The Hill Page 8

  He closed his eyes and shook his head and glanced down at his boots again and tied the laces even tighter, then slowly wrapped the wet puttees about his ankles and secured them. He was only playing for time. His legs were still weak and he wanted to be quite sure that when he stood up he would be strong enough to walk.

  Williams gestured to Roberts to stand and for a moment Roberts felt inclined to disobey the order. He wasn’t ready for any more punishment, but he obeyed Williams and slowly climbed to his feet and stood up straight. Williams looked at Roberts’s trembling knees and Roberts glanced down at his twitching knee caps and smiled grimly to himself.

  “Right. Roberts, we’ll double back.”

  Roberts looked at the white buildings a good three hundred yards away and knew that he would never make it.

  “R.S.M.’s orders to rest me, Staff,” he said quietly.

  “I’m giving you an order. Double.”

  “In my army, Staff, you obey the first order.”

  “Roberts.” Williams walked towards him, then stopped and stiffened to attention.

  Roberts turned and saw the R.S.M. walking towards him. The R.S.M. halted and looked at Roberts with a frown then turned to Williams and asked him curtly, “What the hell happened to him?”

  “He dived into the pool, sir, before I could stop him.”

  Roberts’s body began to twitch and he couldn’t control it. ‘I’m shaking apart,’ he thought ruefully. ‘All my muscles are still trying to work overtime. It’s a damn funny feeling. Now my nerves are jumping. Let them jump,’ he thought. ‘I can’t bloody well stop them anyway.’

  The R.S.M. knew that Williams had given Roberts a hard time on the hill. ‘Ignore my orders, will you,’ he thought, looking at Williams. “I ordered half an hour and that’s plenty, and you’ve given him the best part of forty-five minutes. This time I’ll shut a blind eye to it. If any man’s asked for a hard time, it’s Roberts. But you’d better watch out, Williams, you’d better learn to obey orders.”

  “Get him back to his cell, Staff,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. Prisoner atten — shun ... ”

  “Walk him back.”

  “Forward. March.”

  Roberts walked away followed by Williams. The R.S.M. watched them until they turned behind the hill and were out of sight.

  The prisoners had laid out their kits and already the cell looked more like a barrack room. Blankets were neatly folded, webbing laid on top of the blankets, big packs on top of the webbing. Small packs, water bottles and kit-bags neatly laid out. The brasswork was dull and the packs filthy. All except Bartlett’s. His kit was still white and his brasswork dazzling from his last spell in detention.

  The prisoners sat leaning against the white-washed walls, their eyes glazed with boredom. All except Bokumbo, who sat leaning forward as he bossed the toecap of his boot with an old shoe horn. He took a great pride in his appearance and was looking forward to getting cleaned up and being a spick and span soldier again. He looked at the reflection of his black face in the black toecap of his boot and nodded his head. ‘Man. I’ll soon be so spick and span I’ll blind those screws and they won’t be able to fault me. Williams or nobody will be able to fault me.’

  He put the boot on, laced it up, wrapped the puttee round his ankle and sat looking at the two gleaming toecaps and clicked his boots together well pleased, then he glanced at the other prisoners. McGrath was sucking his teeth and staring blankly at the wall. Bartlett was picking his nose and Stevens was looking at a photograph. Feeling bored, Bokumbo strolled over and leaned against the wall and looked down at the photograph.

  Stevens glanced up at him and smiled. “That’s my wife.”

  Bokumbo looked at the photograph and smiled at Stevens. “She looks like a nice girl.”

  Bartlett walked over and tried to get a look at the photograph but Stevens had taken an instant dislike to him. He didn’t want to be too melodramatic about it but he had an uneasy feeling that Bartlett would soil his wife even if he only looked at her photograph. He held it against his chest and refused to allow Bartlett to look at it. So Bartlett, biding his time, turned his attention to Bokumbo. “Got a picture of your old woman, then?”

  “Sure.”

  “Give us a decko.”

  “Why the hell should I?”

  Bartlett turned to McGrath and nodded his head at Bokumbo. “Bet he’s got about ten kids.”

  McGrath laughed.

  Bartlett, with a waggish grin, winked at McGrath. “And I bet his old woman’s got a bone stuck through her nose.”

