Afterwards

by Rachel Seiffert

  Playing wasn’t something Alice could see her grandfather doing, and she thought her mum knew that. She often took his part this way. Alice remembered talking to her about when she got pregnant and that she’d never worried what Grandad would say, only Gran. Neither of them suggested she should give the baby up, much less have an abortion, but Alice knew her mum had rows with Gran about it. Have you thought this through, because you need to? While they were still busy having words, Grandad went to the Post Office and opened an account. He paid into it every week until Alice’s mum started working, but didn’t say anything until he handed over the passbook. It was their holiday fund: took them to Skye and Pembrokeshire and Dorset, lasted them five years, and her mum and Alan still used the camping stove she’d bought back then. Has trouble showing it, but he’s always loved us. Her mum never wanted Alice to doubt that. They stopped at a stile, at the top of a rise, and stood a moment to get their breath back.

  – Mum left Kenya before Dad did. He was ill for a while, I think, but he did some flying again afterwards.

  The sun was low in the sky, and Alice’s mum had to shield her eyes when she turned to talk to her.

  – He didn’t tell Mum about this for years. Never told me. She did.

  She dropped her hand, blinded, lifted it again, went on.

  – They used to bomb in a line, two or three planes at a time. Dad’s was the last that day, so he would have been able to see the others ahead of him. The spotter from the police, and the other Lincolns.

  She was talking too fast, had to stop and take a breath, slow down again.

  – The second plane was over the target when one of their bombs went off, too early. It was the first one they’d dropped, that was always the largest, and it went off outside the plane, but it hadn’t fallen far enough yet. The explosion triggered all the other, smaller bombs they dropped after it. Worked its way up through them, one by one, up and up until it got to the Lincoln. The bottom of the plane was still open, the bomb-bay, so there was nothing to stop the shrapnel. Dad said it ripped its way through everything.

  Alice’s mother squinted at her.

  – Sympathetic detonation, it’s called. I can hear him explaining that to Mum, can’t you? He said it might have been atmospheric pressure set the bombs off. That’s jargon for accident. Or it could have been because they were faulty. Doesn’t really matter, does it? They did their damage. Sent shards of themselves tearing up as far as the cockpit. Right through the flight engineer’s seat. He bled to death. Before they could get him help back on the ground. I think that’s the part that matters. I don’t know if Dad could see them by that stage, but the radio transmission was left open, so he heard everything.

  Alice walked next to her mother for a while. She tried, but she couldn’t imagine it. The winter grass underfoot was pale and flat and the sun made it hard to look anywhere but down. Her mother wiped her eyes. The path turned and led them towards a line of trees, and Alice waited until they’d drawn level before asking:

  – Have you told Alan any of this?

  – No.

  – Not even after that row they had, him and Grandad?

  – No. I thought about it. Of course I did. But then I thought it might make Alan feel worse. Too much too late. If I was going to tell him, it should have been before. For Dad’s sake as much as his. Could have avoided the whole thing.

  – Why didn’t you tell him before? And me?

  Alice’s mother shrugged.

  – I promised Mum.

  She walked on, but more slowly.

  – I’m not sure he wanted us to know either. She might be the only person he’s told.

  Her mum blinked at Alice, eyes small, although the sun was behind the branches now.

  – He never stayed in touch with his squadron, and he knew they had reunions. Every few years he’d get a letter about them. I used to think we might have a conversation about it, at some point.

  She looked ahead again.

  – I’m glad he talked to Mum.

  Back at the flat on Friday evening, Joseph dug out his maps to mark up the best places on them for Alice, and found David’s maps among them. He’d given the old man his keys back, but he still had those: an excuse to go round there, it was blatant, but in the morning, Joseph put them in his bag. David was probably expecting to get them back off Alice at some stage, not a special delivery with her boyfriend attached, if that’s what he was. Joseph wasn’t sure if he was going to apologise to David, or what for exactly. Avoiding him, maybe, or for being so obvious about it. But how do you say that? He’d just go round there, offer to take care of the skirting in the hallway or something. Have a cup of tea, get things back on a good foot with the old man anyway.

