Chapter 5
While the rest of B Company, including TomTom, scarfed down rations of bully beef on toast, Rook took Ash to the rifle range early, glowering the whole way there.
The range had been set up in the far end of a pasture where the East Surrey Regiment was encamped.
There were three targets affixed to hay bales.
Two on each end were classic bullseyes, but in the middle someone had hung a large, garish drawing of a bulbous-nosed, bespectacled and fanged Prussian soldier that looked nothing like Ashley’s beloved Wintters.
Still she could well imagine the lads would be hungry to riddle the paper enemy full of holes.
“Right, is it loaded?” Rook asked, sounding a bit bored as he nodded towards her heavy rifle.
The possibility hadn’t occurred to Ash. As she studied the Lee-Enfield, searching for an answer, the muzzle tipped towards Rook’s belly, and he used two fingers to casually aim it back down at the ground, glaring at her.
“If you don’t know, then it is. Understand?”
She nodded, scowling right back at him, ashamed of her mistake but also feeling the keen injustice of being blamed for her lack of training.
Rook held out his hand for the rifle, and Ash passed it to him, this time careful to keep the muzzle pointed down.
He slid back the top bolt. “Empty,” he said, tipping it to show her the cartridge slot. “Single round goes here.”
Taking a long cartridge from his ammunition pouch, he slipped it into the slot. “Push it forward. Lock. Cock. Fire,” he added, demonstrating each step slowly and then lifting the rifle and pretending to shoot. “Got it?”
Ash nodded and Rook eyed her skeptically down his long, sharp nose.
“Do you? You don’t look as if you do.”
“What do I look like?”
“Like you’re barely weaned.” He reversed the steps he’d just taken, unloading the rifle before handing it back to her. “Show me.”
Her hands fumbled like a child attempting delicate needlework as she wrestled through the motions he’d made look so smooth, but after a few excruciating minutes the gun was reloaded, and she looked up into his waiting eyes.
He glanced down at the battered watch he wore around his wrist and sighed as though she’d taken hours to get it right.
“Rear uprighted sights,” he said, pointing to the markers on the gun, and when Ash tilted her head imagining peering through those sights, he stepped closer, putting his arms around her and positioning her hands.
The faint scent of bergamot clung to his skin as he hefted the heavy gun roughly to her shoulder so she could look through properly. A thrill ran up her spine, but she focused on the distant targets until he stepped away, leaving a cool breeze in his wake.
She lowered the rifle, arms already tired, and Rook smirked, the left side of his mouth tipping up as though he could see right through her.
“Magazine,” he said, nodding to a metal sort of canister at the back of the gun.
He showed her how to pop it off and held it out for her to see that it was also empty.
Retrieving more shells from his ammunition pouch, he carefully filled the magazine.
“Ten rounds. Clip it in. Remove the safety. Fire. All right?”
“Yes,” Ash lied, to keep from admitting no, no, no, no, no.
“Really?”
This time she didn’t answer.
“Tell me if you don’t understand something. It’s all our necks on the line if you can’t tell your trigger from your todger."
“Ten rounds, clip it in, fire,” she sassed, causing him to smirk once more.
“Bayonet attaches at the top,” he said, demonstrating how to move the sharp spike into place.
“Do not play with this. Do not fuck with this. Do not run with this unless ordered to do so.” He shook his head.
“Ghastly thing. I’ve seen lads trip on their bootlaces—impaled straight through with their own bayonets. ”
“Like Antony,” Ash whispered, wide-eyed.
Rook tilted his head in question, and her cheeks began to burn.
“Antony and Cleopatra,” she mumbled. “Shakespeare.”
His eyes clouded for a moment as though memories of Shakespeare were so very far away, then he nodded once and snapped back to the present, holding the gun upright beside her.
“Taller than you, I reckon,” he said, though she was tall enough for a girl, and he wasn’t much taller.
When she reached for it, he pulled the rifle away and removed the bayonet, tossing it safely aside.
“You must have grown up in the country to know so much about guns,” she guessed.
“Must I?” he asked.
“Am I wrong?” When he didn’t answer she added, “Some fancy country estate?”
He sighed and rolled his eyes. “Holborn.”
“London, really? But you sound so posh.”
“That’s how you get ahead when you grow up somewhere like Holborn. Or Whitechapel,” he added, having sussed her out from the go.
She tucked her chin, a bit affronted that her own accent had given her away so easily.
“Do you remember how to hold it?" he asked, but no sooner had she lifted the heavy rifle than B Company began to flood onto the range.
Rook’s guttural sigh was almost a growl. It made Ashley’s blood run hot, so clearly did it illustrate her own feelings on the untimely interruption.
The other soldiers pushed and jostled and teased, all of them eager to show off their skills and one-up each other in front of their friends.
“Line up evenly or I shall line you up,” an older officer shouted, while another quietly observed, arms crossed, off to the side.
Ashley had hoped her trainee status might afford her some reprieve—at least allow her to stand at the back of the line and watch—but the others still jockeyed for position at the second target, and by virtue of stepping out of their way she became first of the first, with TomTom just behind.
As the older officer strode towards the middle swarm, boys suddenly sprang apart, filling out all three lines.
