Andrew Martin - The Somme Stations

‘Oui ou non?’

This was a clever stroke. Even I could understand the enquiry, and to say ‘Non’ would surely appear rude to Françoise… Only I kept thinking of the wife going all that way to Naburn in the rain for me, and I knew I would have to get out of it. I wished I knew the words for ‘I’m sorry but I have another appointment’, and I was trying to think of something along those lines when Françoise took a step towards me, put her hand delicately on the back of my head and, standing on tip-toe, whispered something into my ear. It sounded like the greatest secret ever told – in French. They both stood back and watched me, and then a brainwave came to me in the form of a single word. I recollected it from the time of the battalion’s arrival in France: the word that Captain Quinn would be ever-likely to say if he were French.

‘Malheureusement…’ I said.

Well, it did the job in an instant. Françoise fairly spun away from me and sat down with the two smoking sergeants, who she seemed to know of old. I made the remainder of my excuses to thin air, turned and quit the establishment. Ten minutes later, in the countrified-looking estaminet with the goat painted over the door, I was wondering whether I might in all conscience have gone with Françoise, only with the request: ‘Par main’. It was rather annoying that the phrase had only come to me at that moment.

There was a tap on my shoulder; I turned about, and there was Tinsley, still looking rather flushed.

‘Did you wash it?’ I said.

‘Leave off, Jim,’ he said. ‘… She was very nice. Will you stand me a beer, old man?’

I wondered if he’d be ‘old manning’ me forever, now that he’d lost his ring.

‘She was very polite,’ he ran on, as I called for the drink.

‘Well that’s something,’ I said.

‘At the end she said “termine” or “terminez”, or something.’

‘Right,’ I said, nodding.

‘Is that a good thing or a bad thing that she said that?’

‘Well, it depends which one it was.’

Tinsley blew out his cheeks.

‘Anyhow,’ he said, as I passed him his beer, ‘I’m a man about town now.’

‘ What town?’

‘I mean… man of the world.’

‘Get that down you,’ I said, indicating the beer, ‘it’s nearly train time.’

We rode back towards Albert in what might have been the very same carriage we’d come out in. As before, Tinsley sat over opposite me, and he had to crane around, while I looked directly forward, at the retreating dark spire of the Amiens cathedral. Our afternoon out had been the next best thing to an afternoon of home leave, of which there still seemed no prospect. Also as before, almost every man in the carriage smoked. Not Oliver Butler, however. He was facing me, and of course eyeing me too, from halfway along the carriage. It was as though he had read the letter I had in my pocket, but he could not have done. I’d guarded it closely since its arrival. The wife had unearthed the one kind of event at Naburn Lock that could have caused the sort of reaction to any mention of the place that I’d seen from Butler, namely a death. For a surety, he knew what had happened to this Matthew Waddington, and it was odds on that either he’d done for the bloke himself, or the twins had. The twins were favourite, of course, the pair of them being cracked, but I doubted they could do anything without their brother knowing. The next question was whether or how this connected to the death of William Harvey. Had Harvey known anything of the Naburn business, and threatened to speak out about it?

And then had Scholes known what Harvey had known? And had Oliver Butler put a bullet into him on that account?

Alfred Tinsley was leaning towards me. He had something to say, but he wasn’t saying it. The carriage was lit by low gas, giving just enough of a blue-ish light for me to see that the smoke over the men’s heads was mainly old; that it was stale smoke from past-cigarettes, signifying that most of the occupants were now asleep.

‘Jim,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Why did you give up the footplate?’

I recalled, for Tinsley’s benefit, the hot summer’s evening when I’d run that engine into the shed wall at Sowerby Bridge. I’d done it while employed as a fireman (well, passed cleaner anyhow) on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway. I told Tinsley of the two hours of questions from the Shed Super that had followed, explaining to Tinsley, as I had explained to the Super, that my mate had told me the brake had been ‘warmed’, but that it had not been, with the consequence that the steam sent into it on my first application of the brake immediately condensed, and the thing did not work.

‘Did the Super not take the point?’ said Tinsley.

‘He did seem to,’ I said, ‘but then I got the chop.’

Tinsley sat back, looking appalled. Oliver Butler, I noticed, was not asleep. But at least he was looking out of the window – at the dark French countryside, which was going past at the rate of about twelve miles an hour – and not eyeballing me.

Tinsley now leant forward again, then turned sideways… so that he too was looking out of the window, and I believed that in that instant he’d changed his mind about something. We began to run over some points, and since we were going so slowly, a great and prolonged clattering was set up.

‘Tom Shaw would go nuts,’ Tinsley said, looking at me once again.

‘Why?’

‘At this crawl.’

‘Traffic’s heavy to the front,’ I said. ‘The driver’s kept back by signals, you know that.’

The rattling did not let up. Presently, I asked, ‘Why does he not enlist, do you suppose? Your man Shaw, I mean?’

‘Somebody’s got to drive the expresses,’ said Tinsley. ‘The government directs all the railways now…’

‘I know.’

‘I don’t believe they’d let him go.’

I doubted that, but kept silence.

‘He’s not a coward, Jim,’ Tinsley said, leaning forward again, in a confidential tone. ‘He’s not afraid of crossing the top brass. I’ve known him pull some pretty bold strokes.’ As he spoke, we were leaving the points behind, coming back to a clear length of line. ‘Why, he’s capable of anything, is Tom Shaw.’

A match was struck somewhere along the carriage, and I said, ‘I suppose he doesn’t smoke, does he?’

‘Oh, he has the odd one,’ said Tinsley, and I was beginning to think once again that Tom Shaw did not exist. Yes, I had seen a photograph, but that might have been of anyone. I took one of my own cigarettes, and offered the pack to Tinsley. He took one, for perhaps the third time in his life, and we were back on another lot of points, clattering as before.

‘Even Tom Shaw has to obey signals,’ I said.

‘Signals, yes,’ said Tinsley. ‘But he’ll pay no mind to the running office. If he wants to get in somewhere ten minutes ahead of time, he’ll just do it.’

‘He ought to join up,’ I said.

‘Oh, I expect he will in time ,’ said Tinsley, giving a queer sort of smile, and I wondered: Does that mean that Tinsley will start speaking of him as an enlisted man, Shaw being a product of his imagination? Or was the smile meant to signify that he was letting go of a myth that had supported him? Then again, Tinsley didn’t seem the fantastical sort.

We were once more clear of the points, gaining speed a little. Tinsley leant forwards again, closer than before. He blew smoke to the left, so it didn’t go in my face, and said:

‘I did for Harvey, Jim.’