The Wars Page 5

  Robert wanted to cover himself but he didn’t know how to do that without making it look as if that was what he was doing. He thought of rolling over—but that would expose his backside.

  ‘You oughtn’t to be ashamed, you know,’ said Ella. ‘There’s lotsa fellows do what you done. Specially the first time. An’—hell—I wish I could even begin to tell ya how many fellows can’t do nothin’.’

  Robert sat up. He pulled the sheets across his lap.

  ‘Look,’ said Ella; ‘we got all night: give yourself a little rest an’ then—’

  Robert stared at the floor.

  ‘Jesus!’ she said. ‘If you don’t take the cake!’ Now she was angry. ‘Dontcha un’erstand—if you don’t do me I don’t get paid!’

  Finally, Robert looked at her.

  ‘How would anyone know…?’ he asked.

  ‘She’ll know from the way you walk down them stairs,’ said Ella. ‘Guys that done it got a way o’ walkin’. An’ guys that haven’t done it got a way o’ walkin’, too. She’ll know. She c’n tell.’

  ‘But what difference does it make?’ Robert asked.

  ‘We ain’t workin’ if we don’t do it, she says. Don’t ask me. It’s just her rule. Everybody’s s’posed to enjoy themselfs.’ She imitated Maria. ‘Minkle! Minkle! Ever’body gotta minkle ’n screw!’ Ella laughed at herself. Then she got serious again. ‘She says if you go away unlaid, her house’ll get a bad reputation. No one’s s’posed to go away unlaid. That’s her rule.’

  Robert heard a thump in the next room.

  Then there were several other thumps and the sound of someone being slapped. Robert was sorry you could hear through the walls. He thought: now someone knows about me.

  Ella got off the bed and tip-toed to the wall. Robert thought she was going to listen—but, instead, she leaned in close and placed her eye to one of the lilacs. She stood this way for several seconds and then she waved at him to join her.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he said. He thought she’d gone peculiar, poking her face at the wall and staring at the lilacs, waving at him like that.

  ‘Shhh!’ said Ella. ‘Hush and come here.’

  Robert shuffled across the floor—wrapped in the sheet.

  ‘Lookit,’ she said, when he arrived beside her. She took him by the back of the neck and pushed him forward. The lilacs blurred, and he wondered what it was she meant to do with him and what sort of perversion this was and then he saw that one of the lilacs wasn’t a lilac at all but a camouflaged hole. He could see right through to the room next door.

  Ella’s hand remained on the back of his neck so he couldn’t step aside, even if he’d wanted to. But what he saw so confused him that he stood there of his own volition—desperately trying to comprehend. There were certainly two naked people—but all he could see at first was backs and arms and legs. Whoever it was who was there was standing in the middle of the floor hitting whoever else was there—striking out with all their force. Robert turned aside and leaned with his back against the wall. He’d never even dreamed of such a thing—of being hit and wanting to be hit. Beaten. Or of striking someone else because they’d asked you to. At school they’d done strange things but nothing as strange as this.

  Ella took his place at the spy hole and after a few more seconds—she was giggling.

  How could it possibly be funny?

  Ella was like a child. She pulled him back and made him look again, laying her finger on his lips for silence.

  Robert stared—one-eyed and breathless.

  The pummelling had stopped and, at first, he could not locate the people in the room. Then he heard them. Breathing. They were breathing in tandem—just like two people running side by side. But where? He shifted his position. The bed could just be seen. Since Robert could only use one eye, everything was flat and undimensional. The bed appeared to be stuck against the wall like a picture. And on it there were two undimensional people—one as pale as the other was dark. One was lying on his back with his back arched off the mattress while the other sat astride his groin exactly like a rider. The one who played the horse was bucking—lifting his torso high off the bed, lifting the weight of the rider with his shoulders and his knees—and bucking, just like the mustangs Robert and the others had broken in the summer. The rider was using a long silk scarf as reins and the horse was biting into the other end with his teeth. The only sound was the sound of breathing and of bedsprings. The rider held the reins in one hand and, using a soldier’s stiff-peaked cap, beat the horse on the thighs—one side and then the other. And the two—both horse and rider—were staring into one another’s eyes with an intensity unlike any other Robert had ever seen in a human face. Panic.

