Maxwell's War Read online

  ‘Well, it’s hardly surprising,’ Pickering laughed. ‘It’s been bloody years.’

  ‘Are you still local?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘No. I live in Brighton now. Got my own metalwork business. You know, body-shop stuff. It’s doing well. Me and a mate also run a shooting gallery on the pier.’

  ‘Glad to hear it. So, you’re also a re-enactor?’

  Bob shrugged. ‘I do my best. I joined the Sabre Society a while back. Now I’m with the Ninth Voltigeurs. As a matter of fact, it was you who got me into all this.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘It was a Wednesday. I shall never forget it. The room was … let me see … H4?’

  Maxwell nodded, smiling. He’d placed many a corpse of delinquent children under those floorboards.

  ‘You told us all about Napoleon; his white horse, Marengo; how he used to stand on the battlefield, have a ten-minute kip, then move on. Well, I don’t mind telling you, Mr Maxwell, I was there. Bloody there, I was. I started reading up on the man and his times. Couldn’t get enough of it. I make all my metal bits myself, you know, of the uniform, I mean.’

  ‘Ninth Voltigeurs,’ Maxwell quizzed him. ‘What period?’

  ‘1810 mostly. Course, I do whatever’s required. I was with the 21st of the Line at the Jena re-enactment a couple of years back. Oh, and did you see Sharpe’s Waterloo on the telly?’

  ‘I did,’ Maxwell nodded.

  ‘I was on Maurice of Nassau’s staff in that. Bloody nice bloke, Sean Bean. We had a kick about between takes. It’s a bitch to kick a ball in hessian boots, I can tell you.’

  Maxwell slapped the man’s arm. ‘I’m sure you can, Bob. Right, Marechal de Logis it is. You don’t mind playing a baddy?’

  Pickering laughed. ‘All depends on whose side you’re on,’ he said. ‘And a sergeant’s a baddy in any language.’

  The other re-enactor stood half a head shorter than Bob Pickering. His name was Martin Bairstow and he too had been at Jena a couple of years back. Unlike Pickering, however, Martin’s motives for buckling on stock and gaiters were entirely liquid. Jena, far from being a Prussian rout by the curly-headed Murat and his Cavalry of the Reserve, was one long bierfest for Bairstow. By the Thursday morning, he was so pissed he fell over his own musket and broke his ankle. Heigh ho, the fortunes of war. Bairstow said he could ride, so Bairstow instantly became a Troop Sergeant in the Castlemartin Yeomanry. Maxwell would get to his sabre drill later.

  By mid-morning, Maxwell had the semblance of a unit. More like a young Dad’s Army than the grumblers of the scariest nation-in-arms in the world, they stood to attention, turned right or left on command and even fired imaginary volleys from muskets of air in three rank formation.

  There was always one, though, wasn’t there? Giles Sparrow, one of Maxwell’s Own from Leighford High, had sat up all night on the Saturday so as not to miss this. Unbeknownst to Maxwell, he’d been more than egged on by Helen McGregor. Angst-ridden in case she didn’t make the screen test, she was determined someone she knew would get close to Marc Lamont. Perhaps it was Sparrow’s youth, perhaps it was his course (GNVQ) but something certainly made him march out of time with the rest.

  ‘Keep your heads up!’ Maxwell snarled at them as they marched in column round the curve of the dunes and out onto the flat. ‘By Tuesday, you’ll all have a four-inch leather stock under your chin and a knapsack that weighs sixty pounds. Your musket will weigh another twelve and that doesn’t include your water canteen, bayonet and sword. Keep those feet up. If the costumier gets it right, the boots they send won’t be shaped left and right and nothing’s going to fit you anywhere. By the time you’ve got your necessaries undone, you’ll have wet yourselves. Keep time. Keep time. I’ll get you a drum by tomorrow.’

  ‘He’s a miserable old bastard,’ grunted Martin to Bob as they marched along the beach without musket or pack.

  ‘Yeah! You’d better believe it,’ chirped in Giles, stumbling over the driftwood that God had thoughtfully placed in his way. ‘You should see him at school.’

  Whit Monday was better. The props had arrived from Basingstoke and most of the morning was spent getting used to the weight of the cowhide packs and trying not to trip over the short, curved swords.

  ‘Wear them high,’ an exasperated Bob Pickering told his grumblers. ‘High on the hip; that way you’ll stay on your feet.’

  ‘How many of these guns work, Bob?’ Maxwell asked.

