Jay, Lizzie and the Tale of the Stairs

by G J Lee

  Chapter 16

  Albert’s Story

  So I got dressed and followed Lizzie in the same way I had a few nights before. I held her hand and the staircase appeared.

  And we stepped into 1946.

  The lingering smell of damp was still there and the large kitchen with its clunky contraptions. And of course Lizzie beamed with colour as I retreated to a black and white copy of myself.

  When Lizzie opened the door between the kitchen and the front room Albert was exactly how I had imagined he’d be only seconds before: he was sitting patiently and cross-legged on the sofa, with the tall ashtray to hand and puffing on his pipe. When I entered behind Lizzie he put out the match he’d been holding over the pipe’s bowl and stood up. He shook my hand.

  “Hello, Jay,” he said in his squeaky, high-pitched voice, “it’s really good of you to come again.”

  I smiled, a bit flushed around the cheeks. I was…what was the word? - bashful. I had never been this important in my whole life. It seemed, for the first time ever, I was needed by someone to do something. Whatever that was. But it felt good. I wasn’t just a pain and getting under peoples feet anymore.

  Albert gripped my hand tightly and looked at me sternly with those green cats’ eyes and his bent nose.

  “You know we need to talk, don’t you?”

  I looked to Lizzie and Lizzie nodded at me.

  “I…I guess so,” I said.

  A smile slowly spread across Mr Raynor’s face but he still held my hand and he still looked at me. It was like he was peering inside of me. Deep inside. In the same way someone would peer down an old well. It felt like he was checking that I meant what I said and that I was telling the truth.

  But I was. So eventually he let my hand go and returned to the sofa. I sat at the other end and Lizzie sat with her legs tucked under her on the floor. You could see by the way she looked up at her Dad that she had real respect for her father. She waited quietly, patiently for him to speak. I thought about the relationship with my Dad and began to compare ours against Lizzie’s and Albert’s. I had to admit that I admired the two people in front of me now, their mutual understanding. That Dad would speak and daughter would listen. But ours was a good one too. More free. Dad had his problems. I knew that. But he was a good Dad and he loved my Mum.

  That, in the end, is all that matters.

  I suppose.

  Albert started up his pipe again and pleasant smelling smoke wandered my way. There were a couple of seconds of some sort of silence and I heard a tap drip-dripping in the kitchen and the unfamiliar sounds of 1946 caught through the open window. Then, through the nets, I thought I saw someone pass by outside. It was just a shadow, really. A wisp. It was there. Then it was gone, forgotten as Albert started to talk.

  “I know what you’ve seen, Jay. You’ve been having visions again. You have to understand that I can sometimes see what you can see. I think you’ve been looking through the eyes of my son, Jay. I believe that, at certain times during the day and at night, you become Ernie.”

  I frowned down at the sofa trying to work this through. I had already understood that I was experiencing the life of someone else but I hadn’t really made any connection with Ernie. Albert was holding his pipe. He watched me closely.

  “Your response?” he asked, almost like a teacher at school.

  I didn’t know what to say. But what I did say seemed a bit silly.

  “Am I family then?”

  Albert Raynor giggled like a little chipmunk. It made me smile.

  “No, I’m afraid you’re not family. At least not yet,” and then he glanced at Lizzie smiling up at him, “but you must remember, on your last visit here, what I told you about men and islands? Do you remember?”

  I kind of remembered something. Something about an island. In the end I shook my head and felt a bit embarrassed because I hadn’t been paying attention. Suddenly it felt like I was being taught but without idiots like Donkers and his leery mates throwing stuff.

  “Well, you have been having these dreams and visions and hearing these voices because you can. You have a gift. A gift that enables you to see, hear, smell and feel things beyond time and space. I’m sure that you are aware of that too. But what you have to remember, young Jay my friend, is that almost everybody has the ability to do this.”

  He paused for a puff of his pipe and allowed this idea to sink in.

  “You see, and I’m convinced of this, that all human beings are connected in some way. No-one is alone. Everybody is everybody else’s brother or sister. So, what happens to one person happens to everybody else. For example, if one person does a really bad thing then it’s not just that one person who is to blame. Everybody has to share in the consequences of that person’s action. So, effectively, we are all to blame. Likewise, if someone or a group of people do a good thing then we should all share in the celebration. Are you following me, Jay?”

  I wasn’t. Not really. But I said yes.

  “So, to return to your original question, yes, in a way I think we are all brothers and sisters, all responsible for each others’ actions.” He paused but then added quickly, “To a degree of course.”

  Now, I was lost. It did sound like Mr Raynor was some kind of religious nut and it felt like we were all at church or something. So I told the truth.

  “I…I’m not sure what you mean, Mr Raynor,” I said nervously. “Can you explain some more?”

  He smoked and thought. Green eyes looking closely at me.

