The Shadow of War

by Jack Murray

  The wireless was on in the background. Danny could hear Al Bowlly singing. None of his friends had heard of him but Danny loved his voice. It caressed the words of a song and brought them gently to life whether it was playful, sentimental or melancholic.

  He forgot about the ringing in his ears.

  2

  ‘Nice to have Mr Shaw, Mr Owen and Mr Leddings back with us today,’ announced Mrs Grout to the classroom.

  Danny, Bob and Alec looked around sheepishly as the classroom turned as one towards them. Alec scowled at one boy immediately ahead, but nothing could be done. Their humiliation was complete. Retribution would come to those who mocked them. This was for later, for now they could only sit and accept their fate. Thankfully, the class seemed to be mostly disinterested. Mostly. Danny didn’t need to look to the other side of the room to see three smiling faces.

  The village school, if a converted barn can be so described, consisted of two classes separated by a canvas partition. On one side were the ‘little ‘uns’ taught by Miss Jarvis. On the other side sat Danny and his pals. They were the ‘big ‘uns’. The bigger children were taught by the fearsome Mrs Grout.

  Mrs Grout occupied an indeterminate age territory between forty and eighty. Although child years seem longer, it was as if she had been around forever. She was just over five feet tall. What she lacked in height she more than compensated for in meanness of spirit, violence of temper and a left jab that would have had Jack ‘Kid’ Berg’s corner reaching for the towel.

  She was kinder towards the girls in the class, humane even. Perhaps it was out of sympathy for the fact that many would marry the boys sitting, bovine-bored, with them. This was their misfortune, she concluded. Consequently, Mrs Grout viewed her job as to knock, quite literally, sense and respect into the rebellious young males that ended up in her classroom year after year with the depressing regularity of winter rain.

  The three boys sat at the back of the classroom. Another two years and their school career would be over. None of them could wait. They had long since lost interest in anything Mrs Grout had to communicate. This process began with the realisation that what they learned at school barely impacted what they would be required to do on the farms.

  They each sat at long wooden desks with inkwells. Pens scratched messily on paper. Surrounding them were walls covered in artwork and even a map of the world. The artwork could, kindly, have been described as modern although Mrs Grout in the twenty-five years she had taught in this classroom, had yet to uncover anyone with a modicum of talent. Often the only noise in the classroom, for hours on end, was the sound of pens crunching through cheap paper, suppressed mirth and regular yelps from a casualty in the ongoing war between Mrs Grout and the boys.

  The terror rained down by the fiendish lady was extraordinary. Slightly built, she could easily have been picked up and thrown through the classroom window by any of the bigger boys. All of them towered over her. Such was her boiling intensity, however, no boy in living memory had ever challenged her authority. In fact, it was inconceivable. Rebellion took the form of internecine warfare when her back was turned and, of course, truancy.

  In between bursts of truancy and clips round the ear, the three boys had, somehow, learned how to read and write. Mrs Grout had treated their teaching rather in the manner of a dog handler training a puppy. Reward came in the form of food, or denial thereof. Punishment was delivered quickly, painfully and with a frequency that suggested Mrs Grout had a natural proclivity towards sadism.

  Only one boy was excused from this guerrilla warfare. Harold Goodnight was the son of a farmer, although something of the runt of the litter. He had two older brothers, both working on the farm. Strapping lads they were.

  Harold was puny but smart. Very smart. Oddly, Danny quite liked him and defended the poor boy on occasion. In return, Harold offered to help Danny and his friends with the occasional homework. Part of this sympathy was due to the fact that Harold was often picked on by the rival gang to Danny’s. It was comprised three boys. All were thirteen; all were bound for farms within a year. One of them was the biggest boy in the year, Bert Gissing’s brother, Hugh.

  Like his Bert, Hugh was big, probably smarter than his brother, but sorely lacked a sense of humour, at least in Danny’s view. The three boys had an ongoing war with Danny and his friends that had lasted as long as they could remember. The cause of the conflict was lost somewhere in mists of time. No armistice had ever been offered. The war of attrition would go on.

