The Captain and the Enemy (3 page)

There was nothing I could do but accept his explanation, and I think that in some way the readiness of my acquiescence worried him just a little, for, as we strolled silently along side by side, taking this turning and then that, he began occasionally to break the silence with a too obvious attempt at conversation.

He said, ‘I don’t suppose you remember your mother?’

‘Oh, yes, I do, but she’s been dead, you know, an awfully long time.’

‘Yes, that’s true. Your father told me …’ but he never said what it was that my father had told him.

We must have walked at least a quarter of a mile before he spoke again. ‘Do you miss her?’

Children, I think, lie usually from fear, and there seemed to be nothing in his questions to make me afraid of the Captain. ‘Not really,’ I said.

He gave a grunt, which with my limited experience I took to be a note of disapproval – or perhaps of disappointment. Our footsteps on the pavement measured out the long length of the silence between us.

‘I hope you aren’t going to be difficult,’ he said to me at last.

‘Difficult?’

‘I mean I hope you are quite a normal boy. She’d be disappointed if you weren’t a normal boy.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I would say a normal boy would miss his mother.’

‘I never knew her very well,’ I said. ‘There wasn’t time.’

He gave a prolonged sigh. ‘I hope you’ll do,’ he said. ‘I hope to God you’ll do.’

Again he walked along in silent thought and then he asked me, ‘Are you tired?’

‘No,’ I said, but I said it only to please him – I
was
tired. I would have liked to know just how much further we had still to go.

The Captain said, ‘She’s a marvellous woman. You’ll know that as soon as you see her if you’ve any judgement about women – but how could you have any at your age? Of course you’ll have to be patient with her. Make allowances. She’s suffered a great deal.’

The word ‘suffer’ meant to me at that time the splashes of ink upon my face which still remained there (the Captain, unlike the headmaster, didn’t notice things like that), the visible sign of being an Amalekite, an outcast.

The reason I had become an outcast at school was not at all clear to me – it was partly, perhaps, because my name had leaked out, but I think it was connected too with my aunt and her sandwiches, the fact that she never took me to a restaurant as parents always seemed to do when they visited their children. Someone had spied on us, I suppose, as we sat beside the canal and ate the sandwiches, drinking not even orangeade or Coca-Cola
but
hot milk out of a thermos. Milk! Somebody no doubt had spied the milk. Milk was for babies.

‘You understand what I mean?’

I nodded of course – there was nothing else I could do. Perhaps this strange woman would prove to be another Amalekite if it was true that she had suffered. There were three other Amalekites in my house, yet somehow we never combined in our own defence – each one hated the three others for being an Amalekite. An Amalekite, I was beginning to learn, was always a loner.

The Captain said, ‘We’ll turn around at the end of the street. One just has to be careful.’

After we turned he said, ‘I won you fairly.’

I had no idea then what he meant. He added, ‘No one in his right mind would try to cheat your father. Anyway you can’t cheat easily at backgammon. Your father lost you in a fair game.’

I asked him, ‘He’s a devil, isn’t he?’

‘Well, I suppose he could be so described,’ the Captain replied, ‘but only when he’s crossed.’ He added, ‘You know how it is – but of course you don’t, how can you? No child would dare to cross
him
.’

We came finally to a street where some of the houses had been repainted and others were in course of demolition, but there were at least no dustbins. The houses, as I know now, were Victorian, with steps that led down to basements, and attic windows four floors up. There were steps which led to front doors, and some of the doors stood ajar. It was as if the street, which was called Alma Terrace, had not made up its mind whether it was going up in the world or down. We stopped at a house marked 12A because I suppose nobody would have cared to live
in
number 13. There were five bells beside the door, but someone had stuck Scotch tape over four of them to show that they were not in use.

‘Now remember what I told you,’ the Captain said. ‘Speak gently because she’s easily scared,’ but I had the impression even then that he was a little scared himself, while he hesitated with his finger near the surviving bell. He rang once, but left his finger on the bell.

‘Are you sure she’s there?’ I asked, for the house had an unlived-in look.

‘She doesn’t go out much,’ he said, ‘and besides the dark’s coming down. She doesn’t like the dark.’

