Lilian's Story (29 page)

Lest We Forget

Over the seas they began killing each other again, and here people put fat in tins and sent it to besieged Britain, and there was no longer anyone on the streets who was yellow-skinned, or who spoke their English differently. They had all been taken off somewhere or were in hiding for the duration, or pretending to be deaf and dumb.

There is a war on
, everyone reminded each other, as if we might forget.
And we must all do our bit.
In the shops and tearooms, signs told us that
Loose Lips Sink Ships
, but I did not think a little William would hurt anyone.

I had no fat for Britain, needing all of mine for myself, but I did my best for the war effort. For those women in trams, managing so many knitting needles at once and being deft about turning the heel of some khaki sock, I had words of encouragement and free recitations.
I would
normally be charging a shilling
, I told whoever was within hearing,
but I am doing this for nothing, out of patriotism.
The women said nothing, but I noticed they knitted faster when I recited, and felt that I could be proud of doing my bit.

It seemed to be all women these days. I wondered where they had been all my life, these women who could drive trams and buses, and be policemen and bank-tellers. Their faces looked stern under their peaked caps, as though they wanted to make it clear that they were not enjoying this, but I heard them humming as they wound the great wheels of the buses, and laughing in uniformed groups, and I did not believe they were not having a good time. I knew they were only pretending not to care.

Kings and Queens

There was a war on, and everyone was wondering if it would ever end, or if life would always be like this, and an ugly blushing girl was being crowned Munitions Queen. She reminded me of myself, except that I would have never been so diligent and produced so many bombs and bullets. She stood on a box, under a banner with a huge number written on it, and wore a dark red sash like a terrible wound across her chest. It was not hard to imagine that this would be the only thing that would ever happen to her.

She blushed and ducked her head, and gulls wheeled overhead, waiting for the eating to start, and the great dark trees of the Domain swallowed the sunlight into their leaves. A man in a boater shouted into a microphone and everyone cheered. The Munitions Queen was pushed from behind until she was standing in front of the microphone which was too tall for her, and she made a sound like a dog barking that was amplified so that pigeons fluttered up off the grass in fear.

That Munitions Queen was a squat girl, as red in the face as her sash, and was trying to swallow her head into her chest, so that her pale neck was exposed to the axe. I watched, because I saw myself there, and because I, too, can be cruel, and enjoy a joke.
I am honoured
, I heard as she began to read her speech from notes that fluttered in the sun, but she could not go on until she had taken her glasses from her pocket, and put them on so that they glittered in the sun like her tiara. She was
honoured
, and
touched
, and
only doing her little bit
, and no one tried very hard to look solemn, but nudged each other when her voice shook with patriotism on the words
my King and my country
, and a pretty girl who should have been Queen, if such things were awarded on golden good looks, laughed behind her slim brown hand when the Munitions Queen leaned forward so far into her notes that her tiara slipped and had to be retrieved.

If I had not been cruel I would have left and walked down to the blue water's edge, perhaps even cleansed myself with a quick dip to wash away the terrible frailty of people, but I was cruel, too, and stayed. I stayed there on the edge of the munitions workers' picnic and laughed with everyone else while that ugly girl with a hairy face and thick red cheeks like meat, like mine, was married to the Munitions King. Her red sash could hardly contain her chest. How often had any man held her hand? She was looking for love, too, it was easy to see. The Munitions King was a handsome boy with a big chest, and muscles that filled his shirt. If he had not been cross-eyed he would have been standing at attention somewhere, or dead with a rifle in his hand. But he had been saved for this moment, when he kissed his Queen and had to catch her as she stumbled, somehow, and nearly fell off the platform.
I pronounce you man and wife
, someone boomed, a drum banged, and a bagpipe began to shriek in pain. The Munitions Queen tried to hide her face against the large chest of her King, but was not allowed any such comfort. She had to take a glass of champagne in one hand and a knife in the other, to cut the cake, and then her wedding was over. The platform was empty, the red sash was rucked around her waist, the wind was suddenly chill, and goose bumps rose on everyone's arms.

Water has proved the smartest grave, and I considered that clean death when I left the picnic behind at last and went down to the harbour. Water would be a purifying death, though a difficult one for a strong swimmer like myself. Everyone is tragic, and I am less tragic than many, but I would have been willing to breathe water, and die in panic. It would have eased the pain in my chest, where sadness lived, to have taken everyone's sadness to myself and drowned it. That blue water would prove the smartest grave, and I would not object to my flesh being nibbled by small inquisitive fish, and my bones being rolled along the sand by the tides.

I cried for the Munitions Queen and everyone else, but there was no need. The Munitions Queen would be as old as I was, one day, and by then her day of glory would have become a story, part of her history.
The time I was crowned
Munitions Queen
, she would say until it was a pleasure and not a pain, and with each telling she would enjoy it more, and feel more as if she, too, had had a life.
That cross-eyed
fellow, Bob, he was my King
, she would explain, and almost remember how to blush.
And I was sweet on him, of course
, and no one listening would know that so much of Bob, so close and all at once, had made her desperate with anguish. No one would know anything but the story she chose to tell, and she would be proud, in the end.

Impossible Freedom

Now, when the streets were full of men in khaki, when everyone knew how to load a gun, and Father in his uniform should have been vindicated at last, and given a platoon to lead, it was too late for him.
It was his heart
, they told me, and I laughed, because I knew about that, and knew that it could not have been his heart that killed him.
She is deranged, poor thing
, one of the nurses said to another.
The grief has unhinged her
, and I laughed louder.

I had allowed myself to dream of Father's death at times, had stared up at the loony-bin sky, or at the square of it framed in the window of my little room, and had felt myself expand and rejoice at the thought of his death. At such times life had become so large, so infinitely full of possibilities, that I had become dizzy. I would stand and walk a few paces to recover myself, and the earth would tilt away from under my feet.

