The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing

by Mary Paulson-Ellis

  It was the temporary sergeant’s job to keep the men in order, whether he liked it or not. Bertie Fortune smoothed a finger across his moustache.

  ‘Nothing, sir. Promise got in there first.’

  One swipe of the knife and sticky blood all over. Godfrey was silent. Both men knew that Hawes couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Not anymore. Fortune leaned on the edge of the shelf, shifted the single jar of pozzie to the centre, then back again.

  ‘You should organize a big game, sir. Winner takes all. Now that the chickens are almost done. Let Promise try to win it back.’

  ‘Why would I do that, Bertie?’ said Godfrey. ‘You know I don’t like gambling.’

  ‘Everybody does it.’

  Fortune was right, of course. Godfrey had spent his whole life in the army with soldiers whose spare time went in scrounging and bartering. Tobacco nips and bullet casings. Tossing the dice for Crown and Anchor, backs up against the wall. Godfrey had seen fights break out over a plum, the fruit smashed and bruised beyond repair, yet still borne away triumphantly by the winner. He knew that men who had little fought over everything if they had the chance. That was why he had let Ralph lead the men out in pursuit of the chickens – in the hope that they would focus their minds on the birds, rather than anything else.

  ‘What makes you think a big game will help?’ he said now.

  ‘They’re jumpy, sir,’ said Bertie Fortune. ‘Since the new boy arrived. Nervous about what might come next. It would help take their minds off it, give them something else to do while we wait.’

  ‘We’re all bloody nervous about what might come next, Fortune. That’s nothing new.’

  ‘It is this time.’

  Godfrey understood. They were all waiting to hear the bells sound in the nearest village, heavy peals ringing out over the empty fields even though it wasn’t a Sunday, knowing that it meant the end had come at last. Bertie Fortune turned to face his captain.

  ‘They’ve been wondering about the orders, sir. What was in them.’

  ‘You’re wondering, you mean.’

  Godfrey’s tone was dry. They had been together more than two years now, Captain Farthing and his lucky man, seen all there was to see.

  ‘Aye, sir,’ Bertie Fortune admitted. ‘I’m wondering. Whether it’s all going to be over. Or whether my letter will be winging its way to the wife.’

  Godfrey felt the tremble in his fingers as he thought of the letters stacked in his wooden lockbox, all that might be left of them if he followed the orders through. Then he jabbed his hand towards the stores in the cellar, its cool walls and beaten earth floor scented with long-lost turnips lifted from the fields.

  ‘These are the orders, Fortune. Counting the supplies.’

  Bertie Fortune looked away then, before he said it. ‘One last roll of the dice, sir. Never did hurt.’

  Three

  That afternoon, Captain Godfrey Farthing stood at the bottom of the fold in the land turning and turning the walnut he kept in his pocket, feeling for all its shallow tunnels and grooves. Next to him Alec, the new recruit, was foraging in a clump of brambles, the dog digging alongside. Godfrey imagined the small berries in the boy’s palm, stained and sweet, wondered if he would ever be able to eat something like that again without tasting decay.

  They had come in search of wild offerings. Mushrooms, and the last fruit of a season, beech nuts safe inside their prickled shells. Also to check for burrows, those small holes that hinted at a honeycomb of tunnels beneath their feet. It was Stone who had sent them, the old sweat coming to stand at the parlour door once Godfrey and Fortune had finished in the cellar – the revised list in his hand.

  ‘Need to start getting in new supplies,’ he’d said. ‘Now the chickens are nearly done.’

  ‘Down to the last two, are we?’

  Godfrey had been joking, thought there must be at least five. But he saw at once from the look on Stone’s face that it was true, Ralph’s game led to its inevitable conclusion now that the end was near. Godfrey had felt queer again then, as though the orders had come at just the right moment, paradise about to be lost.

  ‘You could always go for rabbit, sir,’ George Stone had said, seeing his captain’s confusion. ‘Set some traps.’

  All those warm bodies cloaked in fur, sleeping top-to-tail beneath the earth like Godfrey’s men used to sleep top-to-tail in their trench. Now he watched as Alec dipped amongst the tangle of undergrowth to lay the first trap.

  ‘Tell me more about your farm,’ he said. ‘Where you come from.’

