The Broken Chariot

by Alan Sillitoe

  The old fool even picked it up for him. ‘Can’t lose your identity card, lad, or you won’t know who you are, will you?’

  ‘Not much difficulty there.’ Herbert gave the expected laugh. That bloody cold, with its runny nose calling for the handkerchief so often, had almost done for him. He stowed the card safely in his wallet and looked again at the cover of No Orchids for Miss Blandish set temptingly behind the glass, meanwhile waiting for the Special to turn the corner.

  A mindless and happy wandering among carts and lorries in Covent Garden was ended by a violent splashing of rain. Horse piss was washed away, petrol fumes mellowed, but the wind was cold after rain, the sun fickle.

  At the clarity of the air a sudden panic sent him back to the safety of the Underground, going down at Holborn and getting out at St Pancras. A shadow passed over him in the great space. He was threatened by odours of smoke and steam, wanted to flee but the street was even rowdier. What to do or where to go was the greatest problem on earth. The worst thing was to look bereft in the booking hall of a mainline station.

  His heart thumped at the peculiar sensation of freedom, of having to deal with choice, take risks with reference to nobody else, lock into throngs of people who had a purpose and knew what they had to do. In a German town soldiers with rifles and fixed bayonets might surround him any moment and march him back to the prison camp. At least you’d know what was what.

  The cheerful scene, even an educational experience, told him he would be safe as long as he kept moving and appeared certain of what he wanted to do. But what was that? He could only say it was good to be in England now that April was here. Instinct, welcome reinforcement to his fix, said that other people were his best camouflage, the commoner the better, so he stood at the back of a queue and stayed till an army sergeant in front asked for a ticket to Nottingham. Why not? Herbert’s twenty-one shillings and eight pence was at the ready. Whoever will imagine I’ve gone to such an outlandish place?

  There was a rush along the line to get on board and, well trained in games of murder ball, he forced his way through. A balding middle-aged man in spectacles glared as Herbert fell into a spare seat. Simpson had put the NCOs through a course of unarmed combat, so if it came to a fight he could hurl the weedy twerp through the window.

  He was disappointed. A scrap would have been fun, made him feel less tight, though it wasn’t on because you didn’t draw attention to yourself when on the run. The pathetic man, a clerk most likely, folded his newspaper to read standing up. Maybe he had been wounded in Normandy and was now demobbed, you never could tell, which thought made Herbert give up his seat to a woman and her child.

  He stood in the crowded corridor, back to Caged Birds, though the narrative seemed less gripping now. The train moved slowly through railway yards, and he was glad to be on his way, almost gloating. Let them find me. I’m safe for a hundred and thirty miles, unless we go into a river like the train at the Tay. Life was exciting, helped by the metallic thump-thump of the wheels. The only thing wrong was in being hungry, but that was also part of the escape. Dismal buildings bordered the line, bare bulbs glowing between in the partially lifted blackout. A man stood at one in his undershirt, perfectly still, as if watching every face in the train, like a policeman off duty.

  What peculiar places people lived in. If he had to hole up in such style – he pushed a soldier away who was trying to lean on his shoulder and go to sleep – he might not like his freedom at all. On the other hand maybe he would be glad to live in such a room. He’d be glad to live in even worse at the moment, except that he had to vagabond as far as possible, go somewhere else after – where was it? – Nottingham, and lay a twisting trail to mystify and wear out the most fanatical hue-and-criers.

  The market square seemed vast in the semi-blackout. But for a single trackless bus it looked like an encampment that had been abandoned to flowerbeds and low stone walls. Herbert wasn’t worried about finding a place to sleep, but knew he would sooner or later have to discover a niche into which a policeman was unlikely to poke his nose. His money was almost gone, and his gas mask had been left behind, though he didn’t think there could be any use for that at this late stage of the war.

  Eight boomed from the clock above the Council House and it felt like midnight. On a further exhausting perambulation of the square, pausing again to look at the lions, those same old lions, he saw a pub, or rather heard it, the noise sounding as if the whole population of the town was carousing inside. He edged a way to the bar through a crowd of mostly servicemen.

