Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles)

by Claire Rayner

  Above them, as they sat out in front of their tents round a camp fire which was carefully screened to the North so that no marksman from over the river could pick them out, the stars shone like steady lamps as they ate, and Lizah felt the size of the country about him with relief rather than the misery that he had felt last time he had contemplated it. The vast bowl of sky above him, for all its alien stars, was a beautiful sight and he lay on his back after he had cleaned his messcan of every last scrap of food and stared up at it and found himself half remembering, half dreaming as he let his weary gaze wander from glittering clusters to milky dusting and on to great twinkling southerly stars in the great indigo expanse.

  Millie, he thought after a while, with a deep sentimentality. Millie. And his eyes filled with tears as he looked at her face in his memory. It was a smiling welcoming face, and she held her hands out to him meltingly and her eyes were large and dark with desire and he was laughing at her, and teasing her, and she was getting even more amorous as she came towards him and then –

  And then he was awake suddenly as the voice above him ordered, ‘Attention!’ and he was scrambling to his feet with the rest of the men in his squad.

  ‘Right!’ A tall officer was standing there, just outside the circle of light from their fire so that he could see only his outline and not his face. ‘We are to charge over the river, in half an hour, and take Spion Kop. Those are the orders. Get your mess cleaned and get your kit on. At once –’

  ‘But, sir!’ Their corporal was a regular soldier, grizzled in army ways and knew to a nicety how far he could go. And also knew his responsibility to his platoon. ‘Sir, we’ve been on the line all day, since before dawn. First break we’ve had, this is, and –’

  ‘Are you querying orders, Corporal?’

  ‘No, sir. Just pointing out as there’s other platoons as has been behind the lines all day and is fresher and less likely to make mistakes sir, and you know how easy tired men do that, sir –’

  ‘You won’t make mistakes.’ The officer stepped forwards now and revealed himself to be a lieutenant and clearly a very new one; even after these long and dirty and effortful days in South Africa his uniform had the taint of newness about it. ‘I’m leading you, and no men I lead ever make mistakes, you hear me?’

  Lizah caught his breath sharply, and the officer threw a glance at him and both men stood very still.

  ‘I see,’ the lieutenant spoke first. ‘It’s you, is it, Harris? I might have guessed I’d draw at least one rotten apple in my barrel. Well, if that’s the way of it, so be it. You’ll still do as you’re told and you’ll fight to better effect than you did on the Dunottar Castle. If not, you’ll answer to me, you understand?’ He stood and stared sneeringly at him, clearly delighted with the sight of Lizah standing there in silence. ‘In fact, we might even make a hero out of you. A dead one, perhaps, but a bloody hero for all that. You understand?’

  Lizah said nothing, standing and staring at him with his chin pushed forwards as he bit hard on his tongue to prevent himself saying more than he should.

  ‘Answer me!’ Amberly snapped. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes,’ Lizah said at last, grinding it out as though it took an enormous effort, as indeed it did.

  ‘Yes, what?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He managed it. He managed not to attack the bastard, managed not to hit that sneering face right where it should be hit. He was no army man, Lizah Harris, but he had already learned something of the way this crazy private world operated, and one of its most basic rules was the sacrosanct nature of an officer’s person. To hit an officer, in temper, at a time of war, was probably a shooting offence. If he did as every atom of his nature was crying out to him to do and ground this hateful bastard’s face in the dry red earth at his feet, they’d find time, even in the middle of this stinking battle, to shoot him. And he’d managed to avoid that.

  ‘Right,’ Amberly said, in high good humour. ‘Half an hour, Corporal, and you are to be ready. The tent cleared, the fire out, and the squad on the ready to be part of the push over the river. We go over wading – hold your rifles and kit well out of the water – at the Drift. And then we take that bloody Kop of theirs. Be sharp about it!’ And he was gone into the darkness to rouse three other squads who were to be forced into unwilling heroism that night.

