Of Love and Other Wars

by Sophie Hardach

  ‘Opium?’

  ‘It’s just that I try to avoid religion of any sort. It stupefies a man more than any narcotic, but the library doesn’t offer much else. I’ve been forced to entertain myself with this.’

  He held up the cover of his book. It said Black Beauty and showed a galloping horse, its mane blowing in the wind.

  ‘Any good?’

  ‘It’s a rather sentimental story of a carriage horse who falls on hard times. I suspect it was left behind by someone’s child after a weekly visit. However, after the first chapter I decided to read it as a parable on the chained proletariat, and, voila, it became perfectly enjoyable. Do you see what I did there? It is all a matter of perception. The human mind is but a malleable lump of clay.’

  ‘Fascinating.’

  Chatterjee jumped off the top bunk and landed lightly on his feet with the elasticity of a cat.

  ‘Anon, anon, we must make our way to the canteen. I bribed the cook: we’ll be served a double ration while four new boys will get half. Sometimes, my friend, sometimes I fear that Socialism will never work because of people like me.’

  3

  The toilet paper at Wormwood Scrubs came in waxy rolls marked ‘Government Property’ and there was always a shortage. Paul soon discovered why. Chatterjee had organized a ring of men who smuggled roll after roll into his cell. He drew explicitly posed nudes on the lengths of paper, tore them off and sold them for buttons, which he then used to pay off the men and buy a spoon whose sides had been carefully filed into razor edges. He liked to shave himself with the spoon while the others could see him.

  ‘A little bird told me I’ll be transferred to another wing soon.’ Chatterjee rinsed the spoon in a mug of water. ‘Ten buttons and the magic razor spoon is yours.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll pass.’

  ‘Ah. Is it because you think our friends down the corridor have grown fond of you? I’m sorry to say, my dear Lamb, that they’ll shear you as soon as I’m gone.’

  Paul shrugged.

  ‘Shrug away, Atlas, shrug away.’ Chatterjee began to clip his toenails with the spoon. ‘Shrug as much as you like, but the damned thing will still be on your shoulders when you stop shrugging. See, you have two choices if you want to get on in here. You can be violent, or you can be useful. The man who filed this spoon, for example, is useful. But I can’t see what particular skill you have that would keep them off.’

  Paul pointed at the waxy rolls. ‘I could do those.’

  ‘And I could have sworn you’d never seen a naked girl.’

  Paul picked up the sooty toothpick. He drew a sitting nude, a reclining nude, a nude getting out of a bathtub. He drew a standing nude with her arms crossed over her head, a walking nude casting a coquettish glance over her back, a nude on a plinth with her head twisted towards the viewer. When he was done, he let the whole length of paper travel through his fingers. A dozen nudes, and they all looked a little like Miriam.

  Chatterjee let out a low whistle.

  ‘You might have told me earlier. One thing – with all due respect, if you want these to sell, you need to make them less polite.’ Chatterjee sat down, spread his legs wide and drew two arcs over his chest with his hands. ‘That sort of thing.’ He paused and listened for the hum in the distance that grew into a roar. In the next cell, the methodic thudding sound began.

  ‘And pubic hair,’ he said. ‘Men pay up to three buttons more for convincingly drawn pubic hair.’

  *

  After Chatterjee was transferred, Paul drew for his survival. He churned out nude after nude with the anxious creativity of Scheherazade spinning tales for her executioner. The men began to make specific requests for poses, body types, hairstyles. But whether he drew light-haired girls or dark-haired ones, skinny dancers with bobbed hair or voluptious whores, there was always some expression in their big, vivacious eyes that reminded him of Miriam. There was nothing he could do about it. He tried to evoke other nudes he had seen at Bentham, other women he had seen on the street or in pubs, but his hand always defied his intention and drew only that one face in a hundred different guises.

