The Storms of War (18 page)

Jonathan had written twice more. Michael had replied to neither letter. It was like being back in his room on the night before he left.
Dear Jonathan,
he began; could say no more. What would he say now?
I am in a brothel and I don’t know what to do.
Jonathan would know. He had told Michael once that he had been to a brothel in New York. ‘The second time, I arrived in one girl’s room just when she was reading an article in one of those murder magazines. She stood up, introduced herself – but I could tell she wanted to be back with it. You know how it is when someone pulls you away from something gripping! I said to her, “Miss, why don’t you sit yourself down, finish the article first before you think of anyone else?” She was ever so pleased with that, couldn’t do enough for me. It was some story about a woman who had been kidnapped from her bed by a monkey, outlandish stuff. I like a reading girl.’ He winked. ‘What about you, de Witt? Any kept birds for you?’ Michael shook his head.

And now here he was by a bulging door, the heat and bodies of men pushing against it, all for these three girls, one for each finger on the old crone’s hand. In his pay envelope – in everyone’s – there was a section from Kitchener’s speech on avoiding wine and women. He’d looked at it, on the boat, wondering who had been given the job of printing it out, stuffing thousands of copies into envelopes.

‘Go on, old man.’ The soldier on the sofa broke through his thoughts. His voice had turned sharp. ‘You’re keeping everyone waiting, dilly-dallying like this. The girls need to earn a living.’

Michael was senior to the man, a mere lance corporal. He should have declared that he would report him to his captain for insubordination. But he did not. A coward again. He turned for the stairs.

‘Which one?’ said the woman, holding up her infernal fingers.

‘The eldest,’ said Michael. ‘What is her name?’ The woman shrugged.

‘Good choice, my man. She’ll tell you her name. Upstairs with you, before the door breaks in.’

Michael tried to speak. His stammer returned. The words stuck in his mouth, would not come out.

‘Two shillings with wine,’ the woman said. ‘Cheap at the price.’

The incredulity must have shown on his face. ‘Not really a buyer’s market around here, is it, dear boy?’ said the soldier. ‘These are the best girls for miles.’ Michael had seen the other places: small houses with the sign
WASHING DONE HERE FOR SOLDIERS,
where housewives still in their aprons sat on a couch in the kitchen, flicking brown stuff between their legs in between each customer, the kettle boiling for the men to douse themselves quickly, to stave off the pox.

And now here he was in the room.
‘Merci,’
she was saying, sitting on the bed.
‘Merci, monsieur
.’

He knew French, he had learnt it. But he could not speak it.
Are you really her daughter?
he wanted to ask. He could not say the words.

‘Viens, monsieur
.’ She patted the bed. ‘Come.’

Was this your bedroom?
he wanted to ask. He thought of Celia’s room: pictures on the walls, piles of books on the shelves, trinkets on the desk. This one had nothing: a sparse single bed, a threadbare red cover slung over the top, a pile of boxes in the corner, another box acting as some kind of bedside table.
Did you grow up here? Is that woman really your mother?
The old woman had guided him up the creaky stairs using a candle, had pulled open a dark door (what was this French obsession with dingy wood?). ‘Here!’ she said. A pale girl with light brown hair and reddish rings under her eyes rose from the bed and smiled. She was very thin, he thought, wearing some sort of pinkish dressing gown, pulled tight around her body. The door slammed behind him and he was alone with her.

‘What is your name?’ he asked, but she only shook her head,
beckoned to him again. He had no idea of ages; supposed she must be about the same as him, or younger. How young was the other one?

‘Why are you doing this?’ he said. She did not answer, but he felt from the look in her eyes that she understood. ‘This must have been your home. You went to school here. Surely you want to get married.’

She shook her head. ‘
Merci, monsieur
,’ she said again. She lay back on the bed. The dressing gown loosened.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘I am sorry.’ He walked to the window, clung to the frame. It was covered with a dirty sheet. He could hear the men below, roaring out: ‘Quicker up there, you bastards! We’re waiting.’

‘
Monsieur
,’ she said. Her voice had hardened. ‘
Monsieur?’

