Day (13 page)

It had a gold satin cover, her quilt, very smooth. His hands were ugly when he set them down against it. He seemed to himself a very ugly little man.

‘I'm sorry. I don't know your name, Sergeant. Did I see you were a sergeant?' She turns slightly and this presses her shoulder into his, covers his stripes, strips his heart back to the breech.

Saliva so thick in his mouth that it gets in the way. ‘Yes . . . I'm a very new sergeant. Air gunner.' Better be honest from the start. ‘But I haven't done anything yet. They make us sergeants just for saying that we will.' Be honest in what you can.

‘But you have a name, too . . .'

He looks for how she said this and she's smiling a little. The biddy in the corner almost growling, finally getting something worth her disapproval.

‘Alfie, I suppose.' His voice muffled by pressing down against so much.

‘Hello, Alfie you suppose.'

‘Hello.'

Then a horrible silence and some kid coughing as if he's swallowed a button, or something, and the distant thump of things starting up out in the world.

‘You could ask
my
name, if you wanted. As we'll be spending the night together. It's quite all right, these days. Everyone's very modern and no one comes to any harm. Not much from that, anyway.' She doesn't sound modern herself, or casual about this – more as if she's pushing into somewhere she won't like.

And now you have to make her happy, have to help and that means you can be a good boy really, a good bad boy and that calms you. A bit. ‘Well, I don't know . . . I've never been in London . . . At home we had an Anderson out the back, used that.' Understanding she'll find your old life unattractive, but you can't stop. ‘Wouldn't have been any good if my sisters were still at home – not enough room – I've got a whole wing of sisters, but they left years ago – married. Apart from Nan, she's in . . .' Can't say she's in service, not with someone who probably has servants. ‘I'm the youngest: the babby.' Sounding soft as shit, but it matters much less than it ought, because of how safe you seem, how well, how comfortable she makes you.

She felt like home – gave me that.

Then stole it.

And when he'd finished, finally run down, he turned and discovered her watching him, apparently pleased, but also surprised in some way – as if he had opened a door on her while she was busy with something else, a duty she didn't like.

‘Sergeant Alfie, you still haven't asked me what I'm called.'

‘Maybe I shouldn't.' Because he knew he had to. This feeling that he could die if he didn't know.

‘I'm Joyce.'

Landing like a hot stone in him. ‘Oh.' Rippling his breath, rocking what had only ever stood before, some place in himself he hadn't known. ‘Hello, Joyce.'

The city outside the shelter louder now: desynchronised engines worrying in and the dull shake of bombs, ack-ack doing its best. Not a big raid, but enough.

The batteries firing up always seemed inadequate, thin. Never like that when you got on the other end of the German flak, had to ride across boxes of the bastard stuff, pretend you didn't mind.

But when you were busy, you didn't, that was the marvellous thing. It was a mercy. Like her.

He said her name again just because it tasted lovely. ‘Hello, Joyce.'

‘Hello, Alfie.'

His breathing all shallow and helpless, making him babble at her. ‘At the back of Ma's house there was an ack-ack emplacement – three lads and some sandbags and a Bofors gun. Ma used to bring them mugs of tea. I think everyone did.' He didn't know why he was telling her this, it wasn't the right kind of thing, not witty, intelligent, not any use. ‘Then one morning after a raid, she went out to see them and their heads were lying in the lane. Blown off. There in the lane . . . She shouldn't have had to find that.' Joyce was still watching his face though, listening. Brave girl. ‘I was away by then. Training.' He tried to swallow and didn't quite. ‘Finished now, though. Well, the basics. Not operational, but I've got the brevet.' He wanted to shut up. ‘Would you like to see?' He wanted to start again, be a man she would like.

But it truly did seem that she didn't mind him and so he angled himself to let her see his wing – and his pretty lousy sewing – while her concentration, her attention felt enormous, like a kick from Sergeant Hartnell, only deeper and wonderful, like a strange recoil echoing in his chest. He felt it, the breath when he split open.

