(here the banjo player snatched away the coronet of grapes and planted a pair of women’s drawers in its place)
The widow’s sombre cap conceals
Her once luxuriant hair;
She weeps in silent solitude
—the words were entirely drowned in the merriment of all concerned. So great was the hubbub that the songsters were obliged to enact it all over again, with the audience joining in the chorus, though the words were different. When I asked Mrs Yardley about this she said the army had their own version and didn’t I think the original lent itself to double entendre.
This so puzzled and occupied me – I wondered whether the women’s drawers gave a clue – that I scarcely took notice of the next two items on the programme, one of which was a military song and the other a juggling act, the latter performer being booed off the stage and his skittles thrown after him. This cruel response was possibly due to the circumstances in which we find ourselves; far from home and stalked by death, there is a need to be heard.
The ballad that followed had a curious and wondrous effect on Georgie. It was called ‘Saved by a Child’ and was very suspect, about a man grown tired of being bound to the earth and earthly things, sitting in a church watching a child. The man couldn’t bring himself to pray, on account of being world weary, until the child’s singing began to melt his sophisticated heart.
Half-way through this sentimental verbiage, Georgie reached for my hand. He doesn’t drink any more, so I was startled. I didn’t respond, not right away, in case I put him off. He whispered, ‘Myrtle, dear Myrtle, forgive me.’
‘For what?’ I asked.
‘For everything,’ he said. ‘I give you so little time.’
‘Your work is important, Georgie.’
‘That’s no excuse,’ he said, and added, ‘I’ll come to you later.’
Then I pressed his hand, out of love, not forgiveness.
In the interval, mad with happiness, I ran to fetch Dr Potter from his solitude. He was searching himself for lice by the light of a candle. Impressed by my gaiety, he shook his clothes into place and agreed to join the party. Georgie shifted his seat to afford him room, leaving me squashed against the colonel who was drinking wine from the bottle. His knee jerked worse than ever, but what did I care?
We were a quarter of the way through the second half – Dr Potter was slapping his stout thighs with delight and carelessly swigging the colonel’s wine – when the fire-eater came on. He was dressed in a spectacular tunic of scale armour embroidered on the breast with a green dragon belching flame. Underneath he wore tights, and some bright sparks shouted out they admired his legs. With his wig of black ringlets and the rouge on his cheeks, he could have passed for a girl, and a handsome one at that, if it hadn’t been for his moustache, which was curled up into two stiff points. He was featured within the railway carriage, where he set ablaze a length of tow placed on a plate before him. ‘Pardon me,’ he called out, ‘while I partake of a light supper,’ and forking the burning stub into his mouth, puffed out fire. He did this twice, and chewed the tow all up, or, at least, we never saw him spit any out. He did the same with some sealing wax, and bits of scarlet dripped to his chin and went on burning, which was more satisfactory. Then an assistant came on carrying a bag labelled gunpowder and proceeded to help him off with his tunic and wig. He had dark hair underneath and a pale smooth body. The gunpowder was genuine enough; an officer, picked at random, was hauled up to confirm its authenticity.
The fire-eater hunched his shoulders, poked his head forward, tortoise fashion, and stretching his arms out sideways stood as though prepared to carry our Lord’s Cross. In each fist he clenched what was pronounced to be an onion. The assistant, taking his time, opened the bag, made a show of peering inside, and shuddered. The fire-eater hollered out that he was feeling the chill and urged him to hurry. A heap of powder was poured into the hollow between his shoulders, then, like a farmer sowing seeds, his accomplice trailed the blue-grey dust the length of those spread arms. Finally, he turned the fire-eater round so that his back was to us. A lighted taper was handed through the cut-out window. The assistant took it, held it aloft for all to see, and slowly brought it down.
The audience had gone quiet – you could hear the frogs croaking in the reeds beside the lake. I peeped to look at Georgie. He was craning forward, frowning.
As the gunpowder flashed, the crowd jerked in shock; a fuzz of blue flame sizzled along each arm as far as the fire-eater’s fists; smoke curled out of his uncurling fingers and tatters of burnt onion dropped to the stage. He didn’t appear to have hurt himself, though he kept his hands held up when he took his bow, like children do when their palms have been whipped.
