Godden walked out, feeling suddenly elated. ‘One of the heavy squads’ – he liked the sound of that. It meant something, something solid and comradely. It was a job at last, and a lot more than a job. Once again it was like a bit of the last war, the best bit. And the pay was good, too: three pounds a week, less insurance.
It was the most he had earned since 1929.
The time by the clock in the big main hall was two in the afternoon. Godden would have liked a cup of tea and a bit of cake, since he had missed his dinner (there’d be trouble about that from Edie, when he got home); but he hadn’t any money on him. Someone in the queue had said something about ‘meal tickets’, but he didn’t like to ask about that yet. He rummaged in his pocket and drew out the half-cigarette he’d stowed away earlier. When it was lit he started to look about him.
Already there was a lot going on, a lot of people making a start at this new job. In the main hall, empty of furniture except for the piles of children’s desks stacked at one end, and some clothes-racks along the wall, were about a hundred men; talking in groups, sorting through the kit issued to them, trying some of it on – gumboots, and steel helmets, and bulky, odd-coloured overalls. Stretchers were being brought in and piled in rows: five in a pile, for each of the ten stretcher party squads, whose kit was neatly laid out in one corner. A St John Ambulance corporal, a little wizened man with a lined, humorous face, was demonstrating a leg splint to a small circle. Godden wondered if he’d have to learn that job himself. He hoped not: it looked a bit too fancy. He walked through into another room: the mess hall, with scrubbed trestle tables, and a few men settled down to cups of tea. Nothing there for him, yet awhile … He wished he could find something to do. Even though he wasn’t due to start until eight, he didn’t want to leave. This was different from an ordinary job.
Outside, in the yard, there was a line of six rescue-party lorries, labelled ‘heavy’ and ‘light’ and piled with wooden shores, sawn planks, blocks and tackles, axes, crowbars, hurricane lamps. Men were climbing over them or looking at them from the ground, men like himself, used to this sort of gear. On an impulse he picked up an axe and swung it: caught the eye of a young chap perched on the roof of a lorry, and put it down again, feeling foolish. But it had felt good, all the same.
Suddenly, startlingly, he heard his name called, from inside. ‘Godden!’ said a strong voice. And then, again: ‘Godden! Anyone know what he looks like?’
He walked through into the main hall, feeling something he had not felt for years: a separate person, a unit of a team, wanted for some special job. No one had really wanted him before, for as long as he could remember. Now he was on somebody’s list, a name they were calling out, a person they were looking for.
There was a big man standing in the middle of the hall, with a piece of paper in his hand.
‘You Godden?’ he asked as Godden approached.
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t know if you’d gone yet.’ The big man looked at him, sizing him up: he was a good head taller than Godden, tough and unsmiling, in a washed-out khaki shirt. ‘You’re in my squad – Number Three.’
‘All right,’ said Godden.
‘I thought I’d get you sorted out, those that are here. This is Isaacs.’ The Jew standing at his elbow nodded and smiled, not moving the fag-end of the cigarette from one corner of his mouth. ‘Know anything about this job?’
‘Enough, I reckon.’
‘There’s eight of us in a squad. Here’s the list.’ Godden looked at it, saw that the big man’s name was Watson, saw also, with tremendous satisfaction, his own name halfway down the list, next to Isaacs. He read it through as if it were a star football team: ‘Squad Three: Watson (Leader), Horrocks, Wilensky, Godden, Isaacs, C Peters, B Peters, Platt.’ He was right in the middle of the thing now: it was official … ‘We go out with the stretcher-bearers when there’s a raid,’ Watson went on, ‘and help them to get people out – shoring up, or breaking through a wall.’
Godden said nothing. It sounded the sort of thing he wanted to do, above all else, but he was wary of showing anything of that feeling.
‘I’m driving,’ said Isaacs suddenly.
‘Then I hope you’re good at it,’ said Watson.
‘Used to have a lorry of my own. Bust it up. Hit the kerb and overturned.’
Watson stared at him, still unsmiling. ‘Are you trying to cheer us up?’
