Starshine (12 page)

She gave a histrionic scowl. ‘Certainly not. What sort of girl do you think I am? More to the point, have
you
? Out there with all those French women, to be had, if what I hear in the factory is right, for about five francs a go? Well, James, have you?’

‘Of course not. Neither has Bertie.’

She winced. ‘Jim. Bertie has nothing to do with it for the next three days. Right?’ Her voice softened. ‘It’s just you and me, isn’t it?’ She kissed him gently. ‘While we are on the subject, my love, did you bring any thingumajigs?’

He nodded glumly. ‘Don’t know how to use the bloody things, though.’

‘Well, we will just have to learn, my hero, won’t we?’

They both laughed and he put his long arms around her and swirled her around the room until they both fell on the bed, laughing.

They walked to the local pub that evening, a picture postcard inn with thatched roof and, although it was spring and comparatively warm, a blazing log fire. They drank the only bottle of wine the landlord had – ‘Don’t get much call for it round here, son’– and ate ham and eggs and fried potatoes. Then, hand in hand, they walked back to their cottage.

That night they made love. It didn’t begin well, in that Jim put on the condom before he was erect, so that the thing trailed like an old sock, reducing them both to helpless laughter. Then, inexpertly but tenderly and with increasing passion, they ‘got to know each other’, as Polly put it, and they lay in each other’s arms until first light, when they made love again. ‘It’s called “standing to” in the army,’ explained Jim and they laughed again. Old army habits died hard and Jim rose early and took some fresh air. Polly stayed in bed a little longer and, not for the first time, thought of Bertie …

The next two days were idyllic. They walked the hills of Malvern, those strange, green humps that stood up so unexpectedly from the plains of Worcestershire. They picnicked where Elgar had bicycled and they breathed in good air, so different from that of both Birmingham and the Ypres Salient. They made love in the afternoons on the grassy slopes and at night between the clean white sheets of the cottage. They exhausted the sparse supply of contraceptives that Jim had purchased but the nearest chemist was miles away and they didn’t care. It was a time of pure escapism for them both.

For Jim Hickman it was not reality. Reality was the trenches, discomfort, danger and death. The real life was the latrine trench, lice in his shirt seams, the dread of the trench mortar and the enemy: the Germans and Sergeant Black Jack Flanagan. A bountiful Providence – not the malicious being that orchestrated the hell of the Salient – had granted him these few days of paradise. They were certainly not real. Malvern was a magical land where his love was consummated every day and he could breathe deeply and freely. He didn’t understand it but nor did he want to examine it too closely in case it just disappeared. Malvern was Polly.

Polly Johnson shared much of this feeling of magical escape. Once, as a little girl, her parents had taken her on a week’s summer holiday
to Abersoch in North Wales, where she had played on the sands and paddled in the sea. But otherwise, she had never left Birmingham, except for the occasional excursion to the brown, trodden paths of the old landmark Barr Beacon, which could be glimpsed from Whitehead Road, round the corner from their house. Malvern, then, was a rural surprise, with views that contained not one factory nor tall chimney stack and where the air on the top of the hills stimulated her whole being. As did Jim. Jim! She had become a woman with him and her fulfilment made her body tingle. And yet. And yet … By giving herself to him, had she made a commitment that could not be escaped? Did she
want
to escape?

By the third day, when they silently packed their bags, thanked their landlady and made their way to the little country station, Polly realised that her impulsive decision to emancipate them both had not broken the bonds that tied her, not only to Jim but to Bertie also. Jim, Bertie and Polly. They were still together. She loved Jim and their few days
à deux
had strengthened her love. But not, she realised, half sadly, to the exclusion of Bertie. He remained as much a part of her as did Jim, her first lover. How, oh how, was she going to resolve this dilemma? And had their idyll changed Jim, who had always seemed so happily acquiescent in the triangular relationship?

The answer came when they arrived back in Birmingham, the day before Jim was due to return to the trenches.

He suggested that, before going home, they should take a glass of wine – their other new passion – in Yates’s Wine Lodge. They found the table they had first occupied on his arrival and, after the first sip of wine, Jim fumbled in his pocket.

‘I’ve got something for you,’ he said. He produced a scrap of tissue paper, inside of which was a small lump of plasticine. Embedded in the clay sat a small diamond. It sparkled and dazzled in the dim light.

