Day

by A. L. Kennedy

  ‘You all right then, boy?’ Ringer leaning over Alfred and then crouching to sit a little way off, unhurried, bony knees folded up to his chin. ‘I’d say you was all right.’ And there was a rush in Alfred’s head that wanted to keep on checking, following the Germans, seeing what they’d do, but something about Ringer tugged at him, slowed his breath and turned it milky and peaceable. Alfred wanted to walk on, but he didn’t.

  Ringer glanced up at the empty sky and sniffed. ‘Going to rain.’ Then he glanced up at Alfred. ‘Prob’ly.’ He smiled again and nodded, started tapping with one foot in a way that meant something to him, that made him nod in time.

  Alfred stood, kept on standing, until he began to shiver and to think of the whitewash and the room.

  ‘You’re all right, you know. I can see in you you’re all right.’

  A tiredness spreading in Alfred when he heard that and a sweet weight bringing him to his knees and setting him with his hands down on the ground, before he could shake his head and laugh, scramble himself round to sit and laugh, reach out to Ringer and shake his long, wide hand and hold on and laugh.

  The shivering worse as he let the sound kick out, but Ringer gripped him tight, crushed his palm, ‘Something knocked the air from you, is all,’ until Alfred had shaken and squawked to a standstill and the pair of them were left crouching, hand in hand – the idiot and the madman.

  Things weren’t so bad after that.

  drop

  It was going to be a long night – and their last. Gad and a few other bods had convinced everyone that a genuine farewell concert was required, a real send-off to close the fake prison and send the fake prisoners home.

  The trouble was, they’d got too many volunteers. Almost everyone had a bit of something they’d like to recite – ‘Boots, Boots, Boots’, ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God’, ‘Albert and the Lion’: there was a chap who’d been on destroyers and wanted to play the penny whistle, four would-be pianists, any number of singers with any number of songs, a photographic analyst who blew across the tops of bottles and a chap who’d been something at Myingyan – he did bird calls from home and abroad. Even a few of the Ukrainians had promised unpronounceable offerings. And, of course, there were the Good Germans – one couldn’t very well exclude them.

  The director, who had lately become rather fond of the older and nicely mysterious lady in charge of costumes, had given the enterprise his blessing, although only Jack from the film types had said he would like to take part.

  So at five o’clock, they had settled down to eat, looking about themselves and finding they had almost all made the same decision to change out of their uniforms and make the best they could of their civvies. Shoes had been polished, hair fussed at, shirts ironed – they seemed to have become both less and more military and were quiet with each other, as if they were not quite who they’d thought.

  Gad slipped in beside Alfred when they’d reached the pudding – a fine, celebratory treacle tart. ‘You’re sure about this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Classic distraction, really. I’d never have stooped so low back in the old days . . .’ Gad with the old sheen over him, pre-op nerves. ‘Gives us a twelve-hour start, if not more. I can do a lot with twelve hours.’

  ‘Good.’ Alfred staring at his pudding.

  ‘You don’t sound too happy, laddie.’ Gad sucked at – of all things – a cigar, wanting to have a man-to-man chat. ‘If you have second thoughts, it’s not -’

  ‘I’m fine.’ Alfred kept his head down. ‘It’ll be fine.’

  ‘D’you want that? Because it’s a shame to let good treacle tart go to waste, you know.’ There’s a clear smell of drink about him.

  ‘You eat it, cocker. I’ve got no appetite.’

  ‘Nerves, eh?’

  ‘Something like that. And there’s someone I want to speak to.’ He reached and shook Gad’s hand, ‘Nothing to worry you, just a thing I need to do,’ and then left the table.

  Across in a corner sat four guests from the DP camp, here to oversee their charges’ cultural activities: two bank-clerk sorts with glasses, a bluestocking kind of woman and a younger chap with a trimmed beard. They’d been given a tablecloth from who knew where and their own jug of custard to save them from having to walk and ask for more.

  ‘Mr Fergusson?’

