by Melvyn Bragg
‘This is a real rabbit punch.’ He grinned up at Joe who had the uncanny feeling that it was Speed now before him, Speed who had been his friend and been watched over by Sam standing in for his own father who had cracked up and gone on the tramp after the war, Speed who had lain between the railway tracks and let the train go over him, Speed who had been destined like his older brother Alistair for Borstal had not Sam helped him into the boys’ army. ‘Speed was great at this,’ he said, as if reading Joe’s thoughts.
He chopped his hand down. The rabbit shuddered but did not die. The boy cursed. Licked his hand. Held it higher, the executioner’s weapon of choice, and then slammed it down, accurately, fatally. Life went from the animal and Joe felt a little sickness of excitement. He had missed Speed.
A week or so later in what Captain Fitzjohn described in a letter home as a God-forsaken hole, filthy, stewed in heat, totally off the map somewhere in Malaya in a bitter war nobody at home was the slightest bit interested in, Speed was in terminal trouble.
They were in a tent, the two of them, the officer from Wellington College via Sandhurst, the private from Wigton via the Boys’ Army School in Harrogate. The officer was unusually agitated, the younger private stiff-backed and on full alert on the chair he had been unexpectedly offered.
‘Why did you do it?’
Speed said nothing. The officer took out yet another cigarette.
‘C’mon, man. There must have been some reason. Nobody does that without a reason. Why did you do it?’
Speed looked straight at the man. He knew him so slightly save in one action which he knew more searingly than anything else in his life. The officer was floundering and Speed wanted to help him but it was impossible.
‘For God’s sake. If I’m going to help you I need to know. There must have been a provocation.’ He grimaced. ‘Even for you, you bloody savage. What was it?’
Speed shook his head. It was a lock of shyness, avoiding a form of showing off. He would tell no-one. That was that. Yet inside him was in turmoil. Perhaps this was real fear? Fear in battle egged you on if you were Speed. Fear was a spur. Fear was exciting. It made you more brave. Fear was good. But he had a new fear now and he could not use it. How could he fight his way out of this?
‘Look.’ The officer on a generous and unplanned whim passed over the pack of Senior Service: Speed took one greedily. He reached for his own matches but the officer beat him to it with his lighter. ‘Look,’ he repeated after both of them had sucked the harsh tobacco deep into their lungs, ‘maybe I can help you.’ He gazed around the empty tent, cautiously. ‘You know I want to help you. After all.’
After all, the sword-lean, strained-faced private soldier in front of him had saved his life. The ambush had been brilliantly executed. He himself had been totally exposed when Speed had come out of nowhere and drilled the man through the skull. He had then hurled himself on Speed to knock him out of the way of a man bayonet charging. Speed had got that one too. And on at least two other occasions Speed’s galvanising ferocity had been what, the officer thought, a British soldier was about.
‘What did the man say to you?’ he asked.
Speed paused, took a drag and then, only just noticeably, shook his head.
‘For God’s sake! I know something was said! But I need you to tell me. This will be a court martial unless I have something to work with. This will be you out. Out in any case. But maybe we can beat the court martial. It’s not the first time you’ve done it and it is just not tolerable. You daft bugger.’ He flicked the ash away far too emphatically. ‘For the last time - give me something to go on.’
Speed managed a half-smile. The officer went silent, suspended between understanding and frustration. ‘Last call.’
Although there was half of the cigarette left, Speed stubbed it in the ashtray.
‘I can’t.’
‘Then you’re out. Do you understand? I might get off the court martial because of your record, but you’ll be out.’
Speed’s face tensed up.
‘You mean out of the army?’
‘Yes.’
‘Altogether?’
‘Yes.’
‘But what will I do?’
The question was so forlorn.
‘You can tell me what the hell happened.’
Speed shook his head.
‘Then there’s no hope. You’ll be out.’
‘But what will I do?’
The young officer was moved which, he knew, was the wrong thing to be. But he was, and he let silence grow perhaps to heal it.
He lit up another cigarette from the stump he had and waited.
