The Soldier's Return

by Melvyn Bragg

  Ian’s reputation had stabilised after he’d first seen action. He did not flinch. When bayonets were fixed and they went into a direct assault, he was not found wanting, and that was noted. Noted, too, was the way his willingness to be helpful extended to anyone in the section who would let him. His gossipy, rather mothering talk became mocked only lightly. He survived further actions in which his courage had been fully tested. One image which remained with Sam was of Ian’s bayoneting a Japanese soldier with such force that the bayonet when pulled out was bent almost at a right angle.

  Everybody in turn became fond of Ian and new recruits to the section who tried to grease their initiation by making game of the boy were given short shrift. Especially by Sam.

  His death had been hard to bear. It was still hard to bear. As he went to face Ian’s parents, the wound at the loss of his friend opened once more.

  The last few miles ran alongside the dunes. The tall marram grasses waved like corn in the wind from the sea. The tide was well out, Scotland within touching distance, and it was easy to imagine why so many armies over the centuries had been beguiled into thinking they could march across to the enemy’s flank. For four hundred years, these flatlands had been a war zone.

  Allonby was quite busy, but the greyness of the day had kept away the big crowds. He asked for precise directions at the Tea Rooms. The house of Ian’s parents turned out to be one of a small terrace built right against the dunes so that it appeared almost as a defence wall against the sea. Number Five.

  He leaned his bike against the wall, steadied himself and knocked briskly.

  He was welcomed. The kettle was put on. The daughter who still lived at home busied herself laying the table. Ian’s father and mother gave him their full attention. His letter was mentioned but no reason was given for the failure to reply.

  Sam found it difficult to speak and he was grateful that Mrs Bell took the lead and talked about this and that. He was shocked at how closely she resembled Ian, or vice versa, he thought, would be more accurate. The same loose, rather gangly build. The same very white skin and deep brown hair, in Mrs Bell’s case parted in the middle and drawn back though not as elaborately as Grace’s hair.

  Most uncannily, there were the same mannerisms. The arching of her right hand when she was explaining something was so precisely like Ian’s gesture that for a moment Sam stared at the hand as if mesmerised, as if Ian himself, somehow, had re-entered the room. And her tone, her choice of words, her phrasing – it was all Ian.

  The room itself – he had been ushered into the parlour – was burnished. No speck of dust dared settle, no untidy wrinkle found a home. This, thought Sam, was Ian’s school of fussiness. His heavily framed photograph had pride of place. Sam tried not to look at it. It was Ian in his new uniform, soon after he had joined the regiment.

  Mr Bell was shorter than his wife. Though she was dressed as if anticipating visitors, he was more relaxed, a brass stud on the top of his collarless shirt, a waistcoat but no jacket and no attempt to put it on, despite his wife’s unequivocal stare. He watched Sam very closely but said enough to be sociable.

  Over tea, very awkwardly, but that was appropriate, Sam told them what a good soldier Ian had been. He told them how much he had talked about his family and how much he cared about them and missed them. He told them that Ian was brave and popular and helped others when they needed it. And finally he confirmed what he had written in his letter, that Ian had been shot by a sniper, an unexpected, instant death. ‘He can’t have felt a thing,’ Sam concluded, and the silence was like a prayer. It was broken only when Mrs Bell quietly left the room.

  They finished their tea.

  ‘I’ll get a bit of air with you.’ Mr Bell pulled on his jacket and screwed a hat on to his balding head.

  They talked a little, Sam wheeling the bike. Once through the small village, Mr Bell swung away on to one of the many narrow, hard-packed tracks which led into the dunes. Sam had no option but to follow him.

  They stood side by side on a tiny hill of sand, Sam holding his bike beside him, Mr Bell looking intently across the water to Scotland. He offered Sam a Woodbine and the two men lit up.

  ‘I was in the First War,’ the older man said, ‘with the medical lads. I told the recruitment I wasn’t going to kill anybody, but I wasn’t going to let them think I was frightened either. Our job was to go into no-man’s land and bring back what was left to our own trenches.’

  He spoke unemotionally. They were isolated on the dune. The tide had turned and was racing in with treacherous speed. He paused before continuing. ‘You’ve never seen such messes. You can’t imagine. What can be done to a man, especially to his face. You get used to heaving up. I didn’t eat the morning of an attack. It was just a waste.’ He paused again. ‘So you see, Sam, you can tell me exactly what did happen to our Ian.’

  He did not turn around to look at the younger man.

  Sam, already tired by the strain of meeting Ian’s parents, was jolted by his intuition. He collected himself. The wind appeared to pick up. Its moan grew louder in the telephone wires on the road just behind them.

  ‘It was a fine day,’ he began, ‘and we were in a safe clearing. Hundreds of us,’ and the large clearing in Burma was as visible as the beach before him. ‘We were in no sort of danger. We’d been through a bad patch but the Japs had pulled right back. We were checking on our equipment and making good what had been damaged and resting up – you’ll know about that. You know how tidy Ian was. Well—’

  Sam had been no more than three or four feet away from Ian. Other men from the section were strewn around almost as near, oiling their rifles, polishing the bayonets, repairing the ravages of combat. Close beyond them were scores of others about the same business.

