The Wanting Seed (27 page)

‘Oh, come, nonsense. Look,’ said Tristram, ‘it’s your duty to tell these men what’s going on. It’s your duty to march them back to the Base Camp to stop them getting officially slaughtered. It’s your duty to start asking a few questions.’

‘Don’t tell me my duty.’ Mr Dollimore, surprisingly, unholstered his pistol. ‘I’ve a good mind to shoot you,’ he said. ‘I’m entitled to. Spreading alarm and despondency.’ It was as though he had acute dengue: the pistol rocked violently.

‘You’ve got the safety-catch on,’ said Tristram. ‘Such bloody nonsense. You wouldn’t have the guts. I’m getting out of here.’ He about-turned.

‘Oh, no, you’re not.’ And to Tristram’s extreme astonishment, Mr Dollimore, safety-catch evidently off, fired. Crack, and the bullet whined well off target, bedding itself safe in an earth-bag. Some of the troops peeped out, chewing or, chewing suspended, gaping at the noise of a real weapon.

‘All right,’ sighed Tristram. ‘But just wait, that’s all. You’ll see that I’m right, you idiot.’

Eight

B
UT
Tristram was not entirely right. His own common sense ought to have told him that there was a flaw in his violent supposition. Mr Dollimore shook off to whatever pathetic headquarters A/T/Captain Salter had contrived. Tristram looked in on his platoon. Corporal Haskell said, ‘Know what I found, Sarge? A bit of shamrock. That proves where we are pretty well, doesn’t it?’

‘Can you think why we should be here?’ asked Tristram.

Corporal Haskell made a frog-face and said, ‘Fighting the Micks, as I said. Though why we should be fighting them, God alone knows. Still, we don’t know half of what goes on, do we? From what I heard on the news a couple of weeks ago, I should have thought it wou1d have been the Chinese. Perhaps the Irish and the Chinese are all tied up together.’

Tristram wondered whether he ought to enlighten Corporal Haskell, a good decent family man by the look of him.
They’d never believe me
. A callow officer-voice was singing that some yards up the trench. A session of ancient war-songs, then, on these officers’ training courses? Tristram wondered whether he could risk now making his quiet get-away. But, seeing the whole thing as a trap, a contrivance, he knew that there was no way back, behind the lines. If there was any way at all, it lay ahead, over the top and the best of luck. He said to Corporal Haskell, ‘Are you quite certain this
is the west coast of Ireland?’

‘As certain as I’m certain of anything.’

‘But you couldn’t say exactly where?’

‘No,’ said Corporal Haskell, ‘but I’d say we definitely weren’t as far north as Connaught. That means it must be Galway or Clare or Kerry.’

‘I see. And how would one set about getting to the other coast?’

‘You’d have to pick up the railway, wouldn’t you? All old steam trains they have here in Ireland, or used to have when I was doing my travelling. Let me see. If this is Kerry, then you could get from Killarney to Dungarvan. Or further north it might be from Listowel across Limerick and Tipperary and Kilkenny to Wexford. Or, supposing we’re in County Clare –’

‘Thank you, Corporal.’

‘Couldn’t be done, of course, not if we’re at war with the Micks. They’d cut your throat as soon as they heard the way you speak.’

‘I see. Thanks, anyway.’

‘You weren’t thinking of doing a bunk, were you, Sarge?’

‘No, no, of course not.’ Tristram left the close stinking dug-out, full of lolling men, and went to have a word with the nearest sentry. The sentry, a spotty lad called Burden, said:

‘They’ve been moving in over there, Sarge.’

‘Where? Who?’

‘Over there.’ He bowed his steel helmet towards the opposed trenches. Tristram listened. Chinese? There was a murmuring of rather high-pitched voices. The recorded noises of battle had slackened a great deal. So.
His heart sank. He had been wrong, quite wrong. There
was
an enemy. He listened more closely. ‘Been moving in real quick, they have, quiet too. Seem to be a very well behaved lot.’

‘It won’t be long now, then,’ said Tristram.

As if to confirm that statement, Mr Dollimore came stumbling along the trench. He saw Tristram and said, ‘You, is it? Captain Salter says you ought to be put under close arrest. But he also says it’s too late now. We attack at 2200 hours. Synchronize watches.’

‘Attack? How attack?’

‘There you are again, asking your foolish questions. We go over the top at 2200 hours sharp. It is now –’ he checked ‘– exactly 2134. Fixed bayonets. Our orders are to take that enemy trench.’ He was bright and feverish.

‘Who gave the orders?’

‘Never you mind who gave the orders. Alert the platoon. All rifles loaded, not forgetting one up the spout.’ Mr Dollimore stood upright, looking important. ‘England,’ he suddenly said, and his nose filled with tears. Tristram, having nothing further to say in the circumstances, saluted.

