Albert’s Pig by Ed Reilly

Two days had passed since Albert died. To reach one hundred and four had been an event. To die watching breakfast television on a wet Wednesday morning in a nursing home in Crawley was less of one. I like to think Albert would have smiled at the splendid mundanity of it.

The hardest part came on Friday, when I had to empty his room.

I had been Albert’s key worker for ten years, and matron had, rightly enough, saved the job for me.

‘Box his things,’ she said. ‘The best of it can go to the charity shops.’

She was not being cold. She was being practical. Matron was a kind woman, and we both knew that before long somebody else would be sleeping in Albert’s bed.

I stood for a moment outside his door before going in.

I knew the room so well. On the left, against the wall, stood the single bed. On the right were the toilet and shower. The wall beyond the bed held letters from his old regiment and three photographs of his wife, Effie, who had died of Spanish flu in 1918. Albert had never remarried.

By the window sat his most prized possession, a comfortable chair turned west towards the garden. He liked to watch the sun go down behind the two old oaks at the bottom of the drive.

‘Fine old oaks,’ he used to say. ‘Fine old oaks.’

It is in that chair that I remember him best. He would sit very still, gazing out at those trees as if they opened on to some earlier age. If he was in the mood, he would begin a story.

Officially, they were called reminiscence sessions, and officially I was meant to write them down. Albert never wanted me to, and I never did. Over the years we had many talks and put the world to rights without ever putting pen to paper.

Now that had stopped. He had stopped. And I had to clear his room of everything that had made it his.

I stripped the bed first, then emptied the wardrobe. His suits and shirts went on the mattress. Then I took the socks, handkerchiefs and underwear from the dresser and laid them on top. After that I sat for a moment and looked towards the window.

Rain patterned the glass. Beyond it hung a low, fast-moving Crawley sky. On the sill sat Albert’s old china piggy bank, exactly where it had sat for the last ten years. In spite of myself, I smiled.

It was because of that pig that I first learned Albert had fought in the First World War.

‘Do you like pig?’ he once asked me.

‘Yes, Albert,’ I said, a little thrown. ‘A fine specimen of a china pig, if you want somewhere to keep your pension money.’

‘No, you silly boy,’ he said from the chair. ‘Do you like pig as in bacon rashers and pork joints?’

‘Ah,’ I said, on firmer ground now. ‘Yes. Nothing better than a bit of Danish bacon between two slices of bread and butter.’

‘Danish,’ he said, settling deeper into the chair.

Then he gave a small sigh, which was always the sign that a story was coming.

‘The best pig I ever tasted was Belgian, and I had it for Christmas dinner in 1914.’

‘It must have been a fine pig, Albert, if you can remember it all this time. What was so special about Belgian pig?’

‘The time I ate it, the place I ate it, and the people I ate it with,’ he said.

He paused a moment, then went on.

‘The war was barely four months old, and we were deep in the Ypres Salient. It was a hard place. The winter rains were freezing and the mud was everywhere. We were covered head to toe. It was in our mouths and in our hair. It got into everything. Even the food tasted of mud.

‘But that is not the story. No, those things came later. The real story began at breakfast on Christmas Eve.

‘Now there was one of those understandings that sometimes grew up between trenches. Neither side would fire while the men were eating. I was sitting with my friends, Bob and Harry, after we had drawn rations, when we heard a commotion further down the line. Shouts and cheers were going up, and Bob cried out, “Look at this, lads. Look at this.”

‘We put our heads over the parapet and, would you believe it, there was a great pig running between the lines. At one point our trench and the Germans’ were barely seventy yards apart, and you could see each other plainly enough. This enormous pig was tearing right through the middle of no man’s land as if the war had nothing to do with it.

‘Quick as a flash, Bob shouts, “Christmas dinner,” and is over the top with his bayonet between his teeth.

‘A roar went up from our side as he started after the thing. It dodged him, he went flat on his face in the mud, and the whole trench burst out laughing. Bob got up and after it went again. This time he caught it properly, right round the neck, brought it to its knees and, quick as a flash, killed it cleanly. Just like that. The pig scarcely made a sound. Before the war Bob had been a master butcher, and he knew the proper way to slaughter an animal.

‘A huge cheer went up when he had finished, and then, plain as day, he turned and bowed to our trench. Then, bold as anything, he turned and bowed to the Germans.

‘You would have thought he was a lead actor taking an encore in the West End Theatre.

‘Up went the cheering again on both sides, hats flying in the air. Bob signalled for Harry and me to help him, and between the three of us we half carried, half dragged that pig down into the trench.

‘“Lads,” Bob said, grinning through the mud and the work of it, “it is going to be a fine Christmas. A fine Christmas indeed.”

‘Then he disappeared and came back a minute or two later with a bundle wrapped in cloth.

‘“I knew these would come in handy,” he said.

‘He opened it carefully and inside was a full set of butcher’s knives.

‘From that point on he had the whole platoon working. He sent me and Harry one way with a hock, another man another way with a knuckle. For hours we butchered and boiled and baked and fried under Bob’s direction until there was nothing left to cut and next to nothing left uncooked. The whole trench worked on that pig.

