by David Lodge
Timothy was overjoyed when his mother said they would be going home for Christmas and would probably stay there. The V.1s and V.2s had practically stopped now, and his father thought it was safe. The news was good and everybody thought the war would soon be over. But when his father met them at Victoria Station, the first thing he said to Timothy’s mother was:
– I see we’re losing the war again.
He meant it as a joke, but Timothy could see that he was a bit worried. The Germans were fighting back and the Americans were having to retreat. The newspapers called it the Battle of the Bulge. It spoiled Christmas, because his parents were worried about Kath. But on Boxing Day the news was better. The wireless said the Americans were fighting back and the Germans were retreating again. Then they had a letter from Kath. His mother read it out at breakfast:
I am having the time of my life here in Paris. I enjoy working for the Americans – they are so friendly and we have a lot of fun. We are looked after very well – good billets, good food, entertainment, etc. We had a heavy snowfall yesterday and Paris looks really lovely covered in thick snow. Paris is a beautiful city. The streets are much wider than they are in London. I hope you had a nice Christmas together at number 33. We were looking forward to having Midnight Mass in Notre Dame cathedral, but it was cancelled owing to the turn of events.
The turn of events meant the Battle of the Bulge.
– You wouldn’t think there was a war on, otherwise, his mother said. The way she talks, you’d think she was on holiday.
– She ought to worry about her own battle of the bulge, if you ask me, his father said, with all that Yank food she’s getting.
The war with Germany came to an end in the spring. They listened to every news broadcast on the wireless, and each time there were the names of new towns captured by the Allies. Every day Timothy looked at the maps in the Daily Express and followed the movement of the great white arrows of the Allied armies cutting into Germany. The British and the Americans were advancing from the west and the Russians from the east. Soon they would join up and Germany would be beaten. He was excited and impatient for the end. He felt as he felt when some bully was called out from assembly at school and caned – a mixture of elation and relief and righteousness. When the first news of Belsen came out and pictures appeared in the newspapers of starving men in tattered pyjamas with arms and legs like sticks, ribs sticking through their skins, some lying dead in heaps, limbs all tangled together, Timothy felt almost glad – glad that the Germans had been shown to be wicked beyond all imagining, for it confirmed the righteousness of the war. It was as if all the evil and nastiness and cruelty in the world had been drawn into one place and was now being punished and stamped out, crushed between the mighty armies of the Allies.
He resented any imperfection in the victory, and the death of President Roosevelt, just before the Germans surrendered, seemed to him a piece of mismanagement on the part of God. He had had some vague picture in his mind of Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin marching in triumph into Berlin and shaking hands with each other on a pile of rubble under a blue sky, while the soldiers of the three nations unslung their rifles and took off their helmets and grinned and cheered. And he had a picture, too, of Hitler being dragged before them, frightened and guilty and pleading for mercy and then being hanged or something. But Hitler killed himself, before the Allies could capture him, and that was another imperfection. Then they couldn’t find Hitler’s body and the papers said perhaps he had escaped after all and was hiding somewhere. The boys at school argued about whether he was dead or not, and Timothy took the side of those who said he was, because he couldn’t bear to think that Hitler had escaped, and he was a bit afraid that, if he had, he might reappear one day with an army. For to Timothy there had always been something superhuman about Hitler, as if he were like the Devil. Otherwise, how could a small country like Germany have nearly beaten so many other countries?
But Germany was beaten, and they had V.E. Day, which meant Victory in Europe, for the war wasn’t over yet, because there was still Japan. The Japanese were like the Germans, they were cruel to their prisoners; and they were more difficult to beat in some ways because they didn’t mind getting killed. They had suicide pilots who would crash their planes on to a ship to sink it even though they got killed themselves. Then the Americans dropped the atom bomb, and the Japanese surrendered. That the Allies had invented the atom bomb seemed to Timothy the final proof that the good people were the cleverest people and would always win in the end. It was a pity that they hadn’t invented the atom bomb before, though, because they could have just dropped it on Berlin and a few other German towns and then Germany would have surrendered much quicker.
Between V.E. Day and V.J. Day there was something called a General Election, and afterwards a man called Mister Attlee, whom Timothy had never heard of before, was Prime Minister instead of Winston Churchill. Timothy couldn’t understand it, because everybody liked Churchill and he had won the war. His father said it was politics and he was too young to understand. But Timothy was shocked by what seemed to him ingratitude and treachery. Besides, it was stupid to get rid of Churchill before the Japs were beaten. Mister Attlee didn’t look like a war-winning man. In fact he looked rather like Timothy’s father.
But the Japs surrendered and on V.J. Night they had a bonfire in the street, on the bomb-site. Everybody came out of their houses and stood around the bonfire laughing and talking and drinking beer and lemonade out of bottles. Like all the children, Timothy had a red, white and blue ribbon pinned on his coat in the shape of a V. There were bonfires that night on lots of bomb-sites all over London. They lit up the sky in a red glow like the Blitz. Then a man let off some fireworks that he had saved from pre-war.
