There's No Home

by Alexander Baron

  He’d have to write to the mother, too, about the other boy. Pity, it seemed a waste to die so drearily after the dice had come up the right way for twenty-seven successive days of battle. That Chap Up There, whoever he was, with whom the padre professed to be acquainted, ought to leave infantrymen alone when they came out of the line. After all, fair was fair. Nice kid, too. Bit of a boy scout, but a good footballer. Soft on the outside but the right stuff underneath. He had run a message once, from his platoon to the captain, with mortar bombs dropping all round him. He had come scrambling down into the gully where company headquarters was established, gasping, ‘Phew, what price Errol Flynn?’

  Now, about the letter. ‘He was loved by all who knew him.’ That was the usual thing. And ‘he died instantly, without any pain.’ Perhaps, ‘he gave his life trying to help a comrade.’ That was a laugh. Oh, well, Piggott would help to write it. The first job was to see the brother.

  In a couple of hours the sunshine would be white and dazzling, the heat African, but at this time of the morning the light was gay and gentle and English, painting the pavements a daffodil-yellow and filling the air with an awakening warmth. Captain Rumbold experienced a pleasant, after-breakfast feeling as he approached the billet.

  But when he turned into the shadowed porchway his plans and his complacency were destroyed. A few minutes ago Harry Jobling, released from his cell so that one of the sentries might take him to the cookhouse for breakfast, had knocked his escort unconscious and escaped.

  §§§§

  When Craddock was angry or worried his forehead was deeply corrugated, making him look older and more powerful than he was. The men saw this and were subdued in his presence throughout the day. They had many questions to ask him about the Jobling affair, but for the present they restrained themselves. He was bitter against Jobling, for whose escape he would be held responsible; he was depressed, too, at the thought of the man lurking somewhere in the dockside slums, lonely and desperate, being driven by rage and blind grief step by step towards destruction. It was only when he had completed his duties and was washing himself after tea that he remembered his promise to see the woman along the street again.

  Her door was closed. He knocked with his knuckles and entered in response to her cry of ‘Avanti!’ She was just tucking the baby into its cot. She offered him a quick smile of pleasure, drew a chair back from the table for him, and went on talking in rapid Italian with a young girl who stood in the shadow on the other side of the cot. She paused and turned to Craddock again. ‘This is my cousin,’ she explained, ‘Nella.’

  The girl grimaced. ‘Sebastiana – but Nella is nicer, isn’t it?’ She was very young, and her slim body moved freely inside her loose dress. She came into the light, and Craddock saw her clearly. Her smooth black hair, piled upon her shoulders, framed a face that was dark and flawless, oval in shape with a pointed chin. The first impression that she gave was one of shyness and childish purity, but when she smiled at him with her head bowed and her eyes half-closed she looked as sly and wicked as the Mona Lisa. She said, ‘I must go now. My mamma awaits me.’ She scampered without dignity across the room, but at the door she composed herself and smiled at him again. She said, ‘Ciao!’ and vanished.

  Craddock laughed, and jerked his head towards the door. ‘How old?’

  ‘Fifteen. My cousin. She lives nearby with her mother. Some nights she stays here with me. People do not think well here of a married woman who lives alone. My husband’s mother stayed with me, but she died a month ago, when there were bombardments and no food. Later, perhaps, I will go to live with someone of the family, but for the present Nella keeps me company.’

  ‘She has the,’ – he could not think of the word he wanted – ‘the look of a woman.’

  Graziella laughed. ‘She is ardent. But I watch her. She is a virgin. It is necessary to watch her, always. Now, with the soldiers – they will leave her alone, you think, if they know that she is a child? You will watch, too?’

  He was embarrassed at the sudden assumption of intimacy, but he said, ‘Have no fear.’ He took some tins from his pockets and put them on the table. ‘Here! Milk, for the baby, another of milk, some chocolate, some biscuits, and for you a tin of beef.’

  She clasped her hands. ‘Ah, it is good of you. I thank you. My poor little boy, he needs the milk so much.’ She gathered up the tins. ‘You have no bread?’

