Key to the Door: A Novel (The Seaton Novels)

by Alan Sillitoe

  It would soon be sending weather messages from along its route, so Brian set sticks over a copy of the Straits Times in his outside fireplace and dosed it well with paraffin, putting a match under the kettle so that flames exploded and hid it completely. He spoke by field telephone to the other hut: “That you, Jack?”

  A yawn sounded in his ear: “Yeh. Making tea?”

  “Just put the kettle on. I’ll put a mug by for you.”

  Jack’s voice became clear: “Thanks, Bri. Be over in five minutes.” He lobbed spit at the fire and watched it do a quick-change act into steam, answered by the kettle throwing water from its spout as if competing against him.

  He saw Jack coming along the path, an ex-collier from Abertillery, a slim-built, thin-faced youth whose grey eyes had been used all his life to the murk of his home valley and later to the dust and grime of the pitface. Often in the billet he would be lying asleep under his mosquito-net, dead to the world and dreaming maybe of his welcome in the hillsides, yet with his eyes wide open. “I’ve always slept like that,” Jack told him, grinning to show his uneven teeth. “Can’t help it, man. My sister back home used to try and make me close them, but couldn’t. And I didn’t fancy letting her stitch them together every night.” He carried the Sten gun slung high on his shoulder, every inch the bantamweight, dark hair curly at the front and falling on to his brow. He took great delight in the Sten, feeling twice the man as he walked out with it to the DF hut from his own post, advancing at the ready as if a black mamba might uncoil and strike at the grimy toes of his sandals, or a tiger slouch from the higher elephant grass bordering the monsoon ditch. Buying a box Brownie from his saved pay, he asked Brian to take photos of him holding the Sten like any film star on active service, and both admitted that the reproduction certainly made him look fierce and tough.

  Brian slid a mug of tea over. “Get that in your guts.”

  “Get much sleep?” he asked from the radio table.

  Jack drank half before he’d speak, lolled in a basket chair near the door, and gave a disgruntled reply: “I would have, only those bloody dogs howled all night. It’s enough to send you to chapel. You hear ’em?”

  He sipped his tea: strong, sweet, and scalding. “They didn’t bother me. I had to be awake anyway.”

  “Considerate bastard,” Jack said. “All for one and one for all. I’d like to have one of them, though. Use its guts for garters, I would.” Brian took down a message from the Dakota while Jack grumbled on, phoned it through to flying control. “I would have taken a shot at them, except that the bastards don’t let me have a rifle. Think I’ll let fly at the officers, I expect. Not that I wouldn’t by mistake, though. ‘Sorry, sir, but my glasses were at the laundry. I’ll aim the other way next time.’ Man, what a life! You should ’ave brought one down with the rifle.”

  “Couldn’t be bothered”—flicking an ant away from the sugar. “It was so dark I wouldn’t have seen it.” He hacked off slices of bread and cheese: “Get some o’ this. I’m clambed.”

  Jack shuffled back to his hut, cursing the air force, God, and Winston Churchill. Brian swept up and cleared away the breakfast things, dug a hole fifty yards off to bury the week’s tins. Another message rattled in from the far-off Dakota, then Jack was on the phone: “Listen,” he said, so excited it seemed his head was in the earpiece of the receiver, “there’s a great dog, man, about fifty shakes from your wanking pit. Fetch him down with the rifle. My Sten won’t reach or I’d let him have a burst. He’s one of the sods that’s been keeping me awake all night.”

  “Wait for the bang then. See you soon.” Sliding one up the spout, he stepped to the door. It was as big as a full-grown Alsatian, and not too far off to be winged at the first crack. He stood perfectly still. Its coat was straggly and white, had a long bony head and the noble face of a handsome outcast that didn’t know what was in store for it. Its eyes looked as if waiting for something to move in the nearby grass.

