Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

‘Put that gun down,’ ordered Paget. ‘I’m an RAF officer. Can’t you see?’

  ‘You’m could be in disguise.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  Reluctantly the gun barrels were lowered and Paget stepped closer and leaned towards the face framed by several woollen balaclavas. ‘You’re Skinner, aren’t you?’

  ‘Hughie Skinner,’ agreed the man in a pleased way. ‘An’ you’m be Mr Paget from Ash Lodge. Mr Paget’s son, that is.’

  Some dead rabbits hung over the bicycle handlebars. ‘I’m ’Ome Guard,’ said Skinner. ‘But right now I bain’t in uniform.’

  ‘I thought the Home Guard had Sten guns these days.’

  ‘Been out after a few bunnies for the pot.’ He went to the bicycle and detached a dangling rabbit. ‘Maybe your good mother would like one for Christmas.’

  Paget hesitated but then held out his hand and nodded his thanks. In wartime you never knew when a rabbit might come in useful. ‘Somehow I’ve got to get home,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to ring Wilks. He might come out even at this hour.’ He turned towards the dark telephone box by the booking-hall door.

  ‘Phone don’t ackle, Mr Paget, sir,’ said Skinner. ‘Been bust a fortnight. Nobody to come and mend it, so they says. You could ride on my crossbar but I don’t reckon this old shaker would stand it.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘But I tell you what I’ll do, I’ll pedal down to Wilks and turf ’im out. I know for sure ’e’s got some juice. They Yanks ’ave give ’im some.’

  Skinner creaked off into the icy night. Paget put on his coat and his cap and went into the phone box for some kind of shelter. In the dark cold everything was tranquil. He could make out the winter tracery of the great trees creaking over the station yard. They used to collect conkers below them after school. He and Margaret had enjoyed their first kiss one peacetime evening under the summer leaves. What had happened to Margaret? What had happened to him? To all of them?

  After twenty minutes he gratefully heard the taxi coming, rattling through the dark, and picked up his case as Wilks brought the Austin, its headlights only slits, around the corner.

  Wilks was an old man swathed in coats and scarves, his face barely visible. ‘Mr Paget,’ he said. ‘Welcome home, sir. Skinner got me out of bed. But it’s all right, part of the war effort.’

  ‘Thanks, Wilks,’ said Paget, putting his case in the car and climbing into the warm leather seats in the back. ‘That train should have been here at eleven thirty last night.’

  ‘’Ow they ’ope to invade France if they can’t get the trains right, confounds me, sir. Good job I ’ad some petrol.’

  The engine grunted and they turned a crunching circle in the station yard. ‘Gave a lift to some Yanks last week,’ said the driver. ‘Drunk as lords and miles from camp but I was going that way anyway. They was too plastered to pay. And this morning, would you believe it, there was two of those jerrycans at my gate, full. Four gallons of what they call gas.’

  The taxi crept through the bleak shadows. ‘Still don’t like these masks on they headlights,’ said Wilks. ‘My eyes don’t get any better and how am I expected to see the road? Good job I knows it like my hand. Time they did away with the blackout, anyway. Jerry won’t bomb us now.’

  Paget felt the vehicle going up a familiar slope to where he knew there was a break in the hedgerow and he could look towards the cricket ground. It was glowing faintly luminous with frost, the pavilion hunched by the road. Wilks said: ‘I ’member when you played for the men’s team and you were only a boy, Mr Paget. You did all right, too. They have the odd match in the season now, fire brigade versus the police and that, but the pavilion’s full of air-raid stuff, pumps and ladders. Not that we ’ad much need of them around these parts, thank God. One land-mine in the lake, hundreds of dead fish, and that was about it.’

  Paget laughed in the dark. ‘My mother wrote to me about the fish. She said you could smell the frying for miles.’

  ‘That was all the war we’ve really ’ad down ’ere,’ said Wilks. ‘Except the boys going away to join up and never coming back. And there’s been a few of them.’ The church tower rose at the crossroads, black even against the darkness. ‘I spent a few cold hours up there,’ said Wilks. ‘Fire-watching. One night I’m up there sitting on my deck-chair, wrapped up, with a tot of whisky, and I could see them bombing Bristol. It were burning like ’ell. Grandstand view.’

