Crystal Jeans - The Inverts

‘He’s going to be very cross.’

‘He should’ve thought about that before he got his disgusting old willy out,’ she said. ‘Shall we flip him onto his back?’

They put their hands on Henry. He was cold. And of course, he would be – he’d been lying in a shaded puddle of mud. Of course he was cold.

‘Towards me,’ Bart said. ‘One, two, three.’

Over he flipped. His back landed in the sludge with a wet smack and little droplets of mud splattered up. The whole front of his body was caked in black mud and little twigs. A coiled worm stuck to his shirt.

‘Oh my God,’ whispered Bettina.

Henry’s eyes had rolled up so only the whites were showing, but they weren’t fully white, not any more – the left one had a red bloom on it, like a poppy petal, from where his blood vessels had burst. He had brown sick coming out of his nose – it’d dribbled out onto the sock and mixed in with the mud – brown sick, black mud. His skin had a grey-purple hue in places, except for his face, which was the colour of frogspawn. He was unmistakeably dead. Bart reached out with a tentative hand and pulled the sock out of Henry’s mouth. Backed-up vomit poured out. A brown, lumpy porridge.

Bettina jumped up and lurched away, groaning. Bart fell back on his haunches and looked up at the sky through the trees. He could see everything with great clarity – the pale pear-green of some leaves jostling with the deep toad-green of others, the little knotty nubs sticking out of the uppermost branches, a gasp of milky blue sky.

‘How the hell have you got so good at that?’ he asked, watching as she brought her boot down on the upper blade of the shovel.

‘Because I’m always bloody digging,’ she said.

They were in a small clearing – a patch, really – some hundred yards or so into the thick and off the path. Brambles and bushes enclosed them all around. They’d looked for the gun before digging. Hadn’t found it.

‘Sometimes, for the big jobs, we get the Italian POWs to help. But most of the time, it’s just us.’ She paused and held out her right hand. ‘See that there? I’ve developed a callus.’

They were down to their vests and trousers. Bart had on a pair of wellingtons now, retrieved from the garden shed. He’d also brought the shovels, rope and a large spool of sackcloth.

‘So. Why a land girl?’

‘Oh, God,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘Don’t ask.’

‘Come on. Tell me.’

‘You’ll laugh.’

‘So?’

‘OK. It was because of the poster.’

‘What poster?’

‘That one they put up bloody everywhere . With the gorgeous woman in the green jumper? Holding the pitchfork? “For a healthy, happy job.” I imagined myself in her place. I had all these romantic ideas in my head. Fresh air, real work.’

‘For King and country?’ said Bart.

‘Oh, you know I don’t care about the King. Country, yes, but not the King. I wanted to not be me any more. At least that’s what I tell people who ask.’ She paused in her digging. ‘You know me well, husband. You know my motives better than anyone. I’ll give you one guess. You tell me why that poster so appealed to me.’

‘You fancied the girl.’

‘No. Well, yes. But there’s another reason.’

‘You wanted to be the girl.’

She made her hand turn in lazy circles. ‘Because…’

‘Because she was thin.’

‘Jackpot.’

He laughed. ‘You joined the Women’s Land Army to get thin?’

‘Subconsciously, yes.’

‘Well, it worked.’

She nodded. ‘And I love the work. So goody gumdrops.’

‘What do you do exactly, on the farm?’

She unloaded a shovelful of earth, her knees carefully bent. ‘I kill rats.’

He stopped. ‘You kill rats?’

She nodded. ‘I’m part of the anti-vermin squad. We kill rats and moles and the like.’

‘You’re a rat-catcher?’

She sighed. ‘Yes, it’s funny. I know it’s funny.’ She continued to dig. Sweat was darkening her white vest.

‘Can you remember the last time we were together?’ he said. ‘I mean in a friendly capacity.’

She shook her head.

‘I do,’ he said. ‘It was when the children came here to stay with our mothers for a week.1937, I think. We played Scrabble and I kept making rude words. Do you remember?’

‘I do now, actually.’

‘I even remember what the words were. “Teats” was one. “Scrotum” was another.’

‘“Quim”,’ she said. ‘I remember quim. We debated the spelling.’

He dislodged a fist-sized rock and tossed it away. A family of worms writhed around in the gap left by it. ‘I don’t think I ever grew up,’ he said.

‘I don’t think I did either,’ she said. ‘Not until the war.’

‘Yes. Imminent death and destruction has a way of ageing one.’

She was quiet for a while. And then she said, in a tear-scratched voice, ‘I wonder what – I wonder what murder will make of me.’ She rested her elbow on the spade handle, dropped her face into the crook of her arm and cried.

He watched her, wincing painfully. Were they allowed to show kindness to each other now? Had the old contract been torn up? ‘There, there,’ he said, reaching across and patting her shoulder. ‘I wouldn’t call it murder. You only meant to restrain him.’

‘Then what was I doing, running to fetch a gun?’ She sniffed and abruptly pulled the spade out of the earth.

‘Here’s one consoling thought,’ he said. ‘You’re in good company.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, look at this war. Men killing each other left, right and centre. Thousands of them. You might think that because it’s a war, it’s different, that the deaths don’t count. But they do . I’ve spoken to countless soldiers about this, and believe me, none of them are untainted by the killing. That’s why so many of them hit the bottle when they come home. They’ve killed human men. It takes its toll on the soul, you see. Remember what Jonathan was like? That wasn’t just nerves! He’d had to kill people, he’d had to stab them in the guts with a bayonet and watch the life leak out of them.’

Bettina was resting her arm on the shovel, listening to him.

‘What I’m saying is – rather clumsily I’m sure – is that what you’re feeling right now is shared by thousands of men in the free world. Only you didn’t kill a brainwashed man who was only following orders. You killed a rat, a big fat juicy rat, come to nibble on your crops – that’s what you’re good at, that’s what you do! And frankly, darling, I would’ve done the same. You asked me earlier what I would’ve done? Well, there’s your answer.’

‘Really?’ Both hopeful and cynical.

‘Really.’ There was a rustling in the undergrowth to their left and they stopped, gasping. A bird flew out, and then another. They were finches, mud-brown and darting. Not quite doves, but better than nothing.

They wrapped the body with sackcloth and tied it with rope at ten-inch intervals, like string around a joint of ham. They rolled it into the trench and then rested a while, smoking. Bettina wanted to say a prayer. Bart started to respond to this and she held up a hand, silencing him. ‘Just let me be a hypocrite for once, will you?’

She recited the Lord’s Prayer, faltering over some lines. ‘Do you want to add anything?’ she said.

‘Um, I suppose,’ he said, sitting straighter, ‘that Henry was a loyal servant and a diligent worker…? May he rest in peace? I hope he doesn’t go to hell, but if he does, we shall probably meet him there ourselves.’

‘Bartholomew!’

‘I don’t know what else to say!’

‘Well, perhaps we ought to leave it at that.’ She nodded – one firm and final nod. ‘Amen.’