The Broken Chariot

by Alan Sillitoe

  Herbert smiled, at what must have been the longest ever speech from his father. All his fears about being caught had been for nothing. Bugger it! – almost came to his lips, though he considered his chagrin unjustified because, on looking back, it seemed he had rather enjoyed being a fugitive. ‘It was good of you to take it like that.’

  They sat as if both were too big for the armless chintz-covered chairs. ‘Well, I didn’t think it would do you any harm, especially when you wrote and said you were working in a factory. Everything helps to make a man of a boy as long as he puts his back into it.’

  Herbert struggled for a moment to keep his accent from straying. ‘I liked the life.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. A lot of my chaps came from such places in the Great War, as well as in this one. We had a few bad eggs, but most of them did well. And when they did well, there were none better.’

  Expecting a shouting at, he felt at a loss, glad when the half-shut door was kicked open and the woman he supposed would turn out to be his mother came in with a tray of cups and saucers. Thick grey hair was tied back, showing her strong profile, and a string of brown beads fell over the white blouse covering a sloping bosom.

  She must have known he had been in the house five minutes already, so had been waiting to compose herself for the moment of reunion or, more like it, hadn’t thought it necessary to break off what she was doing; the latter more likely, because pride grew out of her bone marrow.

  ‘I even have to learn how to make coffee – though I always could, you know.’ She set the tray on a shining walnut wood table between them. The crockery rattled, a sign of nervousness at the longed for meeting, he could only suppose. ‘How are you, Herbert? It’s been so long, such a dreadful time, not being able to see you. You were quite a small boy …’

  ‘Hadn’t started to grow,’ Hugh laughed.

  He had already stood up, as you did when someone came into the room. She grasped his forearms, and he was embarrassed at the fervent kiss, at her eyes glistening with love and recognition, a definite tear in one of them. He hoped she didn’t notice the drawing back in his heart and hands. Could he believe she had dreamed of this reunion for years?

  ‘I can see you’re well,’ she said, ’and I can’t tell you how glad I am that you are. Apart from the height you’ve not changed a bit. You’re the replica of your father when he was your age. Isn’t he, Hugh? Just look at him.’

  ‘Is he?’ He smoothed his moustache, the first real pleasure he had shown.

  She touched his arm. ‘How much sugar, Herbert?’

  ‘Two, please.’

  They sat without talking for a while, so much to tell that nothing would come out. Maud knew it wasn’t done not to say a word or two. ‘You look a very smart soldier, but I do wish you’d go in for a commission, Herbert. It would be natural for you. You’re our only child, and we want you to do well.’

  ‘We’ll have lunch, and talk about that afterwards.’ Hugh dangled his watch, spun the chain around a long finger, then threaded it into his waistcoat. ‘I suppose we can fix him up with a show this evening? That’s what I always liked to do in London.’

  Maud picked up the Daily Telegraph. ‘There’s The Gang Show at the Stoll. Not very much really. What about Song of Norway?’

  ‘Bit musicky, isn’t it?’ Hugh said.

  ‘Well, there’s Caesar and Cleopatra at the pictures. Shakespeare, Herbert?’

  ‘Expect you got that rammed down your throat at school, didn’t you?’ Hugh winked.

  He smiled. If they sat in the cinema it would be two hours when he wouldn’t need to talk. ‘Well, yes, but all the same I’d like to see it.’ He turned to his mother. ‘That’d be fine.’

  ‘All right,’ Hugh said. ‘Might be just the thing.’ He stroked Maud’s wrist, and Herbert noticed his loving smile. ‘Vivien Leigh’s damned good to look at.’

  ‘That’s settled, then.’

  Herbert knew he couldn’t berate them any more for shovelling him into those dreadful schools, but neither did he feel any flush of returning affection. He’d have to go back too far for that, to his infancy in India when they mooned over him with so much pleasure and, he now realized, spoiled him rotten. His heart was like a stone, as if he’d just come back from its funeral. ‘I don’t intend to sign on in the army,’ he told them at lunch. ‘All I want is the experience for two or three years. After that, I’ll decide what to do.’

