Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
Shadd had trouble finding the right way to start his long story.
Thinking about it, he looked unseeingly round the dimly lit stock room.
His roving gaze paused on the massive figure of Tom, uncomfortably perched on a crate of Gordon’s gin.
He started to sweat heavily and wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve.
“You gotta understand, guv, I didn’t know what he was going to do. I couldn’t’ve guessed, could I!”
“Let’s start with his name,” Alec suggested in his most soothing voice. He was afraid the landlord might decide silence was the better part of discretion before he’d given that essential bit of information.
“Clem—Clement Rosworth.”
Not John Smith, thank goodness! Ernie wrote it down and kept his pencil poised.
“How did you come to know Rosworth, Mr. Shadd?”
“We grew up just round the corner from each other, right here in Tottenham. Went to school together, went to Spurs games, kicked a ball round, and dreamt of getting on the team. Fat chance! Me dad was a tapster, so I went in as pot-boy at fourteen. Clem, he had a yen to see the world and got took on by a carter. I didn’t see much of him for a while, just when he’d come home to visit his mum. ”
“When was this?”
“In the ’90s. Must’ve been roundabout 1898, ’99, he met a girl somewheres not too far off—St. Albans, it was.
Baby on the way, you know how it goes, so he married young.
Well, being a travelling man, he was off on a job when she went into labour early.
The baby survived but his wife died. He brought the boy back home and his mother took him in—still had a couple of her own at home. ”
“Is she still around? The mother?”
“Nah, she died a few years ago. Dunno where the rest of ’em went off to. There’s none left hereabouts.”
A pity, Alec thought. “Go on.”
“Well, Clem, he worshipped that kid. Quit his long-distance carting because he wanted to stay nearby. I was a barman meself by then. Talked to some pals and found him a job as drayman with a local brewery.”
Ernie looked up from his rapidly filling notebook with a triumphant expression. Here was additional evidence for his beloved pub link.
“What’s the name of the brewery?” Alec asked.
“That won’t help you. It went out of business years ago. Clem got taken on by McMullen’s.”
“Where are they based? Local?”
“Hertford. Not too far. McMullen’s Hertford Brewery.”
“Right. Go on.”
“Then the War came along and Clem was called up in the first draft. So was I, but I ended up in France, and he got sent to Mess-pot.”
“Rosworth never fought in France?” So what became of the military link?
“Nah. Learnt to drive a motor-lorry out East. Me, I ended up as a mess orderly.”
“A nice easy billet.”
“Don’t make me laugh. Wasn’t that fun in the trenches, trying to cater to a bunch of officers that like as not had been blowed up before you got there, and often as not ended up eating the same rations as the men!
I can tell you, I carried a rifle more often than a soup-plate, and they drank their whisky straight from the bottle.
Come to think of it, it was soup near as nothing done me in.
Buried up to me neck in a trench I was, with a satchelful of thermos flasks of soup on me back.
They pulled the other blokes out easy, even the two that was dead, but that satchel got in the way and weighed me down. Nearly drowned in mud, that’s me.”
“And Rosworth?”
“Sand, that was his trouble. Sand and dust.”
“But he came through in one piece?”
“He did. It was his boy didn’t.” Shadd passed his hand across his face as if trying to hide the first real emotion he’d shown.
“Very close they was, like I told you. He missed his dad something dreadful. Lied about his age, didn’t he, thinking he’d get to go join him.
And where does he end up? In bloody France, in my outfit, under Colonel bloody Pelham. ”
“Ah!” said Tom softly. The others held quite still. After a short, brooding silence, Shadd continued.
“Sixteen, should’ve been knee-high to a brussels sprout, but he put on his growth early, did Sammy Rosworth.
All the same, that mud that came up to me neck, it was up to his nose, and I’m not a tall man.
Half drowned he was before they got him out.
The poor little bugger should’ve been sent back to base to recover.
Lieutenant Devine—he wasn’t a captain then, not till Captain Douglas bought it—he wanted to send Sammy back, I’ll give him that.
But Colonel bloody Pelham said he was fit to go right back into the next trench, which hadn’t collapsed—yet.
” Again he fell silent. “Devine didn’t argue. He wasn’t the arguing sort.”
“Sammy was caught in a second collapse and killed?” Alec asked.
“Nah. A shell did hit it that night—five men dead—but he was gone by then. Absent without leave. Deserting his post. The Redcaps brought him back at dawn. My sergeant—I was a corporal then—he talked to them and they said they was just returning him to the battle line. But that wasn’t enough for the bloody colonel.
