He stopped with the door handle in his hand and quietly said, ‘Yes, I’ll come back some day when you are gone and I’ll find where you’ve hidden the gun, for you wouldn’t have dared take it outside this room, would you? And this—’ he moved his arm slowly to the side as he was about to add, ‘This is going to be your grave,’ but he stopped, for two reasons; the words sounded melodramatic, like those that might be used in an amateur play, and this was no amateur play; the second reason was that he felt sick.
He was stumbling as he walked across the landing. There was no sound from behind now, and he leant against the bannisters for a moment, his upper body swaying over them, and his stomach began to heave. She was insane. His mother was insane, yet she looked so normal, frail and normal. But she really was insane, mad. And he was her son, he was the son of a madwoman. What was in her was in him. No! No! He was running down the stairs.
Without stopping in the hall to put on an outer coat, he wrenched open the front door, ran over the terrace and down the steps. It was as he dashed along the drive that Mick Smith saw him. Mick was walking slowly, a haversack and gas mask hanging from his shoulder. He was on his way back to Newcastle, but when he saw Joe racing across the field that bordered part of the drive, he paused a moment before deciding to follow him. He didn’t run but hurried in the same direction, and he kept him in view until Joe disappeared into the belt of woodland. When he himself entered it he couldn’t see him ahead or on either side, although in most places the bracken and undergrowth was flat.
It was as he was about to emerge from the far end of the wood that the figure on the ground brought him to a standstill. Putting down his gas mask and haversack at the side of a tree, he walked slowly forward; then dropping onto one knee, he placed his hand on Joe’s shoulder, and the contact brought the younger man round with a start.
‘What is it, lad?’
‘Oh, Mick! Mick!’ It was an agonised cry. And then he was lying face downwards again, his knuckles pressed into his mouth, trying to smother the fearful sounds that were erupting from his being.
When the tears sprang from his eyes and nose and his body shook as with an ague, Mick put his arms about him and, pulling him round, cradled him as he would a child, saying, ‘There! There! Let it up, an’ out. It’s over. It’s over. It’s over. What’s done’s done; nobody can bring them back.’
How long he lay against Mick he didn’t know; he only knew that between the sounds he had been emitting and the wash of tears that seemed to have drained him dry, a voice within him had kept repeating: ‘She killed your father, Mick; she killed your father. My mother killed your father.’
‘I’m sorry,’ was what he said, however, apologising for his tears.
‘Nothing to be sorry for; it’s the best thing that could have happened. You’d likely have been sorry if you hadn’t, ’cos you’ve been on the verge of snapping. I’ve seen that. I wanted to talk to you, but I couldn’t get through to you somehow…Anyway, what are you going to do now? Have you thought?’
Joe had hitched himself into a sitting position against the bole of a tree, and as he wiped his face he answered, ‘I’m…I’m leaving today; I’ve joined up.’
‘Oh.’ Mick shook his head. ‘Oh, well. What you in?’
Joe looked at the blue overcoat Mick was wearing and said, ‘Same as you, the RAF.’
‘Flying?’
‘Signals—wireless mechanic.’
‘It’s a tough life, mind.’
‘I’ll survive.’
‘Yes, of course you will.’ Mick nodded his head reassuringly. Then glancing at his watch, he said, ‘Come on, get up out of that; I’ve got to be away, my train goes at four o’clock.’
Joe got to his feet and he stood with his head bent as Mick retrieved his things; then slowly he joined him, and together they walked back through the wood, silent now, until they reached the drive. There, holding out his hand, Mick said, ‘You’ll be all right now. And after all, perhaps joining up was the best thing you could do; you’ll be among people. And who knows, but we might bump into each other…eh? Good…goodbye, Joe.’
‘Goodbye, Mick. And thanks. Not only for now, but for everything; all the help you’ve always been to me.’
Mick stared at him for a moment, then again he said, ‘Goodbye.’ And Joe answered ‘Goodbye’, and they parted.