  He frowned at the impertinence of the request and answered, ‘I cannot bring you bread. We do not eat it ourselves. Biscuits are good enough for us.’

  ‘Ah, no. I was not thinking of that. I have a little bread. It is not good bread, but perhaps you would like to eat a piece of it.’

  He relaxed. ‘No. We eat well. But thank you.’

  He moved awkwardly about the room while she arranged the tins on a shelf. He knew what she expected, what all these women expected. Several of his men were already ‘fixed up’. He was not wild for it, but it seemed unmanly not to make the next move. He feared, particularly, that she would think him cowardly; and he felt, obscurely, that with her he could rid himself of the strain and depression he had experienced throughout the day. They were looking at each other, and avoiding each other’s look. The silence shamed him. He advanced upon her and drove her back to the wall. She looked up at him with fear. He took her by the shoulders and sought her mouth with his. She turned her head away and her full soft cheek was against his lips. He was not sure yet whether this was play or an insult. As soon as he had come within a foot of her he had felt the heat that she radiated, a heat that he had known with no other woman. He could see a palpitation beneath her dress. He tried, with one hand, to force her mouth up to his. She resisted, and repulsed him with a sudden push of her knees. She put her hand up to protect her mouth, and said, ‘No! My kisses are for my husband.’

  He was about to fall upon her again when he saw the despair in her face. He hesitated, the violence drained out of him, and he moved away, uttering a little grunt of derision at his own defeat.

  She said, ‘Go now.’

  He could not apologize, but he stood his ground as if waiting for an explanation.

  She remained leaning against the wall, her head turned away. At last she found the courage to meet his eyes. She had a bruised, sullen air. She said, ‘I thought I could have a friend without being a whore.’

  He lit a cigarette and held the packet out to her. She shook her head, and suddenly she smiled again. ‘Let us go outside. It is better in the street.’ She walked to the door, with a silent, animal grace, and he followed.

  When they were sitting in the street she said, in a conversational tone, ‘I do not know how it is elsewhere. They say in other places it is different, but in this place, among our kind of people, a woman is a virgin, a wife or a whore. I am not a virgin,’ – she smiled a little – ‘and I do not want to be a whore.’

  ‘I know,’ Craddock said, ‘forget it. What’s your little boy’s name?’

  ‘Fifo. It is short for Filippo.’

  ‘How long have you not seen your husband?’

  ‘A year. No letters for four months.’

  ‘You love him?’

  ‘Love?’ She shrugged her shoulders. ‘My Vincenzo is a good man. He was good to me. He was strong and he worked hard and gave me his money. He bought me little presents, and sometimes we laughed together. Here a wife does not expect all that. Few women are so fortunate.’

  ‘What work did he do?’

  ‘He was a labourer in the port. In the army, an infantry man.’

  ‘We are infantry.’

  ’I know.’

  ‘That chocolate, you can eat some of it yourself. I will bring more.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She paused, as if trying to find a safe topic of conversation. ‘Do many of your men desert?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If they did, the Germans would win. ‘We,’ – his resources failed him again – ‘like animals – under them.’

&nbs
p; ‘We are like animals now.’

  ‘Finished, all that. It will be different.’

  ‘Rosario says all masters are the same.’

  ‘We think differently. The people can be masters.’

  ‘That is a dream.’

  ‘Many are dreaming.’

  Craddock was interrupted by a shout from the direction of the billet. ‘Sergeant Craddock! Hey, sergeant!’ Piggott came running towards them, his fat body wobbling above his short legs. ‘Hey, sarge!’ The few seconds’ exertion in the sunshine had covered his face with a glistening film of sweat. ‘I got news. Bad news.’

  They’ve just sent a message from Headquarters. It’s Jobling. He hasn’t lost any time, the silly, bloody, crazy idiot. He’s just turned up there with a pistol – I suppose he bought it in the town, they’re ten a penny in the black market – an’ he took a potshot at Broom. Thank heavens he missed. But he got away, and the fat’s in the fire now, properly. The redcaps have put out an alarm, and the whole bloody army’s after him. God help him when they catch him now.’