  Hugh’s fingers drummed some garbled message on to the table, while Maud worked at her beads, looking to the window as if a solution to the situation might show itself in the glass. ‘I suppose we can at least be pleased at the way you seem to chew things over before you speak,’ Hugh said.

  She stacked the plates to clear the table. ‘Well, that’s just like you, isn’t it, dear?’

  His father could be as sarcastic as he liked. Nothing would alter his mind. Not that he knew what his mind was. He didn’t much care, being on Fate’s conveyor belt, and he could do nothing about that even if he wanted to. Neither, therefore, could they, which suited him fine. You could hardly expect such old parents to understand. At the same time he was beginning to feel so much part of them that there was nothing more to be said or done, except do exactly as he bloody well liked. Time in the factory had strengthened his will against intimidation. If they thought to change his mind later about their ideas for his future they would be thwarted because a troopship would soon be taking him to he didn’t know where, a place he hoped would be as far from them as he could possibly get, Japan for preference.

  Eight

  He walked across the deck for a change in the view, bracing a leg at each step, to find that the opposite horizon had the same aspect of violence and colour, coming equally close at the tilt of the ship, but he felt the world to be his, and that he was part of it, feet solid on the wood, in harmony with the world on water, body invulnerable. He had never felt better, or more himself or, more to the point, that he had no interest in who he was, merely that he was separated as far as could be from his past yet was part of a moving organization in which he had for the time being found refuge.

  A light from France flickered white as the troopship made a long turn towards Biscay. ‘We’re on our way,’ Pemberton said.

  ‘I’m glad. You?’

  In the last months Pemberton had lost the oversensitive uncertainty of his mouth. The light had gone out of his eyes, the quick movement that remained due more to self-preservation among the mob than from any kind of fear. ‘All right. Neither good nor bad, philosophically speaking. Things just are.’

  Herbert smiled, and asked if he wasn’t leaving a nice girl behind.

  ‘You don’t meet girls when you’re swatting for Higher School Cert. The girls in the office were difficult to approach, though there’s one I write to. We’re just friends.’

  ‘You mean you’ve never had one?’

  ‘Had one?’

  ‘Well, I think if the fucking boat turned a somersault, and a fish floated up with your number on it – would you be very happy knowing you’d never shagged a girl?’ Pemberton looked blank: what you hadn’t had you can hardly regret. ‘Though I suppose’, Herbert went on, a stiffened arm stopping him getting cracked ribs at the rail, while Pemberton weathered it with some fancy twitching of the feet, ‘that if you have had it you regret dying even more in knowing you’ll never have it again.’

  ‘I imagine that’s the case,’ Pemberton said. ‘But I’m going down to find my hammock, before I start to feel queasy.’

  Herbert was also sad to be leaving, so could relish the best of both states. He took Eileen’s letter from his battledress pocket for another musing read. Now that she hated him, and wished he would – as if such a journey would somehow scare him – ‘go to bleeding hell’, he imagined himself still half in love, though no more so in yearning for her warm body and cow-like generous trust to be with him now. Maybe he would get a reply off at Gibraltar, asking her to think again, wait for him, even to forgive, though he
didn’t know what for.

  A shudder of regret was meaningless to the waves, which was no bad thing. He was on his own at last. The opposite rail started its exorable lift, beams and girders taking the strain. Rain hit the portholes like gravel, peppering the superstructure. He put the letter into his notebook and, before it could get wet, slotted it back into his pocket; then zigzagged into the dimly lit other ranks’ saloon.

  Bumping between the crowd showed no place to sit. For a while he stood with his legs apart to counteract the swaying. Fag smoke and diesel smells weeded out all but the strongest stomachs. Barraclough put down his unfinished half-pint and, with muslin features, pushed by on his way to be sick.

