‘That is – if you wanted to talk about anything with your trusty skip, you would?’
‘Yes.’ Hoping this can turn out to be a promise he needn’t keep, because the skipper is a Sunday Best person, he’s class, and shouldn’t ever see Alfred’s home, shouldn’t know his family – even though he’d like Alfred’s ma, because everyone did and because she had proper class herself and maybe after the war things would be so shaken up that she’d get to lead the life she ought to.
‘You’ve gone quiet on me, Boss . . . You know I don’t like that.’ Another nudge. ‘Are you sure you understand that I would help – that we’d all help with whatever you needed?’
Alfred studying a patch of sand very hard now, his forehead hot and a great, precious kind of brightness in his spine. ‘It’s . . . that’s . . . I would ask.’ But thinking of Sergeant Hartnell, of asking him how to fight and win.
Hartnell had agreed, given him a tight, sharp glance, a frown, and then agreed. And they’d met up for three or four evenings and done their work: the Japanese stranglehold, the hip throw, the waist throw, breaking and making grips, disarming attackers, the sentry hold, striking with boot and hand and knife: around them the empty gymnasium making their movements echo and grow.
But it did no good.
‘Look, son.’ Hartnell taking Alfred’s arm in a way that required no violent response. ‘You’re not the first. Happens quite often in fact. Lads come along and they ask me for help . . . help with an argument they’ve got to settle back at home . . .’
Alfred didn’t shake his head, didn’t do anything beyond standing and feeling slightly sick.
‘Part of growing up – knowing how to handle things. How to stop the bastards messing you about. But you . . . you’re a gunner, mate. That’s the thing you’re good at. I’m not saying you’d have to shoot someone to sort them out. I’m not saying you should show them a gun and that’d wake them up and bring them round to your way of thinking. I can’t suggest that and I haven’t.’
‘No, Sarnt.’
‘Forget that sergeant business, we’re just talking here.’
Alfred glancing up at this and seeing Hartnell’s face, having the chance to take it in fully and noticing how he was quite old and tired-looking: a fit man, but tired.
‘Day, if you have a problem with someone, you come up behind them when they aren’t expecting it and you hit them with a bit of pipe, or a bloody big piece of timber, or a chair, or whatever you can find. In a fair fight, I wouldn’t back you. You understand it with your head, but there’s no conviction. Now maybe you’ll get that. But I wouldn’t risk it myself. I was you? – bloody big piece of pipe and hit ’em so they won’t get up. All right?’
‘Yes, Sar— Yes.’
‘That’s us finished with this then. Won’t waste my time any further, nor yours. And no more to be said about it. That clear?’
‘Clear.’
And they shook hands in silence, Hartnell seeming fatherly, like a father should.
‘Thanks.’
‘We’ve all done it, son. We’ve all gone home and sorted them out, or tried to. We’ve all done it.’ He smiled in a grey, small way. ‘Now bugger off out of it – I’m gasping for a fag and cup of tea.’
Trotting back across the grass to his barracks, Alfred had started shivering. He’d stayed cold the rest of the night and seemed too young to be where he was and clumsy.
So it wasn’t true that he was a fighter, not the way the skipper thought.
‘Skip?’
‘Yes, Boss.’
‘I’m not . . . I . . .’ But he was a gunner. That was true. ‘I’ll always do the best I can.’
Pluckrose breaking in here. ‘Lord – you pair. You look as if you’ve both lost your way to the mothers’ meeting.’ He punched their kidneys lightly. ‘Cheer up. Mrs Mac has promised to bring us a real cake for our leaving, possibly two – with fruit and booze and God knows what impossible delights – a garter from Jane Mansfield, who can say?’
‘More like a garter from Doris Waters. And anyway it’s too bleedin’ dark to keep on strolling.’ Hanson chipping in with a rattly cough. ‘Unless we’re supposed to be waiting for local skirt.’
‘Military Objectives Already Attacked – seen any?’ Torrington drawling this out while he tucked his arm in through Pluckrose’s.
