“And then we used to have sausages,” said the Sergeant.
“And mashed?” said the Private.
“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “and beer. And then we used to go home.
It was grand in the evenings. We used to go along a lane that was full
of them wild roses. And then we come to the road where the houses
were. They all had their bit of a garden, every house.”
“Nice, I calls it, a garden,” the Private said.
“Yes,” said the Sergeant, “they all had their garden. It came right
down to the road. Wooden palings: none of that there wire.”
“I hates wire,” said the Private.
“They didn’t have none of it,” the N. C. O. went on. “The gardens
came right down to the road, looking lovely. Old Billy Weeks he had
them tall pale-blue flowers in his garden nearly as high as a man.”
“Hollyhocks?” said the Private.
“No, they wasn’t hollyhocks. Lovely they were. We used to stop and
look at them, going by every evening. He had a path up the middle of
his garden paved with red tiles, Billy Weeks had; and these tall blue
flowers growing the whole way along it, both sides like. They was a
wonder. Twenty gardens there must have been, counting them all; but
none to touch Billy Weeks with his pale-blue flowers. There was an old
windmill away to the left. Then there were the swifts sailing by
overhead and screeching: just about as high again as the houses. Lord,
how them birds did fly. And there was the other young fellows, what
were not out walking, standing about by the roadside, just doing
nothing at all. One of them had a flute: Jim Booker, he was. Those
were great days. The bats used to come out, flutter, flutter, flutter;
and then there’d be a star or two; and the smoke from the chimneys
going all grey; and a little cold wind going up and down like the
bats; and all the colour going out of things; and the woods looking
all strange, and a wonderful quiet in them, and a mist coming up from
the stream. It’s a queer time that. It’s always about that time, the
way I see it: the end of the evening in the long days, and a star or
two, and me and my girl going home.
“Wouldn’t you like to talk about things for a bit the way you
remember them?”
“Oh, no, Sergeant,” said the other, “you go on. You do bring it all
back so.”
“I used to bring her home,” the Sergeant said, “to her father’s
house. Her father was keeper there, and they had a house in the wood.
A fine house with queer old tiles on it, and a lot of large friendly
dogs. I knew them all by name, same as they knew me. I used to walk
home then along the side of the wood. The owls would be about; you
could hear them yelling. They’d float out of the wood like, sometimes:
all large and white.”
“I knows them,” said the Private.
“I saw a fox once so close I could nearly touch him, walking like he
was on velvet. He just slipped out of the wood.”
“Cunning old brute,” said the Private.
“That’s the time to be out,” said the Sergeant. “Ten o’clock on a
summer’s night, and the night full of noises, not many of them, but
what there is, strange, and coming from a great way off, through the
quiet, with nothing to stop them. Dogs barking, owls hooting, an old
cart; and then just once a sound that you couldn’t account for at all,
not anyhow. I’ve heard sounds on nights like that that nobody ‘ud
think you’d heard, nothing like the flute that young Booker had,
nothing like anything on earth.”
“I know,” said the Private.
“I never told any one before, because they wouldn’t believe you. But
it doesn’t matter now. There’d be a light in the window to guide me
when I got home. I’d walk up through the flowers of our garden. We had
a lovely garden. Wonderful white and strange the flowers looked of a
nighttime.”
“You bring it all back wonderful,” said the Private.
“It’s a great thing to have lived,” said the Sergeant.
“Yes, Sergeant,” said the other, “I wouldn’t have missed it, not
for anything.”
For five days the barrage had rained down behind them: they were
utterly cut off and had no hope of rescue: their food was done, and
they did not know where they were.