by Melvyn Bragg
‘There was something about them,’ Sam said, carefully. ‘I think it was that they felt they had a real stake. The sky was the limit. It was their place. It was a new place and they were going to get stuck into it and nothing would stop them.’
‘What stops you?’
‘What I don’t know,’ Sam replied, rather sadly, and Alex regretted his flippancy. ‘What I never learned.’
‘It wouldn’t stop an Aussie. I mean it. They would say – well, that’s the way I am, mate, and too bad if it doesn’t suit the system. The system will have to change. That’s what an Aussie would say. That’s what anybody with gumption would say after travelling twelve thousand miles to set up a new life. Once you set off to start a new life – why should you rest until you’ve got the new life you want? The whole point is that you’ve cut yourself off from your old life, from everything about the old life, all the good stuff as well as all the bad stuff, all the tradition that’s been hard won as well as all the inheritance that crushes the life out of you – you start again on a continent so big you could tuck England in a corner of it and never stumble across it again. You can be God. You can make your own life the way you want it. Out of Egypt!’
Alex stopped. He had been carried away – not something he cared for in others and a lack of control he positively detested in himself.
‘I think I’m rather keen on this Australian business,’ he said. ‘We can get there free, which has to be attractive, hasn’t it? Or ten pounds, is it? For all the family?’
Sam nodded. He knew about the assisted passage scheme to Australia. When it had been announced, it seemed almost half the ex-servicemen in the town were going – if not to Australia, then to Canada, New Zealand, Tasmania, anywhere far away, unknown, not England. Sam had never seriously entertained the idea, but Alex’s words set him alight. It was staring him in the face.
‘Quite a lot of the lads are doing it,’ Alex said, burying his singularity. ‘They tend, to my untutored eye, to be some of the boldest and best of our crop. Or maybe just want to run away from it all. You know? Live to fight another day. Slough off the old skin of corrupt old Europe. Fresh fields, Sam. How about you?’
‘I’d have to think about it.’
He was too overwhelmed with the prospect to let any of it slip away in unprepared conversation.
‘Thinking slows you down,’ said Alex, looking north towards what for so long had been enemy territory. ‘I should know. I fear I may have exhausted the Australian in myself by thinking. Or maybe thinking was enough. Still I intend to make the first moves next week.’
‘Soon as that?’
Sam felt a pang of prospective regret. They had just met again after months apart. He had just begun the usual rather lengthy business of letting Alex have as much rope as he pleased before attempting to haul him in to some point on which he needed illumination. He would miss that.
‘Maybe I’m dignifying the whole thing,’ said Alex. ‘Or romanticising, an old Northern fault. Maybe it is just running away.’
‘There’s a time for that,’ Sam replied. ‘Often enough you have to run away—’
‘To fight another day.’
‘We did.’
‘We did.’ Alex plucked out a cigarette from his packet and offered it to Sam. Again he lit both. Tt’s over though, isn’t it, surely, war? The bomb’s done for it, don’t you think?’
Sam took his time.
‘Not as long as there’s something to be gained by it.’
‘Who wins when atom bombs wipe everybody out?’
‘I remember those Japs charging at us covered all over in hand grenades. They knew they were going to blow themselves up. Didn’t stop them.’
‘War is madness, yes. Made by bad men. Hitler certainly. Mussolini. Tojo.’
‘Tojo was a fanatic,’ Sam said. ‘Isn’t there a difference?’
‘It’s a fine line,’ Alex laughed. ‘I’m damned if I can draw it. You’ll have to consult a philosopher, Sam. But one thing is for sure – since those poor shivering Romans were stationed on this wall, war hasn’t changed a lot. Sieges? Look at Stalingrad and Kohima. Lines of battle? Well, look at the trenches and we were forever drawing lines in Burma, weren’t we? Rivers were our lines. Bigger armies? Grant you that. And more of the population involved. Long-range weapons -guns and bombs – that’s probably the only big difference. The fellows on these walls knew that all this equipment was just an introduction to the real business of hand to hand. That’s changed.’
