The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  ‘An’ he calls hisself a vicar,’ he grumbled. He wiped the chalk from the toes of his boots, rubbing each one on the opposite leg of his trousers.

  ‘You’re only jealous, mate,’ commented Gilman mischievously.

  Catermole snorted. ‘Over that? That bag of rat bones. Looks like he dug her up from ’is graveyard.’

  Gilman was, as though casually, watching the door. Every five minutes two or three village people would hustle in out of the rain but Mary Nicholas was not among them. She would be at Newton Abbot, he thought, naturally, where the men were. He drained his beer and taking his tankard and Catermole’s he asked the girl behind the bar to refill them. She was a plump landgirl, with, tonight, an unsuitable pink ribbon in her hair and rouge on her cheeks. Catermole had rudely inquired whether she said Mama and Dadda and moved her arms and legs.

  The man who was leading the band, Mr Penningford, had, before the war, been first a cinema pianist and then an organist in Exeter. He conducted with a permanently pained face, every bar another insult. He brought the tango to a premature close like someone trying to put the brakes on a runaway truck. When all the musicians finally reached a standstill he glared at them. ‘Oi can understand you not startin’ together,’ he said loudly across the wooden podium which held his balding music sheets. ‘But oi don’ know why you can’t finish ’un off together. By that time, surely to God, you ought to ’ave caught up with each other.’

  The band looked chastened. ‘We’ll try a waltz,’ he said less severely. ‘One, two, three, one, two, three. Maybe ’ee won’t confuse you so much.’

  His teeth had either been measured for someone else or his face had shrunk around them. They projected from his jaw. He faced the sparse dancers and smiled like a trap. ‘’Tis a waltz next,’ he announced. He half turned back to the band before whirling around again with a terrible jokey grin. ‘A lady’s invitation waltz,’ he added devilishly. ‘Come on, ladies, now be your chance.’

  ‘I’m going for a piss,’ said Catermole briskly. He put his beer down fiercely. ‘I’m not letting any old boot in ’ere get her hands on me.’

  He was making for the door when three bright landgirls, laughing and rosy, came in. He marched backwards towards Gilman again. Gilman laughed. The be-ribboned girl behind the bar called to the new arrivals and they walked across sturdily, taking their heavy brown coats off as they did so. Underneath they had on their best dresses. Catermole beamed. ‘Lady’s excuse me,’ he said loudly against the ear of the first girl to approach the bar.

  She regarded him with wartime confidence. ‘Then you’ll have to excuse me,’ she said. ‘I’ve been working with the pigs all day.’

  ‘Poor bloody pigs,’ said Catermole loudly, defiantly. Then to the smiling Gilman, ‘I will go for a piss then.’

  ‘Do that,’ advised the girl seriously. ‘Enjoy yourself. There’s a war on.’

  The three had coarsely greeted their friend behind the bar. They ordered beer at the bar and stood drinking it swaggeringly and talking loudly and roughly. Gilman, half-listening, half-watching, thought how women had changed. The war had done that. It was as though a hard covering, a husk, had grown over them. They had put on trousers, despite great controversy, and abandoned the role of softness that had been theirs for hundreds of years. Now, their hands, faces and voices thickened, their hair often concealed by the universal turban, they had become another species. He heard one of the landgirls unselfconsciously say ‘fuck’.

  Catermole came back. ‘Nobody asked you to dance?’ he said to Gilman, and nodding at the girls. ‘Losing your charm?’

  ‘I told them I was promised,’ whispered Gilman. He was still looking at intervals at the door. Mary Nicholas had not arrived and he doubted if she would now. She was probably gone off with somebody else. As he watched, through the black out hanging at the door came two Americans, Albie and Ballimach. ‘The Yanks are here,’ he said sideways to Catermole. The landgirls heard and turned. They groaned a collective complaint. They returned to the bar and the beer. Albie and Ballimach, smiling sheepishly, approached the bar but were waylaid by the vicar with extravagant greeting.

  ‘Welcome, welcome to our allies,’ he enthused sliding across the chalky floor, a bow-wave of white powder rising over the toe-caps of his patent leather dancing pumps. Nervously Albie and Ballimach backed away. Gilman and Catermole looked on amused. The landgirls had turned and were watching.

  ‘I’m a Catholic,’ said Albie hurriedly, as if he felt the confession might save him from something.

