‘Yes, well I was just headed home.’
Harry made to walk but the man took a step to block his way.
‘Are you all right?’ Harry asked.
‘All these other fools with their lights on.’ Then he started shouting, ‘Lights out. Lights out.’
‘Now look here, there’s no need to go shouting your head off,’ Harry said, wanting to get away as quickly as possible. ‘Do you want me to call someone for you?’
The man didn’t answer and instead lowered his head as though he had been hurt by what Harry had said. Harry didn’t know what else to do and so tried to pass by.
‘This war will never end.’
The words shocked Harry and he immediately felt his body draw away from the man.
‘The war is over,’ Harry replied.
The man started to hum a tune and then sang up at the sky.
‘When der Führer says we is de master race we Heil- Heil- right in de Führer’s face. Not to love de Führer is a great disgrace so we Heil- Heil- right in de Führer’s face.’
It had been years since Harry had heard the song.
‘Look, I don’t know what you want but I have to get home. I suggest you do the same,’ Harry said, firmly and turned away.
‘They’re coming for her, Harry boy.’
Harry froze. The man moved closer to him and Harry turned to face him. He could see that the fellow was dressed in army uniform.
‘Look out, look out,’ the man shouted and Harry turned to see headlights.
He stepped out of the way and a car raced by. Harry realized he was standing in the middle of the road. When he turned back there was no-one there.
Harry could hear an iron gate being shut somewhere down the road. He scrambled onto the pavement and held the railings with all his might, pushing his head against the metal. The need to feel something solid was desperate and although the railings were painfully cold to his hands, at least they were real. His head pounded and he felt himself on the edge of fainting. He tried with all his might to suck the air into his lungs and as he did he remembered. He stood, his breath exhaling tiny ghosts of air, picturing once more the night sea, the sound of the waves breaking and Freddie’s hand clutching at a pencil.
*
It was early 1944, the beginning of March from what Harry could recall. A year earlier he had signed up to the Royal Norfolk Regiment. Harry did not anticipate enjoying the experience of being in the armed forces but he quickly found a knack for training. He liked the routines and the fitness tests, with the running and jumping and pulling one’s weight through mud or over thirty-foot walls, and he also liked the way it sculptured his body so that in six weeks he had muscles where before there had been only skin and bones. He also found that he could be good company, finding it easy to talk and lark around with a group of men.
Harry and his troop were sent on a training exercise in Devon as part of preparations for Operation Overlord and they were paired with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. The two divisions took turns at being Germans and played out a series of beach landing operations in which they had to secure the shore and take control of a number of stations. He was one of the first into the water, about fifty yards from land. The water was freezing and his army clothes felt like lead weights but he kept his eyes on the shore and kept kicking his legs as hard as he could. There was quite a spectacle ahead of him with several explosions throwing sand high into the air. Blanks were being fired from all about, filling the sky with sound. He reached the shore and pushed his feet hard into the sand. There were others with him, to his left and right. In fact there were four or five hundred men pulling themselves out of the water. He remembered firing his gun a couple of times before falling flat on his face. Some clever git set off an explosion less than ten feet from him and he had sand in his eyes and his ears were ringing. He had to keep going. Never stop. He got to his feet and ran again but almost immediately he came up against someone and pushed them hard so they fell. Then he found the cover of a sand dune and threw himself down for a moment. His eyes were stinging from the grit, and he made a futile attempt to remove it with a sandy finger. Someone shouted at him to keep moving, so he pulled himself up again. It was then that a man appeared directly in front of him and there was a moment where they both aimed their weapons at each other, but had been unable to shoot, even though the bullets were blanks. Harry went up to him and tried to wrestle the gun off him and in the pathetic struggle they unbalanced one another and ended up on their backsides. They looked at each other and then at everyone else around them and they started laughing at the absurdness of it all.
Later that evening they ate their supper together. Harry’s forearms and shoulders ached from where he’d pulled himself along the ground on his front during that day’s exercises and he was freezing cold, but it didn’t seem to bother him. At first he couldn’t place what it was about Freddie that attracted him so; he was handsome, of course, but then he began to understand that it was because Harry was so easy and familiar with him, something that would later attract him about Phyllis. It was as though his arms and legs were liquid and he took the space around him with such ease, his gestures long and fluid. In comparison, Harry felt tightly wound.
‘There were a few months in 1937 when I had barely a few shillings a week to live on. I always managed to pay my rent, but there was one time I went without food for two days,’ Freddie said, almost as a confession.
They had been talking about their lives before the war broke out.
‘Have you ever gone hungry?’ Freddie asked.
‘No.’
‘That’s the one good thing about this war. It makes me feel like I did when I had no money. You stop worrying about anything more than three days ahead. All I think about is food and cigarettes and having a good time.’
Freddie seemed to linger on the words good time. They went on talking all evening. Freddie did most of the talking and Harry found out that he had worked many jobs, mainly as a kitchen hand in run-down hotels in London alongside teaching painting to posh school girls. It sounded as if it had been quite a struggle and yet Freddie’s nature seemed carefree.
‘Are you getting leave for Easter?’ Freddie asked.
‘Yes. Probably the last before we go.’
