The Somme Stations

eyed Butler.

‘What are you doing, man?’

‘I’m superintending the train,’ came the reply. ‘It’s the first duty of the train guard.’

‘Well this is not the Scotch Express,’ said Tate. ‘Lend a hand with the shells.’

And so Butler picked up a shell, or tried to. He had a job to keep hold of it.

‘Want a hand?’ I said, my aim being not so much to help him as to save us being blown to buggery if he dropped it wrong end first. But he’d got a grip on it now, and fairly staggered off into the woods without replying. Tinsley, meanwhile, was peering at a particular tree, which I now saw had a short plank nailed to the upper trunk. He caught up the lamp that was hooked on the locker door. He jumped down from the footplate and held the lamp up before the tree. There were two words painted on the sign, and they came and went as the lamp swung.

‘Naburn Lock,’ he finally pronounced, in triumph.

Well, I knew Naburn Lock. It was only a mile or so south of Thorpe-on-Ouse – a popular spot with picnickers. The village of Naburn was picturesque, and there was a tea place at the lock. People would sit by it and watch the boats go through, marvelling at the pleasure cruisers of the York swells, and hoping one of them would collide with the lock gates, or somehow come a cropper.

The shell carters were now returning, having cleared the wagon. Tate, standing by the side of the Baldwin, had satisfied himself as to the soundness of the wheels. He said, ‘Naburn Lock, that’s right. Let’s have the lamp, and I’ll show you why.’

Tinsley handed him the light, and Tate walked over to the little ditch traversed by the track. The lamp showed a quantity of smashed and rotten wood in the black water. ‘A gate,’ said Tate. ‘A gate in the water – that’s what a lock is, so… Naburn Lock. My mother would take me there. We’d have ices at Martindale’s, and I’d watch the operation of the lock gates.’

That was the name of the tea rooms, and it was operated by a little old woman with a sweet face but a hunched back. She had some young assistants – generally one or two lasses who were real lookers – but I recalled that old Ma Martindale looked so frail, yet so anxious to please her customers, that you felt sorry for her rather than the opposite when the place was full.

Tate was climbing back up, and I was readying to pull the reversing lever (we would be returning to Burton Dump backwards), when I happened to glance over to Oliver Butler, who was standing by the wagon, eyeing the plank nailed to the tree, his brothers either side of him. All three looked mortified.

One – Roy, as far as I could make out in the gloom – was saying, ‘What’s going off, our kid? What’s to do?’ and both were looking to their brother in search of an answer to something. Oliver Butler seemed about to speak – to address some remark to Leo Tate, as it seemed to me – before deciding at the last moment to keep silence.

Was it the naming of the halt that had bothered him?

‘Know Naburn Lock, do you?’ I called out, and the three Butlers turned to me as one man, while making no remark. ‘It’s a pretty spot.’

Of course, every railwayman in York knew the village of Naburn because the London line was carried over the river Ouse by a swing bridge just a little way outside it. ‘Decent pub in Naburn,’ I called out (for I seemed to be able to hold the three of them in suspension just by speaking of Naburn), ‘… The Horseshoe. It had a dining room and a dram shop but…’

Shells came flying, landing either side of us, as if telling me to get on with it. Everyone climbed up; I gave a tug on the regulator and we began rolling back towards Burton Dump. I had been about to say that for all its good points, the jakes at The Horseshoe was at the bottom of the garden, which was a bugger when it rained. I’d sometimes bike along the river for a pint there when the children were in bed, and I’d hear the roaring of the weir – which was next to the Lock – from half a mile away.