  ‘The captain know?’

  ‘Yes. He’s in the office. He wants to see you.’

  ‘I’m coming now.’ Craddock made his excuses to Graziella and hurried after Piggott.

  §§§§

  Sergeant Craddock had a room in the billet. The quarters of the rifle companies were scattered about the town, and the colonel had decided that the sergeants should sleep close by their men instead of in their own Mess at Headquarters.

  Late that night he was still awake, lying in his blankets listening to Corporal Honeycombe, his room-mate, stirring and muttering in the hot darkness. He could not make up his mind about Graziella. He was not dismayed by her attitude, but he was uneasy. He knew that if he pressed her she would capitulate: he remembered her hunted expression, her heaving breast, the damp heat of her shoulders beneath her thin dress. She was not a woman to play at love and if he forced a decision he might upset her whole life. On the other hand they were both human. How long could they keep up their present relationship without strain and hostility creeping into it? And then, he thought, what did she really want? A man never knew. A woman might repulse him and despise him for not persisting.

  He had not much experience with women to guide him. Before his marriage there had been a succession of fumbling episodes with girls at the factory and one night spent with a flashy blonde he had met in a pub, a woman whose cynicism and self-possession had abashed him. He felt deeply affectionate towards his wife but he had never known any depths of passion with her. Their married life had consisted of half a dozen ten-day leaves, during which he had always felt like a visitor in the house rather than its master. She would spend hours absorbed in her housework or with the baby and only at intervals, as if reminded by a sense of duty, would she come to him as a pleasant companion; love was a concession that she granted, not without tenderness, at nights. In the Army he had only been unfaithful to his wife with one woman, a cheerful, sensible bus conductress, herself married to a soldier serving overseas, who had kept him company during his last three months in Plymouth before coming abroad. She had been a good friend and a genial drinking partner. One night, walking home with her, he had pushed her up against a wall and had his will of her. Afterwards she had rearranged her clothing and said, ‘That’s the last time, Joe, if you want to keep on seeing me.’ But when, on the eve of his departure, he had gone to her and said, ‘I think we’re shovin’ off, Bet, in a day or two, for keeps,’ she had taken him home to spend the night with her. He remembered her with warmth.

  If he hesitated now at the prospect of becoming involved with Graziella, it was not because he was deterred by any principles. He would grin when one of his companions tried to moralize about sex, and would say, ‘Dry up, mate, you can’t make rules for that game.’ Nevertheless there was something that discouraged him.

  §§§§

  The fact was that Sergeant Craddock had lost track of his future; he was dimly aware of the fact and was disturbed by it. Once he had had plans and ambitions for a life very different from the one he was now leading. He had gone into the radio factory after working for years in useless, errand-boy occupations, in the hope that there he might find an interesting job, a channel for his wasted intelligence. Work on the assembly line had turned out as boring and as futile as any of his previous jobs. Undismayed, he had enrolled for a correspondence course in radio engineering, and for his first two years in the Army he had spent his spare time carrying on with the course. Army life at that time was empty and unexciting, the war was remote and unreal; his marriage in nineteen-forty-one had sharpened his private ambitions and he had worked all the harder. Then, in nineteen-forty-two, he had been sent to one of the new battle schools that were changing the spirit of the Army. A new interest had flooded into the vacuum of his life. His keen mind and sturdy body had responded to the excitement of war. Here was a test, such as he had never known, of quick wits and initiative. Here were trials, each more desperate, that drove the body beyond the last known limits of human endurance and proved to it that it was capable of undreamed-of feats. Here was a sport, the sport of killing, that was more exacting, more breathless, more dangerous than any he had known. There was a wealth of technical knowledge to be mastered, in weapons, explosives, tactics. Promotion came, and with it the new satisfaction of leadership. The future faded out of his consciousness and the past began to blur. His wife still wrote and asked him (for she was still eager about the life they were going to make after the war) how he was getting on with his correspondence course, and he would answer that everything was going well, although he had long since dropped it. Yes, he had lost track of his future.

