The Laments (17 page)

While the twins simulated a bloody clash between Briton and centurion, Will lay on his back, trying to imagine himself living in a settlement here, a thousand years ago, when people stayed in place, before there were cars and ocean liners.

Hitler’s Ghost

Will scored a few goals during the morning football games. This brought him the favor of Digley, who invited Will over to his home, a council house he shared with his mother and older sister. The lawn was tiny but immaculate: a perfect square of green, surrounded by a well-clipped hedge.

Up the narrow stairs, Will peered into the doorways—there seemed to be a different floral wallpaper and cat in each room.

“My dad was in Egypt during the war. It was
bloody hell,
” explained Digley. “He climbed the Pyramids. Died of pneumonia after I was born. But he left his uniform. Has a big hole in it where he was stabbed with a bayonet!”

Digley showed him the uniform. His father must have been a giant; it was a big green thing, woolen and coarse (and covered with cat hair). Will poked his finger through the bayonet hole and felt a deep, morbid shiver. Digley’s bedroom was strung up with model airplanes. A fat tabby gazed at them from Digley’s bed.

“That’s Goebbels,” said Digley. Turning to the air display, he added, “And this is the Battle of Britain.”

Digley could identify every plane in the German Luftwaffe, from Messerschmitts to Fokkers, and all the British planes, too. Digley’s mother was a nurse; his sister was a supermarket cashier. At teatime, Digley rummaged through the fridge, while Will tripped over the milk saucers that seemed to be placed in every corner.

“Bloody hell,” said Digley. “Nuffink to eat!”

They shared a plate of chilled baked beans.

“This is probably how they ate in the war. But better than a belly full of lead, eh?” Digley grinned.

“
WERE YOU A SOLDIER IN WORLD WAR TWO, DAD?
” asked Will later, at dinner.

“No—I was too young,” said Howard.

“Didn’t you even have a uniform?”

“Not even a uniform. I was only fifteen when the war ended.”

Will’s disappointment lingered into bedtime.

“You’re lucky to have such a young father,” said Julia when she found Will brooding under his covers.

“I didn’t
say
there was anything
wrong
with it,” he shot back.

“Of course you didn’t,” said Julia. “But let me remind you that war is a terrible thing! We left Africa because of the possibility of war. In war, lots of people die or lose legs and arms. You should be happy to have a father in one piece!”

Though Will loved his father, he thought one small bayonet wound wouldn’t be so bad.

“Bloody hell,” he muttered.

“First fighting, then swearing like a sailor,” complained Julia. “I don’t think your new friend is a very good influence.” Julia had other complaints about England—the odor of roast beef, the awful knocking sound when she turned on the water, the twins’ constantly runny noses, the lack of sun, the surfeit of rain, and the queen’s obnoxious corgis.

“Even Buck Quinn’s Ajax was preferable to those revolting little creatures with their stunted bodies!” she exclaimed.

SADDLED WITH THE BURDEN
of a young father who had no experience in World War II, Will compensated by becoming an expert on the Battle of Britain. He memorized every plane in the Luftwaffe, and every major air battle. He built his own plastic aircraft models and hung them all over his bedroom. He pored through comics bursting with salty army characters who dismissed the Jerries and Japs with a few well-placed kicks and punches, destroying the Axis with plucky camaraderie. In the comics Hitler was a bumbling stooge surrounded by foolish yes-men with silly accents and ridiculous salutes. Hitler’s life story could be found in a dozen books in the school library; Will knew Hitler’s hat and shoe size.

“Some people think he’s alive and living in Argentina,” said Digley.

“I think he’s dead,” said Will. “Swallowed a suicide pill.”

“My dad and Hitler wear the same size trousers,” said Ayers. “If he
is
alive, I’m going to go after him when I’m bigger, steal his pants for my dad, and blow him to smithereens.”

“He’ll be dead of old age by then,” said Digley.

“Then I’ll have to kill his family, and his pets,” replied Ayers.

“Not his cats,” warned Digley. “Cats are innocent creatures.”

Digley and Ayers took Will across the wheat fields on the outskirts of the village to climb around the crumbly concrete platforms where the anti-aircraft guns were placed to shoot down German planes. It was almost twenty years since V-E Day, and World War II was still everywhere.