  It was early, but he knew David would be up. Joseph had started work on the upstairs bedroom around this time one morning, to fit the last coat of paint around another job he’d had on in the same part of town, and the old man had just finished his breakfast when he’d got there, already dressed and shaved. It was the same this time: Joseph could see the kitchen light through the stained-glass panel in the top of the door when he rang the bell. Then the shadow of the old man passing in front of it, coming to answer. He didn’t open the door immediately, and Joseph imagined him stooping to look through the spyhole. He stood back a bit, so the porch light would be on him, but David still put the chain on.

  The sliver of face was angry, fearful. Joseph wondered if Alice had said something to him.

  – It’s me. It’s Joseph.

  – Oh.

  The door closed and opened again, wide, relieved.

  – I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting. Did we arrange something? I must have forgotten.

  The old man was pleased to see him. He was walking ahead of Joseph down the corridor back to the kitchen, offering tea and smiling, but still confused about him being there. Alice can’t have told him. Joseph said:

  – I was on my way past.

  And it sounded like a lie. He got the maps out, put them on the side by the bread bin.

  – I just wanted to give you these back.

  – Oh.

  The old man was pouring fresh water into the pot. He looked at the maps and then at Joseph, who still had his jacket on.

  – But you’ll stay for a cup?

  They sat at the dining table together, the old man’s breakfast plate pushed away, cups of tea sitting on their saucers between them. Joseph told him about the holiday, which villages they’d been to, and the routes they took between them, although it was weeks ago now, and he knew Alice would have done this already, shown her grandad the photos. David didn’t seem to mind. He listened to it all, watching Joseph’s face, attentive, and when he’d finished talking, the old man said:

  – I think I owe you an apology.

  He blinked, waiting for a response. Joseph hadn’t thought this would happen, and it threw him. David stopped a moment longer, awkward, and then continued.

  – I’m sorry for running on the way I have.

  He smoothed his tie against his chest.

  – It’s where I met my wife. Kenya, I mean.

  The old man broke off again, uncomfortable. His mouth forming the words before they came out.

  – I used to talk about it with her.

  David didn’t look at him, and Joseph was glad.

  – I always had her to talk to before, and I’ve been missing that.

  An effort to say it. Joseph nodded. Thought the old man would see the movement, even if he couldn’t see his face.

  He stripped the skirting boards in the hallway. David had only pointed out one damaged section to him, but Joseph did the lot, working through till lunchtime. Left them ready for sanding, told the old man he’d bring some paint with him tomorrow.

  He knew David would start talking again: it was like he’d given him permission, and Joseph thought he was ready to get it over with now. Wasn’t surprised when the old man sat down on the stairs in the morning and watched him cutting sandpaper to
size. Ten, fifteen minutes, longer: Joseph had cleaned off three feet of skirting board before he said anything.

  – It was an unreal existence, in many ways. Dawn, we’d be out flying over the forests, the Aberdares. Back again before folk in Nairobi had finished their breakfasts.

  The old man sat stiff-necked, self-conscious, and Joseph was careful, quiet, getting on with the sanding, not wanting to interrupt or draw attention.

  – The rest of the day was difficult to fill, I remember that. We had briefings, we had to fly up to Aden occasionally for parts and bombs, but there was an awful lot of idle time. One fellow in the squadron, he couldn’t get used to it. His son was born shortly before we left for Kenya, and I know it frustrated him terribly, being so far away with nothing to do. I remember he spent the days painting, out by the hangars, where you got the best view of the hills. Watercolours to show his wife. Quite accomplished. A portfolio full of them by the time we left.

  David watched Joseph working again for a while, told him the name of the airfield, Eastleigh, and described the low buildings and corrugated iron roofs, said it was nothing like what he’d been used to in Britain. The single runway was only metalled at each end, with hard, red earth in the middle.

