Echoes of Yesterday Read online

  ‘This is Sergeant Hawes,’ said Alice.

  ‘Hello, you bugger,’ said the woman. ‘Hilda Cummings,’ she said by way of introducing herself.

  ‘You’re full-grown,’ said Sergeant Hawes.

  ‘Glad you noticed,’ said Driver Cummings. ‘What beats me is how I manage to hang on to all of it on ambulance unit grub.’ She drew up a chair and sat down next to him at the piano. ‘Manage a duet, Sarge, can you?’

  ‘Aye,’ he said with a brief smile.

  ‘That’s the stuff. Right, then, let’s bash out “Blaydon Races”. The lads’ll let rip on that one. Off we go, Sarge.’ She stuck her pipe in her mouth and put her hands on the keys. Sergeant Hawes took control of his own half of the keyboard, and away they went as a duet.

  The Tommies did let rip as soon as the music began, four hands moving over the piano, and that was the end of Alice’s time alone with the Northumbrian for the evening. She had an unfriendly wish to kick the chair away from under Hilda Cummings.

  Later, when she and Polly were on the way back to their billet, they passed a standing Army lorry that was filling up with West Kents.

  ‘Goin’ our way, you gels?’

  ‘Not tonight, old sport,’ said Polly. They went on. Two more soldiers approached in the semi-darkness. One was Boots, the other Freddy Parks. They’d spent the evening in an estaminet near the town centre.

  ‘’Night, girls, sleep tight,’ said Freddy.

  ‘Same to you, and ’ow’s yer father?’ said Alice.

  They passed each other, the two men of the West Kents and the two ambulance drivers, and as they did so Boots’s left arm very lightly brushed Polly’s. She hardly noticed. She was close to being one over the eight again.

  Chapter Ten

  The following day, Boots still refused to have anything to do with the pigs. Cecile threatened again to report him to his officer. Boots said no officer, not even the battalion colonel, would crime a sergeant for refusing to shake hands with porkers.

  ‘Why do you call them porkers, you crazy man?’ asked Cecile.

  ‘All right, pigs,’ said Boots. ‘Cochons. But they’re not favourites with me.’

  ‘But I told you yesterday, you are supposed to do as I say.’

  ‘I pass,’ said Boots.

  ‘’Ow would you like my father to speak to you?’

  ‘Send him along,’ said Boots.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Cecile in French, ‘perhaps I should fetch my mother, who is even more formidable than my father.’

  ‘Why not fetch them both?’ said Boots.

  ‘Or perhaps I will ask your officer for someone else, after all.’

  ‘I’ll go and ask him for you, Cecile.’

  ‘No, no,’ she said. ‘No, go and collect the eggs in the chicken house. You will see the basket. Ah, I despise you for refusing to feed the pigs.’

  ‘Sorry about that,’ said Boots, ‘it’s just that I don’t want one more smell to live with.’

  She looked sober then. She knew, as did most French and Belgian people who lived relatively close to the Front, that the men of the trenches existed in a miasma of horrible odours, including that given off by the dead.

  ‘Please to collect the eggs,’ she said, ‘Jules will see to the pigs.’

  ‘Give him my regards,’ said Boots, and off she went in search of the elderly labourer.

  She reappeared an hour later. Boots was sitting on the bench outside the dairy, smoking a fag. The basket of eggs was on the ground at his feet.

  ‘You are not doing anything?’ she said, taking her straw hat off and letting the sun dance on the shining health of her braided hair.

  ‘Yes, I’m having a smoke,’ said Boots.

  ‘That is not doing something.’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ said Boots.

  ‘’Ow would you like—’ Cecile smiled. ‘Some coffee?’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  ‘Ah, you are not too bad,’ said Cecile, and disappeared again, taking the basket of eggs with her.

  They drank hot strong coffee a little later. It tasted slightly of acorns, but coffee beans, of course, were in short supply. Cecile sat next to him on the bench, giving him frequent glances. His eyes were a deep grey, and she noted the little hollows and fine lines that the war had drawn on his face. She felt sad for him. She had felt sad for herself at the loss of her husband Maurice, but the worst of that was over now. Perhaps the war would end soon, and then Sergeant Adams could go home to England and his family.

