by Paul Harris
“He died in the war, then? Wow! You never said.”
“Well, he went to the war and he never came back. He’s still missing. Who knows? I couldn’t find him anyway.” He put his glass down and placed the palms of both his hands down flat on the table, eyeing us both in turn. “You know, I’m feeling really disconnected right now.”
We were silent, neither of us knowing quite how to respond to that. Amos was swirling the beer around in his glass, around and around, like the clothes in a tumble dryer. I lit a Camel up and immediately started coughing.
The waitress staggered from behind the bar with a dish in one hand. With her other arm, she was leaning on an aluminium crutch. She was a tiny little thing, just under five feet, and had one leg shorter than the other; much shorter than the other. Both of her legs were bowed as if she had rickets. She was struggling to find any rhythm with only one crutch, so she leant it against the bar, and hopped over to our table, her sky blue summer dress flapping up around her thighs as she bounced. I wasn’t at all comfortable with the sight, so I averted my eyes until she reached our table, and stopped hopping.
“Damned useless legs!” she joked, as she placed a dish of diced cheese and olives on the table.
“I love French cheese,” I announced, tucking into it with great relish.
“Which is your favourite?” she asked, and seemed genuinely interested. She was a lovely little lady with a big broad grin that seemed to sprinkle a little bit of cheer wherever she went. It would have driven me mad, hopping about like that all day, but you could tell that she was one of those people that never let anything get her down; she just soldiered on and on, smiling through it all. I wished that I could be more like that.
“Camembert,” I said.
“And yours?”
“Brie,” replied Bird, “I think, anyway.”
She looked at Amos.
“Cheddar.”
“That’s not French!” I reprimanded. I hated it when he said things just to be obnoxious, especially to people who didn’t deserve it.
“It’s my favourite; I can’t help that.”
She laughed. “Next time I’ll get you cheddar. Are you on holiday here?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“And, you think this is a good place for a holiday?”
“It’s interesting,” said Bird.
“We’ve had a great time,” I said, “and we’ve only been here one day.”
“And you travel back to England, when? Next week?”
“No, we go today. We’re on our way now.”
“You stay only for one day?” She looked bemused, and, quite frankly, I shared her bemusement. My first foreign holiday for eight years, and it only lasts a day! I saved up for nearly twelve months, for one night on the piss and two days sitting on a saddle. “But, you have visited the battlefields, though?” she wanted to know.
“Yes,” said Bird, “we had a quick scoot around. You would never tell it was a battlefield, though, would you? Now all the shell holes are gone, and everything’s back to normal.”
“Ah!” she said raising a finger. I popped another lump of cheese into my mouth before Amos emptied the dish. He was shovelling them in, three or four lumps at a time. “You have not seen the crater?”
“Crater?” repeated Bird, lighting up with enthusiasm.
“You must see it before you go home; it is not far. You must go this way,” she said, pointing in the direction of Albert, “and then turn left at the sign for La Boisselle. You will find it.”
Bird looked at her as if in awe of this revelation and nodded. “Thank you.”
“You must go,” she urged.
“We will,” he promised.
She took the empty dish in her hand and hopped back to her place behind the bar. I, for one, was sorry to see her go as she’d been extremely pleasant company. It was a, surprisingly, tender moment as the three of us watched her bounce away.
“What do you reckon?” asked Amos.
“I reckon she should wear a longer skirt,” I remarked.
“You’re a horrible bastard sometimes, Rod.” Bird seemed to really be quite irked.
“What do you mean sometimes?” chipped in Amos, giving me a playful dig in the ribs. “I meant about this crater thing anyway?”
Bird got to his feet. “Why not? It’s on our route anyway.”
We left the money on the table, including a generous tip.
