Parade's End (95 page)

It remained indecently quiet. Like Sunday in a village with the people in church. But it was not pleasurable.

Tietjens wondered how long physical irregularities would inconvenience his mind. You cannot think well with a parched back to your tongue. This was practically his first day in the open during a
strafe
. His first whole day for quite a time. Since Noircourt! … How long ago? … Two years? … Maybe! … Then he had nothing to go on to tell him how long he would be inconvenienced!

It remained indecently quiet! Running footsteps, at first on duckboards, then on the dry path of trench! They made Tietjens start violently, inside himself. The house must be on fire!

He said to Aranjuez:

‘Someone is in a hurry!’

The lad’s teeth chattered. They must have made him feel bad, too, the footsteps. The knocking on the gate in
Macbeth
!

They began. It had come. Pam … Pamperi … Pam! Pam! … Pa … Pamperi … Pam! Pam! … Pampamperi-pampampam … pam … Pam … They were the ones that sound like drums. They continued incessantly. Immensely big drums, the ones that go at it with real zest … You know how it is, looking at an opera orchestra when the fellow with the big drum-sticks really begins. Your own heart beats like hell. Tietjens’ heart did. The drummer appears to go mad.

Tietjens was never much good at identifying artillery by the sound. He would have said that these were antiaircraft guns. And he remembered that, for some minutes, the drone of plane engines had pervaded the indecent silence… . But that drone was so normal it was part of the silence. Like your own thoughts. A filtered and engrossed sound, drifting down from overhead. More like fine dust than noise.

A familiar noise said: ‘We … e … e … ry!’ Shells always appeared tired of life. As if after a long, long journey they said: ‘Weary!’ Very much prolonging the ‘e’ sound. Then ‘Whack!’ when they burst.

This was the beginning of the
strafe
… . Though he had been convinced the
strafe
was coming he had hoped for a prolongation of the … say Bemerton! … conditions. The life Peaceful. And Contemplative. But here it was beginning. ‘Oh well …’

This shell appeared heavier and to be more than usually tired. Desultory. It seemed to pass within six feet over the heads of Aranjuez and himself. Then, just twenty yards up the hill it said, invisibly, ‘Dud!’ … And it
was
a dud!

It had not, very likely, been aimed at their trench at all. It was probably just an aircraft shrapnel shell that had not exploded. The Germans were firing a great number of duds – these days.

So it might not be a sign of the beginning! It was tantalising. But as long as it ended the right way one could bear it.

Lance-Corporal Duckett, the fair boy, ran to within two foot of Tietjens’ feet and pulled up with a Guardee’s stamp and a terrific salute. There was life in the old dog yet. Meaning that a zest for spit and polish survived in places in these rag-time days.

The boy said, panting – it might have been agitation, or that he had run so fast… . But why had he run so fast if he were not agitated:

‘If you please, sir,’ … Pant… . ‘Will you come to the Colonel?’ … Pant. ‘With as little delay as possible!’ He remained panting.

It went through Tietjens’ mind that he was going to spend the rest of that day in a comfortable, dark hole. Not in the blinding daylight… . Let us be thankful!

Leaving Lance-Corporal Duckett … it came suddenly into his head that he liked that boy because he suggested Valentine Wannop! … to converse in intimate tones with Aranjuez and so to distract him from the fear of imminent death or blindness that would mean the loss of his girl, Tietjens went smartly back along the trenches. He didn’t hurry. He was determined that the men should not see him hurry. Even if the Colonel should refuse to be relieved of the command, Tietjens was determined that the men should have the consolation of knowing that Headquarters numbered one cool, sauntering soul amongst its members.

They had had, when they took over the Trasna Valley trenches before the Mametz Wood affair, a rather good Major who wore an eyeglass and was of good family. He had something the matter with him, for he committed suicide later… . But, as they went in, the Huns, say fifty yards, began to shout various national battle-cries of the Allies or the melodies of regimental quicksteps of British regiments. The idea was that if they heard, say: ‘
Some talk of Alexander
… .’ resounding from an opposite trench, H.M. Second Grenadier Guards would burst into cheers and Brother Hun would know what he had before him.

