The Wars Page 10

  ‘Not in the least,’ said Devlin. ‘The fact is, I’m devoted to fragility. Glass has a certain fineness and brittleness that a man with my bones appreciates.’ He laughed.

  ‘What on earth is that?’ Levitt asked—crouching in a corner to look at a small wire cage.

  ‘That’s Rodwell’s toad,’ said Bonnycastle, ‘You mustn’t touch it.’

  ‘I won’t,’ said Levitt. ‘Who’s Rodwell?’

  Robert also wanted to know who Rodwell was. He’d never heard of him.

  ‘He’s a visitor,’ said Bonnycastle. ‘I think you’ll like him. He was shelled out two days ago and came along and asked if he couldn’t stay here since we had the four bunks and usually only two chaps. So we said yes. I hope that’s all right with you.’

  Robert nodded. ‘Who’s he with?’ he asked.

  ‘One of the Lahore batteries,’ said Bonnycastle.

  ‘They’ve been out here for ages. Almost since the beginning.’

  ‘And he keeps a toad, is that it?’

  ‘Well’—Bonnycastle looked at Devlin. Devlin smiled. ‘He sort of keeps a lot of things. Maybe you’d like to look under the bunk just here…’

  Robert looked.

  There was a whole row of cages.

  Rowena.

  Robert closed his eyes.

  ‘What’s in them?’ he said. ‘I can’t see.’

  ‘Birds. Rabbits. Hedgehogs. Toads and things…’

  ‘Why has he got them down there in the dark like that?’

  ‘They’re resting. They’ve all been injured. That’s his sort of hospital, you see.’ Not one of the animals made a sound.

  Robert stood up. ‘Well—Rodwell’s not the only one who has surprises,’ he said. He crossed over to his knapsack and began to empty it onto the table. ‘Eggs…two dozen. Condensed milk…four tins…’

  ‘Eggs—two dozen!’ Devlin crowed. ‘Eggs—two dozen! I don’t believe it!’

  ‘…Cigarettes…five hundred,’ Robert continued. ‘Canned peaches—four tins…canned salmon—two tins. Candles…forty-eight…Nestlé’s chocolate—six bars.’ He stood back in triumph.

  ‘No wine?’ said Bonnycastle.

  Robert reached into the knapsack one last time: ‘Cognac—one litre!’

  ‘Cognac—one litre,’ Devlin muttered. ‘Robert—Robert: bless your soul and heart…’ He seized the bottle and gazed on it lovingly. ‘Cognac…one litre.’

  ‘That’s not all,’ said Robert. ‘Poole is bringing us a chicken stew.’

  ‘There now, Bonnie—chicken stew and peaches!’ said Devlin. ‘Doesn’t that cheer you up?’ Bonnycastle had a small round mouth against which he often laid his fingers as if in deep thought. He was very easily depressed. A single drop of rain could depress him.

  Devlin turned the dome of his countenance on Levitt.

  ‘What’s in your sack?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Bonnycastle echoed Devlin’s evident expectancy. He poked at the sack with his wet fingers. ‘Uhm? Eh? Uhm…?’

  ‘Books,’ said Levitt.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bonnycastle, ‘Books, eh? What a waste of a knapsack.’

  Devlin threw his head back—only just missing the beams above it—and gave a loud, nasal laugh. ‘Go on, Bonnie! Don’t be too hard on him. After all—everyone likes a good read from time to time. What have you brought us, Levitt?’

  ‘Clausewitz on War.’

  Bonnycastle and Devlin and Robert stared at him in disbelief.

  Levitt picked up the sack protectively. ‘Well,’ he said: ‘someone has to know what he’s doing.’

  8 The dugout, in fact, was rather grand as dugouts go. Levitt’s assessment of its being civilized was proper. There were four bunks—four stools and a chair and a large handmade table. Candles and lamps were set in holders nailed to the support beams and a large central lamp swung from a chain over the table. There was a stove at the rear with a coffee pot made of enamelled tin and there was a knotted rug on the floor. Levitt’s books now graced the shelf above his bed and the kneeling angel was set in a semi-circle of candles. Down in their cages, the animals stirred—ruffling their fur and feathers. The toad’s eyes glistened in the lamplight. Rodwell, it turned out, was fat and dour as a portrait of Doctor Johnson and Robert feared he would be a bad-tempered man, since he seemed to continually scowl and squint. But it was evident that Bonnycastle and Devlin were devoted to him in some way. Throughout the first part of the meal he didn’t have a great deal to say—other than thanks for what was put before him. Of this, he was appreciative and he praised the chicken stew, which made Willie Poole feel proud, since the pleasure of strangers is always the most rewarding experience to someone who cooks.

