Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, Randall had time to examine the kitchen more closely than he had done before. There was no hiding the fact that it was in a mess, dirty, untidy, as though it had not been swept up or scrubbed out for months. In one corner was a basket of soiled linen; under the sink were one or two unwashed saucepans, and beside them a pail full to the brim with potato-peelings, tea-leaves, and other garbage. Randall drew his finger along one of the shelves of the dresser and raised a little mound of dust like the terminal moraine of a glacier.

  He sighed and prepared to shave.

  Lily came back just as he was drying his face.

  “It’s O.K.,” she said. “No more canteen for me till your leave’s finished.”

  Randall hung the towel he had been using on a cord over the stove. “They couldn’t very well refuse, could they?”

  “No; but it puts more work on the others.” She began taking off her coat. “Any plans for to-night?”

  “I thought we might just pop down to the Grapes for an hour or two. I don’t feel like doing a lot to-night. Too tired.”

  The suggestion did not appear to please her. She pouted. “Not the Grapes, Sid. Some other place.”

  “Why, what’s wrong with the Grapes?” asked Randall. “We always used to go there, and it’s close and handy. Tell you what. Well go there to-night and try some other place another night—eh, Lil?”

  He put his arm round her waist as he said it, but she did not respond to his gesture of affection, and he felt rebuffed.

  “All right,” she said; “do what you like. It’s your leave. Don’t mind me.”

  “Now, Lil,” he said, “don’t talk like that; it’s your leave too, in a way. I don’t want to do anything you don’t like; you know that. If you’d rather not go to the Grapes we won’t go there. You’ve only got to say the word.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, “you want to go to the old Grapes, so we’ll go.”

  She slipped away from his arm and began to fill the kettle for tea. Randall wondered what was going wrong; this did not seem like the wife he had left ten months ago. She seemed short-tempered, ready to go up in the air at a word. It worried him.

  “What’s wrong, Lil?” he asked.

  She looked at him sharply. “Wrong? What should be wrong?” Then, as though feeling that she was not behaving fairly to him, she kissed him on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have spoke to you like that. You mustn’t take no notice of what I say; I don’t always think. But you know I love you, Sid dear; you know that, don’t you? There’s never bin nobody else but you, Sid. Truly!”

  Randall said, “I know, Lil; I know. It’s the same with me too.”

  The bar of the Grapes hotel was so crowded when Randall and Lily arrived that they had to edge their way through the press inch by inch. It was a crowd made up predominantly of blue and khaki, and over its head hung a thick haze of tobacco-smoke. Coming from the cold darkness outside, one burst suddenly into bright light, warmth, and noise, the buzz of conversation, the clink of glasses, and brief gusts of laughter. It was a crowd trying to forget for a few hours the guns, the aircraft, and the ships—trying to do so, but never really succeeding.

  “What’ll you have, Lil—when I can get it?”

  “A gin and tonic, please, Sid.”

  Randall elbowed his way to a strategic position at the bar. “Thank you,” he said; “thank you”—dodging mugs of beer, ducking under lifted arms. “Thank you; thank you.”

  At last he caught the eye of Percy, the barman, who had been working in that hotel for as long as Randall could remember.

  “Hullo, Sid,” Percy said. “On leave?”

  “Eight days,” said Randall.

  “And very nice too,” Percy said. “Where’ve you been this time?”

  “Australia.”

  “Australia, have you? That’s a long way. Well, what’s it to be?”

  “Gin and tonic and a pint of half-and-half,” said Randall. He had a feeling that Percy was really not interested in where he had been. If he never came back again Percy would not lose any sleep. Well, that was how it was; he was nothing to Percy; just another customer; so why should Percy worry?

  He paid for the drinks and edged his way back to where Lily was standing. It was a tricky job with the gin in one hand and the pint mug of beer in the other. A sailor jogged his elbow, and some of the beer was spilt; it splashed a sergeant-pilot who was standing close by.

  “Sorry,” said Randall. “I’m sorry.”

