Somebody at the Door

by Raymond Postgate

  Chapter IV

  * * *

  * SNUFFLY GIRL

  A WORKMAN *

  * A MOTHER

  A WORKMAN *

  * HUGH ROLANDSON

  THE VICAR *

  * A GERMAN

  H. J. GRAYLING X

  * CPL. GEORGE RANSOM

  C.J. F. EVETTS *

  * * *

  I

  Corporal George Ransom was a dark, short, tired-looking man of middle age. He had rather a large nose, and eyes small and close together. He was among the least noticeable of the members of “C” Platoon of the—th Company,—th Battalion, of a certain Zone of the Home Guard. He wore on his blouse the two ribbons of the 1914-18 war, called by the young and irreverent “Mutt and Jeff,” and that was not distinctive either. Even the Mons ribbon was pretty common among his colleagues; of these two there seemed to more men with than without. The ribbons did not, in Ransom’s case, indicate any extensive service; indeed, he had sometimes wondered whether he ought to put them up at all. He had never actually seen a shot fired. He had been young in the last war; in addition he had been called up late, through no fault of his own. He had been sent to the front, nominally, in October, 1918. Counter-orders had stopped his unit when it was going up the line. Then it was switched towards Le Quesnoy, to take over from the New Zealanders. It arrived on the night of November 10th. In the morning, on parade, Ransom heard the famous colloquy reported by Colonel Lushington in his Memoirs.

  “Mr. Straker.”

  “Sir.”

  “You can fall out the men for breakfast. The war is over.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  One of the pigeons which the Colonel noticed as “circling around” messed on his shoulder; it was the nearest thing that he received to an enemy hit.

  At the time, he had been unfeignedly delighted to get off so easily. Most of his fellows had felt the same; 1918 was a disillusioned year.

  He did not, now, talk about the violent pacifist sentiments he had assented to then; it is not very certain that he even remembered them. Certainly, few volunteers could have been more warlike in the Home Guard than he. He seemed to find marked comfort, a relief from some private trouble, in attending to the minute physical details of the training. For some time he had been part of a Lewis machine-gun unit, and had even given instruction, to the extent that the initial shortage of ammunition allowed. He delighted in taking the gun into its sixty-two pieces, naming each, and reassembling it.

  “The gun,” he would say reverently, “is actuated by the force of the gases released by the explosion of the cartridge. These gases are trapped by a cup at the end of the gas piston, and you will perceive there are three rings behind this cup. This ingenious device makes it sure that the maximum pressure will be exercised by the gases and none will escape uselessly.” His satisfaction could not have been greater if he had invented the ingenious device himself.

  He could scarcely bear to allow the recruits to handle the various parts; however well they might reassemble it, he would take the gun to pieces afterwards, oil it, and put it together himself. (The result was that the small stock of Lewis guns was generally rather over-oiled: one, indeed, tried on the range, produced a great cloud of stinking blue smoke and a hostile comment from the Regular instructor).

  “This is my weapon,” Ransom used to tell his squad. “You can have your so and so and so—and so” (he named two of the secret Reception arrangements for welcoming German tanks), “but when the balloon goes up this is the bastard I want to be behind. There’s nothing at all like it. You can sweep a whole area: or you can pick off a single man. All you’ve got to do is to learn some simple commonsense rules of where to place yourself, and you can stop Jerry as long as you please. More or less, anyway. I don’t deny it can’t penetrate a tank. You’ve got to stop a tank with other means. But when they’re stopped, what then? You’ve got to deal with the Nazis as they get out. And this is the boy to do it.

  “You think of parachute troops,” he would go on, patting the large barrel affectionately. “A rifle’s all very well, but think how you could wipe ’em up with this. If you didn’t kill them off, you could pin them down so’s they were afraid to move.”

