Day (9 page)

Earlier, in the camp he'd still eaten, of course – and been hungry, of course.

Clemmed.

He'd grown up being
clemmed
, but
hungry
did just as well and then proved itself a more suitable word for the hard, deep, stalking thing that came to get them.

Behind the wire they'd given each other lectures about the faraway and generous English countryside and collective farms and the early Christians and Plato and hygiene and modern art and he'd sat three examinations by correspondence and he'd taken extra time in the
Straflager
cells to study with no interruptions and he'd read whatever he could find – and
Anna Karenina
and
Madame Bovary
, because he ought to and they were there – and he'd thoroughly improved his handwriting and had meanwhile learned, along with everyone, each of the ways you could be hungry.

Extra bash – always trying to wangle extra bash.

He'd found potato peelings once: spilled, possibly on purpose, when someone had taken the rubbish away from the back of the kitchens. Potato peelings. Wonderful. He'd rushed to tell Ringer – rushed in the sly, compressed way that you must if no one else is meant to see – and he and his best friend: quiet, tall Ringer, his best friend: they'd scuttled back and liberated them. Cooked everything in the hut, shared with the boys in the hut, filled themselves with slimy ounces of green potato peelings – sick as dogs the following day and wasted their rations – my, hadn't they laughed. And why wouldn't they laugh: their bodies turning comical, shrinking until their uniforms were absurd, asking them for dinner and then chucking it away.

He'd lie at night and try to fool his stomach into resting, letting him sleep. But it was clever and alert. He'd picture it under his skin like a little fist, twisting whenever he shifted, reminding him that it was changing and making him changed, too. It was eager to keep his panic, his fear – it just wasn't quite predictable with eating. And somehow it had swallowed his lack of Joyce, his certainty they'd never meet again, and at any quiet time it would let him understand her as a hollowness beside his spine. When he took his bread and tea, he would be careful, shy, not wanting to disturb her.

Then, of course, the war had come up to find them, had sung and howled and thumped beyond the trees and Alfred had assumed they would be shot soon, but was wrong. They were told to prepare for a journey and given Red Cross parcels – hadn't seen even a hint of one in months – and the tins were so heavy to take with you, but you couldn't leave them and maybe, anyway, the journey was a lie and you'd be dead this time tomorrow, earlier, and what was it best to do – you didn't know.

He'd sat with Ringer and they'd tenderly eaten tins of bully beef, fought it down – with doses of cocoa mashed into butter, the miracle in a tall can each of proper butter – and Ringer had stared at him with his too big eyes and seemed worried.

‘It'll be all right, our kid.'

But Ringer not answering and forcing in more meat with his head dropped – everywhere people eating, or vomiting and swearing, or trying to barter tins of cocoa with the guards in exchange for bread – pack the tin with brick dust and a layer of cocoa on top and hope they won't take offence about it later.

‘Ringer. It'll be all right. After this, we'll sew our shirts up into packs and then we'll sort through what to take.' He'd got her letters ready. They had to come in his pocket. Not that he should bother, because it was over. ‘Stick with each other in the morning and off we'll go. We'll manage if there's two of us. Get that fittle down yo now – a nice bit of bash – keep your strength up.' But he was welcoming the tiny, sharp thought that he'd be found with them in the snow – her cards, her notes, the last of the photographs – and maybe somebody would tell her later, or maybe write to her address, or maybe he was deciding to die with something she'd touched, touching him.

That was the one good thing about it, the starvation – you were light-headed already when you realised you didn't need your pride, you could let it be. No more of that or anything like that. You weren't bothered. Now you only needed what you needed and wouldn't get. That made everything simple.

‘You think the Russians'll catch us?' Ringer interrupting. ‘You think?'

‘Good if they do, isn't it?' Alfred breathing in meat grease and thinking he can't get another mouthful down and past his clack, not another bit, but mostly he is far off and somebody could execute him now and that would be fine, or he could even talk to Joyce, explain every detail, and be very calm. ‘I want to see that dixie emptied.'