  Robert’s heart was beating so fast he thought it would explode. Even when he looked away and Ella took his place again he went on hearing and seeing everything he’d heard and seen in his mind and his mind began to stammer the way it always did whenever it was challenged by something it could not accept. He walked across the room and sat on the bed. He picked up a boot and held it in his hand. Its weight alarmed him and the texture of its leather skin appalled him with its human feel. He threw the boot across the room and shattered the mirror.

  Then he threw the other boot and broke the water jug.

  Ella ran and crouched in the corner—folding her arms across her head, afraid.

  Robert didn’t move.

  Tick-tick-tick went the water.

  Tick—tick—tick.

  —

  THE MAN BEING RIDDEN was Taffler. The rider was the Swede.

  Goliath.

  18 Robert remained at Lethbridge the whole of that autumn till late in November when he was sent back to Kingston, Ontario for further studies in military law and trajectory mathematics. Taffler had long since gone and the rumour was he’d been returned to France, although his picture appeared in the Canadian Illustrated—showing him in London with Lady Barbara d’Orsey: HERO AND DAUGHTER OF MARQUIS!

  Passing through Regina, Robert saw a band of Indians—twelve or fourteen of them—standing by the railroad track. They all wore blankets, held against the winter wind. This was very early in the morning. All the soldiers pressed against the windows looking out. One of the Indians sat on a horse. The horse’s head was bowed. Even though the wind blew—even though the snow was lifted from the ground and blown around their feet, the Indians did not make any motion to depart. They stood and stared at all the faces—ghosts through the frosted glass. Their eyes were pitchy black. Robert wanted everyone to raise an arm in greeting. Why should the Indians not be greeted standing by the railroad track? But nobody moved. Everyone was frozen in their places—staring till the train removed them—slowly tearing them apart like paper torn in half. All across the prairie, down through Winnipeg into the forests, pushing north of Superior past the Sleeping Giant, stuttering through the Sault and down, down, down the arms of rock and the broken, frozen fingers of nameless rivers, heralded by steam and whirling snow, the train returned him to his heritage of farms and cottages and cattle caught in fields by fences. Then he could smell the city of his birth—even though it lay about him in the dark—and he stood and he stared as he passed the fires of his father’s factories, every furnace blasting red in the night. What had become of all the spires and the formal, comforting shapes of commerce he remembered—banks and shops and business palaces with flags? Where were the streets with houses ranged behind their lawns under the gentle awnings of the elms? What had happened here in so short a time that he could not recall his absence? What were all these fires—and where did his father and his mother sleep beneath the pall of smoke reflecting orange and red and yellow flames? Where, in this dark, was the world he’d known and where was he being taken to so fast there wasn’t even time to stop?

  Transcript: Marian Turner—2

  ‘What you people who weren’t yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dog
s that barked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed all that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization—sleep was different everywhere…’

  19 Robert and his brother officers were not in Kingston long. Every aspect of the war had worsened. Gallipoli had proved to be disaster. The Allies would have to withdraw. The Germans and the Austrians had reached deep into Russia—three hundred miles to the Pripet Marshes. Poland had fallen. Serbia was about to fall. All the Allies could think to do was to change their leaders in the field. Haig replaced French—the Tsar replaced his cousin, the Grand Duke Nicholas—Joffre was thrown the whole of the French Command in a gesture of desperate consolidation. (General French retired to his bed and wrote his King that General Haig was ‘mad’.) All the Field Marshals seemed to be able to do was bicker and politick on behalf of their own reputations. Thousands were dying in battles over yards of mud. From Canada the word went out that thousands more were ready. It was at this precise moment that Robert received his promotion to Second Lieutenant. He was now a fully commissioned officer and ripe for the wars. On 18 December, 1915 the 39th Battery, C.E.F.—which Robert had joined in Kingston—was embarked on the S.S. Massanabie in St John Harbour. Three days before, with a bottle of wine provided by Clifford Purchas, he celebrated his birthday. They did this at midnight—singing songs in the latrine, long after lights out. Robert even smoked a cigarette. He was nineteen years old.

