Day

by A. L. Kennedy

  Which meant Alfred, with his forty-eight-hour pass, had gone with four gunnery training mates to his nation’s capital and seat of government, because they all had to go and try their luck.

  Looking for an easy way to test it – no harm meant and no ammunition required.

  Although two of the lads had girls there and family and they pretty much disappeared once they’d supped a pint and made everyone come down Putney way because that was convenient for their houses, even if it meant that Alfred didn’t see the sights – or not so that he noticed – only bombed-out buildings here and there and a patch of the river.

  Once the Putney lads had gone Alfred was left with a bloke known as Ditcher – although he’d never ditched – and a quiet type called Blamey, none of them sure of where they were once they’d walked a bit off from the pub in London’s odd, charged dark, a fat moon lifting overhead. They’d walked back towards the Thames, they hoped, in a chilly night and had gone far enough to be highly browned off with not finding it when Blamey hailed a cab and a car did stop – but maybe not a cab – and in got Ditcher and Blamey and then, before they could do a thing about it, some other chap had climbed in after from the off side and everyone shouting as the doors slammed and the car drove clean away.

  Which left Alfred in the dark and sobering rapidly. He gave up on the river, then found it, crossed it, wandered along by himself fretting he should have used this time to see his ma, check that her letters weren’t phoney and she really was doing all right.

  He’d not been clear about where his party had hoped they’d spend the night – the YMCA, a French madam’s boudoir and requesting a serviceman’s discount at the Ritz had all been mentioned. He was beginning to feel lonesome, childish, tricked, but then Goering took a hand and the sirens went up for a raid, the hot columns of searchlights starting to topple and sweep, ticking round for bombers.

  They look for our boys, we look for theirs.

  He’d stumbled on the right way for a shelter: one of the brick-built ones that looked a shoddy job, materials skimped, which was funny, because the area seemed presentable from what he could tell in the whining black. He remembered thinking one direct hit would knock down the whole lousy effort. But maybe serve them right – maybe they’d demanded a local shelter – could you do that, if you’d got the money, influence? Seemed you could do most things if you were that kind – the five courses at the Ritz and bugger the rationing kind – so why not demand somewhere for yourself, or maybe for your staff, if you didn’t just run for your country house and stay there in a funk?

  Count on a war to bring out the finest in people.

  He went inside anyway, perhaps out of curiosity – and because if your number’s up, it’s up, and you could be sitting in a fine, deep Underground station and have a sewer blown apart above you and then drown as easy as anything, choke in shit, or maybe you’d only fall on the steps going down and crush yourself, crush everybody, no matter what you were worth.

  He’d turned through the blast protection and then been knocked against the wall. Couldn’t work out for a moment why he’d never heard the bomb – then realised this bundle had swiped round and clocked him when he wasn’t expecting it. This bundle carried by a woman’s voice.

  ‘I’m so sorry. Did I hurt you?’

  But she hadn’t hurt him, he was only surprised. ‘No, I’m –’

  And the bundle unravelling then and dropping: a quilt, a book in a plain paper jacket, a glasses case, a packet that suggested sandwiches.

  I wanted to know what book. Already trying to know people by their books. Stupid habit.

  She’d managed to keep hold of her Thermos. ‘Thank the Lord.’ Joyce. ‘Oh, dear.’ Standing close, almost against her – like being, all at once, in a warm room and happy. Joyce.

  Green coat buttoned to the top and her hair not exactly brushed, very deep black, and the largest eyes, these huge dark eyes. Joyce. He sees her and feels untroubled, slowed.

  She was a place to live. My place to live.

  Joyce. And already he’s looking too much and can’t stop, but she hasn’t noticed, is busy with flustering over her things, so he’ll just keep on. Even when he crouches to help her he keeps on, takes in her shoes – good but scuffed – and her ankles, her legs, the start of her legs, the calves, the way they take his thinking out of words and into a panic: thin, thin, dizzy air.

  He hands up the case for her glasses but doesn’t lift his head, because he is blushing and appalled. He wants to run somewhere with her. And he wants a few days to consider, to gather himself. And he wants things he cannot say.

  ‘Oh, that’s – You’re most awfully kind.’

  Felt like a creature, a wammell. Heat and shame and enjoying the shame. Hotter because of it.

  Raising the quilt that is warm from her arms and heavy and sweet-scented, he stands and he folds it and can’t think if he should hold it tight or else far away from himself, because both of the choices would seem rude.

  And you’re a good boy, remember. Hold hard on to that.

  And now that he’s standing, it’s her turn to bend at his feet which staggers him again, the glimpse of her bared neck, while she gathers up her book. He worries that he smells of beer, of the twist in his head, of this new, marvellous burning.

  And then because he’s a fool and he does want to know what book, ‘That’s a long . . . a big . . . What are you reading?’

  Shy about it when she answers, ‘Oh. It’s, you know, The Odyssey of Homer – new translation. I never really paid attention when I was at school. Bit of a dummy. I’m up to where Circe turns them into pigs.’

  And his face dying, abandoned out there in front of his thinking, because he cannot nod as if he’s read it, cannot move, and soon she will raise her eyes, stop staring at the wallpaper cover she’s used to protect her book – she takes care of books – and she will see that he’s just an idiot and they’ve nothing in common at all.

