Day

by A. L. Kennedy

  The first Alfred knew about the magic was when he heard laughing – Skip laughing – sounding like somebody else, a boy – and then Hanson and the rest and they’re shouting to Molloy and laughing.

  Then Alfred sees why – there rolling back from him: this strange, dark channel, searchlights with their beams laid and twitching along the ground, as if they’ve fallen – others further off that have frozen, tipped straight up: these blue-white columns that cannot harm them, cannot find them. One to port swings and dithers and then drops, exhausted. There is a distant shake of flak, but Alfred can feel there’s no sense in it, more a little burst of panic.

  Jesus.

  He doesn’t laugh, is too happy for that.

  They leap as the bombs go down, B for Beer feeling giddy, and the job done well tonight, right on the green TIs, slap where they should be. Shorten the war, that’s what you want. Hurt them. Hurt them enough and then more than enough, just make an end of it.

  The turn for home lets Alfred watch the naked city: small, straight glimmers from canals, shine of the lake, the white scatter of incendiaries as they bite, redden: thick folds of smoke like panels of night, of nothingness, and a cookie folding open, hooping itself round with shock and shock, bright and then settling into fire, more smoke. He shouldn’t look, but this is Magic Night and so he does.

  And for the first time he didn’t feel they would come after him for this, because they couldn’t. Even dazzled, with dull ghosts in the black wherever he looked, he was sure that nobody was going hunt up and catch them. Not that he didn’t still search, blink, get himself back to normal and concentrate, keep watching his skipper’s back. But tonight they could do what they liked, he understood: they could break everything and burn it.

  And go home.

  ‘You will light’

  Singing as they cross the English coast.

  ‘My way tonight’

  Suddenly wishing hard, almost praying, staring so far into the black that his eyes are tearing, because getting careless now would be so stupid, such a waste of their finest raid. Everyone maybe thinking the same and very quiet now as they circle and then make their most delicate landing.

  Before they gather up their gear and then come tumbling, scrambling out to the dawn, the sky that’s one huge glow, a wide promise of morning that still smells hot and summerish from yesterday, but yesterday he’d done twenty-three and now it’s twenty-four.

  Hardly one of them making sense in the debriefing and the intelligence bods wanting gen on their secret weapon, on code name Window – them and their bloody code names – and questions and questions, but even they were hearty, satisfied, quite patient – and you’re hungrier than ever in your life and Molloy is singing – face and hands blacked up like Jolson from the strips he’s been chucking about all night and singing something Irish that you don’t know, but you love it, you love him, you love the skipper, you love bloody everything.

  And when they let you go you got washed, had a good, long swill and fitted down into your bed, clean in your bed and tired, but you couldn’t sleep, the light inside yourself too raw to let you rest and so you only lay until you knew it was some kind of a decent hour and the phone box would be unlocked and you ran, you pelted out and called her.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘God, you’m a good wench.’

  ‘Alfie?’

  ‘I was reading this . . . in Shakespeare. I was reading . . . If then true lovers have been ever crossed . . . I was thinking . . . You all right?’

  ‘I was up rather late, watching for fires.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I just . . .’ You can’t talk about what you’ve done, it’s not allowed. ‘I wanted to hear you.’ You can’t talk about what you’re going to do. ‘That’s all. And to say good morning.’

  Be like Dad, keep mum.

  Lousy bloody line.

  ‘Did you have a hard night?’ Then checks herself, because that’s a bad question and she’s sensible, responsible. ‘I mean . . . bad dreams.’

  ‘No. No, I didn’t. I didn’t.’ Sick and hot and golden with needing her. ‘You go back to sleep now. Get your rest.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry . . . But yes – you, too.’ Noise of her hand on the receiver. ‘And I –’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It was nice to hear from you.’

  ‘Good.’ Sick and sick and sick with needing her. ‘And I love you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Wishing will make it so, just keep on wishing and care will go.’