Freddie looked at him thoughtfully.
‘Are you going to see your folks?’ Harry asked.
‘I only got my sister really. She’s asked me to stay, but she’s got a couple of young ones, so I just get in the way. How about you?’
‘My father’s poorly but he’s always got something wrong with him. I’m expected. Well my mother and my sister will expect me. I doubt my father could give a damn one way or the other.’
‘He’s a difficult man?’
‘He is with me.’
‘That’s the way some fathers are. They think they’ve got to be hard or you’ll grow up soft.’
‘Well he’s been hard as a hammer and he has no right to really.’
Harry could tell that Freddie’s eyes scrutinizing him. He realized he had no wish to talk about his father or his home. In fact he had no desire to talk anything of the past because it seemed to taint the feeling that was growing inside of him.
They sat quietly and shared a cigarette while listening to the other soldiers talking about the coming invasion. Then one of the soldiers asked Freddie to sketch his portrait because he’d been told that he was a bit of a dab hand with a pencil. Freddie brought out a little leather-bound book and drew a sketch of the man sitting by the fire. He worked quickly and Harry watched, fascinated by how a series of lines suddenly converged to create an image of the soldier and as Freddie worked, Harry let his eyes wander from the picture to Freddie’s hands. He stared at them intently, studying the way they held the paper and pencil. He noticed that his index and middle fingers were almost the same length and that he kept his nails clipped short.
When Freddie was finished he tore out the page and gave it to the so
ldier, who offered him money but Freddie refused it. Harry felt that in some way the picture had been drawn for him and wanted to ask Freddie if he might do another but was too shy. Instead they walked along the sand. If only they could be alone, Harry thought, but there were small groups of men dotted along the length of beach, all hunched over fires. Harry and Freddie kept close to the water’s edge turning now and then to face the black abyss of the sea and when they did, they allowed the sound of the waves to summon thoughts of an ancient unpeopled world.
‘I rent a little bedsit in Acton if you fancy brushing off your family at Easter,’ Freddie said. ‘It’s pretty small but the landlady's away at her relatives for the holidays so they’ll be no-one about.’
‘Oh.’
Harry felt the water pulling the sand away from under his boots. He wanted to say yes. In his head the idea of spending three or four days with Freddie thrilled him, but there was already a sense of guilt. He had always gone home during leave and his mother and sister had enjoyed seeing him.
‘How about it?’
‘Perhaps,’ Harry said, tentatively, trying to sound as noncommittal as possible.
‘I’d like to get to know you better.’
Before they left the next day Freddie handed him a piece of paper with a sketch of the beach and underneath it he wrote the address of his flat in Acton. Harry spent the next three weeks thumbing the piece of paper late at night as he lay in his bed, his eyes trailing the lines of the drawing, but as Easter approached he allowed routine to take over and when his leave began he took the train home to his parents’ house.
He was greeted by his mother who was as worried as ever about his father’s health. His sister, who was usually over the moon to see him, was more subdued. Apparently this time his father was very sick indeed and the doctor had been in every day. His mother told him that he was sleeping, so Harry decided to leave it until the next day to speak with him.
‘You look different,’ his sister said.
The two of them were sitting on the porch drinking tea. She was giving him a sly look as she smoked a cigarette.
‘How do you mean?’
‘I don’t know. You look bigger somehow.’
‘I stopped growing a long time ago.’
‘What was it like? The training?’
‘You know I can’t talk about it,’ he said, taking a drag on his sister’s cigarette.
‘What can we talk about then?’
‘What’s been going on here?’
‘Nothing. Apart from father being ill.’
‘Are you planting yet?’ he asked, referring to her work in the fields with the other land girls.
‘We’re always planting or digging something up. I like it a lot.’
‘Still, you won’t have to do it forever.’
‘But I don’t mind. I like being outside.’
‘What is wrong with father now?’
‘He has been getting pain all over.’
‘Of course, he has.’
‘He misses you.’
‘No he doesn’t.’
Harry found it difficult to be in the house at all and spent most of the day outside with his sister. They went for a walk around the village and into the country. It was one of those splendid spring days when the air was warm. They passed by the church, where two women were busy cutting back the grass and weeds from the tombstones and then they came upon the village green. In the summer months before the war, the green was home to the village cricket team but it had been four years since any serious match had been played. Now it stood empty, a large oak at the far end, a solitary figure. For many local people, the desolate green was a tragedy of war, but Harry felt indifferent towards it. As far as he was concerned, the green had always been a hopelessly provincial place.
After lunch he sat and read. It was late afternoon when his mother came to inform him that father was well enough to see him. The very fact of his having to be summoned was enough to make Harry tense. He climbed the stairs to his father’s bedroom and stood for some time on the dark landing, tall and rigid, willing the coldness into his heart. He went to knock on the door and then decided against it and walked straight in.
His father was asleep, so Harry sat himself noisily in the chair. His father opened one eye and stared at him.
‘You’ve lost weight,’ his father said.
‘A little, perhaps.’
‘You look too thin. I know there is a war on but you need to keep your strength up.’
‘I feel perfectly fine. You’re the one who should be watching his weight.’
