Behind the Lines (18 page)

CHAPTER XIII

I

Consciousness floated back to him, consciousness of dull pains and aches and particularly of a splitting headache. Rain was falling gently on his upturned face. He opened his eyes without moving. Here and there stars shone from rifts in the clouds, and low down near the invisible horizon a dull red light glowed like an eye. He moved his aching head slowly to avoid the tickling of the long, rank grass which the chill night breeze brushed against his cheek, and at the movement the distant dull red light swayed and kindled to a bright red, revealing itself with startling suddenness as a cigarette in the mouth of a shadowy face.

“So you've woke up, 'ave you!” commented a voice close at hand. The point of light disappeared, and the dark head and shoulders of a man rose against the sky.

Rawley scrambled painfully to his feet and discovered in the process that his belt and tunic were undone. He took a step forward, but the figure backed from him. “Keep your distance,” it growled. “If yer don't want a hole in yer shirt.”

Rawley plumped down again on the bank. He saw that, although the speaker was short and slight, he held a revolver in his hand.

“All right,” he said. “You can put that thing away.” He put his hand to his breast pocket, and found that his wallet was
gone and that the flaps of his pockets were unbuttoned. His pockets had been ransacked. He held his aching head in his hands. “Well, what's the idea?” he asked.

“Idea! What bleedin' idea?” asked the other.

“I mean you've cleaned me out very nicely. What now?”

“Nothin'. You can clear out.”

“Oh—er—thanks!” answered Rawley, with a touch of sarcasm. “But I'm still a bit dicky, and—er—if it's all the same to you, I'll wait a moment.”

The other grunted and sat down on the roadside a yard or two away. Rain was falling gently. The distant gun flashes still played like summer lightning along the horizon. Rawley held his aching head in his hands. He wondered why the fellow had stayed. The glow of his cigarette waxed and waned in the darkness and gave glimpses of a sharp, ferrety little face. He was a little dirty weed of a man and a cockney, judging by his voice.

Presently he spoke again. “I'll take my bleedin' oath you saw some stars when Kelly copped you that beauty on the napper!” he chuckled.

His tone was conversational, and without any malice, and it dawned on Rawley that for some reason the fellow was glad of his company. The cigarette glowed in the darkness, and the sharp face behind it was revealed fitfully. The voice continued in a confidential tone: “I saw you was a gunner, that's why I stayed till you come to. You'll be all right in a jiffy.”

“Thanks,” answered Rawley. He was in truth a little grateful to the fellow for staying. He felt very much alone
in the world at that moment, and the devastated area was very desolate and depressing at that hour. An outcast himself, the company even of a guttersnipe was not to be despised. “I suppose you are a gunner, too,” he added conversationally.

“Yep,” answered the other, and spat. “I was.” He threw away the cigarette end and lighted another with a tinder lighter.

Automatically Rawley put his hand in his pocket, but though his pipe remained, his tobacco had been taken. He put the cold stem between his teeth.

“I suppose your hospitality towards a fellow gunner wouldn't rise to giving him a cigarette,” he asked. “My tobacco seems to have gone astray.”

The fellow hesitated a moment and then fumbled in his pockets. A cigarette fell into Rawley's lap.

“Many thanks,” said Rawley. “But my matches seem to have gone the way of my tobacco.”

The automatic lighter landed in his lap. He twisted the flint and blew the tinder to a bright glow.

The cigarette was flat and a little bent from long residence in a pocket, but it was a smoke. Rawley straightened it between his fingers and lighted it.

In the silence that followed, the grumble of distant gunfire quickened suddenly to a dull throbbing roll like the muffled beating of side-drums, and the flickerings on the eastern horizon became continuous.

“Kaiser Bill's birfday or something!” commented Rawley's companion. “Nasty 'ate going on.”

“Sounds as if somebody is a bit peeved about something,” agreed Rawley. “That's mostly eighteen pounders.”

“I was eighteen pounders,” said the other reminiscently.

Rawley nodded. “Nice little cannon. Though I don't suppose I shall ever fire one again,” he added bitterly.

“Why, ain't you going up there any more?” The dark head nodded towards the distant gunflashes.

“No—I suppose not. I cleared out of the battery this afternoon, and—there's no going back now.”

“Why . . . you ain't deserted, 'ave you—and you an officer!” The tone was one of shocked righteousness.

