by Henry Green
It had been very different after the abduction.
‘Take a hospital,’ Pye might be saying, ‘you are called there, you arrive, and this lecture is called practical fire-fighting ’ints, but all this comes into the job, just as much as putting out the fire. Take an institution, even take what they call a place of public entertainment. Now what do you do? You’ve got always to recollect you must make as little disturbance as possible, use your loaf, don’t let the patients get any idea there’s something up. Go about it quietly. Don’t rush in a ward shouting where’s the fire? There may be people in there through no fault of their own. They’re to be pitied.’ He would be careful not to look at Richard. ‘It might send them altogether crazy, a sudden shock just like that. Women that a sudden shock,’ and the whole class would laugh. ‘No, I’m serious.’ ‘No, that’s right,’ from Piper. ‘Women,’ Pye would go on, ‘they might be our own folks, lads, being treated lying there in bed because of some kink, or misfortune, taken by force out of their own homes most likely, so use your loaf.’
Knowing what he then knew, lying on the cushioned seat, covered with material so rough it was like glasspaper, Roe gave a cough of embarrassment. Those lectures haunted him.
Seven weeks after he had first been home, Roe worked four days and nights straight off to get another forty-eight hours’ leave.
The life he now led was not hard. There were still no raids and they waited at the substation, in their periods of duty, day and night, night and day. At all times they had to be ready to ride out on a pump to civilian fires, fully dressed, in under sixty seconds. But they thought the strain of waiting for raids prodigious. So much so that when, at last, he got into a train, travelling seemed an unnecessary waste of leisure hours which had been dearly bought, and his fellow travellers did not seem to be fellow beings in the war with him, but an odd lot of unpleasant individuals who did not have to go through that which he endured, and which he was now, miraculously as ever, forgetting.
At Oxford, young men of military age, elegantly dressed in last year’s Austrian outfits, skated on each pond. He wondered how they had the time. Then at Evesham, where the Avon was frozen over, townspeople were out along the stretches by the town.
Tired, his expectations lost, Roe found Dy had again brought Christopher to meet the train. This time it was light and they could see each other as they gravely shook hands. The boy blushed. On the drive home he asked what his parents were going to give him the next morning, his birthday, but they would not tell. Then, after some other talk, he said twice he wished they could have come home a different way. It was plain that he was bored. He became restless. He began to irritate Richard, whom he would not allow to finish a sentence when speaking to Dy. In fact, on this occasion, he was extravagantly self absorbed.
It was his bedtime when they arrived. Roe did not go up, once he had been put to bed, to say goodnight and, when he was asleep, did not bother to help fill his stocking.
The next day Richard gave a bike Dy had bought for him. Many months later, at the height of the first blitz, Roe could not remember how the child was given this present. It was certain, clear in his memory, that Christopher had come into the bedroom quite late in the morning, because he could still see the boy’s face stiff with excitement. He knew Christopher had called him because he was so thankful that he had not been called earlier. In times of peace, when staying a week-end in that house, the boy had often woken him with a stammered good-morning at what had then seemed unearthly hours. So he knew he had seen his son first thing on the birthday morning because he remembered how glad he had been to have a long lie in bed, but he did not recollect how much pleasure the bicycle had given. He could see only that face, solemn at the opening of the day, at the present to be received. Further, he realised he could not, at that length of time, distinguish between the bike or the tricycle they had given the year before. He could remember some trouble over tearing wrapping paper away by how afraid he had been that Christopher might burst into tears at being helped or, alternatively, that he might cry on not seeing the thing soon enough revealed in all its glory. But he could not tell which, before the war or after, bicycle or tricycle.
So the father, trying, during the blitz, while he was being bombed on twenty-four hours’ leave, to make himself believe that the war was an interlude, found his memory at fault. But the rest he thought he remembered very well.
The boy had been good all that day. When he got over his first excitement at the presents he said several times how much he was looking forward to having Rosemary, who was staying nearby, to tea.
In the morning he constructed battleships with his bricks, using the strong light which made all the rooms sharp, and which was reflected, beaten in by the still wings of snow on window ledges. He used shadows cast by these bricks to build up substance; thus he set three bricks a little apart and the shadows between gave two guns.
