Soldier, Sail North (1987)

by Pattinson, James

  “Lil!”

  The cry silenced her. It was not Sid’s voice at all. It was just as though a demon had got into him and was shouting through his mouth.

  “Lil! You whore!”

  Randall’s hands seemed to move of their own will; he could not have held them back if he had wished. They felt for Lily’s throat and closed upon it. She cried out, but the cry was strangled as the hands pressed more tightly.

  Inside Randall’s brain the blood was pulsing and hammering, driving out his sanity. When it ceased to hammer Lily was dead.

  When he was sure that she was dead, when he was sure that all his frenzied efforts to revive her were in vain, Randall dressed himself and went downstairs. Strangely, now that the thing was done, now that he knew he had murdered his wife, he felt remarkably calm. It might be that this was simply a numbness of the senses caused by the shock, just as a limb is numbed by the immediate shock of a wound. It might be that pain would come later; but for the moment he was calm.

  He went into the kitchen, boiled a kettle, and made a pot of tea. It was cold in the kitchen, so he fetched the electric fire from the drawing-room and switched it on. Then he sat, drinking tea and smoking, while he tried to decide what to do.

  When day broke Randall had reached his decision. He went upstairs and lifted Lily’s body from the bed, surprised to find how light she was. The eyes, wide open and staring, worried him; but he avoided looking at them, and carried the body to a cupboard let into the wall of the bedroom beside the fireplace. In the cupboard were Lily’s dresses and coats, and it came into Randall’s mind that at least she would not be lost for a change of clothing. It was a foolish thought, and he tried to drive it out; but it persisted.

  The cupboard was large; the body lay with its lower half along the floor and its back propped up against the wall. Randall took a last look at what had been his wife, and imagined that the eyes stared back at him accusingly. He shuddered and closed the cupboard door. Then he locked it and dropped the key into his pocket.

  Randall breakfasted on coffee and cigarette-smoke. He had no stomach for food. Why, he thought, has this happened to me? I didn’t deserve this. Why did it have to happen to me? Why? Why?

  There were times when he did not believe that it had really happened. Then he would sit listening for Lily’s step on the stairs and the sound of her voice. But they never came; and the misery would flood in upon him again in a black wave of despair. Ah, why had this happened to him?

  But his plan was made, and he meant to carry it out; though, at best, it was no more than a makeshift. There was no future in it, he told himself wryly; but he could think of nothing else to do.

  When, through the kitchen window, he saw Mrs Hawkins in her backyard Randall picked up a bucket of rubbish and went out to the dustbin.

  “’Morning, Mrs Hawkins,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady.

  “’Morning, Mr Randall.” Mrs Hawkins was hanging clothes on a line. Her voice was muffled by the peg that she was holding between her teeth. “Going back today, aren’t you?”

  “That’s right. Got to be back tomorrow morning, so I shall have to take the evening train. Mrs Randall’s coming with me.”

  Mrs Hawkins’s eyebrows went up in surprise. She took the peg out of her mouth. “She is? She never told me, an’ I was talking to her on’y yesterday. Never mentioned a word of it then, she didn’t.”

  “We didn’t decide until yesterday evening,” said Randall. “It seemed a good idea. I can get rooms for her in Souttport, and maybe get a sleeping-out pass. It’ll be better than the billets.”

  Mrs Hawkins agreed. “’Course it will. Make the most of your time, I say. You don’t know how long it’ll last. I suppose Mrs Randall will be coming home when you go off on your ship.”

  Randall pushed the lid of the dustbin down into place, avoiding Mrs Hawkins’s eyes. “It depends. She might get a job up there; plenty of ’em going, and good money. We’ll see how things pan out.”

  “Well,” said Mrs Hawkins, “I s’pose she’ll come and have a word afore you go. Or should I pop in and see her?”

  “She’s in bed,” said Randall hastily. “We had a late night; but she’ll come and see you before we go.”

  “I’ll be expecting her,” said Mrs Hawkins.

