Day (3 page)

‘When you say
go
, Boss.'

‘When I say
go.'

Then a different smile from him, bigger, a bit half soaked. ‘That's the stuff, Boss. We're agreed.'

No reason for him to call you Boss – maybe he wants to feel lighter, because you've just given him command, or maybe because you're small and this makes it funny. You never can work it out, but from now on he does call you Boss and this makes the others do the same until, by the end of the week, it's your name. Silly one to pick when you've never been a boss of anything.

When you bring him Pluckrose, again there's a shake of the hand and you notice how the skipper moves: that he's gentle, precise, and you might mistake him for being not much of a man, but really there is just no waste about him. He puts himself exactly where he chooses and is still. If he hit you, he would do it very quickly and very well.

No bomb aimer, yet. ‘Sorry, Boss.' Skip shrugs at you, enjoying that he's rueful. ‘Couldn't find anybody quite right. Who's this?'

Pluckrose in and explaining, before you can answer, which isn't a shock.

‘Pluckrose. From a long line of Pluckroses: my father, and my grandfather and my so forth, all of them Pluckroses to a man and my mother, of course, picked it – plucked it – although possibly under the influence of drink – and so, having put up with it themselves, they were delighted they could pass it on to me.' He doesn't appear to breathe, ‘Those of them still living. The others might well have been less enthusiastic, although who knows – once a Pluckrose, I'd suppose always a Pluckrose.' And the skipper watches him, unreadable and still, and you wonder if you've made a terrible mistake in bringing him a Pluckrose. ‘You can imagine how much I look forward to meeting strangers – especially popsies – and, my, how I liked my schools – all eight of them. I have really no education to speak of, can barely add up, so I wouldn't rely on my calculations at any point – geometry is a foreign land to me – and foreign lands, of course: they're a foreign land to me, too. Struan Macallum Pluckrose, that's the complete set of luggage – the very tiniest touch of Scotland there on my mother's side.' Pluckrose blinks down at the skipper, allows a moment of remarkable silence, ‘Would you like to see my logbook?'

Offering this before he's asked, his face fighting between resignation and a peculiar kind of glee, and the skipper studying each page very calmly, closing it, softly handing it back. ‘Well, nobody's said you're dangerous.'

‘I can be very plausible, if I have to.'

‘Which might come in handy.'

Pluckrose exhaling, seeming to lower by half an inch and no longer close to bellowing. ‘I'd hoped it might.'

‘Peter Gibbs. Sandy.' The skipper rubs his neck, glances at his navigator – which is Pluckrose – and then at his tail gunner – which is you – and then the hangar where more knots are forming, pairs and teams of men gaining definition. ‘This is only a guess, you know . . .' he murmurs just loud enough for the pair of you, his crew, ‘but I think we might take a bit of getting used to. So perhaps from now on, we should travel en masse, formate in a nice little vic and introduce ourselves together. Then they can take us or leave us in one go.'

* * *

Vasyl had declared lunch on the grass, unpacking half a decent loaf, cheese in a greaseproof wrapper, three boiled eggs. Awkward that – you can't share three between two people.

‘Is fine. I have my knife.' Vasyl seeming a touch shy, smoothing his hand into his trouser pocket and bringing out a clasp knife, a small thing. It could still do you harm, but was nothing to fuss about. ‘My famous knife, yes?' Letting it lie on his palm for a moment until it became all innocence, cutlery, an object with no sense of purpose. Then he cut the egg lengthwise through its shell, very earnest, and making a good job of it, the blade plainly very sharp. ‘There, you see? Fair is fair.' Holding out Alfred's half in a wide, reddish hand.

So they had one thing in common: understanding food.

Bash, we called it in the camp. Bash. Maybe that made it easier to cope with. You expected things of food, you had high hopes; never quite knew where you were with bash. And you had to be careful with it, keep things equal and correct.

Not that they didn't have more than enough at the minute. A comfortable ration for this afternoon and a bottle of cold tea apiece – real tea, none of that ersatz stuff made out of daisies, or God knew what – and meals laid on for the rest of the time, generous portions.

