They had every reason to be bloody grateful. Philip knew it from the letters he received from ex-comrades. The stay-at-homes had got all the jobs. He was lucky, with his inheritance, but there were those who struggled, really struggled, had to go back to square one with their careers, because in their absence, fighting the fucking war, others had been busy clambering up the greasy pole. For all his good intentions, Mr Attlee was not going to be able to change things. There were too many bastards hugging their privileges in the way.
The hangover brought on by Wilkinson’s port was still with him, though slightly less searing than it had been at breakfast. Better hurry. He moved forward and nearly fell over a man sitting on the pavement.
‘Matches? Want any matches?’
Obviously a veteran of the First War, the man was propped up against a wall, his box of wares at his side, his trunks of wooden legs, thinly disguised under dirty grey trousers, stretched out in front of him.
‘Matches, mate?’ The man said again.
‘Can’t I help you into some shelter?’ said Philip. ‘You must be getting awfully wet.’
‘Nah. Stopping now, anyway.’
‘Where do you live?’
The man jerked his unshaven chin over a shoulder. ‘Hostel. You need a bed, do you? Food’s good. Liver and onions tonight.’
Philip’s first thought was What the hell does he think I look like? but then he saw the man’s searching pale eyes and realised he was blind. ‘It’s all right, thanks. I’ll have six boxes of Swans. And I’ll take some of your shoelaces as well.’ It was outrageous to leave blokes like this to rot. What are you going to do about it, Mr Attlee?
His pockets bulging with shoelaces and matches, Philip arrived just in time for the service, but too late to locate the men he knew in the crowded church. He slipped into a pew beside a young couple. The man turned and it was a face he recognised, but had never put a name to. A rating. On the Campbeltown, he thought. They clasped hands, and he whisperingly introduced his wife. Philip saw she was on the verge of tears. ‘Already,’ Philip thought, ‘and the service hasn’t even started yet.’ But the touch of her small hand opened him up to the memory and the occasion. The sound of the organ swelled and filled the church. London and his own losses were blocked out by something infinitely greater.
Afterwards, in a watery sunlight, Philip sought out his friends. Ross, with a stunning blonde woman in an incredible feathery hat, his blue eyes dancing with enjoyment of everything life offered, including its sorrows, spoke approvingly of the address. ‘I was glad Mountbatten came. Thought he said the right things.’
‘Yes. I liked him better this time.’
‘Fixed up for a bed, are you?’
‘In the Victory Club.’
‘Shame. And Felicity thinks you are rather the thing, I can tell. Don’t you, darling?’
‘Of course not!’ She winked at Philip. ‘I only have eyes for you.’
A slap on his back. ‘Phil!’ Tucker’s beaming face. ‘Why were you so late, you bastard? Come over here!’
‘Where’s Margaret?’
‘I told you! We’re opening the restaurant next Saturday. She’s up to her ears.’
Jimmy Burns was talking to a tall, handsome woman and what looked like her two daughters. He turned from her to embrace Philip.
‘Seymour! So glad you could come. May I introduce you to Sally Murray?’ The woman turned her empty eyes to Philip’s. ‘And Murray’s girls – Jane, Grace. Philip was a good friend of Wilf’s.’
There were no words up to it. Philip spoke the usual clichés, and Sally nodded and smiled her acceptance of these offerings, because, as they both understood, the old clichés were true. Around them, an astonishing mixture of people gathered, every face he met evoking a memory or asking a question. In the distance he saw Anderson, heavier, his face red and somehow swollen, in a good suit, a nervous-looking woman on his arm. Of course Anderson would do all right.
‘Never thought I’d get into print!’ Tucker showed Philip the book he’d just bought about the raid. ‘Only came out last month.’ He flicked through the pages, ran a finger down a list. ‘Look, all our names are in it. You’ve got to get one, too. Over there.’
There was a confusion of lifts, cars being offered, an accumulation of taxis, the whole thing oddly like a wedding. Philip shared a taxi to the hotel with Tucker and Jane Murray. Jimmy went with Grace and Sally. ‘Is there something? Between Jimmy and your sister?’
