HMS Marlborough Will Enter Harbour (1947) (26 page)

For things were no better at home; and always in the back of his mind was the feeling that this job would have had more point – would indeed, have had a sort of final justification – if he had had behind him the home life and the loving welcome which Edie used to give him when they were first married. But there it was – she didn’t give him anything, except a running, nagging commentary on what she thought was little better than a loafing waste of time: as far as home was concerned he was on his own, and all that he might have felt towards his family was given towards this job, or kept in readiness for anyone who might need it in the future.

Certainly Edie was a trial. In fact she would have come near to spoiling the taste of the whole thing, if he had let her, and if the other feelings hadn’t been so strong.

There was that business about the stretcher-bearers’ show, for instance. Over that he’d come near to – well, to doing a lot of things that didn’t bear thinking about in cold blood. Godden hadn’t been too sure about inviting Edie and Edna to the show which the stretcher-bearers put on just before Christmas; and looking at them through a crack in the curtains during the interval, he was even less sure about it. Edie, six rows back in the audience, was looking pretty sour, no doubt about it – that was because of his get-up in the Arab scene, probably, and Edna, dressed up to the nines in pale blue, was trying (trust her!) to get off with a couple of fellows farther along the row. Godden thought: you’re the wrong side of the curtain, my girl, with all that stuff on your face; and he wondered what the rest of the chaps would say when they knew that this fluffy bit was his daughter, after all … Well, if Edie hadn’t enjoyed it, just because he’d taken part in it and had a little fun, everyone else had: the laughter all the way through the first half, and the applause at the end of it, had been a riot.

It was the stretcher-bearers who had had the idea of giving a show at Christmas: they were doing most of it themselves, but they had co-opted several of the rescue men, Godden among them (after enormous persuasion), to take small parts and supply the spear-carriers generally. The costumes, where necessary, had been made by one of the girls from the local pub, who was also lending a hand with the make-up. The programme was the usual mixture: sketches, songs and choruses, a refined ballad singer, and a distinctly unrefined cross-talk act; but the audience – mostly ‘friends and relatives’, strengthened by two rows of Borough Council worthies – had eaten it up, and now, with the interval here, the cheerful buzz of conversation was a good measure of its success.

Godden had only made one appearance so far, as an ‘Arab’ in a snake-charming scene: the dusty make-up, flowing robes, and high turban had made him look rather a dashing character, in a religious sort of way, and the scene had gone down well. But the success of the show, so far, had been a domestic sketch with Hitler, Goering and Goebbels as the protagonists – ready-made characters for farce, and very much to the audience’s taste. It finished up with the young pacifist, who played Hitler, standing on the table and making a rousing speech on the theme, ‘We have no living room’, to be countered succinctly by a charwoman who popped her head round the backcloth and remarked: ‘You wouldn’t say we had no living-room if you had to clean the bloody place out!’ This piece of homely philosophy had brought the house down.

Now as Godden peered through the curtain, they were getting ready for the second half of the programme. Edie was still looking annoyed about something, he noticed. Well, she’d get an eye-opener in a minute or two.

Someone bumped into him from behind, and he turned round. It was Horrocks, who had been roped in as an odd-job man and was now setting out some chairs on the stage. When he caught sight of Godden he laughed out loud.

‘You look a proper sketch,’ he said cheerfully. ‘Hope your missus will like it.’

Godden was quite sure that she wouldn’t, but he didn’t give a damn. He was enjoying himself enormously, in a way he had almost forgotten even existed.

There was something about the sheer fun of this evening, the excitement behind the scenes and the obvious enjoyment of the audience, that took him right back to the old days, to other Christmases before the last war when dressing up was part of the ritual, and there was ten times more colour in a single day than there was from one year’s end to another now. This was more like a real Christmas party, this was more like the sort of life he had once hoped for; and here he was, right in the middle of it, and not exactly being coy about it either … Godden was dressed, at that moment, for his part in the ‘Fairy Ballet’, which figured later in the programme: the frilly white skirt and tight bodice gave his stocky figure a ludicrous air of virginality, the wreath of pink roses crowning his rather solemn face had an almost blasphemous inappropriateness, like Judas Iscariot, wearing somebody else’s halo after a party. It had taken a good deal to persuade him to make up the number in the
corps de ballet
; he would never have done it, indeed, if there had not been seven others, equally daft, to join in. But what Edie would have to say about it when she saw him, was another matter.

