Chapter 3

Tom was not the only local casualty that week. Bourner heard of the death of his eldest son, a youth who had somehow squeezed himself out to the front at the age of seventeen; the baker at Bodle Street lost his lad, Stacey Collbran of Satanstown had died of wounds, and the late postman at Brownbread Street was reported missing. All these had been struck down together on the ravaged hills round Wytschaete, where the Eighteenth Sussex had for long hours held a trench which the German guns had pounded to a furrow. In this furrow the body of Tom Beatup lay with the bodies of other Sussex chaps, hostages to shattered Flanders earth for the inviolate Sussex fields.

Mrs. Beatup heard about it from Mus’ Archie, who wrote, as she had expected, while Bill Putland wrote to Thyrza. Tom had been shot through the head. His death must have been painless and instantaneous, the Lieutenant told his mother. Then he went on to say how much they had all liked Tom in the platoon, how popular he had been with the men and how the officers had appreciated his unfailing good-humour and reliableness. “All soldiers grumble, as you probably know, but I never met one who grumbled less than Beatup; and you could always depend on him to do what was wanted. We shall all miss him more than I can say, but he died bravely in open battle, and we all feel very proud of him.”

“Proud”—that was the word they were all throwing at her now: Mus’ Archie, the curate, even the minister. They said, “You must be very proud of Tom,” just as if all the age-old instincts of her breed did not generate a feeling of shame for one who died out of his bed. Good yeomen died between their sheets, and her son had died out in the mud, like a sheep or a dog—and yet she must be proud of him!

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Thyrza was proud—she said as much between her tears. She said that Tom had died like a hero, fighting for his wife and his child.

“He died for England,” said Mr. Poullett-Smith.

“He died for Sunday Street,” said the Rev. Mr. Sumption. “I reckon that as his eyestrings cracked he saw the corner by the Forge and the oasts of Egypt Farm.”

It appeared that Tom had died for a great many things, but in her heart Mrs. Beatup guessed that it was really a very little thing that he had died for—

“Reckon all he saw then wur our faaces,” she said to herself.

As there had been so many local deaths, both now and during the winter, it struck the curate to hold a memorial service in the church at Brownbread Street. He knew how the absence of a funeral, of any possibility of paying mortuary honour to the loved ones, would add to the grief of those left behind. So he hastily summoned a protesting and bewildered choir to practise ?terna Christi Munera, and announced a requiem for the following Friday.

Mr. Sumption saw in this one more attempt of the church to “get the pull over him,” and resolved to contest the advantage. He too would have a memorial service, conducted on godly Calvinistic lines; there should be no Popish prayers for the dead or vain confidence in their eternal welfare, just a sober recollection before God and preparation for judgment.

It was perhaps a tacit confession of weakness that Mr. Sumption did not offer this attraction as a rival to the Church service, but planned to have it later in the same day, so that those with a funeral appetite could attend both. Experience had taught him that what he had to depend on was not so much his flock’s conviction as their lack of conviction. The Particular Baptists in Sunday [275] Street, those, that is to say, who for conscience’ sake would never worship outside the Bethel, would not fill two pews. He depended for the rest of his congregation on the straying sheep of Ecclesia Anglicana, of the Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, Ebenezers, Bible Christians, Congregationalists, and other sects that stuck tin roofs about the parish fields.

It occurred to him that perhaps now was his great chance to scatter the rival shepherds, so made his preparations with elaborate care, boldly facing the handicaps his conscience imposed by forbidding him to use decorations, anthems, or instrumental music. He even had a few handbills printed at his own expense, and canvassed a hopeful popularity by rightly diagnosing the complaint of some sick ewes belonging to Mus’ Putland.