Paul Brent was bound for Harlech Dump, those huts and little hillocks of
stores that Manon had seen on the road to Rosières.
Paul was not concerned with the economies of Harlech Dump. He had four
fifty-franc notes in his pocket, and in his head a list of articles that
would be very welcome at the Café de la Victoire. He wanted canvas,
oiled linen, screws, nails, door-hinges, window-fittings, paint,
paint-brushes, locks, an additional bucket, some extra tools. Harlech
Dump was like a quarry in a land that had no stone. It was a temptation
to any man involved in the primitive struggle for existence in such a
wilderness. It was food laid out in sight of men who were hungry, and
guarded by a bored N.C.O., two physically unfit privates and the
theoretical fence of international commercial arrangements. Brent wanted
to buy. He did not know what steps the Disposal Board, or whatever the
authority might happen to be called, was taking to rid itself of these
stores. Certain civilized needs cried out for satisfaction. Over there
in England people had houses to live in, a grocer and a butcher round
the corner, roofs to keep out the rain. Kent had not been pulped into
brick dust and Maidstone pounded into a rubbish heap.
Harlech Dump stood in the corner of a field where the Rosières road
crossed the railway line. The farm-house to which the field had belonged
showed as a red ruin against the background of a wood of poplars. The
dump had all the dreariness, the bald, boot-worn manginess of such
places. There was a stodge of mud about it that was drying with the
March wind and changing its colour from brown to a yellowish grey. Two
rusty Nissen huts faced each other across a roadway made of cinders.
Duck-board tracks lay about the place like huge dead worms oozing into
the sludge and the slime of the soil.
The dump looked deserted when Brent came down the hill, and crossed a
corduroy bridge over a big ditch. A brown figure sat on the doorstep of
one of the Nissen huts, scraping a pair of boots with a jack-knife. The
man was wearing no puttees; his buttons were dirty; he had not shaved.
Even at a distance of thirty yards Brent recognized all the significant
symptoms of a “fed-upness” that reminded him of Wipers and no leave.
The man turned his head like a sulky bird and looked at Brent without
curiosity. He was one Corporal Sweeney, in charge of the guard at
Harlech Dump. The guard was asleep and snoring inside the Nissen hut,
sleeping the sleep of the bored. There was no estaminet within ten
miles, and the few trains that were running passed by on the other side.
Brent walked up the cinder track. He meant to try his French on the
keeper of the dump, and if French would not serve he could fall back on
bastard English improvised for the occasion.
“Bon jour, monsieur.”
Corporal Sweeney went on scraping his boots.
“Go to hell,” he said.
Brent smiled as though Corporal Sweeney had uttered words of English
politeness.
“Parlez-vous français, monsieur?”
“Urn poo,” said the corporal; “learnt it in your billets.”
“Vous avez bien de choses ici,” Brent indicated the stores with a sweep
of the hand.
“What’s that?”
“I spik liddle English, monsieur. I find house—village—napoo—comme
ça. C’est triste, c’est terrible!”
“Come back to roost in the rubbish, have you?”
Corporal Sweeney’s broad face lost some of its stiffness.
“What village?”
“Beaucourt, monsieur. I work the night, I work the day; I put on roof.”
“Tidyin’ up the ’appy ’ome.”
Brent plunged.
“Is it possible, monsieur, peut-être que vous vendez les choses?”
“Do what, bloke?”
“Sell——?”
“Sell!” said Corporal Sweeney, “I’d sell the whole dump.”
And then he added, “I want to get home.”
The thought of “home” caused an emotional explosion in this bored and
unshaven man. It roused a sudden exasperation in him, an exasperation
that produced a feeling of sympathy for this supposed Frenchman.
Corporal Sweeney was home-sick, Paul homeless. The remedy seemed so
obvious to a man who spent a great deal of the day cursing the dump, the
authorities who made the dump, the authorities who kept the dump where
it was. Why the hell didn’t they sell it, give it away, or send it home?
Corporal Sweeney did not bother his head about official subtleties, the
difficulties of transport, the question of finance. He was not
interested in the pocket of the English Public; in fact, he was in a
mood to pick that pocket and distribute the proceeds to his pals.
“Capitalists! That’s what I’m doin’ here in this muck ’eap. Protectin’
the property of the bloke that pays taxes. He’s at home, makin’ money,
and lookin’ after the kids.”
