‘I’m sorry, then,’ said Boots, ‘very sorry.’ He accepted, like most of the men, that he was at the mercy of the luck and the percentages of war, but no man could get used to the slaughter and the tragedies, and this young woman’s tragedy was a very personal one. He judged her to be about twenty-one, and noted that her blouse was a sombre grey, her skirt an unrelieved black, her braided hair a shining Latin black. The high neck of her blouse was fastened by a filigree brooch, and her farm boots marked by patches of dried mud. ‘Accept my sympathy,’ he said.
‘You are a sergeant,’ she said again, ‘and should keep your men away from here. They have the big barn. Here it is private.’ The large stone dairy was at her back, the farmhouse a little way on, part of the farmyard visible. Chickens began to appear, strutting and pecking. She turned to look at them. ‘There, they have come back after flying for their lives from you.’
‘Not from me,’ said Boots, realizing old sweat Private Watts of A Platoon, a redoubtable kidnapper of French poultry, was responsible for putting her hens to flight. ‘I’ll speak to the man you were chasing.’
‘What did you come here for, if not to steal?’ she asked.
‘To tell the farmer – your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘To tell him that my company commander says he can make men available if you’re short of labour. It’s the usual thing when a company is allowed the use of a barn as a rest billet.’
‘Ah, you think so?’ she said scornfully. ‘The usual thing is to lose chickens or eggs or suckling pigs.’
Boots tried another placating smile. She made a face at him. Eighteen months ago, he might have found it difficult to deal with her, for at that time he hadn’t been at the Front all that long, and he’d felt disconcertingly raw among the hard-bitten regulars. Since then, however, the attitudes of a young man had been lost forever, and one could have said of him that if he survived, little would ever disturb him again, for what would ever come close to this carnage? He was mature in a way that stood him in good stead with the old sweats and with what was expected of him. But it was an unspoken regret of his, the certainty that he had lost any feeling of being young, although he wasn’t yet legally of age. Even that, however, was acceptable when set against the percentages. If he survived another six months, it would be despite the odds. He lived, as all the others did, in the shadow of the grim reaper. A fretful and mettlesome young Frenchwoman was a very small problem.
‘It’s the war, madame, we’re all losers,’ he said. ‘But there it is, in return for the use of your barn and its water supply, Major Harris presents his compliments and says if you need some labour, you only have to ask.’
‘That is what you came for?’ She seemed dissatisfied at being deprived of a reason for using the pitchfork.
‘That, and to ask if you’ve a little dairy milk to spare,’ said Boots.
‘Ah,’ she said triumphantly, ‘now I know, yes, you came to steal milk, and perhaps cheese as well.’
‘Young lady,’ said Boots, reverting to English, ‘if you keep this up, I’ll smack your bottom.’
She let go a little yell of outrage.
‘Ah,’ she cried, also in English, ‘you are a pig as well as a—’
‘Don’t say it,’ said Boots, thinking it a pity that on a day of golden summer, with the guns only an intermittent rumble, this young widow was choosing to play the quarrelsome madam. ‘I’m sure we’d get along much better if you cooled down. What is it you don’t like about me?’
‘It is because you look so pleased with yourself.’
‘But I’m not pleased with myself,’ said Boots. They were back to French again. ‘I’m not pleased with where I am, or with what it means. I’d much rather be at home and reading that there’s been an armistice. But I’d be very pleased with you, young lady, if you could spare a little fresh milk.’
‘If I give you some, you will come again and ask for your own cow. I know the Tommies, always asking or taking. Go away.’
Boots, with a resigned smile, said, ‘Sorry to have troubled you, madame.’ He touched the peak of his cap and left.
‘Come back!’ she called. Boots stopped and turned. ‘Come back!’ He returned to her, and she looked him up and down. Her farm-tanned face took on a challenging look. ‘You are very provoking,’ she said.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said.
‘Who is the milk for?’
‘Myself and my corporal,’ said Boots. ‘He’s about to boil a kettle in the hope we can make some real English tea. With dairy milk.’
