Echoes of Yesterday Page 8

  ‘What sort of a look is that?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Should I know ’ow to answer all your questions?’ said Cecile. She bit into bread and followed that with cheese, then a mouthful of wine. ‘Ah, no wonder your officer said I must watch your tongue.’

  ‘Did he say that when you brought your father’s note?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Of course. ’E said not to let it get too near my ear. You are laughing? Why are you laughing?’

  ‘Because I know my commanding officer, and because you’re very amusing,’ said Boots.

  ‘Ah, do I ’ave a funny face?’

  ‘Do you?’ said Boots. ‘I don’t think so. You’re amusing to talk to, that’s all.’

  ‘But what ’ave I said that is amusing? All the time I am serious. Who could not be when the war is so terrible, and our brave soldiers are dying every day?’

  ‘Don’t you think I know that?’ said Boots.

  ‘You are to come ’ere each morning, your officer said so. You are not to find some other bloke. Are you sure bloke is right when I ’ave never ’eard of it? Oh, name of a pig, you are laughing again.’

  ‘It’s hearing you say bloke, Cecile.’

  ‘But you say it too, and I do not laugh at you. Is it my English? It is not very good?’

  ‘It’s excellent,’ said Boots, ‘and far better than my French was when I landed.’

  ‘But I do not speak English as you do.’

  ‘That’s because you’re French,’ said Boots. ‘In the same way, I don’t speak French as you do.’

  ‘But I wish to speak English like you do,’ said Cecile, watching him chewing bread.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I like ’ow you speak it. I do not like your eyes, of course.’

  ‘What’s wrong with my eyes?’

  ‘’Ow do I know? Except that they look at me and my honour trembles.’

  Boots laughed his head off. The young madame’s conversation and her French imagination were having a recuperative effect on his nerves. When out of the line, one could recover much quicker from the physical wear and tear of trench warfare than from what it did to the mind and the nerves. There were always thoughts of being hit and drowning in the mud, or dying slowly on the barbed wire. Private Jones and the seven other men had whistled on their way to the fields, but Boots knew that every one of them had yesterday’s ghosts and tomorrow’s dead on their minds. Madame Cecile Lacoste, a young French war widow, was good at helping to repair a man’s ragged nerves, even if she didn’t realize how she was doing so.

  ‘Not your honour again, you goose,’ he said.

  ‘Goose? Goose? Who is a goose?’ Cecile’s blue eyes flashed. ‘’Ow would you like a blow on your silly ’ead, eh? My honour is funny to you?’

  ‘Not a bit,’ said Boots, ‘I treasure it as much as you do.’

  ‘Treasure it? That is what you say? You are a crazy bloke, Sergeant Adams.’

  ‘Well, I’ve enjoyed the bread and cheese, and your wine, Cecile—’

  ‘Stay where you are,’ said Cecile.

  ‘Have I moved?’ said Boots.

  ‘You are not to move until I say so.’ Cecile spoke in French to make sure she expressed herself clearly. ‘Then you must turn the churn again. A government man will come to collect the butter next week, and there must be enough or he will ask questions. Do you like this weather? It’s better than English weather, isn’t it?’

  ‘No comment,’ said Boots. If there was one thing the British Army had learned in Northern France it was that the weather could be even fouler than in Britain. The French, of course, refused to admit it.

  ‘Ah, now you are going to insult our weather when you are sitting in our sunshine?’ said Cecile.

  ‘No comment,’ said Boots again.

  A stocky middle-aged man appeared. He wore black serge trousers, heavy boots, a dark blue shirt and a black beret. There was a rifle under his arm. He strode up and addressed Cecile.

  ‘This is the sergeant?’ he said.

  ‘This is Sergeant Adams, mon pere,’ said Cecile.

  ‘You have said things about him.’

  ‘Don’t repeat them,’ said Cecile, ‘he speaks French very well.’

  ‘Is he married?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Remember you are in black. However, as he isn’t married, you may use his help.’ Monsieur Descartes turned to Boots. ‘I am grateful, Sergeant Adams, for the men you brought with you. We are behind with everything. All our best young men are fighting for France against the Boches. My daughter Cecile will tell you each day how you may help her. I am François Descartes, owner of this farm.’

  ‘A pleasure to meet you, m’sieur,’ said Boots.

  The farmer smiled briefly.

