Day (35 page)

‘All right?' A sergeant with W/Op sparks on his trade badge. ‘Are you all right?'

Alfred stared at him slightly too long, somehow expecting to recognise his face. ‘I'm . . . I'm fine.'

‘Not a nervous flyer?' The man smiled, as if he knew the answer he'd get.

Alfred smiled back, sleepy suddenly. ‘No. No more than the usual, anyway.' He began climbing the ladder.

The sergeant followed him up into the dim body, the riveted skin. The others were sitting about, having fixed themselves up as comfortably as they could – some of them very still, thoughtful at being here – but Alfred didn't pay them much attention, because he was turning left and heading for the turret.

‘Hang about . . .'

The shock of the sergeant's hand on his arm and then a moment when they didn't speak and came to understand each other.

The man nodded. ‘I take it you know your way.'

‘I think I'll remember, yes.'

‘No forgetting to lock the doors and falling out. That would upset us.' He winked.

‘I won't forget.' Alfred thought they must be about the same age and wondered if that might mean they'd seen about the same things. ‘In fact, I won't revolve the turret, so there'll be no chance of that.'

‘Your captain today would prefer that.'

‘Fair enough.'

They shook hands.

And Alfred fed himself back to the place where he belonged and felt the engines start behind him and checked nothing, did nothing, only remembered the last time – ferried back with a bunch of other half-starved Kriegies, taking turns to peer out of whatever windows they could reach as they flew low and level above the bombed thing that was Germany, above their work.

As if the cities had been eaten, as if something unnatural had fed on them until they were gashes and shells and staring spaces, as if it was still down there like a plague in the dust.

drop

It's past eight in the evening before you reach the shop. Walking up the street towards it, the passers-by with no idea of where you've been, the smell of somewhere else on your skin: it makes you feel younger and excitable for about as long as it takes to rap and then batter on the door, stir up Ivor from his wireless in the back room.

‘Oh.' Ivor with crumbs on his pullover and not well shaved.

‘Oh, yourself.'

‘Didn't think I'd see
you
again.'

The city quiet behind you and as summery as it can manage. ‘Couldn't tear myself away.' The shop not untidy and the scent of books very welcome, almost moving. ‘I see the place has gone to rack and ruin.'

‘I sold your things.' He holds out his hand for your bag and closes the door softly after you. ‘Ages ago.'

‘No, you didn't.'

‘I was going to. Didn't have the time.'

‘Rush on, was there?'

‘A flood of interest in the metaphysical poets, I could hardly keep up. Do you want some toast?'

And he takes you into the back room and you sit in the chair you always take and he puts a new slice of bread in his toasting frame and you think that you cannot stay like this, you do not quite fit any more.

You give him the tin coffee pot and he frowns at it, then puts it on the mantelpiece.

‘Handmade.'

‘I should bloody well hope so. I'd hate to think you'd paid out money for it.' He frowns at the pot again. ‘You look well. Prison life must suit you.' It's taken him less than five minutes to start in at you.

‘Did me the world of good. Of course, this time they didn't beat me as much as I'd have liked.'

‘I could always oblige.' He smiles.

‘You could fucking try.' You smile.

And you go to the stove and set the kettle on the gas, because you can't have toast without a cup of tea.

Ivor's brandy is finished and it's so late that it's actually early before you remember that you have nowhere to live.

Ivor waves his arm at this, shaking his head. ‘Oh, but I know that and it's not true, anyway.' He stamps down a foot for emphasis and breaks a saucer. ‘Fuck.'

‘What?'

‘Your cases and your . . . that . . . your books. They're downstairs with me. Where I live. Which has enough room. Has an extra room.'

‘You live here.' You wave your arm at the fuggy little room.

‘No bed.' Ivor leans across and pokes you in the chest, quiet delicately. ‘Where would I sleep? I don't
sleep
here. I have another life elsewhere.'

‘You don't have another life.'

