The Somme Stations Page 3

  ‘That’s a good sort of rifle, is it?’ I asked the Chief. ‘The Mark Three?’

  ‘The rifle’s all right,’ said the Chief. ‘It’s the bullet that gives the trouble.’

  I thought: yes, it generally is the bullet that gives the trouble, but the Chief was talking about how rimmed cartridges were thought necessary, when in fact they weren’t, and how they would snag somehow. The Germans made do without rimmed cartridges, and consequently their machine guns in particular worked better than ours. I didn’t want to think about German machine guns. But the Chief hadn’t let up by the time we arrived at the Bootham Hotel, which was where all the railway-men went for their afternoon pints.

  The Chief led the way into the close beer and smoke smell – faint manure smell into the bargain, for it was cattle market day and the place was ram-packed. The Chief was still talking about bloody bullets: the British Army had been buggering about with ammunition since the Boer War, when what was needed was simplicity and consistency. At the bar stood Dawson, the cockney porter. How had he slipped out of the station ahead of me? The Chief broke off to order the pints, and two rounds of fish paste sandwiches. Along from Dawson at the bar was a train guard – his guard’s cap was on the bar before him, and I looked at his shining black hair, swept back. I knew him for an ingratiating fellow, the oil on his hair seeming to have leaked into his character, and he had an oily first name to match: Oliver. (I couldn’t recall his second.)

  ‘It’s bloody criminal when you consider what was brewing up with Germany,’ said the Chief.

  ‘But nobody did know, did they sir?’ as we found two chairs near the dusty fireplace.

  ‘Course they knew,’ said the Chief, lighting a cigar, ‘I knew, so I’m bloody sure the War Office did.’

  ‘How did you know war was coming?’ I enquired, at which the Chief fell silent for a space. He was eyeing Dawson, who was after another pint of John Smith’s Best Bitter.

  ‘You’ve put three away in the last two minutes,’ Don Wolstenholmes, who ran the Bootham, was saying to Dawson. ‘I think you’ve had enough.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of you,’ said Dawson, and he was loud enough to make the pub go quiet for a moment.

  Wolstenholmes did pour another pint for Dawson, and the Chief directed his gaze at the sandwich in his hand. He folded it like a piece of paper and put it into his mouth. Then, while eating, he said, ‘I knew from 1910.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  The Chief folded another sandwich and put it in.

  ‘The Entente fucking Cordiale, with the fucking French,’ he said, with crumbs and fish paste flying. ‘We wouldn’t be palling up to those buggers if we didn’t know a scrap was coming with the Germans.’

  The Chief then took a draw on his cigar. He would always smoke while eating, and while doing most other things. Oliver had come over from the bar, and was standing at the Chief’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t blame you police chaps for staying out of it,’ he said, indicating Dawson. ‘He was born drunk, he was. Best thing to do is steer clear.’

  The Chief began turning about, with the dazed look on his face, having been rudely diverted, so to speak, from inter national diplomacy. But Oliver had gone by the time the Chief’s manoeuvre was completed, which left him staring directly at the drunken porter, Dawson.

  And now the clockwork machine, having been wound up to the fullest, began to work.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’ said Dawson, just as though the Chief’s gold-braided tunic and police insignia wouldn’t have told him; just as if every man on the Company strength didn’t know Chief Inspector Weatherill.

  The Chief looked at me, as if expecting me to supply the answer on his behalf, which I did.

  ‘He’s the head of police at York railway station, as you know very well.’

  ‘Right enough,’ said Dawson, ‘and otherwise what?’

  He was drunker than I thought, and had become meaningless. How had he managed it in that short interval of time since leaving the station?

  ‘This gentleman’, I said, ‘is second only to the Chief Officer, Fairclough, up at Newcastle, and you would be very well advised –’

  I broke off, for I’d noticed that the Chief had put his cigar out even though it was only halfway through. The Chief never put a cigar out when it was only halfway through.

  ‘Fairclough?’ Dawson was saying. ‘Who’s he when he’s at home?’

  ‘I’ve just told you who he is.’

  The Chief had not only put his cigar out, he was also hitching up the sleeves of his tunic.