  There they sat, impervious to authority, six elder boys, occupying territory at either side of the class. In front, were the pupils who were either younger, or had some desire to learn. And of course, there were the village girls. The boys had ignored them over the years but now things were changing. It added a fresh dimension to the war with Hugh, Fred and Greg. Soon the males would be fighting over the females. It was the way of the world, wasn’t it? The only thing worth fighting for, said Bob.

  The class went on interminably. Outside the clouds were funeral-dark. Maybe it was as well they’d gone to school. The sky finally released its weight and rain rattled against the window like a machine gun. Danny shivered involuntarily. It felt like an omen.

  -

  After school, Danny ambled back home in a break from the rain. His mum was manning the kitchen like a sentry facing German trenches. She barely noticed Danny’s arrival, or indeed, his exit again clutching a handful of bread. The wireless was on in the background. She was listening to the news. Her face seemed grave. Danny, as a rule, ignored the radio unless it was playing music. He walked a few yards to the forge to see if anything was needed. Although he would not admit as much, he was desperate to help out.

  ‘Anything I can do?’ offered Danny to his eldest brother

  ‘Disappear?’ suggested Tom before his face erupted into a massive grin.

  ‘Funny,’ responded Danny. He walked forward and watched Tom take a hammer and beat the hell out of a luckless piece of iron.

  ‘What did it do to you?’ asked Danny turning and walking out again. He saw his father arriving through the gate. His face looked troubled, but then, it always did. He looked down at Danny.

  ‘Were you at school, boy? Don’t lie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  His father nodded and strode forward into the forge. He took off his hat, mopped his brow and looked over Tom’s shoulder.

  Danny glanced at the two of them and then headed out the garden gate. He didn’t begrudge Tom not wanting him around. He knew he wasn’t ready yet. They’d bring him in when he was needed. The sky seemed to have cleared but it was getting dark. He wondered about heading down to the brook but decided against it. He turned and saw his mother walk out to the forge and motion for his father to join her. The two of them walked into the house.

  Something was up.

  Never mind, he thought, I’ll hear about it soon enough. He walked towards the village. There was a high street of sorts comprising a shop, a bakery and a post office. Further ahead was St Bartholomew’s. Little Gloston was not, and never would be, a metropolis.

  Along the way he passed a couple of younger girls from his class. They glanced at him and giggled to one another. Danny ignored them and pushed on. As he did so, he ran into Bert Gissing. His nemesis from yesterday seemed as surprised as he. He was also somewhat laden down with two bags of feed.

  They looked at one another for a moment then Bert grinned.

  ‘Lucky beggar.’

  Danny grinned also and said, ‘That I am.’

  ‘Don’t let me catch you near the farm again.’

  ‘You won’t,’ replied Danny with a wink and continued on.

  Yes, Bert wasn’t a bad sort, all in all. His younger brother, Hugh, was a different story. He and Danny were unofficial leaders of their respective groups. They led where others wanted to follow. Neither was academic but both, much to the frustration of Mrs Grout, were clearly smart. This frustration manifested itself less in encouragement and flanki
ng strategies to inculcate a desire to learn than frequent, unexplained and painful physical rejoinders to their brand of rebellion.

  Bob was up ahead talking to a girl from their class. It looked like Beth Locke. She was a redhead but seemed to have been in the wrong queue when volatility was handed out for there was no more tranquil girl in the village. Even the girls teased her about this apparent misalignment of hair and nature. She took it in good part. This made her universally popular with boys, girls and parents alike. Even Mrs Grout had a soft spot for Beth despite her apparent lack of interest in classwork.

  It was similar for girls, supposed Danny. Their destiny was decided in the womb. The direction of travel plotted. A life that would revolve around kitchen and cradle. Bob already had one eye to his future. Rather than cramp his style, Danny made his way in the direction of Cavendish Hall but then broke off near St Bartholomew’s. As he did so, a familiar figure greeted him from the garden.

  ‘Hello, young Shaw,’ said Reverend Simmons, ‘Where you off to then?’

  ‘Forest,’ replied Danny with a smile. He liked the Reverend. The stories he told the kids over the years never failed to entertain. He’d fought in the Boer War and boxed against some folk Danny had never heard of but were, apparently, pretty useful if the Reverend’s cauliflower ears were anything to go by.

