boxer. “How old are you now?” said Billy.
“Seventeen.”
Boys were not allowed to join the army under eighteen, and had to be nineteen before they were sent overseas, officially. Both laws were constantly broken by the army. Recruiting sergeants and medical officers were each paid half a crown for every man passed, and they rarely questioned boys who claimed to be older than they seemed. There was a boy in the battalion called Owen Bevin who looked about fifteen.
“Was that an island we just passed?” said George.
“Aye,” said Billy. “That’s the Isle of Wight.”
“Oh,” said George. “I thought it was France.”
“No, that’s a lot farther.”
The voyage took them until early the following morning, when they disembarked at Le Havre. Billy stepped off the gangplank and set foot on foreign soil for the first time in his life. In fact it was not soil but cobblestones, which proved difficult to march over in hobnailed boots. They passed through the town, watched listlessly by the French population. Billy had heard stories of pretty French girls gratefully embracing the arriving Brits, but he saw only apathetic middle-aged women in head scarves.
They marched to a camp, where they spent the night. Next morning they boarded a train. Being abroad was less exciting than Billy had hoped. Everything was different, but only slightly. Like Britain, France was mostly fields and villages, roads and railways. The fields had fences rather than hedges, and the cottages seemed larger and better-built, but that was all. It was an anticlimax. At the end of the day they reached their billets in a huge new encampment of hastily built barracks.
Billy had been made a corporal, so he was in charge of his section, eight men including Tommy, young Owen Bevin, and George Barrow the Borstal boy. They were joined by the mysterious Robin Mortimer, who was a private despite looking thirty years old. As they sat down to tea with bread and jam in a long hall containing about a thousand men, Billy said: “So, Robin, we’re all new here, but you seem more experienced. What’s your story?”
Mortimer replied in the faintly accented speech of an educated Welshman, but he used the language of the pit. “None of your fucking business, Taffy,” he said, and he went off to sit somewhere else.
Billy shrugged. “Taffy” was not much of an insult, especially coming from another Welshman.
Four sections made a platoon, and their platoon sergeant was Elijah Jones, age twenty, the son of John Jones the Shop. He was considered a hardened veteran because he had been at the front for a year. Jones belonged to the Bethesda Chapel and Billy had known him since they were both at school, where he had been dubbed Prophet Jones because of his Old Testament name.
Prophet overheard the exchange with Mortimer. “I’ll have a word with him, Billy,” he said. “He’s a stuck-up old beggar, but he can’t speak to a corporal like that.”
“What’s he so grumpy about?”
“He used to be a major. I dunno what he done, but he was court-martialed and cashiered, which means he lost his rank as an officer. Then, being eligible for war service, he was immediately conscripted as a private soldier. It’s what they do to officers who misbehave.”
After tea they met their platoon leader, Second Lieutenant James Carlton-Smith, a boy the same age as Billy. He was stiff and embarrassed, and seemed too young to be in charge of anyone. “Men,” he said in a strangled upper-class accent, “I am honored to be your leader, and I know you will be brave as lions in the coming battle.”
“Bloody wart,” muttered Mortimer.
Billy knew that second lieutenants were called warts, but only by other officers.
Carlton-Smith then introduced the commander of B Company, Major the Earl Fitzherbert.
“Bloody hell,” said Billy. He stared openmouthed as the man he hated most in the world stood on a chair to address the company. Fitz wore a well-tailored khaki uniform and carried the ash wood walking stick some officers affected. He spoke with the same accent as Carlton-Smith, and uttered the same kind of platitude. Billy could hardly believe his rotten luck. What was Fitz doing here-impregnating French maidservants? That this hopeless wastrel should be his commanding officer was hard to bear.
When the officers had gone, Prophet spoke quietly to Billy and Mortimer. “Lieutenant Carlton-Smith was at Eton until a year ago,” he said. Eton was a posh school: Fitz had gone there too.
Billy said: “So why is he an officer?”
“He was a popper at Eton. It means a prefect.”
“Oh, good,” said Billy sarcastically. “We’ll be all right, then.”
“He doesn’t know much about warfare, but he’s got the sense not to throw his weight around, so he’ll be fine so long as we keep an eye on him. If you see him about to do something really stupid, speak to me.” He fixed his eye on Mortimer. “You know what it’s like, don’t you?”
Mortimer gave a surly nod.
“I’m counting on you, now.”
A few minutes later it was lights-out. There were no cots, just straw palliasses in rows on the floor. Lying awake, Billy thought admiringly of what Prophet had done with Mortimer. He was dealing with a difficult subordinate by making an ally of him. That was the way Da would handle a troublemaker.
Prophet had given Billy and Mortimer the same message. Had Prophet also identified Billy as a rebel? He recalled that Prophet had been in the congregation the Sunday that Billy had read out the story of the woman taken in adultery. Fair enough, he thought; I am a troublemaker.
Billy did not feel drowsy, and it was still light outside, but he fell asleep immediately. He was awakened by a terrific noise like a thunderstorm overhead. He sat upright. A dull dawn light came in through the rain-streaked windows, but there was no storm.
The other men were equally startled. Tommy said: “Jesus H. Christ, what was that?”
Mortimer was lighting a cigarette. “Artillery fire,” he said. “Our own guns. Welcome to France, Taffy.”
Billy was not listening. He was looking at Owen Bevin, in the bed opposite. Owen was sitting up with a corner of the sheet in his mouth, crying.
Maud dreamed that Lloyd George put his hand up her skirt, whereupon she told him she was married to a German, and he informed the police, who had come to arrest her and were banging on her bedroom window.
She sat up in bed, confused. After a moment she realized how unlikely it was that the police would bang on a second-floor bedroom window even if they did want to arrest her. The dream faded away, but the noise continued. There was also a deep bass rumble as of a distant railway train.
She turned on the bedside lamp. The art nouveau silver clock on her mantelpiece said it was four in the morning. Had there been an earthquake? An explosion in a munitions factory? A train crash? She threw back the embroidered coverlet and stood up.
She drew back heavy green-and-navy striped curtains and looked out of the window down to the Mayfair street. In the dawn light she saw a young woman in a red dress, probably a prostitute on her way home, speaking anxiously to the driver of a horse-drawn milk cart. There was no one else in sight. Maud’s window continued to rattle for no apparent reason. It was not even windy.
She pulled a watered silk robe over her nightgown and glanced into her cheval glass. Her hair was untidy but otherwise she looked respectable enough. She stepped into the corridor.
Aunt Herm stood there in a nightcap, beside Sanderson, Maud’s maid, whose round face was pale with fear. Then Grout appeared on the stairs. “Good morning, Lady Maud; good morning, Lady Hermia,” he said with imperturbable formality. “No need for alarm. It’s the guns.”
“What guns?” said Maud.
“In France, my lady,” said the butler.
The British artillery barrage went on for a week.
It was supposed to last five days, but only one of those days enjoyed fine weather, to Fitz’s consternation.