‘All that day the place felt changed. Men were laughing, singing, shouting jokes up and down the line. For the first time in months, we felt like human beings again.

‘And all the while we could hear merrymaking from the German side too. Every so often they would call out, “Happy Christmas, Englishmen,” and we would shout our good wishes back to them.

‘As evening came on, you could feel it in the air. We were like children waiting for Christmas morning. The Germans began singing their songs, and we answered with some of ours. I remember Bob, caked in mud and grease, climbing up on the parapet and starting O Come, All Ye Faithful at the top of his voice, and the Germans joined in too, only they sang it in Latin. And I remember thinking that we were all singing the same hymn, only in different words. That was all.

‘Then, as the moon rose, I saw the most astonishing sight of my life. One by one at first, then in twos, then in tens and hundreds, the Germans set little Christmas trees along their parapets, each one lit with candles. As far as the eye could see, lights flickered out of the darkness.

‘“It is like a gift from God,” whispered Bob.

‘“Too right,” I told him.

‘That night we slept beneath the open sky with the smell of cooking pig in our noses and Christmas carols in our ears. I dreamt that Effie and I were together again, and it was summertime.’

Albert paused there, and for a little while neither of us said anything.

Then he went on.

‘We woke on Christmas morning stiff as boards with frost. There was much handshaking and backslapping. We wished each other a happy Christmas, and after a while the Germans shouted their greetings over too.

‘Harry insisted we say prayers and grace before we ate, and then we sat down to that pig.

‘I cannot properly describe it to you. After months of rations full of mud, it seemed like food from heaven. We ate nearly every part of it that was edible, and a few parts that likely were not, and we were grateful for every mouthful.

‘Afterwards we lay back, smoking. Bob produced a brand-new lighter and sat there grinning over it.

‘“Where did you get that?” Harry asked him.

‘Bob shrugged. “Swapped it for the pig’s bladder. Some chap from the Bedfordshires wanted it. Said he could turn it into a football.”

‘We laughed ourselves silly.

‘“You are quite unbelievable,” said Harry.

‘Then the Germans started calling us over.

‘“Tommy, come and meet with us,” they shouted.

‘At first nobody quite trusted it. Men kept looking at one another, uncertain what to do.

‘Then Harry said, “Well then,” and climbed out of the trench and walked into no man’s land.

‘I felt sick watching him go. Bold as anything he was, and twice as brave. We all stood there with our mouths open as he reached their wire and shook hands with the first German he came to. Then he shouted at the top of his voice, “Merry Christmas.”

‘That seemed to settle it. Men started climbing out all around me and heading into the open. Soon the ground between the trenches was full of soldiers shaking hands, laughing, singing, showing each other photographs of wives and sweethearts, handing round sweets, and lighting each other’s cigarettes.

‘As the day wore on, we even shared out the last of our pig.’

Albert smiled then, a small, private smile.

‘And that, my lad, was Christmas Day 1914. That is why Belgian pig is better, to me at least, than any other pig in the world.’

‘What happened next?’ I asked.

‘The truce lasted a few more days. Some said that in places it went on till the New Year. But the officers and generals never liked it. No, they never liked it at all. Fraternisation, they called it.’

He sniffed.

‘Later we heard that a football match had been played farther up the line between our lads and the Germans. Bob swore blind it must have been his pig’s bladder they used.’

I laughed, but only for a moment.

‘What happened to Harry and Bob?’

Albert looked back towards the oaks before he answered.

‘Harry was killed a few months later, in the Second Battle of Ypres. One moment he was there, the next he was gone. Gone in an instant. Bob wrote a lovely letter to his mother in Sevenoaks saying how brave Harry had been and how he had not suffered. We promised each other that if we both came through the war, we would go and see her.

‘And Bob. Well, Bob was one of the most remarkable men I ever knew, and it was a privilege to be his friend. If it had not been for him and his wild ways, I do not think I would have lasted the war. He kept me steady in an unsteady world.

‘Bob made it all the way through, only for Spanish flu to take him, just as it took my dear Effie. He was twenty-four when he died.

‘With Effie and Bob gone, my world had changed forever. I came home after the war, but I could not settle. In 1919 I left England and started travelling. I had barely been back a year. Forty years passed before I came home again.’

After that he said nothing more. He sat staring out at the oaks at the bottom of the garden, and I knew the story was over.

Now, in his empty room, I sat on the edge of his bed and thought of him for a little while longer.

Outside, the rain still traced patterns on the window. Somewhere in the building a bell rang. It was time for the residents’ afternoon tea.

I stood and finished the work. It did not take long. Everything that had been Albert’s fitted into one large cardboard box and on top of it sat the china pig.

I lifted the box and carried it to the door. Then I paused. For a moment, I saw him again as he had been, sitting in his chair, looking at the oaks as the light faded. Then I turned and closed the door behind me.

Ed Reilly

Image by Bruce Mewett from Pixabay . A black and white view of several soldiers lined up shoulders deep in a dirt trench. In the distance are bomb and artillary damaged trees and buildings.