“Name?” he barked, and Ashley’s mouth went dry.
“Ch-Charley Ashley.”
“Sergeant Major Chapman.”
“Pleasure, sir.”
The sergeant major laughed out loud at that. “It is, ain’t it?" he asked with a grin. “Right, Ashley, you’re up. Give me one shot right down the middle and show the others how it’s done.”
She glanced nervously at Rook, who nodded from his position in the back.
Hoisting the gun to her shoulder felt unnatural, and her arm began to tremble, but she bit her lip, closed one eye, took aim, and fired.
Except nothing happened.
Rook coughed, and when she looked back at him, he made a motion with his finger, just as Tom whispered, “Safety.”
“Let’s go, Private, haven’t got all day,” Chapman called.
Blushing fiercely, Ash unlatched the safety and pulled the trigger once more. The gun bucked like a horse bitten by a gadfly, bashing her shoulder and chin, while everyone ducked as though her shot went very wild.
The officers converged on her. The red-faced sergeant major looked as though a vein were about to pop right out of his neck, and the other was obviously screaming, but all Ash could hear was the raging ringing in her ears.
She relatched the safety and slid to one knee, using her rifle as support while she rubbed her throbbing shoulder, but Sergeant Major Chapman jerked her to her feet.
This time she could hear his voice, soft and far away, like she was underwater.
“What the bloody hell was that? Have you forgotten every fucking thing you’ve been taught? You took that shot like it’s your first damn day on the range!”
“It is, sir,” she whispered—or thought she did. It sounded loud to her own deafened ears.
“Don’t be smart, Private. I’ll cut off your balls and serve them back to you for tea.”
“No, sir.”
“What’s the first thing you learnt in training?”
“Don’t know, sir.”
“Clearly. What’s the first thing you learnt in training?" he asked Tom.
“Both eyes open, sir.”
“Both. Eyes. Open. Sir,” Chapman repeated. “Both eyes open or you’ll miss your bloody mark by a furlong. Ring a bell?”
“No, sir,” Ashley confessed. What had she gotten herself into?
“Permission to speak, Sergeant Major?” Tom asked.
“Private—?”
“Tomasson, sir.”
“What is it, Tomasson?”
“Ash was recruited day before we left England. Replacement runner, sir.”
“I don’t care if Private Ashley is the King’s own bastard,” Chapman said, but most of the fire in his eyes had been replaced with weary resignation. “That gun will be the life or death of you, soldier, so you’d best learn how to use it. Back in line.”
There was a heavy sigh from the rear and then, “It’s my fault, sir,” Rook said, and Chapman’s head snapped around to the other officer.
“How many bloody new recruits do we have today, Lieutenant?”
The lieutenant shrugged.
“Captain asked me to teach young Ash how to shoot,” Rook went on. “We hadn’t gotten to both eyes open before you all arrived.”
“I reckon you should have started there.”
“We were still working on the difference between the stock and Ashley’s cock, sir,” Rook said, eliciting a round of snickers that made her ears burn.
“How was that going?”
“Not promising, sir.”
“Well bloody get back to it then,” Chapman said, throwing up his arms in defeat.
Thank you, Ash mouthed to Tom before following Rook to the back of the line, shaking with pain and embarrassment, unsure which of the two was worse.
As the exercise continued, she couldn’t bring herself to look him in the eye, but Rook stayed at her elbow, a surprisingly soothing presence, pointing out good habits and flaws, noting how the best shooters braced themselves, jamming the rifle under their arms to reduce and absorb the recoil.
“See how that lad breathes, loads, fires in one fluid motion like the weapon is part of his body—as natural as having two hands?”
Ash didn’t see it at all, but she wanted to, so she nodded just the same.
He sighed, not believing her lie, and massaged her throbbing shoulder. “How much does it hurt?”
She shook her head, and a sympathetic half smirk tugged at his lips once more.
“You’ll get there. Unfortunately you don’t have the luxury of time. You’ll have to work hard.”
Ash nodded, and when it was her turn again, he mouthed, Both eyes open.
And though it felt like the most unnatural thing in the world, she wrenched her eyes wide, jammed the butt into her armpit, took a deep breath and fired—flinching at the last minute in anticipation of the almighty bang and recoil.
The sergeant major rubbed the bridge of his nose, exhausted. “Again.”
Ashley reloaded, risking a glance at Rook, afraid to see his disappointed glower, but he unfolded his arms to give her a small thumbs up, and she turned more confidently back to the target.
For a moment she closed both eyes, breathing deeply, before hefting the gun up for another go, recalling the feel of Rook’s strong arms around her as he moved her hands to the proper positions.
Then she opened both eyes, braced herself, and fired.
This shot finally pierced the outer ring, and the whole first line erupted in a cheer that made the rest of the platoon crane their necks, expecting to see a perfect bullseye.
“We’ll make a marksman of you yet,” Chapman said, slapping her wretched shoulder.
Ash couldn’t help her grin as she headed towards the back of the line once more, and when she caught Rook’s eye and the smug expression on his lips, she burned with pride, warm in her belly and spreading all the way out to her toes.