The Opened Cage

by S. C. Howe

  Tom laid the neatly folded demob suit on the counter.

  ‘Do you know of anyone who could use this?’ he asked. ‘It was new yesterday.’

  The old man looked it over. ‘Yes of course. I’m sure one of the service charities would make use of it. Just out are you?’

  ‘Demobbed yesterday. Back to a farm; my home now.’

  A smile cheered up the man’s worn face. ‘You have a good life, young man.’

  Tom found the lodging house several streets back from the seafront. It looked worn and utilitarian. Hauling himself and his kitbag, heavy with books and his new identity, up several flights of narrowing steps, he opened the door to a single room in the eaves and let his kitbag drop to the floor. Sitting alone in this cheap but surprisingly warm room increased his sense of anxiety and unease, so he went out and drank several pints at an ancient mariner’s inn, in a road back from the seafront, a tavern with gnarled, untreated beams twisting along the ceiling and in its walls. By mid-evening, he had wandered back to his lodgings, muddle-headed, but mercifully calm. A couple of women propositioned him from glowing doorways in back streets but he walked past, head down against the sleet, pretending he hadn’t heard. The warmth of his room against its rather spartan décor again surprised him, until he saw the radiator on the wall by the bed. The bed was freshly made with clean blankets, and for the first time in months, he stripped off and sank down, breathing in the cleanness of the sheets, as though it was the most beautiful scent known. Stretching out his limbs between the sheets, a longed-for peace began to settle over him. A peace, and just a thread of sexual well-being, like a whisper, danced lightly through his lower abdomen and into his groin. He lay on his back, stretched out. Rain pattered on the uncurtained skylight and the rain actually sounded comforting, no longer a thing of misery. Then it stopped and stars came out. He saw how the raindrops froze into intricate patterns. It was as though urban life was being silenced under this creeping blanket of frost. Pulling the blankets over his head, he felt the hot air coming out of the radiator by the bed, felt his eyes close...and falling into sleep, let go...

  Then he was dreaming of being on a thin bridge of matting that was inches above a wide stretch of black, icy water. He was in khaki. The water was still, its surface shining like tar under a vast, starless sky, and someone, a man, was forcing him to walk over the bridge, whispering threats into his ear which he could not quite make out. He wanted to get down on his hands and knees and crawl along inch by inch, grasp hold of the matting because the bridge was starting to tip like a see-saw. As he crouched he felt a rifle butt thump into his back. He stared into the water. It was impenetrable, like stippled jet, but underneath he knew there were undercurrents and a bottomless depth, and in it seethed the thousands of dead, who floated towards him holding their arms out in front as though they were blind. To get away from his attacker he needed to jump in, or carry on along the bridge. The bridge matting started to fray and, in desperation, he turned round and tried to catch hold of his persecutor who stepped back. Roger Deerman smirked at him. Looking back at the water, Tom plunged in and thudded to the bottom, turned and lay on his back, staring up into blackness as the sightless bodies of the deep floated over him, their arms and hands like tentacles wrapping around him, gently undressing him until he lay, naked and exposed. Then the only hands were those of Roger Deerman who shamelessly explored his body, and he lay still, allowing it. He lurched awake and sat up, streaming with sweat and threw the bedclothes aside, trying to slow his thudding heart, trying to slow his breathing, wishing he had brought some alcohol back with him. As the sweat chilled him, he pulled the bedclothes over him, and, consciously thinking of summer’s lanes, of bird song on early spring evenings, he finally fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  The next morning he dragged his kitbag into a standard compartment at Paddington Station. Tom travelled second class, despite Joss insisting he go first as he had refused the offer of the family car meeting him at Worcester. Tom suggested that he should go straight to the farm and get it running, and that Joss should follow on. In truth, the thought of the echoing efficiency of Woodham Hall jangled on his nerves, and he did not want to bump into Roger Deerman. So now, he sat in the compartment watching the countryside emerge from the suburbs. Its greenness startled him, even now with only the most stubborn cinnamon-coloured leaves clinging to trees, the world looked absurdly and wonderfully abundant. There were an unbelievable number of greens: the deep green of pastures; the yellowing green of last summer’s fallen swathes alongside the tracks; the rushy bottle-green of moor-like ground, all lit from under a gun-metal grey sky, browning with rain clouds. He looked at the bracken going back into the earth to certain re-emergence in spring. He sat back, shook his head slightly at the thought, the marvellous promise. Saw all the yellows, cinnamons, reds and russets of this beautiful autumn, and it was as though nature was burying the previous years’ fear and hopelessness, taking it all back to her heart to give it a rebirth from that depth which no-one should have seen; exposed, hacked and blown away in France.

