on the bed like a sack of spuds with her face turned away from him. What’s Tam been giving Josette? He knows Tam’s been sending money home to his mother for the ring for Ellen as well as for setting up a home after they’re wed, so how’s he doing all that as well as buying presents for Josette?

  Still, when he finds Tam waiting for him after the shift, grinning like he does and asking him, telling him, more like, they’re off to meet the girls, he goes along willingly enough. There’s something up with Tam, he knows that, and perhaps this is the time he’ll tell him what it is.

  Just like the other times, they drink and eat and dance though this time Tam and Josette leave for the room first. But Marie is smiling again and, after they’ve been gone a while, he holds her tight against him as they dance. He looks to the door hoping to see Tam and Josette coming inside, Tam giving him the wink.

  But by the time they’re back, they’ve been waiting too long. Marie’s gone sulky again and she’s drunk so much wine she’s staggering against him in the dancing. He holds her steady and when he sees Tam and Josette he takes her hand ready to lead her away. Then Tam’s beside him, his hand on Clem’s arm. ‘Come over here and sit a minute.’

  Clem follows him through the lads and girls dancing with Marie behind him to where Josette is sitting at a table. She stares up at him, her eyes very bright. He hovers beside the chair, Marie leaning against him and he’s feeling drunker than he’d like to be. There’s something up all right and the feeling he’s getting is it’s something he doesn’t want to be caught up in. But Tam’s his mate, his good mate, so he helps Marie into her chair and sits by her.

  And Josette holds her hand up to the light. He sees the small flicker of brightness before Tam clasps her hand in his. ‘We got married.’

  ‘What?’

  Tam’s grinning at him. ‘Josette and me. We’re married, boy.’

  ‘You’re joking, mate. Come on. Anyone could see through that one.’

  ‘I wouldn’t joke about something like that.’ Tam’s staring at him. ‘I’m telling you, we’re married. Just now. The priest did it for us.’

  It bursts out of him. ‘But she’s a—’

  ‘She’s a what?’ Tam’s voice is raised high, alongside his own.

  ‘You know right bloody well what she is.’ He hisses the words low across the table and now Marie is shouting. It’s only a bit of English mixed with the French but she gets her meaning over well enough. Clem thinks he’s too good for such as them and that she, Marie, is suitable only for making with a fuck.

  Pense qu’il est mieux que tout le monde! Pense qu’il est mieux que tout le monde!

  Tam is shouting that Marie and Josette come from a good family. That her family farmed for centuries on land that’s now torn apart by the fucking war. Their father is dead and their mother gone and their brothers fighting the war so what else could they have done? ‘It’s about survival, mate. Christ, can’t you see that for yourself?’

  Clem points towards the door. ‘Can we have a word in private?’

  Tam hesitates but Josette holds on hard to his hand. ‘Anything needs to be said is in front of Josette.’

  Well, he has to say this too, though Tam might have kept it quiet. ‘What about Ellen?’

  Tam shakes his head. ‘I couldn’t stomach it, mate. Not after what I’ve seen. Can you see me married to a girl who thinks there’s nothing more to being with a man than prayers and decorating bloody tablecloths?’

  The farm, the bungalow, working with his brother-in-law, all the things Tam had been so excited, so enthusiastic about. All of it gone and him marrying a whore? ‘You’re being a bloody fool, man. You’re not thinking right.’

  ‘Josette est enceinte.’ Marie is chipping in again. ‘Enceinte,’ she says, excitedly. ‘Enceinte!’ And she makes movements with her hands, rounding them out over her belly and she’s smirking at the expression of revulsion that he knows will be right there on his face for anyone to see. Well, she’s in it and all, both of them are in it together to trap Tam: Marie and her grasping hands and Josette with her sly eyes.

  He sees what he’s up against. Well, he has to try to keep himself calm. He keeps his eyes away from the girls and square on Tam. He has to make him see he’s being made a fool of. ‘You’re turning your back on all you had planned out. It was a good life you had ahead of you.’