  ‘Well, it is good, the English and the French together at last,’ he said. ‘Now excuse me, if you please, I am very busy.’ Off he went to the fields, stocky, sturdy and as strong as a horse. A dog followed him, frisking at his heels.

  ‘Why is he carrying a rifle?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Why? Why? To shoot you, of course, and also the other Tommies if my honour is not respected.’

  Boots laughed yet again. It wasn’t very often that a Frenchwoman carried on about her honour. Perhaps a widow’s honour was that much more sacrosanct, although he doubted if certain of the West Kents would say so.

  Cecile, frowning, and still speaking French, said, ‘Why do you laugh so much?’

  ‘Is it out of place?’ asked Boots.

  ‘Yes, it is,’ she said. ‘You should be crying. Everyone should be crying. And the whole world should be weeping.’

  ‘Yes, I daresay,’ said Boots.

  ‘Come, you are not to sit there all day,’ said Cecile. ‘The churn must be filled again, and you must turn it again. I have to do other work.’

  Boots spent the afternoon in the dairy. Cecile spent it elsewhere, except for the occasions when she looked in on him and made him talk in English with her. The occasions were many, and sometimes she even smiled.

  Not until five o’clock did she tell him he could go. Boots’s expression suggested he wasn’t sure if he should smack her bottom or grin and bear her provocations. It wasn’t usual for a sergeant to be given the run-around by a farmer’s daughter.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ she asked.

  ‘Like what?’ said Boots.

  ‘It’s true, yes, that I do not like your eyes. But you must be ’ere in the morning, and with your men.’

  Boots shrugged.

  ‘Au ’voir, Cecile,’ he said.

  She watched him go on his way, the little smile back on her face.

  Boots walked the long lane to the barns. At the end of the lane he saw Major Harris, cane in his hand. The Major waited until Boots reached him.

  ‘Sergeant Adams?’

  ‘Sir?’ Boots stopped and saluted.

  ‘Have you been at the farm all day?’ asked Major Harris, height matching that of his youngest sergeant. Boots was just a little short of six feet.

  ‘It feels like all week, sir.’

  ‘Too much for you, farm work?’

  ‘It’s the farmer’s daughter,’ said Boots.

  ‘She’s too much for you, Sergeant Adams?’

  ‘Not so far, sir. It’s her churn.’

  ‘Damned if you don’t smell of butter,’ said Major Harris.

  ‘Yes, damned if I don’t, sir,’ said Boots. ‘And she tells me I’m under orders to report to her every day.’

  ‘So you are. It’s a question of Anglo-French co-operation. But don’t shout about your luck.’

  ‘Well, I wonder, sir,’ said Boots, ‘is a young French widow good luck or bad luck?’

  Major Harris’s granite-grey eyes glinted.

  ‘Work it out for yourself, Sergeant Adams,’ he said, ‘while you’ve got time. By the way, Kitchener’s gone.’

  ‘Lord Kitchener?’

  ‘Went down with the Hampshire some days ago on his way to Russia.’ Major Harris
looked bleaker than ever. Boots suspected he would have preferred Haig to have been sunk. ‘Either torpedoed or mined. That’s all, Sergeant Adams.’

  ‘That’s enough, sir.’

  ‘Dismiss,’ said the Major.

  Chapter Eight

  The following day Cecile made herself quite pleasant to Boots, and Boots made the churn race round, while Jules, the labourer, put the eight so-called volunteers to work in the fields again. The sound of the guns in Flanders did not reach them. No-one would have commented if they had.

  ‘Ah, you are working better, yes,’ said Cecile on one occasion.

  ‘Hoppit,’ said Boots.

  ‘’Oppit? What is ’oppit?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘But I want to know.’

  ‘It means close the door when you leave,’ said Boots.

  ‘Ah, that is funny, isn’t it?’ said Cecile, and laughed, and left without closing the door. She came back a minute later. ‘Do you ’ave an English girl?’

  ‘Here, you mean, in the small barn?’ said Boots.

  ‘Ah, you crazy bloke, no, no, ’ow could you ’ave an English girl ’ere?’

  ‘Good question,’ said Boots, churning on.

  ‘I mean, do you ’ave an English girl at ’ome waiting for you?’

  ‘Just my family, that’s all,’ said Boots. ‘Why’d you ask?’

  ‘Because you are so funny,’ said Cecile.

  ‘Hoppit,’ said Boots again.

  ‘English is a crazy language,’ she said.

