A morose-looking, sallow-faced doctor confronted us. He had a swagger stick under one arm. I put my hand on my heart. It certainly seemed to be beating unusually fiercely. My headache keened thinly at my temples too. I was pasty and a film of perspiration covered my face. My hair was damp on my brow. Surely, I said to myself, they cannot send a man in my condition into battle. Along the line I saw Pawsey, jade-green, his jaws working relentlessly.
“Right,” the doctor said. “Drop your trousers. And your drawers.”
Baffled, hesitantly, some of us grinning lewdly, we complied. Our shirttails, fore and aft, preserved our modesty. The doctor approached the first file of men. With his swagger stick he lifted the front of the first man’s shirt, glanced down and asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yes, sir.”
He did this to everyone, moving quickly down the line. He reached me and lifted my shirt.
“Are you all right?”
“Well, sir, my heart—”
He was on to the next man. Louise, following, glared at me. I felt sharp tears of anger. I glanced at Pawsey. He looked shocked at my peremptory treatment.
The doctor reached him. Lifted his shirt.
“Are you all right?”
“No, sir,” Pawsey said boldly, swallowing his cud.
The doctor moved on to the next man.
It took him less than an hour to inspect the entire battalion and we were to a man passed Free from Infection. Free to go and get killed and not contaminate the battlefield, Pawsey said bitterly, when we compared our outrage later.
“I feel dreadful,” Pawsey said. “Truly dreadful. I’m ill, for God’s sake. That bloody quack …” His chin buckled slightly as he tried to control his tears.
For my part, I felt only sullen and resigned. I seemed to stand before a high looming cliff of despair. That afternoon, I slipped away from yet another soccer match and walked down the lane through the dunes towards the seawall.
It was a day of high gray solid clouds, dense and packed like cobbles. There was a distant mist far out to sea that blended the water with the sky at the horizon. The light cast was even, drab, monochrome. The tide was going out and the vast beach gleamed with a dull wet iridescence.
I went through a gap in the wire and down the steps of the wall onto the sand, turned east and walked gloomily along for a good while, lost in my thoughts. I was trying to revive my innate, natural optimism, trying to regenerate a sense of my own special worth. Without self-esteem you can accomplish nothing, and I knew that I had to overcome the twin disappointments of Dagmar and Huguette.… Dagmar, I told myself, if only I had been bolder there. Remember her name: Dagmar Fjermeros. After the war you can go to Norway, find her, marry her, start a family. What had she said to me? “You will survive. I’m almays right.” Almays. If only she had said “always” …
I stopped. In the distance I could see Nieuport-Bains and beyond its two piers I thought I could make out the shattered base of the lighthouse behind the trench line on the right bank of the Yser. I felt — surprisingly — suddenly proprietorial. That was my position: l’homme de l’extrême gauche. A special post. The first man on the Western Front. Others had occupied it; doubtless someone was occupying it now, but I felt as if I were leasing it to him. I remembered Teague’s sneer: “What did you do in the war?” It was quite a claim I could make. I turned and began to walk back. I was l’homme de l’extrême gauche. The more I thought about it, the more pleased I was with the image. It seemed apt, portentous. That, I now saw, was to be my role in life.
A powerful blow in the small of my back knocked me heavily to the ground. Sand was kicked in my face. Winded, on all fours, I gasped for breath, trying to pick grains from my smarting, weeping eyes. I heard a depressingly familiar bark. Ralph.
The stupid brute capered and leaped about me like a lamb. He went into a semicrouch, rump up, tail wagging, front legs flat on the sand.
“Stop it!” I screamed. “Leave me alone!”
I felt an irrational fear at the dog’s return. Ralph was, to me at least, a bad omen: at best a powerful irritant, at worst some kind of malign harbinger. I walked back along the beach, quickening my pace. I had not intended to come so far. Ahead the wet beach shone a lustrous scaly silver like a fish. I looked round. Ralph loped behind me.
“Go away!” I shouted. He pricked up his ears and came closer. I scooped a handful of sand and flung it at him. He barked with pleasure at this new game. I turned and started to run. I felt a sort of hot, mazy confusion descend on me. My self-imposed fast and huge intake of tobacco were still affecting my system. I stopped, suddenly exhausted, bile in my throat. I lowered myself to my haunches. Ralph panted idiotically beside me on the enormous beach. My solitude overwhelmed me — a reluctant actor on a vast deserted stage, giddy with fear and apprehension.
The happy return of Ralph prevented the others from noticing my distress. The movement order had come through. We were to entrain at Coxyde-Bains at 0600 hours the next day.
“Where are we going?” I asked Leo Druce.
“A place called Ypres,” he said.
VILLA LUXE, May 27, 1972
Emilia’s day off. I wander up to the village for a bite of lunch. The café-bar is simple: crudely and entirely successful. A dark interior room, tiled and shuttered, with minimal lighting. Outside, a large L-shaped terrace. Vines and bougainvillea grow above on trellises. Many well-watered pots boast flowers — zinnias and geraniums. If there’s a breeze, sit outside. If you seek cool shade, sit indoors. Your eyes will soon grow accustomed to the limpid gloom.
The bar is owned by Ernesto, a swarthy amiable lout of a man, but it is run by his aged parents. Days can go by with no sign of Ernesto — he drives off to town in his ancient Simca whenever he feels like it. The old man, Feliz, and his wife, Concepción, work on with placid patience. They greet me as a respected client. I have seen their son grow from an eager slim youth into this parody Lothario (he is always growing and shaving off a thin moustache). They know I know what they suffer. We smile and shrug. The children: what can we do? There is a benign freemasonry of old folk — we help each other get by.
I order a beer and a plate of olives. Feliz shuffles into the kitchen to cook me a tough steak. I look forward to an afternoon’s pleasant mining of my dental cavities for meat fibers.
I am halfway through my steak when the two German girls come in. These are the twins, Günther’s daughters. They must be in their early twenties. They wear shorts and T-shirts. Their legs are already pink with a few days’ suntanning. They are pretty girls, these twins, with square strong faces. They are well built, like swimmers, with broad shoulders and thick blondish hair. One twin, the slightly prettier, has streaked her hair with a whiter blond color.
They sit outside with their drinks and a plate of pistachios, and light up cigarettes. I munch on, chewing my steak — Feliz has excelled himself; my jaw aches with the effort of mastication.
The girls keep looking at me. Then the less pretty one comes inside to buy more drinks. She puts on a pair of spectacles and pretends to look at one of the gaudy calendars Ernesto’s suppliers have pressed upon him and with which he decorates the otherwise bare walls of the bar. I know she really wants to have a closer look at me.
Feliz’s potatoes ooze oil. I mop it up with a piece of bread.
“Guten Tag.”
“Tag,” I say unreflectingly.
“Do you speak German?”
“A little.… I used to — that’s to say, a long time ago. But I’m forgetting it, ah …”