  They’d been walking home, missed the bus, and Hanson warbling on, ‘Dreamers tell us dreams come true, it’s no mistake.’ Widening his hands and paddling them free in the night, dragging and skipping across the smooth width of the road.

  Twenty-five.

  Window keeping things sweet.

  Twenty-five done.

  You could see it in the crew: all of you starting to brace against that final five and trying not to mither about Window and when the Jerry boffins would work their way out to a cure.

  Twenty-five. Essen not so easy, not so wonderful – but easier than Essen should be. Landing with a little ventilation knocked through the port vertical fin. You’d seen the line of that: the thick glow of the fragment sniping in to hit.

  Landing with a lot more ventilation knocked into the Krupps works – because we’re good at what we do – we know our business.

  Twenty-five.

  The thought of those other five woke with you, was ready and rubbing your mind before you could even think of Joyce.

  Molloy not himself about it. He’d got this blank, stiff grin most evenings and you could almost hear something hinging in his mind. ‘Shut up with that fucking nonsense, willya?’ Molloy yelling at Hanson, but his eyes finding Alfred: wet and large, bewildered.

  And maybe he saw the same in me – all right when we didn’t have a hope. But then we did. We genuinely had a chance. There’s nothing more unbearable than knowing you might have a chance.

  Molloy swinging his boot at the wall, giving it his weight. ‘It never made anything so.’

  ‘Very clever, I’m shewer. Fuck you.’

  ‘You can fucking wish yourself . . . you can wish yourself . . .’

  Alfred could see that Molloy was limping, had hurt his foot, but still he was off running.

  ‘And wishes are the dreams we dream when we’re awake.’

  Molloy seeming taller as he leaves them, thinning into the grey light.

  Alfred wanting to follow, but Skip catching his arm, telling Hanson, quite sharp, ‘Hanson, that isn’t a song that we like. And don’t try another, please, old man. Let’s get some peace.’

  ‘Skip?’ The country round about them busy with sounds in a way that troubled Alfred.

  ‘Yes, Boss?’

  ‘I was . . .’ Beyond their footfalls there was scurrying in the ditches by the road and a cry that might be a fox or an owl, might be something hurt, he didn’t know – too much going on, so you couldn’t relax. ‘The way things are now – it’s safer, ay it – with Window?’ Beer making his tongue unreasonable. ‘I mean.’

  The skipper clasped an arm round his shoulder. ‘I know.’

  ‘I was –’

  ‘I know – we need to be quick about it. Really bloody quick.’ Skip nodded heavily and his hand reached round and tugged at Alfred’s hair, dropped back to his collarbone again. ‘Get the ops in. I know. Doing the best I can, Boss.’

  ‘’Course you are.’

  ‘Tell you another thing.’ He broke away from Alfred and looked at him, stood and made him stand while the others straggled past them. ‘I tell you this.’ And he took off his cap, reached out his hand. ‘That one more you’ve got to do. That one. I’ll fly you.’

  ‘No, you –’

  ‘I
’m twenty-six, you’re twenty-five. I remember.’ He waited. ‘I’ll fly you.’

  And Alfred removed his own cap, ‘You’re the skipper,’ and shook hands.

  ‘You’re the boss.’

  The road shifting slightly under Alfred with how late it was and how strange and how good, how difficult to look at his captain now without acting soft. ‘That’s if we’m both still here.’

  ‘Naturally.’ Skip started walking. ‘Otherwise, we’ll be resting and no more they’ll ask us to do. You never know, though, about heaven, what with it being up – Air Council Instructions, they might still operate . . . you never know.’

  drop

  Alfred wasn’t in love with the concert party: it was getting to be hard work – the director looking for something they couldn’t provide and too many technical problems and delays. All morning, they’d sat in rows and watched the same little dance routine, the same fragment of singing, the same bit of patter with three actors messing it up, dressed in frocks and tits and mophead wigs. And over and over, Alfred had clapped and clamoured and yelled as he was ordered, because he was in the audience and the audience was to enjoy itself and laugh. The audience was not to feel stifled, was not to wipe sweat from its face so often that it started to imagine itself raw: skinned, bleeding from its collar to its hair.

