Small Island

by Andrea Levy

  And all he said was, ‘Indeed.’

  Just that. In-bloody-deed.

  The last time I had seen the back of my husband’s neck it had had RAF blues pressed against it. Walking down our street, off for service overseas in India. A war had been fought and won since then – the world turned topsy-turvey. He’d been missing for so long I was ready to have him officially declared dead. But there he stood, hat raised and smiling. I mean, blinking heck. So I told him, ‘Unless you’re a ghost, Bernard Bligh, I’ll be wanting more of an explanation from you than that.’

  Before

  Thirty-five

  Bernard

  We were packed like cattle on to the train in Bombay when we first arrived in India. Hundreds of troops. We walked three abreast into the station but were quickly outnumbered. Brown people all around. At my back, at my front, under my arms. Hands out. White palms begging. ‘Baksheesh, baksheesh,’ in my ear. Some held up wares – colourful cakes, drinks, trinkets of all kinds. Others had no pride, wanted something for nothing. Behind me someone was shouting, ‘Please, sahib, my mother and father dead, rupees.’

  To my right a father was trying to sell his daughter to a Tommy, ‘Pretty girl – very clean, sahib.’

  Children, who should have been in school, ran at my feet, hardly clothed. Eyes as black as apple pips. Some so young they could barely walk. No parents there holding them back from being trampled under a large man. Nothing for it but to walk on through. Shrug it off as best I could. No thought of causing offence. These people stank. Body odour was masked by sweet, sickly, spicy scents.

  Confusion had me bewildered. Our chaps calling out, wanting to know which way to go, ‘Oi, oi – over here.’

  Groups of carnival-coloured natives gesticulating with arms as skinny as sticks. Jabbering in mysterious tongues. ‘Good worker, sahib. No trouble. Please, job, please, sahib.’ Natives’ spittle breaking on my cheek.

  English cries, ‘Fall in, fall in. Move on through there.’ The squeaky wheel on a cart. The screech of a train’s hooter. The dirty laugh of an erk. ‘Her? You’re joking! Maybe with a bag on her head.’

  The station was familiar. A concrete building with vaulting roof. Could have been back home – St Pancras or Liverpool Street. There was even a man in a black bowler hat bobbing through the crowd. Looked like Pa on his way to work. Except he wore a long shirt and his legs were wrapped in baggy white cotton pants. He smiled bright red teeth as he passed. Thought someone had punched him in the mouth for his cheek, impersonating a gentleman. But he was too carefree – chewing and spitting globules of red on to the floor.

  ‘Sahib, nice oranges, juicy.’ We’d been warned about their oranges. Boiled in filthy water to make them big. The cakes spoke for themselves. Gaudy as Christmas and speckled with black – not raisins but flies. Some chaps bought them. Flicked off the insects and tucked in. Couldn’t blame them – never sure when we’d eat again.

  A native man in a uniform, transport not service, hurried us on, muttering in a language of his own. He piled kits on his back. Five, sometimes six. They bent him double as he struggled to climb the steps of the train. Offload, then back for more. Face like thunder. ‘Chatty wallah,’ chaps jeered, as he hobbled away.

  The train might have been in Bombay but the footplate I stuck my boot on said it was made in Crewe. The sooty stench of steam had me thinking of childhood holidays in Dymchurch. A sudden blast of grey smoke caused everything to disappear. As it cleared, through the mist, a cow wandered along the platform. Nobody shooed it or tethered it. A mangy beast with ribs you could count. It clopped, docile, through the crowds, parting a group of women who were carrying coal in bundled rags for the train’s engine. Some struggled with a hump of a child on their back and a fat belly of coal on their front, while the able-bodied native men jostled and begged from British troops. That had us all tutting and shaking our heads.

  They came through the train windows. Faces. Fingers. Hands. Arms. Hustling and shoving. Clutching useless items. Yelling to be seen. ‘Sahib, take – you like? Take, sahib.’ Most things were no more than a shape to me. Should I eat it, play it or rub it on my prickly heat?

  At last the train started to move off. The natives began running. Still hopeful. Until we picked up too much speed, and hands, arms and trinkets were grabbed back.