‘Tea with milk is disgusting,’ she said. ‘But give me the jug.’ He handed it to her. ‘Wait here,’ she said, and disappeared into the dairy, casting the pitchfork aside on her way. Boots waited. The chickens clucked and ventured in his direction, cocking enquiring and wary eyes at him. The hot afternoon sunshine flooded the farmhouse and the fields. The rumble of guns stopped, and the day became as quiet as any he could remember since arriving at the Front a thousand years ago. His company was at rest in tranquil surroundings, the other companies similarly situated at other farms. How long the lull would last was anybody’s guess. Major Harris knew, perhaps, but if he did his bleak eyes were guarding the information.
The young widow reappeared, carrying the jug.
‘That looks promising,’ he said.
‘You are smiling? The war does not worry you, after all?’
‘Is that a good question, do you think?’ countered Boots.
‘Perhaps not. Here is some milk.’ She gave him the jug. It was nearly full.
‘Well, I’m much obliged,’ said Boots. ‘Thank you, young lady. Au ’voir.’
‘Wait. What is your name?’
‘Adams, Robert Adams.’
‘You are Sergeant Adams?’
‘Sergeant Adams of A Company,’ said Boots.
‘Very well, Sergeant Adams, you may go now.’
‘Thanks,’ said Boots, and smiled as he left. Widow she might be, but she was very much the madam in her dismissal.
She watched him leave, a British Tommy of the sergeant fraternity, who had not come to steal her chickens, after all. It was a terrible war, it had widowed her when she was only twenty, but for once there was a little smile on her face.
Boots returned to the huge barn, some way from the farmhouse. It was full of lounging and relaxing soldiers. Some were playing cards. Some had found sacks, or purloined them, and were filling them with straw to make palliases of them, although in the main the Tommies could sleep on anything barring a bed of nails. Several men were already out to the world, and would probably sleep the clock round. Boots’s own sleeping quarters were in a much smaller barn, along with the rest of the sergeants. A little way from the main one, a disused pig shed was being used as a cookhouse, and some forty yards beyond that was a farm cottage housing the officers.
Corporal Freddy Parks had a fire going outside the south end of the big barn, and a tin kettle was on the go. When Boots arrived with the milk, Freddy spilled tea leaves from a packet into the bubbling, boiling water. Up came Sergeant Boxall of A Platoon, a rugged fighting man, but abrasive.
‘No fires,’ he growled.
‘Do us a favour,’ said Freddy.
‘What favour?’
‘Shove off,’ said Freddy.
‘Sod that,’ said Sergeant Boxall. ‘I’m here now, so I’ll stay for tea.’
‘You ain’t been invited,’ said Freddy.
‘I’ll still have some,’ said Boxall, a regular.
‘Please yourself,’ said Boots. ‘By the way, Watts has been after the poultry.’
‘Get any, did he?’
‘None. Just as well,’ said Boots.
‘Just as well?’ said Boxall, who had an aggressive bone structure. ‘Who’s bleedin’ side you on?’
‘Watts’s,’ said Boots. ‘He needs saving from the farmer’s daughter and her pitchfork.’
‘Some young farm tart’s a problem?’ said Boxall.
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p; ‘I don’t think she’s a tart,’ said Boots, ‘much more like a six-foot iron maiden. She’ll feed Watts to her chickens. Ask him.’
‘I like you, mate,’ said Boxall, ‘but you’re a ponce.’
Boots laughed.
‘I thought that was you, Boxy,’ he said.
‘So did I,’ said Freddy.
‘We all make mistakes,’ said Boxall. ‘Where’d you get that milk from?’
‘I stopped a wandering cow, and Corporal Parks milked it,’ said Boots.
‘Thought so,’ said Boxall, ‘he’s another ponce. But more like you’ve been up to the farmhouse and tickled the six-foot daughter. You sure she’s that size?’
‘Ask Watts,’ said Boots.
‘Bloody ’ell,’ said Boxall, ‘a six-foot French bird ain’t natural.’
‘Same size as her pitchfork prongs,’ said Boots.
‘Six-foot pitchfork prongs?’ said Boxall, a born sergeant but with a thick head.
‘Ask Watts,’ said Boots again.
‘Jesus,’ said Boxall, ‘she sounds like blue bloody murder.’