  Boots thought about the weather. It was hot and dry, and had been for some time. That there was a new offensive was a fixture in everyone’s mind now. The percentage factor was less in his favour with each battle. It would be even less if the weather turned wet, when men would slip and slither over torn ground that quickly turned muddy. He gave up on those kinds of reflections and thought of Ruskin Park on a summer Sunday.

  Cecile asked him what he was thinking about.

  ‘Home,’ he said.

  ‘But you are looking at me as if you are thinking of kissing me.’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Yes, of course. That is what all British Tommies are thinking of doing.’

  ‘They’re all thinking of kissing you?’ said Boots.

  ‘No, no, not me, you crazy bloke, but every woman they see.’

  ‘Well, I suppose it’s better than thinking about kissing the back of a bus, Cecile. Not much fun in that.’

  Madame Descartes appeared then, a middle-aged woman dressed in a high-necked grey blouse and black skirt, her long hair tied in a knot on the top of her head.

  ‘’Ere is my mother to see what you are thinking about,’ whispered Cecile.

  Madame Descartes had actually come to take a good look at the man with whom Cecile was spending so much time. She introduced herself and thanked him for all his help. Boots, on his feet, said it was a pleasure, except that he drew the line at getting mixed up with the farm’s piggery.

  ‘Cecile has asked you to see to the pigs?’ said Madame Descartes. ‘Cecile, is that the way to treat an English sergeant?’

  ‘I’m treating him very well,’ said Cecile, ‘giving him simple work, and look, coffee as well. What is wrong with that? Jules has seen to the pigs.’

  ‘So he should,’ said Madame Descartes, and turned again to Boots, inspecting him with interest. Naturally, one should inspect a man when one’s daughter talked about him so much. She liked what she saw. She smiled. ‘My daughter, Sergeant Adams, isn’t always to be taken seriously.’

  ‘So I’ve discovered,’ said Boots.

  ‘Good,’ said Madame Descartes. ‘Be firm with her and do only what suits you. Cecile is not to take advantage of your kindness.’

  ‘Oh, I assure you, Mama,’ said Cecile, ‘no-one could easily take advantage of a man like him.’

  ‘Good,’ said Madame Descartes again. ‘If he can get the better of you, Cecile, then he has much to commend him.’

  Cecile made a face. But she was extremely pleasant to Boots for the rest of the morning, and at midday took him to have a light lunch with herself and her parents amid the sound of British bombers high in the sky. Boots knew the French ate lightly at midday, and in the large farmhouse kitchen he sat down to a meal of bread, cheese and spring onions, with white wine. Madame Descartes regarded him with visible interest because of her widowed daughter’s own interest, and with a mother’s regret for any sorrow this could cause Cecile. Her daughter was headstrong, of course, and had suddenly become tired of being a respectable widow. Monsieur Descartes thought the guest typically the soldier of the times, agreeable on the surface but guarded in all his references to the war. They were all like that, they all seemed to dislike letting civilians know exactly what trench warfare did to them. The farmer thought they could only discuss it with each other.

  Boots provided a few details about his family and his background; then Cecile’s father asked him what he thought of farm work. Boots said it was preferable to the
kind of work he’d brought on himself by joining the army. No-one commented on that. Instead, Madame Descartes said he looked as if he would make a very good farmer. Cecile rolled her eyes. Her father said a farmer was a slave to his calling, and that no-one born with any real sense would choose to be one if God would allow him to be anything else. Madame Descartes said politicians had no sense at all, otherwise they would not choose to go to war. Cecile said they at least had enough cunning not to do the fighting themselves.

  That aside, the meal was congenial and the rest of the day passed quite pleasantly for Boots. So did following days. Cecile gave him agreeable jobs and refrained from arguments. She was sometimes teasing, sometimes scolding and sometimes provocative. She took him around the farm to help her with work here and there, and whenever the men of his platoon caught sight of the two of them, they ribbed him in loud and bawdy fashion from a distance. Boots took absolutely no notice. Cecile took him to task for allowing impertinence from mere privates.

  ‘It’s not important to me,’ he said.

  ‘It would be to French sergeants,’ said Cecile.

  ‘It’ll be different,’ said Boots, ‘when we march out of here.’

  Cecile bit her lip.

