Days of Your Fathers (7 page)

He lived alone, and on two or three evenings a week came down to the pub for a social drink. He liked to be invited to join in any game but never played with exclamations or vivacity. At darts he was so solemnly accurate that Fred Emerson, who kept the pub, suggested on impulse that he might captain the local team; what the youngsters needed to win their away matches was a responsible person in charge of them. But on second thoughts, Emerson said, he was glad when Melman refused.

‘It wouldn't do for them all to come home too early, Major,' he added.

The Major saw what he meant. Melman was a very possible captain. He said the right things and smiled at the right jokes. His jollity was no more artificial than that of many other serious-minded neighbours, but they did give a bit of themselves with it. Melman was too noticeably limited to what was expected of him.

‘A very reliable fellow,' the Major insisted. ‘All those
women who think he's a kind of ministering angel have got him wrong.'

‘Sometimes I think he could have been in old Efford's trade,' Fred remarked.

Again the Major understood. Efford was the local funeral director and highly respected on the job or off it. He had a healthy, mediaeval attitude to death. He made all the time-honoured jests with the doctors, and they with him. Efford was a deeply religious man who saw himself as the disposer of something so unimportant that he could – when not on duty – laugh at it.

But there was no resemblance between so richly charged a character and Melman who, though a church-goer, probably saw attendance as a parade: a service like any other service, the reasons for which were not his business. So much was not his business. His life of retirement followed a narrow track. Whatever appeared on it he treated with kindness; what was off to each side of the line he ignored.

Mere conjecture. The Major knew it was mere conjecture and likely to be unfair. Yet it was odd how often this searching for the essence of a man had its uses. One had a reasonable intelligence report to give, right or wrong, when somebody called for it.

It was the vicar who called for it. A new churchwarden would be needed. Did the Major think that Mr Melman would do?

‘Well, so long as you realise what you're in for,' said the Major cautiously. ‘He reminds me a little of a sergeant-major in my orderly room. All the evidence for and against the accused was neatly and fairly presented. But if the Military Police had run him in, he was guilty.'

‘I don't think Melman is like that,' the vicar protested. ‘I was much impressed by his gentleness on that … that sad occasion, and I blame myself for ever thinking he was cold. Besides, one sees how the children love him.'

They didn't. They treated him as an animated slot machine. The Major, however, was too good-natured to say so. Mr Melman lived in a pretty white-and-yellow cottage on a lane which was used by a dozen children on their way
to school. At that hour – for he was an early riser – he was generally to be seen trimming his neat privet hedge or digging the kitchen garden. The children were inclined to stop and inspect him very warily over the hedge. When they did, he was quick and eager to distribute sweets. That was the idyllic picture to which the vicar referred, but the Major doubted if any real affection was in it. To stare at Melman was cheaper than dropping a coin in a machine and nearly as dependable.

‘The point is: do
you
like him?' the Major asked.

‘Yes. Oh, yes! I would call him a dedicated man in a curious way – so dedicated that he treats me as if I were some sort of official. I suppose I am, though I hope there is more to it than that.'

‘Well, we mustn't press him too hard. He has a right to his peace. I expect he got as tired of doing his duty as the rest of us.'

‘But would you sound him? You know him better than anyone.'

Better than anyone? The Major was well aware that he knew nothing of him. But it was at least evident that he and Melman treated each other with respect. That was perhaps how the myth of understanding had grown.

Rather unwillingly he tackled him over the usual garden gate, reassuring himself by the thought that the job of churchwarden would relieve Melman's loneliness, whatever effect he was likely to have on the vicar. He was unaccountably relieved, like Fred Emerson, when the man showed no eagerness.

‘If you tell me I should …' Melman began.

‘It might suit you. I don't know. But if you want me to ask you to take it on – well, I've no right to say you should.'

‘As good as anyone's, Major. Obedience – that's what I understand. It helps one to get accustomed to one's duty. It's like what you were saying the other day about killing in war.'