  ‘They all do.’ The Marechal de Logis had checked.

  ‘Amazing! Right.’ Maxwell stood in front of the line of Marie-Louises, the raw recruits who, for today at least, were the invading French army. ‘Today,’ he said, ‘we have naming of parts.’ He held the musket across his chest. ‘The script,’ he told them, ‘calls for three volleys to be fired. From what little I know of the film world that probably means about twenty takes, which means you’ll have to do what I’m about to show you sixty times.’ The drill-sergeant from hell caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. ‘Giles, I hope you’re concentrating,’ Maxwell beamed. ‘I shall be asking questions later. Now, there are twelve movements. First, the cartridge,’ he fumbled in the leather pouch slung across his shoulder and produced one. ‘I hope you’ve all got your own teeth, because you’ll need them to do this,’ and he bit the end off the paper. ‘Any paper allergies, cut along to the regimental surgeon, who in 1797 wouldn’t have the first clue what you were talking about, so there’s a comfort, isn’t it? Right, you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. Now pour the contents down your muzzle.’ He dropped the musket butt to the sand and tipped the ball and powder into the tube. ‘This is where we cheat,’ he said. ‘If this gun was real, you’d have to pour some powder into the priming pan – here – and close your frizzen. As this thing only fires blanks, that’s not necessary. Now, push the ball and paper wad down with this.’ He hauled the ramrod out of its pipes and poked it down the barrel. ‘Now the fun bit,’ Maxwell brought the musket upright again and half-cocked the serpentine. ‘Half-cock – that’s you, Giles,’ he clicked again, ‘Full cock – that’s the rest of us.’ He swept the weapon up to the level, pointing out to sea. ‘I was always taught never to point one of these at anybody, but for verisimilitude, you’ll have to. And, on command.’ He lined up his sight with a windsurfer curling in to the bay. ‘Fire,’ and the gun bucked against his shoulder and the white smoke blew back in his face. There was applause and laughter. Maxwell’s nose and eyes were a mask of black powder. ‘Oh, yes,’ he laughed with them, ‘you’ll get a bit dirty on this job.’

  Indeed they did. For the next hour, forty-four angels with dirty faces slogged through the ritual of 1790s musket drill. Pieces of cartridge paper littered the dunes. Ramrods tumbled in all directions. Every so often there was a distinctly 1990s oath as a musket butt hit somebody else’s foot. The most disastrous was the firing in three ranks, where the third rank fired too soon and there were scorched ears and chronic headaches.

  ‘Feu de billebaude!’ roared Maxwell over the noise. ‘That’s fire at will to you, boys!’ But by that time, most of the will had gone and it was tea-up.

  Maxwell squatted with his sergeants on a sweep of the dunes while the squaddies nursed sore thumbs and wiped the powder off their faces. ‘Could be worse,’ he said to Bob Pickering.

  ‘It’ll be better when we’ve got the uniforms,’ the old grumbler told him.

  It wasn’t really. As Maxwell the consummate quartermaster had predicted, hardly anything fitted anybody. Historically, his heart fell in Tottingleigh village hall which had been commandeered by Eight Counties Television as a green room. Nathans and Bermans were splendid costumiers, but they’d been told 1810 for the epic in question.

  ‘Jesus!’ Bob Pickering muttered as the blue and white tailcoats were unloaded from the huge vans. Maxwell said something similar when the 1806 pattern shakos with their blue pompons and brass plates were delivered.

  ‘What?’ muttered Pickering, ‘No striped trousers?’

/>   ‘Never mind,’ sighed Maxwell. ‘This lot wouldn’t know a sans-culotte from a CD – whatever that is.’ He hauled out a rather handsome jacket with scarlet chevrons on the cuff. ‘Yours, I think, Marechal de Logis.’

  When Miles Needham arrived for his daily inspection that afternoon, the lines looked pretty good. In fact, he and Maxwell, sauntering down the ranks like generals at a review looked decidedly out of place in their modern get-up; Needham in his Versace, Maxwell in his Man at C&A.

  ‘Okay,’ Needham nodded, endlessly signing bits of paper on Angela’s clipboard, as she hovered in the Great Man’s wake. ‘Can they move at all?’

  ‘Well,’ Maxwell hedged. ‘French Light Infantry marched at seventy-six paces a minute. How does twenty grab you?’

