Riptide

by John Lawton

  But he had no idea what to say to this. Stating his own credentials was pointless. He’d encountered the enemy only once in his life-and that was last night. He could not hold his own with this. He couldn’t sit and make small talk with an old redcoat. It was an English day. Let them have their day. He knew it was shitty behaviour, but he muttered an ‘excuse me’ and left. An entire crew lost. Good God, they didn’t need his two cents’ worth.

  He found himself in Soho-killing time. He sat in cafés, watched the English hunched over their newspapers, spread the width of tables, nicotined fingers stabbing down at the paper-the strategy of the Cafeteria Corps. After a couple of cafés he knew there was unanimity among the armchair warriors-we, it always was ‘we’, were going to get the Bismarck. The Earth was not big enough to hide her. He bought a copy of the Evening Herald’s early edition-the loss of the Hood was, it seemed, a body blow. If Dunkirk had been victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, then this was plainly irredeemable by propaganda. Fourteen hundred men had died on the pride of the fleet, and the Bismarck had steamed away from the battle. There was an article, an obituary for a ship, written by Alexei Troy-he’d heard that name before somewhere, hadn’t he?-recalling the twenty or more years in which the Hood had sailed the world as an ironic ambassador for peace; how the Hood had flown the flag in all the old ports of empire, and how he himself had seen the largest battleship afloat glide through the Golden Gate into San Francisco to the roaring cheers of an old enemy. And then how its first taste of action had been the unenviable, ignominious sinking of the French fleet at Oran after the surrender. Fourteen hundred men had gone down with the Hood. And with the British still in pursuit of the Bismarck, the death toll could not but rise.

  Early in the evening, he was lying on his bed. The telephone rang and announced Sergeant Stilton. He could hardly believe this. What was Kitty thinking of? He found out soon enough.

  She was in civvies, a plain black two-piece. Her face scraped white with misery. Eyes red and watery. A handbag, scarcely big enough to hold a handkerchief. He’d never seen her with a handbag before. He’d never seen her out of uniform before. He’d seen her strip it off ad libidinum-but she’d never arrived wearing anything else.

  ‘You gotta come home with me. I can’t stand it no more. I been there since breakfast. It’s driving me mad.’

  ‘Kitty-I can’t intrude on your family’s grief

  ‘Intrude ain’t got nothing to do with it. If you come they’ll pay attention to something outside their own misery. If something doesn’t snap ‘em to we’ll all drown. Just get your coat and come with me, please.’

  ‘Kitty-it’s been less than a day!’

  ‘It’s been thirteen bleedin’ hours. I counted every bleedin’ minute of ‘em. An’ I can’t take no more. Get yer coat!’

  They caught a cab outside the hotel. Cal had half-wondered on the way down whether he’d find her motorbike outside-but she flagged a cab and said, ‘You’ll have to pay. I got no money.’ He was happy to pay. Anything was better than the thought of driving up to Jubilee Street on the back of that motorbike. It seemed an indignity pushed to an insult-an insult to Walter and Edna Stilton and their two dead boys.

  ‘Who’s there?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘At your parents’. I mean, is the whole family there?”An’ the rest. Half the neighbours. Me mum’s sisters been there most of the day. The vicar been round. That was nice for me mum. Told her Kev and Trev was ‘eroes. Me dad wouldn’t talk to him. Atheist me dad is. Me mum cries all the time an’ me dad puffs on his pipe and says nothin’. Would you believe it, he’s been married to her for thirty-odd years an’ ‘e don’t know what to say to ‘er? Vera’s taken over the kitchen. She’s in her element. And she’s in control. Miss Greenlees makes a thousand pots of tea and keeps askin’ everyone if they want more. She’s shot through a fortnight’s tea ration in less than a day. If she asks me again I’ll clock ‘er one. They don’t need me. Really they don’t. They got all the fuss one family can ‘andle. But I can’t duck out of it. I only got out by tagging on to the aunts when they left. But I got to go back. They won’t let me duck out.’

  ‘So I have to duck in?’

  ‘You got it. That’s exactly what it is. I need you. Right now I need you.’

