A TIME OF WAR

by MARY HOCKING

  And she was in, right at the centre, without any idea as to how she had got there. It was as though a flame had stealthily gained a hold on the flimsy substance of her dreams; suddenly it flared and engulfed her and Peter Shaw. She began to laugh. Others were laughing, too, so that at first there seemed nothing exceptional in her behaviour. Several drinks later, however, Peter Shaw said:

  `Perhaps you’ve had enough.’

  `I was reared on it. All Irish children are reared on whisky.’

  `Maybe. But that’s rum you’re drinking.’

  She gave a laugh that would have made a late traveller at home think of banshees. She must have mentioned the fact, because later still one of the squadron was standing on a table singing, to the tune of `Bellbottom trousers’ –

  `Kerren was a servant girl who lived in Belfast town,

  Her mother was a banshee and her father was . . .’

  Someone pulled him down and stuffed a cushion in his mouth. Dixie said:

  `Have a care, there! That’s the man I love.’

  She curled up beside him and they both rolled quietly under the table. Someone else was singing:

  `You can’t go to Heaven in a limousine

  ’Cos the lord don’t supply no gasoline . . .’

  The subbies joined lustily in the chorus and threw their glasses against the wall. The squadron was getting bored; one of its number had picked up a piece of broken glass and was insisting that he could swallow it, two of his friends were trying to stop him and there was blood on the jagged edge. Daphne began to patrol the outskirts of the crowd, pulling stragglers to one side, saying: `Quittin’ time, folks, quittin’ time.’ She tugged Peter Shaw away from Kerren. `Come on, Peter. Set a good example to the children.’ He jerked himself free and lurched back to Kerren.

  `I won’t go unless I can take her with me.’

  He began to sing, `I’m going to buy myself a paper doll that I can call my own,’ his arms around Kerren. Several of the older men and most of the Wrens were by now engaged in ejecting the subbies. After a few moments it occurred to Kerren that this was a more amusing pastime than supporting Peter Shaw. She pushed him away and dived into the fray. They dragged the subbies to the door and pushed them out, the door opened and they came back, they pushed them out, they came back; it had a beautiful, rolling rhythm like a mad sea-shanty. One was climbing in through the window. She put a hand on his face and pushed him out again. Someone shrieked: `The black-out!’ and turned out the light, which didn’t help. Peter Shaw had his arms around Kerren again and he was bellowing: `A doll that other fellows cannot steal’. They dragged him through the door and Kerren leant against it, laughter bubbling in her throat. The door gave and he came in roaring, `I’m going to dance with the dolly with the hole in her stocking.’ In the end she danced him through the door. When at last his motorbike had weaved its way down the path, Kerren sat on the ground beneath the trees and laughed up at the stars, bobbing about hilariously in the sky.

  Robin said, `You help to clear up, Beatie. Dixie and I’ll get Kathleen Mavourneen here back to the cabin.’

  In the cabin Kerren clutched the door as the deck heaved and swayed. Those who had stayed behind slowly reared up from beneath the bedclothes. She watched them sitting there, heads crowned with curlers, disgruntled faces larded with cream, eyes round as owls’. She began to declaim:

  `The unpurged images of day recede,

  The Emperor’s drunken matelots are abed . . .’

  `Christ!’ someone muttered.

  Kerren dived headfirst into her bunk and laughed herself into oblivion.

  `What happened to her, Robin?’ Jessie whispered.

  `She drank too much. She also had a famous victory.’

  Beatie returned much later. But they were still awake. She shut the door quietly behind her. The atmosphere was expectant. From the nearest bunk a figure loomed above her.

  `Hullo, Beatie.’

  They waited, eyes bright in the dark, claws drawn, the little furry bodies crouched beneath the blankets. You could almost smell cat. When she went forward between the rows of bunks, she knew that at any moment the claws would come out. Yet she strolled leisurely down the long aisle; she rumpled her golden hair and smiled, the full cheeks dimpled and the pink tongue flicked out, mischievously unconcerned. Someone said, `Nice party?’

  `Not bad. Kerren pinched my man. What do you know!’

