Nobby
A Cockney in Bowling's company in France in 1916, and his partner in the one attempt he ever made to go fishing again: a quarry pool behind a clump of poplars, full of perch, and a fishing rod improvised out of nothing.
Those fish, at any cost the Army can charge him. They can hang, draw and quarter him if they want to, he says; he is going to have some of them.
The book
At a glance
- A private in Bowling's company in France, autumn 1916
- A nickname; the surname is never given
- Coster, and a hop-picker, poacher and bird-catcher out of season
- Part II, chapter 5
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeBowling never learned the man's surname. Nobby was a dark, slouching, gypsy-looking chap who even in uniform gave the impression that he was carrying a couple of stolen rabbits, a coster by trade and a real Cockney, one of the sort who make part of their living hop-picking, bird-catching, poaching and fruit-stealing in Kent and Essex. He was an expert on dogs, ferrets, cage-birds and fighting-cocks, and had a sly, vicious way of talking.
They met in a village behind the line in the autumn of 1916, in the flat, stiffened boredom that came over you when you were out of the trenches. Nobby beckoned Bowling over with his head and told him there was a pool on the other side of the poplars that was full of bleeding great fish. There was: a flooded quarry, swarming with perch, undisturbed for two years of war, some of them a pound in weight.
The rest of the episode is a day and a night of scrounging. There was nothing to fish with, so they made everything from scratch, and Bowling says the reason they were in such a fever was not just the fish but the thought of a whole day out of the atmosphere of war. The chapter's flattest sentence carries it: fishing is the opposite of war.
How the book draws them
- How he is drawnDark, slouching and gypsy-looking, and giving the impression even in uniform of a man carrying two stolen rabbits. He had a sly, vicious way of talking.
- The rodThere was not a willow within sight of the horizon, so he shinned up a poplar, cut a bough that was better than nothing, trimmed it with his jack-knife until it looked something like a rod, and hid it in the weeds by the bank.
- The needleThey needed one for a hook and could not ask anyone in case the sergeant heard. They banged on the door of the house at the end of the village where two worn-out prostitutes were sleeping, and Nobby shouted "Wantee needle! Sewee clothee!" at a Frenchwoman in a wrapper, on the theory that a foreigner would understand pidgin English.
- The rest of the tackleThe needle made red-hot over a candle and bent into a hook, burning their fingers. A reel of sewing thread bought for a whole packet of cigarettes and plaited in three. Half a cork with a match through it for a float. Ten six-inch lengths of surgical gut swapped from the hospital orderly, who had pinched it from a hospital, soaked pliable and knotted end to end.
- What became of itThey lay down that night in such a fever that they did not take their boots off, meaning to hook it after roll-call and take Field Punishment No. 1 if it came to that. At roll-call the orders were to pack kits and be ready to march in twenty minutes. Bowling never saw or heard of the pool again, and expects it was poisoned with mustard gas later on.