  – Murram they call it. Dusty in the dry weather, muddy in the wet.

  He said they shared the military side of the airfield with another squadron and their Harvards, and there was a civilian part too, where the commercial flights landed. Only a handful a day, so there was only one small terminal building, little more than a customs office and lounge. David told Joseph they’d often go over there and drink coffee after they got back from a raid.

  – That only added to the sense of unreality. Sitting with stewardesses and businessmen, hitching flights over to Lake Victoria or up to Aden if we had weekend rest. We’d walk round the rim of the volcano there, and swim out at the NAAFI facility at Steamer Point. Sleep on the veranda at Khormaksar if the camp was full. I enjoyed that, the warm nights.

  Joseph had worked his way past the stairs, past the old man, and he had to turn his back to him now, to sand the long edge of the hallway, but David didn’t seem to mind.

  – You have to understand this was hugely exciting. To be twenty-three and flying across Africa to go swimming. At a time when few people took planes anywhere, long before package holidays and so on. I had to fly down to Mombasa once, took us past Kilimanjaro on the return leg. One of the most magnificent things I’ll ever see. I knew that too, while it was happening. That’s just what it felt like. The most enormous privilege.

  He was quiet then, but it wasn’t like he was waiting. Joseph didn’t think he had to do or say anything: remembered listening to the old man in the summer, how he paused like that on and off while he was talking, but always picked up again if you let him. Joseph finished sanding, and started brushing everything free of dust, but then the quiet went on too long and he had to stop, because it had him unnerved.

  David wasn’t facing him when he looked up. Still sitting at the bottom of the stairs, eyes still fixed on a point somewhere beyond the open door of the living room. He said:

  – For years afterwards, when I thought about Kenya it was to remember falling in love. The Sumners’ house and garden. Being ill too, that weakness, the long recovery, but that was all bound up with Isobel anyway.

  He shifted a little, but carried on with his careful explanation.

  – All of what I’ve just described sounds so harmless, doesn’t it? The Mau Mau shot a Kikuyu chief in the mouth. That’s what prompted the Emergency. They hijacked his car and murdered him. He was a government official, of course, and the Mau Mau despised them. Men in the Home Guard, Africans who worked for the state, ‘Tai Tai’, that’s what they called them, because of their European dress. They hacked a Kikuyu politician to death with pangas, on the marketplace out in the African quarter, because he was a moderate, he spoke out against them. One farmer, a white man this time, his wife and young son, they were butchered like that, by their own workers. Cut the legs off another farmer’s herd. Didn’t kill them outright, you see, left that for the farmer to do. Not only financially ruined, but he had to finish off his own livestock too. Doubly cruel.

  He stopped a moment, then he nodded.

  – I never saw any of that. I didn’t see what our forces did on the ground either, the army. Or the Kenyan police. Any of the detention camps. Thousands passed through them. Thousands died. I know many were hanged. Many more were beaten, starved. Women and non-combatants among them. But I’ve only read accounts.

  The old man frowned.

  – Impossible to reconcile. Do you see? My memories with what I learnt later. I’ve tried, but what I see are mountains and forests and lakes, and the woman I went on to marry. Strange to say it: we were there to combat an insurgency, but most of the time it felt like being on an exercise, bombing on a vast practice range, if I’m honest. Even when we flew low for the strafing, the trees were so dense, we really couldn’t see much, just the canopy. The ground, and whatever our bombs finally hit, our bullets, that was somewhere much further below.

  He blinked, kept looking straight ahead, but Joseph thought he was aware of being watched.

  – Seems like nothing when you compare it with Hiroshima, with napalm in Vietnam, the firestorms in Dresden. And I’ve read enough afterwards to know that we didn’t do much damage. Not by military estimations.