  Two minutes out of the station I spotted grown men squatting by the tracks, defecating on the ground. For a moment there was silence in our carriage, like we’d just come through a raid. Out of the window, wobbling in the heat, I saw an elephant slowly dragging a car. I nudged the chap beside me. He just shrugged. There were hundreds of men on this train. Our toilet was a little hole in the floor with two handles to keep you upright. The silence was only broken when a well-spoken man shouted, ‘Wasn’t there a poet who once wrote about India’s spell?’

  Answered by a Cockney calling back, ‘More like India’s smell, mate.’

  * * *

  Queenie didn’t want me to join up until I was conscripted. ‘You can wait until you’re asked,’ she kept saying. I’m not sure that women understood how it worked. We all knew, the men who met in the Feathers, we all understood. Harold, Arthur, Reg and George all signed up years earlier. RAF too. Harold flew Spits somewhere in Kent. Arthur and Reg became wireless operators but I lost touch with them after their posting. George was a gunner. Shot down over France. Missing in action. He’ll probably walk home one day and demand to be bought a pint, which he’ll down in eleven seconds, his speciality. That just left Frank and me. We were older, you see. Old hands at the bank – we understood what needed to be done. The other boys were young. They had no family of their own and their country needed them.

  Frank suggested it. After two halves of watered-down beer in the Feathers, he flicked his cigarette out of the door. It flew in an arch of sparks and Hilda, the barmaid, yelled, ‘You’ll start a fire!’

  He blew her a kiss, which I thought was a touch uncouth for Frank. But he was fired up. ‘Right, Bernard, let’s go and join up or it’s the PBI for us.’

  The poor bloody infantry. Everyone knew, except Queenie, that if a man was conscripted, he went straight into the army. Gun under his arm, tin hat on his head and a bullet in his back. I didn’t need persuading. It was the RAF for me. If I was going to go, I wanted to go as a boy in blue.

  ‘You think you’re going to be like Biggles, don’t you?’ Queenie said, when I told her. I shook my head and said no. But I suppose if I was honest I would have liked to be a hero of the skies. A Brylcreem boy with the sun on my quiff. The enemy coming at me, rat-a-tat-tat at three o’clock. Diving swiftly. Hiding in a cloud. Emerging. Giving the enemy machine everything I’d got. Glorious deeds valiantly achieved. Queenie, tearfully joyful at my return.

  But I wasn’t accepted for flying duty – eyesight failed me. Neither was Frank, which, I’m ashamed to say, I found a relief. We were both channelled as aircrafthands, known to everyone as erks. Ground crew. Options given were airframes or engines. Frank chose frames so I took engines.

  ‘You’re going to do what?’ Queenie said. ‘I thought at least they’d teach you to fly.’

  She would have liked to live with a hero. I knew that much for a fact.

  I was thrown from the truck when we finally reached the base out east, my face landing in the dirt. A mouthful of parched dust had me spitting and choking. Someone stood on my leg. No time to yell before another tripped over me. Stood on my hand as he staggered and fell, cursing. Everyone was running. The ground rumbled with pounding boots. Men shouted, ‘Move! Move! Cover!’ I soon got to my feet. Ran with my head low, the dirt kicking up into my eyes. I could barely see, just followed other moving legs.

  There was the screech of a low plane. One, two – more, perhaps. Had no time to look before gunfire was hitting the ground. Dust erupting in a line, its debris belting me in the chest. I screamed (I admit). My boots skidded along the ground to change direction. The dust was like fog. I was blind. Lost. No idea which way to go. Then
someone grabbed me. Ripped my shirt as he pulled me towards a trench. It was full of men, there was no room. I know I shouted, ‘Budge up,’ before I was pushed over.

  ‘Get in,’ yelling in my ear. I landed on top of someone. My forehead cracking against the back of his head. ‘Watch what you’re fucking doing,’ was screamed into my face.

  Everyone was shouting, ‘Get your fucking head down, you stupid erk.’

  The plane passed low again. Had us all wriggling, ducking, swearing. Bullets pelted into the dust which flew high into the air, then fell, covering us like a suffocating blanket.

  I watched the planes. Two Japanese Zeros. Swooping and strafing the ground. Their gunfire sometimes pinged and popped like harmless fireworks. But so close. I could see the pilot. Thought I saw him laugh.