  It was no pleasure to him that his zeal had caused his transference. He knew the Lewis M.G. too well: the C.O. decided he must add another to his qualifications. He was taken away from the arcs and cones of fire he had earnestly mastered and made corporal-in-charge of anti-gas instruction. There was nothing in that sphere which he could touch: it was mainly theoretical work, and in addition he did not believe it would ever be wanted. Gas, he thought, would never be used. He did his best to absorb the necessary information, and to retail it; but his heart was elsewhere. Further, the folding and rolling of the gas cape was difficult, and he frequently mismanaged it. Even the respirator caused him trouble. On one occasion, he was in charge of men mustered for a gas test at the wardens’ experimental station, and was nearly responsible for a major disaster.

  The warden took him aside, and said:

  “I’m giving your boys a specially strong concentration,” (The nearest “boy” was a vastly fat man, with a bald, shiny head and a Boer war ribbon.) “You see, the way I figure it is this. We wardens may have to do our work when planes have dropped gas bombs. Okay. But you chaps may have to face a regular gas attack: you may have to advance into gas, actually. You’ll have to fight in it, quite possibly. So you want a severer test. I’ve made a mixture of double strength. He then gave the constituents and strength of the gas he had prepared, and perceiving no comprehension in Ransom’s face, said: “Take a look at that.”

  “That,” was a small cardboard box, rather the shape and size of the puzzle boxes with glass lids, which used to be sold at Christmas, with two or three small silver pellets inside, which the purchaser had to shake and coax into a certain pattern. Instead of the glass, however, there was an arrangement of four small glass tubes let into the cardboard and numbered. One contained mustard gas—liquid, and rather impure, since it wasdark brown. (Mustard gas is browner the more impure it is; absolutely pure mustard gas is, or would be, colourless.) The other tubes contained other gases, also in liquid form—one equally or more poisonous, the other two relatively harmless. They were named, but there is no need to name them here.

  “I am using two parts of One and one of Three,” continued the warden. At that point Ransom, fumbling with cold fingers, dropped the whole box face down. They were standing on the steps of the experimental station, some twenty feet away from the hut which was used as the treating-room. The box fell on the edge of a stone step.

  “Hell,” said the warden, and, covering his face with his handkerchief, hastily bent down and picked up the box, holding it by its edges. “You bloody damned fool,” he said, and ran indoors with the box. “The blasted thing’s leaking now.”

  He came out again after a minute, in no agreeable temper. “You’d better get your men in, before anything else happens,” he said. “Form them into squads of five. Check the fitting of their respirators yourself. There ought to be someone else here,” he continued dissatisfiedly. “Sending only a corporal in charge, I don’t like it.”

  “Second Lieutenant Grayling should be here,” said Ransom, unhappily. “I don’t know what’s happened to him.”

  “Well, we can’t wait for him.”

  Ransom formed his men up in fives, and sent them through as instructed. But he was badly rattled, and did not check the adjustment of the respirators properly. Three men out of the first squad came running out of the testing-room, choking and with tears pouring from their eyes. At that moment, naturally, Second Lieutenant Grayling came up.

  He glared at the Corporal and the distressed men; then he said: “As soon as you’ve finished with them, Corporal, I want to speak with you.”

  He was in a very disagreeable temper. He knew he had no business to be late, and in addition what had delayed him had been alarming to his dignity. His superior, the company
commander, Captain Sawyer, about to retire, had sent for him; Grayling had hoped that it was to announce a step up. Sawyer was an old friend, who had been Mayor when the Home Guard was formed, in the old days when it was called the L.D.V. Both he and Grayling, as local politicians of eminence, had automatically taken a prominent part. But local politicians are not necessarily the best leaders of a popular army (or any army). Increasingly onerous duties, pressure of discontent from below, and latterly from above, had removed several of Sawyer’s colleagues. Grayling himself had not had the promotion he expected. Now, what Sawyer had told Grayling was that his, Sawyer’s, resignation was not really voluntary at all. Headquarters had (though he did not say this), at last understood that a sedentary, overweight tradesman, good-natured but not very intelligent or very honest, was not an efficient company commander, and had in effect told him to go. Sawyer’s summons to Grayling was to communicate this, to complain of ingratitude, and to tell him that he believed all local worthies were to be treated in the same summary way. So far from Grayling receiving a second or third pip, he might consider himself lucky if he stayed at all. Certainly, the relatively easy time he had had was over: the new C.O., Williams, was no friend of his, and was determined to “pull things together sharply.”

