Mufti Read online

  “Of course not,” laughed Margaret, “nor milk, nor sugar. There’s a war on up the road. You want about ten drops of that liquid saccharine.” In the sunny street outside, soldiers in various stages of convalescence, strolled aimlessly about. An occasional motor car, containing officers – on duty, of course – slowed down at the corner opposite and disgorged its load. A closer inspection of one of them might have revealed a few suspicious looking gashes in the upholstery and holes in the mud-guards. Of course – shrapnel – but, then shrapnel did not occur by the sea. And on what duty could officers from the shrapnel area be engaged at Paris Plage?… However, let us be discreet in all things.

  In a few hours that shrapnel scarred car would be carrying its freight back to Boulogne, where a table at the restaurant Mony had already been secured for dinner. Then back through the night, to call at various dilapidated farms and holes in the ground, in the area where shrapnel and crumps are not unknown… But just for a few brief hours the occupants of the car were going to soak themselves in the Waters of Forgetfulness; they were going to live – even as the tripper from the slums lives his little span at Margate. And they were no whit less excited at the thought…

  They did not show it by an excessive consumption of indigestible fruit, or by bursting into unmelodious song. True, the greatest of all the “Q” men, who had come officially from a Nissen hut near Poperinghe to study the question of salvaged materials at the base, had waved a friendly hand at all the ladies – beautiful and otherwise – whom they met. But then save for salvage he was much as other men. And with that exception they just lay back in the car and thought; while the trees that were green rushed past them, and war was not.

  Thus had they come to the sea. Tomorrow once more the flat, dusty country with the heat haze shimmering over it and every now and then the dull drone of some bursting crump, or the vicious crack of high explosive. Behind, the same old row of balloons; in front, the same old holes in the ground… But today – peace…

  Vane thoughtfully stirred the pale straw-coloured concoction reputed to be tea on the table in front of him. The remark Margaret had made to him on the beach was running through his mind – “The new Heaven and the new Earth.” Yes, but on what foundations? And would they be allowed to anyway? Reconstruction is work for the politician – not for the soldier… Most certainly not… The soldier’s ignorance on every subject in the world except fighting is complete. And even over that he’s not all he might be: he requires quite a lot of help from lawyers, doctors, and successful grocers… In fact, the only thing he is allowed to do quite on his own is to die…

  Vane smiled a little bitterly, and Margaret leaned across the table towards him. “You’ll get it back soon, Derek – believe me, old boy.”

  “That’s very possible. But will the people at home? I’m jangled, Margaret, I know it – just for the time… However, don’t let’s talk about me. Tell me about yourself…”

  The girl shrugged her shoulders slightly. “I don’t know that there’s much to tell. I’ve never been so happy in my life as I am at present…”

  “In spite of all that?” He pointed out of the window to two soldiers limping painfully by on sticks.

  “Yes – in spite of all that. One gets accustomed to that – and one’s doing something. After all, Derek, you get accustomed to death and mutilation up there in front. It doesn’t affect you…”

  “No, not to the same extent as it did. In a way, I suppose not at all. But you – you were so different.” He thoughtfully drained his tea cup, and set it down again, and for a space neither of them spoke.

  “I can’t help laughing at the comparison,” said Margaret suddenly. “Five years ago you and I were sitting in Rumpel-mayer’s, surrounded by sugar cakes, being smart.”

  “They’re doing that now in London except for the sugar cakes.”

  “We shouldn’t have been silent for a moment, and we should have enjoyed ourselves thoroughly… I wonder – ”

  “It was our only standard, wasn’t it?”

  “And now we can sit over a cup of weak and nasty tea – without milk and not talk for effect… What’s going to happen, Derek, to you and me afterwards? We can never go back to it?”

  “No – you can’t put back the clock – and we’ve grown, Margaret, years and years older. So have thousands of others – the boys up yonder, their people at home. But what about the business train to Brighton, and the occupants thereof?… Have they felt this war, except to make a bit more boodle out of it?

