Two in a Train

by Warwick Deeping

  “Yes.”

  “Chuck the box over. I lent you a pencil yesterday.”

  Young Fothergill had lit a cigarette. He tossed the matches to Jackson, and ignoring the letters on the table, looked with questioning blue eyes at Glenluce. He was aware of the sag of his friend’s shoulders, of the moody lassitude of the figure in the doorway. Smith, the mess-orderly, carrying a pile of enamelled plates and mugs, was asking for egress.

  “ ’Scuse me, sir.”

  Glenluce drew aside sharply as though the man’s voice had startled him like the sound of a shell. His head gave a jerk, and for an instant Fothergill saw his friend’s profile, and it looked sharp and pinched like one of those profiles seen after death has come to the trenches. But those letters waited. Fothergill got out a pencil, and having read through one simple scrawl in which the writer announced that he was in the pink, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that Glenluce had disappeared.

  Young Fothergill straightened on his biscuit box. Sherring, his pipe well alight, was also staring at the empty doorway, and suddenly the eyes of the two men met. Fothergill seemed to be about to speak, but Sherring nodded at him and there was infinite understanding in that movement of the head. It said: “Yes, I know, kid. Jimmie’s got the needle. He’s been out here too long, and he’s been through too much. I’m sorry about Friday. I couldn’t help it. The Old Man ordered me to detail him for the show. And you too. I’m sorry, but it’s got to be. Yes, clear out.”

  Fothergill drew in his heels, and tossed his share of the letters across to Jackson, and Jackson, with his pencil poised above a page, looked protestingly at the youngster.

  “Here—I say——”

  “Sorry, Jacker, I’ll do the whole lot to-morrow.”

  Fothergill was on his feet, and Sherring, putting out a big brown hand, gathered up a wad of letters.

  “All right, kid. I’ll do your lot. Yes, clear.”

  Fothergill slipped out to the narrow terrace cut in the cliff above the Great Gully. The 3rd N.F.’s were in rest here, if any situation could be described as restful at Helles. In two days’ time the battalion was going back to the trenches, and B Company was to carry out a stunt. A certain poisonous pimple in the Turkish line known officially as The Thatched House, and unofficially as The Dung Heap, had been mined by the R.E.’s. The mine was to be blown at three o’clock on the Friday afternoon, and two platoons of B Company were to go over and seize and consolidate the crater. Lieut. Glenluce had been detailed to lead the party, with Fothergill as his second.

  Archie, seeing nothing of his friend, scrambled up a path leading to the plateau above. The Great Gully below him was full of its usual life, a brown cleft in the earth peopled with brown figures. The day was serene and peaceful, almost poignantly peaceful, a golden interlude between autumn and winter. Not a gun was to be heard. The shaggy and war-worn scrub on the plateau sleeked itself in the sunlight.

  Fothergill saw a solitary figure moving towards the cliff edge and the sea. He followed Glenluce’s figure. He did not attempt to overtake his friend, but he shadowed him like some protecting presence. He had seen enough of the war to know that it was a bad sign when a fellow wandered off to be alone and went about with a kind of starved look in his eyes. Glenluce had the black shadow on him.

  Fothergill saw Glenluce sit down on the edge of the cliff. Two naval guns were in screened pits less than fifty yards away, but their ugly mouths were mute. Had those same guns popped off suddenly, young Fothergill’s impulse would have been to spread his fingers—“Think you’d make me jump, did you? Go to hell.” But on this November afternoon even this callow, cheeky, blue-eyed child was moved by the quality that we mortals describe as beauty. Over there lay Imbros like a soft, violet cloud floating in the sea, an Imbros that flushed pink in the dawn. O Blessed Isle, where no shells screamed, and sacred to G.H.Q.! The sea was serene and still. It had a limpid loveliness. Along by Gully Beach men were bathing. The sky was as silky as the sea.

  Glenluce was sitting there with his knees drawn up, and his arms folded over them, like a man knotted up and trussed. He had plucked a twig of heather and was chewing it. Sea and sky were a blue vastness, and yet he was feeling like a little animal in a trap. How futile it all was! He was twenty-five years old, and what had he got out of life? How much he had missed! Damned fool! And in two days’ time he believed that he would be one of those brown and bloody bundles that are huddled into a hole in the ground or left to rot in the foulness of No Man’s Land.