  Sixpences were draining away but he scorned to spend them carefully. Glancing at an old man close by, dressed in a clean blue overcoat, a cap and scarf, and with an empty half-pint glass by his side, he said: ‘Have a drink on me.’

  The man’s look of surprise was more obvious than his expression of distrust. ‘All right. I’ll have the same again.’

  Herbert, celebrating his escape from school, called for two, and along they came for a shilling.

  ‘Throwing your money around, aren’t you?’

  ‘Not particularly.’ Herbert refrained from sneering. Parsimony was the last refuge of – he couldn’t think what. ‘Perhaps I want to get rid of it. Anyway, it’s a great occasion for me.’

  ‘Is it, then? How much money have you got?’

  Herbert wiped his nose, and explored the cloth caverns of his pockets. ‘Another two shillings.’

  ‘Where did you pick up that stinking cold?’

  The whole damned school had had one. ‘On the train, I suppose.’ Colds were loathsome, only inferior types stricken – till you caught one yourself. ‘It was packed.’

  ‘They usually are. Here’s to your health, which seems a fair toast.’

  Wasn’t there a line in Lullabalero about Nottingham’s fine ale? He’d never tasted anything so good. ‘And to yours, as well.’

  ‘I’m Isaac Frost.’ A frail hand was held out for shaking. ‘What might yours be?’

  He touched the cold fingers. ‘Herbert.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘For the moment.’

  Isaac looked at him pityingly. ‘I’ve met some funny chaps in my time, but not one that throws his money about when he’s got so little.’

  Herbert supposed that his lavish father would easily spend his last shilling treating someone he didn’t know to a drink, especially if he came into a place like this and met one of his old soldiers – except that he most probably wouldn’t set much store by this dive. He took his foot from the brass rail and stood full height. ‘As soon as I’ve nothing left it will collect my mind wonderfully towards getting some more.’

  Isaac adjusted his glasses on hearing such pretentious nonsense. ‘Sounds a cock-eyed notion to me. And you’re a bit too young to be a philosopher. You’re from London, I suppose?’

  Herbert had heard of coppers’ narks, and wondered whether he shouldn’t make a run from this noisy and exuberant den, though pride decided him not to. Either that, he thought, or I’m too done in to care. ‘Thereabouts.’

  ‘What hotel do you propose to put up at?’

  Being laughed at encouraged him to more openness, whether the man was a nark or not. ‘I’m not on the run, if that’s what you mean. I’m seventeen, and want to get a job. As soon as I’m eighteen, though, I’ll enlist.’

  Isaac was appalled at what the war had done to the young. ‘Why do you want to do that?’ A tinkle of broken glass came from further down the hall, and a woman’s scream was followed by such male effing and blinding as made Herbert turn his head, though slowly, to look. The smack of a fist on flesh sounded even over shouts and laughter, and a burly man in evening dress frogmarched a capless glaze-eyed soldier out on to the pavement. ‘There’s always a bit of that going on,’ Isaac said, ‘with so many women on the loose. And you know what soldiers are. But the doormen are very good here at dealing with it.’

  Herbert turned to his drink as if nothing had happened. ‘The army will take care of me for a few y
ears. I need to learn how to kill properly.’

  Isaac laughed in such a way that Herbert wondered if he had asthma, knowing what it sounded like because Dominic had a touch of it when he first came to school. ‘You don’t have to learn a thing like that. Necessity will tell you, if ever you need to. In any case, who would a nice young chap like you want to kill? There’s been enough of that going on in the last five years.’

  ‘My parents, for a start.’

  ‘They seem to have made a good job of you.’ His thin lips curved even more in amusement, as if to say: who the devil have I got here? ‘You should be grateful.’

  ‘They packed me off to boarding school from India when I was seven.’ The laughter at some jokester further down the bar diminished. Herbert, not knowing the right thing to say, or even what he really believed before this sceptical old man, said whatever came to mind. ‘I’d have been quite happy staying where I was.’

  ‘I wish my parents had been able to send me to such a place. I left a hellhole of a school at thirteen to work on a market stall. And then I fought my way up, if you can call it that. Anyway, the best thing you can do is take my advice, and never blame your parents for anything. Whatever you think they did, it wasn’t their fault. And whatever they did do can’t be altered now.’

