A roar went up from those nearby and the corporal to whom Maggie had just handed the tea, muttered, ‘Good for you. He never learns, does he?’
Maggie did not answer, but she thought: no, they never learn. If they were of a kindly nature they stayed that way, if they were narrow, tactless, or big-headed they stayed that way. People didn’t change much. And most of them were blind, even the decent ones, for they never seemed to see below the skin. For a moment, even while she continued to dispense tea and wads, she fell into the void of loneliness that seemed forever gaping at her feet and from whose edge, time and again, she had to forcibly drag herself back if she wanted to survive.
It was ironical that the man she had just rebuked should be the only one who had shown interest in her as a woman during the fifteen months she had been on the station. She had lost count of the number of times she had slapped his hands from her body whenever he waylaid her outside. He would start with her shoulders and move down to her hips, and no amount of disdain seemed to get through to him. It was unfortunate also that he wasn’t much taller than herself. His body was thickset, but his head was narrow and set close to his shoulders. Yet he wasn’t a bad-looking man. Had his character been different she would have welcomed his attention. Yet if his character had been different he would have attracted an ordinary-looking girl. Almost constantly she longed to be like ordinary-looking girls and have a fellow, even if, like most attachments on the station, it was only a temporary affair. But she knew she would have to be a great deal more in need of male company to tolerate anyone like Corporal Billings.
‘You’re hard on him.’
She cast a withering glance at Peggy now, then whispered back, ‘Poor soul. Then go and comfort him; he’s all yours.’
As she was about to hand a cup to another airman, Peggy happened to jostle her arm and the tea sprayed onto the counter, splashing the man on the other side. And as he pulled his waist inwards she exclaimed, ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I’ll get you another.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘No, give it here.’ She pulled the half-empty cup towards her, and after quickly filling another she passed it to him, smiling at him, saying again, ‘Sorry.’ But he gave no answering smile. This caused her to look closely at him.
He was tall, near six foot, and he had dark hair, black, and deep grey eyes. He was young, yet his face somehow gave off the impression of age. It wasn’t that it was lined or rugged, it was the set of his jaw and the expression in his eyes. Her glance rested on him only for a matter of seconds, yet his face could not have registered more in her mind had she been staring at him for an hour.
He made no further remark but followed his companion towards a table, and she followed him now with her eyes.
‘Clumsy clot! He must be one of the new batch; I haven’t seen his dial before.’
‘It wasn’t his fault: it was yours, you nudged me.’
‘Me!’
‘Yes, you.’
‘Well, if you say so, ma’am.’ They both laughed quietly at this.
The rush over, Maggie drew in a long breath, and turning to the supervisor who was hovering in the background, she asked, ‘All right if we go?’
‘Yes. And thanks, Maggie; and you too, Peggy.’
Before leaving the counter Maggie glanced to where the tall one was sitting. He had spoken only three words but they had sounded different…nice. She was sensitive to voices.
When she went into the restroom she sat down for a minute while waiting for Peggy to come out of the lavatory. Resting her elbow on the table, she let her head fall onto her hand, and again she thought of voices. A voice was all she herself had, and she had inherited it from her mother. That was about all she had inherited. Her mother had had a beautiful voice both when she sang and when she talked. She could recall sitting listening to her. She always pronounced the ends of her words, particularly those ending in ‘g’. Even when she was being reprimanded she had still loved to listen to her mother’s voice. Voices were more expressive than eyes. Eyes could lie, but voices couldn’t, not really…She could still hear her mother’s voice saying, ‘Don’t sit looking at me like that, child; say something.’
‘What shall I say, Mother?’
‘Anything, anything that will give the impression that you can think. Do you understand me, child? You will have to think: the only thing that will get you by in life is your mind because you are not presentable in any other way. You understand that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘So you must use your brains, because you’re not stupid, you know, you’re calculating, too calculating. I have found that out. That’s why your father gets annoyed with you. You understand that?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘You are nine years old and you are going to be sent away to a good school, and you must take advantage of all they teach you. You understand?’
‘Yes, Mother.’
‘I have had to persuade your father to fall in with my wishes on this matter. It wasn’t easy, and it is going to cost a great deal of money, and business is not at all bright at the moment. People are not wanting good furniture. The big houses are selling up; they are in as much dire distress financially as the working classes. There is little call for antique furniture. So you can understand what a sacrifice it is your father is making in sending you to this school. I have also indicated to the headmistress that you take singing lessons. You have a voice, though what use it will be to you I don’t know. Oh…oh, go to your room, child…’
She never got to the expensive school. Her mother was killed in a train accident and her father, without looking at her, for he very rarely looked at her, told her that she would continue at the local school. This she did until she was fourteen. It was in that year her father married again. Perhaps he couldn’t stand the thought of her being in the house all day, even though they rarely met; and never, never since her mother died had they eaten together.
The new stepmother did not take to her, and yet she could have for she, too, was plain and had little to recommend her except that she had a business head and she knew about antiques and was very good at sales.
