by Derek Hansen
Looking back I guess there were two possible responses. We could circle the wagons and shore up the defences while things settled down. Or we could move on. Since we were in no position to move anywhere we dug in. But the seeds of the latter option were sown as I lay in the gutter, of that I have no doubt. There was no coming back from the depths of disappointment and disillusionment that followed the anger.
Not all was gloom, however. My prang was big news and some nice things happened. I reckon there wasn’t a kid in the neighbourhood who didn’t know I’d been carted off in an ambulance by the time the sun had set. Next day, there was a steady stream of kids through the shop at lunchtime and after school bringing comics for Mum to take to the hospital. Judith headed a delegation of girls who handed Mum a ‘get well soon’ card for me, which the whole class had written messages on and signed. Ryan had drawn a cartoon of me in bed covered in bandages with my bike covered in bandages alongside. Ian, who wasn’t supposed to speak to me or set foot in the shop, brought Mum a bunch of flowers from his mother and apologised again for telling Captain Biggs before he told her. My old teacher, Mr Grainger, and new teacher, Mr Ingleby, dropped in to sympathise and offer Mum whatever support they could. Mack came by, of course, and so did the mothers of my closest friends. Mr Holterman came in on his crutches and handed Mum a colour, cross-section diagram of a Sunderland equipped for anti-submarine duties.
‘Give that to the lad for his essays,’ he said. ‘And give him a kick in the pants for all the trouble he’s caused.’
Mum accepted all the goodwill with her normal good grace and then, when the time came, went out and slapped Mr Gillespie.
The afternoon prior to the slap, Nigel and Maxie rode up to see me after school and managed to sneak past the dragon up to my ward. Eric would’ve come too if he didn’t have to have his hair cut. They brought the first instalment of comics, which I couldn’t read because my hands were still wrapped up like Easter eggs. Nigel and Maxie were bubbling with news that the police had been to the school and interviewed Collitt and all the members of his gang. They reckoned Collitt would be sent to Borstal for sure. Borstal was a boys’ reformatory, sort of a gaol for juveniles. At the very least they expected him to be put on probation and half of his gang with him. They also claimed the police had been to see Collitt’s dad, Veronica’s mum had seen them, and the Collitts’ pig dog had been taken away to be destroyed. Veronica was in Nigel’s class. Her mum said the dog had attacked a young constable.
When Captain Biggs arrived after Nigel and Maxie had been kicked out for being too rowdy, I passed the news on to him. I was pleased and excited by the fact that Mr Collitt would be sent back to gaol for beating up Christian Berger and that Graham Collitt would end up in Borstal. It seemed both just and inevitable. I never doubted for a second that Sergeant Rapana would do his job and that would be the outcome. It was another tenet of faith; if you broke the law you went to gaol. End of story.
Captain Biggs wasn’t the last of my visitors. Sister Glorious and Mack were also allowed in to see me. Sister Glorious fussed over me. She held my glass so I could have a drink of water, peeled an orange and split it into segments, which she fed to me one at a time. Mack wanted to talk about the six gurnard, which gave me an opportunity to impress her. I told Mack all about catching the fish and how many meals they’d make but she was my real audience. She’d kissed me, hugged me tight against her glorious breasts and cried her heart out while I was lying in the gutter. Now she was visiting me in hospital and cradling my bandaged right hand in her lap. She made me feel as if I was the most important person in the world. I blushed like a beetroot when she kissed me goodbye before going off with Captain Biggs to see Christian Berger. More fuel for my fantasies. Mack stayed and we talked more about fishing while another writer’s insight slipped through to the keeper. I might as well have had bandages over my eyes as well.
Captain Biggs, Mack and Sister Glorious had spotted Mum walking up Richmond Road from the trolley bus as it brought them home and thought it rather odd. After all, Friday night was late-night shopping and they knew her routine. Sister Glorious waved but Mum didn’t see her. At least she didn’t wave back. Captain Biggs was sufficiently curious to pause at the Church Army’s front door and look back up Richmond Road. He saw Mum cross over and cross back again. He noticed a man was doing the same odd dance and realised moments later that it was Mr Gillespie. He told Mack later it was like watching trains racing towards each other on the same track. The collision was inevitable and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.
