Lord of the Nutcracker Men Read online

  In the afternoon I went exploring along footpaths as the rain pattered down on my mac. I gathered sticks as I went along, because it was already the third of November, and the fifth was Guy Fawkes Day. I wished more than ever that I was back in London, for all my pals would be making their guys, stuffing sacks full of leaves and twigs, shaping them into arms and legs and bodies, dressing the figures in old clothes. They would wheel them through the city, collecting pennies to buy their fire-works. On Guy Fawkes Day they would light a huge bonfire and dance around it, then toss the sad old guys onto the flames. Except for Christmas, that was my favorite day of the year.

  But the rain had fallen for so long in Kent that all the leaves were rotting and all the sticks were too wet to burn. I searched along the footpaths until I found a rabbit's tunnel through a hedge and squirmed along it, into a wonderful, secret garden.

  Against the walls of a thatched-roof cottage lay piles of thorny branches, all clipped and dry. In a little greenhouse were empty sacks and a great bag of mulch just waiting for a boy to come along and take. At the back of the garden, beside a stack of planks at a short bit of wall, grew a wild tangle of bushes that were thorny at the top but smooth at the bottom. I tore whole branches away.

  I was hardly able to squeeze through the hedge with all I'd found. It was enough to make the biggest guy in Cliffe; the biggest guy in the whole world. The boys would like me then, I thought.

  But I had to be crafty about it. I dragged the sacks along the footpaths and hid them behind the wall at Auntie's garden. I waited for the sounds of school ending for the day—the bell and the shrieks of children. Then I waited a bit longer before I went home.

  Poor Auntie Ivy felt so sorry for me that she gave me cocoa with a spoonful of Horlicks. “Honestly,” she said. “I don't understand how a boy can get so wet and so muddy just walking home from school.”

  “It was raining awfully hard in the village,” I said, sly as a fox.

  “A parcel came,” she said. “Something from your father.”

  CHAPTER 4

  October 31, 1914

  Dearest Johnny,

  We hopped across the Channel yesterday morning and got to the front in time for tea. Well, not quite to the front, though it's amazing how close the battle is to home.

  When we got off the train, I heard the guns for the first time. Still very faint, they made little whumps, like someone plumping at a pillow. I could see flashes of light, low to the ground. In the rain and clouds it looked like a thunderstorm brewing.

  Fritz has made a proper mess of everything here. There are buildings that he has blasted apart. Some, just the chimneys are standing. There is a steady stream of people heading west, pushing all their belongings in wheelbarrows. We marched past them all night long, through a rainstorm, through mud like you wouldn't believe.

  Where a farmer had his field, it's mud. Where a village stood, it's mud. If it weren't for the crumbled heaps of stone, here and there a shattered tree, you'd think there'd never been anything else but mud. It swallows up the horses, and it swallows up the other horses that come to pull them out. I saw three dead ones standing in a row, looking as though they were grazing, but stuck like flies to paper. I saw a huge cannon buried up to its barrel, and twenty poor lads trying to get it loose.

  And the rain. Why, Johnny, it never stops. I think they might have told us about the rain, and I could have brought my umbrella. Sixty pounds I have to carry on my poor old back, so how much harder would it have been to bring a brolly?

  At any rate, I'm in the rear trenches now. We'll be moving up in two or three days, when the lads at the front are ready for a rest. A week after that I'll be back here myself. I have to say that it sounds like quite an easy life, all in all.

  Enclosed, for your British Army, one little soldier. Ask your auntie who it is.

  All my love,

  Dad

  Wrapped in old paper was the smallest man that Dad had ever made. Brightly painted, with a grin on his face and a silver tag on his wrist, he wore a British uniform, a smart new jacket. He carried a funny little rifle too tiny for his hands, like a toy soldier with a toy gun of his own. He was rooted in mud that bubbled round his boots and puttees like lumps of pudding.

  “Who is it, Auntie?” I asked.

  “I don't feel like playing games,” said Auntie. But she aimed her spectacles toward the little soldier. “How should I know who it is?”

