Day (8 page)

‘Just did,
old boy
. Just did.' This with his eyes shut, trying to show that he was the gen man and entitled. He'd managed two ops before he broke his leg in a way he wouldn't tell them and effectively had to remuster and start again. The two ops were supposed to make him someone. But he'd had to go back and get more training and conversion – the RAF hadn't bloody well thought he knew everything.

Miles sucked on his pipe and looked as troubled as he ever could and there was silence. So nothing was settled beyond Johnnie Bastard Hanson getting his way and putting up a black for all of them. He never was happy till everyone else was upset. There might have been a fight, Alfred could feel one was coming, but there wasn't time.

Because then the two officers from adjustment came in, very quiet, almost apologetic when they saw they had company. They glanced about them for a minute and seemed confused. They frowned at each other. They turned to the Bastard, the pair of them solemn, vaguely disgusted, and eventually he sensed it, opened his eyes. When he saw them he almost flinched, scrambled up, slid away to one side and fumbled his cap on. It was nice to watch, Alfred thought.

Then they made the adjustment, while everybody had to stand and let it happen and Alfred wanted to leave, only that might look yellow, or not be the proper thing. The framed snap shot by the bed was taken – pretty girl, but rather heavy-set – a drawer was emptied, the traces cleared and put into a box: letters, a magazine, little things which seemed too insubstantial for all that a man would leave – not a memorial, more like a mess.

The taller adjuster searched out the dead man's clothes, folded the shape of him flat. Probably, they'd emptied his locker already. Nobody spoke, but it seemed at last that everyone stopped moving and looked at the Bastard. He'd taken the man's bed and now the man didn't need it. That wasn't a lucky thing to do. That was like murder.

The shorter adjuster – pilot officer, slapped-looking face – when things were finished he drew to a kind of attention and Alfred knew they were all remembering that no one had saluted, that something in the room had stopped them.

‘We'll sort through everything elsewhere. Has to be done. Wouldn't want to send a shock back home. Not an additional shock.'

The other man, a flight lieutenant, started to walk out and then hesitated. ‘You're new bods.' Nothing in his voice to soften what he'd just done, only a need to explain. ‘Well, this is what you get. If you're not careful and don't follow procedures and remember your drill this is what you get. He got the chop last night. Over Essen.' He realised this sounded wrong, a type of insult. ‘He was a decent man. You should hope you're as good.'

Alfred swallowed and wondered what he should be thinking, how to show respect, how he should be.

Didn't know him, so how can I be sad? If I was, it would only be for myself – in case I get the same. But I'm not sad. I could even be happy, because it wasn't me. It wasn't one of us.

The adjusters walked out, the flight lieutenant holding the box awkwardly, as if it should be treated like a coffin, but was too small, or maybe as if it just shouldn't be touched. He could have been unfamiliar with the duty. It could have been hard to get used to.

‘Well, you all heard. It was last night. He bought it last night.' The Bastard having to break the silence. ‘Nothing to do with me.' He didn't sound convinced.

Nobody agreed. Nobody said anything.

‘Suit yourselves, then.' He didn't go back towards the bed. ‘But it wasn't my fault. The fucking Germans chopped him. Not me.' And he stood for a minute, longer, although everyone knew that he would have to go back – make his bed and lie in it – because it was unlucky, now, like him. No one else would have it, or would let him leave it for another new bod, coming in.

So that was it. The Bastard making their first kill. Which was like him.

The station, though, Alfred got on with it, felt settled in as soon as he'd arrived and never mind the unlucky bed – he'd never touch it, but he didn't mind it. And for once he'd been posted and not caught a head cold straight after. He was always mithered about his ears, hoping they wouldn't get infected and object to the pressure changes, go US on him, but now he had a fair chance to stay healthy.

At least on the ground.

He enjoyed the sense of age about the place, more brick and less bloody corrugated iron – iron was so sodding noisy when you were trying to get a sleep – presentable hard standing, neat dispersal and low trees – he preferred them low for take-offs, out of the way – paths that might be green if he saw them in spring and a run with six hens that some ground-crew bods looked after. If they could keep chooks alive it boded well. And the near beer in the sergeants' mess tasted quite close to the genuine article.