‘Not in Burma it hadn’t.’
‘I realised that the moment the words came out of my mouth.’ Alex looked directly into his former corporal’s hard blue eyes and turned away.
‘I never thanked you enough for that,’ he said.
‘It was over in a second. The whole thing was a shambles.’
‘I still see the little bugger and his bayonet. I froze. I still wake up in a sweat. I’d had it. Yes.’ He paused. ‘Thanks for that.’
‘It was a shambles. So where do you find out about this Australian caper?’
Alex told him. Sam made a note.
The band struck up again.
‘The Last Waltz,’ said Alex. ‘Mustn’t keep our public waiting.’ After a final dainty drag on his cigarette, he threw it over the ramparts and accompanied Sam down the deep stone steps and onto the parade ground for the end of the Reunion.
It was Doug who started it all but nobody would admit that. Doug had never been easy. Sam and he had eyeballed each other several times in Burma before the fight which had seen Sam busted, but after that Doug had quietened down and taken Sam’s orders.
The problem Doug had was that deep in his gut and his whole being was the imperative to disobey. If anyone said, do this! -especially a command – then Doug’s immediate responses were either, no, or why pick on me? Or a torrent of foul and abusive language. He was also a compulsive thief, second nature, no hard feelings and often of objects he had no use for and could not turn over. In the small town almost smack on the line of the English-Scottish Border in which he had been brought up – ‘dragged up more like,’ he boasted – he was feared when sober and best avoided when drunk, which was as often as he could lay his hands on cash. He had spent much of his training in the glasshouse for offences that several times threatened his ejection from the army, but they had held on to him and, as time went on, he held on to the regiment. He had not the slightest hesitation in going for his awesome Gurkha knife if anyone outside the regiment whispered a syllable of criticism of it. After their dust-up and when eventually Sam got his stripes back, he was asked whether he wanted Doug in his section. There was no question – you wanted Doug on your side.
Doug bought a loaf of bread. In fact he bought two rather stale end-of-the-day loaves, but the first one he tore through and wolfed down to soak up some of the beer. Most of that particular gang which had roared out of the castle and into the town were well-oiled. Sam’s section was much in evidence: not only Doug but Titch (well over six feet tall), who had been with them during the last fifteen months of the war, and Spud (because his face looked like one), whose passion had been for cheroots. Alex had slid off towards the cathedral. ‘Never miss an opportunity to see medieval misericords,’ he had said as he had woven off into the Close. Sam had thought to follow him, but felt embarrassed to intrude and anyway what did he know and therefore care about medieval misericords and by that time the tide had carried him forward. They were headed for the town centre with its old cross and medieval town hall and the streets were still quite busy, late-afternoon shoppers and strollers and those with nowhere in particular to go and no money to spend.
Doug passed the loaf to the next man who had asked for a bite. But he passed it as if he were passing a rugby ball. That simple flick of the wrist went through the unit like an electric current. He in turn passed it to the next man, who broke into a run, dummied a smiling shopper and then passed on along what had developed into a line. And on to the next man, who was forced well into
the road and swerved round a car before racing ahead past the august Crown and Mitre Hotel, lodging of judges for the Assizes and host to the gentry, and into the town centre where a large triangular patch of traffic-free pavement became, for a few minutes, a miniature rugby pitch. Two sides emerged and the game was on.
The tackles gave no quarter and the men crunched to the hard ground. The beer cushioned the bruises and whipped up the excitement. They yelled for the ball, the loaf, skidded, slipped and one or two could really play, dummied, scissored, forced their way over the line. The pedestrians scattered about good-naturedly and soon there was a small, cheering, clapping crowd and one policeman scratching his head – held back from a policing decision by his own interest in the match.