‘I think so,’ Jane smiled.
Ross had made sure the hotel laid on plenty to drink, and after three quick gins the room lost its stability, heightening Philip’s impression that he was back on the Josephine Charlotte, surrounded by commandos all just slightly older and bulkier than before. And wandering among them were the ghosts. Young, thin ghosts in bloodstained uniforms, their expressions pained and questioning. The rating Wilde, the good side of his face staring at all the women he’d never had.
Jane touched Philip’s arm. ‘Are you listening?’
She was good company, very funny about how she and her sister were brought up surrounded by boys in the school where Murray taught. At the age of ten, she told him, she’d performed a striptease in one of the dorms. ‘They threw pennies at me. I made five bob.’ She laughed, her hand fluttering at her mouth, ‘I expect you think I’m terrible.’
In the gents, Tucker asked, ‘No news, I suppose?’
‘Can’t find her. Maybe she doesn’t want to be found. I’ve given up.’
‘That’s it, Phil. Get over it. Best thing. Are you still going back to college?’
‘Given up on that, too.’
‘What next then?’
‘Might go to France,’ Philip said, on impulse, thinking, well, why not? He owed Françoise a lot and it offered an escape from England. ‘Matter of fact, I think I’ll go tomorrow. Want to come?’
‘Been there once, thanks. Didn’t like it much.’ They laughed.
‘I thought I saw Strang earlier.’ They looked at each other.
‘Don’t you go disappearing on me,’ Tucker said, his eyes shining.
Philip sat with Jane, drank more, raged against England, at the terrible poverty in the north, all the bastards wanting to keep the status quo as it was before the war.
‘You sound just like Dad. But if you feel as strongly as that, surely there must be something you can do to start changing things? Why don’t you go into politics?’
A tap on the shoulder. He found himself looking at a large woman with a blotched creased face.
‘Are you Philip? Captain Burns said you was.’
‘Yes. Philip Seymour.’ A shrunken man stood beside her, looking uncomfortable, easing his shirt collar away from his brown neck. Philip heard the Cornish vowels.
‘My boy wrote me about you.’
‘You’re Mrs Strang. And Mr Strang. I’m so pleased to meet you. Please join us.’
Their country air refreshed the atmosphere. They remembered Strang together, Strang’s dog, his sad end omitted, Strang seeing in the sky his mother’s star, scenting the land of France before it could be seen. ‘He always had a good nose for grass,’ his father said, wiping his eyes. Jane held Mrs Strang’s hand and talked about her father. It felt healing, purifying.
Before they left to catch the night train back to Cornwall, Mrs Strang kissed Philip and said what a lovely girl Jane was, and hoped they’d be happy, for her boy’s sake.
She was a lovely girl, with shapely tanned arms and dark curling hair. He drank more and found himself for the first time telling the story of his near-drowning and of escape, aware, even at the time of telling, of how he was dramatising it vilely for effect, dressing it up to impress, and seeing, in the slackening of her face muscles and the leaning of her body towards him, how it worked its sexual magic.
She whispered, ‘Did you see my father die?’
‘I didn’t see it…I know he died pretty fast.’
‘Put your arm around me. Please.’
He thought, What a shit I am. I knew what I was doing.
There were carpeted, curving stairs upward and then cool evening air. Then kissing Jane. Drinking Jane like water in the desert. God it felt good. Then Sally Murray’s pale face.
‘Jane? We have a taxi waiting.’
Philip and Tucker blundered into a twin room at the Victory Club. Tucker poured whisky into the tooth mugs and they rambled on, discussing the people they’d seen, remembering those who’d died. Tucker sang a few songs. Finally, an irate neighbour hammered on the door. ‘Do you have any idea what time it is?’
It was 4 a.m.. They lay on their beds. Philip murmured. ‘There are loads of beautiful girls in the world.’
‘That’s true enough.’
‘You don’t want to let them down, though, do you? That’s the problem.’
‘Problem is, and always has been, they all lie down in front of you, you lucky bastard.’
