Everybody's Somebody

by Beryl Kingston

  ‘Let’s ’ave one a’ them cold ’ands,’ he said to her. And when she held out her hand, he put the parcel onto her palm. ‘To keep you warm,’ he said. ‘Merry Christmas.’

  It was a pair of brown leather gloves with fleecy linings. ‘Oh Jim,’ she said. ‘They’re lovely. Thank you ever so much. Can I put them on now?’

  ‘That’s what they’re for,’ he said laughing at her and watched as she slid her cold hands inside the sturdy leather and flexed her fingers, smiling at him with the pleasure of it. He was so pleased with the success of his gift that he took her face in his hands and kissed her full on the mouth, right out there in front of all the people streaming out of the hall.

  There was a chorus of cheers and whistles and catcalls and one man called out, ‘Don’t eat her Jim!’

  ‘She’s my gel,’ Jim said, grinning at him.

  ‘I should ’ope so an’ all,’ the man said, punching his shoulder.

  They were surrounded by a group of grinning men, all chiyicking and teasing. ‘When you gonna make an ’onest women of ’er, our Jim?’ one asked.

  ‘Soon as she’ll ’ave me,’ Jim told him and made a joke of it. ‘Not right this minute though. We needs our pie an’ mash first.’ And he put his arm round her and began to walk her away.

  That was almost a proposal, she thought, and she was suddenly so full of happy excitement that she could feel her throat constricting. First a Christmas present and now this. She couldn’t wait to get to St James’s Park and the privacy they both needed. They ate their supper in a dream, holding hands whenever they could, and ran to catch the tram. And oh! it was wonderful to be on their own at last, in the grassy darkness of the park, away from streetlights and crowds, with the stars white and unwinking above their kissing heads and the silence so intense they could hear it hissing.

  ‘I shall love you fer ever an’ ever an’ ever,’ Jim said, holding her face between his rough, gentle hands. ‘I’d do anythin’ fer you.’

  ‘There’s only one thing I want you to do for me,’ she told him seriously, ‘and that’s not to do something.’ That puzzled him so she went on quickly. ‘What I mean to say is don’t go joining up. Bad enough for Tommy to do it. I don’t want you killed an’ all.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he told her seriously. ‘I’m not a mug. My mate Sid had a letter from his son. He got a French woman to post it for him private like so’s it didn’t get censored. Told him exactly what it’s like out there. He let me read it. That would a’ made my mind up, never mind nothin’ else.’

  ‘Good,’ she said trenchantly. ‘I’m glad to hear it. If they want to fight their stupid war let them. Just don’t you go gettin’ involved in it.’

  He laughed at her. ‘I promise,’ he said.

  But he was reckoning without the government’s power to control their lives. Just over a year later, they passed a bill that, although very few realised it at the time, would prove to be a death sentence for millions of men.

  Jim and Rosie saw the news of it on a newsvendor’s placard as they climbed down from the tram late one Thursday night, ready to start their walk to St James’s Park. ‘Conscription’ it said in letters a foot high.

  The sight of it made Rosie feel afraid. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.

  ‘Wait there,’ Jim said, ‘an’ I’ll nip an’ get a paper an’ see.’

  They read it together under the light of the nearest streetlamp.

  ‘The government has introduced a bill making it compulsory for all single men between the ages of eighteen and forty-one to join the armed forces. Every British male subject who on 15 August 1915 was ordinarily resident in Great Britain and who has attained the age of 19 but is not yet 41 and all those who on 2 November 1915 were unmarried or a widower without dependent children, unless he meets certain exceptions or has met the age of forty-one before the appointed date, is deemed to have enlisted for general service with the colours or in the reserve and is forthwith transferred to the reserve. He will now come under the controls specified in the Army Act.’

  ‘Well that’s it,’ Jim said bitterly. ‘They can’t get enough men to volunteer. They been floodin’ us with posters, but it don’t do ’em no good ’cos we ain’t mugs, not now we know what’s goin’ on out there. So they’re goin’ to call us all up whether we wants to go or not. If you’re over nineteen you’ve had it. An’ I shall be twenty-one come February.’