  33

  The water was cold. Blessedly wonderfully cold and even though he knew he was walking towards unimaginable horrors of gunfire and even, perhaps, hand to hand encounters with enraged Boers, Lizah was able to relish the sensation of water on his skin. Never mind that it reached him through the layers of heavy fabric and leather boots that were his uniform; it was cool and that was bliss.

  For a little while. Once they were over the Drift and had obeyed the whispered command to spread out and move as quietly as possible towards the shadow on the near horizon that was Spion Kop, his clothes felt heavy and rough and as they began to dry a little in the hot night air, they chafed agonizingly and he slowed down considerably as he tried to find ways to make himself more comfortable, if he possibly could.

  On each side of him he could feel rather than hear the presence of other men; a great many of them, he thought, and all as frightened as he was. He could smell the fear in the air; it prickled in his nose and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand up as it seeped into his very bones and made his legs shake beneath him, and he let himself fall to his knees and remained still, not thinking, not planning, just stopping.

  And after a while it seemed to him that he had managed to do a remarkable thing. He felt the rest of the men of his platoon move on ahead of him, and within a matter of minutes knew he was alone. The tide of the war had run on in front of him and left him stranded behind, like a crab on a shingle beach. There was no one to see him, or tell him what to do, or be aware of what he chose to do.

  For a little while he contemplated the pleasure of curling up and going to sleep, for God knew he was exhausted. But that road would lead to disaster; he’d wake in the morning to find himself stranded out here in the sight of every marksman in the Boer army. Back to his own lines then? That wouldn’t work either. If he came back without his platoon when no shot had been fired – for ahead of him there was only silent darkness and the shape of that damned Kop against the starlit sky – he would be branded a deserter on the field of battle and shot out of hand. So, it had to be something else – for he was not going to go forward where the Boers were, and worse still, where the rest of his platoon were. And then it hit him, like a sudden ray of purest light; he could, if he thought it out carefully, begin to make his complete escape.

  The railhead lay, he knew, to the east and the south of where he was at present. If he could move sideways, to his right, instead of ahead to where the platoon was about to storm the lower, southern slopes of Spion Kop, he could ease back into the lines in a section where no one would know him by sight, and somehow reach the trains. Reinforcements were still coming up from Durban, and clearly the trains had to go back; there might be a train waiting there that he could get on to and sleep his way back to Durban and a ship where a stowaway might be a practical chap who could take care of himself on a journey home to London and the cold and the fog for which his whole body yearned. Whatever happened there, however high his debts, however vindictive his ex-friends and now enemies, the Jack Long lot, it could only be heaven compared with this.

  He unhooked his pack from his back, and with fingers shaking slightly with excitement, began to pull out the necessities; the rest of the biltong and rusk and chocolate and bottles of water, all of which he managed to stow in the capacious pockets of his uniform. The rest he left there, lying in the dry stubby grass, and began to crawl, easily and slowly, his head well down, to his right.

  He had gone less than half-a-dozen yards when he returned; to leave his rifle would make it clear he had deserted. If anyone found the pack abandoned they would think little of it; a soldier jettisons what he must to be the most effect
ive fighter possible. But he never leaves his rifle, so whatever sort of burden it was, Lizah must take it with him. And so he did, and was not altogether unhappy to feel it bumping on his rear as he crawled steadily onwards. There was a certain comfort in having it, after all.

  He seemed to crawl for hours. It would have been heaven to stand up on his two legs like a man, and walk, but he dared not risk that. To have his whole figure outlined against the sky was to ask for trouble. He had to go like an animal on all fours, like a dog or a cat –

  – Or a lion or tiger or elephant, he found himself thinking absurdly. I’ve seen none of ’em here, not one, and everyone thought we would. Supposed to be like a bleedin’ zoo, it is, but the only animal here is me, crawling for hours on all fours –

  Suddenly, ahead of him, an automatic weapon chattered and then was silent, and at once other guns took up the chorus behind him, and he lifted his head gingerly to see flashes of light as rifles sent their bullets screaming into the night, and his heart jumped directly into his throat and then sank again. They were a hell of a lot closer than he had imagined and on the wrong side of him; and he hurled himself flat on his belly to try to think.