As Joe walked away he felt that he had said goodbye to the last phase of his youth, and that his storm of weeping had swept him into manhood and away from all connection with the woman back in that room. Yet he felt like someone entering a foreign country without knowing anything about the language.
PART THREE
MAGGIE
One
She was standing in the wings, leaning against a post that supported a wooden framework, which in turn held up a number of backcloths. She was just five feet tall, and fat. The Marie Lloyd costume she was wearing: buttoned boots, feather boa, black-straw, flower-trimmed hat, gave her the appearance of a child dressed up as an adult. She had full view of the stage and of the three female impersonators, kicking up their legs in a dance, the rhythm of which had gone a little awry.
She turned her head slightly as a voice behind her said, ‘If those idiots don’t come off soon they’ll get booed. Five hundred rookies to choose from and that’s the best they can turn out. Thank God for ENSA. What do you say, Lemon?’
Maggie LeMan lifted her shoulders slightly and smiled as she said, ‘They’re enjoying it, anyway.’
‘They’re not out there to enjoy themselves; bloody fools.’
The man now bent his long length down towards her and said quietly, ‘You tired, Lemon?’
As she turned her face towards him there was a twinkle in her round brown eyes and a touch of sarcasm in her tone as she answered, ‘No, sergeant, no; I’ve only been up since half past six. I think I’ve sat down twice since then, because one has to eat…And what is it now?’ She turned round and looked at the brass-dialled clock sitting starkly on a red brick wall to the side of them and added, ‘Only half past eight.’
For answer he pushed her in the shoulder, and when she almost tipped over the birdcage at her feet his other hand came out and, steadying her, he laughed down into her face as he said, ‘Sarky little bitch, aren’t you? If your figure could match the length of your tongue you’d be over in Hollywood. Oh—’ The smile slipped from his face as he said, ‘I meant well. What I mean to say is…Oh’—he jerked his big head to the side—‘I never open me mouth but I say something.’
She flapped her hand at him. ‘Don’t let that worry you, Sergeant. If I got on me high horse every time somebody hinted that I wasn’t like Betty Grable, I would have ridden to hell long before this.’
The sergeant was silent for a moment; then unconsciously taking his tactlessness a step further, he said, ‘I always say it’s a bloody shame, you with a voice like you’ve got. You should be in front of one of the big bands. When you hear some of those squawkers and what they get.’ He bent towards her again, saying now, ‘Have you ever thought of applying to join a NAAFI concert party? They’re sending them overseas I hear, like ENSA…Oh, but’—he pulled a face—‘God’s truth, I wouldn’t suggest you join ENSA, not after some of the stuff we’ve seen here.’
Maggie LeMan kept her eyes rivetted on the occupants of the stage for a moment, where they were bowing and making the best of the half-hearted appreciation now being shown by clapping punctuated with catcalls; then, slowly leaning to the side, she picked up the birdcage as she said, ‘What do I want with a concert party? I wouldn’t leave Madley if they offered me my own travelling dressing room. Why, who in his right senses would leave here, Sergeant? It’s home from home.’
He pushed her again and smothered a deep laugh as he said, ‘I don’t think they’d let you go anyway, Lemon. Oh, my God! Look at those silly buggers, they’re going back to take an encore. Why doesn’t someone throw a hand grenade?’
As the three impersonators left the stage they, too, we
re laughing, and it was evident, as Maggie had observed, that they had enjoyed themselves. Their painted lips were wide, and they continued to push up their false busts as they went past.
The sergeant muttered a deep oath, and Maggie remarked, ‘If you don’t think well of yourself, nobody else will…Are you going to announce me, Sergeant, or am I going straight on?’
‘OK, Lemon. Those silly buggers have got me goat.’
The sergeant marched to the middle of the stage and when, using what he called his stage expertise, she heard him say, ‘Now I give you three guesses who comes next,’ there followed ribald suggestions from different parts of the hall.
As the hubbub subsided he cried, ‘Miss Maggie LeMan, our own Lemon!’