‘Obedience is no excuse at all. Nothing to do with it!' the Major exclaimed, and then, feeling that he had been unwarrantably brusque, added: ‘I'll tell you a thing I've
never told anyone. I had to supervise an execution once. Unofficial, but I obeyed. We shot him in the back of the neck. Didn't do it myself, but I can't get out of it that way. We is we, if you see what I mean.

‘I've no objection to capital punishment in principle. None at all! A very useful deterrent! Nine times out of ten the world is better without the man who is executed. Those damned professional liberals have got the argument all wrong. The State has every right to take life. What it doesn't have is the right to order somebody to take it. And whether you hang or press a button or shoot, a human hand has to do it. I won't have that. Society has no right to demand it. Killing in cold blood is murder of the soul which kills.'

To the Major's surprise, Mr Melman for the first time strongly disagreed with him.

‘You're wrong about that,' he said. ‘Now, strictly between ourselves – you always take me just as I am, Major, and I know I can trust you – strictly between ourselves, I was the official hangman. It's a police job like any other. And I don't think it has made any difference to me at all.'

Women's Lib

Wasn't there some old Greek tragedy in which a band of women tore a civil authority into small pieces because he had no gold braid on his cap? I'm pretty sure that the Ancient Greeks did not wear official caps, but the principle is the same. Ever since 1926 I can never forget that under those appealing faces lurks a profound contempt for the opposite sex.

Perhaps it was nearer the surface then than now. There were still quite a lot of virgins about, and their dreams were of marriage and a home of their own. For the inadequately educated girl few other dreams had a hope of fulfilment; professions, black-coated or brass-hatted, were all out of her reach. No wonder she had a latent, feline resentment of the pretensions of the male.

Why do I choose 1926, you ask. Because that was the year of the General Strike and a call for volunteers to man the public services. Among the misty memories of hundreds of old Londoners will be one of a giant: of a 4–4–0 Great Western locomotive stopped two yards from the mouth of the east-bound tunnel in Earl's Court station. At a platform meant for trains of the District Line skittering like mice from one hole to another was this great, green monster which had never moved without space and due ceremony. The arch against which it would have been driven, had the six-foot driving wheels made half a revolution more, was lower than the boiler. This was before the rebuilding of the station and the approach from the west was open.

I was the guard of the empty train behind the engine. I had volunteered to wheel hand-trucks about as a porter, but when I ran into an old schoolfellow on Paddington station he appointed me to be his guard. Jimmy Fell was a
railway engineer on leave from the wilds of Africa. He had been working with black labour a year or two longer than was good for him and felt imperial. He once abandoned me in the Exeter station buffet and I only found my own train because an amateur shunter had run him into the engine sheds by mistake.

He had driven all kinds of locomotive in his time, so the Great Western gave him a mainline express and the
County of London
to pull it. He treated her as his own pet car, and when he wasn't on the foot-plate he was wandering about inside her guts like Jonah with an oilcan. I call it an express, but all the signals were permanently at danger and we used to feel our way down to Devon from block to block, stopping to negotiate with other speculative railwaymen whenever we seemed to be on a line where we had no right.

After ten days or so of this, the Company chose us to take an excursion to Pangbourne. Yes, they actually wasted time on an excursion. It was a gesture, you see. Sir John Hardy always gave the saleswomen of his suburban branches an outing in the same week of June and, being proprietor of Models Ltd and on the board of the Great Western as well, was determined upon Business as Usual. The nation was paralysed, but he wouldn't disappoint his ‘girlies' as he called them.

Well, the Great Western were moved by this touching faith in their organisation, so they agreed to the excursion. Britain with her Back to the Wall. They ordered the line to be cleared to Pangbourne and at 10.30 a.m. we pulled out of Paddington with the trustworthy Jimmy Fell at the levers and four full coachloads of chattering girlies between myself and him. Sir John and his managers naturally went by car. Their lives were of value.