  When the sun shone from a clear sky off the coast of Spain he sat among hundreds on the open deck to relish the cruise. Passing Cape Trafalgar, a sandy-looking bluff in the distance, he opened his notebook to write up the log of his travels. A copy of the farewell missive from Eileen rested there, as well as his reply. He pulled both out and tore them into the smallest pieces possible, and watched them blow away from the stern like snow, a confetti that disappointed the gulls. She had callously reminded him of what he didn’t need to know, that there were a lot more pebbles on the beach. Being compared to a pebble irritated him beyond endurance, especially since he was one of a thousand on this three-funnelled troopship heading for some outpost of the Empire.

  The Med was stormier than Biscay, and his stomach wasn’t too steady, so he was glad to clatter down the companionway to the bottom of the ship for bulkhead duty, a paperback snatched from the library in his back pocket. So far below, he was clear of the sea-howl, stew-reek and diesel stench that thickened in the air of upper decks.

  The steel doors either side were to be rammed shut if a mournful death-in-the-heart signal indicated that the sea had broken in. Very comforting, he thought, but practical. The bottom length of the ship was divided into compartments, each to be made separate and watertight so that if rock was struck or a stray mine left from the war brought in the floor the vessel would stay afloat. Crippled but viable, it might even make a few knots, which kind of mechanics made firm sense. The sergeant of the watch came striding in. ‘Not supposed to have your nose in a book when on guard, are we?’

  ‘Sorry, Sergeant.’

  He winked, passing close. ‘Don’t do it, or you’ll get me shot with shit. If you hear that klaxon it’s not because Sheffield Wednesday’s scored a goal. Just wind them doors shut, or we’ll be floating like tiddlers in a bowl. Your reading days will be over if you don’t, and so will mine. What’s it called?’

  He turned to the front page. ‘A Room with a View, Sergeant.’

  His pale face came near to laughter. ‘No fucking view down here!’ And went on his way.

  Dereliction of duty – damn it, he murmured, getting the book back from his pocket. He wouldn’t let the novel be invaded by his present situation, had stopped regarding himself as the perfect soldier since forging his father’s name on Archie’s pass. Every spin of the ship’s screws was taking him forward on a mystery trip, but wherever it ended up he would still be himself. A burst of sea water into the bulkhead suggested panic if he allowed the possibility, though as far as his mind went it was easy to control, the mind being like the ship itself, unsinkable, kept going by its many lockable compartments. If something threatening rushed in you could shut it off, and live in those that were clear of disturbance.

  All the same, maybe there was something behind the closed doors that he didn’t know about but should. Any door invited opening. You couldn’t batter it down to find out – cut your way in, claw steel and shavings away. Such bulkhead doors, or doors of the mind, you had to wait for them to give way or open up of their own accord to reveal the mysteries. No room with a view in the bowels of the ship. The sergeant was right. There was no fucking view anywhere, until you got clear and made your own.

  By the last hour of the watch in the dimly lit depths he knew that the terror of what wasn’t yet known was only another manifestation of normal life, inflicted by the imagination in the stifling warmth. Strict control of the brain was as much necessary as guidance from the bridge keeping the ship from all obstacles, whether on the surface or half-sunken. Jonah in the whale could only keep calm and wait.

  ‘That grey blob over there must be Pantelleria.’ Pemberton also had a map. ‘It certainly doesn’t look up to much.’

  It had, at one time, to Herbert. ‘Maybe there are some nice girls there, though, and a lit up café, with a band outside playing stirring Italian music.’ Steaming by the island before, he had wanted to throw himself overboard and swim there, or drown on the way, having been told he was to be left at school in England. The pathetic little boy in short trousers sobbing at the rail was an image best forgotten, and he wondered why it had come to undermine him as he turned to watch a school of dolphins making scimitar curves out of the water, the boat track no doubt crossing that of Aeneas on his way to found Rome after leaving Dido to her fate.

  ‘Sounds good,’ Pemberton said. ‘Maybe we’ll end up in an even more exotic place, holding the fort somewhere in the Far East, a real Joseph Conrad backwater.’