  Tam shakes his head. ‘Josette’s what I want.’

  ‘Listen to me. This is what the war does, mate. It makes you see things all wrong. It’s not too late. All that’s needed is for you to go to the officer in charge and tell him you’ve got yourself into a spot of bother with a local girl. He’ll sort it out for you.’

  ‘I told you. Josette’s what I want.’ Tam gestures to the window and the darkness outside. ‘This place is finished. Even if the French keep it after this show is over, they’ll never get it back to the way it was. I’m taking her back home with me. Mate, I love her.’

  ‘Listen,’ Clem says, ‘you kept telling me what a fine life you had ahead of you, what a lovely girl Ellen is. A good girl, you said.’

  ‘Josette’s a good girl.’

  ‘A good girl?’ He can’t help but snort over that one. ‘She’s out to trap you, man.’

  He shouldn’t have said it but Tam saying, Tam believing that Josette with the way she had of looking over any man was a good girl, well, it was too much for him to stomach.

  Tam’s eyes are dangerous. ‘I won’t have you talking about Josette like that. She’s my wife.’

  ‘Have you got permission for this? You haven’t, have you? I’ve a mind to tell—’

  ‘You keep your fucking nose out of it. Josette said I shouldn’t trust you. You’re a fucking nark.’

  ‘Shouldn’t trust me? Shouldn’t trust her, you mean. You’re fucking cunt-struck, man.’ He can’t help himself, his voice is raised up blurting out what he knows he shouldn’t say. Because he’s angry. By God, he’s angry. ‘How do you know there’s a baby coming, eh? Even if there is, how could you know it’s yours?’

  Tam is on his feet, his fists clenched, by Christ, you won’t say that. Clem’s up as well with the chair crashing onto the floor behind him. ‘It could be any man here got her in the family way.’ He waves his arm at the other tables. ‘Any man in this room, you stupid bastard.’

  He feels the sudden pain as Tam’s fist smashes into his nose. He’s got his own fists up now. Someone behind grabs onto his arm but not before he’s landed Tam a good one back. Marie is screaming and he pushes his way out.

  He feels the warmth and wet of the blood gushing down his face; he’s almost weeping with the anger and the pain and the bitterness of it. He seizes the bike by the handlebars and pedals hard through the darkness. The stupid bastard can make his own way home. Stupid bastard, the poor, poor stupid bastard.

  36

  Though they share quarters and work together they never say so much as a word to each other unless it can be helped. When the other lads saw his eye blackened and his nose twice its size, there were a few teases about it, got caught out by her dad, did you, mate? Once they saw how the land lay, though, they shut up.

  He’s heard the rumours. Tam requested permission from his senior officer to get wed and got tur
ned down because of the low moral stature of his intended so Tam said to hell with that and he’d marry her anyway with or without the fucking army’s say-so. He’s keeping it all hush-hush, in the meantime, though everyone knows.

  So, Clem thinks, it was general knowledge before Tam even told him and that makes him angrier because he was supposed to be Tam’s best mate. He knows Tam would have kept it from him because he wouldn’t have wanted to hear the truth: that he was being a bloody fool and Josette was the right girl to make the fool out of him.

  The year is almost over and the weather starting to set in again; they’ve had the first snow and Christmas isn’t far off. It’s his third now, away from home. Well, he’s lost the mate he would’ve been celebrating it with so he’s facing this third one on his own. He’s far too angry, too disappointed as well, if he’s honest about it, to try making amends. He’ll keep himself occupied with work and his carving and there’s other mates he can trust better.

  There are new lads joining them from the 2nd Tunnelling Company. As well as that, the Maori Pioneers have turned up in Arras, all forty-three of them. The Pioneers are great workers, but it’s their way of going about the tasks in front of them with the jokes coming thick and fast that make every one of the shifts you work alongside them rush by. They have their own ways of working, by God they do. Their way, for instance, of getting around the supplies their own company have been allocated for timber, which is strictly rationed, while over in the British, Saint-Sauveur, section, there are the Royal Engineers loaded up with plenty of the very best. Well, how in hell is the company supposed to build what’s wanted without enough timber?