The doctor came on Saturday morning and told me I was allowed to sit up. I begged to be allowed to get out of bed to go to the toilet because it was so embarrassing to have to pee in a bottle. Everyone knew what you were doing and sometimes it’s impossible not to fart.
‘Let’s see,’ he said. ‘Sit up.’ I sat up but it was a lot harder than I thought. My head had felt like lead when I had my prang but now it felt as though the slightest breeze would blow it away. ‘Now slip your legs over the side of the bed. How do you feel?’
‘Terrific,’ I said. My head felt like an emptying bath. Everything inside it was draining away.
‘Try to stand.’
I tried but the curtains came down before the show even began.
‘Whoa!’ said the doctor. He caught me as I pitched forward. ‘I thought that would happen.’ With the help of the nurse he put me back into bed and made me lie flat. ‘Wait five minutes before you try to sit up again, kiddo. I think we’ll leave getting out of bed until tomorrow.’
Kiddo. You’d think my name wasn’t written in block letters on a card above my head. Nevertheless I was happy to obey. My head thumped. Apparently feeling dizzy and fainting was normal when you have concussion. I resigned myself to another day in bed, hoping Sister Glorious wouldn’t visit me while a half-filled bottle of pee sat on the cabinet alongside my bed, waiting for a nurse to collect it.
Mum, Dad and Rod came to see me at the morning visiting time and brought Eric with them. They were so pleased to see me sitting up that I didn’t tell them about my attempt to stand. I asked Dad if the Collitts had been arrested.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
‘Then when?’ I asked.
‘We’ll have to wait and see,’ he said. He didn’t look too happy.
For once I didn’t get exasperated by Dad’s ‘wait and see’. It was Saturday after all and I thought maybe the police were waiting until Monday. Rod told me the tip of my fishing rod had broken off in the crash but that he’d managed to glue and bind another tip on. He reckoned I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Mum helped me drink some cordial she’d made up and fed me some chocolate brownies she’d baked that morning. Dad got permission for Eric to stay behind when they left. Eric had ruled up pages of grids so we could play Battleship. As soon as we were alone he told me how Mum had intercepted Mr Gillespie and slapped his face. His eyes were as big as saucers as though he still couldn’t believe what he’d seen, but I suppose mine were as well.
It was Wednesday morning before the hospital let me go home. I’d never known time drag so slowly despite the fact I had plenty of visitors. Judith came to see me after school on Monday and brought me some flowers. She perched on the edge of my bed while her girlfriend, Pauline, sat on the visitor’s chair and tried not to look embarrassed. I also tried not to look embarrassed. It wasn’t every day I was visited by a girl and the first time in my life one had given me flowers. Flowers, for God’s sake. But Judith was great and bubbled away like the drinking taps at school. She kissed me as she left. OK, it was only a peck on the bandages around my head, but it still counted. Apart from that, there were only two other moments worth mentioning.
The first was when they took the bandages off my head and I discovered a huge patch of my hair had been shaved off so they could put in six stitches. I’d never had stitches before and I was thrilled to my socks. The stitches made me look tough as all hell. The second moment was when Eric and
I snuck away from the ward to visit Christian Berger. We thought we’d blown it when we found Sister Glorious sitting with him, perched on the edge of his bed like Judith had on mine. Captain Biggs had sent her in with some clean pyjamas. She leaped in the air when she saw me as though bitten on the backside. I thought I was in trouble for getting out of bed. Then she spotted my stitches.
‘What have they done to you?’ she cried. She threw her arms around me and hugged me right there in front of Eric and the U-boat captain. Eric’s eyes nearly popped out of his head. Despite my bandages I gave him a halfway decent thumbs up behind her back.
