As it happened, he’d reached the assembly point for the first scene of the day.
Might as well stop where I am, then.
So while the others mooched and trotted, scuffed and marched up to join him, he watched the technicians fiddling, Old Jack setting up and making good. methodical. And finally Alfred permitted himself the comfort he’d had through too many bleached-out waits, the privacy he’d built in too many crowds – he remembered her, he searched out the full, high rush of her, stepped inside it and closed his eyes.
‘Hello. Hello? This is me . . . Is that you? That’s . . . I . . .’
He’d not done well the first time. He’d known the number for a while: it was printed on her headed notepaper along with her husband’s name and their address: another wedding present, no doubt.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t quite . . .’ The line so bad that he might have been back on the Lanc, her voice only barely defined. ‘Is that . . . when you say “me” . . . Is that Alfie?’
Not that hearing even this much of her didn’t make his neck sweat immediately. He couldn’t tell if she was pleased, though. ‘Yes, it’s –’
‘God, I’m . . . You’re a surprise. I’m . . .’
‘Well, I didn’t intend to be.’ Or not a bad surprise, anyway – a good one, please a good one. ‘It’s only me.’ As if he spoke to her every day.
‘Where are you?’ She did sound mainly pleased. ‘Are you here?’
Didn’t want her scared – it was easy to scare people. ‘I am. Here. Or there. I mean, we’re both here.’
Molloy, packed into the phone box with him – and Pluckrose also – prods him under the ribs, hisses so she surely must hear it. ‘Jesus, make sense, willya.’
‘Well, I am here.’ This meant for the lads, not for her, so now he has to try again, ‘I’m in London, sorry . . . there’s . . . things going on here.’ Pointing at Pluckrose, warning, no room to point at Molloy, both of them being no help to him, in any bloody way.
But he was in London. Which meant this was very last minute, but his leave was his leave and couldn’t be changed in any case and he’d rung her before, quite often, you could say repeatedly, and got no answer, started to think that the line was out, misdirected, or she’d moved house, or been bombed out, or hurt, or worse, and he wouldn’t know – there really wouldn’t be a way that he could know – or else she’d maybe guessed that he would call and was just ignoring him until he’d stop. He couldn’t tell. How could you tell?
‘Alfie? You’re in town?’
‘I . . . yes, I am. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be sorry.’
‘I would have said before. There wasn’t time to write. The post is so . . .’ He swallowed and realised that he was smiling, that his whole head felt loose. ‘Are you busy today? I don’t really have much more time than today. My crew, they’re . . .’ One of his crew was currently banging the back of his knee while another sniggered – the rest were in a cordon just outside, the Bastard licking the glass in the little windows and winking whenever Alfred looked his way. ‘I only have today.’
‘Well, that’s . . . Shall we go to the pictures? We could do that . . . see something? I have to fire-watch later. Making myself useful – I’m a mass observer, too . . . Donald would never have allowed . . . anyway. I’m keeping busy. You’re lucky. I mean, lucky that I’m not working today. I work ever such a lot now. That is, not as much as you, but –’
‘I’m glad I’m lucky.’ With all his heart, unbroken and hot and big between his lungs. ‘I’ll meet you . . . I don’t know where, though.’ Hating that he had to shout and Pluckrose grinning at him and nodding, while Molloy blows smoke in his eyes, makes him blink.
But he keeps listening, keeps on willing her voice to come in, catching it, holding.
‘Oh Lord, I’m hopeless with directions . . . what about Hinde Street? I have to be there for . . . There’s a church in Hinde Street, you could get the Underground to Baker Street, could you? Then it’s not far.’
‘I’ll find it.’ He didn’t for a moment think he could.
‘At twelve?’
‘I’ll be there.’
But you found it. You did. Ran all the way.
You met her at the bottom of the steps, still ruffled with the nonsense your crew yelled after you as you escaped, a solemn little handshake from the skipper before you made the dash and a kind of embarrassment still on you – as if she might see what they’d suggested, what they thought. What you thought yourself, that was another matter, that was something you should keep at bay because this was just meeting someone, a girl, a woman, a married woman, and this was just everything, but also just meeting, seeing each other after letters where she’s said that she thinks of you often and so it’s not a bad thing if you say you’ve thought often of her.
‘Oh, and I’ve got you this.’ She pushes a flat, soft parcel into your hand – her fingers touching your knuckle, cool.
‘What?’ It’s something wrapped in wallpaper. ‘I mean, you needn’t.’ She seems to have a lot of wallpaper. ‘I don’t have anything for you . . . If you smoked.’
‘I don’t.’
‘No, neither do I. But I could get you cheap cigarettes – out of the NAAFI. Would you like to start?’
The rubbish you talked around her – every time you’d collapse into trails and heaps of words, be lost in them rather than realise you were beside her, rather than have only silence thin between you, transparent. And that first time probably the worst, while you watched her move, the lightness in her – even with those big, scuffed shoes – and the blue hem of her dress beneath the green coat that you know, duck-egg blue dress and her face that wonderful oval, tiny chin and the neat mouth, soft neat mouth you can hardly look at because it makes you jumbled and the eyes more than anything – eyes of some creature, something marvellous – never seen them in daylight before now, never let them ease inside you and not stop.