  The tiny pause that followed seemed longer than the whole of her life. Then a ripple of laughter ran round the cabin. Someone echoed: `Well, what do you know!’ She had passed through without a scratch! That was all that mattered. There would be time later to think about Kerren and Peter Shaw.

  Chapter Four

  `How I hate the young!’ Lieutenant Commander Hunter stared out of the rain-speckled met. office window, his eyes like bruised green grapes.

  Adam Grieve drew the blue line of a cold front from Shetland to Anglesey and wondered whether he was meant to answer; sometimes Hunter thought aloud without realizing what he was doing.

  `Two pilots killed yesterday!’ Tears welled up in Hunter’s eyes. The pilots had been so young . . . so . . . He realized he was getting confused again; he hated the young when they were alive but found them unbearably moving when dead. `And that little bitch Egan saw it all happen and enjoyed it; she had her face glued to the window and she was late with the chart.’ He bit his lip. He wished he hadn’t mentioned the chart, it made him sound callous; he wasn’t callous, God knew he wasn’t callous! But this office was so difficult to run, it was getting beyond him.

  Adam, feeling something was now required of him, said, `Egan didn’t know the pilots.’

  `But she saw them killed!’

  `She had a terribly exciting moment when she saw two planes coming together and then she saw a heap of tangled metal. I don’t think death registered.’

  `Nothing registers!’ Hunter shouted, his face going red. `They’re so ruthlessly concerned with their own disgusting pleasures that nothing else registers, not even the war . . .’

  `I don’t think that’s in the least surprising. Egan came into the service straight from a girls’ public school, the very sheltered kind. She is making all sorts of astonishing discoveries about herself – not all pleasant, I would hazard a guess. One can understand that this is much too absorbing to allow time for abstract thought. . . .’

  `Abstract!’

  `Yes, abstract!’ Suddenly Adam shouted, too. `The war is an abstraction here. The girls have got the answer to this bloody place. There’s nothing one can do about it, same as rape, so one might as well lie back and enjoy it.’

  Hunter turned away. He never knew quite how to handle Grieve; the man had had more to put up with than most men, so one had to make certain allowances. But he was so self-contained that it made it difficult to feel any sympathy for him.

  `Talking of rape . . .’ There now! His mind had made another of its startling jumps and Grieve was staring solemnly down at the chart, savouring the moment for later repetition in the wardroom. Hunter floundered on, `That new girl, Nolan . . . there’s talk of her and Peter Shaw.’

  `Egan mentioned something. I don’t think he’s a rapist.’

  `He’s an unbalanced hooligan and she’s completely irresponsible.’

  `He had a bad crash, don’t forget.’

  The door opened before Adam could go any further and Robin came in carrying a tray of crockery.

  `Sorry to be such an age, but Nolan didn’t do the washing up. She and Sub-Lieutenant Corder were behind with work this morning. I think she was rather overcome by night duty.’

  `As long as she wasn’t overcome by Corder!’ Adam said.

  Robin laughed delightedly; Sub-Lieutenant Corder’s immaturity was a great joke between them. Hunter turned away to stare at the sodden airfield, despair etched deep in the heavy furrows of his face.

  In Cabin 8, Kerren was writing to her friend Dorothy:

  `I have just finished my first night duty. A sol
itary affair. The building seems dead after all the day-time pandemonium. Outside there is nothing, more of nothing than I have ever known: some of the nothingness seemed to get into me. I don’t like night duty. `But the rest is pure joy, Dorothy. I don’t for a moment regret quitting university. There will be time for that kind of learning later.

  `I am at B camp. A camp is near the airfield and all the brass hats are up there. B camp is two miles away, lost in the woods. I’ve never known such freedom! I expected everything to be strictly disciplined and purposeful; but in fact you can break all ten commandments and no one will care provided you are in by ten at night and report for duty in the morning! The airfield is busy; kites circle round and round and round doing dummy deck landings and other strange things. But there doesn’t seem to be much sense of purpose, perhaps because we aren’t operational. After two weeks here, I begin to wonder what has happened to the war! It goes on, I suppose?’