The colonel said it was a damn dangerous thing to try, and there was no trickery in it. He was lucky not to have had an arm blown off. Had the fellow lost his nerve and lifted his head by a fraction, his hair would have caught fire. I turned to gauge what Georgie made of it, but he wasn’t there. I asked Mrs Yardley if she had seen him and she said he’d rushed off thinking he recognised someone.
The concert party finale thrilled us all. The troupe, minus the fire-eater and the juggler, and swelled by a dozen or more soldiers of the Rifle Brigade, clambered up on to the boards and stood to attention while they lustily sang of death in battle. Dr Potter blew his nose violently, a sure sign he was moved, which was unusual bearing in mind his aversion to melody. It was the boy bugler’s plaintive accompaniment to the twice-repeated line, Enough they murmur o’er my grave, He like a soldier fell, that stirred the heartstrings most.
How strange it was to be encamped in a foreign land, Queen Victoria plumply gazing into the mist-wreathed night, the voices ringing out beneath the hidden stars! How portentous the message, how wrapped in sentiment the cheapness of life!
Dr Potter thanked me for forcing him to be there. He said it was good for men to weep. He and Mrs Yardley swayed as they walked. We tripped over two figures on the ground, one still moaning, the other cold. The colonel strode off to alert the stretcher bearers, but when they came they were staggering in drink. ‘At night all cats are grey,’ quoted Dr Potter, and clung to Mrs Yardley for support.
I left them as soon as politeness allowed. Once in the tent I cleaned myself as best I could, wiping my armpits and other, more secret places. Then I extinguished the lantern light and waited. Georgie is coming, I whispered.
I fancied I could smell onions, though it may have been the memory of the fire-eater’s act that haunted my nose.
I waited a long time. The human noises died away and the frogs croaked again. Sometimes I floated off and walked through a garden in Cheshire, belly swollen, fingers snipping off blown roses. I could hear the clack of Annie’s knitting needles. Once, Mrs Hardy hovered above me, demanding to know what I’d done with the tiger-skin rug. A pearl of mercury slid down my eyes, but it was only a diamond of light shining through a hole in the canvas.
When at last I rose and emerged into the open, the mist was rolling away across the lake and dawn streaked the sky. Not a yard distant a man and a woman lay on their backs in the dew, she with her legs splayed wide. They were sleeping, not dead, for their mouths gaped open and both were snoring. A dog had its snout in Dr Potter’s cooking pot tipped from the fire.
Georgie was in the medical tent, fast asleep on a straw mattress behind the instrument table. His arm was flung out across the chest of the fire-eater, who, covered in a hospital night-shirt, the rouge still hectic on his cheeks, lay on the bare ground beside him. This close, I knew him; it was the duck-boy. He had a blister on his lip and blobs of sealing wax spattered his beard.
Behind me a sick man called out for water. He was trying to raise his head, the claw of his hand raking the air. I took no notice and slipped away. He swore after me.
When reveille sounded I found myself at the lake, though I have no recollection of walking there. By now the crimson flush above the hills had faded into shining day. I stood, resentment wriggl
ing like a worm within my breast. It had been my conceit that it was enough to give love, that to receive it would have altered the nature of my obsession. When passion is mutual, there is always the danger of the fire burning to ashes. Rather than lose love it was better never to have known it.
A crane sailed down the sky and landed in the reeds. It frightened me that the child who had trailed Master Georgie at a distance was now treading on his heels, clamouring to be noticed. I knew I was in the wrong; Georgie had made no promises, raised no false hopes, and yet … and yet—
A voice called out, ‘My dear, what a night. Wasn’t it amusing?’ and Mrs Yardley, her hair spilling from its pins and her face creased, waded through the grass. The crane splashed upwards. Then, remembering the sick soldier craving water, misery overflowed and I wept.
Mrs Yardley was very sympathetic. I was in a state to behave stupidly and went half-way to confiding in her. I admitted, or rather hoarsely sobbed, that I loved Georgie. Just voicing it gave comfort.