31
London, 28 – 29 March 1947
Beryl’s Bob said half the country was under water, and he should know, doing that much driving around in his job. Beryl tucked an umbrella under her chair and regarded Rosie critically. ‘You’re looking much better,’ she said. ‘I like the short hair. You turned so drab staying all that time with the nuns, I don’t know how you could stand it.’
Rosie rubbed her sleeve on the window and watched the rain snaking down the glass in bubbly trails. The two women met occasionally, not because they particularly liked each other, but because they shared a past. You needed to stop pretending once in a while.
‘Well, say something. You’re like a wet weekend yourself.’ Beryl leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘Look at it this way; they’re probably looking for a really nice couple – that’s why it’s taking so long. Didn’t that dopey Sister Frances say she’d let you know?’ Beryl chattered on about the nice little job she’d got, in a solicitor’s office a couple of mornings a week, how Bob was doing well, still apparently blissfully ignorant of what Beryl had got up to in the war, and finally asked the inevitable, ‘What about you? How’s your love life?’
‘There’s a man at work.’
‘Who’s that then?’
‘My boss.’
‘Oooh. Keen is he?’
‘I suppose he is.’
‘Don’t go being honest, then, girl,’ Beryl said, inspecting her face in a little gold compact. ‘You grab your chance and make something of yourself.’ She snapped her handbag shut and examined her watch. ‘Look at the time. I’ve got to go in a minute and I haven’t even told you my good news. Aren’t you wondering why I’m so gay?’ She patted her stomach and said, ‘I’m in the family way. Three months.’
Rosie blinked. ‘Congratulations.’
‘Thanks. Bob’s pleased, of course. I think he was beginning to wonder. Well, I was too.’ She leaned in again and Rosie breathed the mild sweet smell of face powder. ‘You start to think it’s a punishment,’ Beryl whispered. ‘That it won’t ever happen again. That’s what you’ve got to do. Find someone, get married and have another. It’s the only way.’
Alone on the puddled pavement, Rosie found the sky above momentarily blue. A lad re-pointing the brickwork of St James’s Palace cloisters stopped work to look at her as she passed. The raspberry-pink cardigan she’d knitted for herself was perhaps a little tight. On Saturday, she’d treated herself to a matching lipstick and wore it now. Putting on the paint just like London she was, and trying to look more like her old self. She felt the boy’s eyes swivel to watch her back and heard his timid whistle.
So long as she kept away from children it wasn’t too bad. Sometimes, for a couple of hours or so, she forgot about Alex altogether. Not much chance of children in the Pall Mall world of gentlemen’s clubs, and none in sight as she walked up the Haymarket, past the beautiful Palladian-style Theatre Royal, designed in the 1820s by John Nash, as she told the tourists who were interested in that sort of thing.
Get married, have another bairn, send the long delayed letter home, live happily ever after.
As she pushed open the glass door of the Tourist Bureau, Denis waved to her. ‘Telephone call for you.’ He handed her the receiver and whispered, ‘Someone called Sister Frances. I do hope it’s not bad news; she sounds rather upset.’
It was getting on for one in the afternoon when Philip woke with another terrible headache. He peered out of the window, squinting against the brightness, and watched London in full swing down below, its pale, purposeful faces on the lunchtime march. Tucker snored on. It seemed, despite the muzziness inside Philip’s skull, time for decisions. He leaned down to tie his shoelaces, felt the world lurch and lay back on the bed for a minute, recovering.
He couldn’t go on like this. He was twenty-four. He’d seen friends killed; been pursued; knew what it was to be terrified; walked until blood oozed through the leather of his boots; survived; had loved – or thought he’d loved – and lost that love. All this should make him old and wise, but he still felt so bloody young compared with all the stout and complacent ‘stayed-at-homes’; both more worldly than them and more innocent, if that was possible.
As he scrubbed angrily at his teeth he thought the one thing he could do was sort out the sex thing. He’d done everything he could to find Rosie. She couldn’t be found. If he’d ruined her life, that was something he’d now have to live with; there was no help for it. But perhaps he could make Françoise happy. He’d find work – something simple, away from intellectuals – marry Françoise, if it turned out she wanted him, and take things from there. He shaved and pulled a comb through his hair, then stuffed his things into his suitcase. Tucker stirred and sat up, blinking.