‘’Fraid not, old dear.’ Pluckrose swinging about and beginning to lead them home. ‘Not a Self-Evident Military Objective within miles. Unless they’ve been keeping things from us.’
Hanson coughed again, then spat, then spat again.
‘Well, I can’t imagine why.’ Miles muttering round his pipe stem. ‘Us is lovely, us is. You can’t beat us.’
drop
Once he’d calmed himself, the being a stretcher-case job was not half bad. Alfred was bumped about and clattered down here and there for the best part of the day – with tea breaks now and then and lunch. He lolled his head when he was told to and even groaned a little, although that wasn’t actually required.
Towards four there was a sudden shower, the air filling with the tang of wet dust and running. He’d flung off his Red Cross blanket and then watched as the film people hurried their equipment under cover and his people scattered to take in their laundry. Amazing how much washing got done in the camp – partly to balance the lack of new clothing, but partly, Alfred thought, because cleanliness made you respectable and gave you something to take charge of. Not that your bunk mates wouldn’t bind on appallingly, anyway, if you were slack with your personal hygiene.
And we all wanted the wash-day smell: the one about being back home and taken care of.
Alfred still did his own washing, ironing, wherever he was.
You can’t beat a well-pressed shirt.
As if anyone bothered about it beyond you.
The rain hardened, raked across the roofs while Alfred still sat on his stretcher, slowly unwound the bandage from his head and set it at his side, the fake blood in it weakening under the downpour, becoming a general, salmon-coloured stain.
Then the first impact of thunder started off to the north-east.
Only weather, nothing bad.
A thin slash brightening and closing, another couple of deton-ations – the storm was coming to them.
Alfred made sure to get up slowly and then walk towards what they called Pall Mall – the lane between huts that led up to 27, which was his own. Hail started and another barrage from not far beyond the trees, it seemed, but he kept to an even pace. To either side, shutters were being fastened, windows closed, from a half-open door he could hear slightly nervous laughter.
A lot of us don’t do well with bangs, not now.
The sky lifted above him and slammed shut, blitzed him to his knees in spite of his better intentions and he knew he was shaking again, badly. A tearing raced above him like shellfire, before the air burst and then slammed shut again.
Bastards.
Volley followed volley and he pressed his fists into the sand, tried to rise up, stand under it. This took him some time.
Bastards.
His thumbs cramped and, when he finally rose to his feet he couldn’t help reeling over towards a hut wall, finding cover.
‘Lips that once were mine, tender eyes that shine,
They will light my way tonight.
They will light my way tonight,’
The rest of the route would take two or three minutes. That wasn’t long.
‘They will light my way tonight.’
The hail subsided, rattled to an end, and left him back under simple rain.
‘They will light my way tonight.’
He was sweating, greasy with it.
When he passed the end of the hut a movement to his left disturbed him and he dodged back before he
could think. Under the receding thunder he could hear something wet and heavy. Crouching, peering out round the wood, he saw three grey figures hunched under the downpour, an arm looping, casting off water as it gathered pace and then barn-doored round, made contact. Three men grouped in a dead end, tucked between the blank wall of the latrines and two empty huts, dark-windowed. They were Ukrainians in their Jerry get-up: two coal-scuttle helmets running with rain, another upturned on the ground. One man was holding a skinnier chap from behind, while the third lamped him, methodical, something practised about the beating, considered.
Alfred couldn’t see them too clearly, they were crowded in with their backs mainly to him, but then the man striking took off his helmet, wiped his face and he was plainly Vasyl, could not have been anyone else. He seemed very out of breath, but happy.
A last crack of thunder sliced down between the huts and Vasyl’s target was allowed to drop, to curl on his side. Alfred didn’t recognise him, nor the man who’d been holding him up and who now patted Vasyl on the shoulder. They leaned in together and exchanged a few words before nodding, slipping through the little gap that would lead them out to the football pitch and the tent where the DPs waited and were given mugs of tea and sandwiches and their instructions for the day.