‘I
could
have another life.' He needs a haircut, you think. ‘And fuck you. And I have a bath and three small rooms in the basement. One room with your things in, could also have you in.'

‘We'd murder each other – within days, hours.'

‘S'OK. You're better at all that than me.' Light over his shoulder from the window that faces the yard – blue-grey dawn starting up. ‘You'd kill me and then you'd hang and I'd know that and die happy.'

‘Nobody dies happy.'

He gives you a frown and then rubs his hairline. ‘S'OK.'

‘It's not a happy thing to do.'

You sit for a while after that and neither one of you speaks and you think of Ringer being with you in the snow when the Germans had gone and you could go where you liked and there was nowhere to like, except being near to a hedge because that would give you shelter. And it seemed that you wouldn't be shot and maybe in a while you could find food – you guessed there were fields here and maybe underneath the snow there would be something, there would be the leavings of some crop, only you needed a rest, Ringer needed a rest, wouldn't walk any more.

But you should have made him walk, you should have looked after him and saved him the way he'd saved you. You shouldn't have let him sleep.

And then you shouldn't have left him lying – out in the open on ground you couldn't dig.

Nothing about him marked, not a sign on him of death except his colour and the worst death you'd seen because it had crept so gentle and still been a bastard and taken him away.

He'd have wanted a grave in a churchyard, to be near bells, but now you don't know where he is.

Known only to God.

Which sounded as if it would scare him – so far away and nothing with him but the God that watched him die, knew all about it. What's the comfort in that?

‘They think we're scum.' Ivor not angry, but grabbing for you, catching your wrist and holding it. ‘That's what they think – I wanted to tell someone . . . but you weren't here to tell.' His good eye fixes you.

‘Hm?'

‘They think we're scum. All the rubbish my mother used to talk about this and that class – it doesn't matter. It's only that whoever crawls to the top of the heap will always think the rest of us are scum. That's the only law. So people like you go off and die and people like me go off and get burned and all of us get bombed, because they think bombing will scare us and make us give up. But it doesn't. They bomb us and we don't give up. They have us bomb other people and the other people don't give up. Because people aren't scum. And we've nowhere to go. We can't give up. All the fuckers in charge, they don't understand.'

‘Ivor . . .' Suddenly wanting to tell him about the Luger, how it's waiting, dozing in your bag.

But he doesn't listen. ‘At the start, they didn't give us enough shelters, in case we all stayed in them and never came up – because they expected us to be scum.'

‘Ivor –'

‘And your type – they shoot you in the trenches –
pour encourager les autres
– they threaten you with Lack of Moral Fibre, because they expect you to be scum. But we did so well – so many people did so well . . . and all it means is they learn the next time they'll have to kill more and then more again, because maybe we're stupid scum and we don't know when we're beaten.' He seems to be crying. ‘They never learn, the people in charge – as soon as they get in charge, they forget what people are . . .'

And you don't want to hear this. The start of the day is lifting beyond the dirty net curtains and there's unfinished business that needs your attention, a change you have to make.

Ivor sighs. ‘Sometimes I –' but he breaks off when he sees you stand. ‘Going somewhere?'

‘For a while. Got to get some air.'

‘Oh.' He sinks a touch more into his seat, shrugs.

‘I'll come back, if you don't mind, and I'll take that room.'

Ivor studies the patchy carpet. ‘Need someone here anyway – look after the place . . . I was thinking of going in for more surgery. Maybe.'

‘Well, that's good, then.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'll come back later.'

‘Don't mind me.'

‘I do mind you – and I'll be back later. I'm just not sure when.'

‘Today?' And he checks you quickly, wary.

‘Yes, it'll be today.'