  ‘And who are you,’ Dawson was asking me, as the Chief rose from his chair, ‘that you go round sticking up for him?’

  ‘Would you stop asking everybody who they are?’ said the Chief, in a voice that didn’t sound like him. It sounded like the Chief very far away. ‘You’re a disgrace to your uniform,’ he said, facing Dawson.

  The pub was quite silent once again.

  ‘You can talk,’ said Dawson, for as well as gold braid there was a quantity of fish paste and cigarette ash on the Chief’s tunic. The Chief pushed closer towards him.

  ‘Eh?’ said the Chief. ‘What do you mean?’

  He wanted Dawson to lay a finger on him. Mere abuse did not justify blows. The Railway Police Manual said as much.

  Dawson raised his hands, and pointed at the smudge on the Chief’s chest: ‘You’re clarted in bloody …’

  He touched the Chief, who frowned at him – not angry but puzzled rather. I was eyeing Dawson’s nose, which was of a good size, and wondering how it would look smashed. Was there a word that might spare it? I barked out ‘Apologise’, but that was too long a word, and the blow, and the cracking sound, came before I could get it fully out. The Chief was getting on in years, but his punch had some special bonus feature. I’d felt it myself on one occasion, and seen its effect on several station loungers. It was spring-loaded somehow; told by its speed rather than its force. Dawson went down.

  ‘I’ve a mind to charge you,’ the Chief said, at which I made out a voice from the saloon bar throng:

  ‘… Only you can’t, because this is not company premises.’

  It was Oliver, and he was dead right. The Bootham Hotel was not company premises, and that was precisely why it was full of railwaymen, who were not to be seen drinking on railway territory. Dawson could not be charged with assaulting a police officer, because the Chief and I did not count as police officers in that place. We had the ordinary citizen’s power of arrest, and nothing more. The Chief peered into the crowd, and just then seemed a very old man indeed. A commotion at the back of the throng signified the departure of Oliver.

  The Chief said to Dawson (who had now risen to his feet, and whose nose was still more or less as was, but a good deal bloodied), ‘You’ll come and see me tomorrow morning in the police office.’

  Dawson looked over the Chief’s shoulder, over the heads of the pub blokes, and … he seemed to be gazing through the clear glass of the public bar window. He then fixed his gaze on the Chief, saying, ‘I’m joining the fucking army tomorrow morning.’

  That knocked the Chief, at least for a moment.

  ‘You’d better not be spinning me a line,’ he said. ‘When you sign up, you’ll be given the King’s Shilling. You’ll bring me yours at midday. As proof.’

  Dawson, sobered by the punch, quit the Bootham Hotel. The Chief and I took another pint with Don Wolstenholmes, who said he’d had trouble from Dawson before, and would be glad to see the back of him.

  At about half past three, I was standing by the high doorstep of the Bootham Hotel, while the Chief took his leave of Wolstenholmes. The heat of the day had hardly abated, and all the pedestrians pushing on down Micklegate looked worn out. Over the road from the Bootham Hotel stood The Lion, a mysterious territory – a pub ignored for some reason by all railwaymen. From above the pub sign – which was a painting of a lion with one paw resting on the York city crest – two Union flags drooped. I looked fr
om them to the window of the Bootham Hotel public bar, tracing the line of Dawson’s gaze of a short while earlier. I didn’t believe he’d meant to enlist until catching sight of that flag. It had struck him as something to say that might shame the Chief. Well, he was in a fix now, for he would have to go through with it.

  The Chief had now finished his talk with Wolstenholmes, and we set off back. I said, ‘That was Oliver who spoke out in the pub.’

  Silence from the Chief.

  ‘He was right wasn’t he? About the Bootham being out of our jurisdiction?’

  Still the Chief kept silence.

  ‘I suppose Dawson will bring you his shilling …’

  The Chief stopped and turned to me.

  ‘You’ll bring me yours as well. Then I’ll have shot of the bloody pair of you.’

  I ought not to have reminded him about the jurisdiction.

  Below us on the right hand side, the old station was packed with army again, and all the sidings were taken up with the special low loaders. It was a relief to regain the cool of the booking hall, where the Chief and I parted. My eye then fell on Constable Scholes.