There were so many grown-ups round him that Timothy couldn’t see the fireworks properly, and he moved away from the crowd till he found a high place to stand on. The last firework was an especially bright flare that lit up the whole bomb-site like daylight and he realized that he was standing on the grassy roof of Jill’s old shelter.
The glare of the firework faded and he was in the dark again. The figures of the people below him were dim silhouettes against the red glow of the fire. He felt strange: solemn, yet baffled, as if something should be said, or thought, at this moment, but he didn’t know quite what it was. He scrambled down from the roof of the shelter and, stumbling over rubble and twisted pipes, made his way back to the circle around the fire.
– Oh, there you are, said his mother. What have you been doing with your best trousers? She slapped at them with her hand.
He stared into the glowing embers.
– Mum . . .
– Your face is filthy, too. What?
She took a handkerchief from her handbag, spat on it and rubbed at his cheek. He put up with this childish treatment because he had a question to ask.
– Mum, is the war really over?
– Yes, thank goodness.
– What will it be like now?
– What will it be like? Goodness, you do ask questions. I suppose things will go back to normal in time. She closed her handbag with a snap.
– What’s normal?
– Well, all the soldiers will come home, and go back to work. There won’t be a blackout . . . and there’ll be more food in the shops, and no rationing.
– Will there be bananas?
– Yes, there’ll be bananas, and oranges and pineapples, and all those things.
– When will you buy me a banana?
His mother laughed.
– Oh, I couldn’t say. It’ll all take a certain amount of time.
3
– IT’S ALL TAKING a lot longer than I bargained for, his mother used to say, for she often recalled Timothy’s questions on V.J. Night. It was two years before Timothy tasted a banana, and then his mother had to queue for an hour to get a bunch. Rationing went on, and in some ways it got worse.
In fact life changed surprisingly little after the war
. The street-lamps were turned on one night, and Timothy and his two friends in the road, Jonesy and Blinker, walked round the streets for so long, experimenting with their shadows in the strange bluish light, that his mother sent his father out to look for them; but the novelty soon wore off. The soldiers were being demobbed, and every now and again one of the houses in the neighbourhood would be plastered with hand-painted signs saying Welcome Home Dad. But his Dad had never been away from home, and Uncle Jack, for whom he would have liked to paint a Welcome Home sign, was not coming back from the war. He thought of putting up a sign for Kath when she came home, but he was afraid that Jonesy and Blinker might tease him about it, because she was only a secretary.
But when Kath arrived she was wearing a special uniform, a very smart khaki one made of smooth cloth, like Rod’s, with a red, white and blue badge on her sleeve. To everybody’s surprise, she wasn’t half so fat as she had been when she went away. Her hair was done differently, and she didn’t wear glasses any more, except for reading, and she wore lipstick and nail varnish. She smoked cigarettes, too. When he walked up the road with her, Timothy saw the dim shapes of the neighbours moving behind their lace curtains like fish in an aquarium, drawn to the windows to look at his glamorous sister. Jonesy and Blinker said she was smashing, and Timothy wished he had put up a Welcome Home sign after all.
But Kath was only on leave, and she made it clear that she had no plans to come back to London for good. She was working in Frankfurt now. His parents wanted her to come home, but she said she was better off where she was; well paid and well looked after, and she was seeing life. They were all sitting round the dining-room table after tea. His mother muttered something about some people being selfish, and Kath looked upset.
– That’s a silly thing to say, Mum. What good would I be at home? We always got on each other’s nerves.
– What nonsense, said his mother, pinching her lips together.
– It isn’t – is it, Dad?
His father shifted uneasily in his chair and drew from his pocket a packet of Lucky Strike that Kath had given him.
– I don’t know, Kath. But I know that your mother and me would like to have you a bit nearer home.
Kath took a cigarette and lit it, and her father’s, with a dainty gold lighter.
– Look, if there’s an emergency, I can always hop on a service plane and be home in a few hours.
– That’s not the point, said his mother.
– What is the point then? If it’s money I’d be glad to –
– We don’t need your money, girl, said his father impatiently. There’s nothing to spend it on, anyway.
Timothy’s mother began to pile the plates in front of her.
– Well, I suppose I’ll have to resign myself to running this house all on my own.
– Oh, Mum! Tell you what. (Kath stubbed out her cigarette in a saucer; the butt, crimsoned with lipstick, was so long that it buckled under the pressure, and Timothy saw his father cast a scandalized glance at the waste.) Tell you what: let me pay for a woman to come in and clean.
– A woman! What would I do with a woman? I can manage perfectly well on my own in this house, thank you very much.
Kath exploded with laughter:
– Mum, you’re impossible!
Timothy and his father joined in the laughter. His mother gave an uncertain, unhappy smile. Undecided whether or not to take offence, she stood up and carried the pile of plates out to the kitchen.
Kath had brought a lot of presents home with her. It was as if a fairy godmother had visited the house. For Timothy there were American sweets, or candies as she called them, with strange, inexplicable names like Baby Ruth and Oh Henry! There were American cigarettes in huge packets of 200 for his father, and a new kind of stockings called nylons for his mother. And there were special expensive presents as well: a watch for Timothy, a camera for his father and earrings with real pearls for his mother.
