But he took no notice. He might have gone to a shelter if he had known where there was one; but he did not, and so he walked on, trying to find his way back to the docks and the Golden Ray. He had lost all his roubles; he had lost about two pounds in English money also—Anya had wheedled it from him—and he had lost his cigarettes and his lighter. But for these things he cared nothing; they were replaceable. He could earn more money; he could buy more cigarettes. What he mourned was the loss of something that could never be replaced—that vision he had cherished for so long. That was why his heart was heavy, why his eyes burned. He looked into the future and saw nothing. Life had lost all meaning. He was like a man who has followed a star, only to find in the end that it is tinsel.
Miller realized now that the Russia of his vision did not exist, had never existed but in his own imagination; and that realization was bitterness to him. Now he had nothing to cling to; he was lost, adrift, rudderless. In the anguish of his spirit he could have wept.
He heard the whistle of the falling bomb, and in the same instant fell flat upon the ground with his face in the snow. He could feel the ground shudder beneath him with the force of the explosion, and it seemed as though his ear-drums were being sucked out of his head. Then lumps of snow and pieces of earth fell on him. Then there was nothing more; and after a time he got to his feet and went on.
He saw a wooden house blazing, flames thrusting up through the roof. He saw men and women running, heard them shouting; but they were nothing to him—nothing at all.
Away beyond the town he saw a chandelier of incendiaries fall upon one of the hills. There in the snow they sparkled, and it was as though a cluster of stars had fallen upon the earth. They were beautiful, but Miller had no eyes for beauty. He could hear the bomber droning in for another run across the town, and he wondered whether this time a bomb would have his number on it. But the bombs fell half a mile away, and the plane droned off into the night, heading for Petsamo. Then the guns became silent, the searchlights ceased to play upon the sky, and only the flicker of red flame remained as a sign of what had occurred.
“Seegret?” asked the sentry at the dock. “Seegret, comrade?”
Miller did not answer. He took his pass back from the man’s hand and walked towards the gangway of the Golden Ray. As he climbed up to the deck he felt infinitely weary, as though all the spirit had been drained out of his body. In the cabin the dim bulb was alight, and he saw all the other gunners were in their bunks. He began to undress, and Payne, who slept in the bunk below his own, awoke and gazed sleepily at him.
“Hullo!” said Payne. “Had a good time?”
He was asleep again before Miller could think of an answer.
Weary as he was, Miller did not sleep at once. He lay on his back, staring up into the gloom, and his soul ached. He had seen the land of his dreams, and he never wished to see it again. He had been ashore in Russia for the first and last time.
Suddenly he thought of Jessie; and, thinking of her, his lips trembled and his eyes filled with tears. He turned over and bit into the life-jacket that he used as a pillow, stifling his agony in the soft folds of kapok.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
On Russian Soil
VERNON, Payne, Andrews, and Lance-Bombardier Panton-Smith were sitting round a small table in a room on the first floor of the Arctica Hotel. The room was large and warm, and contained many tables at which sat many men—some English, some American, some Russian. They talked earnestly in low voices; there was a little laughter, but not much; life in Murmansk was not a very laughable affair.
Vernon, Payne, Andrews, and Panton-Smith were drinking tea and vodka. The tea was hot and sweet, but without milk; it was served in glass tumblers. There was a small glass of vodka and a large glass of tea to wash it down. In the way of solid refreshment there were sweet, sickly-tasting cakes filled with a kind of cream that hung greasily about the mouth.
Panton-Smith finished off his glass of vodka and said, “I prefer whisky. What’s this stuff made of, anyway?”
“Plain alcohol, I should think,” said Payne. “Not much colour about it. I agree with you; whisky’s better.”
“I’d rather have beer,” said Andrews.
“Ah,” said Payne, “now you’re talking. I could just do with a dirty big pint. And I wish I was in the Trip to Jerusalem drinking it.”
“Are you from Nottingham?” asked Panton-Smith.
Payne nodded vigorously. “That’s right.”
“Do you know the Flying Horse?”