  ‘Think so?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘but you speak it very nice, which I like.’

  ‘Don’t mention it,’ said Boots, and Cecile smiled and departed.

  ‘Alice, what’s up with you?’ asked Polly. She and Alice, in overalls, were doing some maintenance work on their ambulances in the large yard behind headquarters. Other drivers were doing similar work, with the help of mechanics. There was no call for missions of mercy at the moment, not in the sector controlled by the British Fourth Army. Relatively, the trenches were lightly occupied, for large numbers of battle-hardened men were out of the line, resting and recovering. And instinctively waiting. In and around Albert the atmosphere of quiet was growing daily more ominous.

  ‘What’s up with me? Nothing,’ said Alice, ‘except when this bloomin’ war is over, oh, how ’appy I shall be, Mother.’

  ‘You’re glooming a bit,’ said Polly, and tossed a spanner down.

  ‘Me? Now look ’ere, Polly, I’ve never gloomed about anything in all me natural life. I’m happy-go-lucky, I am, except about blown-up Tommies.’

  ‘All right, old sport, don’t get shirty.’

  ‘I’m not shirty,’ said Alice, ‘I’m just saying. And I was thinkin’, anyway, about the Northumberland sergeant I talked to the other night.’

  ‘Found him a bit special, did you, ducky?’ said Polly. ‘Would you like to send some of our generals over the top in place of men like him?’

  ‘Not ’alf I wouldn’t,’ said Alice, and looked up as two RFC spotter planes, high in the sky, passed over Albert towards the German lines. ‘That’s where I’d like to be, Polly, up there in the sky, shakin’ hands with me Maker.’

  ‘Well, dearie, I think you’d find our Maker dark with thunder at what mankind’s up to down here, and more likely to chuck sulphur and brimstone at you than shake your hand,’ said Polly. ‘Oh, sod it, ducky, I’m getting oily. I don’t mind getting muddy, filthy and looking like something the cat brought in, but I hate getting oily. And soap’s no good. Alice, pinch a can of petrol.’

  ‘That’ll make you smelly,’ said Alice.

  ‘I’m always smelly. We all are. That’s why we don’t notice each other. Dear Jesus, I just hope if I ever meet the one man who could be my soulmate, my smell won’t put him off.’

  ‘Crikey,’ said Alice, ‘are you lookin’ for a soulmate, Polly?’

  ‘Just a passing thought,’ said Polly, and grimaced at the smell of oil. ‘I think I’ll have one over the eight again tonight, old love.’

  Sammy, having spent most of the day doing odd jobs for some of the stallholders, thought about going home. But no, not yet. Chinese Lady might get on to him about finding regular work in some factory. The last thing Sammy was in love with was the idea of factory work. It would pin his feet to the factory floor, and stop him in his tracks. Fortunately, he was able in his market activities to pick up quite a tidy little bit of what had been invented by a thinking cove in somewhere like Ancient Greece. The Greeks called it spondulicks, according to an old bloke who collected fag ends. Of course, it came to be called money later on, as not many people spoke Greek.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ A shy but warm voice travelled into his ear. He turned. At his elbow was the girl from Sunday, wearing a school frock and a round school hat of blue felt. A smile made her brown eyes look melting. Crikey, thought Sammy, me alarm bell’s ringing. The money nestling in his pocket lost its sense of security and sort of shivered. He wasn’t sure that it didn’t even rattle.

  ‘Well, I’m blessed,’ he said, ‘it’s you, Rachel.’

  ‘Oh, I just thought I’d come down the market before I went ’ome,’ said Rachel, not at all put off by the fact that he was in jersey, cap and well-worn trousers instead of his Sunday suit. Well, his clothes didn’t matter. What did were his blue eyes and his immediate smile of friendliness. Nor did it matter that she was only fourteen and not yet old enough for a nice Jewish boy to take an approved interest in her. Rachel Moses had a crush, and simply didn’t mind that it was on a Gentile boy. ‘Fancy bumpin’ into you,’ she said, as if it had been an accident. ‘Oh, but I remember now, you did say you were ’ere every day.’

  ‘It’s where me future lies as a start, yer see,’ said Sammy. ‘I mean to ’ave me own stall as soon as I can.’

  ‘Oh, I think you’d be ever so good, running a stall,’ said Rachel, and Sammy brought her free of the thinning crowds and stood with her on the corner of King and Queen Street. She took a little breath and said, ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Sammy Adams.’

