The Diamond Waterfall (40 page)

Surely, if I
tell
God I'm sorry, and I repent? (For I do, I do.) She
remembered then a phrase from the small prayer book, the examination of conscience. If I were to call it something else …

“And also, I—had
impure
thoughts, Father …”

It was over. Done.

“… thank God for a good confession. And now, an act of contrition.
Oh my God, I am heartily sorry …”

Rags, bones, skeletons, scraps of uniform, debris. No-man's-land of nearly three years ago. You could tell by the uniform, Hal said to the others: a white collar instead of a khaki on what had once been an officer. Seeing a rusted bayonet—rust or dried blood—he trembled again at his recurrent nightmare. The bayonet stuck between the ribs, which
he could not draw out again.
Twisting, turning, struggling to finish the deed—always a different face looked into his, different eyes, imploring, hating, glazing with pain. Once he had looked into Stephen's face and had woken up twitching, sobbing.

Summer of 1917. They had been out for nearly five months now. He had spent a few days at home first where he'd seen the wounded Gib. “Haven't they made you an officer yet?” Gib had asked, surprised. Hal had said no, and that he thought they judged him not quite right in the head—“I keep my head down jolly low. I want to stay with my friends.”

And so far, he had. They'd been together a long time—over two years. What he liked was that they never changed. He'd taken on their concerns— they'd taken on his. Bert, married to Winnie, was already the father of a baby boy. Now, as a result of Bert's embarkation leave, she was waiting for another.

Oh, that cold send-off … marching down the steep path from the cliffs to Folkestone Quay. The steamer, painted gray, waiting. Papers checked, life jackets on. No going back now. Icy cold winter weather, a sleet-filled sky, a wind getting up. Bert, who'd had a bad experience on a fishing expedition at Whitby the summer before the war, was certain he would be very sick. But in any event, it was Snowy who came off the worst: retching before they were two miles out, throwing up over the side, losing his teeth.

Base camp was terrible. So was the long tedious cold railway journey later, the train at almost walking pace through the snowy countryside, all of them packed forty to a truck. The jokes about horses and cattle lasted only
the first five minutes. Then: “Form fours …” Hungry, cold, starting the long march.

Fifty minutes at a stretch. As they marched, they sang about the Mademoiselle from Armentiéres who hadn't been fucked for forty years: “… up the stairs and into bed,
parlez voo,
Up the stairs and into bed …
Inky pinky parlez voo
…” Singing to take the mind off discomfort of the body.

New issue boots, and feet that had been icy burning now with blisters and chafing. The weight of the pack: they'd worked out that it was all of sixty pounds. Manure from the officers' horses in front stained the snowy road.

They had spent the first few months after leaving the base in a quiet sector. Bert became servant to a Lieutenant Taylor, who came from the same part of Leeds. He was good to Bert, always making him keep the change when he sent him out for cigarettes or food. They fancied Bert enjoyed his work; it was like looking after a customer again. “Will that be all, sir?” they'd hear him say. “Because good stocks of
café au lait
came in yesterday. I'd not leave it too late, sir—if you was wanting a tin.”

It was in the last cold days of February he heard from Olive that James had been killed. “I think I somehow expected it,” she wrote. “Dad's taken it very hard, which is not to be wondered at. Since Mam went he's …”

It had been difficult to write back. Mrs. Ibbotson's death, just after Christmas, hadn't surprised him. They'd been still in mourning when he visited the farm on his last leave. Olive had said only, “It was her time.” He remembered now that he'd been jealous of Tom on that visit. Not Arthur. Arthur was too young—she couldn't be interested. She said often—he supposed it was natural enough, “Tom reckons we ought to do this, that, sell this …” Natural enough since Tom was there to help—and he was not. But oh, he didn't like it. Once, long ago, he'd sent kind regards to Tom in his letters. Now he could not.

Letters from Olive came regularly, never less than two a week. And he the same, although he always thought when he sat down, tired and in the winter months often cold, that he would have nothing to say. But he always did. He could write things he could not say. Pencil covering the paper rapidly, so that Gus, who had trouble with anything more than his own name, would look on in wonderment, occasionally giving a low whistle.

