Story, Volume I

by Dai Smith

  ‘Hallo, mun,’ he said with his rough vigour, picking up the newspaper and glancing at the headlines. ‘Still bad? Where’s the kids? Up in your mother’s?’

  ‘She fetched them up after tea,’ she said. ‘’gainst there’s a raid.’

  ‘By yourself, then?’ he said. ‘Good job I come. Got anything to drink?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ashamed at being such a poor wife. ‘I’d ’ave asked Mam to go down the pub for a flagon if I’d thought you was coming.’

  ‘What about yourself?’ he asked. ‘Still drinking that old pink lemonade? Can’t you drink a drop of milk or tea or Oxo or something yet? Still spitting that old yellow phlegm up, too, by the looks of that pisspot. I don’t know, bach.’ He sat on the edge of the sofa and put his hand idly on her moist tangled hair. ‘I don’t know what to do. Curly said for to take you to the hospital. I think I’d better, too. Shall I carry you tonight?’

  ‘No,’ she said, frightened. ‘You can’t now. It’s blackout and there’s bombs again, and I doubt there won’t be a bed there. And you got to pay, too.’ She pushed her bony hand slowly across the soiled sheet and touched his battledress. ‘I don’t want to go there,’ she said.

  She was too weak to wipe the tears out of her eyes.

  ‘Oh Jesu!’ he said, getting up in a temper. ‘Don’t cry, then. I was only suggestin’. Do as you like. Wait till tomorrow if you like. Only I was thinking the redcaps will be coming round to look for me tomorrow.’

  ‘Never mind about tomorrow,’ she said.

  ‘The cat’s been pissing in the room somewhere,’ he said, sniffing about him. He sat down again and wiped her eyes with the sheet.

  ‘You got to mind about tomorrow,’ he said.

  ‘Remember you was jealous of me in a dance at the Mackworth when we was courting?’ she said. ‘You took me out and slapped me in the face, remember?’

  ‘What about it?’ he asked slowly, nonplussed.

  ‘Slap me now again,’ she said.

  He laughed.

  ‘I’m not jealous of you no more,’ he said. ‘You get better, and then p’r’aps I’ll get jealous again, see?’

  She smiled and let her neck relax on the cushion.

  ‘You’ll never be jealous of me again,’ she said, looking at him with her faraway eyes.

  Her soul was in her eyes, and it wasn’t sick like her body.

  The bombs had been falling heavier and heavier, and neither of them seemed to notice. Till the light went out, and then he cursed filthily. The fire was nearly out; it was cold sitting with her all the time. He tucked her icy hands under the blanket.

  ‘I’m going out for some coal,’ he said.

  ‘There’s none there,’ she said. ‘The coalman’s killed.’

  ‘Christ, there’s plenty more men not killed,’ he said. ‘I’ll get some from next door, then.’

  ‘Don’t go,’ she whispered.

  The house shivered and plaster fell in a stream of dust, as if from an hourglass.

  ‘Can’t sit in the cold all night,’ he said. ‘And the dark. I won’t be a minute.’

  He slipped the latch and went out into the burning night, straight out into a screaming bomb that tore the sky with its white blade and flung him onto his face in the little backyard and brought the house crashing down with its mighty rushing wind.

  The Luftwaffe’s secondary objective concerned Captain Cochrane’s harbour. The raid began at midnight, by which time Swansea had nothing to do except stop the big fires spreading and wait for the morning to come. Taffy had called at his mother-in-law’s, and seen the children; and at the police station, to tell them his wife was buried and ask them to inform his unit; and he was just walking around, trying to keep himself from freezing and crying and lying down in a doorway, when Captain Cochrane, who had also suffered some emotional disturbance, was getting out of Eva’s bed and hastily pulling on his shirt and trousers in the dark. When he was half dressed he pulled the blind back to see what was happening. The searchlights were stretching their white dividers over the harbour; and yes, by God, they had a plane in their beam, a little tinsel plane, and the red tracer bullets were floating up at it from the Bofors by the sidings. Christ, it was a marvellous sight. He was thrilled stiff, trembling to sink his teeth into it, to draw blood. Where the hell were his shoes?

