He’d woken with his shoulders sore, as if he’d been leathered all night. A cold in his stomach, too, that made him remember his mother and how she’d been quiet when he’d seen her last and tired.
I fixed him, though. I bloody fixed him. Showed him what I’ve learned – that fuckers like him can only be stopped by force.
He’d even told Pluckrose – because Pluckrose made you tell him things. Sunk in splitting armchairs dragged up to the kitchen stove – the last two awake and both of them fuddled with Scotch, genuine Scotch.
‘You are appearing thoughtful, Boss. What is it you’re frowning about? Tell your Uncle Pluckrose.’
‘I ay frowning.’
‘That, I will presume, is a denial, but I can see it in the blessed and familiar fizz – our Day is unhappy . . .’
‘Was remembering.’ His father’s face, the barm-pot grin for the customers and everything nice as nice. That bloody fish smell – crept out halfway up the street, made you gag.
‘You were remembering. Good start.’ Pluckrose’s feet enormous in ragged layers of wool sock – something Russian-seeming about them as he leaned one on the other, long legs aiming them straight for the warm. ‘But I may have to fetch the oyster knife if you’re going to take this long.’
‘Not an oyster.’
‘Indeed. Let it never be said.’ Pluckrose swivelled his long head over and made his most serious face. ‘But if we are both to stay pals, I’ll be needing the whole story. Now. Is there a broken heart involved?’
‘You wha’?’
‘Not the lady friend?’
The thought of her juddering the rag rug under Alfred heels. ‘No, no.’
‘Good.’ Pluckrose punched Alfred’s arm with a good deal of knuckle. ‘Can’t have a broken heart for little Alfie. Couldn’t stand it.’ And punched again.
‘Ow.’
‘Well then, talk, damn you. Not made of patience.’
Alfred letting himself walk into the shop again, past the blackboard with the whitewashed offers in his father’s curly printing – a feature being made of eels. The bell ringing over the door when it opened and let the stink rear up and greet him. That moment when his father saw the uniform and not Alfred, gave him a fawning leer and under it the obvious thought – wondering if a serviceman might just fancy something extra under the counter, hoping there was money to be made. A woman, old Mrs Archer, reaching up towards some little package for her and her sister and Alfred had vaguely noticed the display seemed sparse and greyish, not much there to sell.
Father calling out, acting the loud and jolly fishmonger, trying a wink, ‘Not a lot I can offer you, sir – if someone’s not registered with us . . . but if you’re visiting . . .’ And this when he met your eyes and knew you. His hands fell at the sight of you. He dropped his guard.
Pluckrose punched again.
‘Ow.’
‘Then tell me.’
‘Went back last leave and saw my ma.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘She’s nice . . . Saw my father, too.’ Washing the sound of him out of you with a mouthful of whisky, burning him away. ‘Went to the shop when he wouldn’t expect me.’
‘Ah.’
‘He’s a cunt.’
‘Ah.’
‘Walked in on him.’ The same dart of blood in your hands now as when you’d walked across the shop, leaned in past Mrs Archer, so that she would hear as well. ‘I told him – you leave Ma alone. I kept his eye until he had to look away. You leave her alone. Think they haven’t taught me how to look after myself? Think I couldn’t take you now? Featherweight champion now.’
‘A little bit of a lie there, old man. But a good one.’
‘He believed me. Told him I knew how to fight with a knife and if I had to I’d bring home a pistol and I’d end him. There shouldn’t be a night when he came home in the dark and he didn’t think I might be hiding in the blackout and waiting to blow off his head.’
Pluckrose sad-looking, frowning at his hands. ‘Good for you, Boss.’
‘He had to leave her alone now. And if he didn’t, I would know. I would fucking know – and Mrs Archer giving me a look and then giving him a look and he couldn’t say anything back – only trying to grin again, like I was somebody asking for lemon sole, a special treat, and the bell going off behind me when somebody comes in, so I said again – yo fucking lay a hand on her, that woman yo never bloody deserved and I’ll hear on it. The sisters’ll tell me – the ones yo drove out of the house – they’ll tell me, wo they? – and the others I’ve axed to watch yo, they’ll tell us and yo’ll be chopped, yo’ll teck a shit before yo know. ’Cause I’m sick fed up on it.