‘Well, slightly dangerous,’ said Boots, with Freddy grinning all over his chops.
‘Sometimes, yer know, Adams, I feel sort of sorry for you,’ said Boxall. ‘You’re not only a ponce, but you talk like one, did yer know that?’
‘Course he knows it,’ said Freddy. ‘We both know it, but if he can live with it, so can I. Well, I got to, I’m only his corporal. All right, tea’s brewed.’
‘Don’t pour yet,’ said Sergeant Boxall, grinning as he went to fetch his mug.
There was a fair amount of this kind of camaraderie on the go. The West Kents, out of the trenches and at rest, were in a good mood, and had few grumbles apart from the usual ones about headlice, bleeding officers, lousy grub, and perishing Jerries.
Someone was singing, ‘Oh, when this bleedin’ war is over, oh, how ’appy we shall be . . .’ to the tune of ‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam.’
Chapter Five
Alice and Polly, lodging with a middle-aged French couple, left their billet that evening to visit an estaminet. That was their preferred choice of entertainment during a lull in their sector at the moment. At other times, when the warfare was persistent, they often came off duty too physically exhausted and too mentally drained to do more than simply fall into their beds. The continuing lull in the whole of the Somme sector was as welcome to them as to the men of the British Fourth Army.
Reaching the estaminet, one run by proprietor Jacques Duval, an avuncular Anglophile, they entered and looked around. Blue smoke filled the place, the smoke from pipes and inveterate fags. The haze shifted about, its patterns created by the movements of bodies or the intermittent gusts of laughter from men seated at tables laden with bottles of French beer or wine. There were an unusual number of regiments presently stationed or resting in and around Albert, and men who could get passes made for the estaminets in the evenings.
So many men in the area represented another sign to Polly that a new offensive was coming. Were the Germans taking note? You bet they were, she thought, and most of the men in this estaminet would take the bet. So for them it was drink, smoke and be descriptive about their sergeant-majors, for they knew they were going to cop it.
She and Alice showed themselves in the blue smoke. Men of the West Kents, newly arrived in the area, were present, the few who had wangled immediate passes. So were men of the Warwicks, Royal Scots, Irish Fusiliers, the Essex and other regiments. They hailed in boisterous fashion the arrival of the women ambulance drivers. Pipes waved, and men took fags from their mouths to invite them to Paris this year, next year, sometime, never. The comradeship that existed between the Tommies and such women was imperishable. They were all in it together, and that was a fact.
‘This way, girls, we saw yer first. Room ’ere for yer derrières.’
‘Stuff the Essex leavings, Alice, join the Warwicks.’
‘Dinna mess aboot wi’ Sassenach fairies, lassies, the Royal Scots’ll gi’ ye a fine welcome.’
Polly made herself heard.
‘You hairy lot, you all need a barber. Never seen such riff-raff, and all as tight as a one-eyed parrot in a beer barrel. No, don’t get up, old dears, you’ll only fall over, and there’s a squad of redcaps outside waiting to cart you away.’
They roared with laughter. Behind the bar, Jacques grinned. He knew Polly and Alice, and many other women drivers. Of them all, Mademoiselle Polly Simms was the joker in the pack.
She and Alice looked around again. Along with the bottles and glasses on the tables were packets of fags and pouches of tobacco. The weed was the solace of almost every Tommy. There they were, these specimens of a strange wartime breed of men. Polly accepted that they were as imperfect, basically, as all men: blasphemous, complaining, scrounging and womanizing. They thought nothing of attempting to seduce every French housewife who came within reach, and within reach could be as much as half a mile to their trained eyes. All the same, they were men of extraordinary resilience and character, for whom the Germans, a tough breed themselves, had unqualified respect. Perhaps French housewives responded to such men, for none had ever been known to cry rape as far as Polly was aware. She had once rescued a Tommy fleeing from a farmhouse in just his shirt-tails, a white-bearded and red-faced grandfather roaring after him with a shot-gun. The Tommy jumped aboard her ambulance as she slowed down for him, and afterwards she went back to the place to persuade the woman in question to let her have his uniform and boots. The young woman willingly handed them over and said with a smile, ‘Tell Gus, Monday afternoon when my grandfather will be at the market.’
