Day Page 6

  They’d brought in national service the day before, which had put Alfred’s father in a mood. Not for himself: he was too old for anyone to want him: but he’d worked out they’d be after Alfred soon.

  Alfred had been put in a mood, also, because of being fifteen and just those few months, only six, which meant he’d have too long to wait. But as soon as he could he’d volunteer. He’d decided. So he wouldn’t have to walk about in fish guts till he died, wouldn’t have to listen while his father made that same sodding joke every day: a blind man walks past the fish shop – ‘Morning, ladies.’ Alfred would go and he’d pick his service, that was how it worked, he hoped. Up in the clean air, up free with the blue, that’s what he wanted. At least it would be, if they’d have him. So he’d exercise more to please them and strengthen himself and then he’d volunteer. Of course he’d fucking volunteer.

  Ma, she’d heard the announcement and stopped eating. Alfred had been so busy in his head that he hadn’t paid her proper attention and she must have sat perfectly still for a long while before he noticed and was jolted, damaged somewhere by the way she raised her eyes to him.

  She was normally very sensible about crying and didn’t do it. Today, though, she’d made a mistake and so they both started seeing what they were together – truly seeing, because they couldn’t help themselves, and so they had to know what they meant for each other and how it would be when he’d go. They were harmed by it, by too much feeling. He might as well have been leaving that afternoon.

  And he hated that they were trapped inside this, had to rush through the way they would be months in their future, for fear of his father, the thing still asleep above their heads. Later his mother might not find the chance, might not be allowed, so she had to weep in the kitchen when nothing was different yet. Without ever intending, they were making their one goodbye.

  His mother lost herself for a while in little cries that seemed to leave her frightened, woman’s sounds, and her hands fluttered and tried to shield her head and he went around the table and held her, the twitch and flicker of pain in her, and he touched her hair.

  Didn’t pray for her, though, did you? Only for yourself. You asked if God could make you strong.

  Because he’d heard what Chamberlain said about Mr Hitler and the way he was using force to gain his will. Alfred understood about that. And before it was mentioned, he knew anybody who did that can only be stopped by force – it seemed daft that Chamberlain bothered to say so when it was just obvious. Unless he was trying to let people see he was like them and had problems they’d recognise, even if he owned a Cabinet room and no one else did – as if he was trying to say this Hitler was nothing special. That might be the kind of message a prime minister would pick: hoping you’d think him a pal and meaning you all to keep cheerful and ready for fighting the war.

  Alfred hadn’t cared. He’d smelled breakfast and roses and his mother’s skin and his heart had stammered.

  And the sirens – they set off the air-raid sirens, just for a practice – although we didn’t know it wasn’t real, not then – and the howl of that, I could feel it in her arms, I could feel the noise scare her.

  She’d almost begun to stand: thinking of hiding maybe, of the shelter she’d never been to and didn’t know: but he’d held her, rocked her, where she was to make her safe, to be her safety – he’d made her stay just where she was with him – and he’d closed his eyes and prayed again to be a strong, strong man.

  Another waste of mental energy.

  He stretched out his legs, leaned back and let the sounds, the rhythms of the camp, coddle in around him: a game of kick-about scuffling off beside the nearest huts, a curse as someone fell, distant sawing, the film people’s bad piano limping out with a bounce of jazz, the player trying to be smarter than his fingers. Strolling feet approaching and a murmur of gossip to his left – odd how fast there was gossip when nothing here mattered and hardly any time would pass before all this was gone.

  It came for him then, the true press of his mother’s scent returning, speeding in at him and when he’d seen her fall and the little start of blood that time above her eye and being able to do nothing.

  You see too much and have no words for what you see and see and see until it doesn’t reach, is nonsense, there without you.

  The woman in the forest when they were marching, when the Germans were pushing them west; she had a man with her and wanted his help, there on her knees and blood on her and shouting because he should help her and make this less terrible and let her be not alone and the man doing nothing, of course, being dead already and her screaming in German at a German soldier and him raising his gun to make her stop. And walking into the house with the blue window frames, neatly done, the place were the Russians had called and got drunk: Alfred hadn’t known what to expect before he saw: broken things in the good front room, the foreign kind of parlour, and where they’d lit a fire on the rug and the hair, meat and hair, hidden under the kitchen table, or maybe just there by accident, maybe no hiding involved. Her breasts, she’d been cut on her breasts. The child cut, too. Beyond recognising.

  Too much.

  And having to keep all you love in your head, saving it all from the rest of the world and yourself: your nature, your training: and holding it, hiding it away – intentional hiding – crossing your arms now where you sit on a wooden chair which is not your own, in the dusty sun of a game you are playing with all of these other madmen, because as soon as you saw the advertisement, you knew you’d have to come here and it all just thins and fades until you can only feel her, where her head would rest at your right shoulder and her breathing, her life inside your arms, under your fingers, knowing what she thought by the give in her, or the little tensions, twitches, and how she never seemed possible – the touch of her standing against you something no one could deserve. Joyce. Her making you a man of silver, bathed with light.

