The Wanting Seed (25 page)

Four

S
PARKS
on the morning-night road outside its barrack-room as No. 1 Platoon fell in, coughs, hawks, curses five feet above the sparks. Corporal Haskell syringed light from a thin torch on to the nominal roll held by his
sergeant. Tristram, in steel helmet and a raglan greatcoat of ancient design, called the names into the wind:

‘Christie.’

‘Sarnt.’

‘Crump.’

‘Boogger off.’

‘Gashen. Howell. Mackay. Muir. Talbot.’ Several men answered, some obscenely. ‘Better count them,’ said Tristram. Corporal Haskell took his thin-rayed torch to each trio of faces, disclosing serially decollated masks, horrible apparitions in the Atlantic blackness. ‘Twentynine, Sarnt,’ said Corporal Haskell. ‘O’Shaughnessy got hisself shot last night.’

‘Platoon shun,’ suggested Tristram. ‘Move to the right in threes. By the left quick march.’ This total order was roughly obeyed. The platoon sparked off, left-wheeling, right-wheeling, halting on the wrong foot at the company lines. The other platoons came shambling up severally, fire at their heels, barked at, and the platoon commanders came out to take posts. Captain Behrens eventually appeared, a milk-white ghost in an officer’s raincoat, to march the company off to the battalion parade-ground. Here, arc-lamped like a tattoo, mass was said by the Battalion chaplain, yawning and shivering as he made his obeisances at the canopied altar. There was bread to be transubstantiated (a bumper harvest last year) but still no wine: blackcurrant-flavoured alc went into the chalice. The chaplain, a long unhappy-looking man, blessed the troops and their cause; some of the troops ironically blessed him back.

Breakfast and, above the champing and sucking, the C.O. gave his valedictory speech over the loudspeakers.
‘You will be fighting an evil and unscrupulous enemy in the defence of a noble cause. I know you will cover yourselves in glo in glo in glo in glo craaaaaark come back alive and therefore I say godspeed and all the luck in the world go with you.’ A pity, thought Tristram, drinking tea-substitute in the sergeants’ mess, a pity that a cracked record should make that perhaps sincere man sound so cynical. A sergeant from Swansea, Western Province, got up from the table singing in a fine tenor, ‘Cover yourselves in glow, in glow, in glo-o-ow.’

At 0600 hours the battalion’s share of the draft, having drawn the unexpired portion of the day’s rations, marched – packed, strapped, water-bottled, helmeted, rifled, all cartridge-pouches (except for those of the officers and N.C.O.s) safely empty – down to the quay. Their transport waited, sparsely lighted but its name covered in glow: T
₃
(ATL)
W. G. Robinson London
. The smell of sea, oil, unclean galleys, merchant seamen in turtle jerseys spitting from the top deck; the sudden appearance of a bawling scullion emptying swill over the side; the plaintive pointless hoot of the siren. Tristram took in the scene as they were fallen out to wait – the drama of hard shadow, bales, gantries, the scurrying RTO men, the troops already unwrapping their rations (bully between doorsteps) as they stood or squatted. Mr Dollimore, withdrawn from his fellow-subalterns, gaped ever and anon up at the black sky as at a source of eventual glory. The tripartite draft completed itself – more troops marching on to lip-farts, cheers and up-your-pipe V-signs. The brigade major appeared, dressed as for a riding-lesson, saluted and saluting. Breath rose from speaking mouths like cartoon-dialogue. Oil was
steadily pumped in by pipe, the nozzle asp-like at the ship’s breast. A C.S.M. from another battalion took off his helmet to scratch a head obscenely bald. Two privates punched each other in yelping gleeful play-fight. A tall captain irritably rubbed his crotch. The ship’s siren booed. A lance-corporal’s nose bled. Like a Christmas tree the covered gangway suddenly lit up with pretty lights. Some troops groaned. ‘Attedtiod,’ called a loudspeaker voice, muffied and denasalized. ‘Attedtiod. The ebbarkatiod will dow cobbedce. Ebbark id order of codstituedt battaliods, duberically.’ Officers called and pleaded, taking post with the rocking ship for background. Tristram beckoned Corporal Haskell. Between them they ranged their platoon, blaspheming and chortling, at right angles to the ship’s side. Mr Dollimore, recalled from dreams of England far and honour a name, counted with mouth and fingers. The six platoons from 1st Battalion went aboard first; one man’s rifle fell over the side to everyone’s joy; a clumsy near-imbecile tripped, nearly collapsing the men ahead like a cardpack. But, on the whole, it was a smooth embarkation. 2nd Battalion, No. I Platoon leading it up. Tristram saw his men into a troop-deck with hammock-hooks (hammocks to be drawn later, and fixed mess-tables; cold air hummed in, but the bulkheads sweated. ‘Not sleepin in one of them buggers,’ said Talbot, told about hammocks. ‘Doss down on the floor like, that’s about it.’ Tristram went off to find his own quarters.