  There were six of them for the ‘banquet’ and there being only the four stools and chair, Poole sat on the steps and ate looking out at the winter sky. The door, it turned out, could not be closed. At night, they dropped a canvas tarp across the entrance to keep out the rain. At any rate, you didn’t want to be sealed in tight, since there was no way other than the door to get air.

  Levitt, thinking to inject some interest into the conversation, made himself thoroughly unpopular by quoting Clausewitz as follows: ‘Clausewitz says the true basis of combat is man to man. He says for that reason an army of artillery is an absurdity…’

  Somebody coughed.

  Bonnycastle said: ‘Are you saying we’re absurd?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so,’ said Levitt. ‘Just that man to man combat is the only true test of what we’re doing here. No one’s going to prove anything by firing off guns.’

  ‘I hope you don’t live to regret that,’ said Devlin pleasantly.

  ‘If the artillery’s an absurdity, Levitt,’ said Bonnycastle, ‘what are you doing in the C.F.A.?’

  ‘I wanted to join the cavalry, but the cavalry is sort of on the outs,’ said Levitt. ‘The only other place I could be with horses was in the Field Artillery.’

  ‘You like horses, eh?’ said Rodwell.

  ‘Yessir,’ said Levitt. (Rodwell was a Captain.)

  ‘Well, then—’ said Rodwell—smoothing the waters. ‘Any man whose love of horses is stronger than his fear of being an absurdity is all right with me.’ And he put out his hand. ‘How do you do?’ he said.

  Levitt stood up—shook Rodwell’s hand and sat down.

  There was a silence.

  They ate peaches.

  ‘Where did you find the hedgehog?’ Robert asked.

  ‘Under a hedge,’ said Rodwell.

  Everybody laughed.

  ‘I suppose that means you found the bird in the sky, sir,’ said Devlin.

  ‘Would that I had, Mister Devlin,’ said Rodwell. ‘No, sir—I found him with the hedgehog. They were crouched there side by side when I got them and I got them by putting out my hand to secure the toad. We were all there together, you see. It was a popular hedge, just at that moment.’

  Robert smiled at the thought of Rodwell under a hedge.

  ‘Are you a botanist, sir?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, no,’ said Rodwell. ‘Not in the professional sense. I’m an artist, you see.’

  ‘An artist?’ said Devlin. ‘Mercy me. I’m sorry to say I don’t think I know…’

  Rodwell waved the apology aside with his hand. ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said. ‘I don’t expect people to know my work. I’m an illustrator, you see. I illustrate children’s books.’

  ‘Fairy tales?’ said Levitt. He could barely keep the contempt from his voice.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with fairy tales,’ said Rodwell. ‘Although, that doesn’t happen to be my line. Sometimes, I wouldn’t mind a good old fashioned beanstalk to get me out of all this mud. But no. What I do is quite realistic. I should draw that toad, for instance, just as he is without embellishment. In his own right, you know, he has a good deal of character.’

  ‘I thought it was improper, sir, to refer to animals as he and she,’ said Levitt.

  ‘You’re quite the pedant are
n’t you,’ Rodwell sighed. ‘Well—I suppose in the strictest sense—perhaps. It depends how well you know them…’ He smiled. ‘Toad, there—I think of him as he. We’ve endured a lot together.’

  ‘May I ask what rank he has?’ said Devlin in good humour.

  ‘You may,’ said Rodwell. ‘He’s a Field Marshal.’

  ‘Well then, Levitt—we must call him “sir” and have done with it,’ said Devlin and sat back.

  After another moment, Bonnycastle said: ‘I do like a peach. I think a peach is probably the finest thing I can think of.’

  ‘You’re drunk, dear,’ said Devlin.

  ‘Bugler,’ said Bonnycastle. ‘Play us a song. The peaches have made me sad.’

  ‘I will indeed, sir,’ said Poole. He liked to play for an audience. He drew off his trumpet and made himself comfortable. ‘Anything you’d like?’ he asked.

  ‘Just don’t play Abide With Me,’ said Devlin.