Gus stayed with field postcards, crossing out as instructed the lines which didn't apply. He left untouched always the line at the bottom—“I haven't heard from you for a long time.” His family were even worse correspondents.

Hal had felt sad about James. “I wish, Olive,” he had written, “I wish there was something better, more helpful I could say. I try to remember, and think of what you said about being careful, and I understand how you feel, because now you have no brothers left, friends must be even more important.” And he would try not to think about Tom.

It was beginning to look really like action now. They had been hearing rumors, latrine rumors, about a big show for some days now. Tales of tunnels dug and mines laid. When at last it was about to happen, the evening before he thought of writing a farewell letter to Olive—in case. And then he thought,
Why?
(And yet she was down as his next of kin. That had never been altered. Miss Olive Ibbotson.) But his hand trembled too much—and then in the end there wasn't time.

All that checking, last-minute preparations. The march off when it was still dark. They were in the first wave for the offensive, so had the farthest to go.

To make it worse, a shell, a whizz-bang, got their rum ration on its way up. It fitted in with the joke they had about the jars of Special Ration Diluted. It should have been called Seldom Reaches Destination.

They were silly all the time with their jokes.

“I worry,” Gus said, the evening before they marched. “I don't want my dick shot away.”

Snowy said, “You might get a DSO. If you don't take care. Might have to go up to Buckingham Palace for it. Have to wear a ribbon, says Dick Shot Off.”

Hal was frightened. Not about that, but about all of it. Frightened before, and again after. Not during. It was all too fast. Such a flurry of running, and crouching, and up again, and forward. Doing, for once, what he was told. When he could hear, that was, above the barrage—when he could see the raised arm of Captain Palmer, leading them this way, that.

They got separated, inevitably. And as usual afterward no one told them if the day's fighting was a success or not.
They
had advanced, possibly. But others?

It wasn't till that evening, when they were together again, that he learned Bert had gone. Snowy had been near him when it happened. And no, there wasn't any chance he was one of the wounded…. He … “bit of a mess,” was all Snowy would say.

He said it several times, as they lay out on the grass, sipping tea and rum from the second lot of rum jars, safely arrived. “Bit of a mess, old Bert … bit of a
mess …”

It was quite a while later he told them, “It were a Jack Johnson. Twenty, thirty yard away.”

A five-nine shell. Jack Johnsons, great heavy brutes. “Bit of a mess,” Snowy said, licking dry lips. His hand, holding the mug, shook.

They supposed Lieutenant Taylor, Captain Palmer too, would write to Winnie, but knew they had to also. Hal wrote Gus's letter for him after he'd asked Hal three times how to spell “Dear.”

Hal wrote, “Snowy saw him go. It was very quick.” (That must be the
truth. The mess that Snowy had at last described
had
to have been quick.) “I know the Lieutenant's explaining that it's sometimes difficult to find the bodies. … We can only sorrow for you in your great loss. Bert was always talking about baby George and we knew how eagerly he was waiting for …” His pen dried up again. The ink wasn't flowing properly.

Hot dry summer of 1917. There was a drought so they had to be very careful with water. They seemed always thirsty. The farmers near where they were billeted padlocked the wells—which you could understand, Hal thought. But Swanker Russell, in their platoon, just shot the bolts away.

Hot dry summer of 1917. The time came and went for bringing in the hay at Lane Top. He thought about Tom and Arthur helping Olive. Once he and Olive—and Jack—had been hay boys. Hot dry summer of 1911.

“Roll on, Duration,” Snowy said resignedly. Sitting in the sun outside the trench—they were in reserve now. Cracking lice with his thumbnail. Hated creatures, little white shellfish. Bloodsucking, irritating. Bad enough in cold weather, impossible in high summer. Scratching, scratching, sometimes till the blood ran, frantic with the filthiness of it all. Officers or men, the lice didn't distinguish (although Snowy had a theory they preferred sergeant majors).