  The war, in fact, seemed strangely irrelevant. The world of the camp was intensely exciting and what happened beyond it was of little importance. The met. office was busy, pilots constantly coming and going; she worked hard and enjoyed it. The met. officers were an ill-assorted group and their conflicting personalities gave a touch of drama to the work which was much to her liking.

  Sub-Lieutenant Corder was at the age when he thought he knew everything and the navy had confirmed him in this belief by bestowing a commission on him after only a few months’ service. The navy needed met. officers and Corder had a science degree. Unfortunately, he was quite unused to exercising authority and it went to his head like strong drink; he very soon came to regard himself as omnipotent. Hunter was an affront to all that Corder held dear; it disturbed his sense of scientific integrity that such a man should be in charge of the met. office. Corder’s sense of scientific integrity was second only to his sense of duty. Every time he prepared a forecast, he said to himself, `A man’s life may depend on this.’ In contrast, Sub-Lieutenant Staitham had no sense of duty at all. He was concerned exclusively with women and one of Hunter’s recurrent nightmares was that Staitham would get one of the Wrens into trouble. Maggie had already refused to do a night duty with him. `Though whether this is because she suspects that something will happen, or whether she is afraid that nothing will happen, I can never be sure,’ Adam remarked. Adam did not like Maggie and she did not like him. `He tells improper stories,’ she warned Kerren. `And he drinks. He came on duty the other night smelling of whisky.’ It was all quite delightful, and Kerren enjoyed every moment of it.

  The days whirled by. She found out more about the camp, fitted it into the pattern of war; it was called H.M.S. Guillemot and pilots came to it to do their advanced fighter training. Each day brought a new experience. She saw her first plane crash with lyric grace, dropping swift as a swallow from above the poplars, skimming the earth and tilting forward on to its nose. `So elegant,’ Robin said. `No dust and blood and screaming of brakes.’ But blood there must have been because the pilot was dead when the crash-tender crew reached him.

  Her social life began to develop. There was a visit to the nearest village, Holly Green; a drinking session in The Sycamore Tree with some G.I.s she and Jessie met on the late-night bus. Then there was the camp dance at which Peter Shaw danced with her all the time. After that nothing was quite the same again.

  `Are you going to be a corvette like Robin?’ Hazel asked her after the dance.

  `What is a corvette?’

  `A sub-chaser.’

  `Well?’

  `There are two kinds of sub.,’ Naomi said. `One has gold braid on its sleeve. Get it?’

  No one seemed to mind whether she was a corvette or not; all that interested them was whether she would succeed in taking Peter Shaw away from Beatie.

  `He doesn’t appeal to me,’ Kerren said. `That act of his doesn’t fool me; he’s just a boy who has botched the business of growing up. Beatie can have him!’

  The first time she went out with him, she told him, `I think you’ve treated Beatie badly.’

  `I haven’t treated Beatie to anything; let me set your mind at rest on that score.’

  `I don’t think you should talk about her in that way.’

  `Why not? Everyone else does. She’s known as the randy girl of the flights.’

  `So that’s how you talk about the girls you go around with behind their backs! I wonder what you’ll be saying about me in the wardroom tonight.’

  `I don’t go around with Beatie. I’ve only been out with her three times.’

  `You won’t go out with me that many times.’

  `You can bloody-well say that again!’

  They had taken a lift on the back of a lorry carrying unidentified explosives and were perched rather warily on the metal containers. Kerren hoped that the lorry would take them as far as Salisbury, but when they reached one of those crossroads from which the roads seem to lead from nowhere to nowhere, the driver turned and said:

  `I’ll have to drop you here. There’ve been patrols a few miles farther along this road lately, and I’m not supposed to give lifts.’ The lorry drove off, leaving them solitary at the crossroads. There was a signpost, the words painted out. The ground was high and the roads ran down and were soon masked by hedges. They hesitated, looking about them. The impatient March wind flurried the long grass in the fields and worried at the hedgerows; it shrilled in the telegraph wires above their heads and buffeted a broken gate leading into one of the fields. Everything was in motion except Kerren and Peter, standing obstinately erect in the middle of the road.