‘I don’t want to smoke.’
‘I know. I don’t want to smoke, either . . . because . . . But if we did smoke.’
‘Then we’d need cigarettes.’
‘Then we’d have cigarettes. You could note that in your mass observation.’ Wanting her to note him. ‘Along with me wanting to dress you in parachute silk.’ Struck shy when you say this, but it turns out all right.
‘Yes, I could.’ A smile in how she says this, lovely smile, while you trip yourself up a little, because you are almost stepping backwards so you can face her, or because you have forgotten how to walk.
‘Maybe I’ve noted it already.’ She catches your near arm softly and you almost drop the parcel. ‘Careful, Sergeant Alfie – I have to give you back to that crew of yours without anything broken.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Well, otherwise it would be sabotage, wouldn’t it?’
‘No, I mean thank you. For the . . .’ You wag the parcel. ‘For this.’
‘Gratitude might not be quite the thing, you know. You haven’t seen it yet.’
So you unwrap the string and unfold the paper and there is this woollen thing that you don’t quite understand.
‘It’s a hat.’
A woollen thing which is red.
‘It isn’t regulation, but then I couldn’t get the regulation wool.’
You both pause and study it where it lies across your hands like a fillet of something unpromising.
‘It’s –’
‘Terrible, I know. But I wanted to try and I did manful work – see, there aren’t any seams – it’s all on four needles and terrifically complicated and one has to keep count for the ribbing – and you can wear it under your flying gear when it’s cold, that was my thought. It’s rabbit wool – like they use for babies – so it won’t itch.’
‘Under my –’
�
�It’s a hat, you chump. That much, at least, is obvious and I refuse to believe that it’s not.’
And you are halted on the pavement – this broad street with surges of people tramping along it and this little reserve policeman in a helmet that doesn’t fit and he’s only really the same height as you, but seems small today, seems a bloody dwarf because you are so grown when you’re with her and there are fine, high shopfronts behind you that would be impressive, might even have something to sell and there are quite possibly sights nearby and you don’t care to see them, don’t care in the smallest way, are only sure that you will wear this terrible rabbit-wool hat until you die and that it will be as if she is touching your head, is putting her hands over your hair.
Spent all day with her.
Strolling and sitting in Lyons Corner Houses and not letting her pay for anything and you didn’t make it to the pictures.
Like her to promise and not deliver.
Only at the time, you didn’t want the pictures, because that’s to do with being back at the station and watching The Lion Has Wings again – it’s all they bloody show you – or thinking of the fleapit back home and being someone else and Humphrey Bogart up there in High Sierra and hearing the couples at your back, believing you’ll never have anyone like that – a girl to touch.
Not that you touched her. Not in a bad way.
No, you did worse.
‘I . . .’ Over another pot of tea – this time in one of those old, square teapots – drips like buggery only you don’t want to complain. ‘Joyce, you know . . .’ Half of your cup spilled on the tabletop and no taste in it anyway – you suspect these are leaves they’ve been using for a while. ‘I . . .’
You were comfortable and happy and you told her, ‘I like seeing you.’
‘So do I. Like seeing you. I see me all the time. Well . . . in the morning in the mirror. Not all the time – that would be ghastly.’
And she’s veering you off-course, so you have to correct. ‘And I like the letters, your letters. I like them a lot.’ You like correcting.
‘You write good letters back.’
‘No, I don’t.’
Then this bright, lifting pause that you’re both inside and the scent of roses. There’s the bombsite reek as well – charring and plaster open to the rain, woodsmoke, something distantly sickening underneath – but you have roses mainly, because you are here with Joyce.
‘I like knowing you, too, Alfie. I like it very much.’
Nothing simple about this and perhaps everything hopeless, but you don’t mind that, because your doing the impossible is no more than what she deserves. Love requires the impossible, you understand.
Joyce looking out of the window at the street that’s fading now, bustling into darkness and shuttered headlamps. You realise that you have made her sad.
drop
That bandage smell: he’d never liked it. You wanted them to smell clean, but they didn’t, there was always a sourness about them, as if they’d been used before, were bringing you something to do with decay. They weren’t healthy.
So why volunteer to wear them, cocker? Never volunteer, you know by now.
The film people had wanted injuries. A little crowd was organised to stand and be saddened by a few other chaps got up as casualties who’d totter in through the gates as if they were new to the camp and fresh from some unhappy time in the sky, or on the run. Alfred – as always, in favour of lying down – had said he’d like to be a stretcher case.
The bandages, they taste of fear and church.
Three women were doing the make-up. Odd to have a woman touch his face. A woman to choose what damage he’d have, how it would look.
This dry, disinfected perfume that you’d think would make things better, but only turns them strange.
Alfred had sat on the edge of a table, beside him a man with his hands swaddled up as if he’d been burned. There was nothing wrong with him, of course – in fact he was an irritating bleeder, knocking and clapping his big parcelled mitts together as if they were the funniest thing out, asking if anyone would light him a fag, scratch his nose, wipe his arse.