  ‘Anyway, I remember he gets home safe in the end, gets the girl and so forth . . .’

  The end of her sentence tingling in his spine.

  And not sure if she was making it sound simple, because then I’d understand – her being kind – or if that was only her way of talking. She seemed kind. Always kind.

  She clears her throat neatly and begins edging further into the shelter, chattering on as she draws him in behind her. ‘I don’t usually come here – been using the basement, because it lasted through the proper Blitz, so why not. Only then the house two doors along caught it last week and their basement didn’t come off very well.’ He thinks, hopes, she hasn’t noticed he’s so much a bloody fool.

  And they’re walking together after that and finding a space, sitting, this old dear frowning at them sideways and put out, a kiddie starting to whimper elsewhere, people fixing themselves for the night while a man in a long, grey coat gives out Commun-ist leaflets, lots of praise for Uncle Joe and how they’re still holding out at Stalingrad after so long. Alfred takes one because Joyce does – except he doesn’t know she’s Joyce yet – and he folds it up into his pocket.

  ‘Do you approve?’

  There’s this shine about her, as if she’s a magazine picture, or something religious and he doesn’t know why people haven’t noticed and can’t think why she’s bothering with him – not that she truly is bothering, more like passing the time, and there’s something about her that’s nervous, upset, and it seems that she’s speaking against her will. In those astonishing eyes there’s a type of question, or a request. He can’t read it exactly and maybe his want is making him find what isn’t there, but he has the idea that he might be able to touch her hand and that it might calm her if he did and that he should do something to mend her: that should be his job. Of course, he’d forgotten – so tickled with his idea – that she really had asked him a question out loud.

 
‘I said, do you approve? I mean, it doesn’t matter if you don’t.’ She’s dipping her words, nearly murmuring – the old dear staring sharply, trying to overhear. ‘I always did think the Blimps and so on could do with getting a good old shake. We’ll need things to be fairer when this is all done with, people won’t stand for anything else. And we’re used to sharing by this time, mucking in. And meeting each other.’ She frowns at herself, at her quilt which is resting on his knees. He raises it, but she stops him. ‘If you can bear to keep a hold – I’ve nowhere else to put it.’ She glances around at the shelter, the dim, musty packing of strangers against strangers, grubby bedding, a shady fellow knocking his pipe out and laughing as if he’s told an off-colour joke, elbowing his shady friend.

  ‘Oh, God.’ She gives a shiver, very small. It clatters his bones.

  Alfred’s stomach fluttering and, ‘What’s wrong?’ Sounding too loud to himself and not quite respectable. ‘That is . . . is there something the matter?’

  She shakes her head, ‘No, no,’ as if there was water rising to meet her and she hadn’t expected it. ‘Would you like a sandwich? I have some. There’s spam, or there’s jam. My mother made the jam. No way of telling who makes the spam – some Yank, I suppose. Oh, Lordy. You must think I’m cracked.’

  Alfred wants her to stop and has cramp in his arm from needing to reach across to her, only then he wouldn’t know what he should do – even if she didn’t slap him – which she would – and also that aircraft recognition feeling is seeping into him again like sin. It’s tearing him: trying to seem presentable and this nasty eagerness, a bad want of her that breeds more of itself and tricks his breathing up and what kind of man can he be that he likes his going wrong, loves that it springs him up, leaves him hiding his lap under her quilt.

  It had a gold satin cover, her quilt, very smooth. His hands were ugly when he set them down against it. He seemed to himself a very ugly little man.

  ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know your name, Sergeant. Did I see you were a sergeant?’ She turns slightly and this presses her shoulder into his, covers his stripes, strips his heart back to the breech.

  Saliva so thick in his mouth that it gets in the way. ‘Yes . . . I’m a very new sergeant. Air gunner.’ Better be honest from the start. ‘But I haven’t done anything yet. They make us sergeants just for saying that we will.’ Be honest in what you can.

  ‘But you have a name, too . . .’

  He looks for how she said this and she’s smiling a little. The biddy in the corner almost growling, finally getting something worth her disapproval.

  ‘Alfie, I suppose.’ His voice muffled by pressing down against so much.

  ‘Hello, Alfie you suppose.’

  ‘Hello.’

  Then a horrible silence and some kid coughing as if he’s swallowed a button, or something, and the distant thump of things starting up out in the world.

  ‘You could ask my name, if you wanted. As we’ll be spending the night together. It’s quite all right, these days. Everyone’s very modern and no one comes to any harm. Not much from that, anyway.’ She doesn’t sound modern herself, or casual about this – more as if she’s pushing into somewhere she won’t like.

  And now you have to make her happy, have to help and that means you can be a good boy really, a good bad boy and that calms you. A bit. ‘Well, I don’t know . . . I’ve never been in London . . . At home we had an Anderson out the back, used that.’ Understanding she’ll find your old life unattractive, but you can’t stop. ‘Wouldn’t have been any good if my sisters were still at home – not enough room – I’ve got a whole wing of sisters, but they left years ago – married. Apart from Nan, she’s in . . .’ Can’t say she’s in service, not with someone who probably has servants. ‘I’m the youngest: the babby.’ Sounding soft as shit, but it matters much less than it ought, because of how safe you seem, how well, how comfortable she makes you.