‘It’s a bit cold, this get-up,’ he answered Horrocks. ‘Kind of draughty here and there. What do they think of the show out in front?’

Horrocks laughed again. Godden had never seen him in such good spirits during all the last few months: it was like coming round a corner and suddenly meeting the old Horrocks, cheerful and self-reliant and ready for anything. The Old Firm might set up in business again, if he was getting back into this form ...

‘They’re loving it – eating it up,’ Horrocks replied. ‘Remember those old concert parties back at the base? Something like that, only of course you’re keeping it a bit cleaner … What have you got under that skirt, by the way?’ he added, following a natural continuity of thought.

‘Football shorts,’ answered Godden. ‘Only thing we could trust.’

‘Thank God for that.’

The stage manager hurried on, and said: ‘All off, please – curtain going up.’

‘So long, Bill,’ said Horrocks. ‘I’m going round in front again. Good luck with it.’

Godden looked down at his frilly skirt, and said: ‘We’ll need it.’ Then he retreated into the wings.

The curtain went up, to a burst of clapping, and a St John Ambulance sergeant began to sing ‘Trees’, with an absence of any feeling on the subject, one way or the other, which would not have disgraced a civil servant in the Forestry Commission. He was followed by a tap-dancer, who lost the beat halfway through but continued to plough a lonely furrow right to the end – a manful effort, which earned a lot of applause and a shout of, ‘He can do it with music, too!’ from a sarcastic onlooker at the back. Then it was the turn of the cross-talk act, two stretcher-bearers dressed as charwomen, relying largely on ‘family’ jokes about the depot, which mystified some of the audience but went down well with their fellow workers. And then it was time for the ‘Fairy Ballet’.

This had been very carefully worked out and rehearsed till they were all heartily sick of the music – one of Chopin’s waltzes. But the rehearsals certainly paid a dividend. The curtain rose on a group of fairies – that actual grouping borrowed wholesale from ‘Sylphides’, but stopping right there as far as any other attributes were concerned. The volunteers for the ballet were of assorted types: big men who lumbered, skinny little fellows who hopped about like fleas, sturdy performers who shook a leg as if it were a length of two-inch planking; but they all wore the same frilly skirts and wreaths of roses, and they were all united in frowning determination over one thing – to follow the pattern and the music as they had been taught.

Their performance lasted for three and a half minutes altogether, and the audience rocked with laughter throughout. After a few preliminary twirls by the
corps de ballet
, the only male character (he was actually the only stretcher-bearer who was at all effeminate) struck an attitude of anticipation, and the Queen of the Fairies, artificially buxom, bounded onto the stage, jumping down from a box in the wings and landing with a thud which nearly jerked the record from its groove. Solemnly the
corps de ballet
, in their absurd frills, capered about them, their faces set and preoccupied: one of them, just behind Godden, was counting, ‘Hop two, three … hop! two, three …’ in an urgent voice, which the music and the laughter only just drowned. The two principals had a set-to in the middle, sinews cracking as they went through the motions of enchantment and despair which the story (a confused one) dictated. Then, to end it, the
corps de ballet
formed up behind Godden and lumbered in solemn procession round the stage: the male figure took up a welcoming stance in the centre, the other dancers stopped in their tracks, breathing heavily, and the Queen of the Fairies, hurrying to join her partner for the fall of the curtain, over-reached herself in a final
entrechat royale
and landed in a sitting position with a crash that shook the hall. On this scene of transcendental beauty, as the programme notes would normally have had it, the curtain fell.

