The Penguin Book of the British Short Story Page 12

  ‘Well, by Christ, d’you know that laugh has made me want to do something?’

  ‘Do something?’ queried O’Garra.

  ‘Yes,’ replied Elston, and standing over the prisoner in the hole, he pissed all over him. Likewise O’Garra, who began to laugh in a shrill sort of way.

  There is a peculiar power about rottenness, in that it feeds on itself, borrows from itself, and its tendency is always downward. That very action had seized the polluted imagination of the Irishman. He was helpless. Rottenness called to him; called to him from the pesty frame of Elston. After the action they both laughed again, but this time louder.

  ‘Hell!’ exclaimed O’Garra. ‘After that I feel relieved. Refreshed. Don’t feel tired. Don’t feel anything particularly. How do you feel?’ he asked.

  ‘The same,’ replied Elston. ‘But I wish to Christ this soddin’ fog would lift.’

  This desire, this hope that the fog would lift was something burning in the heart, a ceaseless yearning, the restlessness of waters washing against the flood-gates of the soul. It fired their minds. It became something organic in the brain. Below them the figure stirred slightly.

  ‘Ah!—Ah!—’

  ‘The ucker hasn’t kicked the bucket yet,’ said Elston. He leaned over and rested his two hands on O’Garra’s knees. ‘D’you know when I came to examine things; that time I thought you were asleep you know, and you weren’t; well I thought hard, and I came to certain conclusions. One of them was this. See that lump of shit in the hole; that Jerry I mean. You do. Well now, he’s the cause of everything. Everything. Everything. Don’t you think so yourself?’

  ‘Yes I do,’ said the Irishman. ‘That’s damn funny, you know. Here is what I thought. I said to myself: “That bastard lying there is the cause of all this.” And piece by piece and thread by thread I gathered up all the inconveniences. All the actions, rebuffs, threats, fatigues, cold nights, lice, toothaches, forced absence from women, nights in trenches up to your knees in mud. Burial parties, mopping-up parties, dead horses, heaps of stale shite, heads, balls, brains, everywhere. All those things. I made the case against him. Now I ask you. Why should he live?’

  ‘Yes,’ shouted Elston. ‘You’re right. Why should he? He is the cause of it all. Only for this bloody German we might not have been here. I know where I should have been anyhow. Only for him the fog might have lifted. We might have got back to our own crowd. Yes. Yes. Only for him. Well there would not have been any barrage, any attack, any bloody war in fact.

  ‘Can’t you see it for yourself now? Consider. Here we are, an Englishman, and an Irishman, both sitting here like soft fools. See. And we’re not the only ones perhaps. One has to consider everything. Even the wife at home. All the other fellows. All the madness, confusion. Through Germans. And here’s one of them.’

  ‘Ah!—’

  Elston glared down into the gargoyle of a face now visible to them both, the terrible eyes flaring up at the almost invisible sky.

  ‘Water—Ah!—’

  A veritable torrent of words fell from Elston’s lips.

  ‘Make the funkin’ fog rise and we’ll give you anything. Everything. Make the blasted war stop, now, right away. Make all this mud and shite vanish. Will you. You bastards started it. Will you now. See! We are both going mad. We are going to kill ourselves.’

  ‘Kill me—’

  ‘Go and shite. But for the likes of you we wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Water—’

  In that moment O’Garra was seized by another fit of madness. Wildly, like some terror-stricken and trapped animal, he looked up and around.

  ‘Fog. Yes fog. FOG. FOG. FOG. FOG. FOG. Jesus sufferin’ Christ. FOG. FOG. FOG. HA, HA, HA, HA, HA. In your eyes, in your mouth, on your chest, in your heart. FOG. FOG. Oh hell, we’re all going crazy. FOG. FOG.’

  ‘There you are,’ screamed Elston into the German’s ear, for suddenly seized with panic by the terrific outburst from O’Garra, he had fallen headlong into the hole. The eyes seemed to roll in his head, as he screamed: ‘There you are. Can you hear it? You. Can you hear it? You ucker from Muenchen, with your fair hair, and your lovely face that we bashed in for you. Can you hear it? We’re trapped here. Through you. Through you and you bloody lot. If only you hadn’t come. You baby. You soft stupid little runt. Hey! Hey! Can you hear me?’