  “You know, it’s hard to believe,” Albert said slowly and his attention moved from my eyes to a space beyond me, “it’s hard to believe what men have done to each other over the last thirty-odd years. They’ve bickered and argued, complaining I want this or I want that. They have blown each other to little bits, dropped millions of tons of bombs onto innocent children and starved, beaten and murdered millions.”

  Now his attention moved urgently to me and there was a wild look in his sea-green eyes.

  “Do you know what they did only last year, to end the war with Japan?” Albert stood up and paced the room. He stood and faced the portrait of the grand old gentleman that I had noticed hung on the wall when I had first visited the front room in my dreams. “Do you know what they did, Jay? They dropped a bomb so powerful, so unthinkably powerful, that, in a moment, it destroyed a whole city. A whole city! Imagine that? Imagine the devastation? The horrible twisted waste of it all.”

  Albert had taken the pipe from his mouth and he was getting so worked up, so passionate, that I saw a bit of spit shoot out of his mouth and stick, like a little piece of dust, somewhere near the man in the picture’s face. He didn’t mean to and I might have laughed but the seriousness of what he was saying had made me try and think back to my history lessons with Mr Butler. I think what Lizzie’s Dad was talking about was the atom bomb. I wasn’t sure. I’d have to ask. But I didn’t get the chance as Albert had raised his pipe hand into the air in some weird salute.

  “GOOD OLD KING GEORGE!” he bellowed in a voice that made me jump. Lizzie still sat on the floor. She frowned at her Father’s wild speech.

  “We’ve been through so much, Jay. So much. Five years of bloody awful war. Friends and family gone, buildings bombed flat, no food, no new clothes. And still it goes on. There’s no end to this God-awful madness. ‘Mend and make do’ they tell us now. ‘Mend and made bloody do!’ That’s a laugh. What do they think we’ve been doing the past six years? It’s an utter, utter mess. Now the army, the navy and the air force are coming home. Where are they going to live? What are they going to do? What are they going to eat?”

  There was a small mirror on one wall and Albert was now looking at his trembling self as he fumbled at the buttons at the neck of his shirt.

  “What was the bloody point?” he mumbled at his other self reflected in the glass. “What was the bloody point? What were we fighting for in the end?” Then Albert turned on us again. “Sin begets sin’ a famous author once wrote. ‘Sin
begets sin.’ And what do we read in the papers? What do we read the bloody Nazis had been doing? Just when we think no more blood can be squeezed from this world of ours…”

  “No, Dad, please don’t. Please.”

  That was Lizzie. Her little voice stopped her Dad like a sparrow hoping onto the cold steel of a railway line in the hope of stopping a freight train.

  It sung out like sweet spring.

  She did it. The little sparrow stopped the train.

  Albert, for a moment, just a moment, looked at his daughter as if she was a stranger. As if she was someone who had just walked in off of the street and told him to be quiet. Then he cleared his throat and straightened himself. He returned to the sofa and set about lighting his pipe.

  As Albert rummaged in his tobacco tin I looked at Lizzie. She had wiped her runny nose again with her white hanky taken from one of her pockets. But she also held onto the Jesus Christ on the Cross around her neck.

  The silence lasted a while but we both knew that there was much more that Albert wanted to say. When finally he had relit his pipe and calmed himself he began again.

  “Did I mention that I had served in the first war?” he said, much lower now. “Do you know what that is?”

  I was glad of the opportunity to say something.

  “Yes I do. That’s the First World War.”

  Albert giggled in his chipmunk way. “The First World War!” he repeated, almost to himself. “I suppose that makes sense. Well, I was in the navy. A spotter on the big ships.”

  Albert’s chest visibly puffed with pride as he said this and Lizzie tutted from where she was on the floor.

  “Daaad,” she whined.

  “What?”

  “Not again. Please.”

  “Well I was, “continued Albert, ignoring his daughter. Again he seemed to stare into space, but this time his face wore a thin smile. “HMS Indefatigable.”

  Now that confused me a lot. The HMS stood for something, but I didn’t know what, although I knew it came before a ship’s name. Just the British navy. Nobody else’s. But the other word I didn’t quite catch. I tried to hang onto it, roll it around inside my head and talk it out again. I couldn’t.

  “What, “I said, “what was the name of it again?”

  “I beg your pardon?” replied Albert good-naturedly.

  “Your ship, Dad,” Lizzie interrupted impatiently. “He wants you to tell him its name again.”

  “Oh, I am sorry. Yes. HMS Indefatigable.”

  “In-def-at-ig-able,” I repeated slowly. Then quicker. “Indefatigable.” Then I looked at Albert all pleased with myself. “HMS Indefatigable.”

  “Well done, Jay," complimented Albert.

  “Yes, well done,” repeated Lizzie sarcastically from the floor.

  “But what does In-def-at-ig-able mean?” I asked, curious now.

  “It means big and indestructible.” Albert’s chest puffed out again and he reminded me of myself when talking about boy stuff. “She was a battlecruiser. A big ship. Big and powerful. Jerry didn’t like her. Kept their eye on her they did. I’ve got a photograph somewhere.”