  Then someone landed on me. A mountain of a man crashed into my back. Winded me. I gulped. Couldn’t yell. There was an explosion, an almighty bang that left everything silent for one brief second. Until stones and earth fell in on us like hail. Everyone was choking and coughing, their arms over their heads and mouths. The dust surrounded us like a London pea-souper. I couldn’t breathe, as sure as if someone had clapped their hand over my face. I scratched at the air trying to inhale. Involuntarily grabbed at the man beside me, who shrugged me off. Gulped mouthfuls of thick unbreathable yellow filth. My mouth was dry, my tongue fat.

  The noise of the planes soon faded to a buzz, like distant bees. And I breathed. I breathed a smelly lungful of the sweetest breath I have ever tasted. Suddenly it was over. Japs were gone. The relief had the whole trench sighing as one man.

  ‘Get off my fucking arm – you’ve broken it, you clumsy bastard.’

  Someone was talking to me. I moved off him. Said I was sorry but he’d stopped listening. We began clambering out of the trench, all of us coughing and spitting like tubercular cases. I lost my balance and slid back down. It was then I noticed an unmistakable bulge in the front of my shorts. I had an erection.

  ‘Come on,’ I heard above me. I looked up to see a hand being held out. Tried to wave it away but the chap insisted. I grabbed his hand hard as a handshake and scrabbled up.

  ‘Just off the boat?’ he said. Tried to hide my shame as best I could – twisting round, arm in front. Chap looked about eighty. We all did, with our pantomime ageing of dust. I wondered if he’d noticed, seen the bulge. I shook myself loose, dusting down the baggy ill-fitting shorts. Decent again. I started to tell him how long I’d been in India but he’d already walked away.

  I breathed out. That was the closest I’d come to real war. I’d been bombed in London. Houses, shops, factories, streets – everyone shaken silly by the destruction. Queenie and I hid like rats. Bailed out the water in the garden shelter. Sat with our candle listening as the planes droned above us. A matter of being unlucky if we got in their way. I was useless to her. But now, with bullets breaking the ground inches from me, I was being aimed at because I was dangerous.

  ‘Move! Get those kites off the strip. Move! Move! Get it cleared.’

  Men started running again. I ran with them. There were two Hurricanes on the runway. Shot to pieces. It was a sorry sight, like birds fallen from the sky after a shoot. Undercarts twisted. A wing lying dismembered. Nose buried in the dirt. Buckled metal. Flapping cloth. Limp, lifeless.

  I couldn’t see the rest of my unit, the chaps I’d travelled with. My kit was still on the truck, which was abandoned – tipped at an angle, one wheel in a shallow monsoon ditch.

  ‘Come on, move it! Get those kites moved!’

  I found a place in the gang, thrusting my hands out to join the many others on the stricken kite. The metal burnt. I yelped and pulled my hands off for a second. I quickly put them back before anyone noticed. There were dozens of men round the plane. Grimacing with effort. Trying to keep their foothold on the dry earth. Slowly the kite moved – graceless as a corpse. Soon the sweat we created dripped on to the dusty ground, turning it into a thin layer of mud. I lost my footing. Slipped. Found myself with my face in the warm man-made muck. I got up, my damp hands fizzing as they hit the hot metal again.

  First one kite then the next. Pushed off the strip into a graveyard of planes. A despair of kites. No wings. No wheels. No windows. No hope of flying. Pierced with bullet-holes like colanders. The golden powder of rust shaken all over them. Animals had made a home in some.

  Seconds after the strip was cleared a plane landed. Vibration like an earthquake. Bouncing along the ground. Dust swirling a sandstorm. Its thunderous engines the only sound. A Vulti Vengeance.

  ‘That’s lost,’ a chap next to me said.

  The pilot got out, jumped down sweeping his hair back. He was no more than a boy, hands on his hips as he looked around. Word was soon out. Jap plane had crash-landed half a mile away. A cheer went up from the tight circle of men round the pilot.

  ‘Gurkhas will get him,’ same chap said. ‘Just arrived?’ I realised he was talking to me. He was looking down at something on my bottom half. I crossed my arms over the front of my shorts (just in case). Then saw it was my knees that interested him. They were bleeding. Dribbles of blood running down my leg. Couldn’t feel a thing.

  ‘Just a scratch, nothing serious,’ I said.