‘You mentioned that I should go to my old workplace.’ He spoke
shyly again, as though they had never been intimate. ‘Well, I did. I went last week. But not to see my old mates, but to buy this.’ He carefully lifted it from its bed and picked away fragments of the clay with his thumb. ‘It’s not mounted, of course, Pol, but I can do that on my next leave.’ He spoke hurriedly now, as though anxious to make a sale. ‘I’ll find a good gold ring and you can choose a mounting for it: platinum, plain gold or whatever. I can do it for you. Look.’ He held it up and rotated it. ‘See how it reflects the light.’ He handed it to her.

Polly realised that her jaw had sagged. She gulped and took the stone and put it into the palm of her hand, where it sat, like a reproach. ‘Oh Jim. I don’t know what to say. It’s lovely. It’s … it’s …’ She sought for words, something, anything that would buy her time to think. ‘It must have cost a fortune. How could you afford this on army pay?’

He gave a slightly embarrassed grin. ‘Oh, I’ve got savings. And I got it at trade price, of course.’ He hurried on quickly. ‘It’ll look better when it’s mounted and on the ring, of course.’ He paused and the shyness came back. ‘When it’s finished, it’ll be an engagement ring, Pol.’

She looked at him, still thinking quickly, still at this last minute trying to make up her mind. But she could not resist one last, gentle push. ‘So, Jim …?’

He looked over her shoulder again. ‘Er … um … well … Pol …’ Then it came out in a gush. ‘Pol, I love you and I want us to get married. Particularly after these last few days. It was, well, all so lovely. I know you’re fond of Bertie, Pol, but I would make you happy. Honest I would. When the war’s over I would have a good job and, and …’ He tailed away. ‘I thought you’d say yes, Pol. Particularly, after … you know.’

She felt the tears rush to her eyes. She seized his hand. ‘Oh, I do love you, Jim. And what happened during the last three days was
wonderful but it made no difference. I always loved you. But …’ She paused and saw the look of desperation come into his eyes as she hesitated, and she tightened her grip on his hand. ‘I don’t think I want to get married yet. We are both only nineteen and this blasted war is making such a change to all our lives.’ She picked up the diamond and put it to her lips. ‘This is lovely and I love you ever so much, Jim, I really do. You know I have never been with another man …’

Jim looked up quickly. ‘Bertie?’ he asked.

Polly sighed. ‘No. Not even Bertie. You are the first. But, Jim, I have to be honest. I am in a mess. You see, I love you both, you and Bertie. I really do. I wish there was a way in which we could all live together. I know that that’s impossible, so I think time is the answer. I really don’t want pressure being put on me.’

They sat in silence and the chatter in the crowded bar somehow seemed to lessen, as though the other customers were looking on, listening in sympathy. Slowly, Jim reached out and took back the diamond. ‘I didn’t want to put pressure on you, Pol,’ he said. But his voice was dull and his eyes heavy.

‘Oh, Jim.’ Now the tears began to trickle down her cheeks. ‘I gave myself to you – I suggested we should go away – because I wanted to show you that I loved you … that … that there was love for you in the middle of this terrible war. Now I have hurt you. I don’t want you to be hurt.’

A new certainty came to her. ‘Look. Will you let me keep the diamond? You will not make it up into a ring and I will not wear it, nor show it to anyone. So we will not be officially engaged.’ Her voiced faltered for a moment. ‘If … if you do meet someone … someone else … then of course you must have it back. But I shall treasure it and, when things have sorted themselves out, I will tell you and then,’ she gave his hand another squeeze, ‘I will be the happiest girl in the whole world.’

He gave a wry grin. ‘And what about Bertie?’

She held his gaze. ‘I cannot promise you that I will stop loving Bertie but I can tell you that I know I will always love you. Time, Jim. Give us all time, my love. Won’t you?’

He looked at her steadily, noting the way a long lock of hair had escaped from its pins under her workaday hat and was straggling in a soft wave to her shoulders; the way her green eyes were wide and pleading and the freckles on her high cheekbones were gleaming under the tears. He remembered the hair curling across her white shoulders as she lay back on the pillow. He gulped.

‘Of course I will.’ He carefully placed the diamond in its waxen cushion, wrapped the tissue paper around it and slipped a rubber band three times around the little package. Then he handed it to her. ‘Take care of it, Pol,’ he smiled. ‘It was bloody expensive. All of half a crown.’

Then he grew serious. ‘If something happens to me, then take it to the works and get it made up how you want it – brooch, pendant, ring, whatever, and wear it, please. I shall leave some money there so it won’t cost you anything. They will understand.’

Too full of tears to speak, Polly nodded and placed the package carefully in her handbag.

Long before Polly had left for work the next morning, Jim Hickman had left the house next door and, that evening, he was back with his battalion in France.