  ‘It’s just a farm, sir,’ said Alec, setting the coil of wire, then stepping back. ‘Animals. And fields like these, two kinds of clover in the summer. A river at the bottom of the hill.’

  Godfrey smiled. ‘Did you grow up there?’

  ‘When I was young.’

  ‘Is that where you learned to trap rabbits?’

  ‘Aye, sir.’

  ‘I knew a boy like you once,’ said Godfrey. ‘He came from the city. But his family were from the north.’

  ‘Of England, sir?’

  ‘Scotland, I think.’

  The mountains and the burns.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Beach.’ Godfrey hesitated. ‘William.’

  The boy glanced at his captain. It wasn’t usual for an officer to use an infantryman’s first name. ‘What happened to him, sir?’

  ‘He was shot,’ said Godfrey, starting to walk on now. ‘Died of his wounds.’

  Down in the yard, the men were taking a bath. Any receptacle they could find, Hawes in charge, Second Lieutenant Svenson to supervise. Might as well go clean to the slaughter, Godfrey had thought as he handed down the instruction, should it come to that. It began to rain as the men lined up the tubs, Ralph lounging in the doorway to the farmhouse as he watched the men drag them across the yard to the pump. A low cattle trough. A couple of buckets. A barrel of some description just big enough for one of the slighter lads to dip into up to his neck. There was a proper tin bath hanging in the back room of the farmhouse, but Ralph would not offer it to the men. He would bathe in it himself later, a slow descent into warm water, a thousand tiny bubbles silvering his thighs.

  Jackdaw and Promise took turns to pump, skinny arms flexing in the wet, shoulder blades like knives. Hawes joked as he watched the A4 boys work, water gushing in spasms from the wide mouth of the pump.

  ‘This’ll build you up, lads.’

  But even he could see how out of breath the work made them, Jackdaw and Promise not as fit as they had once been, nothing but spit and bone between them now.

  George Stone went to and fro from the kitchen with the big kettle full of hot water, adding it to each container before Percy Flint and Archie Methven hauled them into the barn. Ralph sauntered across the lagoon of mud to watch in silence as the small section undressed, his face all shadow and scowl. Godfrey Farthing had forced his second to hand over his lucky dice in punishment for pointing his weapon at Promise. Ralph felt naked without them, unmoored, like the men before him now.

  As the section disrobed, piling their clothes in neat heaps by each tub, Ralph fiddled with the silver cap badge in his pocket, turning the little thing over, then over again. What was it that made Captain Farthing dislike him so much, he wondered. A man not that much older than Ralph was himself – the same age his brother would have been if he’d survived, buried now beneath an ever-shifting battlefield, never would come home again to drink tea or bash on the piano, challenge Ralph to a game of tennis on the lawn.

  When Ralph had crammed himself into the train carriage along with all the other new officers, the smell of freshly pressed khaki filling the air, he had imagined card games round a table in the billet, laughing and tossing his dice with the older men as they told tales about what they had seen. But when he arrived, Ralph had found that Captain Godfrey Farthing was a man who barely spoke, kept his treasure locked away in that wooden box, never did agree to join his second in a game. An officer who
did everything he could to keep his head down, and those of his men, too. It wasn’t fair, Ralph thought now, rubbing his thumb over the lion with its paw raised ready for battle, that after weeks of waiting for something to happen the captain had taken the new recruit on reconnaissance, while Second Lieutenant Ralph Svenson had been left behind to watch old men and boys take off their clothes.

  The mist lay thick on the fields as Godfrey and Alec Sutherland stood side by side beneath the ring of trees looking out across the broken walnut shells, black and decomposed. An hour or more of walking and their pockets were already filled with treasure. Berries and haws. Nuts dug from the earth where they had fallen. Nothing but the smell of earth and loam. What would it be like to be buried here, Godfrey thought, once the end had come?

  Alec’s dog panted by their feet for a moment, then wandered away across the walnut shells, sniffing at one here, licking another there. Neither man attempted to stop him, watched in silence until the dog disappeared into the undergrowth on the opposite side. It was Alec who started to talk of what might happen once they reached the other side, too.

  ‘What will you do next, sir?’ he said. ‘When it’s over, I mean.’

