Day (29 page)

‘'Course you are.'

‘Tell you another thing.' He broke away from Alfred and looked at him, stood and made him stand while the others straggled past them. ‘I tell you this.' And he took off his cap, reached out his hand. ‘That one more you've got to do. That one. I'll fly you.'

‘No, you –'

‘I'm twenty-six, you're twenty-five. I remember.' He waited. ‘I'll fly you.'

And Alfred removed his own cap, ‘You're the skipper,' and shook hands.

‘You're the boss.'

The road shifting slightly under Alfred with how late it was and how strange and how good, how difficult to look at his captain now without acting soft. ‘That's if we'm both still here.'

‘Naturally.' Skip started walking. ‘Otherwise, we'll be resting and no more they'll ask us to do. You never know, though, about heaven, what with it being up – Air Council Instructions, they might still operate . . . you never know.'

drop

Alfred wasn't in love with the concert party: it was getting to be hard work – the director looking for something they couldn't provide and too many technical problems and delays. All morning, they'd sat in rows and watched the same little dance routine, the same fragment of singing, the same bit of patter with three actors messing it up, dressed in frocks and tits and mophead wigs. And over and over, Alfred had clapped and clamoured and yelled as he was ordered, because he was in the audience and the audience was to enjoy itself and laugh. The audience was not to feel stifled, was not to wipe sweat from its face so often that it started to imagine itself raw: skinned, bleeding from its collar to its hair.

And the more he laughed, the more it sounded queer to him – and the voices round him, they were splintering into something that seemed fearful, or hungry, or in pain. After a while, he didn't want to look at the other men, in case they were altered in some way that would come to be dangerous.

Funny: when you're a kid you're scared of all sorts – noises at night and the Hand of Glory and the rats in the back of the coal-hole and the brewer's old Sentinel steam wagon, how it rattles and screams like the boiler might burst. But you're wrong.

It's only people who can harm you. You can never be scared enough of them.

So there'd been days back in London when the shop would have to hide him: when he could barely get there, hardly leave. He couldn't tolerate a bus, the tube, a tram, even the busier pavements – and his evenings would mostly be spent in the back room with Ivor, the street door locked and bolted against people – the only way of leaving to be in the dark, tucked against walls in the still of darkness and trying to remember that he could see well, that he was used to being ready, that he would take care of himself. Then he'd dash for his lodgings, get in, tiptoe up the boarding-house stairs and into his rooms – hope that he'd be tired enough to sleep, that no one would cough, or drop their shoes on the floor above, or stumble at the uneven landing, or pull the chain too loud – hope nobody would do something to claw him up awake and leave him staring at nowhere, clinging to his bed.

People, they got everywhere: the heave of them and their eyes and hands and teeth and a mind that you couldn't predict, something terrible inside their clothes, their blood.

Not now, cocker. You'm among friends here. Or not enemies, anyway. Easy with yourself, go easy.

Alfred's scalp was constricting and a dizziness was sinking in him. The concert stage – with suitably homespun backdrops – was empty. He wanted to think this meant the whole nonsense was over, but no one had said so and the mob on the benches around him was staying put.

Forcing the movement, Alfred turned to the lad on his left and made himself find the boy human, civilised. And the chap did seem a nice kid: polite, only twenty or so, less. He was dressed as a naval flyer and intent on supporting the show, giving out hoots and whistles at quite arbitrary points. The kid's face, the line of his back – they made it very clear that he was monstrously relaxed.

Of course, the kid could feel Alfred's look – we all can feel when we're under somebody's attention. ‘Something up?'

‘No, no.'

The lad studied him. ‘You all right? Seem a bit green, old man. If you don't mind my saying.'

‘It's the heat.'

Up on the stage, a proper entertainer sidled across and settled himself with his ukulele, twiddled a few chords. The kid gave a viciously approving whistle. ‘Corklino, that's a bit more like it.' He nodded to Alfred with a reassuring grin, ‘This'll take you out of yourself.'

Alfred hadn't heard anyone say
corklino
in years. ‘Yes.' Obviously, the lad was trying to get himself into the part – because it was only a part and so he could, like, not take it personally.