‘There’s one thing I’ll bet,’ said Sergeant Lightbody, easing his pack off, ‘and that’s that they’ll batten down the hatches or whatever the nautical term is. You’ll see. They won’t let us up on deck. Rats in a trap, by God or
Dog.’ He lay down, as though highly satisfied, on the shallow tray of a lower bunk. From the thigh-pocket of his antique battle-dress he drew out a scarred volume. ‘Rabelais,’ he said. ‘Do you know of this old writer?
“Je m’en vais chercher un grand peut-être.”
That’s what he said on his death-bed. “I go to seek a great perhaps.” Me too. All of us. “Ring down the curtain, the farce is finished.” That’s something else he said.’

‘That’s French, isn’t it?’

‘French. One of the dead languages.’

Sighing, Tristram heaved himself on to the upper bunk. Other sergeants – tougher, stupider perhaps – were already starting card-games; one group was even quarrelling over an alleged mis-deal.
‘Vogue la galère!’
called Sergeant Lightbody’s voice. The ship did not obey at once but, after about half an hour, they heard the clank of casting-off and, soon after that, the steady engine throbbing like a sixty-four-foot organ-stop. As Sergeant Lightbody had prophesied, no one was allowed on deck.

Five

‘W
HEN’S
grub up, Sarge?’

‘There’ll be no grub up, today,’ said Tristram patiently. ‘You drew rations, remember. But you’re supposed to send someone to the galley for cocoa.’

‘I ate it,’ said Howell. ‘I ate me dinner when we was waiting to get on board. Bloody imposition I call it. Bloody half-starved and bloody f – ed about and being
bloody sent to be bloody shot at.’

‘We’re being sent to fight the enemy,’ said Tristram. ‘We’ll have our chance to shoot, never fear.’ He had spent much of the battened-down morning cleaning his pistol, a rather beautifully made weapon which, thinking to serve out his time as a pacific instructor, he had never expected to have to use. He imagined the surprised expression of somebody toppling, shot dead by it; he imagined a face exploding in a riot of plum-jam, the mashing of the lineaments of surprise or any other emotion; he imagined himself, dentures and contactlenses and all, suddenly become a man, performing the man’s act of killing a man. He closed his eyes and felt the finger on the trigger of the pistol in his mind gently squeeze; the surprised face before him was the face of Derek; Derek, in the single smart crack, became jam pudding perched on a stylish jacket. Tristram, opening his eyes, was at once aware of how he must look to his troops – fierce, with slit eyes and a killer’s grin, an example to them all.

But the men were restless, peevish, bored, inclined to reverie, in no mood for dreaming of blood. They sat about, chins in palms, elbows on knees, their eyes glassy with visions. They passed round snapshots while somebody played – most melancholy of instruments – a mouth-organ. They sang:

Tristram, back on his bunk, brooding, felt a shiver break over him as he listened to the sad little song. It seemed to him that he had been suddenly transported to a time and place he had never visited before, a world out of books and films, ineffably ancient. Kitchener, napoo, Bottomley, heavies, archies, zeppelins, Bing Boys – the words, fragrant and agonisingly evocative, sang over the song like a descant.

He lay transfixed, breathing hard. This was no operation of what the old SF writers called a ‘time-warp’: this was really a film, really a story, and they had all been caught in it. The whole thing was fictitious, they were all characters in somebody’s dream.

He vaulted from his bunk. He shook Sergeant Lightbody. ‘We’ve got to get out of here,’ he panted. ‘There’s something wrong, something evil.’

‘Just what I’ve been trying to tell you all along,’ said Sergeant Lightbody calmly. ‘But we can’t do anything about it.’

‘Oh, pipe down for Christ’s sake,’ called a sergeant trying – for all sea-time was one – to sleep.

‘You don’t understand,’ said Tristram urgendy, still shaking. ‘It’s evil because it’s unnecessary. If they want to kill us why don’t they just get on with it, here and now? Why didn’t they kill us over on B6? But they don’t want that. They want us to go through an illusion –’

‘An illusion of choice,’ said Sergeant Lightbody. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you now. I think it’s going to be a rather prolonged illusion. Not too prolonged, I hope.’

‘But why, why?’

‘Perhaps because we’ve a government that believes in everybody having the illusion of free will.’

