by Henry Green
Pye sat with Prudence in the half dark of that night club Richard had taken Hilly. He wondered impatiently how soon he could suggest that they should go back to her flat. His small, questioning eyes did not leave what he could see of her face and that darkness, with the deep stains the infrequent lamp shades cast, irritated him, gave him no feeling, as Richard had, of the shared, woman-hunting cause. But then he was only drinking beer. Even so it was an offence against his upbringing that he should have to pay six shillings for a jug of washy lager, less than two pints. The entrance fee, plus her ‘white ladies’ at four and six of which, on average, she would drink three in one of these evenings, sobered him by the exorbitant expense. With his house still not paid for he could not possibly afford it. Yet he was too foxy to let her see. He spoke steadily of his troubles at the station, keeping to the last, as always, such excitements as had come his way on peacetime fires. It was these, he knew, that got her, the silky bitch.
Prudence was tolerably miserable about another man, a pilot, who had gone away in August, who was now said to be marrying someone else. Also she had had a row with Ilse over going to bed with Pye, whom she called Bert. What could it matter? He was different. It was something. He would not remind her of John. But the lighting in this room made her think of John on a leaflet night raid, his darling face with much of Bert’s look who, anyway, had had to be brave in peace, who was staring at her now with just that glare John would have into the dangerous, dangerous night, which might be the colour that was here before her eyes. What little he could see of the land or ocean beneath might be like this deep light she drooped in, and the beat of his engine possibly a bit like this music.
Of course Bert was looking at her, and always did like that, for bed, sitting up, begging. It was different, but John would want his target so much it would really be the same. War, she thought, was sex.
‘Yes,’ he went on, speaking as refined as he knew how and with an utter lack of interest that she shared, for bed was all they had, and were not to have much longer, in common, ‘Yes I sometimes wish I’d never taken promotion, turned it down same as many have in the Brigade. It’s nothing but a worry. There’s Howells. Her snivelling daughter’s got into trouble with her husband, she’s gone up north to see him, now we’re short of a cook and I’m expected to say nothing. She thinks I’m going to pretend she’s still cooking for us. I know that sort. It pays her not to see my position. I daren’t do it. Besides I don’t know where she is, she might be in Russia for all I know, it was too much trouble on her part to tell.’
‘Darling,’ said Richard, ‘I thought it would kill me,’ while she thought well anyway I never snored or did I, it was such heaven I shan’t know unless he tells; or would he have noticed, but it certainly didn’t seem as if he could. She said, ‘Oh it was worth the candle.’
They lay now on a sofa, naked, a pleasant brutal picture by the light of his coal fire from which rose petals showered on them as the flames played, deepening the flush spread over contented bodies. She wriggled over on top, held his dark face and drank it with her eyes. She had never been to Venice. She murmured to herself, ‘This man’s my gondola.’
Brid at that instant was crying. She missed her Ted, so feckless in everything except when he loved her, ‘flyblow’ his father called him, her spot she had to clean up after, feckless with money and all but he loved her, only sometimes he forgot, leaving trousers, boots, and socks all over, one boot here, the other beyond. But he was everything to her who had had to come back she wouldn’t know why exactly, something to do with mum, and of course there was baby. Nothing had been right after it came, it was such a worry, a girl didn’t know what, not for the best she didn’t. It was so difficult, and she was no hand at it. She cried on.
‘Did I never tell you about Bossy Small, at Number Seventeen?’ Pye asked Prudence. She turned herself towards him, said no with her head. ‘Which is Number Seventeen?’
‘I don’t know, Bert.’
‘Come on now,’ he said gallantly, ‘how many times must I tell you?’
‘I never can remember.’
‘They’ll never make a WAFS of you if you join. It’s Dryden Highway station off of Great Clarence Street. It was when I was standin’ by there one afternoon, and we got two calls to the same address. That’s what we call it, see, only it was two adjacent addresses, one backing on the other, and we sent attendance to both. You might think that foolish, but how are we to know there’s not two separate jobs going, and on this occasion it was very fortunate there is that rule in the Brigade.
