A Soldier's Tale (12 page)

The woman had on a black dress and a shawl over her head. She was thin and dark and you could see her in the boy, the resemblance. She's a bit anxious and clucks over the boy like a hen, but when she sees how he's enjoying the chocolate she smiles a bit, shy-like. Then she looks over my shoulder and her face changes.

I swung around because it might be trouble, but it was only Belle, in her blue-and-white dress, with her hair braided up, looking like a Sunday-school teacher. The woman, the mother, screamed out something and she caught the kid an open-handed slap that staggered him and sent the bit of chocolate flying into the dust. The poor kid began to holler and she
grabbed his arm and dragged him up the road, giving him a proper piece of her mind.

I was going to go after her and make her let the kid alone when I heard voices behind and there was half-a-dozen more of them, oldish men and women mostly, all in Sunday black. One of them leaned over the gate and said something to Belle, but she stood her ground. I stood in the gateway and stared them down till they went off up the road, but still turning back to look at us. They stopped and had a proper palaver with Wolf-face and the others up the hill, but I took Belle by the arm and we went back inside.

Well, like I said, it was a bit of old home week, because the next thing that happened was that the Indestructible Yank dropped in again. Come to think of it, it could have been quite a bit later, because I went back to the front garden and stopped out there for a while, smoking and watching the last of the mist clear and the sun come through, and generally keeping an eye on things. The Mass-bell had stopped a while back, and instead I heard the Angelus what they rung at midday, dong-dong-dong and stop, dong-dong-dong and stop, like that. I see the Indestructible Yank strolling down the road, and there he was again, large as life, with that beefy close-shaven face and a uniform like it was just fresh
from the laundry and a smell of perfume. He has a small pack slung over one shoulder, and he carries a tommy-gun, very heavy and shiny. He looks tough but sort of unreal, like a soldier doll.

Hi, he says.

Hullo, I says.

Say, fella, he says, I'm real sorry about yesterday. Didn't know you had interests here.

Well, I have, I says, short-like.

Aw, come on, he says, we've had that bit. I'm your friend, honest, I'm a real friendly guy.

He was looking past me, watching for Belle, but she didn't show though I reckoned she was sure to be watching, and he knew it too. I didn't make any move to stand out of the gateway. He slipped the small pack off his shoulder and put it down by the gatepost.

Look, he says, I brought you some stuff. C'mon, take it, we got plenty. It's real good, tinned turkey and stuff. You got enough to eat? This'll vary your diet. C'mon, share it with the strawberry blonde, with my compliments.

So I thought, why not? We could do with a change from all that bullybeef, and after all where's the harm? Of course he wants Belle to remember him as a good provider, generous. But he's wrong. That's
what the Yanks never understand, they give people things and expect them to be grateful, and the people aren't grateful because they think the Yanks have got all this stuff and they just can't help giving some of it away, anyhow.

Me, I took it and thanked him nicely, because food's food at any time. He ambled off up the road again with that gun slung over his shoulder.

I took the pack inside and emptied it out on to the kitchen table. Belle watched—sure enough, she'd been watching from behind the curtains. It was good stuff like he said, a big tin of turkey and another one of fruit salad, and coffee and even a tinned cake, all just like Christmas. American fags too, Camels. She was still angry, but I think the fags helped, because she'd told me she liked them better than English ones.

Look, I says, we can use this stuff, and the Yanks aren't all that bad. It's just that they aren't really good at being soldiers. They're only playing at it, so they have to have lots of stuff to keep them happy. Not like us, we're used to not having much.

(I think Saul was right about this. Each country has a character of its own that comes out in its army. The Germans fought like engineers, the Russians like peasants, the Americans like movie cowboys, the
British like workmen, grumbling, doing their job and taking their pay. An army of mercenaries indeed—they're the ones to be careful of, the tradesmen.)

Then she told me some of the things that the Jerries had said about the Yanks in their propaganda. She said that it was the Yanks they really picked on, how corrupt they were and decadent and all that. They didn't seem to mind the British so much, though they seemed frightened of the Jocks.

