Umbrella (40 page)

wherein the most abbreviated things have become . . . elongated
. A telegram boy halts alongside the top panes of the snub bay window and bends to pull up his stocking – Doctor Vowles thinks of the skull in Holbein’s Ambassadors,
its disturbing anamorphosis
. . . I’ve seen two or three others who’re as difficult to bestir – who cannot do anything for themselves . . . The oppression of the half-buried room, the two ailing young women, his own exhaustion – it all bears down on him, and he steps to the window to breathe deeply. Gracie waits, her yellow hands twisting inside the pockets of her paler yellow apron. Vowles recovers: . . . and who, when they’re able to speak of it at all, report strange hallucinations and violent headaches, but then . . . the sickroom camphor and the stench of sweat-saturated sheets is as nauseating to him as
Wilson’s claim
that
the war almost justified itself
. . .
I have another patient, a lady in Pimlico, who’s afflicted with the exact same unreasonable anxieties, these flushes and sweats, but who, far from languishing, can gain no repose at all – she’s been pacing and fretting for five days now, I’ve never seen the like: the strongest drugs make no impression on her, salts of salicylic won’t touch her fever, I greatly fear –. He stops, looks round, sees his Gladstone – acts upon this by crossing the room with two long strides, withdrawing a pad, taking a fountain pen from his breast pocket, scrawling upon a sheet, hunching up to tear it free and handing it to Gracie. He queries: Have you sufficient funds? not knowing what he will do if she doesn’t – for, while Cook cabled to him that he would accommodate Vowles’s bill,
he said nothing of
further subventions
. — When he is gone, his boot heels ringing up the bare stairs to the front hall, Gracie reads the note to the chemist: Salicyclic prep. Asprin x 20 grns. Two weeks now and no sign of change: Audrey bellows, her knees fall down and her
back bends . . . bends
. . .
the cushions and the pillow roll down under her back and she arches over them, her eyes all bloodshot sclera, their lids quivery. What is it that she sees, Gracie wonders, up there inside ’er own ’ead? Audrey arches still more, lifting her torso clear of the covers – her arms are flung back and her nails pick at the wallpaper, fingers scrabbling up to discover the picture frame,
I-am I-am I-am
. . .
and then there is sensation – the answering pressure of fingers that make his fingers exist once more, and once they are, so are his wrists, his forearms, his elbows,
all me benders
. . .
It is touch, Stanley thinks, the movement of touch that makes us be in time – for time had fled me also.
Nisi agit non est
. . .
He thinks all this as first one arm, then the other, is freed from its interment in this citadel shaped so exactly like himself. Next there is further loosening of the hard-packed earth – it squeezes, then releases him, compelling a slithery second birth as the final backward dive he made when the shockwave hit still continues
hours . . . days?
later. Small clods, agitated,
tickle away
and his own face is exposed – whose other faces will he see,
Fritzes’? Frenchies’? Our own? Will they be soldiers or
stretcher-bearers?
He strains for voices – there is only panting h-h-h-h-huh, thumping, and the falling away
of the dug earth. Stanley calmly awaits the reddening-to-orange as daylight impresses his eyelids – it does not come. His rescuers must have hollowed out a cavity beneath his bent back because all at once he tumbles painfully on to the till, sees only the fencing of erratic wands – electric torch beams that magic up a dirty leg, a dirtier shirt-tail. His emergence is haled in various tongues: Veranstalten Sie ihn! Tirez-le libre! C’mon now, men –! Then he is being dragged bodily along a Russian sap that descends steadily down, its chalky walls beautifully ridged by the mattock strokes that hacked it out – here and there sardine tin lamps glimmer in little niches. Stunned by joy in living at all, to begin with Stanley is inured to scrape and dunt – soon enough, though, he bridles, legs bicycle, grip, propel him standing . . . The rescue party halts. Stanley’s bare head scrapes against the tunnel roof – his steel helmet has gone. He reaches for the lanyard – the Colt is lost as well, webbing, ammo pouches, belt, potato-mashers, haversack . . . the entire battle order
gone
. His rescuers’ breathing rasps harsh, flutters
bully beef
on his face. Wh-what waar woo? he numbles. A lithening potht? From far overhead the noise of the barrage declines into innocence,
a carpet beaten on a clothesline
. One of the rescuers – whose wide face,
combed yellow
in the lamplight, Stanley is surprised to see
thickly carpeted
by beard – reaches out to take the insignia on Stanley’s collar between his blackened nails. Death, Lance-Corporal, 32nd Machine-Gun Company, 5665, Stanley says – he cannot stand to attention but attempts a salute that . . .
flops
. The bearded man laughs, and it is then Stanley notices that he, like the others, is naked apart from a shirt – his isn’t a greyback but a fancy cambric thing
more like a woman’s blouse
, with pleats on the bodice, puffed sleeves and a patterning of embroidered flowers
planted in the dirt
. The bearded man laughs again and, leaving go Stanley’s miniature crossed Vickerses, takes the floppy hand gently in his, tugging it down so that they stand there in the subterranean passage holding hands . . .