We reached Pangbourne about midday. Our average of twenty-five miles an hour was excellent considering that Jimmy had climbed down twice to see which way the points were set and had been grazed by half a brick that was meant for the fireman. We never had the slightest trouble with the strikers – we were free entertainment for dull days – but our fireman thought he was entitled to call them names
which would earn him half a brick at any time. He was a sort of fascist – or whatever they labelled themselves in those days – and all out to smash the reds. In private he sold silk stockings from door to door and he was hungry for any job that called for more muscle but just as little brain. He used to splash himself with oil and coal dust to look like a real fireman. He didn't. You might have taken him for a tramp who had been sheltering from the rain in a garage pit.

The girlies skipped off to a tent by the river to hear Hardy's annual speech and put away some lunch. Flags waved gaily over the white canvas and a little brass band played a welcome of the latest popular songs. It was a blazing June day with thunder in the air and when we had run the train into a siding we ourselves went to the local pub for beer and sandwiches. The bar had a few jokes at our expense – four coaches of women among three men and so forth. We didn't think them very funny, for there was something unnatural about those two hundred female passengers, the old catching the giggles from the young. We were uneasy as if there had been a wagon load of explosives just behind the engine. Perfectly safe, of course. But one is appalled by sheer quantity.

At three o'clock we went to work again. At first sight the task of getting the train from the down to the up line with the
County of London
at the right end appeared nearly hopeless; but Jimmy was a positive chap with a commanding manner, ready to take responsibility. An invaluable quality in Africa, I expect. He ran the Holyhead boat train into the only other siding, blocked a down freight, borrowed its locomotive and by occupying most of the main line between Pangbourne and Reading had hitched his
County of London
to the front of his own train. The girlies encouraged us with cheers and laughter, lined up on the platform and singing all the songs played by the band. They were tousled and shrill and the cheap make-up sold by Models Ltd was running in the heat.

While they climbed into the coaches, Sir John, who had been watching our manoeuvres with a sightseer's interest
and a large glass of port, paced up the platform and made a little speech to Jimmy on his patriotism and what-not, shaking his hand with genial condescension. He mistook the fireman for the real article and congratulated him on not being led away by subversive and anti-Christian agitators. He made his money, I believe, in Australia where a strike's a strike and could not be expected to know that English labour leaders were more likely to be fervid chapel-goers than Marxists.

When this moving ceremony was over and the doors were shut and Sir John and his managers waving goodbye till next year, the
County of London
whistled and drew out of the platform in smart mainline style. I just had time to wave the green flag and blow my own little whistle, but I doubt if anybody was taken in.

Before we were fairly out of the station Jimmy stopped with such a jerk that an empty oil drum charged down the guard's van towards London by itself. I looked out of the window. A down train was creeping at us on the up line. We had forgotten one set of points after all our shunting, and the new arrival was proceeding with caution in search of authority.

While Jimmy and his vis-à-vis straightened matters out, the girlies flowed back onto the empty platform and began to dance. There was a lot of horseplay and shrieking, for they had the place to themselves. Sir John and his henchmen had left, and I kept discreetly to my van. I don't know if you have noticed that young women, by the mere fact of being in a group and unrestricted, can reach a state of innocent excitement that would take the ordinary man three or four double whiskies on an empty stomach.

The intrusive train passed on its correct line, and Jimmy and the fireman returned to the locomotive. I shepherded the girlies back into their compartments and walked down the train shutting doors and turning handles. We were forbidden to start till all handles were in a horizontal position. A strict rule. Even Jimmy observed it.

When I was halfway down the last coach I heard giggles
behind me and turned round. The passengers had opened the doors again.

‘Now then, young ladies!' I said.

I thought my voice had just the right note of tolerant authority. They thought so, too. They thought I was perfect in the part. One of the girlies hollered: