A Spell of Swallows

by Sarah Harrison

  She finished her cigarette, stubbed it out in the soil at the edge of the vegetable border, pinched the end and put it in her pocket. The waistband of her skirt sagged. She was burning up.

  On the way home she had to pass the Clays’ cottage and it seemed the very least she could do, as well as providing some retrospective justification for her outing, to stop and enquire about Susan.

  Edith said her daughter was quite recovered, thank you.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll see her tomorrow, then?’

  ‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’

  Vivien detected something prickly in the other woman’s manner. ‘I do hope so. Mr Mariner would miss her these days.’

  ‘I dare say.’

  ‘He thinks the world of her.’

  ‘Does he.’

  This was not a question but Vivien chose to treat it as one. ‘Yes—you might not think it but they get on like a house on fire.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’ Edith’s face gave nothing away.

  Seeing that she was obviously not going to be invited in, Vivien said goodbye and left. Even in her present, distracted frame of mind she thought it odd that no mention or apology had been made concerning the morning’s ‘accident’.

  Ashe called in at the Waggoner’s two or three times a week. He was a moderate drinker and no great talker; his reasons for being there had less to do with the Hogg’s ale than with being seen as a regular, which conferred a certain modest status. He always sat at the left-hand end of the bar so it was the good side of his face that was on show. Matters were discussed, in the cryptic, codified manner of the village, in front of him, even if without his direct involvement. If he wished to contribute anything he could, but this was rarely the case. His habitual silence lent a certain weight to whatever he might choose to say. The other patrons knew John Ashe didn’t speak lightly, so they paid attention.

  This evening, talk was of the harvest. The weather looked set to hold for another week or so, but with manpower reduced the work was slow. Ted Clay had already said he could spare his lad for a few days if need be.

  ‘But not your Susan, eh?’ joshed one of the others.

  Clay looked embarrassed. ‘She shouldn’t’ve been there.’

  ‘Right opposite the vicarage though, weren’t it?’ said someone else. ‘She couldn’t hardly not see.’

  ‘Poor old vicar!’ There followed a good deal of unmalicious merriment at Clay’s expense, and his face reddened.

  ‘Give over . . . Anyway he owes us, he gets a lot of work out of our girl, and for no pay, neither.’

  ‘He paid good and proper this time!’ It was no good, they liked nothing better than a spot of genial bear-baiting and Ted Clay—who along with his missus was apt to be a bit self-righteous—was the perfect subject.

  Ashe waited till the laughter had died down, then said:

  ‘He gets a lot else out of her, too.’

  He spoke just loud enough to be heard, but not quite loud enough for them to be certain what they’d heard. They looked his way, their faces still wearing the tail-end of their laughter. Except for Clay’s, which was red and angry-looking.

  Someone asked, ‘What’s that, Ashe?’

  He sipped his beer slowly, comfortably, as if it had been nothing, the most casual comment.

  ‘What did you say?’ This time it was Clay.

  He wasn’t going to repeat it. ‘About the vicar—he likes your Susan.’

  ‘She’s a worker, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘She is . . .’ Ashe took another sip. ‘And she’s not a girl any more, either.’ At once, before Clay could pick him up on this, he went on: ‘You’re right, she’s a young woman doing a day’s work.’

  In the past few minutes the atmosphere had shifted from warm jocularity to the chilly beginnings of unease. Now it shifted back slightly towards more comfortable territory. To signal he had nothing else to say, Ashe pushed his glass forward.

  ‘I’ll have the other half if I may.’

  The conversation became, without him, general once again. Ten minutes later he got up to leave. One or two of the patrons wished him good night. Ted Clay met him by the door.

  ‘John Ashe—can I have a word?’

  He stopped. Waited.

  ‘You work up at the vicarage. Live up there these days. You know what goes on.’

  ‘I mind my own business.’

  ‘Our Susan—she’s all right up there?’

  Ashe shrugged. ‘More than welcome, I’d say.’

  Clay’s eyes narrowed. ‘Only—you saying she’s a woman. She’s not, is she? Not up here.’ He tapped his temple. ‘She knows nothing.’

  ‘You have to be careful,’ allowed Ashe.