That same day, in May 1915, a minister in the House of Commons answered a question from a pacifist member by denying that any sentence of death had been carried out in France on any member of His Majesty’s forces. He was lying, for records later revealed that, up until that time in 1915, twenty men had been shot at Le Havre rest camp for cowardice or desertion.

Jim returned to find his battalion in the middle of the line – a new line that had been established after fierce fighting in what had become the Second Battle of Ypres. The Germans had attacked with forty-two battalions, forcing the Allies to retreat, trench by trench, step by step, until the line now bulged scarcely two miles east of Ypres at its furthest point from the ruined town. In the first five weeks after that first gas attack, 60,000 men had been killed, wounded or were missing. Now, there was to be no more retreating.

The spring rains had replaced the cold and storms of winter and the whole of the Salient was now a complete quagmire. Nothing was left of the tilled fields, farmhouses and woods. Looking at it now, standing to in the early dawn, Hickman felt that Malvern must have been a dream. Reality had returned in all its sodden misery. Now, in the pocket that formed the Salient, the gravelly topsoil that used to filter away the moisture for the farmers had long since gone, leaving
only a few inches of clay. The guns had turned the area into a swamp as well as a killing ground.

The fighting had been fierce during Hickman’s absence, as a very depressed Bertie related. ‘Ah, Jimmy,’ he frowned and shook his head, ‘the killin’ was awful. There was us goin’ at them over the top hell for leather and then comin’ back with our noses all blooded and then them, comin’ at us and us fightin’ an’ retreatin’, fightin’ an’ retreatin’. Like some bloody – and I do mean bloody – gavotte, son. So it was. But enough of that. How was the lovely girl? I haven’t had a letter for two weeks now, y’know.’

Jim immediately felt guilty. ‘Ah well,’ he muttered, ‘she’s working so hard at this crane driving business. She does twelve-hour shifts, you know.’

‘Ridiculous. Our lass should be in a flower shop or something. She shouldn’t be driving cranes up there, above all them shells. They should leave that to the wankers who haven’t been called up. What’s it they call it? “Reserved occupation”, or somethin’. Ridiculous. Bloody ridiculous.’

‘Has the shelling been bad?’

Bertie’s blue eyes clouded. ‘It’s never stopped, Jimmy lad. It just keeps on going. You know, old Jerry is throwin’ everythin’ at us now— Ah …’ The whistle of an approaching shell made them both duck. It exploded behind the line with a V-shaped eruption of mud. ‘It’s like that all the time now. The Germans now shell at night. If a working party just chinks a shovel on somethin’, then down comes a barrage. And we’re out most nights, repairing the wire an’ the sandbags.’

‘What about old Black Jack? Has he been bothering you?’

‘Ah, that’s the good news. The bugger has been transferred. I don’t know where to and I don’t want to know. Perhaps he’ll come back but I hope not. I’ve got enough trouble with the bloody Germans.
Now, come on. Tell me about Polly. How does she look? What did you do? Did she kiss you?’

As the wet dawn came up and they sat on the fire step, rifles and bayonets in hand, for the duration of the stand-to, Hickman dissembled as best he could. Looking at the intensity with which Bertie soaked up everything he told him about Polly, he felt ashamed of himself. He had stolen – was stealing – his best friend’s girl. He realised that the relationship was no longer what it had been, open and shared. Now, although Bertie did not know it, it was bitter rivalry, although he must never reveal that he and Polly had made love. Jim blew out his cheeks. What a bloody pickle!

The intensity of the Second Battle of Ypres seemed to have run its course, at least for the moment, and the Salient settled down into the most depressing stalemate. The Germans still held the ridges that commanded the Ypres bowl and their guns ranged everywhere. Until the enemy could be removed from the ridges below the village of Passchendaele, the Allies could not advance. Nor, however, could they retreat, for there was nowhere for them to go. Rumour had it that the British command had even now set in hand an ambitious plan to blow up part of the ridges by tunnelling underneath them, using Welsh miners who were paid six shillings a day (Tommies earned a shilling a day). For the front-line troops, however, the misery continued.

It was not just the huge, long-range shells that intimidated and killed. These were called ‘Jack Johnsons’, after the crushing knockout punch of the American Negro who was reigning heavyweight champion of the world. They were frightful but were mainly used for shelling behind the front line, reducing Ypres to a ruin where hardly one brick now stood upon another. Yet the supporting cast of shells and projectiles employed by the German artillery had a variety only matched by the names given them by the British troops: minnies
(the
minenwerfers
or trench mortars), flying pigs, coal-boxes, flying torpedoes, flying fishes and the pip-squeaks.