  Rosie was so horrified that the government could do such an appalling thing that for a moment she didn’t know what to say. Then she was shaken with fear that he would be sent away from her and killed like poor Tommy and even the thought of it turned her fear to anger. ‘That ent right!’ she cried. ‘Oh they’re such fools. Why don’t they work out how to stop this stupid war instead a’ sending more men out to be killed? That’s just stupid an’ wasteful an’ cruel. Ent they killed enough already? Tell ’em you won’t go. They can’t make you.’

  He looked at her furious face, chin in the air, brown eyes blazing and sighed because he knew he couldn’t do what she was suggesting. ‘They can,’ he said. ‘They’re the government. They can do what they bleedin’ like. They’ve already done it. They’re not askin’ us if we wants to go, Rosie. They’re tellin’ us we’re goin’. We’re in the reserve already.’

  She was too busy planning his escape to pay attention to what he was saying. ‘We’ll run away,’ she said. ‘That’s what we’ll do. We’ll go to Binderton an’ you can hide there an’ live in the cottage. Pa wouldn’t mind. You could work on the farm or somethin’. You mustn’t let them tell you what to do. They got no right. No right at all. I’ll write to Edie an’ tell her we’re coming. You’ll be safe there.’

  ‘You’re not listenin’ to me,’ he said angrily. He was caught up in a terrible creeping fear, knowing what he would have to face out there in those God-awful trenches, and it was making him furious, the way fear always did.

  She was afraid and angry too. ‘I’m not having you sent into the army, Jim, and that’s flat. You’ll be killed as sure as fate. I’ll write to Edie the minute I get in. The sooner you get out of harm’s way the better.’

  His anger erupted before he could control it, the way it did when he was in the middle of a brawl. ‘I’m in the army,’ he yelled. ‘Don’t you understand? “Forthwith in the reserve” means I’m in the army. I was in the army the moment they passed this sodding law. In the army and subject to army law.’

  ‘It’s a law, that’s all,’ she said, her chin up and her face stormy. ‘Just a law. Ignore it. You don’t have to do what they say. I keep tellin’ you. Just run away to Binderton an’ keep right out their way. If you go to France, you’ll be killed.’

  He couldn’t understand why she was being so pig-headed. It was so stupid to say ignore it. Didn’t she understand how dangerous that was? Over the past few months he’d heard some terrible stories about what was happening at the Front. He knew what army law could do. ‘Okay. I run away,’ he said mockingly. ‘That’s a wonderful idea. I don’t think. An’ what then? D’you know what then? Well I’ll tell you. If you run away, they send the military police after you an’ they put you on trial as a deserter an’ they find you guilty an’ then they take you outside an’ put you up against a wall an’ shoot you dead. How’d you like that to happen?’

  She was so appalled she denied it at once, her face fierce in the moonlight. ‘They don’t. They couldn’t. You don’t kill people on your own side.’

  ‘They do. It’s happening all the time out there, onny the papers don’t tell you.’

  It was more than she could bear to hear. ‘Don’t speak to me!’ she yelled and swept off at a furious speed, running into the private darkness of the park as if she were being pursued by devils.

  For the first time in his life Jim was too off balance to know what to do. He stood completely still and thoroughly uncertain and watched as her flying figure melted into the darkness and was gone. He was buffeted by powerful emotions, all of them strong and some
of them shameful, fear, fury and a dreadful, puzzled anger at the way his Rosie was behaving. How could she be so stupid? Why didn’t she understand? Why couldn’t she just stop and listen to him for a moment? He felt she’d rejected him by running off and now he didn’t know what to do. In the end he sloped off to the nearest pub and bought himself a pint of consolation. It didn’t console him in the least, and nor did the second nor the third. After that, there was nothing left for him except to trail home feeling aggrieved and miserable, with a fine old headache gathering.

  It was a relief to find that the living room was empty and quiet, and the fire had died down to ashes. Kitty must have turned in, and just as well because he couldn’t have faced having to tell her what had happened. He couldn’t even face it himself. Loving his Rosie, and knowing she loved him and that, as soon as they could afford somewhere to rent, they would marry and live together, had become part of the fabric of his life, almost the reason for being alive at all, and now it had all been spoilt and he didn’t know what he could do about it. He pulled out his truckle bed, tugged off his boots, tossed them under a chair and spread himself out on the mattress still fully clothed. He was so tired he couldn’t think straight.