  Young Fothergill was within five yards of his friend, and Glenluce had not heard him. He was away in the desert of his own dreadful despair, and Fothergill covering those last five yards, plopped down on the edge of the cliff.

  “Marvellous day for a bathe, Jimmie.”

  Glenluce seemed to wince.

  “Hallo, kid.”

  Fothergill lay prone and gazed at Imbros.

  “Reminds me—of a day I had in Scotland. Might be one of the Scotch islands.”

  Glenluce’s face looked all twisted.

  “Might be! Good lord! The might-have-beens make one sick.”

  “You wait till we get to Alex.”

  “We’re here for the winter, or some of us.”

  Fothergill turned on his back, and gazed at the sky.

  “You’ve got Friday on your soul, Jimmy.”

  Glenluce glanced at him sharply.

  “Have I? Perhaps. I’ve been feeling—like a bit of raw meat that didn’t want to be cooked. Oh, hell—the things one’s missed! We’re only a couple of kids.”

  “You’ll get through all right on Friday, Jimmie.”

  “I shan’t.”

  “Rot.”

  “I’ve scraped through too often. One’s luck can’t last for ever.”

  “Oh, rot.”

  From the distance came the sound of men cheering, an unexpected and strange sound in a world of sickness, flies and disillusionment. Young Fothergill sat up, for when you were both frightened and fed up the fluttering wings of rumour can stir a whole army. The obvious canard might be an absurd creature stuffed with straw, but it could appear as a symbol of salvation and of hope.

  “What the devil are they cheering for?”

  Glenluce gloomed:

  “Someone has had a bread issue. Or the French have captured half a cemetery in France.”

  Fothergill got on his feet. He saw the dead earth sprouting men. They seemed to appear from clefts in the ground. He saw brown figures running towards the cliff edge, waving caps, and shouting.

  “Something’s up, Jimmie.”

  And then he beheld that most trivial and amazing object. It appeared round one of the yellow brown bluffs of the cliffs, a naval pinnace gliding over the blue sea within fifty yards or so of the shore, and in this magic craft were women, three or four nurses in blue cloaks. Someone was having a day out. Someone was superior to all regulations, if any regulations forbade such an adventure.

  Fothergill shouted.

  “Jimmie—girls!”

  For, in all probability not one man in a hundred among all those thousands had seen a woman for many months. The whole of Helles seemed to be streaming to the cliff. There were cheers, wavings, a kind of wistful and vibrant excitement. The nurses in the pinnace waved back to the men upon the cliff.

  Glenluce looked angry, strangely angry.

  “The damned fools! Bringing a boatload of women in range of the guns.”

  “They’re all right, Jimmie. They’re keeping close in. Abdul can’t see them. And if he can—he’s a bit of a sport.”

  “Good Lord, has everyone gone potty!”

  But he was addressing the air. Young Fothergill had taken to his heels, and was running like a hare for B Company lines. He was going to tell Sherring and Jackson. He was going to collect a pair of field-glasses. He was just a little mad.

  He returned flushed and out of breath with other brown figures streaming after him. The pinnace had put about just beyond Gully Beach, and Fothergi
ll squatted down and turned the glasses on the boat. His hands trembled.

  “I say—Jimmie!”

  Glenluce was gazing with an air of sullen resignation at those fortunate naval men and their guests.

  “Have a look, Jimmie. One of them’s quite young and pretty.”

  He pushed the glasses at Glenluce, who, with a farouche air, focused them on the pinnace. The faces were very distinct. A girl with dark eyes and white teeth was smiling and waving. She seemed to be smiling and waving at him.

  “O, damn!”

  Almost fiercely he tossed the glasses back to Fothergill, but Sherring and Jackson had come up, and the binoculars were the prize of seniority.

  “Hand ’em over, my lad.”

  Sherring stood and gazed at the pinnace and those things in petticoats. He was smiling. His great knees showing below his khaki shorts looked as brown as the soil.

  “My God!”

  “O, damn the navy!”