‘Be all right going home to the missus like this, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I?’ Laughing his stupid head off. ‘I’d finally get a proper handful. Wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t I?’ Peggy brown teeth that you’d rather not see – too deep and narrow a mouth.
Alfred with a gauze pad plastered over his left eye, three or four yards of binding round his head – like a kid’s idea of someone wounded. The binding made him slightly deaf.
But not quite deaf enough.
‘Turn out the lights and I’d think she had a pair. Wouldn’t know where to start. I should say so. Wotcha reckon, mate? Eh?’
What do I reckon? What do I reckon? I reckon septic articles like you never should have made it through the war. I reckon somebody should have bombed you, bombed you flat. I reckon if we’d known you earlier the crew and I would have happily volunteered. I reckon the wrong people die. I reckon that happens every fucking time.
Alfred remembering his mother, the burn on her leg where his father scalded it with tea. She’d dressed it herself, meticulous, and taken care, but there’d always been marks left after that. A woman, she wants her legs to look nice, they’re something she’s meant to be proud of. His father had made her ashamed.
‘I’m planning to keep this lot, mate – take it back home. Make meself think that I’m lucky for once. Might as well.’
Might as well.
Alfred remembering how they tended him in the German hospital. He’d worried about scarring to his lip: if Joyce would ever see it and be upset.
Might as well.
And then Alfred remembered nothing and reckoned nothing and had only a pink-grey light in the back of his head, a comfortable sense of warmth, before he realised his eyes were closed. There was a funny noise from somewhere near his feet – like a dog being sick. He glanced down.
It surprised him a little that the man with the bound hands was lying on the sand and that his nose was bleeding entirely convincing blood and then Alfred noticed an ache in the knuckles of his right hand and realised that he had punched the man, hit him very hard: wound the idea of it up from his waist and twisted it out with what might have been anger, or could have been joy – he seemed purely still at the moment and happily relaxed.
‘Jesus!’ The man was upset. ‘What the bloody hell . . . ?’ Browned off, but too nervous to get up yet. A shock would do that, a blow to the face. People cared about their faces.
‘Sorry, mate.’ Alfred settling in behind his best Kriegie expression, the inoffensive blank. ‘Can’t see a thing with this bloody eyepatch on. Didn’t know I’d caught you. So sorry.’
‘Here though –’
Alfred stepping out. ‘Sorry, mate. Honest.’ He could see a make-up woman staring at him, deciding whether she approved. ‘Don’t worry, they’ll patch you up. They’ve got all the kit for it. Handy.’
And he walked off for a turn or two, circled the nearest hut to keep from laughing, to keep from thinking.
It bothered me when I first saw it, that one scar. Half the length of my top lip – swollen and stitches in it – something most women wouldn’t find too pleasant. But I’d thought Joyce wouldn’t mind it, because we were ourselves and no alterations could bother us.
Otherwise, I’d have covered up, I’d have grown out a moustache for her back then.
So why grow it now, when she won’t see you?
You do know she won’t see you.
So why are you suddenly bothered about how you look?
You are sure she won’t see you.
So why end up taking yourself down into London and living where she lives?
You are almost certain she won’t see you.
How much of a fo
ol are you planning to be?
‘I’m not a complete fool.’ Pluckrose with the boys out strolling by the sea.
‘Oh, really – and what parts are missing? Do tell.’ Miles with his milky, big face as placid as ever, just chipping in.
Pluckrose gave a delighted great howl of affront and barrelled himself into the wall, bouncing along it while staring at Miles. ‘Well, I’m bloody glad that you’re on our side.’
Miles just sucked his pipe, the flicker of a grin escaping him before he could smooth it away.
Last evening of their leave and all of them out here, straggling into the wind along the dimming shore. The gusts punched at them and rubbed their mouths with salt, caught in their greatcoats and generally made them feel lively. Alfred thought that he would recognise the particular crack and drag and scuffle of his own crew’s feet no matter what. Years could pass and make no difference: he would know them.
Eventually, the skipper halted, turned out to sea and they all gathered alongside him, watched the yellow-and-silver end to the day, the clean shine on the wave tops, the splitting and shaking of lights where water lay among the rocks. Alfred understood they were simply ignoring the rolls of wire staked out between them and the firth, defending the closed up houses and emptied hotels from a Nazi attack.
‘How’s life, then?’ The skipper nudged Alfred gently, murmured, ‘Ready for it all again, Boss?’
‘I suppose.’
‘You suppose?’
‘Well, the gunnery leader would miss me if I didn’t go back. And the sergeant armourer – he told me that he’d cry.’
The skipper’s hands, when Alfred looked at them, were cupping round his fag as usual. ‘And I’m sure he meant it.’ The part of him that always showed the strain. ‘Always very sincere, your armourers.’
Alfred waited, because he knew that’s what his skipper wanted.
‘You’re a . . . you’re a fighter, aren’t you, Boss?’
This meaning that Pluckrose had told him about Alfred’s father, which was fine. No secrets in the crew.
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