  A perfect target. Maybe I’ll scare it with a shout and get him on the run. He lined foresight and backsight with its right eye and eased on the safety-catch, feeling for the trigger. The dog turned and there was no fear in its gaze, as if it didn’t realize that another animal was so close, though Brian knew it saw him, felt its curiosity and quiet enquiring surprise. His finger was on the rounded steel of the trigger, and he visualized it already with a hole battered into its skull, fallen like a piece of floorcloth after the butt had jerked against his shoulder. He brought the gun down.

  The dog moved, and with no thoughts left, Brian followed it into the grass, leaving the radio to fend for itself. A sudden spurt put the dog out of range. He felt the sun pushing at the back of his neck and impelling him towards the trees. A hundred yards off, the dog leapt into the air: I should have got it then—but when he reached where the dog had jumped, his legs and shorts were ripped by barbed wire concealed in the grass, paining as if burning embers had peppered his flesh. He aimed and fired, but the grass obscured his aim. I’ll get it on the dispersal clearing. Stop, he told himself, leave it be, you lousy bastard. Yet he was enjoying the chase, couldn’t force himself to draw off.

  Concealed roughage below the waving grass blades buckled his ankle now and again and, falling behind, he expected the dog to wheel out of range and reach the safety of the trees. But it stopped from time to time as if sick, hoping perhaps to lie low and be given up. Brian went on, driven by pain in his legs.

  The dog veered from the trees, circled back for the hut, so that all he needed do was wait. Maybe it wanted food. He whistled a tune until it reached the clearing, told himself not to shoot it, but was too weary to listen. On his knees he fired, the noise sharp and great, directly connected to the dog that dropped by the hut door. He circled the hut himself, feeling a black end-of-the-world weariness as he dragged himself, after some minutes, towards it.

  In spite of the great hole in its head, which he couldn’t bear to look at, the dog still twitched. He dragged the limp relaxed body ten yards and dug a hole out of the stony ground, half an hour of feverish hacking and lifting because the sun was up and draining rivers of sweat off him. He pushed the dog into the deep trench and shovelled stones and soil in, hating himself for the rottenness of what he’d done. It was impossible not to think thoughts that wouldn’t come to him before but did so now. Christ, I shouldn’t have done it. Useless and mad. I ought to have slung a brick and let it go, not shot it like the cruel and wicked bastard I am. At the set another message came from the Dak, its signals fainter so that he listened hard to pull down the five-figure groups. Out of the biting heat his mind grew cool, drew him back a dozen years to a thundery weekend at the Nook, to a walk across cornfields with grandad Merton to look for Gyp, who was missing after a fearful kicking for nothing at all. The air was heavy with unshed rain and a cool breeze blew—as they tramped by hedges and over stiles. The picture was not clear, needed an effort even to keep it at this blurred pitch, but he remembered at the end of it finding the dog on the railway line, bloody and curled up after being hit by a train. It was impossible to say who had killed it: Merton, the train, God. Who? The family said Merton, and in this case, in spite of the phone call from Jack, anybody with two eyes would have said Brian had done it. And so would he, in their place. But never again, he thought. One dead dog is enough to have to pay for.

  At eight-thirty the relief lorry waited at the airstrip, and Kirkby was on his way to take over, a dot seen in the distance as Brian stuffed his haversack with towel and books. Sun scorched his hair and he could smell the sharp stench of sweat from his body when the breeze lifted. Far to the left was the paddy field where the old DF hut had been, though the flat expanse of rice shoots had no aerials now to break the monotony of it. The Chinese peasant guided his oxen through where they had been, and palm-trees on the far edge that had received the full blow of the last monsoon lay like kitchen mops over the water.

  Jack came out of his hut and walked in step: “That was a good shot, man. I watched you b
ring him down. Smack! Keeled over, he did, just like that.”

  Brian stopped to light a fag. “Listen,” he said, filled with rage at his own useless cruelty (a dog’s a dog: it’s got to live; even Dave and Colin would admit that): “That’s the last fucking dog I shoot, I’ll tell you that, mate. In fact, it’s the last thing I shoot at all. Christ knows why I killed it; I don’t.”

  “Well,” Jack said, subdued at seeing him in this funny mood, “all right, comrade, man, don’t do it. I suppose it didn’t do any good, now you put it like that.”