“Oh, yes; but I didn’t used to go there.”
“I was on a gun-site in Nottingham for six months,” said Panton-Smith. “That was a couple of years back.” His eyes became dreamy. “There was a girl called Elsie; I met her in the Flying Horse. We had some good times. Lord, yes! What a game it is, eh?” He sipped his tea. “What a game! What a game! Elsie! Oh, Lord!”
Outside it had begun to snow again. Vernon gazed out of the window of the Arctica Hotel and saw the snow like an immense dotted curtain falling upon the silent town. He looked down into the street and saw a Ford lorry driving past. The back of the lorry was open, and Vernon could see five figures sitting with their backs to the cab and their legs stretched out; he could not tell whether they were the figures of men or of women, but as the lorry turned a corner he saw them roll to one side and then straighten again. Then they were out of sight and snow was already filling up the marks of the lorry’s wheels.
“Freddie’s ship caught a near miss last night,” said Panton-Smith. “Damaged a propeller. Looks as if she’s going to miss the next convoy.”
“Nice for Freddie,” Vernon said. “Another month in this hole!”
“It’s a bastard right enough; but I can’t say I’m looking forward to the journey home.”
Payne wiped cream off his moustache. “Oh, no need to worry over that. Jerry don’t trouble with the empties. Have a fag.”
Panton-Smith took one of the cigarettes and fished up a lighter. “Don’t count on that,” he said. “A ship is worth a torpedo whether she’s full or empty. I won’t sleep sound till I see the Orkneys.”
Vernon took one of Payne’s cigarettes and lit it from Panton-Smith’s lighter. “Did you hear about the accident in our ship, Smithy?”
Panton-Smith shook his head. “Accident? No. What was that?”
“Stevedore killed. Bit messy, one way and another. I saw it.”
“How did it happen?”
“Damned fool of a crane-driver caught a slingful of boiler-plates under the lip of the hatch as he was drawing them up out of the hold. The sling broke, and down went the plates. One of the stevedores happened to be in the way, and the plates fell on him—couple of tons of iron, I suppose. You wouldn’t have known it was a man when they lifted the plates off—just a mass of pulp—blood spattered all over the place—very messy.”
“What did they do?”
“Picked up the bits and went on as if nothing had happened.”
“Well, he won’t be caught again.”
“No.”
Panton-Smith turned to Payne. “Ever go to Trent Bridge? The cricket-ground, I mean.”
Payne had been lifting a glass of vodka to his lips. He paused with the glass in mid-air, just as though Panton-Smith’s question had frozen him. Then he answered slowly, “Yes—yes, I did.” And after that he put his glass down again without drinking, and was silent.
Panton-Smith began telling some interminable story of a Test Match he had once seen; but Payne was not listening; he was back at Trent Bridge under the hot sun, hitching up his trousers and casting a glance round the field before starting on that smooth, accelerating run to the wicket that he had modelled on the great Harold Larwood. He was seventeen, already playing for Nottinghamshire second eleven, and people were beginning to notice him, even beginning to speak of him as a possible successor to Larwood and Voce. Not without reason; he had the build for a fast bowler—plenty of height—six feet three inches of it, and muscle too.
“Strong as a horse, our Ted,” his father used to say. “Bit stronger, mebbe!” But it was not only height and strength he had; those attributes alone did not make a bowler. No, he had more than that; he had skill—the ability to move the ball—in the air and off the pitch, and the ability to keep a length.
Much of that he owed to old Tom Watson. Tom’s cricketing days had long been past, but he still had an eye for a promising youngster, and Ted Payne caught that eye.
“Come on, boy,” Tom had said. “You do as I tell you, and you won’t go far wrong. Trust old Tom. He may be gettin’ stiff in the joints, but he still knows a thing or two.”
And that was no idle boast. Tom did know a thing or two when the subject was cricket. Young Payne listened and learned.
“Length,” Tom used to say; “length first. Pace and tricks afterwards; but length first, me boy.”