  We didn’t have enough bombs to do the job properly, for one thing, and those we had were often old. A mix of instantaneous and long-delay fuses, they were unreliable, leaky, many failed to explode. Most people agree, in fact, that we were responsible for very few enemy deaths. The air contribution was mainly in supply. Keeping the ground forces serviced with food, munitions. Some go so far as to say it was a costly waste of time us being there at all, the bombers.

  David was silent a moment, his eyes narrowed.

  – But I wonder whether I repeat these things to console myself. I’ve read about monkeys, their fur scorched, down to the flesh. Craters, thirty feet deep, trees splintered and torn up by the roots. Elephant and rhino with holes ripped in their ears, deep gashes in their flanks. I remember a rumour while we were there, something in the region of two hundred Mau Mau dead or wounded after one series of raids. That figure was discredited. Still, I can’t believe we never hit a human being. In twenty months of air operations, that would seem deluded.

  The old man’s voice was low, controlled.

  – The Mau Mau used the terrain to their advantage, they had supply lines coming in from the Kikuyu reserves, a great deal of support from their people, gave our ground forces a great deal of trouble. But I’d still have to describe it as an unequal battle. They had no flak, no anti-aircraft defenses, unless you count the forest. I don’t. I can’t.

  A small movement, his head, or maybe just his eyes. Quick, but Joseph had seen it: as if David had wanted to look over at him, but thought better of it again. He went on:

  – I know what kind of damage the bombs we used can do, when they explode.

  Another short pause.

  – If they don’t kill, they can deafen and blind and burn, and plenty would have detonated, after all, it stands to reason.

  The old man passed a hand across his face: an involuntary gesture.

  – What should I say about all this? I have never known what it is that I should say.

  He broke off, adjusted his hands on his lap, but when he started speaking again, there was no change in his voice.

  – My son-in-law tells me it was brutal. How can I deny that? I’ve heard myself talking, in this house all these years. I can hear how brutal it sounds.

  The old man stayed where he was, but Joseph knew he’d finished. Pot of undercoat by his feet, he opened it, and stirred the paint. Calm and deliberate, only that wasn’t how he felt. There were two more pots over by the door, but he couldn’t see the brushes from where he was sitting. Brought them in from the van this morning, must still be at the other
end of the hall, where he’d started. He’d have to walk past the old man to get them, but then he’d be the first to move, disturb the quiet in the hallway, so he waited.

  Minutes had gone by already. David was still sitting on the stairs, hands folded in his lap, shoulders curled around him. He looked small and old and it made Joseph angry.

  – Is that you done now?

  It came out cold, and the old man looked up at him.

  – Because I’ll get on with my work if you are.

  His pale eyes were hurt behind his glasses. Joseph hadn’t come here to be cruel to him, but it was like he couldn’t stop himself. It turned his stomach. He hadn’t been shouting, but his voice was loud, and the old man was only a few feet away from him. David blinked, but he didn’t say anything, just sat there watching him. Looking at Joseph, like he was thinking. He used to talk about it with his wife, that’s what the old man had told him. Joseph pictured them both, sitting here in these rooms, years and years of talking and trying to work it out. Couldn’t see what it amounted to.

  – You feel bad about what you’ve done. My heart bleeds. I believe you. So you can let me get on.

  The brushes were in the porch, but Joseph still couldn’t move. Not with those eyes watching him like that. All upset and waiting, like they were expecting something from him.

  After what felt like a long time, the old man stood up and walked past him: into the kitchen first and then out into his garden.

  Joseph saw it happen, even before he’d started. Paint hurled across walls and banisters. Undercoat, heavy and stinking. Thick, oily mess of it under his shoes, slipping on the dustsheets. The floor turned slick and grey and he was already looking for the next tin to throw. Something else, anything to create more damage, and wherever he moved Joseph left marks: footprints, palms and fingers coated, paint oozing up his arms. Last pot he got through a window, smashed it. The top of the door all spikes of glass. Dripping white, he couldn’t see through any of it now except the hole: above head height and showing autumn sky.