  ‘And me, I’m a Jew,’ put in Ballimach just as promptly.

  ‘No matter, no matter,’ Sissons assured them shaking the small hand of Albie and the big paw of Ballimach at the same time. Gilman heard one of the landgirls sneer: ‘Jews.’ He turned quickly but she had gone back to giggling with her friends. No one else seemed to hear it except Catermole who turned and grinned stupidly towards the woman as if wanting to share the joke.

  For a moment Gilman thought that the vicar was going to buy a drink for the Americans but Sissons saw Doey, Lenny and some of the other villagers coming in the door, struggling their way through the green blackout blanket; he went like a skater across the floor to meet them. Gilman turned to Ballimach and said: ‘Would you and your pal like a beer?’ Catermole looked surprised but he put on his wide, vacant smile and beamed towards the Americans in a comradely way. He put his tankard on the bar next to Gilman’s.

  ‘Gee, thanks. That’s very friendly,’ responded Ballimach.

  ‘Certainly is,’ said Albie. ‘Just a little one for me. I have to take this British beer a little at a time.’

  None of the soldiers introduced themselves. When the drinks came they lifted their glasses to each other. The landgirls began complaining loudly about men buying drinks for each other before they bought drinks for ladies. Gilman turned slightly: ‘I didn’t think you counted yourselves as ladies any more,’ he said.

  ‘Go and shit,’ said the one who had made the remark about the Jews.

  ‘See what I mean,’ he said to the other men.

  The landgirls began to move away from the bar. ‘What a twat,’ said one over her shoulder as she went.

  Gilman shrugged and smiled at the Americans. ‘She should know, I suppose,’ he said.

  ‘Who are those girls?’ asked Albie. ‘They don’t seem very friendly.’

  ‘Landgirls,’ answered Catermole. ‘They get like that through living in dung.’

  Gilman said to Ballimach, ‘I saw you going on the exercise the other morning, on to the landing craft in the harbour. You’re the man carrying the reel of telephone wire on his back.’

  Ballimach gave a funny bow. ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘Biggest star of the show.’ His mobile face rolled forward. ‘And the biggest target, I guess. God, if you picked me out so easy, what about the goddamn Germans?’

  ‘Maybe you could carry a white flag or a red cross,’ suggested Albie with a sly grin. ‘The red cross would be better. Maybe they’d mark you down as a mobile hospital. Then they won’t shoot you.’

  Ballimach grimaced. ‘I don’t know about the real thing, pal, but the rehearsal was lousy. I had sand up my ass for days.’

  ‘You lost some men, didn’t you?’ asked Gilman. ‘We heard about it.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ballimach sadly. ‘Three guys.’ He caught Albie’s eye. It was supposed to be secret. ‘What the hell,’ he said fiercely but not raising his voice. ‘I don’t see why those guys should just be hushed up. They died didn’t they? Just like they was in battle.’ He gave a short wave of his fat hand. ‘The people around here, they ain’t stupid,’ he argued. ‘They know real shooting from dummy fucking shooting. And that was real shooting and it was a real set of mines that blew up and killed our guys.’

  ‘It was a dog that did it,’ put in Albie. He sighed across the top of the beer. ‘A crazy dog. He went into that goddamn hotel just as our guys were a couple of yards away. We’d been warned about the mines, to keep away f
rom the building, but I guess that dog wasn’t around when the orders went out. He was with some guy, some nut digging for fishing bait on the beach.’

  ‘Digging for bait?’ said Gilman. ‘A civilian?’

  The Americans nodded together, but without emphasis, worried about giving offence.

  ‘Bad enough the Germans killing you,’ agreed Catermole solidly. He glanced over his shoulder. The landgirls were sitting in a dogged row, stony wallflowers, glowering challengingly towards the four soldiers. Catermole sniffed. ‘I’ve tormented this lot long enough,’ he said. ‘I don’t want them peeing their drawers.’ Gilman smiled and shook his head slowly. Catermole finished his beer with a wet flourish, wiped his mouth with his hand and marched heavily across the floor. With a suggestion of a bow from his thick frame he began at one end of the female line and, having been sulkily refused a dance, went along, being rejected by each of the glowering girls, until the last one, who was smaller, uglier and wore peering spectacles, agreed to dance. The band was playing a quickstep and like many big men Catermole was light on his feet. He spun and fishtailed across the white-clouded floor dragging the slight girl along. She clung on to his neck desperately like a limp albatross.