  ‘We are, always have been.’

  Ashe waited. The other man’s mood, a combustible mixture of suspicion, anxiety and battened-down anger, swirled round them.

  ‘As I say,’ said Clay. ‘You’re up there, you’ll keep an eye on her.’

  It was in his voice, that he wasn’t accustomed to ask favours and could scarcely bear to do so now.

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said Ashe. ‘Good night.’

  Calmly, he stepped outside. The days were beginning to draw in; it was very nearly dark.

  Not much time to go.

  MESOPOTAMIA

  Jarvis wasn’t in dock for long. The brave (and the not so brave) boys of the Relief Force are on the move. Rumours about Kut have been flying—how they’ve only got rations for another five days (that was three weeks ago, but never mind), how rats for the pot are changing hands at inflated prices, how they’re making tea out of stable straw, and blokes are shooting themselves in the leg at the rate of a dozen a day—though why they should do that when they’re stuck there anyway is a bit of a mystery. It’s in our interests to keep the stories going; makes us realise that a) there are worse places than Basra and b) we’re going to be the heroes of the hour, the saviours of Kut. In fact Kut takes on a sort of mythical significance, almost like Baghdad, except even we can’t fool ourselves.

  Reinforcements have been arriving thick and fast and completely unprepared, the poor bastards, from India, from Egypt, from France, straight from England, God help us. As per usual it’s taken them bloody nearly as long to disembark in Basra as it has to get there in the first place, As soon as they’re on dry land they’re off, with no idea what they’re up against, and I’m not talking about the Turks.

  The brass have decreed that all the troops move up overland, so they can use the river boats for supplies and ammunition. As few animals as possible because of lack of forage. Just a few officers’ horses and so on. A couple of aeroplanes are buzzing back and forth doing recces and making maps, so we’re told. Maps? Of what? If you see anything resembling a natural feature round here it’s a topic of conversation all day. We’re marching with a company of Norsets—Norfolks and Dorsets, fresh out of basic training on the Wiltshire downs. It’s tricky deciding how much to tell them: nothing at all and let them find out the hard way, or the full SP and risk them getting shot for desertion first time out.

  Our company arrives when it’s all over bar the shouting at Sheikh Sa’ad. It’s like Ctesiphon all over again.

  The Indians take it particularly hard; they seem to feel betrayed. The very least they expected was decent British organisation and here they are, wounded in the service of the Empire, lying in the mud and their own filth waiting for help to arrive. Hoping it does; wondering if it ever will.

  I take myself for a little walk behind the lines, out of curiosity. It’s a facer, I don’t mind admitting. I’m shaken. There’s hundreds of the Sikh troops lying back here and they don’t know what hit them. A week or so ago they looked bloody marvellous, so tall and dignified, just their whiskers were enough to scare the living daylights out of you. I was glad they were on our side. Now they’re behaving like—no other word for it—like beggars. Surely they can see I’m not worth bothering with, but there’s men pawing me and catching at my legs, and wa
iling and whining, ‘Water, Sahib! Sahib, blanket! Help me, Sahib, help me!’ For the first time I feel angry. Angry with them for losing their pride and even angrier with the generals who reduced them to this.

  One of the Sikhs is just lying there on his side. He’s got a nasty shoulder wound, but his eyes are open. His arms are out in front of him, wrists crossed, and his hands are beautiful, with smooth skin, long fingers and filbert nails; the palms are like that old, stained ivory you see on cigarette holders. He’s absolutely still, which reminds me of how sick animals just close down and retreat inside themselves, waiting for the end.

  Because he’s the one not making a fuss I crouch down next to him for a moment. His lips move, I think he’s praying.

  ‘You’ll be all right, squire,’ I say. ‘They’ll get here soon.’

  He rolls his eyes in my direction. They’re almost black, with whites the colour of buttermilk.

  ‘Why do we need it?’ he whispers. ‘This Satan-like land?’

  Good question, and I’ve got no answer for him.

  We’re ten miles closer to Kut at a cost of four thousand men. And the weather’s terrible. If we don’t get there in the next few weeks we’ll have drowned before they’ve eaten their last rat, if they haven’t done so already. So, naturally, we hang about.