  There’ve been bad feelings about it, and the Pioneers didn’t see it as right at all, so what did they do but send out raiding parties into the other section to help themselves to what was there and whenever they came across anyone out of the Royal Engineers who asked what they were up to, they’d just look perplexed, like, and shake their heads. No speak English.

  No speak English. Well, they all had a great old laugh over that one, but there they are now, with a good bit of the best timber, better than they’ve ever had before. The best of mates, into the bargain.

  The Pioneers are billeted in a place that used to be an estaminet. It’s been so shot up by Fritz’s machine guns it’s been left empty by whoever owned it. Though there’s a fairly steady thud of bullets coming against the walls, it’s turned into a regular meeting place for the lads. The Pioneers, with their talent for getting their hands on what’s needed, found themselves a piano in one of the big abandoned houses and brought it back with them. It’s a great hulking thing: took eight of them, taking turns one lot of four after the other, to lift it through the streets. There was a boy they found among the troops, trained in classical piano with a good ear and the nous to tune it. It’s a fine piano, despite it being knocked about, with the notes coming out rich and clear. Fine-looking too, the wood dark and glossy and brass candle-holders attached above the lid that they light candles in. Well, it’s been a great favourite among them all; there are those who can play by ear, tinkling out any tune called for.

  Clem’s got his trumpet out again and he joins in with the piano and the singing. ‘Pack Up Your Troubles’, ‘Goodbye Dolly Gray’, ‘Oh You Beautiful Doll’. Most of them who play can rattle out a good tune he can follow easily enough, but now he’s getting better with the practice he’s been doing; he most likes playing with Johnny, the young lad who tuned the piano in the first place.

  ‘Keep the Home-Fires Burning’ is a favourite for everyone and Johnny knows to do it in E flat for Clem so he can do it in F which means there’s only one flat to worry about; he isn’t so good as to not have to care about the hard notes. But he’s learned to pause over those long notes, to draw them out, sweet and hanging. Keep the home-fires burn-ing/ while your hearts are yearn-ing./ There’s a silver lin-ing/ through the dark clouds shin-ing.

  What he can do now is to get right up into the higher range to the top G. Well, the lads love that, the sweetness of the trumpet with the piano alongside, that pureness of the notes rising higher and higher, then the downward turn, the yearning feel of it. Turn the dark cloud inside out/ ’til the boys come home.

  He and Johnny can raise a tear or two in the eyes of even the hardest-eyed lads at the end of a night with that one. Though it’s not all sadness and gloom, not by a long shot, with all the jokes and the banter and the stories of girls met and booze drunk. He’ll not forget the Pioneers with their music and the belly laughs and the stories.

  There was the Bosche captured by the Gordons on a raid and brought down by a sergeant who had the charge of him into the main tunnel where some of the Pioneers were at work. Well, they’d never seen a Bosche before, had they? Not close up, so they crowded around to have a good look at the bugger, all twenty of them. Well, he was so little and shy-looking they thought he needed cheering up and a Maori welcome was in order.

  The candles flickering on those huge bodies with their rolling eyes, their tongues stuck out, leaping and slapping and stamping and whooping and calling. Jesus, he was close to scared himself as they showed them what they’d done. Well, and it all finished with the Maoris down on their knees, begging the sergeant to let him keep him to take home and fatten up. Please, sir. Good eating, sir. Good meat.

  That wasn’t the end of the story, though. The next communication from Fritz brought with it a complaint that the British were engaging cannibals from New Zealand for the purpose of terrorising German soldiers.

