Blasted Things

by Lesley Glaister

  ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ Doll says. ‘I had a proper kip this afternoon too. Thank you for that, dear, must’ve needed it.’

  Vince helps himself to another sausage roll.

  ‘You been down the Labour Exchange lately?’ she asks, so out of the blue it takes his breath away.

  He brushes pastry flakes from his knees. ‘Nothing doing,’ he says. ‘What with this.’ He taps his cheek, deliberately tugging at the strings in her soft old heart.

  ‘But there’s plenty you can do, Vince,’ she says. ‘Something behind the scenes – storeman, something in that line, maybe?’

  His teeth grind through stodgy sausage meat. He swallows, takes a swig of tea, lights up a cig, without, for once, offering her one.

  ‘I’m sorry, dear, I didn’t mean . . .’ Her face has flushed. Her hand comes out and touches his knee. ‘And in any case, look how well you do behind the bar. Slap bang in the public eye. So brave of you, dear. I could recommend you for another bar job.’

  His breath is too shallow. He can’t sit there like this panting. He goes off to the lav. What’s she up to, coming out with that at a time like this? He leans against the white tiles, avoids the mirror, pisses, buttons up. And then he gets it. Ha! She’s pushing, of course. She’s pushing him to show his hand, wants to know where she stands. High time they got this on a regular footing, course it is.

  Play it cool for now though, Vincey. Hold your fire. The ring sits in its box, sparkling away in the dark. No, not sparkling; it takes light to sparkle. The moment he opens that box then the sparkling will begin.

  By the time he gets back, Doll’s chatting with the people at the next table. She introduces them: Tom and Netta Earnshaw with their kiddies, a girl and a boy. The boy and Kenny are comparing soldiers. This wasn’t the plan. No one else figured in that, but Doll and Netta seem to have hit it off, and that’ll cheer her up. Vince and Tom manage a word or two about the football, about the news. Tom calls Kenny ‘your nipper’ and Vince tenses, waiting for Doll to contradict him, but she either doesn’t hear or doesn’t mind.

  Nasty moment though, when the little girl cringes away from him. She snuggles up to her mum but keeps staring with round eyes, till her mum ticks her off.

  ‘Show ’em some tricks,’ Kenny says.

  ‘Yes, go on, Vince, dear,’ presses Doll. And he has them spellbound with his matchbox trick, the dancing hankie and the vanishing penny. He wins over the little girl by fishing it out from behind her ear and Kenny looks proud as punch. ‘He’s going to teach me,’ he boasts.

  ‘Can you vanish yourself?’ says the girl.

  ‘Still working on that one!’ says Vince and they all laugh, and Doll nudges him fondly. They smile at each other and he relaxes. You don’t smile at a person like that, you don’t nudge them, you don’t go away with them to the seaside, if you don’t mean business.

  There’s a big kerfuffle as the band arrive, trooping through the restaurant and into the bar to set up for tonight with their great black instrument cases, the name painted on the drum in silver: Pendulum Swing Band. Though the sun’s nowhere near the yardarm, Vince and Tom go through to the bar to get some drinks in. Tom and Vince give the staff a hand rolling back the carpet to reveal the dance floor.

  Kenny and the Earnshaw lad come rushing through to skid about on the parquet – nice to see Kenny with a smile on his face at last. And it’ll tire him out good and proper. The band start tuning up, blowing on their trombones, clarinets and so on. A long time since Vince’s danced – a bit rusty – but no doubt it’ll come back to him, and steering her round the floor, and afterwards back up them stairs . . . he can hardly wait.

  28

  AT EIGHT O’CLOCK Doll finally emerges from her ‘boudoir’, all done up to the nines, L’Heure Bleue wafting everywhere. She shall have another bottle of that for Christmas or her birthday – don’t even know when that is! So much to learn about each other still, and a lifetime to do it.

  ‘You’ll keep Kenny company, won’t you, dear?’ she says, not quite meeting his eye.

  ‘Hold your horses,’ he says. ‘I’m coming down with you.’ But he’s still to change his shirt; been listening for the bathroom, and every time he hears the door someone else nips in there before him. Wants a good a wash before he dons his clean shirt and runs a razor over his chin. Has to look his best for the occasion.

  ‘I said I’d have a drink with Netta,’ she says. ‘Tom’s settling theirs down.’

