The Magic Army

by Leslie Thomas

  Horace stared at him in the darkness as though trying to detect some secret in his face. ‘You say the same to the bishop as you say if they catch you and shoot you up agin a wall for a spy, I s’pose,’ he answered logically. ‘What’s a bit of poachin’ alongside spyin’, if you don’t mind me askin’?’

  The clergyman acknowledged the point with a grunt. They continued to move along the low darkness of the lane. Although he had spent ten years in the region Sissons quickly found himself confused, then lost. Eventually they crossed a sloping field and went through a lofty wood, which he recognized as being on the fringe of Barrington’s farm. They were approaching Telcoombe Magna from the north-west.

  ‘There be the wire, just there, see,’ said Horace quietly but not whispering. ‘The bottom strand is cut just by that hawthorn. I know that ’cause I cut it.’

  ‘What about the patrols?’ asked Sissons.

  ‘They’re along two or three hours a’tween them,’ assured Horace. ‘And you can hear they comin’ a mile away. They smoke and you can see the red ends. They’re always talking and swearin’ though they don’t seem to have as many swear-words as us. I’m always on the other side of the hill afore they get anywhere near. Nobody’s ever seen the wire’s been cut either. They be a bit dopey like that, these Yanks.’

  They advanced on the wire, then, as if to give the lie to Horace’s confidence, a line of figures, irregular and dark, abruptly appeared on the near skyline and began moving downhill along the perimeter. There were no cigarettes and little noise. The poacher and the vicar lay flat against the dew-damp grass and waited until the soldiers had passed only a dozen yards ahead.

  ‘So much for your knowledge,’ said Sissons bitterly.

  ‘’Twas all right. Maybe they be tightenin’ things up. But they be gone now. They won’t be back for a couple of hours, any road.’

  ‘We could easily have been caught,’ grumbled Sissons. His knees and his hands were wet and all four were shaking.

  ‘We was outside the wire,’ pointed out Horace. ‘If they’d asked we could ha’ said we was ’aving a quiet prayer loike.’

  The clergyman glared at him in the dimness. He stemmed his retort and asked tersely: ‘How long before we can go on?’

  ‘Better give ’em five minutes,’ Horace assessed casually. He sat back against the bole of a tree. Sissons squatted moodily in the shadow. ‘Many a night oi spent out like this, reverend,’ said the poacher slowly after a while. ‘Just sittin’, waitin’ for some trade, a li’l ol’ rabbit or a long hare.’ His voice seemed to drift in the dark.

  ‘Don’t expect me to approve of your poaching, Horace,’ said Sissons, though not unkindly.

  ‘Now oi wouldn’t that,’ replied Horace sportingly. His voice quietened again. ‘But ’tis strange sittin’ by yourself at night, when you can’t tell the difference between a field and the sky. Not sometimes anyway. Then you get nights with good stars and the moon. They used to call the moon the parish lantern in Devon in the old days, vicar, you know, when my ol’ dad was a boy.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve heard it.’

  ‘Just sittin’ ’ere at night sometimes I wonder maybe what I might ha’ done. Loike, maybe, if I been learned, it could be that I might be loike one o’ they generals, or a reverend same as you. But here I be catching rabbits and pheasants for trade. ’Tis a funny twist is life.’

  Sissons was wondering if his wife had fallen off the chair yet. Horace seemed to read the thought. ‘Mind, I got a lot to be thankful for. Not bein’ fit for the army, so I could stay at ’ome, and my missus, fat as a sow though she be, she’s a good old maid.’

  The vicar put his face close to his watch. It was a quarter to ten. ‘Why wouldn’t they have you in the army?’ he asked.

  ‘Legs,’ answered Horace mysteriously. ‘They said the legs wasn’t no good. I weren’t goin’ to argue, so I went ’ome again.’ He added: ‘They didn’t like my eye either.’ As though he did not wish to pursue the subject, he stood and said, ‘We better be goin’ on.’

  He stood easily, Sissons stiffly, and they took up their curious indian file again and moved ahead. They were within two yards of the wire before Sissons saw it.