Well, this Major Grosvenor shut his men up, naturally, and stood listening with his eyeglass screwed into his face and the air of a connoisseur at a quartette party. At last he took his eyeglass out, threw it in the air and caught it again.

‘Shout
Banzai!
men,’ he said.

That, on the off-chance, might give the enemy a scunner at the thought that we had Japanese troops in the line in front of them, or it would show them that we were making game of them, a form of offensive that sent these owlish fellows mad with rage… . So the Huns shut up!

That was the sort of humour in an officer that the men still liked… . The sort of humour Tietjens himself had not got; but he could appear unconcernedly reflective and all there – and he could tell them, at trying moments that, say, their ideas about skylarks were all wrong… . That was tranquillising.

Once he had heard a Papist Padre preaching in a barn, under shellfire. At any rate shells were going overhead and pigs underfoot. The Padre had preached about very difficult points in the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, and the men had listened raptly. He said that was common sense. They didn’t want lachrymose or mortuary orations. They wanted their minds taken off … So did the Padre!

Thus you talk to the men, just before the event, about skylarks, or the hind-legs of the elephant at the old Lane! And you don’t hurry when the Colonel sends for you.

He walked along, for a moment or two, thinking nothing. The pebbles in the gravel of the trench grew clear and individual. Someone had dropped a letter. Slocombe, the dramatist, was closing his copy-book. Sighing, apparently,
he
reached for his rifle. ‘A’ Company Sergeant-Major was turning out some men of sorts. He said: ‘Get a move on!’ Tietjens said as he passed: ‘Keep them under cover as much as you can, Sergeant-Major.’

It occurred to him suddenly that he had committed a military misdemeanour in leaving Lance-Corporal Duckett with Aranjuez. An officer should not walk along a stretch of lonely trench without escort. Some Hun offering might hit him and there would be loss of property to His Majesty. No one to fetch a doctor or stretcher-bearers while you bled to death. That was the Army… .

Well, he had left Duckett with Aranjuez to comfort him. That minute subaltern was suffering. God knew what little agonies ran about in his little mind, like mice! He was as brave as a lion when
strafes
were on: when they weren’t, his little, blackamoor, nobbly face quivered as the thought visited him… .

He had really left Valentine Wannop with Aranjuez! That, he realised, was what he had really done. The boy Duckett
was
Valentine Wannop. Clean, blond, small, with the ordinary face, the courageous eyes, the obstinately, slightly peaked nose… . It was just as if, Valentine Wannop being in his possession, they had been walking along a road and seen someone in distress. And he, Tietjens, had said:

‘I’ve got to get along. You stop and see what you can do!’

And, amazingly, he was walking along a country road beside Valentine Wannop, being silent, with the quiet intimacy that comes with possession. She belonged to him… . Not a mountain road: not Yorkshire. Not a valley road: not Bemerton. A country parsonage was not for him. So he wouldn’t take orders!

A dawn-land road, with some old thorn trees. They only grew really in Kent. And the sky coming down on all sides. The flat top of a down!

Amazing! He had not thought of that girl for over a fortnight now, except in moments of great
strafes
, when he had hoped she would not be too worried if she knew where he was. Because he had the sense that, all the time, she knew where he was. He had thought of her less and less. At longer intervals… . As with his nightmare of the mining Germans who desired that a candle should be
brought
to the Captain. At first, every night, three or four times every night, it had visited him… . Now it came only once every night… .

The physical semblance of that boy had brought the girl back to his mind. That was accidental, so it was not part of any psychological rhythm. It did not show him, that is to say, whether, in the natural course of events and without accidents she was ceasing to obsess him.

She was certainly now obsessing him! Beyond bearing or belief. His whole being was overwhelmed by her … by her mentality, really. For of course the physical resemblance of the lance-corporal was mere subterfuge. Lance-corporals do not resemble young ladies… . And, as a matter of fact, he did not remember exactly what Valentine Wannop looked like. Not vividly. He had not that sort of mind. It was words that his mind found that let him know that she was fair, snub-nosed, rather broad-faced, and square on her feet. As if he had made a note of it and referred to it when he wanted to think of her. His mind didn’t make any mental picture; it brought up a sort of blur of sunlight.