  ‘Let’s get on, then,’ Needham snapped, checking his watch. ‘My so-called stars are arriving tomorrow. I want this thing wrapped up.’

  Maxwell took his position on the flank of the front rank. Bob Pickering took up his at their head.

  ‘Maxwell’s Marauders!’ Pickering bellowed, sword in hand. ‘The company will advance.’

  Tickled as he was by the name Pickering had suddenly dreamed up for the fighting men of Willow Bay, Maxwell instantly regretted giving their only drum to Giles Sparrow. The lad, already having visibility problems with the weight and outsizeness of his headgear, was stumbling over his gaiter straps. Only one thump in three hit the centre of the drum. Maxwell took it from him. ‘Any drummers here?’ he bellowed as the second rank got vaguely in step with the first.

  A tentative hand went up somewhere in the middle of the line. Obviously not a regular, Maxwell noted; the boy had volunteered. ‘I used to gig with a band in Hove,’ the lad called.

  ‘Right,’ Maxwell sighed. ‘Not exactly the Edinburgh Tattoo, but there is a war on. Change places, you two. Giles, get that man’s musket.’ After an initial kerfuffle in the line, the new drummer got into step and it wasn’t at all bad, except for the odd fill and a tendency to slash the air with his sticks in a vain swipe at a high hat.

  ‘Eyes left,’ Pickering barked as the three ranks trudged past General Needham. Almost everybody obeyed that, but two or three of them collided with the rank in front.

  ‘I think we’ll skip the Ordre Profonde,’ Maxwell called to Pickering. ‘Too profonde for this lot by a long chalk.’

  He turned to assess the reaction of the General and his Staff, but the General had gone, leaving an embarrassed Angela dithering on the dunes. ‘Halt!’ Maxwell bellowed and everybody gratefully took five.

  The Head of Sixth Form ploughed back through the dry sand, past a variety of technicians tinkering with cameras and sound booms that looked like stuffed grey poodles on sticks.

  ‘Been called away, eh?’ he said to Angela.

  ‘Er … I’m sorry, Max. Miles wasn’t very impressed I’m afraid. Can you work on them a bit more?’

  ‘We’ve got another three or four hours of daylight,’ Maxwell said. ‘But if you think they’re bad on foot, wait till we get them into the saddle.’

  The saddles were wrong, of course. So were the bits and bridles. All of it modern riding-school stuff by way of a Thelwell cartoon. But Maxwell estimated that about point nought eight per cent of the viewing public would know that, so it really wasn’t worth making a fuss about. He also noted that the horses hadn’t had their ears sliced off or the last two digits of their tails docked, which would certainly have been the case in the 1790s, the Cadogan dock being then in fashion, he shook his head and sighed at what a politically correct world he lived in now. They even advertised the fact on the telly – ‘PC World’, the irritating jingle ran. How green was his valley.

  There was of course no grey for the trumpeter and no guidon for the troop. Still, the frogged blue jackets bore a passing resemblance to the Castlemartin Yeomanry and the Tarleton helmets didn’t look too ridiculous with their leopardskin fur fabric effect.

  ‘Left shoulder,’ he growled at the Johnnie Raws who were getting hopelessly snarled up in their straps. ‘Pouch belts are always worn on the left shoulder. One of the many things they got wrong in Far From The Madding Crowd. Still, with Julie Christie around, who was watching?’

  Only twenty-one of the extras claimed to have had any riding experience and that would have to do. ‘We might just get away with this, bearing in mind the script. Listen carefully. I shall say this only several times. This,’ he took the bridle of the nearest bay gelding, ‘is the head – that,’ he pointed along the animal’s flank, ‘is the arse. Both ends can do you a nasty, but in the scheme of things, the teeth are arguably nastier than the shite. The point is, you won’t have much warning of either. And any one of these things,’ he crouched and hauled up the patient animal’s forehoof, ‘can kill you. At Waterloo, Wellington nearly had his brains splattered all over the place by his horse Copenhagen; but then, the bugger had been on his back for twelve hours.’

  ‘Yeah,’ grunted Martin Bairstow, ‘I know how he feels.’

  ‘The problem,’ Maxwell drew the curved sabre he’d buckled around his hips, ‘is that not only will you have to gallop on one of these, you’ll also have to do it with one hand on the reins. None of you knows anything about riding long, with your legs straight in the cavalry tradition, so how the Hell you balance, I don’t know. These are the words of command – “Walk, march, trot”. Steve.’