‘You’re not off already?’
‘Yep.’
‘We haven’t even had breakfast!’
‘Don’t think I could manage anything. Just feel I want to get going. Been messing around for too long.’
‘You’re not really going to France?’
‘I am, you know. Here,’ Philip threw Tucker a pen. ‘Give me the address of this restaurant, then.’
Tucker wrote laboriously on a piece on an old envelope, held it out. ‘You mad bugger. When am I going to see you again?’
‘I’ll write. Here. Have some matches. Looks like you need some bootlaces, too.’ He emptied his pockets on Tucker’s bed, picked up his bag and set off for the boat train.
The Goebbels lookalike in the ticket office put down his sandwich and informed Philip there wasn’t a train for three hours. In the waiting room, crammed with steaming travellers escaping the heavy rain, every seat was occupied.
He sought shelter in the buffet. The large space was crudely divided into a bar one side and a café the other by means of a rope and a sign announcing, ‘No children beyond this point.’ Bracing himself against the smell of pork fat, Philip joined the shuffling queue in the café area. ‘Tea. A weak one, please.’
With a malicious smile, the brassy woman poured from a huge pot, slopped in milk and slid a bright tan cupful across the counter. Philip found an empty seat beside two men discussing the dismal effect of the weather on the racing season and took out the book about the raid.
The word ‘plucky’ jumped out at him right away. Jimmy had said it wasn’t up to much. He scanned a few more pages, supposedly about people he knew, or at least knew of. Soldiers and sailors didn’t use words like ‘blighter’, but then ‘fuck’, which they said all the time, wasn’t allowed in books. Philip remembered the banned Lady Chatterley’s Lover doing the rounds at school, its much-thumbed pages turned down at the dirty bits. ‘Here’s a good bit, Seymour. Look. “We fucked a flame into being.” They do it so much they make a fire.’
‘What, inside her?’
‘Course. It can be dangerous, you know. My brother said.’
Fuck. It was such a good word. Funny, too. A drunk Tucker propositioning their tough old bat of a landlady in Scotland. ‘What would you say to a little fuck, Mrs Mackay?’
‘I’d say, “Good
evening, Little Fuck.”’
He looked around the room for a female worth focusing on, but they all seemed middle-aged, bundled into mackintoshes. Women weren’t usually sexy in mackintoshes… Françoise, slim in her schoolgirl raincoat.
Her last letter had reminded him of the terrors they’d shared, ‘Tu te souviens? Tu te souviens?’ When the real question throbbing behind the words was do you remember the sex afterwards? Which of course he did. The yokel and the schoolgirl at it in a field. That must have been a sight for a passer-by. In the absence of Germans she’d probably seek the same frisson of risk by seducing him on high balconies minus railings, or perhaps in sandy bunkers on crowded golf courses.
He saw his future. Manufacturing excitement with Françoise.
It wasn’t enough, so why was he going? Because he was grateful… Just as he’d searched for Rosie for two years because he felt guilty. What he should do instead was get up, find a telephone and ring Jane Murray. Get away from the bloody war and embark on something new. God. What a mess his life had turned into. He longed to crawl back to bed and pull the sheets over his head.
‘Wouldn’t be surprised if they cancelled the National, too,’ said the man next to him. ‘Unless they can swim over Becher’s.’ Crossing his arms around his book, Philip put his head down and went to sleep.
Rosie leaned into the swing doors and glistening concrete gave way to a mud-coloured carpet that sucked at the soles of her shoes. The eyes of the thin barman flicked south as she lifted herself on to a stool, and looking down, she saw her new cardigan hung open at the top, its two top buttons gone in the struggle with the priest. Well so what?
The barman raised an eyebrow in enquiry. ‘What can I get you, Miss?’
It just came to her. Da’s usual, when in funds. ‘A whisky chaser.’ She’d never drunk such a thing before.
The War Before Mine Page 28