‘It's a bit old hat, of course.' The kid who had never really met the war – you could see this in him – but here he is looking battle-stained but triumphant like a snap from
The War Illustrated
and he's using the word
old
far too often. ‘But I don't think we'll get any better.' He whistled again, one of the soundmen flinching in response.

‘No. I don't suppose we shall.'

The entertainer cranked out a familiar number about the Maginot Line and Alfred tried not to remember Formby singing it better when the Maginot Line had still mattered and tried not to seem an older and older man with every breath.

You're not thirty yet, cocker – buck up. Years to go, yet.

And is that a threat, or a promise?

Haven't a clue, just slap your hands together like you're meant to, there's a good boy.

And he did manage clapping in time with the others, even stamped a bit, although it jarred his knees.

Twenty-five, going on fifty – however I look. However fit I get.

And then something jammed, or snapped, or otherwise went US with one of the cameras and the pack of them were ordered out to have their tea break early.

It was, naturally, no cooler outside, but there was a half-hearted breeze and the possibility of dispersal, of shade and relative peace. Alfred gathered his mug of tea as fast as he decently could and then sat in the sand at the dark side of Hut 21.

Which is where Vasyl found him.

‘Ah, yes.'

The toes of Jerry boots messing up the quiet sand that Alfred had been studying, smoothing in his mind. Probably they were real Jerry boots. War surplus. The whole bloody world, up to its ugly neck in surplus.

‘Ah, yes. So here is where you hide, Mr Alfred.'

‘No. This is where I sit. If I was hiding, you wouldn't find me.'

One of the boots scuffled a touch to the right and then both rocked back on their heels with a creak Alfred didn't want to recognise.

‘Have you thought any further –'

‘I won't sell you the gun.'

‘Not to worry, old man. There will be plenty of time to discuss this. When I am in London.'

This intended to make Alfred look up, which he did. ‘You won't be in London.' That uniform leaning over him, Vasyl's grin drawing the heat from the day, putting a dirty chill on Alfred's skin, so he had to rub his face with his sleeve. ‘You're a liar.' Staring straight ahead now, keeping steady.

‘If you weren't my friend, Mr Alfred, I would be very angry to hear that you say so.' Vasyl fanned his hands out ahead of himself, acting harmless, and then moved round to crouch beside Alfred, to lean against him. ‘I have suffered a long delay, but now everything will be quite fine.'

‘Anyway, I'm never in London.' Alfred concentrating on the sand, the idea of sand.

‘Now I think you are perhaps not telling the truth. Everyone here has an address, a record of their address. This is only practical. Very easy to check where somebody lives.'

‘They won't let you in.'

‘I will be a good citizen. Obedient. A good citizen is obedient.'

‘They won't let you in.'

‘To your house?'

‘To my country. They won't let you in to my country.'

‘Whyever not?'

‘Because you're –' And Alfred intending for a moment to be cautious here, but then remembering a knife in the ribs would solve any number of his problems, perhaps all. ‘Because you're not who you say you are.'

Vasyl only made a breathy type of laugh that shook through Alfred's mind, turned him slightly nauseous. ‘It doesn't matter who I say I am. You know two years ago, your government accepted a whole division.' The pressure on Alfred's side increased as Vasyl fitted close, whispered, ‘A Waffen SS division – all waiting in Italy and then all declared very good immigrants. From the Ukraine. What do I worry? You like us now. We are much better than the Russians, the Communists. And we are very healthy, very intelligent. We are ideal.'

Alfred tried to stand, be elsewhere, but Vasyl threw an arm around his shoulder.

‘Do you want to know?' There was a surprising strength in Vasyl's grip, a meat smell from his breath. ‘Do you want to know who I am? The truth. I think you do. I think you have wanted to know for a long time and so I will tell you, because you are my friend.'

‘I don't care.' Alfred had no energy for a fight, somehow – at least not while Vasyl had the height, the advantage. He let himself be pressed down into his place. ‘I really don't care, Vasyl. Be whoever you like.'