‘Bossy is on the Pump and he dashes up through the first room over the fire to find a person that was reported to be inside. First thing ’e knows is that the floor gave way beneath him. As it went he jumps for what he’d caught out of the corner of his eye, the window, because there’s nothing heroic in getting fried. He goes clean through, head first, landing in eighteen inches of drink, as we term water, two stories below in the basement area. That’s where the other crew came in, that’d gone to the back, to the other address. They saw ’im go, got a line round him and had ’im up pronto. He was invalided out.’
‘Oh,’ she said, thinking this was not one of his best, ‘and who got him out?’
‘Your humble servant,’ he said.
He knew that she knew he lied. But he did not worry, he felt she was straight about it, that she would admit this was the sort of story she wanted for afterwards, when, the third ‘white lady’ finished, they were to go up to her flat.
In the silence which followed, what seemed to Pye outstanding, as always, was her hands. Yet he did not see these because he kept his eyes upon her eyes, on that remote fire in this half dark as of fireworks released at a distance in a night sky, the points of brilliance when she turned her eyes towards him the only evidence he had of what went on inside her; as of a dead king’s birthday celebrated on a hill seven miles away, with rockets, in frosty weather. But her hands would be warm. Although they were not touching him, he knew the feel, the soft touch. He had achingly learned their milk whiteness in daytime, not chalky, as they would now be under the violet-hooded lamps. He coveted her fingers because they had not worked. With all her other warmth they set a glow about him just as, in childhood, when, watching the impossible brilliance climb slowly high then burst into fired dust so far away, so long ago, over that hill the time his sister put her hand inside his boy’s coat because he was cold, to warm his heart.
It was danger Prudence sought in this lull of living, before the enemy went into Norway.
But the peril was drawing closer and heavier about Pye; Prudence, for the spring and summer months, would be as safe as houses.
‘It’s strange, it is,’ Piper had said to Trant that very afternoon, as he mixed colours yet again in an attempt to get the shade required by Mrs Trant, ‘I’m an older man an’ yet I can’t seem some’ow to get accustomed, a ’eart it’s known by in the ’uman frame, but the bowels is the word they employ in the Book. We know very well, sir, that if it’s not the one thing like marriage then there’s the bloody other, that when they’re not back at ’ome, men are poachers. I remember the last time I danced,’ he went on, naturally, ‘in South Africa it was. I was dancin’ with the Colonel’s daughter. I was colour sergeant at the time. An’ the wind of the dance sent ’er skirt into my spurs. Tore ’er skirts right up they did, and there was I not knowin’ what to do. A beautiful blue robe she ’ad on, with white stars set about it. It would’ve cost a quid in those days to buy another. But seein’ she was the Colonel’s daughter I didn’t rightly know for the best.’ He dropped his voice. ‘So there you are then,’ he murmured.
Trant wondered whatever made this old man, at his age, want to be a fireman, and how on God’s earth he had been accepted. It must be he had needed to wear uniform once more.
‘There was many was stuck on ’is daughter,’ Piper went on, ‘many, with not one out of all of us but knew she was above our station. Yet in this ’ere campaign they seem to set
themselves after it unleashed, spendin’ maybe twice what they earn, the crazy lechers, on bits of stuff that would turn up their sniffin’ noses at a man’s own mother.’
‘She’ll find that a shade too yellowy,’ Trant objected.
‘It’s your sleepin’ room, not mine,’ said Piper. ‘Now, beggin’ your pardon, sir, but take your own cloth. Look at the goin’s on of young Fire Brigade officers. I know one sub not many miles from ’ere crazy after a tart, just like the lad ’e used to be more’n fifteen years back though I ’adn’t the pleasure of knowin’ ’im, I ’ad a war on me ’ands then. Lunattic. Why, of a night, ’e’s never in, duty or not. An’ layin’ out money on ’er. If ’is sister could see ’im as ’e is today it would break ’er bloody ’eart.’
‘Is she under the sod, then?’ Trant asked, disinterested, idly thinking that if she was dead, whoever she might be, he would and must get back to his desk.
‘Not on your bloody oath she ain’t,’ said Piper, ‘she’s inside, in one o’ them places, right out of ’er mind.’
