Unexploded

by Alison Macleod

  This morning, Brighton beach would do – it was a shorter journey back to the Bank – and, at the age of thirty-six, he walked across the pebbles. Soon the beach would be closed for the war but today, the scene was as ever – or it was if he let himself forget the strange emptiness of the piers and the promenade.

  On the seafront behind, hunched carriage drivers waited between the Palace Pier and the West Pier, their restless horses jingling with promise for any visitor foolhardy enough to risk a seaside town marked for invasion. High overhead, cirrus cloud drifted like the ragged end of a dying man’s last thought. The Italian ice-cream man sat on the kerb next to his three-wheeled bicycle reading his paper, no doubt hoping against hope that Mussolini would not enter the war. Further down the prom, a fishwife hollered ‘Winkles! Sixpence a pint!’ to no one.

  The King’s Road was bright, still, and as empty as a place of contagion. Not so much as a chip carton blew down the prom. No summer holidaymakers raced against the breeze on bicycles or laughed behind the wheels of sporty motors. The excursion boats no longer ferried pleasure-seekers from the end of the Palace Pier to Dieppe. Hotel porters and bellboys, jellied-eel and cockle sellers, shopkeepers and carriage drivers seemed suspended in the heavy translucence of aspic.

  But on the beach itself, one could still imagine that nothing had changed. The tide was in, and the surf dragged the shingle in a perpetually casual show of force. An old man in a beach slip bobbed in the waves ahead like a white-headed seal. A mother and three children in newspaper sailors’ caps played in the shallows, the youngest screaming at the crashing arrival of each new wave. A stray mongrel sprinted back and forth, tussling with a dead cuttlefish in its mouth. Three teenaged girls in beach pyjamas planted their tuppenny deck-chairs on the pebbles.

  The fishermen were already tipping out the second catch of the day, and their children hopped between boats or clambered out from below them. Earlier that week, these same men, men of the old fishing families – the Gunns and the Rolfs, the Leaches and the Howells – had been hauling the desperate and the wounded into their boats while bullets strafed the sea around them like skipping stones. Men who had never ventured further than the Isle of Wight had steered their way to Dunkirk by the glow of fire on the horizon.

  Now they were at their dees again, as if all the smoke of France had been only a brutal trick of the light, as if the beach weren’t soon to close. The children helped out before school each day, with the older boys spearing twenty or thirty herring on a stick before laying them out in gleaming rows, ready to be smoked.

  An ancient man, wearing a blue woollen cap even in the day’s heat, looked up from the net he was mending to spit cord from his mouth. ‘On your way,’ he called to the children, ‘or the Schoolboard Man will be here to lock up the lot of you!’ They scattered like pigeons at gunfire, chasing each other across the beach, the boys threatening the girls with scale-smeared hands.

  Two women sunbathed on vast white hotel towels. One looked up dreamily, vaguely irritated by the children’s noise. On spotting Geoffrey, she adjusted the knot of her haltered swimming costume and turned her face.

  It was a curious sort of freedom to be divested of his pinstripes. For this rare quarter-hour, he was not one of the town’s leading bankers. He did not approve, decline and seal fates. He had not agreed to serve as Superintendent at the new internment Camp, nor did he head the town’s Invasion Committee. The man who entered the sea was not that reliable citizen, and, for a few moments more, he imagined himself walking free of his identity, unpeeling his responsibilities and abandoning them like clothing at the water’s edge.

  He had not told his wife of twelve years he might abandon her and their son if the worst came to pass. She had not looked up at him this morning, her eyes narrowing with mistrust.

  When the first wave hit, he felt as if he’d been cut in two. His lungs snapped. His bones ached to the marrow. The heat of the day was misleading. It was only the end of May, after all, and this, the open Channel. Yet it was the stranglehold of the cold water, its overwhelming of all thought, that drove him deeper.

  He flung himself below an oncoming wave and his heart kicked in his chest. The cold punched his ears. His forehead throbbed. Something brushed his leg and was gone. A yellow-and-brown tin of KLIM powdered milk rolled in the seaweed at the bottom. He surfaced at last into the sunshine, spitting salt water, eyes burning.