It didn't surprise me none, and I told her the old one about the Jerry on the radio—you know—Ven der Britisch Schpitfeuer come ofer, ve duck—ven der Cherman Messerschmitt come ofer, you duck—ven der Americanisch Lightning come ofer, ve both duck.

That made her laugh, and it didn't help the Yank any. You see, he still hadn't understood. He meant the turkey and stuff as a present, but to her it was like showing that he'd still got his claim in. Like a down payment on a haitch-pee, with her as the property. She was still against him—that was all right, but I didn't want her sulky with me. I looked out of the window and the mist was quite gone and it was a real sunny day.

Cheer up, girl, I says, how about a picnic?

She looks up and says, We cannot go far.

No need to, I says, there's a good spot right out there at the back in your orchard.

We spread out the tins on the table and began to open them. The turkey looked all right, all white meat and jelly, very savoury. He'd even put in a little tin of cranberry sauce, the way the Yanks like it. There was mixed vegetables, biscuits and butter, cheese, some real coffee. We got it all ready and I picked out the spot in the orchard.

The grass had grown long all over, except in one part, a kind of square patch overhung by four very old trees. There was a lot of moss there, perhaps on purpose to keep an open space, perhaps just because it was an old part of the orchard. I laid a blanket there and a white cloth she brought out. When we put out the food it made a real good spread. I had my sten and the other tools laid handy, but I didn't really expect trouble, we was so well hidden on all sides, so still and quiet.

I looked it over and I says, joking like, Pity we ain't got no champagne.

Wait, she says, and she runs off through the orchard towards the wash-house. Soon she comes back with two bottles and there was dried earth on them and the little metal plates were all rusty so that they broke up.

Quite a lot of it was buried, she says, and the Boches have not found it all.

She showed me how to ease out the cork and when I poured it out it had a pretty good head on it, in the tumblers. It was the stuff all right, and it went down nicely with that turkey. We sat there on the grass talking and eating. It was really warm there and still under the trees. I was in shirt-sleeve order but presently I took my shirt off so as to get the sun, while she loosened her blouse and unbound that beautiful red hair so that it rippled down over her shoulders. We finished the turkey and the bottle about the same time, and I lay back and stared up at the sky through the branches hung thick with little half-ripe apples. She moved over so she was sitting close beside me, looking down at me. I felt warm and peaceful and sort of innocent.

She'd been talking about Paris and the painters and art and all that—I couldn't follow all of it. She looks at me and says, There is a marvellous painting by Manet, I feel like it now, it is called
The Lunch on the Grass
. There are two men and two girls, you know, having a picnic very like this. Only the men are dressed in the costume of gentlemen, trousers, waistcoats, everything. One of the girls is quite nude. They are like classic nymphs in Arcadie,
you know? You do not know, do you, you stupid big Englishman?

But when she said it she bent down and kissed me, very sweetly.

I'm not much on art, I says, but it sounds all right.

All right, she says, all right, is that all you can say? It is superb, a vision. I should like to be like that, an Arcadian.

What, sitting on the grass with no clothes on?

Yes, she says.

Dare you, I says, joking.

Here, she says, open the other bottle, the way I showed you.

Now, it took a bit of doing, breaking off the rusty wire and easing out the old cork and pouring it all nice and creamy into the tumblers. While I did it she stood up and moved away behind me and came back. Then I looked up and it really took my breath away. She'd slipped all her clothes off—I don't think she had much on anyway—and she was standing there with the sunlight dappling down on her, with her red hair all loose and golden about her face, and her beautiful big charlies and the tawny hair at her crotch and her long white legs. For a second she just stood there, then she eased down beside me, sitting with her legs tucked under her. She took up her glass and
drank it off in little quick sips, to steady herself like.

You really are a smasher, I says. You really are. I never seen nothing like you. I'll remember this all my days.

She looks at me, pleased, and sort of giggles.

