“Did you know Dick got it in Flanders?” she said and, from her expression, clearly judged I didn’t.
“Wounded?” I said.
She shook her head. “Fallen.” Then when the word didn’t quite provide the drama she required, she said, wide-eyed, “Gassed. We just heard, but it might have been a while ago. Not that he’s been a soldier long. Hard to think of Dick dead, isn’t it?”
Sentimental girl that she was, her eyes filled with tears and she got out a very small, clumsily embroidered handkerchief and pressed it to first one eye, then the other. “He was so reliable and decent, you wouldn’t think he’d have let himself be gassed.” She paused and screwed her eyes up. “It’s a terrible death, they say: you go blind and your lungs fill up with blood.”
My knuckles were tight on the handlebars and I found myself glancing at the bike, as if waiting to see a reaction. My throat tightened, thinking of gas, like at school how you’d imagine an itch when one of the other children had lice.
“But I’ve got his bike,” I said, and she said “Well, he won’t want it where he’s gone,” and she gave a sort of laugh. Which was in slightly bad taste, I thought, but she was upset, probably remembering she’d kissed him.
It preyed on my mind, and I found myself polishing Hercules every evening. Polishing away, as if Dick were coming back the next week. Before I went to work, I’d look in the shed to make sure Hercules had not been taken in the night. I had saved no more money, given that my landlady charged sixpence a week for the use of the shed, and I suppose having the use of the bicycle had dulled the urgency. But all the time now I was thinking it wasn’t my property. I’d heard it said that soldiers made wills before they saw active service, and perhaps there was someone somewhere who should by now be riding Hercules.
While I was agitating over these matters, Mr. Nugent came in holding his newspaper one day. He had acquired a habit of standing at the center of the shop, when it was empty, to proclaim news of battles or the King, like he was a town crier from the olden days and we peasants unable to read. John Quickseed always made a point of absenting himself. Today the news was that they were drawing up a list of all single men between eighteen and thirty-five who were fit for service. Mr. Nugent shook his head, looking not at Jakob or old Albert or Joe but at me.
“Mark my words,” he said: “it’s a list today, but it will be conscription tomorrow. Just as you’re getting the grasp of the business.” He looked sorrowful. “To think we made a uniform for the Kaiser when he was a young man.”
Then old Jakob spoke, and direct to me. “So, you vill be in invantry?”
“The poor bloody infantry,” said Mr. Nugent.
“In var,” Jakob said, using “V” for “W” and “F,” as he did, “invantry soldier eating rat and each other body.”
Mr. Nugent looked quite put out. “Not in our war,” he said.
Later on Joe said to me, “No British soldier would be a cannibal. Have the Russkies had any other wars?” Neither of us was going to ask Jakob. He wasn’t right in the head, and it wasn’t just a matter of his neighbors burning his workshop down.
But I thought that if Mr. Nugent’s newspaper was correct, it was, like as not, the “bloody infantry” would have me. I thought of old Dick and thought he’d been proud of the Bedfordshires—which was just as well, as he’d had to die for them. And I thought of Hercules and was bothered.
The afternoon was busy; three officers came in, one after the other. One officer was scarcely more than an excited boy about to join his regiment and was whisked off to be measured by Mr. Quickseed. Cavalry men were always high spenders. Then an older officer of engineers. We didn’t see many sappers in Duke Street; most of our gentlemen had private means and the Royal Engineers, as a rule, did not, but Mr. Nugent obviously knew him and I noticed he wore a purple-and-white ribbon, very small on his tunic. He too was taken through to the back.
Seconds later, a tired-looking gunnery officer came in. Much my age, I thought, and in some way, I thought at first, familiar. He wasn’t there for full equipping; he just wanted more shirts and gloves and to inquire about a cased compass he’d seen in the window.
“It’s for my friend,” he said. “He’s in the Flying Corps, and I thought it would be useful.”
I didn’t like to say that they would be standard issue, but anyway by the time we’d added up the shirts, gloves, and a dozen of our best India cotton handkerchiefs, he couldn’t afford it. He didn’t say it, but I knew; and, at that moment, I knew where I’d seen him before.