One morning, Julia beckoned to Will to watch the television. “Never forget this,” she whispered. “This is history.”

On a screen the size of a tea saucer, Will watched the fuzzy images of a horse-drawn carriage on its solemn procession through London. Winston Churchill’s funeral was being covered by the BBC. Will was old enough to fear death, and the dark carriage with its black horses became lodged in his nightmares. The Midnight Chinaman seized the reins, and when he cracked his whip, the horses’ eyes glowed and steam billowed from their nostrils.

THE WAR PRESENTED WILL
with some puzzling moral questions.

“Dad, why did Hitler want to fight Britain?”

“He was collecting countries,” explained Howard.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s greedy,” said Julia.

“Was it greedy for England to collect Ireland, Scotland, and Wales?”

“Yes!” snapped Julia. “It’s an awful thing!”

“Then why did you say that we’d love England?” asked Will.

Howard frowned. “What’s that got to do with Hitler trying to rule the world?”

“Well, what about England ruling India, Canada, Australia, and all the African countries?”

“Look at the time.” Howard yawned. “Off to bed.”

Later, Julia complained about the conversation.

“What’s this obsession with Hitler?” she said. “Can’t he find something more
positive
to think about?”

“Well, you have to admit, the damage is everywhere. Will’s school was bombed; have you noticed that his classroom is actually a Quonset hut?”

The woman at the sweet shop entertained Will with stories of the blackouts, when whole towns would strike out their lights to prevent the German bombers from spotting targets from the air.

“Can’t everybody get over the war?” asked Julia one morning when the twins started making machine-gun sounds at each other in the garden.

“Not until something bigger comes along,” Howard said. He was drumming his fingers to the song on the radio—the Beatles, singing “All My Loving.”

WILL INVITED DIGLEY TO HIS HOUSE
. Julia roasted a chicken. Digley told Will that Julia had a nice smell and looked like a movie star, like Natalie Wood.

“Well,” remarked Julia later, “perhaps he’s not such a bad fellow after all.”

Will met Digley’s sister the next time he visited Digley’s house. Elaine Digley wore cat’s-eye glasses and served warm baked beans on toast for dinner. Her hair was teased up into a beehive, her fingernails were an inch long, and Will couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“I like your cats,” he said.

Elaine smiled. “You’re a charmer,” she said. Then her false upper eyelashes got tangled with her false lower ones and she disappeared into the bathroom to fix them.

“She’s got fake everything,” whispered Digley. “Even her tits. Stuffed with tissue. Everything but her bottom. That’s real enough. She sat on Goebbels, broke his leg.”

After dinner they waited outside for Julia to pick Will up. Digley hunted for cigarette butts in the street, lit one, and offered Will a hit.

The taste was foul, but the wickedness of the act appealed to Will.

“I can summon the spirits,” declared Digley as he studied the smoke curling from the stub. “Good ones and evil ones. The spirit world is everywhere.”

“Who have you summoned?” asked Will.

“My dad, of course,” replied Digley. “All the time. Told me he met Churchill and Hitler. Had tea with Genghis Khan and his naked harem . . . ugly as hell, all of them, my dad said, all with bottoms as big as my sister’s.”

Will wondered if the Midnight Chinaman was a spirit, too, and if his nightmares were actually attempts by this specter to sabotage the family. He remembered the Midnight Chinaman beckoning from the bottom of the ocean liner’s swimming pool, and shuddered.

In the distance, he saw the old gray Morris approach with Julia at the wheel.

“You’d better toss that,” said Will. “There’s my mum.”

Digley flicked the cigarette away and winked.

“You’re a good man, Lament.”

Will smiled. For a moment, he felt as though he actually belonged. No longer the foreigner, he had a place beside Digley, his mate.

Will’s Second Love

Sally Byrd sat in the front row, directly in front of Mr. Brogh, who had taken such a liking to Will’s class that he was accompanying them into their next year. When she smiled, Sally’s mouth turned down rudely, and her eyes hinted rebellion beneath a moptop haircut. Only Sally could turn an agonizing history lesson into an uprising. And the astonishing thing was that Mr. Brogh didn’t seem to realize it. He’d be pacing the aisles, droning on, while, across an unreasonably large clock face, the minute hand seemed to die a slow death.

