‘I know. But I feared the ructions if I said what I thought. I only hoped it wasn’t true.’
Lydia leaned forward on her umbrella, tired at standing but too proud to request the use of a chair. She pitied Alma but was hardly less sorry for her brother, not nice for anyone to hear of his daughter’s bad luck, or gormlessness. ‘We thought you ought to know.’
To have it confirmed by his sister was doubly painful, since she had always treated him and his failings without an ounce of sympathy for what the world did to a man who tried his best to get work, and when he did, and slaved all the hours God sent to make a go of it, the client took a dislike and paid him off, which made him even harder done by, and now the present catastrophe stabbed him like a bayonet in the guts.
He stood before Alma and lifted her chin. ‘Been whoring, have we, you dirty little bitch? Got your belly up, have we?’ She shook her head clear, but the grip was brutal. ‘Said you were at Sunday School when you were with some lad. Who was it?’
Hilda rubbed the lamp glass with a teacloth and set it gleaming on the table – anything for her hands to do. ‘Don’t say such things, Les. It won’t help matters.’
‘Won’t it?’ He turned to her. ‘You can shut your mouth, for a start, and leave this to me. I always expected something like this.’
‘It’s not the end of the world,’ Lydia said coolly, ‘unless you want to make it so.’
‘It’s none of your business.’ Half-fainting, Alma stood as if all life and hope had gone, but the hatred of her father kept her upright. His pot-coloured eyes glazed with rage. ‘Who was it, then? We shall have to get you married, and I can only hope that whoever it was has a bob or two to pay for it. I’ll wring his bloody neck if he tries to get out of it. Come on, who was it?’
‘I can’t say.’
‘“Can’t say”!’ he mimicked. ‘Oh yes you can.’ He opened a tobacco tin in the hope of seeing a few shreds for his pipe, the inside so clear he saw his face and didn’t like it, slinging pipe and tin onto the couch. ‘Was it that young man who called on you in summer?’
‘No, it wasn’t.’
‘Who was it, then? I want to know.’
His request was expected, and reasonable, but she had to say: ‘I can’t tell you.’ If she did, and her father was mad enough to call on Burton, well, she was saving blood and tears by staying mute.
‘You’ve always been stuck up and stubborn, but if you don’t tell me I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.’
Silence drove him to madness, and what she hoped would not happen came when the flat of his hand went against her head. She staggered into a mist of sparks, but stayed on her feet. ‘I won’t tell you,’ she cried.
A heavier blow sent her onto the floor, curled in misery and waiting for a boot to strike. His short black moustache was wet with spit: ‘Who was it?’
‘Oh, Les, don’t,’ Hilda said. ‘She’ll tell me later. I know she will.’
He moved to give what his eyes promised, but Lydia stood between, and drew back her umbrella for the thrust. ‘If you do that I’ll stick this in your beer-belly. And don’t think I won’t.’
He recalled her temper as an elder sister when they were children, and stepped away. ‘You got her into this. She told us she was stopping with you, when she was out whoring.’
Alma stood up, as if to strike back, but Lydia took her arm. ‘Come on, you can’t stay in this house.’
‘You’ve disgraced me,’ he shouted after them on the street. ‘Never come back, you trollop.’
They walked silently for a while till Lydia said: ‘I know he’s my brother, but he’s mental, and I can’t think what made him like that. He had a lot to put up with as a child, but that’s no excuse, because we all did.’
Alma covered the pain with her hands. ‘I feel sorry for him. It’s my fault, after all. I have to forgive him.’
‘No you don’t. There’s too much forgiveness for what people do to each other, especially what men do to women. The things I hear when I go to collect the lace. Some women have had more black eyes than hot dinners.’ Close to the main road she said: ‘We’ll do some shopping before getting home, and you can help me to carry it.’
Her flesh burned less on being hurried along at her aunt’s pace, a blue and white landscape between the mountainous clouds, peaceful without houses or people, and she wanted to be walking on her own among them, the nearest relief from a death she wouldn’t now think about.