“Chatty for the Duration, I reckon,” Gus said, “can't ever picture not being lousy. Nice clean soft shirt—me uncle's a tailor, used to give me bespoke ones what'd gone wrong—soft poplin, lovely long thread—really nobby. Scrubbing up in front of the fire, popping it over my head, looking good—and going out with Maggie—”

“Or Connie or Mary or Bridget,” Snowy said. “You and your back-step carry-ons.”

“Best way to meet ‘em,” Gus said. “Nice in their uniform, answer the door, kettle on—never a day I didn't sit in someone's kitchen. All good lasses, they were. Safety in numbers, they say, like—don't they?”

Bare-chested, sunning themselves. They shared an old stump of candle, which Hal lit with a lucifer and, long coarse shirt over his head, ran along the inside seams where the little buggers lay in hiding—got you!

Their turn came up to have a bath at the delousing station—previously a brewery. They went in together. Their underclothes were taken off them to be fumigated. The mail had come up just before they left, bringing Hal a letter. He'd barely had time to skim the first page.

“It's from Olive, is that,” Gus said. “Blue ink and all. Your folk use
black.
Sweet on her, aren't you? Look at him, Snowy.”

They were certain he was in love with Olive. He thought it best not to argue. He couldn't just say, “She's my greatest friend,” even though it was the truth. Now, at the baths, he could think only of sitting in the sun, all
clean,
drinking tea and reading that letter.

The vats once used for brewing were full of water. Hot, soapy—and dirty. You had to wash off in the first and second, then rinse off in the third— where the water was cold, and clean (or less dirty).

The underclothes he got back after weren't his. It was the same for everyone. But his were the worst: meant for a dwarf, he thought. His undershirt, when he managed to get it on, ended above his ribs. The long johns he couldn't get on at all. Snowy and Gus were delighted.

Hal said, “Give me yours, Snowy—your undershirt, it's hanging right down.”

“What's hanging down, eh? Gus, look there—look at Marmaduke's johns … won't your dick fit in, Marmaduke? Who've
you
been dreaming about, eh? His Dibs dick's too big—”

“Give over now,” Hal said, laughing.

Gus said, before making Snowy do a swop, “They'll fit him right enow when he gets his DSO.”

Why joke about nightmares? They were fooling around. You couldn't have too many laughs. And you had to take them when you could.

“Bet our khaki's not been smoked out. We'll be lousy again by teatime— let's play silly buggers, shall we?”

He was always hungry—the others told him he was growing still. The more worried and frightened, the more empty hunger he felt. It was best not to think what some of the food was or, in the line, where it might have been. Flavors of petrol and chloride, dead bodies, feces. Food fallen, rescued, reflavored. And some of the tins—what was in them? They sang,
“Oh, a little bit of everything got in a tin one day, And they packed it up and sealed it in a most mysterious way …”

Eating was better behind the lines. And they could supplement it in cafes. They had their favorite
estaminet,
where they would sit for hours. Gus would call for more and more
“vin blanc,”
though Snowy said it was too acid. “If I dropped me dentures in that lot they'd be gone in a half hour.” He drank it all the same, with lots of syrup added. Hal drank the pale weak beer. They ate eggs and chips when they were rich, or so hungry they didn't care. Hal had an allowance now from home. They had made him accept it. He shared it with Gus and Snowy, and with Bert when he was alive.

Sometimes Madame's old father would come out and play the piano. They would sing anything they felt like. One evening there was a niece or cousin staying there, helping in the cafe. Swanker Russell persuaded her to sing—she'd sung the night before, he said. She was about Hal's age and wore a black dress that showed her ankles. Her hair was tied back with a large black satin bow. She looked a bit like Teddy. Hal thought, Teddy's not bad, I suppose …

She sang:
“Après la guerre finie,
                     Soldat anglais parti,
                     Mademoiselle in the family way,
                     Après la guerre finie …”

The tune had a swaying rhythm and was at once haunting and tender. Heavy French tobacco, Woodbines, Ruby Queens thickened the air, obscuring the Virgin Mary and the Sacred Heart above the bar counter. Smell of sweat, hardly a square inch of unoccupied space. Beside them the pile of saucers, which were their unpaid-for drinks. He couldn't believe he had ever been Mr. Stainthorpe's pupil.