  ‘It was a good time. The Japs were nowhere near. We were on a sort of break. For a day or two, maybe more.’

  Ian. He could remember every moment. Ian had been smiling, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, his equipment laid neatly around him. He wore that rather balmy, contented expression which Sam had come to like – Ian’s off again, he would say to himself, off into a world of his own. Ian had caught Sam’s smile and understood, fully, its meaning and thrown him the pack of cigarettes as a sort of acknowledgement. Then he went back to his dreaming and his fastidious cleaning.

  ‘I can see it now. He was cleaning a grenade. I’ll never know why as long as I live.’ Sam swallowed. His throat was dry. ‘He pulled the pin before removing the fuse. What was he thinking? So,’ Sam paused, ‘he had a count of five before it blew up.’

  That look. Sam could not, would not want to forget that look. For both had known, instantaneously, that there was nowhere to throw the grenade without killing some of the others. There was nowhere at all to throw it. Ian’s look had been of wonder and then, this was scored on Sam’s mind although he could scarcely credit it, Ian had smiled, gently, sweetly, like he did sometimes and he had tried to say something before he violently twisted himself over and flattened himself on to the grenade, taking the full weight of the blast into his own body. He did not die for almost two hours. He had tried so hard to stop himself from crying out. Every so often he said, ‘Sorry’. Sorry! You never walked away from that.

  Somehow, wholly understated, Sam conveyed the essence of that to Mr Bell. The older man took a half-step forward as if hit and his shoulders slumped, his head bent forward as if he were bowing. A spasm, a retch of shock went through him and he wiped his lips. ‘I’ll not tell his mother,’ he said eventually. ‘She can’t fully cope as it is.’

  He indicated he wanted to be alone. Sam left him without a word, wheeling his bike carefully as if afraid he might damage it. When he came to the road, he looked back. The old man stood firm, unbowed now, enduring.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Sam was exhausted. He wanted to sling the bike down, find a level bed of turf and sleep. The growing wind was at his back and it seemed that only the force of its i
nvisible pressure pushed him inland, back home. If he had hoped that the meeting with Ian’s parents would help relieve him of another burden, he had been wrong. Talking to Ian’s father had not helped. Ian had been resurrected.

  It was as well the roads were all but empty of traffic as Sam slowly swayed and zig-zagged. He even got off for the small hills and pushed the bike up the inclines with difficulty. The weariness drenched him. He knew about weariness. He knew about exhaustion. He knew, as well, about how you fought them. But this had ambushed him. It was worse because it had no physical cause. No long night standing-to. No hacking of routes through jungle. Nothing but tea and talk.

  Slow as his pace was, the Venetian tower rose before him too soon. Whatever it was that had a grip on him, he wanted to nurse it. Ian, whom he had tried to dam out of his mind, now flooded his thoughts. His smile, his gestures, the fling of a handful of tea, the boyish earnestness on his face as he set about a task, the slightly over-large bush hat which made others look like film stars but Ian rather clueless, his pleasure in the phrases ‘what’s cooking?’ and ‘right up my street’, the serene sweet boyishness in sleep: the last hours.

  After Waver Bridge he switched left to go back the longer way, to give himself more time alone. It took him past the cemetery. Beyond the fine wrought-iron gates was the War Memorial to those who had died in the Great War. He got off the bike and stood, looking at it, through the open gates. The evening was cool and grey but beyond the Memorial he saw a few people among the graves, standing still as he was or walking slowly, serving the dead.

  He turned from the Memorial and looked across the darkening town and remembered how he had seen it from the east, so recently, on that first morning back. The fear then that it would suck him in. For the first time he felt a chill, an uncertainty, about Ellen and Joe, about himself, about the world he had come back to. Too much of him did not belong here. Too much of him was still with Ian, and beyond Ian, a darkness that must never be disturbed.

  Ellen was pleased to have the house to herself. When Grace had announced she was going to make some treacle toffee on her return, Joe had leapt out of his Sunday-best boredom. Helping Grace with the treacle toffee had become one of his jobs and for his help he could lick the pan with his finger and later expect a slab of the dark treat. Ellen was glad to see them all go. Grace, Leonard, Mr Kneale, Joe, herself – it was too many in that room and everybody had been too polite about it. She wished someone – not herself because that would have been complaining – had said ‘What a crush!’ or ‘How are you going to cope in something this size?’ But they had sat uncomplainingly crammed, had tea and some newly-baked scones, and chatted easily enough and pleasantly enough but Ellen was glad to see them go. Perhaps time would get her used to it.

  For now, she was confused. She did not like the feeling of embarrassment which threatened her. There was nothing to be ashamed of. Who did she think she was, being fussed by a perfectly normal little home for starting off in? Grace was not critical, indeed she passed no single remark which could be misinterpreted. Leonard, a little like Sam, was genuinely blase about such matters. Mr Kneale was more of a problem. He was meticulous in his appreciation and it was he who confused Ellen, because she did not know why it made her want to scream. It was such a disproportionate relief when they went and she tidied up like lightning.