  When he looked around, he was briefly disoriented. The sea was blinding; the horizon seemed to have dissolved. The reliable buoy of the old man was gone, and the currents had pulled him thirty or forty yards. His fellow swimmer was heaving himself up the beach, his elderly girth now covered in a towelling robe.

  A few of the fishermen looked past the old man to him, their eyes narrowing over their tins of tobacco. Water was something you tried to stay out of, their eyes said. Whoever you are, you’re a grown man and you’re bad luck, throwing yourself at the sea like that.

  Somewhere in the Channel a boat blew its siren. At the end of the Pier, the anglers cast their lines and floats into the swell. He climbed the steep shelf of the beach as the automated music from the carousel started up in the distance, a dismal, tinny accompaniment to his exertions. He looked to the men at the dees, and looked away again only to see the two women sunbathers staring warily too, as if, in his stumbling preoccupation, he might at any moment intrude upon their privacy. He blinked in the strong light, trying to spot his chalet in the long, monotonous row, and in that moment he felt lost, out of step, in a place as familiar to him as his own childhood.

  They’d got it wrong, the fishermen. He wasn’t bad luck. It was worse than that. ‘Precautions,’ she’d whispered hoarsely. No precautions. She’d eased the rubber off and her eyes had dared him. It wasn’t just that another pregnancy could kill her. That was his fear, more than it was hers. Her stubbornness about the rubber was code for what she wouldn’t bring herself to say: that it was he, her husband – not the enemy – who had suddenly put her and Philip at risk. If the enemy landed, he’d leave them. It was a betrayal. An abandonment. What, her eyes had demanded, was the point of precautions now?

  Whatever her own private logic, it was between them, unspeakable, an oily dark thing, and it hardly mattered what actually came to pass. It hardly mattered if German barges appeared at this very moment, an ominous semaphore on the horizon, or if he and Evvie lay next to each other, safe in their bed for the next forty years. He had told her it was possible he would leave.

  6

  That morning, as his father turned south for the Bank, Philip cycled up the London Road, past the Co-op Department Store and Goodall’s Greengrocer; past the Cat and Dog’s Meat Shop, Jessop the Barber’s, the watch-repair shop, and the boot mender’s, the open door of which released the delicious smell of new leather. Behind him, a milkman’s barrow jingled with empties. At the tram stop, two Gypsies waved fistfuls of wildflowers. He bumped over the kerb, crossed the tram-rail and glided past Dr Baldwin’s surgery and Mrs Dowley of Dowley’s Fish ’n’ Chips, bending over, tipping yesterday’s chip fat down the drain and showing, by accident, the backs of her fat, fish-white legs. Then the gas fitter’s flashed past, the radio-set shop and the tinsmith’s window, where the morning light bounced off milk pails and cake tins.

  At the corner, he made a sharp, wheel-juddering turn and heaved himself up the hill of the Old Shoreham Road. He stood tall on the pedals and wobbled up and up, through the colossal, catacombed darkness of the railway viaduct bridge. High above him, pigeons sat on the narrow ledges of the iron girders, immobile as toy ducks lined up in the shooting gallery on the Pier.

  Orson’s brother, Hal, had been known as a damnfineshot. His hands, Orson claimed, always smelled of gunpowder. From the time he was just twelve years old, Hal had won every prize at the shooting gallery. Next he was made Squadron Leader in the school militia. Now he was a Second Lieutenant overseeing three rifle sections and two dozen men in France. Orson said there was nothing Hal couldn’t do. P
hilip wished he had an older brother. He wished it all the time. Orson had Hal. Tubby had Frank and Alf. He had no one.

  The underworld of the bridge spewed him into the light, and he aimed one hand at the sky. ‘Eh-eh-eh-eh-eh!’ he shouted, and enemy aircraft fell from the sky.

  At the Grammar, he leaped from his bike. Orson was waiting. ‘You won’t believe it,’ he said in his own lugubrious way.

  Philip turned, but the school was still there.

  ‘Behind us,’ Orson sighed.

  Philip walked around to the other side of the sheds.

  It didn’t seem possible.

  Overnight, a city of tents had risen from the playing fields.

  Never before had those fields been so crammed with life and yet so hushed. The two boys kept to the sidelines. The tent-dwellers stared at the sky like old men in a dole queue. They gnawed at buns and gulped water. They rubbed their hands across their whiskers. But they weren’t old.