– Kath, you shouldn’t be so extravagant, his mother said, turning the earrings in her hand. I’ll never dare wear them. They must have cost the earth.
– I saved my cigarette ration, Kath explained. You can buy anything in Germany for cigarettes. Or food.
– You mean you got these things on the black market, Kath? his father asked, with a hint of disapproval in his voice.
Kath shrugged.
– Everybody does it. Why, only the other day the Chaplain’s driver came into the office tossing a tin of ham in his hands. I asked him what he was doing with it, and d’you know what he said? Chaplain told me to go out and get some flowers for the altar.
– The Catholic Chaplain? his mother said.
– Yes.
– Goodness. I suppose it must be all right, then.
Timothy was curious to know how many cigarettes his watch had cost, but he thought it might be impolite to ask. It was a Swiss watch with a sweep second hand and it was shockproof, waterproof and antimagnetic. He imagined a German handing over the watch for a carton of cigarettes and smoking them one by one and, when there were only a few left, wishing he hadn’t swapped his watch because a watch lasted and cigarettes didn’t.
– What are they like, the Germans? he asked Kath, on her last day at home. They were sitting in the back bedroom, which he had given up to Kath for her leave. She was varnishing her nails, an operation he liked to watch.
– Well, we’re not supposed to fraternize – you know, mix with the Germans. In fact at first they kept us behind wire, you weren’t allowed out without a pass. So it’s difficult to say. But they seem just like other people. Except that you see a lot of cripples, injuries of various kinds.
– I s’pose they hate us for winning the war?
– They’re pretty bitter about the bombing, and nobody likes to be occupied, of course. But they’re better off under the Americans than they would be in the Russian zone, and they know it.
– Well, anyway, they asked for it, didn’t they? The bombing, I mean.
– I suppose so . . . But the Blitz was nothing to Frankfurt. I’ve never seen such devastation. Block after block, completely flattened.
– You know our Woolworth’s was hit by a flying bomb? Timothy asked her, feeling obscurely that Kath was underrating the battle-scars of her own country.
– Yes, wasn’t that terrible? All those people killed, children too. Well, thank God it’s all over now.
– I wonder you want to go back to Frankfurt, he said.
– Oh well, I might get posted to a nicer place. You never know. There!
Kath had finished her nails. She replaced the bottle cap with its little brush, stood up, and waved her hands in the air to dry the varnish. She walked to the window and stared out.
– My God, she murmured.
Timothy followed her to the window to see what had provoked this comment. But looking out, he saw only the familiar rows of narrow back gardens with their coal sheds and washing lines, a tram stopping in the street beyond, and the smoky expanse of roofs blurring into the distance. A fine drizzle was falling, and the smoke rose slowly from the chimneys. He went back to the bed where he had been sitting and turned the pages of an American magazine Kath had brought home with her. It was thick and heavy and shiny, and there were a lot of pictures in it of pancakes dripping with syrup and tall drinks full of fruit and lumps of ice and huge streamlined cars, spread across two pages so that they seemed to bend in the middle. The magazine was called Life.
– Can I keep this, Kath, or do you want to take it back with you? he asked timidly.
– Mmm? she murmured abstractedly. Oh, yes, keep it Timothy, I get it all the time in Germany.
She was still standing at the window, moving her hands up and down, like some large bird struggling into flight.
When he was ten, Timothy went to a grammar school, St. Michael’s. The teachers were called Brothers, and they were like priests except that they didn’t say mass. They wore black cassocks and big white collars. There were also some teachers
who were not Brothers and wore ordinary clothes, like the Art master. Timothy liked Art best. They had a double period of Art on Friday afternoons, which was a nice way to end the week. His best subjects were art and maths. At the end of term they had tests, and Timothy usually came third or fourth in the class, though he was one of the youngest. At first his parents paid for him to go to St. Michael’s, but when he was eleven he took a special test and after that it was free.
There were two things he didn’t like about his school. One was the caning, of which there was a lot, not just for being naughty but for getting your lessons wrong; and the other was games. Timothy was keen on sport, especially football, which everybody played at break. Being light and agile, he was rather good at playground football, where you needed to dodge not just the opposing players, but other players in other games sharing the same pitch. But the school game was rugby, which he hated. He didn’t like getting banged and knocked like you did in rugby, and he didn’t have the courage to tackle other players round the legs when they were running. He learned to run about on the edge of the play, looking as if he were interested, without actually touching the ball or another player. Sometimes he would fall over on purpose to get his knees muddy so that it would look as if he had tackled somebody. It was the same with cricket in the summer. He enjoyed playing in the playground, and with an old tennis ball that had had most of the fur rubbed off it he could turn off-breaks quite sharply. But cricket with a real ball, hard and deadly, was a different matter. The only other school sport was running, and he was no good at that either. Usually he was eliminated in the heats before Sports Day, and so he would sit with his parents to watch the races, and see the winners go up at the end to receive their cups.