  Rosie didn’t stop running until she reached the club and by then she was so out of breath she had to stand still and recover a little before she could climb the stairs to her bedroom. But once there, she threw herself on the bed and wept with abandon. It was too awful to be borne, too awful to think about, too awful, awful, awful. Why wouldn’t he listen to her? She could hide him away as easy as pie and they’d never find him. All he had to do was agree to it and she’d see to everything else. But no. He was going to let them put him in their rotten army and send him to France where he’d be killed as sure as fate. She couldn’t bear it. It was just awful, awful, awful.

  She must have cried herself to sleep because she woke in total darkness, feeling stiff, cold and very uncomfortable just as Big Ben was striking two. She got up, feeling it was time to be sensible, changed into her nightgown and went to bed properly, pulling the blankets right up under her chin and snuggling down to get warm. Then because her conscience was beginning to trouble her and she couldn’t sleep, she tried to get her thoughts in order. It had been horrid of him to shout at her like that but then he was the one who’d been told he’d got to go into the army and that was enough to make anyone shout. Did they really kill the men who ran away? She couldn’t bear the thought of such an awful thing, but he wouldn’t have said it if it hadn’t been true. He might have a temper on him, but he always told the truth. It was stupid of me to run off and leave him. I should’ve stayed where I was and argued it out, even if he did shout. And now we’ve had a row and heaven knows what that’s going to do to us. I must write to him, she decided, and say I’m sorry for running away. I’ll do it first thing when there’s light enough. On which faintly comforting thought she fell asleep for the second time.

  She wrote her letter before she went down to start work and posted it as soon as she was free to slip out for a minute. Then there was nothing she could do but wait and get on with her day.

  Jim’s day was peculiarly difficult. He’d managed to get taken on quite quickly, but he had such a banging hangover he knew he was working too slowly to satisfy the gaffer and that made him clumsy as well as slow. He’d come home feeling bruised and miserable to find Kitty waiting with her hat and coat on, ready to go out to get fish and chips.

  ‘You ’ad a right skinful last night, didn’tcher?’ she said cheerfully. ‘Look at the state of yer. I got the fire goin’ all nice an’ warm fer us. Kettle’s on the ’ob. You can make the tea while I’m gone, can’t you. Oh, an’ you got a letter by the clock.’ And she was off.

  He was across the room in two strides to pick up his letter. If she’d written to him things couldn’t be so bad, could they? He tore the envelope open and pulled out the letter with shaking fingers. The first words on it were such a relief he had to sit down.

  ‘My darling Jim,’ she’d written. ‘I am so sorry I ran off like that. I shouldn’t have done it. I been thinking about it ever since. I love you. Rosie.’

  He rushed to the dresser drawer to find a postcard, pushing the contents about much too roughly in his excitement, found a rather battered one and answered her at once.

  ‘Sweetheart, I will see you on Thursday. Same place, same time, Jim.’

  It was in the post before Kitty arrived with their supper.

  And oh what a wonderful thing it was to sit side by side in the warmth of the Star that Thursday and stroll into the private darkness of the park to kiss and kiss again and be forgiven. At one point, Rosie tried to tell him how sorry she was, but he put a finger over her mouth to stop her.

  ‘Don’t let’s talk about it, Rosie,’ he said. ‘What’s coming’ll come no matter what we do. Let’s just enjoy ourselves while we got the time, eh?’

  So they tried to forget their quarrel and enjoyed as much time together as they could, acutely aware of how precious it was and how soon it could come to an end. His call-up papers arrived eleven weeks later at the daffodil end of March, together with a chit for the train to take him to Salisbury. Their lovely, easy courtship was over.

  Chapter 9

  Jim spent the next six weeks on Salisbury Plain, mostly in unseasonably cold and rainy weather, learning how to be a soldier. He wrote to Rosie and Kitty every evening, even when he was aching with fatigue, partly because he knew they’d want to know what he was doing, but mostly because it was comforting to think of them as he wrote, and it made him feel close to them.

  ‘I got a uniform and a number and had a haircut, what you wont like.’; ‘The grubs pretty good. We eat it out of tins.’; ‘They learnt us to fire a rifle so now we have target practice.’; ‘It is very cold and muddy and the trenches are full of water.’; ‘We are getting used to artillery fire now what is very loud. The gunners practise every day and a right old row it is.’