  ‘Yeah?’ the drummer of Maxwell’s Marauders shambled forward.

  ‘Don’t play the trumpet in that band of Hove of yours, do you?’

  ‘Nah.’

  ‘Well, pretend. I’m sure those clever technical people can dub you in later. After ‘Trot” you blow the bugle twice – once for canter, once for the gallop. All of you start off with your swords thus,’ he rested the blade against his shoulder, ‘at the slope. On the command “March”, you bring it upright, like so. When you hear the second bugle call – whatever it sounds like – you extend your sword arm straight. That’s all there is to it.

  Right.’ He sheathed his sword and stood aside in the puddles the receding tide had left. ‘Prepare to mount.’

  ‘Hang on,’ Bairstow said. ‘Aren’t you leading this one, then?’

  Maxwell looked appalled. ‘My dear boy, I can’t actually ride. You lads are on your own.’

  It wasn’t great, but the thunder of eighty hoofs along the level stretch of Willow Bay, albeit at a trot, had a thrill all its own. Bearing in mind that forty-four extras had to represent at least three hundred and that divided into two armies, this called for many takes and superlative skill on the part of the cameramen and editors. All that would start tomorrow. As it was, by the end of that Tuesday, Maxwell walked the circling tents of the Willow Bay Camp and Caravan Park, marvelling at the motley collection who were there to make a piece of entertainment.

  Old hands like Bob Pickering and Martin Bairstow, re-enactors to their fingertips, sat in their Yeomanry jackets, smoking their clay pipes. There was a certain incongruity in the Carlsberg six pack lying beside Bairstow’s sabretache, but you couldn’t have everything. Steve looked an anachronist’s nightmare too with a set of headphones over his bonnet de police, rocking his narrow head in time to some repellent piece of modern music. The horses had gone back to Merstone Farm for the night. No way, their owner had said, was he going to leave his animals tethered in the open, May or not, re-enactment or not, fortune though Eight Counties were paying him – or not.

  Maxwell wandered the edge of the dunes. The crowd of curious sightseers had gone home now, but no doubt they’d he back tomorrow. Word was out that Marc Lamont would be there, so the teenaged groupies of Leighford High would take full advantage of the Whitsun hols to scream and tear their hair and dribble all over him. Hannah Morpeth would be there as well, so an awful lot of men with macs would, no doubt, be skulking in the dunes, Maxwell among them.

  A sharp breeze had got up as dusk came to Willow Bay. The sea was a slab of silver under the stars as the drillmaster headed for White Surrey, the trusty b
icycle that had carried its master on campaigns without number and was named after Richard Ill’s courser at Bosworth Field. The wind sang lullabies in the tall spurge grass and the sighing sea pinks, but Maxwell picked out an altogether different sound – rhythmic, grunting. He turned a corner by the Park toilets and nearly fell over a couple writhing on the ground.

  Even in the near darkness of the stunted oaks, he could make out the white piping of a trooper’s jacket above a pale bum. Maxwell tapped that bum with the riding crop he’d somehow acquired during the day.

  ‘Giles,’ he said softly, ‘I’m not sure Mr and Mrs McGregor would altogether approve.’ Helen McGregor’s startled face peered out from under the lad’s braided shoulder, horror stamped in her eyes, her bra up somewhere around her ears.

  ‘Ah, well,’ Maxwell sighed, wandering off, ‘camp followers will be camp followers, I suppose.’ He was off duty. And Helen McGregor was a big girl now. That was fairly obvious.

  The Victorians had built the Grand in the great days when Leighford was still competing with her sisters Bournemouth to the west and Brighton to the east. It was still the largest hotel in town, with three bars, not a bad tariff and a cybercafe for those sad bastards who filled their days with the spurious delights of communication technology and the superhighway that led nowhere.

  Soft music was filtering through the hotel’s PA system as Marc Lamont ordered his fourth gin and tonic of the evening. Outside, the seafront of Leighford was closing down, the coloured lights switching off as the drunks rolled home. Knackered bar staff in the Grand hoped to follow suit as soon as possible and stood looking at their watches and drumming their fingers on the mahogany. For a while before dinner, the front door was besieged by autograph hunters, groupies and the paparazzi of the south coast, carefully briefed by Lamont’s travelling PR circus to give him the maximum of hype. Now, except for two or three painted trollops whose mothers had no idea where they were, belts for skirts and high, block heels on their fuck-me shoes, the Grand frontage was deserted.