  They were almost there now. He was home again. The taxi pulled up, shuddering at the gate. ‘Do they know you’re coming, Mr Paget?’ asked Wilks as he took the one-and-sixpence fare and refused a tip. ‘Tip me when the war’s over,’ he said.

  ‘They’ll hear the gate squeak,’ said Paget. ‘My father will probably come down with his sword.’

  Wilks laughed. ‘I heard tell about ’is sword. God, if they Jerries had landed ’ere they would have ’ad some trouble with your dad.’

  They shook hands, neither taking off his gloves, and wished each other a Happy Christmas. Carrying Skinner’s rabbit, Paget opened the gate and nodded to the familiar squeak. A curtain twitched above as he watched for it. Then there came a candle glow in the fanlight, the latch sounded and the chain rattled throatily, like a memory. The door was pulled open. His father stood there in his bulky dressing-gown, his grin below his grey moustache deepened by the candlelight. His mother was behind him. ‘Martin,’ she whispered. ‘You’re home for Christmas.’

  ‘Didn’t I say he would be,’ said his father. Paget embraced his mother and handed her the rabbit.

  Chapter Two

  He slept until the early afternoon, woken by the arid branch of a dog rose tapping at the glass, as it had done when he was a boy. He used to imagine it was someone, perhaps a beautiful woman, wanting to come in. Now he lay deeply enjoying the room around him, the feel of the remembered bed, how he fitted into it, the shadowed walls and the beams crossing the ceiling; the safeness. The blackleaded fireplace was empty but the room was warm for it shared a chimney with the living-room below where there was a log fire all the winter. Twenty-five years of nights he had lain there familiar with the beams above him, their twists, cracks, shadows and generations of spiders who had eluded his mother’s duster. Nothing had changed. He was grateful to be back.

  By instinct, his mother Emma knew he was awake. She appeared at the sloping door, her happiness apparent even in the low light. ‘It’s two o’clock,’ she said. ‘I’ve brought you a cup of tea. And I’m making a stew for tonight.’ She hesitated. ‘Rabbit.’

  As she put the tea on the side of the bed she kissed him. ‘Perhaps before long you’ll be home for good,’ she said. ‘Do you think it will all be over next year?’

  He laughed and patted her face gently. ‘If I knew that, Mother, I’d be up there with the big chiefs, with Eisenhower, Montgomery. And they probably don’t know either.’ He tried to sound reassuring: ‘But we’re going to win now, that’s certain.’

  ‘Tanner’s boy was lost at sea,’ she said, ‘and Tommy Andrews was killed in Italy.’

  He grimaced sadly. In a village the casualties were personal.

  ‘You’ve got something on your hand,’ she said. He was wearing a pair of pyjamas she had given him from a drawer smelling of mothballs.

  Turning his wrist, he pretended. ‘Oh, that. That’s nothing. A bit of a scorch.’

  ‘It goes up, right up to your elbow.’

  ‘It’s better now. That’s what you get for being careless, putting your arm on the block of a Ford.’

  She regarded him accusingly. ‘There’s a mark, a scar, on your neck also.’

  ‘Same thing.’

  She went to the door and hesitated. ‘Did you bring your ration coupons, Martin?’ she asked. ‘I’m going to the shop. Adamson promised me a tin of apricots.’

  ‘I’ve got them,’ he said, reaching for his wallet. He took out the coloured, small-squared, pieces of paper. ‘And my subsistence allowance.’ He gave her a white five-pound note with the coupons.

  ‘Five poun
ds,’ said Emma Paget. ‘That seems a lot.’

  ‘I might be here for months,’ he joked. ‘At least five days, unless they dream up some reason to drag me back.’

  She kissed him again but repeated: ‘It seems a lot,’ as she went from the room and down the stairs.

  He got up and put on his familiar dressing-gown which hung behind the door. He looked out of the tight window, over the paved garden with its skeletal apple tree, to the diminishing fields. He remembered the window framing a scene of high summer, the borders brimming with flowers, busy with birds, the apple tree loaded, the meadow beyond lush and green. Everywhere was white now, even the afternoon sky.

  His father called up the stairs. ‘There’s hot water for a bath, Martin. We’re just walking to the shop.’