  McGrath laughed again. “Don’t push your luck, Bartlett.”

  “Monty,” said Bartlett, expansively. “They all call me Monty.”

  Encouraged by McGrath’s laughter, Bartlett grinned at Bokumbo again and decided to take more liberties with him. He knew a few niggers back home you had to take it easy with, but this one was a big soft article. The way he’d carried on with the R.S.M., the dope. Didn’t know what day it was, and calmed down as easy as that. ‘If he starts rucking,’ he thought, ‘I’ll soon have him eating out of me hand.’

  “Got a picture of your ’ome, mate?” he said, with his easy smile.

  “Sure,” said Bokumbo. “With my wife with a bone through her nose and my ten kids standing outside it.”

  Bartlett enjoyed the joke and laughed heartily and slapped Bokumbo on the back. “Up it, you mean, me old mate, don’t yer.” Then with a sidelong wink at McGrath. “This berk ’ere lives up a bleeding tree, don’t he?”

  McGrath threw back his head and laughed.

  “Mind I don’t come down after you, man,” said Bokumbo. Bartlett held his fists up in an old-fashioned, bare-fisted fighter pose. “Watch it,” he laughed, “or I might ’ave to do you over, me old son.”

  Bokumbo was amused. “You?” he laughed.

  “Considering you live with the bleeding monkeys,” said Bartlett with a condescending grin, “you ain’t so bad.”

  Bokumbo stopped laughing. “Thanks, white boss, you’re too bloody kind.”

  Bartlett, still laughing, still the life and soul of the party, turned to Stevens again. “What’s her name, then?”

  “Fay. Why?” Stevens didn’t want to be outright rude to Bartlett. He hated bad manners.

  “Let’s have a decko.” Bartlett snatched the photograph from Stevens’s hand and looked at it.

  “Here. Give me that back,” Stevens shouted, struggling to his feet.

  “Well,” said Bartlett, still looking at the photograph, “I wouldn’t mind ’alf an hour wiv her.”

  “Give it back.” Stevens made a grab at the photograph, but Bartlett pushed him away. “Old on,” he cackled. “Let’s ’ave a proper shoftie. Can’t see ’er legs. What’s ’er legs like?”

  Stevens, outraged, attacked him but Bartlett, still laughing easily, pushed him away as he walked backwards still looking at the photograph. Then a large black hand gripped him around the back of the neck and he wriggled as the fingers sank into his skin. He struggled and came face to face with Bokumbo.

  “Give that photo back.”

  Bartlett nodded his head. “Let go then. Only ’aving a lark.” He flicked the photograph towards Stevens. “Don’t break me bleeding neck.”

  Bokumbo let him go. Stevens picked up the photograph and wiped it on his shirt and sat down and looked at the photograph of his wife. He still could not believe that it had happened. I know I’ve been overseas a year,’ he thought, and this seemed to him a lifetime. ‘But how could she do this to me. She knows how much I need her. How could she do it? Leave me. Desert me and go and live with another man. It can’t be true. Surely she can’t do this to me. She loves me, she’s told me so a thousand times. I know she loves me. If only I could see her and talk to her. If only they hadn’t found me on that ship. If only I’d got home. I know I could have made her understand just how much I love her. And now, God knows when I’ll get home. Nine months in this awful place. With these ... these criminals.
’ He gazed at the photograph and his eyes filled with tears. Then he looked about him and seeing that no one was watching, he furtively kissed the photograph and replaced it in his pocket.

  The cell door opened noisily and Staff Burton walked in.

  “From outside, sounds like a monkey house. Looks like a monkey house. Smells like a monkey house. Didn’t I tell you to smarten it up?”

  In a fury he kicked everybody’s kit all over the floor. Stevens cringed away from him and Bartlett stood at attention, his face quite expressionless. Both Bokumbo and McGrath, standing together, looked angry. McGrath clenched his fists and his face whitened. Bokumbo glanced at him and shook his head.

  “I’d like to meet up with him on a dark night.” McGrath spoke out of the corner of his mouth. “How about you?”

  “I wouldn’t say no to that.”

  “You’d have him puzzled.” McGrath had his temper under control again. “He wouldn’t bloody see you coming on a dark night, would he?”