  “You want to be more careful,” the airman said. He looked down at his trouser-leg. “You want to mind where you’re going.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “I should think so, too, splashing beer over people.”

  Randall left him still complaining.

  Lily was standing by the wall, almost flattened against it. She was gazing across the room, as though searching for somebody. Randall had to speak to her before she noticed him.

  “Here you are,” said Randall. “Here’s your gin.”

  “What a crush, Sid!” She took the glass. “Seen anyone you know?”

  Randall shook his head. “Only Percy.”

  He took a pull at his beer, and as he lowered the mug he heard a voice say, “Why, hullo, Lil! Fancy meeting you here!”

  The remark was made in a bantering tone, as though the speaker really felt no surprise at seeing Randall’s wife in those surroundings. Turning, Randall saw a sergeant grinning at Lily, a heavily built man with close-cropped black hair and a neatly trimmed moustache. He had thick eyebrows which met across the bridge of his nose, and when he smiled there was a flash of white teeth. Randall disliked him intensely from the first moment.

  Lily spoke quickly, as though she were afraid of what the sergeant might say next. “You haven’t met my husband, have you? Sid, this is Sergeant Wilson. He comes to the canteen.”

  “Your husband! Oh, better watch my step!” He laughed, and it occurred to Randall that the fellow had already had as much drink as was good for him. Then he put out his hand. “I was only joking. Johnnie Wilson’s little joke, eh? Pleesetermeecher!”

  The sergeant’s hand was large and moist; he squeezed Randall’s hand very tightly, perhaps to show his strength. Then he said, “I see you’re in the Artillery, too.”

  “Yes,” said Randall.

  “He’s got eight days’ leave,” said Lily. “Eight days. I shan’t be at the canteen while he’s home.”

  “Oh,” said Wilson, “that’s a pity. We shall miss our Lil.”

  Randall resented the way he said “our Lil.” What right had the fellow to talk like that? He stood glumly silent and waited for the sergeant to move on. This was what happened when your wife helped in a canteen; every Tom, Dick, and Harry who took a cup of tea out of her hands thought he had the right to call her by her Christian name. There was too much familiarity—altogether too much.

  Sergeant Wilson appeared to sense a touch of frost in the atmosphere. “Well,” he said, “I must be moving. Got to see a man about a dog.” He winked at Lily. “I can see I’m one too many here. Eight days! O.K.” He laughed and began to plough his way towards the bar.

  “That,” said Randall, “is the sort of man I don’t like. He’s got a nerve—calling you Lil.”

  “But they all do, Sid. It don’t mean anything.”

  “Well, I don’t like it. I wish you didn’t go there.”

  “Now, Sid, we’ve bin over that once. Don’t let’s say any more about it now. Give me a cigarette, there’s a dear. I’m dying for a smoke.”

  Randall put his mug on a window-ledge and took a packet of cigarettes out of his pocket, handing them to his wife.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Lil; it’s not that—”

  She answered quickly, “I should think not, indeed. Not trust me! Why, there’s a thing to say! What do you think I am?”

  “Now, now, Lil,” he said, “don’t take on. I didn’t mean anything. It’s onl
y that I’ve been away so long, and—”

  “And what?”

  Oh, God! he thought. This isn’t how it ought to be; this isn’t how it ought to be at all. What’s gone wrong? What’s gone wrong?

  He struck a match for her cigarette. But she just stared at him, and the match burned down to his fingers.

  “Let’s forget it, shall we, Lil? Let’s forget all about it.”

  “I don’t know what it is you want to forget,” she said. “I don’t know if you’re trying to accuse me of something. If so, you’d better say it straight out.”

  “Lil,” Randall said desperately, “I’m not accusing you of anything.”

  A man bumped into his back, thrusting him forward, close up against his wife.

  “Sorry, chum,” said the man. “What a crowd! Can’t see to move, can you?”

  Randall thought: This is a fine place to quarrel in, with scores of people milling around. But nobody was taking any notice of them. People were interested only in themselves.