When it spread beyond the triangular patch it was clear that someone had to call a halt but no one wanted to. Sam, carrying an injured shoulder which he had collected in the road and which would stiffen up badly in the morning, was far too involved to care and yet someone must have sensed that they were turning into a riot because the game slowed down, the men looked up and saw a bus driver laughing at them but banging on his horn to get through and, in the other direction, almost half a dozen cars waiting, patiently enough, but waiting.
Scenting danger, Doug put two fingers in his mouth and let out a whistle which could have been heard back at the castle.
‘Opening time!’
He led them across to the Crown and Mitre.
The loaf of bread, or what was left of it, lay in the gutter only for moments before stray dogs found it.
To the rear of the Crown and Mitre was a public bar, usually approached by the back entrance. It was the hotel’s concession to the populace. For the Crown and Mitre, site of smart dinners and lavish coming-out parties, watering-hole of the county set and as liveried, embossed and enslaved in hotel pomp and ceremony as any grand hotel in the land, made it plain from scarlet doormen to a cute capped bellboy that this was not the place for the hoi poloi. The hoi poloi agreed.
Doug decided on the direct assault.
The doorman was about to offer a protest and then he caught Doug’s eye and decided to concentrate on his feet as more than a dozen dishevelled men, who had been tidily dressed and sober citizens at the beginning of the day, walked in a well-behaved manner through the majestic lobby – portraits of judges, Lakeland landscapes, a wide burnished-oak staircase and an acreage of faded but still impressive maroon deep-piled carpet – conscious of being out of place but happy with the lark. Doug began to sing, ‘See what the boys in the back room will have and tell them to bring me the same’, and two or three others who had also seen the Marlene Dietrich film joined in, which was probably a mistake as it attracted the attention of those in the hushed tea room who would have been oblivious to them but now looked up and saw what they feared might be the Peasants’ Revolt.
The men packed out the small, ill-furnished bar. The drinks rolled in, the stories unwound, the singing was just getting properly under way when three policemen arrived and took down everyone’s name with much licking of the stubs of pencil.
Two weeks later they were fined, one pound.
Disorderly conduct.
The magistrate said he was being lenient because of the service these men had given to their country but they had to be reminded that they were now part of a civilian population in a peaceful country. He had been much impressed by the statement from Colonel Oliphant: otherwise the fine would have been far heavier.
It was a story Sam liked to tell over. He did not mind seeing his name in the papers in such gallant company and Grace’s displeasure was, privately, enjoyed.
With growing eagerness, he was looking through the material on Australia, its newness, the sun.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The squatters came to Scott’s Yard in the half light and by the morning the boards had been ripped down, meagre furniture moved in and the smoke from the chimney confirmed defiant possession. There were four children in the family and they were soon in the small inner yard and in and out of the lavatory. Bella was frightened and retreated inside her house.
When Joe went through the yard on his way to school, the squatters’ children stopped what they were doing, stood still and stared. No sound came from them until he had passed by. They treated Ellen in exactly the same way although she smiled and said hello. Sam had left for work before their arrival and when he came back early in the afternoon, the children were gone.
The next morning the two other empty and boarded houses in Scott’s Yard were taken over by squatters, again with large families, again silent and antagonistic.
‘No wonder,’ Sam said. ‘The poor beggars have been living like animals for months. No wonder.’
They were from a town almost twenty miles away and they had walked, pushing their goods on an improvised cart, having heard of the Water Street clearance. Over the next two weeks, as Water Street continued to filter up to Brindlefield, squatters struck down the flimsy council boards again and again. By the time the first batch of Water Street families – sixteen – had all moved and a halt was called until the next lot of houses was finished, they had been replaced and although the squatters were in a minority in the street, they were a world unto their own – outlawed, resentful, fearful that they would be thrown out.
Ellen was tormented by her reaction. She wanted to see everyone as nice, decent people, all with something to be said in their favour except in the most extreme cases. Here, though, she could not force down her alarm and her dislike. She disliked her new neighbours in Scott’s Yard – all of them, parents and children both. It was not uncommon for people to be careless over cleanliness, but the squatters had a matted-haired, grime-ingrained-clothing, dirt-caked-limbed filth which it needed only water to remove. Nor did they ever yield to a friendly greeting. Silent animosity was their trademark.