Not that Alfred hadn't signed the Pledge – three times, when he was too young to care and he'd only known that beer was to do with his father. A red blur of sweat and yelling, the pub and crib and poker and lost money and the bad, bad nights – that was beer: everything to hate about his father, the gleam it would put in his voice.

Alfred could take it now, though, put it in himself where it was nobody's business but his and it made him smile. In the Duck's Head. Always in the Duck's Head. The crew – at least Pluckrose – had decided, whichever pub they chose to be their own would always be the Duck's Head.

‘The Duck's Head, Boston – the Duck's Head, Piccadilly . . . this way, we'll always know just where we are.'

‘Yes.' Molloy nodded as if this was maths, or philosophy. ‘We'll always know we're in the Duck's Head. Good man, yourself.' He surveyed their fourth or fifth pub of that name with proprietorial admiration.

‘Better than a bottle party – you never know where you are with them.'

‘Fast girls.'

‘Hotter than incendiaries. More harmful.'

‘Thank you for sparing me that trouble, my good ol' pal.'

‘The least I could do. And remember – a bird in the Strand –'

‘Isn't worth two in Shepherd's Bush.'

They gave each other the sign for victory with some inaccuracy.

As they did, Alfred stretched up to meet the idea of himself standing, which seemed a little slower than it had been at seven this evening. ‘I'll get . . . the same.'

The faces crammed at the table nodded to him and he wound off through the muddle of civilians, a couple of brown jobs over by themselves and blue and blue and blue. Old blue – men who'd finished with the preparation, who'd fired at drogues, who'd done their fighter affiliation, their cross-country exercises, who'd flown out with other crews, old hands, to learn the ropes, maybe had that childish fluster at the thought of separation – men who were on ops now, already working at the job – they were doing it, weren't still waiting, weren't unsure. Alfred and his crew were almost there, but almost there was nowhere.

‘Surprised meself.'

‘How d'you do that, then?'

A pair of sergeants leaning into each other at the bar, hands slapping down slowly on a thin puddle of beer across the counter, palm over palm, as they spoke, peering close at each other's faces.

‘Oxygen mask fell out of the hatch at twenty thousand feet.'

‘So?'

‘Was wearing it at the time.'

They didn't laugh, only ground on, hands dipping and then rising off the bar top.

‘Fall won't hurt you. Have my guarantee. Air's the softiest, bounciest stuff you'll meet. And it's very thin that high.'

‘S'right.'

The brown-haired sergeant rubbing at the black-haired sergeant's neck, nodding and rubbing as if he couldn't stop. ‘Just don' land.'

‘S'right.'

‘Thass the only part that hurts. So don't you try it.'

‘S'right.'

‘'Less you got a chute.'

‘'Course, got a chute. 'Less it doesn't work.'

‘Take it back and complain.'

‘If it doesn't open.'

‘Take it back to the girlie and complain.'

‘S'right.'

Alfred had never asked, never gone to someone who was aircrew and actually tried to find out what they knew, what they really knew, and here it seemed there might be an opportunity. ‘Excuse me.' If they thought he was a twerp, then at least they'd not remember in the morning. ‘Excuse me . . . if you wouldn't mind.' He'd sound soft, but that wouldn't matter.

They blinked at him, mouths pursed. ‘Wouldn't mind?'

‘What wouldn't we mind?'

They were watching a movement he couldn't see, something beyond him. ‘Did we mind?' Hands still folding in across each other, wet with spilled beer.

Alfred cleared his throat. ‘What's it . . . If you wouldn't mind.' Only one shape for the question. ‘What's it like?'

Their eyes were pink, as if they'd been crying, or were sick – as if when they looked at anything it would be sore. They both had the rash from their oxygen masks, that mark.

Alfred waited. ‘What's it like.' A soft kid's question.

‘And who are you?' The black-haired sergeant suddenly more sober. ‘Exactly.'