  Randall was sweating when he went indoors, though it was a cold day; and he felt weak and sick. He wished there had been some brandy or whisky in the house, for he felt in need of a stimulant; but there was nothing of that sort. And even if there had been he would not have dared to touch it, for fear it might loosen his tongue. In future his tongue would have to be under control—always. He must not make a slip.

  When he had shaved he packed his kitbag and stood it in the hall. Then he went out, locking the house behind him. First he visited the baker and cancelled the bread order; then he went to the dairy and told the dairyman that Mrs Randall would not require any more milk for the present. He stopped the daily paper, and in turn called on the butcher and grocer. To each he gave the same story: his wife was going back north with him.

  Neither he nor Lily had any relations in Yarmouth. There were a few slight acquaintances; but he felt he could safely leave it to Mrs Hawkins to inform them of what had happened, or at least of what Mrs Hawkins supposed had happened.

  On his way home Randall called at the canteen where Lily had helped. It had just opened, and there were few other Servicemen in the place. He found the lady in charge and told her who he was.

  “My name’s Randall. My wife helps here.”

  The lady had perfectly white hair and thin features. She wore heavy ear-rings, and her neck seemed to be a bundle of wires with a loose skin covering. Randall noticed these things as he felt the sweat pricking out on his forehead again.

  She said, “Lily Randall. Why, of course. You’ve been home on leave. I hope you’re having a good time.”

  Randall said, “I go back today. My wife’s coming with me. I thought I’d better come and tell you; she may not have time; there’s a lot to do.”

  A shadow passed over the white-haired lady’s face. “Oh, dear! This is most awkward. If only I had known sooner.”

  “We didn’t decide until last night,” said Randall. “We couldn’t let you know before we knew ourselves.”

  “No, no! Of course not. However, it is awkward.”

  Randall forced himself to eat some dinner. It was no good going without food and then fainting; that would not help. He found some cold meat and pickles and ate as much as he could. Then he made a pot of tea and drank four cups; there was no need to save the sugar any longer. Afterwards he washed up and put the things neatly away, drawing from these ordinary, humdrum actions a store of nervous strength.

  He did not go upstairs. He felt that never again would he dare to enter that part of the house. He was finished with that for ever.

  A loud knock on the back door startled him. When he opened it he found Mrs Hawkins standing on the doorstep.

  “I thought I’d just come and see if there was anything I could do,” she said. “Mrs Randall ’asn’t been to see me.”

  “She’s down the town,” said Randall. “I expected her back, but maybe she’s been held up.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs Hawkins; “oh, well.” Her gaze moved about the kitchen, with its new cleanliness. “You’ve made a change here since you been home, an’ no mistake. Real spick-and-span. That’s Army spit and polish, I s’pose. My old man used to be like that when he was alive; guardsman, he was; reg’lar. ’Course, the Army was different in his day.”

  Randall felt the smile setting rigid on his face. Why don’t you go? Why don’t you go? he thought. Go, go, go!

  Mrs Hawkins hovered on the doorstep. “You’ll be travelling all night, I s’pose. Wouldn’t like that meself; never did like long train journeys, anyway. And what a crush these days! Lucky if you get a seat. You’ll be having a taxi to the station, of course.”

  “No,” said Randall, “we’re going to walk.”
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  “With all your luggage? You’d be better with a car.”

  “I’ve taken the luggage to the station,” lied Randall. “We’d rather walk.”

  “It might rain.”

  “We’ll risk that.”

  Mrs Hawkins started to move away. “Well, if there’s anything I can do to help you’ve only got to say the word.”

  “No, there’s nothing, nothing, really. Thanks all the same.”

  “And Mrs Randall will pop in before you go?”

  “Yes, yes, I expect so. But we may be pushed for time.”

  When he had closed the door Randall leaned against it for some minutes, feeling mentally and physically exhausted. The cheap tin clock on the kitchen mantelpiece made the only sound in the house; it ticked away the seconds with a loud, monotonous beat that seemed to drive its way into Randall’s brain, mocking him, laughing at him. Tick-tock, tick-tock; your wife is dead. Tick-tock, tick-tock; dead in the room upstairs. Tick-tock, tick-tock; you killed her. Tick-tock, tick-tock; they’ll hang you.