‘I’ve got some witch-hazel at home.’ Lydia reached back for her hand. ‘It’s good for bruises. But if somebody asks what happened tell them you fell on your face when you weren’t looking. They’ll believe you. You do get that dreamy look sometimes. What a terrible waste,’ she said, a column of soldiers passing on their way to Wollaton Park. ‘All these idle men.’
They looked tired as ghosts going into some nether world where none could follow. ‘Keep your eyes to the front,’ the sergeant shouted. ‘And step out.’
Lydia crossed when the first batch had gone. ‘Won’t you tell me who it was?’
A lamplighter was pulling the gas into flame with his pole, wet pavements shining in the half-dark as if covered with ice, so that Alma righted herself from slipping in a pool of light. The painful drumming in her bones told her she would one day get out of a place which was no part of her, and not by killing herself either. ‘I can’t tell you.’
‘I shan’t ask again.’
‘Perhaps you’ll know one day. But not now.’ She was surprised at her strength in not even saying anything to Lydia, and hoped it was a promising sign for the future. ‘I’ll go on working at the mill as long as possible, so as to save all the money I can.’
‘We’re going to need it,’ Lydia stopped at the grocer’s window, ‘but you’ll be all right with me. One thing about the war is that wages are going up. Prices are as well, because everybody’s got work. As for the men, I know I shouldn’t say this, but let them kill each other if they want to.’
When she came out with her packets and bags Alma said: ‘If I have a boy I’ll call him Oliver.’
‘So that’s who it was.’ She put some of the groceries into her arms. ‘But Oliver who? It’s got to have somebody’s name.’
‘It’ll have mine,’ she said.
EIGHTEEN
Four stretcher-bearers and Albert looked on as Surgeon-Captain Rowe spread his burberry so as not to get mud on his trousers when kneeling over Oliver, who lay pale and cold on the ground. The winded horse chewed clover by a hedge, too satisfied at what it had done to wonder about its fate. Albert stood erect, glad that rain concealed his tears, and hoped the bastard would be shot dead, the sooner the better.
Blood soaked the khaki serge to Oliver’s shoulders. Rowe took off his cap for a clearer view, a small mirror at the wounded man’s mouth showing the hardly-expected sheen of breath, the face narrowed with pain, lips ashy blue, pulse uncertain. A leg kicked out. ‘He’s a strong soldier.’
Albert felt himself the only man left on earth because he hadn’t been able to help his friend, and struggled to straighten his features. ‘He’s very popular in the regiment, sir.’
‘That’s as maybe.’
Oliver’s head was lowered, tunic opened at the neck. Second-Lieutenant Hanson said: ‘How bad is he, sir? We can hardly afford to lose a farrier.’
‘There isn’t much to be done here in camp. It looks like a fracture at the base of the skull, and some lacerations of the brain I shouldn’t be surprised. He must go to the Southern General Hospital.’
‘That’s about thirty miles away.’
‘They’ll be able to treat him properly there. The thing till then is to keep him comfortable and still. May God help the poor chap. The orderly will need plenty of morphine for when he comes to.’
Stretcher-bearers took him to the medical-aid tent, where dressings were put around the wound. When a wagon was found a corporal and orderly were detailed to get him to Oxford. Rowe’s signed authorization and particu
lars ‘of the case were given to the corporal, who elected to drive. ‘Go as fast as you safely can. A man’s life depends on it. Once you’re in Oxford ask for the hospital at St Peter’s-in-the-East. Do you know the way?’
‘It’s through Wantage and Botley, sir.’
‘At least you know your geography.’
‘I’ve been there before, sir.’
‘The Saturday traffic might be heavy. But take the light wagon. I noticed one free this morning.’
Hanson turned to Albert. ‘The colonel will be sending for you, to find out how it happened. Meanwhile, get back to your work.’
Raincloud darkened as the corporal whipped the horse along the High Street. A barge sliding under the Kennet and Avon bridge looked so set apart from the world he wished himself asleep in the cabin, after a few pints from a wharfside pub, instead of driving the cart on a journey likely to be wasted.