  Then she sat in one of the chairs and took up her magazine and tried and failed to read. Without self-pity she suddenly thought how good it would be one day to have a new chair, a chair no one but her had sat in. She stirred the fire unnecessarily.

  How could she feel so lonely in such a cosy place? With Joe and Sam due back soon, the place ship-shape, warm, her own. She heard some girls in the big yard and smiled as she recognised the skipping song. They were lively enough around here. She would have her work cut out defending the lavatory and that too made her smile as much as grimace. You could not be over-fussy where kids were concerned.

  It was not the place, the place would do. The place was a good start. It was Sam, of course. He was still not hers, not his old self, not easy with himself. He still clashed himself in nightmares and cried and woke up Joe and claimed he never remembered a thing. And when he looked at her sometimes it was as if he looked through her, clean through her, as if she were not there, not there at all, and the chill went to her bones.

  Joe insisted on going back himself and Grace made no fuss. The boy was nearly seven and he had all his wits about him and the way was simple.

  First he ran around Market Hill, his old playground, like a puppy trying to pick up smells. Down to the row of black railings and the stone steps which dropped you into Tenters, along to Minnie’s House which was half on the hill and half below, sniffing for old friends. He thought it would not do to knock on anyone’s door and ask if they could come out to play. Not on a Sunday evening. Not when it was getting dark enough for the street light at the corner to have popped on.

  He gave up his recce and set about mapping his way to his new home. The quickest, most obvious route, was back on to King Street, up past Tickle’s Lane and the bus office and some shops and there was Water Street. He rejected that. He could go to the very end of Market Hill, up the steps next to Henry Sharpe’s field and loop around the lane at the back to come in at the top of Water Street and take it by surprise. Or there was the way which passed the building in which his mother had gone to school – now a warehouse – down past the Temperance Hall, along the back of the Spotted Cow Dairy and the Parish Rooms and then either into a slit in the wall back on to King Street or down past Hudson’s buildings to the wash-houses which flanked one side of Water Street. Joe did not know all the names of these small squares and lanes and runnels and alleyways but games of war and pursuit had made them familiar.

  He chose the longest route and decided that he would clear out the Japs along the way. Every corner was a Ml stop, a careful peer around, a sudden dash and a deadly burst of fire – ‘da-da-da-da-da-da-da!’ When someone from the adult world suddenly loomed, he would stand still and look at a wall and put his hands in his pockets. At the back of the dairy he decided that there was a mass of Japs and so he scraped up some pebbles for hand-grenades and lobbed them over the wall – ‘Eeow-boom! Eeow-boom! Boom! Boom!’

  There was an exposed dash down a tunnel of an alley which led to the wash-houses and he decided there was nothing for it but to fix his bayonet and run like hell, head down, as he had been told, yelling at the top of his voice fit to scare them to death.

  Some of the Water Street gang were playing around the wash-houses which stood halfway up the slope on the Waste. A few lads were swinging on an old tyre they had rigged up from the only tree. A handful of the bigger boys were huddled together, hidden from Water Street but in clear view of Joe, sharing a hard-gotten Woodbine. Five girls were squatted in a circle, talking away. A small fire burned, unattended. In the dimming light, in the rather steep open space overlooked by high windows now glimmering with candles and paraffin lamps, it looked like the temporary settlement of scavengers. Perhaps it was.

  Joe thrust his hands deeply into his pockets and walked carefully. He was still very much a newcomer. He was aware instantly that his clothes – his best, uniformed for the visitors at afternoon tea – were smarter than those of the other boys. He had had time to learn a few faces only and as yet had made no friends. Most of them went to the Catholic school while he went to the Church of England Primary and that was a schism. He knew enough to walk steadily.

  ‘Richardson!’

  He stopped, abruptly. He looked around in the twilight. No one seemed to claim the voice. He walked on, feeling uneasy.

  ‘Richardson!’

  This time his name was followed by a few sounds, caws, calls, pack sounds meant to unnerve, and they did. He stopped again and looked about him, furtively. What did they want him to do?

  ‘Mammy’s boy!’

  The insult sped out of the semi-darkness and his eyes smarted. Once more the caws and call
s and pack sounds. What he could not have named as fear took its grip. He swallowed to ease the dryness of his throat and moved forward slowly again up the final few yards of the unmade path which would wriggle between two large gloomy buildings and into Water Street.

  ‘Mammy’s boy!’

  He bolted up the final incline, out into the street, swung right and down towards his house as fast as he could go. A scuffle of feet followed him some of the way and then stopped and a few small pebbles flew by, some close.

  But the caws and calls grew louder and they stung his ears and did not stop until he had crashed through the door and into safety.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Coming back.’

  His chest heaved from the pain inside it. His expression was wild. ‘Who was chasing you?’

  ‘Nobody.’

  Ellen went out into the yard and then into the street. A couple of young men were leaning on the wall of the shop, smoking. She knew full well what had happened. She knew where they would be and her anger almost took her there but she paused. Better to talk to Sam. These things could get very tangled. Bottling her vengeance with some difficulty, she went back into the cosy core of her house and found Joe warming his hands before the fire, shivering.