  Now, only four months out of England, he was aware that he had a wife and a baby girl, of whom he was fond and to whom he recognized his responsibilities, but he could no longer visualize them clearly unless he had their pictures in front of him. ‘After the war’ was something which he no longer talked or thought about. Sometimes he would speculate about the future of the world, for politics interested him, but never about his own. It was somewhere away in the mists, impossible to discern. He did not know it, but he was already convinced subconsciously that he could not possibly survive.

  When, sometimes, he managed to wrench his thoughts back to the subject, it was not to make concrete plans for himself, but only to think of his wife and child as the only certainties that awaited him out there in those dark mists, the only entities to which he could anchor himself if he ever wanted to make anything at all of the rest of his life. Thus, although he had no profound scruples about married fidelity, he felt that it would not do to let himself drift too far away from his wife, to increase with woman after woman the distance between them and the difficulty of reunion.

  Honeycombe was writhing and thumping about in his blankets, talking to himself rapidly and unintelligibly. He started up, and interrupted the sergeant’s thoughts with a shout of ‘They’re coming through the vines!’ He sat up, trembling.

  ‘Hi-aye,’ said Craddock. ‘Have a fag.’

  Honeycombe wiped the sweat from his face and expelled a long, scarcely controlled breath. He added sheepishly, ‘I was dreaming about them bastards.’

  Craddock knew that he meant the Germans.

  The corporal lit his cigarette. ‘That was a do, wasn’t it?’

  ‘The Pink Farmhouse?’

  ‘Ah. Thought it was my lot that time. Them up on the top there, tossing grenades down into the ditch. And that bloody Spandau in the barn. Kep’ quiet till we was right on top of it.’ He pulled his blankets over him again. ‘Queer, I’d forgotten all about it till tonight. You think you never will, but you do.’

  ‘Funny how you forget, isn’t it?’

  Honeycombe said, ‘Ah. Seems a long time already, doesn’t it?’ But the sergeant did not answer. He was thinking of Graziella.

  Honeycombe said, ‘Night, Joe.’

  Craddock was silent. He lay for a long time watching the red glow
of his companion’s cigarette, and trying within himself to recapture what he had felt when he was close to the woman.

  Chapter Five

  THE word ‘shop’ which, to the soldiers, called up visions of plate-glass windows, awnings and neatly stocked counters, hardly seemed appropriate when they applied it to the den in which Rosario and his mother lived. It was next door to Graziella’s dwelling and, like it, consisted of one room opening out on to the street. The only difference was that, while Graziella used the whole of her space as living accommodation, Rosario and his mother only occupied a small strip of floor against the rear wall. In the foreground were trestle benches, with a narrow space to pass between; these and the shelves on the walls were laden with sacks of beans, split peas, dried melon seeds, maize, dried figs, prickly pears, pasta, peppers and other eatables, with casks of wine, drums of paraffin and flagons of olive oil. Ropes of garlic hung on the inside of the door and in the barred window. All of the dwellings in this quarter of the town were of the same size. Most of them had to accommodate large families. Many of them were also shops like Rosario’s, or workshops where the breadwinner toiled with his children swarming and screaming in every corner.

  At eight o’clock in the morning Rosario opened the door and admitted a little strip of sunshine into the premises. The improvised counters were a barrier that prevented the daylight from ever penetrating to the rear part of the room. The air inside was heavy with the smell of garlic and of human occupation, and Rosario stepped out into the open air with pleasure.

  Graziella’s front door was still closed. He looked at it with savage yearning. All the strength inside him was urging his body to crash through the flimsy door and to confront her. He could imagine her, startled, in her bed, her hair in a black disorder upon the pillow, her face beautiful with terror. The close warmth of her room was in his nostrils. He had been dogging her for months but he had never done more than glare at her or utter a few inarticulate words. She was careful never to be alone with him and whenever he contrived to come close to her she would daunt him with a glance, her lips compressed, her eyes angry and imperious.