  He sent out pictures of Miriam into cells full of leering men and it felt as if he was selling his most treasured memories, as if he was selling the loveliest images in his head; yet there was nothing he could do to stop it. He asked the guards if he could have a cellmate, hoping another Chatterjee would bolster his status, but it took them a while to find someone who was willing to share a room with him.

  *

  The new man was stocky and neckless, with a bald head covered in scabs and scars. He had been moved after his previous cellmate had refused to put up with him any longer, and Paul soon found out why. He also discovered the source of the mysterious thudding noise.

  At night, when the air-raid sirens howled, the bald man screamed: ‘Let me owwww-t! Let me owwww-t!’

  And then he whacked his head against the wall. Thud, thud, thud.

  *

  ‘Are you the barber?’ he asked Paul in the morning. The blood had dried in brown patches on the side of his head. The man was like Chatterjee turned inside out: all of Chatterjee’s hidden, internal madness was on full physical display here, and Paul was not sure whether this was any better or far worse.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not the barber?’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘But the barber would say that, wouldn’t he?’ He had spotted the mouse trap in the corner that Chatterjee had bequeathed Paul as a parting gift, picked it up and tenderly examined the cheese on the spike.

  ‘Maybe . ⁠. ⁠.’ Paul tried to remember what his mother had taught him about speaking to people who were soft in the head. With loving kindness. ‘Are you looking for a barber?’

  The man ate the cheese, pocketed the mouse trap and put his scabby mouth very close to Paul’s ear. ‘I need him to shave the inside of my head.’

  4

  When Miriam was at the factory all she thought about was her drill and the steel mould before her. Never in her life had she felt such purposeful concentration. She was one of a hundred links in a perfectly forged chain, one of a thousand minds that formed the collective spirit. The great surge up the stairs in the morning, clocking in, a turban among a hundred other turbans, shirtsleeves rolled up, a smile on her face, humming along to the rhythm of Music While You Work. She learned not to compete with the noise of the machines, not to shout over it and lose her voice, but to speak under the noise, as one of her supervisors told her. She did not understand that at first; how could one speak under the noise? And then, one hot summer day in 1940, she found that she simply did it, she was conversing with the other women at quite a normal level, moving her lips carefully, speaking under the great noise.

  At the Bentham College Women’s Union and the Debating Society, and even in the air-raid precautions team, her initial fire and energy had fizzled out when she sensed that her efforts were not truly needed; that the Women’s Union already had plenty of spirited speakers, that the short-trousered grocer in Highgate would have noticed the chink in his blackout board even if she had not sternly pointed it out to him. Here, the demand for patient labour was immense and ceaseless, and all she had to do was dedicate herself to it. She did not need to question her job because the chain’s perfection was clear to all. Her task was to drill out an impeccably smooth steel mould. Other women would use the mould to cast bullets; soldiers would use the bullets to win the war. Here was the purity and simplicity that all her other causes had lacked.

  When there wasn’t any music on the wireless, the women sang. And that, too, contributed to the wonderful satisfaction of belonging to a useful whole. This new life had a rhythm and a tune where her old life had been aimless and disordered, a constant lurching from unfinished job to unfinished job.

  They worked and sang, and every now and then, Mr Baxter, the director, descended from his office to the factory floor and said something wise and profound that they would all lau
gh about afterwards.

  ‘I’ve been in this business longer than you’ve been in this world, and one thing I’ve observed is that northern girls are better with their hands. Why do you think that is?’

  Miriam shook her head. Mr Baxter wiggled his fingers.

  ‘Northern girls have longer fingers. And do you know why?’

  Miriam tried not to look at the red-haired girl next to her, who was biting her lips while her cheeks inflated with pent-up laughter.

  ‘It’s the mills. Just like we developed an upright gait to be able to throw spears at mammoths, northern girls developed long fingers to work the textiles at the cotton mills.’

  ‘Is that so, Mr Baxter?’

  ‘Just take a look for yourself. It’s never too late to learn something new.’

  ‘I’ll make sure I do, Mr Baxter.’