We headed downhill, along the arrow-straight road, through what was left of Pozieres. We passed the Australian Memorial on our right, which made me wonder where Bird had been looking for his grandad and, soon afterwards, we took a left into a tiny village. There was another monument on the green in front of the local church. We didn’t stop, we just wound our way around the village, following the English language signs along a narrow lane. There were a couple of cars parked up on a verge, with British number plates. Two children, a boy and a girl, were running around a Vauxhall estate, discharging water pistols at each other. The irony of which was almost beyond endurance, and I wanted to explain to them how inappropriate it was to be playing with guns, even toy guns, in this place, of all places; but, I didn’t.
We parked near to the cars and walked up a slope. There was a track worn into the ground between the long grass on either side; tramped upon by thousands of tourists who had come here to pay their respects or merely stand in awe. We passed a large and battered cross which had a bench on either side of it. Both benches had bronze plaques on them, signifying the donator of the bench and to whom it was in memory of. Paper poppies were scattered about the foot of the cross.
At the top of the slope, we stopped, stock-still. Before us was a breath-taking sight; an immense impression that will never, ever leave my consciousness. I heard myself gasp. The crater was vast, the size and shape of the inverted dome of Saint Paul’s. It was so deep that, at its foot, it seemed to disappear into the centre of the Earth. It was an unsettling thought that man could tear our planet apart so violently, and so effectively.
I imagined the German soldiers, mere boys, younger than me, lolling around in their trenches, reading letters from their loved ones in Berlin, Frankfurt, or Munich, munching on a breakfast of field biscuits, having, what was to become, their last cigarette, before this Armageddon was cast upon them; and, then, they evaporated into a million pieces, washed back into the blood sodden soil by the pounding rain; no longer existing, not even a limbless corpse to bury; no headstone, just a faded bronze plaque on a wall.
They wouldn’t have known a thing about it; there would have been no fear. Apart from the momentary pain of the initial impact, they would have felt nothing at all. Perhaps, it was one of the best deaths a young man could have hoped for in this god-forsaken field back in 1916.
I edged closer to the rim. There was an old man in a flat cap climbing up the opposite bank. The sides were steep, but the edges unprotected, and you could have easily fallen into the crater and rolled all the way to the bottom, where a cluster of little white crosses were driven into the earth.
And, this was it; this was the legacy of the bitter, twisted, and greedy old men who own our world and make our decisions for us. This was the result of the hatred and intolerance with which they poison our minds; the hatred for others, all others, which is passed down from one generation to the next like a family heirloom. It all came down to this: a little cluster of wooden crosses in the bottom of an enormous pit in the middle of a French corn field.
I gazed into the crater with tears in my eyes. I could see a thin, green stalk waving weakly among the crosses, and I wondered what the source of the breeze was that made it dance like that. The blob of red at the top of the stalk began to have a hypnotic effect on me. It cleared my mind of all thoughts of triviality and self-pity; that last poppy.
The plan was to head back to Calais via Abbeville, with pit stops at Crecy-en-Ponthieu and Etaples, in order to further expand our already burgeoning knowledge of military history. The traffic was heavy
on the A16 and the journey plodding, as homebound journeys often are. After a brief sojourn in Crecy, which was fairly uneventful, and not so nearly as interesting as the Lochnagar crater, we decided to give the main roads a miss and, instead, take a series of rural lanes along the coast to Etaples and, possibly, a spot of lunch in Le Touquet.
Just outside Quend, we passed a fork in the road and, shortly afterwards, Bird led us into what looked like an abandoned farm yard. We pulled up beside him and he bellowed through the visor of his helmet. “Which way?”
I shrugged, and so did Amos. “You’re leading! Don’t you know the way?”
He tore his helmet from his head and almost tore his ears off with it. “Which one of you idiots has got the map?” Bird was so inexplicably irate that Amos and I removed our helmets and looked at each other in utter amazement.
“Not me,” said Amos, “I don’t do maps.”
Bird scowled at me. I shook my head innocently. “No.”