Trant did not say another word. He went away. He had not even forgotten that Pye had a sister. He did not know the first thing, yet.
‘A shade too yellowy, the tight-fisted bastard,’ Piper muttered after him.
That very evening, as Richard was still enjoying Hilly while she revelled in him, with Pye still waiting for Prudence to drink up her third ‘white lady,’ the Chief Superintendent, Mr Dodge, was talking to his District Officer, Trant.
‘There’ll be trouble over that substation, you don’t have to tell me, I know,’ he said, ‘the rates are too high by far, out of all proportion. I’ve got a feeling we’ve not heard the last of that place. If the telephone rings now something seems to tell me it will be the Chief Officer on about these Auxiliaries bein’ in palaces, and put there by me, naturally. Who’s the man in charge?’
‘Sub officer Pye, sir.’
‘Albert Pye, the individual that was with me up at Number Seventeen when I was Station Officer? How’s he makin’ out?’
Trant could say nothing about Pye’s absence when on duty because he had not reported it. But there are other ways.
‘He’s very much the same, sir.’
‘A bit of a red he used to be in the old days. But we’re not in the Navy now, Trant, and the Council’s Labour.’
‘He’s behind with all the returns.’
‘That’s wrong, that’s all wrong. I won’t have that, you understand?’
‘Yes sir. And a cook there is adrift.’
‘Adrift?’
‘Yes sir. I was going to ask you. Been gone without trace these four days. Though I do seem to remember seeing she reported back today, I think it was.’
‘Don’t think, Trant, I don’t want you to think what you remember. Well, I don’t have to tell you what to do. Have her up before me at the end of the month and I’ll have to fine her. We must have discipline. Why, in the Brigade, men have been thrown out for less.’
Trant said, ‘Very good sir.’ But he reflected that as the women were not on the run, did not ride to fires, it could hardly, in their case, be such a crime when they forgot to apply for compassionate leave.
At that instant the Auxiliaries in this substation were discussing Pye’s excursions.
‘Every bloody night he’s on duty.’
‘No?’
‘Yus.’
‘’Ow d’you know?’
‘Because he’s not about now. I went to see ’im on account of my bed, you know the one we scrounged off the place next door, well it’s in a terrible condition an’ I went to ask if ’e could get me a Brigade issue, them bloody trestles they use up at Number Fifteen look all right to me. But he’s nowhere to be found, not in any place. An’ when I asked the women in the watchroom they was ’ighly indignant, so much so I could tell there was something up, nosey Charley they call me. An’ every night it’s the same.’
‘The cows in there would make a mystery out of a bit of window glass.’
‘I don’t pay no attention. But the doorman at that posh night place up the yard just beyond where the ’eavy unit is parked, he moved over one night when I’m on guard. ‘’Oo’s your geezer,’ ’e says. ‘Sub officer Pye,’ I said. ‘Don’t spend much time on fightin’ fires, do ’e,’ ’e says. ‘How’s that,’ I said. Then he comes out with it. Makes out old Pye’s in ’is place every evenin’ till late, in ’is glory, then comes across with a tart and goes up to ’er apartment.’
‘What a lark, eh?’
‘Is ’e a married man?’
‘No, ’e lives with his sister by what I’ve ’eard, but she’s evacuated or something.’
‘Dodgy, eh,’ said Shiner, speaking for the first time.
They were draped in a half circle about the trestle table that served as a bar, beneath the orange ceiling with harsh indirect lighting, behind them one of the fluted pillars and a barrel of beer on a rack, like a secret in the naked light. and which dripped into its enamelled pail. Their shoes were coated with white dust from the artificial marble floor. They had white faces. On and off they had been months indoors. The skeletons were there, painted over blacked-out windows.
‘It’s conga all right for the Regulars,’ he went on, ‘why they’re like petty officers run amock.’ He then spoke a line of what he said was Maltese, and which sounded like abra kalay kalamooch, ‘Every night up in that bloody flat, with a lovely bit of ’omework, the old matelot. Does ’e run up ’is pennant, I wonder, like an admiral, on the bit of stick there is on the top of ’er building when ’e’s up there.’
‘How do you know where she lives, Shiner?’