At 2140 hours there was sudden silence like a smack in the face. ‘Cor,’ said the men, missing the cosy noise. Lights ceased to flash. In this unfamiliar hushed dark the enemy could more clearly be heard, coughing, whispering, in the light tones of small-boned Orientals. At 2145 men stood, breathing hard through their mouths, all along the trench. Mr Dollimore, pistol trembling, eyes never leaving his wrist-watch, was ready to lead his thirty over (some corner of a foreign field)
in brave assault, owing God a death (that is for ever England). 2150 and all hearts were all but audible. Tristram knew his own part in this impending suicide: if Mr Dollimore’s office was to pull the men over, his own was to push them: ‘Get up and out there, you scabs, or I shoot every cowardly one of you.’ 2155. ‘O God of battles,’ Mr Dollimore was whispering, ‘steel my soldier’s heart.’ 2156. ‘I want my mum,’ mock-sobbed a Cockney humorist. 2157. ‘Or,’ said Corporal Haskell, ‘if we were far south enough you could get from Bantry to Cork.’ 2158. The bayonets trembled. Somebody started hiccoughs and kept saying, ‘Pardon.’ 2159. ‘Ah,’ said Mr Dollimore, and he watched his second-hand as if it were an act in a flea circus. ‘We’re coming up now to, we’re coming up now to –’

2200. Whistles skirled shrilled deadly silver all along the line, and the phonographic bombardment clamoured out at once dementedly. In mean spasmodic flashes Mr Dollimore could be seen, clambering over, waving his pistol, his mouth stretched in some inaudible OCTU battle-cry. ‘Go on, you lot,’ shouted Tristram, prodding with his own gun, pushing, threatening, kicking. The troops mounted, some with fair agility. ‘No, no,’ panicked one small gnarled man, ‘for Christ’s sake don’t make me.’ ‘Over you go, blast you,’ snarled Tristram’s dentures. Corporal Haskell yelled, from above, ‘Jesus, they’re coming for us!’ Rifles bitterly cracked and spattered, filling the sharp air with the. sharper smoked-bacon tang of a thousand struck matches. Bullets dismally whinged. There were deep bloody curses, there were screams. Tristram, his head above the parapet, saw etched black cut-out bodies
facing each other in hand-to-hand, clumsy, falling, firing, jabbing, in some old film about soldiers. He distinctly observed Mr Dollimore falling back (always this element of the absurd: as if he were in a dance and were trying to keep to his feet to go on dancing) and then crashing with his mouth open. Corporal Haskell was caught savagely in the leg; firing as he fell he opened his mouth (as for the host) for a bullet and his face disintegrated. Tristram, one knee on the topmost earth-bag, emptied his pistol wildly at the staggering advance. It was slaughter, it was mutual massacre, it was impossible to miss. Tristram reloaded, now belatedly infected with poor dead Dollimore’s ague, scrambling backwards into the trench, his booted toes digging into the interstices of the earth-bags, his helmeted head, eyes and shooting hand above the parapet. And he saw the enemy. A strange race, small, bulky at chest and hips, highscreaming like women. They were all going down, the air full of tasty smoke, still zinging with bullets. And, seeing, a cold reserved chamber of his brain fitting everything into place, all this foreshadowed by that Sacred Game of Pelagian times, he retched and then vomited a whole sour gutful of chewed meat. One of his own men turned back to the trench, clawing air, having dropped his rifle, choking, ‘Oh, bloody Christ.’ And then a groan from behind his sternum as bullets entered his back. He toppled like a tumbler over, taking Tristram with him, all arms and legs, essence of man, bifurcation. Tristram, smashed hard against the rocking duckboards, struggled with the dead-weight incubus that snored out the last of its life, then heard from the flanks, as from stage-wings, the dry rain of machine-gun
fire, manifestly a live noise against the sham cacophony of bombardment. ‘Finishing them off,’ he thought, ‘finishing them off.’

Then all the big noise ceased, nor were there any specifically human sounds, only animal gasps of those late in dying. One last flash showed him his watch: 2203. Three minutes from start to finish. With great difficulty he heaved the corpse off his stomach on to the trench-floor; it groaned, collapsing. Fearful, he crawled away sorely to whimper alone, the smell of the monstrous smoked-bacon breakfast still swirling above. His sobs started up irrepressibly; soon he was howling with despair and horror, seeing, as if the darkness were a mirror, his own wretched screwed face, tongue licking the tears, the lower lip thrust out quivering with anger and hopelessness.