It was the mentality that obsessed him: the exact mind, the impatience of solecisms and facile generalisations! … A queer catalogue of the charms of one’s lady love! … But he wanted to hear her say: ‘Oh, chuck it, Edith Ethel!’ when Edith Ethel Duchemin, now of course Lady Macmaster, quoted some of the opinions expressed in Macmaster’s critical monograph about the late Mr. Rossetti… . How
very
late now!

It would rest him to hear that. She was, in effect, the only person in the world that he wanted to hear speak. Certainly the only person in the world that he wanted to talk to. The only clear intelligence! … The repose that his mind needed from the crackling of thorns under all the pots of the world… . From the eternal, imbecile ‘Pampamperipam Pam Pamperi Pam Pam!’ of the German guns that all the while continued.

Why couldn’t they chuck that? What good did it do them to keep that mad drummer incessantly thundering on his stupid instrument? … Possibly they might bring down some of our planes, but they generally didn’t. You saw the black ball of their shells exploding and slowly expand like pocket-handkerchiefs about the
unconcerned
planes, like black peas aimed at dragonflies, against the blue; the illuminated, pinkish, pretty things! … But his dislike of those guns was just dislike – a Tory prejudice. They were probably worth while. Just …

You naturally tried every argument in the unseen contest of wills that went on across the firmament. ‘Ho!’ says our Staff, ‘they are going to attack in force at such an hour ackemma’, because naturally the staff thought in terms of ackemma years after the twenty-four-hour day had been established. ‘Well, we’ll send out a million machine-gun planes to wipe out any men they’ve got moving up into support!’

It was of course unusual to move bodies of men by daylight. But this game had only two resources: you used the usual; or the unusual.
Usually
you didn’t begin your barrage after dawn and launch your attack at ten-thirty or so. So you might do it – the Huns might be trying it on – as a surprise measure.

On the other hand, our people might be sending over the planes, whose immense droning was then making your very bones vibrate, in order to tell the Huns that we were ready to be surprised, that the time had now about come round when we might be expecting the Hun brain to think out a surprise. So we sent out those deathly, dreadful things to run along just over the tops of the hedgerows, in spite of all the guns! For there was nothing more terrifying in the whole war than that span of lightness, swaying, approaching a few feet above the heads of your column of men: instinct with wrath, dispensing the dreadful rain! So we had sent them. In a moment they would be tearing down… .

Of course if this were merely a demonstration; if, say, there were no reinforcements moving, no troops detraining at the distant railhead, the correct Hun answer would be to hammer some of our trenches to hell with all the heavy stuff they could put into them. That was like saying sardonically:

‘God, if you interfere with our peace and quiet on a fine day we’ll interfere with yours!’ And … Kerumph … the wagons of coal would fly over until we recalled our planes and all went to sleep again over the chessboard… . You would probably be just as well off if you refrained from either demonstration or counter-demonstration.
But
Great General Staff liked to exchange these witticisms in iron. And a little blood!

A sergeant of sorts approached him from Bn. H.Q. way, shepherding a man with a head wound. His tin hat, that is to say, was perched jauntily forward over a bandage. He was Jewish-nosed, appeared not to have shaved, though he had, and appeared as if he ought to have worn pince-nez to complete his style of Oriental manhood. Private Smith. Tietjens said:

‘Look here, what was your confounded occupation before the war?’

The man replied with an agreeable, cultured throaty intonation:

‘I was a journalist, sir. On a Socialist paper. Extreme Left!’

‘And what,’ Tietjens asked, ‘was your agreeable name? … I’m obliged to ask you that question. I don’t want to insult you.’

In the old regular army it was an insult to ask a private if he was not going under his real name. Most men enlisted under false names.

The man said:

‘Eisenstein, sir!’

Tietjens asked if the man were a Derby recruit or compulsorily enlisted. He said he had enlisted voluntarily. Tietjens said: ‘Why?’ If the fellow was a capable journalist and on the right side he would be more useful outside the army. The man said he had been foreign correspondent of a Left paper. Being correspondent of a Left paper with a name like Eisenstein deprived one of one’s chance of usefulness. Besides he wanted to have a whack at the Prussians. He was of Polish extraction. Tietjens asked the sergeant if the man had a good record. The Sergeant said: ‘First-class man. First-class soldier.’ He had been recommended for the D.C.M. Tietjens said: