by Henry Green
Fully dressed, Shiner hurried round that corner with a bellow. ‘There ’e is,’ he remarked to Piper behind him. ‘Look mate, we didn’t know ’oo you was, see,’ he went on to Christopher. ‘Good morning Mrs,’ to Dy, thinking to himself, what a smashing lump of stuff. ‘Say Chris, see ’ere, there’s a fire in this place, see. It’s up to us to put it out.’ He picked up a roll of hose as though it was no more than lavatory paper, unrolled it, that is he ran it out, chased back, calling to Piper, ‘The branch, man, the branch,’ by which he meant the nozzle, got one of these out of a locker on the pump, tore back, snapped it into the coupling on the hose and yelled, ‘Down with the pump.’ Nothing happened.
‘I can’t make this out,’ he pretended. ‘Look,’ to Christopher, ‘you be number four. OK? You run back along this length of ’ose and when you find Fireman Piper you sing out to ’im, down with the pump. Becos’ it’s dodgy, this fire’s fryin’ us alive, there’s not a second to lose, man. Get me.’
Expressionless, Christopher trotted along the hose. ‘Not a minute to lose, not a minute to lose,’ Piper remarked, sawing his chin. ‘Down with the pump,’ the boy cried, high and clear. ‘Bless me,’ said Piper and made motions with his hands. ‘What you must think,’ Hilly said to Dy, hating her, as Dy called out, ‘Be careful, darling.’ Then, when Piper yelled, ‘Water,’ and Wright began to shout, ‘Another ’and on the branch, it’s taking charge,’ by which he meant that the imaginary pressure was threatening to pluck the nozzle out of his huge fists, at that instant Pye came in.
He saw, and seemed to pay no attention, turning aside at the door to speak with an electrician, who was there to fix a fire sign outside the entrance. He was dressed in civvies. Dy had no idea who he could be. Shiner was much embarrassed at being caught fooling. Piper let his mouth fall open. Richard was appalled. This was Pye’s leave day. He had agreed to Christopher’s visit only because he had been sure Pye would not be there.
Standing with his back to Pye, facing Piper, Christopher repeated in his treble:
‘Down with the pump.’
‘Water,’ the old man echoed, in hushed tones.
There was a regulation which laid it down that all visitors must be reported to the officer in charge. Also it was in Richard’s mind that his wife and son had called round out of visiting hours. So in spite of the fact that Pye was on leave, but in deference to Pye’s latest attitude by which he demanded elaborate respect for his rank, Richard thought it best to report Dy and Christopher. He went up. He said in confidential tones:
‘The wife and son have come, sub. All right?’
‘Your wife and your son? Why yes, go ahead. Now don’t fix that sign where they can’t see it for the other one,’ he went on to this electrician. ‘I thought the best place would be about three foot east of that soil pipe, but excuse me a minute, mate, I shan’t be long.’
He came across to Dy. As Richard introduced them, and Pye held the brim of his hat before taking her hand, she gave not a flicker of a sign of what she really felt, for, once she knew who it was, she loathed him.
‘So that’s the son and heir, is it?’ said Pye, not taken in, thinking to himself the crafty whore. ‘Going to be a fireman like his father,’ he went on, sly, ‘well, I must say, he’s shapin’ fine at it. Taking orders back correctly into the bargain.’
The situation Richard hoped would always be spared them was present. Piper was alive to it and could now hardly mask his interest. Pye had instantly decided not to recognise the boy. But Christopher, at this first encounter with him after the abduction, behaved as if it was most natural.
He said ‘I say.’ He came across to shake hands. He said ‘I say’ again, and then, before he could be asked, ‘I’m quite well, thank you.’
Pye, giving no indication, said, ‘That’s good. Now would you like to see the engines? You take ’im round Dick, let him ring the bell if he wants. Mrs,’ he went on, turning only to find that she was no longer there, ‘Mrs Roe,’ he said again, moving over to where she stood, in conversation with Shiner, ‘Will you excuse me while I see to this fire sign? I’ve come back particular on my leave day.’ ‘Of course,’ she said, sweetly smiling. Then she spoilt it. Abruptly she turned her back, walked off to pretend to look at one of the pumps.
