Waiting For the Day

by Leslie Thomas

  Although the train was crushed with passengers the mothers somehow pushed their families aboard and climbed in after them. It had come from South Wales and Harris found himself wedged in a group of Royal Navy men going to Portsmouth. ‘You have to have submarine training for this lark,’ said one. ‘Roll on, butty, don’t let anybody else get aboard. We’ll all suffocate.’

  The young sailor’s face was almost next to his. He was Welsh. ‘Got engaged this leave,’ he said. ‘Known her since school. Now I’ve gone and put her up the spout.’ He needed to tell somebody. ‘Only done it twice, we ’ave. I’m putting in for leave to marry her when I get to Pompey. What’s it like in the army for getting compassionate leave?’

  Harris smiled grimly and said: ‘Nothing to it.’

  Chapter Eight

  The countryside levelled as they went towards the coast. Harris had a narrow view over the sailor’s shoulder. The cold had not been so severe down here and he caught a glimpse of a river with a muffled man fishing from a small boat. ‘Did you see him, fishing?’ said the Welsh youth. ‘All right for some.’

  Harris suggested the man might be a night worker or a wounded commando on leave. The sailor said: ‘I wouldn’t want to be doing that anyway. On that water, I ’ate water, man. My old chap got hisself drowned. Merchant Navy, 1942, sunk by a U-boat. And there’s ’undreds down in Davy Jones’s with him. I didn’t want to go in the navy because I’m scared bloody rigid of the sea. I wish I could swap places with you, man. You can’t be scared of the land, can you? You can always run on land. But the sea is nasty. They might never find you.’

  It was not a long journey – even at the wartime pace of the train it took less than an hour – but long enough to see how the invasion army was taking shape. For all the manoeuvres of battalions and guns and tanks, Salisbury Plain, in its lofty isolation, was a place apart, away and above the massing of men and the materials of war, which had been given a code-name: ‘Bolero’, after the insistent ever-growing music of Ravel.

  From the train he could see tanks beneath trees and crouching under camouflage nets, armoured vehicles lining villages and blocking suburban streets. Children played around the wheels and tracks, the crews teasing and laughing and engaging their older sisters and mothers in earnest conversations.

  The widespread winter-brown acres of the New Forest were thick with tents and huts, armoured vehicles lurking below fir trees. On the narrow forest roads were creeping lines of trucks and there was a squadron of American Sherman tanks hugging a copse, camouflage netting slung between the tree-trunks. Somehow all that had to be taken across the English Channel.

  They passed the grounds of a stately house, ranks of ambulances lining its drive, a red cross painted above its portico. There was a public park where only the playground remained uncommandeered by the military. Amid parked armoured cars, troop carriers and squads of drilling soldiers, small girls swung on swings and two boys bounced on a see-saw.

  As they neared Southampton docks Harris saw that the familiar sidings and marshalling yards were lined for miles with railway trucks loaded with ammunition crates. The Welsh sailor watched also. ‘If you dropped a Swan Vesta on that lot, just one match, I bet all of Southampton would blow up, Pompey too.’

  When the train stopped he had to fight his way out and across the platform. Soldiers, airmen, sailors, blocked the route to the exit, sitting on their kit, drawing at cigarettes, some talking but not many. Nobody was laughing. Some looked exhausted. A uniformed crowd jostled around a mobile canteen marked ‘Church Army’, where three sweaty-faced women served in a sheet of steam. ‘I’ll be glad when this bleedin’ war is over!’ shouted one. In the centre of the platform, grouped tightly together as if for safety, were a dozen grey-uniformed and bonneted nurses.

  At last Harris gained the exit and went out into the damp city air. But now he could smell the sea on the breeze coming off the docks, and he sniffed at it gratefully. This was his home town.

  There was a bus with only a number on its destination board among the others outside the station. The youthfully spotted conductor stood on the platform reading the Dandy. He looked up and said: ‘Korky the Cat’s good this week.’

  Harris said he was pleased. ‘You go down Gosport Street, don’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘All the way down,’ said the conductor, folding the Dandy. ‘Then to the dock gates. That’ll be tuppence.’

  Harris paid while he stood on the platform. The conductor gave him a ticket and offered him the folded comic, as if it were part of his war effort, saying: ‘I’ve read it.’