  They were emotive words, uttered wholly without emotion. He was not a necessity in her life. He was a convenience.

  §48

  Walter was standing in the hallway when they arrived. The telephone pressed to his ear, saying ‘I see’ over and over.

  Kitty waited till he’d finished.

  ‘News, dad?’

  ‘Aye. That mate o’ mine at the Admiralty. Those three blokes the Navy picked up. A midshipman, a signalman and an able seaman. No leading seamen.’

  For a moment Cal was not there. They could neither of them see him or acknowledge him. Then Kitty said ‘That’s it then. We know now, don’t we.’

  Walter disappeared into the parlour to shatter his wife’s last hope. Kitty led Cal down the stairs to the basement, pulling on his hand like a child dragging a reluctant father to the shops.

  Vera was at the range, swapping pans around like a juggler. Grim-faced, stripped of make-up, sleeves up and tearless. Losing herself in her own efficiency. Miss Greenlees hovered with the kettle until Vera swore at her and snatched it away.

  ‘I was only going to make a cup of tea. I’m sure Captain Cormack would like a nice cup of tea.’

  ‘He’d love a nice cup of tea,’ said Kitty. ‘We both would.’

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ said Vera. ‘How much bleedin’ tea do you have to drink to bring back the dead?’

  She slammed the kettle onto the hob. Miss Greenlees fled in tears. Cal wished he could follow her.

  ‘Vera, for God’s sake…’ Kitty began.

  ‘Don’t Vera me. She’s been wittering on at me all day. You sloped off, you sly tart. You’ve had a break from her. You’ve had a break from all of ‘em. Don’t start on me!’

  ‘I did not slope off!’

  ‘You sloped off all the way to Claridge’s. You been up West. If that ain’t slopin’ off I don’t know what is. You left me ‘ere on me jack jones to get a meal for us all. Kitty, you’re me sister, me own flesh and blood, and you’re about as much use as a fart in a colander.’

  Walter appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Will you two shut up. This is meant to be a house in mournin’-or had neither of you noticed?’

  The women turned their backs on him. Walter’s attention turned to Cal.

  ‘The missis’d like a word, Calvin. If you’ve a moment.’

  Cal had not anticipated this. He had come for Kitty. He’d sink back into the wallpaper. No one would notice him. No one would ask anything of him.

  ‘I’ve all the time in the world, Walter. But I’ve no idea what I can possibly say.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anythin’ lad. Let our Edna do the talking. You’re a servin’ soldier, after all. That’s what matters to our Edna. Just to be able to talk to another man in uniform. Someone as knows what it’s like.’

  Cal followed, wondering what on earth he could do for Edna Stilton to fulfil the notion Walter had dreamt up. He’d never been in the Navy-he wasn’t actually in uniform-as in better days Stilton was wont to remind him-his experience of combat was clandestine, grubby compared to the heroics of the Royal Navy. No one would ever boast of what he and Stilton had got up to last night. For himself, he wasn’t sure he’d ever tell anyone.

  Edna Stilton was leafing through a photograph album. Stilton eased him gently forward with a hand between the shoulderblades. Then Cal heard the door close softly, looked around and found himself in a room he hadn’t seen last time. A formal room-Victorian in the weight of its furniture and the universal hues of brown and black. The ‘parlour’-that was what Stilton had called it. It had the air of a room scarcely used. Like the ballroom in his grandfather’s house-the dustsheets came off once a year.

&nbs
p; ‘Mrs Stilton?’

  She looked up. Sad and smiling at the same time.

  ‘Captain Cormack. It’s very good of you…’

  ‘Calvin, please…’

  ‘I was just looking at some snaps of my boys.’

  Cal peered over. Black gummed corners sticking the snapshots down to a coarse grey paper, heavy as blotter. Two shorn pre-adolescent boys in swimming trunks, facing the camera with four rows of bright teeth. A castle made of sand.

  ‘That was Southend, 1923. The year they got nits and I had to shave their ‘eads.’

  She turned a page, then another and another. Came to rest on the twins in uniform, a cigarette stuck to each lower lip, beer bottle in hand, one of them with his head back, roaring with laughter.