  —

  ON AUGUST THE FOURTH of 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm had stood on the Unter den Linden beneath the protection of a wide marquee. His withered arm was attached, as always, by a hook to his sabre. He was relaxed and smiling. The sky was full of birds and small white clouds. The Kaiser made a gesture with his good right arm and the gesture embraced the rows and rows of lovely shade. Then he said to his departing troops: ‘you will be home before the leaves have fallen from these trees!’

  And now, the leaves had fallen twice. It was not for nothing he’d stood beneath the wide marquee that summer day. It would fill and fall on everyone.

  20 Longboat, Robert’s hero, was an Indian. He ran the marathon. He won things. Then he smiled and was silent. Robert smiled and was silent, too. He’d go upstairs into the attic, when he was ten, and take off his clothes in front of an old, dark mirror and wish that he was red. Or black. Or yellow. Any colour but pink. Smiling and silence didn’t seem to go with pink. One night, later on when Robert was twelve—he decided he would run the marathon himself. Twenty-six times around the block—down through the ravine and back along the sidewalk—running in his bare feet. He did this after supper one night—while his father watched from the porch and counted off the laps. Twenty-six times. On top of liver and bacon with scalloped tomatoes. This was unwise. Mrs Ross and Eena the maid both said so. ‘He will die,’ they said. ‘Twenty-six times on top of supper! Surely he is mad!’ But Tom Ross said: ‘No—let him. This is what he wants to do.’ In the end—by the 24th lap—the porch was crowded with all the Rosses—Bimbo the dog—Eena the maid and Charles the gardener—cheering. People even came out onto their lawns along the street and waved and called out ‘Keep on going!’—‘Don’t give up!’—and ‘That’s the spirit, Robert!!!’

  Then Robert fainted. Just at the end of the 25th lap. Fainted and was down with jaundice.

  His father got him through it.

  He came up every evening after work and sat in Robert’s darkened room and talked to him and told him stories. None of the stories had to do with running. These were tales of voyages and ships and how to ride a horse. This was the binding of the father to the son. When the ordeal was over—Tom Ross took his boy upstairs and watched while Robert stood in front of the old dark mirror, slipping out of his pajamas and seeing that his skin was different now (a sort of ochre yellow). Robert smiled and was silent. He went downstairs in his dark skin and stayed that way for another day.

  Tom Ross understood, it seemed. He too smiled and was silent. When Mrs Ross asked him what he was thinking of, he shrugged. But he was thinking of the time he’d climbed the steeple of a church when he was ten—and had seen, for the very first time, the world spread out around him like a gift.

  Robert Raymond Ross—Second Lieutenant, C.F.A.

  He is wearing his uniform. Nothing is yet broken down. Every stitch is stiff as starch. The boots are new—the latest gift from his father. He carries a riding crop made of Algerian leather. The grip is finely braided and Robert holds it lightly in his right hand—pointing it towards the ground. He is posed in mind and body. Only his left hand disobeys his will. Its fingers curl to make a fist.

  Dead men are serious—that’s what this photograph is striving to say. Survival is precluded. Death is romantic—got from silent images. I lived—was young—and died. But not real death, of course, because I’m standing here alive with all these lights that shine so brightly in my eyes. Oh—I can tell you, sort of, what it might be like to die. The Death of General Wolfe. Someone will hold my hand and I won’t really suffer pain because I’ve suffered that already and survived. In paintings—and in photographs—there’s never any blood. At most, the hero sighs his way to death while linen handkerchiefs are held against his wounds. His wounds are poems. I’ll faint away in glory hearing music and my name. Someone will close my eyes and I’ll be wrapped around in flags while drums and trumpets-bagpipes march me home through snow…Afterwards, my mother will escort her friends across the rugs and parquet floors to see this photograph of me and everyone will weep and walk on tip-toe. Medals—(there are none just yet, as you can see)—will sit beside this frame in little boxes made of leather lined with satin. I will have the Military Cross. He died for King and Country—fighting the war to end all wars.