  He walked back up to the factory floor and shut the door behind him. The girl next to her released her lips and released a howl of hilarity. It was so infectious that Miriam laughed until her laughter turned into pig-like snorts. When Miriam finally calmed down, the girl wiggled her fingers and both were helplessly convulsed once more. It was only when one of the older women muttered that she wished she could afford a good giggle, but unlike some she needed the piece work to feed her children, that Miriam and her new friend returned to their drills.

  *

  They were walking away from the factory after their night shift when they heard the explosion. People came running towards them. Her friend disappeared in the crowd and Miriam’s instinct was to retreat too, but then she reasoned that there might be injured victims. She held on tightly to her bag and ran the other way, into the noise.

  The blast had hurled a double-decker bus against a house. It stuck in the wall like a giant loaf. A photographer overtook her and began to snap away. The banner on the side of the bus advertised Hovis sliced bread. Miriam began to laugh hysterically. It was not the worst hit she had witnessed and the bloodied bodies being pulled out of the bus by ambulance workers were not the worst she had seen. Yet her hand was shaking so hard she could hardly hold on to her bag.

  The photographer left. The ambulances left. Miriam was still standing there shaking. The warm blanket of the factory had been pulled away and she felt so alone, so utterly alone. A dog emerged from behind the bus, sniffed at something on the ground and began to lick it.

  Miriam tossed a stone at the dog. Then she picked up a leg in its thin black stocking, which had been sliced off neatly by a flying piece of metal. She put it high up on a window ledge.

  *

  She began to walk south until she reached Marylebone. Her feet hurt and the streets were bright now in the morning sun. She turned west. Gradually the deserted pavement filled with typists and civil servants. The crowds thickened and she walked on with a rigid smile; bumped into briefcases and sharp elbows; apologized.

  When she reached the high gloomy prison walls she thought she would linger a little and then turn back home, but there were dozens of women waiting at the gate and one of them gave her a friendly nod. Her curly red hair reminded Miriam of her friend at the factory. She felt the warmth of the herd and stood there very comfortably, as securely as she stood every evening at the factory gates.

  The woman nodded at her again, unscrewed a little jar and rubbed some red colour on her cheeks. She offered the jar to Miriam. Miriam copied her.

  ‘They won’t let us in for another hour,’ the woman said. ‘It’s a disgrace.’

  ‘That’s fine. I can wait.’ She marvelled at the calmness of her own voice. ‘I forgot to make an appointment. Do you think they’ll let me in anyway?’

  ‘I should think so.’ The woman screwed the jar shut.

  Miriam felt the hysterical laughter rise within her again.

  5

  She looked as fresh and apple-cheeked as if the big gates had opened and let in an entire summer. He had assumed the walls of the visitors’ room were white but when she sat down opposite him in her white wool jumper and blue rayon scarf, he realized the walls were grey. The room filled with her warm scent. His own smell must compare to hers as the walls compared to her dress.

  ‘That’s a nice jumper.’ He did not know what else to say. It was as if he had forgotten how ordinary people spoke to each other. If she had grunted at him, he could have grunted back. If she had started banging her head against the wall, he would have known how to make the right soothing noises and pull her away. But she did nothing of that sort. Instead, she made some comment about the weather, and he said: ‘Yes, it’s very cold.’

  His eyes met hers and she flinched.

  ‘I probably look quite rough.’

  ‘Of course not.’ She placed her hands flat on the table. ‘I must be looking rather wild myself. I’ve walked all the way from the factory. Though after all your tall tales about joining the army, I’m not sure why I did that.’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to explain . ⁠. ⁠.’ he said uncertainly, expecting her to interrupt him. But she nodded in encouragement and he realized he had no explanation. ‘I suppose I told you what I thought you wanted to hear.’

  She waited for him to say more.

  ‘That’s all,’ he said.

  ‘That can’t be all.’ She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Had there ever been a lovelier movement? He wanted to ask her to do it again.