  While he had been sitting there in the darkness, planning to run away and then went crawling off to look for a train to Durban, the platoon and several others with it had also gone curving away eastwards, and he was now, heaven help him, in front of them. How it had happened, he couldn’t imagine. Some peculiarity of the way the land lay was to blame, he told himself feverishly, or perhaps he had been mistaken in his own sense of direction and he had gone due north instead of the way he had meant to go? And again he lifted his head and looked about him.

  ‘Keep down, you bloody idiot!’ someone hissed at him and again bullets whined and spat but this time they were hitting the dust around him, sending up spurts of dry mist that he could see clearly, even in this poor light, and he flattened again, his face pressed into the dirt and so sick with terror he could hardly breathe.

  ‘Well done, whoever you are – you’ve pushed us right up – who is it? You’re a good chap –’ The voice that came in a hoarse whisper was a terrified one. An officer’s voice but clearly shaking with sick, blue funk. Lizah could hear it in every syllable of his speech, and he lay there with his face down, actually wanting to be dead, just for a moment, rather than pretending to be. Bloody, bloody Amberly! What did a man have to do, where did he have to go, to escape that mumser? The hate that filled him at that moment was a rich pure vein that curled itself all through him, so much so that it washed out the fear that had been lurking there for so long.

  ‘The Kop is right ahead. No more than five hundred yards. I don’t think we’ve been spotted by more than a sniper – can you make it?’ The voice came again, still shaking, trying pathetically to sound normal, and totally failing.

  Lizah lay there, still silent, thinking, and then knew he had to speak. ‘I can make it,’ he said as he lifted his head. ‘Can you?’

  ‘Who –’ Amberly peered at him in the darkness and Lizah felt the intake of breath shift the air between them. ‘You? How did you get this far ahead of the platoon?’

  ‘Like you said. Good chap –’ Lizah said loudly and then ducked his head as again gunfire sprayed them.

  ‘I’m getting out of this –’ Amberly rolled over on to his side and peered ahead at the darkness. ‘I’m not staying here with a bastard like you – let me out of here –’

  Lizah had heard people talk of men going to pieces. He’d seen some dissolve into tears when pain became more than they could bear, seen others tremble with fear at the sight of him in the opposite corner of the boxing ring, but he’d never seen anyone dissolve as rapidly into liquescence as he saw Basil Amberly do. He had no control over himself at all, no power in him that could make him think, or behave, like an intelligent man. He was, pure and simple, a mass of instinct with every cell of his body clamouring to run away, as fast and as far as possible.

  ‘Don’t be any more stupid than you can help,’ Lizah said sharply and felt Basil stiffen at the sound of his whisper. It was as though he, Lizah, were now the eager officer and Basil was the totally helpless, unwillingly enlisted soldier under his command. And suddenly, as though he were watching a scene change on a stage, it was all different. They weren’t members of an army lying out in the South African veldt trying to take from entrenched Boer soldiers a strategic position. They were Kid Harris, the brave, the successful, the tip-top boxer, in his own gym, in the East End of London half a world away, and Basil Amberly, a weedy youth with more arrogance than sense, trying to beat a man who was twice his value in every way; and Lizah laughed softly in the darkness and thought – I wish Ruby were here – we’d show the bugger – and was puzzled, for he had not thought of Ruby for years. ‘You’re here and you’re lumbered, like me,’ he said then. ‘All you can do is the best that’s possible. You say the Kop’s ahead? What’s behind? Our chaps? Or –’

  ‘I don’t know –’ Basil was almost weeping now, for the rifle fire had continued and was no longer intermittent, but a steady chattering din that was battering at both of them. It was impossible to tell who was firing at whom, for the bullets seemed to be coming from all directions, and what little veneer of command Basil had had now seemed to be completely stripped away. He was a boy of twenty-four, terrified out of his wits in a situation he could no longer either understand or control.