  ‘Women swanning off to the bar while the men do the donkeywork? What’s the world coming to?’

  ‘Well, it is my holiday,’ she says.

  ‘Mine too,’ he points out. ‘And Kenny knows we’ll only be down them stairs.’

  ‘Still, in a strange place, I’d rather not leave him. What if he wants something? What if he gets scared?’

  Vince takes a deep breath. ‘I’ll be down directly he’s nodded off then.’

  She hesitates, puts a hand on his arm. ‘Tell you what, Vince, if you don’t fancy a dance that’s fine. You could stop up here, keep an ear out for Kenny, read the paper.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I fancy a dance?’ he says, staring at her red lips and cheeks, her brassy piled-up hair. She says nothing, just goes off downstairs, leaving him stood there in the corridor. As if he wouldn’t want to dance with her! Why shouldn’t he? This is the big finale of the trip – whatever’s got into her? Just being a good mum is all it is, he tells himself, that’s all it is. Treats that little toerag as if he’s bone bloody china.

  Finally he manages to get into the bathroom and catches sight of himself in the glass. Stares at the painted eye. Christ, he forgot all about it for most of today. Why does she have to go reminding him? He’s still got his feet, hasn’t he? You can hear the band starting up from here, a swing tune. He’ll show her who likes to dance.

  He goes back into the room, where Kenny’s on the top bunk, cross-legged in his pyjamas. ‘Mum said we could play cards till I’m tired,’ he says.

  ‘Did she now?’

  ‘Crazy eights?’

  Vince lights himself a cigarette. ‘One game.’

  ‘Hey, crazy golf, now crazy eights!’ Kenny kneels up. ‘Crazy day!’ He deals the cards. Vince lets the kid win the first hand, but after that gets on a winning streak he can’t resist. Seems like a good omen. The band’s really swinging now, you can feel the vibration through the floorboards.

  Vince shuffles the cards and runs through his tricks, fooling Kenny every time, though he can feel his fingers fumbling, needs to brush up a bit.

  ‘Could you make a person vanish?’ Kenny asks.

  Vince snorts, thinking of a certain Ted Chamberlain, but the head of a German boy – wide blue eyes – suddenly shoves itself into his mind; a head on top of shoulders one second, blown off the next.

  Maybe it’s the barrack-like bunks where he stood and played cards, back then; come to think of it, did tricks on the blankets, just like this.

  ‘Bet you could if you tried,’ Kenny says.

  ‘Mr Sandman on his way yet?’

  ‘Mr Sandman!’ Kenny gathers and deals the cards. ‘I’m not a baby.’

  ‘One more hand,’ says Vince, ‘then I’ll go down and tell your mum you dropped off. Play along and there’s a bob in it for you.’

  ‘But Mum said you’d be stopping up here with me.’

  Those flaming drums thumping up through the floor, getting him all in a jitter. ‘Shouldn’t you rather have a shilling all to yourself?’

  ‘Two bob?’

  ‘You little shark! Not a word to your mum and I’ll make it one and six.’

  Kenny considers. ‘All right then,’ he says. ‘But best of three first.’

  Downstairs, the music’s louder, ragtime now. At the bar, people are yelling above the noise; it’s rammed in there and he can’t spot Doll or anyone. The floor’s a crush of dancers. He cranes his neck, trying to get a glimpse of Doll’s hair or her flowery shoulders in among the melee, but he can’t see, w
hat with the smoke, the pulsating spots of light from the mirror ball. No sign of her so he shoves his way through to the bar. Can’t stick being in a crowd like this. The racket’s properly getting on his wick. That drumbeat – thumpa-thumpa-thumpa – right through his vitals. And where the hell’s Doll?

  They’re dancing American-style, legs and arms flying, those who know the steps; others are just shuffling round. Well, he’ll be in that category, him and Doll no doubt. At last he gets a flash of her hair. She’s on the dance floor, found herself a partner. Well, of course, that’s Doll for you. But his heart stops, actually goes and bloody well stops when he sees who her partner is.

  The fog has come in thick now. He had to get out of there and walk it off. Rage roars through him as he strides along the prom smoking ciggie after ciggie, grinding them out, cupping his hand round the flame for a tiny flash of warmth – a tiny flash of warmth that’s all he asked of her, the cow, the fucking cow. Did she plan it? Did she? Did she invite him here? ‘I’ll get that mug to stay upstairs with Kenny,’ did she say that to him? You can’t even see the sea in this fog but you can hear it, sighing away, saying ooh dear, ooh dear, ooh dear.