  9 Devlin and Bonnie went back through the dark with their scarves around their ears. It was a frigid night. The only lights were the stars. Nothing was afoot. On the far horizon to the south towards Verdun there was a sickly, yellow pall. Nothing else—not even the usual sniper fire.

  Robert lay on his bunk half-asleep. Levitt sat at the table reading. When he read he put on spectacles that made him look old. He was a strange man, Robert decided. Eager to be of help—and resourceful in his way—he was also a cold man to whom, it seemed, nothing much existed outside of the mind. He had come back all that way alone with the trumpet to save Robert’s life—and Poole’s; but what he was doing was merely practical. It had nothing to do with courage or a lack of it. He was the sort of man who when asked who was there? said me. Who else might there be?

  Robert looked along at Captain Rodwell. He too was strange. (We’re all strange, Robert thought. Everyone is strange in a war I guess. Ordinary is a myth.) Rodwell was feeding the toad. They were two of a kind.

  Robert rolled over. He wanted desperately to sleep but his eyes wouldn’t close.

  Levitt said: ‘Clausewitz says an excess of artillery leads to a passive character in war. He says artillery must seek out great natural obstacles of ground—mountain positions—in order that the topographical impediments may aid the defence and protection of our guns. He says in that way the enemy’s forces must come themselves and seek their own destruction. That way, he says, the whole war can be carried out as a serious, formal minuet…’

  ‘That’s nice,’ said Rodwell. ‘Everybody likes to dance.’

  Robert began to drift.

  He was lying on a thick bed of chicken wire over which he’d spread his blankets. The wire was strung from the sides of the bunk and the longer you lay on it the deeper it sagged. Robert hooked his fingers through the mesh and held on. His elbows ached. And his wrists.

  The sound of distant rifle fire clattered against the dark like a handful of pebbles thrown against a window pane. The pickets were letting one another know they were there—or perhaps a patrol had stumbled on someone alive in No Man’s Land. Robert was more perturbed by the turning of Levitt’s pages. He wished the tarp was open, no matter how cold it might be. The smoke from the brazier burned his eyes. He was fearful of the fumes from the coke. Men had died in their sleep down the line in a dugout with no ventilation. Coke had a dreadful smell. It wasn’t anything like the comforting smell of coal that, for Robert, was the childhood smell of winter living rooms where great blue chunks of cannel-coal had burned all day—and of evenings barely recalled when someone held him in a knitted blanket almost asleep by a yellow flame.

  The dugout was full of eyes: Robert’s that would not close; Levitt’s that stared at Clausewitz; Rodwell’s squinting against the smoke and the animals’ staring at the dark that only they could penetrate. Rodwell held the toad in its cage on his lap. The only one who slept was the bugler. If it hadn’t been for the battle, Rodwell’s toad would probably still be asleep in the mud like Poole, who was lying on a shelf cut into the earth. His pillow was a rubber boot he’d stuffed with socks. Robert’s pillow was his haversack, with its buckles turned down and caught in the wire. He wished he’d thought of a rubber boot himself but it was too late now for that. He was as near to sleep as he’d get and he didn’t want to jeopardize his chances of getting all the way, though he knew the chances were slim. Sleep was dangerous. The animal memory in you knew that. No matter what your mind said, your body didn’t listen. Part of you always stayed awake. In Robert’s case it was his hands and feet. His fingers, in spite of gloves, were bound to bleed before morning because they clung so tightly to the wire. His toes were curled like fists inside his boots—like a monkey’s toes or the claws of a bird that are locked to a branch. Robert smiled. Perhaps his hair would sleep—but that would be all.

  Poole’s breathing was harsh and liquid. He’d probably caught a cold in the marshes. It reminded Robert of Harris—and that was the last thing he needed reminding of. All he wanted was a dream. Escape. But nobody dreams on a battlefield. There isn’t any sleep that long. Dreams and distance are the same. If he could run away…like Longboat. Put on his canvas shoes and the old frayed shirt and tie the cardigan around his waist and take off over the prairie…But he kept running into Taffler. Throwing stones. And Harris.

