Caught, Back, Concluding

by Henry Green

  ‘Why run her? What’s she done?’

  ‘Well she’s got a daughter that went an’ got ’erself married to a young feller in the army, Oxford and Bucks Light Infantry ’e’s in. She comes to me for a bit of advice every so often, there’s many do along our street I couldn’t tell for why. She’s in a spot of bother now an’ takin’ it rough. I’m acquaintin’ you because I know it won’t go no farther. It’s like this. On account of one thing or the other, I’m not clear about that part, see, this daughter’s back ’ome an’ the mother, my friend that I was tellin’ you about, went north to ’ave a word, or maybe more, you get me? with the ’usband.’

  Richard, of course, knew that part of the story, but he could not admit to knowing.

  ‘So what does sub officer Pye do,’ the old man went on, ‘’e posts ’er adrift as they call it in the Brigade, ’e so much as calls ’er a deserter. And now they’re making out a charge. She’ll be fined most likely. It does seem not right, Mr Roe, though, of course, I couldn’t say if you would be to my way of thinking.’

  ‘Right? I think it damnable,’ says Richard, up in arms at once. It was an outburst. One or two of the cowlike heads, under hanging ferns, turned towards him, ruminating. His eyes almost flashed, as though the lamps hanging before rows of bottles had been sent lurching, as they were to be, by a bomb. His righteous anger was flashy.

  Meantime, back at home, across the table to Brid, Mrs Howells was opening a tin of sardines for their supper. Once they were emptied on a plate she began to powder the oil-soaked fish thickly with brown pepper. When she saw her mother do this Brid realised, it was proved to her, that she was being poisoned, no less. First she had come to know the things she had always counted hers were no longer hers, that mum was set on keeping them. And she had felt bad, somehow, about the way the room with Ted was so bare. That beautiful jar would have gone just right on the mantel. Then she had felt poorly, not up to anything, and it seemed worse after she got back to London. She could not think why at first. She knew now. She stared, fixed. Her eyes widened. She stuck a knuckle in her mouth.

  ‘Don’t, mum,’ she broke out, but in a tone so piteous that Mrs Howells stood, frozen.

  ‘But you did always fancy pepper with ’em.’

  ‘Don’t, you mustn’t.’ Brid was moaning now. She had dropped her gaze to the cain and abel.

  ‘Why, whatever,’ said Mrs Howells loudly, ‘you’ll be the finish of me, my gel. Whatever’s the matter, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Poisonin’ of me, I know, poisonin’ she is. Where’s my baby?’

  ‘You leave that alone. In the condition you are if you so much as touch a ’air of ’er ’ead I’ll bring a copper in to yer.’

  Brid was silent. She now held a hand flat across her mouth.

  ‘Oh Brid,’ said Mrs Howells, ‘what’s come over yer, love.’ While her daughter sat motionless, head bowed, Mrs Howells covered her face with her hands. She broke into a loud, ugly, persistent sobbing.

  Richard went straight back to the substation. He sought Hilly out and, against all rules, sat alone with her in her room, a thing he had never dared before. She accepted his presence as another proof of love until he began talking, and this he could not manage at first because he was almost out of breath with his love for her.

  ‘Surely, if it’s true,’ he panted, ‘this about Mrs Howells, it’s very bad, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is that why you’ve come?’ Hilly said, giving him a chance to affirm.

  ‘Of course,’ said he. ‘But it’s monstrous, don’t you think, that a woman can’t go north without getting into their bad books, when her daughter’s in such trouble?’

  ‘I know,’ she answered sadly, ‘it does seem hard.’

  ‘Darling, you don’t sound very certain.’

  ‘Well, you see, it’s discipline, isn’t it,’ she said rising above herself. ‘After all, if everyone went away, if every fireman did . . .’

  He interrupted to demolish this proposition.

  ‘I know you’re right,’ she replied, ‘of course everyone wouldn’t go off just like that, but still, in any other Service, darling, I’m sure you would find them making trouble for those who did.’ It seemed too much that he should be able to sit opposite, talking angrily like this so soon after. He went on:

  ‘But it’s exactly that the AFS isn’t a Service, in the proper sense, that they simply can’t run it on these lines. Besides, any proper officer worth his salt would never report someone for that, much less a mother. He’d cover them.’