  Bokumbo laughed and Burton swung round on him.

  “Something funny?”

  “Sorry, Staff,” said Bokumbo.

  “Watch it, darkie, or I’ll have you. Right. Get your mess tins and parade outside.”

  The prisoners threw equipment and clothing left and right in an over-zealous search for their mess tins, then doubled out of the cell and into the corridor. Burton gave the order, “Left turn. Double” and they doubled away and half way down the corridor they passed Roberts and Williams. Stevens noticed that Roberts still looked groggy and remembering the state he was in when he stumbled towards the pool, his knees bent and trembling, his eyes glazed, he shivered and inwardly prayed that the Staff wouldn’t put him over the hill again.

  Williams opened the cell door and Roberts walked in. Williams stopped in his tracks when he saw the disorder in the cell and his face tightened with rage. He walked out of the cell and slammed the door and waited.

  *

  The prisoners doubled to the Field Kitchen and on the order they marked time. Facing them was a trestle table and on it stood a stew pot, a dixey of tea and a basket filled with hunks of dry white bread. The cooks stood by with ladles ready to serve the prisoners. Still marking time, the prisoners turned their heads when they heard drill orders shouted and watched a squad of prisoners, flanked by Staffs, double towards the cookhouse. On the parade square they marked time then the Staffs drilled them. They marched and counter-marched, doubled, turned and turned again. The Staffs were giving the prisoners a wet shirt and an appetite for dinner.

  The four prisoners, on the order, doubled away, then doubled back to the Field Kitchen and slow marked time as the watery stew and dark brown tea was ladled into their mess tins. Then a hunk of bread was dropped into the stew which overflowed over the rim of the mess tins. They doubled away towards their cell trying hard to balance the mess tins, but the tea and watery stew slopped on to the sandy ground. They doubled along the corridor and Bartlett grinned to himself. From long experience he had learned how to balance his mess tins and not spill a drop of the precious food. They marked time outside Cell 8 and Burton unlocked the door and they doubled in. Burton was about to follow when Williams walked out of a cell along the corridor and called out, “I’ll see to them, Staff.”

  “What?” Burton turned and looked at him.

  “I said I’ll see to them.” Williams rattled the keys in his hands.

  “Staff Harris told me to — ”

  “I take my orders from the R.S.M., Staff.”

  Burton looked at the new man standing a few feet away from him. ‘Cocky boy, this one,’ he thought, ‘needs taking down a peg. Not been inside the place five minutes and thinks he’s running it. Telling me — me ... ’ His face reddened and he felt his ears burning and a muscle twitched on the side of his jaw.

  “You’re new here, right enough,” he said, “but how about getting some service in before you tell me ... ”

  Williams interrupted him. “R.S.M.’s orders. I’m in charge of Cell 8. If you don’t like it then take it up with him.”

  “I will that.” Burton gave Williams a searching look. “But don’t try to come the old soldier with me, son. I’ve been up there fighting. Gawd knows where you’ve been.”

  Burton turned on his heels and walked away.

  Williams watched his retreating back until he walked out of the main door into the sunlight and out of sight. Then he walked into the cell and looked at the prisoners seated on the floor, eating greedily. They looked at Williams as they spooned food into their mouths.

  “On your feet.”

  The prisoners regretfully placed their mess tins on the floor and stood up. Roberts, who had been looking out of the window at the hill and secretly marvelling that he had run up and down it for so long, turned and looked at Williams.

  Williams addressed Bartlett. “Who’s responsible for the state this cell’s in?”

  “The Staff, Staff.”

  “Staff who?”

  “Don’t know his name, Staff. The Staff you was just chatting to.”

  Williams turned his attention to McGrath. “So he’s responsible?”

  “Aye. He went mad and kicked our kit all over the shop.”

  “Watch it, McGrath.”

  “I’m stating the facts of the case, Staff.”

  “Clear it up then.”

  “What about our grub?” Bartlett protested.

  “I said clean up this cell.”

  Williams stood and watched them as the prisoners sorted over their equipment and blankets and clothing.