  ‘Well, it is. I implied I was going to sign up because that’s what you wanted to hear.’

  ‘But I don’t understand it!’ The strand came loose again. She swept it back with both hands and smudged the rouge on her cheeks in the process. ‘I don’t understand any of it. Are you trying to be a martyr? But martyrs don’t lie about their beliefs one day and go to gaol for them the next, do they? See, if you’d lied and then gone and sat out the war on a farm – that I would have understood. But this, this just doesn’t make sense.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you I was going to sign up. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You know what I think? I think you told me the truth that night. I don’t think you ever meant to go through with this. It just sort of happened, didn’t it? You wanted to please your family, and now you’re here and you’re probably not even sure why.’

  She was right, in a way, and yet it irked him that she should think of him as someone who didn’t have views of his own. He had views of his own. He was not very good at expressing them; he was not even capable of fully articulating them for himself, but he did have them.

  ‘I do know why I’m here,’ he said firmly. ‘And it’s not as senseless as you think. When they let me out, I can apply to be registered as a conchie again and this—’ he gestured at the bleak thick walls – ‘this will support my case.’

  She looked exhausted and confused, and he thought, it can’t be easy for her. The patches of land where their families had pitched their tents were just too different. When he listened to her talk about the war and what it meant to her and why everyone should go and fight, it made perfect sense. When he was alone in his cell and explained to the judge in his head why the swords should be turned into ploughshares, it also made sense. Isaiah was right, and Joel was also right. They were even bound together by the same book. But if you put them right next to each other, if you read ‘they shall turn their ploughshares into swords’ and then read as the next sentence, ‘turn your swords into ploughshares’, well, that was a mess. There was no way of reconciling those two. They could exist in their different patches – just like the old Quakers had said ‘thank thee’ and ‘third-month’ while their neighbours said ‘thank you’ and ‘March’, but they could not live together.

  He was about to try to tell her this when she reached out and, instead of saying anything, very gently touched the left side of his face.

  ‘This isn’t as bad as it looks,’ he said quickly. ‘I . ⁠. ⁠. I fell down the stairs.’

  ‘It’s horrible to see you in here.’

  ‘It all looks much worse than it is.’

&
nbsp; ‘Is there anything I can send you to make it better?’ She took her hand away. ‘Books?’

  He shook his head. ‘In the early days, I had a Bible.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Someone took it off me.’ He cracked his knuckles. ‘Look . ⁠. ⁠. there was a bit of a paper shortage. It was my own fault. Hell, I’ll say it as it is. Some men needed toilet paper and they took my Bible. And that’s why I don’t want you to send me any books. It wasn’t a personal thing. They were ordinary men who needed paper, that’s how I’ve decided to see it. I was partly to blame for the shortage, and I happened to have a book with a lot of pages. What I don’t want is for you to send me books because . ⁠. ⁠. well, I’d only get angry if they tried to take those, too.’

  ‘And you’d get into a fight.’ She glanced at his ear. ‘That’s what this is, isn’t it? They took your Bible and you got into a fight.’

  ‘It was only because . ⁠. ⁠.’ His excuse was lost in a mortified stammer. He tried again, and again the stammer defeated him. ‘It wasn’t because it was the Bible as such,’ he said eventually. ‘It was because I had nothing else. It was the only thing I had left, so I was sort of attached to it.’

  They fell silent. Paul wanted to get up and pace up and down as he did in his cell. Instead, he drew his finger up and down along the edge of the table between them. ‘You’re going to say this just shows that it’s important to defend yourself. But it wasn’t like that. I was angry, and I got into a fight. If anything, it convinced me that fighting is a bad idea.’

  ‘That’s not at all what I was going to say.’ Her eyes followed his finger. There seemed to be something on her mind, and several times she began to say something. But then the guard told them visiting time was up.

  ‘I’ll come and visit you again,’ she said quickly. ‘There’s only one thing. I might as well tell you, I’ve signed on at a munitions factory. If that’s a problem—’