‘Who are you writing to?’ asked Oliver Butler.
‘Mind your own fucking business,’ I said.
‘Everywhere one goes, the spirit of merry badinage in the air,’ said Oamer, who’d just stepped into the barn. (Scholes had also come in behind him.)
‘What’s the special duty, Corporal?’ came the voice of young William, who had his crib on the other side of wooden partition, next to Oamer’s – his bolthole from the twins.
‘Bide,’ said Oamer.
This was the nearest he ever came to saying ‘Shut up’, and he was eyeing the twins, who hadn’t yet left off with their secret whisperings. Presently, Oamer said, ‘Be it known by all…’ which was his way of beginning an announcement. He then told us that the Spurn military railway very nearly was half completed.
‘Oh good-o,’ said Oliver Butler.
According to Oamer, it now ran from a railway pier at the tip of the peninsula to a spot somewhere in the middle. Tomorrow, we were to march to that spot, and there we’d board the train and be conveyed to the pier.
‘That’s a bit of all right,’ said Alfred Tinsley, because here was a railway for him to look at.
‘Why are we going to the railway pier, Corporal?’ asked Oliver Butler.
‘You are to unload a ship,’ said Oamer, ‘… quite a small ship, you will be pleased to hear.’
Digesting this news, we all turned in for the night, and every lamp in the barn was soon extinguished except the one from Oamer’s (and William’s) side of the petition, which continued to burn low. Oamer would no doubt be writing to… well, whoever he wrote to.
I couldn’t get off to sleep. I turned on my side; I heard a sort of grunt from the direction of Oamer, and then the noise hit. It did hit as well; the whole barn rocked, and every man instantly sat up. Every man was talking as well, but I couldn’t make out a word; soft muffles seemed to fall from every mouth, even though I knew everyone was shouting. The Chief had once told me that a bloke in the Riflemen’s Leagues at York had fired one of the big bore ones indoors without ear defenders. He burst both his ear drums, and the way he knew about it was that he couldn’t hear the mechanism when he re-loaded the gun, and then he felt a tickling above his collar – the blood running down from his ears.
I put my hand up to my own neck, and there was no blood, but still my hearing wasn’t right. After a space, the word being repeatedly spoken by Oamer, ‘Bide… bide!’ became clear, but it was no use against the shouting of the others, and one shout I heard above alclass="underline" ‘It’s the bloody war,’ said Scholes, ‘it’s come here… it’s bloody come here.’ Then the farmer came into the barn dressed in his night shirt with an Ulster coat slung over the top but no bloody trousers or underclothes on, so his privates were in plain view. In a right state, he was. Evidently half the windows in his house had smashed.
‘What in hell’s name’s going on here?’ he shouted at Oamer, but he’d been followed in by Captain Quinn, who addressed us while buttoning up his tunic. He would be riding down to the peninsula to make sure, but he believed that the Royal Engineers had fired one of their 9.2-inch guns – ‘almost certainly not in anger’, but merely to test it.
‘Well, I’d say it was working,’ muttered Dawson.
‘Now if I’m wrong over this,’ Quinn continued, ‘and this is in fact a German battle group firing on us, then that puts a rather different complexion on matters…’ We could rest assured he would be telephoning through to battalion headquarters from the Spurn redoubt directly.
He wheeled about and was gone, at which all eyes were fixed on Young William. He was sitting on the dusty flags and fighting for breath, just as though he’d run a mile at full pelt. Oamer made towards him, and the kid brushed him off, saying in an under-breath something like, ‘Will you leave go of me?’ in a way that could have landed him in very hot water indeed, if our corporal had been a different sort of person.
The Spurn railway terminated hard by a wooden hut that served as an officers’ mess for the Royal Engineers. Someone had chalked a message on the bare wood of the shed door: ‘Tom, Telephone down to Henry. Regards, Max’, and that’s the kind of set-up it was. The officers were easy-going blokes, more university professors than soldiers; they seemed to run Spurn like their own gentlemen’s club.
The mess, and the temporary terminus, were bang in the middle of Spurn, in a part of it called the Narrows. There was beach at not more than thirty yards’ distance on either side of the track. Just then the sea did not threaten the track, but I didn’t fancy its chances in the event of any storm, such as that predicted by Scholes.
It was, in fact, a beautiful early-afternoon, the sea shining, two sailing ships off Spurn, both definitely not German destroyers. The day suited the cheery features of a certain Captain Leo Tate, who stood on the new-laid track, and addressed us as we sat on a sand dune. Our whole group was present save William, who’d been detailed to bicycle between the cottages and the farms around Kilnsea and Easington, giving out a schedule of the times when the Spurn gun would be tested again. He would then return to Cobble Farm in the evening.
Captain Leo Tate was a little older than me – somewhere in the middle thirties. He told us he’d been delighted to hear we’d been given this detail because he was from York himself. Well, he certainly didn’t sound it. He was also a good friend of our own Captain Quinn’s, both of them having been at St Peter’s School, the Eton of the North. As he addressed us, Tate seemed fascinated by the sight of the twins, and kept sneaking sly looks at them.
‘Did you know Spurn is eroding at the rate of a yard every year?’ he began.
‘Yes,’ I heard someone say. (Probably Oliver Butler.)
Tate told us something of what he and his fellows had been about, adding that we would shortly see for ourselves. After talking for five minutes, he asked if we had any questions.
‘What class of engines do you run on the railway, sir?’
It was Alfred Tinsley, of course.
‘Well, you see our modest engine shed,’ Quinn said, pointing to what looked like a glorified beach hut at the end of a siding a hundred yards distant. Steam was leaking from it, and more from the walls than the chimney. ‘At present, it houses just the one locomotive,’ Tate was saying. ‘A Hudswell-Clarke standard, and I don’t need to tell you men the specifications.’
Dawson leant into me, and said, ‘He does need to tell me.’
‘Outside cylinder 0-4-0 saddle tank,’ I said, and Quinn heard and pointed at me, ‘Quite right, there. Are you an engine man, fusilier?’
‘I’m a railway policeman sir,’ I said. ‘Detective division.’
But Captain Leo Tate didn’t seem to have heard me. He was looking along the line, with a big grin spreading over his features; then there came a gasp from Alfred Tinsley. Something was skimming towards us at a hell of a lick. It was two men sitting in something between a railway wagon and a yacht – for it was propelled by sails.
‘What is it?’ breathed Tinsley, and he was looking the question directly at Tate, even though a private soldier is not supposed to address an officer, but must wait until spoken to.
‘Pump trolley converted by the addition of a lug sail,’ said Tate, beaming, ‘and these chaps are on a broad reach.’
Even he seemed amazed by the speed of it. When the thing came close it looked jerry-built, ridiculous, but you couldn’t help liking the looks of the two blokes who stepped off it – two junior officers in the Tate mould: a pair of overgrown boy scouts. They put their funny little bug in a siding, and at that instant, the barking of steam was heard from the little engine shed, and the Hudswell-Clarke rolled out. ‘Anyone fancy a footplate ride?’ enquired Tate. Alfred Tinsley’s hand was up directly. Mine would’ve been too, had I not been on my dignity. There were no other takers, but Tate pointed to me, asking, ‘How about our railway policeman?’