  The first few faces did not look outwardly hostile, but something in their expressions, in the glaze of their eyes, made Philip’s stomach tighten. One man had no arms, only bandaged stumps, like the pollarded trees that poked up stiffly over the playing fields from the road beyond. A swarthy, shirtless man with a red-and-white towel wrapped around his head was striding towards them. Orson stumbled into a run but the man caught Philip by the shoulder. ‘Cannae you read?’ He pointed at a white placard nailed to the boundary fence.

  Philip swallowed and looked past him to the two men at the near-est tent. One gargled at the other: ‘Oi, Jimbo, gimme back me ruddy crutch!’ They seemed to speak English but not as he knew it. Were they English? Hal had a smart uniform. That’s what Orson said. Many of these men were only half dressed. In the distance, three were washing from the same bowl. The broadest had a pirate’s patch over one eye.

  ‘Whass your name, lad?’

  He tried to stop his leg from trembling. ‘Philip.’

  The man bent down and laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. ‘Philip, this is noo place. It’s noo place at all. Now go find your mate an’ get yourselves to your lessons.’

  Philip’s voice wobbled in his throat. ‘Are you prisoners of war or war heroes?’

  ‘I’ll be honest with you.’ With slow, careful fingers, the man shifted the towel on his head. ‘I’m not so sure myself this morning.’ And now Philip could see. The towel wasn’t a towel. It was a loose white dressing.

  The man swatted at a fly but it landed again and again. Between the bandages, blood oozed, thick and dark as blackcurrant jam.

  The wireless buzzed as the juice went through it. ‘Germany calling. Germany calling. Germany calling. Station Bremen 1, Station Bremen 2 and Station DJB on the ninety-metre band. You are about to hear a talk in English.’

  ‘Not tonight, Geoffrey …’

  Philip looked up from his sketchpad on the floor. His mother was peering over her Mrs Woolf. She didn’t like Lord Haw-Haw. She didn’t like him hearing Lord Haw-Haw. Children weren’t supposed to. That’s what she’d said before. But his father only raised two fin-gers, which meant quiet, please, and the tip of his cigarette burned red.

  ‘The last week has been supremely eventful in the history of the world. It has witnessed the first great climax of the German campaign, and, as to the result, there is now no doubt whatsoever. In disorder and despair, the British Expeditionary Force has sought to save itself by withdrawing from the Continent, but the very attempt has produced British casualties of a shocking magnitude.’

  Philip leaped up from the floor, his eyes bright. ‘I saw them! I did! They’re up at the Grammar!’

  His mother raised a finger to her lips.

  He settled on the carpet once more. He considered his Spitfire and sighed. Why couldn’t he draw better? To trace was to fail.

  Evelyn closed her book and leaned her head back. Geoffrey stared at the ceiling, blowing smoke as high as the picture rail.

  ‘Along a strip of land six miles deep, the British are still trying to cover the retreat of their forces across the Channel. On Wednesday, sixty British ships were hit by bombs and thirty-one were sunk, and today comes the news of still further British losses. The number of British and French prisoners taken is at present beyond computation.’

  Evelyn crossed and recrossed her ankles. On the street outside, a woman’s heels clicked past, and somewhere on the Crescent, a door slammed heavily shut.

  ‘As you listened to the British radio a week ago, did you get the impression that there was going to be any withdrawal at all? Did you think that the necessity for a rearguard action was being contemplated by the dictator of Britain? Is it not a slightly novel experience to see the British people being treated as congenital imbeciles? And now, as the bloody and battered fragments of what was once the British Expeditionary Force drift back to the shores of England, the likelihood of invasion grows by the hour.’

  Evelyn turned sharply. ‘Geoffrey, I think we’ve heard enough.’ But she knew her words were pointless. Who could turn off Lord Haw-Haw? Who in the country did not feel compelled to listen for the facts the BBC would not report?

  ‘Is it not a little amusing to think of the trumpetings with which Churchill became Prime Minister of Britain. He was the man to frighten Hitler! He was the providential leader who was going to lead Britain to victory. Look at him today, unclean and miserable figure that he is. When Germany threw off the shackles of Jewish gold, this darling of Jewish finance resolved upon her destruction. But thanks to God and the Führer, it is not Germany that is confronted with destruction today!’