‘No,’ said Isaacs. ‘I was telling you why I’m a driver.’
Godden said, nodding at the list: ‘Are there any more of them here?’
‘No,’ said Watson. ‘They must have signed on early, and gone home.’ He yawned and stretched. ‘All right – eight o’clock then. We’ll get sorted out when we’re all here.’
‘Think they’ll come tonight?’ asked Godden. ‘Jerry, I mean.’
‘Bloody fools if they don’t. Stands to reason. Take us by surprise, that’s what they want to do. We’ll have to watch out.’ He yawned again. ‘Well, see you later.’ He left them.
‘Big bastard,’ said Isaacs, without heat.
‘What’s the matter with him?’ asked Godden.
‘Chucking his weight about already. I know his sort. “You’re in my squad.” Bloody sergeant-major, that’s what he is.’
‘But he’s the squad leader.’
‘Blasted little Hitler,’ said Isaacs. ‘What a war … Well, I’m off. No overtime on this job for me.’
Godden let him start off and then left the building himself. He didn’t feel like that about Watson, or about the war or overtime or anything. But he wasn’t going to argue. He was still feeling his way.
He walked slowly home, thinking of the step he had taken and recalling what he had seen of the depot. He had liked it a lot. Of course, it was grand to be in work again, on any terms, after the months and years of mucking about, of slammed doors and barred factories: after the curt answers and the shabby tactics of the Labour Exchange. But more than that: there was something about the job itself: It was the sort of thing a chap like him ought to be doing in wartime. Twenty-five years ago he would have been along at the recruiting office by now – in fact, that was exactly where he had been, twenty-five years ago; now he was past that sort of thing, but he wasn’t past giving a hand in whatever job they could use him. And this job, rescue work in air raids, and the atmosphere down at the depot on the first day of it, seemed to be part of the same worthwhile story. It recalled the war years very strongly, and the feeling they had all had then. There was the same sort of comradeship, the same sort of team feeling: he might have been Corporal Godden again – Corporal Godden, DCM, of the East Surreys, with a Lewis gun section to take care of and a definite responsibility to discharge.
He had never spoken at all about that Distinguished Conduct Medal, except to say, the first time he was home on leave: ‘It wasn’t much: I must have been a bit mad, I reckon.’ In winning it he had charged a German machine-gun pit, shouting obscene and forgotten blasphemies: he had killed four men with the bayonet and strangled a fifth with his bare hands. He was twenty-eight at the time, lean and good-looking, and just married to Edie: now he was fifty, not much good for anything, unemployed since February and for long stretches before that: on and off the scrap heap for twenty years and more.
Something had gone wrong in between. What was it? What had changed him from Corporal Godden, lining up for his medal at Buckingham Palace with Edie, pretty and breathless, looking on in ecstasy, into ‘old Godden’ (if anyone took the trouble to call him anything), steadily getting poorer and shabbier, never in a job worth counting on from one week to another, and now not much better than a street-corner loafer. What had changed Edie herself, who had been so slim and shy and lovely, into the shrill discontented woman she now was? What had changed the pretty little baby, laughing all the time and twining minute fingers round his own, into Edna – fifteen years old, snuffly and whining, rude and slangy, slamming doors and giggling in corners, laughing at him when she dared, but for
the most part going her own pert peroxide way?
Had it been his own fault? Edie for example … That had gone wrong almost from the beginning, as soon as he was demobbed, with time on his hands and a bit of money to spend. When the money was gone everything else seemed to be gone with it, and that had somehow given the tone to most of the things between the wars. He had tried to settle into jobs, but the jobs themselves seemed to melt into nothing, before he had time to look round. He had tried to make Edie happy, but that again had disappeared, as soon as he was out of work and there was no money coming in.
Of course, she nagged a bit. In fact she nagged nearly all the time now, in a high, shrill voice that he’d got into the way of not hearing at all: about the money: about clothes for Edna: about her brother, who was a clerk in the city and doing so well. ‘Why aren’t you more like Walter?’ she had said, not once, but scores of times; and when, goaded, he had once answered: ‘There’s no one like Walter – and a bloody good job too!’ she had talked and nagged and screamed of nothing else for weeks afterwards.