  This was partly responsible for the tone in which Grayling spoke to Ransom. “What is the reason for these men’s respirators not fitting? “he said. “Don’t you know it is your duty to inspect the fitting yourself?”

  “I did inspect them, sir,” mumbled Ransom. “They appeared all right, the straps I mean.”

  “It is inexcusable stupidity,” said Grayling. “The consequences might have been disastrous. You are unfit to have your stripes when you can be guilty of such gross neglect and incompetence.”

  The pomposity and unfairness nettled Ransom. “If you had been present in time, Mr. Grayling,” he said loudly, “and I had had your assistance, I could have given each man a thorough examination. This is not my fault, whosoever’s it is.”

  Grayling shouted. “That’s a piece of damned insolence, and I shall report you. You fail in your duty and then you’re impudent. Let me tell you, the time’s gone by when you can pull those tricks. This isn’t a volunteer army any more, or won’t be in a week or two, anyway. You’re under military law, and you can’t get away with it. You’ll be sorry for your behaviour, and I’ll make you sorry.”

  Ransom turned away, flushing. Grayling called him back.

  “Ransom!”

  “Sir.”

  “Salute properly when you leave an officer.”

  There was a short hesitation, and then Ransom walked away, without saluting.

  He did not hear any more of that particular incident, but he remained worried. The new C.O. was something of a martinet, and Grayling was malicious. The weeks were marching on fast and soon the date would come when he could not legally resign from the Home Guard. The coming of conscription for the Guard had been announced in the Press. The pleasant days, the comradeship, the understanding, the freedom and equality would be over, he thought. Incompetent, minor bullies, old fools and worse like Grayling would boss you around. Yet how could he go? The unit held him. He was a lonely man; he had little else to be loyal to. When he joined, in August, 1940, he had found happiness again: after years of shame he had known what it was to be needed and busy.

  He had not changed wholly, nor had he changed suddenly. Men don’t. But the day on which he had signed the declaration had begun an alteration. The act of enrolment had been a voluntary act, a decision of his own will, as it had been with a million other men. But such a decision had been unknown to him for some years: he had been constantly shiftless and hopeless, and what decisions he had made had either been to meet some immediate financial need or to avoid some trouble. This time he had deliberately, at some inconvenience, sought out the L.D.V. office, waited his turn to be enrolled, filled up a form for no other inducement but an appeal on the wireless to his hatred of Nazism, and waited anxiously to know that he had been passed—had been given permission, that is, to spend a great deal of time and trouble for no personal gain. A pukka sahib with a toothbrush moustache, an officer-wallah of the type he disliked, had read his form carefully. When he had approved it, the officerwallah had stood up (following his usual routine), grasped Ransom by the hand, shaken it and grunted: “Welcome you into—th Company L.D.V.”

  George Ransom had been startled and moved by this action. He had not been able to analyse its effect on him, except in so far as it caused him to change his opinion of officers with small moustaches and abrupt manners. If he had done, he might have considered himself as a man who was climbing out of one condition of mind and life into another. His action in joining the Volunteers had been the announcement to himself that he had ceased to be a wreck, a drifting thing, but had become a vessel under control—a man and a citizen. The handshake of Mr. Alistair Edgwarebury-Caine (whom he never saw again) was an acknowledgement of that change of outside authority. In the next few months, Ransom not only attended to his Home Guard duties with exemplary keenness, but he also made a serious effort to put his personal financial affairs in tolerable condition.