  But after ten days steaming from Blighty they were stepping down the gangplank on to a lighter at Port Said, going ashore with the rest of the regiment. Talk of a Cyprus posting left Herbert discontented, galled at cheers from the ship as it weighed anchor and steered off down the ruler-straight waterway for India and Singapore.

  The close, unforgettable odours of the ship were changed for the sun, sand and sewerage smells of a transit camp near Ismailya, a two-month limbo of waiting. Set to guard an enormous encampment of stores, Herbert one midnight prodded a ragbag thief into the guardroom at bayonet point. The man was shivering with fear, and rage at having been caught nicking what he looked on as belonging to him by birthright, hardly able to lift the motor tyre he’d tried to purloin, which Herbert made him carry.

  ‘Another bugger,’ the redcap sergeant behind the desk said. ‘That makes three tonight. God knows what they do with ’em back there. Give ’em a bloody good pasting and let them go, I shouldn’t wonder. You can’t stop it. There’s five born every minute in this fucking country, and each of ’em’s got ten thieving fingers.’

  From then on Herbert let marauding shadows slide away on velvet feet, and took no action.

  There was nothing else to do but put up with boredom beyond all experience, even to the stage of a cultivated emptying of the mind in the hope that time would take off its clogs and whizz along on bare feet. Pemberton passed him a magazine of current affairs called Compass, read and re-read till it fell from Herbert’s hand in light-brown flakes.

  The sea was calm on the short run to Limassol. Disembarked, they sat in a lorry, kit and rifles heaped by shining boots. The exhaust marked a track from the port, through town and across a dusty plain, much honking around bullock carts, and drab-garbed women in the middle of the road who took little notice. From a bend Herbert saw the mountains had come closer, green with groves and orchards, streaks of snow still on the summits, light green on nearer spurs, a jumble of re-entrants. The view was like paradise, but halfway towards it the driver took a fork and brought them back to a vast area of tents not far from the coast.

  When the six hundred men were moved from place to place, an exercise of seeming pointlessness, all complained at being fed up, fucked up, and far from home. The eternal grumbles were raved out with melancholy humour, better that way, Herbert felt, because otherwise they would be inclined to go out on a binge of mayhem and murder, and so would I, he mused, knowing himself better off for being in tune on that point at least.

  More training, though with less obvious bullshit, and more sentry-go, all compounded into more and more boredom, unless he laid hands on a paperback book or two from a stall in Nicosia, detritus from those who had already come and gone, not even to be haggled for, thrown across for a few of the local akkers. As the weeks slid by it seemed as if the colonel was going mad w
ith the map, shifting them here there and everywhere. At least the landscape changed, though the island wasn’t so big, and eyes soon lost their sense of wonder. Moving numbers to more purpose would call for the unravelling and joining together of subtle organizational threads beyond their capabilities, though much time was devoted to trying, with a talent that in Herbert’s view never seemed more than mediocre.

  At times he wondered whether he wouldn’t have been more content as a commissioned officer, but soon enough doubted it. Being that much singled out had no appeal for him, and to land himself closer to the scene of control would have made him even more exasperated and contemptuous. He lacked the tolerance to understand how time could be squandered and energies blighted. The more hours NCOs spent in offices performing their administrative duties the more was life made dull all around.

  Yet he was happy enough being a soldier. His limited experience of other states told him this one was one of the best, interesting, exciting even, when waiting didn’t milk the élan out of the platoon’s morale. Existence came close to real life, and was a lot improved when echeloning up a hillside between black goats whose neck bells told the umpire over the rocky crest that they were on their way, all surprise gone. Moving at speed between the trees was also mindless, but it was better than sitting around a lorry in the wrong gully, that the driver had brought them to because he couldn’t read a bloody map.

  They infiltrated remoter parts of the mountains looking for no one knew what, a sense of realism provided by living off what they carried, and occasionally for a day on almost nothing because no lorry turned up at the rendezvous. When there was a lorry they were glad to sleep by its huge presence, as if the vehicle was alive and would give comfort and protection. ‘God knows why we’re doing all this,’ Pemberton said, spreading his groundsheet.