Each had its distinctive sound. The rifle grenades, on the end of sticks and fired high, mortar-like, from conventional rifles, made a popping noise. The 4.2-inch shells made a sucking sound in mid flight; the big stuff emitted a ‘phew-ew-em’ sound, rising to a crescendo and passing over with a roar that sounded like an express train entering a station. Many of these projectiles were filled with shrapnel, jagged pieces of steel that could cut a man in half. Jim hated the coal-boxes most of all, for they could be seen wobbling and turning high in the sky before descending. Judging where they would land became a life-and-death game, ending in a rush round the traverses that buttressed the trenches at intervals, providing a zigzag that gave some protection. So strongly had the bombardments come to epitomise trench life that no one spoke any more about ‘the end of the war’, instead they said ‘when the guns stop’. Death was ‘when Jesus called you’.

Usually, a shell could be heard approaching and it would be possible to take some sort of cover, if it was only possible to crouch with the hands spread over the face, but it was different with rifle shots, particularly those fired by snipers. Jim and Bertie learnt that if you heard the shot, the bullet had passed by, so that it was pointless to duck. Rifle bullets in the open hissed into mud without much noise, but in the trench they cracked sharply as they passed overhead. If they struck the barbed wire in front of the parapet, however, they would ‘ping’ as they went in a head-over-heel motion, careering back high over the support trenches harmlessly.

Night became a period of great activity, when phantom figures would climb out of the trenches into no man’s land to repair the damage done to the walls and parapets by the shelling, but also to
bring in the dead that remained after the last attack. After a few days corpses swelled up and stank. Those that could not be retrieved from the German wire expanded until the walls of their stomachs collapsed, either naturally or from being punctured by a bullet. Disgusting smells would then float across. The colour of the dead faces lying in the mud changed from white to yellow-grey, to red, to purple, to green, to black to slimy. As the summer wore on, figures seemed to petrify in no man’s land and would remain in a ghastly tableau, depicting what they were doing at the moment of death: stretcher-bearers bending over corpses that were once wounded men; wire cutters stretching their bony arms upwards; and officers stretched flat except for one arm upright, beckoning their men forwards.

In the absence of daylight attacks across open ground, patrolling no man’s land during the hours of darkness became a strange macho substitute for both sides. The concept was to prevent a sudden night attack but patrols rarely confronted each other, passing like ghosts in the night, dropping flat but noting the other’s presence. Exchanging fire in the dark, open land would have been fruitless, bringing down a barrage and prompting raking machine-gun fire.

The dangerous drudgery of life in the line was now compounded by a rise in the water level, meaning that the bottom of the trench could be as much as a foot deep and bringing on a condition known as ‘trench foot’, whereby the feet became swollen and black. It was not, however, considered to be serious and a reason for leaving the line. Bertie, in particular, suffered from it, but was told to stamp his feet and soldier on. He sniffed: ‘The next time I stamp me foot it’ll fall off – and I won’t notice, so I won’t.’

Rats were now their constant companions. Encouraged by the decomposing bodies in no man’s land, they invaded the trenches and the dugouts, eating not just scraps of food but also webbing,
knapsacks, socks and mud-plastered puttees. Killing them became a personal crusade for Bertie and he devoted considerable ingenuity to the task. He sprinkled creosote on the walls and floor of the little dugout he and Jim shared with other members of the section, but the smell was so overpowering that the cure was voted worse than the plague. He experimented with placing cordite at the entrance to the rat holes in the walls of the trench and dugout, lighting it and then smashing the beasts as they ran out. More bizarrely, he tried sticking a piece of bread on the end of his bayonet, fixing the bayonet to his rifle and leaving it, fully loaded, on the floor of the dugout. Then, when the rat pounced, he would fire the rifle, sending the beast to perdition. This was quickly condemned as being dangerous, so he resorted to old-fashioned methods, such as storming around the dugout, smashing away with an entrenching tool.

Jim took delight in describing Bertie’s personal war against the vermin in his letters to Polly after his return. It was a way of avoiding the embarrassing question of his deep, burning love for her. Neither he nor Bertie, of course, exchanged Polly’s letters between them, nor did they reveal what they wrote to her. For her part, Polly had quickly resumed writing her twice-a-week missives, giving news of the home front, of how women were now giving white feathers to young men in civilian clothes – some of whom turned out to be soldiers home on leave. In her letters to Jim, she made no mention of Malvern, nor even of his leave. Perhaps she felt that the boys shared her letters.