  He went to the bathroom on the wooden landing. In there was a small oil heater which he remembered being in the greenhouse. The water was heated from the living-room fire. He ran the bath and lay in it, wishing deeply that he could be there, home in that house, the war finished and done. He thought of the people he knew in France and of Antoinette.

  His uniform, already pressed by his mother, was in the wardrobe. Hanging beside it was a rough, familiar shirt, a pair of corduroys and a brown pullover. There was underwear and socks and his shoes, new in 1940, on the low chest by the window. He got dressed and went down the creaking staircase into the living-room, enclosed and silent but for the ticking of the mantelpiece clock. It was surrounded by Christmas cards and there were others on the dresser. On a plant stand was a low Christmas tree, hung with a few baubles but no lights and a silver star sagging slightly to one side.

  He walked into his mother’s kitchen; everything was as she would always have it, shining, ordered. The rabbit stew was simmering on the stove, its good smell growing.

  Back in the living-room he picked up that morning’s copy of The Times, four pages of it, and sat in comfort in the armchair before the fire. The war was stalled. Russian winter had frozen the invading Germans in their tracks, in Italy battles had sunk into the December mud. In Burma, so far away it was almost forgotten, the Japanese were still trying to reach for India. Americans, landing on Pacific islands defended by manically brave Japanese soldiers, were in heavy combat. The extra Christmas issue of chocolate had gone swiftly from British shops.

  His mother and father came into the hall, pink from the cold.

  ‘Ah, that’s more like you,’ said his mother.

  ‘Do the civvies still fit?’ asked his father. ‘They look a bit big.’

  ‘They are,’ said his mother, giving a gentle tug at the pullover sleeve. ‘He’ll have to grow into them again. Once he’s not so busy.’

  They went into the kitchen. His father filled the brass kettle and put it on the stove while his mother began unloading her shopping basket.

  ‘Two ounces of butter each,’ she recited. ‘And four of margarine. A pound of sugar between us …’

  ‘And a bit of cheese that would scarcely fill a mousetrap,’ added his father. ‘Thank God bread’s not rationed.’

  ‘When you can get it,’ said his wife.

  ‘I promise not to eat more than my ration,’ smiled their son.

  ‘Your coupons were useful,’ said his mother. ‘He had our apricots.’ She held up an oblong tin. ‘We even got some sardines.’

  *

  At nine o’clock in the evening they always listened to the news. Most of the population did so; it had become the meeting place of the nation. Schoolchildren did not go to bed until it was finished. They grew up with a geography lesson of battles: Dunkirk, Leningrad, El Alamein, the Irrawaddy River in Burma. The voices of the newsreaders were as recognisable as those of a family: Alvar Lidell, Bruce Belfrage, John Snagge. Some people christened their children Alvar.

  The wooden wireless set was like a pointed hat standing on a wicker table in the corner. His mother polished its case once a week and dusted its dials daily. Every fortnight the wet battery had to be changed; the dry battery lasted longer.

  ‘This is London.’ The voice, modulated, important, filtered through the patterned fabric of the loudspeaker.

  Paget saw his mother glance at her husband who gave a formal cough, as though chairing a meeting, and said awkwardly: ‘We’ve … Well, we’ve formed the habit, like a lot of people, of giving some thought to those close to us who are away …’

  ‘In the war,’ put in his mother, attempting to get to the point. Big Ben began resoundingly to strike nine o’clock.

  ‘We do it every evening while Big Ben is striking,’ hurried Geoffrey Paget.

  His mother said: ‘We say a prayer for you, Martin.’

  They were silent. After the successive shivering sounds had faded the BBC voice said: ‘Here is the nine o’clock news and this is Alvar Lidell reading it.’

  They had eaten the stew that evening. ‘The rabbits are suffering heavy casualties,’ his father had said.

  ‘We have a duck for Christmas dinner,’ Emma Paget said in a proud way. ‘Hemmings promised.’

  ‘And the very last of the Christmas puddings,’ said his father. ‘Vintage 1939.’

  ‘Remember the puddings I made the week the war began in September,’ his mother added. ‘We’ve had one each Christmas.’

  ‘She calculated the war would last five years.’

  ‘That’s as close as the experts,’ said Martin.

  ‘Do you ever see General Eisenhower?’ enquired Emma genuinely.