  ‘I’ll have to run,’ he said brusquely, grabbing his cap and greatcoat. Eva, motionless and dark in bed, said nothing at all. Of course he had to go; a soldier like him.

  ‘Goodbye,’ he said, stumbling on the stairs.

  Eva lay quietly, heavy and as though waterlogged, thinking of the Germans and the English, the soldiers of both sides, her husband and the excitement, the professional coolness with which, firing his two-pounder from the revolving turret of his pet tank, he died. And Hector Cochrane – she always thought of his surname as well as his Christian name – that boy with glasses was right; he wasn’t much of a man. When he had come in tonight, drunk and abased, begging her forgiveness – as if that was anything to give or to withhold – her infatuation had dissolved like a sudden thaw, leaving everything slushy. And as she stroked his spiky Brylcreemed hair and let him sob into her lap she had felt how small and worthless the two of them were, clumsy bungling people of no moment, passive and degraded by their own actions. She had let him take her to bed. Anything was as good as nothing. He had written her a cheque.

  Captain Cochrane had a haggard jauntiness, arriving at the office the next morning. The ethical code of his profession forbade a man to allow a hangover to take the edge off his morning smartness. He behaved in the exemplary manner of a commissioned officer, inspecting the sleeping huts and the cookhouse and the sump, chewing up slovenly old Crocker for overflowing the swill bins, chasing the fatigue party who were rat-hunting round the sump, getting a shake on everywhere. Then to the company office for his morning correspondence. Ration indents, pay requisition, arrangements for boot and clothing exchange, a glance at the medical report to see who was scrounging today. Sergeant Crumb had everything in order, non-committal and deferential, soothing.

  ‘Damn good show last night, sergeant,’ he said when he had finished his business. ‘Got a cigarette?’

  ‘Certainly, sir.’ (Bloody cadger). ‘The Bofors crew are going on the beer tonight, sir, to celebrate knocking that Jerry down.’

  ‘Yes. Damn good show it was. All burned to death, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes sir. The plane was too low for them to parachute.’

  ‘Well, that’s burned their fingers for them. Something towards winning the war.’

  ‘Yes sir.’

  A phone message. Thanks. Captain Cochrane speaking. Good morning, sir.

  This is Swansea police. A private Thomas from your company, sir. Yes? Called in at 0025 hours last night, sir. Said his wife had been buried under a bomb, sir. Christ, has she? That’s bad luck. Have you confirmed it yet? Not yet, sir. Check up on it, please. He’s a bit of a scrounger. If it’s OK, put him in touch with the barracks. They’ll give him all the dope he needs. Money. Railway warrant. OK? Yes sir. If he’s bluffing hand him over to the redcaps. He’s absent without leave. Very good, sir. Goodbye. Goodbye, sir.

  ‘Thomas’ wife. Killed. They must have had a raid as well.’

  ‘That’s bad luck, sir. I’ll look up the ACI about coffins. I think the civil authorities supply them, don’t they, sir? RASC only issue them to soldiers. She was ailing anyway, sir, I know.’

  ‘Check up on it, sergeant. Also ring through to battalion and inform them. We’ll send him a leave pass if necessary. Keep the charge sheet, though. He’ll have to go before the colonel for absence without leave just the same.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Anything else, sir?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. Oh yes, there’s that return to the adjutant about anti-gas deficiencies. I’ll inspect all respirator contents at 1100 hours.’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  ‘Christ, that reminds me. I’ve
left mine in town. Where’s Norris?’

  ‘Up at your billet, sir, I sent him to clean your kit, sir, being that Thomas your batman isn’t available.’

  ‘Send a runner up, then. Tell him to go to this address’ – he scribbled it down, Sergeant Crumb hiding the faintest wisp of a smile as he did so – ‘and ask for my respirator. Miss Eva Barthgate is the name.’

  He smiled, too. They were both men.

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  Sergeant Crumb saluted smartly and withdrew.

  Captain Cochrane yawned and put his feet up for a few minutes, and thought, well, that was that.

  Maybe he’d ask the old man to put him in for a transfer to the Indian Army. There were better prospects out there, on the whole.

  THE LOST FISHERMAN

  Margiad Evans

  Emily came flying down the steps, glaring at a piece of paper in her hand.