like kids
. Tush, the bearded man says softly, there’s no call for sooch talk down ’ere, chappie. He has long North Country vowels and is oddly courteous. You moost’ve ’ad a ’elluv a shock from that there blast – lookie-thar, yer kecks’re all blow t’bits. Stanley peers down into the fawnlight – it’s true, his trousers are in tatters, his drawers as well. His boots have
deserted me
and his tunic is in filthy ribbons. Even set beside this strange crew he’s a
sorry ragamuffin
. The bearded man resumes, Ahm called Michael and this ’ere – he indicates a slim, curly-haired figure with a fleecy beard and round, wire-rimmed spectacles – is Winfried, boot we call ’im, Winnie fer convenience. Thass Jean-François – a sallow-faced giant of man, bowed under the weight of his heavy, swallowtail moustaches – boot Johnnie t’uz, an’ this wun ’ere is Mohan. The Hindoo is clean-shaven in comparison with his mates, with only a thin braiding of black hairs on his full brown cheeks. Nah then, says Michael, having effected these peculiar introductions, try again t’givuz yer ’andle. Stanley says, It’s Stan, my name is Stan. Michael squeezes his wrist. Good, he says, you’re getting the ’ang of it beauty, Stan. Without relinquishing his grip, Michael draws Stanley on behind him. Mind yer ’ead, he says, it’s no better fer a lanky wun doon ’ere than oop top –. Laughing, he corrects himself: Savin’ that ’ere the worst azall ’appen is yer brains being bashed rather than blown t’smithereens. The gradient steepens and steepens, the tunnel doubles-back on itself and back again as it corkscrews into the earth, around corners worn smooth by the rubbing of shoulders . . . It’s no Russian sap, Stanley realises: not this deep – and these men are no black hand gang sent out to do the business before the big push, nor sappers either – for where’s their tackle?
Curiouser and curiouser
. . .
The party shuffles by a narrow gallery lit by electric bulbs strung from a wire in the bright light of which casualties are being treated. Stanley hangs back to see field dressings torn apart, the bandage tossed aside, the ampoule of iodine broken into the wound – he sees morphia injected into
tallowy
flesh. We don’t keep ’em, Michael explains. Leastways, not oonless it’s a scratch. We taykem back oop, lissen fer the ebbin’ an’ flowin’ uvvit, an’ when we joodge it right nibble oor way through t’oonderbits inta a shell crater or a trench an’ leave ’em there fer t’oopsiders t’find. Stanley has absolutely no idea what Michael is talking about – although he grasps that the Northerner knows this and speaks only as he does to calm him, as he might have done a restive horse spooked by the cacophony of war. The long shaft terminates in a chalky grotto some twenty feet across, its roof high enough to allow all of them – Stanley and Jean-François included – to stand erect. Oor deepest point in this partuv t’line, Michael says, and Winfried plays his torch beam over the galvanised iron walls
seeped-upon brown
, writing into legibility the familiar mock street signs. Michael points to one that reads Unter den Linden and says, Over-yonder to the Jerries . . . then to the Champs-Élysées, saying, South-west to the Frenchies . . . and finally to the Tottenham Court Road: An’ back there to the British lines, see, we moost know oor way round better than t’belligerents – fer them it’s joost back an’ forth a few paces, fer uz it’s scootlin’ all abaht. Stanley revolves and in this murky-go-round sees the faint rings cast by the torchlight travelling along these man-made gullets
like a . . . sort of pulse, I s’pose you’d say
. Michael says, Now, laddie, Ah reckon yoove earned yer tommy, cummere, and, flinging an arm around the taller man’s shoulders, he encourages him under a low lintel, through hangings of sackcloth and canvas, to where there’s a rich, homely glow of firelight and a
Catholic blaze
of candles. The cool mustiness of the tunnel is replaced by fat frying – the saliva gushes into Stanley’s dry mouth. Men are packed into the well-lit chamber: Britons of all shapes, sizes, classes – Germans and French ditto, some
plucky little
Belgians, a scattering of coolies, several more Hindoos, also Negroes from the colonies – many are altogether naked, others wear bits and pieces of military-issue kit, others still oddments of civilian clothing, including ladies’ walking cloaks, boudoir bonnets and even – adapted with blade and twine – the occasional corset. The men lounge on blanket-covered divans hewn from the sides of the burrow – they all seem to be simultaneously smoking pipes, mopping greasy plates with hunks of black bread and reading. The studied silence of their concentration is undisturbed by the arrival of Michael’s party, the members of which distribute themselves here, there –
wherever we can . . . mingling not with laughing comrades
. Stanley finds himself wedged between
a hook-nosed Levantine and a flat-faced Finn
, at his feet lies an etiolated and languid figure,
not a stitch on ’im
, with the most singularly
sticking-out ears
, who absent-mindedly rearranges his genitals, pulling the pinched sac of his scrotum from between hairless thighs, then sets down his Everyman edition of Pater’s Appreciations and calls over to the big blackamoor who’s cooking on a pot-bellied iron stove, I say, spear me another banger or two, will you, ol’ man? The blackamoor calls back, Two zeppelins anna cloud cummin’ up! And in due course the plate does come, hand to hand, on it two sausages and a lump of mashed potato. To Stanley the forceful impression of a domesticity long cultivated is unutterably sad:
Where is dopey Olive, chirpy Vi? We sit no more at the familiar table of home
. . .
He hunches over, weeping not because of the pain from his strained back or bruised arms and legs, but unashamedly as his sensibility quickens. — The barrage, so muted now it resounds only as memories of
summer rainfall
on the roof of a bandstand
. . .
Michael squeezes in beside Stan, gloves his hands with his own thickly callused ones and says, Y’know biggest problem we ’av is wi t’smoke. See, we can mekk t’cunningest of chimbleys – he points to where a contrivance of soldered tin snakes up from the stove’s flue to wander across the uneven roof of the burrow – boot we still ass t’vent it soomwhere. Means we can only ’av cooking an’ ’eating by night . . .
They’ve no part in the labour of the day-time
. . .
Not so bad now, but coom winter it gets right parky down ’ere. The naked officer at their feet drawls up from his resumed Pater, Yaas, deuced fucking cold. The newcomers have all found perches, and now their food comes – the plates are all in use, so they are furnished with platters fashioned from the lids of ammo boxes and other scrap. Nestling in his lap, scorching his thighs, Stanley’s platter supports greenish gravy, a potato splodge . . .