A Coin for the Hangman

by Spurrier, Ralph

  A casual passer-by on Silver Street that September afternoon, would have taken little notice of an army sergeant stepping through the door of M. Eastman & Son’s shop, the resonant ting of the bell sounding both inside and out. Uniforms, ubiquitous during the war years, were becoming less common on the streets of Bradford on Avon with the gradual demob of the past year pushing men back into civilian lives. Those still in uniform were either career soldiers or were engaged in mopping-up operations in various parts of Europe. This soldier, now nearing 40 years of age and newly demobbed but still wearing his uniform, was on a long weekend leave when he stopped by Eastman’s shop to pick up a packet of cigarettes. Normally Henry would have been in the shop at that time of day but he had a dental appointment and it was Mavis who looked up from the magazine she was reading when the door opened and the army sergeant strode in.

  “Afternoon, love. Packet of ten Kensitas and a box of Vestas, please.”

  Henry had arranged the display of cigarettes in the shelves up against the back wall and although he could reach the highest quite easily, Mavis normally had to use a small stool to pick off the ones at the top. As luck would have it, the Kensitas boxes were on the highest shelf and she pulled out the stool from under the counter and hopped up. As she did so the sergeant’s eye was drawn to the shimmer of her green dress over what he could see were nicely rounded buttocks.

  “Filling in for your hubby today then?” he asked, sliding his eyes quickly down her legs before she turned round.

  Mavis coloured slightly as she stepped off the stool with the cigarette packet in her hand. “Mr Eastman died some years ago. I run the shop now. That’ll be one and three please.” Mavis pushed the cigarette packet and box of matches across the counter and took a quick look at the sergeant. His face was tanned and the creases around his mouth betrayed what she saw as laughter lines.

  “Sorry to hear that. A war casualty, was he?” The sergeant fumbled in his jacket pocket for the right change and passed over a florin.

  “No. He died just before the war started – over seven years ago now. Seems like a lifetime.” Mavis gave a little nervous laugh, feeling an uncommon flutter in her stomach. She picked out a sixpence and three pennies from the till and handed them to the sergeant. “Makes me wonder what life would have been like if he was still around…” She tailed off for a fraction but then quickly added, “…perhaps he would’ve been killed in the war anyway and it would be all the same.”

  She looked out the window at the sun slanting down on the dusty street, purposely keeping her eyes from meeting the soldier’s. She carried on. “Got used to it now – though I still miss him a little, I suppose – a bit of adult company would have been nice but I’ve the shop to run and my son helps me out. We’re good together.” Mavis self-consciously touched her hair and then quickly brought her hand back down to the counter.

  “Children are all well and good. Mind you, I haven’t got any of my own. Not that I know of!” He winked. “Haven’t got a wife either!” The sergeant laughed. “War got in the way. Joined the Territorials when I was 28 and bit surprised to find that we were the first to be called up in early ’39. Did have a long-term girlfriend back in a little place called Warlingham – but you know what it’s like. Move here, camp there – blimey, I was on duty down in Cornwall for months on end because they thought Jerry was going to invade down there. Easy to lose touch, don’t you think?”

  He paused and Mavis nodded, arms folded across her chest, remembering the conversations she had had with the army wives during the war.

  “But then we got to go on D-Day.” The sergeant hesitated before continuing. “Not good. Not good. Saw some bad things.” He shook his head and looked at the lino floor of the shop. Mavis guessed that he was remembering things that few of the men who returned from the war ever spoke about. The soldier suddenly looked up. “Ha!” he blurted.

  It was a sound that expressed so much that was unspoken, but which both of them, somehow and inexplicably, understood. The sun touching the edge of the front window sent a refracted shard of light shimmering across the display of jars behind Mavis’s head and the motes of dust danced between them. Mavis thought she could see that the soldier’s eyes had tears hovering at the edges.

  “Do you think time will ever blot out these memories?” The sergeant raised one eyebrow. His tone touched an emotional chord within Mavis.