‘Day. Alfie Day.'

‘Says he's Alfie Day.'

‘Is he now. Is he.'

‘Wants to know what it's like, Dusty.'

‘What
is
it like, then, Mogg.'

Mogg and Dusty leaned their foreheads right in to touch, skin against skin, and rolled the contact back and forth. ‘It's bloody awful.'

‘Wha' did he think?'

‘Dunno, Dusty. Less find out.'

They broke off and faced him again. Alfred answering before they could say any more, ‘I didn't know. I don't know. Why else would I ask?'

This makes them twitch before Mogg begins gently, ‘Know about the breakfast, do you? Operational breakfast: real fresh eggs and bacon, maybe sausage. Traditional.'

‘Traditional.'

‘Home you come.'

‘Home from the sea.'

‘From the sky, Dusty.'

‘My mistake.'

‘From the sky.'

‘And you get your eggs and bacon hot. Treat. Know why you get the eggs, do you?'

Alfred shook his head and so they gave him their catechism.

‘Penguins. Which is to say, all of the flying creatures –'

‘Which is airmen.'

‘Who do not, or cannot fly –'

‘Which is penguins.'

‘They sit at home while we go out and pay calls on the Hun and they lay us the eggs to be ready for when we come back.'

They give Alfred time to nod, although he barely does.

‘Tell him about the bacon, Mogg.'

‘Ah, the bacon. Yes. Know why they feed us the bacon?'

And Alfred wants never to be like these men and never to wear their grey sweat, their weariness. But he knows that he will – if he's lucky, if he lives – and this makes him giddy and too loud when he tells them, ‘No.'

‘Shhh.'

‘Softly does it, sprog, or the Huns will hear. The snappers.'

‘Bacon, laddie. They feed us up on bacon, because bacon is our meat. Wait till you catch it, or some bugger lands with a burning boy on board, wait and you'll understand. We're all just pork.'

‘Cook us up and we all smell the same.'

Alfred sat on his make-believe bed in his make-believe hut, a rolled shirt on his knees. He hadn't opened it yet, but he could hear the gun inside it, breathing.

They eat, they shit, they breathe – don't ever mistake a gun for something dead.

He wondered if there would be noise at dinner, which he wouldn't like. He wondered if there would be ice cream. He wondered when the first change in him had come and when he had gone beyond where people lived: lost the God-bothering, his clean self, his redemption.

I feel the life His wounds impart.

He wondered why he'd ever thought that he could touch her.

I feel the Saviour in my heart.

He wondered where he could go now when the day came and he had to leave the camp.

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

He wondered about the gun there in his hands.

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

The gun that was watching, asking.

All kinds of being free, our kid, all kinds of escaping.

But what difference would it make. My heart's not free.

drop

By the end of his time as a prisoner Alfred had been different, a new thing and surprising to himself. He lived in a way he couldn't recognise: light and distant, as if his release had already come and unlocked somewhere underneath his skull, parted him from his dirt, his flesh. He didn't need to feel any more, he didn't need to eat.

Convenient really, because there was no food. '45 coming in cold enough to burn your lungs and all of the world crawling westward, driven, or folding up asleep in the snow, dropping out into one last drowse that seemed like drinking, or wading, or fighting if you happened to watch a man step off and catch it, if you were able to pay attention. Men who lay in the morning and never rose, men who forgot how to walk, men who slipped at the crack of a bullet, tumbled. Men who were things.

There were roads and woods and railway trucks and there were driven things moving beside you – ahead and behind – and they might look at you, which you didn't want, should be afraid of, their lost and dead and dangerous eyes – just like your own. And there was no food and no reason and no longer any pretending you'd find either.

Your chance to see the true world. Your chance to know you live where there is nothing for anyone.

Sometime in that spring, he'd noticed his fingernails and seen they were still growing: his beard, his hair, they were still turning out more of themselves when the rest of him was reconciled to leaving and would have been impatient if he'd had the energy – there was only this final tiredness to get through, then he could be done. It seemed he'd become an argument now, a silly row over when he would let himself be peaceful, stop.