But you could still worry.

The thought of food had followed Alfred for six years now, long after the end of the war: that and the preventative hunger, the drive to take what he saw, whenever he saw it, in case there was nothing else after. He'd kept chocolate with him every day; and a new slice of bread each morning, to help him be at ease. This was how you discovered that you were an animal – you caught yourself hoarding, savage, feeding: mind shut.

You'd think all those books would make a difference, wouldn't you, our kid? That's what everyone said would happen. You end up around reading people, ones who like their words and are comfortable with them, and you show an interest, a curiosity, and that's your affair and no one else's business and you find yourself growing – a little chap, but big inside, quite roomy. Only then they pile in, the reading people, gang up on you and interfere and they want you to be like them, their boy, their babby, and they give you more refined concerns – according to them, you've never been bothered by anything worthwhile – so now you have rarefied worries and delicate problems, like your head's been turned into a parlour and there's nothing there can stand your touch – and they give you words that you can't quite operate to put in your new voice and this is supposed to make you finer and a finished man. A great opportunity for self-improvement, war.

Unless you're hungry.

Then you end up just like any other dog.

Still, they'd had a point. Being an autodidact – horrible word, autodidact, but one of the first you teach yourself: all by yourself, without the reading people, without anyone – being an autodidact had made a difference. Without the books, you might not have been so thoroughly ashamed. Or disappointed. Your shame might have been unavoidable, very probably it was, but not your disappointment.

Oh, give it a rest, though, can't you? All of that was years ago and you could have had it worse.

And you were warned – by someone who was taught in schools – Ivor Sands told you and his whole life is books – go scraping about in your past and you'll get hurt, you'll remember and hurt. But you wouldn't be told.

Alfred rubbed his fingers through his scalp.

Won't need a punch in the head at this rate – doing it very effectively from within.

He lowered his eyelids, turned his face to the heat and stared at the muffled light, the blood sun.

Time to get yourself in order, Day. No more self-indulgence. Think of your egg – your nice half chooky egg. That shouldn't be neglected.

He looked down at it, peeled away the shell, his mouth suddenly overinterested, wet.

My, but wasn't it all just a big, free university – the university of war – with HE
and armour piercing and incendiaries, just for a lark. And so much to find out: the far edges of people and the bloody big doors into nowhere that you don't want to know about.

Enough of that, though. If you keep yourself in charge of your thinking then things stay friendly and polite.

So keep in charge.

And then what?

Let us consider the things for which we should be grateful.

For instance?

For instance, you wouldn't deny that it left you with a grand appreciation of your grub. When there is food, you don't take it for granted. No indeed. It's just as if you can't help saying grace.

Amen, straw women, rubber babbies all a-swimming.

But those regulations no longer apply.

No more playing silly buggers over God now, either.

He focused himself on his egg and biting, hid inside that – the nice cling of the yolk, a dab of it slightly creamier where it was undercooked. ‘Nice enough, I suppose. No salt, though.' When he licked his lips he could feel the tickle of hairs – eating was going to be different now, very slightly. He liked that.

‘Apologies. I forget my head.'

Vasyl threw across a twist of paper that did indeed conceal a hollow full of salt. Must have been a Boy Scout. If the Ukraine had Boy Scouts. Alfred suspected that Uncle Joe would not be all that keen and wasn't there some other outfit they had in Russia, some socialist arrangement?

‘An egg with salt, now that's more like it.' Bread made it better yet. Sip of tea. A modest slice of cheese. You couldn't complain.

‘Want some of this?'

‘Bloody hell.'

Vasyl brought out a tin of Klim and, quick as you like, had it open, something about this seeming a kind of threat. It had been four years since Alfred had seen a tin of Klim and the tiny shock of the banded label, the fat, square lettering, hurt him slightly, made him swallow. ‘Bloody, bloody hell.' Klim had been behind the wire. It didn't belong in 1949.

