Читать книгу Seven Men Came Back - Warwick Deeping - Страница 3

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Private Kettle was laying the table. It was a very ordinary table in the room of a very ordinary French farmhouse, the floor of red tiles, the black stove just a black stove, the chairs plain and practical. Two family photographs hung on the wall, opposite the window, with a picture of the Bleeding Heart between them. One of the photographs had been smashed. It hung awry, and a piece of sacking applied to one of the lattices explained the disaster. At ten-fifty a.m. on that November morning, a German machine-gun, firing its last burst in the war, had put a stream of bullets through that farmhouse window.

Private Kettle, B Company officers’ mess-orderly and cook, was alive to the significance of the situation. A lean, sallow, wiry-haired cockney with a long nose and a mordant mouth, he rubbed a knife on the sleeve of his brown cardigan and listened to the voices of the two Frenchwomen in the kitchen. Grandma and granddaughter were assisting in the preparation of that most dramatic of dinners. The granddaughter wore a black shawl, and was comely. Grandma was incontestably a hag, toothless, leathery and cynical. They chattered.

Kettle, laying the knife on the table, supposed in the deeps of his cheerful but sardonic soul that no strange occasion would silence a couple of women, and Frenchwomen at that. The outer night preserved the utter stillness of a misty, dead, November day, and Kettle, with his head on one side, seemed to savour that stillness. He went to the window, opened a lattice, thrust his head out, sniffed the air.

“Marvellous!”

Even to Kettle the stillness was tangible but incredible. He would have said that you could cut it with a knife, and that the night was like a black, moist cheese.

“Yus, marvellous!”

The farm was too small to house any number of men, and it had been assigned or been seized upon by the officers of B Co. The officers of B Co. were to dine de luxe. You could show a light and no one would take a pot-shot at the window. Moreover, A and C Companies were responsible for a hypothetical front from which Jerry had retreated.

Kettle closed the window and burst into song. “I’m in love, I’m in love. You can tell by th’look in m’eyes.” Dinner was to be at 7.30, an affair of real plates and glasses loaned by grandma. Mr. Loviebond, the transport officer, was messing with Mr. Sherring’s crowd to-night, and if there was any wine to be scrounged in the village, Mr. Loviebond would produce it. Kettle picked up another knife and rubbed it on the sleeve of his cardigan. He stared at the picture of the Bleeding Heart, and being in every sense a modernist he could express surprise at the rummy placards they put up in this country.

“Oi, grandma, got those eggs for the omelette? Les oofs pour la omelette?”

Grandma had not. She brought to the communicating doorway a face that was like a creased and shrunken boot. She explained that all her hens had disappeared with the square-heads, but she was preparing some potage.

Kettle grinned at her. “Potage. Soup. Get a move on, old dear. Scootez vous. Got any vin rouge buried in the garden?”

“Pardon, monsieur?”

“Vin rouge. Jerry ‘ad it all, blast ‘im?”

He surveyed the table with its plates and cutlery. A clean sheet was serving as a cloth. Yes, it was to be some show, and Kettle, backing through the doorway into the kitchen, collided with the girl with the black shawl. Here was an opportunity that was not to be squandered.

“Pardon, mam’selle. Ain’t she sweet! Après la guerre finis.”

Grandma grinned at him sardonically.

“L’amour commence.”

“O, la-la! Got to take the bitter with the sweet. Right-o, grandma.”

His gallantry was not wholly successful, for the girl was holding fast to the soup tureen collected from the dresser, and it interposed itself between kisser and kissed. The piece of white china was as irresponsive as her pale face and her firm young bosom, and Kettle’s lean swarthiness was not her fancy. She shrugged him off. Her dark eyes were sullen.

