The Diamond Waterfall (34 page)

“Age, sonny?”

He had it pat this time.

“Not run away from home, none of that, eh? Address now. Address…”

Heart, troublesome heart. It was
that
that he feared the most. Already it had begun its thumping, its missed beats. It could not,
must
not, betray him.

There were others there: boys, men, but he could scarcely notice them. A short, pale-skinned youth, stretching (to appear taller?) said something he didn't catch. Outside it was raining. Inside it smelled damp and nervous.

“Chest out. Say ninety-nine.”

Ears, eyes, limbs, private parts, reflexes, feet, skull, heart. Heart. Heart. It was all over in moments. Stethoscope on bare chest. Tap, tap. Sandy-haired doctor with a Scotch accent, talking to a colleague, not talking to him. “Sound as a bell, this one … farm … life in the fresh air. As I said … city lads …”

Address? Next of kin. “Miss Olive Ibbotson.” I must be mad, he thought afterward. I
am
mad.

He was sworn in with thirty others. Hand held up. Holy words. God, swearing. He wondered if it was blasphemous that he'd kept his accent. And who was it had sworn—Firth or Greenwood?

He had till nine the next morning to report at barracks. He told his landlady. “I shan't need the third night. I've to report tomorrow.”

Never, he thought, had he seen teeth so white, so plainly, triumphantly false. Their owner was stocky, with coarse dark hair, a sallow pitted skin, and a wide smile. He was known as Snowy because of his name, White. Not, he told Hal, on account of the teeth.

“They don't fit, like. They
look
good, but they don't fit.” And they didn't: seeming to slip up and down as he spoke or ate, or even just thought. Hal couldn't take his eyes off them.

“I'd thought, you see, to go back, have 'em tightened. Folk said as they might fall in the works.”

Snowy worked for Glovers at Wortley Low Mills. He'd enlisted with his next-door neighbor, Bert Varley, who at twenty-five was older by six years. Bert's pale brown hair, already half receded, gave him an air of great maturity. He was a grocery assistant at (of all places) a branch of Greenwood's.

“They've said they'll keep my job open.
Said
that, Greenwood's did.”

Earlier he'd asked Hal, suspiciously, “You're never one of
those
Greenwoods?”

“Never,” Hal said, and Snowy had added, “Him here, he's a farm lad, nowt to do with grocers.”

Bert said then, but pleasantly enough, “There's another Greenwood at the barracks so I thought maybe—”

“It's a northern name.” Hal cut him short.

“Any road,” Bert said, “there's no Greenwood at the head of it now, it's someone else from the family. I've been with 'em twelve years all but—eight behind the counter. Kirkgate branch and then Boar Lane.”

It was important he got the job back because he had been courting
Winnie Mason for six years—and would be marrying her as soon as he got his first leave.

“They've to give it me back—after Duration.”

They spoke often of the Duration, because they'd signed on for “three years or the duration.” It was easy to guess which was the sooner.

Leaving Yorkshire. They had marched about midday to the station, and he'd feared that in the crowd there might be someone looking for him. Many of the recruits had parents and relations, little brothers and sisters come to wave good-bye. Tears in eyes. Not France yet, though. Going southward.

As far as Derby only. They were cheered as they marched to barracks. On the way in the train compartment he'd learned three new swear words, and how to play Crown and Anchor.

Margarine on bread—he had never eaten margarine before. From the quartermaster's stores they were given straw palliasses: his bed was numbered eight. Sorting themselves out, time to kill before roll call at half-past nine. They weren't allowed out that first evening—what might they not get up to? Some might go into the town and never come back. Rushing to the canteen, suddenly hungry, spending the last of his one and ninepence daily ration allowance.

It was there he'd first seen those teeth of Snowy's biting into a pork pie.

“Farm lad, eh? Know all about pigs—help put t'pigs in pig pie, eh?”

Then Snowy had called over Bert, who bought them both a pint, and told Hal all about Winnie. Snowy said with a wink:

“He'll not be wanting any dick here in Derby, won't Bert. Keeping it all for Winnie, he is.”

Bed number nine, next to Hal, had a boy whose face looked nicely wicked. He had curly hair, eyes that darted about, and teeth that were the opposite of Snowy's. Too many of them, crooked and crowding his mouth. He was small too. His pals had been stretching him for two weeks, he said. He'd only
just
made it.