‘Of course you do,’ she soothed, and patted my hand. ‘It’s only natural.’
‘Last night, after the concert, he said he’d come to me—’
‘Come to you,’ she repeated.
‘But he didn’t—’
‘He has his medical duties,’ she said.
‘What about his duty to me?’ I cried. ‘What about me?’
‘There, there,’ she murmured, ‘you poor child,’ and took me in her arms, which dried up my tears, for there’s nothing I dislike more than to be pitied. I’m not a ‘poor’ child and never was, unless the description is strictly related to poverty. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that Georgie owed me something, on account of the babies, when she said, ‘I wish I had a brother,’ and that closed my mouth. I’d forgotten she supposed I was Georgie’s sister.
When I returned Dr Potter had rekindled the fire and put the water on to boil. He was attempting to grind coffee beans with the heel of his boot.
‘Pompey Jones is in the camp,’ he said, stomping away. ‘He and George have gone to the river to wash.’
‘That time Mrs Yardley and I were frightened by the dogs,’ I said, ‘I saw how they dealt with the beans. They had a crusher with a handle.’
‘Well, I haven’t,’ he retorted, and stamped the harder.
I changed my dress for the duck-boy, not Georgie. He was taller than I remembered and fuller in the face. His black hair, damp from his swim in the river, was drying into curls. He strode right up and took my hand, saying he was heartily glad to see me. He wasn’t at all shy or subservient. It had been three years since last we met, at Christmas, the time I’d come back from being made into a lady and gone to Georgie’s room in moonlight.
The concert troupe posed for a photograph before marching off. Preparing the plates for the camera proved difficult because flies kept sticking to the collodion mixture. The duck-boy wasn’t a soldier but an assistant to a photographer he’d met in Chester who thought the world of him. They had been sent out by an important newspaper. He had taken part in the concert at the last moment, owing to a colour sergeant who recited monologues succumbing to the fever. Before leaving England he’d gone to see Mrs O’Gorman; she’d cried at the sight of him. He’d found her in good health apart from a certain stiffness of the joints, which was only to be expected at her age.
Georgie helped with the photographs, even though it meant neglecting his medical duties. The results would be sent back to England, so that the public would be aware of the good times the troops were enjoying. Dr Potter said it was a case of securing the shadow ere the substance faded, meaning, he gloomily prophesied, that it was likely those captured by the camera would shortly be dead.
Georgie was allowed inside the photographer’s van. It was a curious vehicle, painted all over in white, its sides slotted with glass windows. When disembarking at Varna it had nearly sunk in the mud.
The duck-boy and Georgie spent most of the morning discussing thicknesses of solution, physical as opposed to chemical development, the effects of temperature and the exactitude necessary for exposures. Georgie’s own equipment had been lost when the ship caught fire out of Scutari, and Dr Potter declared messing about with Pompey Jones would do him more good than a week of rest.
Later, I encountered Mrs Yardley. She was saddling her horse, and crying. At first she said she didn’t want to talk about it, then almost immediately did so. She had spied the colonel twinkling at the wife of a captain in the Grenadier Guards. I thought her foolish for letting on she’d noticed. It would have been wise to turn the other cheek.
The performers departed at midday, leaving the duck-boy behind. He was his own man as regards time. He sought me out in the afternoon; I was in the open, cutting Dr Potter’s hair.
‘Well, Myrtle,’ he said. ‘Was it worth it?’
I replied I didn’t understand the question.
‘Being turned into a lady. Is it what you expected?’ He was eyeing me steadily, from head to foot, taking in my faded gown and the men’s boots I wore; they were practical because they stopped the insects fastening on my ankles.
‘I don’t regret it,’ I said, defensively. ‘If that’s what you mean.’
‘From what I hear,’ he said, ‘you’ve been done no favours.’
Dr Potter jerked his head from the scissors and said, ‘I note you’re as insolent as ever, Pompey Jones.’
‘That’s observant of you,’ he retorted. ‘But then, I was never made into a gentleman, was I?’ He fingered his blistered lip. ‘I shan’t do the fire-eating again,’ he announced. ‘I’ve lost the knack.’
‘Certain knacks are better lost,’ remarked Dr Potter. They stared each other out; the duck-boy’s lashes were singed. Brushing the hairs from the shoulders of his stained coat, the doctor retreated down the avenue of bell tents.
‘You shouldn’t speak to him like that,’ I said. ‘He’s an educated man.’
‘He understands me,’ said the duck-boy. ‘He always did, and not on account of his learning. For what it’s worth, I reckon him and me see eye to eye.’
He was digging into the pocket of his vest as he spoke. ‘I’ve something to show you,’ he said, bringing out a flat object wrapped in the folds of a red handkerchief. Uncovering it, he held out a square of copper plate. It was black all over with some scratch marks in the middle.
‘What is it?’ I asked.
‘Why you, of course … standing by Mr Hardy’s bed.’
I was astonished to think of him keeping the picture by him all these years, particularly when there was nothing to see.
‘Today is in the nature of an anniversary,’ he went on. ‘It was August, if I’m not mistaken, when I first saw you—’
‘In that house,’ I said. ‘On the stairs with the broken banister—’
‘Before that … you were sitting on the station steps … in the rain … in Lime Street.’
‘You did a good thing,’ I told him. ‘A boy stole the woman’s duck and you brought it back.’
He laughed at me then, and explained it was nothing but a street trick. The station was a good place to try it on, what with the waiting and the dumped down baggage. They worked in pairs and split the money. One boy did the thieving and the other the retrieving. Even if the owner didn’t cotton on to what had been lost, ten to one a passer-by with more bobsticks than sense, noting the return of property, would hand over a few coppers – as a reward for honesty. Sometimes the accomplice said, ‘No, sir, I cannot profit from doing what is right,’ and more often than not the amount was doubled.
I was speechless.
‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you had to know which ones were gullible, otherwise you might end up with nothing more useful than the promise of a corner in heaven.’
Deep down I thought it a clever trick, though I declared he should have been ashamed of himself.
‘I never was,’ he answered, voice flat, and asked if I was content with my life.
I nodded.
‘I know about the children,’ he said. ‘From George.’
At this, I felt elation, because it meant that Georgie had bothered to talk about me. The lingering resentment at his preferring to be with the duck-boy dropped clear away, and suddenly the day was beautiful, the vista of tents and distant lakes, previously grey under a leaden sky, now miraculously glowing with radiant light. A troop of horses trotted towards the dirt road, coats silky in the sunlight. I enquired what else Georgie had confided.
‘Just that,’ he replied. ‘And that he was glad … seeing that Annie was no longer capable of producing offspring.’
I might have accused him of being the cause of her disappointment, due to his shenanigans with the tiger’s head, but then, hadn’t I every reason to be grateful for the outcome? Instead, I blurted out, ‘I love him. He is my reason for living.’
He looked at me sombrely and asked, ‘Did they send you away, then?’
‘Not on my own,’ I protested. ‘Both times Annie and I went to a cottage … in the country. At night she knitted and I told her stories. I had to make them up in my head because she’s allergic to books. I respect her. She has never shown jealousy.’
‘Why should she?’ he scoffed. ‘She has never known hunger.’
He wouldn’t stop questioning me. He wanted to know what old Mrs Hardy had thought of it all, and I said I didn’t know, but that, like me, she’d only ever wanted Georgie’s happiness.
He looked away. I fancied he was sad. Presently he murmured, ‘I’m thankful I’m not a woman.’
At that moment Dr Potter returned, carrying a haunch of mutton. Jubiliantly he described finding a provision wagon overturned down by the lake. It was empty, but after searching about he’d come across the meat lying at the bottom of a slope.
‘That was lucky,’ said the duck-boy. ‘Particularly if there was no sign of the driver.’
‘Indeed there wasn’t,’ the doctor retorted crossly. ‘Otherwise I should have paid him.’ Sitting down on his stool, the leg of mutton clasped between his thighs, he began to pluck off the maggots. Soon after, the duck-boy left us.
Master Georgie Page 10