  ‘In by the back door.’ Horace gave a subdued guffaw. He went directly to one section and efficiently pulled the bottom two strands apart. A gap about ten inches high was exposed under the coil. ‘Right, vicar,’ said the poacher, holding the next strand up politely. ‘Under you go.’

  ‘Under there?’ muttered Sissons doubtfully. ‘I doubt if I can.’

  ‘Either that or we dig a burrow,’ smirked Horace. ‘Can’t cut any more wire. They Yanks b’aint that mazed.’ He lifted the strand to its tightest extent and Sissons, flat on his stomach, prepared to crawl under.

  ‘There aren’t any mines here, are there?’ he said.

  ‘Not that ’as ever bothered me,’ said Horace ambiguously.

  ‘I hope not. Here goes.’ Sissons shuffled and scraped forward before rolling quite athletically beneath the wire and out on the forbidden side. He cleared the coils and remained at a crouch.

  Horace squirmed under like a ferret. ‘That wadn’t too bad, vicar,’ he said, grinning encouragement. ‘You b’aint so soft as you look sometimes.’

  Sissons grunted and said: ‘Let’s get a move on.’

  Horace led the way across open country now, fields that Sissons recognized, down towards a group of farm buildings. ‘We ha’ got to get along in the ditch now, boy,’ said Horace. ‘They got one o’ they bazooka guns in the yard there and they be just as loikly to shoot it at us. They be jumpy as bloody frogs. Come along a ’ere.’

  His heart thundering against his siren suit, Sissons dropped obediently into the deep Devon ditch and followed the poacher. It was wet, thick and smeary. The mud soaked through the baggy knees of the trousers, smothered his hands. For the first time his nerve began to seep away. Horace froze like an animal just ahead and Sissons pushing forward felt the top of his head collide with the man’s bony backside. Someone was emptying a bucket into the ditch ahead. The smell of human sewage filled the enclosed space. The water from the bucket drifted down the ditch running first between the knees of Horace and then those of the vicar.

  ‘I emptied the honeybucket!’ shouted an American voice. ‘Nobody else would.’

  ‘Wow!’ another exclaimed. ‘Now maybe I can have a clean shit.’

  The two Englishmen remained stiff and still in the stench of the ditch. After several minutes Horace eased his head above ground level, only to see the American soldier astride the honeybucket less than two yards away. The GI began to sing idly:

  ‘The stars at night

  Are big and bright,

  Deep in the heart of Texas.’

  Sissons winced as he lay among the deposit of excreta. Eventually the man was heard to move and the bucket clanked metallically. ‘Georgie,’ he called, ‘I can’t wipe my ass. Pass over the Stars and Stripes, will you? You’ve read it all by now, surely.’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ answered another voice amiably. ‘But don’t put your ass on Yvonne De Carlo. I’m sleeping with her tonight.’

  Cramp and the nausea caused by the smell were causing Sissons double agony. He knew he would have to move soon. God, if they got up now they’d probably be shot without anyone thinking twice. He wondered how much damage a bazooka did. To his great relief he heard the soldier move. Then, new horror, as another deluge of urine and turds was flung and descended between him and Horace, trickling only inches in front of his nose. The American soldier, clanking the bucket, went away still singing ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas’. Sissons gagged in the stench.

  Horace moved forward as soon as prudence allowed. Fifty yards of crawling and he emerged from the defile and crawled warily to the shelter of a hawthorn hedge. ‘’Ow be you, vicar?’ he whispered. He did not appear concerned.

  ‘Covered in filth,’ said Sissons through clenched teeth.

  ‘Makes your ’air grow nice, they say,’ replied Ho
race.

  He turned away and began to go downhill, under the shadow of the hedge, until they reached the wall on the eastern end of the church. Beyond was the area of the graveyard where the village victims of the Black Death, almost the entire population, were buried in a mass grave.

  ‘There be your church,’ announced Horace as if the vicar might be in doubt. ‘Now, can oi be havin’ my ten bob?’

  ‘God,’ breathed the vicar, ‘can’t you wait until we get back?’

  ‘I only said I was goin’ to bring you ’ere,’ pointed out the poacher. ‘For myself, oi’ll be going along now. It may be that you mayn’t get back at all, or it may be months afore they let you out. I’d be glad of the favour now.’