  There was no vehicle in sight. The wind cut across Peter’s shoulders and he wished that he had put his overcoat on. But he felt exhilarated, a tense exhilaration as though a wire was drawn taut through the centre of his body; he felt the need to move, to bend to the wind’s way before it broke him. At the side of one of the fields, just where the road dipped out of sight, there was a track that led down through a wood. He thought that, far in the distance, he caught a glimpse of water between the trees. He said:

  `There’s a stream in the valley. Or would it be a river?’

  `I don’t know.’

  `Let’s walk down and find out. We can take that track through the wood.’

  He set off and she followed him silently, her head up, taking the wind in the face so that it drove her hair straight back. They did not speak until they had reached the track and the trees arched over them, offering some shelter from the wind. Then he said:

  `It’s the first day of spring. Did you know that in the met. office?’

  `No.’

  `You’re not angry still, are you?’

  She felt strangely disturbed and she supposed it might be due to anger, so she answered, imitating him:

  `Yes, I’m angry still.’

  `Why are you making such a fuss? Would you rather I had been to bed with Beatie?’

  She stopped, her legs apart, her head thrown back and crowed with laughter while the birds flew up in a protesting chorus from the trees. The ugliness of the sound jarred his nerves.

  `What’s so funny about that?’

  `You! Just how many girls have you been to bed with?’

  A red patch glowed on one cheek-bone, making his twisted face more unbalanced than ever. She guessed the answer to her question and guessed, too, how much it hurt his pride.

  `Never mind,’ she mocked. `It will come in time.’

  He stepped very close to her. She heard a twig snap beneath his feet and then there was a moment’s silence while even the wind seemed to take breath for a fresh onslaught. The scar was livid, the left eyelid twitched and the mouth puckered; his whole face seemed to wither. She was frightened and her legs were suddenly boneless. Yet she wanted him to hurt her and she was disappointed when he controlled himself and turned away muttering:

  `Don’t play about with men, someone might decide to teach you a lesson.’

  `There’s not a lot I need to be taught.’

  He laughed. His m
ood had changed, and his laughter was gentle, almost affectionate. This upset her more than contempt would have done. Hot waves of anger surged through her body and at the same time she felt a shameful impulse to cry. She wanted revenge, on her own weakness, on him, on whatever it was that tormented her body so painfully. As they went down through the straggling wood towards the stream, she began to needle him in every way she knew, driven by an impulse quite beyond her control, something so strong that to have denied it would have made the pain inside her intolerable.

  The path was waterlogged and they slipped often and had to make detours through the undergrowth; between the trees the distant fields were a dark, drenched green. The trees were still bare and the wind-flecked water in the stream looked very cold. The smell of winter lingered everywhere, dank and rotten, but there were a few early primroses in the long grass and the pale, cloud-streaked sky had a kind of tremulous uncertainty which Kerren felt repeated in her own body. She was tearful and exultant, dreary and elated, all at the same time. She seemed to be evolving painfully, sloughing a protective skin so that every inflection in his voice, the lack of an immediate answer, a failure to respond, touched a nerve and made her hot with pain and rage. Her face mirrored her sensations; one moment the eyes were brilliant with sharp, darting points of light, the next they were misted and blank; the mouth twisted and curved, cruel, mocking and jubilant, then became suddenly slack, the lips trembling. Peter was too conscious of his disfigurement to betray himself in this way, but Kerren understood enough to get through his defences.

  `Why are you so affected, then? Tell me that!’ She drove the slivers of her contempt where he was most vulnerable. `What’s the point of it? Sideburns and long hair! Do they help you fly your kite? Come on, tell me! Do you think it proves something, makes you look like a Regency rake? You need more than long hair for that!’

  `There’s a lot to be said for the Regency days. Women were women and looked like it.’ He put his hand out and caught at her hair. `Like stubble! Can’t get a grip on it.’ But he had a grip on the back of her neck. She tried to break free, but he crooked his arm and brought her closer to him, laughing as she pushed with her fists against his chest.