  They wrote back to him every day too because they missed him every bit as much as he was missing them. It was a wonderful relief when he wrote to tell them he was coming home for two days on embarkation leave. Rosie swapped her next two evenings off so as to be with him and she and Kitty put money aside from their next pay packets so as to have enough for their outings.

  It shocked them to see how much he’d changed. Neither of them liked his uniform although they pretended to admire it and they both secretly thought that he didn’t look like their Jim anymore with all his lovely mane of hair shaved back to stubble, but they were careful not to tell him that either. They just hugged him and sat on either side of him at the Star and held on to his arms every moment they could and kissed him goodbye most lovingly when they all went off together to catch his train. Neither of them cried until the train was out of sight and they were sure he couldn’t see them. Then they put their arms round each other and sobbed their hearts out.

  ‘It ent fair,’ Rosie said angrily. ‘Takin’ him off like that when he never wanted to go. It shouldn’t be allowed. Oh! If I was a politician there’d be some changes.’

  ‘We can’t do nothin’ about it,’ Kitty said resignedly.

  ‘I’ll do somethin’ about it, one a’ these days,’ Rosie said fiercely, ‘you see if I don’t.’

  ‘We’ll ’ave to get the vote first,’ Kitty told her, sadly. ‘Can’t do much wivout a vote an’ that’s a fact. Trouble is, I can’t see us gettin’ it now Keir Hardie’s gone. I do so wish ’e ’adn’t gone.’

  She looked so downcast that Rosie yearned with pity for her. She set her anger aside and gave her a hug. ‘Come an’ have a pint,’ she said.

  But it took more than one pint to shift their misery and the next morning Rosie had to face work with a pounding headache. Serves you right! she scolded herself. You should’ve had more sense. But no amount of scolding could cure the headache nor stop her worrying about her Jim. She’d never been a particularly religious person but at that moment she sent up a prayer a
nd meant every word of it. Please God don’t let him be killed.

  Jim wrote her a postcard as soon as his journey was over. His battalion was at a base camp in Picardy a few miles from the front line, but as they’d had strict instructions not to give anyone any details about where they were and warned that everything would be ‘took out by the censor’ if they didn’t do as they were told, he just said he’d arrived, that the crossing had been ‘a bit rough’ and that the grub was ‘pretty good considering’. The next day they were given breakfast and set off to march to the front line, wearing their tin hats and carrying their rifles, respirators and all their kit, which got heavier with every step they took.

  They sang music hall songs as they marched, the way they’d been taught to do on Salisbury Plain. It seemed cruelly unsuitable to Jim to be singing ‘Pack up yer troubles in yer ol’ kit bag an’ smile, smile, smile’, when they could all be walking to their deaths but at least the song had a good strong rhythm that helped them to keep up a steady pace and after a while he gave up thinking about whether it was unsuitable or not and just plodded on, putting one foot after another, bellowing with the rest.

  They arrived at the rear trenches in the middle of the afternoon and then they had to slog their way through the maze of trenches until they reached the front line, where they were shown their posts by a burly sergeant with a loud voice, a dry sense of humour and an irrepressibly cheerful grin. When he’d satisfied himself that they all knew what they were going to be doing in the front line, he led them to another trench and showed them the bunks where they would sleep ‘if you ever gets the chance what I very much doubt’ and the latrines ‘what you’re to use at your convenience so to speak and don’t let me catch none of you piddling nowhere else’. Jim liked him at once although, from the stink in the trenches, it was obvious that a lot of men were piddling wherever they could. Then they were led back to the front line and shown the positions they were to take on the fire step when stand-to was called and warned not to put their heads above the parapet ‘unless you wants it shot off, what Jerry’ll be only too happy to oblige’. And after all that, they were given their duties. Jim and another new recruit called Fred were told to pump out the trench and lay down new duckboards where they were needed. Others were sent to dig new latrines and cover up the old ones, or to repair the sandbags, which were sagging and evil smelling. And they were all advised to kill any slugs or stag beetles they found crawling up the sides of the trenches and give any rats they found a good thumping with their shovels.