  And the more he laughed, the more it sounded queer to him – and the voices round him, they were splintering into something that seemed fearful, or hungry, or in pain. After a while, he didn’t want to look at the other men, in case they were altered in some way that would come to be dangerous.

  Funny: when you’re a kid you’re scared of all sorts – noises at night and the Hand of Glory and the rats in the back of the coal-hole and the brewer’s old Sentinel steam wagon, how it rattles and screams like the boiler might burst. But you’re wrong.

  It’s only people who can harm you. You can never be scared enough of them.

  So there’d been days back in London when the shop would have to hide him: when he could barely get there, hardly leave. He couldn’t tolerate a bus, the tube, a tram, even the busier pavements – and his evenings would mostly be spent in the back room with Ivor, the street door locked and bolted against people – the only way of leaving to be in the dark, tucked against walls in the still of darkness and trying to remember that he could see well, that he was used to being ready, that he would take care of himself. Then he’d dash for his lodgings, get in, tiptoe up the boarding-house stairs and into his rooms – hope that he’d be tired enough to sleep, that no one would cough, or drop their shoes on the floor above, or stumble at the uneven landing, or pull the chain too loud – hope nobody would do something to claw him up awake and leave him staring at nowhere, clinging to his bed.

  People, they got everywhere: the heave of them and their eyes and hands and teeth and a mind that you couldn’t predict, something terrible inside their clothes, their blood.

  Not now, cocker. You’m among friends here. Or not enemies, anyway. Easy with yourself, go easy.

  Alfred’s scalp was constricting and a dizziness was sinking in him. The concert stage – with suitably homespun backdrops – was empty. He wanted to think this meant the whole nonsense was over, but no one had said so and the mob on the benches around him was staying put.

  Forcing the movement, Alfred turned to the lad on his left and made himself find the boy human, civilised. And the chap did seem a nice kid: polite, only twenty or so, less. He was dressed as a naval flyer and intent on supporting the show, giving out hoots and whistles at quite arbitrary points. The kid’s face, the line of his back – they made it very clear that he was monstrously relaxed.

  Of course, the kid could feel Alfred’s look – we all can feel when we’re under somebody’s attention. ‘Something up?’

  ‘No, no.’

  The lad studied him. ‘You all right? Seem a bit green, old man. If you don’t mind my saying.’

  ‘It’s the heat.’

  Up on the stage, a proper entertainer sidled across and settled himself with his ukulele, twiddled a few chords. The kid gave a viciously approving whistle. ‘Corklino, that’s a bit more like it.’ He nodded to Alfred with a reassuring grin, ‘This’ll take you out of yourself.’

  Alfred hadn’t heard anyone say corklino in years. ‘Yes.’ Obviously, the lad was trying to get himself into the part – because it was only a part and so he could, like, not take it personally.

  ‘It’s a bit old hat, of course.’ The kid who had never really met the war – you could see this in him – but here he is looking battle-stained but triumphant like a snap from The War Illustrated and he’s using the word old far too often. ‘But I don’t think we’ll get any better.’ He whistled again, one of the soundmen flinching in response.

  ‘No. I don’t suppose we shall.’

  The entertainer cranked out a familiar number about the Maginot Line and Alfred tried not to remember Formby singing it better when the Maginot Line had still mattered and tried not to seem an older and older man with every breath.

  You’re not thirty yet, cocker – buck up. Years to go, yet.

  And is that a threat, or a promise?

  Haven’t a clue, just slap your hands together like you’re meant to, there’s a good boy.

  And he did manage clapping in time with the others, even stamped a bit, although it jarred his knees.

  Twenty-five, going on fifty – however I look. However fit I get.

  And then something jammed, or snapped, or otherwise went US with one of the cameras and the pack of them were ordered out to have their tea break early.

  It was, naturally, no cooler outside, but there was a half-hearted breeze and the possibility of dispersal, of shade and relative peace. Alfred gathered his mug of tea as fast as he decently could and then sat in the sand at the dark side of Hut 21.

