There's No Home

by Alexander Baron

  ‘Signore.’

  The voice had been croaking at him for some time, and he had been vaguely aware of the bulk of a human shape at his side.

  ‘Signore.’

  He turned his head. An old woman, so stooped that she seemed to be bowing deeply to him, was grinning at him with pale gums. Her eyes were hideously filmed and tracks of wetness were creeping down from them among the multitudinous wrinkles of her face. Her hands were clasped in front of her. An old man with a hideous purple growth on his forehead hid behind her, trembling violently as if terrified at her temerity.

  Private Fooks swallowed a mouthful of biscuit and scooped at the corned beef with his spoon. The first taste of food had sharpened his appetite and he was impatient to satisfy his hunger. ‘Hallo, ma.’ He bent to his meal again.

  She whispered something. Her nearness was unpleasant.

  ‘Signore.’ Her open jaw was quivering horribly. She whispered, ‘Biscotti.’

  Fooks understood the word. ‘Eh?’ he repeated sharply. ‘My bloody biscuits? Gah way!’ He hesitated, and sighed. ‘Here, sod you!’ He gave her a biscuit. She clutched it with both hands, sobbing, mumbling and dribbling from the mouth. The old man extended a shaky hand.

  ‘You too?’ Fooks gave him a biscuit. ‘My name’s Joe Muggins all right. Ought to ’ave my ’ead examined, I ought. Now sod off, the pair of you.’

  The old couple did not move, but stood weeping and sucking with their gums at the biscuits. The woman laid her hand on her belly and moaned, ‘Fame. Fame.’

  Private Fooks turned his head stubbornly away and broke his last biscuit.

  ‘Fame. Fame.’

  ‘F— off!’

  The mumbling went on; it sounded like prayers in front of an altar.

  ‘I said f— off!’ Private Fooks rose to his feet. ‘I can’t stand this!’ He turned to go back into the guardroom. He halted in the doorway. ‘Here, sod it!’ He scowled at the old woman and thrust his mess tins into her hands. ‘Take the bloody lot!’

  §§§§

  Night came; a warm, velvet darkness studded with stars. The guard commander strolled along to the street corner and stood on the sea front, looking northwards across a wide, shadowy bay. To the north the white gunflashes were flickering, and he could hear the artillery, faint waves of sound borne on the night breeze. It was comforting to stand in peace and watch the battle recede.

  The street slept, the civilians luxuriating in the verminous warmth of their beds after weeks in the foul shelter, the soldiers enjoying the novelty of sleeping under a roof.

  Of all the women only one was awake, Paloma, restless in her wide bed. Of all the men only one was awake, the sentry, leaning on his rifle in the porch.

  A sound was born in the dark remotenesses of the night, a thin, vibrating murmur. The sound grew louder, an angry drone that crept into the street, invaded the houses, disturbed the dreams of the sleepers, awoke them. The civilians felt themselves go cold with terror in the warmth of their beds. This was the sound they dreaded. It was the sound that brought bombs. They had thought that, with the Germans gone, the war had gone. Would there be German bombs every night now? They trembled and prayed. The soldiers heard, too; in them the sound aroused only a weary resentment, a sense of unfairness because perhaps they were not to be left alone, after all. The noise of aircraft swelled until it filled the night. The ramshackle houses shook and crumbs of mortar pattered down into the courtyard from the balconies of the tenement. The Sicilians and the soldiers lay and waited for the bombs. The noise moved slowly over their heads like a thundercloud. The vibration lessened. The noise dwindled. The soldiers muttered, ‘Ours!’ and pulled their blankets over their heads. The civilians sighed shakily, muttered grateful prayers, eased their aching bowels and surrendered again to the enveloping warmth of their beds.

  Paloma stood at her window. She was wearing nothing but a shift, but she was weak with the heat within her. She opened her front door and enjoyed the coolness of the night. The doorstep was cool to her bare feet. She saw the sentry in the porch, a black, bowed shape. She shook her hair back and thrust her breasts forward against her nightdress, showing herself to him. She saw him raise his head, and she imagined that the white smudge of his face mirrored her own longing. Perhaps, perhaps… But he did not move. She sighed. Stupid soldiers, stupid men, stupid war… She went back to bed.

