The Great Fire (19 page)

'Helen has grown.'

Ben said, 'It's true.'

And Helen, joyful: 'I'm five feet three and a half.'

'And I, five ten and a half. Five eleven, if I stand straight.'

'You always stand straight.'

'That comes from having been a sergeant. I never had such power as when I was a sergeant.'

He'd meant something more: her new tension, new dimension.

He produced a book, and she went to fetch a knife to prise apart the coloured paper.

Ben teased him: 'What about me?'

'Any book of poems is for both of you.'

'No, no. All is now for Helen.'

They sat, Helen in the low-cushioned chair with a blue book in her lap.

'It's for your birthday, which I wasn't aware of. Next time, I'll know better.' By then, it might seem paramount. They felt so kindly for him that he said, 'I should go away more often, in order to have such a welcome.' He would be gone a day or two, in Tokyo. 'They've recovered some of my stuff, which I must identify'

Happiness spilt from her eyes, like the glance exchanged under the storm. It was fresh and strange to him, that by merely arriving in that obscure place he could create such pleasure, in two others and in himself. In her. What I came back for, to be loved like this.

Aki made tea for them, Helen bringing biscuits. Leith had a folder, which would go in the box beneath Ben's bed. Along with his notes from China, there was an envelope of photographs, which brother and sister asked to see. The lamp was on, the room was cold.

'How fine they are.' Benedict was turning pearly matte surfaces of Asian scenes: trees inclining from promontories, a great junk spreading her slatted sails, tiled roofs accepting a sandstorm.

'It's the Yellow Wind. In Italy, there's the red wind from Africa; in Greece, a brown wind brings mud from the Levant.' The world's colours, streaming away in the gale.

Huge sculptures stood free from tombs: winged lion, maned horse, gigantic ram.

Ben asked, 'Are there any of you?'

'Two or three, there somewhere. One, touristic, on the Great Wall. An old school friend took it, who came with me from Shanghai.'

'What were you like, as a schoolboy?'

'Hellish, I suppose. Well, there was a lot of dreaming.'

'Can we have it — this one?'

'If you give me one in exchange.'

Helen read out, from the envelope, 'Hedda M. Morrison, Peiping.'

'I took the negatives there, it's a serious place. Otherwise, one hears of rolls of film that don't come back from the developers. You're told that they didn't come out. I took few, and didn't want to lose them to censorship. There are some of Hong Kong.'

Helen held up Peter Exley. 'Is this your friend? You didn't say he was good-looking.'

'He might come here for a bit. He'd like to meet you.'

Benedict told Helen, 'So we've been discussed.'

'Don't grudge me the pleasure — being so far off — of speaking your names.' He got up, saying, 'I must tear myself away.' Which was what it felt like.

When he'd gone, they were still: Helen reading her new book, Ben dozing or, as it seemed now, lapsing into a trance. When he next looked for her, she was sitting upright with the book half-closed over her hand — looking, but not at him.

'What is it?'

'The book.' She went on, without focussing. 'Oh, the vast distances, forlorn partings, terrible journeys. The loneliness.'

Ben said, 'The helplessness, and longing.'

She said, 'The Never.'

Near evening, Aldred walked up to the common room to make his arrangements for Tokyo. In the fuggish room, a man straddled a chair that was turned backwards. He was on the phone, deploring: 'You were notified, I fully indicated .. .' A man in his late forties, just the age of the century, with a fleshed and nearly featureless face that paradoxically represented a type.

Leith was aware that this was the man from Washington, come to find him. When he was not laying down the law, the man's lips were twitching. Leith thought that men go to pieces differently in peacetime, outside their borders.

An associate stood by, impassive: a loose-limbed young officer in American uniform, with hair so closely cut that colour was indeterminate. He introduced himself: 'Thaddeus Hill.'

Who had been kind, and whose good face was not more than twenty-five years old.

'Helen wrote of you. Ben, also. You befriended them.' He did not want to seem to stake a prior claim, even while doing so.

'It's a privilege to be friends with them. Fun, too.' Tad said, 'They're on their own' — meaning in their singularity or their isolation, or both. 'Great kids. They think the world of you.'