Now you, she says.

I thought you said the gentlemen had waistcoats and trousers and all? I says.

Oh, that is in the picture, she says, we can do better. And she kissed me very lightly and reached over and began to tug at my belt.

Here, hold on, I says, but I just couldn't help it, with her half-helping and half-hindering, I got out of my trousers and soon I was sitting there mother-naked beside her.

Now it really is like the garden of Eden, I says, and we drank on it and refilled our glasses, but I wasn't sure.

Because she looked down at me and saw how I was and she says, Is there something wrong? What is wrong, Saul? Is it my fault?

No, I says, it's hard to say, Belle, but—it's like I'm a night man, see? I never taken a woman in daylight, see? not to look upon her nakedness. And I never had a red-haired woman before you, I says, and like this it makes me feel strange and it puts me down.

Lie down, she says, putting her hand on my shoulder.

No, I says, but the wine was strong in me and I lay back with soft grass under me. She leaned over me and she laughed in her throat and she says, I can see the apple trees reflected in your eyes.

Then she bent closer and I says, And I can see myself reflected in yours.

Then she bent right down and kissed me, her red hair hung all around my face and it smelt like ripe apples. She set herself astride of me and she says, Is it so?

And I says, No, and then, Yes.

Is it not right? she says.

And I says, Everything's right.

And so it was, after all, the best I ever had.

When it was quite finished she rolled off me and lay there in the grass with her eyes shut. It was my turn to lean over her.

Was it all right? I says.

And she smiles all rosy and says, It was all right.

Was it like the picture?

It was like the picture.

You're an artist, I says. If loving was an art, you'd be in the National Gallery in London. I've been there once, I says. I didn't like her thinking I was ignorant.

I eased down beside her. The sun was off the orchard now, but it was still very warm and still there under the trees.

There is a poem also, she says, by Baudelaire. And she went on saying the words in French, something about order and beauty looks calm—she began to tell me what it said, it seemed to mean a lot to her. What with the warmth and stillness and her so close I must have fallen asleep.

But we know what the poem was. It was Baudelaire's
Invitation to the Voyage
. I have it in front of me now, in the old edition of
Flowers of Evil
, published by Editions Verda, 11 Cité Dupetit-Thouars, Paris, and sold for twelve (old) francs. When did she give it to him? He couldn't read it, so he gave it to me. It has her signature in it, ‘Isabelle Pradier', in a careful unformed hand, in violet ink. The cheap pages have turned brown, and it falls open of itself at page 105, ‘
L'Invitation au Voyage
', as if the pages had been turned by the ghost of a hand. The dead poet begins to speak to the dead woman—

Mon enfant, ma soeur,

Songe à la douceur

D'aller là-bas vivre ensemble!…

My child, my sister, dream of the sweetness of going down there and living together! To love easily, to love and die, in this country which is so much like you! The hazy suns in its smudged skies have a mysterious magic for me, like those treacherous eyes of yours, smiling through tears.

Là, tout n'est qu'ordre et beauté,

Luxe, calme et voluptà.

There it is all order, beauty, luxury, peace, pleasure.

And he goes on to tell her how they will live in the old house with its dark lustrous furniture, its deep mirrors. Outside, canal-boats sleep at their moorings. Setting suns clothe the fields and streets in daffodil and gold. The world sleeps in warm light. It is all order, beauty, luxury, peace, pleasure.

She must have learned that poem at school and loved it and remembered it somehow behind the loveless couplings and the terror and the despair. She dreamed of that order and beauty and found it perhaps in the lush summer orchard.

Well (said Saul) what woke me up was a fly settling on my face. A hand gently brushed it away. The orchard was in shadow now and a mite chilly, so she'd tucked
the blanket around me. And the flies had found us, perhaps from the dead cows over in the field, and so there she was with her dress loose about her, sitting beside me on the grass waving the flies away so that I should have my sleep. When she saw me awake, she kissed me and went off into the house, leaving me to get my clothes and gear together.