  She nodded: “I hope so, I hope so. We have to look to the future. No choice.”

  The soldier picked up his cigarettes and matches and quickly stuffed them into his breast pocket. Something about the light in the shop, their shared mood perhaps, touched an unspoken bond that made him hesitate for a moment before he took a noticeable breath and said, “Look, if you think this is rude, I’ll understand, but…” he hesitated, “but… look I’m at a loose end this next weekend and if you’re not doing anything, how about you and me going to the flicks next Saturday?” The last had come out all in a rush.

  The suddenness of the question surprised them both.

  “Blimey, don’t know where that came from!” The soldier laughed. “I don’t normally ask girls out after just five minutes.”

  Mavis hadn’t thought of herself as a girl for nearly twenty years and it must have been almost eighteen years since anyone had asked her out on a date.

  “I… I… don’t know.” She heard the sound of her own coquettish voice with a strange sense of surprise. “I don’t know you at all.”

  “George. George Tanner.” He offered his hand across the counter and Mavis unwittingly slipped her cool fingers into his, feeling an electric tenderness run between them.

  “Mavis Eastman.”

  “Now we do know each other. What do you say? No strings, eh? Just a good evening out.” George held on to her hand, enjoying the smoothness of her skin.

  Mavis hesitated. Flattered and unsure, she removed her hand. “I don’t know. I’ve got a son to think about. He’d need a meal.”

  “How old is he then?” George asked.

  “Well…” Mavis faltered, realizing her answer was going to sound silly, “…he’s nearly eighteen.”

  “Blimey!” George raised his eyes to the ceiling. “There were lads that age in my unit tramping across Germany just a couple of years ago.” He thought quickly. “Tell you what. I’ll pick up some fish and chips for the lad on the way here, and then you and me can nip off to the pictures. We’ll have our own after the flicks. How’s that sound?” George smiled reassuringly, fixing his eyes on Mavis. He could see the hesitation in her, wondering if she should or not.

  “Alright. I guess it won’t hurt for once. It’d be nice to go to the pictures. What’s on? Do you know?”

  “I just passed the cinema and noticed they have a poster for a film called Brief Encounter which is on all week. I was going to go by myself but it would be much nicer to have a pretty woman on my arm. Starts at 7 o’clock.” He stopped suddenly. “Haven’t seen it already, have you?”

  Mavis shook her head. “No, haven’t been in years.” She laughed. “Sheltered life here in Bradford.”

  “OK. If I drop by with the fish and chips at half past six, will that be OK?”

  Mavis agreed.

  “See you Saturday then. I’ll look forward to it.” George winked and headed out of the door.

  Mavis watched as George stepped out of the shop and then she quickly moved over to the window so that she could follow his progress down the street towards the station. Shielding her eyes from the sun’s glare she could see a man with a definite spring in his step, almost a jaunty swagger, as he crossed Silver Street. She felt a strange elation that had long been absent from her life. Who would have thought as she hung out the washing that morning that she would have been asked out on a date by mid-afternoon? She smiled, but then suddenly checked herself. Coming in the opposite direction was Henry. He had his head down and was unaware of the soldier coming towards him on the same stretch of narrow pavement. Mavis felt a sudden, inexplicable dr
ead. She watched as Henry stepped out into the road to avoid bumping into the soldier who brushed past him. The soldier passed on unmindful but Henry hesitated, looking back at the retreating figure. Mavis saw Henry falter and then step forward back on to the pavement, continuing up the hill. There was something odd about Henry’s indecisiveness that stifled Mavis’s new found exhilaration. She watched with growing unease as Henry neared the shop and the toll of the doorbell sounded.

  Henry went into the garden after dinner that evening and began the job of building the winter clamps for the carrots, swedes and potatoes. The wet spring and reasonably dry summer had brought on an abundance of produce that, stored properly, would keep them going through to next year. The job would take a couple of days but he wanted to make sure he had the base just right before building up the cone-shaped earth mounds which would house the vegetables over the coming winter. He remembered helping his father make up the clamps before the war and the economies forced on everyone since then meant that neighbours could swap surpluses amongst each other.