  They have their own way, as well, of producing dusty bottles of wine that’s of the sort more likely found in rich men’s cellars than sold in Arras for five francs. The supplies were getting down so the idea of a raiding party was put forward with all the planning that a sortie of this serious nature should muster. The target was to be a fine old house and it was a full corporal guard equipped with kits that was sent off marching in formation through the streets towards the destination. There was a sentry put outside the building while the undertaking was carried out inside, the guard returned, the sentry was relieved and the guard marched back to quarters, shoulders back, eyes to the front and not so much as a grin despite the clanking of the kits they were hefting along.

  Well, the year is moving fast towards Christmas and, for all he tells himself it’s only another day, it’s not the way he feels about it. For a start-off, it’s always bloody freezing when it’s meant to be hot. He remembers the year the house was sweltering. The kitchen was steamed up from the pudding bubbling on the range the goose in the oven, everyone cramped up and uncomfortable and Mother with sweat running down her face.

  ‘Give us a hand, Mick,’ she said to Dad. ‘And you open up the door, Clem, wide as you can, to get all this through.’ She’d taken up the end of the table, already set with the best cloth and Gran’s dinner service that’d come with her own mother from England. Dad took the other end, then there they were, out in the back garden beneath the trees. After their dinner, he and Jeanie and Alice were allowed to go down to the creek to swim; up until then they’d always been made to stay around the house. It was Christmas, the day of Christ’s birth, and that meant they were to be dressed in their finest and sitting with the family.

  ‘Meg.’ Granny had sat grim-faced through dinner and now the children were stripped down almost to nothing. ‘It’s not right. It’s not . . . traditional.’

  ‘It’s too hot for tradition, Mum.’

  Mother had teased her into smiling and then they’d come down after them, Granny sitting in the shade and Mother drawing up her skirts and wading in with them. That’s what it’s been every Christmas after: the table set up outside and then down to the creek to cool down and swim out their dinners.

  Lying down there, the stones beneath your skin, hot and smooth, and the sound of the creek moving as it does and the lupins popping and bright yellow of the gorse and the smell of it all. The sting of water and of su
n. Feeling that sun stinging again at night in the tightness of where it had rested on your back and arms and your legs. Mother hearing you move, restless and sore. Mother coming with the calamine lotion. Hold still there and let me put it on. Good thing you’ve got your father’s skin. Jeanie’s all blistered up. She’s got my skin, poor girl.

  They’d heard the story about the very first Christmas of the war when the truce was called and those from both sides celebrated together but the majors wanted no more of that, consorting with the enemy. So Christmas Day was to be as all the days were: shots being fired, the shells and mortar being set off and the earth shuddering.

  So it’s work as usual but those not on a shift are to gather at the Pioneers’ quarters in the evening and take along any grog or food they can get their hands on. Clem takes the cake he’d got sent from home, full of fruit and nuts that he knew Mother would have been saving up for the purpose. There’s the usual bully beef out of their rations but the Pioneers have rustled themselves up a pig and roasted it right there on a spit; there’s a long queue up for that. And there’s bread and cheese, more cakes and jam sent over from home as well.

  Clem’s pleased to see Johnny, just in from his shift, keen to play music. They mix in the usual along with carols and in the end, the whole lot of the lads are around the piano. Bitter-sweet it is, the candles lit, singing in the half-dark with the snow lying outside and all of them thinking about how it would be back home.

  Tam’s there and Clem tries to catch his eye but his mouth is set and grim and he keeps his head turned away from him. Jesus. They’d been good mates and all that gone, now, because of a woman. It’s Christmas, the one time Clem would like to make it up with him. He’d even say he was in the wrong, though he doesn’t believe that. But it takes two to make up, and the way Tam moves away when he gets closer to him, well, Clem’ll meet him halfway but it’s as far as he’ll go. He sees him slip out. Off to visit Josette. Well, that’s his business. ‘Good King Wenceslas’, ‘While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks’, ‘Oh Little Star of Bethlehem’; he and Johnny play all they remember from their churches and their schoolrooms and the halls and their homes.