He leapt from his scooter and kicked the rear tyre. “I’m sick of this shit!” he declared, and began pacing up and down the farmyard, kicking anything he could find; a bottomless bucket received a good going over, as did a rusty horseshoe, which span across the yard at his impulsion. He wrenched a shovel from a heap of soil and hurled it, with violence and venom, in our general direction. He kicked a tree stump and found it immoveable. He turned his back on us to hide his pain and angst.
“What’s got into him now?” muttered Amos under his breath. We stood, gazing on at the mad man, totally dumbfounded, as he limped into an open barn. It was as though something had been festering in the back of his mind since we’d arrived in France and had, without warning, found its release. He’d been simmering gently for a couple of days and had now reached boiling point; his critical mass. “You’ll have to go after him.”
“Oh, yeah!” I exclaimed, quite alarmed at the notion.
“He could do himself an injury,” coaxed Amos.
“He could do me an injury!”
We waited for him to re-emerge from the barn but he didn’t. Amos was urging me on with his body language. “He may never come out of there if you don’t go in.”
“Why’ve I got to go in?”
“Because you’ve known him longer than I have.”
“That’s a crap reason, really crap.” I lit a Camel, coughed, and followed Bird into the barn. There were bales of hay stacked high on either side and in front of me. The floor was strewn with straw and rock-hard cowpats. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could discern a couple of old oil drums at the far end of the barn lying on their sides. Bird was sitting on one of these and seemed to be talking to himself. He stood up as I approached and eyed me sternly.
“What’s up?” I asked him as sympathetically as I could.
“Nothing’s up!” he snapped back at me, “Why should there be?”
We were face to face, gazing at each other with furrowed brows. Perhaps we were both looking for answers. Eventually, he spoke slowly and deliberately. “You do know that I’m from New Zealand, right? Dunedin, right? I’m not an Aussie! Why do people keep calling me an Aussie?”
“Is that it?” I asked, probably a little too dismissively, “Is that what’s pissing you off?”
Suddenly, he seized me by the throat so aggressively that I spat my cigarette from my lips. “No, of course it’s not!” he raged, “I just need some time alone! Leave me alone!” I thought he was going to cry so I did as he suggested and I left him alone.
Outside, Amos was still waiting anxiously. I lit another cigarette to try to calm my nerves. “Where is he?” he asked.
I spread my arms blankly. “He’s lost the plot, man. His head’s gone.”
“What we going to do though?”
“I don’t know! I think he’s having a breakdown or something.”
Amos looked gravely alarmed at this revelation. “Don’t ever say that!” He eyed our three mud-splattered scooters, which were parked in a neat line in front of a decaying tractor that had once been the colour of the sky. “Don’t ever say the B word within earshot of the scooters.”
Chapter Seventeen
Shoes
I once bought a pair of shoes; a pair of light brown loafers with leather soles and tassels on the front. They were in a sale, reduced from a hundred and twenty pounds. I got them for sixty. It took me ages to finally decide to commit so much of my beer budget to an item of footwear. I walked up and down Oxford Street for an hour before marching into the shop and trying them on. The minute my feet were inside them, I knew it was right. Although, sixty pounds was a lot of money for me to scrape together back then, they were worth every penny.
I wore them for the first time at a northern soul bash in Tufnell Park. I remember dancing to the Cavaliers, sliding across the polished wooden dancefloor. Those shoes were great for dancing. I could never have danced like that without them.
The most vivid memory I have of that evening, is that Frank Garvey nutted the bouncer on our way out of the club. He deserved it, though; he’d been shadowing us all night, giving it large every time we looked as if we might start enjoying ourselves. Bangla wanted to torch the place.
I remember the trauma of scuffing them for the first time, climbing the steps up to the stand at Vicarage Road. Broomhead had managed to drag me along to an FA Cup match because he’d been given free tickets and nobody else wanted to go. As we passed through the turnstiles, I glanced down to admire my shoes, and happened upon an apple core. I flicked it up onto my toe, and juggled with it three or four times. I could never have done that in any other shoes, as ball control was never my strong point. As my confidence grew, I decided to volley it up the steps into the stand and, maybe, right onto the pitch. I swung at it and missed, scraping my right foot along a wall. I sank to my knees and almost burst into tears.