Ellen had a new sense – which she fought, but unsuccessfully -that nothing was safe, that houses should be locked. The door of the lavatory was broken but it was no use trying to find the culprit, although it was obvious that the blame lay with the new families. Being themselves unsettled, they seemed to be hell-bent on unsettling others. Ellen felt the unaccustomed and disconcerting beat of envy -against her and Joe and Sam because of their Teal’ home, and Sam’s good job. The squatters themselves cut turf down on the moss.
Ellen could not deal with this corrosive envy. She had been fashioned by her anonymous ordinariness, her normality. She had shaped herself to that as a sapling is shaped straight being lashed to a pole. It disturbed her that she should be envied because that made her someone who stood out, which she had never wanted. How could she stand out, be superior even, be exposed as having advantages? She, who in her heart had grounded her life in the religion of her unyielding ordinariness, in having ‘nothing, like everybody else. Being exposed put her in some sort of danger which she could neither fathom nor articulate but only feel. She had always known where she stood, where she was. The squatters had upset all that, broken that compact between her self and the outside world.
The other almost shameful cause of her unease, which she could only half-admit even to herself but knew it and fought it and lost, was that they were strangers. It was culpably intolerant, but one of the things that had helped her survive her childhood lack of parents, which even now she could remember only with pain, had been to see the town and the people in it as the familiar security. Grace was rather cold, Leonard now and then full of rather uneasy play but much more often aloof, about his own business, taking his cue from Grace. But the town was always there. The town for Ellen was a secret addiction, a need, only revealed when it seemed in danger of being removed. Now that Water Street, her part of it, had become a foreign place, she wanted more each day to live in that big old house, secure in the cobbled yard, planted deep in the town.
Yes, said Leonard, when he saw her, it’s still on the market.
She contrived to go and look at it, even just a quick furtive glimpse, on mo
st days, as the weight of the squatters turned her hope into a lust for the place. It was terrible: she could think of nothing else.
Australia dominated Sam. He saw the beaches, he could smell the ocean, he breathed widely into that vast space, already he loved the sun and wanted to do battle with a new life in a country which could be his as England, he feared, would never be. If he felt more free, more energetic and full of greater hope just thinking about it – how much more was there to win by going there!
It would be action. It would be taking his life in his own hands and risking it for himself and for Ellen and Joe.
He recognised, after Alex had lit the blue touchpaper, that the Australian move had something of the same initial liberation about it he had felt on joining the army.
He wanted it so badly that he kept it from Ellen, hoarding it, guarding it, feeding it, waiting until it was ready and the moment was ripe.
Yet it was difficult not to talk about it to someone. He had biked through to Aikhead to see Alex but the schoolteacher had been out and the family he lodged with, a retired solicitor and his wife, had been a little supercilious, enough to deter Sam from a second visit. He would surely see him on the streets of Wigton at the weekend. But Alex failed to show on the Saturday afternoon when, he had told Sam at the Reunion, he sometimes came in for a game of billiards. Sam hung around the streets for almost an hour.
Mr Kneale spotted him and invited him back for tea. The younger man found it impossible to turn down the invitation even though the prospect rather depressed him. It was like a command. A social command but still a command and Sam responded obediently even though he had sworn that after the war he would be done with commands. He knew what Mr Kneale wanted and was not surprised when, after Alison, a new young girl Grace had taken on part-time, had brought them tea, the schoolteacher pulled out a notepad.
‘I have a list here of several – not all – of the Wigton men who returned from Burma,’ Mr Kneale announced, raising a large round teacup which almost obscured his small round face. His little finger stiffened upwards to attention as the cup met the mouth. ‘Some of them are in quite a bad way as you know. Poor Mr Donnolly’s consumption – they’ve put him in a bed on stilts so that he can see out of the window – the boys play football in the field. And Jackie you know about. Gilbert Little tells me