  Another voice spoke: ‘That is the end of our talk. Our next regular transmission of news will take place at 11:15.’

  ‘Philip, my love, it’s late …’ His mother’s hand was ruffling his hair. He hauled himself to his feet, clutching his pencil and sketchpad. Then he approached his father’s chair and waited for him to bend so he could offer his hug goodnight. Sometimes his father reciprocated with a whisker-rub. Not tonight. ‘Father?’

  Geoffrey looked up and blinked himself back into the moment.

  ‘Doesn’t Mr Churchill wash?’

  ‘Of course he washes, Philip.’

  ‘Lord Haw-Haw said he was unclean.’

  ‘Lord Haw-Haw made a mistake.’

  ‘Is Mr Churchill a Jew?’

  His mother started to lead him up the stairs. ‘See, Geoffrey. He really should have been in bed long ago.’

  ‘He’s not an infant, Evvie.’ The hinge in his jaw flexed. ‘No, Philip. Mr Churchill is not a Jew.’

  ‘Mr Feldman our baker is a Jew.’

  ‘Yes …’ Geoffrey nodded gravely. ‘Mr Feldman our baker is a Jew.’

  ‘Does he have much gold?’

  ‘Not much, I shouldn’t think.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, then, isn’t it?’

  Geoffrey motioned him on his way. ‘Yes, nothing to worry about there, old bean.’

  7

  That spring, the news spread like Spanish flu through the Grammar: Hitler had chosen the Royal Pavilion for his English HQ.

  Although no boy could say which boy had actually heard the broadcast, word had it that Lord Haw-Haw had made the announcement himself. It was the most thrilling news of the war so far.

  Like its neighbour Park Crescent, Hanover Crescent was an elegant anomaly in the jumble of Brighton housing. Its Georgian townhouses were compositions of pilasters, pediments, arches, bow-fronts and balconies. Its position overlooking The Level declared it a place of privilege and privacy, and Orson’s house, Philip discovered, was even quieter than his own because Orson’s brother, Hal, was off being a hero in the war, and Ivy the housekeeper never seemed to speak, and Orson’s parents were old and so rarely seen in his house that Orson sometimes seemed like an orphan.

  That day after school, he asked Philip if he wanted to know a secret.

  Orson was nearly two years older than Philip. While most boys from the Grammar walked home every afternoon to Hove, these two both de
scended the hill to Brighton, and Orson seemed not to mind if they walked together, with Philip pushing his bicycle, even though he was only eight. But that spring day, out of the blue, something happened. Orson said, ‘Come over to mine.’

  *

  Upstairs in Orson’s room, Orson was on the rug on all fours with his head under the bed where even Ivy wasn’t allowed to look, he said. As he eased the secret out from under the bed, Philip’s jaw went slack.

  Orson said he’d made it himself from a second-hand inductor, a crystal detector, and plates he’d stolen from his deaf grandmother’s set. ‘It even picks up Radio Bremen.’

  ‘Lord Haw-Haw …’ said Philip.

  Orson nodded. ‘Lord Haw-Haw.’

  An oatmeal box held the inductor in place. A bit of gauge wire made the connection. In metalwork class, he’d soldered earphone connections to the base. Then he’d strung aerial wire along the picture rail in his bedroom and down the outside wall, where he fixed it to a pipe he’d found at the bottom of Hal’s wardrobe. He’d dug a hole in the ground, packed it with soot, as the science master advised, then plunged the pipe in, earthing his connection. The case was plywood and parcel string. A semicircle of paper marked the positions of the stations. The tuner was a knob from the dead-specimens cabinet.

  Orson had defied the quiet of his house.

  Sometimes Philip wished he was also two years older and ten years smarter, but that afternoon, he felt only grateful that Orson had entrusted his secret to him. Besides, Orson could always be counted on to have something no one else had: a pen that wrote in invisible ink, a stink bomb for Assembly, a code-cracking book, tin cans on a long string, and now, best of all, a home-made secret wireless through which Lord Haw-Haw would speak.

  ‘With rare honesty, the English Prime Minister revealed his true goals to the world when he declared a war of destruction on Germany. Even neutral observers were surprised at how brutally he rejected the Führer’s peace offer. No one in the past months, years and decades has worked harder at unleashing a European war, with the goal of destroying Germany, than England!’