Harry glanced at his father’s bedside table which was covered with books and an empty cup of tea.
‘I see mother is doing a good job of looking after you.’
‘It’s nothing she hasn’t done before.’
It upset Harry that his father was incapable of admitting what mother had done for him or at least show his gratitude. For the last twenty years she had nursed him on and off and there were weeks when it had been nothing but a hard slog for her, especially because the war had put pressures on everyone else.
‘You’re going to France then?’
‘I believe so,’ Harry said.
‘You’d better get that head of yours in shape.’
‘Yes, father.’
‘You always have a weak look in your eyes.’
Harry stood up to leave.
‘You might have said hello father. You might have asked me how I am.’
‘I need you to understand what you’re going to do. ‘
‘And what exactly is it that I’m going to do?’
‘These aren’t schoolyard games, you understand me? There’s no time for thinking like that. You are going to have to learn to kill because that bullet that hit me, well I can tell you for certain that there are plenty more and if you don’t sort out that soft head of yours, you’ll be dead before the year is out.’
‘And would that really bother you?’
His father said nothing. He reached his hand up to his head and rubbed his fingers into his temple, his expression remote. Harry’s eyes fell upon the mask of his father’s face and all he could see in that vacant head was a cold unbleeding machine of jaw and nose and brain; any feeling in his father had long been hermetically sealed under the sheet of metal which covered his skull. He should have felt pity for the old man, for someone who had been almost entirely absorbed by his sickness, but then sickness did not make somebody pleasant to be around. Stoicism was an attitude his father reserved for everyone but his family. Harry tried desperately to think of a time when he had cared about his father, but it was so long ago as to be out of reach. It would have been better that they had been strangers; it would have been better that his father had been killed at the Somme.
‘I’m going now father.’
‘You’re a foolish boy.’
Harry fixed his eyes on his father.
‘I wish you could be better for mother and Jean but perhaps the best thing you can do for everyone’s sake is hurry up and die.’
‘Harry,’ his mother said.
Harry turned to see his mother in the doorway, her face pale with anger. He stood up and went to his room. It only took him a minute to gather his things as he had not unpacked. Jean stood at the door of his bedroom and as he passed her he managed to put his hand on her shoulder.
‘You can’t go Harry,’ she said.
‘Jean, you ought to get out of this place as soon as you can. You understand me? Any way you can.’ Harry heard the unsteadiness in his own voice. He tried to give Jean a smile but failed, squeezing her shoulder instead.
He walked to the station and waited nearly an hour for a train. His body was stiff with anger and he noticed that no-one would sit beside him. He tried not to think about where he was headed and when after several hours he finally reached Freddie’s address in Acton he couldn’t bring himself to knock at the door. He was about to walk away and find a h
otel when Freddie came along the street.
‘I didn’t think you were going to show.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You’re here now,’ Freddie said, and opened the door.
Freddie led the way up two flights of narrow stairs and unlocked a second door.
‘There’s a special knack with this thing,’ he said, wiggling the door handle and the key until the lock disengaged.
Freddie’s home was essentially one large room that contained a sofa, bed, and writing bureau which looked as though it was from the nineteenth century. Above it on the wall he’d pinned large sheets of paper and on them he’d drawn a series of buildings, some tall skyscrapers, some intricately detailed houses and others just the beginnings of structures. The ceiling sloped down on one side and on its supporting wall was an extraordinary sight. Along half its length Freddie had drawn the entire cityscape of London in pencil.
‘You really have a good eye,’ Harry said, peering at the sketch on the wall.
‘I get bored easily. I just started one evening and I couldn’t stop. You think I’m a lunatic?’
‘No. The landlady doesn’t mind?’
‘She never said a thing about it. She comes up here once a week when I’m here to check things are in order but she never mentions it. I see her looking at it but she can’t bring herself to say anything. I can’t work out whether she likes it or not.’
‘I like it,’ Harry said.
Freddie smiled.
‘I should go,’ Harry said.
‘No,’ Freddie replied.
‘I don’t really know what I’m doing here. I got home and it didn’t feel right being there. I already felt like I was over in France and this life here wasn’t quite real or that everything with my family seemed trivial.’
‘But the trivial things are important.’
‘What I mean is I don’t care about what my father thinks anymore. He’s like a bad habit the whole family can’t shake. I want to feel that what I do is my decision. Mine. You see what I mean?’
Harry could not find the right way to convey what was going on inside him. He stood there and watched as Freddie removed his shirt. His gaze drifted over the weave of muscles under the skin. Freddie came close to him and undid the collar of his shirt. At first Harry’s muscles tightened but as he felt Freddie’s hand on the back of his neck, something in him softened. He pressed his body against Freddie’s and the physical touch affirmed the mainspring of his desire. His palms tingled and he realized his breathing was shallow from excitement but Freddie seemed to understand and wrapped his arms firmly around him, planting kisses all over his neck and moving ever closer to his lips. It was a language he understood without having to learn and he felt no need to resist. Never had he been so aware of every part of his body, and as he turned his head up towards the rafters, he was almost amused that so much life could be found in a little attic room.
The Smog (A Jean Clarke Mystery Book 1) Page 7