Gus Wilkinson. Gus was another who hoped to get his job back—but feared he wouldn't. He loved it. Butcher's boy with a bicycle and a basket full of joints and sausages, and a chance to chat at the tradesman's entrance. Gossip, stories continued week by week, cups of tea, girls … whistling through the gaps in his teeth, getting a song on the brain and taking it all around Leeds. Him and his bike.

“Me and my trike. They said to me, ‘Right, lad—you go, and there's plenty'll want your place—and they'll get it.' “

Snowy. Bert. Gus. Henry. Somewhere in the strangeness and rush of those first days they had all chummed up together. No particular reason, he thought afterward. It just happened.

“Squad! Squad
shun!
To the right in fours—form
fours—right!
By the left, quick march, left right, left right …”

“You may have broken your mother's heart, but you bloody well won't break mine …”

Drill, getting punished. Grousing, not sleeping, reveille, unbelievably early in the icy cold February dawn. Hungry. The one and ninepence didn't go far in the canteen—and why
was
he so hungry? As if everything he was trying not to feel and trying not to think had left him quite empty. Meat and turnips, pie and turnips, liver and bacon, another helping, one's not enough. He was determined not to touch the remainder of his gold. Just the silver change—soon gone.

Easy enough to keep up the accent, easy enough to make them believe he had worked on a farm, since he had. Had he not once felt, wished himself, more Ibbotson than Firth?

There
was
another Greenwood, he learned soon enough, who'd been sworn in before him, so that Hal became 6904 Greenwood to distinguish him. With all the exercise, he toughened up again, as he had been in those farming summers.

He was Henry Greenwood, and he had his pals Snowy and Gus and Bert —one of the four of them always in some sort of trouble. Even Bert, who tried hard enough but ended each day, each march, each drill with a patient, puzzled, slightly hurt expression. (Sarge: “Don't look so pained, Private Varley—it's me what's suffering.”)

Bert: Hal could imagine him at the counter taking down patiently the grocery orders of vague old ladies, demanding housekeepers. When he wrote to Winnie, which he did every other day, he would moisten the pencil tip and then, when he'd finished, from habit put the pencil behind his ear. (Just like Snowy, who kept a half-smoked fag behind his ear—and got into trouble for it.)

Puttees. They ought, with practice, to have been possible. Buggers. Roll on, Duration, I can't roll me puttees. A bulge top or bottom. A bulge just when they were
almost
done. Left leg perfect, right leg wrong, right leg perfect, left …

He had his pals, though.

Snowy said, “Best day's work I ever—getting meself them teeth. Always had a ache, like, before, top or bottom, alius one or t'other.”

“My cousin,” Gus told them, “my cousin Arnold, he saw this notice, Xmas time, for the cycling corps it was. It said large letters at bottom ‘Bad teeth no bar.'”

“Well,” said Snowy, “so what then?”

“They took him right enough. Only heck, he couldn't ride a bike. He'd never—they give you one, see, he thought it'd be easy, like—but no matter
how he tried, he couldn't, he'd no notion. They've put him some other place, me Dad says. He's summat with guns now.”

Early days yet—so that it was still novel and weird and not
too
bad. He could be, if not comfortably, at least mindlessly, 6904 Greenwood. The pain of Stephen was lessening a little, because just by being here he was going to avenge him. One day.

After a few beers the usually peaceful natures of all four of them would devise what they'd do to the Hun when they got the chance. Bert knew some terrible stories, worse than any that had been in the papers. About women's titties being cut off. Anyone who could do
that
… And if Von Kluck came over here, it would happen to
their
mothers and sisters and sweethearts. Winnie was in his mind, in all their minds. They would all be defending Winnie.

Homesickness caught up with him when he least expected it. Early in the third week he'd been bawled at by Sarge (hadn't they all been saying the night before what they'd do to
him
if they got the chance) for not moving quick enough. He had reacted and for a second only given him the Look which he'd used so often in the last few months for Mr. Stainthorpe.