  ‘I’m going back!’ Lizah said with decision. ‘It can’t be worse than goin’ forwards. At least behind us we know we’ve got our own lines. We might get back safe to the tents and –’

  ‘They’ll kill me.’ Basil almost wailed it. ‘We were all given the orders – get to the Kop. If I go trailing back without my men, they’ll kill me – I can’t go back –’

  ‘Then bloody don’t,’ Lizah said. ‘I’m going. We’re more likely to get shot here than there. I’ll take my chances the safest way.’ And he began, painfully and stiffly – for his uniform had dried now to a board-like hardness and every move was agony – to ease his way back to where he thought their own lines were, keeping low beneath the hail of bullets which had at last begun to ease off a little.

  ‘Don’t leave me here!’ Basil began to crawl after him but he was so much taller that his humped shape stood out more clearly against the star-filled sky and at once the rifle fire from the direction of the Kop was redoubled.

  Lizah saw Amberly duck down and grinned in the darkness. Stupid sod! Well, he’d learn. To see a man go to pieces like that was a disgusting sight, Lizah told himself sanctimoniously, as the stiffness began to ease out of him and he could move more easily, his rifle still banging on his back as he went. He’s a sickening piece of work altogether. How he ever came to have my Millie for a sister is beyond me –

  He stopped, suddenly, and again flattened himself against the ground as a bigger missile went over his head. Not a rifle bullet; were they bringing in the bigger artillery? He heard the explosion behind him, where whatever it was hit the ground, and lifted his head gingerly. It had exploded harmlessly well to his left and he turned his head and was about to start crawling again, back to the safety of his lines when he stopped and realized what he had seen.

  Or rather, not seen. Amberly had not got up again after that last burst of fire. Lizah had seen the humped shape that was his body lying there in the scrub and he lay flat for a while, trying to think.

  Was it indeed his body? Had he been hit by a bullet and was he now dead? If he was it bloody served him right, Lizah thought viciously and then almost at once thought – God forgive me. For wishing another man dead was tantamount to wishing yourself dead; he had learned that long ago, when he had gone to the cheder, the religion and Hebrew classes to which his father, but above all, his mother, had sent him hoping he would learn to be a good Jew. He’d never learned how to be that but he had learned that wishing someone dead was tempting fate. It’d be you that got walloped if you so much as thought it –

  Maybe he
wasn’t dead. Maybe he was just too scared to move any more and was lying there like a great shlemiel, crapping himself with terror. In which case he’d be dead soon, on account of come daylight they’d see him there, these lousy Boers, and shoot him just to be on the safe side, in case he was alive.

  So, do I go back and get him? That’d be a crazy thing to do, Lizah told himself. Bleedin’ crazy. What chance have I got to make the man crawl back safely if he hasn’t the wit to do it for himself? The stupid bugger could kill the pair of us, making a fuss and drawing fire, if I go back.

  And if I don’t, then, it’s the same as if I wished him dead and I’ll get walloped – and Lizah’s mind spun and twisted as he lay there with his head to one side and his cheek pressed into the dirt, with gunfire going on all around him, caught as much in a trap by his attempt to behave as a man should, as Basil Amberly had been caught in a trap by his own terror.

  After a while the gunfire eased and then stopped and the night, as black and inky now as a velvet curtain with holes through which the stars glittered with an almost vulgar intensity, became silent. He lay and listened hard, but heard nothing more than the rustle of grass as the occasional breeze moved over it, and the distant cry of an animal somewhere. No soldiers, no fighting, nothing.

  Except that he thought he could hear breathing after a while.

  Stertorous, thick, but definitely human breathing and he lifted his head again to listen more easily, and now there was no doubt. There behind him Basil Amberly was lying still and bloody well snoring –