  From his sodden pocket, Sissons pulled a wet ten shilling note. ‘Take it,’ he said.

  ‘I was,’ replied Horace. He looked craftily around, spying his retreat. ‘Don’t be forgettin’, they got a sentry post around the front.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Sissons.

  ‘Right. ’Tis away for me, then. Good luck, vicar. ’As been a pleasure, ’t’as.’

  With that he was gone like a shade merging with darkness. Sissons felt so alone, and so immediately apprehensive, that he almost called him back. He crouched, half lay, against the churchyard wall and gradually levered himself to his feet until he could look over the creepered coping.

  At first it seemed that all was silent and dark. Then he noticed streaks of light coming from the windows at the western end of the church, low, shining from below badly fitted screens or curtains. His nose travelled along the rough stone, ivy and damp lichen of the wall. As he reached the limit of the movement the organ sounded, a blunt blast from within the building. Sissons felt his stomach clench and his anger ignite. The tune bellowed out, a blatant, jumping jazz tune. His face tightened.

  Then the door opened and a passage of yellow light ran out. Three Americans, drunk as apes, stumbled along the ragged gravestones. He watched as one leap-frogged over a tottering cross. Another began to urinate, a silver bow in the moonlight, against an ancient angel.

  He was tempted to leap the wall and frighten the skins from them, but he could hear the metallic touches of their weapons. He desisted. One of the men went back and closed the church door with his foot. They turned and rolled away, talking and sniggering, towards the lychgate at the front.

  Sissons scraped himself up on to the wall and dropped noisily into the churchyard. Then, with a growing anger overcoming his fear, he advanced on the door of his ancient church.

  Still fixed to the outer door was the notice issued by the bishop appealing for the protection of the churches and the burial grounds. Someone had appended a Star of David in thick ink or boot polish. He opened the door by the old iron handle, once more feeling it familiarly warming to his hand. The organ had temporarily stopped its raucous progress but as he entered the porch, as if the player were awaiting him, it struck up yet another frantic, fanatic fanfare. Sissons was staring at what had been the inner door of the church. Once it had been covered with green baize, smooth as a billiard table, and upon it the church notices used to be pinned.

  Now it had been carved, shaped, sawn, into two swinging flaps, tops and bottoms missing, like the doors of a western saloon. Across both halves in rough and gaudy paint were the words ‘Diamond Lil’s’. From the spot where he had been abruptly brought to a halt by this second intimation of sacrilege, Sissons could only see the upper part of the nave over the swing-doors. Lights were burning, church lights augmented by large arcs slung on wires, but even the illumination of these was diffused by a loitering layer of smoke. Voices came too, mostly in conversation but with outbursts of laughter and cursing. Determinedly he took another pace.

  What he saw over the door caused his whole being to boil. He was not a man totally convinced by his calling, but he felt deeply for the church which was, and had been for centuries, the very focal point and symbol of the village, its life and its uncomplicated faith. Now, his face hot, his eyes burning with astonishment and anger, he saw what the Americans had done.

  Pews were on end, stacked against the precious windows and the family memorial tablets on the wall; others were arranged in squares with tables at the centres. Men were sitting, sprawling, sleeping with their boots on, drinking from tins which they pitched, as he watched, into the raised pulpit or the medieval font. The exceptionally fine brass lectern, in the shape of an eagle, was, not inappropriately, hung with the Stars and Stripes. The organ was pounding, and through the mist from Camels and Lucky Strike he could see two khaki figures on the organ stool pounding like marionettes as they thumped out their banal melody. From there his eyes went to the altar, even for him, a doubter, the symbol and centrepiece of this place. He could hardly focus it through the smoke. An inch at a time, as though walking into a dream, he pushed the swing doors open and walked down the aisle.

  At first the men were so preoccupied with their recreation that no one saw him. There were a dozen poker schools operating and a group of recumbent men were facing, in an attitude of worship, the altar and the cross of Jesus. They were playing dice. They rolled the bones up the marble chancel shouting and cursing about their fortunes. Beneath his feet as he slowly walked there was a thick carpet of cigarette and cigar butts. In the side chapel dedicated to St Mary Magdelene he saw two men playing table tennis; the communion rail had become a bar with a busy barman passing over tins of beer and Coca Cola. The cans, many of which had missed the receptacles provided by the pulpit and the font, were littering the floor. The place was heavy with a dozen smells. He had never known it so warm.

