The Soldier's Return

by Melvyn Bragg

  The voice went on and Sam switched off. Could Mr Kneale be someone to seek advice from about Australia? It was no good going to Leonard. He was a little soft on Ellen, Sam knew that well, and he would want to keep her in Wigton. Mr Kneale similarly was keen on Ellen but surely an educated man ought to be capable of a dispassionate view.

  How could he frame the question?

  ‘I’m in touch with the Castle of course and they tell me that there is already at least one book underway on the Campaign. That will be the strategy and tactics of it. I want a more human perspective.’

  Could he ask – ‘What do you think about Australia, Mr Kneale?’ Or would it be better to be more direct. T’ve decided to go to Australia – what do you think?’ Any question would do.

  ‘When first we talked about your experiences,’ Mr Kneale looked grave and behind the tortoiseshell spectacles the eyes softened with the sympathy of a mourner, ‘and I know how painful it can be – but what you said was very graphic, Sam, you have a way of describing the really ordinary Tommy’s point of view and that’s what I’m after with you fellows. So—’

  ‘Some of the lads were thinking of pushing off to Canada,’ said Sam, picking up his cup. The tea was almost cold; he was embarrassed drinking it. ‘Or New Zealand, or even Australia.’ He drank the unappetising liquid, draining the cup in two gulps.

  ‘Wholly mistaken in my view,’ said Mr Kneale, severely. ‘Nothing more than a romantic delusion. You’ll see them haring back faster than they ran away. If they can’t buckle down here, why should they buckle down in Canada – or in Timbuctoo for that matter?’

  Sam nodded and replaced the cup in the saucer, taking inordinate care over this simple action.

  ‘I have to push off soon,’ he said.

  ‘This needn’t take long,’ said Mr Kneale, and that beatific smile for Sam announced a sentence that had to be served. Courtesy was law. He took a clean sheet of paper.

  Sam clenched his mind. No one would be told what had really happened. Not Mr Kneale. Not Ellen, and if he could help it, not even himself. The nightmares were less frequent. As long as he kept busy. Australia would see all that left behind. The sight of those bodies would not follow him there.

  ‘It was the mud was the worst,’ he began, thinking of golden beaches and blue oceans.

  ‘I never approved of Water Street in the first place.’ Grace felt vindicated.

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with Water Street,’ Ellen countered. ‘The squatters have changed it a bit but I‘m sure there’s nothing wrong with the squatters either.’

  ‘Try sending any squatters down here to Market Hill and see what happens,’ said Grace. ‘The band will play, I’ll tell you that. They should be sent back.’

  ‘But they have nowhere.’

  ‘That’s no reason to break into houses and work on public sympathy.’

  Ellen held her tongue. She had not sought out Grace to discuss squatters.

  ‘A11 I said was that I thought the house might suit us.’

  ‘I know you,’ said Grace, triumphing in what she saw as Ellen’s capitulation to reality. ‘You want out of Water Street.’ Grace smiled broadly. They were in her kitchen. It was a Sunday afternoon, but despite that Joe had been encouraged to go out to his old haunts and see if he could find one or two other lax Christian children to play with. His protracted absence indicated success.

  ‘It’s a fine house,’ said Ellen.

  ‘Leonard’s told me all about it’ This was not altogether true but Grace had nosed out a secret pact and would not be seen to be left out. ‘He says there’s a bit of damp.’

  ‘Not much. I’m sure it’s neglect more than anything else.’

  ‘It’s very big.’

  ‘Not as big as this.’

  ‘This is exceptional,’ said Grace. ‘Leonard says it’s gloomy.’ Tt could be made lighter.’

  ‘It’s certainly better than anything Water Street has to offer.’

  There’s nothing wrong, Ellen said to herself, with Water Street, but she said it to herself.

  ‘How will you get the money?’

  ‘Uncle Leonard said it could drop a bit. There’s been very little interest.’

