Day (7 page)

Oh, and the waiting, you couldn't underestimate the practice he'd got in at waiting, he could win cups for doing that: waiting to get something, or leave something, or sign for something, or to grab hold of his ration of something, or waiting to go and do much the same, but somewhere else. Now, if anyone kept him hanging about for more than a minute or so, he'd find himself laughing out loud, howling sometimes, as if he was having the finest fun possible, because otherwise he knew he'd do some kind of damage: violence would be unavoidable. Safer to laugh and have them think you're cracked.

Twenty-five years old and laughing in queues. Twenty-five years old and already he'd done too much, or else too long, more than you should. Twenty-five years old and he'd never decided anything for himself.

No. That wasn't true: he'd made, he thought, four decisions. Four in a lifetime; and you could wonder about them, you could raise doubts with regard to their merits. At least they were his, though, all his own – the four moments when he'd acted like a man of vitality, health and endurance, the sort of chap Physical Culture should produce.

Alfred had decided to join up before he was called up.

Alfred had decided to be a tail gunner and nothing else.

Alfred had decided to kill his father.

Alfred had decided he'd come back to Germany and the fake camp.

At least you couldn't call me half-hearted – not once I make up my mind.

He'd only prayed before the first one, being then at an age when he did still talk to God. And there were special circumstances that might have made anyone call down extra help, because he was only fifteen when the war broke out and it might have been over too soon, he might have missed it. There could have been another agreement like Munich, or it could have stayed phoney and fizzled out, he hadn't been able to tell at the beginning. So he'd prayed for the war to be serious: good and long.

And don't think I haven't thanked myself since. And God.

That Sunday morning in September, the weather so good, looking set for an Indian summer, and the church bells sounding and a conscious stillness up beyond them, a sweet ache of a day – he wouldn't forget any part of it. He'd sat with his ma in the kitchen – she couldn't go to chapel because of the pain in her leg and that wasn't good, it made a familiar rawness in at the back of his thoughts, still Alfred and his ma, they kept things cheery. They were fine. They were being comfy together and they'd eaten their sausage, eggs and bacon, not talking much because they never had to, and everything today could be late and slow – they'd get away with that – and they were having extra toast – he didn't know then she made the best bread he'd ever taste – and the house would be at rest for another two hours, at least. The back door was open and the smell of their last roses coming in and a wedge of sunshine fallen down into the hall with the cat lying in it and purring, you could tell by the set of his head before you even heard a sound. Then Chamberlain comes on the wireless and Alfred had never liked him, never taken to the tone of him – the way he seemed like some thin, grey relative you wouldn't want to sit with, all his sentences fading away and breaking if his voice went low and everything being so sad and hard for him, even though there were other people in the world who weren't enjoying themselves that much. Like the Czechs. Or the Poles. You could bet they weren't happy. But here was Chamberlain in the Cabinet room – which Alfred imagined to be like a kind of parlour: Mansion Polish and china dogs – and he was saying in his pretty accent that he'd had a bitter blow and there was nothing else for it now but to be at war. He'd needed to hear from the Germans by eleven o'clock and eleven o'clock was gone. Which suited Alfred nicely, thanks ever so much.

They'd brought in national service the day before, which had put Alfred's father in a mood. Not for himself: he was too old for anyone to want him: but he'd worked out they'd be after Alfred soon.

Alfred had been put in a mood, also, because of being fifteen and just those few months, only six, which meant he'd have too long to wait. But as soon as he could he'd volunteer. He'd decided. So he wouldn't have to walk about in fish guts till he died, wouldn't have to listen while his father made that same sodding joke every day: a blind man walks past the fish shop – ‘Morning, ladies.' Alfred would go and he'd pick his service, that was how it worked, he hoped. Up in the clean air, up free with the blue, that's what he wanted. At least it would be, if they'd have him. So he'd exercise more to please them and strengthen himself and then he'd volunteer. Of course he'd fucking volunteer.