  ‘I don’t know. Go home, I suppose.’ Though where was home, Godfrey wondered, now that his parents were in the ground. He turned to the boy. ‘What about you? Back to your mother? She won’t want to let you go again, I bet.’

  Alec looked embarrassed, a slight flush on the back of his neck.

  ‘I never had a mother, sir.’

  ‘Everyone has a mother, don’t they?’

  Godfrey had meant it as a joke, but Alec flinched and Godfrey felt bad. After all, he didn’t have a mother either. Not anymore.

  ‘I didn’t mean to pry,’ he said.

  ‘I have a girl, sir.’ The boy spoke as though to make up for the absence of a mother. ‘She lives next door to the farm.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Daisy.’ Alec blushed. ‘Haven’t heard from her for a while, though.’

  Godfrey thought of all those letters in his lockbox. Perhaps the boy had one that he wanted to add.

  ‘I can keep a message for her, if you like,’ he said. ‘Just in case.’

  Alec hesitated, brushed the tip of his boot against a blackened walnut shell. ‘Mebbe.’

  ‘Or anything else you want to keep safe.’

  The boy raised his hand then, as though by instinct, touched the pocket over his heart. Godfrey wondered what it was that Alec kept there as treasure, felt again the orders burning in his top pocket. He made as though to put his hand on the boy’s shoulder, dropped his arm to his side.

  ‘And what are you and your girl hoping to do once this thing is done?’ he asked.

  ‘We want to get married, sir,’ Alec replied. ‘See a bit of the world.’

  ‘What, like France or Belgium?’

  Alec grinned then. ‘Something like that.’

  A boy like Godfrey had once been, then, keen for adventure, his sweetheart left behind amongst the hay.

  ‘Well,’ Godfrey said. ‘You’ve seen some of that and then some. Time to go home and settle down for a bit first, don’t you think. Start a family when you’re ready.’

  ‘Aye.’ Alec shuffled, looked at his boots amongst the debris of the walnut shells. ‘Is that what you would do, sir?’

  Yes, thought Godfrey. Yes. Though he hadn’t imagined it before, the idea of a son.

  ‘Maybe I’ll drink a cocktail first,’ he said. ‘To celebrate.’

  Champagne. With brandy at its heart.

  ‘I’ve never had anything like that,’ said Alec.

  Godfrey smiled. ‘We could drink one together. Toast the future.’

  ‘I might prefer a pint, sir.’

  Godfrey laughed. ‘Drunk many of those, have you?’

  Alec flushed slightly. ‘A few.’

  Godfrey imagined the two of them then, sitting together at a table in a pub somewhere in the north, the dog at their feet, froth on the boy’s top lip as he took his first sup. He could almost taste it, too, the sweet fizz of bubbles on his tongue.

  Then the dog began to bark.

  Despite the rain outside, the atmosphere in the barn was high, the men larking as they took turns in the water, splashing and tossing a thin ration of soap from one to the next. The soap was like a sickle moon after more than ten days of waiting for the orders to arrive, almost gone now. But Percy Flint had a private cake of his own, unwrapped from a single piece of waxy paper the week before to the envy of all the other men. Flint’s soap smelled of lavender, was stamped with the image of a woman’s face. He had probably bartered it with Bertie Fortune, Ralph reckoned. For something equally precious in return.

  Flint lounged in the cattle trough as though he was bathing in a spa, a leisurely wash around his dick and his balls. He balanced the fancy soap on the lip of the trough – didn’t want it to get coated in grit and chiff chaff. Ralph knew he would not share it with the other men, unless they had something to give him in return.

  ‘Perfect for the ladies,’ Alfred Walker shouted from where he lathered and splashed in his own bucket.

  ‘You wish,’ said Flint flipping him a lazy ‘V’.

  Walker talked big-time about the sweetheart he was going to marry when this war was done. But all the men knew he probably hadn’t even kissed a girl yet. Walker shook out his hair, flecks of foam spattering across the barn’s cold floor like the first specks of snow they were expecting any day now.

  ‘At least we’ll be clean for when the bells ring,’ he said.

  ‘Who says the bells are going to ring?’ drawled Flint.