  ‘There’s been none at all. Doesn’t that worry you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It should. Never take tea in an empty cafe. Leonard’s mother told me that.’

  How can I tell her how much I want this place? When it came down to it, Grace was the only one she could talk to on such an emotional and family matter and yet she could not talk to Grace in any way approaching the way she felt. Would a mother have been different? Surely. Surely. And a father? Even more so. Surely. You wouldn’t even have to mention it. They would know. They would understand the real reason. Not a flight from Water Street, much as she still, despite all efforts, disliked her dark, poky, inconvenient and unprepossessing home there – one up one down leading to nowhere. It was a flight to somewhere. To a real future, uninterrupted, with her own place in the town for ever.

  ‘Have you talked to Sam about it?’

  ‘Once.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘He wasn’t that keen.’

  ‘Men know nothing about houses. Somewhere to eat, somewhere to sleep, somebody to cook and wash for them – it could be a palace, it could be a chicken shed, they’d notice no difference. Does the money bother him?’

  ‘That’s part of it.’

  ‘It always is. But that asking price will come down – Leonard says that and I’ll give Leonard this, he knows his Wigton property. But there’s more than that, isn’t there?’

  Grace’s tone softened in that last sentence. Ellen was caught off guard. For a moment she was about to confess everything. Such relief to describe the silences and clashes. The anger at not being able to talk openly even to each other. Neither of them, since Sam’s return, had found it possible to talk about what mattered most to them. The recent past had padlocked the deepest emotions.

  Ellen longed to break that lock.

  ‘Marriage is not a bed of roses,’ said Grace, encouragingly. ‘I could tell you things. Take the lid off this town and you’ll find damnation right left and centre. I could name names. You’ve always been too head-in-the-air. You don’t like to believe the worst. I say the worst is what’s what. I know a couple who’ve never exchanged a word for more than thirty years and there’s others nearly as bad. I know women knocked about and things that would make your eyes pop out of your head even in the highest society, so the ups and downs of married life is not a secret.’

  Ellen knew all that but she did not like to admit it. Even more when it concerned Sam. It would be letting him down. To talk about him truthfully would be to betray him. It was just not possible.

  ‘It isn’t that,’ she said.

  Grace’s face registered disappointment. She had put out a hand, she thought. All that Ellen had to do was offer something up. A little would have done. Nothing at all was almost an insult.

  ‘You can put the kettle on,’ she said. ‘Leonard and Mr Kneale should be back from their little outing about now.’

  The squatters did not bother Joe. This might have been because of a visit to Scott’s Yard the evening of their arrival by Speed and his two older brothers looking for a fight. Joe had been playing with Speed when the notion had come to Al, the eldest brother, now running wild since Jackie’s incarceration and openly threatened with a spell in Borstal. The mother of one of the squatters’ families had bidden her sons into the house. The last thing they wanted was trouble of any sort. But the territorial point had been made. The brothers ran around the yard whooping and yelling for a while to ram it in.

  Perhaps, though, the children of the squatters were just not interested in fighting. They were rowdy and louder than the girls who had previously dominated the yard, yet they were easily called off with one shout from their perpetually angry mother. Certainly Joe walked through the yard with no fear, which was unusual for Joe.

  Bella, th
ough still a problem, was now much subdued. She did feel afraid of the squatters. Their newness and the new crop of jibes and taunts and insults upset her. And she was obsessed with Blackie, now growing rapidly and with every inch claiming just a little less attention from its owner. In order to see Blackie and to hold him and be allowed to cuddle him for a circuit of the tiny yard, she knew that she had to be careful with Joe; and cunning, because Joe could be cruel, she thought.

  Twice already in that week he had refused to bring Blackie out for her to play with. It did not occur to Bella that the boy was in a hurry to be in the house for as quick a bite as possible and out again to be back on the Waste, which had become a real playground. For Joe, in that mood, every minute’s hold-up was unacceptable.