‘All right, Boss.'

His name from a hundred years ago that Ringer had given him over again.

‘I'm not your boss. Just somebody has to decide. And keep you right.'

Only Ringer is sad now and holding his spoon as if he's ashamed of it, setting it back in the tin. ‘I'll go again later.' He rubs at his hair and it ignores him, goes off at its own angles in the way it always does. But he smiles so that Alfred will smile. ‘Are we downhearted?' So quiet it might have been a thought they'd had and never spoken.

‘No.' Alfred's stomach cramping and his mouth sour. ‘No.'

But that was before the full change.

On the march or in the sidings – it had happened there, he thought – being turned to a thing that crept and lost its voice and couldn't shiver. His lips grew this layer on them, since he didn't much need his mouth.

He would still remember holding Ringer's hand, or sleeping against his back to know he was breathing. But if he thought of Ringer, allowed that, then things would slip on to the day when it went wrong and Ringer was took bad and messed himself as he walked and couldn't be contented after that, stooped over more and wouldn't look at you. Alfred had brought him clean snow, no shit near it, no fucking dysentery near it, but he wouldn't take it. You don't last without water. They could have gone on without eating, but not without water.

And Alfred had been happy to die. Almost keen – why not be? Who was there to want him alive? Only other dead men.

Even back in Cosford where they built him up – those children in blue uniforms, faces as if they'd been packed in gamgee cotton for the duration, milky – they'd brought him all sorts to eat, nothing too complicated at the start, but then good stuff, and some of it he'd managed, acted grateful in the way they wanted and supped it up, but he'd never believed that it would work. He'd mainly lain and waited and hoped they'd forget about him so that he could, too.

And then everything had gone comical again: whatever he was made of changing its course and lifting him, stinging. One afternoon, there'd been this rushing inside his arms and his heart doubling, racketing about – there was no way to misunderstand the terrible life that roared back in. He'd been caught again and no escaping. It all would come for him and hurt him and he wouldn't die, he would only want to and not get his way. He would have to be there, be Alfie Day and feel.

drop

Alfred had never quite believed in him, not at the start.

‘Day! What are you doing, Day?' Sergeant Hartnell just looked too much like a sergeant. ‘What is it that you are trying to do?' He had a rectangular head. Four corners at the top, four corners at the bottom – he had a head with corners.

‘Don't know, Sarnt.'

‘I know you don't know.' He looked like an actor, or like the instructor they'd seen in their first training film, who might have been an actor. ‘Everybody here knows you don't know. The baby Jesus and all of his angels knows you don't know.'

Except Sergeant Hartnell was real and sweating with the effort of shouting at Alfred. Shouting made him sweat more than exercise ever did. He seemed very sensitive that way. ‘I should expect your bloody mother sitting back home knows you don't know. She's had the whole of her bleedin' life to get used to you. But you came as a norrible bleedin' shock to me.'

Your bloody mother.

Alfred found that offensive, which it was meant to be. He also found it too large to breathe round and this started a throb in his head which was not convenient and he wasn't far from losing his temper which was worse – then again, if he didn't, it put his personal Moral Fibre into doubt. A chap with Moral Fibre wasn't meant to tolerate offence. Then again, offence from a sergeant was something you had to enjoy, so maybe that left you right back where you'd started – standing still while the man called your mother a bad word.

My bloody sergeant.

But Sergeant Hartnell intended to see Alfred's Moral Fibre, needed its proof.

Because Sergeant Hartnell did not like him.

The trouble was, they'd got along at the start of basic training. Alfred had been relatively fit and keen to do better – he'd enjoyed the exercises: swinging and pressing and marching and squatting and jumping alongside lads who'd sat in offices all day, bods who were not determined, who had never heard of the Great Sandow, or anyone else. There was a proper gymnasium here – barbells and clubs and beams and ropes, the things you would need to improve yourself, already set in place without a word – no more mucking about with chairs and door frames and what you could rig up from drawings and instructions – it was all on hand. Alfred had taken to Sergeant Hartnell's training, had enjoyed himself in a way: so, although he'd tried not to, he'd stood out, which is never a thing you ought to do.