Alfred waited once they were gone, stayed watching, but they didn’t return. After a few minutes, the man on the ground shifted, rolled. He was covered with dirt, but also bleeding, that red sheen on his face. It took a good while for him to roll again and lift himself enough to crawl. He would have broken ribs maybe, concussion, damaged internal organs and fractures, fear. That’s what a proper beating was meant to produce. He did look afraid, crawling there, dragging himself up the steps and into an empty hut where he might hide, or sleep, or gather his wits, or die.
Alfred could have helped him, but didn’t. The man wasn’t crew and he looked like a German. So there was nothing to be done.
drop
On the train back from Scotland the crew occupied a compartment, filled the luggage racks, lit up, removed its boots. They hadn’t slept much, not really at all – talking and singing their last night into tatters before a far too early start. Alfred, snug beside the window, glanced round at his family, his people: Miles asleep already – was he ever entirely awake? – and his snoring desynchronised with the engine, the Bastard nodding, Torrington eating a sandwich – one of the many dozen Mrs MacKenzie had supplied – Pluckrose sitting opposite and gazing out through the glass, something slightly misty in his expression, Molloy slowly courting a bottle of beer, then going in very quick but gentlemanly with his opener, and the skipper glancing back at Alfred, winking. Alfred couldn’t quite return the wink, it didn’t seem respectful, but he grinned, let himself believe what it seemed the skipper wanted – that they were set, every one of them set and a good, good fit and ready to go and do their work again.
You’d always remember Skip’s hands. After the first few ops, you could see the bone in them, the tendons, a sense of grip. Hauling a Lanc about, it changed you. Said it gave him forearms like Popeye – but that was no good cos he’d always favoured Betty Boop, not Olive Oyl. Skinny girls were never any fun.
Without discussion, they’d happily commandeered the compartment’s eighth seat, sat bottles on it, two fruit cakes and a small deer’s head (with antlers for the use of), a dilapidated object which Pluckrose was bringing down for the sergeants’ mess.
Dilapidated – more appropriate for buildings, it being to do with stones, but you’d liked to have the thought of it in your mouth. You’d let your first sip of beer in to melt it through you, a word you might never have met, would probably never use, but it was there in any case, swallowed down and warm, slipping under your chin.
Put it in a letter – try and make her laugh. Tell her about the deer. Joyce would want to know about the deer.
Of course, any civilian or even a service type could have come in and spoiled the arrangements, but Molloy said he had a plan ready for just such emergencies.
Alfred was travelling backwards because he now preferred it – liked things in the turret direction – the pools and streams and tawny slopes of moorland sliding away from him as he looked, being replaced by mountains: real mountains with snow on the top in Britain, he’d never have thought. And he watched the fat, white backside of a stag as the animal turned in fright, headed up over a slope in a punching, stilted run and disappeared. He’d never seen a live deer before, but didn’t want to mention this when Pluckrose seemed so fond of his little dead one.
And Alfred didn’t feel like talking, anyway – holding this stillness under his skin while the heather skimmed along beside him and he edged down his beer and started a Philip Trent mystery to go with it. He’d fancied a bit of crime, seeing wrongdoers get what they ought always made him glad.
When they jolted into another dusty wooden station, he discovered he’d lost an hour. A handful of people boarded, one of them a stout, older lady with a carpet bag who quite mistakenly supposed that they had a spare seat and she should claim it. Molloy intervened.
‘Ah, Freddie. Mind your feet now.’ Molloy staring directly above the bottles and clutter in the empty place and yelling fiercely. ‘You’ll be in the lady’s way when she’s come to talk to us.’ Molloy wagged his finger at no one. ‘You just be polite now and remember the last time. That brought shame upon us all.’ He beamed at the woman. ‘Lovely of you to pay us a visit and can we do anything for you, or shall I come out and speak with you privately?’
