“Bloody hell, Porgy, you’re going all out today,” said Atkins. “Give the poor girl a chance!”
“Oh, I intend to, at the very least,” he said with a grin. “I’m still looking for my Queen of Hearts.”
“You again,” Edith said as she approached.
“Yeah, I know,” said Porgy. “Can you take a look at me noggin again? I’m feeling a bit light headed. Especially around you.”
“You are incorrigible, Private,” she said, smiling.
Atkins coughed discreetly.
“Oh, this is my mate, Only,” said Porgy shuffling awkwardly.
“Only what?” she asked.
“Go on, tell her,” said Porgy, digging him in the ribs.
Atkins rolled his eyes wearily. “My name’s Thomas Atkins,” he sighed. Tommy Atkins, the nickname for the common soldier, and didn’t he half get ragged about it?
“Tommy Atkins? Really? That’s your real name?”
“Certainly is, nobody would make that up. This,” announced Porgy, enjoying his friend’s discomfort just a little too much, “is the One, the Only Tommy Atkins!”
“It sounds like a music hall act,” she said, putting her hand over her mouth politely as she laughed.
“I know,” said Porgy, slapping Atkins on the back, “so we just call him Only.”
It was what passed for a Tommy’s humour. No sense making jokes you had to think about. You could be dead before you got it. To Tommy though, ‘Only’ also served as a constant reminder of his missing brother. He might well be the only Atkins brother left, the sting of conscience he experienced at its every mention was a penance he accepted for his uncharitable thoughts regarding William.
Leaving them to talk, he made great sport of Gordon, charging the waiting casualties thruppence an item to have their clothes chatted by the creature. Porgy caught up with him as Nurse Bell went on about her ministrations.
“She’s a fine lass, isn’t she, Only?”
“Oh no doubt,” said Atkins, “But I do doubt she’ll put up with you.”
“She’s a debutante,” he said, plainly enamoured.
“And clearly out of your league. A Northern lad from a brewery stepping out with someone who’s been in the same room as Royalty? I’d say you need your head examining.”
“I have,” he sighed. “By Edith.”
“What? And she found nothing wrong with it? Can’t be much of a nurse then.”
LIPPETT OPERATED ON the young Urman with an orderly and Sister Fenton assisting. Napoo was reluctant to leave him alone, partly because Gutsy had explained to him in a slow, loud voice — which was the best way, in his opinion, to communicate with natives — that they were working their juju magic on him, which seemed to alarm Napoo. He hung around the surgical tent, his face etched with worry as he and Everson waited. To Everson’s relief, the operation was a success. Lippett came out of the tent wiping his hands on his apron.
“It was some sort of poisonous thorn, embedded deep in his muscle,” he said. “We’ve cut it out. He’s young and strong. He should pull through. Remarkably, that poultice muck they’d spread on it seems to have some medicinal properties, slowed the spread of the poison. We might be able to use something like that if we’re here much longer.”
They moved the Urman to a tent, where Sister Fenton and Nurse Bell checked on him hourly. Owing to his chiselled, unshaven appearance, reminding them of the Gallic soldiers they’d treated, and not knowing the unconscious man’s name, they nicknamed him Poilus. It seemed to suit him, or at least their romanticised notions of him.
Napoo was nervous and edgy, never leaving his bedside until the man eventually came round and opened his eyes. The wound on his thigh had been bandaged and he was still suffering from a slight fever, but Sister Fenton explained that they expected it to come down after a couple of days’ rest.
Poilus looked around nervously, panic building behind his eyes. However, Napoo stepped into his eye line and laid his hand on his forearm, tears welling up in his eyes. He looked up at Everson across the bed.
“Yes,” he said, his voice choked with emotion, “we will help you.”
NAPOO WAS AT first suspicious when Oliver Hepton, delighting in him as some sort of indigenous novelty, wanted to film him. He persuaded Napoo to pose, which he did grinning nervously, surrounded by the men of 1 Section.
“Wave for the folks back home,” Hepton directed them. “Valiant Tommies meeting the local natives of the Wonder Planet.”
“Who’s he kidding?” said Half Pint sourly as they performed for the camera. “Everything on this bloody planet is poisonous or dangerous. This place is going to kill us before we get a square meal out of it.”
“Give it a rest Half Pint. Tell us something we don’t know,” said Gutsy.
“Whuuugh!” yelled Half Pint ducking down as something buzzed over his head; a fat bloated thing about the size of a pigeon with feathery antennae and large compound eyes. He started flapping his arms around. “Get it off, get it off!”
Napoo grinned, snatched it out of the air and bit its head off, spitting it onto the ground before tipping back his head and squeezing the carcass. A slop of dark viscera fell into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed.
“Gawd, that’s disgusting!” said Porgy.
“It’s good!” said Napoo, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, offering it to Atkins.
Another flew by Pot Shot. He reached up a long gangly arm, and caught it. He was about to use his bayonet to cut the head off when Napoo stopped him, laughing.
“No, not that one,”
“Why not? I did what you did,” Pot Shot protested.
Napoo shook his head and rapped his knuckles on Pot Shot’s head.
“No, look. This one is thin. It hasn’t fed yet. You wait until it has fed and fat. You eat that now you taste only bile. Make you sick.” He picked it up and threw it away.
“Excellent!” yelled Hepton. Pleased with the unexpected footage he capped his camera.
EVERSON WAS RIGHT in his estimation of Napoo’s knowledge. Over the next few days, he taught them many things. He showed them safe food to eat and where to find more. He told them what firewood to use without it spitting hot poisonous sap at them. He showed them edible fruits to gather, how to dig up the roots of the Tergo plant where they could find large, wriggling grubs the size of a man’s forearm nestling in swollen tubers. They brought down one of the tall three-legged herbivore ‘tripodgiraffes’ as it fed. They also shot one of the hell hounds from a pack that was trying to stalk it. After several days of hunting and gathering, they had managed to build up quite a store of food.
“I think it would be a good idea,” suggested Everson to Captain Grantham, “that is, I think it would boost the men’s morale if we could celebrate our first meal with indigenous ingredients,”
The Captain nodded and waved his hand dismissively. “Whatever you want, Everson. Whatever you want.”
However, Everson knew their survival would depend on more than food and water and morale. It would depend on information and there was more that Napoo might tell them about this planet. Therefore, he, Jeffries and Padre Rand sought to question him further. Padre Rand’s bright flame of faith had guttered alarmingly in the face of the Somme and seemed extinguished by the wind of circumstance that had blown them to this world. Now it seemed Napoo’s arrival fanned the embers of his dying belief. He had been a missionary in Africa and knew a heathen when he saw one. He wanted to know if Napoo believed in god, whether he had been baptised. He believed it to be his sacred duty to save the man’s soul. If indeed he should have one. For if this place was not Earth, then he could not be a son of Adam, a creature of God.