  ‘May have time to get the tape,’ she muttered.

  She let the scrap float away, and ran down the street. It was quiet and warm and empty; the only person in it besides herself was a woman in black ringing a door bell. The church clock was striking five behind the roofs which were only a little lower than the tops of the huge chestnut trees: from the churchyard stole the green scent of the sward, the coolness, lightness, peace, of the petal-dripping trees.

  But round the market hall trampled these strange crowds that the small townspeople were getting so used to; hot, bewildered people, burdened, with a dazzled look on their faces, looking for hotels, for lodgings, for rest. Some of them were sitting on the stone stairway, with their suitcases; some were eating, and some with their hands loosely clasped were staring downhill into the blue-grey hollow of the town. Many more would be queuing at the bus stop, the cafés would be full; there would be forms being signed in all the sash-windowed offices just as if the whole population were suddenly going to prison or to law or something. For last night London had had another heavy raid, and the three o’clock train had come in at half past four. Emily bought the tape from a country girl who was blind in one eye, and selling buttons instead of looking after her father’s poultry. She was sagging on the counter.

  ‘Are you done in? So’m I.’

  They had been to school together.

  ‘Lord, you can’t believe it,’ said the girl, heaving herself up on her elbow: ‘poor souls – there’s any a host of ’em. God knows where they’ll all sleep tonight. It must be awful up there! Has your sister come away?’

  ‘Not yet. We wish she would. Keep on writing. Mother’s terribly worried.’

  ‘She must be. Yes, it’s terrible with children…’

  Emily nodded. She wondered if Annie and her family were still alive; if they still existed. Any moment they might not. Any second – the flashes when the truth showed were unrealisable. It was vile and horrible and terrifying, and yet unreal. Thinking was a physical, aching disease trying to conquer another disease – that of not thinking. Allow yourself to be injected – submit to noble advertisements. Save, work, smile. Be poster educated. London was being struck and struck and struck again. Annie and the children lived there. Patrick was a prisoner. England was close, how close, to invasion. Patrick, Patrick.

  She came out of the shop and looked at the town hall clock. Slow by the church chimes, she noticed. The white face with its hands like an enormous pair of scissors, what did it mean to her? There would always be only one time now on it. That was because she had been staring at it when she held the telegram. A Prisoner of War. A quarter to three. Queer. How did the telegram come to be in her hand? She would never quite remember. Her mother was away: and she had felt, ‘This joy isn’t mine. I carry it.’

  There was a word widow and a word motherless, but for the condition of a woman who had lost her son there was no simple expression. Childless was false; a woman whose only son was dead was more his mother than she had ever been: she was as secret, as filled with mystery as when she and her child were one being, only this time she carried his whole life and death – she was the mother of his death.

  Emily had gone into the telephone box. Her mother’s voice said, ‘Yes, dear?’

  ‘Mother, good news. Hold on to something. Patrick is a prisoner.’

  Faintly the voice: ‘Emily… Emily…’

  Now the town hall clock meant that hour. But sometimes these days when she looked at it she thought there was always time for grieving. Yes, always, Emily said to herself, turning round. Not for touching your love, or for seeing or being aware of the landscape you lived in, but always for sorrow.

  Down the hill she plunged into the spinning people. The smell of war was the smell of a herd, weary and swollen footed. It wasn’t the dead, but the driven, the sweated road, the shambling herd.

  To avoid the direct but choked way home, she dashed up a narrow side street, one of the oldest in the town. Years before, a few cottages had been demolished. The walls still stood lodging in their niches the flying weeds of the fields, the winged grass which owned the earth, the nettles of gardenless places. Dandelions were in bloom and seeding, their bare wicks standing stiffly whence the flame had blown. There was the quiet intense odour of wallflowers in sunlight; and out of a doorless doorway two white butterflies lurched as if a breeze had puffed them out of the enclosure.

  It was May. Oh, why did that still concern her? What was so urgent that it would not wait until the war was over to be beautiful again? Could you pull mankind like a burr out of your heart? But Emily stopped, swaying, conscious of this other presence in the worn, cracked street – the presence which made itself felt from the trees in the churchyard, and from the sight of the hills from her window.