Rawley's pent feelings overflowed. “Why, blast you, you thieving little squit, you're a deserter, too, aren't you?”

“Orl right. Orl right. And what if I am?” protested the other.

“Then what the hell do you mean by talking like that? If you think I got cold feet and ran away from my men, you are damn well wrong, and I'll knock your dirty little head off.” He checked his vehemence and laughed bitterly. “Well, what's the good of all this anyway? We are both deserters and there's an end of it.” He threw his cigarette end on the ground and trod it viciously into the mud with his heel. There was silence for some moments, and then another cigarette landed in his lap. He lifted it between his fingers, and after a moment's hesitation put it in his mouth. “Thanks,” he said curtly.

They smoked in silence for some moments. Presently the cockney voice came again, sympathetically: “What are you going to do, mate?”

Rawley blew a cloud of smoke through his nose and laughed shortly. “Lord knows. What do
you
do?”

“Well, that's just it; I was just a-thinkin'.”

“Thinking what?”

“Why, that we might be half-sections, you an' me.”

Rawley's answering grunt was non-committal.

“You see,” went on the other confidentially, “you want a maite in this gaime. It's orl rite scroungin' round on yer own fer a bit, but yer never knows if some of the other crowd won't find where you've hidden your stores and pinch 'em. And it's lonesome out 'ere at night, I give yer my oath.” He spat and shivered. “No, I reckon you're ruddy lucky meetin' me. When I fust come out 'ere I lived on arf a biscuit for two days and drank rain water from a shell 'ole. And the fust two nights it rained like only sunny bleedin' France can rain, and I lay in a shell hole under a bit of old elephant iron till I got washed out and nearly froze. And that's what you'd be doing if you hadn't met me. You ain't got no bunk, and you ain't got no grub, and you ain't got no fags. And I've got all of 'em, and what I 'as, my mate 'as too. What do you say?” He came close to Rawley and tapped him on the knee. “Look 'ere,” he went on in a confidential whisper, and pulled something from his pocket, “I'll show you the sort of bloke I am. That's 'arf my share, five francs. Kelly, blast 'im, took your fifty-franc note and all the rest, and he give me and Pearson ten francs each. And that's the bleedin' truth, if I never speak another word.” He held the tattered note towards Rawley. “There y'are fifty-fifty.”

“What's your name?” asked Rawley without taking the proffered note.

“Alf. The other naime don't matter.”

“Well, Alf, put that five francs back in your pocket. It's payment for the cigarettes I've smoked, and for the grub I'm relying on you to produce. And as I'm devilish hungry, the sooner you produce it the better it will suit me.”

II

They set off together in the darkness along the narrow, muddy, pot-holed road. There was no sound except the distant drumming of the guns and the gentle swish of the rain. The darkness hung like a curtain around them, and once only did Rawley see dimly against the sky the skeleton rafters of some shattered homestead.

Presently they left the road and stumbled among foot-high, weed-grown walls and grassy brick rubble slippery with rain. Beyond the flattened village the ground sloped upwards and was covered with coarse grass and pitted with weed-grown shell holes. Alf led the way, and occasionally gave warning of a tangle of rusty wire or of an old half-filled trench that had to be jumped.

He halted finally and said: “Here we are, mate.” But there was nothing to be seen. The flickerings eastwards had either ceased or were hidden by the contour of the ground. The invisible rain rustled mournfully in the darkness. Alf bent down and his dark form was instantly swallowed
up. A moment later his voice came muffled from below Rawley's feet. “Come on; it's about a six-foot drop.”

Rawley felt forward cautiously with one foot and slithered down through wet grass and weeds into a narrow, muddy trench.

Alf led off again and Rawley followed. Dripping weeds brushed his face and bits of old basket revetment stabbed at his legs. For twenty yards or more they stumbled along, sliding and sticking in the mud, before they halted where the trench was blocked by a fall of earth. A baulk of rotting timber, half-buried in the landslide, bridged low down in the trench a narrow hole, through which Alf crawled. “You stay, mate, till I get a light,” he said, as his head disappeared.