And it will be today, but first you have to walk and see her, go west across the city in the gold shine of the proper morning and the sparrow din and the start of the rush to work, people climbing out and into their lives and used to the gaps now where the bombs fell and the willowherb growing in them and floating its seed along their streets and used to the new buildings, set where the old ones died, and used to the scars in the masonry from shrapnel and used to the brown linoleum and the shabby passing of small hours and the treats under the counter and the petty greed and not minding what they've lost and what they never got.

You remember the address.

You never forgot it.

Still quite early when you get there, but that might be good, because she could have a job and this will mean you catch her in.

You've checked every year in the telephone directory and there's been the same number, the same address, the same name which is
Antrobus, Donald
. Sometimes you've thought she's kept that for the sake of her husband's memory, or to protect herself – a woman living on her own – or that she just forgot to change it and put her own name, because she can be forgetful, scatter-brained. But usually, you've realised that it means he came back.

What were the chances: that both of her men would come back.

Walking round the block once you've got here and the houses seem slightly more worn, unhappy, but it hasn't changed enough – still pitches your stomach with the full, high wonderful fear. And you haven't been alive as much as this in a long, long while – so you could leave, duck away for the shop and safety and you would still have gained, you would have got your ration of new heartbeats, moving blood, but you won't leave, you'll pass the door for the fifth time and think that they haven't painted it since you were here last, not in all these years, and they should have, it's overdue, and that takes you in closer and the sweep of how this used to be takes you closer yet and this is your hand now reaching and ringing the bell which is next to
Antrobus
, a name that you took once in Lincoln and which makes you want her and that isn't what you intended, it's too much and you really should not stay, you ought to run.

‘My God.' Joyce standing in her opened doorway and saying what you haven't time to think. ‘My God.'

‘Yes.'

And she stares at you, covers her mouth with both hands and stares and you feel this on your face, the way it washes you, strips you, touches.

‘I . . .' All of those words that you know and there are none of them to hand. ‘I'm sorry.'

She keeps her eyes on you, as if when she blinks, when she glances away, you will disappear.

‘I'm . . . No, I'm not sorry.' You breathe in, which you haven't for a while. ‘Are you well? How are you? You seem . . .' You swallow. ‘I grew a moustache.'

She almost grins. ‘So I see.'

‘How are you?'

‘I'm all right.' Such eyes she has. ‘Considering.' Wearing this house dress, flowers on it – blue, all different blues and she's lost a little weight and shorter hair, slightly shorter and her hands are beautiful. ‘I . . .' And she looks bewildered in the way that she might if you had woken her, something gentle about it and slow. ‘Where have you been?'

And this hits you in your chest: mouth open, but nothing to say, to tell her, and the sunlight is beginning to make you wince and you need to go, but then she takes a small step forward and then pulls the door closed behind her and this is the most wonderful thing, this is exceptionally fine, this is bostin and it makes you, only a very little, cry so that you drop your head for a moment and cough.

When you look again she's still there and you tell her. ‘I was away.' Which twitches in your neck when you hear it and then you smile without entirely knowing why. ‘I was away.'

Which is when she touches you, cups her hands against your cheeks and holds you so that you tremble.

‘I was away.'

‘You seem tired.' This seems to be not quite what she wants to tell you.

‘I didn't sleep last night. And I have a hangover.'

‘Is that a habit?' And the question important to her and making you wonder about the lieutenant and how he is with her.

‘No. Not the hangover, anyway. Not a good sleeper.' And you swallow, but it breaks out anyway. ‘I missed you.'

Her hands drop away from you then and she begins to walk and you follow, you keep beside her. ‘I'm sorry, but I did.'

‘And you think that I didn't miss you?' She's angry-sounding and you would like to reach out for her, but you don't and then she grabs your arm, shakes it. ‘Having to wait for him and then wanting to wait for you and knowing nothing, then almost nothing, then nothing again – the whole of that bloody building full of women waiting for some bloody man or another and every now and then you'd hear so-and-so shouldn't be waited for any more.' She stops herself, lets a chap work past you with his little dog. ‘I always regretted that letter.'