  I could tell that Albert was only pretending to search for the photograph. His pride always knew where it was. For moments like this. After rummaging half-heartedly in a drawer in the cabinet he went quickly to another drawer and instantly found it. He brought the small black and white photograph back to the sofa. Lizzie looked completely bored as she still sat on the floor pulling at the worn rug she was sitting on.

  Albert handed me the crinkled bit of what seemed like card.

  “There she is!“ he nodded. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  What I saw was a ship, that was for sure, sat on a calm sea. The ship itself looked long and grey and dirty with big pieces of metal and what looked like small pylons sticking up out of her. There were several funnels too, like I’d seen on pictures of the Titanic and I could see the guns, big ones on the front and others sticking out here and there.

  “We were trying to draw the Germans out into the North Sea. Into a big battle. A big battle where old Jellicoe could destroy ‘em with our big guns.”

  “Did they do it?” I asked, “I mean, was there a big battle?”

  I heard the soft clack of Albert’s teeth on his pipe. It wasn’t lit. It had gone out. But Albert looked past me into the middle-distance where perhaps he saw the old ship again. His pride had gone and now he seemed sad and a long, long way away. It took Lizzie to break his silence.

  “Tell him Dad.”

  “Nobody’s really sure. You see there was a big battle. Men were killed and ships were sunk on both sides. But then we lost each other in the fog and both us and the Germans crept back to port. But it wasn’t the mother of all battles it was meant to be. And it didn’t decide the war, that’s for certain. Make no mistake about that.”

  “And HMS Indefat-igable?” I carefully asked, “did she get hit by the Germans?”

  “Yes, she did. She was sunk with the loss of over a thousand hands.”

  “Hands?” I repeated, “that’s, uh, five hundred men,” and I had an image of a thousand hands bobbing in a black and white ocean.

  Lizzie giggled and Albert smiled. Briefly. But then all became serious again.

  “No. One hand equals one man in the navy,” corrected Albert.

  “So a thousand men were killed!” I tried to picture a thousand men in my head. I couldn’t.

  “I’m afraid so. There were only three survivors.”

  “Wow!” I exclaimed, now really impressed. “So you’re one of the three survivors?”

  Albert’s green eyes locked mine in a cold stare. Then he blinked slowly and looked away. It made me feel like I’d said something wrong. Maybe I had. I wasn’t sure. I fidgeted nervously on the sofa.

  “We had been refitted in Malta,” said Albert quietly, “then our Captain, old Sowerby, had received orders to rejoin our fleet nearer home. So for home we sailed. There were rumours that the British might have to have a massive battle with the German navy. The war in France was going badly and the people at home here needed some good news for a change. We joined the rest of our brave boys near Scapa Flow, which is in Scotland, to await news from France and to find out when we could have a pop at Jerry.” Albert looked down at the floor. I was certain he had tears bubbling in his eyes. “We thought we could win the war and bring the boys back home. We were young and confident. Brave. But so, so foolish.”

  Albert looked up again and if there had been tears they had dried away.

  “It was cold in Scotland. The North is a ferocious place. Even in spring. It was the cold and the sharp winds that brought on my visions. I had my first one on one of our rare run-ashores. We were sat in a bar having a pint when I saw a flash at one of the windows. All I remember is being helped off the floor by the lads. But that night what I had seen whilst I had feinted came back to me.” Albert shivered at this point. “The flash I saw at the pub window was the explosion to come. But I saw the dead and the maimed and the dying the next night… and the night after that…and the night after that. Night after night after night.”

  Now I shivered.

  “I was a screaming wreck. I had started to upset the crew with my screams when my watch were trying to sleep. I just couldn’t help it. The dreams were the worst you could imagine. In the end they said the safest place for me was in hospital. So off I went, even though I was accused of cowardice.” Albert looked at me again. “I didn’t want to die. But I was no coward.”

  At that moment I saw Mr Butler and what he’d written on the board that day.

  COWARD!

  COURT MARTIAL

  FIRING SQUAD

  I chewed on Albert’s words then I realised what being taking off the ship actually meant.

  “So you weren’t on board during the battle. When she blew up?” I said as carefully as I could.

  “No son. No, I wasn’t. Because of my…gift…I had seen the end of the Indefatigable and nearly all her cre
w.” He got up walked to the nets at the window. “They sailed the next day and the day after that she was hit. And her magazine went up, taking her down by the stern, to the bottom.”

  “Magazines?” I repeated (by now I really should have learned to keep my mouth shut), “paper you mean?”

  “No, Jay. A magazine is where the ammunition is stored.”

  “Oh,” was all I could think of to say.

  “A pretty big flash I should imagine,” Albert said almost to himself. “A pretty…big…flash.”

  There was quiet then. Albert, holding his pipe, looked beyond the nets and Lizzie still pulled at the frayed rug. I just sat and nodded. The silence lingered. Dragged on too long.

  Eventually Lizzie broke it.

  “I cup of tea I think,” and she got up and skittered into the kitchen.