Polly herself had not been immune. Owning a particular regard for the men of Mons and the Marne, and increasingly bitter about their gradual decimation, she came to share the opinion of other ambulance women, that virginity could hardly be considered sacred in a war like this one. She was nineteen when she delivered hers to an Old Contemptible, a man of thirty-four, who had fought as a young soldier in the Boer War. She had her eyes shut tight throughout. But she need not have worried, for he was experienced in other arts besides those of war, and she was able to be a pleasure to him because of his understanding of her body. There were others like that. Not many, just a few, a few who came close to her armoured heart. One did grow that kind of armour, to escape the risk of falling in love with a man who was not really the right one and whose time, in any case, was limited.
They’re all dead men. That knowledge, that certainty, repeatedly came to mind.
Alice stood apart from making love with those who were about to die. But cockney girls, of course, as Polly realized, were far less inclined to go all the way than she and her kind were, even in a world turning hideously upside down.
They moved forward between tables. No hands reached to grab at them, although Helene, the proprietor’s buxom daughter, always had a terrible time when she was squeezing her way through with a tray of orders. The Tommies, however earthy they were, had a respect for all the women who drove their ambulances close to the shot and shell of the trench warfare.
Five Northumberland Fusiliers made inviting room at their table. Alice and Polly stopped.
‘You blokes fairly decent?’ smiled Alice.
‘Nobbut else, lass.’
‘Chance it, Polly?’ said Alice.
‘Well, ducky, you’ve got more to lose than I have,’ murmured Polly, and Alice laughed. They sat down with the Northumberland men. An open packet of fags was proffered, and they took one each. The light of a struck match hovered, putting a little glow around Polly’s piquant nose and delicately carmined lips as she leaned. She lit up, and the match moved to serve Alice. She dipped the end of the cigarette into the flame, and the tobacco glowed as she drew. Polly called to Jacques and ordered a bottle of wine and two glasses for herself and Alice. In the main, everyone bought their own drinks. The Tommies rarely had much money to spare. The Government didn’t feel that going over the top was deserving of h
igh wages. After all, with so many soldiers doing it – and in their thousands, what was more – it was very commonplace by now. Nor did the Paymaster-General think much of soldiers’ wives who wrote asking if their husbands couldn’t have a bit of a rise.
Alice and Polly struck up a lively conversation with the Northumbrians. At an old piano in a corner of the estaminet, one of their sergeants was running his hands lightly over the keys, playing some kind of tinkling sonata barely heard above the general noise.
‘Liven it up, Sarge,’ called an Essex man, ‘give it a go.’
The sergeant, cap tipped back, took no notice, apart from a brief smile. He continued his light trilling. The estaminet buzzed with anecdotal conversation that was punctuated with bursts of laughter. It was all very familiar to Alice and Polly, who had shared many such evenings in the estaminets of France and Flanders with men of the British Army. Progressively, there were fewer old sweats, fewer Old Contemptibles. But in an estaminet, the survivors could still laugh, and still make their sardonic jokes about the unfortunate.
‘Poor old Jock, Alice. Found his boots, yer know, just his bleedin’ boots. Still running, they were. Pointin’ to Glasgow. Hope they can run on water, or they’ll never get there.’
Through the smoke, Alice caught sight of the sergeant at the piano, a pipe between his teeth, his eyes watching the keyboard, his hands travelling lightly over it, the tune difficult to hear above the noise.
‘Who’s the sergeant?’ she asked.
‘Old Horse,’ said the man beside her.
‘How’d he get that name?’
‘Well, lass, he were Young Horse once.’
‘Ask a silly question, get a silly answer,’ said Alice. She got up, asked to be excused for a moment, and made her way to the man at the piano, taking her glass of wine with her. She looked down at him. He lifted his head, little trails of smoke issuing from his pipe. She met his eyes. They were blue overlaid by the inescapable grey of the trenches. With his cap tipped back, his black hair showed a widow’s peak. His face was weathered, his expression enquiring.
‘Hello,’ she said, ‘I ’aven’t seen you before.’
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