  Gilman and the two Americans looked on with amused expressions. Ballimach rubbed the chalk from his shoes with his army handkerchief. Then from outside the hall came the deep snort of a heavy motor vehicle. The band had come to the end of the quickstep and Catermole sauntered back to the others leaving the stringy landgirl to stagger back to her friends. ‘She was real small,’ mentioned Albie, who appreciated other small people.

  ‘She’s a wet-nurse to the pigs,’ said Catermole coarsely. The remark went beyond either Albie or Ballimach. Gilman made a face. In the break between dances, Mr Penningford, the bandleader, dabbed his brow with a red handkerchief, keeping it fixed across his forehead for a moment, an action which gave him the appearance of a wounded man. There came a further cough of the vehicle outside. It stopped and voices sounded. The soldiers looked expectantly towards the blackout blanket. It flurried and in came a confused-looking bus driver, his cap with a grim off-white crown hanging crookedly over his sparse ears, dead cigarette wedged in his mouth.

  ‘How far be it to Newton Abbot?’ he demanded of all present. He looked about him like a sparrow. There were random answers, and rudery from the landgirls who were getting drunk. They collapsed against each other in giggles. ‘It’s twenty-three miles,’ said the vicar with certainty. He pointed dramatically like an evangelist in the direction of Newton Abbot.

  ‘Gor, never make it,’ sighed the man. ‘The old bus won’t get up the ’ills. She ought to ’ave been scrap years ago.’

  ‘Can’t help you, I’m afraid,’ said Sissons positively, thinking that they might be asked to go out into the inclement night and push the vehicle. Voices came from outside. Loud and demanding female voices. Gilman glanced at Catermole. ‘Who are your passengers?’ inquired the vicar benevolently. ‘Perhaps we can accommodate them or be of some help.’

  The man removed the defunct cigarette from his tight lips and regarded it quizzically as if wondering where the rest of it had gone. ‘Ladies,’ he said finally, having thought over the word. ‘Ladies from Plymouth, reverend. Going to the Yankees’ dance at Newton Abbot. Now they ain’t goin’ to be getting there.’

  Sissons said brightly: ‘What a shame. Never mind, bring them in here. We’re having quite a jolly time and I think we could make room for a few extra ladies. Might brisk up the dancing a bit. Yes, tell them to come in.’

  It appeared that the driver was going to protest. Then, apparently realizing some advantage in the situation, he smiled a cracked smile, replaced the dead butt and nodded: ‘That’s very Christian of you, vicar,’ he said.

  Sissons laughed. ‘Right you are,’ he said.

  ‘Right,’ agreed the man sagely. ‘I’ll send them in, these ladies. Then I’ll go empty up the hill and turn the bus around. It’ll be pointing downwards then, when they want to go back to Plymouth. If they want to …’

  He turned and sauntered back towards the blanket-covered door. As he did so the band stumbled into another quickstep and the bus driver did a few deft and jolly steps with an imaginary partner as he went. The vicar approved of this good nature and said, aslant, to Gilman who was standing close by: ‘Very good chap. Indomitable, that sort, don’t you think?’

  Catermole, who thought Sissons was addressing him, became aghast at the word indomitable. He glanced at Gilman like a boy might look towards his father. Gilman nodded towards the vicar. ‘Indomitable,’ he agreed. ‘That sort.’

  Taking a consoling swig of his beer Catermole confirmed: ‘Indomitable.’ He turned in disgust towards the bar. ‘Another of them bloody Churchill words,’ he muttered. ‘Every bugger is walking around saying words like that these days. Just as if they’ll win the bleeding war.’

  The vicar jollily moved off. Gilman was saying: ‘Churchill’s got a lot to answer for,’ when the blackout blanket wobbled like a fat dancer and was pushed away violently by a painted woman with her hair dyed fiery red; great mouth and black stockings. Behind her came another, blonde, daubed with rouge and powder, bandy as a barrel.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he breathed to Catermole and the Americans. ‘It’s a whores’ outing.’