  Some bright spark’s written something called ‘The Cynical Alphabet’, that’s doing the rounds. Just leafing through . . . Take ‘W’:

  W stands for the wonder and pain

  With which we regard our infirm and insane

  Old aged generals who run this campaign

  We are waging in Mesopotamia.

  Give that man a medal.

  It’s a funny thing: that Sikh can ask the real question, and use a poetic turn of phrase while he’s about it—‘Satan-like’ land, I like that. Whereas Tommy, simple soul that he is, trusts his superiors and grouses about the weather and the food. Safer, I suppose. Here it is, under ‘R’:

  R are the rations ‘by order’ we get,

  Though no one I know has sampled them yet -

  And I don’t think we will, so it’s best to forget

  That they’re somewhere in Mesopotamia.

  Jarvis thinks that verse is funny, but not the one about the generals. Not exactly on his high horse, sort of more in sorrow than in anger.

  ‘Would you want their job, Ashe? All those difficult decisions, that terrible responsibility?’

  ‘Probably not, sir.’

  ‘Somebody has to make the decisions and carry the can,’ he goes on as if I hadn’t spoken, so this time, I don’t.

  He says: ‘Let’s not forget it’s the politicians who put us here in the first place. The chiefs of staff are answerable to them. We’re at the end of the line.’

  ‘That’s true, sir.’

  Notice how he says ‘Let’s not’. Us. It’s incredible how he’s managed to put what happened right out of his mind, and talk to me as if we’re chums, brothers-in-arms or something. It appears I overestimated Jarvis. I don’t mind him being a coward, nobody in their right mind wants to meet a sticky one. What gives me the creeps is him never mentioning it again, hoping if he doesn’t that it’ll all go away. And I don’t mean thanks, fuck thanks! I mean shame. A bit of good old dishonest, slimy crawling and bartering. I couldn’t have promised anything but who knows? It might have paid off.

  As it is, the more he takes this all-water-under-the-bridge, least-said-soonest-mended attitude, the more carefully I tend my little nugget of unsavoury knowledge.

  He’s doing pretty well at the moment: keeping the men’s spirits up, his speciality. We’ve had a couple of bashes at Kut, both pretty inconclusive, and the conditions are worsening by the day. It’s bally freezing at night, rains like you wouldn’t believe. The blokes from France say they feel quite at home, except there’s no proper trenches and dugouts here. Just the odd nullah and drainage dyke and whatever foxholes we can scratch out in the mud. Though that’s like building sandcastles as the tide comes in. One night the hospital tents just filled up with water, a couple of the Indian sepoys and myself had to rally round, baling out, shifting the wounded and collecting any old thing to use as ballast; dead men, even. You couldn’t move the tents, there was nowhere to move them to. The Indian troops are a study. Those wounded men lying in the mud waiting for help to come were about as stoical as dishrags. But they’re brave as lions going into battle. And the way the sepoys look after their officers is way beyond the call of duty. It makes my humble efforts look quite paltry. One chap was out in no man’s land with one of his officers—a subaltern straight out of boarding school—for more than twelve hours, patching him up, protecting him, all this under fire. Eventually he manages to carry him on his own back to the hospital tent. What makes them do it? Not power, not fear . . . It must be devotion. Eerie, in my opinion. Lieutenant Morrish copped it at Sheikh Sa’ad and as far as I’m concerned it’s one less to worry about.

  We keep banging away at Kut like a ram at a wall, except we’re nowhere near the walls yet. Every yard has to be fought for across open, featureless desert—correction, quagmire—giving the Turkish machine gunners plenty of time to get a bead on us, so the casualties are terrible.

  Last night the rain was torrential. The river overflowed and the camp’s under water. Every single trench and defile is full. When I come out at daybreak to try and make breakfast there’s a bloke lying outside without a mark on him, his face in a puddle, stone dead. And he’s just one of hundreds. Hardly a shot fired overnight but it hasn’t been possible to do the usual tidying-up operation and these chaps have just died of exposure.