  “They’re only a small minority.”

  “Are they? They’re a damned powerful one.” He laughed a little bitterly. “And they’re artificial – just like we were before the war.”

  “That’s why it’s we who have got to do the rebuilding. Even if it’s only the rebuilding the house in our own little tiny circle, with simplicity and reality as the keystones… You see, if you get enough tiny circles sound and good, in time the others may follow…”

  “Dear lady, you’ve become very optimistic.” Vane’s eyes smiled at her. “Let’s hope you’re right.” He paused and looked at her quietly. “Margaret. I’ve never asked you before – but you’re different now – so different. Incidentally so am I. What was it, that made you alter so suddenly?”

  Margaret rose to her feet, and shook her head. “I’ll tell you some day, Derek, perhaps. Not just now. I must be getting back to the hospital.”

  “Will you come out and have tea with me tomorrow?” For a few moments she looked at him as if undecided, and then suddenly she seemed to make up her mind.

  “All right,” she said with a smile. “I’ll come, I want to deal with this jaundice of yours. One must live up to a professional reputation.”

  Chapter 2

  A hospital is much the same anywhere, and number 13 General at Etaples was no exception. On each side of the big marquee ran a row of beds in perfect dressing. The sheets were turned down on the design so ably portrayed in the War Office Sealed Pattern X.B.451. – “Method of turning down sheets on Beds Hospital.” On “Beds Barrack” the method is slightly different and is just as ably shown on Sealed Pattern X.B.452. During moments of intense depression one is apt to fear the war-winning properties of X.B.451 and 452 have not been sufficiently appreciated by an unintelligent public.

  The period of strain incurred on entrance was over as far as Vane was concerned. For the sixth time since leaving his battalion he had, in a confidential aside, informed a minion of the RAMC that he was a Wee Free Presbyterian Congregationalist; and for the sixth time the worthy recipient of this news had retired to consult War Office Sealed List of Religions A.F.31 to find out if he was entitled to be anything of the sort. In each case the answer had been in the negative, and Vane had been entered as “Other Denominations” and regarded with suspicion. One stout sergeant had even gone so far as to attempt to convert him to Unitarianism; another showed him the list, and asked him to take his choice.

  In the bed next to him was a young Gunner subaltern, with most of his right leg shot away, and they talked spasmodically, in the intervals of trying to read month old magazines.

  “Wonderful sight,” remarked the Gunner, interrupted for a moment in his story by the eternal thermometer. “Firing at ’em over open sights: shrapnel set at 0. Seemed to cut lanes through ’em; though, God be praised, they came on for a bit, and didn’t spoil our shooting.”

  Vane, sucking a thermometer under his tongue, nodded sympathetically.

  “A bit better than sitting in a bally OP watchin’ other fellows poop at the mud.”

  “How did you get yours?” he queried, as the Sister passed on.

  “Crump almost at my feet, just as I was going into my dug-out… Mouldy luck, and one splinter smashed the last bottle of whisky.” The gunner relapsed into moody silence at the remembrance of the tragedy.

  Two beds further alo
ng the Padre was playing a game of chess with a Major in the Devons; and on the opposite side of the tent another chaplain, grey-haired and clean shaven, was talking and laughing with a boy, whose face and head were swathed in bandages.

  The RC and the C of E exponents hunting in couples as these two always did… They are not the only two who before the war would have relegated the other to the nethermost depths of the deepest Hell; but whose eyes have been opened to wisdom now.

  Vane was no theologian – no more than are the thousands of others across the water. Before the war he had been in the habit of dismissing any religious question by the comforting assertion that if all one’s pals are in Hell, one might as well join them. But in the Game of Death the thoughts of many men have probed things they passed over lightly before. It is not doctrine they want; faith and belief in beautiful formulae have become less and less satisfying. They are beginning to think for themselves, which is anathema to the Church. Of old she prevented such a calamity by a policy of terrorising her followers; of later years she has adopted the simpler one of boring them. And yet it is only simplicity they want; the simple creeds of helping on the other fellow and playing the game is what they understand. But they will have to be reminded of it from time to time. One wonders whether the Church will be big enough to seize the opportunity that stares her in the face.