  “Too bleeding right, it didn’t,” Brian fumed. “Roll on the boat, that’s all I can say. This place is beginning to get on my wick.”

  “It’s no good letting it get you down,” Jack said. “We’ll be in that steaming jungle next week.”

  From watching Baker test his model aeroplane (fuselage and wings were smashed on the second flight, though the engine was saved), Brian saw a letter on his bed bearing a Singapore postmark. It was a note from Mimi, not exactly filled with words of love, but merely saying she was on her way back from Singapore (stopping at KL to visit her parents) to take up her old job at the Boston. Yet because her words were unadorned, his imagination flamed with possibilities, set him cursing at the fact that in only a few days he would be off to climb Gunong Barat. He reflected, though, that such a life of expectation and promise, enabling him to see Mimi for a few days and then make a trip into the jungle, wasn’t such a bad thing. And a couple of months later he would be on the boat, making his way back to Pauline and the kid. He wondered why Mimi had abandoned the idea of Singapore so soon: happen the job hadn’t turned out as she’d expected. Or maybe there hadn’t been work at all, but she’d gone down on the trot with some boy-friend who’d taken a fancy to her at the Boston—who’d packed her up when his ship left. Then again, she could have come back because she missed me. Now you have got a touch of the bleeding sun.

  That afternoon a dozen from signals stood in threes outside the admin office, being told by a sergeant (what they as wireless operators knew already since all information sent to the camp went through them) that they would be demobbed in three months. For some reason the short ratty sergeant gave a lecture on their lack of smartness, threatened them with guard duty, kit inspection, and morning parades, which they as wireless operators had so far avoided. Their great dread was that the air force bullshit machine would find its way even into this easygoing outpost of dialectical imperialism. “I like it the way it is,” Corporal Knotman said to Brian. “You don’t jump when I walk into the room, and I don’t jump when any other rattlebox shows his mug. They don’t realize that the war’s over, and times are no longer what they were.”

  “And so”—the sergeant bawled from the veranda, a little man who knew how to have his own way because he in his time had been bullied blind—“I want to see signals’ types look smarter and be a bit more punctual. You were all late for this parade, every manjack of you, by four minutes. Four minutes is a long time in the air force and I want you to know that you must never be late again, NEVER! Understand? Not even for ten seconds. Now, another thing—no, I haven’t finished with you yet, not by a long way—I was walking through your billet this morning and it was untidy, scruffy in fact. WILL YOU STOP JUMPING AROUND LIKE A LOT OF BLOODY BALLET DANCERS AND HOLD STILL? That’s better. The beds weren’t made on time and I want you to see that they are.”

  “Inferiority complex,” Baker grumbled, his lips hardly moving. “He’s like Hitler. A Nazi louse. I wonder where he’s left his swastika? ‘Lost, one swastika in Piccadilly Circus. Reward of half a crown.’ Blokes like him’ll be slammed in the gas-ovens next time.”

  The sergeant went on to instruct them about going to England on the troop-ship: “You’ll wear full webbing equipment, with water-bottle and big pack, also carry a kitbag and rifle. All your surplus possessions can go into one deep-sea trunk.” He asked for questions. Brian could feel Baker seething nearby, like a dog-lover whose pet bonzo has just been trodden on in a crowd and is out to set on anybody with two legs. It’s understandable: it takes him a month to make such streamlined aeroplanes. Baker’s hand shot up: “What about our suitcases, sergeant?”

  He let out a sneering roar: “Suitcases? Who’s got suitcases?” I wonder if he’s married, Brian thought, and treats his kids like this? Everyone put his hand up, and the majority vote rattled him. “Now listen to me, you can only take what’s on Standing Orders, that is, the equipment provided by the air force. All personal stuff has to go in a deep-sea trunk, crated and made to specifications by some wog chippy in the village. Any airman who wants these specifications can call at the orderly room after the parade, and I’ll be glad to see he gets them.”