  I stood the figure on the table. Auntie Ivy leaned closer. “Oh, for mercy's sake,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Johnny, that's your father.” Her laughter reminded me of the geese in Regent's Park. “That's his old toy gun, that little gun. He was forever playing with that.”

  I looked at the soldier, and saw tiny bicycle clips painted round his puttees.

  Auntie Ivy took off her spectacles. She laughed again, her silver hair wobbling. “Who but your father would sit in the trenches as the guns went off, carving a model of himself?”

  “I'm going to put him in the line,” I said. “Then I'm going to build a guy.”

  “What about your schoolwork?” asked Auntie.

  “Oh, I don't have any today.” Slyly, I added, “I don't think I ever will.”

  I put the model in the rear trench, just where my real dad had been when he'd written his letter. Across noman's-land, the nutcracker men watched with their fierce stares. I wanted to send my dad marching against them, but I had to build my communication trenches.

  I gouged them out, joining the front lines to the rear. The handfuls of mud became artillery shells, and I tossed them high in the air. I said it was a German barrage, and I made whistling sounds, and booms, as the mud rained down on my men.

  “Whoosh. Bang!” Dirt splattered across the soldiers. The little figures leaned, then fell, as though cowering into the dirt.

  “Quickly, now!” I ran my new soldier up to the front. He twisted through the communication trench as bullets whizzed around him. “Bang, bang!” I shouted, jabbing at the mud. He ducked and carried on, up to the front with the others. I took the drill sergeant and turned him toward my father. “You're here,” he bellowed. “Good show, Private Briggs!”

  I left him there and went away to build my guy. I pestered Auntie Ivy for stockings to make the arms and legs, for string to tie them all together. I crammed them full of branches, then pestered her for clothes.

  “Honestly,” she said. “Will this never stop?

  ” “But I have to dress my guy,” I said.

  She clucked her tongue. “I suppose I might have an old skirt you can have.”

  “A skirt?” I cried. “I can't dress my guy in a skirt.

  ” “Can't you pretend that all the men guys are up at the front?”

  “No, Auntie. That wouldn't do.

  ” “All right,” she said. “For heaven's sake.” She took me through the house and up the stairs, her enormous shoes clunking like artillery. “I don't know why you can't leave me in peace.”

  We went to the room at the back of the house. It was full of old furniture and a jumble of boxes. In the corner was a steamer trunk, and Auntie Ivy swept away the blankets and the bedsheets piled on top. She flicked the latches open.

  “These were your father's things,” she said. “I suppose you can take what you need.”

  I wanted the most wonderful guy, the biggest and best of any. But the clothes in the chest were the ones my father had worn as a boy, and they were too small for my overstuffed sacks and stockings. When I finished, I sat and cried. The guy looked like a monster that had suddenly grown from a boy himself, exploding from his shorts and cardigan. The cloth cap balanced like a button on the top of his gigantic head.

  “It's quite grand,” said Auntie Ivy when I showed her.

  “It's silly.” I gave the thing a kick in the chest. “He looks like Tweedledum.”

  It was too late then to take my guy to the village. The next morning it was too chancy, because I should have been in
school. So I left him in the potting shed, sprawled among the garden canes, and went back to the marshes.

  The day was cold and drizzly. I walked for miles and never saw a soul, and hours had never seemed longer. Finally, I trekked back to the village and sat on the step at the post office, sheltered from the rain by its overhanging floors.

  As I waited for the school bell, I heard hooves plodding on the road. Around a corner came the postman, rumbling down the street in his one-horse van. He wore a rubber cape folded back across his head, and didn't see me sitting on his bench. He tossed down the big mail-bags that he'd brought from the station, then dragged them to the door. But he stopped when he came up beside me.

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “Waiting,” I said.

  He was a kindly old geezer. He sat down beside me. “Where's your mother?” he asked.

  “In London,” I said.

  “And your father?

  ” “At the front.

