The Accidental Soldier Page 4

  ‘Sergeant?’

  ‘Your lucky day, Lambert.’ The sergeant doesn’t whisper, but is vaguely confidential. ‘Special Parade in twenty-five minutes. Six-thirty sharp.’

  ‘I can’t make that.’

  ‘My oath you will. Full uniform and kit.’

  ‘Uniform?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  Harry hasn’t worn his uniform in weeks, not since he last attended church Parade. He jumps to a disturbing conclusion. ‘We’re on the move?’

  ‘Maybe. Not for me to say.’

  ‘What about grub?’ It’s a ludicrous concern. He’s not hungry. He’s anxious to preserve the regularity of his day.

  ‘I’m sure they’ll save you something,’ says Ticker.

  Appalled, Harry watches him weave among the naked men. Ticker refers to a typed list. He pulls up close to his victims. Their eyes go wide. Their mouths either drop or tighten. Harry thinks: Why me? There are ninety-odd more suitable men, younger men. He pats the pale bulge of his stomach.

  Twenty bakers stand before the lieutenant in the guise of common infantrymen. They amount to less than a quarter of the company. Harry continues to resent his inclusion. He fears any sort of change, preferring to stick with what he knows. Bunter is also present, white-faced and wary. Harry wonders how they were chosen. Names from a hat?

  The lieutenant apologises for bringing them away from their bathing. He refers vaguely to ‘the press of events’. It has become rare for Harry to look past the conventions of rank – the man has pips, the long and the short of him – but he’s aware, too, that the lieutenant is said to be only nominally in command, too shy to say boo. Ordinarily he keeps his distance, leaving the men to Ticker. So this small and exclusive Parade is probably an ordeal for him.

  His address is predictable enough. Difficult times, a difficult job. ‘You will have heard,’ he says, ‘that other companies have been asked to provide field cooks for the forward areas . . . ’

  Harry’s thighs flex and shiver. His belly is in turmoil. The front lines are no place for a big slow-moving lump! He’ll be lucky to last a day. Surely his age disqualifies him. When he failed to fail his medical they said this would never happen. Even then he had his doubts. Once you’re in you’re in. They had also said he would never be sent overseas.

  The lieutenant assures them they are the envy of their unit. There are men, he says, who will undoubtedly feel slighted for having been overlooked. It’s while he’s wishing them luck that Bunter begins to vomit. The sound is a sort of stuttering groan. He’s bent double in the front rank, spewing his midday stew on the ground. Harry can’t help but steal a look. Bunter’s trousers and puttees are a mess. There’s a gob of what might be gristle on his boot. The smell is foul. Ticker heads towards the disturbance but the lieutenant pulls him up with a glance. Let it go. Bunter lifts his white face, distressed and ashamed. He looks like something carved in wax. Harry can’t spare him any feeling. He has his own visceral knowledge. It comes to him as something he has known all along. He will not die for them. He will not die for anyone. He must run, or at least try. He must run with the appearance of poise. There is no moment of decision, no doubt, just the press of necessity. He holds his attention fiercely on the officer, who refers with trembling delicacy to a written itinerary. They have an hour and a quarter to make themselves ready. Muster at 8:00 p.m., motor transport to Rouen, train to Amiens. Harry thinks: Perhaps an hour, at most an hour to get lost.

  He’s not at first conscious of having made a leap. Certainly something has tripped a wire – pure fear, but also defiance. He experiences an abrupt refusal, less a decision than a bodily revolt against months of obedience and self-abnegation. His signature, his oath, his dubious adherence to the outward form of a soldier, all mean nothing. He won’t die for them. It occurs to him that the terrier instructor in Australia has contributed to this – all those hours of obeisance to the bayonet and its sinister truths. He forces down a meal of bread and jam. His gut feels shrunken and rebellious. He has the squirts. Yet his discomforts have become peripheral. It is like being drunk – a strange paring down of perceptions.

  But there are sober moments too. The old Harry can’t believe what the present Harry, the fleeting Harry, is up to. The charge will undoubtedly be premeditated desertion.