  He was three-quarters of the way down the aisle, the path covered by the brides and the carried dead of Telcoombe Magna for many generations, and had reached the point where the choir normally halted and bowed to the cross, when a GI, sitting with three kings in his hand, glanced up from the poker table, with its hundred-dollar kitty, and saw the gaunt, blackclothed, angry and avenging figure creeping forward. ‘Gee, guys,’ he breathed. ‘We got a fucking ghost.’

  The words were enough for Sissons. He had reached a point where his vision took in the altar and he saw that the cross had been removed (he had prudently taken the candlesticks himself but had thought that no one, if only through superstition, would take the cross) and that the altar table had become the base for a line of coffee urns and soft-drink containers, with a heated, glass-fronted receptacle for hot dogs at one end and a vat fronted with the words ‘Miss Tutti-Fruiti Ice Cream’ at the other. The sight of this abomination was enough, but the blasphemy of the poker player triggered off a violence, a storm of fury, a breaking vengeance, such as few of them had ever seen.

  Sissons rushed, shouting, screaming, at the immediate poker school, the one to which the GI who had spotted him belonged. The men turned and their faces altered. Their hands made to grab the money from the table and clutching this and their cards, they tried to get out of the way. But Sissons, bellowing the name of Jesus Christ, charged at them. From all parts of the church soldiers hurried, beer, table tennis bats, cigars in their hands. The organ players tumbled from their stool and hurried to look around the angels at the foot of the pulpit. Nothing could prevent Sissons’ headlong rush. Men who could escape climbed over pews with all the agility gained in battle training. Others fell backwards and the vengeful vicar lifted the card table and flung it at them. They managed to fend it away with their dollar-filled hands. He then picked up a small chair, one he recognized, even at this moment, as having come from the vestry, a gift from a tiny man called Mulcoombe who had used it to sit in the aisle during services because he could not otherwise see. Now he grasped Mulcoombe’s chair like a club and began to lay about the soldiers who were within range. They shouted and protested and flailed their hands ineffectually, like women. One podgy man, cornered by the junction of two pews, crossed himself repeatedly in the face of the Church of England man’s onslaught.

  Surprise and wrath were, however, the vicar’s only weapons
. He was abruptly grabbed from behind and then his legs were caught and he was boisterously hoisted head-first into the pit of his own pulpit. He crashed face-down on to a lining of refuse; beer tins, bottles and newspapers and tobacco ash. He sobbed with surprise, pain and frustration, aware that his clerical legs were wriggling above him, provoking an outcry of mirth from the Americans. His echoing protests and curses only added to the wild laughter. With some athleticism he managed to curl his trunk sideways so that his legs fell into the open entrance of the pulpit. He fell heavily on to his knees on the steps; his fury even more fierce. The howls of the soldier mob were sounding all around. His hand, still in the rubbish, came into contact with something odd and he realized he had grasped a French letter. With another thrust he stood upright, his face livid, blood under his nose and on his forehead.

  They went wild with delight as he reappeared in the pulpit like a jack-in-the-box. He spat at them and then, realizing he still held the condom, he threw it in the face of the man immediately underneath. The soldier held it and whooped as he whirled it around his head like a prize.

  Sissons ducked below the top level of his position and picked up two beer tins and a bottle. Standing up again he threw them directly at the Americans who retreated hurriedly before this more serious bombardment. He went down again for more ammunition, bringing up a handful of tins which he flung one after the other, shouting: ‘Swine! Heathen swine! This is a Church of God! Take that! And that! You uncivilized bastards!’

  Once again he found himself grasped from behind. This time the grip was assured and unbreakable. ‘Okay, okay,’ a voice said coolly, close to his ear. ‘You’ve had your fun.’

  ‘Fun! Fun!’ Sissons exploded. He tried to swivel but the man held him without effort. He forced him down the garbage-strewn steps of the pulpit and then eased him into a seat at the corner of one of the pews. Even in his agony he recognized it by the carving on its upright of an angel with a fishtail, like a mermaid.