‘Alfie, I came here –' She faces straight ahead now, falters. ‘Alfie.'

She is so, she is too much. She hurts him with being Joyce, even when she seems not quite concerned with him, is preoccupied. She is the first good hurt he's known.

‘Alfie, I came here because I wanted to be with people, but I don't think I can stand being jammed in like this all night . . . This will sound awful . . .' She checks with him now and he shakes his head for her before he knows why and maybe she's going, maybe he's leaned up against her side too hard and she's offended and their having met is over and no more of it to come and perhaps now he has to be shaking his head because he can't let that be true.

‘This will sound awful, but I don't want to go back alone.'

Alfred's mouth hasn't got a clue – his mind, likewise – they can't help him. He is beyond wanting her, lost in a splendid, shining fear.

Joyce clears her throat. ‘Look, I wouldn't ask. And I also shouldn't. And you ought to know that I'm a married woman. I really am terribly married and I don't want there to be misunderstandings.'

She says other things after that, but he doesn't hear them. He thinks he might still be shaking his head, because here is something else that can't be true.

Then she is quiet, tense.

He hugs the quilt. Doesn't want to give it back. Perhaps he is shaking his head about that. It would be very simple if this could be all about a quilt.

She brushes his hand, which stings, or lights, or twitches, he doesn't know which without looking and he doesn't look and she tells him, ‘You really don't mind? I do realise it's an imposition.'

His head still swinging back and forth without him and that blasted old woman tutting and acting as if she's outraged, when there is nothing to be outraged about.

Joyce again, insisting gently, ‘Because I'd probably get out now, if we were going.'

And he stands and his legs are unhelpful and he follows Joyce, because he can't do otherwise.

Should have stayed where I was. Stayed safe.

But I couldn't.

Not in a million years.

So they'd gone out beneath the edge of the passing raid, rushed out before anyone could stop them.

He'd stumbled through the streets beside her. The moon apparently swollen, watching: at its highest and very naked, very bright for them.

Thinking all the way that what she said was one thing and how she seemed was another and you believe how someone seems, don't you? That's common sense.

The reek of fires as they went. The harsh, the sweet, the rotten: another lesson war would teach you, the way there could be such variety in waste, the infinite variations of fire.

They stepped across the head of a street, something leering at its end: a squat, red threat and a bell sounding, a fire engine going somewhere and a whistle blown, three blasts. Funny how you heard the detail and not the guns any more, not the Heinkels, not the bombs: the larger noise of that more like a grip around you, a heaviness you moved through and learned to ignore unless it pressed too sharp, came down and bit you.

Alfred saw the muffled street lights changing and pausing, showing their signals in the proper order, as if anybody cared. The scent of her quilt and of her hair were so much the only urgent things.

A little dog ran past, upset – yipping and snapping, which made Joyce draw in her breath and then what sounded like a shell fragment dropped down quite close and she held his arm. And he let her.

And they went on like that.

Otherwise, he might have said goodnight when they found her doorstep. He might have tried to.

‘This is very decent of you.' She struggles with the lock in her front door while you look at nothing and her arms are pointlessly full and the glasses case drops again. ‘Damn and blast the –' And there are tiny noises from her that make you think she's crying, so you rescue the case and follow her into the darkened hall of a house that smells expensive, officer class.

‘Mind, there are stairs.' Something lost about her voice and you don't know this dark and so there is only her in it and your idea of her and your clinging on round the gold satin cover of a quilt. Together you rise and turn with the curve of the staircase, fumble your way.

When they reach the second landing, she's easier with her keys and another door, but she pauses in the hallway beyond. Alfred hears himself a long way away whispering, ‘You didn't need to say, you know.' Whispering to Joyce. ‘About being married. You never needed to say. I wouldn't do anything . . . not because I was in your house. I only . . . I'm not . . . I wouldn't have done anything.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Well, I had to tell you.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘Well, I think I had to tell you that.'