  ‘Why else did the captain order baths?’ Walker flicked water towards the married conscript. ‘That’s the orders the new recruit brought, don’t you think?’

  ‘Or for going over.’

  There was a lull in the men’s chat as Percy Flint offered his prediction.

  ‘Offer Alec your soap when he gets back and then maybe we’ll find out.’ It was Jackdaw who made the suggestion.

  ‘Why don’t we just ask the captain?’ said Promise.

  ‘He won’t tell, will he,’ sneered Flint. ‘Likes to play his cards close to his chest.’

  Bertie Fortune’s voice cut through the rest. ‘Nothing more than a supply count.’

  ‘How do you know, Fortune?’

  ‘Just do, Flint. Just do.’

  ‘What about you, sir?’ said Archie Methven, standing next to the cattle trough with a towel draped about his neck. ‘Do you know what the orders are?’

  ‘None of your business, Methven,’ said Ralph turning away. But they all saw the flush upon his neck.

  The men who had bathed already began to dress, the skin of their fingers wrinkled like the walnuts Stone served them for dessert after every dinner, their feet sprinkled with a dusting of Boric powder so that they slipped and squeaked inside their heavy boots. How squalid they were, thought Ralph, filthy on face and neck, pale as dead men underneath, their skin riddled with lice bites, blotched with shadows and scars. Like the wound Ralph had glimpsed beneath Godfrey Farthing’s shirt. A small pucker of skin, just above his heart, that seemed to ache in the damp if the captain’s constant pressing at it was anything to go by. Ralph had noticed it when he and Godfrey passed on their way to and from their tin bath in the back room, the flicker of a candle high on a shelf shimmering across the captain’s pale skin. Ralph had lain in the bath after, staring at the roses on the greasy wallpaper, wondering how the captain had got the wound. Something to do with Hawes – that was what Fortune had suggested, called their temporary sergeant the bravest of them all. But Ralph was too afraid to ask.

  He looked now across the wide expanse of the barn towards where James Hawes was handing out towels taken from the wash line in the grain store. Hawes had kept his clothes on, as befitted a temporary sergeant, no need to expose himself to the men any more than he had been already the day before. But he stank, Ralph thought, bad enough to make h
is own mother turn away. All the men smelled bad, in fact, a stench of decay hanging on them however much they washed beneath the pump each morning or got caught in the rain. Except for him, of course. Second Lieutenant Ralph Svenson only ever smelt of lemon oil, a sweet note of citrus following wherever he led.

  Ralph watched as Hawes helped Jackdaw clamber into the barrel, the boy dipping his head right under the water like a child on a trip to the seaside, before rising like a nymph emerging from the waves. This was who was left to win the war, Ralph thought. A4 conscripts and sexual adventurers. George Stone, the old sweat who wouldn’t remove his apron and Alfred Walker, the petty thief, always stuffing his pockets. Bertie Fortune, the entrepreneur who could get anything anybody wanted as long as they paid. Not forgetting James Hawes, of course, the temporary sergeant who could no longer stand the sight of blood. Not the bravest of them, thought Ralph, not anymore.

  Across the barn, Jackdaw splashed some more before he clambered out, made way for Promise, a broad beam on Hawes’s solid face as he handed the darker A4 boy a towel. Jackdaw began a vigorous rubbing down of his whole body as Hawes disappeared towards the grain store to get another. Jackdaw was a skinny thing, scrawny, but he didn’t mind it all being on show. Walker whistled a few bars of ‘Mademoiselle’ till the others joined in, Jackdaw laughing and striking a pose. Legs like a lady’s, thought Ralph. He would let the A4 boys lead, when the orders came.

  He sauntered over to where Promise was still dipped into the barrel, all the others out and dressing now. Flint was attempting to comb a parting into his hair, frowning at himself in a bashed-out piece of tin.

  ‘Are you coming out, Promise?’ Ralph said. ‘Or are you going to lounge in there all day?’

  He took the silver cap badge from his pocket, flipped it between his fingers as though it was nothing more than a toy. Promise’s face was suddenly all angles and dips. Jackdaw couldn’t help himself, came slapping over in his bare feet, towel flapping.

  ‘That doesn’t belong to you . . . sir.’

  Ralph turned the little badge over once, then twice, more slowly this time.