When this ghastly transport had spent itself, he fancied he heard the renewal of battle above him. But it was only single cracks of pistol-shot, irregularly spaced. Looking up in terror he saw torch-beams searching, as if for something lost in the shambles of bodies. He stiffened in great fear. ‘The old coop de gracy,’ said a coarse voice. ‘Poor little bitch.’ Then a couple of cracked peremptory shots. A torch searched, searched, over the trench-lip, searching for him. He lay, his face bunched anew, like one who had met violent death. ‘Poor old bugger,’ said the coarse voice and a resonant bullet seemed to meet bone. ‘Sergeant here,’ said another voice. ‘He’s had it all right.’ ‘Better make sure,’ said the first. ‘Oh, hell,’ said the other, ‘I’m sick of this job. Real sick. It’s dirty, it’s filthy.’ Tristram felt the torch-beam travel over his shut eyes, then pass on. ‘All right,’ said the
first. ‘Pack it in. If they’ll let you. You,’ to someone more distant. ‘Leave all pockets alone. No looting. Have some respect for the dead, blast you.’ The boots crunched on over the field; more odd shots; Tristram lay on in dead stiffness, not budging even when some small animal ran over him busily, sniffing and twitching whiskers on his face. Human silence returned, but he lay on for an age longer, frozen.

Nine

A
T
last, in that dead but safe stillness, Tristram torchlighted his way into the dug-out where Corporal Haskell had taught him the geography of Ireland, where the first section of his platoon had awaited, singing, lolling, fidgeting, action. It was still, sealed by its blanket-door, foul-smelling, odorous of life. Packs and water-bottles lay about, perhaps including his own, for he had dumped these impedimenta with one of the sections on moving into the trench. The battery-fed dug-out lantern had been doused before the attack and he did not re-light it. His torch showed a pile of money on the table – guineas, septs, tosheroons, crowns, tanners, quids, florins; this, he knew, was the pooled cash of the platoon, useless to the dead but a prize for the survivors – an ancient tradition. Tristram, sole survivor, bowed his head as he fed the money into his pockets. He then filled a random pack with tinned meat, strapped a full water-bottle on to his belt, and loaded his pistol. He sighed, facing another anabasis.

He stumbled out of the trench, tripping over the corpses in the tiny no-man’s-land, not daring to use his torch yet in the open. He felt his way into and out of the opposed trench, a very shallow one, and then marched, wincing at the pain of that fall from parapet to duckboards so long ago, fearful of possible lurking gunmen. Bare ground stretched under faint starlight. After what he judged to be a mile’s walking he saw lights ahead on the horizon, dim, widely spaced. Cautious, his pistol out, he trudged on. The lights glowed bigger, more like fruit than seeds. Soon he saw, fear beating hard in him, a high wire fence stretching on either hand indefinitely, a pattern of illuminated and penumbral close steel weaving. Probably electrified, like the Base Camp perimeter. There was nothing for it but to walk parallel to it (there was no cover of trees or bushes) and seek, ready with bluff, threats, force, some legitimate way through, if any.

At length he saw, and carefully approached, a sort of gateway let into the endless fence, the gate itself a firm metal frame garnished with barbed wire. Beyond was a wooden shack with a single dim-lighted window and, outside the door of this shack, stood a greatcoated, helmeted sentry nearly asleep on his feet. Hut, gate, wire, dark, sentry – nothing else. The sentry came alive with a startled jerk, seeing Tristram, and pointed his rifle. ‘Open up,’ ordered Tristram.

‘Where’ve you come from?’ His rather dim-witted face was uneasy.

‘I’ve got a rank, haven’t I?’ blustered Tristram. ‘Let me through. Take me to the N.C.O. in charge.’

‘Sorry, Sergeant. It was a bit of a shock, like. First
time I’ve seen anybody coming through from that side.’ This was going to be easy. The sentry opened the gate, which whirred along the ground on casters, and said, ‘This way.’ There was evidently no other way. ‘Sergeant.’ He led Tristram to the shack of a guard-room, opened the door, showed him in. A bulb of low wattage glowed like an orange from the ceiling; on the wall were framed standing orders and a map. Corporal Haskell’s nose had been astonishingly accurate: it was a’map of Ireland. At a table, cleaning his nails, his feet on a chair, sat a corporal not unlike Charles Baudelaire in hair and expression. Tristram rapped, ‘Stand up, Corporal.’ The corporal knocked the chair over in his haste, responding to Tristram’s officer-accent more than his stripes. ‘All right,’ said Tristram, ‘sit down again. Are you in charge here?’

‘Sergeant Forester’s asleep, Sarnt. I’d better wake him up.’

‘Don’t trouble.’ He decided to swell his bluff to skin-bursting. ‘What I’m after is transport. Where can I get transport?’