  His teeth still hurt a little from the dentist’s drilling. He ran his tongue over the new fillings and came across a remnant of a semolina pudding his mother had made for him from some of the week’s milk ration she had mixed with water. A dollop of damson jam, out of a jar from Mrs Curtis in exchange for a bag of potatoes, two doors up, had nicely sweetened the blandness of the yellow mush. His mother had told him of her invite from George Tanner over the supper table. He hadn’t said much at the time. Really, he didn’t know what to say. He just made a simple query over which film they were going to and what time, but he looked at his mother as she cleared away the dinner things and he sensed a lightness in her manner. He knew her suggestion that he should have a day off on Saturday, a day away from the shop, was some kind of sweetener.

  “It’s going to be a nice day. Why don’t you go into Bath and visit those second-hand bookshops you like to dig around in? Plenty to keep you busy for most of the day there.”

  Henry picked up the drying cloth and began to wipe the washed plates from the draining board. “How old’s this soldier, Mum?”

  Mavis stopped scrubbing at the inside of a saucepan and gazed out the kitchen window. “Oh, I don’t know really. He said he was twenty-eight when he joined the Territorials before the war so I suppose he’d be around forty now.” She almost added “just a little older than me” but bit it back.

  Henry polished the knives and forks and dropped them back into the cutlery tray in the kitchen drawer. Mavis picked up the wire wool and ran it around the rim of the saucepan where some stubborn semolina remains had burnt onto the metal.

  She added, “It’s just an evening out, Henry, with someone my own age. Just, well, something for me for a change, something different. Nothing serious.” She turned to face her son. “You don’t mind, do you?” She smiled at him and put a soapy hand on his bare forearm.

  “No, no, of course not.” Henry smiled back. “Just feels a little odd.”

  “I know. But we’re only walking down the road to the pictures and then having some fish and chips after.”

  Mavis felt she was excusing herself to her son and it irritated her slightly.

  “Now, don’t worry about me. I’ll finish off here. Go and get on with those clamps.” She nodded towards the garden through the window. “You’ll need to trench them otherwise the slugs will get in.”

  Henry draped the drying-up cloth over the table edge. Stepping out of his slippers by the back door he put on the old boots that he now used for gardening. From the kitchen window Mavis watched as her son walked down the short path towards the back of the walled garden. For some months now, ever since that evening when he had broken down in tears, she had become increasingly aware of something different about Henry. His size was always going to make him the odd one out but since she had lived with it all her life, she had barely recognized it. Now, and increasingly these days, she longed for the times when they had been a complete family with Arthur running the shop and Henry singing and laughing with her at the piano.

  Before the war! Before the bloody war! Mavis threw the wire wool into the stone tray by the taps and dried her hands on the front of her pinny. The bloody war! That had changed everyone’s lives. Mrs Curtis had lost her son early on at Dunkirk; Joyce Creighton’s husband had gone down on the Hood, him and hundreds of others blown to bits in a second. Poor Joyce; always worried that her husband was cheating on her but when she got that telegram she had gone to pieces. No-one ever saw her smile these days. And then there was Saul. Mad old Saul, wandering the streets, never to be seen without his wife’s fur coat draped over his shoulders, come rain or shine. She had been killed outright and Saul was buried alive for two days when a stray bomb demolished their house. Arthur’s death was, somehow, hidden away behind the great wall of the war and Mavis knew she was seen by others in the town as someone who had been untouched by the upheaval. She thought of those women who had taken the opportunity of their husbands away at the war to play fast and loose, especially with the American soldiers billeted at Shepton Mallet. During all those lonely years she had remained faithful to Arthur – even though he had been dead and buried. More fool her, she thought. Well now, for once, she had a chance for a bit of fun, perhaps even a change for the better. Who knows? When she had said “nothing serious” to Henry, she desperately hoped it might be otherwise.

