Orphan of Angel Street (20 page)

They were to wait it out that day. Zero hour would be in the small hours of the next morning. All day, along the line, they waited. Johnny and the others came to see him. The four friends sat drinking tea together, trying to smoke in the damp.

‘Marching orders tonight.’ Johnny still seemed energetic, while Tom was numb and sullen. ‘You awright?’

‘I feel fuckin’ awful.
This
is fuckin’ awful.’

‘Shut it,’ Fred said with sudden venom, hurling his tea dregs into the sludge. ‘None o’ that.’

‘Everyone got their last will and testament at the ready?’ Billy joked, squatting next to Johnny, hands clasped round his cup. He worked in the carpet trade.

‘Don’t take long, that, do it?’ Fred Donaldson was a stonemason, tall and hollow-cheeked. He spoke without humour.

‘Got that bit of back pay due to me,’ Johnny said. ‘What – ten quid? I’ll make a note, willing it to our mom.’

Tom’s head whipped round, scattering raindrops from the brim of his hat. ‘Shut up, will yer? Just shut it. Oh Christ.’ He gripped his belly. ‘’Ere we go again.’ He rushed towards the latrines to the raucous laughter of the others.

They spent the day together, watching reinforcement troops arriving, long snakes of them tiny in the distance, bigger at the head. They ate bully beef and bread and Tom managed to keep it down. After a time the rain let up and the sun strained its light through the smoke and cloud. The mud was shiny with water, reflecting the light.

By nightfall a mist had come down. They had the order to move forwards after dark, carrying their full equipment. Tom, as well as his haversack, rifle, gas mask, water bottle, grenades and entrenching tools, was one of the men assigned to carry a shovel strapped to his back for digging in where they were to maintain a position.

They walked, the way illuminated periodically by Verey lights but mostly dark. Tom kept his eyes on Billy in front of him. Johnny was further up ahead. In the mist and darkness, Tom’s mind filled with horror at the sea of mud around them and all it contained. He’d seen horses, whole carts with their loads disappear into this foul yellow and grey sludge. He heard frequent shouts of those who had slipped from the walkway and fallen in and his mind almost blanked out at the thought of it. He was still in considerable discomfort, his guts wringing. His equipment felt heavy as lead on him, the shovel making it impossible to bend freely.

‘Steady there, Bill,’ he muttered as his friend suddenly seemed to make quicker progress in front of him. ‘Don’t go leaving me be’ind, for God’s sake!’

But as he spoke he lost concentration and his feet slid from under him, jerking him off one side of the boards. He fell, rolling in the poisonous, sticky mud, losing control of himself so that diarrhoea squirted from him, warm inside his breeches.

‘Fuck!’ he cried out, his voice shrill. ‘Help me, for Christ’s sake!’

‘You awright, mate?’ He could hear Billy’s voice, but see nothing. His feet were in water at the base of a shell hole and he was surrounded by nothing but blackness and slime. Panic engulfed him. They’d go on and leave him in this black stench! He flailed wildly, his legs lifting from the mud with a great squelching noise. He struggled to move up the side, digging his fingers hard and straight down into the ooze, trying to gain a hold. He was making some progress he was sure. A slight change in the intensity of darkness. He must be near the top.

‘I can see you!’ Billy cried. ‘Come on, pal – just a bit further and yer can cop ’olt of my hand.’

Tom frenziedly thrust his hand up again, the fingers jabbing into something tense, inflated, which gave way instantly with a soft belching sound. He smelt the most overpowering, putrid stench. The body must have lain there for many days.

‘Jesus! Jesus Christ, get me out of ’ere . . .’

At last he could seize Billy’s hand, fingers slipping, then his wrist and he was up again, plastered in slime outside his clothes, befouled inside.

‘I just – fuck. Someone . . . I stuck my ’and in – went right through . . .’

‘Come on, come on,’ Billy urged him. ‘Yer awright, just get going. Just shift yerself. No good thinking about it.’

Only yards later Billy himself tumbled down into one of the drainage channels and Tom had to help him out. They were slipping and cursing all the way along.

By the small hours they had found the tapes marking the starting point east of Frezenberg, and dug into position close to the railway leading to Roulers. A great quiet had come over the place at last. No one spoke. The line of men all waited shoulder to shoulder in position. Tom could just make out the railway embankment to their right, a humped shadow of denser blackness in the dark. Just once he heard the desolate cry of a marsh bird which must have ventured there in the lull.