  The train drew to a slow clanking stop at the halt above Heathend Farm, which was in pitch black. Only Tom alighted, with difficulty, bumping his kitbag down the step after him. Before getting off he had checked his pocket watch – five past eight in the evening, right on time. The train drew off into the misty night, and he watched the lights disappear round the bend in the track.

  ‘Good-evening Mr Fielder,’ a voice came from out of the gloom. Tom swung round as a large figure stepped out of a close of trees nearby with a dog wearing a cape. Throwing his kitbag down, he embraced Joss, who was laughing, with...what? It was meant to be mirth – he had been planning this coup for days – but dragging Tom to him, the mirth changed to tears, became all mixed up and confused, and he spluttered into Tom’s shoulders. Tom was repeating, ‘How did you know? How did you know the train time?’, but actually not caring one bit as he clung to Joss. Nico was barking, and, at last, Tom sat down by the dog on the edge of an upturned wooden box which served as the only furniture at the halt; his head was swimming. Joss stood in front of him.

  ‘As though I would let you come back without a welcome,’ Joss said, then quickly shifted his foot. It was clear his left foot was still hurting him.

  ‘How did you know which train I was going to be on?’ Tom repeated as they started walking down the track to the farm. Joss had even remembered to bring a wheelbarrow for Tom’s luggage.

  ‘Looks rather good doesn’t it?’ Joss exclaimed and Tom knew he was grinning in this pitch dark. ‘Oh all right then, we’ve had a few walks up here, not many as the train only stops here a few times.’

  ‘You can also request it to stop. Joss, you could have been walking up and down for hours.’

  ‘So what? I had to meet you.’

  They walked down the sandy track arched over by the filigree of branches and twigs, past tall oaks disappearing above them, their breath smoking in the cold as they talked and laughed. Joss walked with a moderate limp. They had written to each other plainly about Joss’s injuries, and he had been direct and unsentimental about the damage to his left side and foot. For now, all Tom wanted to know was that Joss was there, that they had survived, and that the farm, and their joined future, was coming to meet them with every step they took along the track.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Joss took his greatcoat from him, as would a waiter at a top grade hotel, in the porch of the farmhouse.

  Tom looked up at it. ‘Was this here before?’ he asked, and was surprised at his lack of memory. But then he had only seen it once. Only once?

  ‘No, it’s new. Thought it was a good idea in case of rain.’

  ‘That’s a fine idea.’

  ‘I did write to ask if you agreed, you know,’ said Joss pushing the front door into a warm, golden interior.

  Tom would have said, ‘When I read your letters, it was you that mattered, the fact you were getting better, that you w
ere all right’, but instead gasped in amazement. From the old, rather dull interior of his first visit had metamorphosed a warm, honey-lit room. A big range was now inside the cavernous inglenook and on top of it, various kettles and pans wheezed and steamed. There was a large sofa along one side and two high backed chairs on the other and between them a rich coloured rug of mighty size.

  ‘Look!’ said Joss, jumping towards a tap on the side of the range. ‘Constant hot water!’ Tom arched his eyes. ‘I asked the plumbers to devise something to pump it through to meet up with a boiler in this range. And they did!’ He was beaming like a child, waving his hands in his old way when he was overwrought. ‘We’ll never be cold or dirty again.’

  Tom wanted to lurch over to him and hold him, this childish enthusiasm moving him more than any tears or long words. Looking over to a long deal table, he saw a feast set out.