  The bearded man glanced up, frowning. ‘Mm?’

  ‘Might I have a word?’ Alfred unsure of how this would go and it was clear now that Fergusson liked his comforts, was thinking mainly of more custard and then the chance of booze. ‘You are Mr Fergusson?’

  ‘Yes . . . This isn’t exactly –’

  ‘I wanted to talk to you about one of your DPs.’

  ‘Well, you can’t.’ A neat purse of the lips after this. ‘They’re under our jurisdiction, no one else’s.’ Fergusson took another mouthful of tart, sighed when Alfred showed no sign of leaving. ‘Look, old man, if there’s been some kind of pilfering, or bad blood, then you really should address your complaints to Mr Simms there.’ He jerked his head towards one of the bank clerks. ‘But you’re off tomorrow, as I understand, going home. So there hardly seems any point.’

  ‘I don’t have a complaint.’ Keeping the accent RAF, trying to be someone to respect, but knowing your jacket is worn and is cut down from one of Ivor’s. ‘Not that kind of complaint.’ Leaning closer so you’ll make no fuss, because nobody ever wants a fuss. ‘One of your DPs is a criminal.’

  At which Fergusson sniggers, wet crumbs on his tongue, in his beard. ‘Oh, they’re all criminals.’ He frowns, the way one ought to when addressing an idiot. ‘That’s what we expect.’

  ‘I mean –’

  ‘I know exactly what you mean. You’re talking about ancient history.’

  ‘Vasyl.’ The others at the table not meeting your eye, the woman setting down her spoon. ‘Vasyl Mishchenko, but he –’

  ‘He’s very probably not called anything like that and he’s very probably not Ukrainian. We know.’ As if he’s explaining to a child. ‘But it doesn’t matter whether he’s a Ukrainian, or some kind of Balt, an Estonian, for example – if we send him back, the Communists will murder him. Do we want that? No, of course we don’t. We can’t have Communists thinking they can murder people just as they like, now can we.’

  ‘He said he was coming to London.’

  Fergusson drifting his head from side to side, quite thoroughly amused by this time, the others still keeping quiet, the woman blushing. You think he might talk like this often, while they have to listen – agreeing or not, there’s no way to tell.

  You try again. ‘He can’t come to London.’

  ‘London – I wouldn’t know. That certainly won’t be his point of entry. You have to remember, Mr . . .’

  ‘Day.’ And as if this makes any difference, ‘Formerly of the RAF.’

  ‘Good for you. You have to remember, Mr Day, that Britain lost a great many people in the last war. Almost four hundred thousand dead, hundreds of thousands seriously disabled. We need population. We need a healthy birth rate and good stock. Now either that comes from the colonies and refugees whose cultures are very unlike our own, or we take in lads like your Vasyl, who were misled in their youth, and we live in a country which stays Christian and white. The Yanks have snapped up most of what territory we haven’t given away . . . prices in dollars anywhere there’s a hope of visitors . . . you know how it is. You surely want our homeland to survive, if nothing more – after all your efforts.’

  Alfred saying nothing because there is nothing to say.

  ‘And no need to look at me like that. I follow the line which is the government line. We must think to the future, not the past.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Yes, well, we’d already guessed your rank, but thank you for the confirmation. Good even
ing, Mr Day. Perhaps we might finish our meal now without further disturbance.’

  ‘Fuck you.’ Not shouting, only disciplined and mild and standing to attention and giving a crisp salute, all of the table watching you now – studying this animal they do not understand. ‘Fuck you.’

  Adding no lustre to the service in any way.

  Walking clear outside into the start of evening, the heat green and gentle and crickets busy in the grass beyond the wire and the moor growing over its corpses and the bones of its other camps – only this joke, this game left.

  Maybe I never did exactly know what I was fighting for, but it fucking wasn’t that.

  Grass should grow across the whole damn pack of us, clear us away.