  ‘That was the year they enlisted. 1934.’

  Cal pulled up a footstool and took the crick out of his back. He felt like a child next to Mrs Stilton, her bulk sedate in the depths of an overstuffed armchair.

  ‘You’re a reg’lar aren’t you, Calvin? Not like Maurice. Maurice is only in for the duration.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve served eleven years if you count West Point.’

  ‘What’s that? Is that like Aldershot?”More like Sandhurst, I guess.’

  She nodded at this, turned another page. A formal shot. The boys in dress uniform standing to attention.

  ‘The vicar was round.’

  ‘Yes, I heard.’

  ‘Reckons they was ‘eroes. Told me and Kitty they died a hero’s death.’

  This was the moment Cal had dreaded. His own feet of clay. He had no idea what to say and less of what to be.

  ‘But they was reg’lar. “That’s the thing with reg’lars,” he said. “They lay down their lives for their king and their country.” ‘

  She stared off into nothing for a few moments. Then she looked straight at Cal.

  ‘Was that why you joined up?’

  And he could see no moral or merit in lying to her.

  ‘No, Mrs Stilton. I’m no hero. I joined up to escape the ties of family. The obligation to go to the right university after the right school, and to cheat the career my folks had mapped out for me. It was a selfish act on my part. I had no thoughts of heroism. I had hoped to get through it all without ever coming face to face with an enemy. It was always meant to be something temporary. I saw myself doing something else within a few years. I’d no idea what, but I never imagined I’d still be a soldier on the eve of a war. Not everyone’s a hero. Not everyone can be like your boys.’

  ‘Heroes?’

  ‘We’re not all cut out for it. Your boys were… special.’

  ‘An’ you didn’t want to be a hero?’

  ‘Never entered my mind.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear you say that. I’d much sooner remember them the way they were-a pair of scallywags looking out for the next fag and the next likely girl. If I thought they was really heroes I’d never have understood ‘em. They joined up to get off the bloody dole queue. ‘Scuse my French.’

  She closed the book flat on her lap.

  ‘Vicar always was a silly old sod. I remember during the General Strike him saying we’d all go to hell ‘cos we’d broken God’s law and it was God as allotted us our station in life. You hang on to your life, young Calvin. I don’t think I believe in dead heroes. Now-has no one offered you a cup of tea? There’s nothing like a nice cup of tea.’

  Her arms were poised to push herself out of the chair when the door opened and, as if on cue, Stilton appeared with the tea tray.

  ‘There’s nothing like a nice cup of tea,’ he said, and Cal knew he was trapped for the duration of the English Tea Ceremony.

  § 49

  Vera cooked as well as her mother. Cal had no idea what it was, but there was plenty of it. A dash of meat somewhere, he thought it might be mutton, but healthy portions of carrot and lentil. All the same it was a spartan meal, in that neither Stilton nor his wife nor the lodgers came down to eat, and the awkward recriminating and self-recriminating gathering around the kitchen table consisted of Cal, Kitty, Vera, Rose, her husband Tom, the roundly pregnant Reenie, and the boy Tel.

  Cal aimed for neutrality, as heads bent over plates in what he could only think of as an angry silence.

  ‘Is Pilot Officer Micklewhite on duty?’ he asked of Reenie.

  Reenie and Rose were the tearful ones, always on the verge of grabbing a handkerchief and dashing from the room. Reenie looked up at him, eyes red-rimmed.

  ‘Beg pardon?’

  ‘Maurice-I meant, I guess Maurice is on call?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘He can’t get away, you see. They could scramble any time.’

  And in saying this the implication of her own words came home to her. She sniffled and dug around in a pocket for her hanky.

  Vera’s voice cut through the sniffles.

  ‘You’ll have to move back now. You know that, don’t you?’ Cal wondered to whom she was speaking, but Kitty answered all the same.

  ‘Wot? Wot do you mean?’

  ‘I mean you, fancy pants. You’ll have to move back. I can’t manage this house on me own. It’s time you recognised that you can’t shirk your responsibilities no more.’