  Which is where Vasyl found him.

  ‘Ah, yes.’

  The toes of Jerry boots messing up the quiet sand that Alfred had been studying, smoothing in his mind. Probably they were real Jerry boots. War surplus. The whole bloody world, up to its ugly neck in surplus.

  ‘Ah, yes. So here is where you hide, Mr Alfred.’

  ‘No. This is where I sit. If I was hiding, you wouldn’t find me.’

  One of the boots scuffled a touch to the right and then both rocked back on their heels with a creak Alfred didn’t want to recognise.

  ‘Have you thought any further –’

  ‘I won’t sell you the gun.’

  ‘Not to worry, old man. There will be plenty of time to discuss this. When I am in London.’

  This intended to make Alfred look up, which he did. ‘You won’t be in London.’ That uniform leaning over him, Vasyl’s grin drawing the heat from the day, putting a dirty chill on Alfred’s skin, so he had to rub his face with his sleeve. ‘You’re a liar.’ Staring straight ahead now, keeping steady.

  ‘If you weren’t my friend, Mr Alfred, I would be very angry to hear that you say so.’ Vasyl fanned his hands out ahead of himself, acting harmless, and then moved round to crouch beside Alfred, to lean against him. ‘I have suffered a long delay, but now everything will be quite fine.’

  ‘Anyway, I’m never in London.’ Alfred concentrating on the sand, the idea of sand.

  ‘Now I think you are perhaps not telling the truth. Everyone here has an address, a record of their address. This is only practical. Very easy to check where somebody lives.’

  ‘They won’t let you in.’

  ‘I will be a good citizen. Obedient. A good citizen is obedient.’

  ‘They won’t let you in.’

  ‘To your house?’

  ‘To my country. They won’t let you in to my country.’

  ‘Whyever not?’

  ‘Because you’re –’ And Alfred intending for
a moment to be cautious here, but then remembering a knife in the ribs would solve any number of his problems, perhaps all. ‘Because you’re not who you say you are.’

  Vasyl only made a breathy type of laugh that shook through Alfred’s mind, turned him slightly nauseous. ‘It doesn’t matter who I say I am. You know two years ago, your government accepted a whole division.’ The pressure on Alfred’s side increased as Vasyl fitted close, whispered, ‘A Waffen SS division – all waiting in Italy and then all declared very good immigrants. From the Ukraine. What do I worry? You like us now. We are much better than the Russians, the Communists. And we are very healthy, very intelligent. We are ideal.’

  Alfred tried to stand, be elsewhere, but Vasyl threw an arm around his shoulder.

  ‘Do you want to know?’ There was a surprising strength in Vasyl’s grip, a meat smell from his breath. ‘Do you want to know who I am? The truth. I think you do. I think you have wanted to know for a long time and so I will tell you, because you are my friend.’

  ‘I don’t care.’ Alfred had no energy for a fight, somehow – at least not while Vasyl had the height, the advantage. He let himself be pressed down into his place. ‘I really don’t care, Vasyl. Be whoever you like.’

  Vasyl softly knocked his head against Alfred’s, then eased back. ‘They came in the summer. In ’41. When it is hot this way, I remember. You never knew this – the way it is when they come – in the Nazi time. It is like being born. In my home, this was in my real home town – not in the Ukraine – I am from Latvia, but I think it is better now to be from the Ukraine – in my home they come with trucks and tanks and then everything is different and simply only walking about is wonderful because you are so light. When the Nazis come, they take away everything that stopped you moving – it is almost possible you might fly.’ Vasyl pausing and smiling at Alfred, as if this were bearable, a story, something sentimental and lovely – but also smiling as if he would like to see Alfred opened, emptied out. ‘A lot of us feel it, this being light, and we try and see what it means. We can tell it means something. So we say what we want to say now, what we want to be, and they are . . . the Germans, they are like fathers – they watch us: how we grow. It’s many years since they have been born, but I think some of them like to watch it happening to us.