‘Hold on,’ said Scholes, ‘how far is Albert from the front?’
‘About three miles,’ said Oamer, who by his answer told us that everything Tinsley said had been true.
In the light of this knowledge, silence fell again for a while.
We were slightly bucked by the sight of Amiens station. There were plenty of soldiers but plenty of civilians as well, and some very pretty samples of French womanhood.
‘Look like cats they do, the French doxies,’ said Dawson.
‘And is that a good thing?’ enquired Oamer.
‘It is to my mind,’ said Dawson.
But I believed Oamer to be indifferent on the point.
The next station was all army, however. It had no name, but Tinsley knew it for a spot called Corbie. Two minutes after we pulled out, we saw a wrecked cottage. After a few more of the same, Dawson said, ‘House roofs seem to be at a premium around here.’
It wasn’t just the houses; the trees were broken too, and the fields under the darkening sky were fields of mud, with clusters of ponds everywhere – ugly black ponds that might have held monstrous creatures. We came through another mass of sidings, and beyond these were whole crowds of wrecked buildings, as if they’d all banded together out of sympathy with one another – a wrecked town, in fact.
‘Albert,’ said Oamer.
‘Jesus Christ,’ said Scholes.
Albert station had survived, which only made it look the more ridiculous. You thought: why does this place merit a station? Why don’t the trains just go on until they come to a proper place? As I climbed down, with the engine blowing off up front, and all the blokes shouting, I saw that the station building was like a town hall, with a clock tower, and the time on the clock was about right: six p.m. But that was the only thing that was right. At the sight of this place, I was scared shitless but I wasn’t about to lie quaking on the ground. The only thing to do was muster around the ‘E’ Company sergeant major as directed. After we’d told off into our companies, a silence fell. The engine had stopped blowing off steam, and was now simmering; all the slamming of doors had stopped. A new noise could be heard, and every man was listening to it. This was the most infernal and continuous crashing, screeching, howling. In this noise there was everything bad: old ladies screaming, mighty waves breaking, whole train crashes happening out of sight in the sky.
‘Hold on a minute,’ said Scholes, who was standing alongside me, a look of horror on his face.
Two minutes later, we were marching, in extended order, towards the noise. Oliver Butler was behind me. ‘Got the collywobbles, Private Stringer?’ he called out. ‘It’s got me spooked, I don’t mind admitting.’
His brothers were alongside him. As a great jabbering arose amid the stream of din, I glanced back at them. ‘Oh mother,’ they said in unison… Only they were laughing at the same time.
We went first through the centre of Albert. It wasn’t a ghost town because – Tinsley had been right – the ruins were all ram-packed with Frenchers and soldiers. It was as though everyone had decided: All right, the place is wrecked, but let’s pretend it’s not. In what appeared to be the central square of Albert, a lorry rumbled past us with trailer attached. The trailer was full of Tommies, and one of them called out, ‘Just arrived mate? Rather a hot shop, this is.’
And it would be Scholes that he’d spoken to. Scholes was breathing too fast.
‘I’m not good here,’ he said, ‘I’m strained all to pieces.’
I was thinking it would have been well worth jumping in the sea off Spurn to avoid, but I said, ‘It’s not like this all the time, you know’, and as we approached the noise it was changing, the screaming din being replaced by periodic bangs, with sometimes the more continuous noise of a machine gun, like a sort of virtuoso player in an orchestra. All the while, the sky would continually change colour, from a deep blue, to green, to red, and back.
We left Albert behind, guided by Oamer and the battalion billeting officer. This bloke was coming with us rather than any other unit because we would be in the furthest billet, the one nearest the front, and I thought: is this deliberate? Are we being put in harm’s way because, after what happened on Spurn, we’re considered a liability? Were the Brass, or the regimental police, trying to ‘sweat’ us, so that a confession or an accusation might emerge?
We went along rough chalk roads that shone with a moon-like glow in the darkness. Some of the fields were ploughed, as far as I could make out, but others contained upended or broken carts, as though the farmer had suddenly come to his senses and fled the district. There were more of the ponds I’d seen from the train, and I seemed to make out black flying things skimming back and forth across them, like evil sprites or spirits. At one point, I thought, we are now entering a wood, but the wood never came on. We just kept walking through widely spaced, broken trees.
We were still in the wood, if that’s what it was, when the billeting officer came to a halt. He indicated a large building and a small one, the only survivors of a group of ruins. He said, ‘You’re barely a quarter mile from the reserve trenches, so it’s pretty well sniped by the whizzbangs.’
‘Nice,’ said Dawson.
At that moment, I wanted to get my head down, no matter where. I turned towards the main building, and saw in the moonlight a French word, or part of one, painted in a sort of red, fairground lettering. The word was: ‘T-VERNE’. Dawson was looking the same way. ‘There’s an “A” missing,’ he was saying, frowning; then he turned to me with a grin. ‘It’s a pub, mate!’
We went inside and got some hurricane lamps lit. It was a pub, of sorts: there was a bar, with posters of some strange-shaped green bottles behind it (although no actual bottles). The place was filled with a petrol-like smell, and the floor crowded with furniture – couches and cupboards mainly, that had perhaps been rescued from the ruins round about. In one corner was a trapdoor leading down to a cellar. Dawson was all for kipping down there, but the billeting officer, addressing Oamer, said that if a five-nine hit us directly we were done for anyway. There was no food in the place. That would come in the night, we were told, together with our trench kit. Meanwhile we had our water bottles, and Oamer handed out some hard biscuits. He made a sort of cubbyhole for himself behind the bar, and rest of us lay on the floor at crazy angles, one couch and one cupboard apiece.
I was asleep in an instant, and I dreamt of a ghost train. A train made of light, and not running on rails, but flying through the air at a great speed. I woke with a start when the noise of its chuffing became faster than was possible, and I sat up on my couch. The noise was still there. Scholes was staring across at me, mortified. The twins were awake and listening too, both with heads propped on hands. They had two candle stubs burning between them. One said to the other: ‘Heavy shower’s coming.’ Lined against the wall beyond them were picks and shovels, and other bits of kit that had not been there when I’d turned in. I noticed an opened window. All this I saw in less than a second. The shell hit, and the ghost train crashed, leaving a darkness and a ringing in my ear. The concussion had blown out the candles. I heard Oamer’s voice, quite steady from behind the bar: ‘Speculative, I would say. Back to sleep, boys.’
If I did sleep, then I was woken soon after by another noise. Sitting upright, it took me a second to work out what it had been. It was a fart. One of the twins had let one go, and was putting his head under the blanket to sample the smell.