  He’d like to walk all bloody night. Walk right out of this, this life, but you can’t. Too much invested, you can’t give up yet, Vince. Pull yourself together. He’s half a mind to walk straight into that cold sea; in this fog no one would spot him. Walk in and finish it all. Then she’d feel bad. She’d surely feel bad as hell that she’s gone and done him such a terrible wrong.

  He goes down steps from the prom and walks towards the sea. Soon he’s in the dark. You can just make out glimmery bits of wave. Smell of salt, taste of it in his mouth. How could she? He steps back, realising he’s come right to the soft bit before the water starts. Maybe it wasn’t her fault though. Don’t go jumping to conclusions, Vincey. Perhaps she didn’t ask Chamberlain to come? Maybe Arthur told him where they’d gone? He should at least allow her to explain. Yes, get back and let her explain, go back and get warm at least. Brass monkey weather it is, with that bloody wet fog getting everywhere, cold drips running down his face, his neck and the prosthesis like an icy blade against the side of his nose.

  But when he gets back they’re still dancing. He comes across Netta and Tom in the bar and they give him such a funny look he can’t stand it and goes up the stairs, into her room. He fingers her stuff, her undies, a stocking. He winds it round his hand, tight silk, unwinds it, lays it back across the chair where it dangles like leg skin. He dabs L’Heure Bleue on his wrist, lies on the bed, lights a cig, hearing the band – oh, it gets to him, it does, that kind of music, grates on his nerves. Surely she wouldn’t have planned it? Surely she’s not that much of a bitch?

  It’s just coincidence Ted turning up, she’ll say, and as long as she says it, cares enough to say it, then that’ll do, that’ll have to do. He’ll save the ring till one night when they’re home, one of them nights when she’s tired and good-tempered, when they have one of their little moments, that’s what he’ll do. His eyes close. He’ll wait and sort it out, sort it out and

  you put your head up and get a bullet through the brow, the eye, you turn your head you get it through the ear, straight in one and out the other, that happened to Griffiths, sharing a smoke and a snigger then there he was, still a smile, a cock-eyed wink, tin hat intact, and all his brains spilled in the mud with the rain pouring down, just the same cold rain that was clean at least, the only clean thing landing on the mud that was as much animal as mineral, snot, spit, shit, piss, blood, brains, fingers, spikes of bone and gobs of flesh, rats big as terriers, crows and what have you, worms, maggots, beetles, fleas, lice. Mud that’s animal enough to move on its own so you’re hardly shocked when it sometimes gathers and rises up into a man. That was the day he shot the stupidly brave Hun lad, looked right into his clear blue eyes and shot his head off, boom, gone. A day of endless rain, endless strafing, third day of rain, heavy fire with hardly a let-up, not more than a wink of sleep, then Griffiths bought it and no time even to cover him up. Jerry at it tooth and nail. He knew they were going to get him, every fibre said keep your head down, but keeping your head down meant seeing Griffiths, and now he was gone it was up to Sergeant Fortune to set an example and up went his head and for a moment it was still and his vision roved over the apron of tangled wire. Reload, reload, he cried, ducking down to clip the cartridges into the rifle and up again, seeing movement from Jerry’s line only a football pitch away it seemed. Fire, fire, fire, but his eyes were on the wire in which capered a lad, Mount, was it? There he was stuck in a stiff dance, held up, a leg lifted as if he was prancing, head thrown back and tin hat caught on the wire behind him like a bowl, like a nest, like a bloody bird bath spilling rain. Too much noise, you couldn’t get your thoughts in order, solid noise that knocked you off your feet, a giant’s kitchen being smashed, pans clattering, plates, a tin of cutlery being shook beside your ear, inside your head and the rain, the rain. Reload, someone said. Him? Reload, and he really couldn’t think in all the rumbling and he put his head above the parapet and there was the lad Mount doing his rain dance, the last thing his two eyes ever saw and

  ‘Vince!’ He starts, stares, opens his eye. His eye can’t see that side – what’s happening, what’s happened? What the hell? And there’s a woman looking down and it’s dry underneath him, not wet but dry. ‘What’s up with you?’ she’s saying. ‘What you doing in here?’