  10 The old country house in England that Robert had described for his parents was near a town in Kent called Shorncliffe. It was here the C.F.A. maintained its reserve brigades that supplied reinforcements to the Canadian Corps in France. Robert and Harris had only been there a week. Harris became so ill the doctors in the small infirmary couldn’t cope and he was sent to London where he was installed at the Royal Free Hospital in Gray’s Inn Road. Robert, at roughly the same time, received his embarkation leave and took it in London—mostly on behalf of Harris with whom he’d become close friends—but also because Mister Hawkins, the RAYMOND/ROSS representative in England, had procured a Webley automatic for Robert at his father’s request and Robert wanted to have it. The dates are obscure here—but it must have been mid-January, 1916 since Robert’s tour of duty began on the 24th of that month.

  The buildings of the Royal Free Hospital had once been the barracks of the Light Horse Volunteers. That was at the time of Waterloo. Sometime in the 1840s they’d been converted to their present use. They were red and formal and damp. Robert went nearly every day to visit his friend. The afternoons were dark and foggy—lonely and full of hollow noise. The people in the streets all hurried along taking small nervous steps with their collars turned up and their hats pulled down. No one spoke, except to say ‘excuse me’ or ‘watch where you’re going!’ It was like a tunnel through which you walked not knowing your destination. Everyone remained a stranger. At night—the Zeppelins came. There was a sense of silent menace.

  Harris had no other visitors. No one had responded to the cablegrams sent back to Sydney, Nova Scotia. It was evidently true that Harris’s estrangement from his father was final. There was not even thanks. Just silence.

  Some afternoons, Harris couldn’t open his eyes. Every ounce of energy was devoted to breathing. Robert sat in a chair and watched him. Harris’s hair was damp with fever. His nurses and doctors shook their heads. They were glad that Robert had come. They told him bluntly no one should die alone.

  The ward was filled with wounded. Some of these were on the way to recovery—others lay silent, wrapped in bandages and held together by splints. Many visitors came and went—some with bottles of stout and tins of cake and others with hampers of chicken sandwiches, devilled eggs and breast of grouse. Flowers were carried in of every kind—from single camelias to clusters of wilted daisies in the hands of children. Once, on a snowy afternoon, the corridors were cleared for the Princess Royal who came to visit a cousin wounded at Gallipoli. She carried a dozen yellow roses. Sometimes there was even an atmosphere of gaiety as the visitors spread their gifts and flowers like picnics over the covers. Robert sat in the midst of all this wearing his polished boots and his uniform with t
he spotless breeches and he crossed his feet beneath the chair and folded his hands and watched for hours while Harris fought for breath. The hours were made worthwhile whenever Harris woke and smiled and sometimes Robert had to look away because he was confused by what he felt.

  The thing was—no one since Rowena had made Robert feel he wanted to be with them all the time. If what he felt could be reduced to an understanding—that was it. ‘I have to get over there and see him,’ Robert would think every morning when he woke up. He also wanted to be there if Harris spoke. Harris said the strangest things—lying on his pillows staring at the ceiling. Strange and provocative. Robert didn’t know, sometimes, what to do with Harris’s sentences; where to fit them in his mind, or how to use them. He only knew they went somewhere inside him and they didn’t come back out.

  ‘Where I swam, there was a shelf. I used to walk to the edge of the shelf and sit with my legs dangling down. I’ve no idea how deep it was. Sitting on the shelf at low tide, my head was just above the water. Then I’d slide. Like a seal. Out of the air and into the water. Out of my world into theirs. And I’d stay there hours. Or so it seemed. I’d think: I never have to breathe again. I’ve changed. It changes you. But the thing was—I could do it. Change—and be one of them. They aren’t any friendlier—the fish, you know. But they accept you there. As if you might belong, if you wanted to. It’s not like here. It’s not like here at all.’

  Then he would sleep. And in his sleep his hands would move at his sides as if he dreamt of swimming—or of ‘breathing’ in the other element.

  One day—very early in the morning—Harris said to Robert: ‘Once I got lost. In a school of mackerel. Silver. Blinding. Every time they turned, I was blinded by their scales. We swam into seaweed. Kelp. Long, slippery arms, like horses’ tails. It caught round my neck and I thought I couldn’t breathe—that I was going to drown and die. Until I began to swim again—and once I began to swim again I realized the kelp was coming with me. See? In that place—there—in that element—somehow I was safe—even from choking. The kelp just slid away—let go of its root and came with me. But once I’d landed on the shore, it knotted and dragged and I couldn’t get it off. It wasn’t till then that I nearly died. In the air. With this thing around my neck In the air…’