He stared at her. There were words in his head and he could not say them. It was like the days of his stammer again; his mouth would not join his brain. She pulled the dressing gown around her and then, in one swift movement, hopped off the bed and came towards him. She clutched the front of his trousers. He jumped in horror. ‘Stop!’ he shouted. ‘Stop.’ He pushed her off and she fell back on the bed, her gown flapping open. She started laughing, infernal endless laughter. ‘Stop!’ he shouted again. ‘Stop it now!’ and he tore out of the room, down the stairs and back through the parlour, ignoring the men and the crone. He wrenched the door open and threw himself out into the road. A great roar went up from the gang of men outside. Hands were on him. Cries of ‘Good on you, old chap!’ ‘My turn now!’ He heard Bilks’s voice. He pushed through them, the infernal, shouting mass, and dived into the street, kept running. He turned a corner into a quieter street, leant against the damp wall of a house, breathing deeply.

‘Michael!’ The voice was above him. He looked up into Tom’s face. ‘I thought it was you!’

He shook his head, could not speak.

‘I thought I saw you come out of that place. I’ve heard the daughters there are pretty good.’

Michael felt a tear bulge up behind his eye.

‘Come on, Michael. I didn’t mean to upset you. Nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘It’s not that,’ Michael managed. The last time he had seen Tom had been at Boulogne. Tom had been sent further south, he thought.

Now Tom clapped him on the back. ‘Splendid to see you, Michael. I’ve been wondering how you were getting on. It’s been pretty quiet up where I was, so Loos should be a nice change. What’s it like here?’

Michael shook his head again. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’ He had left his men in the trench singing their hearts out with Private Andrews who said he would have gone on the stage if his father had let him. ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’: that was him, marching them up to the top of the hill and marching them down again. ‘The men are doing well. There’s mud. Have you seen the rats? Some of them as big as cats.’ That very morning, he had been dreaming of a cat wrapped around his feet and had woken to find a rat there, fat as anything, licking at his socks. He swore the things must feast on corpses.

‘But what is the real fighting like, man? We spent most of our time chucking mud out of the trenches with buckets. They made us do it at night so Jerry couldn’t spot us, but he never seemed to do much anyway. Honestly, it was more like living on a farm than in a war. The farmers got so used to us, they used to herd their cows past the front of the trenches. We were told by our officers to keep our heads down in case of Jerry, and then a load of cows went mooing past.’ He clapped Michael on the back. ‘Shame we were split up. I thought they would keep us together. But we’re back together again now.’

After they’d joined up, the officer in charge had told them to go home and wait.

‘We’re a bit full, you see,’ he said. ‘The top brass didn’t expect such a rush.’

‘We can’t go back. They won’t let us leave again. My father
would be against it,’ said Michael. The officer moved to refuse; Michael cut him off.

The officer went away, came back ten minutes later. ‘You can join the group at HQ in Winchester. Look, there’s no room here. We’re sending you to Bury. Don’t tell the rest.’

They piled on to a truck and the officer drove them off. Michael smiled at Tom. ‘Thank you!’ he shouted, over the wind battering around their ears. ‘Thank you!’ If it wasn’t for Tom, perhaps he wouldn’t be there. In the garden, saying
Of course you can do it, Michael, you’ll make them proud.

A girl fluttered past them in the alleyway. ‘Come on,’ said Tom, ‘let’s find a café. It’s freezing out here.’ He linked his arm through Michael’s. ‘I am so pleased to see you. Thought I might not bump into you for the whole war.’ He squeezed. ‘It was the right decision, don’t you think? For me, definitely. There was nothing back there for me but slaving around under Marks for a few pennies, a job for a boy.’

‘And now you are a man?’ Michael could not help the bitterness in his tone.

‘Why of course! Don’t you think so?’

‘You want to please my sister.’ Tom looked down. Michael knew he had been cruel. The night before they left, Tom had drunk too much and talked of how beautiful he thought Celia was. Michael had sighed. Anyone (except his parents, who were blind) could see that Tom was devoted to Celia, followed her round like a puppy. He knew other things that Tom did not say – that he hated being treated like a servant, thought that going to war would change things, make Celia proud of him. ‘My father would never allow it,’ he said after Tom had poured out his heart.

‘I don’t want anything like that. I – well – I can’t.’

‘Glad you recognise that, at least.’