  ‘But, you see, he tried.’

  ‘Did he? I shouldn’t say he did.’

  ‘Yes, Richard, he did, honestly. But make an effort to look at it his way. He did not dare cover her after she’d gone. He offered, only she didn’t understand. She just went off without saying a word. He couldn’t know where she was.’

  ‘I can’t understand your taking this line. It’s just when it is awkward that the real officer does do something for people under him.’

  ‘Richard, darling, you aren’t angry with me, surely?’

  ‘What d’you mean, angry?’ Secretly, and he had not even put it to himself, he was irritated, mainly because she had gone to bed with him. He found it made her of no account. ‘Of course not,’ he went on, ‘but do try and see how monstrous it is that she should have to go up before old Dodge. She may get even worse treatment. It’s Pye the super ought to run for not seeing that she went up north at once.’

  ‘But you agreed with me, on our night, that it was the silliest thing she could do, to go to Doncaster.’

  Then, probably because he knew this last was true, he was short with Hilly. They had their first row. And kissed and made up after.

  If he could only have witnessed the appearance Mrs Howells made before the Superintendent he would not have excited himself.

  The moment she set eyes on Mr Dodge at his desk Mrs Howells liked the look of him, recognised him as a man she could talk to. ‘It’s me daughter, sir,’ she began at once, hurrying forward, looking absurd in uniform, and before the formal preliminaries, usual with a man of his rank, could be opened. Pye, who had to be present as her immediate superior, literally held his breath. But Mrs Howells had made no mistake. Behind a front of purple, whisky-drinking ferocity, under wide shoulders, beneath the show he made of great strength for a man of his age, she had smelled the gossip in Mr Dodge. She was right. At the first pause in the rattle of her narrative he said, ‘You can go, Pye, dismiss.’ Once Pye was out of the room he began, ‘You know I ’ad a niece get just like it.’ Before long they were deep in the topic of afterbirths. In the end he dismissed her, without even a reprimand, after what had been to him a very interesting discussion. As for Mrs Howells she would, for the rest of her life, at a word, have followed him through fire and water to the end. What is more, she never troubled the Superintendent again, either by appealing to him or by telling tales. For he knew what he was about.

  So did Pye. It made the sub officer extremely uneasy that she had not been reprimanded. As he knew the Brigade, he expected to catch it because she had been let off. He tried to get out of Mrs Howells what had passed after he was sent out of the room. She would only repeat that Mr Dodge was a gentleman, a proper gentleman. This made Pye sure she had told the Super some lying tale. The incident weighed on his mind. He dared not ask Trant. He thought he was going to come on it any minute round the next corner, as he was. He became so nervous of making some mistake in the returns he had to send up, returns which, day by day, seemed to breed, that he got to be more and ever more behind, until his desk was littered.

  It was the beginning of the end.

  Soon after Mrs Howells had been before Mr Dodge, and as a direct result of that visit, Trant came down to give Pye a shake up. The District Officer did not refer to Mary but it was as Pye feared, the fact that she had been let off put Pye in the wrong.

  When Trant arrived he went straight to Pye’s small office by the watchroom. He saw Pye alone. He began a
bout some return that was overdue. He broke off to dress him down about the condition of his tunic. Even the office was dirty and untidy, he went on. Papers all over. Pye interrupted to point out he could not do much with the tunic, that it was second hand. He voiced a grievance by saying he hoped to get issued with new clothing shortly. Trant objected that the buttons were filthy, had not seen polish for a month. Glancing down his chest Pye had to admit they were in bad shape. The way they looked even came as a surprise to him. But he had no time to marvel. The DO was carrying on alarming. He swept all forms, returns, petrol dockets, doctor’s certificates, etc., to the floor. He cleared the table. ‘Who’s runnin’ this station, you or the men,’ he shouted, then went so far as to state that Pye was only an Acting Sub, Temporary. By this time Pye had seen the light. He was standing to attention. At any interval he piped, ‘Yessir.’