She talked like that in front of the child, too. Godden had objected at first; but that was a long time ago … Now, of course, Edna was taking the hint from her mother, and was as rude, silly, and uncaring as she liked. He was just beginning, after a series of flaming scenes in which Edie had joined, to shut his ears to that, too. Perhaps everyone’s kids grew up the same way. Not much he could do about it anyway, without everlasting rows, and he was sick to death of those.
So Godden’s thoughts wandered, as he turned into his own street, the dirty cul-de-sac off the Harrow Road, where they shared a seven-roomed house with two other families. What he didn’t think about, the thing he never gave a thought to because it had never yet crossed his mind, was why he felt as he did about the Army, and England, and joining up straight away, and helping people in air raids. No one had helped him for more than twenty years. His wife alternately laughed, sneered or raged at him, his daughter was growing up in the same dreary image. The place he lived in was the same ‘home fit for heroes’ he had finally found in 1919 – a damp and crowded little hell with, now, the cracked decay of 1939 and the drains of 1850.
The England which had welcomed his services, with a beaming smile in the Great War, was now baring its gums and getting ready to accept them again – but what it had done for him in the meantime was like some sordid confidence trick with a rotten-cored apple. And yet here he was, on the first day of another war, taking another bite of that same apple, ‘joining up’ without a thought, without hesitation, without really believing that he had any other course.
Not quite ‘without thought’, perhaps; but almost. Vaguely he realized that it wasn’t much of a world off the Harrow Road, that it was wrong that Edie should have to go out office cleaning in order to make up the rent and that Edna (as she had pointed out on one vile, unforgotten occasion) got more money as a ‘starter’ at Madame Marie’s than he himself now drew from public assistance. But he didn’t connect this with anything more complex than the circle of his own family: he didn’t think of it as the fault of any system or group or organization. What he did think, from reading the newspapers, looking at cinema posters, and listening to Edie, was that there must be something wrong with himself.
The delight of professional patriots, the despair of social historians, and the irrational pride of England, Godden went down the basement steps to the corner of the house where they lived.
‘Rescue work? You’re daft!’ Edie Godden banged down the plate with the overcooked, dried-up kipper on it, and put her hands on her hips again. ‘Why don’t you get yourself a proper job for once? What’s rescue work? Who could you rescue? I’d like to know!’
‘It’s air-raid precautions,’ answered Godden for the fifth or sixth time. He had known it would be like this, but it was impossible to explain why he had missed dinner, and why he would have to go out again after tea, without going into details of the job. He had thought she might be pleased about the money, but she wasn’t.
‘Are you one of those wardens?’
‘No,’ said Godden. ‘We go out when there’s a raid, and give a hand, like.’ (Shoring up and breaking through walls, Watson the squad leader had said, but he wasn’t going to say anything about that to Edie. It would only start her off.)
‘What sort of a hand could you give in an air raid?’
Godden, munching dry flaky fish and trying to wash it down with tea, didn’t answer for a moment. Then he said: ‘They’ll tell us all tonight.’
Edie Godden sniffed. ‘They’ll have to tell you a lot before it makes any sense. What do you want to get yourself mixed up in that lot for? Walter’s firm is going to make uniforms, he says. There’s thousands in it. Why don’t you get yourself a job like that?’
Once again Godden paused before answering. All he knew was that he didn’t want that sort of job at all. It wasn’t what you ought to do in wartime, not if you could help people other ways. Air raids were more important. For weeks now, he had had a picture of what an air raid might be like, and the number of people who might be needing help when it came. He’d seen a film once (the cinema in the Harrow Road put them on in the mornings, for the unemployed, threepence a time) with an air raid in it. Bombing in China, or something; a kid stretched out on the ground with its clothes torn and bloodstained, and a woman with her hair hanging down acting crazy over it, waving her hands and crying. Godden hadn’t liked that picture, or the things it meant: he had wanted to pick up the child, take care of the woman, giver her a cup of tea or something, tell her it would be all right.