  Vane nodded to the grey-haired Roman Catholic as he paused at the foot of his bed.

  “Shoulder painful?” The priest held out a lighted match for Vane’s cigarette.

  “Throbs a bit, Padre; but it might be worse.” He smiled and lay back on his pillows. “An arm makes one feel so helpless.”

  “I think I’d sooner lose an arm than a leg,” remarked the Gunner from the next bed. For a while they pursued this debatable point, much as men discuss politics, and incidentally with far less heat… It was a question of interest, and the fact that the Gunner had lost his leg made no difference to the matter at all. An onlooker would have listened in vain for any note of complaint…

  “Time you were getting to sleep – both of you.” Margaret’s voice interrupted the conversation, and Vane looked up with a smile. She was shaking an admonitory finger at Father O’Rourke, and with a sudden quickening of the pulse he realised how perfectly charming she looked.

  “Sister, dear,” said the Gunner, “you’re on my side, aren’t you? It’s better to lose an arm than a leg, isn’t it?”

  For a moment she affected to consider the point. Then suddenly she smiled, and came between their beds. “Unless you both of you go to sleep at once I’ll come and wash you again.”

  With a groan of horror the Gunner hid himself under the bed-clothes, and Margaret, still smiling, turned to Vane.

  “Good night, Derek,” she said very low. “Sometimes I just want to sit down and howl…” And Vane, looking up into her face, saw that her eyes were a little misty…

  Gradually the ward settled down into silence. Right at the other end a man was groaning feebly; while just opposite, looking ghastly in the dim light, a boy was staring round the tent with eyes that did not see. For hours on end he lay unconscious, breathing the rattling breath of the badly gassed; then suddenly he would lift his head, and his eyes, fixed and staring, would slowly turn from bed to bed. He looked as a man looks who is walking in his sleep, and Vane knew he was very near the Great Divide. He had been hit in the chest by a piece of shell, and a bit of his coat impregnated with mustard gas had been driven into his lungs… Every now and then Margaret passed noiselessly down the centre between the two rows of beds. Once she lent over Vane and he closed his eyes pretending to be asleep. But every time as she came to the boy opposite she stopped and looked at him anxiously. Once she was joined by a doctor, and Vane heard their muttered conversation…

  “I can’t get him to take his medicine, Doctor. He doesn’t seem able to do anything.”

  “It doesn’t much matter, Nurse,” he whispered – why is it that the sick-room whisper seems to travel as far as the voice of the Sergeant-Major on parade? “He won’t get through tonight, and I’m afraid we can’t do anything.”

  The doctor turned away, and Margaret went to the end of the tent and sat down at her table. A reading lamp threw a light on her face, and for a while Vane watched her. Then his eyes came back to the boy opposite, and rested on him curiously. He was unconscious once again, and it suddenly struck Vane as strange that whereas, up in front, he had seen death and mutilation in every possible and impossible form – that though he had seen men hit by a shell direct, and one man crushed by a Tank – yet he had never been impressed with the same sense of the utter futility of war as now, in face of this boy dying in the bed opposite. To have come so far and then to pay the big price; it was so hard – so very pitiful; and Vane turned over to shut out the sight. He felt suddenly frightened of the thing that was coming nearer and nearer to the dying boy; furious at the inability of the science which had struck him down to save him…

  Vane closed his eyes and tried to sleep, but sleep was far away that night. Whenever he opened them he saw Margaret writing at her table; and once there came to him an irresistible temptation to speak to her. He felt that he wanted her near him, if only for a moment; he wanted to lean on her – he wanted to be taken in her arms like a little child. Angrily he closed his eyes again. It was ridiculous, absurd, weak… But there have been times in this war when the strongest man has sobbed like a child in his weakness…

  “Sister!” Vane hardly recognised it as his own voice calling. “Sister!” Margaret came towards him down the ward. “Could you get me something to drink?”