  Randall saw by the hands of the clock that it was only half-past two, and his train did not leave for nearly five hours. To help pass the time he got out his cleaning-gear and began to polish his cap-badge and the buttons of his greatcoat. When he had finished the brasses he took off his boots and started on them, working spittle into the toe-caps with a toothbrush-handle, then rubbing them with a soft cloth until they shone like black glass. Absorbed in this task, he forgot the ticking of the clock; but when he had finished the time was still only half-past three, and as he sat idle the clock again began to mock him with its tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock.

  To get away from the clock he went into the front room and stared morosely out of the window at the darkening street. One or two people hurried past, muffled up against the cold, and Randall envied them. They had not his trouble weighing heavily upon them; they were free and happy. And yesterday he had been like them—only yesterday, so short a while ago. He could have wept with self-pity.

  Shadows were creeping into the house, and Randall was afraid, his mind haunted by the silent occupant of the cupboard upstairs. He imagined he heard sounds, rustlings, whisperings, muffled laughter. He caught himself listening straining his ears for the sound of a footstep, a chuckle, anything. The hair prickled on his scalp, and he shivered in the cold room.

  “Oh, God,” he whispered, “oh, God, give me back yesterday!”

  At five o’clock the air-raid siren gave out its wailing, banshee note, and Randall welcomed it because he knew it would send Mrs Hawkins scuttling to her Anderson shelter, there to remain until the All Clear. So there would be no danger of her seeing him leave without Lily; nor would she think it so strange that Lily did not come to say good-bye. Randall waited ten minutes; then, having bolted the back door, he let himself out at the front and locked that door behind him. Having put the key in his pocket, he shouldered his kitbag and began walking towards the station.

  Searchlight beams were slashing the sky, weaving bright, silver patterns upon its sombre background. Somewhere there was the throb of aeroplane engines; in the distance a gun barked, and its shell burst between the questing beams in a brief glitter of light.

  Randall walked on, half hoping that a bomb might kill him and end his misery. For the first time he had no fear of an air-raid; a greater fear had thrust out the lesser.

  Before he reached the station the All Clear had sounded. His train was only twenty minutes late in starting, and then he was moving smoothly away from the scene of his crime, moving away into the night. He lay back in his corner and tried to sleep.

  Now that Randall was away from the house a strange desire began to grow in him, gathering strength as he fell again into the routine of Army life. He wanted to go back and see whether anyone had been to the house. Every minute he expected to feel the heavy hand of a policeman falling on his shoulder. He wondered whether the secret of the cupboard had been discovered. He wanted to go back and make sure that Lily was still where he had left her.

  The first night in billets, lying between rough grey blankets on a palliasse stuffed with straw, he dreamed that he was in Yarmouth, walking towards his own house. He dreamed that he unlocked the front door and let himself in, and stood for a moment listening. There was no sound—no sound at all. He knew that he was searching for some one, though who it was he could not remember. He went into the kitchen, but there was no one there—only a tin clock, which leered at him with its grotesque white face, suddenly appearing to cover the entire wall. He hated the clock and feared it, and as he retreated from the kitchen the clock began to strike in tremendous, vibrating strokes. He thrust his fingers in his ears and ran into the front room; but there was no one there either —only a frigid cold which set his teeth chattering. He glanced out of the window and saw a policeman standing in the road, watching the house with large, glowing eyes. Randall pulled the curtains across the window, but the eyes shone through, and in terror he ran from the room and mounted the stairs.

  Now he was in the bedroom and still searching. He looked under the bed, in the drawers of the dressing-table, and in the wardrobe. Finally he opened the cupboard door, and as he did so a skeleton fell out upon him. Then the luminous eyes were in the room and a hand was on his shoulder. He screamed, and woke to find himself drenched from head to foot in sweat.