  ‘You haven’t seen a bloke with an owl, have you?’ he said, coming up to me. ‘Funny looking sort of bloke with … Well, he’s carrying this owl, so you can’t really mistake him.’

  ‘The one from before, you mean?’

  I watched him realise that I’d overheard his talk with Flower on the subject.

  ‘Aye,’ he said.

  ‘I thought he’d cleared off,’ I said.

  ‘I know but Flower saw him not ten minutes since. I know he means to bring the bloody thing back onto a train. If he did, it would be in express contradiction of my instructions.’

  ‘It would,’ I said, nodding. ‘Have you signed up for the battalion?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ he said, ‘… did that at dinner time. Went over with Flower.’

  ‘Went over where?’

  The recruitment office was evidently in the Railway Institute gymnasium. The office had closed at three, so I’d missed my chance for that day, and would have to go tomorrow. Just then Constable Flower marched into the booking hall, signalling at Scholes.

  ‘The bugger’s out here,’ he was saying, indicating the taxi rank, and meaning the owl man. ‘And I reckon he’s stolen that bloody bird.’

  ‘Have you got any evidence?’ said Scholes.

  ‘Course not,’ said Flower, ‘but I’ve seen him before, in the bloody police court. Come on!’

  And they went off together. Flower was leading Scholes towards the confrontation with the Owl Man, and I didn’t doubt that he’d dragged him towards the recruiting office as well. Scholes was always led by Flower, but I was impressed by the coolness of the pair of them just then. They might just have signed their very lives away, but here they were, fretting about a bloody owl, while I was thinking about German machine guns, and whether I might come up against the troublesome porter, Dawson, in the railway battalion.

  Thorpe-on-Ouse

  The sun was low and ragged as I opened the garden gate, and walked towards the wife, my work valise under my arm. She was on the ‘spare’ part of the lawn, where it ran under the three apple trees. Black boots; old blue dress; brown face; hair neither up nor down; trowel in hand. She’d only have been home from her own work at the Women’s Co-Operative Guild half an hour since, but was already hard at it. She was no great hand at housework – well, she had no taste for it – but made an effort with the garden. I walked up and kissed her, saying ‘Hello kidder’ which made her look at me suspiciously.

  The wife had a paper bag of bulbs in front of her. She crouched down, took a handful of them – daffodils, we’d bought them in the market the week before – and pitched them under the trees. That was how it was done: you made a ‘run’ to give a natural effect, but it looked like an act of despair.

  She said, ‘What’s happened, Jim?’ and I believe she half knew.

  I said, ‘Sir Godfrey Glanville Gordon …’

  ‘That idiot.’

  ‘You don’t know who he is.’

  ‘He sounds like an idiot.’

  ‘He’s the general manager of the North Eastern Railway.’ The wife was gathering up the bulbs, not satisfied with the run. ‘He’s raising a battalion from all the railwaymen, and I mean to sign up tomorrow.’

  No reply. She threw the bulbs again – another roll of the dice.

  She looked up and said, ‘What are you going to do, Jim? Run the Germans over with trains?’

  ‘I should think we’ll be a bit like the Royal Engineers.’

  ‘And is this man Gordon joining up? Will he be fighting alongside you all?’

  ‘Well he’s got a railway to run. The Chief reckons the commanding officer’s going to be a chap called Colonel Aubrey Butterfield.’

  ‘Audrey? That’s ridiculous.’

  ‘Aubrey.’

  ‘Why, Jim?’ she said, brushing her skirts and rising to her feet. ‘Why are you joining up?’

  ‘Everyone else is.’

  ‘Try again, Jim.’

  ‘All right, to keep the Germans out of wherever it is … Belgium.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that.’

  ‘France, then.’

  We walked over our lawn, which was too big, and stood before our house, which was likewise, but rather tumbled-down. At first we’d rented it, but the wife had insisted on buying it, which she managed at a knock-down price, her perpetual aim being to keep up with the other socialist ladies, who were all rich.

  Without a word, we stepped through the gate, and onto the narrow road that led to Thorpe. To our right, beyond the hedge, lay the flat field that was used for cricket. Two boys had it all to themselves.

  ‘That’s the end of the cottage garden,’ the wife said at length.