He pressed the bell again with his finger, twice this time, and I heard a movement in the basement, and a light went on. He said, ‘I’ve got a key, but I like to give her warning. Her name’s Liza, but I want you to call her mother. Or Mum if you like that better.’

‘Why?’

‘Oh we’ll go into all of that one day. You wouldn’t understand now and anyway there isn’t time.’

‘But she’s not my mother.’

‘Of course she’s not. I’m not saying she is. Mother is just a generic term.’

‘What’s generic?’ I think he took a pleasure in using difficult words – a sort of showing off, but there was more to it than that I learned later.

‘Listen. If you aren’t happy we can take a train back. You can be at school nearly on time … Only a little late … I’ll come with you and make excuses.’

‘You mean I don’t have to go back? Not tomorrow?’

‘You don’t have to go back at all if you don’t want to. I’m only asking you.’ He had his hand pressed on my
shoulder
and I could feel it tremble. He seemed frightened, but I wasn’t frightened at all. I was no longer an Amalekite. I was freed from fear and I felt prepared for anything when the door in the basement opened.

‘I don’t want to go back,’ I told him.

(1)

ALL THE SAME
I was not prepared for the very young and pale face which peered up at us both from the gloom of the basement where a bare globe of a very low watt gave all the light. She didn’t look to my eyes like anybody’s mother.

‘I’ve brought him,’ the Captain said.

‘Who?’

‘Victor. But I think we’ll change all that and call him Jim.’

The possibility had never occurred to me of changing my hated name as easily as that, just by choosing another.

‘What on earth have you done?’ she asked the Captain, and even I could detect the fear there was in her voice.

He gave me a small push towards the basement steps. ‘Go on down,’ he said, ‘say what I told you to say. And then give her a kiss.’

I took a very small step forward across the lintel and muttered, ‘Mother.’ It was like the first embarrassing rehearsal I remembered in a school play, in which I had been allotted the most minor part, a play called
Toad of Toad Hall
, but that was before anyone discovered I was an Amalekite. As for the kiss I couldn’t manage that.

‘What have you done?’ she repeated.

‘I went down to the school and I brought him out.’

‘Just like that?’ she said.

‘Just like that. You see I had a letter from his father.’

‘How on earth …?’

‘I won him quite fair and square, I promise you, Liza. You can’t cheat at backgammon.’

‘You are going to be the death of me,’ she said. ‘I never meant you to do anything when I said … I just thought … if only things had been different …’

‘You might invite us in and give us a cup of tea.’

‘Oh, I put the kettle on as soon as you rang. I knew what you’d want.’

In the kitchen she told me rather harshly to sit down. There were two hard chairs and an easy one, so I followed the Captain’s example and chose a hard. The kettle was beginning to splutter on the stove. She said, ‘I haven’t had time to warm the pot.’

‘It won’t taste any different to me,’ the Captain said, I thought with a certain gloom.

‘Oh yes, it will.’

They were both strangers to me, and yet already I found that I liked them better than my aunt, not to speak of the headmaster or Mr Harding, my housemaster, or any of the boys I knew. I could tell that in some way they were not at ease with each other and I wanted to help them if it was in my power. I said, ‘I had a spiffing lunch.’

‘What did he give you?’

‘Oh, just a bit of fish,’ the Captain said.

‘That was only the start,’ I told her, ‘and the fish was smoked salmon.’

I knew smoked salmon was important because I’d taken a look at the menu and had seen the price they charged. It cost far more than a pork chop.

‘How did you pay for it?’ she asked. ‘You aren’t so flush – or you weren’t this morning.’

‘I gave them that old suitcase you lent me in exchange,’ he said.

‘That old thing, why it wasn’t worth two bob.’

‘There were three pairs of socks in it – they had too many holes in them for me to keep – and a brick or two. The landlord was quite content and he even stood me a brandy.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she said, ‘sit down and drink your tea. What do you suppose I’d do if you went to prison?’

‘They wouldn’t keep me long,’ he said. ‘Any more than the Huns did, and I had all Germany to walk across then. The Scrubs is nearly next door compared to where I was.’

