In the afternoon, the twins would occasionally sing bits of their digging song, sometimes both singing different bits of it at the same time, and that was the only sound to be heard all afternoon. It was just like one of those hazy York days with nothing doing, but an occasional clanking in the far distance, which in York would have been a factory at work, or wagons being shunted, but hereabouts was probably something worse. We might have been digging on the railwaymen’s allotments at Holgate, and we seemed to have this stretch of trench to ourselves. After a couple of hours, with the light beginning to fade, Newton came back once again with a trench cooker, and all the doings for tea. As he brewed up, the twins went over to him, and Roy said ‘Where’s t’shitter, boss?’ only Newton, not being a Yorkshireman, couldn’t make him out.
‘They’re after the latrines,’ I said.
So Newton led them off back the way we’d come. When they’d gone, Tinsley took out his paybook, and removed a photograph from it. It showed a collection of railwaymen sitting on a platform bench somewhere. A smart, small bloke sat in the centre. He had his legs crossed, and looked away from the camera, as though he knew he was the main object of interest, but couldn’t get excited about it. The other blokes, sitting alongside him or standing behind, all grinned.
‘There he is,’ said Tinsley, indicating the central bloke.
‘Who?’ I asked, sipping tea.
‘Tom Shaw,’ he said, ‘if you recall.’
And he seemed hurt that I’d forgotten about his hero driver.
‘Always beautifully turned out, he is. He can be five hours on the footplate, and there’s not a speck of coal dust on him. It’s almost magical, Jim. To keep himself in trim, he comes into work on his bike rather than take the train, and he’ll come along all these muddy lanes… The bike will be absolutely clarted Jim, but Tom Shaw’s suit’ll be spotless.’
I didn’t recognise him, but then I didn’t know all the York drivers – not by a long chalk. In truth, I didn’t much like the look of the bloke.
‘I didn’t expect him to be small,’ I said. Most drivers were thin, but tall.
‘He rides the engine with a light touch,’ said Tinsley. ‘Like a jockey, you know.’
‘Why did you enlist, Alfred?’ I asked Tinsley. ‘I mean, he didn’t.’
The Company, and the government, had to keep the trains going, so drivers and firemen had the best of excuses for not joining up. Given that plenty of them had enlisted even so, a youngster could expect to move up from cleaning engines to firing much quicker than normal.
‘Tom Shaw’, he said, putting the photograph back in its place, ‘got over the obstacles that were put in his way, and I must get over the ones put in mine. You can’t expect to get on the footplate without facing down difficulties, whatever they might be. My difficulty is this war, do you see?’
‘It certainly is,’ I said.
‘And I mean to face it down.’
I took out a packet of Woodbines, and offered one to Tinsley. He took it.
‘You must never light three fags from one match,’ said a voice. It was Newton, back from the jakes with the twins.
‘We’re not,’ I said.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But I’m just warning you. It gives away a position – the third bloke always gets it.’
Even I’d heard that tale. Newton didn’t seem to have much that was new to offer, but he evidently wanted to play the old army hand. He fell to telling us what had happened to his best pal the week before. He’d been on sentry-go in the trench at two o’clock in the morning when a German raiding party had come over. They’d made no fuss, never fired a single shot, but had just taken Newton’s mate – and him alone – off with them. ‘It’s not as bad as being shot, of course,’ said Newton, ‘but a good deal stranger. Here,’ he said, ‘do you want to go out?’
‘How do you mean?’ I said; but I thought I knew.
‘See a Fritz,’ said Newton.
‘A dead one, you mean?’ said Tinsley, before blowing smoke in such a way (he looked like someone whistling) that you knew he’d never done it before.
‘Course not. Follow me.’
‘I don’t fancy going into the dog’s teeth,’ said Tinsley.
‘The dog’s leap,’ said Newton, and we followed him past the twins, who’d gone back to digging, now both grunting and humming instead of singing, being, as I supposed, that bit more tired, but still going at it like a pair of machines. At the end of the bad bit of trench there was a ditch going off at right angles into no man’s land.
‘This is a sap,’ said Newton. ‘Now keep your head down for Christ’s sake.’
I knew it was a sap, and I didn’t really want to follow him, but I wouldn’t funk it; Tinsley, I guessed, felt the same. There was nothing in the sap at all – no sandbags, no duckboards, just two banks of mud about four feet high, and a queer smell coming and going: as if there was some strong cheese lying about somewhere – cheese-gone-wrong. It was mixed with a floating smell of woodsmoke. We’re gone about twenty yards, and my back was killing me from the crouching walk. But just then we were at the end of it, and here was a little cockpit made of sandbags and a tarpaulin.
‘Now you lie down flat on this tarp,’ said Newton, ‘and just have a peek over.’
Tinsley was looking at me, uncertain, but half grinning.
‘Come off it,’ I said to Newton.
‘It’s quite all right,’ he said. ‘They don’t know about this. They’re looking at our trench, not here. Except they’re not even doing that, you see, cause they’ve got a brew on.’
‘They have a fire going,’ said Tinsley.
‘Exactly,’ said Newton. ‘Always do at this time.’
‘They’re not cooking cheese, are they?’ said Tinsley. ‘I mean, sort of toasting it?’
‘What do you think this is?’ said Newton, ‘Wilson’s bloody Tea Rooms?’
I thought that must be some place in Bromley that he knew of. The bloke was getting agitated now, in a way that I didn’t quite like. ‘No,’ he said, ‘that cheese smell is Rogers, and he’s dead. He died yesterday on a raid. He’s about twenty feet over that way, but you don’t want to look at him do you?’
At that instant, he put his head up and down.
‘Big fucking Alleyman in plain view,’ he said, but even though he tried to keep an even tone, he was panting as he spoke. It had taken a lot out of him to put his head up. ‘I don’t know what it is, but when they have a brew on it’s always the same. You can see ’em.’
‘I mean to have a look,’ said Tinsley, and he was eyeing me because he knew I’d object. Perhaps he wanted me to, but I didn’t think so. This test was another one he had to pass if he was ever to make it to the footplate of an express engine. It was a bloody game of dare – that’s what Newton had got us into.
I said, ‘You’ll not.’
I turned to Newton, saying, ‘I’ve to look out for this kid.’
‘What kid?’ said Tinsley. ‘No you haven’t.’
And his head, too, was up and down in an instant.
‘I saw him,’ he said, but I wasn’t sure I believed him, and in the end it was pure curiosity that made me stick my own head up. I saw a line of scribble that was German wire, then a wall of sandbags, a gap in the sandbags and a small moving face in that gap: a Fritz, talking to another Fritz who was out of sight. It was as if they were in a different century over there. I detected a big moustache on the man; his helmet had a spike it in – just as promised in the manuals – and a white band wrapped around it. I thought: he’s a Prussian, not a German, and having ducked down again, I was all for crawling back fast to the trench, since it was properly evening now, and the ‘hate’ would soon be starting. But Newton was saying, ‘Who wants a pot?’