‘You don't like? Milk – is good for you.' Vasyl watchful, more interested than he should be. ‘Make you grow long bones.'

‘Bones are long enough, thanks.' Being sure to sound sharp. ‘Wouldn't want to grow out of my clothes. At home we all have to economise, you know. Save pounds, get dollars, that kind of thing.' Because you couldn't let him start assuming you would put up with anything. Unwise to stand out, or throw your weight around, but you couldn't let somebody mark you as a target, either. Show them you're not afraid and then you're halfway to winning the fight. ‘Just a surprise to see it. Klim. For some reason I'd have thought they'd blow every Klim production plant sky high and then bury every tin of it at sea. Bloody
Klim
, from bloody herds of
swoc
, eating bloody fields of bloody
ssarg
. I took it as a sign that somebody out in the world had a sense of humour. Very necessary, a sense of humour.' This was too long, too big, giving Vasyl leverage he could use. Which was what he'd wanted, no doubt. Better not to get angry, though, because that could lead to weakness and other sorts of grief. ‘But maybe I'm taking things too much to heart, just because I still dream of the stuff. Often.' Wrong – Alfred watched in Vasyl's eyes how this invited an intrusion, showed a fast way in. ‘And everyone's been so busy in the peace: keeping the rationing going, taking whatever they like, making sure that we stay cheerful and all get what we deserve. We've every one of us got what we fought for, hadn't you heard?' Alfred aware that he now sounded as bitter as Ivor Sands, when he wasn't like Ivor, was sure that he wasn't as damaged as that. Still, despite his complaining, Alfred reached and took the can, shook out a palmful of that old, dry sweetness. ‘Christ.'

‘Taste pleasing? The way you know?'

‘Tastes like hell. And I like my tea black. You can keep the rest.' A flutter in his stomach, so he lay back, breathed for a while.

But Vasyl was in the mood to take advantage, couldn't wait to dig. ‘Tell me a thing, Mr Alfred.'

Tongue at your top lip, cleaning away the memory. ‘No.' That was the trouble with a moustache – it made things linger.

‘You sleep?'

‘Everybody sleeps.'

‘You sleep the way you like to? You enjoy your sleep? Is enough for you, your sleep?' The man in a rush for something, after blood. Like the doctor at Cosford, the trick cyclist. Same style. Wanting to steal what was left of you and pretending you shouldn't object.

‘My sleep is more than enough for me, thank you. I sometimes have to wake up early, just to keep it from wearing me out.'

‘And now you are here in Germany again, pretending to be in a camp – now with this, you sleep?' The fucker guessing, correctly guessing, that insomnia – a charming word, that, full of Latin – insomnia had been a problem but, since coming here, had abandoned him completely.

Such conditions could go either way, Alfred supposed, but it turned out the hut noise had soothed him: the breathing, creaks, the shift of bodies, the chafing night din of a barracks, none of it annoyed him any more. Instead he'd gained a sleep like drowning, like being swallowed, a crush of grey taking him off as soon as he lay down and folding over him, thick and seamless, until they had to shake him at reveille, haul him back up to the light.

No need to mention that yesterday morning you'd gone round to have a swill, get yourself presentable, and had to pause, sit down on the clean, fake steps of some other clean, fake hut and realise you were tearful, ached, because the pretend camp, pretend fences, pretend guards – they had been what you wanted. The bastard thing had made you miss it. The fucking thing had put itself inside you so deep that you felt this happiness to see it built again and straggling with men: pretend Kriegies –
Kriegsgefangene
: all German, that word – pretend POWs, like yourself and more than only you coming back for their second time, volunteering for their prison, more than only you – and you were fucked off with yourself and fucked off with them and fucked off with the thing and its taste and its fear and its living in you and fucked off that it wouldn't be long before filming was over and they'd send you home.

And I'm looking for the faces, too. From when it was real. From when we were Kriegies.

Because some of it here can seem so much the same and that leads you to expect them, even when you're certain they're not coming: the boys you need to see.