He convened a scratch court martial—no judge-advocate nor nothing, nobody to speak for the kid.
He didn’t have a hope in hell, and hell was where he was, and we all was, come to that.
The bastard was bound and determined to convict him. ”
“The other two members of the court were…?”
“Come off it, guv, them’s who you’re here about, aren’t they?
He picked ’em carefully, them that wouldn’t go against him.
Major Halliday, he was so set on discipline, used to quote Nelson at us, you know: ‘England expects that every man will do his duty.’ Well, there’s this to say for him, he stuck to it himself.
Everything by the rule book, he was, which don’t always make the best officers, mind.
And Sammy broke the rules, there’s no arguing about that. ”
“And Devine?”
“Like I said before, he wasn’t the arguing sort.
Not a chance he’d go against that bastard Pelham and the major.
Sammy hadn’t got a hope. The sergeant rounding up the firing squad had a tough time of it.
Everyone made themselves scarce at the sight of him—the Boche weren’t pounding us for a change.
But he was a bully like the colonel. Twin souls, they was.
He found his ‘twelve good men and true.’ Not their fault, poor buggers, and I know for a fact most of ’em aimed to miss. But it only takes one.”
For a moment the only sound in the gloom was a faint murmur from the bar. Then Alec heard the softest of sighs, as if Tom, Ernie, and Mackinnon were all letting out the breath they’d been holding.
“Sixteen, shell-shocked, executed.” Enough motive for any father to contemplate murder. Unhappily, this father had carried through. “How did Rosworth find out? I didn’t think they notified families.”
“Nah. Killed in France was what they told him. He knew I was in the same outfit and came to me to ask. I didn’t want to break it to him, but he was desp’rit to know how his boy died, and did he suffer much.
So I told him. Then he had to know all the details.
They didn’t have too many deserters in the desert—nowhere to run to.
” Shadd shrugged. “Maybe I should’ve kept me mouth shut. ”
“Maybe you should have,” Alec agreed grimly.
“How was I to know he’d go berserk? He just got quieter and quieter when I told him how they’d blindfolded the kid and tied him to a post. Didn’t even turn pale—well, after a coupla years in the desert he couldn’t’ve, I s’pose.
They used to make ’em drunk first, I’ve heard, but that Sergeant Harris—Harrison—I’ve forgot his name, something like that—he didn’t give him a drop.
He pinned a bit of paper over his heart for a target.
The squad had their backs turned. When the sergeant gave the order to fire, they had to turn round, aim, and shoot.
Only a coupla shots hit the kid, but that did for him, all right. Only takes one.”
There was a long silence before Alec could bring himself to say, “When was it—how long ago, that you told Rosworth the story?”
“Not long after we was demobbed. I got the job of barman here soon as I got home, and he got his old job back. Must’ve been the first time I seen him after the War.”
“Obviously you told him the names of the officers involved. Did you mention Sergeant Harris by name?”
“Can’t remember. That was a long time ago. Prob’ly.”
“And the men on the firing squad?”
“Nah, not them. Didn’t have any choice, did they.”
“So it’s Harris we have to worry about. Harris or Harrison?”
Shadd shook his head. “Dunno. Can’t remember.
He wasn’t my sergeant and I think he got transferred not long after.
There’s ways of making even a sergeant uncomf’table.
Like the thought of a nasty mistake when he’s making the rounds at night, sentries nervous, took him for a Boche infiltrator. … It happened.”
“I dare say. We’ve got to find him. Your sergeant would know his name.”
“Dead.”
They would have to go back to the army records. “What about Rosworth? Where does he live? You said he still works for the brewery in Hertford?”
“McMullen’s. ’Sright. That’s how come I seen quite a bit of him over the years. He delivers here.”
“Regularly?”
“Nah. I let ’em know when I need a delivery. Sometimes it’s him, sometimes one of the other blokes that drives for ’em.”
“He drives a motor-lorry, you said?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes a horse dray. Depends what other deliveries they’re making.
We’re one of the closest customers, and you don’t have to drive through the Smoke to get here.
They deliver right down to the south coast. Use the lorries for that, of course.
They’re switching over to all motors, but it takes a few quid to spare. ”
“Give DC Piper their address. The brewery’s.” He waited till Shadd had complied. “Are they on the telephone?”