  Forty-five minutes before Parade he leaves his haversack and hat on the bed. He has the jitters and is convinced everyone is watching as he throws one foot in front of the other with the disjointed emphasis of a puppet. In his pocket he has 200 francs and a worthless leave pass. Bunter pauses in his letter-writing – he writes twice weekly to his mother – to fix him with a taut-lipped smile. He rolls his eyes as if to say, ‘What the fuck, we’re in for it now!’ Harry hastens from the hut, too urgently, whatever composure he possessed quite shot. But it isn’t a clean escape, as Natty Mills catches him outside in the cold and shakes his hand. Mills becomes grave and formal and tells him they will certainly meet again. Harry is embarrassed to see how important he has become to him. He draws away, feigning urgency to visit the latrines. A night shift has been instituted and he hurries past a knot of men shoulder-bent to a loaded rail cart. They’re too absorbed to look up. If they notice him at all, they assume he is off to shit away his nerves.

  At this point he becomes aware of a strategic advantage. Within popping distance of death, they expect men to run. Not back here. And true enough, the way is clear, no one paying the least attention to an apparently brisk and purposeful private putting the barracks behind him. But this is the easy part. Base Depot is a maze of compounds within compounds, and he is afraid to contemplate the fences that stand between him and the Rouen road.

  Yet he has a nebulous plan, born as a vague flicker during the upheaval of Parade. It begins with the field hospital. By the time he reaches the hospital gate the light is fading. The military police light their lamp just as he arrives. He salutes and waits deferentially, imagining it pays to approach Red Caps on your belly. For all his agitation, he recognises a feeling of tautness and harmless deceit reminiscent of family card-play. He knows that it is illusory, a form of light-headedness, but that it is better than dwelling on the consequences of failure. He asks for their help. His brother’s in the hospital, he says, and tonight his unit goes forward. If they’ll let him through he won’t be more than ten minutes. Just to say toorah!

  These two hard-bitten types exchange vacillating looks. Will they or won’t they?

  They give him five minutes.

  He walks between the tents, dreading that he will run into some officious nurse or orderly. Above the sandbags, electric lights shine through the canvas, creating a peculiar puppet show of shadows. Sometimes he hears fragments of conversation, the squeak of castors rolling on boards, an occasional clap of laughter. He crosses the bare exercise paddock, remembering the raw-faced cripple, his tucked-up skull, his juddering gait. This is the image that had come to him at Parade. It had struck him that such a human wreck could go anywhere, no questions asked.

  Beyond a block of huts a house stands in a ruined garden. A blaze of light. Evidently the resident doctors have no fear of German bombs. He decides it’s time for stealth – difficult for a man of his height and bulk. Bent double, he scoots across to a deciduous hedge. If he’s caught now they must assume he’s up to no good. But as far as he can see there’s little danger. The house is shut up tight against the night. He sidles along the base of the hedge, which claws at his hands and scalp. Coming within feet of the rubble wall that abuts the house, he emerges to try the gate. His fingers encounter a chain but no lock. A simple clasp. He lifts the gate and eases it open without a sound. The light from a back window seeps across the yard but doesn’t reach the medical store – a converted stable – where he worked before Christmas. In the open, in the diffuse light, he’s inclined to panic. His hearing is heightened and he agonises over the squelch of his boots. Then he’s pressed ag
ainst the cold masonry of the stable, edging towards the double doors. Naturally they’re bolted, but underneath, from memory, there’s a deep hollow in the earth from constant foot traffic. What he discovers is an ice-cold puddle. He removes his greatcoat and pushes under the doors on his back. The water penetrates almost instantly. Scrambling up on the other side, he swipes the excess from his uniform and tries to restrain his gasping. The darkness is total as his hands play along a timber railing. He inches his feet up a series of steps. Before long he’s exploring the shelving that he helped to construct. In the first he clasps the boot of a prosthetic leg. Not what he wants, but on the right track. He explores other less identifiable hardware: stiff canvas with cane ribbing, straps, buckles, rubber sheeting with a fungus-like texture. Then on to the next, and the next. Three four five along, and there they are: splints, crutches, sticks. For a moment he’s in a quandary. A crutch or a stick? A crutch is unmistakable evidence of a disability, but cumbersome. A stick is ambiguous. At a distance he might be taken for an officer. Perhaps an advantage. A stick it is.