  ‘You be good, young man, and let me see you at the church more. I didn’t see you Sunday. By the brook as usual, were you?’

  ‘Sorry Rev. I’ll be there. Promise.’

  Simmons laughed and called him a cheeky imp. Danny continued on his way with a smile on his face. He wasn’t heading in any particular direction but thought to head up the hill and sit overlooking the valley. It would be another half hour before tea. They clearly didn’t want him under their feet. That was fine with Danny. There was plenty of time for work.

  A few minutes of climbing brought him to his destination. He sat down and looked across the valley once more. The early evening had brought the sun out after the rain. A long shadow lay across the valley, only the Hall remained in the sunlight.

  All was silent save for the sound of birds in the trees. And then, from behind, he heard some twigs break. He turned around and found himself looking up at the grinning figures of Hugh Gissing, Fred Dobbins and Greg Lunn. They looked in the mood for fun.

  This wasn’t good news.

  3

  ‘Where was that boy going?’ asked Stan Shaw, entering the kitchen. His tall frame filled the doorway. There was no one in the village as strong as Stan Shaw. But strength is not just physical. Stan Shaw knew this. Inside he felt weak. Every day was a battle just to rise from his bed and face the day. His eyes haunted the depths of his sockets, unspoken torment came and went.

  The family understood. They understood the silences. They understood the anger. They also felt the brief, rare moments of tenderness from a soul trying to escape the prison of depression.

  He strode forward into the kitchen. It was the first room a visitor to the house would see. In reality, it was more to the Shaw family. It was the centre of their universe. An all-day glow and the all night heat came from the Aga cooker, lovingly restored by Stan. The warmth wasn’t just physical: it was an emotional and spiritual, too.

  Stan looked at his wife. They’d married just before the war when she was nineteen and in the bright bloom of youth. Not yet forty, she looked older, but the beauty remained. Tom had arrived as Stan had received Kitchener’s call. He went over in sixteen. He’d survived. Barely. There were scars, though, unseen but vivid, painful and untreatable.

  Kate looked up and smiled radiantly at Stan.

  ‘Danny? I didn’t see him.’

  ‘He was here a few minutes ago. I saw him walking out the gate.’

  ‘Nothing for him to do in the shed?’ asked Kate.

  ‘Tom chased him off. I’d have given something all right. Lazy little beggar.’

  Kate grinned at this. Stan could be very hard on Danny, but the truth was the little ‘beggar’ was idolised and probably spoiled a little. He’d always been the bright one. The mischievous one. Tom was stolid and true. Big, strong as an ox but soft as well. Danny fibbed, cajoled and charmed his way through life with a ready wit and a smile that could melt granite at thirty paces. Even Tom, a heart as big as his frame and not a jealous bone in his body, let the boy get away with murder.

  The result for Danny was a mixed blessing. The boy wielded his magnetism like a sword to cut through any problems he faced. Stan worried he lacked the work ethic that was core to the Shaw family and had been so for many generations.

  ‘What’s in the pot?’ asked Stan glancing at the cooker.

  ‘Vegetable broth,’ replied Kate, ‘and I made some bread also.’

  ‘Smells good,’ said Stan giving his wife a peck on the back of the head. ‘I’m hungry as hell.’

  ‘Watch your language, sir, in front of the children,’ admonished Kate.

  ‘They’re not babies anymore,’ smiled Stan. It was a conversation that was like the well-worn groove in the floor at the entrance of the house.

  ‘That imp better not be late.’

  Stan was as guilty as the others in allowing Danny his head, but he was a natural disciplinarian. On things that truly mattered, Danny knew there was only so far, he could push things. For some reason, unfathomable to Danny, his family pushed him harder on education than they ever had Tom. In fact, the ease with which he avoided work was matched only by the relative ease with which he had managed his schoolwork. When he bothered.

  Both Stan and Kate had attended the same school as the boys. They’d both left at fourteen, Stan to work with his dad at the forge and learn the trade of blacksmith and Kate to work as a seamstress. They had been sweethearts at school, and they married as war clouds thickened in the dark sky.