On his return to the front, Jim had experienced no change in his feelings towards Bertie. In his darkest moments, soon after Polly had declined his offer of marriage – for that’s what it was – he felt that he really ought to hate his friend, the rival in his affections for the woman he loved. But it was impossible to feel that way about the
little Irishman, the boy with whom he had grown up and shared everything, even the girl next door. They were friends – and now fellow sufferers in degrading and dangerous conditions. It would be a step towards barbarism to turn on his cheerful, vulnerable mate. Things were bad enough in Flanders without that.

That warmth was tested, however, when, shortly after Jim’s return, Bertie announced that he had, at last, been granted leave. It was his turn for fourteen days of escape back to Blighty and he was taking it in a week’s time.

‘You know what I’m goin’ to do, Jim lad?’

‘No, Bertie. Turn out for Aston Villa? Punch Lord Kitchener?’

‘Don’t be daft. Better than that. There’s a wonderful show running in London,
The Maid of the Mountains.
It’s on at Daly’s Theatre. I’m going to get Polly down to London to meet me and take her to it. She’ll love it. There’s a great song in it, you know. It goes,

“At seventeen, he falls in love quite madly,

With eyes of tender blue … ”

Do yer know it, now?’

‘Er … I don’t think I do.’

‘Ah, everyone’s singing it. An’ it’s my story, see, Jim lad. My story. I fell in love with Pol – well, it was a bit before I was seventeen, actually, and her eyes are green, rather than blue – but I still feel it’s our song. See?’

‘Hmm.’ Jim felt as though his heart had dropped six inches. ‘Will you … er … be staying in London overnight, then?’

Bertie flashed gleaming white teeth out of the dirtiest face in Flanders. ‘Oh, I’ll say we will. I’ll find a nice little place. Just for one night, y’see. Then back up to Brum.’

‘But she might not be able to get the time off, and anyway, what about her parents?’ Jim felt an utter hypocrite as he said the words,
but he had to go on. ‘She’s only nineteen, you know. You’re an old mate, of course, but even so …’

Bertie’s eyes twinkled. ‘Oh, we’ll manage that. You’ll see.’

On the eve of his departure, Bertie waved a telegram. ‘She’s done it! She’s arranged it for the weekend. This Saturday, she’ll meet me off the train in London. She’s even bought the tickets. What a girl, eh?’

Jim clenched his teeth but forced a smile. He held out his hand. ‘Go and have a great time, lad. And give her my love.’

That Saturday night he volunteered to take charge of the work party that crept out after dark to effect essential repairs to the trench. As they toiled in the mud, uncoiling wire that insisted on springing back as soon as it was released, cutting fingers as it resisted all attempts to wind it round the posts, he forced his mind not to think about what might be happening in London, in some small hotel there, near the theatre. He told himself that he didn’t care but he swore at the clumsiness of the men and kept them out, sandbagging and wiring, until nearly dawn.

While Bertie was away, new gas masks were issued. The original flannel belts had been replaced by a gauze pad fitted with chemically treated cotton waste, for tying across the mouth and nose. But they had proved ineffective against renewed gas attacks and they were replaced by a ‘smoke helmet’, a greasy grey-felt bag with a talc window and no mouthpiece. These were cumbersome, no more sophisticated and lasted only a few weeks before the new issue of what everyone immediately called the ‘google-eyed-booger with the tit’, with air breathed in through the nose from within the tight-fitting rubber mask and exhaled from a special valve within the teeth. Jim heard that gas was still being used by the Germans in other sections but thankfully he saw no evidence of it in his part of the Salient. The
war was horrible enough there, without the return of that particularly ghastly form of warfare.

He forced himself to write to Polly while Bertie was away. His letters had always been stoically cheerful but this time he allowed a touch of melancholy and frustration to creep into the lines. Indeed, it was a fair reflection of conditions in the trenches. The dangers of replacing troops in the front line had now grown. The marches in the darkness to and from Ypres had now become frightful stumblings as everyone tried to avoid slipping off the slimy duckboards that picked out a kind of pathway between the shell holes. With distant star shells providing the only illumination – even a glowing cigarette end could bring down a barrage – it was almost impossible to keep a footing. Yet to tread off the boards could end in a desperate slide down into the slime of a shell crater. Men were now drowning in these holes, for the mud in the depths was glutinous and seemingly bottomless. The whole of the Salient was a bog. As a result, troops were forced to serve longer in the line without relief – two, three, and sometimes four weeks without a break. And this meant going without a wash or proper food for that time.