  ‘Really?’ Herbert hoped his attempt to resist an outright sneer would be obvious to the most imperceptive, or so Isaac surmised. The silly kid’s trying to seem more adult by blaming his deficiencies and troubles on his parents.

  Two half-pints, and the ever biting famishment, not to mention tiredness, made him grip the brass rail to stay upright, while trying to show interest in whatever other rubbish the little man had to say.

  ‘I was a printer for much of my life. Now I’m retired, and live on my own. Why? Well, I like it that way, that’s why. I’ve got a couple of beehive rooms up one of those narrow streets across the square, and as I can see you’re in a fix you’re welcome to come back and sleep on the floor. I won’t be the perfect host and offer my bed, because I’m sixty and need it myself.’

  Herbert knew he should say no, thank you very much, it’s awfully kind, I must be getting on, but he put himself into the hands of this stranger because he was too much starving and done for to know what to do or where to go next.

  Stars spun over the sky; he looked at pavements and tarmac to get his equilibrium settled. ‘It’s not good to drink on an empty stomach,’ Isaac said. ‘Certainly not Nottingham ale.’ He led the way up the stairs of a damp-smelling decrepit building of offices and store rooms, turning from the landing to say: ‘I’ve told you my full name. What’s yours? And I don’t want an alias, either.’

  The question signified a Rubicon that would have to be crossed sooner or later, a turbulent river for Herbert after his determination to follow the Caged Birds code of concealment, but he had blabbed plenty in the pub so he decided that a little more truth wouldn’t get him turned over to the law. Trust was laziness, a deadly sin, but even so he answered: ‘Herbert Thurgarton-Strang.’

  ‘One of them?’ Isaac worked his keys at the lock. ‘We’ll have to find you a shorter monicker, otherwise the blokes in the factory will make your life a misery.’

  ‘I’m not going to have anything to do with a factory.’

  ‘You’ll want a job won’t you?’

  Herbert followed him into the small room. The old man’s brain must have been working overtime. ‘Well, yes, I suppose I do. Or I well might.’

  ‘You’ve got problems, and I’m wondering what to do with you. Anyway, Thurgarton-Strang, in the meantime, I’ll cook us some chips.’ He took off his hat, overcoat and scarf. ‘I’ve got spuds, fat, and a loaf of bread, so you won’t go to sleep on an empty stomach, which it looks like you’ve got with that bony face. There’s tea and milk as well but, alas, no sugar.’

  ‘That’s awfully kind of you.’ His speech sounded clumsy even to himself, as if he had landed in a foreign country with an obsolete phrasebook. ‘Very kind I must say.’

  ‘Kind is a word you don’t have any cause to use,’ Isaac said with a wry smile. The smell of paraffin, soap and dampness pricked Herbert’s nostrils. The old cove was helpful, but as domineering as a teacher, especially when he went on: ‘Maybe I succumbed in a weak moment in asking you to come back here, though I always respond to an attempt at generosity. Unless it was a subtle ruse of yours to treat a stranger to a drink out of your last few bob.’ He looked at Herbert, as if holding a new penny up to the light. ‘But I hardly think so, if I’m any judge of character.’

  The walls were mainly bookshelves, with a table close up, and two chairs of the sort used in canteens. A second room through an archway, little more than an alcove, contained a bed and a chest of drawers. ‘It wasn’t a ruse,’ Herbert said, ‘I can tell you.’

  ‘Sit down, then, and don’t be offended – while I get to work.’ He filled a kettle and saucepan at a tap on the landing, and Herbert drew out a book to find that half was in a script he hadn’t seen before. It wasn’t Greek or Hindustani, but whatever it was suggested that Isaac, though only a printer, might be something of a scholar, and not so lowly and simple as he had thought at first. A smaller curtain in a corner covered his larder, and in a few minutes the room was pungent with the smell of frying. He must be lonely though, to do what he was doing so well, cutting spuds into chips for someone he had just met. ‘I’ve even got a pat of butter for our bread. It’s a lucky night. Every man should be able to cook, otherwise he’s no man.’

  Herbert sat down to the most welcome meal of his life. ‘It’s marvellous,’ starvation diminishing with every mouthful.