  The rain slackens off while we have tea and porridge, but it’s like eating in a churchyard after the gravediggers have been. I’ve forgotten what it feels like to be dry, let alone warm. Not long ago we were dying of heat. Now we’re dying of cold. ‘Satan-like land’ is right.

  It turns out our side’s asked for a truce to collect the wounded and bury the dead. I’ve developed some respect for the Turks, but you wouldn’t expect them to say ‘Yes, carry on’ just like that, even if there are as many of them as there are of us out there. They’re going to think about it, make us sweat for a while.

  Our white flag goes up while we wait, and right away the Arabs are out there in no man’s land doing what they do best—looting, stealing, finishing off anyone lucky enough to have survived the night. No way of telling if the bastards are enlisted men or just jackals, but it’s too much for some of our men, who charge out there to see them off. Weaponless (the white flag’s up and you have to play fair), so the inevitable happens—they get attacked and robbed, too. It’s threatening to turn into a full-scale incident when a handful of Turkish generals comes out and calls off the Buddhoos.

  The rest of the day we spend bringing in the bodies. To protect themselves the Buddhoos have used a different method of keeping their victims quiet: a handful of wet sand stuffed into the mouth, suffocating the poor buggers. It’s not even quick, one chap is still gagging and struggling, but even though we get a lot of muck out of his mouth he’s already swallowed too much, and he’s shy half his stomach, so he’s a goner.

  On one of our trips back to the hospital area I see Jarvis, wandering up and down the lines, taking names and numbers of the casualties. Not a cheerful task but even allowing for that he’s not looking good, white as a sheet and sweating.

  ‘All right sir?’

  ‘Not too jolly,’ he tells me. ‘Think I’ve got another dose of the tummy bug.’

  ‘You want sugar for that. Sweet tea.’

  He smiles but it’s a bit ghostly. ‘You sound like my mother.’

  It strikes me as quite funny that I, of all people, should sound like anyone’s mother.

  ‘I’ll see what I can do,’ I say, because that’s what he likes to hear. I know what ails him and it’s no tummy bug. He’s in a funk. Absolutely fucking terrified. Today’s goings-on between the lines have reminded him of lying there, waiting for the knife. Ve
ry unpleasant I know, because I was there too. That’s why he’s never going to mention it.

  I’m worn out. The sun’s dropping along with the temperature. There’s the snap! snap! of rifle fire from the wadi. Business as usual.

  I can still hear his teeth chattering.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Felicity Delamayne, casting a gimlet eye over the small crowd assembled in the Bridgford bookshop, felt compelled to ask after Vivien.

  ‘She’s not here,’ Saxon appeared somewhat tense, which she supposed was only natural in the circumstances, but still . . .

  ‘I must say I’m rather surprised.’

  ‘She had things to do.’

  ‘Well, if it comes to that—’ Felicity bridled slightly—‘so do we all, but this is an important event.’

  ‘I don’t know that I’d go that far.’

  ‘We don’t have so many distinguished poets around here that we can afford to neglect the one we do have. I’d have thought Vivien would have put everything else aside to attendi’

  Saxon’s eyelids snapped irritably. ‘She reads all my work, you know. She doesn’t need to come and sit in a bookshop to hear me read it out loud.’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Now if you’ll excuse me I need to collect my thoughts.’

  ‘Of course, I mustn’t keep you.’

  There were not many occasions when Felicity regretted being outspoken, but this was one of them. The vicar, poor fellow, was facing a nerve-racking public performance. She fervently hoped her ill-chosen remarks hadn’t shaken his confidence; especially as they’d arisen not from censure, but anxiety. She had hoped to see Vivien here, perhaps invite her to Eaden Place again for another woman-to-woman chat. If, in her self-confessedly ‘restless’ state the girl was not here, then it followed that without the car (which Saxon had driven himself—it was parked outside) she was almost certainly at home; along with the man Ashe, who was living at the vicarage these days. This was incomprehensible to Felicity, who, though it was true she would have employed him herself like a shot, wouldn’t have wanted him sleeping under the same roof. He wasn’t exactly sly; slyness required a carefully constructed self-ingratiation. She could detect no such calculation in Ashe; in fact she could detect nothing at all. He was a mystery, and that of course was fascinating . . .