  ” “Oh, you poor child.” He looked close to tears. “Here you are, dressed up like a lord. And you're only a poor little waif.” He patted my knee. “But never you mind. You come in and get warm.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  The postman had a little office at the back of his building, and we sat in there, between a cast-iron stove and a table that held boxes and pens and a telegraph key. He put a kettle on to boil, then gave me a roast beef sandwich that was wrapped in greasy paper. “When was the last time you ate?” he asked.

  “This morning,” I said. “My auntie made me breakfast.”

  He looked at me, then laughed. “Who's your auntie, son?”

  “Ivy Briggs,” I told him.

  “Ah, you're Johnny then. The boy who gets packages that I have to carry, don't I?” He pretended to shake his fist at me. Then he smiled and said, “Why aren't you in school?”

  “I don't like it there,” I said.

  “Ah. So you've come out here so your aunt will think you're there.” He pushed back in his chair. “Well, you're James Briggs's son all right, that's for certain. Many a day I found him sitting in one place when he was supposed to be at another.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Oh, Lord yes.” He got up to see to his kettle. “Usually I'd find him out at the station. He was mad about trains, your father. Quite the spotter; keen as mustard.”

  I laughed at that, my father watching trains. I only knew that he complained all the time about the noise and smoke they made.

  “Yes, keen as mustard,” the postman said again, as though he hoped I would laugh a second time.

  A bell rang then, a sharp jangle that made the old postman jump. “Oh, Lord,” he said. “Here's another one.”

  “Another what?” I asked.

  “Another broken heart.” He leaned over the table and clamped a set of earphones on his head. He closed his eyes for a moment, took up a pencil, and started jotting letters on a pad of paper. His letters became words, his words a sentence. Then he tapped a few times on his telegraph key, took off his earphones, and folded the paper.

  “Yes, it's another lad gone,” he said, with a heavy sigh. “Another soldier who won't be home.”

  He put his paper in an envelope. “I'd better be off,” he told me. “Crikey. It's a blasted job being a messenger for cold Mr. Death.”

  He put on his cape and a pillbox hat, and went out again to the drizzle. This time I went with him, around to the side of the building.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Did a soldier get killed?”

  “Another one, yes. ‘Died of his wounds,’” he said. “That's five for little Cliffe since the war began.”

  There was a bicycle leaning against the wall, below the cables and wires that came in from the telegraph poles. It was covered with rust, from the pedals to the little round bell on the handlebars. When the postman climbed onto the saddle, his feet sat flat on the ground. “Do you want a lift home?” he asked.

  “No, thank you,” I said.

  “Go to school, son. It's where a boy belongs.” He pushed himself forward, put his feet on the pedals, and wobbled away on his journey. The bell, when he rang it, sounded just like the one in his office.

  I looked up at the wires, tracing them from pole to pole as far as I could see. I wondered if they stretched somehow all the way to France, to the trenches and the battlefields. Then I wondered who sat at the other end, sending the news of soldiers dying. I had an image of cold Mr. Death in a black hood and black robes, tapping away with his skeleton fingers.

  I was frightened that the office bell would ring again, jangling through the empty building. It would summon me into the little room, and I would put on those earphones. What would I hear? A voice: a creaky old voice? “Died of his wounds,” it would say, and whisper a name.

  I hurried away. My feet pattered on the road, over mud and through puddles. I ran and ran along the footpath, until I heard a scream that stopped me cold. Only once had I heard a sound like that, when a dog had been crushed by the wheels of a coach. But those cries had ended quickly, and this went on and on.

  I was close enough to the little cemetery to see the tombstones standing among heaps of khaki-colored leaves. They were ringed by trees with twisted branches, like old umbrellas that the wind had torn apart. Beyond them was the farmhouse, the home of old Storey Sims. Square and white, with an upstairs balcony facing toward me, it looked like a tombstone itself.

  The screams were coming from there.

  A door opened, a slit of darkness on the whitewashed wall, and out came the postman with his cap in his hands. He put it on, mounted his bicycle, and went trundling down the lane.

  The cries never stopped. Around the cemetery the trees shivered, and a flurry of leaves—nearly the last— fell down among the graves. The sounds made me shiver too; they turned me to ice inside as I ran along the path. I wished more than ever that my mum would be waiting at home. It was the worst thing of all that Auntie Ivy was there, her sharp little nose poking into my business.