'And I of them.' Aldred felt that, had Thaddeus Hill been present at table to witness his arrival, no thunderbolt would have deflected his attention.

They would have liked each other entirely, had it not been for the contest.

Tad said, 'I'll look in on them tomorrow. We just got back, Mr Slater and I, from Formosa. We're down in Kure.'

Noting their connection, Mr Slater was fast concluding at the telephone. He could not be everywhere at once.

What Leith could not put together was the role of Thaddeus, with his good manners and face. He supposed it would reveal itself. He said, 'I myself am just back, and already making plans for departure.'

Slater said that he would welcome an opportunity. 'We think the world of your record.' Possibly had not expected quite this man, or so deep a voice. 'We have the greatest interest in your work.'

Which was safe enough under Benedict's bed.

'Thank you.'

'You're welcome.' Slater said, 'Well, fix it up with Tad here. I'll be away a day or two myself. Have to go to Osaka.'

Ósaka,
not Osáka.

Leith might have said, My work is of no interest to you, being in its way a meditation. But reflectiveness is hateful to men mobilising grievance.

Something sordid.

Slater was meeting Driscoll and went out, removing Tad also. Leith, having made his phone calls, walked downhill under a tigerish sunset. He did not intend to talk to such a man; but lightness of heart had been shaded. And he did not care to think that, calling on Helen and her brother, he might find Thaddeus Hill there — especially since Tad had proved likeable. 'One is nice,' Ben had written. 'The other not.'

After dinner, while she was reading to Benedict, Tad came in, bringing a small heater for their low-wattage room and a bottle of aquavit, of which he accepted a glass. He told them that a box would come from Tokyo. At a store of imported goods, he had bought two loden coats in different shades of olive green.

'I hope the size is right. If not, you'll grow into them.' He said this, doubting that Ben would ever need the coat, or grow.

They were highly pleased, and said that he should never have done it. (Brother and sister meanwhile having identical presentiment of their mother's comments.) Helen said that it was an American present: generous, needful, and fun.

'I guess you mean cheeky,' he said — a gift of serious clothes being presumptuous. However, they needed coats. Let the terrible parents take umbrage; they could blame it on American crassness. And — though this was no consolation — he would soon be gone.

She said that, in England, she'd had a warm coat but had outgrown it. 'We left for the tropics just in time.'

Tad asked, 'Can I look at this?' — the book, which was on their table.

Ben said, 'Aldred brought it.'

'I meant to say that I ran into him.' Tad was turning pages. 'Impressive,' he remarked. 'The man, I mean.' He put down the book. 'The book also, as I can see.'

'Helen has been reading it.'

Tad said, 'Quite a salon you kids are running here.' Pronouncing it
salonne,
he was being American for them to the top of his bent. Sprawling a bit, so far as their rickety chair would allow. Laughing, they were grateful for long-limbed, self-deprecating goodness. And childish enough, too, to be excited about their new green coats.

'I'd like to take you two to the movies.' He told them that the American base had set up a picture house that on certain evenings showed, with crackling and lapsing, films that could cause no offence — 'to our tender American sensibilities, kids.' At any rate, Occupation families were welcome, and he'd look into it.

Ben said, 'Late in the day, I'm not much good. Or early, for that matter.'

Helen suggested that he might sleep in preparation. He said, 'We'll see. I'd like to go' — which was true. It was equally true that he had begun to fear departures from the talismanic routine of his stark survival. Helen saw it, that he dared not break the remnant of a spell.

Tad said, 'I'll fill you in.' When he had gone, with a wave like a heron's, Helen stood at the open door. 'Benny, you must see it, the full moon.' Her life, and even his, in the little prison of their rooms, had also rounded and ripened, grown luminous.

Three days later, coming from Tokyo, Leith was met by Brian Talbot, who said, 'Home again.'

A transient room in a military compound had become his destination. For the time being, he didn't mind.

There was a heavy, historic-looking box with his printed name, and a strapped suitcase, which the two men heaved aboard the jeep. 'My books,' said Leith. 'Or what's left: of them.' For there had been losses, thefts; and water had got in. 'And some winter gear.' They set off in the mild afternoon. Their route was being patched and threw up black gravel splotched with tar. Talbot told him that a new coast road was planned: 'Scenic stuff' At the port, mines had been conclusively swept. The sunken ships were all raised now and taken for salvage.