Kettle, unabashed, supposed she was the haughty sort. It did not occur to him that she may have had a German lover. Also—that dinner was the serious business of the moment, and Kettle was very much responsible for it. The Q.M.S. department had sent up roast beef and one or two surprises, and Kettle—with the aid of grandma—was preparing the unexpected, a jam roll. Welsh rarebit was to be served as a savoury. Kettle fancied himself as the producer of Welsh rarebit. Also, the beef was roasting in the kitchen stove; and the stove, like Mam’selle of the Black Shawl, was somewhat unsympathetic.

He got down to hard tacks.

“ ‘Ere, I say old dear, got any more charbon? This sanguinary stove ain’t got the guts to finish off my roast beef proper. Charbon. What—finis? Gawd, then—wood, old dear, bois, even if we ‘ave to break up the furniture.”

Grandma produced some wood from an outhouse, and Kettle attended to the stove. He had become accustomed to producing hot meals under all sorts of conditions, and regarded as the workshop of the expert this French kitchen was by comparison equal to anything in Paris or London. Kettle’s nose appraised the savoury smell.

“Bon, grandma; très bon.”

The succulent roast would not be consumed solely by the officers. Kettle was proposing to enjoy in a corner of the kitchen what he described to grandma as “A damned good blow-art.” Grandma understood. She showed her toothless gums to the Englishman. Age has its hungers and its passion for pickings, and grandma had known lean years.

Kettle had his head over his pots and pans when Captain Sherring came in out of the November darkness. Sherring’s field-boots were muddy, and his trench-coat had been torn by barbed wire, and as Kettle turned to look at this beloved and familiar figure his lean face crinkled itself up into a smile.

“I’ve put your slacks out f’you, sir.”

Sherring nodded at the Frenchwomen. He looked tired. He was carrying his box-respirator slung over his shoulder, and he unhitched it and passed it and his tin hat to the waiting Kettle. His steel helmet had left a faint red line on his forehead.

“We shan’t want these damned things much longer, Kettle.”

“Gawd’s truth, sir.”

“There will be six to dinner. Dr. Pitt is coming along from B.H.Q.”

Captain Sherring went through into the inner room, and Kettle followed him.

“ ‘As Mr. Loviebond ‘ad any luck with the liquor, sir?”

Captain Sherring was looking at the window with its patch of brown sacking. He stood there as though listening for some familiar sound, and the night was soundless. His face was whimsical, sad, surprised.

“I don’t know, Kettle. It’s so strange.”

Kettle understood.

“Marvellous, ain’t it, sir?”

“This silence.”

“Might be the end of the world, sir.”

Their eyes met.

“It is the end of our world, Kettle.”

“There’s still ol’ Blighty, sir.”

Kettle saw Captain Sherring smile. It was not the sort of smile that you saw on the faces of other officers, but then, Captain Sherring was different from the other officers. To Kettle he was a bit unique, a queer, gentleman bloke who had curious quiet eyes and an almost gentle voice. Not one of your bucking, busy sort, but tough and quiet in a tight corner. A tall, thin, dark man who looked delicate and wasn’t, judging by the way he had stuck things. A bit mysterious to the Kettle mind, but none the less remarkable for that. Captain Sherring had a way of looking fixedly at a fellow and then saying something quite unexpected.

“It will be a different Blighty, Kettle, somehow.”

“Different, sir?”

“Not the place we went on leave to, but the place we’ve got to live in.”

Surprising but true! Kettle sniffed and looked thoughtful.

“That’s so, sir.”

Sherring went towards the door of the room that was to be his bedroom. Its colour was a utilitarian brown, and in Sherring’s experience all French doors were either brown or grey, but before entering the bedroom to pull off his field-boots and breeches and change into slacks he commented on the mess-orderly’s efforts.

“Real glass, Kettle, and a tablecloth! Good man.”

Kettle grinned with pleasure. Captain Sherring was that sort of gent. He always said something nice to you when something nice could be said.

“Speshul occasion, sir. Expect it will be a bit lively to-night.”

Sherring smiled at him and went into the bedroom.

“I expect so, Kettle.”