Watford lost four-one, and I was glad.
Everywhere I went, people asked me about those shoes. I constantly lied, and claimed that they cost the hundred and twenty pounds that they should have done. Some people poured scorn on the tassels, particularly as they got a little dog-eared later in life. But, some people have no sense of style; no class.
I loved those shoes, and I still do to this day. I still have them, and they occupy pride of place on my shoe rack. Every now and then, I wipe the dust off them, and give them a good polish. I never wear them now, and I curse the day that I ever laid eyes on that rotten apple core.
The point is, I never loved anything as much as I loved those shoes, except for my child.
There were so many things that I wanted to do when we arrived back from France, and a handful of things that I needed to do. In the short space of two or three days, things had changed profoundly, and forever.
I planned to pay Ringlet a visit to find out if she knew anything about Sol’s whereabouts; not because I was obsessed about finding him, I just wanted to confirm my doubts regarding Bird’s motives for taking us to France. I needed to understand what had happened.
But, first, I caught a train to Waterloo and went to visit Marilyn. I phoned ahead, and we arranged a time that was suitable for her. It would have to be in the evening, after she had picked our son up from school. She agreed to let me see him, in the hope that I would be able to construct some kind of relationship with him. She derided me, but not viciously, for not getting in touch sooner. I tried to explain to her how difficult it was for me to even communicate my true feelings, and how lost and helpless I had become. But, the words got stuck in my throat, and demonstrated my point precisely.
The journey was a tedious one, the bland facelessness of London travel was beginning to bore me. The processional march through tunnels, and up staircases, and down escalators was beginning to make me feel sub-human. There was no humanity underground, just mice feeling their way, by instinct, through a laboratory maze.
I was more nervous than I had ever been; I could feel myself trembling with anxiety. I could feel the arteries in my neck throbbing with every
beat of my heart. I felt light-headed, physically ill, and a grey curtain of guilt began to descend somewhere in my inner consciousness.
I knocked the door at exactly half past five, for my prearranged appointment with destiny. There was no answer. I waited for a minute or two, and knocked again, commanding myself to remain patient and not to appear to be in a state of anxiety when the door was finally opened; which, in due course, it was; by Marilyn, who still looked as beautiful as the first day I’d met her. She didn’t look dressed for the school run; she looked as if she was going out somewhere nice.
“Hi,” I said meekly, “you off out?”
She smiled, awkwardly. I found some reassurance in the impression that she was also nervous. “Why would I be going out when I knew that you were coming over?”
“True,” I said, hesitantly, “You just look nice, that’s all.”
She appeared confused, as if she didn’t know how to take my remark; as though she was pondering whether to turn this compliment into a perceived slight, as she would have done in the past, or to take it at face value. “Thank you, I think.”
“Is Thomas here?”
“He’s having his tea.”
“Can I see him, or is it inconvenient?”
She called him. “Tommy!” There he was, ambling shyly towards us with a baked bean clinging to his lower lip and sauce dribbling down his chin. He stood before me, clinging to Marilyn’s leg. I bent down and offered him my hand. He refused to take it and clasped his own hands behind his back. “I’ll leave you two to it”, she said, “I’ve left the oven on.”
I stepped into the house, and Thomas backed off. “I’m your dad,” I reassured him.
He shook his head. “No you’re not,” he said, quietly, “I don’t have a daddy.”
I wondered, momentarily, and then for many years afterwards, which was the more painful experience: this one or the day that I had left him. How do you explain to a child something that you don’t understand yourself; something entirely beyond your grasp? How can you express your feelings to a world that just won’t listen, because the world has already decided against you? I repeated, with greater assurances, that I was indeed his daddy.