Maggie had made herself useful to her stepmother by running the house, and yet continued to make herself scarce. In a way, the pattern of her life was much the same as during the years following her mother’s death: she ate alone and as soon as she heard her father’s key in the door she went upstairs to her room.
She was seventeen when her life changed.
She met her aunt for the first time and was invited to spend a holiday with her. She knew that her father had two sisters, although he never kept in touch with them. They were common people. So much her mother had told her about them. She had recognised that her father, too, was common, but that he was a good imitator: from the time he had taken up with her mother, who was from the middle class, he had aimed to act accordingly.
But as common as his sisters were, the one who had died had become quite wealthy through a progressive small business. She left no will and was unmarried, so because her nearest relatives were her brother and sister, they shared her estate.
Her Aunt Elizabeth lived in a small house in the depths of the country near Hereford, and as she herself had never in her life been outside of Birmingham, the journey was like visiting a foreign country.
She was to stay a fortnight. At the end of the fortnight she wrote to her father, saying she wasn’t coming back. She received no reply; nor had she heard a word during the five years that had passed since, and she didn’t know to this day if he was alive or dead, and she didn’t care.
She had never known what love and tenderness were until she met her Aunty Lizzie, and she knew that no-one in the world would ever love her like that woman did; nor would she love anyone else. In any case she would never get the opportunity. It wasn’t only because she was fat, and it wasn’t only because she had no height, and it wasn’t only because she was plain, it was because she was a combination of all th
ree.
‘What’s the matter; you falling asleep, Maggie? You all right, you’re sweatin’?’
She took a handkerchief and rubbed it across her brow and her eyes.
‘You cryin?’ Peggy’s voice was a whisper. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Crying? No!’ The tone was scornful. ‘Me crying! Look, let’s get out.’
They had just turned the corner of the NAAFI building on their way to the public road that ran through the camp when they bumped into two airmen. There followed the flashing of their torchlights and muttered excuses and a voice saying with exaggerated courtesy, ‘Sorry, ladies. So sorry.’
The dimmed light from Maggie’s torch swept over the face of the sombre airman. He hadn’t spoken, just stepped aside. Then he and his companion walked away in one direction and she and Peggy took the opposite through the camp.
‘What d’you think it’s going to be like, Joe?’
‘It’s hard to tell; we’re not trainees any more.’
‘Aye. We are now fully fledged instructors. Doesn’t seem real, does it? AC1, Leonard Forbister, Wireless Mechanic Acting Corporal Instructor. I never thought to see the day, and all because I said I fiddled with wireless. Air-Gunner, that’s how I saw myself: pop, pop…pop, pop, pop. And then having medals pinned on me. I still get jelly in the belly, Joe, when I stand up and face those bods.’
‘Well, you certainly have no need. You put over your stuff better than most.’
‘Well, it’s only because you gave me a leg-up at the beginning, explaining the theory and such.’
‘That was the blind leading the blind, Len. I don’t know how I got through myself, because I was no good at school.’
‘Oh, that’s all me eye, Joe. You know something, Joe? What puzzles me, I hope you don’t mind me saying this, but I…I would have thought you would have gone for a commission. They had you before the board at Cranwell, didn’t they? But you never said what for. Wouldn’t you like to be up there, Joe?’
‘No, Len, no desire.’
‘I’m not probing, you know, Joe, but we’ve been together months now, nine of them, in fact, and I know no more about you now than on the day we met, except that you come from the wilds of Northumberland. On the other hand, you know all there is to be known about me: born Bigley Road, Grays, in Essex, twenty-six years old, wife Alice…who says if she had met you afore me I wouldn’t have had a look-in—and she only saw you from a distance.’ He now pushed Joe on the shoulder, and Joe said, ‘You’re a very lucky man having a wife and a mother who like each other, besides doting on you.’
‘Aye, yes, I suppose you’re right, Joe. And I miss them both, particularly Alice. She’s a spanker, is Alice…Speaking of spankers, what do you think a woman feels like who’s been born stumpy and fat and who looks as plain as a pikestaff, like that little one we bumped into back there? She was on the stage, remember? Must be pretty tough for them when they look at other lasses.’
‘She had a beautiful voice.’
‘Oh aye, granted, but that won’t get her very far in life, not as she stands.’
‘I don’t know; you forgot what she looked like as you listened to her. And I think most of them there did, too: she seems popular with them.’
‘Oh aye, I would say she was popular: anybody they can get a laugh out of is popular with thick-headed rookies…By the way, what do you think of the WO?’
‘He seems decent enough, but we’ll know more tomorrow.’
‘Phew! It’s a snifter.’ Len pulled the collar of his greatcoat up over his ears, then added, ‘I hope they’ve got that stove going. But then I don’t suppose it’ll matter much with twenty of us in there; our combined breaths’ll be enough to give us a steam bath. That’s when we get there. Number eight, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, the next block, I think.’
They had left the path and turned up by the side of the long Nissen hut when Len paused and, half turning to Joe, he said, ‘You know, you still didn’t answer my question earlier on information concerning one Joseph Jebeau. I don’t even know if you have a mother or father, or whether they made you up in a test tube. And by the way, that’s another thing. I read today about someone prophesying there’ll be such a scarcity of blokes after this war that they’ll be injecting the women. It’s a fact. It’s a fact.’