  That Saturday, Henry decided to take his mother’s advice and set off for Bath by train. The station master at Bradford, like most of the people in the town, recognized Henry and waved to him from the other platform as the train drew in. The early autumn sun softened the foliage of the trackside trees and the folds of smoke rolling back from the engine moulded and disappeared into the cropped hay fields of the Avon Valley. Crossing and recrossing the disused canal and river that shared the valley floor, the railway line snaked through a countryside swathed with a collar of densely packed trees which occasionally broke to provide a glimpse of a wider countryside before closing in again.

  After ten minutes or so the train pulled into Limpley Stoke station and stood quietly, the engine gently pulsing, held up by a semaphore signal at the end of the platform. Just beyond the station a branch line ran off to the south down towards Dunkerton Colliery and although very few trains used the line those days, the occasional freight train pulling wagons of coal heading for Southampton docks emerged from the valley and joined the main line. Henry, alone in his compartment and with the window half-opened on the notched leather strap to let in the warm air, had heard no slamming of doors. The station was fairly remote and few travellers used it these days. The white picket fence bordering the platform of the station halt had recently been painted and sat in bright contrast to the dark green of the dense swathe of trees that bordered the south side of the railway line. On the opposite side, the country lay open and bright with a swelling, golden breast of a hay field rising away from the station and up to the wall of the churchyard close by the village. Small stooks of hay, a regiment at halt, marched in uniform lines across the field. A lane ran from the station buildings down the hill and disappeared momentarily under the railway before emerging into the bright sunshine heading towards the cluster of cottages congregated around the church. Henry could see a small figure – a woman he thought – walking away from the village towards the station. There was no hurry to her step and occasionally she would stop to call to a dog that sniffed and dawdled by the hedgerow that lined the road. Henry settled back in his seat, deeply and inexplicably content.

  His eye was suddenly caught by the fluttering of a bird, hovering about twenty feet above the field. He had seen a windhover many times before but today there was perfection in the light and sun, in the gold of the fluttering bird bucking like a dolphin against the bright-blue wash of the sky, in the hissing of the steam, in the green of the tree backdrop and the yellowness of the cut field that overwhelmed his senses. A sudden wash of irresistible joy flooded his body, swamping him with an el
ectric current that made him involuntarily jump up from the seat. Flipping the leather strap off the catch, Henry lowered the window to its fullest extent and leant out. The four carriages of the train sat nestled against the halt’s empty platform. Down the line ahead, he could see an approaching engine blowing heavily as it crossed over the points from the Dunkerton branch and climbed the light incline towards the station. Soon they would be off. Henry turned to watch the bird. Still it hovered; miraculously steady in static flight, its head turned towards the earth. The engine gave one short whistle in response to the oncoming train but still the bird remained fixed and unflinching, pinned to the sky. The smoke from the engine’s bell chimney wreathed into the air, circling in a listless arc before melting into the brightest blue Henry had ever seen. The semaphore signal dropped its arm, indicating a clear track ahead and the sudden billow of exhaust steam meant the driver had opened the slide valve, giving the train a sudden lurch forward before settling into a smooth run forward out of the station.

  Henry, his head still out the window, continued to watch the windhover as the train headed down the incline. Suddenly, just as the trees on the embankment threatened to obscure the bird completely, Henry saw it buckle its wings and drop like a stone into the hay field, disappearing from view. Gathering speed, the train rolled down the incline, the high embankment now hiding the enveloping countryside. Henry, leaning from the carriage window, turned his face to the buffeting wind, mouth open, tears streaming down his cheeks and his feet stamping an ecstatic staccato against the compartment door.

  Henry’s circuit of the Bath second-hand bookshops took a regular route, stretching at its furthest from the station to a passageway that was tucked away behind The Circus. From here he would wander back into the centre before returning down Milsom Street and into Green Street where he made his final stop at Gregory’s. That day’s trawl had bought little to interest him so far, apart from a detective novel – Death of a Train – which had caught his eye because of the artwork on its wrapper.