He got up and walked about, and became aware of a fifty-franc note in
Brent’s hand. He flared.
“What’s that? Put that money away. Compris?”
Brent put it away.
“Mais oui, monsieur. Comme vous voulez. Mais, il faut payer——”
“Come ’ere,” said the brown man. “Lord love you, do you think anybody
knows what they’ve got in the dump? Course they don’t know. Got a list,
have I? Yes, and it’s all wrong; who bothers now the war’s over? What
d’yer want for the home?”
Brent made a pretence of trying to understand.
“You no sell, monsieur?”
“I want to get home,” said the corporal, “and the French—they want this
stuff. Me or Clemenceau or Lloyd George would settle the biz in five
minutes; the Tape-worms’ll take years. Come ’ere.”
He conducted Brent to a big hut that Paul had not seen before, and
kicked open the door. The hut was full of miscellaneous stores, like a
ship-chandler’s shop or an ironmonger’s warehouse. And Brent was
tempted. Like Corporal Sweeney he was a simple man in need of certain
simple things, and he wanted so little. If he helped himself, he would
owe the British Public something, but the British Public owed Paul Brent
something, his unclaimed gratuity and back pay. His one fear was lest he
should get the corporal into trouble.
“Catch hold,—prenez.”
“Mais, monsieur, l’officier vous en voudra, n’est-ce pas?”
“Officier—fini. They don’t know what’s here any more than I do. And
they don’t b——y well care. Voyez-vous?”
Brent looked round the hut. He saw the very raw material he needed,
canvas, oiled linen, paint, ironmongery, stuff to make the bowels of a
reconstructive artist yearn. He nodded, smiled at the corporal, and
shrugged his shoulders.
“You let me take some things, monsieur?”
“Catch hold,” said Sweeney.
Paul made his selection, but he made it like a Puritan, and with an eye
as to how much he could carry. A roll of canvas, a smaller roll of oiled
linen, a seven pound tin of red paint and one of green, two brushes,
four locks, six sets of butt-hinges, some screws, a keyhole saw, an
assortment of nails and tacks. He made a bundle of the plunder by
rolling it up in the canvas and lashing it with a length of cord.
The corporal looked on approvingly. He was a man who worked with his
hands, and the Frenchman’s nice and practical taste in choosing his raw
material piqued the domesticated craftsman in him. Moreover, this fellow
was not greedy.
“I’ve got an old hen house at home,” he said, “needs paintin’, and some
new tarred felt on the roof. Lord love a duck, wish I was there.”
Brent tried the bundle on his shoulder. He found that it was not too
heavy for him to carry.
“Monsieur,” he said, “tousand thanks. If officier says pay—I pay.”
“Officer—nah poo. The stuff will only rot here, old cock.”
Paul shook hands with the corporal.
“Monsieur, you visit Beaucourt. Fumez cigarette, drink glass of vin
rouge.”
“Bong, très bong,” said Corporal Sweeney; “me for Beaucourt, mossoo,
toote sweet.”
Brent took the road to Beaucourt with that bundle on his back. The wind
had dropped, and the western sky was a great arch of blue, with the sun
coming and going behind hummocks of white cloud. From the hill above
Harlech Dump Brent could see Beaucourt, a distinct chequer of red and
white between the purple of the woods, the broken spire of its church a
soft blue line against the blue horizon. He dropped his bundle and sat
down to rest on the bank side of the road, with the sunlight playing on
him through the branches of a road-side apple tree. There was a little
wood behind him and in it birds were singing.
Brent sat and looked towards Beaucourt, and his thoughts were of the
simplest. He was busy making a canvas ceiling or canopy for the kitchen,
and filling his windows with oiled linen. He had a boyish desire to go
home and to paint that front door, at once and without delay—a joyous
April green. It was very pleasant to work for Manon. She was so
delighted with things that he always felt that he wanted to fetch her to
see any new piece of work that he had completed. He liked to watch her
eyes and face light up.
Some day he would try his hand at painting a sign-board and nail it up
over the front door. “Café de la Victoire,” and underneath it her name,
“Manon Latour.”
But it was possible that her name might not be Manon Latour.
Brent smiled and, picking up his bundle, walked on towards Beaucourt. He
was well content with life, a life that was full of the fascination of
contriving, creating, conquering; a simple life in which hands and head
worked together. No thought of Louie Blanc crossed his mind. The evening
was too peaceful.