  ‘I had the cook at Woodham show me how to make cakes and things,’ Joss said. There was an undeniable pride in his voice. ‘She said I was rather a good pupil.’ It was something he had been pleased with himself over, getting Cook at Woodham to give him basic lessons in food preparation, and she had appeared happy to coach him. It had taken a time with several episodes of eggs skittering along tables and floors, of mixes flying high in the air from too vigorous a whisking, and pastry mixes being peeled off his large, clumsy hands when too much milk and then flour had been applied. Yet somehow, the cook, a woman of later middle age who came up to Joss’s shoulder, had trained him in the basic recipes. Mrs Deerman had peered in on occasion. In the early days she had cooed exuberantly at the sponge cakes with sunken sodden middles; at chewy braising steaks swimming in thin gravies; at the crunchy, partly-cooked vegetables, prepared when the cook was out and he was determined to ‘have a go’, until trying his meals was no longer something of a chore but actually rather enjoyable. And she admired that this strapping young man didn’t care that anyone saw him cooking cakes and puddings, as though it was the most usual thing in the world. Mr Deerman had joined her at the doorway of the kitchens on a few occasions and watched his son whisking something with gusto and then pouring it out into trays. Nothing surprised him about John. From the shock of being told he was going to become a father again in his early fifties, to the birth of the little chap one May morning, Mr Deerman had always felt this child was going to be different to the rest of his children.

  Nothing had to be expected of John, and so no-one tried to influence him. Consequently, he had toddled around then walked, with the easiness of a partly tamed bird, free to fly and to alight wherever he wanted. Mr Deerman had tried not to laugh too openly when it became obvious this youngest child was more interested in getting into puddles or digging holes in flower borders than being dressed up to meet his wider family. Mr Deerman was the eldest of four brothers and had felt the responsibility of his position weigh heavily on him throughout his years. To have a child who was so blithe and, dare he say, so irresponsible, was something of a boon to him. He remembered how, as a small boy, John would appear at his study door dragging a small branch, a large flower, a feather or muddy stone to show him, and how he would feign interest in these eccentric gifts and be given the gift of a beaming, dimpled smile. John’s nanny would always follow, dishevelled and all apologies, but Mr Deerman would smile up, say it was a pleasure to meet ‘the little fellow and his recent acquisitions’. John would then take the hand of his nanny and be led back to the nursery, chattering away and gazing up at her. As he had grown into adolescence, John had become quieter and restrained, as though he was always keeping something hidden, something protected from them all. At eighteen he had gone to London and to a life his father had not known anything about, only that Joss had become more withdrawn, sullen even, when he had visited, and the word ‘stranded’ had come into Mr Deerman’s mind. But it was now like seeing the enthusiastic child he had once been. A farming life wasn’t what he had had in mind for any of his offspring, but to see John focussed on something, and so enthusiastically involved, had assuaged some of his worries over his son’s eccentric choices in life. Some of the others he merely chose to ignore.

  And so to late 1918, and Tom staring at the food-laden table. Nico was also staring at it, hopefully.

  ‘Before you eat, a warming drink,’ said Joss going to a pan to one side of the range. ‘Hot porter,’ he announced, holding out a steaming tankard to Tom. Joss had kicked off his boots and socks on entering the room and worked his left foot, which had two of the toes missing on the left with an area of loss to the side of the foot. Tom stared at it, in spite of himself.

  ‘You’ve lost your toes,’ he murmured.

  ‘I left them somewhere at the Front,’ said Joss.

  ‘Bloody hell, Joss. Why didn’t you say?’

  Joss shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘You’ve been very stoical about it,’ Tom said.

  ‘The very fact we are standing here talking to each other is the reason I don’t mind.’

  Tom nodded.

  ‘Hence I have a rather strange gait–’

  ‘It’s hardly noticeable–’

  ‘And I have an odd cavern on my left side,’ Joss continued. ‘Here, look.’ He pulled up his shirt and jumper, and Tom stared at the large puckered, white scar around a depression in his side. Tom fingered it, felt the skin clench involuntarily.