  Chapter Three

  FOR the next three days the soldiers were confined to their billet. They saw something of the town when they marched to Battalion Headquarters to change worn-out clothing at the stores, when they went down to the sea to bathe, and when Captain Rumbold took them for a trot along the sea front; otherwise they were imprisoned, occupied with parades and domestic duties.

  In their spare time they crowded at the windows which overlooked the street, throwing toffees down to the children and whistling after the women who, contemptuous or indifferent at first, soon thawed sufficiently to answer with shrill and incomprehensible sallies. Already, on the window-sill of a house across the way, a soldier’s khaki drill tunic and shorts were hanging out to dry. Private Fooks had taken advantage of an off-duty spell during his period of guard to slip across the road with a bundle of dirty washing. He had accosted a plump and handsome young woman on the pavement and followed her into her house. Their negotiations must have been protracted, for he did not emerge until a half-hour later. His comrades’ subsequent inquiries elicited no reply from him except for a complacent, ‘Now, now, Nosey!’ or a pitying, ‘Why don’t you grow up?’ Once, in a confidential mood, he mentioned that she called herself Paloma, and went on to refer to her as ‘ol’ Poll.’ Now when she stood in her doorway she smiled up at the soldiers with the replete sleekness of a cat full of cream. Her hair was combed and gleaming, and she wore a scarlet flower over her left ear. Many of the soldiers had since prepared bundles of dirty washing. Some had already managed to dash out and find themselves laundresses. The rest were impatient.

  From time to time the captain sent runners to Battalion Headquarters, and NCOs went out on different errands. All of these took advantage of their brief spells of freedom to explore the town, and they returned with tales that increased their comrades’ restlessness. The town was coming back to life. Thousands of civilians were coming back from the hill villages to which they had fled some of them were appearing in the Via dei Martiri with their bundles and pushcarts – and crowds were beginning to flow again through the once-deserted streets. The shutters were coming down from shop windows. There were queues in the markets for fish and fruit and, for the first time, exorbitantly-priced supplies of bitter black bread and flyblown meat. Some of the rubble had been cleared from the main streets. A corporal had discovered a palatial barber’s saloon and had treated himself to a haircut, shave, manicure and shampoo. He spoke of the place as if it were a palace out of the Arabian Nights. One of the medical orderlies described ecstatically an enormous and many-coloured dish of ice cream that he had bought. Others spoke of bars, cafés and pastry-cooks. A few miles away the armies were still engaged, but throughout this sprawling city thousands of people were bustling about, wiping away from their streets, their habitations and their own minds the traces of war as they might clean up the mess after a drunken party.

  Somebody came back to the billet with the news that the jocks were in town and raising hell. It seemed that the stocky and ferocious Highlanders, closer than most to a martial past, found it harder to cast off the savage spell of battle. The billet resounded with legends about their exploits. One man swore that he had seen some of them driving past with a lorry load of screaming women. Another said that they were plundering whole streets to furnish their billets. Another said that they were hunting down Italian policemen – scruffy little men, these, in shabby uniforms, who lounged about with hands in pockets, cigarettes drooping between their lips and ridiculous miniature carbines slung from their shoulders and throwing them through shop windows or into the nearest fountain.

  Private F
ooks returned from one mission with a magnificent silver wristwatch. ‘You never seen anythink like it!’ he announced. ‘There was some little geezer in the street – one o’ these black market blokes –’e was selling watches on the sly. You should o’ seen ’im, ’ad ’em ’ung all over ’im, ’e did, dozens of ’em. Up comes a bunch of jocks, gets round ’im, says they’d like to ’ave a look. ’E passes the watches round, pleased as a dog with two choppers, ’e was, silly little bleeder. I got one. Then we all strolls off. You should o’ seen ’im, dancin’ an’ prancin’ up an’ down, wavin’ ’is ’ands about, screamin’ blue murder. Cryin’, ’e was! I ain’t a-kiddin’ you! On my life, ’e was cryin’ like a baby. None of us takes a blind bit o’ notice. Then this little bloke sees an Italian copper, an’ ’e starts complainin’ to ’im. Know what? This copper takes one look at the jocks an’ ’e runs for ’is life. Couldn’t see ’is arse for dust. Laugh? I pissed myself!’