  But when he came back from picking rose-hips with Sadie he felt expansive. Sadie had borrowed his mother’s bike, plonked him on the carrier seat and cycled deep into the Solway Moss to a place she had heard of through the sister of one of the turf cutters. Rose-hips galore, unlike, as Sadie reminded Joe more than once, his sterile outing with Mr Kneale, which showed that schoolteachers did not know everything. Laden with their booty, they came into King Haney’s yard like chieftains bringing tribute and after due weighing and pondering, Sadie came away with four shillings and sixpence and Joe with one shilling and threepence. The money jangled in his pocket and he could not wait to add it to the money he had recently got for his seventh birthday. Leonard had given him a money box in the shape of a pig and he liked to rattle it and hear the coins clink together.

  With money in his pocket and happily weary from the afternoon’s work, he agreed that Bella could hold Blackie and brought him out right away.

  Bella almost swooned to hold on to the pretty little creature. It scratched her neck as she nuzzled it to her but she did not mind and took care to be gentle in her handling. She asked Joe if she could walk around the yard and Joe said yes. He sat on the step and watched. Inside the house his mother was preparing the tea. His Daddy would be back from the football match soon.

  When Bella asked, most humbly, for a second circuit, Joe acquiesced without hesitation. It was so comfortable on that step. The sound of crockery being laid out on the table, his Daddy coming back with news of the game. He had brought out his piggy bank and now and then he put it to his ear and shook it just a little and smiled drowsily at the clink-clink sound.

  And a third circuit was allowed, taken languorously by Bella, swooning over the kitten, rocking as she went, stroking it so lovingly that the purr-purring of the creature expressed a completeness of contentment. When Bella came to the narrow passage beside the lavatory, she stopped and rocked to and fro, crooning a little, a noise without melody but soothing and sensuous, the lumpy, plain, ill-dressed girl made graceful, even attractive in this coupling with the kitten.

  The air was turning chilly. Joe shivered.

  ‘Time’s up now, Bella.’

  Bella took no notice, cradling the furry animal which stuck to her fast.

  ‘Come on Bella. You’ve had three goes round.’

  She looked lazily at the boy but ignored his words, wholly absorbed in her loving of the kitten.

  Joe put the piggy bank inside the front door and went across the yard.

  ‘Give it back, Bella.’

  He held out his hands.

  Still she ignored him.

  He reached out to touch Blackie, to pluck him off her, but Bella swayed around and used her height to stay out of reach and Joe was frustrated.

  ‘I won’t lend him again, Bella.’

  Bella smiled.

  ‘One more go round, Joe. Please, Joe.’

  ‘It’s enough, Bella. Three’s enough.’

  ‘Please, Joe.’

  ‘No. I’m going in now.’

  He held out his arms.

  ‘You can see my bottom, Joe.’ She indicated the lavatory.

  Joe stared at her, the arms still held out.

  ‘You can prick it with a pin if you want to,’ she said.

  Joe was quite suddenly dry in the throat. His widened eyes looked around the empty yard. The door of his house was open.

  ‘I want Blackie back,’ he pleaded.

  Her eyes seemed to mesmerise him and he felt a mild giddiness.

  ‘Come on, Joe.’

  She backed towards the lavatory door, still fondling the kitten. The little boy was immobile as the pillar of salt.

  ‘I want Blackie back.’ Now it was a whimper. ‘Please, Bella.’

  She shook her head slowly swaying and was about to step into the lavatory when Sam turned into the alley.

  ‘I saw them walking down the street,’ said Leonard, as he enjoyed the final cup of tea of the day. ‘They make a handsome couple. You know, I think she’s even bonnier since he’s come back.’

  ‘You’ve always rather exaggerated where Ellen’s concerned,’ said Grace. ‘He’s smartened up, I’ll give you that. The war did wonders for his general appearance.’

  ‘They looked as fine as any couple in Wigton,’ said Leonard. ‘All life before them.’

  ‘We’ll have to be like Mr Asquith and wait and see.’