  ‘Ready?’ Gad tapping him on the left shoulder, but standing by his right – bloody silly trick, Ringer used to play it all the time and Alfred really could have done without it: remembering the wink he’d give when you spun you head round to him after turning the wrong way.

  Gad nodded, merrily sympathetic. ‘You did your best.’

  More and more of the boys leaving the mess and heading out. ‘I did nothing.’ A few of them jogging, even running, to the hall and raising the taste that Alfred can’t help knowing: will running alongside will, intention, men deciding they’ll do something, preparing. Alfred trotting himself now and Gad beside him, grinning, younger, flushed.

  ‘We’ll be waiting for your song, Alf. Bound to get a big response.’

  ‘I wouldn’t guarantee it.’

  ‘Don’t sell yourself short, laddie. And dinna fash about the other thing.’ He seems he is drunk enough to be unsteady. Although this may be an act.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Thon Vasyl. We know him. First job we do once we’re out – we’ll slide by the DP camp and see to him. As a favour to you.’

  The men around them in a press, rushing for no particular reason, but rushing all the same.

  ‘See to –’

  ‘The war’s only over when we say so. Nice to get some action again. We’ve friends there – how d’you think we got the papers?’

  ‘But I didn’t mean –’

  Gad drifting back from him, giving Alfred a thumbs up as he’s pushed to the hut steps. ‘Happens all the time in these places.’

  Being bumped towards the door. ‘No. The war’s over. I don’t want that.’ Having to shout.

  ‘Oh, your face . . . I wis only kidding. We’ll no have the time.’

  ‘What?’ And Alfred’s through the door, half stumbles.

  Gad still with his thumbs up, nodding. ‘I wis kidding. Sing away good and loud, now. Sing away.’

  The crowd propelling Alfred forward and on to a bench before he can turn again or say anything more and Gad out of sight – just this mass of men filling up what used to be the phoney theatre hut, but now it’s a real theatre, operational for the night, because they want it to be and this is when they get what they want.

  ‘Now, then, yes. Simmer down. Simmer down.’

  A former CSM on stage and the usual whistles and calls from the audience, Alfred stamping his feet without even noticing much, clapping: the performance about to begin.

  ‘Because they have to be back before curfew, our Ukrainian friends –’ A small burst of applause. ‘Our Ukrainian friends will be singing first. And I do have what they’re singing written down, but I can’t say it, so I’ll just ask you to give them a very warm welcome.’

  So this is it, then.

  And the Ukrainians have made themselves into a choir: two mildly awkward rows of solid men, flesh scrubbed pink: wrists and necks and ankles extending from clothes provided by various donors.

  Our show, the one we wanted. Ours.

  A moment or two of confusion and then this heavy-headed one starts up the tune and the rest go in after – a deep, cosy spread of sound – and it turns out their songs aren’t foreign, only Ukrainian pronunciations of Robert Burns – ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’ and some others Alfred half recognises.

  Who’s to say that Gad wouldn’t have killed him? And I minded, but I wouldn’t have stopped them. They could have gone ahead and it wouldn’t have been my fault, so that would have been all right. I wouldn’t have done a thing about it.

  Along the row comes a dixie of moderately appalling punch. Alfred has a couple of mouthfuls, because he hopes it will take the bite away from what’s bound to be a concert full of love songs and dirty jokes – how could it be anything else.

  My love is like a room with nothing in it, only whitewash.

  She did care, though.

  I have it in writing.

  There was a piece in the paper about them landing repatriated prisoners at Leith – an awful lot about bands and ‘Roll out the Barrel’, but they didn’t seem to be in too bad shape and said the Germans were being kind. I do hope that’s true.

  I have it in months of letters I could go and show her and they would prove she must still be that person.

  I saw a chap with your hair the other evening. He was sitting in a café window and the way he was turned meant that he looked exactly like you. I can’t say how that was, how terribly happy it made me, thinking maybe you’d got back somehow and were here. Of course, when he turned back, he was someone else entirely with really rather piggish eyes. Not like you at all.