  In a moment she had returned with some lemonade. “I thought you were asleep, Derek,” she whispered. “Are you feeling feverish?”

  She put a cool hand on his forehead, and with a sigh of relief Vane lay back. “I’m frightened, Margaret,” he said so low that she scarce could hear him. “Just scared to death…of that boy opposite. Ain’t I a damned fool?”

  Her only answer was the faintest perceptible pressure on his forehead. Then his hand came up and took hers, and she felt the touch of his lips on it. For a moment she let it rest there, and then gently withdrew it, while with a tired sigh Vane closed his eyes…

  He slept maybe for two hours, and then he found himself wide awake again – every nerve intent, like a man aroused by a sudden noise. Margaret was reading at her table; the man at the other end still groaned feebly in his sleep; the boy was staring dazedly at nothing in particular – but there was something else. He knew it.

  Suddenly Margaret put down her book, and half rose from her chair, as if listening; and at the same moment the Gunner woke up. Then they all heard it together – that high pitched, ominous drone which rises and falls in a manner there is no mistaking.

  “Boche,” said the Gunner, “Boche, for a tanner. And lots of them.”

  “Damn the swine,” muttered Vane. “Can’t they even leave a hospital alone?” The next minute any lingering hope was destroyed. Both men heard it – the well-known whistling whooce of the bomb – the vicious crack as it burst; both men felt the ground trembling through their beds. That was the overture…the play was about to commence…

  All around them bombs rained down till the individual bursts merged into one continuous roar. The earth shook and palpitated, and, to make matters worse, the lights suddenly went out. The last thing Vane saw was Margaret as she made her way, calmly and without faltering, to the boy’s bed. He had a picture, printed indelibly on his brain, of a girl with a sweet set face, of a gaping boy, stirred into some semblance of remembrance by the familiar noise around him. And then, in the darkness, he made his way towards her.

  There was a deafening crash close to him, and a fragment tore through the side of the tent. He could see the blinding flash, and involuntarily he ducked his head. Then, running and stumbling, he reached her. He felt her standing rigid in the darkness,
and even at such a moment he felt a sudden rush of joy as her hands come out to meet him.

  “Lie down,” he shouted, “lie down at once…”

  “The boy,” she cried. “Help me with him, Derek.”

  Together they picked him up, fumbling in the darkness, and laid him on the ground beside his bed. Then Vane took her arm, and shouted in her ear, “Lie down, I tell you, lie down…quite flat.” Obediently she lay down, and he stretched himself beside her on the ground. To the crashing of the bombs were now added the shouts and curses of men outside; and once Margaret made an effort to rise.

  “The patients, Derek. Let me go.”

  With his one sound arm he kept her down by force. “You can do nothing,” he said roughly. He felt her trembling against him, and a wave of fury against the airmen above took hold of him. He was no novice to bombing; there had been weeks on end when the battalion had been bombed nightly. But then it had been part of the show – what they expected; here it was so different.

  A sense of utter impotence filled his mind, coupled with a raging passion at the danger to the girl beside him. And suddenly his lips sought hers.

  “It’s all right, my dear,” he kept on saying, “quite all right. It’ll be over soon.” And so almost unconscious of what they said or did, they lay and listened to the tornado of Death around them…

  It is on record that one man once said that he thought it was rather amusing to be in a raid. That man was a liar. He was also a fool… To be bombed is poisonous, rather more poisonous than to be shelled. If there are no dug-outs there is only one thing to be done, and that is what Vane was doing.

  To lie flat on the ground minimises the danger except from a direct hit; and a direct hit is remarkably sudden. And so – since every occupant of Number 13 was well aware of this fact, approximately five seconds elapsed after the light went out before all the patients who could move, and most of those who couldn’t, were lying on the floor beside their beds.