Next thing he knew he was up for something called Dumb Insolence: 6904 Private Greenwood got six days Confined to Barracks. Jankers, they called it. Gus had been there in their first week and was especially sympathetic: it had been the usual, he said, emptying urinal tubs, all that. Hal got mess waiter fatigues. That way he saw for the first time the officers all together. They were eating, drinking well. One with his smooth freckled face reminded Hal of Gib. The meal had the look of one at The Towers. The room smelled the same: food, drink, wine remaining in glasses, Stilton. A disorder, expensive, which was no concern of theirs, someone else's work. A manner like Mr. Hawksworth's. A pyramid of washing-up.

His last evening, a slight, moist-skinned officer was talking to another, heavier, pouch-faced, dark. Suddenly they took notice of Hal. Earlier in the week the one who reminded him of Gib had thrust on him the end of a box of peppermint fondants—marked “carminative.” Tonight the pouchy-faced one said:

“I say—you, Private, what's your name?”

“Greenwood, 6904 Greenwood, sir.”

“Right, Greenwood.” He turned a second, then: “Have a cigar, old chap,” he said to Hal. “Ever tried one?”

Hal said, “I don't smoke, sir.” He added, “Thank you.” Damn you, he thought. Suddenly angry.

“Hungry then? You look lean and damned hungry. I say, what about a biscuit and a bit of Stilton? Know
Stilton?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Didn't work in a grocer's shop by any chance?”

“That's Varley, sir—”

“Didn't ask who—all right. No, don't go, Greenwood. This, look at this, have a bit on toast.
Pâté de foie gras de Périgord,
with truffles. Food for civilized chappies. Treat for you, Greenwood, eh? Well,
answer.
Better than cowheel and tripe, eh? Never seen, tasted, it before, have you?”

“Yes, sir. No, sir.” He said it wearily. It must have been eight, nine weeks since he last ate it. New Year. He felt humiliated.

After Lights Out that night he found himself weeping, as from somewhere deep, deep down.

Gus was the one he told first. Gus told the others. He didn't come from a farm at all. Hadn't been staying with his Auntie Olive, didn't even really talk like he'd been talking. He was someone quite else, from somewhere quite else, which was
home.
Which he suddenly, desperately desired and needed.

If he'd thought and feared that after all this time, his pals might (rightly) be angry with him, it wasn't like that at all. Maybe it was too late and some link had been forged: those first weeks of change in all their lives, beginnings of shared experience, reaching out into the future. Perhaps that was the reason. But they didn't mind. They were delighted. It was their “open” secret.

His Nibs.

Bert said only, “What'd you want to fib about Greenwood's?”

“I don't know anyone that's of it,” Hal said. “There's a cousin, I think, that I've never met—”

“That'll be Mr. Walter. Mr. Walter, he was round at Xmas. Tall man, big man, heavy. Balding.”

Lord Marmaduke, his Nibs.

“Heck, they'll make you a officer,” Gus said, “a officer. One of them.” Bert told him that he'd been bad not to think of his Mam. Snowy said the same.

“She knows I'm safe—”

“She'll want to hear, though, will your mother.”

“I don't want to be an officer,” he said. It was something he could not imagine, or rather could imagine too well. For every Gib there would be ten like the teasing two he had met on Jankers.

6904 Private H Greenwood alias his Nibs, alias Lord Marmaduke, to be known henceforth as Marmaduke.

He didn't tell the others too much about his home. Especially not about matters such as the Stones Room and the Diamond Waterfall.

The days ran one into the other. So much to learn. Bull. Everything shone. He was good at that. He had a Lee Enfield and did rifle practice, and was good at that too. The high-ups spoke of making Snowy a lance corporal.

The weather became so bad there was little they could do outdoors. Indoors, bayonet practice made him sick. He was no longer so sure of what he would do to the Hun. Sarge bawled at them all, but especially Hal, for halfheartedness.

Snowy said about the bayoneting that if you could spear a sausage over the fire, you could manage that. But Gus said he hadn't been counting on
eating
a Hun.

In the middle of March a married man in the squad, three beds down, went on leave. His home was in Nottingham. Hal gave him a letter to post from there. In it he said he was sorry, because he was, but that he was well and happy and had made friends. “I shan't go abroad without telling you, or seeing you. I don't expect anyway that it'll be for quite a while.” He wondered still why he hugged his secret. It wasn't likely they could get him out now, however they tried. An oath was an oath, in whichever of his accents he'd sworn it.