The man was obviously near death, but hurry was the order because he was a lad of the regiment whose life depended on getting to Oxford as quick as the old nag would allow. You couldn’t tell. Some people go like a straw in the wind, but others have come out of worse. If the poor chap dies he’ll be the second since the regiment left Nottingham, because Sadler was crushed to death when a horse fell on him at Moulsford in September. Two dead, and the Germans hadn’t fired a shot, though you had to expect casualties in the army, and there’ll be plenty when we get abroad. It’ll be interesting to see foreign places, but it’ll be even more interesting to come back in one piece and tell the family what it had been like.
The orderly felt better off under cover, away from the rain on such a piss-ant day. Burton was so still it was hard to say whether he was here or in the next world already. He’d been told that if he came round and was in the sort of pain he looked like not being able to stand he must take a morphine tablet from the first-aid pack and put it under his tongue.
A rank odour of beerish nausea mingled with cold rain pelted the canvas. Drops came through in places, and it was funny how many different smells rain could have. If you were walking through a field in summer it might be sweet and warm, and you didn’t mind such a pong. Along a canal bank there would be a touch of iron in it, he couldn’t think why. Rain in town had a stink of horseshit and fag stumps, very unpleasant to the sniffer. The best rain was the sort that slapped against the window when you were in the kitchen, and smelled of nothing except toast and strong tea on its way to your gullet. The worst was that which reeked of soaking overcoat and leaky shoes on your way home dead beat from work on a dark night. But what was a few splashes of cold rain to a trooper?
Oliver’s feet stirred, a troubled snore from nose and lips, both arms needed to stop him sliding off the stretcher at the bumps and bends. The corporal on his high seat tackled the hill to Hungerford New Town. A nice pub there, but they daren’t stop, much as he would like to, speaking for himself, but the corporal from outside shouted that it was wrong even to think of it. A good enough stretch with little traffic took them over the hill to West Shefford, where a motor in the high street frightened the horse which had to be shouted at and called to order.
‘It’ll be ups and downs nearly to Oxford,’ the corporal mused. ‘Unless somebody flattened them out with a rolling pin since I was sent on one of the colonel’s chargers to get a box of cakes from that posh pastry shop, though I hope nothing’s been done with the more or less level bit beyond Wantage. After that there’s only the big up until down into Botley, and we’ll be nearly there.’
Oliver was trying to say something, all bubbles and blue spit, calling for his mother, the orderly didn’t wonder, like they were supposed to, unless he was married and it’s his wife he wants, though if he is married he ought not to be serving in the army but looking after her at home. Anyway, he’s too young to look as if he is. What’s that you say? Don’t worry, you’ll be as fit as a fiddle again, though I can’t promise you’ll shoe any more horses. Might as well make him think he’s going to get over it, if he’s hearing me at all. That’s a nice-looking chain coming from his tunic pocket. I wonder if there’s a watch on the end? Some blokes are born lucky to have one. Pity there’s no fags. I could do with a smoke.
Clouds moiled and glowered, a dreary day for the job they’d been landed with. Why couldn’t the horse have kicked him on a sunny day? Dour hedges lined the road, and a well-fed spaniel ran in front of the cart, from one field to another as if whistled by a bloke they couldn’t see. A second dog followed, and he wondered how many more there were. Maybe the hunters were out. They didn’t care about the weather. The hooves missed it by inches, and he squibbed his whip shouting: ‘Watch out, you blind curs.’
Crows squawked from a great oak tree. On beer wafting its malt delights from a pub doorway the orderly poked his head from the tarpaulin to say again that he wouldn’t mind a taste, but the corporal said they couldn’t stop under any circumstances. They might, though, pick up a jar on the way back. It’s a bloody long way to Tipperary, and I’m already fed-up slogging along this miserable road.
Sparks squealed from the brakes on a steep descent, a workhouse two-thirds the way down, a place I might have been in if I hadn’t joined the army, the corporal smiled, ready to tackle the obstacle of Wantage. ‘Do you know what famous man was born here?’
The orderly moved the flap aside. ‘Where?’
‘In Wantage. Can’t you see the houses?’
‘Who was it born here, then?’
‘You an Englishman, and you don’t know?’
He stopped Oliver rolling, at a turn of the street. ‘How the hell should I?’