‘And then I turned – very parade ground and neat and I walked past Mrs Caulfield and her boy – both of them rockin’ like they was kaylied – and I left ’im. Fixed ’im, day I?’
‘Oh, you did, Boss.’
‘I fixed him.’
And sitting then and staring into the opened stove and the fire in it – a very small, kind fire – and Pluckrose had reached and held Alfred’s forearm for a while and then let it go and filled their glasses again and smiled at Alfred and rattled at his hair for a moment.
‘You’re a quiet one, aren’t you, Boss?’
‘Doe know.’
‘A good one, too. Have to always protect the weak. No matter what.’
Alfred rushed another hot swallow of whisky, couldn’t find a reply.
‘I try to make that my job, you know? When we fly out, I like to think that’s what we’re doing.’
Alfred patted Pluckrose on his shoulder. ‘Suppose.’
‘I’m happy when I think that.’
‘S’what they ax us to do, ay it?’
‘Yes, Boss. Of course. That’s what they’re asking us to do.’
For a while they listened to the fire.
Then Pluckrose shifted in his seat. ‘The thing I do consider . . . I’m not a bad navigator.’
‘Yo’m good.’
‘Thank you.’ He sighed. ‘Trouble is, even when I’m on the ground, I can get a fix that’s accurate to maybe five miles, possibly one or two.’ He spoke softly towards the flames. ‘A mile’s a long way, Alfred. And if I’m out by a mile, who else is out by a mile? What am I dropping my bombs on? Am I right? How often are we right? And if we’re not right . . .’
‘We do our best.’
Pluckrose rubbed at his hair with both hands. ‘We do.’
‘Do what they ax us. Buggers on the other side, I bet they don’t worry.’
‘Not much use if they do.’
‘Not much use if we do, either. No point gooing a game with ourselves about that. We’m doin our best and God’s with us and all that.’
Pluckrose let out a small, coughing laugh.
‘Wha’?’
Pluckrose shook his head, but then began, ‘Remembering what my uncle told me. Story from Gallipoli. He said the trenches were very close there and the lads used to yell at each other – the two sides: the Turks and our chaps – they used to yell back and forth, and the Turks, you’d hear them saying Allah this and Allah that, calling on their maker, and we’d yell something back in return and on it would go between the shooting. Turns out, the Turks, they thought we were like them, that we’d be calling on our maker. So they thought the name of our God was Bastard.’
Alfred started to smile at that and then didn’t feel right about it. ‘We’m doin the best we can. It’s the Nazis, they’re the bastards.’
‘No argument there.’
‘We’m doin our best.’
‘I hope so, Alfie. I do very much hope so.’
And then they sat quiet for a while.
drop
At the film camp Alfred had restarted his habit of wa
lking around the perimeter – this didn’t constitute vigorous exercise, but it made him seem more useful to himself. Not that the circuits did have any point, only the memory of one – of Kriegie Alfred working to harden his feet, ready for marching, or running, or whatever awfulness might come to pass. You needed to mind your feet.
Proper boots I had, looked after them, too. Had a pair of lousy clogs to slope about in and stashed away the boots, kept them greased up, in good condition, with God knew what, it didn’t bear thinking about.
With every day’s walking the place grew more defined, the garden plots settling and thickening, the hut windows showing curtains, mugs full of wildflowers, stacks of books.
Shouldn’t put books in a window – the sunlight foxes them and then when it’s wet the damp catches hold and makes them bloat and warp. Silly blighters.
His tour this morning brought him to a quiet crowd, mainly of film people, huddled in away from the fence and highly interested in something. Once he’d stepped close enough to see, he realised he didn’t want to – they were watching a demonstration of tunnelling.