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Your joining up.’ I was supposed to be building a cottage garden, whatever that was. In any event, it must be bordered by a wall of expensive brick. ‘When will you go off?’

  ‘Oh, not for a couple of weeks, and at first I’ll be close by. We’re to train at Hull … I’ll plant the cottage garden next year.’

  I kicked a stone.

  ‘You’re very sanguine.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘What does that mean?’

  Well, I knew really, and the fact was that I was not sanguine. The thought of war, even a short one, put me in a considerable state of nerve tension. ‘Anyhow,’ I said. ‘Do you want us to fight them or not? Your lot seem torn on the question.’

  By this, I meant all those committees in which the wife was involved by virtue of her part-time job with the Women’s Co-Operative Guild: the movements for women’s suffrage, Labour Party governance, Christian Socialism and whatnot. The committees were all in favour of brotherly (or sisterly) love but in practice argued constantly about whether feminism went with Christianity, violence, protectionism, and now war. But it wasn’t all high principle with the wife. For example, she opposed point blank anything suggested by a certain Mrs Barratt, who was her main rival in York Co-Operation. The wife had several enemies, all women (according to her) of a ‘pushing’ kind. Many of these, it appeared, had come out strongly for pacifism, which inclined the wife rather in favour of the war.

  ‘After all,’ I said, ‘there’ll be no votes for women, or anyone, if the Germans win.’

  By way of reply, she said, ‘Where are we going, Jim?’

  ‘I thought we were off to collect Harry and Sylvia.’

  ‘They won’t have had their teas yet.’

  The children were being looked after – as always on the wife’s workdays – by Lillian Backhouse, who was the wife of Peter Backhouse, verger of St Andrew’s Church, Thorpe-on-Ouse.

  On Thorpe-on-Ouse Main Street, we stood in the middle of the road. All the houses were hidden behind the great hedges. I looked down at the dust on my boots. In the distance, I could hear the rattle of a thresher.

  ‘Fancy a drink?’ I said to the wife. Sh
e nodded, and we stepped into the darkness of the Bay Horse inn, where I bought a pint for myself, and a lemonade for the wife, before returning once more into the light – the garden, which was overgrown, and quite empty. We set down our drinks on a rough wood table with benches alongside. At the foot of the garden was a half-wrecked railway carriage in the green of the North Eastern livery. It had been meant as a sort of summer house, and it had been wrecked before it was brought into this garden, having been in a smash at Knaresborough station. I had often mentioned this to the wife, but she never took it in.

  ‘It’s just engulfing us all,’ she said with a sigh as I drank my beer.

  I went back inside to buy another pint, and when I came out and sat down, the wife’s mood had improved.

  ‘You must be made an officer, Jim. You might be a captain.’

  There was a regular army captain in Thorpe: a Captain Briggs, and at church he sat in his own pew, marked with a little tin badge reading ‘Captain Briggs’.

  ‘Can’t you be made an officer for showing valour in the field?’ asked the wife.

  ‘Not if you went to Baytown National School.’

  ‘What’s the one below captain?’

  ‘Second lieutenant.’

  ‘What a mouthful.’

  I could tell what she was thinking: it wouldn’t fit on one of those little plaques.

  ‘I’ve just thought,’ I said, ‘Lillian’s taking them swimming in the river.’ (I meant the children.) ‘Have we to go and watch them?’

  ‘No,’ said the wife, and she was looking at the old carriage.

  ‘Do you want to go behind that … thing?’ she said.

  And we went behind, where there was a little copse, and no fear of an interruption. There we did what we had done a couple of times before in that spot, although not for years, which is to say that we committed a nuisance or indecency, in the words of the Police Manual.

  Ten minutes later, we were out in Main Street, and kicking the stones on the dusty road again. I was thinking of myself as an army officer. Why not? They were making men up from the ranks at a great rate, and how many of the new officers had faced down desperate men on lonely station platforms? How many had hunted up murderers? I had done those things – not easily, and not without fear, but I had done them. And I would look well in an officer’s uniform. What had that junior coat cutter in Brown’s, the best York tailors, said when the wife had forced me to buy a handmade suit? ‘It’s a pleasure to fit you, sir … The greyhound breed.’