A Childs War

by Richard Ballard

  “That’s it,” he said, “Now kick with your feet like you did before and, you’ll see, it’ll drive you along. You’re getting along famously now!”

  This was just beginning to happen when George saw that everyone else was scrambling out of the pool and a man in a uniform was gesticulating at him and demanding that he should follow their example. George picked Alex up quickly, carried him to the steps and clambered out of the water after him. They ran over to join Edna who had moved all their gear back to about ten yards from the pool. As they sat down by her they saw, when she pointed them out, three large army lorries parked by the gate. At least, Alex did. George ran to his cubicle to collect his glasses. As he sat down again, the tailgate of each lorry was lowered and thirty or so soldiers in denim overalls, tin hats and webbing, carrying rifles, lined up beside them. The soldiers began to double march into the park in single file, to line up again at the side of the pool from the deep end to where the four-foot mark was painted on the side.

  Their sergeant stood by the shallow end and gave the word of command. They all jumped into the water: boots, tin helmets, rifles and all and made for the other side, kicking with their legs and doing their best to keep their weapons dry by raising one hand over their heads. Some succeeded; some did not. Then they put the rifles on the pool’s edge and hauled themselves out of the water, standing there dripping unless, like some exhibitionists among them, they shook themselves like hilarious dogs.

  George, Edna and Alex watched them do this several times. The sergeant good-naturedly encouraged those who had let their rifles go under the water not to do it again. After four attempts, they seemed to have mastered it, except three men, whom the sergeant separated out to be encouraged further, while some of the rest, permitted to sit down on the grass on the other side of the pool from the civilian spectators, discovered what the effect of chlorinated water on packets of cigarettes and boxes of matches was. A few other smokers were pleased to find that the driver of one of the lorries, with whom they had deposited their smoking requisites, had joined them and lit up accordingly. George was pleased to comment that their camaraderie was such as to let them to offer smokes to the others and cheer them up. He also admired the training technique and control exhibited by the sergeant, which reminded him of the skills he used to exercise himself long ago.

  “If I jumped into a swimming pool with all my clothes on and my shoes, you’d tell me off, wouldn’t you?” Alex commented.

  “Yes. But you’re not training to go ashore on a hostile beach with a lot of Jerries shooting at you!” said George

  “Is that why they’re doing it, then?”

  “I imagine so. You know I told you about the hopes for a second front being opened in the west soon. Well, it looks as if this lot are in training for it. They couldn’t ask the German gunners to wait while they sat down on the beach and put their uniforms back on with towels round their backsides, could they?”

  The soldiers went behind the cubicles George and Alex had used, and emerged a few minutes later in dry battledress, with two or three others who had not gone into the water taking their wet things in bags back to the lorries. Before the soldiers left, they sat down on the grass in groups and carefully dried and oiled their rifles with materials that were given out.

  Alex said to his parents,

  “They all seem pretty cheerful, despite what they had to do.”

  “Poor young devils,” said Edna. “If they didn’t laugh, they’d cry.”

  “Yes. I hope not too many of them are lost when the time comes,” added George.

  There was a pensive silence.

  “Let’s have our sandwiches, then. Are you going to change first, George, or are you going to drip over everything?”

  “Now, now!” smiled her husband, wagging his finger at her. “Come on, boy. We’d better do as we’re told.”

  George instructed Alex into the mysteries of rolling his socks onto still damp feet and packaging his wet costume inside the less wet towel, after which they enjoyed their picnic with Edna, although the preponderance of beetroot was not entirely welcome. She even managed to smile outright when George eventually put into words what she had been thinking herself:

  “I’m glad we saw them being trained. Gives us hope that we might start getting our own back one day not too far off. However,” he went on, “I’m also glad that when we went ashore in whalers we only got our bare feet wet. Fancy having to carry all that kit as well as a rifle!”

  Then he noticed he had said the wrong thing. Edna was not able to be anxious on behalf of the young soldiers without going back to feeling sorry for herself.

  When the cake she had made had all gone - and George noticed that she ate a good deal of it herself for comfort - they packed up the things and made for the bus stop.

  “Do you two think it’s turned cold?” asked Edna. “Or is it only me?”

  “I feel quite cold myself,” George lied.

  VII

  “When you were in the Royal Navy, Mr Ryland, did you ever resent the decisions being made over your head?” asked the young American. George and Lieutenant Zimmerman were in the armchairs in front of the fire in the front room after the young man had eaten with the family one evening. No one had drawn the blackout curtains so there was no light on and Alex was sitting on the floor in front of George, so near the fire that his face seemed to burn, watching the flames licking around the coal and then becoming absorbed into the glow they created. Edna had suggested they go and talk somewhere other than round the table in the kitchen, volunteering to clear up without them so that she could get out her sewing machine again in the living room and finish the winter coat she was making for Alex.

  “Of course I did. In fact for most of the time. You forget I wasn’t an officer, like you. My decisions involved a choice of procedures already laid down by other people. The three buttons on my cuff meant that I had to hand things on, not think them up.”