Christian Berger looked like he’d been hit by a bus. My injuries were peanuts compared to his. He had the best black eyes I’d ever seen and his nose looked as if it was only held on by sticking plaster. I reminded him of his promise to tell me his story and pointed out he’d have plenty of opportunity while he was recuperating. I asked if Eric could sit in as well. He agreed to both requests provided we kept everything he said a secret between us. We left him talking to Sister Glorious and fair danced our way back to my ward. Imagine it. A real live U-boat captain was going to tell us his story, tell us what it was like to torpedo ships, what it was like to be depth-charged and what it was like to be attacked by aircraft. Being able to share the experience with Eric made it even more special. Nothing my Dad or adopted uncles had told me about their wartime experiences would come close. Even Mack’s story would pale by comparison.
The rest of the time in hospital was more boring than a bad day on the breakwater when the fish weren’t biting. The nurses always managed to catch my thumbs when they re-strapped my wrists and that really hurt. I still couldn’t feed myself but at least I could hold a glass or a cup between my hands. I couldn’t wait to go home.
They say the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was a shot that was heard around the world. Mum’s slap to the face of Mr Gillespie reverberated throughout every household in our neighbourhood. Nothing remotely like it had ever happened before. If a novelist had come up with the idea, he or she would probably have used it as a device to bring everyone to their senses. After all, a child—me—had been hurt, possibly seriously and, while people hadn’t actually stepped over me or around me, a lot of people who should’ve come to my aid hadn’t. The novelist would perhaps argue that Mr Gillespie took the second slap on behalf of all the others who’d failed in their duty, that it was a means to awaken them to their guilt, make them confront their shame and bring about contrition. But the novelist would be wrong. The proposition might work on paper but it certainly didn’t in real life.
Mum’s slaps widened the divide in the community. Perhaps half a dozen people witnessed the act but five times that number claimed to have. The public nature of Mum’s humiliation of Mr Gillespie worked against us. Mr Gillespie was a very popular figure and many people were embarrassed for him, and possibly even more embarrassed for his wife. They wanted to find excuses for why Mr Gillespie hadn’t come to help me, blaming his lack of compassion on the fact he’d been torpedoed and still hadn’t fully reconciled himself to the horrific events that had followed, but few were prepared to find any justification for what Mum had done. It was wrong for any woman to slap another woman’s husband and the humiliation cut deep. Even more telling, rather than ‘bring everyone to their senses’ the slaps only served to make those who deserved to feel ashamed feel more ashamed. Some people dealt with their shame by avoiding us, others by getting angry and defensive. Mum’s slaps gave the latter group a reason for their anger. Women who’d been coolly polite when Mum passed them in the street or out shopping now shunned her. We couldn’t take a trick. Mr Gillespie had left me in the gutter to die but once again my family was in the wrong.
On Tuesday afternoon Sergeant Rapana rang Mum to tell her the police wouldn’t be bringing any charges against Graham Collitt. He said Mr Gillespie refused to act as my witness, claiming he never saw Collitt kick me off my bike and, as far as he was concerned, I’d just fallen off. Though he was under no obligation, the sergeant also confirmed what Dad had suspected. He admitted the police wouldn’t be charging Mr Collitt either. Although there was no shortage of witnesses they all claimed Christian Berger had thrown the first punch. He said the man who held Christian Berger’s arm was technically guilty of assault but the police were unlikely to get a conviction. There was nothing more they could do. Sergeant Rapana said he was sorry.
‘I’m sure you did your best,’ said Mum. I winced. Mum often said that when my team was beaten at soccer or I came second down at athletics. It wasn’t said in a way that was calculated to make me feel better.
