Andrew Martin - Death on a Branch line

‘The square was formed against a massing of the Mahdi’s forces…’

‘The dervishes, as they were known?’ I said. ‘The fuzzie-wuzzies? They wanted to kick Egypt — and us — out of the Sudan?’

‘Correct,’ he said, ‘quite correct. In the square there were all sorts: York and Lancasters, Marines and other regiments besides, but I show the York and Lancasters only. You might have brought your friend in for a look,’ he said.

This was a turn-up: a bit of steeliness in his voice, as if I’d let him down.

‘He was in a hurry,’ I said, ‘- business up at the Hall.’

Hardy appeared to show no interest whatsoever in what might or might not be happening at the Hall, but carried on moving his fingers across the ranks of little soldiers. They wore khaki uniforms with white bands on the tunics and pith helmets and white puttees. Some wore moustaches, and these did not come standard but were various in shape and size.

I asked Hardy: ‘Did you paint them yourself?’

‘Sable brush,’ he said briskly.

‘It’s well done.’

This compliment seemed to check him for a second, but he made no acknowledgement of it.

‘We have three poses. First, standing,’ he said, indicating upright soldiers; ‘… then kneeling to repel,’ he went on, indicating others; ‘and finally kneeling to fire. It’s the Winchester rifle, of course,’ he added, standing back, as if for a better view of his own creation.

‘You haven’t modelled the Mahdi’s men,’ I said.

He blew out his cheeks.

‘Leave those chaps to the imagination,’ he said, ‘and they don’t bear thinking about too much. They slashed hands and arms first — then go for the head and body. Wouldn’t take prisoners, mind you, but then nor would we — not at Tamai. It was life or death.’

He advanced on the table again, and shifted a couple of the kneeling figures a few eighths of an inch.

‘The square was broken, you know,’ he said, looking up. ‘I don’t show it broken, but it was, and you saw the character of the British soldier: officers and men risking their lives for each other.’

All I could think to say was ‘Yes,’ for I’d been quite knocked by Hardy’s speech. He lived for this miniature display.

‘I should imagine that if you’d been in that lot,’ he said, indicating the display, ‘then everything that happened next in your life would be of quite minor importance.’

I thought of the Chief. Certainly he was not over-anxious.

‘… quite minor importance,’ repeated Hardy, who then took a deep breath and looked at me. ‘All my paints and all my brushes,’ he said, ‘… all stolen last week.’

‘Well, don’t look at me,’ came a voice from the doorway, and it was Woodcock the porter.

He leant against the door frame, smoking.

‘This is Mr Hardy’s little war,’ he said, addressing me. ‘Nice, en’t it?’

I kept silence.

‘His big war’s summat different,’ said Woodcock. ‘That’s against me. No — joking aside — he wants me stood down, don’t you, Mr Hardy? He’s got his monkey up with me, has Mr Hardy.’

‘Clear off, you,’ said Hardy.

‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ Woodcock said, ‘what with him always acting so friendly like, but he’s plotting against me. You want to be careful that board don’t get kicked over, Mr Hardy.’

‘And why might it?’ asked Hardy, looking down at the floorboards.

‘Somebody might just come in and give it a bit of a fucking boot,’ said Woodcock as he moved away from the doorway.

Mrs Handley was peeling apples in the middle of the trestle table that stood before The Angel. There were a couple of documents in front of her. Mervyn sat at his end with his terrier but without his ferret. His gun was propped against the end of the table.

My silver watch said five to one. Perhaps Hugh Lambert would be taking his second-to-last dinner. It would be brought to him in the condemned cell, and he would eat observed by guards, who would then watch him walk it off in the exercise yard. Later they might watch him smoke a cigarette or even, since he was condemned, a cigar.

As I walked up, the wife came out of the inn, and sat down opposite to Mrs Handley. It seemed that they’d become fast friends in my absence. I didn’t much fancy telling the wife I’d been put off by the Chief.

‘What are these, Mrs Handley?’ the wife asked, indicating the papers, and looking sidelong at me as I stepped up to the table.

‘Oh, pictures of Master Hugh,’ she said, and I saw that she was once again a little teary. She passed two photographs across to the wife, and I stood at Lydia’s shoulder and looked at them. In the first, Master Hugh wore a harlequin outfit and held a frying pan as if it was a banjo. He was in a beautiful garden and he was smiling, but it was a quiet, secret sort of smile, not the jollity you might have expected given his rig-out.

In the next photograph he was more himself, or so I imagined. You’d still say he was smiling but if you looked carefully his mouth was turned down. He wore a dusty black suit. He was in the country-side somewhere — some wild-looking spot — and indicating an object on the ground amid a mass of ferns.

Mervyn had risen from his place at the end of the table, and joined us.

‘That’s him up at the ridge,’ he said.

‘It’s up above the old quarry,’ said Mrs Handley. ‘He’d take Mervyn and me up there.’

‘See brock,’ Mervyn put in.

‘To look at the badgers,’ said Mrs Handley, by way of explaining.

‘He knew just when they’d come out of their holes. He would say it was the last train — the last train of a day that did it. The badgers would listen for it going away, and then they knew it was safe to come out.’

‘Was that another of his jokes?’ I asked, and Mrs Handley frowned at me.

‘Certainly not,’ she said.

In that case, I wondered what the badgers did for an alarm clock on Sundays, when there was no evening train.

‘Just look at that suit,’ Mrs Handley said, gazing fondly at the photograph. ‘You’d never believe he’d been at Eton, would you?’

‘You might not,’ I said, ‘but then again, he doesn’t look like a murderer either.’

Mrs Handley kept silence. The matter was not to be spoken of.

She rose to her feet, asking, ‘Would you two like some food?’

The wife asked, ‘Oh, what do you have, Mrs Handley?’

‘Cheese, pickled walnuts and salad. That do you?’

‘It sounds just lovely,’ said the wife.

I knew that Lydia could not abide pickled anything, but when she was ‘out’ with me she was always extra-friendly to whoever else was around, so as to let me see what I was missing.

Mrs Handley collected up the two photographs and put them on top of the pile of papers; then she went inside The Angel.

Looking directly ahead, the wife asked me, ‘Did your Chief turn up, then?’

‘He did.’

‘And where is he?’

‘He’s gone to the Hall.’

‘So you’ve given the whole matter over to him?’

‘Isn’t that what you want?’ I said, ‘So that we can get on with our holiday?’

The wife made no answer, but just looked at me for a while before nodding towards the front of the pub, and saying, ‘The bicycle’s gone, you might care to notice.’

‘Isn’t it round the back?’

‘It is not,’ she said.

She’d been onto that bicyclist from the very beginning. But his behaviour — and that of every other train-arrival — was no longer any concern of mine. Let the Chief figure it all out.

Mervyn was saying from his end of the table: ‘Mam writes letters to him, you know.’

‘What’s that?’ I said.