  “No, bless ’em, Jacker. Here, have a look. One of ’em’s a real peach.”

  They were too absorbed in the affair to notice Glenluce. He had turned his back on the sea, and was lying prone and staring at a patch of heather. His eyes had a kind of hopeless hunger. The voice of his youth was crying, “This is a bit too bitter. I can’t bear it. I’m going to be killed on Friday.” For he was still seeing the face of that smiling girl, her eyes and teeth and two soft loops of dark hair. The anguish of sex burned in him. He wanted to live, he wanted the beauty of loving. And in two days’ time he might be a brown and bloody bundle hidden away in the earth.

  He got up suddenly and walked off. He went blindly across the open, and his movements were inco-ordinate and aimless. He fell into a gun-pit, was cursed by somebody, and crawled out to resume that fierce, desperate striding. He was trying to escape from the anguish of blue sea and blue sky, a face, the mockery of that other world where youth could be youth, a world of beauty and freedom and desire. What bloody nonsense war was! How futile and yet how merciless.

  The other men on the cliff edge were still watching the pinnace making for the cape where the great white hospital ships lay out in the blue sea.

  “Good-by-ee. God bless ’em.”

  “O, damn those naval chaps.”

  “Shut up, Jacker, and be grateful.”

  Young Fothergill’s voice piped up. “Hallo, where’s old Jimmie?” They looked at the spot where Glenluce had been, and where he was not. Sherring and young Fothergill exchanged glances, and perhaps both of them understood the sudden flight of Glenluce. The experience had been too tantalizing. It had bitten deep into the warm flesh of youth.

  Flies buzzed, and the tea tasted of chloride of lime, and from the gully below rose the rancid smell of empty tins being burnt in an incinerator. Glenluce had not turned up, but the Mess refrained from remarking on his absence. Glenluce might have gone for a walk, for people could go for walks on the Gallipoli Peninsula. Or he had gone to call upon that Scotch friend of his who was the adjutant of a battalion of the Lowland Division. There was one blessed thing about Skipper Sherring; he was not a fusser. He did not rub in his authority.

  “Pass the jam, Archie.”

  A swarm of flies hovered over the jampot.

  “Say, young fellow, you might go along to B.H.Q. and ask the doc. to come and dine with us.”

  Fothergill understood. He nodded at Sherring. The big man was a father to them all.

  The hour of dinner arrived, and with it Captain Martin, the M.O. of the 3rd N.F.’s. He was a thick-set, hard-bitten wag of a man whom the whole battalion treated with respect. Flies might abound, but there were no flies on Captain Martin. It was quite a cheery party, but no Glenluce appeared, and these other men threw a casual cloak over his absence.

  “Where’s Jimmie?”

  “Gone to see the Scotties, I think.”

  “Good lad, Jimmie.”

  Sherring kept his own counsel. If he was going to say anything to the doctor it would be in private.

  “Yes, Jimmie’s been a sticker. Not like that little literary gent we had, doc. Remember how the miserable little swine tried to wangle things and get off?”

  Martin grinned. “I do. Highbrow hysterics. Anyhow he squirmed himself into a Corps job. That sort does.”

  It grew dark, night stealing out of Asia on the heels of a stupendous sunset. Imbros had flamed, and the sea turned to molten gold. Somewhere on the cliff above Lancashire Landing Glenluce was lying in the heather, watching those great white ships become as ghosts. The Red Cross! And he, with the youth in him crucified, saw the red and green lights shine out upon those ships of mercy. O, lucky men who were ferried over the blue water and taken into the bosoms of those ships. What were wounds and sickness when you were reprieved from this hell of dust and heat and flies and death! To be going to Egypt, or Malta, or England! To lie in a bunk, to feel your soul and body relaxed, released from a dreadful and ever present fear.

  That girl was on one of those ships. She was looking at men with her dark eyes. She was being looked at by them. And on Friday he would be waiting in a trench, shaken to the very marrow, clenching his soul to confound that crisis. An explosion, earth, sandbags, men blown into the air, and he—scrambling up and over into the dust and the smoke!