This is it, he kept thinking. His innards had at last quietened a little. He felt beyond physical concerns now, as if his mind had overridden bodily things and the weakness had left him.

This is it. Oh God, oh God help me, don’t let me die . . . He struggled to remember a fragment of a hymn from school:

All that Thou send’st to me

In mercy given;

Angels to beckon me

Nearer my God to Thee,

Nearer to Thee!

He couldn’t remember any more of it, but that fragment kept going round and round in his head.
Angels to beckon me
. . .

There came a great crashing rent of sound as the barrage of fire started from behind their lines and shells were exploding over towards the ridge.

‘Come on, boys!’ The whistle blew and Tom, as if dreaming, felt himself move, hauling the burdening weight he was carrying out on to the open ground as the land beyond was lit up by explosions, and flames and smoke rose from the German lines. The men in front of him looked like giants, swollen shadows in the mist and glare, and for a second he thought of Johnny. Johnny’s words to him before they parted: ‘Keep yer ’ead down, won’t you, mate?’ Johnny out here somewhere . . . Johnny, someone connected with real life, away from this crashing, screaming nightmare. Then thought left him, and he was an animal surviving.

The German machine-guns were clattering and on all sides he heard the whining of shells, howitzers firing, the hysterical shrieking of horses, the shouts and cries of men. His body felt leaden, the mud not so deep as before, but still clogging every step.

Within moments he was crouching with several other men at the lip of a shell hole. There were no trenches to speak of on the battlefield, just water-filled craters, sometimes so many in a row that they coalesced to form something like a trench, always with a depth of water in them.

‘They’re fucking miles above us!’ one of the others was yelling against the roar of the barrage. ‘Got a bird’s-eye fucking view – how’re we s’pposed to get up there? . . . Where’s that bastarding fire coming from?’

The pillbox was their first objective, on a low ridge to the left of the embankment and the strafing of machinegun fire seemed to be coming from close to it.

A lull came, seconds only and they decided to break for it, heaving themselves to their feet over the slime. Tom could hear his breath coming in grunts. The fire started again immediately and, as they moved out, one of the Suffolks fell back. Tom, the shovel slung from behind him, was unable to bend or dodge easily. He hovered at the edge as another shouted, ‘Come on – leave ’im,’ then dived back, following the other man’s body. That this was wrong never entered his head. You were never supposed to stop for anyone.

‘’Ere, I’m coming, it’s awright.’ Slipping down to the bottom wasn’t difficult, borne by his own weight. Tom laboured towards him through the mud which was up to his knees, his hands thick with it. The bloke’s face was already under the water. Tom was grabbing him by the shoulders when a shell hit the ground, falling short of their own trenches and he was flung backwards, mud and water raining down on him. As soon as he could he struggled back up, feeling slime creeping down his face, obscenities gushing from his lips, for there was not just mud wherever he placed his hands: sharp slivers of bone, softer bits of flesh or organ. This first section of the battlefield was a churned up morass of human remains. From somewhere near him he could hear moaning.

He seized the feet of his companion and hauled him clear of the water.

‘Yer awright – I’ll see to it yer awright . . .’

Heaving him up by the shoulders, Tom saw the exploding bullet had blown away nearly all the lad’s throat. His head fell back, blood pumping. Aghast, Tom thrust it away from him.

He flung himself out over the top into the murky expanse of noise and exploding light, instinctively trying to duck, bogged down by his equipment, starting to move in the direction of the railway embankment, looking out the next shell hole for cover. The flash of explosions lit up men running not far ahead through the mist.

Within yards Tom was in the mud up to his waist. An unseen pool of soft, sucking mud. It squelched as he struggled, fast sinking deeper.

‘Help! Help me!’

He held his rifle up, trying to throw himself forward but he was in too deep. He could see movement on each side of him, men dodging and weaving, fallen bodies.

‘For God’s sake, SOMEONE – get me out. Help, I’m going under!’ He was roaring with all his strength but his voice was the cry of a small bird against the gunfire. He had to stretch his arms out to the side to keep them clear. The more he tried to move, the greater the appetite of the swampy ground to suck him in. He raised his face, screaming to the sky.