“And Oliver Cromwell’s men were known as the—”

“Roundheads,” Sally would say, a
split second
before he said it. She loved history.

“The Roundheads, yes, and he was a—”

“Puritan,” interrupted Sally, again a beat ahead of him.

Mr. Brogh blinked. “Have I covered this already?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” Sally smiled, sparing the class an hour’s worth of agonizing facts and dates. Sally could do no wrong. Perhaps Mr. Brogh preferred girls, or simply preferred Sally, but she made good use of his biases—and he was a man with many of them.

If Brogh was in a bad mood, he would pick on the foreign-looking students. “What’s your name?” he asked a new boy with a brown face in the front row.

“Paulo, sir.”

“You’re not
English,
are you?” Mr. Brogh said, as if the boy had sneaked into the school by nefarious means.

“I live here, sir,” said Paulo. “I was born in Malta, which was under British rule until last year, sir.”

Mr. Brogh sniffed, as if the boy’s presence had plunged the nation another inch or two below sea level.

“Wouldn’t that make him English, sir?” asked Sally Byrd.

“Not a
native
Englishman.”

“Member of the British Empire,
at least,
sir.”

“What’s left of it,” Mr. Brogh muttered.

“The sun never sets on the British Empire,” said Sally with a peppy smile. “Rule Britannia, sir!”

Mr. Brogh, overcome by instinctive nationalism, blinked painfully. “Of course, of course.” Then his eyes settled on Will.

“You’re from Africa, aren’t you, Lament?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why’d you come here?”

“My father got a job here, sir.”

Mr. Brogh sniffed again. Britannia was sinking further. “No jobs in Africa? Had to come all the way up here and displace an Englishman, eh?”

“Lots of Englishmen went to Africa to displace the Africans, sir,” said Sally, giving Will an indulgent glance.

“Ah, but they offered their talent and ingenuity. They built bridges and systems of law, they—”

“Perhaps they could use
you
in Africa, sir,” remarked Sally, smiling.

“
I DON’T LOVE HER
,” Will told his mother when she inquired about this Sally girl he was always chattering about.

“Julia, he’s too young for that,” said Howard later that night, when they were alone.

“But he’s always been romantically inclined.” Julia was remembering Ruth and the tunnel to China, which now seemed so long ago.

Howard thought of Ruth, too, and reminded himself to lock up the shovels before Will invited friends over.

In spite of Brogh, Will looked forward to school. Thinking of Sally made him smile. There were no carnal thoughts; he simply liked her laugh. And her wit. And her intelligence. And her taste—Sally liked Mars Bars, but only the top half.

So Will bought her one and sliced it in two layers with his penknife. He took the bottom part, she the top with the caramel. Sally wasn’t allowed sweets (her father, Benjamin Byrd, was a dentist), so they’d scarf the Mars Bar by the school football field.

It might have gone on much longer if not for Digley.

That autumn, Digley was the conker king. Conkers was a game in which the boys drilled holes through the strongest chestnut they could find and strung it on a shoelace; then championships would be held in the playground. One boy let his conker hang while the other swung at it with his in an attempt to smash it to pieces. Then they’d switch places. The duels took place all October. Shattered conkers littered the playground; the building superintendent cursed as he swept up the remains every morning. Digley had been the season victor for two years. Rillcock had been disqualified the year before, when it was revealed that he baked his conker until it was rock hard. That year, Digley chose his championship conker from the chestnut tree in Will’s back garden. Soon everybody wanted to pick conkers from Will’s tree. But this season, when Digley called, it wasn’t about conkers at all.

“
LAMENT? WANT TO COME OVER?
”

“Not today, Digley. Sally’s over here.”

Nobody ever turned down Digley. He was the conker king.

“Sally Byrd?”

“Yes.”

“She’s ya girlfriend, then?”

“No.”

“Then she’s not?”

“Not really,” Will replied bashfully.

“Not that I care. Just asking,” said Digley, hanging up. Digley, it seemed, didn’t care if Will played with a girl. Girls weren’t important; they didn’t even play conkers.

Will felt a prick of shame after this conversation. Sally watched him put down the telephone.

“Who was that?”

“Digley.”

“Oh,” she groaned. “He’s awful.”