The ovation which this effort received made an encore imperative, and the whole thing was repeated, this time without mishap, but with a hard-breathing concentration, which showed that the effort, physical and emotional, was beginning to tell. That was almost the end of the show, except for another short sketch, and a chorus of popular songs in which the audience joined cheerfully – ‘Run, Rabbit, Run’, ‘Somewhere in France’, and ‘Hanging Out The Washing On The Siegfried Line’, being among them. For Christmas, 1939, they seemed just the right note to end on … The final curtain fell to thunderous applause from all over the hall.

Godden, changing back into his ordinary clothes, but keeping on the rose-petal headdress as a mark of distinction (which indeed it was), joined the rest of the performers as they mingled with the audience afterwards. Making towards Edie and Edna, he knew instinctively that neither of them was going to be pleased. But it seemed somehow to have nothing to do with him personally; he was in such high spirits, and so firmly a part of the success of the evening, that any other influence could hardly touch him. Indeed, when Edie started on her outburst, he thought for a moment that she must be joking. But he was not long in doubt.

It was his opening remark, when finally he made his way over, that set her off.

‘Here we are!’ he exclaimed cheerfully. ‘Did you enjoy it?’

‘Enjoy it!’ Edie, who was standing up in the middle of the row waiting to move, drew in her breath with a sharp hiss, which should have warned him. ‘Enjoy it! I was never so ashamed in all my life. Dancing round the stage in that silly way. You and your rescue work. Is that what you do all day?’

‘Go on,’ he said, still cheerfully. ‘I bet you were laughing as loud as the rest of them.’

‘There wasn’t anything funny in what I saw,’ said Edie furiously. ‘And for goodness’ sake take that thing off your head. Haven’t you done enough fooling about already?’

‘It made me feel funny all over,’ broke in Edna affectedly. ‘Whatever made you do it, Dad?’

‘It was just a joke,’ said Godden, ignoring her and trying to answer Edie. ‘What’s the harm if there’s a lot of us doing it?’

‘A lot of grown men behaving like a bunch of kids doesn’t make it all right, not by a long chalk.’ People nearby were turning round to watch them, and Edie lowered her voice till it was a fierce whisper. ‘You ought to think of the people you invite to watch it, even if you don’t mind making a fool of yourself in front of everybody. If I’d known it was going to be like that, you couldn’t have dragged me here!’

‘It was SORFUL,’ exclaimed Edna, with a realistic shudder. ‘I wanted to run away and hide myself.’

And that’s what I felt about you, thought Godden, suddenly angry. By God, be hadn’t been got up any worse than Edna was right now, with her paint and her skirts up round her neck! For the first time for years he wanted to hurt them both; Edna for her silly affected talk, Edie for the perpetual nagging which could turn even a night like this into the same old row at the end. A moment ago he had been on top of the world: now the whole thing was spoilt, and all because of their blasted bad temper and complaining. He hadn’t really wanted them to come, anyway: thought he was giving them a bit of a treat; and now they made this sort of mess of it. And it wasn’t just the show, it wasn’t just tonight, either: it had been like this even since the beginning – everything to do with the depot came in for the same damned nagging and back-biting. In the back of his mind Godden knew Edie was jealous of him: jealous of what he was doing there, and what the depot had done for him. She realized, well enough, the difference it had made to him, to have a job he could be proud of, and a place where people treated him as a human being instead of a bit of furniture lying about the house. She knew how much he liked it there, and she hated him for it.

‘Now look here, Edie,’ he was beginning, stung to the point of giving her a straight answer for once in a while, ‘I’ve had about enough–’

He stopped suddenly, as a hand clapped him on the back and Horrocks’s voice said cheerfully: ‘Good old Bill! I didn’t know you had it in you.’

Horrocks’s interruption fitted in so well with what Godden had been about to say, and with the general temper of the atmosphere, that an awkward pause ensued. Then Godden pulled himself together.

‘Hallo, George,’ he said quietly. He turned to Edie. ‘This is George Horrocks. Remember, I used to talk about him? In the war … This is the missus, George. And my girl, Edna.’