  On the afternoon of the fifth day the company was allowed out.

  §§§§

  A few men went off to get drunk. Some departed in search of women. But most of the sixteen surviving members of Sergeant Craddock’s platoon kept together throughout the afternoon, straggling through the streets like a party of peace-time tourists. They indulged in little outbursts of horseplay among themselves and occasionally a chatter of animated conversation would spring up among them, but for the most part they were timid and subdued. Everywhere in the town were little groups of men like this, men from the front, hesitating on street corners or clattering along in bunches that overflowed from the pavements into the cobbled roadways, their uniforms bleached and faded, their boots scrupulously polished, displaying the painful good behaviour of schoolboys.

  The war flowed past them. Landing-craft bearing reinforcements were gliding into the harbour and mooring in closely-packed lines. The docks, seen through ruined gateways, were a brown ferment of uniforms. Lorry convoys formed up and started off for the forward areas and for the dumps that were being established in the outskirts of the town. Columns of marching men toiled through the narrow streets. Hundreds of soldiers squatted among the debris of a customs shed brewing tea. A military policeman daubed an arrow on a triangle of broken wall and added the inscription: ‘To the Forward Area, Ten Miles.’ When he had gone a soldier chalked underneath it an arrow pointing in the opposite direction and wrote: ‘To Blighty, Fifteen Hundred Miles.’ A passing sapper shouted to Sergeant Craddock, ‘They’ve captured Acireale!’ and Sergeant Craddock answered, ‘You don’t say!’ – for all this activity made little impression on him and on his men; they did not feel part of it any longer; they felt withdrawn and only mildly curious. Standing on the sea front they could see for miles across the bay in the marvellous clarity of the Mediterranean air. It was possible to see the coast road on which the battle was still being waged. Warships were bombarding the enemy rearguards. The sound of the guns hardly entered into the consciousness of the men, and when the sergeant pointed out to them the flashing splinters of light in the distance that were made by the sun reflecting on the windscreens of the enemy transport, it was only in an instinctive, absent-minded way. They saw white puffs of shell-smoke blossom among the German columns and Geoff Jobling cried, ‘Good shooting!’ His brother grunted, ‘It’s the Navy,’ as if that explained everything. They did not look up when two Messerschmitts appeared briefly overhead to the accompaniment of an outburst of anti-aircraft fire.

  They stopped alongside some troops who had just landed. One of the newcomers shouted, ‘You blokes take this place?’

  The sergeant answered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bad?’

  ‘Pretty rough.’

  ‘What’s it like here now?’

  ‘Cushy.’

  ‘How long you been out from Blighty?’

  The sergeant had to stop to think. It seemed a long time. ‘Four months.’

  ‘We been out two years. Africa. What’s it like in Blighty?’

  ‘No bloody beer.’

  The newcomers began to call out, ‘Any Rochdale lads among you?’ ‘Anyone there from Cardiff? ‘Any o’ you blokes from Hackney?’ Ling found a couple of pennies in his pocket and offered them to a Bethnal Green man whom he had discovered. The other man said, ‘Thanks, mate,’ solemnly, and put the coins into his wallet.

  Sergeant Craddock led the platoon back into the town. He behaved with his men as with equals, without self-consciousness, yet he had the air of being abstracted, apart from them, as he walked at the head of the group. He was five feet nine inches in height, taller than most of them but, because he was broad of haunch as well as of shoulder, appearing almost squat. He walked with such a deliberate uprightness that he seemed to be leaning slightly backwards, and he swung his arms with the palms of his big, ugly hands turned outwards as if he had them on display. His hair was chestnut in colour, wavy but dull and rough, and set closely against his skull, with a few locks straggling down over his forehead. The skin of his face was a light, rough red, and his cheeks were pinched out above a lumpy jaw as if a sculptor had scooped some of the face out to slap it on below, giving a cast of countenance at once gaunt and aggressive. The brutal lines of his face were redeemed by his eyes, which were mild and always hit by the beginnings of a smile, as if they saw a joke in everything. ‘Well, what d’you want to do, lads?’ he asked.