  “I’m only just an officer and have no experience in things of a military nature at all. All I am is a trainee interrogator in case we capture a few Germans when we finally get going. I finished infantry training and then was picked for this course because I had had good grades in Spanish at high school. I’m not doing very well with learning the language of Goethe’s Faust, or even of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In fact, I find it hard going in the extreme.”

  “But haven’t you inherited something of what it was like to be German in the last century from your people?” asked George.

  “They were businessmen in Württemburg, not Prussian soldiers. Besides, they stopped being German Americans twenty years ago and became American Americans. My father and mother speak Idaho indoors and at church they listen to Latin, but I’ve never heard a word of German in our family, even from my grandparents. I think they put our names in a helmet to choose the make-up of these courses. It sounds good, going to Oxford of all places, which even we country hicks have heard of, but I think any Kraut whom I interrogate is going to laugh uncontrollably. The old don who’s supposed to be coaching me certainly does, even though he does it politely, up his sleeve.”

  “Go on. You’re only three weeks into the course. You’ll do it.”

  “Yeah. I don’t have a choice in the matter anyway, do I? I’m sorry to let off my steam, but I’m away from my folks, and you mustn’t mind if I make use of you, though that’s presumptuous on my part.”

  “Any time you want to get something off your chest while you’re here, you know where to come.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “You are welcome,” George responded in his friendly way as Alex could see when he turned round from the fire to see its glow reflected on his father’s kindly smile towards the young man.

  “Can I ask you something now?” George went on.

  “Of course.”

  “How do you Americans feel about being involved in this European war? Are you here just because they told you to come, or is it a matter of conviction?”

/>   Zimmerman laughed before he said,

  “I didn’t have a choice, but there is something pretty evil going on in the Third Reich. Our church at home has pretty good relations with the synagogue and we’ve heard what’s been happening with the deportations and confiscation of Jews’ property and houses in Germany itself and all the occupied countries. Anyway, after Pearl Harbor, fighting Germany went with getting our revenge against Japan. You could say we’re committed to the cause, politically and militarily, right through our nation. Certainly in our state there aren’t many gainsayers. No family wanted to see its own sons go to war, but we thought the cause was just. We all went to see ‘Mrs Miniver’ at the movies.”

  “I didn’t see that. Over here they said it was sentimental.”

  “Nothing like a good weepie to get the determination going! No, the bombing of the village church and the little ships at Dunkirk made it plain that, if you were standing up to the threat, we ought to stand with you. Once Greater Germany was in being after you’d been conquered, would Hitler really leave us unmolested? No he wouldn’t!”

  “What about when it’s all over?” said George. “When Hitler’s gone and Japan back in her own islands? The trouble is that last time, when President Wilson went out of office, America’s unwillingness to be involved any more meant the effective end of the League of Nations. Personally, I think that some form of world government is the only answer, or we’ll keep on having to fight dictators for ever and ever.”

  “I’m sure there’s a lot in what you say. We can’t do this every twenty years, can we?”

  “Do you think your politicians will stay interested in Europe this time, then?”

  “I think they’ve got to. I’m not so sure they’d take kindly to world government, though. We did fight a war of independence, didn’t we? ”

  “Do you think you might go into politics yourself when this is over?”

  “My rhetorical questions suggest it, don’t they?” he laughed. “The only thing I can say now is, let’s get it over and then see . . .”

  By this time, Alex was sitting with his back to the fire, intent on following what was being said. He said nothing himself, but became aware that George had very definite opinions which, given the right company, he was willing to express with conviction. Alex did not have the vocabulary for all that, but what he heard was another base for the statue he was casting of his father. He had never heard him in the company of someone educated and intelligent before. He had enjoyed listening and was very resentful when the door burst open to admit Edna, whose first words were,

  “Can I get anyone a cup of tea?” and her next speech was twofold, without catching her breath:

  “Look at the curtains wide open. Don’t you know there’s a war on? (Alex sensed Lieutenant Zimmerman flinching). What’s that boy doing there listening to all your talk? Come on, Alex. School in the morning: off to bed now. Wash your face properly.”

  “That’s right,” said the lieutenant, “School in the morning. I’d better wash my face too and see if I can concentrate for another couple of hours or so.”

  The tall American stood up and stretched and Alex did likewise. Then they both went out of the room. Edna pulled one of the curtains and George hurried round to pull the other one. When they met in the middle, George said to her, “I hope he’ll be all right when the balloon goes up. He’s very down in the mouth about it all.”

  “You mean Fred Zimmerman?”

  “Yes. He says all the right things, but he says them with a fatal air. I hope he’ll be safe when the time comes. Or, at least, that someone else will look after him.”

  “You can’t take on the world’s troubles, George,” said Edna.

  “No. I suppose there are enough round here one way or the other.”