Joe walked on towards the door of the hut. As usual, Len had sidetracked himself, but what would his reaction have been if he had satisfied his curiosity and said, ‘Yes, I have a mother: she is now living alone in a manor house in Northumberland,’ and had gone on to tell him why. He wouldn’t have believed it, of course; he’d likely have thought he was mad. And there were times now, even amidst the hubbub of men, when the numbness reared its head again and made him think that eventually it would take over and he’d descend into silence, cold unthinking silence. Strangely, the prospect didn’t frighten him as much as daily living did.
Two
‘Look, Joe; for the last time, why don’t you come home with me, if only to prove to Alice you’re still on the station? She’s getting suspicious now, and she’s saying, “You don’t mean Josephine, do you?” As you know, it’s no palace, but it’s home, and she’ll make you welcome. And Mum will an’ all. And she’s a damn good cook.’
‘I’m sure she is. And what I’m also sure of is she won’t want to see me. Your leave’s short enough. What’s forty-eight hours and a good part of it taken up on the train! It’s very good of you, Len; but don’t worry yourself, I’m all right.’
‘You’re not all right. What’s for you here? Cycling in the hills on your own or sitting in the NAAFI! Look Joe—’ Len leaned towards him from where he was sitting on the side of his bed and, lowering his voice, he said, ‘I don’t want to probe, and I know I’ve said this before, but I…I feel bound to bring it up again. You must have somebody, a young fellow like you; you say you weren’t brought up in a home. Well, you wouldn’t be, would you, with your education? So isn’t there anybody you want to go and see?’
Joe smiled tolerantly at the man who had made himself his friend. In the ordinary course of events he would have said Len Forbister wasn’t the kind of man to associate with him. It wasn’t that he was a good few years older than him or that, like Mick, he had been a working chap. He had been very fond of Mick, and of his company. But Len wasn’t Mick: there was no deep depth in Len; he was an honest, open fellow who was a father of two children and had a good wife, by the sound of her. But when that was said, all was said. Nothing about Len was compatible with anything in himself. And yet he had grown fond of him, and he had to admit to himself that when Len was away from camp he missed him. It was then that the feeling of utter boredom would assail him and he would be driven to join the crowd for the buses and the queue for a seat in the pictures in Hereford to pass the Saturday afternoon away. On Sundays, unless the weather was really rough, he rode out into the hills. On these journeys, however, he hadn’t been fortunate, as some of the fellows in the camp had been, in finding a cottage or a house where they were invited in to tea, which often meant, so he understood, eggs and chips or even bacon, particularly if it was a farmhouse. And he had no inclination to spend his off-duty time working in the jam factory that ran cheek by jowl with the camp; he wasn’t in need of extra money.
He also knew that there was a cure for his loneliness. He wasn’t blind to the fact that he only had to say, ‘What are you doing tonight?’ and he needn’t be alone any more. There was that tall girl in the NAAFI. She had looks too. But he doubted if he could have stood her voice for a full evening; it grated on him when she chatted him up over the counter. Now if she’d had the voice of the little dumpy one they all took the mickey out of, Lemon, as they called her, he just might have put the question to her. Yet what would have been the result? What would they say about a fellow who didn’t make a pass at them, for to make a pass you had to feel something? Well, he felt nothing, not in that way, and he doubted if he ever would again. He was dead inside. All except his head wa
s dead.
It was impossible at times to imagine that he had been in this camp all of eighteen months. He had seen men come and go; squads of them went through their training and came out bright-eyed WOP-AIRs thirsting to get onto an aerodrome to finish their training and then into action. But here and there some found action on this very camp, and didn’t live to tell the tale. They’d be taken up in a trainer plane by a pilot who had survived the Battle of Britain and, as Len put it, was zonked out with combat. In showing off to the raw recruits he might even throw the small plane into such daring bankings or dives that it couldn’t be manoeuvred out of. If they were lucky his and his recruit’s parachute might have time to open. But only yesterday one of his own batch hadn’t been so lucky, and it was when the news broke in the camp that he knew he could still feel emotion. And Len had witnessed his reaction and this had prompted Len to do what he had said he wouldn’t do again, and that was to try and persuade him to accompany him home.
Hitching himself over to sit beside Joe on the edge of his bed, Len now persisted, ‘You must have some place, you know.’ And after a pause, he went on, ‘I sometimes think you’ve got something on your mind, Joe. If it would help any, I’m a good listener. I know I’m a good chatterer’—he grinned—‘but I can keep my own counsel, and yours an’ all, if you want to talk.’
Joe turned and looked into the kindly face as he said, ‘I really haven’t any family, Len. The only relative I now have…well, I became estranged from her.’
With his head to one side Len stared at him for a moment, then asked, ‘No friends or acquaintances, like?’
‘Oh…oh yes. But they are scattered.’
‘In the forces?’
‘Er…yes, mainly in the Navy.’ That was a good place to put them: you didn’t know when ships were docking these days.
My Beloved Son Page 15