She watched him walk sideways towards the other end of the stage, his arm outstretched in her direction. The piano struck up My Old Man Said Follow The Van. She stood poised for a moment, stretched her mouth wide, licked her lips, moved her shoulders from side to side, then let her body sway, waited for the chorus to finish and the verse to start and she went on.
As she assumed her drunken pose and shambled towards the centre of the stage, she was deafened for a moment by the clapping and the shouting; and different names came to her ears, all meant for her: ‘Good old Lemon! Good old Suck-it-and-see. Maggie McGee!’
She waited. The pianist softened his key. It seemed that he had stopped playing. She looked over the packed hall, from the front seat where sat Group Captain Peasmarsh and his Wing-Commanders, through the different grades, all merged into a dusty blue mass dotted with white blobs.
She kept up her swaying motion, her mouth in a silly grin, until there was silence; and then she began to sing. Her voice, clear and pure, soared up to the roof of the theatre, and when it picked up the words of the chorus of ‘My old man said follow the van…’, no-one in that vast hall joined in, they just listened. And not a few thought it was a kind of desecration to use a voice like that in uttering such common words:
My old man said ‘Follow the van,
Don’t dilly dally on the way.’
Off went the van with my home packed in it,
I walked behind with my old cock linnet,
But I dillied and dallied, dallied and dillied,
Lost the van and don’t know where to roam.
You can’t trust the specials like the old-time coppers,
When you can’t find your way home.
When she had finished, the applause was deafening; as she made her exit there were cries of ‘More! More!’
The sergeant and a young NAAFI girl were standing waiting for her. They ripped off her hat, her feather boa, her coat; then she was unbuttoning her shoes and stepping into slippers. As she smoothed down her straight black hair over her ears the girl pulled her skirt straight and tucked her blouse into the back, and she said to her, ‘Thanks, Peggy.’ Then turning her head, she glanced up at the sergeant, and with definite bitterness in her voice, said, ‘I’ll never do that again. I hate that song, and the rig-out.’
‘I don’t blame you.’ The girl Peggy nodded at her. ‘Not struck on it meself. It isn’t for you; it’s a common kind of thing, cheap. Go on. Go on. Listen to them.’
When she reappeared on the stage it was to look over a sea of smiling faces and to listen to the chant now of ‘Macushla! Macushla!’ The pianist struck and held a long opening chord, the hubbub died away. And now, her face straight, her lips seeming to quiver, she went into the song; and so beautiful was her rendering of it, so touching the cadences, so tender with longing the words, that she seemed transformed before their eyes: she was no longer Lemon, good for a joke or a bit of ribbing, for her voice cut through the façade of brashness, of insensitivity and coarseness that seems to become necessary to men in war.
‘Macushla! Macushla! Your sweet voice is calling,
Calling me softly again and again.
Macushla! Macushla! I hear its dear pleading,
My blue-eyed Macushla, I hear it in vain.
Macushla! Macushla! Your white arms are reaching,
I feel them enfolding, caressing me still.
Fling them out from the darkness, my lost love, Macushla,
Let them find me and bind me again if they will.
Macushla! Macushla! Your red lips are saying
That death is a dream, and love is for aye.
Then awaken, Macushla, awake from your dreaming,
My blue-eyed Macushla, awaken to stay.’
As always when she sang this song her eyes were moist, and when she had finished the applause did not come immediately, but there was that magic moment of silence that sometimes links a performer and an audience. When the applause did come it was deafening, and she stood there unsmiling, though with her head bobbing up and down in acceptance of the appreciation.
As she left the stage there were again cries of ‘More, Lemon! More!’ and in the wings the sergeant said, ‘Do you feel like it, Maggie?’ and she shook her head, saying, ‘I couldn’t, not tonight, Sergeant.’
‘Good enough. Good enough. They’ve had more than their share. By!’—he patted her on the shoulder—‘That was something. It always is something. By!’ He nodded at her now, and again said, ‘By!’ before turning and running onto the stage.