  She felt like home – gave me that.

  Then stole it.

  And when he’d finished, finally run down, he turned and discovered her watching him, apparently pleased, but also surprised in some way – as if he had opened a door on her while she was busy with something else, a duty she didn’t like.

  ‘Sergeant Alfie, you still haven’t asked me what I’m called.’

  ‘Maybe I shouldn’t.’ Because he knew he had to. This feeling that he could die if he didn’t know.

  ‘I’m Joyce.’

  Landing like a hot stone in him. ‘Oh.’ Rippling his breath, rocking what had only ever stood before, some place in himself he hadn’t known. ‘Hello, Joyce.’

  The city outside the shelter louder now: desynchronised engines worrying in and the dull shake of bombs, ack-ack doing its best. Not a big raid, but enough.

  The batteries firing up always seemed inadequate, thin. Never like that when you got on the other end of the German flak, had to ride across boxes of the bastard stuff, pretend you didn’t mind.

  But when you were busy, you didn’t, that was the marvellous thing. It was a mercy. Like her.

  He said her name again just because it tasted lovely. ‘Hello, Joyce.’

  ‘Hello, Alfie.’

  His breathing all shallow and helpless, making him babble at her. ‘At the back of Ma’s house there was an ack-ack emplacement – three lads and some sandbags and a Bofors gun. Ma used to bring them mugs of tea. I think everyone did.’ He didn’t know why he was telling her this, it wasn’t the right kind of thing, not witty, intelligent, not any use. ‘Then one morning after a raid, she went out to see them and their heads were lying in the lane. Blown off. There in the lane . . . She shouldn’t have had to find that.’ Joyce was still watching his face though, listening. Brave girl. ‘I was away by then. Training.’ He tried to swallow and didn’t quite. ‘Finished now, though. Well, the basics. Not operational, but I’ve got the brevet.’ He wanted to shut up. ‘Would you like to see?’ He wanted to start again, be a man she would like.

  But it truly did seem that she didn’t mind him and so he angled himself to let her see his wing – and his pretty lousy sewing – while her concentration, her attention felt enormous, like a kick from Sergeant Hartnell, only deeper and wonderful, like a strange recoil echoing in his chest. He felt it, the breath when he split open.

  ‘Alfie, I came here –’ She faces straight ahead now, falters. ‘Alfie.’

  She is so, she is too much. She hurts him with being Joyce, even when she seems not quite concerned with him, is preoccupied. She is the first good hurt he’s known.

  ‘Alfie, I came here because I wanted to be with people, but I don’t think I can stand being jammed in like this all night . . . This will sound awful . . .’ She checks with him now and he shakes his head for her before he knows why and maybe she’s going, maybe he’s leaned up against her side too hard and she’s offended and their having met is over and no more of it to come and perhaps now he has to be shaking his head because he can’t let that be true.

  ‘This will sound awful, but I don’t want to go back alone.’

  Alfred’s mouth hasn’t got a clue – his mind, likewise – they can’t help him. He is beyond wanting her, lost in a splendid, shining fear.

  Joyce clears her throat. ‘Look, I wouldn’t ask. And I also shouldn’t. And you ought to know that I’m a married woman. I really am terribly married and I don’t want there to be misunderstandings.’

  She says other things after that, but he doesn’t hear them. He thinks he might still be shaking his head, because here is something else that can’t be true.

  Then she is quiet, tense.

  He hugs the quilt. Doesn’t want to give it back. Perhaps he is shaking his head about that. It would be very simple if this could be all about a quilt.

  She brushes his hand, which stings, or lights, or twitches, he doesn’t know which without looking
and he doesn’t look and she tells him, ‘You really don’t mind? I do realise it’s an imposition.’

  His head still swinging back and forth without him and that blasted old woman tutting and acting as if she’s outraged, when there is nothing to be outraged about.

  Joyce again, insisting gently, ‘Because I’d probably get out now, if we were going.’

  And he stands and his legs are unhelpful and he follows Joyce, because he can’t do otherwise.

  Should have stayed where I was. Stayed safe.

  But I couldn’t.

  Not in a million years.

  So they’d gone out beneath the edge of the passing raid, rushed out before anyone could stop them.

  He’d stumbled through the streets beside her. The moon apparently swollen, watching: at its highest and very naked, very bright for them.

  Thinking all the way that what she said was one thing and how she seemed was another and you believe how someone seems, don’t you? That’s common sense.

  The reek of fires as they went. The harsh, the sweet, the rotten: another lesson war would teach you, the way there could be such variety in waste, the infinite variations of fire.

  They stepped across the head of a street, something leering at its end: a squat, red threat and a bell sounding, a fire engine going somewhere and a whistle blown, three blasts. Funny how you heard the detail and not the guns any more, not the Heinkels, not the bombs: the larger noise of that more like a grip around you, a heaviness you moved through and learned to ignore unless it pressed too sharp, came down and bit you.