Nigel had some news for me, too. Club had begun again the previous night but fewer than half the usual number of kids had shown up. The fact that Captain Biggs had based his Sunday sermon rather pointedly around the parable of the Good Samaritan probably hadn’t helped. He conducted club as normal but I knew he must’ve been devastated by the poor turnout. He worked his heart out for us kids, trying to raise our sights and give us the chance to be something other than trouble. Captain Biggs’s slap in the face may have only been metaphorical but it had also cut deep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The lookouts heard the sound of the aircraft just as fading daylight had brought them hope. It circled them, using the clouds for concealment while it confirmed the U-boat’s position. Captain Berger ordered his crew to battle stations. He hoped the attacker would turn out to be a Sunderland. While the big, lumbering flying boats were heavily armed with machine guns and carried over two thousand pounds of bombs and depth charges, they were rarely equipped with searchlights—unless things had changed once more. Provided their attacker was a Sunderland, there was a chance they could hold it at bay through the last dying minutes of daylight and avoid being depth charged. This was the slim hope the captain clung to as the pitch of the aircraft’s engines changed and the crew braced themselves for attack.
The aircraft dropped through the clouds at the end of a banking turn less than two thousand metres astern, forward guns already blazing.
‘Sunderland,’ confirmed the lieutenant.
The flak guns opened up, their range advantage already negated but not their striking power. One good hit and the Sunderland would crash or withdraw, but it had the advantage of speed and manoeuvrability.
‘Discipline!’ shouted Captain Berger, but his voice went unheard. The gunners were rushing and making mistakes. Their aim was wild. He saw the telltale eruptions on the surface of the water heading directly towards them and ducked. There was nothing else he could do. The aft deck gunners fell under a hail of bullets. The 37-millimetre gun kept firing on the forward deck but without effect. The Sunderland swept past, rear guns blazing, then banked and climbed, preparing for the next assault. On the aft deck replacement gunners were rushing to position while the dead and wounded were gathered in. The U-boat continued its slow turn to port.
AN EXTRACT FROM ‘DEATH OF A U-BOAT’
Mum wouldn’t let me go to school until the following Monday. My wrists had pretty much sorted themselves out although I still wasn’t allowed to play any ball games or tag. I wasn’t supposed to ride my bike either but Mum knew there was no way she could stop me. I promised I wouldn’t fall off, go too far or go anywhere near Collitt. As I walked to school with Nigel, Eric and Maxie, I wished I had a leather jacket with the collar turned up. My partly shaven head made me look like a dog with mange and the stitches weren’t due to come out for another four days. All I needed was the leather jacket and a fag dangling from my lips to look as tough as I felt. Collitt and his mates surrounded us moments after we walked through the school gate. They were spoiling for a fight.
‘Look at you, ya little Pommy weed,’ snarled Collitt. ‘Ya had ta call the cops, didn’t ya. Can’t take ya punishment.’
I sensed Eric, Maxie and Nigel falter, but I’d been expecting trouble and had prepared for it.
‘Jesus, Collitt,’ I said. ‘Do you always have to prove you’re
as dumb as you look?’ I heard Maxie gasp and even Nigel took a step backwards. They were almost pissing themselves even before I’d opened my mouth. ‘You’re as thick as a lamppost, pal. I’m amazed you don’t get splinters in your hand when you brush your hair.’ Collitt’s jaw dropped open in disbelief. Nobody ever dared to talk to him like that. And I still hadn’t finished. ‘How could I call the cops, blockhead? I was knocked out when I hit the road. What are you saying? That I got up, walked down Ponsonby Road to the phone box, called the cops then came back and lay down in the gutter? Are you that pig-shit thick?’ Quite a crowd had gathered. They stood stunned, unable to believe what they were hearing. I think some of them thought I was committing suicide.
‘I’ll fuckin’ fix you!’ said Collitt. He grabbed me by the front of my shirt and almost lifted me off my feet.
‘Come on, you clown, hit me,’ I said. I stuck my jaw out invitingly. ‘Come on. What’s stopping you?’ What was stopping him was the fact that both my wrists were bandaged and I had stitches in my head. I knew there was no way he’d dare throw a punch. The teachers would kill him. ‘While you’re at it, give Nigel a good thumping, too. Go on. Sergeant Rapana’s just praying for the day. Come on, you chicken-shit prick, hit me.’