Читать книгу All That Glitters - Martine Desjardins - Страница 12

VI

IT TOOK ALMOST an entire week for the horde of aboriginals transported from the far corners of the Empire to unload our vessels. On the docks of Saint-Nazaire, the munitions crates alone formed pyramids fifty storeys high. When the soldiers received the order to carry them to the railway station, they believed they were being made sport of.

One of them shouted, “We’re here to fight, not do coolie work!”

Some of the men cheered, while others began to beat on the munitions crates. The situation was beginning to deteriorate. Peakes rolled up his sleeves and motioned me to follow him.

Paying no attention to the shoulders he jostled, he strode through the milling crowd, fully erect, stroking his embroidered arm with a dangerously calm air. When the men laid eyes upon him, they turned strangely timid, and even the loudest voices died down. Where had the lieutenant drawn that sudden authority, I wondered. Was it his imposing stature? His iron will? Neither, in the event. No, it came from the mark of gallantry he bore on his forearm, which proclaimed in no uncertain terms that he had faced that which most of his men—who were nonetheless prepared to face bayonets—feared above all else: the needle.

Without a word, Peakes cast his eyes all around, then suddenly froze. Something in the distance had caught his attention, something that I, because of my shorter stature, could not see. He turned and handed me his service revolver, even though I had my own.

“I’m handing over command to you. Make sure everyone gets back to work.”

And he strode off briskly. I did not immediately understand why the men had begun to nudge each other with knowing looks. That is, not until I stood on tiptoe and caught sight of a white coif fluttering above the sea of heads.

The lieutenant did not reappear again until we were at the railway station, as the men were filing into the cattle cars that would carry them to Armentières. A crowd had gathered on the platform. There were women wearing double-peaked caps, and chubby-faced children pressing tresses of onions and jugs of cider upon us as parting gifts, cheering as though we had already won the war, though not a single finger had so much as touched a trigger. They could only have been misled by Peakes’s triumphant swagger.