‘And you are more than twenty years older. Listen! Is that someone at the door?’

‘It’s only your nerves, Liza. No one followed us – I saw to that. Drink your tea and don’t worry. You’ll see – everything will be hunky-dory.’

‘What will they do when he’s not back tonight?’

‘Well, I left the head man his father’s letter, and he’ll probably write to him, but I doubt if the old devil will bother to answer. You know very well he doesn’t like writing letters, and he won’t want to get mixed up in things, and then I suppose the head man might write to the boy’s aunt – if he has her address – and she won’t know a thing.’

‘And after that they’ll go to the police. Kidnapped boy. I can just see the headlines.’

‘He wasn’t kidnapped, Liza. He went away willingly with a friend of his father. The fees are always paid in advance – what do they care? Of course we’ll watch the papers for a week or two just in case. You don’t
want
to go back to school, do you, Jim?’

‘I think I’d rather stay here,’ I said, although I wasn’t yet quite sure – but it seemed the polite thing to say.

‘There you are, you see, Liza, it’s as I told you. He’s all your own. You’re a mother now. A proper mother, Liza.’

‘And where shall I put him? We’ve only the one room.’

‘You’ve got the whole house to choose from. You’re the caretaker. You have the keys.’

The day which had begun badly at school certainly ended with a sense of excitement and mystery. We tramped all over the house from the basement to the attic. It was like exploring Africa. Every room when unlocked had its individual secret. The Captain, like a native carrier, supported a pile of blankets. I realized that I had never before visited a whole house. My aunt lived in a flat on the first floor, and she kept away from neighbours.

In those days (I don’t know what the custom is now) something was always left in an unoccupied room to enable a landlord to call it furnished, and so I had the choice of three different beds in three different rooms, a dingy sofa in another, and an easy chair big enough to sleep in, but it was the traces of the ancient lodgers who had been expelled, perhaps without notice, or who had moonflit of their own accord, which fascinated me. On the floor of the attic there was a copy of a very old tattered magazine called
Lilliput
over which I lingered long enough for them to notice. ‘Would you like to sleep here?’ Liza asked, but it was too far away from the basement and human contact, and I said, ‘No.’

‘Take the mag with you if you want,’ the Captain said. ‘Finding’s keeping – remember that. It’s one of the basic laws of human nature.’

We had begun at the top of the house and we trudged on downwards. In another room on a rickety table lay a notebook with lined pages in which somebody had kept accounts. I still remember a few of the entries and they seemed odd to me even then – there were things called penny buns noted down (what can one buy now for a penny, even with a new metric penny?). They seemed much in favour with the owner and there was a note ‘Extravagance’ marked with an exclamation mark – ‘Lunch at the ABC two shillings and threepence.’ With a glance at the Captain I put the notebook in my pocket. There were a lot of blank pages, and I thought it might prove useful. I already had literary ambitions which I had not confided either to my aunt or my father. I had read
King Solomon’s Mines
four times, and I thought that if I ever went like my father to Africa I would keep a journal of my adventures.

‘Why does nobody live here?’ I asked them.

‘The owners sent all of them away,’ Liza said, ‘because they want the house pulled down. I’m here to keep out squatters till the owners have got permission.’

She opened another door – it was one of the rooms with beds, and on the lino was a broken comb and a tuft of grey hair. ‘An old lady died in this one,’ she said, ‘she was eighty-nine, and she died on her birthday.’ She shut the door again quickly and we went on very much to my relief because of the coincidence. This was my birthday too, though nobody at school knew the fact, the Devil seldom remembered, and my aunt’s letter usually arrived several days late with a postal order for five shillings.

I finally chose the room with the sofa because it was
near
enough to the basement for me to hear the movements of the other human occupants. There was a small table and a picture on the wall of someone in strange clothes, whom I still for some reason remember was called Mr Lunardi, as he was setting out in a balloon from Richmond Park – it was another odd coincidence seeing that my aunt lived there. The young woman, whom I began to think of as Liza rather than mother, brought up a saucepan to serve as a chamberpot from the basement, and the Captain produced a basin and a cracked jug from a cupboard. ‘Soap,’ he thought aloud and rummaged further.