Ma, she'd heard the announcement and stopped eating. Alfred had been so busy in his head that he hadn't paid her proper attention and she must have sat perfectly still for a long while before he noticed and was jolted, damaged somewhere by the way she raised her eyes to him.

She was normally very sensible about crying and didn't do it. Today, though, she'd made a mistake and so they both started seeing what they were together – truly seeing, because they couldn't help themselves, and so they had to know what they meant for each other and how it would be when he'd go. They were harmed by it, by too much feeling. He might as well have been leaving that afternoon.

And he hated that they were trapped inside this, had to rush through the way they would be months in their future, for fear of his father, the thing still asleep above their heads. Later his mother might not find the chance, might not be allowed, so she had to weep in the kitchen when nothing was different yet. Without ever intending, they were making their one goodbye.

His mother lost herself for a while in little cries that seemed to leave her frightened, woman's sounds, and her hands fluttered and tried to shield her head and he went around the table and held her, the twitch and flicker of pain in her, and he touched her hair.

Didn't pray for her, though, did you? Only for yourself. You asked if God could make you strong.

Because he'd heard what Chamberlain said about Mr Hitler and the way he was
using force to gain his will
. Alfred understood about that. And before it was mentioned, he knew anybody who did that
can only be stopped by force
– it seemed daft that Chamberlain bothered to say so when it was just obvious. Unless he was trying to let people see he was like them and had problems they'd recognise, even if he owned a Cabinet room and no one else did – as if he was trying to say this Hitler was nothing special. That might be the kind of message a prime minister would pick: hoping you'd think him a pal and meaning you all to keep cheerful and ready for fighting the war.

Alfred hadn't cared. He'd smelled breakfast and roses and his mother's skin and his heart had stammered.

And the sirens – they set off the air-raid sirens, just for a practice – although we didn't know it wasn't real, not then – and the howl of that, I could feel it in her arms, I could feel the noise scare her.

She'd almost begun to stand: thinking of hiding maybe, of the shelter she'd never been to and didn't know: but he'd held her, rocked her, where she was to make her safe, to be her safety – he'd made her stay just where she was with him – and he'd closed his eyes and prayed again to be a strong, strong man.

Another waste of mental energy.

He stretched out his legs, leaned back and let the sounds, the rhythms of the camp, coddle in around him: a game of kick-about scuffling off beside the nearest huts, a curse as someone fell, distant sawing, the film people's bad piano limping out with a bounce of jazz, the player trying to be smarter than his fingers. Strolling feet approaching and a murmur of gossip to his left – odd how fast there was gossip when nothing here mattered and hardly any time would pass before all this was gone.

It came for him then, the true press of his mother's scent returning, speeding in at him and when he'd seen her fall and the little start of blood that time above her eye and being able to do nothing.

You see too much and have no words for what you see and see and see until it doesn't reach, is nonsense, there without you.

The woman in the forest when they were marching, when the Germans were pushing them west; she had a man with her and wanted his help, there on her knees and blood on her and shouting because he should help her and make this less terrible and let her be not alone and the man doing nothing, of course, being dead already and her screaming in German at a German soldier and him raising his gun to make her stop. And walking into the house with the blue window frames, neatly done, the place were the Russians had called and got drunk: Alfred hadn't known what to expect before he saw: broken things in the good front room, the foreign kind of parlour, and where they'd lit a fire on the rug and the hair, meat and hair, hidden under the kitchen table, or maybe just there by accident, maybe no hiding involved. Her breasts, she'd been cut on her breasts. The child cut, too. Beyond recognising.

Too much.

And having to keep all you love in your head, saving it all from the rest of the world and yourself: your nature, your training: and holding it, hiding it away – intentional hiding – crossing your arms now where you sit on a wooden chair which is not your own, in the dusty sun of a game you are playing with all of these other madmen, because as soon as you saw the advertisement, you knew you'd have to come here and it all just thins and fades until you can only feel her, where her head would rest at your right shoulder and her breathing, her life inside your arms, under your fingers, knowing what she thought by the give in her, or the little tensions, twitches, and how she never seemed possible – the touch of her standing against you something no one could deserve. Joyce. Her making you a man of silver, bathed with light.