A couple of chaps who’d written books – personal reflections on imprisonment and so forth – they were down on their knees and showing how they’d dug. Alfred knew about the books, they’d been in Ivor’s shop at times, but he hadn’t read them and didn’t intend to.
One fellow was hunched on all fours and acting out a crawl underground, holding his trowel and moling forward beneath an invisible roof. The director was kneeling beside him and peering in that half-soaked way he did, while the other invited expert was pressing batons down into a shallow hole he’d made – the result of neat work with a little entrenching spade. Standing to the left in what looked like a proper Luftwaffe uniform was a genuine German – well spoken, quiet about his war, and playing the camp commandant. Oscar Vonsomething. Rumour suggested he’d been a navy boy, or an opera singer, or a political refugee, although Alfred didn’t much care. Of course, being an actor as well as a German, he didn’t mix much with the average bods, wasn’t one you’d see kicking a ball about, or mucking in. But Alfred had almost spoken to him, had walked up and nearly started to tell him a sentence that withered as soon as Alfred thought of it, that left him only staring and then dropping his head and hurrying on.
Just now, Vonsomething was sinking, crouching on to the sand and blushing, unwilling to have someone lower than he was and working in front of his feet, their body in a frightened shape, even if they weren’t currently frightened. You could see it in him, the way he was embarrassed by himself, his uniform – happiest after the scenes where he was outwitted, where he could find humiliation.
Maybe that’s what I want to talk to him about – maybe it’s nothing to do with the war, only that I’d like him to know he should fall in love. Then he’ll be humiliated soon enough.
Busy in his excavation, the expert worked at shoring up his five or six inches: too happy, too intent. Something in his face reminded Alfred of London, of the men – see them working as bank clerks, or on the tram that takes them to an office, a school, a shop, some job they can’t keep, can’t get, can’t want – in a country that is brown linoleum and saving money for the meter and war surplus and making do and the blood pressed out of you years ago, everything seeming small and cheap for ever. The man was digging himself out.
The actors – even Vonsomething – they were different, had some life, a bit of health about them. Three of them were studying the diggers. But they’d only be trying it out back in England, lying inside pretend burrows in a studio somewhere – safer for all concerned. Queer how people got so fussed about themselves when nothing much would kill them any more – not beyond the usual.
Alfred left them to it, quick as he could: trotted on, turning the trot to a run, a chase, eventually stopping himself against the wall of the equipment store, enjoying the small impact, the dunt of his heart, the kick of breath. Inside, old Jack set down a coil of cable and then gradually sauntered out.
‘Sorry, Jack.’
Jack spoke around his cigarette. ‘S’OK.’ He picked up the cable again and put it in a box. ‘They after you for something?’ Decent sort, Jack – the only one whose name you could remember.
‘No. Just . . . felt like a gallop.’ Breath hard in him, shaking things loose.
‘Mm-hm . . .’ Jack withdrew to a little table, sat and began to dismantle a mechanism, some part of a camera, stripping it down to mend it, to find it out. ‘Twenty minutes and they’ll need you in the crowd.’ Jack had been in an army film unit, front-line cameraman. ‘And on we go.’
‘No rest for the wicked.’
‘Nor anyone else.’ Examining an invisible piece of metal. ‘This bloody sand gets everywhere.’ Some types, they went this way – only calm and more calm and slowness, nothing else left.
‘Suppose it would.’
Jack pondered him for a breath. ‘You all right?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s all right then.’ He went back to studying the broken nothing between his fingers, let Alfred be because that was what Alfred wanted. ‘The gentleman is all right.’
Or the gentleman is buggered, what’s the difference either way?
Alfred pushed off, steered towards the parade ground, admitting – because he might as well – that the shadow beside him should have been Ringer, his good friend. He had been running to get away from his lack of Ringer – because digging, that couldn’t go on without Ringer. Nothing could.