  ‘You poor sod.’

  ‘There’s nothing poor about me.’

  ‘The sergeant told me about how you threw yourself on me, to save my life,’ Tom whispered. ‘I can’t repay you for that.’

  Joss held him out from him to look in his face. ‘There’s no debt. So no more talk like that. Understood?’

  Tom looked up, nodded, unable just then to speak.

  Joss picked up his tankard of mulled wine. ‘To us,’ he toasted.

  ‘To us.’

  Tom sat draining the tankard, trying to feel what he was expecting to feel. For months, anxiety had bound him rigid, and with that the expectation of death in the next moment, but now all that was gone and it felt as if the tight strapping of fear had sprung apart and he was left with bits of himself to reconfigure. Looking around the room, he kept saying, ‘I don’t believe it.’ He blinked, shut his eyes then opened them again. And this new world of Joss, of their life together, of this farm and its promise was still there.

  Joss looked at him affectionately. ‘Is it all a bit too unreal, too changed?’ he asked. Tom nodded. Joss gave a smile. ‘I know exactly how you feel,’ he whispered. ‘So let’s eat and go to bed.’

  Tom came to the next morning, surprised at how comfortable and warm he was, and how big the bed he woke in seemed. For months, he had been curled up in the side of the trench or, at best, in a narrow single bed. He craned up and looked around a bedroom with thick curtains still drawn and a small fire glowing in the grate.

  Remembering where he was, he sat up, looked down at his clean pyjamas and then around for signs of Joss. The other side of the bed had clearly been slept in as the sheets were rumpled and the pillow dipped, but when he stretched his hand out, they were cool. Yawning, he focussed on his watch. It was nearly midday. He bolted out of bed, convinced he had missed a fatigue or duty, but then he settled back in and realised that it was all over. The war and his ordeal had stopped; not finished, just stopped. The trace of anxiety drifted through him and he shuddered. To hell with that. But just to make sure nothing broke the truce he started to think in evens, clamped down on it immediately. No, this had to stop. Bartering, placating, it really had to stop. He remembered how the whining insistent voice had plagued him as they waited for 11 a.m. on Armistice Day. And how appalling the result if he had acted upon it.

  Drawing back the curtains, he looked out with astonishment at the scene before him. When he had last seen it, the courtyard was weed-covered with the traces of cobbles poking out. Now it was gleaming with cobbles, and the barns opposite, which had been shambolic, were repointed, and had new doors of carefully crafte
d wood and new ironware. The roofs were now rehung. Opening the window casement, he looked out sideways and saw the stable block similarly restored. All it needed now were horses, implements and wagons. Activity and progression. But just for the next few days he could enjoy the stillness with Joss, who he could see walking back over the nearest pasture with what looked like a newspaper tucked under his arm, Nico walking head- and tail-high, jauntily at his side; he could swear the animal was grinning. Then, without wanting to, he focussed on Joss’s uneven gait and observed, unbidden, that Joss was favouring the inside of the left foot, ‘suggesting sustained damage to the outer area’.

  Minutes later Tom was downstairs in the kitchen. The range was popping and chuntering with saucepans.

  Joss walked in noisily, trailing mud from his large boots and proffered the newspaper.

  ‘I’d arranged that a newspaper and the post be dropped off every morning at the halt,’ he said beaming with obvious pleasure. Pouring the boiling water into a big earthenware teapot, he added. ‘Anyone for tea-tasting tea?’

  ‘You mean, without the hint of petrol or essence of bog?’

  Joss grinned and pulled off his boots. ‘I do try to remember to take these things off,’ he said waggling his feet in his thick socks.

  ‘Let’s see your foot.’

  Joss pulled off the left sock and presented his damaged foot unselfconsciously. However, the colour was a healthy pink (shows a good blood supply, Tom’s mind recorded) and the wounds had healed well.

  ‘Does it hurt?’

  Joss pulled a non-committal face. ‘It aches a bit when it’s cold and damp, but it’s not stopped me doing much. I probably won’t be able to ride a horse easily, but that’s about the only thing, and I can easily live without that.’