'Getting to be quite a beauty spot,' he said, and squawked a laugh.

Sea and islands had always been beautiful. It was the blunderings of men that made the idea laughable. Leith smiled, though not for that reason.

Brian Talbot followed the direction of his companion's thoughts, having seen Leith at times with Helen, and being nudged by other soldiers who frequented the common room. There had been nothing to report, except what is invisible and unmistakeable.

It would not have troubled Leith if Talbot, who probably wished him well, was aware of that attachment.

Brian told him, 'You won't be seeing me much longer. Marching orders. Back to Aussie in a month or so.'

'Good God. I can't be glad, but I suppose you are.'

'Yair, oh well. Time to move on. I won't be sorry to leave the army.'

'Would you like — I don't know — some document? A letter of recommendation?'

'Thanks, I hadn't thought about it — but yair, thanks, she'd be good.'

Some friendly word should be ventured. But they were careful with one another, and there was still time.

'I suppose I should've done more with my stretch here. Never took you up on your offer, the lessons.'

'Later on, the experience will count, perhaps.'

'When I'm old and grey, eh? Something to tell the grandchildren. Who won't want to listen.'

At the compound, they stacked the baggage in the common room. Leith left Brian having beer with a pal, and went out in the last of the light. He had extracted his greatcoat from the unloaded suitcase and had it over his shoulders.

Halfway down the path, in a small clearing where jeeps were allowed to turn, Helen was standing with Tad Hill. It was clear that they were setting out together. Helen was wearing a long greenish coat that Aldred had never seen, and pale stockings; and her shoes, while too summery, were for city use. A purse dangled from her arm. And Tad had a tailored uniform, not khaki but fawn, such as American officers wore for civil occasions, and in which he looked well. Helen had seen Aldred. And Tad, turning in the direction of her expression, came to what might have been attention.

Reaching them, Leith smiled and spoke. Tad, who, on a slight rise, appeared tall, smiled too: 'I'm taking this lady to the movies.' He explained about the American shed at the port.

Helen's immemorial feminine look: regret, accountability, resistance, and a plea for indulgence.

'What are you seeing?'

She told him, '
Meet Me in St Louis.'

Tad said, 'It's Louis, not Louie. In real life, if not in song. Saint Louis, MO. Hell, what do I know, I'm from Cincinnati.'

Aldred laughed. 'I hope to hear about it.'

'We might get a bite down there. Along with the movie house, they've set up a place with hot dogs, Cokes, all amenities of high civilisation.' Tad remarked, 'We'd better get going.'

'Ben couldn't come.' She should have prevented herself from saying this.

Aldred said, 'How nice you look.' With her flushed cheeks and a wisp of pink silk at her throat — in the collar of the new coat that something warned him not to mention.

His room, put in order as before, had lost its sense of destiny. He hung his coat near the door, unpacked his small bag. Might have liked hot tea, but settled for whisky. An ineffectual heater had been placed near the table. He switched on the lamp and lay on the bed, turning over his notebook from Tokyo — where he had written about reconstruction, about the vexed question of the Japanese theatres, about the education of Japanese women and the brothels for American troops.

Tad would take her hand in the dark. And what would she do? In the overlong coat, she had seemed fully grown — embarking on the years in which men would contend for notice, locking antlers. He would have liked to say this to her, so that they might laugh together. He wished he had never seen her.

He went on writing about Tokyo: about places of worship, and the monks.

It was all absurd. Without the coat, she was a child.

In this way, the evening advanced — he writing on a lined pad, or at times reading in one of the books he'd kept by him. At last, half-asleep, he was aware that Helen had come back with Thaddeus. Heard voices on the path, the opening and closing of a door, and the young steps of a man going up under the trees. A flashlight glimmered past his windows. She would recount the evening to her brother. The three men in her immediate life.

He had not eaten and was hungry. He got up, reaching for his boots, and went out to find his dinner. By now, half an hour had passed since her return. There was no light in her rooms, except for the gleam left on, always, for her brother.