A few minutes later a gleam of yellow light appeared, and Rawley squeezed through the hole, feet first. He found himself in a low and narrow tunnel, revetted with rotting timbers and half-blocked with falls of earth. Alf stood with a battered hurricane lantern in his hand, his body bent to avoid the roof timbers. They squeezed under an outward-leaning pit-prop and its burden of loose earth and revetment and scrambled round a mound of loose earth that all but filled the tunnel. Then down several steps to a curtain of dirty sacking which Alf pulled aside. “ 'Ere we are, maite, 'ome sweet 'ome.”

Rawley followed him past the curtain and found himself in a medium-sized dug-out. A big beam ran across the middle of the roof and was supported in the centre by a great baulk of timber whose base rested on a thick
plank half-embedded in the earthen floor. Against the post stood a rough table on which at the moment rested a dirty piece of newspaper, an empty bully-beef tin with jagged meaty edges, and much candle grease. Beyond it stood a crazy wire-netting bed with rumpled brown blankets, and pegged by match stalks to the earth wall above were a number of stained photographs of actresses, torn from illustrated papers. The whole place was indescribably dirty and had a musty, earthy, garlicky smell, like the lair of a wild beast.

Alf put the battered hurricane lamp on the table and looked around him with a grin. “ 'Ere we are,” he said. “ 'Ere we are. The well-known society gent, Mr. Alf Hitchkins, in his boudoir—some-bleedin'-where in France.”

The lamplight revealed him to Rawley as a short wiry little man with long unkempt dark hair curling over his ears, bright and rather humorous eyes set in a grimy face, and several days' growth of beard like a strip of black crêpe round his narrow jaw.

“Now for some grub,” he said. He went to the other side of the dug-out and pulled down a dirty piece of sacking that was pegged into the earth wall. Behind it was a hole some six feet deep by four feet in height, forming an alcove. From a corner he dragged a battered bucket, with holes punched in it, and set it up on two bricks on the floor of the alcove. Into this he put some scraps of paper and splintered wood.

“You're not going to light that thing in here, are you?” asked Rawley. “We shall be smoked out.”

Alf watched the paper blaze up and the wood begin to crackle, and then turning on one knee gave a large wink. “This bug 'ouse might 'ave been built for Hindenburg hisself,” he said. “Every modern convenyince. Fireplace and chimbly. The only thing it 'asn't got is a barf room.”

He took a fair-sized tin with a wire handle from under some rubbish, filled it with water from a petrol tin, and hung it over the blaze by means of a rusty bayonet. Then he cleared the table by tipping the rubbish on to the floor. He set out a tin of bully beef, four rather mouldy army biscuits, a battered enamel mug, and an old mustard tin.

“It's the cook's night out, and the kippers 'avent come cos it's early closin' dye, but I'm stunnin' the fat 'eaded Fray Bentos.” And he set to work with a jack-knife to open the tin. A small handful of tea thrown into the boiling water completed the preparations.

They sat on upturned boxes on either side of the rickety table and ate the beef from the tin with the aid of pocket knives.

“Where do you draw your rations?” asked Rawley, as he sipped his nearly black tea from the mustard tin.

Alf transferred a lump of bully-beef from the point of his jack-knife to his mouth.

“Scrounge it,” he answered, masticating vigorously. “There aint 'arf a lot of stuff lying around these old trenches. I've got a nice little stock of bully, and I had some jam too, but that's all gone. Oh, it aint 'arf bad out 'ere. We live like perishin' fightin' cocks sometimes, I give you my word. Why, a few weeks ago the boys 'ad a raid on a canteen at
Morpas. It was one of Kelly's stunts, and I come back 'ere with a perishin' bread sack bulgin' with tins of crab, and pork and beans, and Maconochie, and fags by the 'undred. Proper Christmas day in the workus, it was.”

Rawley broke one of the board-like biscuits by hammering it on the post beside him and dropped a piece into his tea to soften. “Who is Kelly?” he asked.

“Kelly! Why, he's the perishin' Fairy Queen. A bloke what's a sight too free with his dukes—so it don't do to argue with 'im.”

“I see,” said Rawley. “Sort of unofficial O.C. devastated area. A deserter, I suppose?”

Alf nodded and went on between spasms of mastication. “He's an Aussie. They say he shot a perishin' red-cap down at Etapps. I ain't never seen his billet 'cause he don't encourage visitors, but they say he lives like a bloomin' duke, down there in the old Jaeger Redoubt—armchairs, brass beds, and a pianner—proper Buckin'am Palace it is, from all accounts.”