Now they told me he was dead, had dropped down suddenly clutching his chest, while talking to another man in khaki, and at the moment all I could do was laugh in a high-pitched way that did not belong to me, and be thought callous by the people at the hospital. They had arrived too late to be able to do anything for Father, but had still brought him to this building that knew what to do with death in a way that Rosecroft did not. And now that he was dead I knew that when I stopped laughing I would be overwhelmed by a cold vastness that was beginning to surround me. With Father gone, the world lacked edges, and went on grey for ever into the distance. There seemed no reason to do or not do anything, with Father lying cold on that hospital bed.
You would like to pay your last respects
, the people in white told me, and locked me in alone with Father's corpse. I had dreamed of this and had on occasion rehearsed the speech that I would make to him.
You are a vile and
degenerate man
, I would begin. I had stirred myself into a frenzy more than once.

But now I stood over the body of what they told me was Father, and I recognised the long upper lip, and the mouth that even in death was unforgiving, and I was consumed with unwilling grief, and felt the world was a barren place, full of nothing but the angry hard sobs that were wrenching themselves up, from somewhere even deeper than my heart, from somewhere secret where my being had its source.

All My Family

There were men in khaki everywhere, and for a long time I saw Father on every street corner, standing erect in his uniform, or stepping out into the road to hail a taxi. Once or twice I surprised myself, breaking into the beginning of a thick run, feeling my mouth shape the word
Father
before I realised that the khaki back belonged to some red-cheeked patriotic country lad, or some wooden man
doing his bit
but determined not to enjoy it.

John had some job that was
top-secret
, he said coyly, and
of vital national importance
, and he flinched when I shrieked,
Oh, you are a spy, you mean.
He surprised me.
Lil, do not taunt
me
, he said.
We only have each other now and you should not taunt
me.
I was silenced by surprise. John's top-secret job had transformed him into someone I did not recognise, as he had been transformed several times before in our lives, when the brother I thought I knew turned out to be someone else altogether.
I forget that Father is gone
, I told John in explanation, and he nodded behind his glasses. He said,
I am making the most of it, and have wished him dead for years.
I had never been so brave, for all my bombast and noise, and even now I was tied to Father in a way I could not change.
He
hated me
, I said, but John laughed his sudden hard laugh.
He did not hate you
, John said, wiser than me after so long.
He
just thought you did not matter.
He saw that I was upset then, and took off his glasses in the old way, and began to breathe on them, and polish them on his handkerchief.
It is all right,
Lil
, he said finally, and looked at me without his glasses, so I knew he could not see me.
None of us matter, Lil, but life is
none the worse for that.
I could not agree, although I saw what he meant, seeing the world from a top-secret job where the way he did not seem to care would be valuable. But I could not pretend not to care and everyone would keep on mattering to me.
I would be no good as a spy,
I told him.
Luckily I
do not have to be one. I have bigger fish to fry
. I did not know what I meant, but like all those others I wanted John to care, or at least wonder.
And I am doing my bit for the war effort, too.

Bombast

Then one day there was cheering in the streets, for more Japanese had been killed than anyone could count, and they were still slowly dying. The streets were full of khaki, but people's faces were not pinched now, but glad with victory, and glad with the larger victory of having survived. I could not believe that death could come in such quantity, and turned away from the pictures of that final victory that paper-boys thrust at me.
I am sickened
, I told them.
I am safe in my age, but
you could die that death.
The paper-boy stared and opened his mouth so as not to miss a word.
Do not forget
, I told him, and meant myself, and all the possibilities that I represented, and also meant the deaths he wanted to sell me. Mother would have loved them, but I did not.
If you forget, it will
happen to you
, I said, but he had recovered now, and laughed in my face with his cold green eyes, and was sure nothing could ever happen to him.

It angered me, and roused me to inspired speech. I did not bother with a box, in the Domain, but stood on a tree root that stuck up a convenient height.
The vermin
will not perish
, I shouted.
The vermin will f lourish on our corpses.
Michelangelo will be gone and Shakespeare will be gone and the
cockroaches will breed in our eyeballs.
I was making myself sick, and drawing a crowd. I heard hecklers and laughter, but I ignored them, for it was necessary to share my vision of apocalypse, it was choking me like hands around my throat.
We are fragile,
I shouted,
we are as fragile as an eggshell
, and by now no one could hear my voice, grown shrill with conviction, because my public was too busy laughing at this huge woman who was claiming to be fragile.
You will
be sorry
, I called, climbing down off my root.
You will be
sorry, but it will be too late.
I chose a man close to me who was showing me his meaty tongue as he laughed:
You will pray
for a quick death then
, I told him, my skin still crawling from the terrible pictures I had seen.
You will envy the dead and cry
for mercy and there will be none
, I told him, and saw his face close down, for my words had killed his laughter and his tongue had disappeared. He would laugh again, but not at the thought of the final horror.

Life's Journeys

Father's death made me weightless and I was discovering new ways of journeying through my life.
It is better to travel
, I would remind myself, when my room began to close in around me, and Frank was nowhere to be found.
No one
enjoying life can afford not to journey
, I told the people beside me in the bus. But on a bus or tram, everyone can pretend not to hear a large woman talking nonsense. In a bus or tram they can always get off, if the large woman should sit next to them and begin telling them the story of her life, or some other fanciful tale, or reciting Shakespeare at them. There was pleasure in the size of that audience, but its quality was inferior, and I discovered soon that there was a taxi purring on every corner, waiting to take anyone anywhere, with a small and attentive audience inside, of one or two people who could not get out at the next stop, and who might be going anywhere at all.