Sally Spencer: Blackstone and the Great War

‘Did you hear what I said,’ the corporal repeated. ‘We don’t want no civilians coming in and telling us how to do our job.’

‘You do know that your superiors are trying to pin Lieutenant Fortesque’s murder on one of your own people, don’t you?’ Blackstone asked.

‘One of my own people?’ the corporal repeated, as if Blackstone had suddenly switched to a foreign language. ‘What do you mean by that?’

‘They want to put the blame on someone from the ranks.’

‘And how are they my own people ? I’m no common soldier — I’m a corporal,’ Johnson said, tapping his stripes with two fingers, in case Blackstone hadn’t noticed them. ‘These mean that I’m a non-commissioned officer .’

‘And your old man — or is it your uncle? — is a porter at Billingsgate Fish Market,’ Blackstone said.

Johnson looked thunderstruck.

‘Who told you. . how did you know. .?’ he began.

I know because your accent gives you away, Blackstone thought — because there are just a few nuances in it that pin you down to Billingsgate, and if that’s where you’re from, it would be a bloody miracle if somebody in your family didn’t work in what’s possibly the biggest fish market in the world.

‘Having been given the right to sew two stripes on your sleeve doesn’t cut you off from the lads you grew up with — not unless you let it,’ he said.

But Johnson had stopped listening to him, and was clearly turning over in his mind something he’d heard — but not fully understood — earlier.

‘Hang on,’ he said finally. ‘If you think they want to pin the murder on one of the enlisted men, then that means that you don’t think it was an enlisted man that did it.’

‘I knew you’d get there in the end,’ Blackstone said.

Johnson’s brow furrowed again, as if so much thinking was starting to hurt his brain.

‘But if it wasn’t one of the men who killed Lieutenant Fortesque, then it has to be. . it has to be. .’

‘There’s a good chance it was one of the officers,’ Blackstone supplied.

‘But it can’t be!’ Johnson protested.

‘Why not?’

‘Because. . because they’re all gentlemen.’

It was terribly sad when a man chose to betray his own class in return for a few scraps from his master’s table, Blackstone thought.

But it was more than sad when the man accepted the mythology that the master used to justify his own privilege.

In fact, it was bloody tragic.

‘I’d like you to show me to my billet,’ he said.

‘It’s this way,’ Johnson said sullenly, turning to cross the square.

‘My bag, man!’ Blackstone barked in his best sergeant’s voice. ‘Pick up my bag!’

Johnson turned again, confused.

‘Uh. . sorry, sir,’ he said, bending down to pick up the bag.

And that made Blackstone feel sadder still — but at least it seemed to have amused the man strapped to the wheel.

They passed a smithy — its forge stone-cold, its anvil silent — and a dress shop inhabited solely by lonely naked mannequins.

They turned a corner, and saw at least two dozen soldiers lined up impatiently outside an otherwise nondescript house.

‘That’s the local knocking shop,’ Johnson said.

Blackstone smiled. ‘Really?’ he asked. ‘If you hadn’t told me, I’d never have guessed.’

‘Three pox-ridden whores servicing the whole bloody army,’ Johnson continued. ‘None of them ever last more than a couple of weeks, and they must have insides like an infantryman’s boot to be there for even that long, because sometimes they work round the clock.’

‘Have you ever taken the opportunity to visit the place yourself?’ Blackstone asked casually.

‘Me? Go in there? No!’ Johnson said vehemently. ‘Like I told you, I’m a non-commissioned officer.’

And once more, he could not resist the temptation to touch his stripes.

‘Never been there yourself,’ Blackstone mused. ‘Yet you still know there are three prostitutes inside. I suppose that’s because you’ve inspected the place as part of your official duties.’

‘That’s right,’ Johnson agreed — far too eagerly.

‘Or could it be that when there’s a troop rotation going on — when you know there’s no chance there’ll be any enlisted men there — you take the opportunity to slip in yourself?’

Johnson sniffed. ‘Most of them are pox-ridden whores,’ he said, ‘but there’s just a few — now and again — who are very nice girls.’

The house in which Blackstone had been assigned his billet was at the end of a steep cobbled street, almost at the point at which the village petered out. None of the houses close to it showed any signs of habitation, and he thought it was more than likely that this one had been chosen because it was as far away from the officers’ billets as it was geographically possible to be.

Blackstone’s room was furnished with a camp bed, two army blankets, an oil lamp, an enamel bowl and jug, a table and two rickety chairs.

‘It ain’t up to the standard of the Ritz — but then neither are you,’ Corporal Johnson said.

‘Just put my bag on the bed,’ Blackstone told him.

Johnson looked down at the carpet bag in his left hand, and a puzzled expression came to his face — as if he were suddenly asking himself how the hell it had ever got there in the first place. Then he dropped the bag on to the floor, and a cloud of dust flew into the air.

‘Are all the surviving members of Lieutenant Fortesque’s platoon in St Denis?’ Blackstone asked.

‘As far as I know, they are,’ Johnson replied, indifferently.

‘I need to talk to them,’ Blackstone told him. ‘I’d like them brought here within the hour.’

‘Would you now?’ Johnson asked. ‘Well, it can’t be done — not without Captain Huxton’s permission. And he doesn’t like making hasty decisions. Sometimes, he’ll think about them for days.’

‘In other words, he’ll block me any way he can,’ Blackstone said.

‘We’ll all block you any way we can,’ Johnson replied. ‘I told you before, we don’t want you here.’

‘You are aware that I’m the personal representative of General Fortesque, aren’t you?’ Blackstone asked.

‘I did hear something about that.’

‘And that if I have to send a telegram to the General, there’ll be consequences.’

Johnson chuckled. ‘The General’s not as powerful as you might think,’ he said. ‘Captain Carstairs will jump through hoops for him — because they’re from the same regiment. But Captain Huxton works for the Provost Marshal’s office, and he’s not quite so easily bullied. He might have to give way in the end, but he can stall for days, if he has to.’

‘Ah, I see!’ Blackstone said, as if he’d suddenly realized there’d been a misunderstanding. ‘You thought the telegram that I’d send would be about Captain Huxton.’

‘Wouldn’t it?’

‘No, it would be about you .’

‘Me?’

‘That’s right. I’ll say that you haven’t been cooperating with me, and ask him to use his influence in the War Office to have you transferred from the redcaps to something a little less pleasant — say, the sanitary engineers.’

‘You wouldn’t!’ Johnson gasped.

‘I would,’ Blackstone countered. ‘And do you seriously think that there’s anybody in the War Office who’s prepared to stand up to a general, just to save an insignificant little corporal from spending the rest of the war shovelling shit out of cesspits?’

‘I. . what if the captain finds out?’ Johnson asked worriedly.

‘He won’t find out,’ Blackstone assured him. ‘He’s the kind of man who couldn’t find his own arsehole, even if you gave him a map.’