For a few moments looking up towards the smoke-obscured sky, something more chill, more deep and corrosive than panic took hold of him. The possibility of going down into the mud unleashed something in his mind. It was spinning off, already disconnected from its hold on the real world he had known. Here was this black hell of overpowering shocks of noise, of mud and decay, rats, stench, blood and shit, of lice, mutilation, agony. Nothing which linked with what had gone before, the daily reassurance of human life, streets, pubs, washing lines, hearths, mothers, bread, love, life held sacred. Here, he was sinking in this sea of death-filled mud and would be entombed under invisible cold stars.

He was close to blacking out until the sound of rasping, groaning breaths roused him and he knew suddenly that it was his lungs and throat making those sounds. He was a man with a voice, a body, surrounded by other men, and the moment in which he was cut loose, whirling lost, receded.

The butt of a rifle swung towards him. ‘’Ere – cop ’olt of this, mate, quick!’

Johnny’s voice, shrill with terror. In all this, a miracle:
Angels to beckon me
. . .

‘Quick – for Christ’s sake.’

At first Tom thought it wasn’t going to work. Johnny had to keep ducking for although they were in a dip he was still exposed to the enemy fire. Tom could find nothing to push with his feet. Johnny hauled with all his strength until he could reach one of Tom’s hands without falling in himself, then both hands. Finally Tom slithered out like a baby from the womb and Johnny flung himself down beside him.

‘It’s me,’ Tom yelled, laughing, drunk.

‘Fuck—’ Johnny, panting hard, peered into his face. ‘So it is! Didn’t know . . . We’ve got to get over there – the railway—’

Their main objective, a spot called Le Moulin, lay ahead of them on this side of the tracks, close to Zonnebeke village which lay on the other.

‘Get to the next ’ole, over there—’ Instinctively, as ever, Johnny took the lead. Like rats crawling from a riverbank they moved off, stumbling forward through the fire to another shell hole.

‘Now!’ Johnny cried and they were up and over the edge of the next one and as they did so Tom heard Johnny cry out and clasp his left shoulder. Tom, slightly in front, unable to duck, turned, it seemed to Johnny afterwards, in slow motion, his lips forming the word, ‘What . . .?’

Tom fell, mouth still open.

‘Tom! Oh Christ, Jesus, no!’

Johnny hauled his brother’s body back over the edge of the crater, oblivious to the pain in his own shoulder. Tom’s eyes were closed.

‘Stay there, brother,’ Johnny shouted at him. ‘Stay there, mate, awright? I’ll be back for yer, I will!’

He rolled Tom on one side and unstrapped the shovel from his back. As he came up over the side of the hole he stuck it into the ground. Rifle clasped under his left arm, and clutching the shoulder with his right hand, he staggered out once more and headed, ducking and lurching, back towards the lines.

Dawn was shrouded in smoke, the sun a blood orange in the sky, guns still firing.

Johnny had made it back behind the lines under cover of the last shreds of darkness. He found makeshift dressing stations along the country road to Zonnebeke, doctors and nurses working in the open. A dark-eyed American nurse wearing gigantic gumboots dressed his shoulder.

‘It’s a graze,’ she said. ‘You were lucky – but it’s deep – nearly cut through to the bone.’

‘Just stick summat on it.’ In his feverish state he was ungracious. ‘I got to get to me brother – ’e’s out there – please, just do it quick.’

‘Oh, I don’t think you’ll be going anywhere,’ she said patiently, thinking him delirious. ‘We don’t want you getting infected, do we?’

But as soon as she’d finished he broke away from her, off along the road, until he met a party of stretcher-bearers lurching exhaustedly towards him, their eyes fixed on the ground, faces shaded by their tin hats. The conditions were so bad in no man’s land that it often took a dozen bearers to bring in one of the wounded.

‘Steady, steady,’ the front one cried. ‘Here – get out of the way!’

‘My brother,’ Johnny ran at them. ‘’E’s out there – get ’im for me, please, pal—’

The men stopped. They were swaying with exhaustion. ‘Have you any idea . . .?’ another of them said, his voice well-spoken. He pushed his helmet up with a mud-caked hand. ‘It’d be like looking for a needle in a bloody haystack.’

‘But I know – I can show you, for pity’s sake . . .’