  ‘They’ll get that house.’ Leonard smiled. ‘I’ll put my money on Ellen for that.’

  ‘Sam might have a say.’

  ‘I’d back Ellen.’ Leonard’s smile softened.

  ‘There might be more going on there than we know about.’

  ‘The squatters turned the balance – that’s what’s new. Mind you, they’re causing complications all round.’

  ‘Where did you see them? Ellen and Sam.’

  ‘Walking down High Street. He must have met her out of Eves’. Lucky Sam, that’s what I thought.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Grace, with unusual gentleness of tone.

  She stood and leaned down to pour out another cup for Leonard and her bosom grazed his face.

  When she sat down, she began to unpin her majestic hair. Leonard quickly took out a cigarette while there was time.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Sam had sought ways to lead up to it but found none. It should have been easy enough. There should have been a casual way to introduce it but since the rift following Ellen’s suggestion that they move house, both of them had trodden carefully. They were polite, they deferred, they were hesitant: an observer might have thought that they were distant cousins, recently reunited. But Sam knew that Ellen was only waiting before launching another attack and Ellen had picked up, in the way intimates do, that Sam was concealing something important.

  He thought of introducing the topic on the Saturday night but Ellen looked so tired and Joe was restless, came down twice. So the opportunity did not arise.

  He decided he would break the news on the Monday. He thought he was prepared for it to be sticky. The truth was that since Alex had planted the idea, it seemed obvious and irresistible. Two weeks had passed and every day had strengthened his faith in this dramatic move. He had no doubts. He saw their future as if written in columns of fire. The word ‘Australia’ made his spirits soar – so much of what had kept him down would be transcended, there was no apprehension, he would be unbound, unbounded, the words free and freedom flanked the name of the distant continent and he could not wait to go.

  ‘But 111 never be able to get back.’

  Ellen’s first reaction made him smile. She was wearing the dark blue buttoned summer dress he liked and, with her hair down, she looked much like the near-girl he had married.

  ‘We can save up.’

  ‘No. They can never afford to come back. I’ve heard them talk about it.’

  ‘I’m talking about going.’ Sam kept his voice light. ‘We can talk about coming back later.’

  ‘No. We can’t. It’s too far, Sam.’

  ‘I want it to be far.’

  ‘Why? What for?’

  Her earnest tone, the stricken look suppressed Sam’s optimism. These questions, so simple but full of such force, checked any easy answer. The excitement
and plans and union of this conversation, imagined so vividly and so often in the past fortnight, collapsed utterly.

  ‘I want to start again.’

  ‘You can start again here.’

  ‘No. I’ve just gone back to much the same thing.’

  ‘Well, find something else.’

  ‘It’ll still be there, won’t it? I’ll still be the same penned-in man.’

  ‘Who’s penning you in?’

  ‘I feel penned in.’

  ‘But somebody must be doing it.’

  ‘Ellen, whatever I do in Wigton, I’ll always be Sam Richardson who left school at fourteen and never got a trade and stuck in a deadend job and,’ he struggled to say what he meant without claiming too much for himself, ‘and that’s all I’ll ever be. However long I live. However hard I work. I’m sorted out and labelled for life here, don’t you see?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must.’

  ‘No.’ Ellen was curt. ‘If you don’t like your job you can change it. What makes you think you can get a better job in Australia?’

  ‘I’m not going for a better job.’

  Ellen waited.

  ‘Although,’ he lifted up the two brochures he had thought they would study together, ‘there do seem to be much better openings over there.’

  ‘That’s just to get you to go.’

  ‘It may very well be.’ He paused only for a moment. ‘But I believe them.’

  ‘It’s a long way to go to make a mistake.’

  ‘It’s new, Ellen. Over there they haven’t got all this that holds us back. I’ve talked about it to other lads who are going – they’re good lads, they’re some of the best lads – and all of us want to get out and find a better life. There’s got to be a better life than what we can have here.’