  “Auntie!” I shouted, as I barged through the door. “I heard someone screaming outside.”

  She didn't even care. “Where have you been?” she asked.

  “At school,” I lied. “But, Auntie

  —” “And how was school today?” Her little eyes squinted. “How was Mr. Tuttle?”

  “Fine,” I said. “But

  —” “Oh, really? Come into the parlor, Johnny.” She turned her back and went thumping down the hall.

  I followed her with a fear in my stomach, a dread of what I would find. On the table by the doorway were letters from my mum and dad, but I barely glanced at those. Sitting in the rocking chair, his legs crossed at the ankles, was the last man in the world I wanted to see.

  “Well?” said Auntie Ivy. “Now you can tell Mr. Tuttle about your fine day at school.”

  He sat as still as a cat that had spotted a mouse. He watched me in that same way, as though he would pounce if I tried to run. The black gown that he'd worn in class was folded over his lap. His hands rested on it, his long fingers touching at their tips. “Hello, Johnny,” he said.

  His face was lumpy and wrinkled, like a squash that had lain in the field through the winter. The backs of his hands were covered with scratches. Very slowly, he started flexing his fingers, and his hands moved together and then apart, like a heart beating on his lap. “You've missed two days of school,” he said.

  “Johnny, you're wicked,” said Auntie Ivy.

  Mr. Tuttle's hands kept pulsing. “No excuses?” he asked. “I expect to see you in my classroom tomorrow.”

  “And you will!” cried Auntie Ivy. “I'll drag him by the ear if I have to.”

  I cringed at the thought of that, of what the boys would say to see my auntie with me, as though I was still in infant school. “I'll be there, sir,” I said.

  “Excellent,” said Mr. Tuttle. “We're reading the classics now; I imagine you're acquainted with Homer?”

 
“Homer who?” I asked.

  He blinked. “The poet, Johnny.

  ” “No, sir,” I said.

  “Gracious.” His fingers beat faster. “Well, never mind. I live just down the road, and you can come and see me one evening a week—on Wednesdays, say—and Saturdays, of course. I shall tutor you in the classics, and get you caught up by the end of the term.”

  “Yes, sir,” I said. My few days of freedom had cost a terrible price.

  “We'll begin next Saturday,” said Mr. Tuttle, rising from his chair.

  Auntie Ivy gave me a black look, and went with him to the door.

  I fetched my letters and waited for Auntie to read them.

  CHAPTER 5

  November 2, 1914

  Dearest Johnny,

  I like to think that I've never lied to you before, but once I did. It was just a little lie, but you caught me at it—do you remember? At that moment, when I saw the look in your eyes, I promised myself that I would never lie to you again.

  Well, right now it's very hard. I think of you there in the house where I grew up and see you as a child playing beneath that enormous tree. I want so badly to tell you that everything is fine, that I'm having a splendid adventure, and that you shouldn't worry in the slightest about me. But then I remember that you're ten years old now, not really a child at all, though not quite yet a man. And it wouldn't be fair to you or me to tell you simple things like that.

  The truth is, Johnny, that I'm crouched in the mud like an animal, and the man at my side is crying and holding himself, and there is nothing between us and the Boche but fifty yards of the most haunted ground I have ever imagined. I have seen it only in the flashes of star shells, but it looks even worse for that, I think. In the fizzly light of the flares it is utterly white or utterly black, with no shadows in between.

  We came up to the line in a great rush, in the dead of night, running through the mud with our rifles and our packs. It is now the hour before the dawn. Old Fritz's guns are hammering at our trenches, and ours are battering his. The shells pass overhead with eerie ripping sounds, as though the sky is shredding into pieces. His guns twinkle far ahead, and ours flash behind us. But in the middle there is darkness, until a star shell bursts and flutters down. Then we see the ground heaving up, the dirt and mud all tossed about, and it looks like the Channel on a windy day, the earth a stormy sea.