Vasyl softly knocked his head against Alfred's, then eased back. ‘They came in the summer. In '41. When it is hot this way, I remember. You never knew this – the way it is when they come – in the Nazi time. It is like being born. In my home, this was in my real home town – not in the Ukraine – I am from Latvia, but I think it is better now to be from the Ukraine – in my home they come with trucks and tanks and then everything is different and simply only walking about is wonderful because you are so light. When the Nazis come, they take away everything that stopped you moving – it is almost possible you might fly.' Vasyl pausing and smiling at Alfred, as if this were bearable, a story, something sentimental and lovely – but also smiling as if he would like to see Alfred opened, emptied out. ‘A lot of us feel it, this being light, and we try and see what it means. We can tell it means something. So we say what we want to say now, what we want to be, and they are . . . the Germans, they are like fathers – they watch us: how we grow. It's many years since they have been born, but I think some of them like to watch it happening to us.

‘And after that we
do
what we like. We find out what we like – and we like what the Germans like. It is very special to obey them and be a part of such a thing. I took . . .' He chuckles and rubs in the dirt with his forefinger. ‘I took this woman's basket of food – eggs, some bread, sausage. I took it from her, because my mother needed it rather more and because I wanted to and because the Germans were happy to see me do it, they watched me and they were happy.'

‘Who did you take it from?'

‘Nobody.'

‘Who did you take it from?'

‘You know.' He smiles. ‘Nobody.' He pushes how fine he's feeling into the silence between them. ‘You know. Windows, I broke. A little chicken house, I set on fire. You would never believe you would do such things, but then you realise your town is spread out for you now, smooth as a tablecloth – the first time – your town is really yours and this is what you always wanted – to take it.'

The earth under Alfred seeming to thin until it is a tissue, a weak thought stretched across a place the dark has burrowed out, a place with no words.

‘Then one morning I don't go to work. A lot of us, we don't go. I'm in my shirtsleeves, it's a warm morning – and our baker and our postman, the grain merchant, the station master – very many men also that I didn't know – and we are all in our old clothes, or in overalls – the station master is dressed for a country walk – we had each one separately decided that our worn clothes might be most suitable. Some of our women they come, too, but they don't help much. It is us, the men: we are here and we are going to prove we are new and finished with being born and growing very fast to be true men and our fathers are watching and we have our sticks – our fathers have guns, but we don't need them yet – our sticks are better, they let us understand.

‘I hit a female first. Only because of the noise she was making. I didn't know her well: but her husband, he worked making baskets, I think, and sold them, travelled with them. Someone else was killing him. I hit her six, seven times and then some more, because in the beginning you can't stop. But others were coming, they were being driven out, and so I left her then and took a boy I hated. He had been in my class at school for a while. You always knew he thought he was better, thought he was a little bit disgusted with us. But he was still a boy and I was a man now. He was easy. He pissed himself. Partly, he was easy because he was trying to cover up where he was wet and not covering up his head – still wanted to seem better than everyone around him.

‘He's almost the last one that I can remember properly. I thought I would remember all of everything, but you don't. It becomes incomplete and then you do more and forget more and then it is very, very long ago and you are different.'

Vasyl rubbing the heels of his hand together with a small, dry sound, but he keeps talking, he keeps on.

‘We did that first killing almost until sunset. Mainly in the square. I fell once, because of the blood, and I hurt my elbow. I didn't do that again, because it made the Germans laugh at me.

‘Of course, then we had to clear the bodies up ourselves – we were so stupid, the way we did it. There were only two or three left alive when we thought of this problem and they weren't useful. You should save people to carry the bodies for you, or the best is to take them out alive and make them dig graves – or ditches, or defences, sometimes we would say all types of lie and they want the lie – it doesn't matter who – I killed all types – they don't expect you will do it, don't really expect, or anticipate? Believe. They don't want to. We are unbelievable for them. Is that a better word? If they don't understand us – sometimes this is why we can kill them. Some, I think, did begin to understand. Some few, they realise – turn into us and then you'll live. But you'll be us. But stay as you are. You don't live. There's no other choice. Maybe not even such a choice. We decide. Mr Alfred, you think maybe there is another way, but that's not so. When there's no war, you don't see it, but it always has been this way.