Christopher trotted after her. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, pointing to an adaptor. Richard joined them. Shiner and the hermit hastily cleared up, then followed Pye over to the electrician, to see if they were still all right with the skipper. Hilly, furious with herself, saying ‘Excuse me’ in a low voice to no one, went out to look at her face in the big mirror, where the girls washed. And Dy said, for Richard’s benefit:
‘Mummy doesn’t like that man.’
‘Why?’ Christopher asked.
‘Look at this funny thing,’ she said.
‘Why don’t you like him, Mummy?’
‘Sh . . . Sh . . . or he’ll hear.’
‘Why don’t you Mummy?’
‘No I can’t talk about it, darling, not now.’
‘Why, Mummy?’
‘You let Mummy be. Richard what is this for, oh what did I tell you, never mind,’ she said in the one breath. Roe began to explain the apparatus they carried. This was not the time to shew what he felt.
But Christopher would not listen at first.
‘I say Mummy,’ he said brightly, ‘that man came to tea when I was lost.’
‘I know, darling. Now listen to Daddy.’
At that Christopher gave all his attention to his father.
‘What are they painted grey for?’ he asked.
Richard said he thought it was because by keeping them Admiralty grey, like battleships, these appliances would be less easily seen from the air at night. He even pronounced this grey to be almost the colour of the night, and by that he meant moonlight. Who was he to know, before he had been in a raid, that it would have been best to paint them pink, a boudoir shade, to match that half light which was to settle, night after night, around the larger conflagrations.
‘I want to be an airman,’ Christopher announced.
‘Would you like to ring the bell?’
‘Oh yes. I say, may I really, please?’
‘Go ahead,’ his father said. He climbed up, barely reached the strap while Richard steadied him where he was perched on top of some rolls of hose, and violently rang that bell. The warning, flung out on the pitch peculiar to all bells on fire engines, made pedestrians outside turn round.
‘Look, Christopher, the traffic policeman’s watching behind him. He thinks we’re coming out.’
‘Wear this and be a real fireman.’ It was Pye. He had gone to his office and brought out the Regular Fireman’s helmet shaped like a goose’s head, black, made of a cork wood composition. It was much too big for the boy, sat down over his eyes. He began crowing with laughter.
Dy said, ‘Now that’s enough darling.’ Christopher climbed off at once. In a few minutes she took him away, at long last, Richard felt. They shook hands all round. Pye again held the brim of his hat. Piper sought to play the fool by saluting. His attempt to exaggerate this was ludicrous. As Piper and Wright went back to the recreation room Shiner said:
‘It was decent of the skipper to bring ’is ’elmet. Went to fetch it on ’is own as well.’
Piper answered mysteriously. ‘Right glad I am they brought it off at last,’ he said, ‘brought it off at last.’
‘Brought what off?’ But Piper would only mumble in answer. Shiner went on, ‘What beats me about you, you bloody old ’ermit, is the way you will talk in riddles. It’s dodgy. I’ll tell you another thing, you carry on like that in the night. You can’t ever get your rest. Watch yerself, mate, you’ll be goin’ pickin’ violets off of stones before you’re finished, stone bonk, you will.’
If the old man would not explain at once, he let fall so many hints that a story of Christopher’s abduction eventually got out, for Piper considered the visit paid by Mrs Roe with her son had been prearranged, that t
he old score, if you liked to put it that way, must now be settled. He was the kind of man who could never credit coincidence. And he was glad, for his own sake. He did not care in the least about Roe. Piper had got it into his head that Pye was down on Piper because he happened to know about the abduction. This was a fixed idea, although he kept it to himself. But even if he had let it get about that he thought it was the reason Pye was always chasing him, no one in the world could ever have dissuaded the old man. He was one of those who are beyond even the common or garden interchange of doubts and petty fears.