  A few days later, the lieutenant came back unexpectedly, packed his things and said his farewells. He could not cope with language learning and was transferred back to his infantry unit. He seemed relieved and desperate at the same time. In a few days, Edna had a letter thanking her for her kind hospitality towards him and a postcard later from the Lake District, which contained no real news. George and Edna felt very sorry for him. He was at the age that any child they might have had when they were first married would have been. For a moment they forgot that all they had set out to do was raise their own income from the rent being paid for providing Americans with bed and board for a time. For many years the question was asked, “I wonder what did happen to poor Fred?” and they guessed at the answer, though no information came as to where, exactly, he met his end.

  VIII

  Arrangements were made for Christmas: George’s mother and father were coming to stay for it and were going to arrive on Christmas Eve. Edna was very apprehensive because of the rough start to married life they had given her. So was George because he feared they might begin their campaign against her all over again. As for Alex, it had been such a long time since he had seen them that he could barely remember what they looked like.

  George went to meet them at the station with Alex in tow and got off on the wrong foot because the train had already arrived. George recognized the short but upright figure of his father on the station steps, wearing his grey Homburg hat and his light coloured Burberry raincoat, and broke into a run to meet him. Though he knew it was not the best thing to say, he began with an apology,

  “I’m sorry. The timetable said two twenty-six and it’s only twenty past now.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said his father. “Mother’s still in the station minding the luggage.”

  “You stay here with Alex,” said George. “I’ll go and find her.”

  Alex was left alone to look up at his grandfather and experience relief when he saw him smiling down.

  “You’re a lot bigger than you were when we last met, aren’t you?” was the greeting offered to him.

  “Yes,” was all he could think of to say, and they stood side by side looking at the other side of the railway bridge with the faded Shanks’s Pony poster on it that had encouraged people to walk to their destinations. They were both beginning to feel cold and had not found any common ground for conversation as yet.

  The embarrassment was ended when George re-emerged from the station with two cases and his mother. The first thing Alex noticed about his grandmother was her large hat: black with a crumpled silk flower in front. She caught hold of Alex’s shoulders and bent down to give him a kiss, which tickled his face.

  “He’s grown, hasn’t he, son?” she said to George, who could not help himself saying, “Yes. Little boys do,” in reply. The slight ground frost this caused soon passed, however, because Alex took charge of the situation. By this time they were near the road where they could see the railway bridge.

  “That’s where Mum and I saw a bus that was too big to go under have its top sliced off, Grandad.”

  This meant that both George’s parents talked to their grandson, going on in front of him, each holding one of Alex’s hands and he was left merely to struggle with the two cases behind them, feeling his truss slipping and hoping that Christmas would not last too long.

  Edna had put her coat on and come to wait by the front hedge. When she saw them crossing the canal bridge, she came to meet them. She went to her mother-in-law to kiss her, and then to her father-in-law. She saw George, and took one of the cases from him.

  George’s mother, seeing this, said,

  “Are you fully recovered now, Edna?”

  “I can manage most things now,” she replied and they were at the front gate, except there was no front gate any more: workmen had arrived one afternoon a while ago and taken it away, together with the railings that were under the privet hedge. All that remained of the gate was a small stump in the ground on which it used to swivel, the bracket where the top of it was and the end of the latch embedded in the party wall.

  George breathlessly elbowed his way past Edna and Alex to be first at the open front door.

  “Welcome to our
home,” he said, smiling apprehensively at his father. “It isn’t much compared with yours, but it’s a roof over our head until things look up a bit.”

  He then kicked himself mentally for being so diffident.

  “Looks all right to me, son,” remarked his mother, and followed him in.

  George carried the case he still had upstairs and made for the back room where all signs of Fred had gone and there was a new counterpane on the bed. His mother came in behind him, smiling. George was surprised to see that she looked old now. She had taken her hat off and her wispy hair, held in a little bun, was pure white, though it was no more than grey the last time he saw it. Her face had become very lined and her teeth looked too big for her face. He put the case down where she could unpack it and was about to go and get the other one when she held his arm and said,

  “George, one of the reasons we have come is to stop you feeling that we are going to carry on disliking Edna for ever. Please stop behaving so awkwardly. Just be yourself and everything will be fine. You two have been through a lot together in the last three years and we have not come to make things more difficult. Your father is very anxious that we put things right, but you know he will never reveal his feelings. He has asked me to say this to you.”

  Again, the discomfort was assuaged by Alex, who ran in to say,

  “Gran, Mum says she’s made the tea and would you like some now?”

  “Tell Mum I’m coming right away and, yes, I would very much like a cup.” Then, smiling at George again, “I meant what I said, son.”

  Leaving her coat and hat behind, she followed Alex downstairs.

  George was bewildered. After twenty years of married life with Edna, his mother had never offered such an olive branch and here she was blurting all that out as soon as she arrived. He could not pretend that he was unhappy about it. He thought it very unlikely that his mother would say the same to Edna and he wondered why he should still feel like a schoolboy in her presence at the age of forty-two. He waited a bit. He was still fatigued by having carried both cases nearly all the way from the station and sat down on the small armchair by the window. He looked out on the untidy garden, past his shed and over the wall to the dairy where he spent his working hours and quietly said to anyone who was listening,