‘Do you think this ship’s really moving?’ Tristram listened. The ship’s engines organ-stopped on, comforting to the belly as a warm poultice, but it was impossible to tell whether –

‘I don’t know. I don’t care.’

The ship’s Orderly Sergeant came in, a boily young man with horse-teeth and a neck like twisted cables. He wore a cap and an arm-band – SOS. ‘What’s going on up there?’ asked Tristram.

‘How should I know? Bleeding fed up I am, copping this lot.’ He dove into his thigh-pocket. ‘Ought to be a post corporal,’ he said. He shuffled letters. Letters? ‘Got enough to flipping do. The O.C. Troops is a right bastard. Here,’ he said, throwing the bundle in the middle of a card-game ‘Roll on, Death, and let’s have a go at the angels.’

‘Where did you get those?’ frowned Sergeant Lightbody, puzzled.

‘From the Ship’s Orderly Room. They reckon they got them dropped by helicopter.’ There was a scramble. One of the card-players whined, ‘Just as I got a decent effin hand, too.’

One for him, one for Tristram. His first, his very first, his literally the absolutely bloody first since joining. Was this ominous, part of the film? He knew the writing; it made his heart dance. He lay on his bunk, very weak and trembling, to slice it open with a delirious finger, sweating. Yes, yes, yes, yes. It was her, she, his loving – sandalwood and camphorwood. Dearest dearest Tristram, changes in mad world, strange happening parted so unhappily, nothing can say here except miss you, love you, long for – He read it four times, then seemed to faint. Coming to, he found he was still clutching it. – Pray daily sea will send you back to me. Love you and if ever hurt you sorry. Come back to your – Yes, yes, yes, yes. He would live. He would. They wouldn’t get him. He trembled down from his bunk to the deck, squeezing the letter like his week’s pay. Then he unashamedly knelt down, closed eyes, joined hands. Sergeant Lightbody gaped at that. One of the card-players said, ‘Bugger there having a word with the C.O.’ and dealt swiftly and with skill.

Six

T
HREE
more days in the ship’s womb, perpetual electric light, beating of the engines, sweating of the bulkheads,
hum of the ventilators. Hard-boiled eggs for breakfast, slabs of bread and bully for lunch, cake for tea, cocoa and cheese for supper, constipation (a new day-long preoccupation) at the troops’ heads. And then, one sleepy afterlunch, hooting from above and counter-hooting, very distant, later a heavy grating unwinding of a mile of anchor-chain, the voice of the Ship’s R.S.M. over the Tannoy: ‘Disembarkation at 1700 hours, tea-meal at 1600 hours, parade on troop-decks in F.S.M.O. at 1630 hours.’

‘Can you hear that noise?’ asked Sergeant Lightbody, frowning hard in the direction of his cocked left ear.

‘Guns?’

‘That’s what it sounds like.’

‘Yes.’ Bits of old song spiralled through Tristram’s brain, fuming up from some forgotten source: ‘– We were up at Loos When you were on the booze, The booze that no one here knows.’ (Where was Loos and what were they doing there?) ‘Take me back to dear old Blighty, Put me on the train to –’ (Blighty was a wound that got you repatriated, wasn’t it? The wound glowed desirably, so did England; England and the wound became one. How tragic man’s lot.) Drearily, members of his platoon were droning in sentimental reprise:

Tristram chewed and chewed at the dry seedcake they were given for tea; he almost had to push the bolus down
with his finger. After tea he put on the greatcoat which, with its row of metal buttons straight down the front, gave him the look of a child’s drawing of a man, and the shallow steel helmet like an inverted bird-bath. He heaved on his back-pack and hung his side-pack; he clipped on his ammunition-pouches and dryly clicked his pistol. Soon, an upright soldier, he was ready for his platoon and Mr Dollimore. When he entered their messdeck he found Mr Dollimore already there, saying, ‘This old country we love so well. We’ll do our best for her, won’t we, chaps?’ His eyes shone through their glasses, his forehead was as moist as the bulkheads. The platoon averted their eyes, embarrassed. Tristram suddenly felt a great love for them.

Sea-air blew in icily: the hatches were open. Over the Tannoy the Ship’s R.S.M. began, indifferently, to call out the order of disembarkation. Tristram had time to clomp out on deck. Darkness, rare lamps, ropes, hawsers, spitting jerseyed seamen, razor cold, thumps and crashes from the land, explosive flashes. ‘Where are we?’ Tristram asked a sailor with a flat face. The sailor shook his head and said that he didn’t speak English:
‘Ying kuo hua, wo pu tung.’
Chinese. The sea hissed and whooshed, the language of a foreign sea. Foreign? He wondered.