Mooney had been his name outside the bag – David Mooney – an amount of suspicion and bother at his arrival, because he was such an unusual bod and couldn’t explain himself. There had been an idea that he was a snooper for a while. But he’d been on a British Stirling all right – only to see the sights – his first and last op ending in a cack-handed parachute drop and a broken ankle. And for what he’d been told was a milk run, he had worn a dispatch rider’s helmet – swore the thing had saved his life and they must not be parted: its padding and thickness making his head seem even larger. And the Germans had let him keep it, maybe thought that he wasn’t quite right in his mind and wearing the helmet would help him. He took it off to sleep, but even then he’d cuddle it. Superstitious.
And maybe he was unusual in his thinking, sometimes slow, and you couldn’t always teach him, but he wasn’t daft. Called him Ringer because in private life he’d rung bells – campanology, the sound of a peal inside it, tumbling. Farm worker in the fen country, bloody awful life, but on his Sundays he’d walk for miles with some other lads, go from tower to tower, ring the whole day.
‘To get a good tower. You like that. Sweet bricks, they make it sweet. For hundreds of years. Ringing sweetens the bricks sweetens the bells.’ Gently spoken – because when people heard him they made fun. ‘You’re something that keeps on after hundreds of years – what they put in the ringing books, that’s years of raising bells and Pleasures and Superlatives and Surprises. Once we rang a peal of Treble Bob Major, that’s 6,144.’
Not exactly an expert at writing, but he’d scrawl you out these long chains of numbers, patterns, had thousands of them packed in that monster skull.
‘12345 then 21345 then 23145 then 23415, d’you see?’
And him almost tearful once, Alfred thinking some bad thing had happened, but it was only that Ringer was worried the bells were quiet at home and that after the peace it might be too late, what they needed might be forgotten.
‘40,320 with a peal of eight – that’s how many changes you’d get. Would take you seventeen, eighteen hours to ring that many. 40,320. You see? Eighteen hours. And I’ve never.’
‘Never yet.’
‘Christmas Day in ’41 and when we won at Alamein – victory peals, that’s not enough. That don’t let them sing.’
‘It’ll be fine.’
‘The lads’ll forget. They’ll be i
n the services now and the old uns’ll die. It’ll all be forgot.’
Alfred with no idea if this was true, but not wanting Ringer to cry, not wanting him to be publicly weak, because some bastard would always notice and take advantage. ‘They’ll remember. I’m sure they will. You will. So they will.’ Rubbing his hand between Ringer’s shoulder blades because when his ma did that to Alfred, he’d feel calmed.
‘Accomplishing the extent. They’ll paint my name up on the board if I do. Me and the boys, if we do.’ Rain banging off the dirty hut windows. ‘Accomplishing the extent.’ His eyes so scared they hurt you. ‘Will I, Boss?’
‘Well, there’s time enough.’ Alfred lying the way that he might to a child, if he ever had a child.
Not that he was like a kid, Ringer. He’d try and fight you if you said so – would lose against anyone, but he’d still fight. No sense of direction in his fists, just head down and flailing, useless length of arm. The thing was, you didn’t understand him if you thought he was daft – it was just that he’d get so scared and he wouldn’t hide it, not always, so you’d need to calm him. For yourself, you’d need to make him steady – then you’d be steady, too. Got him the bunk under mine. Kept him right and close.
And Ringer kept everyone right – because he never did forget. Not anything. Whatever got into him stayed and he could read and tell the pattern of the camp – the passage of guards, deliveries, times and days, alterations, substitutions – he carried everything.
Out walking, it was Ringer you missed. Long stride he had, but he’d rein it in for you, head nodding with that mad helmet and his soft eyes flickering at each movement, each new detail and always an angriness or a sadness in his face, a sense of some feeling that made him hurt.
My friend.
My crew.
My girl.
You were some kind of mug to bother with any of that.
Because where did it get you? Here. Just marching round and round inside a daydream.
He halted, crossed his arms – hugged the sum and substance of what he was meant to look after: Day, Alfred F.
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