  “Lil,” he said, “let’s go home.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Nightmare

  THE first morning of his leave Randall spent in cleaning up the house. He began in the kitchen; he scrubbed the floor, took everything off the dresser and scrubbed that too, scoured all the pots and pans, and ended by polishing the brass water-tap. Later he would clean the other rooms. Randall was a man who detested dirt and untidiness; on parade he had often been complimented on his smart turn-out, the gleaming polish of his boots, the glitter of his brasses. Therefore he could not bear to see his own house dirty and slovenly. Therefore he swept and scrubbed and polished.

  Lily watched him, not offering to help. She seemed to be amused that he should think such labour necessary or even desirable.

  “Where does it get you?” she asked. “Couple of days and it’s as bad again.”

  He answered cheerfully, “Now, Lil, that’s not the way to look at things. Think what a state the house would be in if we never did any cleaning.”

  “Oh, well,” she said, “if you want to do it, nobody’s going to stop you. But you needn’t think I’m ever going to wear myself out doing that sort of work. I’m not a char.”

  In the afternoon Randall went for a walk. Lily refused to go with him because she wanted to wash her hair. So he went alone. He walked along the promenade, thinking how different it was from what it had been in peace-time. The sands were deserted, bleak and cold; the pleasure beach was silent, falling into decay, with bits of canvas flapping miserably in the wind; shops and amusement arcades were boarded up; here and there a house had been taken over by the Army. It looked what it was—a town at war.

  Coming back along the river-bank he saw that where once the herring fleet had floated, three ships abreast, were now only naval craft; and a long stretch of the wharves had been wired off to keep the public away. Many times he saw where bombs had fallen, tearing great gaps amid the buildings.

  He went home feeling depressed by what he had seen.

  The days of Randall’s leave flickered past like the pictures in a peep-show, gone before he could grasp the reality of them. Sometimes he wondered whether he really understood Lily; she was like a weather-vane on a day of light and variable breezes, never the same for two hours in succession. At times she was sweet to him, and he felt that he was living in some seventh heaven of delight; then she would become sulky and he would not know what to say to her, since everything he said seemed to bring only a bitter answer. Then he would become bitter too, and they would both say things they did not mean, wounding one another with words.

  Many times Randall told himself that this was not the leave he had planned. There was always a kind of tension in the air, as there is when a thunderstorm is brewing. Randall felt the tension and hated it. Yet he hated more to think of going back. Lily and he might quarrel; he might doubt whether he understood her; but of one thing he never had any doubt—that he loved her. And, loving her, he wanted to be with her always. Yet tomorrow he must go back.

  Hell! he thought. To hell with war!

  He turned over in the bed and felt his wife lying warm beside him. He wondered whether she were awake, and whether she too were thinking that this was to be their last night together for who could tell how many months.

  He whispered, “Lily, are you asleep?”

  She murmured something he did not properly hear, muttered words from the country that lies between waking and sleeping and belongs to neither.

  The room was very dark; there was not even a glimmer of light from the window, since the black-out curtain was still covering it. Randall felt that he and Lily were in a box, cut off from the rest of the world—he and she complete in themselves. That was how it ought to be. He wanted to stay in the box for ever; it was warm and soft and safe; and the darkness pressed in on all sides like black cotton-wool, a shield, a covering, a defence against all that was harsh and unpleasant.

  Randall’s mind was wandering, hovering on the borders of sleep. He imagined suddenly that he was alone. He was still in the box, but now he was alone; and the box was no longer a haven, a sanctuary of peace, but a prison. The darkness had become thick and heavy, suffocating him; he was shut in, and he could never get out—never.

  Randall was afraid. In his fear he thrust out a hand, and the hand found his wife. With that contact his mind came back out of the dark cavern into which it had wandered, and relief flooded in upon him.

  “Lily,” he said; “Lily, my darling!”

  He heard her long, sighing breath close beside him, and he loved her; he loved her more than ever now, because he knew that tomorrow he must go back to the billet and the gun-drill, the crowded wash-place, the wire bed, the filthy blankets, the coarse jokes—all the strange ingredients of a soldier’s life. He must go back to all that.