  *

  Staff Burton was determined to find out exactly where he stood. He stepped out briskly, ignoring the intense heat, in search of the R.S.M. He was going to find out who was in charge of Cell 8 and get the matter settled one way or another. Seething with anger, he marched towards the hill. ‘New men coming in and trying to take over,’ he thought. ‘Making me look a fool in front of the prisoners. I’m not going to wear that.’ He saw Staff Harris standing gazing at the hill having a sly smoke, the cigarette cupped in his hand. ‘He’ll do,’ thought Burton. ‘I’ll have a ruck with him for a start.’

  “Staff,” he bawled, increasing his speed. “Like a word with you.”

  Harris turned and looked at Burton marching towards him, and grinned to himself. ‘What’s he in a flap about?’ he wondered. He took another sly pull at his cigarette and waited for Burton.

  “Yes, Staff?”

  “I want to know where I stand,” said Burton. “Am I or am I not on Cell 8?”

  Harris drew hard on his cigarette and rolled smoke out of his mouth with obvious enjoyment. “Well, you are and you ain’t, Staff,” he said with a grin.

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  Harris dropped the butt end on to the ground and kicked sand over it. “You’re any damn place the R.S.M. sees fit to put you,” he said, looking up from the ground and gazing into Burton’s eyes.

  “You put me on Cell 8.”

  Harris shook his head. “I didn’t. The R.S.M. did.”

  “Then I’m on Cell 8.”

  Harris shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “Make up your mind, Staff.”

  “He put Williams on Cell 8, too.” Harris watched a prisoner, whom he recognized as one of the Staff billet cleaners, walking across the parade ground. “Double,” he yelled. The prisoner took fright and doubled away.

  “Without first telling me,” said Burton, glaring angrily at Harris. “The R.S.M. gives me the job. Then gives it to this new fella. What the hell does he think he’s playing at?”

  Harris squinted up at the hill then sideways at Burton. “God didn’t tell anybody when he made the world, did he?”

  “I reckon I’ve got a genuine complaint, Harris,” said Burton.

  “About the R.S.M.?”

  “Who bloody else?”

  “Face him with it then.”

  “I don’t mind seeing him. I don’t scare easy like some here. But I reckon I ought t
o take this up with the Commandant.”

  “Burton.” Harris looked at him severely. “Go over the R.S.M.’s head and — Do I have to spell it out for you?”

  “O.K. I’ll complain to the R.S.M. first.”

  Harris laughed and held out his hand. “I’ll say goodbye to you now, then.”

  ‘You’re a creeper, you are,’ thought Burton. ‘R.S.M. can’t do any wrong as far as you’re concerned.’ Even as he thought this he knew that he wasn’t being fair to Harris. Old Charlie Harris wasn’t a bad bloke. If the rest were like him this place wouldn’t be so bad. He wouldn’t do you a bad turn and that’s more than you could say for some of them. He cooled down a little but he was still angry.

  “Who the hell does the R.S.M. think he is?”

  Harris knew the R.S.M. as well as any man did. He knew his strength and his weaknesses, and his secret thoughts about him were not always complimentary. But in many ways he admired him and under no circumstances would he ever hear a word said against him. He got angry now.

  “R.S.M. Wilson,” he said. “Twenty-five years’ service. He thinks he knows his job and he does. He thinks he can make soldiers out of muck, and he can. He thinks he’s a man and he is.”

  “And he thinks he’s God,” said Burton.

  “Staff, you’re joking,” smiled Harris. “He knows he is.” This was one of Harris’s favourite jokes and he had repeated it to the R.S.M.’s face more than once.

  “Staff.” The voice rang out clear across the prison grounds from the far side of the parade ground.

  Harris and Burton turned and saw R.S.M. Wilson and both slammed to attention.

  “Not you, Staff Harris. Staff Burton. Double over here.”

  “See if you can beat the quarter mile world record,” grinned Harris as Burton doubled away.

  Burton fixed his sights on the R.S.M. as he ran, still seething with anger. ‘The lunatic doesn’t have to make us run ourselves into the bloody ground,’ he thought bitterly. ‘Who’s doing punishment here, us or the prisoners? Out in the blinding sun all day, doubling prisoners, keeping up with them. We work damn nearly as hard as they do. Then the R.S.M. pulls tricks like this.’