  For a time the shreds of his dream clung to him, and he could feel his heart beating with loud hammer-blows. Then the rhythmic breathing of the other sleepers, interspersed with snores and whistles, brought him back to reality. He was surprised that his screaming had awakened no one, for it had seemed piercingly loud in his dream. But the twelve other men in the room slept on undisturbed, and Randall envied them their untroubled slumber, for he would sleep no more that night. Through the long, dragging hours he lay staring up into the darkness, and at the morning cry of “Wakey, wakey!” crawled from his blankets, haggard and weary, to begin another day.

  Randall had been back at Southport for only four days when he was warned for embarkation and found himself in Sergeant Willis’s nine-man gun-team. Russia! He welcomed the prospect of that bitter journey, and hoped that he would never return.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Outward Bound

  FOR seven days the four great mouths of the s.s. Golden Ray gaped wide; for seven days into her capacious stomach poured a strange, miscellaneous cargo. Coal formed the base, and above this were piled, in successive layers, barrels of fat, boiler-plates, coils of wire, high-explosive shells, depth-charges, machinery, and chemicals. Then, when nothing else could be wedged into the holds, the hatches were battened down and several tanks were lowered on to the decks and lashed there with wire ropes, effectively blocking the way forward and aft, except for a narrow passage along the rails, made hazardous in the dark by tautly stretched hawsers. Finally, the derrick-booms were lowered into their cradles, and the Golden Ray was ready to go.

  On the third day Sergeant Willis and his men travelled to Hull to draw their Arctic kit. They went by tram to Grimsby, and thence by ferry across the Humber. Then they were met by an Army lorry which conveyed them to the naval depot from which the kit was to be issued. This outfit consisted of heavy leather sea-boots, a sheepskin jerkin, a hooded waterproof type of duffel-coat, a pair of fleece-lined gloves, a Balaclava helmet, and a fleece-lined bed-cover. With this gear they struggled back to the ship, to arrive late in the evening, cold, hungry, and disgruntled, to find the fire dead and their cabin icy.

  On the following morning the captain sent a message to Petty Officer Donker and Sergeant Willis that he desired their presence in his cabin.

  “Pep talk,” said Donker. “Get one at the start of every trip. Old boy likes to hear ’isself talk.”

  Captain Pownall was a man who had seen more years at sea than were, in the normal course of events, likely to lie ahead of him. His head, which was entirely bald, bore upon its surface a number of dark, scabby patches, like an unhealthy apple, and these patches were matche
d by others on his face. His face was thin and long, an area of bulges and hollows like a stretch of country that has been ravaged by battle. His eyebrows were bushy, still retaining some faint traces of their original copper hue, and they overshadowed a pair of almost colourless eyes that in course of time appeared to have sunk deeper and deeper into his head, as though seeking therein what they no longer hoped to find outside. His lips were thin and had about them an unhealthy, bluish tinge. His smile, which was a rarity, had never been known to affect more than one half of his face; it consisted of a twisting up of the left side of the mouth and a slight closing of the left eye. To the sensitive it appeared more a sneer than a smile; but at that it was preferable to his frown.

  Captain Pownall had a long, lean, creaking figure which had once been over six feet in height, but which a permanent stoop had reduced to well below that mark. Willis noticed that he wore the ribbon of the D.S.O.

  While he talked he moved restlessly about the cabin, fingering a book here, a writing-pad there, as though to be still were foreign to his nature. Occasionally he would pause for a moment and shoot a glance at the petty officer and sergeant in order to thrust home some point of his discourse. He had a harsh, grating voice which seemed to go well with his appearance.

  “I don’t need to tell you two men,” he said, “where we’re going; it’s common knowledge—too common. Every dockside worker knows, and half the prostitutes in Hull and Grimsby besides, I shouldn’t wonder. That’s security for you.”

  He had taken up a book from his desk and was flicking over the pages, more, it seemed, to give his fingers employment than for anything he might find there.

  “You,” he said, fixing his gaze on Willis, “you, sergeant, are coming with us for the first time. The petty officer has been with us before; he knows what it is like.”