  Yet he must have this memory to take with him, something of this to hold on to in the months ahead.

  “Lily,” he said, “you do love me, don’t you, Lil?”

  She was still half asleep, and her words were muffled; but he heard them.

  She said, “Of course I love you, Johnnie.”

  Suddenly the darkness was a blinding, flaming hell to Randall. His hand wrenched Lily into wakefulness. His voice was high and unsteady.

  “What did you call me?” he cried.

  Lily could not see her husband, but his voice and his hand alarmed her. Yet she did not realize what had caused his emotion, because sleep was still clogging her brain.

  “You called me Johnnie.” The words were bitter, angry. “You called me Johnnie.”

  He shook her, rattling the bed, driving the sleep out of her brain.

  “You called me Johnnie.”

  “Don’t,” she protested. “Don’t, Sid.”

  “You called me Johnnie.” That one fact appeared to have seized upon his mind, holding it completely, driving out every other thought.

  “You called me Johnnie.”

  Lily tried to push his hand away; the fingers were biting into her arm, hurting her.

  “Don’t be silly, Sid. You’ve bin dreaming. Why should I call you that?”

  “That’s what I want to know. That’s what I mean to find out. Who do you know of the name of Johnnie? Tell me! Who is it?”

  She tried to laugh, but the attempt was nearer hysteria than genuine laughter. She had never known Sid to be in such a fury.

  “I don’t know nobody called Johnnie. You bin dreaming, I tell you.”

  Randall said harshly, “I wasn’t dreaming; but you were, and you called me Johnnie. Who’s Johnnie? That’s what I want to know.”

  His fingers tightened on her arm so that she cried out with the pain. “Sid, let me go; you’re hurting me. I tell you I don’t know anybody called Johnnie; I swear I don’t.”

  Randall was stirring his memory, flogging it into activity. Johnnie! Where had he heard that name before? It had been recently; he was sure of that. Where had it been? Johnnie! Johnnie! He loosed his grip on Lily’
s arm and began to think back over the days, methodically searching for a man called Johnnie.

  And suddenly he found what he was looking for; he found it on the first evening of his leave in the smoky, clamorous atmosphere of the Grapes hotel. A sergeant with a black moustache! Johnnie Wilson!

  He grasped his wife’s arm again, his fingers sinking into the soft flesh. “What you been up to while I was away? Come on; tell me.”

  She tried to wrench her arm away, but the grip tightened.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh, yes, you do. This Johnnie—Johnnie Wilson. That’s what I mean. You’ve been playing around with him, haven’t you? Tell me! Tell me!”

  “Let go of me!” she cried. “Sid, let go of me, you damn fool!”

  But he would not release his grip, and suddenly she bit him in the hand. He cried out, and the grip relaxed.

  “You little devil!”

  “Serves you right. I told you you was hurting me.”

  He sucked his hand, feeling the hot taste of blood where her teeth had broken the skin. His anger had left him, and he felt weak and unhappy, like a child that has been beaten.

  “Lil,” he pleaded, “Lil, tell me it isn’t true. I’ll believe anything you say, Lil; but just tell me.”

  Detecting his altered tone, her fear left her, and she became sulky, determined to goad him, determined to take her revenge upon him.

  “You’re a damn fool,” she said. “What you expect me to do while you’re away for months on end? Sit at home and sew? I got better things to do than that. I got my life to live.”

  “Lil,” he said hoarsely, “you don’t mean it. You’re joking.”

  She loaded her voice with sarcasm. “Oh, yes, of course; hear me laugh!” Then she changed her tone. She spoke rapidly, defiantly, as though trying to convince, not Randall, but herself, that she was in the right. “How do I know what you get up to while you’re away? Of course you’re Mr Righteous, but I bet you bin with women since you was home last. I know soldiers; they’re all alike. Of course they can do what they please, and it’s all right. But wives! Oh, that’s different. Well, I don’t see it. I say a wife has got as much right to have a good time when her husband’s not there to give it to her as what he has. We’re only young once. So we’ve got to enjoy ourselves while we can. You can’t expect—”