So he had curbed the exuberance of youth which would have sent his pupil in a tearaway run to the wicket, to hurl the ball as hard as he could somewhere, anywhere, in the general direction of the batsman.
“Softly,” Tom used to say; “softly does it, boy. Length first; length first. Other things’ll come.”
And they had come.
“Remember,” Tom said, “remember you got fingers. They ain’t just there to keep the ball from falling out of your hand; they’re there to put the ’fluence on it—the ’fluence! Ah!”
So Tom taught him how to put the “’fluence” on the ball; taught him how to bowl the out-swinger and the break-back; how to make them sit up and how to make them float; how to vary his length by those imperceptible degrees which caught the batsman off his guard. All these things the old bowler patiently taught him.
“But it’s the one that moves away that’s the best,” Tom would always say. “The one that moves away is worth ten of the one that moves in. Make the ball leave the bat, and you have ’em groping. Then, snick! and it’s in slip’s hands. Make ’em move away, boy; make ’em move away.”
Old Tom remembered players of earlier generations—Hirst, Armstrong, Jessop, Fry, Sid Barnes, Bardsley, Trumper, Hill, Tunnicliffe, the brothers Foster and Ashton; he remembered the Graces, Johnnie Briggs, Peel, and Spofforth, the Demon. To listen to Tom was like browsing through old, dog-eared numbers of Wisden’s Almanack. He would talk about the great fast bowlers—Lockwood, Richardson, Kortright, Fielder, Gregory—of Bill Hitch, with his startling leap at the wicket. “But Korty was the best of the lot, boy! Korty could make ’em fly! Why, bless me, I’ve known batsmen—and good batsmen too—shaking at the knees because they had to go in and face Korty on a lively wicket. Not but what they had some reason to be scared; I was scared meself; but then I never did reckon to bat.”
Tom himself had bowled to Hayward and Ranjitsinhji, to Hobbs, MacLaren, Johnny Tyldesley, and a host of others; but he admitted that he had never been more than a county man—a good stock bowler who could keep one end going without too much expense. But as a coach he was in the top class. Ted Payne listened and learned, and it was not long before the county scouts cast an eye on him; and not long after that he was given a trial; and soon he was in the second eleven and signing professional forms.
He was twenty when he got his first chance in the county side. It was a home match, and his father took three days off work, so that he could come and watch. Young Jackie, his brother, was there too; and, of course, old Tom. People talked about the happiest day of their lives, and perhaps few of them were really sure which was the day; but Payne knew; he knew there could never be another day as wonderful as that first day of his first match for Nottinghamshire. It was like a fairy-tale: there were the two batsmen—he could see them now—one tall and dark, the other short and fair, one an amateur, the other a professional; they had put on 140 runs, and looked like occupying the centre for the rest of the day. Then his captain tossed the ball to Payne, and he, with his first delivery, his first ball for the county, before his own crowd, before his father and Jackie and old Tom, broke the partnership. He would always remember the sheer, mad delight of that moment as the off stump went cart-wheeling out of the ground, and the great roar that went up from the stands. There would never be anything like it again for him.
They had his photograph in the evening papers, and there were headlines: “Young Bowler takes Wicket with First Ball!” “Payne Another Larwood!” “Startling Debut!” He gloated over the accounts, and went about for days with a head much larger than it ought to have been. He already had his career mapped out. He was going to play for England; he would tour Australia, South Africa, the West Indies; he would help England to win the Ashes. It was all going to be wonderful.
Then something happened; he began to put on weight. At first he was not worried; it was nothing—just the natural increase of maturity—added muscle. But soon he had gained a stone and was beginning to feel it. He was unable to get the same pace in his run-up to the wicket as he had done; it took fewer overs to tire him; his wind was not so good. And still his weight increased; and there was no question now about its being muscle; anyone could see the fat on him.
He was alarmed. If this went on there was not likely to be any future for him as a fast bowler—no future in cricket at all. He consulted a doctor, and the doctor put him on a diet. It was tough going, but he stuck to it, and his weight began to fall. But he was always hungry—hungry and weak—so weak, in fact, that he had to cut his run-up by half.