  ‘Let’s ’ave no more of it. Keep on top line,’ Trant said when at last he went.

  Pye did not like the state of things. It was very awkward. There would be all hell let loose the next stroke his bad luck played. He got out of the tunic. He brushed it so hard he was half afraid he might brush right through, the cloth only held together by force of habit. New sub officers had second hand issues. It was misery. He fell on his buttons. He had to admit these were on the dull side. He asked himself how he had not come to notice earlier. But there was so much on his mind. It was different in the old days, before the war, when there was time for spit and polish, when that was all there was to the Job. Now you only had leisure to go ‘ha’ at buttons. Yet he had known subs in those times, real officers mark you, who didn’t look no different. You could never say Bossy Small’s brother up at Number Ten, had been smart. But it was any stick to beat a man with these days, anything. And once in their bad books you were for it.

  He was too disturbed to notice the invasion of Norway. In any case he had not read a newspaper for years. As a disillusioned trades unionist he had given the Press up as corrupt. To his mind, in politics, he had been betrayed even by his own people. Now his own class was putting his job in peril, his own cloth, or so it seemed to him.

  He began to blame everything on the AFS. He would still admit the new Service was necessary but he came, in that first interview with Trant at which they had not been mentioned, to recognise cut-price firemen, the Auxiliaries, as an evil. He cracked hard down on his. He would shew who was running the substation.

  He chose this moment to order that the guard outside was to be properly rigged at all times, spotless. This man was to see that no other Auxiliary within view of the public had so much as a button undone on his tunic. It seemed oppressive to the personnel, all the more so now that Piper had blobs of distemper all over his trousers, and nothing was said to him because he was on his racket redecorating the DO’s quarters. Several supposed Pye must have a relation out in Norway.

  He stopped Richard going off to the pub.

  He stopped them getting between blankets in the afternoon, even in the case of an off-duty guard who had been up half the night.

  But Piper still did not have to do general duties, could go out for a drink whenever he pleased. This led to comment. The comment grew pointed, niggly. When eventually a deputation went to see Pye in his room about the privileged time old Piper had, the hermit made out he was bewildered. He said no such thing had happened to him in all his four campaigns, that he was humiliated. But Pye refused to have it. The men even put in that Piper was receiving special rations. On this Pye emptied his office of them. He said they had the remedy, in other words, as was true, that the messing was for the station’s food committee. ‘You get your grub allowance separate each week. The Chief Officer leaves matters to you lads yourselves to manage between you. There’s Auxiliaries in this station claim they’ve held down big jobs before the war. Can’t you organise your own grub, or do I have to do your pants up for you in addition.’ He ended with, ‘And I don’t want to see you lads here again. The Brigade don’t recognise round robins and the like. If I have any more I’ll run you, every one, before Mr Dodge. It’s more than my pension’s worth to talk as I am doing. If I wasn’t a man that tried to see reason, was amenable to it, I’d charge each one of you now. This place will be the death of me. A babies’ button, a comforter, is what you want, some of you. What a ship!’

  He did not stop his visits to Prudence in the evenings. ‘’E’s like a tom that must get back up on the self-same wall,’ they said.

  Coming back after his second spell of leave, Richard found he could not remember what his home life had been only a day or two before. All he had then done lay ready to hand, but as dried fruit is to fresh off the tree, tasteless, unlike. Now that he was kept all hours in the station he had no privacy with which to ferment those feelings, shrivelled after so short a journey.

  Pye went along to the kitchen. On thinking things over he had decided it was part of his duty to investigate the complaint. He found Hilly and Eileen alone with a blank white readiness of the electric range.

  ‘Where’s ’Owells?’ he began, very sharp. Hilly explained she had sent Mary out to the butcher’s.

  ‘I thought maybe she had gone on a trip to Sheerness,’ he said. He went on to ask what had happened to the orderlies. When it was explained that these men had done all they had to do for the next meal, which was dinner, and had been allowed upstairs, he was indignant. He pointed out to the cooks they had no right to vary the men’s routine, which called for work throughout every morning, bar Sundays. He said if one of his superior officers came to find the state of affairs he had just found, he, Pye, would get a bottle for it, would be landed in trouble. He told Hilly she must think up something for the orderlies to occupy themselves with, no matter what. If necessary they could scrub the kitchen floor again.