‘Coming for a drink?’
‘Thanks, Peggy, but I’m all in; I think I’ll go to bed. Anyway, I’ve seen enough of that lot for one day.’
‘Aw, come on. There’s a new batch in, about fifty, they say, to fill up the last posting. I want to see if my dream man is among them.’
Maggie started to laugh, saying, ‘If you couldn’t find him among the five hundred there’s less chance you’ll find him among the fifty.’
‘There’s always hope in here.’ Peggy Ryan dug her thumb in between her small breasts, then added, ‘Betty and Rona have just gone over. Of course our Rona—’ Peggy pulled a long face and assumed a refined tone as she went on, ‘She’ll be sweeping the counter with those eyelashes of hers in that demure virgin-like way, and the poor bods’ll rush like lambs to the slaughter. And there she’ll sort them out. But she’ll want their pedigree before they get their hands on her knee. Did you ever know anyone like her? She’s got ideas about herself, has our Rona, and her a mother’s help, as she calls it, before the war hit her.’
‘Well, she can afford to pick and choose, looking as she does.’
‘But she’s brainless.’
‘She’s got brains enough to know what she wants.’
‘Well, come and see what she picks up tonight across the great divide…That makes me a bit peeved, you know: we can serve them, but not mingle with them on the other side. And by the way, we’ll have to run for it; it’s coming down whole water.’
Their running was impeded by the mass of men coming out of the main doors and scattering in all directions, and heads down, they made their way between them to the back of the NAAFI and into the restroom, which was empty; and they were just in the process of taking off their wet topcoats when the supervisor came in, saying, ‘Oh, I’m in luck; I was about to send to the hut for help. Betty has scalded her foot and there’s the last-minute rush on. Will you give a hand?’
They both glanced at each other before saying, ‘Yes’ together, and when the supervisor said, ‘Oh, one will do,’ Maggie on a tired laugh said, ‘It’s all or nothing.’
Within minutes they had gone into the kitchen, donned overalls and caps and joined the tall girl at the counter who was coping with an admiring queue.
After Peggy had been serving a while she muttered, ‘Spotted a likely in the new wave, duchess?’ and the blue-eyed blonde with the full-lipped mouth shook her head as she said, ‘They all look married to me.’
‘How can you tell?’ Peggy Ryan asked between saying to an aircraftman, ‘That’s two teas, two wads and a Rizla. Tuppence…fourpence…tenpence altogether. Ta. Thanks.’ And quite seriously, Miss Rona Stevens answered sotto voce in between her serving, ‘Oh, it’s in their eyes: kind of
a troubled, searching look, like…well, like something that’s escaped from a cage.’
There was a concerted splutter from Maggie and Peggy in which Rona didn’t join; instead, her expression quite humourless, she murmured, ‘Well, you arsked,’ and Peggy, mimicking her companion’s refeened accent, said, ‘Yes, I arsked and you h’answered, h’as you always do.’
Maggie was looking at the corporal standing at the other side of the counter as she said, ‘Sorry, no sandwiches left; only wads, I’m afraid.’
‘Good enough,’ he answered. ‘Oh, by the way, that was a good show you put on tonight, Lemon. You get better.’
Maggie smiled at him and nodded her thanks, until a jocular voice from the queue called, ‘Squeezed some high notes out tonight, Lemon. Juicy. Juicy. Only Lemon left in the country.’
When another voice said flatly, ‘Ha-ha-ha! That quip could get you recommended to the witless corps, brother,’ the speaker put in, ‘Oh, I was only pulling her leg. Lemon knows that. Don’t you, Lemon?’
Maggie looked blankly at the face grinning at her from the queue, and as she pushed a cup of tea across the counter she said, ‘You were saying?’
‘I said I was only pulling your leg.’
‘Corporal’—her voice was clear and could have been that of a schoolteacher reprimanding—‘I haven’t much opinion of my legs, but I can assure you you are not the type of man I would allow within parade-ground distance of them, let alone pull them.’
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