He said to the Welshman later, ‘That’s the reason ’e’s been sortin’ you out, the skipper ’as, ever since you said what you did the night them two tarts drank three bottles of gin. I said to meself then, I says, “You watch out, Taffy, you won’t get away with that, you won’t, oh dear.”’
‘But skipper and me’s close as a snail who’s riding on another’s back.’
‘The minute I ’eard you say them few words that time I says to meself, that’s done it.’
‘Man, you’re making me all nervous.’
‘When you said about the Regular what ’ad a sister that got took inside for bein’ sticky fingered in one of the big shops.’
‘Stiffen my crows, what about it?’
‘Gawd, you young fellers will never learn. ’Is own sister was put inside for walkin’ off with Roe’s nipper, that’s why.’
‘What sister, sister to what man?’
But Piper would say no more to the Welshman. This was how the story got around in bits and pieces, and it was in this way that it grew, and grew in a short time, for there was not much time left.
When he had finished with the electrician Pye went into his office, and picked up the telephone as though taking hold of a black handle of the box which held all his hopes imprisoned; delicately, so that he should not break his luck which had broken; fearful, because before he could make the connection, he already knew.
‘Yes, hullo,’ she answered, bright.
‘It’s Bert.’
‘Oh yes,’ Prudence said, in a very different tone, ‘how are you?’
‘I’m terrible,’ he moaned, ‘sweetheart. It’s the change in the weather, or this war, or something. What about me and you meetin’ some place?’ He knew better now than to propose going up to her apartment.
‘I’m not sure,’ she answered, after a bit of a pause, ‘it’s rather difficult this week.’ But she thought this is awful, I shall never manage to get rid of him.
‘You’ve become a different girlie altogether,’ he said.
‘Don’t be like that,’ she answered, sharp.
‘Oh yes you ’ave,’ he replied in a low voice of great unhappiness.
‘Don’t be silly.’
Her educated accents cut him.
‘Is it somethin’ I’ve done, sweetheart?’
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. But he was following his own thoughts, the will of the wisps. He could no longer take in what she told him. ‘Was it something I done the last time,’ he asked. ‘I rack my memory,’ he went on, ‘because you know I wouldn’t do the least thing, not for worlds, to put you against me. When I ’ad all that trouble with my sister I think I’d’ve gone stark crazy if it hadn’t been for you. When I think,’ he said, all at once speaking in his official tone but in a way that would have alarmed his men, it was so interrupted, so indistinct, ‘I realise I owe more than life to you, my dear, all the trouble I’ve been through these last few weeks, yes more than life, for what is it if it isn’t happiness, and you gave me more of that, yes you did, than any human being, than I ’ad the right in my position, that is, the likelihood to expect.’
‘Well, but you’re all right again now,’ she said, brisk, at the first opportunity.
‘Am I,’ he said, ‘that’s the big question.’
As he went on and on she settled down, slumped, over the stool there was by the phone. It was of black glass, bitterly cold. Ilse had taken the cushion for her bed. The glass struck at her through her thin, flowing clothes. Her soft back got quite round.
Ilse came in about the middle. She chose to ignore the fact that Prudence seemed to be listening into the receiver which, as she held it close to her ear, made a butterfly sound for Ilse about that bent head to which, unseen, this voice from another world was speaking.
‘Darling,’ she interrupted, ‘shall you be going out presently?’ Prudence put her hand over the mouthpiece. She told herself it was the final limit. Here was Ilse trying to turn her out of her own flat so as to ask that horror Wright.
All she said was, ‘I don’t know. I don’t expect so.’
‘But darling I’m so very sorry, I did not see that you were busy,’ said Ilse.
‘That’s all right, darling,’ Prudence answered. She put the receiver back to her ear. It seemed Bert had had the threat of a writ, the asylum was insisting that he should pay some money for his sister. But she did not care. Nothing would make her see Bert again this week, no, not till she felt quite different about firemen.
‘What about you an’ me meetin’ some place this afternoon,’ said Pye, falling back on his fatal banter.