  They were in a sordid enough mess, which was far from being his own fault. He told his story, once, on a sudden burst of confidence, to a fellow Home Guard during a two-hour watch on a November night: even the manner in which he told it was significant. For the first time, there was no tinge of whining or self-pity in his account, even to himself; his story was one of things which had been hard to bear, but had been borne; the reaction expected was not commiseration but astonishment. He described his experiences not so badly as his limited education might have justified: indeed he spoke with a clearness of accent and sensitiveness in description which did not fit with his generally shabby appearance. He had been educated in a mixed Church school in a village in a backward county, so indifferently run that if it had not been for the Rector’s influence it could hardly have been allowed to continue, even thirty years ago. The instruction in arithmetic was wretchedly bad, and science or language teaching did not exist. Miss Grinngamble, the overworked teacher, was harried by her pupils and disliked them. In only one thing did she take an interest, and that was the English language. Not in spelling—Ransom was still unable to write down a sentence of any length correctly. But Miss Grinngamble made her charges read aloud, from plays and from novels, and, because she had no time to correct essays, made them stand up and speak. Each one of the children who showed any ability was required to deliver aloud the equivalent of an essay on a set subject, or a reproduction or variation of a story read or told the day before. Not only did Miss Grinngamble thus save the trouble of reading and correcting forty-three essays, she was also enabled to concentrate for once her attention on the children who showed intelligence. The rest, after blundering once or twice, were relegated to the position of audience; and they were an obedient and attentive audience. At all other times Miss Grinngamble was too tired or indifferent to repress disorder, idleness or even impudence, but during English any attempt at mockery or disorder was put down grimly by the instant and pretty hard application of a ruler to knuckles or the tightly stretched seat of cotton knickers. A proportion, therefore, of the pupils of Brengton Village “National School” left with an exceptionally low equipment in arithmetic, general knowledge and spelling, but an oddly full vocabulary and confidence in expressing themselves. George Ransom was one.

  Yet he would probably not have talked as freely or well as he did if it had not been for the circumstances.

  2

  It was a November night, 1940, and the moon rose late; it was past the full. Ransom was on guard at company headquarters; he was not then a corporal, but only a rank and file volunteer. The guard assembled at 7.45 p.m., which meant that Ransom had to leave his room at twenty-past seven in uniform; it was then deep darkness. As he waited for the bus, he noticed that an inspector came up and spoke to the conductor of the 48 which preceded his own bus. Half the light
s were turned off, and the bus went on dimmed. “The first warning’s come through,” he thought, a little dully. “They’ll be over again to-night.”

  The guard consisted of eight men; they took two-hour shifts of watch, in pairs, except for the cycle orderly and the N.C.O. in charge, who were, more or less always available. The N.C.O. selected the pairs for the night. He partnered Ransom with a volunteer named Fremont, and allotted them the two spans 10 to 12 and 4 to 6—or, as he meticulously called them, twenty-two hours to twentyfour hours and oh-four hours to oh-six.

  At five minutes past nine the wireless news (on full in the guardroom) suddenly dropped in volume; at twenty past nine the sirens went. Ransom felt his usual reaction of tired irritation at the noise. “It looks like the hump and it gives you the hump,” he thought. The siren note started low, rose slowly to a higher volume of howling misery and then sank again; climbed again, wailed, and sank; and so on for the whole minute. The rise and fall made a picture in Ransom’s mind, as of a series of humps of a string of Bactrian camels. He was no more, and no less, courageous than the next Londoner who enlisted in the Home Guard, A.R.P., or any of the Civil Defence services. He was not the indomitable, always gay Cockney of the kinder American correspondents. He did not enjoy the raids; he found them a strain. But equally they had no serious effect on his morale: the thought of surrender never even occurred to him. Communists and Fascists, in a tacit alliance in those days, were beginning a “campaign for a people’s peace.” The occasional evidences that Ransom came across—a sticker on a tube advertisement, an abandoned copy of the Daily Worker—affected him so little that he was not even angry. The effect of the strain on him was only to release certain inhibitions. It made him, in general, more incautious. If he was annoyed, he would use language that he once would have avoided. If he was in the mood for autobiography, he would disclose things that once he hid carefully.