  The two men now fell upon the prisoner, and with peculiar movements of the hands began to mangle the body. They worried it like mad dogs. The fog had brought about a nearness, that was now driving them to distraction. Elston, on making contact with the youth’s soft skin, became almost demented. The velvety touch of the flesh infuriated him. Perhaps it was because Nature had hewn him differently. Had denied him the young German’s grace of body, the fair hair, the fine clear eyes that seemed to reflect all the beauty and music and rhythm of the Rhine. Maddened him. O’Garra shouted out:

  ‘PULL his bloody trousers down.’

  With a wild movement Elston tore down the prisoner’s trousers.

  In complete silence O’Garra pulled out his bayonet and stuck it up the youth’s anus. The German screamed.

  Elston laughed and said: ‘I’d like to back-scuttle the bugger.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ shouted O’Garra.

  ‘I tell you what,’ said Elston. ‘Let’s stick this horse-hair up his penis.’

  So they stuck the horse-hair up his penis. Both laughed shrilly.

  A strange silence followed.

  ‘Kill the bugger,’ screamed O’Garra.

  Suddenly, as if instinctively, both men fell away from the prisoner, who rolled over, emitting a single sigh – Ah—. His face was buried in the soft mud.

  ‘Elston.’

  ‘Well,’ was the reply.

  ‘Oh Jesus! Listen. Has the fog risen yet. I have my eyes tight closed. I am afraid.’

  ‘What are you afraid of. Tell me that. There’s bugger all here now. This fellow is dead. Feel his bum. Any part you like. Dead. Dead.’

  ‘I am afraid of myself. Listen. I have something to ask you. Will you agree with me now to walk out of it. We can’t land any worse place.’

  ‘My arse on you,’ growled Elston. Where can we walk. You can’t see a finger ahead of you. I tell you what. Let’s worry each other to death. Isn’t that better than this moaning, this sitting here like soft shits. That time I fell asleep I did it in my pants. It made me get mad with that bugger down there.’

  ‘A thing like that,’ O’Garra laughed once again.

  ‘Listen,’ roared Elston. ‘I tell you we can’t move. D’you hear. Do you? Shall I tell you why. It’s not because there is no ground on which to walk. No. Not that. Its just that we can’t move. We’re stuck. Stuck fast. Though we have legs, we can’t walk. We have both been seized by something, I can’t even cry out. I am losing strength. I don’t want to do anything. Nothing at all. Everything is useless. Nothing more to do. Let’s end it. Let’s worry each other like mad dogs. I had the tooth-ache an hour ago. I wish it would come back. I want something to worry me. Worry me.’

  ‘Listen! Did you hear that?’

  ‘Well, its a shell. What did you think it was. A bloody butterfly?’

  ‘It means,’ said O’Garra, ‘that something is happening, and where something is happening we are safe. Let’s go. Now. Now.’

  ‘Are you sure it was a shell?’

  ‘Sure. There’s another,’ said O’Garra.

  ‘It’s your imagination,’ said Elston laughing. ‘Imagination.’

  ‘Imagination. Well, by Christ. I never thought of that. Imagination. By God, that’s it.’

  They sat facing each other. Elston leaned forward until his eyes were on a level with those of the Irishman. Then, speaking slowly, he said:

  ‘Just now you said something. D’you know what it was?’

  ‘Yes. Yes. Let’s get out of it before we are destroyed.’

  ‘But we’re destroyed already,’ said Elston, smiling. ‘Listen.’

  ‘Don’t you
remember what you said a moment ago,’ continued Elston. ‘You don’t. Then there’s no mistake about it, you are crazy. Why, you soft shite didn’t you say we had better talk, talk, talk. About anything. Everything. Nothing. Let us then. What’ll we talk about?’

  ‘Nothing. But I know what we must do. Yes, by Jesus I know. D’you remember you said these Germans were the cause of the war. And you kicked that fellow’s arse. Well, let’s destroy him. Let’s bury him.’

  ‘He’s dead, you mad bugger. Didn’t we kill him before. Didn’t I say I felt like back-scuttling him? I knew all along you were crazy. Ugh.’

  ‘Not buried. He’s not buried,’ shouted O’Garra, ‘Are you deaf? Mad yourself, are you?’

  The fog was slowly rising, but they were wholly unconscious of its doing so. They were blind. The universe was blotted out. They were conscious only of each other’s presence, of that dead heap at the bottom of the hole. Conscious of each other’s nearness. Each seemed to have become something gigantic. The one saw the other as a barrier, a wall blotting out everything. They could feel and smell each other. There was something infinite in those moments that held them back from each other’s throats.

  ‘Not deaf, but mad like yourself, you big shit-house, can’t you see that something has happened. I don’t mean outside, but inside this funkin’ fog, Savvy?’