  Harris took the comic anyway and went to the upper deck. There were only some headscarfed women with their shopping and their fags on the top deck and they were at the back. He put his greatcoat on a seat at the front and his pack and steel helmet on top of it, lit a cigarette and looked out of the forward window on to the wet station yard.

  He did not know what he was going to say to Enid.

  The bus trembled and started. It was not far to Gosport Street. His council house was two-thirds of the way down the terrace. When they were almost there he saw a car, a taxi by the look of it, standing outside. Christ, perhaps she was running away.

  The bus-stop was a hundred and fifty yards short of the taxi. He peered close to the window and then, picking up his coat and his kit, clattered down the stairs. The housewives were enveloped in a cloud of cigarette smoke. One of them called: ‘Hurry up, mate, you’ll miss the invasion!’

  As he was getting off the bus Harris saw a man leaving his front door. He felt his eyebrows rise. The man was carrying a canvas kitbag which he tossed into the back of the taxi and then climbed in after. ‘Wait, wait a minute,’ said Harris, turning to the bus conductor. ‘I’ll stay on to the dock gates.’ He pulled his equipment back on to the platform. ‘That’s another tuppence,’ said the conductor, looking at him quaintly. ‘Thruppence if you’re going to the eastern docks.’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ said Harris. He handed the man a threepenny piece. ‘I’m chasing somebody.’

  The conductor regarded him with concern and moved quickly out of the way when Harris began to remount the stairs. ‘Roll on,’ he sighed to himself. ‘What a job.’

  Harris reached the upper deck and one of the women said: ‘He did miss it.’ He went again to the front seats without looking at them. He sat watching the taxi.

  They approached the first of the dock gates but the taxi did not stop until the second. Harris picked up his equipment and overcoat, and made a dash for the stairs at the rear. ‘Here he comes again!’ hooted one of the women.

  There was no bus-stop. Urgently he pressed the bell. They passed the stationary taxi. The man was getting out. ‘Hang on, wait for the stop!’ called the conductor.

  Harris could not wait. Clutching his load, he dropped backwards off the platform and hit the road at a run, landing on his backside. The steel helmet bounced with a clang. People on the pavement shouted and a tut-tutting woman tried to help him to his feet. A schoolboy picked up the Dandy, glanced at the front and gave it back to him.

  People gathered as they did in wartime at any sign of an incident, no matter how minor, some laughing outright, some smirking, some indifferent, a few looking concerned and sorry for him. He regained his feet, gathered his belongings, and marched from the scene.

  His quarry was just entering the iron gates of the dock; as Harris hurried his pace, they began to close again.

  ‘Wait!’ He was still two hundred yards away. He shouted to the sailor who was inside the compound now, changing shoulders with his bag, waving cheerily to another man who was going in the same direction, and then to the gatekeeper and a police sergeant standing beside him. A soldier with a fixed bayonet occupied a sentry-box next to the gate. A merchant ship, patterned whorled grey, camouflage along its bow, was standing at the quayside. A skein of steam oozed from its funnel. Other cargo ships were unloading and a fleet of invasion barges and landing-craft huddled in the open water beyond. Harri
s lumbered towards the gate. ‘That man,’ he pointed breathlessly. ‘Stop him, will you. I want to punch his lights out.’

  Both the gatekeeper and the police sergeant frowned. ‘Can’t let you in through here unless you’ve got a dock-gate pass,’ said the gatekeeper.

  ‘Have you got a pass, sergeant?’ demanded the policeman.

  ‘No, I haven’t, sergeant,’ Harris replied.

  ‘Well, sergeant, you can’t go through, and that’s that.’

  The gateman said: ‘Why do you want to bash him?’

  ‘The bastard’s just got out of bed with my wife.’

  ‘I’d say he was Greek,’ said the gateman, as if it might have some bearing on the matter. Harris could see the man was going away quickly. He called hopelessly through the railings: ‘You, you!’ The sailor vanished unknowingly around the corner of a warehouse.

  Harris felt himself sag. ‘Bollocks,’ he said. ‘I’ll get him when the swine comes back.’

  ‘That’s the time,’ agreed the gatekeeper. ‘Wait for him.’