‘Let me stay in,’ Speed said, his eyes cast to the floor, his voice very quiet, his demeanour humbled, even begging. ‘I’ll do anything,’ Speed mumbled. ‘You can put me on jankers as long as you like.’
‘Last call.’
Speed looked at him, helplessly. He could not. ‘Let me stay in.’
Speed had never pleaded for anything. The effort of it caught the young officer by the throat.
‘It matters to you, doesn’t it, being in the army, even in a malaria-infested shithole like this?’
Speed merely nodded but in the enduring pause he managed to say,
‘There’s nothing else I want to do, you see, sir.’
‘So for Christ’s sake - tell me why you did it?’
The men looked at each other, intently. Across a chasm of class, education and privilege. They knew that in those perilous moments under fire they had been welded together. The look held: and then Speed once more shook his head.
Later, in the Officers’ Mess, the visiting V.I.P. Lieutenant-General Oliphant asked him what sort of day he had.
‘Lousy,’ he said, and explained.
‘We can’t have the wild men,’ the General said, sadly. ‘But I’ve never really known why. Look at Mad Jack Sassoon - out after snipers night after night. Mad as a bat. Great man. Great soldier.’
‘This lad,’ the officer nodded, ‘he’s wild. The others looked to him. He was not just brave - they’re all brave - he was - I don’t know - fearless - a bit of an inspiration.’
‘He has to go?’
‘He has to go.’
‘God knows why we lose our best like this,’ said Oliphant and turned away.
Speed was blind drunk in the guardhouse. They’d bought him beer. Now they left him alone.
The man from the other regiment had picked on Speed’s officer and said he knew him from time back and he was a bit of a nancy boy. Speed had warned him. Then he had said worse. It took three or four of them to drag him off the man who was still in a critical condition. They said that had they not stopped Speed in time he would have murdered him.
Joe walked back to Wigton through the fields. He had promised to be with Alan after dinner but it was with no deep reluctance that he left the hunt. He had felt rather left out. He was not as good at it as the others, not even the young boys, not as eager at snouting out the prey, and after two or three hours this grew uncomfortable. It was as if he were failing all the time. And there was something else, something he could not name, but it troubled him, a sense that this mattered to them, really mattered in many ways, whereas he was just a strolling player. Diddler waved him away with no reproach. He passed one of the younger boys who had been told to guard sacks which they would pick up on their way back. The boy was puzzled that Joe wanted to go home and asked him to guard the sacks so that he could rejoin the others. Joe’s refusal elicited a spit, to the ground, but no doubting its target.
It was too good a morning for the boy-man to resist. The leaves were still heavy, hedges thick, the thrill of the chase, now that it was behind him, stirred feelings of valour, the exercise had blown away the usual cobwebbed organisation and constraints of duties, fears, plans, controls, projections, insurances, and he was intoxicated by the rhythmic pace of his walk, the sense of Nature all about him which seemed to flow into him and reach the heart and soul of him. He was
young, he was doing what he wanted, he was in love, the fields were fair, beyond him like a beacon was the Italianate tower, pride of Wigton, the day would end with Rachel; all this was his.
As he strode at full stretch, he found himself humming. He was alone in the fields, looked around to check, began to sing. It became just a noise, a crush of sounds from chants and hymns, songs and the music heard in secret - all just one sound which matched his mood, which floated as he himself seemed to float through the autumn fields. It was a song of himself. Everything seemed to be in harmony. Everything seemed good. The world was a blessed place, all things committed and flowing through him and through everyone. He saw that everything moved to a single purpose, everything was earthed in the grass beneath his feet, and it was as if he simply ceased to be but was part of all around him, the sky within his reach, air, earth, stones, trees, he was part of their song and they of his.
It was fish and chips in the back room. There were two wooden tables bare but for salt and vinegar. No chairs, four benches. He had cod and sixpennyworth of chips, a heap of scrams and a pot of tea with bread and butter. They were supposed to charge you threepence more for having it off a plate in the back room but mostly they forgot. He was alone for which he was thankful. Sometimes eating out could be embarrassing, a show off, especially at the café above McGuffie’s, even in the Spotted Cow. The fish and chip shop was the easiest. It had been his mother’s decision a year or so ago. Saturdays were just too busy for her to get three different dinners cooked for three different times.