  Martin laughed. ‘Not to speak to,’ he said. ‘On the newsreels.’

  The reader of the nine o’clock news was saying: ‘General Dwight Eisenhower has been appointed Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary Force. General Montgomery is to be Commander of Allied Ground Forces …’

  Geoffrey Paget took a bottle of whisky from the cupboard and they toasted Eisenhower, Montgomery and victory. When the news was over his mother went into the kitchen to wash up. ‘This Scotch has just about lasted, like the puddings,’ said his father, peering through the glass. ‘How long before we get some more, I wonder?’

  ‘Well, we’ve got Eisenhower and Monty in command, so all we have to do is go and win.’ Martin raised his glass and added grimly: ‘Nothing to it. Easy.’

  Christmas morning was rosy. The sun came up over the rigid countryside, and children were out early sliding on trays down the slope behind the school and on the pond where the ice had been inches deep for a week. Bare trees stood like iron. Bascombe, the postman, made his Christmas morning delivery, collecting a doorstep gift of a couple of shillings or a tot of whisky at each house and riding his bicycle with increasing unsteadiness.

  It was almost as it had always been in Crockbourne; except for the faces that would never return, and the fact that there were no bells. The ban on ringing bells had been lifted – nobody expected an invasion by German paratroops now – but it was feared the ropes were unsafe. Next year, the villagers promised themselves, the ringers would be able to continue their happy business. Next year, when the war would be over.

  In uniform Paget walked to the church, talking with people he had not seen for a long time, his mother on one side of him, proudly, and his upright-walking father on the other. There were twenty others in uniform: soldiers, two army nurses, airmen who had once been his schoolmates.

  As the scarved-and-coated congregation sang the opening carol, their breath clouding the cold church, he saw Margaret across the aisle, two rows in front. It had been over four years. She turned purposely, and their glances connected as they sang. At the end of the service, coming out beneath the crackling churchyard trees, he saw her, smiling, leaning against a tilting gravestone.

  ‘You’re not supposed to do that,’ he grinned. She wore a long, warm, grey coat and a fur hat. He kissed her on the cheek and she returned the kiss on his. ‘Propping yourself up on tombstones.’

  ‘I’m allowed.’ There was that slightly careless smile, the well-formed face, the touch of dark hair below the fur of the hat. But her eyes wer
e deeper. ‘It’s my grandfather.’ She patted the tombstone. ‘And how are you, Martin?’

  ‘Getting through,’ he said. ‘Like everybody else.’

  ‘You look splendid in your uniform. Have you been doing brave things?’

  ‘Not outstandingly brave,’ he smiled. ‘Although I could lie.’ They began to walk familiarly among the other villagers, speaking briefly to people as they passed. His parents were still conversing at the church door.

  Oddly she said: ‘What do you suppose the Germans are up to today?’

  ‘More or less what we’re doing, I suppose.’

  ‘Going to church, praying, singing carols.’

  ‘“Silent Night” is a German carol.’

  ‘Seems a bit mad,’ Margaret said.

  He said: ‘You don’t still live down here, do you?’

  ‘No, in London. It’s just for Christmas.’ Two small boys came to her and she held their hands. ‘I’ve brought my twins,’ she said.

  For Christmas dinner they had half the duck with boiled and roast potatoes, long parsnips, carrots and sprouts. There had never been a vegetable shortage; the nation had been told to ‘Dig for Victory’ to save shipping space, and gardens, lawns, parks and sports grounds had been dug over.

  Following the last of the 1939 pudding the family sat, replete and solemn, around the wireless and listened to the traditional speech of King George VI spoken in his stumbling way. When the national anthem was played they stood, unselfconsciously, at attention. Outside it was bitterly dark. At five o’clock there was a knock at the door. Geoffrey and Emma Paget put down their wineglasses. Martin stood but his father said: ‘I’ll answer it,’ and went into the hallway. Emma regarded her son. It might be a policeman with an instruction for him to report back. The department avoided using the telephone. It might be an order; another landing, another mission, another risk, another death. Perhaps his. He drained his wineglass.

  His mother said: ‘Not long ago your father would have taken his sword, in case it was a Hun paratrooper.’ They heard Geoffrey removing the chains from the door. ‘He very nearly sliced me in half once when I came back early from the Mothers’ Union.’