On the rattling wagon, Dawson sat smoking again, while the twins stood, exchanging whispers. Roy was nodding at something Andy was saying, at the same time fishing about in his pockets, perhaps looking for his own fags. Oliver Butler was at his post on the coupling gear, and since we were rolling backwards, he was now at the front, like the figurehead on a ship. Even though I could only see his back, I somehow knew he was thinking hard. Leo Tate, cause of all this disturbance in the Butlers, was now climbing over the coal bunker, and down onto the wagon. He stood in the centre of it, perfectly balanced and looking to left and right. He’d long since forgotten about Naburn and its lock, and was on the look-out for… what? Some new problem to solve. Something out there in the ruined trees he could set to rights. We came out of the trees, and rolled past Old Station – I only saw it because I was on the look-out for it – and then I knew where to look for Holgate Villa. It still stood. Then came the New Station, followed by the different rumble of the girder bridge over the Ancre. What had been an ascent was now a tricky descent, and I knocked off the regulator, so that we coasted down towards Aveluy Wood, rattling and clanking in the sudden silence. There hadn’t been a shell for five minutes and we’d shortly be back at base, but I didn’t care for the way that Tate was prowling on the wagon, looking to left and right.

He turned and raised his hand to me, indicating that I should stop. He was walking forwards to Oliver Butler, to warn him of same. He’d found something to fix. He was speaking to Dawson, who kept throwing anxious or half- amused glances back to me, as Tate lectured him on the subject of a filthy puddle on the edge of the trees we were approaching. It was a shell hole, about fifteen yards off. I could make out the black shine of the water, and I didn’t like the look of it. As Butler screwed down his brake, Tate was saying something to the effect: ‘I mean to have a sample of that water.’

‘Why, sir?’ said Dawson. ‘In ten minutes you can have a glass of ale in the mess.’

But I knew what Tate was about. His plan was to fit all the engines with a hose and a lifting injector to take on water from the shell holes. That way, the Boche would be helping us by putting down shells near the tracks – a notion that appealed no end to Tate. On the other hand, the two-foot lines were never likely to extend far enough for the engines to run low on the water put into them at Burton Dump. And muck floating about in a boiler caused more trouble than it was worth. Tate was muttering something about ‘a simple filter to stop priming’ – it was all Greek to Dawson. Oliver Butler, standing over his brake, was eyeing me. I believed he was thinking of different water – Naburn Lock – and it was then that I had my idea of writing to the wife to ask about the late history of that spot, and whether the name Butler was involved in any way.

Tate jumped down from the wagon. He called out, ‘Does any man have a billy?’

Tinsley leant into me and said, ‘There’s one in the locker.’

I said, ‘Don’t bloody encourage him,’ but too late: Tinsley was repeating the information out loud. Tinsley opened the locker and handed over the can. As Tate made towards the shell hole, I switched my gaze to the twins who were sitting cross-legged on the wagon. ‘Fine style… Fine Style,’ I heard, and having lit their cigarettes, they both turned to look at Tate, as though expecting to be entertained. They, at least, seemed to have put Naburn Lock from their minds. Tate was standing by the edge of the pool, contemplating the water. He hadn’t yet bent down to take the sample when the whistling started. At that point Tate did crouch down – not for fear of the shell, but to collect water – and so there was one thing going up and one thing going down. I knew after the count of three that the shell would be close, and if I’d been stone deaf, then Alfred Tinsley’s eyes – he was frozen in the act of sweeping the footplate – would have told me as much. I had my hands over my ears when the thing came down. The night became day for an instant, and I saw Tate dive into the water, at the sight of which Tinsley leant away from the engine and spewed, for only the top half of Tate had dived. His legs had been slow off the mark, had remained behind, and for a moment they had remained standing. The shell had been shrapnel, not high explosive, and the last of the bullets were now raining down into the black water. I turned my head towards the wagon. I was listening to my own breathing, and it seemed a bloody cheek, disrespectful to Tate, that it should be carrying on, even if the breaths were coming too fast. Oliver Butler was crouched behind his brake wheel; Dawson had simply turned about so that he now sat facing away from what he’d just seen. But the twins continued to stare at the spot where Tate’s legs had toppled.

‘He’s ’appened an accident,’ I heard one of them say.

‘Proper job,’ said the other.

In the silence that followed the shell, I thought of all that brain… all those schemes at the bottom of that black water. My next thought was: there’s no commanding officer here, and it was as though every man had the same thought, for all started talking at once. Oliver Butler was calling out to me, ‘Open her up, we’re getting out of here.’ Dawson was pacing next to the wagon, saying over and over, ‘Takes the fucking cake, that does… It takes the fucking biscuit…’ The twins were muttering fast to each other, pointing towards where