Too much.

Caring for her more than your mother, more than the skipper – of course, more than yourself.

Too much.

Alfred discovered that he was bent forward, elbows on his knees, eyes fast shut. His head stung, drummed. And this was the clear result of a failure in his discipline.

The piano music had disappeared, he'd no idea when, and the air was beginning to redden, slow, the shadows tipping forward, one of them already thick across him which would explain why he was chilly. He stood, picked up his chair and his book and started walking. Dinner would be served up soon, he could smell it: some kind of soupy effort involving chicken, he thought, and afterwards vegetables and mutton: the moorland sheep disappearing and meat turning up in the pot. He wasn't that partial to mutton, but if it was there he would eat it, no question.

Before they started calling people in, he wanted to go back and be in his hut, check in his hut for the Luger. If there was no one about he would like to see it, have it in his hand.

The Bastard had been the first of them to kill.

Unexpected it was, in an easy January afternoon, their fresh, operational station drifting and darting out ahead beneath a heavy mist. It seemed purposeful, orderly – the end of their road, although Alfred had felt that most as an achievement, not a threat. This was a good day for the crew, swinging down from the truck, shagged after the journey, but ready as well and smart. They'd peeled away from the rest of the crowd, caught themselves trotting and had to ease off. No call to go looking too keen, too confident. Sometimes they were, but not today – they were only a little wary, nervous today.

‘No need to rush now, lads.' Molloy with his cigarette glued to his bottom lip. ‘They'll keep the war warm for us while we unpack.'

And they had laughed, because they were a crew that laughed, louder than they needed to be, warming the space between them and the low white sky. Alfred had turned his head from side to side, searching.

‘What's the matter, Boss?' Skipper checking him, keeping in touch.

Alfred might not have told anybody else. ‘Lancs. I can smell the Lancs. They're here.'

The skipper cuffed by the side of his head. ‘Yes. I think that was rather the point.' He made another few paces. ‘That they post us to where they keep them. Makes all our training that bit more relevant.'

They studied each other for a moment and Alfred wondered if his face was different in the way the skipper's was, if the closeness of operations was so obvious in him, and that unsteady lift in his hands, under his boots, that fear of the next breath and its power to drag him forward, that fear it wouldn't drag him fast enough.

Formalities concluded, they'd set off for their new quarters. Pluckrose took the lead in the sergeant's party and drew Alfred up beside him, Edgar following on and the Bastard last, trailing, proving he could handle things fine without them. They'd hurried under the frost, rushed themselves inside, but then had to pause at their new room's door, because this would be their place now, a kind of home, but four of the eight empty beds were already owned: pictures on their lockers, a pack of cards, a collar, dress shoes, signs of life. They didn't like to be intruders and were unsettled.

All except the Bastard who brushed in past them to sit on a corner bed, bounce the cover slightly loose.

‘Steady now, Johnnie – that one's taken.' Pluckrose smiling, but not happy, making a point of setting his kitbag down gently on a free bed. ‘Doesn't much matter where you bunk, does it.'

‘So then it won't matter much to him. We'll talk about it. Have a darn good discuss.' He lay full out, claiming the space. ‘Loverly. Sheets – don't get sheets in the army, but we do.' Boots on, rubbing that filthy hair oil of his into the pillow. ‘And I got to have a wall at my back and at my head, can't sleep otherwise. You wouldn't want me not sleeping. Someone has to be alert, keep an eye out.'

Very clear this was a dig at Alfred, at his gunnery and observation skills, and so he had to answer, his forearms getting tight, ‘We can't help it if you're used to living in a cell.' Hanson ignored him so he had to go again, ‘You can't do this.' Which sounded weak.