  It was exactly that. A dozen of them came through the curtain, each one making an entrance as though on a stage. A black-haired mystery woman with a twitching eyelid, a curly blonde with a massive nose, a short vicious-looking matron, a rancid-looking girl of about seventeen in a red dress powdered with cigarette ash and a funny buxom lady who lifted her skirt above her swollen knees and performed a brief hornpipe just inside the door. Others followed, thin women, swollen women, women with mouths like caves, skin like leather.

  ‘Welcome,’ whispered Sissons, whose expression had disintegrated a fraction more with each entry. He was trembling with confusion. ‘Wilcoombe to Welcome.’

  His mistake caused great hilarity among the jaunty ladies. The bus driver poked his small wicked face around the curtain and called: ‘That be the lot, vicar,’ in the manner of a man who had completed a delivery. ‘Now you just be careful.’

  The prostitutes plunged into a rude hilarity at this. The flabby blonde woman had no roof to her mouth and brayed like a donkey. ‘Cheeky little sod,’ said the one who had done a dance with her bulging knees. ‘I’ll give him a kick up the jacksie when he comes back.’ She pushed imperiously towards the bar. ‘I s’pose we’ll have to buy our own bloody drinks,’ she said.

  The landgirl with the pink ribbon stood transfixed behind the counter, like a doll prize in a shooting gallery. Suddenly the woman from Plymouth was upon her, demanding scotch. The other landgirls had watched with mute amazement and now shifted protectively towards each other like threatened virgins.

  No one but the recently arrived whores made any movement, except the ogling band which continued to play, now even more raggedly, Mr Penningford looking beyond his ear to see what was happening. Albie and Ballimach, shuffling sideways, had almost hidden themselves behind Gilman and Catermole. The British soldiers stood transfixed while the Americans peered apprehensively around their allies’ khaki shoulders.

  They were not long concealed. ‘Ooooooh … Yanks!’ squeaked the yellow seventeen-year-old. She brushed an avalanche of ash from her front and rushed at Albie Primrose. He tried to hurry behind Ballimach, who was behind Catermole. But the ravaged red-head who had entered first now made a target of the fat American. Catermole felt the GI tremble as she came forward. ‘Come on, dearie,’ she bawled. ‘Buy me a drink and I promise you a good one.’

  Albie and Ballimach were forcibly pulled into the open, the drinks ordered through the crowd of harlots, and the dollars, nervously produced but quickly grabbed, were swept across the counter. They flung the first consignment of spirits down their throats, coughed and heaved, lit cigarettes and looked around for prey. Under loud threats from the leader of the pack the band had
begun to play a foxtrot and Albie Primrose and Ballimach found themselves thrust on to the chalk-strewn floor in the formidable arms of the two women who had selected them.

  Gilman, believing there was a threat of a scene if he did not dance with the black-rooted blonde, reluctantly took her heavy hand and projecting shoulder blade and tottered on to the floor. She felt adhesive under her blouse. Catermole, shrinking like a boy, was engulfed by the curly blonde with the gash for a mouth. The Reverend Sissons remained in a corner surveying the scene with an expression of fear. Doey Bidgood stood, cider glass at his chest, by the band. ‘Oi reckon these be women of ill repute, vicar,’ he announced loudly and with relish. His rural eyes rolled. ‘Fornicators.’

  ‘I’m certain it will be all right as long as they behave,’ muttered Sissons inadequately. He wondered if he ought to call Police Constable Lethbridge and, as he wondered, so his apprehension increased with an outburst of cat-calling from the landgirls sitting on the cross-wall. They had banded together, like a clutch of hens on a roost, but the effrontery of the invasion and further beer had given them a rude anger.

  Ballimach glanced nervously in that direction as he danced with the whore who had selected him. ‘Listen, chuck,’ she urged in his hair-hung ear, ‘for five dollars we can go outside and I’ll give you the best time you ever did have. Chuck, I’ll destroy you.’

  The big American blinked. ‘Destroy me?’ he questioned.

  ‘Blow you out in bubbles,’ she promised.

  Albie was similarly entwined with the apprentice. ‘Me, I’m fresher,’ she boasted. ‘See, I’m only seventeen. And I’ve got more go than any of these shagged out old cows.’ She nodded uncharitably at her sisters in sin. ‘Give us two dollars now and two after and you won’t have the strength to grumble, I promise you. I’ll make you feel like a real man.’

  ‘I am a real man,’ argued Albie plaintively; the memory of Ballimach calling him Pinocchio returned even at this dire moment.