  Alice and Polly, along with colleagues, waited for the curtain to go up, the curtain on one more horrendous drama. Nerves twitched, nerves that relaxed each evening in the rumbustious atmosphere of Jacques’ estaminet. On Friday evening, Alice met Sergeant Ben Hawes again, and this time sat with him at a table and kept him to herself. She had wrong feelings about him. All emotional feelings towards one particular man were wrong, for they were feelings that had no future. Nevertheless, Alice couldn’t help herself. She had met hundreds of Tommies, some for a brief few minutes and some for much longer, and while all aroused that special sense of comradeship in her, she had never seen any of them as Mr Right. There were no Mr Rights among the fighting men. Sergeant Ben Hawes, however, was having a dangerous effect on her, and she felt herself teetering on the brink.

  Recklessly, she saw off a whole bottle of wine in a very short time. It gave her a welcome amount of Dutch courage, which put her on a par with the Northumbrian as far as arguments about women’s presence close to the Front were concerned. Sergeant Hawes began to smile at her quips and sallies.

  ‘You’d all miss us if we went ’ome,’ she said.

  ‘True, lass.’

  ‘So why’d you keep sayin’ I should go?’

  ‘Only said so once tonight,’ said Ben.

  ‘Oh.’ Alice puzzled over that. ‘You sure?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘All right, but don’t look so cocky about it.’

  Driver Hilda Cummings emerged again from the fug.

  ‘Hello, hello, Alice,’ she said, beaming, ‘is that my sergeant you’re hogging?’

  ‘’Oppit,’ said Alice.

  ‘I’ll pull up a chair,’ said Hilda.

  ‘I’ll kick its legs off,’ said Alice.

  ‘Now, lass, there’s always room for one more in a pub,’ said Ben.

  ‘Not for Happy Hilda and her pipe there’s not,’ said Alice.

  ‘Hello, got the bit between your teeth, Alice?’ said Hilda cheerfully.

  ‘’Oppit,’ said Alice.

  ‘I will at ten-thirty or thereabouts,’ said Hilda. ‘I’ve just dropped our Commandant off at Divisional HQ. She’s dining there, lucky old biddy. I’m detailed to pick her up at eleven. Anyone want to buy me a drink?’

  ‘Oi, ’Ilda!’ A cockney soldier called. ‘Over ’ere, darling. Bottle of beer for yer, if yer want.’

  ‘Coming, old-timer,’ said Hilda, who was well-known for breaking the unwritten rule about buying her own drinks. Over she went to a table occupied by men of the Essex Regiment.

  Crikey, thought Alice, Lady Banks out for the evening. She turned, looking for Polly. Polly, in company with some Australians and Middlesex men, was laughing her head off, the soldiers roaring.

  ‘Listen, Ben, would you like to ’elp me look for some silk stockings?’ asked Alice in a whisper.

  ‘Speak up, lass.’

  ‘Well, come closer, you daft thing,’ said Alice, and Ben shifted his chair and himself until he was touching elbows with her. Under the table her right knee made contact with his left one. It was only knees, but it did something to her. ‘Ben, you up to something?’ she said lightly.

  ‘Not with you, lass.’

  ‘Look, I’m not sixteen,’ said Alice.

  ‘I know, Alice, I know. But you’re still not for spoiling.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can say things like that in a war like this,’ said Alice, then asked him if he’d go with her to the Red Cross and St John headquarters and keep watch for her.

  ‘Keep watch?’ said Ben.

  ‘Yes, while I do me best to borrow some of Lady Banks’s silk stockings,’ whispered Alice.

  ‘Say that again, lass.’

  ‘Well, all right, pinch some. For me and me best friend, Polly Simms.’ Alice smiled as winningly as any young lady would who was well into her second bottle of wine. ‘Come on, Ben, be a sport, you’d like to see me in silk stockings, wouldn’t you?’

  Ben laughed. Alice felt happy with herself for making him laugh.

  ‘Not in the light, lass.’

  ‘Don’t be daft,’ said Alice, ‘what’s the point of silk stockings in the dark?’

  ‘Didn’t mean that, lass. Only meant I’ll not keep watch till it’s dark. Nor will I then.’

  ‘Oh, come on, don’t be a sergeant all your life,’ said Alice, ‘be one of us.’

  ‘All right, Alice,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, you’ll come with me, then?’ said Alice.