  5 × 9 and framed in silver.

  21 They went on board at ten o’clock and now it was nearly two. Robert was in a stateroom with Clifford Purchas, Captain Ord and a young lad called Harris from Sydney, Nova Scotia. The S.S. Massanabie was in convoy with other ships but just how many, no one was certain. Some were in the harbour—more were beyond the furthest point of land, unseen. There were rumours of a storm but there was nothing now except a low, grey sky and a damp demoralizing cold.

  At two, there was commotion. Robert made his way on deck. Everyone was greatly excited. Horses were being brought on board. This was unexpected. No one had been told.

  Each horse was lifted in a harness by a gigantic crane and lowered into the hold like cargo. Robert had never seen such a sight. A hundred and forty horses were brought aboard this way. High in the air, each horse lifted its head and cried aloud. Just once. And this was the only sound they made. Once they were all secured, the hatches were closed and the S.S. Massanabie pulled away from the dock and sat for an hour or more in the middle of the harbour. Now they must wait for the tide.

  Someone came around and said the last tender would be leaving in a while and anyone with messages or letters had best get them ready. Robert wrote to his father and expressed his surprise at having seen him in Montreal. As the troop train sat in the yards, Robert had looked from the windows and seen the RAYMOND/ROSS private railway car sitting three or four tracks away at a siding partly obscured by an engine with a snow plough. It didn’t seem possible. How had his father known he would be there? And why—though he didn’t ask this in his letter—if his father had been able to come, hadn’t Mrs Ross accompanied him? Anyway, the sight of his father had lifted his spirits immeasurably. And the feel of his father’s hand on his arm had brought him back into a world he’d thought he’d lost. Even so, he had to write that the revolver his father had brought him—and come all the way to Montreal to deliver in person—was not the kind he wanted. Mister Ross had handed him a polished wooden box and cautioned him not to open it till the train had started moving. Now Robert wrote: ‘I guess the only thing to do is send it back and get the Rice-Lewis people where you bought it to refund the money.’

  Inside the box, there was a Colt six-sho
oter. Robert had wanted an automatic. ‘I hasten to add, it’s not your fault,’ he wrote. ‘The last time I telegraphed I should have been certain they put down .455 and I guess they put down .45. I could put it in a parcel now, except I mustn’t be without sidearms as an officer. I’ll keep it till we get to England and have it returned from there. Maybe Mister Hawkins could forward it—slip it into the company packet or something. The fact is, some of the other officers were all set to take along six-shooters too but someone who knows about these things says an automatic is imperative once you get in the trenches. Since all this involves my safety, I’m sure you’ll agree it’s the right thing to do.’

  Clifford Purchas said that Robert should send his ‘love’ to Peggy. Robert nodded as though he might—but he didn’t. He and Clifford had been on the outs since Clifford had borrowed some money and not returned it. Oddly, too, he didn’t feel like sending love to anyone. It seemed unmanly. What he did do was enclose a photograph (official) and say to his father: ‘This will show you that my draft makes a brawling, husky lot of men. Not quite gunners or drivers yet—just as I can’t quite feel that I’m a soldier myself. Every time you think you’re ready, someone says you’re not. This is the way it’s been since the beginning. Every time you get in shape, they either take away your men or send you off to some new place where everyone is raw. These men in the picture are mostly out of lumber camps and factories. You, of course, would like them. This battery hasn’t been formed too long, so at the moment I’ve got a bit of a discipline problem. (Ha! Ha!) The Irishman I told you at the station had deserted is the tallest sergeant on the left. He stole a horse and never came back. Seems some people will do anything just to get a bit of the old attention! Well—I have to leave you now. Whistles are blowing and bells are ringing everywhere. Everyone on board is cheering, even in spite of the fact we’re leaving in the dark and there’s no one on shore to hear us. GOODBYE! Way, way out on the point some fires are blazing. I’ve written these last few words by lantern light. Green for starboard looking towards the sea. I hope you all can read this—because I can’t. So—adios! as the bandits say. Robert Ross. Your son.’