  ‘Any pictures open?’ someone asked hopefully.

  ‘Not much chance of that,’ he laughed. ‘Let’s try for a drink.’

  Most of the shop windows in the Via Etnea were still shuttered or empty of goods, but a few hundred yards along they came to a bar, a big place, very smart, swarming with plump and prosperous civilians who even in the summer’s heat were all wearing long, beautifully-cut overcoats and rakish trilby hats. The soldiers stood outside for a while, timid and abashed as they stared through the big, plate-glass windows at the deep, green leather armchairs, the chromium fittings and the white-jacketed barmen. The civilians within returned their stare, insolently. ‘Hell,’ said the sergeant, ‘what we waiting for?’ and they went in. Some of them lounged at the bar, and some found armchairs, almost aching with the ecstasy of reclining at ease. They drank vermouth and cold, pale beer. It was wonderful.

  A thickset civilian with a portfolio under his arm sidled up to Sergeant Craddock. ‘Good day,’ he said in English, ‘welcome.’

  Craddock said, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘A drink? You will take a little vermouth with me?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  ‘I am anti-fascist. Salvatore di Pietro, avvocato.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘You want silk stockings, bread, a signorina?’

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘You give me a cigarette, yes?’

  ‘You speak English?’ asked the sergeant.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then f— off,’ said Sergeant Craddock, ‘before I crown you.’ Ling said, ‘’Ere, sarge, this lot’s a bit different from the people down our street.’

  ‘Lice,’ the sergeant answered, ‘they just come crawling out of the woodwork. This lot’s the reason why the people down our street got nothing to eat. Drink up, lads, and let’s go.’

  They strolled through the streets, taking their time in the dry, fierce heat, squinting their eyes (except for a few who owned captured Afrika Korps goggles) against the sun’s glare, asking for nothing more to enjoy than the sight of crowds of people going about their daily lives. They stopped for minutes at a time outside every shop window that had any stock in it, whether it was an ironmonger’s, a haberdasher’s or a bookshop in which every volume was incomprehensible to them. To each they devoted the same solemn attention, discussing the goods on sale as if they were doing their own household shopping in their own High Streets. They went into one or two of the shops. At a stationer’s, they bought all kinds of things which none of them wanted, nibs, postcards, sealing wax, paper-clips, just for an excuse to lean across the counter and handle things, for the joy of spend
ing money and having change handed to them by a smiling girl. At this and other shops which they entered, Sergeant Craddock was their interpreter.

  A man of little education, he had an intensely active mind which was always seeking something on which to exercise itself. At home it had been the garden, and a hundred household gadgets. Here he had concentrated on learning Italian. Most of the men, in the month they had spent on the island, had acquired a considerable vocabulary and were already masters of a strange patter of English and dog-Italian, which enabled them to carry on fluent and animated conversations with the peasants and townsfolk among whom they moved. Craddock had gone about it the hard way, poring for hours at a time over an Italian grammar which the padre had given him, studying rules each of which took him prolonged thought to understand, and painfully memorizing conjugations, genders, lists of pronouns and other mysteries. Throughout the campaign, even in the forward areas, he had taken every opportunity that offered itself to talk with the Sicilians whom they had encountered. The result was that he spoke the language more hesitantly but more effectively than his comrades. Some of the officers had, because of their superior education, made more progress than he had, but he possessed a native sympathy with the labouring folk among whom they moved that was already enabling him to forge ahead in mastering the colloquial speech. At a fruit stall, where the men went wild and bought great armfuls of grapes, oranges, apples, peaches and prickly pears, he surpassed all his previous efforts when, in the course of a heroic bout of bargaining, he shed his self-consciousness and routed the bewildered vendor. They went on their way eating, laughing, filled with happiness. They had more drinks. They found the ice-cream parlour of which they had heard so much. In a filthy delicatessen shop they gorged themselves on hard-boiled eggs and repulsive-looking sea-food, glad to pay the exorbitant prices because spending money was a pleasure in itself.