  ‘And you’re sixteen? My life, ain’t you nice and tall?’

  Hello, hello, thought Sammy, what’s going on?

  ‘You’re not so bad yerself, Rachel,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, thanks. I’m Rachel Moses.’ Rachel knew that would tell him she was Jewish, if he hadn’t already guessed.

  ‘Well, ain’t that a privilege?’ said Sammy. ‘Moses is the best-known name in the Bible, Rachel. Well, along with Jesus and Abraham. Who’s yer dad?’

  ‘My Daddy’s Mr Isaac Moses,’ said Rachel.

  ‘Not the Mr Moses that runs pawnshops and lives in Lower Marsh?’

  ‘Yes, that’s my Daddy,’ said Rachel quite proudly.

  ‘Well, blow me, I know ’im,’ said Sammy. Many Walworth people did, because of his pawnbroker’s business. He was known as Ikey Mo, but not in an unfriendly fashion. He knew the people of South London through and through, and his pawnshops would lend on items almost worthless. If such items weren’t redeemed, the business absorbed the loss but gained goodwill. You Bessie, take it to one of Ikey Mo’s shops, you’ll get a penny more on it there, even if it is all wore out. That was a common injunction from hard-up mums to young daughters. ‘Yes,’ said Sammy, ‘I’ve met ’im a couple times, when I was in ’is Walworth Road shop, redeemin’ some valuable items of me mum’s, and he ’appened to be there. We had a chat, yer know, each time. Well, yer dad’s the kind of bloke that’s ’elpful to someone that’s got ideas of ’is own about business. Imagine you’re ’is daughter. Does he know you’re a good-looker?’

  ‘Oh, d’you think I am?’ said Rachel.

  ‘Well, yes, I do,’ said Sammy. Here, half a mo, he thought, what’m I saying? More formally, he said, ‘You can tell yer dad Sammy Adams sends ’is regards and is pleasured to ’ave met ’is daughter.’

  ‘Sammy, I – oh, can I call you Sammy?’

  ‘Well, I don’t answer to Charl
ie, yer know.’

  ‘Sammy, d’you mind—’ Rachel went just a little hesitant. ‘D’you mind that I like you?’

  ‘Funny you should say that, Rachel, I was just goin’ to say you’re fav’rite with me.’

  ‘Oh, crikey,’ breathed Rachel in bliss, ‘I think you’re the nicest boy I’ve ever met.’

  Gallopin’ elephants, thought Sammy, now what’ve I done? I’ve as good as invited her to put her hand into me pocket. His pocketed coinage shivered again.

  Slightly hoarse, he said, ‘Mind you, don’t forget I’m a bit hard-’earted.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got to be sort of practical when you’re runnin’ a stall,’ said Rachel, ‘you’ve got to make a profit.’

  That did it. Sammy had a mad moment.

  ‘Here,’ he said, ‘would yer like to come roller-skatin’ with me at the Brixton rink on Saturday afternoon?’ Roller-skating was his one and only pastime. He had a passion for it, and closed his eyes to the pain of what the price of admission did to his savings each week.

  ‘Oh, crikey,’ breathed Rachel again. She didn’t look ahead, she didn’t have to. She knew she could only have a Gentile boy as a friend up to the time when an acceptable young Jewish man would begin consideration of her. If she could have Sammy Adams as her best friend just for a few years, she’d really like that. Her eyes danced in the light of the afternoon sunshine. ‘Oh, my life, Sammy, would yer really take me? I’ve never been roller-skatin’.’

  ‘Don’t be downhearted, you ain’t too old to start,’ said Sammy. I’ve gone right off me rocker, he thought, I’m saying things I don’t believe I’m hearing. ‘I’ll call for yer in Lower Marsh say about two on Saturday afternoon.’

  ‘I’ll be ready, I’ll buy some boots and roller skates in the week,’ said Rachel, all velvety bliss. ‘Thanks ever so much for askin’ me. Your—’ Again the little hesitancy. ‘Your fam’ly won’t mind?’

  ‘Why should they?’ asked Sammy. Point is, he thought, will me pocket mind?

  ‘Well, I’m—’

  ‘Oh, you’re a Moses.’ Sammy smiled. ‘Well, I’m an Adams. My fam’ly’s not goin’ to worry about that. Nor am I.’ It’s just me hard-earned dibs, he thought, that’s where all the worry is.