The woman hesitated. She looked at the empty seat. She looked at the faded deer’s head with its one remaining eye squinting glassily back. She looked at the Bastard who occupied, in all his dingy glory, the next space along. The Bastard smiled at her as only he could. He crossed his legs and wiggled his feet, both of them mainly hidden inside contagious socks. The woman appeared disheartened but still likely to protest, or point out some kind of entirely irrelevant fact.
Molloy forced her hand. ‘Freddie, you mustn’t do that. It’s not right.’ Molloy shook his head sadly at thin air and then focused himself on the woman. ‘Is there some assistance we can give?’ He stared as if mildly unhinged.
Pluckrose decided to aid the process. ‘We’re terribly well trained. Could pitch in at a moment’s notice. What we’re meant for. Do let us help, we’d love to.’ The innocence and eagerness of his expression suggested all manner of accidents waiting to happen.
The woman’s shoulders dropped, she frowned and then quietly offered, ‘There isn’t anybody there.’
‘Ah, but don’t we love him all the same?’
She contemplated Molloy and the deer and the crew and they contemplated her until she understood she was defeated and gingerly worked herself and her carpet bag out of their doorway, as if she expected some further uncertainty might arise, more trouble from present or absent men.
Hanson fired up another Players. ‘She’ll complain to the guard. I’ve seen her sort before.’
Molloy was still pleased with himself and said only very gently, ‘Let’s hope she hadn’t seen your sort before.’ And Hanson smirked and shrugged.
Alfred wondered if it was altogether lucky to make themselves a crewman who wasn’t there. But Freddie kept them undisturbed and cosy and, as the miles passed, they dozed contentedly and drank more beer and ate more sandwiches, enjoying the peace they had come to need. They offered some of what they had to Freddie, but he apparently declined.
Between connections there was further beer and they played cards – Hanson, Torrington, Pluckrose and Molloy – or read newspapers – Miles and the skipper – or fuddled through a book of crime yarns – Alfred. On a blurry, country platform Molloy borrowed Miles’s Times and this for some reason led to Hanson easing in and stealthily holding a match against the paper’s bottom edge. The effect was not unspectacular and there were hardly remains worth stamping out by the time Mo
lloy had flung them down.
Eyebrows were raised among the station staff and Alfred was bundled, along with the rest of the crew (and the small deer’s head), into a stuffy, wavering room with very bright paintwork and floored with the bloody brown linoleum he’d already learned to hate and questions were directed to them regarding bottles of beer consumed and the validity of travel warrants and routes chosen, during which both Molloy and Hanson were most strenuously respectable and sober-minded.
‘High spirits, sir, that’s all. No cause for alarm. My companion here, Mr Hanson, he’s recovering from shell shock. We’ve been off in a flak house. There’s no harm done.’
‘All crew, we are, mate. Crews are pals. We has to be.’ Hanson put his arm around Molloy while two disapproving porters remained grim and a chap with enough polished buttons to be at least a station master, if not an admiral, sat behind a desk and looked to be nursing savage indigestion.
‘That’s it – pals.’ Molloy pronounced the single syllable as if it were a password. ‘We’re pals, sir. On our way back from leave.’
‘What with the disruptions and delays, it’ll be a bleedin’ miracle if we’re anywhere near the station before lights out.’
Molloy, believing this might be construed as criticism, rushed in, ‘Ah, and I’ve just thought – you’re a station master and here we’ve a station commander and we’re all doing what we must for the empire, aren’t we? We’re all on the same side.’
Alfred was trying to remember how many bottles of beer he had drunk and only slowly realised that mentioning their station commander might mean that someone would telephone their station commander and harsh words would be spoken in the direction of their station commander and they’d all put up a black.
But the admiral softened slightly and the skipper was placating – while kicking Molloy’s shin firmly to shut him up – and no constables were summoned and praise was lavished upon aircrew as a species and the admiral expounded theories on taking the fight to the enemy and the frailty of German morale.
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