And she is most likely crying again – sounds like it – and hurries off up the passageway and he hears a clattering, confusion, something heavy tipping over, but just waits, leans against the wall and puts his hand on to the paper, thinks he is touching her wall – there will always be this place where his hand was and he touched her house.

He closes the front door and the dark becomes a little darker.

He waits.

‘I'm, I'm sorry.' Her voice rather distant, calling. ‘You should . . .' Then a spill of light ahead and to the left, the shapes of little tables now along the corridor and a clock, door frames. Officer class. ‘Do – Ah, do come in.'

For a diving moment he wonders what room she is in, because different rooms have different meanings and this will be important and he wants and does not want to know what he will be supposed to do.

‘I forget if I put up the blackout and then I . . . I mean, I must have done it this time, because it was dark before I went out, but sometimes . . .'

Then he moves himself forward, lets her talk him forward.

‘So I'm in this habit now. Crashing about through the dark. I broke a vase yesterday which Donald's mother liked especially . . . I . . . I'm not very good at this war. Maybe when they have another.'

And there she is in an untidy kitchen – not a bedroom, or a parlour: a kitchen – sitting at the table, wearing her coat. Her head is dropped and her fringe hides her face. There are two nice cups and saucers set out and two plates and that would be for her and for him. Her hand is holding a teaspoon, turning it over and over. There is no sugar bowl. She has perhaps forgotten it. There is a smell that is faint, but not clean, stale.

Alfred blinks. ‘Do you, would you . . . This quilt.'

‘Oh, my goodness. I am a BF, aren't I?' She darts up, wet-eyed, and snatches away his bundle, almost runs to another room somewhere to his right. He thinks he might sit down and, after a while, he does and holds her teaspoon and turns it over and over. No sugar bowl. No milk.

He hears when she steps back in, feels a line taut in his neck.

‘There, that's . . . ' She pauses until he glances round. ‘You're very kind.'

‘I don't think so.'

‘I think so. I think you're very kind.'

‘No.'

She is a little more collected, slower – he heard water running while she was gone and imagines that she must have washed her face. Carefully, she pours him cocoa from her Thermos and takes out her sandwiches from the packet and puts them on the plates – two sandwiches each. Then she reconsiders and gives him three. It doesn't matter, because he can't eat them, can barely sip the watery cocoa.

‘Don't you want to be in your basement?' Although the raid seems a good way east by this time, not their concern.

‘I couldn't. I mean, sometimes I don't. I mean, there'll be my neighbours and if you're here –'

‘I can leave.' Which is his first lie to her.

‘No.' Which is when they look at each other.

And there is nothing to be said. And Alfred sits and believes what he sees and allows himself to be in love, cannot prevent himself being in love.

Then quietly she turns the lamp out and takes the blackout down and they stand side by side and, in the window, Alfred watches the swipes and smears of warlight, the way it searches, judders, bleeds. The night cracks and heals and cracks again, while he feels it tremble, his own lost skin taken in with the shake of everything and he sees the little garden below them apparently undisturbed, but made out of some dark metal, precisely engin-eered, mysterious.

Thank you, Ditcher, thank you, lads. Thanks, God, if You're up there. Thanks for my night. My burning night.

And Joyce told him about her husband who was Lieutenant Antrobus – Donald – and how he'd been out in Malaya and then withdrawn to Singapore and then no word from him since the Japanese overran it. No word for months.

Standing there like a bastard and hoping this Donald Antrobus was dead. Pretending it wasn't unlikely, was already settled and thoughts could do no more harm. Wanting to push a man out of his bed.

Changing the subject after that, ‘We ought to move, you know,' because you would rather not hear any more of Antrobus and rather not think any worse of yourself than you already do. ‘It's not safe here.' Although this doesn't change the subject, it only means more than you want.

She nods for a while, drifting, then pays you attention again. ‘What?'