But alone, he could make the chips into sandwiches and put on lashings of salt. Alone he could keep up the singing in his head and conduct with his knife and fork. Alone there was no one to whom he felt he ought to explain and apologise. Manuel the owner came back for a cigarette and talked sport. Joe told him about the hunt. He found he was exaggerating and boasting about the hunt to impress and entertain the fish and chip shop owner. He knew he was doing it but it careered out of control and he ended up edging into some fibs, small fibs but fibs, and he left the place rather cast down, knowing he was bound to be found out. He had to stop doing that. He was always doing that. Especially when he was happy he was always exaggerating, fibbing. Even if God forgave him, there were others who wouldn’t if it got back to them.
Alan had decided to wear a helmet. No proof could have been stronger to indicate the significance of the enterprise. He saved it for the aerodrome and he and Joe - on the pillion - drove their faces naked to the wind, bare heads tingling as the air rushed past them.
They had cycled there often enough with the gang when younger. A few old Spitfires, Lancasters and Wellington bombers had once stood in neglected corners of the place to which in the war they had hedge-hopped for urgent repair. Irresistible to the boys. Inside the cockpits. Battle of Britain. Messerschmitts at five o’clock. German ack-ack below, steady through the anti-aircraft fire, bombs away, noise from film sound tracks - eeeeee-ow - pum, pum, pum - or da-dat-a-da-dat-a-da-dat-a-da as the Spitfire scimitared into the sky then swooped on the outwitted German to blow him to smithereens. Now the weed-infested former emergency ward for fighting planes was being repossessed by the land.
The aerodrome was where the motorbike boys went to try for a ton-up. Hitting that hundred had been Alan’s ambition for months. He had souped up the engine with the help of one of John’s friends from the factory and now he reckoned he was ready. Joe envied him. His own attempt to save for a motorbike had failed. The money he got or, as his father said, earned in the pub somehow trickled away, dances, bus fares, the occasional packet of cigarettes, a couple of halves out of town, on a Saturday night, sweets. Alan got a big extra from Christmas tips and his mother liked to spoil him.
Colin was there - without Paul. Colin was one of the oldest of the crowd who had now made a club of these Saturday afternoon tests on the abandoned Solway aerodrome. Joe cringed a little but also felt, as usual, that Colin had been hard done by and in this confusion went across to him. Alan had immediately started tinkering with the bike.
‘So you’ll come and speak to your uncle?’
Why not? When had he avoided him? What did this mean? Colin was dressed in a leather jacket, leather trousers, dead smart, Joe thought, all the gear, heavy boots, goggles slung around his neck, the winning dog had given him funds.
‘Hello,’ Joe said.
‘Is that the best you can manage?’
Colin quiffed his hair. Joe was instantly aware of his own wind-flattened hair and shoved a hand through it.
‘No good, pal,’ Colin said. ‘Sandy hair’s too thin for the job.’
He leaned easily on the gleaming saddle of the propped-up bike, took out a cigarette.
Til not offer you one. Your mother’d kill me.’
No she wouldn’t, Joe thought. She needn’t even know.
‘Where’s Paul?’
‘Paul’s not here.’ Colin was abrupt.
I know that. But you’re always with him. So where is he? He persisted.
‘I used to see Paul a lot,’ Joe said.
‘He’s into U.F.O.s now. He’s just a crazy mixed-up kid!’ Colin smiled - the smile was for Paul, Joe knew that. ‘Do you believe in U.F.O.s?’
‘Paul does. I’m thinking of getting a sidecar. For the dogs, mainly.’ Joe waited, sensing another volley.
‘Your dad doesn’t really want me on that dog men’s bus. I can put them in a sidecar. It’ll give me my independence. Take them anywhere.’
‘Dad says the dogs are running well.’
‘No thanks to him.’