  Eileen took offence.

  ‘My kitchen’s clean, Mr Pye,’ she said.

  He replied it was not for her to say what was clean or otherwise and that, in any case, he had not said it was dirty. ‘And there’s another thing,’ he went on, ‘some of the men have had a moan to me that Piper’s been favourised.’

  Eileen went white all over. She opened her mouth and was about to start when Pye interrupted. He said to let him finish. He pointed out he was not accusing any individual of being special to the old man, that he was not saying it had happened, much less who had done it, if it had been done. ‘All I have to tell you is, it’s got to stop,’ he said.

  ‘Then you are accusing me,’ Eileen shouted, whiter, breathless with rage.

  ‘No, Eileen, let me,’ Hilly began.

  ‘I’m not so green,’ said Pye, ‘I’ve not been twenty years in the Brigade for nothing. What’s more it’s natural, sometimes you can’t help yourself.’

  ‘There’s not a man at this station gets anything special in my kitchen,’ Eileen said in a small voice, breathless.

  ‘There’s occasions you can’t help yourself,’ Pye continued, ‘when certain food don’t suit a individual and he asks if there’s any left over from the day before. Anyone who’s a bit out of trim that mornin’ will claim that man’s getting preference. I don’t say it’s right, I say it’s ’uman nature.’

  ‘There’s nothing of the sort goes on here, Mr Pye,’ Hilly said, bowing her head before the outburst she saw was on them. And break it did.

  ‘Get out of my kitchen,’ Eileen yelled, dead white, surprised herself at where she got the breath.

  ‘Now look,’ he said.

  ‘Get out of ’ere,’ she shouted, ‘I don’t mind, get out of ’ere, Mr Pye, can’t you leave me alone, get out.’

  Upon which Pye left. Eileen burst out sobbing. And that same day she gave notice.

  The news from Norway was worse.

  With Eileen gone Hilly gave of her best in the Mess. But Mrs Howells was no cook, the third woman hardly any better. The men began seriously to complain about the food. ‘It’s good grub spoiled,’ they said. No one came along to take Eileen’s place. Pye could not be certain some lying
acccount might not get back to Trant, through Piper, of the reasons which had led Eileen to resign. Besides he was afraid Mr Dodge would blame him for losing what had already become a rarity, a woman who was prepared, in return for good money, to cook hot meals for men.

  About this time an elderly gent walked right into the station, cried in a loud voice, ‘You won’t be getting my money much longer.’ Boys, riding bikes on errands, called out to them ‘Why don’t you join the army?’ And Pye was summoned to the asylum for the second time.

  Before he could make arrangements to pay this visit, the first blow fell, with no commotion, and officially, yet with deceptive softness. He was summoned to appear before Trant in his room up at Number Fifteen. As it was some days after he had been told off by the DO at the substation, he thought it could only be about Eileen’s giving notice. But when he got there he found Trant was giving him the official caution in connection with his work, the traditional warning. Nothing was directly specified. He was led to understand in dangerous, gentle language that if he did not change his ways, he would find serious trouble for himself. He took the wisest course. He said ‘Yessir,’ to everything he did.

  The next day he went down to the asylum. He was to remember afterwards how fine that afternoon had been; sun, a blue sky, the air mild; so that he had to remind himself afterwards it was a false spring, just one of those days come much too early, a break in the weather.

  He considered they must want to see him about his sister’s maintenance. He thought almost happily of what he would say, of his triumphant refusal to contribute towards what had been forced on him by a savage society.

  They did not make him wait. He was shewn into a room, was asked to sit in a deep chair. In front was a big gothic window overlooking a big park which must have been the grounds. This window had violet-coloured glass in clover-leaf openings round the frame. Then he became entirely aware of a man at ease behind a large desk, who might have been, and wasn’t, Mr Dodge, but who was properly imposing.