In the afternoon they went to a bonfire in the pied garden, all hard mud and dead soiled swans of snow. Last year’s leaves lay frozen under a grove of beeches, next to the green yews. Two gardeners were raking in these leaves. He insisted on taking along his scarlet handcart, two clappers, and a toy rake he said would be handy. The gardeners had a better way. They were getting the leaves over two old turkey carpets. When they had made a heap they would gather the corners, stagger with this load on their backs right up to the fire, and then let go. Flames would take minutes to come through but, when they did, all called to Christopher to watch them lick out, making a hole and not even seeming warm, the colour taken away by the sun on snow. There would be sparks, a roll of smoke, and, in the end, that same mound of ash growing imperceptibly, glancing rose in places with the wind.
Christopher had not used the rake once and found the clappers too difficult. He picked up a forked branch. He used this as a pitch-fork. He would let no one near, he prized the thing and hurled small quantities of brown leaves towards the fire, warning the others they must not even touch his stick. His father had shewn him how to use the clappers, and possibly this had been too much. He seemed to be absorbed. But the instant word was sent out from the house that Rosemary had arrived he was so excited that he turned round without another thought, shouted, ‘Here you are,’ as he threw the bit of wood, which had been precious, towards his father, and then ran so hard to get to Rosemary that he tripped and twice fell flat. They all laughed, pleased that he was glad.
The children were going to have their tea with the nannies. Roe had to leave for the station before they could begin. He was due for some annual leave in a fortnight’s time, Christopher could hardly wait to say goodbye because of his birthday cake, but, on this occasion, Richard did not mind departing. He was to be back in a day or two, so that his night at home seemed to have been a week-end before the war, his life in the Fire Service, so easily forgotten once he was away, no more important than a routine.
When Roe first joined the Service, when the nations were still declaring peace, it seemed ludicrous to be trained by firemen in a real fire-station. He signed on because he had for years wanted to see inside one of these turretted buildings, and also because he had always been afraid of heights. He did not know there was such a thing as a public night each week, when anyone is allowed to wander round, and he had not had the energy to run up a ladder thirteen times to find out if he could lose the feeling that he must throw himself off.
When he finished training, lost his fear of heights, and was allowed to go to fires, he never had one in all the time he waited fully dressed there, and he had gone every Tuesday for three hours until war was declared, that is for nine months. He had never felt war was possible, although in his mind he could not see how it could be avoided. His feelings were usually uppermost. As a result he did not expect ever to go to a fire, and he did not consider that his life in the station, what little he had, could at any time be real.
He was called up three days before the outbreak and, certain of death in the immediate raid he expected to raze Lon
don to the ground, he was soon saying farewell to his family away out in the country whenever he was alone, losing them because he loved himself so well that he was afraid. In his self pity he might have been sighing goodbye to adored unreality. All that was real to him then was his death in a matter of days.
Then, when there were no raids, and he was happy at the substation because it was a complete change of scene, he forgot his family until, on his first leave, he found he was still terrified of dying, perhaps because his son was older, also because his wife was miserable in the country, but almost entirely because, now that he had been parted from them, he could not bear to leave for ever, never to share life with them again just when he had discovered how it had been shared.
A year later, when raids began, and he faced death, he loved them fiercely, not so much for himself as for something between the three of them which he felt made life worth living, as his son grew up, for father, mother, and child.
But while being trained, that is before the war, when he was still working through a joke discipline with regard to heights, it had seemed too amusing to be true, being put through it down in the yard by a burly fireman who took them all in ladder drill, who could not see a girl of any kind but he was struck dumb, followed her with his eyes until she was gone, and only then was able to pick up the lecture he had learned by heart, where her legs had scissored it off his tongue.
All his period of training meant to Roe afterwards was flashes of a kind, scenes such as those when below the single arc lamp, an instructor’s bulbous eyes followed the girl’s criss-crossing legs, under silk stockings her skin a sheath of magnolia petals beneath the blue white light.
Magnolia and rose was what it meant to him, the country house in which he had been born, and in which he was to spend his next leave with Christopher.
He came at last, at night. He found the shutters closed, shutting out all he had left. He came upon Christopher playing in the library with his bricks. The light was soft, soft as in the day the cedar outside lay about the room. He sank back on to cushions covered with a willow pattern, forgetting the hard pews they had at the substation, lent by a church, and that had racks at the back in which to place hymn books, forgetting the train, the car beginning to recede, coming gradually out in the old comfort, and the remembered warmth of his wife’s presence.