  ‘Let’s bury this thing. UGH. Everything I look at becomes Him. Everything Him. If we don’t destroy him, he’ll destroy us, even though he’s dead.’

  ‘Let’s dance on the bugger and bury him for ever.’

  ‘Yes, that’s it,’ shouted O’Garra. ‘I knew an owld woman named Donaghue whose dog took poison. She danced on the body.’

  And both men began to jump up and down upon the corpse. And with each movement, their rage, their hatred seemed to increase. Out of sight, out of mind. Already this mangled body was beginning to disappear beneath the mud. Within their very beings there seemed to burst into flame, all the conglomerated hates, fears, despairs, hopes, horrors. It leaped to the brain for O’Garra screamed out:

  ‘I hate this thing so much now I want to shit on it.’

  ‘O’Garra.’

  ‘Look. Its going down down. Disappearing. Look,’ shouted Elston.

  ‘Elston.’

  ‘Let’s kill each other. Oh sufferin’ Jesus—’

  ‘You went mad long ago but I did not know that—’

  ‘Elston,’ called O’Garra.

  ‘There’s no way out is there?’

  ‘Uck you. NO.’

  ‘Now.’

  ‘The fog is still thick.’

  ‘Now.’

  The bodies hurled against each other, and in that moment it seemed as if this madness had set their minds afire.

  Suddenly there was a low whine, whilst they struggled in the hole, all unconscious of the fact that the fog had risen. There was a terrific explosion, a cloud of mud, smoke, and earthy fragments, and when it cleared the tortured features of O’Garra were to be seen. His eyes had been gouged out, whilst beneath his powerful frame lay the remains of Elston. For a moment only they were visible, then slowly they disappeared beneath the sea of mud which oozed over them like the restless tide of an everlasting night.

  T. H. WHITE

  The Point of Thirty Miles

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Frosty, coughing discreetly, ‘and ladies, I ought to have said. It is a hunt with the Scurry and Burstall that I am going to describe to you. The strangest hunt and the longest point that ever I was in. Mr Puffington hunted them in those days, a connection of his late lordship’s, in a remote way. His lordship’s grandfather married a Jawleyford, and his Great-aunt Amelia Jawleyford married a Puffington; so there was hunting in the family. The original Puffington used to hunt the Mangysterne country in the ’fifties; not a very keen master, by all accounts, but an amazing popular man.

  ‘The old Miss Amelia was never really a fox-hunting woman, and nor was old Puffington a born master. Between them they migrated to London and had a large family in the safety of Belgrave Square. The eldest son went into the city and financed sock-suspenders. It was a paying thing, and the Puffington I am speaking of, the grandson, found himself with a convenient house in the Scurry country and a town house in Pont Street. He took after his grandfather and accepted the mastership of the Burstall. My own father sent me to him, as a second whip, when I was a young lad.

  ‘Those were the days for foxes, as my lady and you gentlemen know, before the modern world was pupped: fat subscriptions, stout foxes, fences kept, and nothing to do but ride all day. It was before the niminy-piminy generation of motor cars to and from the meet, before the day of horse-boxes and bath-salts and changed-for-tea at four o’clock.