  ‘If he gets back,’ sniffed the policeman. ‘A lot of ’em don’t.’ He turned to Harris and said kindly: ‘Go and have a cup of tea. There’s a forces’ canteen just over the road.’

  Harris stood hopelessly. He found he was still holding the Dandy and he absently offered it to the police sergeant who shook his head: ‘I’m a Beano man, myself.’

  ‘Oh, sod it,’ said Harris dismally. The bus from which he had fallen had turned and now waited at the stop prepared for its return journey. He trudged towards it and was greeted by the same conductor. ‘Back again,’ said the youth cheerfully. ‘Gosport Street, wasn’t it? Thruppence like before.’

  ‘With my luck,’ said Harris miserably, ‘I thought the fares might have gone up.’

  ‘They will do, I expect,’ said the conductor. ‘After our strike.’

  Harris sat wearily on the bench seat next to the platform. ‘Strike?’ he said. ‘You’re going on strike? I wish I could go on strike.’

  ‘Ah, but you’re a soldier. That would be mutiny, wouldn’t it? This is a strike. It’s against the summer schedules. We’re out from midnight Friday.’

  Harris felt crushed, defeated; the conductor, the Greek, the gatekeeper, the policeman, the whole lunacy. ‘That’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?’ the conductor said with surprising passion. ‘Freedom. That includes the right to strike.’

  The bus went along Gosport Street and Harris left at the stop nearest his house. He walked slowly towards it. He wondered how he would confront her; what to say, how to accuse her.

  Knowing neighbours eyed him around their curtains. He tried to walk casually. He waved to the peeping woman next door. He took in a heavy breath and put his key in the lock of the front door. Then he took it out again. He rang the bell.

  Enid appeared like a sleepy vision, her pink silk dressing-gown open, her breasts lolling half out of her crumpled nightdress. ‘Oh, Harris,’ she said. ‘What a really nice surprise.’ She took him in with a widening smile. ‘I didn’t know you read the Dandy.’

  Chapter Nine

  She had always called him Harris because she refused to use his Christian name which was Neville. Enid was twenty-four and he was ten years older. They had been married for two years.

  ‘He only came to pick up his sea bag,’ she said. ‘He was so drunk last night he couldn’t carry it and he had to join his ship.’

  They were facing each other across the kitchen table. The ashes of a small coal fire in the cooking range warmed the room. She poured him a cup of tea from the teapot his mother had won at Brighton before the war, then nodded to a clutch of empty bottles on the draining-board. ‘They all were.’

  ‘How many?’ he asked, relieved that she had not been alone with the sailor. It was some sort of excuse to himself because he did not want to lose her. This morning, in her creased nightclothes and with her stringy hair she was desirable to him and she knew it. Her eyes were grinning at him.

  ‘God knows,’ she answered. ‘People are always coming in and out. You know I can’t stand it on my own. I’m glad you’re here, Harris, darling. I miss you a terrible lot.’

  They leaned across the wooden table, her brimming breasts resting on it, and kissed. Careful not to capsize his cup he got up and went round the table to her, his boots sounding on the linoleum, putting his arms about her from the rear. ‘You’ve been away a long time,’ she murmured.

  ‘Two weeks,’ he said, close against her hair. He eased Enid to her feet and turned her to him, sensing the glow of her body.

  ‘Uniforms always feel so scratchy,’ she said. ‘Even those three stripes dig into me. It’s not meant for lovers, is it?’ Her mouth went to his face. ‘It’s meant for fighting war. Get it off and let’s go to our bed.’

  Now he did knock his teacup over. ‘Leave it, leave it,’ she said. ‘It won’t flood the place.’ The spilt tea ran across the table and was dripping thinly on the floor. ‘I was going to give it a mop sometime this week anyway.’

  She led him like a new acquaintance up the council-house stairs. Harris followed dumbly. He would never know enough about her, how to keep her, how to leave her. They went into the bedroom where the bedclothes were spread like an avalanche on the floor. ‘I was thinking of staying in bed,’ she said by way of an excuse. ‘The last few nights have been a bit hairy.’

  ‘Where have they been hairy?’ he asked inadequately. They were standing a little apart, facing each other.

  She shrugged. ‘Down at the pub, at Maggie Phillips’s house, and here. It’s the war’s to blame. It’s been a bit of a travelling party, believe me.’