‘I’m afraid I can’t.’
‘Now sweetheart,’ he objected, but she had had enough. She softly put that receiver back, as though shutting a linen cupboard, and said, quietly, ‘damn.’
He did not immediately ring her again. He came out of his office into the watchroom looking for trouble. He picked up the first thing he saw, which happened to be Hilly’s log book, an official record of her journeys that she had to keep. She was passing the outer door just then.
‘Here a minute,’ he said.
She thought how terribly ill he had seemed these last weeks, honestly he looked deathly this morning. Not that she cared.
‘How often do I have to tell you drivers?’ Then he began, ‘What is the matter with this log book? It is yours, isn’t it? It’s got your name and your staff car number on the cover? What’s wrong with it?’
‘I’m very sorry, sub, let me see, well I suppose . . . but honestly I don’t notice anything.’
‘What about the end of the month? How many times do I have to remind you that there is a double line must be drawn after the entry on the last day of each month.’
Oh, she thought with satisfaction, what an awful doing your Prudence must have given you.
‘So soon as you’ve made the appropriate entry for the thirty-first or the thirtieth,’ he went on, ‘whichever it may be, rule a double line under.’ He enlarged for some time. When at last she was able to get away she locked herself in the lavatory again. She had never felt so depressed in her life.
Once Piper opened his mouth about the abduction Richard found the substation rapidly altered their opinion of him. In fact he became almost popular, that is with as many as heard what grew to be the fable started by the old soldier. This was largely possible because he no longer gave Pye drinks. Richard’s companions were interested, or were influenced, only by actions. That Richard would have gone on standing him ale, if Pye had allowed it, did not affect their view. This change of attitude was also due to his having kept his mouth or, as they called it, the trap, shut. Again it seemed wrong to them because word had gone round that his wife looked to be a smashing dame. Thus the whole story made him someone in their eyes. For the first time he became real to the substation, and all this from a tale that had expanded remarkably within thirty-six hours. Because it was now the sub officer who had taken Christopher away from where the boy was left when Pye found him, in a cloakroom of one of those night clubs, while his parents drank champagne within.
Shiner remarked that Roe was playing the white man when Richard refused to discuss the matter, shoot his mouth. It was generally understood that he did not dare, in case Pye took reprisals. In this the men were wrong, but the effect was the same, as much as if they had given him credit for the feeling he had, which they ignored, that he must never let them share, even though it was
only in the telling, in the agony he had suffered.
Conversely Piper came to be even better hated.
The invasion of the Low Countries had begun. Although they hardly ever discusssed the war these men listened to news broadcasts three times a day. With the first shock of retreat overseas there was hardly one of them who did not transfer some of his sense of frustration into active dislike of old Piper, and, with each defeat across the Channel, into a hope, now the fighting had started, that his kind, the crawlers, the creepers, the old enough not to fight and know better, would at last be sunk, would be put in a situation where they could not bother anyone again. This feeling was intensified by the fact that they, who were young enough to carry arms, had nothing whatever to do at such a time but scrub floors and polish brass. This made them ridiculous even in their own eyes, and they knew that the public, seeing a man of Piper’s age in the Service, must think it gallant of the hermit to be in even their uniform. No one shouted out to him, as was done more and more to the others, ‘Why don’t you go and fight?’ Still the men dared do nothing again about Piper, not yet. He was protected, too well in.
But threats began to be made. ‘The first blitz we get I’ll drop a flue pot on the old oyster,’ someone said.
Because he worked for Trant the hermit was excused more and more of the station fatigues, for instance, he was never orderly in the kitchen now, although he made his way back for meals. As a result the others, when their turn came, waited on the Pied one, washed his dirty dishes. They objected to it. Also he got out of doing guards at night. He said Trant had given orders that he should get his night’s rest in return for the extra work he put in. At last, about the time of Weygand’s stand, three men were deputed to see Pye once more. The sub officer was almost tearful with the spokesman. Pye sometimes knew when to drop his official manner, to forget his threats.