And, having caught his eye, Alfred had raised Sergeant Hartnell's expectations.

‘Day, you are spreading alarm and despondency. You're supposed to save that for the bleedin' Nazis. Or am I wrong? Day? Have I been mistaken?'

‘No, Sarnt.'

Now Alfred was disappointing him.

‘What is it you did in civilian life, Day?'

Not a question Alfred liked to answer – it could lead to so many nicknames you wouldn't want.

‘Day? What is it they discovered you could do?'

Alfred could see in Sergeant Hartnell's face that he still thought there was promise hidden somewhere about Alfred's person and that he was guessing Alfred had been in a decent, respectable line of work: a policeman, or better still, a farrier, or even a mounted policeman – Sergeant Hartnell especially liked men who'd worked with horses, no one knew why. Although some wag did once suggest that his mother had won the Gold Cup by a furlong in '38.

‘I was in a fish shop, Sarnt.' Don't think about Hartnell's bloody mother, it will make you laugh. ‘Wet fish.' Don't think about –
Why the long face?

‘A
fish shop
?' He makes this sound like a disease.

‘Yes, Sarnt.'

‘
Wet fish
?' A gentian-violet-painted-on-your-short-arm-and-your-bollocks type of disease.

‘Yes, Sarnt.'

‘Well, then pretend he's a bleedin' haddock, Day, and
kill 'im
!'

Hand-to-hand combat, all-in fighting – Alfred was no good at it. He wasn't so tall and that could be a disadvantage, but he was strong and he had balance and flexibility and he'd practised making punches for years: he understood punches, the theory of hitting people. You punch from your arse, from your hips, that's where it comes from. Too late once you've got to your arms: if you only use your arms, they won't give you enough, even if you get that snap and twist in at the end, you'll be no use.

Alfred's father didn't understand the theory and was not fit. He just hit people. He hurt them. Alfred found that offensive.

And it wouldn't be a thing to think of: not now, not to keep your temper.

Sergeant Hartnell had taught them how an RAF man ought to walk and ought to stand and ought to clean his kit and use it and then had taken them out to the football pitch and put them into pairs for combat training, let them square up to each other – grievous assaults for the use of – and learn how an RAF man ought to fight. He explained to them the softness of the throat, the invitation to damage beneath the jaw, the weakness of the neck, the knees, the ankles, the fear you can put in your enemy when you go for his eyes, for his balls. Sergeant Hartnell had a special fighting knife of which he was very fond. He said that it would always do the job.

‘Worked with a knife, did you, Day?'

‘Yes, Sarnt.'

Worked with my hands frozen, gutting stinking little bodies with stinking little eyes, cutting my fingers and never feeling it. The pail full of heads and the meaningless fucking eyes. The pail full of staring.

I wore gloves to bed and still couldn't sleep for the stink of fish. In the end, you know you won't notice it any more and then you'll be done for – you'll be a fish man the whole of your life and not have to care – so you run for the RAF, just as soon as you can. Self-defence.

‘What does a knife do, Day?'

‘The job, Sarnt.'

Alfred understood this was true, but also knew that if he was sitting behind four Browning .303s he would do the job on Sergeant Hartnell
and
his knife, would cut him in half.

‘Come at Sims again, Day, overarm strike with the knife – even if you'd be a fool to use it – overarm strike to give him practise, Day. And this time,
mean it.
'

Alfred stepped back, tried meeting Sims's eyes and saw that Sims was close to laughing, which should have helped, made him annoyed – only it didn't, because he couldn't let it, couldn't tell what would happen if he did. His wrists got heavy and bumped against his thighs, his spine curled, lost faith.

You never would do this when he's waiting for it. You hit your man when he's sleeping, drunk. You stand on his bollocks when he's passed out drunk. You kick him when he's fallen, when he's lying in the passage and won't remember. There's nothing you can do like this.