‘Not for the reasons you think!’ Tom said, angrily. He glowered at Michael, so much so that Michael felt he had to soothe him, change the subject, return the conversation to the subject of their plans to join up in secret.

This time, Tom was ready for the Celia question. ‘No. You were right, I was wrong with all that. I am here for the King, to save us from the Germans. Like you.’

Michael shrugged. ‘Our training was pointless, you know.’

At Bury they were given a ticket, then sent off to the stores, where they were handed a set of khakis that didn’t look as if they had been darned since the Boer War. They were lucky; some men were training in pyjamas, stores were so low. They had to hew firewood into the shape of rifles, then they were set to marching, round and round, holding, turning, front, back, inspection, learning how to form fours, right wheel, left wheel, supervised by an elderly commander who said he’d fought in India. Then they went to the local park and practised digging trenches. Surely, Michael had wanted to say to the officer in charge, by the time we get there, they’ll already be dug. Or are you planning to turn all of France into a trench? He held his tongue, bent over in the August sun, and shovelled mud out of a rose garden that some philanthropist had planted for the benefit of the workers.

After a month, they were given real rifles. One of the old chaps said it wasn’t the right sort of rifle; it was a long one, which wasn’t what they wanted, apparently. It wasn’t loaded and it didn’t have any webbing, but still, Michael thought, he had a gun. He held it up and stared at it. It was a deterrent, he told himself. He would use it as a deterrent. He wouldn’t need it until the final pitched battle of the war, which would be something like Waterloo, lots of them on horses, the Germans retreating with their hands up in the air.

The town band played them to the station, the girls waving their handkerchiefs, the people cheering. He crammed with the other men on to the train to Southampton, his heart bursting. He would make them proud at home. Hours on the boat, then bundled off at Boulogne. One solitary gendarme with a gun patrolled the dock, nothing more. They piled into a fleet of thirty London omnibuses, their sides papered with rain-sodden advertisements for soap and cereal, fighting to sit at the top – until it started to rain. Most of them were sodden by the time they were turfed out to march. As
Michael stepped down, the officer in charge grasped his shoulder. ‘Your corporal has been moved on,’ he said. ‘Bilks is your lance.’

Fifty minutes on, only ten minutes of rest. Barker and Cook kept falling to the side of the road, begging for water. They wouldn’t get up. ‘You must leave no one behind,’ his commander had said. ‘Beat them if they will not move.’ Michael made another man cut down a branch from a tree and hit them on the hands until they got up. The twigs slashed at their fingers, caught their faces. When they got up, they were red and angry, did not look at him.

‘Why did you do that?’ asked the commander when they arrived and he was reporting. ‘That was your lance corporal’s job. You should oversee.’ Michael nodded, wrong already. ‘Still, at least you didn’t let them take their boots off like Cullen. Half of his men couldn’t get them back on again after the lunch stop and had to walk barefoot or with them unlaced. They’re in no fit state now.’

They were ready for the bullring: more shooting, throwing grenades and charging at bales of straw with their bayonets. The instructor sergeant said they had to show more teeth, made them charge the straw five times until they were screaming, diving on it, as if to show the truth of Hobbes and his vision of man, Michael thought, standing back.

The trench was, as he’d expected, already dug, shored up with sandbags at the sides. ‘There should be boards over the ground,’ he said to Bilks. ‘The men can’t get around like this. Tell them we need boards.’

Bilks shrugged. ‘If they give them to us, they’d have to give them to everybody, and they can’t spare that. I’ll ask, though.’

The commanding officer came back with Bilks and peered down. ‘You are asking for wood? We don’t have it.’

‘Won’t the people give it up from their houses?’

‘The old woman I asked yesterday said she would rather kill herself than relinquish wood from her house to us. I told her that if it wasn’t for us, the Germans would come and take what they wanted. She said the Germans had been here in 1870 and were very well behaved.’

Two days later, it rained hellishly and the whole place was flooded up to the knees. The rats swam untidily along, chasing after floating bits of biscuit, the only way to get that stuff soft, Michael thought. After a morning of trying to bail the water out, he was leaning on the side, exhausted. ‘Just you wait till it goes up to your waist!’ shouted one man. ‘Then you’ll have it.’