  He buried his head in the heather. If the ghastly business was over! If he could be at peace; if he could be just nothing; a mere part of the soil that was unvexed by the anguish of living! Peace, peace, oblivion, sleep. For sleep had become to him like a little syrup left at the bottom of a pot, to be scraped at avidly with a spoon.

  Suddenly, he rose to his knees. He tried to pray.

  “O God, keep me from playing the rotter.”

  He looked at the lights of the hospital ships, and they seemed to smile at him like the eyes of the young nurse. He could not say why or how, but the bitterness in him began to lose its ragged edge.

  He stood up. He followed the road along the plateau, with the sea on his left. Stars were out, and when he came to the great dark gulf of the gulley he saw it sprinkled with lights like spangles on black velvet. It had a strange beauty, and its beauty was part of that human fellowship, of all the hearts of those men beating in exile. He was but one of many. All those obscure and rather simple men were but children of circumstance, just as he was. They were sick, and they were afraid, and they endured.

  Young Fothergill had blown out the candle and was settling himself in his bunk in a dug-out that he shared with Glenluce when he saw the opening of the recess darkened by a figure. A moment ago the space had been pricked with stars, but now it was obscured by the shadow of a man.

  “In bed, Archie?”

  “Hallo, Jimmie.”

  Glenluce slipped in and sat down on the edge of the other bunk. There was a moment of silence, and then he said, “I’ve been mooching around. There are a wonderful lot of stars to-night.”

  Fothergill was sitting up in his bunk.

  “Want the candles, Jimmie?”

  “No.”

  “Had any dinner?”

  “Dinner! I clean forgot about dinner. O, by the way, kid, I want you to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “If I make a muck of things on Friday—I mean—if I go potty—or—just give me one through the head with your little squirt.”

  Young Fothergill put out a hand in the darkness.

  “Rot, old man. You’re going to get through. I’ll take any offers you like on it.”

  Friday was another golden and tranquil day, but when, at three o’clock those at sea heard the rumble of an explosion and the hammering of guns, they knew that some little affair had been staged ashore. It was only some little sideshow like a damp squib let off when all the set pieces had burned themselves out, a futile anticlimax tagged to a great and tragic failure. The nurses on the hospital ships heard the uproar. The ships had been warned to expect wounded.

  Said one nurse, looking through a porthole across the blue sea to the dim-coloured coast, �
�It seems such horrible waste.”

  Her companion had grown more callous.

  “Well, they have to do something to make a show. I suppose it keeps the boys’ spirits up.”

  Said the younger woman—“I wonder.”

  In that vast saucer of raw earth men were digging for their lives, filling sandbags and piling them, and cutting a sap from the front line to the crater. The attack had been a success. There had been very little resistance, and as yet no counter attack had developed. The 3rd N.F.’s had lost three men killed and seven wounded. The dead lay in the centre of the hollow to be dealt with later. Stretcher-bearers had carried off the wounded.

  Glenluce, with a face like a man who has been starved for a week, was watching the men consolidate the position. Young Fothergill was filling sandbags. Neither of the officers had been touched.

  “What about those bombs, Archie?”

  Fothergill tried to smile at his friend.

  “All O.K. I sent Corporal Baines back. They’re coming up. Well, I’ve won my bet, old lad.”

  Glenluce looked at the dead men.

  “We haven’t begun yet. Wait till——”

  He seemed to stiffen. His face sharpened. He was listening, for his ears were more wise to the sounds of the war than were young Fothergill’s.

  “Look out, you men.”

  There was a sound as of a vast pipe blowing off water, a kind of rending of the sky, and the earth spouted on the edge of the crater. Glenluce went flat. Fothergill only ducked. The men crouched under the lip of soil.

  Glenluce picked himself up, looking white and angry.

  “Get on, you chaps, dig like hell.”

  “What was that, Jimmie?”

  “An eight-inch ‘How.’ He’s going to give us——. Look out, here’s another.”

  The second shell burst behind the crater, and threw clods and earth into the hole. A clod hit Glenluce on the shoulder. He staggered, looked surprised, put a hand to his shoulder, and smiled a little, stiff, whimsical smile.

  “Thought I’d won, kid.”

  Young Fothergill, rather white but grinning, felt for his cigarette case.

  “Have one, Jimmie.”

  “Thanks.”