Joe’s stomach clenched.
Til help Alan.’
‘That’s right. Run away.’
Colin held his nephew’s gaze for a few moments, saw what he wanted, turned, let him go.
Alan was one of two going for the ton that afternoon. He did a few warm-up runs. The men and boys gathered around his bike as if it had been involved in a terrible crash, as if by gazing alone they could improve it. Joe was outside the technical talk. Again he did not know enough. As the motorbike men closed in on their day’s object, he looked across the flat lands towards the sea and Scotland beyond. This was supposed to have been outside the range of the German bombers which was why so many planes were nursed over the counties of England to come here to be repaired. Yet how had the Germans managed to reach Glasgow? And Liverpool was not so very far south. Maybe it was a difficult target, no city, no river to guide them, only the Solway Firth and that at a clever distance. Sometimes he looked forward to his coming two years’ National Service and today he thought the best option would be to try for a pilot. You could always get a good job after that. But they needed perfect eyesight, didn’t they? He was sure he could remember in some photographs of R.A.F. pilots that there were men wearing specs. He looked in vain for the old planes they used to play in so blissfully.
Colin had brought a stopwatch though no one knew what use it would be. He said a stopwatch was second nature now, with the dogs. He said he had measured out the perfect mile and put in two sticks. If he stood far enough away he could get a reading to within a fraction. Alan said his speedometer was reliable enough. Colin said that in this sort of affair you needed a second opinion. He walked away to take up his position. Alan gave Joe a look which said, ‘You are responsible for that Colin.’
Finally and reluctantly all the elaborations important to the event were completed. Alan put on his helmet and went slowly down the disused runway. He was a very small figure in the distance and Joe, who had not brought his specs, had to squint hard. He revved up and higher and then the dot began to move towards them, straight at them, it seemed, as if launched on a course to blast directly into them. They began to cheer and Joe waved as Alan bombed past, decelerated, turned, came back.
Colin came across, stopwatch in front of him.
‘It’s got to be thirty-six seconds at least,’ Joe said. They knew that. He need not have said that. They had been here before.
Alan took of
f his helmet as Colin arrived.
‘Well?’ Colin demanded.
I think I did it,’ Alan said. ‘I think I did,’
Colin’s nod was grave. He took the stopwatch to Alan and showed it to him, close up. Alan gave no reaction.
‘Thirty-five seconds!’ Colin announced, as triumphant as if he’d done it himself. ‘Better even than a ton.’
Joe let the others beat him to clap Alan, though awkwardly, on the back. He was almost too pleased to move. He wanted to savour it a little longer. Better even than a ton!
He helped Alan with the sports editions and they swooped around the town on their bikes pretending to be on motorbikes. Alan was going to the dance with him: he would be on the pillion again. They would go to the Bird in Hand for one or two halves and then on to the Institute. He had promised Rachel he would be there at eight-thirty. She said she wanted to be there at eight on her own for a bit.
As he and Alan came down Southend at the end of their round, they caught up with Diddler. Speed’s brother was standing upright in the cart, steadying himself between the full sacks. Alan swerved past. Joe slowed down.
‘We had a good day, Joe,’ Diddler said. ‘Tell Sam I’ll bring him a fresh rabbit or two and some spuds. We found a lot of spuds.’
‘Thanks.’ Joe wanted to linger but Alan was opening the gap and so he pushed on the pedals, but turned after a few yards, to wave, and admire Speed’s brother, a charioteer, standing high on the flat cart, riding into Wigton with the plunder of the day.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Rachel decided to put on her lipstick in the house. She even left the bathroom door open. She had put on her own low heels - her mother’s shoes would be hopeless to dance in - and she decided to carry her coat downstairs rather than wear it, which had been her original intention. She wore the dress she had worn on their first date, her second best but the dance in the village hall was not for best. Instead of wearing her cardigan she draped it over her shoulders, which meant that her bare arms were clearly visible. And as she dabbed Yardley’s eau-de-cologne between her breasts she tugged down the dress. The breasts still had some way to go. She hoped.