  ‘There’s a saying. Generals own the works, for the rest there’s perks.’

  ‘Too blessed right,’ said Alice.

  Later, at dusk, she let Polly know what she was going to get up to with Ben. Polly said bloody top-hole, that she’d go with them.

  ‘No, you won’t,’ said Alice, ‘you’ll be in the way.’

  ‘Hello,’ said Polly, ‘three’s a crowd?’

  ‘Yes, one too many,’ said Alice.

  ‘Listen, Alice old sport, don’t get serious.’

  ‘All right, Grandma, I won’t,’ said Alice, but not at all confident that she wasn’t already emotionally committed.

  Ben did his stuff outside the building, keeping watch, his pipe between his teeth and a little smile on his face. The place was devoid of staff except for two night-duty personnel. Alice had no difficulty in avoiding them as she went up to the quarters of the Commandant. She wasn’t long in finding what she was looking for with the aid of struck matches. Crikey, a rectangular cardboard box in one of the dressing-table drawers held at least a dozen neat white manufacturer’s envelopes, each containing a pair of silk stockings. She pinched two.

  Outside, her laconic Northumbrian was waiting for her.

  ‘I’ve got ’em, Ben.’ They were tucked inside her shoulder bag.

  ‘Right, lass, now be on your way.’

  ‘You’re goin’ to walk me to my billet, aren’t you?’

  ‘No time, lass. Off you go.’

  ‘Will I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘Can’t say,’ said Ben.

  ‘When, then?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  ‘Look, can’t you – can’t you fall in love with me?’

  ‘Easily.’

  ‘You – you can have me if you want, you’ll be the only one.’

  ‘I told you, lass, that’s not love. Marry you, aye, then I’d have you.’

  ‘Would you marry me?’ breathed Alice.

  ‘Easy enough to think on it,’ said Ben, ‘but you’re young, lass, I’m a hundred. I’ve had my time.’

  ‘Don’t say such things.’

  ‘I don’t mean my number’s up, only that my time’s gone by for marrying someone as young as you.’

  ‘Don’t say that, either.’

  ‘Good night, sweet lass,�
� he said, and away he went.

  Alice was very emotional by the time she reached her billet.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sammy knocked on a door next to a shop and ten seconds later it opened and Rachel showed herself in a pearly-pink blouse with a lace collar, and a calf-length skirt of maroon. Her black hair was dressed in two pigtails, each ribboned in pink. Her brown eyes looked velvety with pleasure.

  ‘Oh, you’ve come, Sammy.’

  ‘Well, I’m ’ere,’ said Sammy, in jacket, jersey and trousers, and a peaked cap on his head. He raised it. ‘How’d you do again, Rachel Moses, done up to the nines, I see.’

  ‘Oh, d’you like me skatin’ outfit, Sammy?’

  ‘Pretty,’ said Sammy.

  ‘Can you come up and say ’ello to my Daddy before we go?’

  ‘Mr Isaac Moses? Be a pleasure,’ said Sammy, and Rachel took him up to the living-room of the flat, where her father greeted him solemnly, shook his hand solemnly, and gravely requested him to take care of Rachel. ‘Well, Mr Moses,’ said Sammy, ‘I’m not gen’rally regarded as bein’ careless, yer know. I’m fairly certain I can get Rachel to the rink and back without losin’ ’er.’

  ‘Thank you, Sammy.’

  ‘Don’t mention it, Mr Moses. Me mum sends ’er regards and says it’s always been a pleasure doin’ business at your Walworth Road pawnshop.’

  ‘We do our best, Sammy,’ said Isaac, smiling. He liked the look and character of Sammy, a tall, self-confident lad with a fund of mental and physical energy. ‘You wish to be a friend to Rachel?’

  That caught Sammy on the hop. Well, how much would it cost to be a friend to a girl who was obviously treated to a lot of coinage by her dad?

  ‘Daddy, we’re friends already,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Yes, Mr Moses, so we are,’ said Sammy, and then realized that her dad’s question was because Rachel was Jewish and he himself was a Gentile. That, actually, didn’t bother him in the least. ‘It’s easy to be friends with Rachel, Mr Moses.’

  ‘Well, I think we understand each other, Sammy,’ said Isaac. ‘Now go and enjoy yourselves.’