  Because I’m still the man who read them.

  Like in that Keats thing when he melts into her dream. You do that a lot, my darling.

  The Ukrainians gone by this time, wet-eyed and waving and hugging chaps at the end of rows as they’re marched away. Fergusson and his crowd perhaps sneaking off after, but probably tucked in a corner somewhere, enjoying a night out, making the most of the drink. A weedy lad up next, doing his best Max Miller.

  ‘See these eyes, ain’t I got big, eyes, ain’t I? I do, don’t I? Ain’t they big? Got them from me mother – spent so many years looking all over for me father.’

  I’m still the man.

  No point in looking all over. What would there be to find?

  Jesus Christ, there’s days when you shouldn’t wake up and everything bloody hits you, everything bloody hurts. And it feels like her, like she’s doing it and yo’m still connected, but yo ay. You’re not. You’re nothing to do with each other. The pain’s your own.

  February ’44. That’s how far I made it, until February ’44. In the bag nearly six months and that was it.

  When you say go, I go.

  But I was already gone.

  I know this will hurt you and I wish it wouldn’t.

  Such a stupid fucking thing to write.

  And I cor think of the rest. Honest. It’s not in my head any more. Oh, I read the letter often enough that I should know it off by heart like all the others, but it didn’t make sense and you can’t remember things that make no sense – going on about the news from the East and there’s terrible things going on there and she is married, after all, and she doesn’t know what’s what any more and waiting for two people when she only wants the one and what if he ever comes home and she doesn’t want to hurt me.

  Bloke next to you chuckling away and the chap onstage is getting louder, ‘And I says, I says, he paid for the new carpet and the new wallpaper and the new piano in parlour? – bloody hell, then shut window – he’ll catch his death of cold.’

  And this noise coming out of your head, again and again, the same fucking stinking noise, like a fucking dog that knows no better than to howl and one day you fucking wish you’ll laugh because you’re happy, just one time, one fucking day you fucking wish.

  As had been planned, Alfred didn’t get up to sing until it was almost ten o’clock. Hovering in the wings while ‘Yours’ and ‘That Lovely Weekend’ got hooted briskly across a table full of more and less empty bottles. The audience, he
could feel, was admiring, but not exactly entertained. And by now they were fairly drunk.

  And he was as close to nervous as he could get.

  There’s a thing, then. Life somewhere in that old dog, yet.

  The bottle blower finished and got his applause – slightly wild – as the stagehands clunked off with his table of props.

  ‘Don’t drink them all at once, mate.’ Someone at the back yelling out and so the room unsettled as Alfred walked out, his feet seeming very big and slightly far out ahead of him. But that’s fine.

  Can’t shoot me. Not any more. Can’t even hurt me.

  And he stands towards the front of the little stage and he waits and he smiles at them, the rows of men he doesn’t much know and will very soon not meet again.

  Can’t do me a single bit of harm.

  And he breathes in as deep as deep and he shuts his eyes and he starts to sing, just the way he did back at his school in the assembly hall – he gives them ‘Jerusalem’, sweet and straight as he can make it.

  For a line or two there seems a numb space ahead of him and then a few voices join him in the music as it stretches on forward and up, in the ache it raises out and doesn’t fill, only rolls out further.

  As the verse widens, strengthens, more and more singers go along with it and, Alfred knows without having to look, Gad and his bods slip outside to lose themselves, to run away.

  Alfred standing and the sound like a love in him now and round him, tilting his head and wrapping him with a light he only touches, cannot see.

  And he can believe that he hears Pluckrose singing, that lovely awful voice, and they are here together again and yelling the England that will never be.

  And he can believe that he hears the Bastard and Molloy and Torrington and Miles and Parks and they are back and didn’t die.

  And he can believe that he hears his skipper. His skipper.

  And he can believe that if he opens up his eyes the benches will be full of all the boys lost to the sky and his friends the closest, his crew the closest, so near that he can take their hands and know they are well and never were harmed and never were frightened, never lost.