‘I don’t know. Some mother’s do have ’em. It was King Alfred, you bleddy dunce.’
‘The chap who burnt the cakes?’
‘Well, you do know that much. He started the navy, that’s what he did.’ It was a complicated place to find a way through, but an elderly constable whistled, shouted and waved to get them a space in the congestion. A file of cavalry halted to let their red-cross wagon go by, the lieutenant at its head lifting a hand in salute.
‘He didn’t start the bleddy army after he burnt the cakes, though, did he, that King Alfred?’ the orderly shouted, smarting from his ignorance.
‘Shut your rattle, while I drive out of this lot.’ He turned left across the market place by the town hall, right into Grove Street, and down to the end of town. After the tramline came an awkward angle for a horse and wagon, then the way was clear into open country. The horse trotted across the railway and, a few miles on, over the Childrey Brook and the River Ock. The corporal took out a tuppenny packet of Woodbines, lit one, and even the horse seemed to clatter on more smartly at the smoke in his lungs.
Opening the flap the orderly called: ‘You wouldn’t have one of them fags for me, would you, Corporal?’
‘No, I wouldn’t.’ The horse went slothful again, so he used the whip, thinking that a month or two before it must have been pulling slag and rammel around a builder’s yard.
‘They ought to have provided a motor van for what we’ve got on board,’ the orderly shouted as the speed increased.
‘Or they could have put him on a train,’ the corporal said, when a scream came from Oliver on trying to move. ‘He’d have got there quicker, the poor chap, and in a lot more comfort. Here, have a fag, then.’
‘Thanks, Corporal. Swear like a trooper, smoke like a trooper, eh? They don’t care. He’s only an enlisted man.’ Head and shoulders came in from the stinging rain. He put an ear to Oliver’s lips, cigarette smoke over his face as if it might revive him. ‘What’s that? Your mother again? I wish she was here, instead of me. I expect she’d be a lot more use, though I don’t suppose by all that much. Stop moving your legs like that. It’ll make things worse if you manage it.’
Oliver struggled as if to get on his feet. The orderly opened his slack mouth, blood and spittle sliming his fingers, unravelled a twisted flattening tongue between the teeth, for a tablet to go in. ‘That’s the best thing. A bit of old kn
ockout. The less you feel the better.’
Making him as comfortable as the jolt and rattle allowed, he slid fingers into the tunic pocket. ‘You don’t want to get it damaged, in all this rolling around. It would be a shame, such a lovely ticker.’ Oliver’s hand stopped him, an effort through dimming waves of sickness and pain, perhaps recalling the acronym of the Royal Army Medical Corps which the men always said meant: ‘Rob All My Comrades’.
‘Hang onto it, then, if you feel like that. I only wanted to look after it, to stop somebody else getting it off you. We’re doing our best to get a move on, and I wouldn’t mind if you did come round. Not that it looks like you’re going to, but it’d make my job easier. We could talk, then. Or you could talk, and tell me what’s best to do for you. When they’ve mended you in Oxford they’ll send you back to your family. Let them fuss over you. I’ll bet they will. You’re out of the war, and no mistake, one way or the other, so perhaps some good will come of your accident, except it’s taking us a long time to get to King Sawbones’s Palace. Not that it’s our fault. Your watch says it’s over a couple of hours since we left, and we’re doing the best lick we can, crossing most of Berkshire. Trouble is we’ll come back over the hills in the dark, and that’ll be a right dance. Lighting-up time’s twenty-past seven, and we’ve only got one lamp for the dark road.’
Ending such a comforting speech he called: ‘Do you want me to drive for a bit, Corporal?’
‘You do your job, I’ll do mine. You’re best off where you are. But I hope they shot the horse that kicked him. If they do, I suppose there’ll be meat pies for tea when we get back. It was a big horse. Corn in bleddy Egypt all next week.’
‘They don’t eat horses in the army, Corporal.’
‘Not yet we don’t.’
The orderly enjoyed talking to someone who could answer back. ‘When I see leaves diving from the trees, Corporal, it makes me think we’re in for a long war. I didn’t think so when they was green and the sun was shining on ’em.’