He had dropped out of the county side long before this. Soon he was dropped from the second eleven also. At the end of the summer his professional contract was not renewed. His cricketing career was finished.
So he gave up the diet and let the flesh come, trying to forget that headline which had read: “Payne Another Larwood!” But it was not so easy to forget: it would have been better if he had never had the hopes, if he had never got as far as he had. To fall away after touching the edge of success was the galling thing. He felt humiliated; he hated to look into old Tom’s eyes, to read the disappointment in them.
“It ain’t your fault, boy,” Tom said. “You can’t help being made that way. Don’t take it so hard.”
But he had to take it hard, because over and above his own disillusionment was the feeling that he had let Tom down. Tom had worked on him, given him all he had to give; Tom had had faith in him and had hoped to make of him an England bowler and take vicariously those triumphs it had been beyond his skill to grasp in any other way. Now that hope was dead, and Tom was too old to take another pupil.
There were some dead matches on the table in front of Payne. He began arranging them in the form of wickets—three long ones and a short piece across for bails.
“Yes,” he said musingly, “I went to Trent Bridge.”
Panton-Smith and the other two looked at him, grinning.
“Hullo,” said Vernon, “are you still in those regions? You’ve been day-dreaming. We’re off cricket now.”
Payne said, “I used to play for Notts.”
The other three laughed. “You really have been day-dreaming,” said Panton-Smith.
Payne was not worried by their laughter; he had not expected them to believe him. He knew what people saw when they looked at him—a great, balloon-like carcase, a mountain of flesh; they never paused to think that he might once have been lean and athletic. If only he could have stayed like that! How different life might have been! But the fat would come; there had been no denying it. It was, he supposed, something to do with glands. He sighed and lit another cigarette.
“It’s stopped snowing,” Vernon said. “Should we go?”
Bombardier Padgett went ashore with the killick, Leading-seaman Agnew. They went to the International Club. It had been the killick’s idea.
“There’ll be a film show,” he had said. “It’ll probably be lousy, but you’ve got to do something.”
Padgett went because he was sick of being on board ship; he wanted to stretch his legs; he felt cramped, cooped up, like a dog that has been too long confined to i
ts kennel. Padgett would have liked to have more space for movement. He did his press-ups regularly, his muscle-building exercises, his deep breathing; but what he missed was the daily run; there was no chance of that on board the Golden Ray; instead he had to substitute a brisk walk on ten feet of iron deck. Backward and forward, backward and forward; one, two, three, four, five—five hundred to the mile; backward and forward, backward and forward—leaning against the roll of the ship, counting to himself—two hundred, three hundred, four hundred—five hundred to the mile.
“Mustn’t go soft,” he told himself. “Got to keep fit. Got to keep at it. Mustn’t go soft.”
It was his greatest worry—the fear of going soft.
Leading-seaman Agnew was a Liverpudlian. He was a man who delighted in gloom, taking always the most pessimistic view of everything and always expecting the worst to happen. From his appearance one might have supposed that he had at one time or another received a blow in the chest so powerful that it had forced that part of his anatomy into permanent concavity, while producing at the same time a balancing convexity in the region of his shoulder-blades.
He had first seen the light in a miserable house in Scotland Road, and it had been a feeble light, almost exhausted by having had to thrust its way through heavy clouds, many layers of smoke and fog, and a small, grimy window. Most of the regulation ailments of childhood had aimed their blows at his unfortunate body, and both his father and mother had looked upon it as their right and their duty to cuff his ears whenever those large and misshapen articles chanced to come within striking distance. As soon as he was old enough he had joined the Navy, and had left the bosom of his family with the liveliest feelings of pleasure, glad to be at last free of that oppressive growth.
Agnew was forty-five years old, and spoke with that adenoidal snuffle which is the birthright of all born under the ægis of the Liver birds. He was a man much learned in the ways of sin, and tough as a piece of horse-hide.
Soldier, Sail North (1987) Page 15