  Too much.

  Caring for her more than your mother, more than the skipper – of course, more than yourself.

  Too much.

  Alfred discovered that he was bent forward, elbows on his knees, eyes fast shut. His head stung, drummed. And this was the clear result of a failure in his discipline.

  The piano music had disappeared, he’d no idea when, and the air was beginning to redden, slow, the shadows tipping forward, one of them already thick across him which would explain why he was chilly. He stood, picked up his chair and his book and started walking. Dinner would be served up soon, he could smell it: some kind of soupy effort involving chicken, he thought, and afterwards vegetables and mutton: the moorland sheep disappearing and meat turning up in the pot. He wasn’t that partial to mutton, but if it was there he would eat it, no question.

  Before they started calling people in, he wanted to go back and be in his hut, check in his hut for the Luger. If there was no one about he would like to see it, have it in his hand.

  The Bastard had been the first of them to kill.

  Unexpected it was, in an easy January afternoon, their fresh, operational station drifting and darting out ahead beneath a heavy mist. It seemed purposeful, orderly – the end of their road, although Alfred had felt that most as an achievement, not a threat. This was a good day for the crew, swinging down from the truck, shagged after the journey, but ready as well and smart. They’d peeled away from the rest of the crowd, caught themselves trotting and had to ease off. No call to go looking too keen, too confident. Sometimes they were, but not today – they were only a little wary, nervous today.

  ‘No need to rush now, lads.’ Molloy with his cigarette glued to his bottom lip. ‘They’ll keep the war warm for us while we unpack.’

  And they had laughed, because they were a crew that laughed, louder than they needed to be, warming the space between them and the low white sky. Alfred had turned his head from side to side, searching.

  �
�What’s the matter, Boss?’ Skipper checking him, keeping in touch.

  Alfred might not have told anybody else. ‘Lancs. I can smell the Lancs. They’re here.’

  The skipper cuffed by the side of his head. ‘Yes. I think that was rather the point.’ He made another few paces. ‘That they post us to where they keep them. Makes all our training that bit more relevant.’

  They studied each other for a moment and Alfred wondered if his face was different in the way the skipper’s was, if the closeness of operations was so obvious in him, and that unsteady lift in his hands, under his boots, that fear of the next breath and its power to drag him forward, that fear it wouldn’t drag him fast enough.

  Formalities concluded, they’d set off for their new quarters. Pluckrose took the lead in the sergeant’s party and drew Alfred up beside him, Edgar following on and the Bastard last, trailing, proving he could handle things fine without them. They’d hurried under the frost, rushed themselves inside, but then had to pause at their new room’s door, because this would be their place now, a kind of home, but four of the eight empty beds were already owned: pictures on their lockers, a pack of cards, a collar, dress shoes, signs of life. They didn’t like to be intruders and were unsettled.

  All except the Bastard who brushed in past them to sit on a corner bed, bounce the cover slightly loose.

  ‘Steady now, Johnnie – that one’s taken.’ Pluckrose smiling, but not happy, making a point of setting his kitbag down gently on a free bed. ‘Doesn’t much matter where you bunk, does it.’

  ‘So then it won’t matter much to him. We’ll talk about it. Have a darn good discuss.’ He lay full out, claiming the space. ‘Loverly. Sheets – don’t get sheets in the army, but we do.’ Boots on, rubbing that filthy hair oil of his into the pillow. ‘And I got to have a wall at my back and at my head, can’t sleep otherwise. You wouldn’t want me not sleeping. Someone has to be alert, keep an eye out.’

  Very clear this was a dig at Alfred, at his gunnery and observation skills, and so he had to answer, his forearms getting tight, ‘We can’t help it if you’re used to living in a cell.’ Hanson ignored him so he had to go again, ‘You can’t do this.’ Which sounded weak.

  ‘Just did, old boy. Just did.’ This with his eyes shut, trying to show that he was the gen man and entitled. He’d managed two ops before he broke his leg in a way he wouldn’t tell them and effectively had to remuster and start again. The two ops were supposed to make him someone. But he’d had to go back and get more training and conversion – the RAF hadn’t bloody well thought he knew everything.

  Miles sucked on his pipe and looked as troubled as he ever could and there was silence. So nothing was settled beyond Johnnie Bastard Hanson getting his way and putting up a black for all of them. He never was happy till everyone else was upset. There might have been a fight, Alfred could feel one was coming, but there wasn’t time.