‘It was Savoury showed me, mate.’
‘And you didn’t go up?’
‘That’d be tellin’,’ Shiner said, mysterious as you please. ‘But what a lovely bit of ong dong.’
‘That’s as may be,’ another whined, ‘but it won’t do us chaps any good.’
‘’Ow d’you mean, won’t do us any good? ’Ow come it’s the business of any man in this place the dodgy way the skipper passes ’is evenin’s?’
‘Because when they get to ’ear up at Number Fifteen they’ll be coming down to turn us out so as to catch ’im.’
‘Gawd stone me up a bloody gum tree but they can’t say nothing to us,’ Shiner said. ‘If old Pye’s a man ’e’ll take ’is punishment when ’e’s caught, dong, like that. It’s not hurting you if they do come round ’ere. Be fair to the bloody man.’
‘There’s nothing fair in this game, mate.’
‘It’s not like the Services, I’ll agree with you so far. But what bloody rat come to tell them up at Number Fifteen?’
‘Well, you asked. That stinking old ’ermit, Piper.’
‘Good God,’ Shiner said, ‘that old frayed end of old rope? ’E might. ’E’d be capable of anything, that bastard.’
‘Or Savoury.’
Here they disagreed. It was admitted Richard did more crawling to Pye than any, but it was cynically held that if half the station had Richard’s money, Pye would be drowned in beer. The majority believed Roe treated no one besides Pye, in other words, as was true, that he no longer bought drinks for the Regulars up at Number Fifteen.
Not one of those present knew about Christopher. Shiner asked:
‘Is Roe a pansy?’
Shiner turned out to be alone in thinking he might be. ‘I’ve seen ’em in the Navy, the quiet, well-spoken sort. I got nothing against ’em, mind,’ he said.
‘Nor I ’aven’t,’ another went on. ‘What would you say to the diabolical stroke like pushing the dirt under a man’s bed, and then, when it’s brought to light, blame him whose bed it is for the room bein’ dirty.’ They laughed.
‘There’s a canny lot of bastards in this station,’ said a third. At this their talk moved to football.
The following evening old Piper sought Richard out in the pub next door. Roe preferred this to the wet canteen in their recreation room, because it was an escape from s
houting, gargantuan, mushroom pale firemen. Nothing was said, yet, to his staying out thus when on duty by reason of the fact that he started Pye off, buying him drinks before, as he now realised the skipper went to his Prudence. Nothing was said to Arthur if he went to get a wet or a wine off Richard because he was protected, he worked for Trant.
‘Why, it’s Mr Roe,’ Piper said, when he came upon him, pretending it was accidental, ‘what d’yer know about that?’
‘What’ll you have Arthur?’
‘A double Scotch an’ a large packet of Players,’ the old man answered, sawing his moustache. Richard laughed, as was intended. ‘Why, thankin’ you, a wallop, Mr Roe, to your very good ’ealth, sir. This is a queer job, I don’t remember another similar, an’ this is my fifth campaign. It must come strange to you, that’s lived a life with those that never lacked for nothin’. Yus. There’s occasions it dunders me, grieves me, but then I’ve ’ad my time amongst all sorts and conditions, I’ve ’ad no choice.’
Richard said that although he had knocked about the world a bit himself he had never come across anything quite like the London Fire Service.
‘You never said a truer word, sir.’ Piper drank, sucked his moustache, sawed a forefinger across his chin, and shook his head. ‘Not ’uman, that’s what they are, not men, more like women. T’ain’t right. Course you light upon some like it in the army, officers that never was nor couldn’t be officers ’owever ’igh they rose if you get my meanin’, but on God’s oath every one o’ them is alike in this Service.’
‘What’s troubling you then?’
‘I never was a man to meddle in another’s business,’ the old man replied, ‘I keep me own counsel, ’ear no evil speak no evil, that’s me. But this mornin’ up at Number Fifteen I get the buzz they’re intendin’ to crime Mrs ’Owells. Now I’ve known that party years. A respectable married woman, mind yer. She’s a widder today. I knowed ’er old man same as I knows me own brother, ’e was one o’ my mates oh years back.’