Perhaps there was some deep connection working, for ‘Wipers’ had begun a day previously, and Mrs Trevick received the news soon after that her husband had been killed in action. I have done some research since then: it was at about the same time as I was crossing the square that a burst of machine-gun fire cut Marlers Trevick in two, almost upon enemy lines. His unit was all but wiped out in those few, terrible minutes. It was from roughly that day that Percy Cullurne’s nickname changed from ‘Yeller’ to ‘Bidatome’. I never heard the chant again. ‘Bidatome’ he bears still, if somewhat worn by use and laziness to ‘Bid’m’. But even ‘Bid’m’ reminds us of its origin, much as an old coin reminds us of some great monarch, though the head be almost smoothed away.
As Ypres claimed man after man who had stood shoulder to shoulder on that August evening, and November came in cold and wet, a terrible nightmarish atmosphere descended upon Ulverton — so that it seemed, at times, as if I never truly woke up out of my own night horrors, but walked the streets of the damned. Few of those young men would be returning after all, to seed the land and bring the next harvest in, to hand on their qualities, to keep the heart of the village pumping strong. Cullurne kept a silence that even I could not break. Up on the downs, brushing without a word at the burial site, we would hear the bell tolling in long, slow arcs of sound, and the Squire would whiten as we paused, wondering again — who?
One afternoon young Sidney Bint came running up the track towards us, soon after we had heard the bell once more. He panted upon the rim.
‘Well?’ snapped the Squire. His eyes, I noticed, were full of fear.
The lad took a deep breath.
‘It’s Mr Allun, sir.’
‘Allun?’
‘He’s back.’
‘They’ve sent him back? Was that the tolling?’
‘Reverend axt as to make an apology, sir. ’E’s not dead, sir.’
The Squire closed his eyes.
‘Thank God,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll go and see him.’
The boy shifted from foot to foot. I asked him if there was anything else he wanted to say. He stared for a moment at the skeleton, although he had seen it some days before, when he had brought the news of Herbert Daye’s death (the young man who had made my bookshelves too small) from ‘injuries received’ and so forth. The Squire was climbing the ladder, and Lock was looking slightly piqued, as if Allun was likely to slip on his chauffeur’s gloves immediately.
I think I had guessed what the boy was going to say.
‘’E’s got no arms, sir.’
The Squire paused on the rim, feet still resting on the ladder, hands ready to push him onto the level. I remember his back against the sky, his drooping shoulders, his bowed head. He looked colossal, the very figure of utter and deep weariness. Dart laughed.
Allun put a brave face on it. He had been handling a grenade, a German stick type, attempting to pick the thing up and hurl it back. He lost one arm immediately and, as he put it, ‘thought as how it would miss the gear-stick, look’. His other arm developed gangrene in the flesh-wound. He was terribly thin, stranded amongst his automobile mementoes in the estate cottage, his wooden prostheses lying weirdly across the table while his stumps ‘took a bit of a rest, look’.
Soon afterwards we spent our last afternoon on the downs: the weather was blowing cold and the soil was hardening with the sharp night frosts of late November. We had dug right round the skeleton, and it was lifted by means of a pulley and our hands onto the side. Wrapped in canvas, the body of the ancient was placed on cushions in a cart, and then, at a nod from the Squire, taken slowly down the track, the great iron-tyred rims circling through the ruts and over flints so cautiously we could count the spokes … eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Twelve. The number the war eventually claimed from our village. The Squire followed the bier down like a mourner.
As I watched them go, preparing to clear the site of our implements, Ernest came up with the wooden box in which he had placed the smaller finds. I asked to see them, perhaps for the last time, before they were assigned to some dusty glass case. Like a boy with his stone collection, he handed them to me one by one: the bronze dagger, and the iron hair-pin; a polished greenstone wrist-guard (or so we guessed), with nine holes at each end capped with sheet-gold, and broken — probably as part of a ritual; and a bone pendant, stained by the corroding dagger, found beside the ribs, carved into the form of a leaping animal (a hare?) and painfully crude. Hardly a treasure. But each, as it lay in my hand, had an extra weight; of silence perhaps, ‘deep as Eternity’, and the value of silence, that had lain unstirred under tussocks and cloud for four thousand years, until the Squire smote through the turf with his blade.
11. Wing, 1953
MAGNETIC RECORDING No. 24 (Transcript)
File under Broadcasts/Way of Life (B/WL)
BBC Home Service (West) ‘That Was My Day: Cartoonist Herbert Bradman talks about a very special day last month.’ 10.10 p.m. March 6th 1953
(Note: first five-and-a-half minutes lost due to magnetic tape snapping.)
[…] BANGS THE TRAY with his small hammer and the toffee cracks. Then comes the tattoo. Well, the crumbs bounce up and down as if electrified. Now I have no idea why Mr Bint must perform this tattoo with his little hammer. It makes the tray clatter frightfully. Perhaps it is in order to release the cracked toffee from the grease paper. Perhaps it is in order to make a very loud noise. One day, I will ask him. But not today. No, not today. For today is a very special day. Isn’t it, Sidney? But Mr Bint just snaps a paper bag off a hook with many other paper bags upon it, and whistles a single bar from the opening of Chopin’s B minor Sonata. At least, that is what it sounds like. And he is always whistling it. One day, I will ask him. Not today. No, not today. Meanwhile, I will continue to — well, marvel. Now come on, I hear you say, what exactly are you marvelling at? Well, dear listener, at the great strides we have made in communication by means of the wireless. Even our shopkeepers bend an ear to the Third Programme.
Mr Bint slips the dark toffee into the paper bag. He knows I cannot bear to have my fingers stickied. Who can, but grubby little creatures, as don’t know better? Talking of these, there are quite a few strung out behind me. Oh dear, I think they are rather impatient today. Well, I have never seen Bint’s Bakery so full. And that applies to the shelves, too.
‘A quarter of liquorice pomfret cakes, please, Sidney. And four acid drops.’ Do I hear a groan behind me? Someone drops their penny. Consternation. And today of all days. Do not worry, she has got it. She is called Marjorie. She has just got over the chicken-pox. But did I not see her in the Village Stores? Of course, her parents have the shop. ‘But it don’t sell sweets, sir. Just bleach.’ Just bleach? Well, that is a shame. Just bleach.