  As a smithy, Stan had originally been exempted from service in a reserved occupation. The nature of war had changed, though. It was no longer the clash of armies but of industrial economies. Stan joined the newly formed tank battalions that were part of the Heavy Section of the Machine Gun Corps. It was felt that his skills might be of use in a part of the armed forces where heavy armour was a critical element. Bob Owen’s dad had joined with Stan on the same day in the same battalion. He was nearly blown to bits in the tank next to Stan’s.

  Stan survived the war, but the experience had marked him forever. Even with Kate, the topic was never discussed. His response to the war was silence. In the first few years after his return, these silences would last for hours. And the silences were frequent. The boys and Kate knew to stay away at those times.

  They had become fewer over the last few years but recently they had returned. The news from Germany had reawakened something in Stan’s damaged mind. Kate could see this but felt powerless to stop the creeping dread afflicting her husband. Tom could see it also but Danny, as ever, was blithely unaware. He was fighting his own wars, his own battles of growing up.

  The forge was Stan’s escape, his confidant, his redemption. The horse ruled the country. And horses needed shoes. Farmers from around the county came to Stan to have shoes made for their horses. Between one and two hundred horses were on the books and they needed to be shod three times a year.

  He also made crucifixes, iron coats of arms, light holders, plough-cutters, nails made of iron, smelted with charcoal that would last centuries. The demand was endless, the orders came like a river flowing unstoppably during the rains. The business grew and grew. He would need Danny soon. Maybe someone else. They’d have to make the barn larger.

  Thankfully, Tom had taken to work at the forge quickly and with Danny of age in a year or two, he would soon be helping the business to fulfil the order book. The three of them together, working at the forge; this was Stan’s dream.

  He unrolled his shirtsleeves, rolled from the inside to avoid sparks catching in the folds, and began to wash his hands and arms.

  ‘Tom shouldn’t have sent him away. I’d have found him somethin
g to do. He needs to start learning.’

  ‘You know Danny, any excuse,’ laughed his wife.

  ‘Yes, I know our son all too well,’ said Stan grimly but suppressing a smile.

  ‘Dossing about somewhere, no doubt.’

  4

  In fact, Danny was a long way from loafing about. Hugh, Fred and Greg looked down at him with malicious intent in their eyes. The boys traditionally confined their rivalry to barbed words and occasional playground pranks. As they grew older and began to work off their excess energy in the forest shinning up trees, playing foxes and hounds and making the first tentative steps to courting, the rivalries deepened, and the dislike spilled out into more physical demonstrations like goats butting heads in the meadow.

  Danny looked at the three boys and said. ‘Three against one. Not very fair. Are you sure you don’t want to run down to the village and get some help?’

  The words hid his distinct nervousness. One on one he was more than a match for any of the boys but if they rushed him all at once, they would easily overpower him. Oddly, he did not expect this. Whatever he may have thought of them, there were unspoken rules in combat. Rules that were etched into their bones and blood.

  ‘Very funny, Shaw,’ said Hugh, stepping forward. As unofficial leader, he would make the first rush.

  ‘We’ll see who’s laughing in a minute.’

  Danny managed the unusual feat of both relaxing and tensing at the same moment. The fact that Hugh had stepped forward meant they would not all jump him, and this made him feel more relaxed. They would attack one after another. He could handle this, at least until fatigue crept in. However, his muscles tensed as he stood feet shoulder width apart. He moved one foot slightly behind the other in anticipation of a rush.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Hugh surged forward, and they met in a clash of bodies. Another feature of the fighting of the boys in the village was the absence of fists. The two boys wrestled for a moment. Hugh was slightly taller than Danny but, like his brother, heavier of build. At this stage, Danny recognised that Hugh was the stronger. This only mattered when each boy was equal in technique. But Danny had the ultimate card up his sleeve and he deployed it as soon as the opportunity arose. Relaxing his upper body, he bent back as Hugh tried to make his greater weight and strength tell, then quick as a squirrel avoiding an owl, he whipped his body round, throwing Hugh over his trailing leg. Hugh hit the ground with an enormous bump.