  Purportedly the hospital is the way out, the tried and trusted route for a little unofficial furlough. Several in his unit have availed themselves of it, or say they have. They report the fences are poorly maintained. They argue the police don’t bother patrolling in the belief the wounded and sick are in no condition to break out and that the malingerers won’t want to. Impressive logic. But now as he crouches beside the first of two ten-foot razor-topped fences, he has cause to despise camp hearsay. Certainly in this dark corner there are no police, but these fences are daunting. A mile off Rouen is a black hump that sometimes twinkles ever so slightly. The plain is flat and dark, fuzzed with hedgerows. On the road there’s the usual movement. Men. The occasional lorry.

  According to his father’s watch, which has phosphorescent Roman numerals, Parade has begun. Perhaps at this moment the sergeant is calling his name. He can imagine his consternation. Lambert? Gone? They will question Bunter and Mills and one or two others. Did he give any inkling? Have they any suspicion of where he might be? He wonders, too, whether the Red Caps at the hospital gate, piqued at his failure to return, will have the initiative to come searching for him.

  He must dig. Any point is as good as the next. Without a suitable tool he must make do with his bare hands and the blunt end of his stick. The soil is wet, but compacted and icy below the turf. The bottom wire is pinned with iron pegs, and as he tries to extricate them his fingers ache then go numb and lock at the joints. He jabs savagely then paws away once more, alternating until a peg loosens. He twists and pulls, twists and pulls. Then more digging. The noise can’t be helped. The first peg gives way. Then another. Though the bottom wire is still very taut, he levers it up so he can force his head through. Not unexpectedly it clamps down on the back of his neck so he’s momentarily trapped. But he wriggles and pushes on. By now he’s soaked and trembling from the core of his body. One last heave and he’s through. But this is no spot to celebrate, as he’s confined within the perimeter strip, just twenty yards wide – one of the first places they’ll come looking. He tackles the next fence. Quicker now, he locates the pegs without indiscriminate digging, exposing their heads with a few well-aimed strokes. Latching onto the first with the crook of his stick, he stands and pulls. For a moment it seems he’s achieving nothing, until all at once he topples backwards, the peg hurtling overhead. Uninjured, he bounces up and wrenches at the next. Soon he’s tearing at the matted grass to produce a hollow, finally slipping under with comparative ease.

  Out in the open he stands briefly motionless, fearful but also appreciative of the spread of fields. The nearest cover is a cluster of leafless trees. From the road a hundred yards away come voices, British, the same rural sing-song his father spoke. He’s not without a sense of shame, but he’s seen enough of England – admittedly in the bleakest circumstances – to know it’s not the land of hope and glory. His loyalties have become very narrow. Moment by moment they narrow.

  For several hundred yards it’s possible to keep to the hedges. He’s wet and cold and no matter how energetically he moves, he can’t warm himself. The track curls into the oversized village of Sotteville, which gradually merges with St Sever, the manufacturing district of Rouen. He teeters between confidence and terror, for a few brief moments driven by a peculiar certainty that nothing and nobody will impede him, then chastising himself for idiocy. He doesn’t allow himself to think definitely of his destination, but knows that it is there, a choice too fragile and absurd to examine. Twenty yards further along he’s convinced he’s proceeding on the basis of fantasy. He resolves that if challenged, he will give himself up. He will not run or struggle. Yet he continues to push the possibilities, casting his escape as an almost passive endeavour, at every step testing fate. His route becomes a cobbled backstreet bisecting the high brick walls of mills and dye-works and rows of bleak cottages. All the windows of the dwellings are draped or blacked out with paper but he doubts there’s any activity within. The residents have succumbed to the enforced darkness and war-time routine of early to bed, early to rise. Faintly from across the river, probably from the Amiens line, comes the howling of a locomotive: a place to steer clear of, particularly with Bunter and the others on their way there. He turns towards the wharves. A face looms suddenly: a spare old Frenchman, well-dressed and nodding amicably. No time to conjure up pretences. Harry offers a reciprocating ‘Bon soir’ as the man disappears. That it was not a gendarme seems cause for confidence, and once more, in wild contrast to just a few seconds before, he strides out with a conviction of invulnerability. He can smell the Seine, a reek of oil and shipping, and hear the jabber of Chinese labourers. The sounds of their exertion lead him on, until he has a view of the vast boulevard and quay along which he and Bunter passed weeks before. Glinting ropes sweep down from launches and small ocean-going ships. Engines chug in the darkness and winches grip and rattle. Men strain against rail trolleys. The same brash instinct that has brought him this far sends him out into this activity with a sudden lurch. He is a convincing cripple. His left leg creeps forward, trembling from the thigh down. Then his weight goes onto his stick and he pivots. Slow progress but he feels perfectly safe. Passing the entrance of a weakly lit cafe, he musters a withering resentment for the able-bodied within. He thanks God for the Rushburn Anglican Players, where he first learnt to impersonate others. With each step he becomes more consummately a ruin.