  ‘It was my last hunt with the Burstall: because my father was ready to take me back after my apprenticeship, to whip in for the F.H.H., and because nobody would believe the account which I gave when I got home after it. They seemed to think that I had been drinking – as, indeed, I had. I was forced to lie out that night, at a public-house, and after what I’d been through, drinking seemed to be the reasonable solution. But I suppose I ought to begin at the beginning. Mr Puffington was a generous master, mounting his hunt servants in the very best style, and I had a couple of horses for the meet at Wingfield Abbey, in their Saturday country. It was a grand scenting day, a little rain overnight and a cold air to fetch the smell out of the ground in the morning. The going was good; not slippery, for the year had been a mild one; and not holding, for it was early in the season and the summer had been fine. We had a nice dart to begin with; not much of a point, only a mile and a half, in fact, but a good four as hounds ran, and we did it in twenty-five minutes. Just at the end of this I came down at a post and rails. The horse was not really what I should have called a goer, and I fear that Mr Puffington had been done over him. The rails were in a deep bottom, with a good-sized ditch on the landing side. I saw this ditch as I was coming up to it, and put on steam as much as I could. The result was that we hit the top rail, for the horse was blown and never rose as much as he should have done. I have no recollection of what happened on the landing side. Somehow I tore Mr Puffington’s flask off my saddle, which he used to like me to carry for him, and had to pick it up whilst the others were waiting to come on. I also split my right hand on something, I thought a hoof, and the horse was going awkwardly in the next field. The kennel huntsman held that he had struck himself behind. Fortunately that fox was rolled over within a hundred yards of his point, in another minute, and this gave me time to shake my head and find out where I was. It must have been about twelve o’clock. There was a bit of a palaver, with people casting up and fussing about, and amongst them came my second horse. I hadn’t been intended to change over till late, but after I’d told the groom about my rails and moved the horse about in front of him, we decided to make the change at once. I had scarcely got my leg across the second mount, which was a cob-like chestnut up to Mr Puffington’s weight, when they were into a second fox out of Yardley’s spinneys. They took him quickly back into the spinneys; and out again, having been brought to their noses, on the far side of a rugged fence with an oxer on the one side and wire on the other. We could see across it perfectly, but it would have been lunacy to jump. The hounds came out of the spinney slowly and well together. They were half into the field, almost under the metaphorical shadow of the wire, when a grey creature that looked like a cross between the Benicia Boy and a bear jumped up amongst them. Personally, the first thing I thought of was a sheep-dog. There was nothing to be done at all. The Master, who was hunting them because the huntsman had asthma, was on the hither side of the wire with the field, and we whips had cleared off round the spinney. The grey creature just went straight away for a windmill on the skyline, and the hounds went after him, within a few yards, as soon as they had recovered from their surprise. The cry was amazing. The field all turned up the fence and went bucketing along for the nearest gate, which proved to be at the farthest corner of a big enclosure.
After that there was no hope of stopping hounds.

  ‘Gentlemen, I must not bore you with the details of the run; and in any case I couldn’t, because I have forgotten the country. The important things about it were that our quarry ran practically straight and that I was the only person on a fresh horse. I don’t suppose that you have ever hunted a wolf. He went away at a tremendous loping pace, a kind of wolf-burst which brought the hounds back to scent within a couple of fields. Then he must have settled to a steadier gait, and he ran like a human being pursued – straight away from his pursuers.

  ‘Like a human being,’ repeated Frosty meditatively, and the Professor handed him a cigar.

  The Countess said: ‘I thought the last British wolf was killed in the eighteenth century, or something.’

  ‘Quite possibly, my lady,’ replied the huntsman.

  ‘But, my dear fellow,’ said Mr Romford plaintively, ‘either yours was a wolf or it wasn’t, and I understand you killed it. You really must make up your mind. It makes a great difference, you know.’

  ‘It was difficult,’ said Frosty-face, ‘to make up one’s mind at all. Our quarry took us ten miles towards the North Sea, running parallel with the Thames, before half-past one. I can’t pretend that it was a cracking hunt, not after the first half-hour. The hounds simply ran away from us. When we had properly settled down to it, and after I’d had time to think and realize that the sun was behind my back, I took to the roads with the Master and a few others. After a couple of hours, we merely took the nearest road that seemed to lead eastwards and more or less within reported sights of hounds. We went on at these at a goodish pace, but naturally a boring one. There were only five or six in it, and after two hours and a half there was only one objective: to retrieve hounds somehow or other before dark. Every now and then, but very rarely, we had a bit of country and soft going to make up for the eternal trot and canter along the roads. At four o’clock there was only the Master and myself. He was in a temper and couldn’t bring his mount to canter. I offered him mine, but he had worked himself into such a fury about the hounds running riot that he wouldn’t listen to anything likely to bring him into salutary touch with them. At the same time I had a faint suspicion that he had by now reached the stage when he preferred his home to his hounds. He simply told me to get along as well as I could, and send him a wire from Dover if I caught them. Well, by now I was excited. Anything like a record is apt to excite a young man. So, although it was not enjoyable, and although my horse was beginning to fade, I set out on my travels with a rising heart. To be the only one up with the hounds on a historic run, perhaps on the most historic run of all! And then there was the nature of the quarry: the last wolf in England. I wondered where on earth it had come from, and wished that it might not prove to be a menagerie creature or a pet. It seemed not to be in the best condition, or else, I suppose, it would have beaten us with ease, but he took us thirty miles. Then, just as it was beginning to get dark, the tide turned in our favour. Scent became burning before it faded, the wolf began to pack up, the tired hounds were drawing up to him, and I established contact with the pack for the first time that afternoon. He was still a good way in front of us, gentlemen, but he was beginning to be a tangible identity. I even winded him myself: a whiff of sour bread and stale bananas. I suppose I ought to have stopped the pack; but he seemed just possible, and I was young. The glory of achievement went to my head.’