  He laughed. ‘No. White knees – dead giveaway.’ Looked anything but white to me. ‘You’ve just arrived.’

  ‘Been in Worli,’ I told him.

  ‘As I said.’ He stuck his tongue into the corner of his cheek. ‘You’ve just arrived. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’ I must have looked puzzled. ‘The slit-eyed bastards,’ he went on. ‘You’ll get used to their funny little ways. They come every day. Bit early today – must be a public holiday or something. Every day though. Could set your watch by the nip in the air.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Maxi. George Maximillian but everyone calls me Maxi.’ His hand was calloused, felt like knotted wood.

  ‘Bernard Bligh.’

  ‘What do they call you, then?’

  I didn’t answer. Last name I could remember being called was miserable beggar.

  They brought him through the camp, down the strip, through the dozens of natives dressed in straw hats and rags. Men and women who’d appeared from nowhere with makeshift shovels, who were smoothing over the freshly made craters. They stopped, along with the men and officers of the RAF, and watched. A Japanese pilot. Hands on his head. Two army men with rifles – fixed bayonet – pointed at his back. Nudging him along. Shouting. Not in English. Foreign themselves. Black. Indian. ‘Gurkhas,’ Maxi said. ‘May not look like one of us but they’re good sorts. You don’t mess with the Gurkhas.’

  He was young, this Japanese pilot. This ‘unintelligent slum dweller with nothing worth fighting for except the fanatical belief that his emperor is God’. Looked twelve or thirteen. One side of his face was smashed and bloody. No shoes. No trousers. Bare skinny legs. One foot dragging as he walked, turned at an impossible angle, scraping the ground. He wore just a vest inscribed with their picture writing. Chaps spat at the ground as he passed. Some jeered. Some cheered. Some turned their back. He walked on. Looked at no one.

  ‘Where are they taking him?’ I asked Maxi.

  He shrugged then sighed. ‘Listen, Pop, you know what it says on his vest? The writing on his vest. They all wear them. It says: “I will fight for my country. I will die for my country. I will not return.” We can’t take prisoners, nowhere to put them.’

  ‘Well, what will they do with him, then?’

  Maxi put two fingers up to his temple and said a quiet ‘Bang.’ I felt like a fool. A white-kneed fool who was expecting war to be polite. ‘Quite frankly we’re doing him a favour,’ Maxi told me. ‘Least he’ll have the dignity of an enemy bullet.’

  Thirty-six

  Bernard

  I’d not wanted a war. None of us had. And I never wanted to be out in India. But (I admit) it put a rod in the back and spring in the step of this middle-aged bank clerk who’d thought his life was set. Even started whistling (noth
ing fancy) now I was part of a team: 298 Repair and Salvage Unit. RAF trained and tested – mechanic (engines) – and proud to be an erk.

  Maxi needed someone sensible with him on this salvage trip. Me, his first choice – that bit older, you see. Orders were to find a downed kite (Spitfire). Reports claimed it had come down somewhere in the hills. Vague, but an army unit nearby knew where. Maxi was after some piece of equipment it was carrying. All very hush-hush. Security too tight to tell this lowly aircraftman. Draw some supplies (including a Sten each), then into the truck. Glad to get off my duties on the base. Sense of freedom. Mission, even.

  Maxi wasn’t as silly as some – senior clerk on the railways back home. A wife, two boys (one he hadn’t seen yet), waiting in Brighton. We had a good-natured argument all the way, like brothers.

  ‘Underestimate your enemy, lose your war. Show me someone who thinks a Jap a fool and I’ll show you someone who’s sun-happy.’

  Maxi had all the stories. Collected them in a scrapbook in his head. Pulled them out to scare the white-kneed. ‘If you bring one in wounded then you better strap him down because if you don’t he’ll pull out a grenade and blow everyone up while you’re nursing him. Or, failing that, you’d better tie his hands ’cause a Jap will open up his own wounds – his own wounds! – to die for his emperor.’ They were relished – savoured, even – these stories. Everyone had them. Tales running round the camp blanching even the most sunburnt faces. Maxi’s were not quite as fanciful as some. One chap swore that with twenty bullet-holes a Jap could still run. Others were truly convinced these little men could rise from the dead. But I was having none of it.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t believe everything the chaps say,’ I said.