  And he sits up and his heart is beating hard enough to make his tie flap and his breath won’t come.

  ‘You’re in a right old state,’ she says, more kindly. ‘Bad dream? I just popped up to see how you and Kenny was getting on.’

  He rises from the bed and it’s as if he’s rising from the trench, caked in mud. As if he’s made of mud. He stands unsteadily. Without a word, he leaves the room. No slithery duckboards. The floor is dry under his stockinged feet. He runs his hand along the solid wall. The sound is only drums and wailing saxophone, not guns and shells. Blank as man can possibly be, he goes and lies down on the narrow bottom bunk.

  29

  ‘WHAT’S THE MATTER, dear? Cat got your tongue?’ Doll’s at the cooker frying chops. He hadn’t said any more than the necessary on the journey back, what with Kenny there. She kept shooting him nervous looks across the carriage, and tried to draw him out once or twice: offered him sandwiches and barley sugars, tried to include him in a game of I Spy.

  They’d got back to the Wild Man before the end of dinnertime, and she was straight behind the bar, greeting the regulars as if she’d been away weeks instead of only a day and a half. Soon as they’d closed up she’d paid Arthur off and gone round clearing the bar. Finding fault, of course, with how he’d done things, but chuffed that the place was still standing. And now there was that gap between dinnertime and the evening trade and she was cooking their tea, as if nothing had changed.

  ‘Perhaps you could set the table, dear? Call Kenny down?’

  Treating him just like a hubby. What does she do that for, if it doesn’t mean anything? He looks at her shabby slippers, stout shins in wrinkled stockings, the flowers on the housecoat she wears to protect her dress. She’s hardly the Queen of bloody Sheba.

  ‘Come on, Vince,’ she says. ‘You’ve hardly said a word all day.’

  He allows his gaze to reach her face, all creased with concern. ‘Did you ask him to come?’

  Her face stiffens and she turns back to prod the chops. ‘Who?’ she says and he could nearly laugh.

  ‘Saw you on the dance floor.’

  She uses a fork to test the potatoes, lowers the gas flame. ‘Oh, you mean Ted,’ she says, and gives a tinny laugh. Facing him, she folds her arms, and out it comes, all in a rush. ‘Oh, Vince, I was as taken aback as what you were. I said to him, I says, “What are you doing, turning up like a bad penny?” ’

  Vince watches her face carefully. ‘And what did he say?’

  ‘Oh, some claptrap. Don’t remember.’

 
‘How did he know where you were?’

  She glances anxiously at the sizzling chops. ‘Reckon Arthur must have said. He’s the only one knew where we was.’ She slides open the table drawer and sets to rattling cutlery onto the table. ‘You don’t honestly think I planned it, Vince?’

  The sound of cutlery sets his teeth on edge. He should help but sits watching her put out the tablemats with their seaside scenes – ha – and arrange the knives and forks in their three places. Three places like a tidy little family.

  ‘Be a dear and call Kenny,’ she says, ‘or the chops’ll be like leather.’

  He clumps up the stairs. In the murk of his soul there’s a gleam of light. Ted could have got it out of Arthur right enough. It could be true. The bastard, throwing a fucking great spanner in the works. Well, he’ll have to be dealt with. Lying in his bunk last night he plotted murder, could have done it, mad enough to get up and smash the bastard in the face and keep on smashing till there was nothing left. He imagined hitting Doll too, shocking her, making her see – but he’s never raised his hand to a woman, not about to start now. And Doll, oh, Doll, he’s gone on her, he really is. It’s love like he never imagined.

  But Chamberlain will have to be got out of the way. Last night he went through the ways: gun, poison, knife, throttling. But then the face of that boy, the blue-eyed Hun, rose up. He’d killed others at the Front – par for the course – but they were further away, they were the enemy, only Huns. That boy was the only one he’d looked in the eye.

  Cold-blooded murder wasn’t in him.

  ‘Teatime, Kenny,’ he calls and waits to hear the boy coming before he trudges back down the stairs into the smell of frying meat. There must be another way to get Ted out of the way, something that stops short of murder.

  Green grapes in a dish. With her softest pencil Clem cross-hatched, darkest where the fruit skin met the curve of the plate, the glaze reflecting the window, the shine of the brass light fittings where the sun cast . . . The lead snapped and she sighed. Pressing too hard. And it was not, in any case, a successful sketch.