  Because then the two officers from adjustment came in, very quiet, almost apologetic when they saw they had company. They glanced about them for a minute and seemed confused. They frowned at each other. They turned to the Bastard, the pair of them solemn, vaguely disgusted, and eventually he sensed it, opened his eyes. When he saw them he almost flinched, scrambled up, slid away to one side and fumbled his cap on. It was nice to watch, Alfred thought.

  Then they made the adjustment, while everybody had to stand and let it happen and Alfred wanted to leave, only that might look yellow, or not be the proper thing. The framed snap shot by the bed was taken – pretty girl, but rather heavy-set – a drawer was emptied, the traces cleared and put into a box: letters, a magazine, little things which seemed too insubstantial for all that a man would leave – not a memorial, more like a mess.

  The taller adjuster searched out the dead man’s clothes, folded the shape of him flat. Probably, they’d emptied his locker already. Nobody spoke, but it seemed at last that everyone stopped moving and looked at the Bastard. He’d taken the man’s bed and now the man didn’t need it. That wasn’t a lucky thing to do. That was like murder.

  The shorter adjuster – pilot officer, slapped-looking face – when things were finished he drew to a kind of attention and Alfred knew they were all remembering that no one had saluted, that something in the room had stopped them.

  ‘We’ll sort through everything elsewhere. Has to be done. Wouldn’t want to send a shock back home. Not an additional shock.’

  The other man, a flight lieutenant, started to walk out and then hesitated. ‘You’re new bods.’ Nothing in his voice to soften what he’d just done, only a need to explain. ‘Well, this is what you get. If you’re not careful and don’t follow procedures and remember your drill this is what you get. He got the chop last night. Over Essen.’ He realised this sounded wrong, a type of insult. ‘He was a decent man. You should hope you’re as good.’

  Alfred swallowed and wondered what he should be thinking, how to show respect, how he should be.

  Didn’t know him, so how can I be sad? If I was, it would only be for myself – in case I get the same. But I’m not sad. I could even be happy, because it wasn’t me. It wasn’t one of us.

  The adjusters walked out, the flight lieutenant holding the box awkwardly, as if it should be treated like a coffin, but was too small, or maybe as if it just shouldn’t be touched. He could have been unfamiliar with the duty. It could have been hard to get used to.

  ‘Well, you all heard. It was last night. He bought it last night.’ The Bastard having to break the silence. ‘Nothing to do with me.’ He didn’t sound convinced.

  Nobody agreed. Nobody said anything.

  ‘Suit yourselves, then.’ He didn’t go back towards the bed. ‘But it wasn’t my fault. The fucking Germans chopped him. Not me.’ And he stood for a minute, longer, although everyone knew that he would have to go back – make his bed and lie in it – because it was unlucky, now, like him. No one else would have it, or would let him leave it for another new bod, coming in.

  So that was it. The Bastard making their first kill. Which was like him.

  The station, though, Alfred got on with it, felt settled in as soon as he’d arrived and never mind the unlucky bed – he’d never touch it, but he didn’t mind it. And for once he’d been posted and not caught a head cold straight after. He was always mithered about his ears, hoping they wouldn’t get infected and object to the pressure changes, go US on him, but now he had a fair chance to stay healthy.

  At least on the ground.

  He enjoyed the sense of age about the place, more brick and less bloody corrugated iron – iron was so sodding noisy when you were trying to get a sleep – presentable hard standing, neat dispersal and low trees – he preferred them low for take-offs, out of the way – paths that might be green if he saw them in spring and a run with six hens that some ground-crew bods looked after. If they could keep chooks alive it boded well. And the near beer in the sergeants’ mess tasted quite close to the genuine article.

  Not that Alfred hadn’t signed the Pledge – three times, when he was too young to care and he’d only known that beer was to do with his father. A red blur of sweat and yelling, the pub and crib and poker and lost money and the bad, bad nights – that was beer: everything to hate about his father, the gleam it would put in his voice.

  Alfred could take it now, though, put it in himself where it was nobody’s business but his and it made him smile. In the Duck’s Head. Always in the Duck’s Head. The crew – at least Pluckrose – had decided, whichever pub they chose to be their own would always be the Duck’s Head.

  ‘The Duck’s Head, Boston – the Duck’s Head, Piccadilly . . . this way, we’ll always know just where we are.’

  ‘Yes.’ Molloy nodded as if this was maths, or philosophy. ‘We’ll always know we’re in the Duck’s Head. Good man, yourself.’ He surveyed their fourth or fifth pub of that name with proprietorial admiration
.

  ‘Better than a bottle party – you never know where you are with them.’

  ‘Fast girls.’

  ‘Hotter than incendiaries. More harmful.’

  ‘Thank you for sparing me that trouble, my good ol’ pal.’

  ‘The least I could do. And remember – a bird in the Strand –’