He felt like that about all sorts of people – about everyone, in fact, who had a run of bad luck or needed a hand. There were plenty of those in the Harrow Road … his reverie was interrupted by Edie.
‘Hurry up with that plate,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to do some proper work, if you haven’t.’
‘It’s a government job,’ said Godden. ‘Because of the air raids.’
‘Government! You’ll be saying you’re in Parliament next. Another excuse for hanging about doing nothing, more like.’
Edna came in, from the bedroom she shared with her mother. (Godden slept on a camp bed in the kitchen where he was now eating.) Edna was dressed to go out, in a brown coat with a piece of fur round the collar, yellowish silk stockings, and a shining black handbag. Under the gaslight her hair had a thin metallic glint. Godden saw that she had been making up again – there had been a row about it a couple of days earlier: the childish mouth stood out in a straight wet gash, the red patches on the sallow cheeks were like fever marks. His daughter, fifteen years old, and looking like a Praed Street tart already.
‘You going out?’ he asked, rather sharply.
‘Pictures,’ said Edna. Even in that single word she achieved the whining tone she had now permanently adopted. It sounded like a sulky complaint. He wondered what sort of a place this Madame Marie’s could be, if they put up with that sort of thing from a kid.
‘It’s the first night of the war. You ought to stay at home with your mother, instead of gadding about looking like a–’
‘Like a what?’ said Edie sharply.
‘Nothing,’ said Godden.
‘You leave the child alone. Why shouldn’t she have a bit of fun? She pays for it, doesn’t she? I don’t see you doing much staying at home, either. Dad’s got a job,’ she added to Edna. ‘Rescue work in air raids, he says.’
‘Sounds soppy to me,’ said Edna. She looked at herself in the mirror over the mantelpiece, and pushed up her hair at the back. ‘Rescuing what, may I ask?’ she said, and giggled rapturously at her wit.
Godden said nothing.
‘I’m going out myself, anyway,’ said Edie, ‘so there’s no cause to go after Edna just because she wants a bit of fun.’
‘You and Edna ought to go away, really,’ said Godden. He had finished his tea, and wanted a cigarette, but the packet was crumpled and empty. The yellow gaslight, bubbling and purring, made the kitch
en a cosy place to relax in: it might have been a nice little home. ‘Away from London, I mean,’ he added.
‘Where to?’ asked Edie.
‘Out in the country somewhere. There’s places. It says so in the papers. Evacuation scheme, that’s what it is.’
‘Lot of nonsense,’ said his wife. ‘That’s just for the kids.’
‘Grown-ups too. Everyone. I saw it in the papers. In case there’s big raids.’
‘Catch me going off to the country!’ said Edna. ‘No shops or anything. Give me the creeps.’
‘You’ll do what you’re told,’ said Godden.
‘Leave the child alone, can’t you?’ Edie broke in. ‘Anyone would think you’d bought the place, with your rescue work and your three pounds a week.’
‘Three pounds!’ exclaimed Edna, in a high affected voice. ‘Wonders will never cease. Well, I must be going. Goodbye, soaks – I mean folks!’ She giggled again, patting her hair.
‘Enjoy yourself, love,’ said Edie fondly.
‘You know me,’ said Edna. The door rattled behind her as she went up the basement steps.
There was silence in the kitchen after she had gone. Godden knew he ought to speak to Edie about the child, who was getting worse every day, but it would mean another row straight away, and he didn’t want to start that tonight. It was a special night for him – the war, a new job, a place in the same old team again … He kept silent until Edie, after tidying up at the sink had put on her hat and was ready to go out. Then he said, in an effort to be friendly: ‘Not working Sundays, are you?’
‘I’m going round to Mrs Lambert’s,’ said Edie briefly. There was no answering friendliness in her voice. ‘What about in the morning? What time do you finish at this job of yours?’
‘Eight,’ said Godden. ‘Back here about half past.’
‘I can’t cook you breakfast then. I’ve got to start early tomorrow, and Edna’s got quite enough to do getting ready for her work.’
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