When Christopher demanded that he should help build something, and he was about to ask if Christopher would mind his sitting quietly by to watch, he was annoyed to see Dy frown and nod her head. She had noticed he wanted to refuse. She meant to make the few days they were to have together as much a memory to the boy as they would be to the father. She was determined they must share what little time they had. He had the grace to give in. He sat by his son to put up a harbour.
When his father had finished the lightship it was Christopher’s bedtime, but the next morning Dy added a custom’s house. She gave it a Carolean front. Then he bombed the whole thing down, and the time had come to go out to find Actress.
Actress was a hound bitch. For some reason her name was to be changed to Acorn. She lived about the stables, not right in the head. Her eyes were brown, but she was mad by a never-shuttered grey light in them, even when smiling. She was shy, wild with everyone but Christopher.
To go out to the stables with him was to go back years, Richard felt, to be the age again when he was always drifting out to the saddleroom, when the last day of the holidays he had said goodbye to a terrier, which had been his uncle’s before the Germans killed his uncle in the last war, and it howled as he said goodbye for another term. This morning he now went out with Christopher, so many years later, there was no snow, but the roadway was slippery with ice. The boy wore rubber boots. In shrieks he called ‘Actress,’ and ‘Acorn darling.’ She did not come to him. His father was shewn where she slept, and was asked if he did not think her bedding comfortable. They visited the red setter Bruno. Christopher called again, but still no Actress. They looked through the kitchen garden, at the other empty rabbit hutch, then went back to the lawn. By this time the boy had forgotten all about the bitch.
As they returned towards the stables, Sam joined them, a cross between bulldog and mastiff, huge and awkward. Every now and then this animal would go sideways into the boy, almost knocking him over. As they came near the stables Christopher began to call Acorn again. There was still no sign. The one response in a muffled day was the frantic barking set up by Bruno to attract attention, and, at any pause, the rattling of his chain as, unseen, Bruno spun about his kennel. Yet again he cried ‘Acorn.’ This time she did gallop up at last, as though from a great distance, blown, with heaving sides. At the sight of Christopher, while she covered the last few yards, she flattened herself from her ears down her head. She crouched with love even along her tail. She did not bark. Bruno began to howl. She did not make a sound. She circled Christopher, rising up when she was in front, and when she was behind, to put her paws on his shoulders, licking his face and neck no more than once, and quickly, at each turn she made. He got cross and bothered. Sam joined in. Suddenly it was over. She trotted away in front with Sam and began to worry the dog, hamstringing him in play. He was yellow in colour, she liver and white, and the road was like a dark glass bottle.
Actress coming back to the boy as though they had been separated for a year, and not, as was the case, for only a few hours, led Richard back to the abduction again. When Christopher was lost, and he himself had been driven out of his own house by the dry-eyed anxiety about, he met the parlour maid of that time in the hall when he returned. She was in tears. The place was dark. He turned on the light with the second great thrust of dread that he had felt, the better to face the news of what he was at once certain would be the child’s death, and under a bus at that. He needed to see it in her face if she was not going to tell. She snivelled a smile and said, of all things, ‘I always knew,’ and thus, while he rushed the stairs, he had realised, with a strong sense of irritated guilt over his relief, that Christopher was all right.
Turning away, to his son by his side, and these five easy days ahead, he found Christopher wanted him to come sliding on the pond. When Actress ran across, the ice cracked, and that was that.
Then he begged Richard to help him break the ice. He had some idea he would store it against the summer and his father wondered, but could not remember, how it had been left after their walk in the park, whether it was admitted that where the fairies lived might be an ice house after all.
Then Richard persuaded Christopher to come with him to the moat, to break ice near where they had had the bonfire not so long ago. But it was no use. The day was too cold. Over and above this he found, with so much time on their hands, that nothing was special. This was no more than just another week-end, now that he had forgotten he was a fireman who had not even had a fire. When he made some excuse to get away the boy did not mind, happy to go back with Actress to the stables.
The stud groom, on his last visit, had let him kill with a spoon nine immature mice they had uncovered beneath a pile of horse blankets.
Each day they had down there, Dy arranged that Richard should be with Christopher in the mornings. He would come into their room first thing, and ask, ‘What shall we do?’ ‘Why not go out with daddy after breakfast?’ ‘Yes,’ he might say, or ‘All right,’ not letting it be seen whether he was bored or pleased, seeming to accept the arrangement because it had been settled.