  It doesn’t surprise him that the Chinese are quite indifferent as he continues his crippled march into their midst. He has experienced the same blinkered absorption, the same dread of looking beyond what’s close at hand. The European overseers, British soldiers, refuse to look at him. He’s almost cocky. Yet not far away is the Place Carnot, wide and without cover, and probably crawling with police.

  He emerges laboriously into the square as a tram clatters away from a stop. A group of women factory workers, evidently coming off shift, divides around him. Despite his anxiety, and quite involuntarily, he watches the way they move, watches them bustle onto the bridge and hears the provosts calling to them in a mixture of English and French. The French is lost on him, but the English is clear enough. Nothing too improper. The women respond with a weary raillery of their own, routine half-hearted banter that makes one of the Red Caps laugh. As good a time as any for Harry to advance. The laughing provost sees him rock and lurch. His eyes become businesslike within his beaming face. The women haven’t slowed, haven’t missed a step. He fires a parting quip but they’ve already forgotten him. Which leaves just the unwelcome distraction of a broken-down soldier. Harry gasps and stamps his stick. His left leg shudders and he swings again. The Red Cap opens the latch of his lantern to get a better look. Breath hooting, Harry fishes in the pocket of his coat. He manages to articulate the word ‘Pass’. The Red Cap, a coarse-looking English boy not much older than twenty, openly winces. Harry makes several attempts at another word and extends an open hand at the
cafes over the bridge.

  ‘Sorry, chum. All leave’s cancelled. They should have told you.’

  Harry shakes his head, insisting the pass is good. He sees the doubt forming on the boy’s face. And the impatience: What’s this human wreckage doing out of hospital anyway? Should be locked up tight.

  But it’s his offsider who has the solution: ‘Just you sit here a bit. We’ll put you on the next motor back to camp. Save your legs.’

  Harry protests limply as they settle him on a stool outside their shelter. He could laugh or he could howl. Damn decent lads, they’ve nabbed him with kindness. Mostly he wants to howl. He peers down through the hinged mechanism that allows the bridge to open up for tall ships. The river is black, flowing soundlessly. A truly desperate man might jump in. He can hear the young Lamberts back home, George’s myriad descendants, telling the comic story of how Uncle Harry killed himself in the Seine rather than face the Germans. On the Nord line the locomotives continue to shriek. Next stop, slaughter. Poor Bunter. Not that his own lot’s any better. He fears he’s coming to, his rational side resurfacing with a belated regard for the odds against him. At best he might have stolen a few hours. And then what? Precisely what awaits him now. Detention and beatings. Disgrace. And ultimately the same chances of being killed. All at once he has a maudlin desire to confess, to tell these pleasant English boys they’ve caught a bad one. He’s on the brink of calling to them when a soldier jogs out of the darkness, shouting obscenities and turning in circles. Soon there’s another, less vocal but more slippery. He’s wheeling an invalid. Drunkards. But not the man in the chair. He’s the genuine article, lolling side to side and all but toppling out, his white face as impassive as a doll’s.

  ‘Bloody Jocks,’ the Red Caps curse, and reluctantly set off after them, waving their arms and lurching as if rounding up livestock. The Scots think it’s hilarious, until they’re cornered. Then they turn argumentative, insisting they have a right to show their comrade a bon time. If their comrade’s having a bon time he’s not showing it. His mouth hangs permanently open. His eyes are opaque and unmoving. Awake to the opportunity, Harry moves briskly, the object of a miraculous cure. He imagines the bridge is swaying with every step. Yet when he treads on the far side, glancing back, he sees the dispute has advanced to pushing and shoving and that the police are fully occupied.