  This hit everyone, for all had suitcases to hold the growing volume of presents stored up since arrival. Brian had a dressing-gown for Pauline, things for the kid. Baker spoke up: “I’ll burn all my equipment. I’m not leaving presents behind.”

  The sergeant seemed about to rush back to his office for the Riot Act. “Who said that?” He leapt from the veranda and came so fast into them that he burst against Baker and knocked him backwards. Baker recovered quickly, squinted down at him with insolent amazement. “You shouldn’t strike an airman, sergeant,” he said gently.

  The holy rank awarded by the air force gave way. “Take him to the guard-room,” he bellowed, jabbing out with his fingers. “You, you, you as well.”

  Baker was dragged off by his mates, Brian unable to decide whether he was acting or in earnest as he struggled violently and called out: “I’m innocent, I tell you. Innocent!”

  CHAPTER 22

  He remembered how on the long straight street of the housing estate Pauline ditched him one night: “I don’t want to go out with you any more. I’ve got a date with somebody else tomorrow.” Just like that; and even though they’d been getting on each other’s nerves, it was still as abrupt as if she’d prodded him with a hatpin or knitting needle.

  “Go and get dive-bombed then,” he raged, and walked at a quick pace down the street to catch up Albert Lomax, who had just bid good night to his girl, Dorothy.

  “That was quick,” Albert said. “Has she chucked you?”

  “Don’t be bleddy funny,” Brian retorted. Then: “She has, if you want to know. Not that I’m bothered. We’ve been getting fed up with each other the last week or two.”

  “You’ve been having too much of it, that’s what’s wrong,” Albert said soberly. “You’ve got to lay off now and again, not see owt of each other for a few weeks, then you wain’t get so bored.” Exactly what had been in Brian’s mind, but neither he nor Pauline were made for the mechanics of sensible separation. Too much passion was involved, and any letting-go would have to come out of hatred, not understanding.

  Weekdays had been given to kissing by the back door, or sitting in with old Jack Mullinder over a lugubrious game of darts. Jack was off work now—for good, it looked like—because his foot had broken out again, was giving him jippo, he admitted whenever an evening passed with not much more than a snappy word from him now and again. To Brian it was a house of silence compared to what it had been, no fun with poor old Mullinder trying to nurse his pain without going off his head. He felt sorry for him, as if he were his second father dropped into a cleft of hell, and was moved to weeping one night on his long wind home through the black-out. Nothing could be done except take the foot off, the doctors thought, and that’s what it seemed like coming to. It was a miserable lookout when you dwelt on it, what with the war and everything.

  On dry days of mid-week he walked with Pauline past the Broad Oak to Strelley fields and they lay on his topcoat behind isolated hedges, making love again and again into an intimate and speechless lassitude. They were blind in such darkness, unable to see except by the touch of hands against each other, which suited Brian down to the ground, though Pauline was sometimes irritated when his solicitude went on too long afterwards. “I can’t help it,” he laughed, “if my old man wa
s a rabbit. John I was christened, not Brian—Jack Rabbit to my pals.”

  “I don’t know about a rabbit,” she said, wiping herself, “but you must a bin born in a boat, if you ask me.”

  “It’s so bleeding dark,” he said, “I can’t see a thing.”

  “Stop swearing: wash your mouth out with soap, foulmouth.” The tone and volume of her voice were calmer than the content of her retort, the main fire staying in her eyes, which he could not see. Shocked nevertheless at her reaction to a plain truth, he stood up and took a few paces away as if to make the darkness thicker by being on his own. It certainly was more comfortable, and his rage at her temper went like the matter from a pimple back into his bloodstream and left him calm. But she hadn’t finished: “You’re allus swearing, and you never stop doing it for my sake. I suppose you think it meks you look big.”

  The darkness was lit up, as if he had been smacked in the mouth—like his fight the time they first met. He wanted to walk off without turning towards her to do so—impossible because it was a lunar and dangerous landscape they were in, full of lime-kilns and abandoned pit shafts, wells and outcrop workings where one false step might cripple you for life. So it was better to stay and try argument: ‘“There’s nowt wrong wi’ swearing. It’s just words like any others.”