  ‘I do believe you.’

  She pouted, making the dark seams below her eyes contract. ‘Harris, you wouldn’t want me to stay at home knitting. I can’t knit anyway. I can’t do hardly anything. But you knew that when we got married. Your mother told you.’

  He nodded. ‘I knew.’

  Encouragingly she smiled, and with offhand titillation let her robe slip away. Her creamy breasts curved the straps of her nightdress, swelling and swelling more when she breathed deeply which she did now. He took a pace to her and eased away the silk straps; the nightdress dropped in slow motion, the left-hand strap hooking on her roused nipple. Laughing, she gave it a modest tug and stood with her upper body fine and naked, the nightdress held around her waist. ‘Don’t tread on my toes with those army boots,’ she said.

  She pushed him backwards on to the bed and climbed on top of his rough uniform, propping herself on her forearms and rubbing herself into him. ‘Actually, in a way, it’s quite exciting this khaki stuff,’ she mumbled. ‘Rough as a pig’s bum.’

  Harris encircled her and she wriggled and kissed him. ‘Better undress,’ she said, ‘or you’ll be untidy on parade.’

  ‘I might not have time to iron it,’ he said.

  ‘When is it?’ She eased herself up. ‘How long have you got?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours,’ he said.

  ‘Christ, is that all? Let’s get your togs off then.’

  Eagerly she began to help him, undoing the buttons of his battledress. He had taken off his belt in the kitchen. ‘You unbutton the shirt,’ she said. ‘I’ll do your flies. I’m better at doing flies.’

  ‘Boots,’ he said breathlessly. ‘We’ll never get anything off with them still on my feet.’

  ‘It’s taking so long,’ she complained. ‘I want you, Harris.’

  ‘You really do?’ He peered down at her near his bootlaces.

  ‘I don’t do this for fun,’ she said.

  He began to laugh, something he had not done for weeks. One boot hit the wood floor in the corner, followed by another. Earnestly she tugged at his socks. ‘These are thicker than the boots,’ she panted. ‘There. Now let’s see what present you’ve got for me.’ He closed his eyes and enjoyed the sensation of her manoeuvring his trousers down his legs. She eased herself from the bed to complete the removal and flung them as though in disgust
into a corner after the boots. She turned to inspect him. ‘Oh, God,’ she said in a sad way. ‘I’d forgotten.’

  ‘Combinations,’ he said solidly. ‘Army issue. You need them on Salisbury Plain.’

  ‘I suppose you do,’ Enid said. She undid the front buttons and inserted her fingers. ‘Come on out,’ she said. It did. ‘There,’ she said.

  She leaned to put her lips to him, her hair falling across his groin. She eased herself away, still crouching at his hip level but looking up along his white-flannelled stomach and chest as if considering a new plan. She began to crawl inch over inch like a slow animal up his covered body. ‘Oh, Harris,’ she said dreamily. ‘I quite like these combination things. Keep them on.’

  He did, and then turned her firmly on to her back and pulled up the rim of her nightdress. He stared at the pale cleft of her thighs. His hands parted them and with a deep sigh from wife and from husband he entered her. ‘It feels really different,’ she eventually whispered. ‘And not a bit itchy.’

  ‘Everything’s grey outside the window,’ she said. ‘All the world’s grey except in here with you.’

  Harris, luxurious in the bed, said: ‘Get me a cup of tea, will you, love.’

  ‘Let’s have it once more,’ she said. ‘Just another one. Then I’ll get you tea. A whole pot if you like, although I think we’re a bit short on milk.’ She smirked. ‘Only condensed. Plenty of condensed.’

  ‘Tea, then after tea more of the same,’ he insisted. ‘It will give me strength.’

  ‘In that case, I will get it.’ She looked at the bedside clock. ‘It’s half eleven,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to go somewhere this afternoon.’

  Now naked, he sat up in the bed. ‘Where? Can’t you not go?’

  She laughed at his dismay. ‘I won’t be gone long. It’s a little job I do.’ She pulled on her robe and went downstairs. Harris, mystified by her as ever, sat up in bed and said: ‘Christ.’

  She brought him the tea in the pot and, like a mother, poured it for him at the side of the bed. ‘So this Greek sailor just left his kitbag here, did he?’ he asked.