  She happened to stop, and she happened to peer round the doorhole…

  The mumbled heaps, the smooth dirt and weeds, had been somebody’s garden. It was worn to a gloss with children’s games, but in the centre grew a lilac tree, its clusters faded to a bluish-grey, dropping their crumbs in the shade. There, close to the trunk in a rocking chair, a paper tossed over his knees, a man sat sleeping: he was quite unconscious. His powerful, innocent face free from eagerness, away from the frightening smell of people, he slept like a lad in a field, and Emily wished she might wait by him for a little while. She knew him, though not his name. She wondered as she turned away if he lived in that street – she had always wondered, though not in an asking way, where was his home. And what had made her stop? Was it the white butterflies, that had flown as though from his brain almost into her hand?

  ‘Is there any news from Annie?’ she asked, as she ran into the kitchen.

  Her mother was at the sink, washing lettuce. She said there was no news.

  ‘Mother, I’ve seen the fisherman!’

  ‘Oh, have you? Do you know where he lives?’

  ‘No, he was asleep!’

  ‘Asleep?’ sighed her mother absently.

  ‘Yes, in a rocking chair in one of Saint’s Cottages.’

  ‘Well, what a strange place to doze in! I can’t bear to walk up that street, it smells so bad.’

  ‘You couldn’t smell the gas today. Oh mother – gas. We’ve had a terrific day. Two gas extractions and both fought like mad. Poor Mr Jones, I bet he’s bruised.’

  ‘My dear child! You must be tired. Sit down and eat something. Were you all right?’

  Emily had taken a temporary job as a dentist’s nurse and receptionist, being quite untrained except in sterilising instruments and comforting people. ‘Oh yes, quite,’ she said. ‘I stood behind them, it was old Jones got the kicks. I say, Mum, I think I’ll ring Annie up tonight.’

  She was twenty-seven and was to work in the ordnance factory at Chepsford as soon as the real nurse recovered from an operation. Meanwhile she quite liked her work. She never thought about it after the day was over. It was that kind of job. Teeth, she thought, when handed about, were rather absurd: otherwise she had grown used to the white overall, the sterilisers, the appointment book.

  But – seeing the fisherman
! As she ate her supper and helped to wash up, everything else that had happened since the morning seemed ugly and monotonous. He belonged to a life that was neither tedious nor terrifying. If her mother had guessed the emotions that filled her, she would have said, Are you in love with him? No, no. It isn’t individual, like that. He is something – he’s part of something that’s being lost. And I want it to come back. It’s life. At least it is to me. Oh dear. Am I going out of my mind, or is my mind going out of me?

  The house that Emily and her mother lived in was at the bottom of the town near the Co-operative Mill. It had stood for centuries and smelled of stone and mice and coal, and the spicy old beams which still had the bark on some of them. It was said to be the oldest house in the town. The street door had a large dented brass knob: when you turned it and stepped into the passage it was as if you came under the shadow of a great cliff, for all the sunlight was at the back where it fell into a tiny paved yard as into a box. A long narrow corridor of a path led past a wall with a fine flat vine, as ancient as the building, to a large plot of garden. Next to that was the Friends’ graveyard which had in the middle a cedar tree. This enormous geni, so dark as to be nearly black, seemed dead to all sunshine and looked the same by moonlight as by day. The house was simply Number 17, but to the older spirits of the town it was known by its disused and genial name of The Friends’ House.

  The room where they were eating their early supper was the kitchen. It was clean and orderly: quiet with polished brown furniture, and lit by the evening sun. The door into the yard, and the well lid in the flagstones were open, for both Emily and her mother liked the delicate, flashing reflection of the water which flickered about the imprisoned space. The ferns and vine leaves were still: flies wove the evening light into their loom, and there was a calling note from a blackbird in the apple tree next door.

  Emily looked at the canaries swaying in the window; she gazed meditatively into the corner at the oilstove. When war seemed close, she remembered her mother had said they would have to move the oilstove. How she had laughed! But it had come true, and they had moved it, for the shutters wouldn’t close when it was in the window. Not a pinch, not a leaf of light showed after dark now. Emily, glancing at the fuchsias in their pots built up on bricks, recalled how the lit plants were sprinkled on the darkness before the blackout came.