  ‘Wot? Me? Why me? Why not Rose or Reen?’

  ‘Why you, ‘cos you’re the eldest, that’s why. Besides, they’re married. They got blokes and kids of their own to look after. I can’t look after me mum as well as Dad and Tel.’

  Tel chipped in, ‘You won’t ‘ave to look after me. I don’t need no looking after. I’ll be in the Navy next year.’

  Then both the sisters turned on him.

  ‘Not bloody likely!’

  ‘Wot?’

  ‘You’re going nowhere,’ said Kitty, aiming at him with her fork. ‘Hasn’t this family lost enough already? You can just wait till you’re called up, and even then you won’t have to go. Not after this. It’d be cruel to take you as well as Kev and Trev. If you join the Navy now it’ll break your mother’s heart.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’-the cry of younger siblings everywhere. ‘You’re making me stay at home just so you can go on swanning around up West.’

  ‘That’s got nothing to do with it. I work up West. Bow Street ain’t exactly the Mile End Road, you know. I can’t roll out of bed and be at work ten minutes later! Will you lay off. Will you all just lay off! I am not moving back, and that’s final.’

  Vera gathered up plates, an oversized show of bustle, as much noise as she could make. And when she’d dumped everything in the sink, she faced Kitty across the width of the kitchen and uttered the single word, ‘Bitch.’

  Kitty pushed back her chair and yanked open the kitchen door. Cal sat nonplussed. He’d never seen anything like this. In his family it simply didn’t happen. His sisters would never call each other a bitch, they’d simply point out that one was being boring-the greatest sin the family knew of, to be boring.

  ‘Calvin!’ Kitty said from the doorway.

  Out in the street it was already dark.

  ‘Will you take me home?’ she said.

  ‘To Covent Garden? Sure. I’ll get us a cab at the end of the street.’

  ‘No. I meant to your place. To Claridge’s.’

  ‘To Claridge’s?’

  ‘I can’t stay here. Not with that lot. And I don’t want to be on my own. So just take me home with you, will you.’

  ‘Am I ever going to see where you live?’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to, really you wouldn’t.’

  § 50

  Afterwards. Lying in the bed. Lights out, windows open, curtains flapping. A single sheet pulled over them, Kitty with her head on his chest, one hand splayed across his belly. Cal said ‘Are they always like that?’

  ‘Like wot?’

  ‘Angry.’

  ‘Oh, that. Yeah. I think it’s the only way Vera and Tel have to show emotions. Like they don’t have the vocabulary for all the others, so they use the one they know. Vera’s as cut up as the rest of us, but
it’s the only way she’s got to show it, to take it out on Miss Greenlees and me and young Tel.’

  It was the most analytic statement he had ever heard Kitty make.

  ‘Doesn’t let you off the hook though, does it?’

  ‘You mean I lost me temper too?’

  ‘That… and the fact you can’t bear to be there.’

  ‘If you lived with ‘em you’d know.’

  ‘I do know. I told your mother much the same thing while you were in the kitchen with Vera. She asked me why I joined up. I told her, not in so many words, but I told her I’d done it just to escape my family. It’s not unique to the English. You joined the cops, I joined the army. Amounts to pretty much the same thing, really.’

  Kitty propped herself up on one elbow. He couldn’t see her eyes but he knew she was looking at him.

  ‘You slyboots,’ she said.

  ‘Slyboots.’ He weighed up the phrase.

  ‘Answer me this, then. You wear them bifocals-specs to read-specs to look at objects more than about thirty feet away-how did you ever get into the army in the first place? You can’t be better than A4 with peepers that bad.’

  He was wearing his glasses now. He’d put them back on within a minute or so of rolling off Kitty. He could get by without them and a lot of the time he had to-but he could see her the more clearly with them. He’d made love to her out of focus-in the afterglow he rather wanted to be able to see her. He put his specs on much as most men lit up a cigarette. Unconsciously he pressed a finger to the bridge and shoved them an infinitesimal fraction further up.

  ‘Well?’ she said.

  ‘I cheated.’