  Isaac ate daintily for a man in such accommodation, and Herbert saw the skullcap on his bald head as something to keep off the chill. ‘Which you are too young to feel with your black thatch,’ Isaac said, when Herbert politely mentioned it. ‘It may well be marvellous grub, but I’ll burn in hell, if there is such a place, for eating a mixture like this. However, necessity knows no bounds, with which I’m sure the sagest rabbis would agree.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t they?’

  ‘Well, my son, I’m Jewish, and this fat is not what they would call kosher, though I get it when I have to.’

  ‘Kosher?’

  ‘Ritually clean, to you.’

  Herbert guided a piece of bread around the plate with his fork to mop up the fat. ‘Why shouldn’t you eat it?’

  ‘That – is a very long story. Very long indeed. You’ll have to bury yourself in Leviticus to find out.’

  Herbert felt himself to be what people meant by intoxicated, and that the beer was responsible. He was also drunk with freedom and food, for on standing up the room seemed to be without walls, and he hoped he wasn’t going to faint. After being locked in all his life he belonged nowhere at the moment, no rules or walls surrounding him. Every nerve tingled with a mixture of relief and trepidation, but on the whole it was good, even better than he would ever have thought good to be. Acting out of his own will, Fate had led him to this funny old chap who for one night anyway had given him a place to sleep. What more did he need? He’d never had the chance to bump into such a person before, and all he had heard from his father about his sort was a slighting comment on one who had kept a store in Simla. How strange and wonderful life was! He sat down and said, as if to flatter him for his generosity: ‘I’ll bet you have lots of interesting stories to tell.’

  Isaac laid the plates in a washing up bowl and set it by the door, in place of a steel helmet which he put on to a pile of books. ‘I used to look a sight in that when I did my firewatching. Yes, I’ve plenty of stories, and I might tell you one sometime. I won’t go into any now though, because as soon as I’ve done with this cigarette it’ll be time for bed.’

  They sat as if silence was part of the ritual until Herbert, confident that Isaac was to be trusted, said he found it hard to believe he had left his bloody awful school only that morning.

  ‘In that case you won’t mind sleeping rough.’ He
took a blanket from a cupboard. ‘Though I’ve slept rougher in my time, let me tell you. Spread this over you when you get your head down.’

  Herbert unpacked his spare trousers, jacket, shirt, underwear, socks and handkerchiefs, complimenting himself on the forethought of bringing so much. He remembered the wet tents he had slept in. ‘I can hardly believe my luck.’

  The response was a don’t-know-you’re-bornlook. ‘There’s no such thing.’ Isaac called from the alcove where he was changing into pyjamas. ‘Everything’s pre-ordained, as you’ll find out more and more as you go on.’

  Herbert opened his eyes. Sunlight, albeit watery, came into the room. He folded his blanket with cadet neatness and cleared the space, feeling as if the awareness of freedom all through the night had doubled the intensity of his sleep. Waking up penniless gave him no worry at all.

  ‘Borrow this cap,’ Isaac said after breakfast of sugarless tea, bread and jam, ‘for when you go to the Ministry of Labour, otherwise they’ll take one look at you and make you a penpusher. You’ll earn a lot more in a factory, and mix in better. But watch your accent. Act the silent sort, as far as they’ll let you, and get a grasp of the accent as soon as you can. You’ll find they’re a lot more tolerant in a factory than an office. Another thing is that for a while anyway say yes to whatever you’re asked to do. As for your proper name, forget it. Tell ’em at the Labour that you’ve just left school and your certificate’s coming from Ireland where you were evacuated.’

  He cleared the table and took out a box of pens and rubbers and inks. ‘Give me your Identity Card.’ Herbert looked at it as well, opened before them both. ‘This is one advantage in having been a printer,’ Isaac said. ‘I’m going to alter it so that Ernest Bevin himself wouldn’t know the difference.’

  ‘Isn’t it a bit criminal? I mean, what if I’m caught out?’

  ‘You won’t be.’ Isaac cracked his fingers to make the joints supple. ‘A little innocent forgery to fox the bureaucrats never hurt anyone. We’ll make your surname into Gedling, which is a district around here. Bert Gedling you’ll be, and a good honest name it sounds. If and when you want to join the army I’ll change it back for you.’