At the Break of Day

by Margaret Graham

  ‘It’s OK, Jack. You’re OK. They’re not here yet. Remember what you’ve been taught and stay with me.’ He turned and moved out into the snow. There was firing all round, from the hills ahead and around them.

  The fear held Jack still. Dad, where are you? Rosie? He wanted to run. Just run and hide because he could hear screams and shouts and the bugles at the base of the hill and they were getting nearer, the firing was louder. The snow was heavy, and he couldn’t see. He hadn’t been able to see in the fog either. Dad, where are you?

  But the barricades were there. They would keep them away. Jack was out in the open. Following Tom, running, the snow in his eyes, his nose, his mouth. The breath was sharp in his chest. He slipped, scrambled up again, ran to where the Sergeant pointed, heaving the Sten gun up on to the wall he had built, firing down at men who fell as the ducks in the fairground had fallen, but more took their place. For God’s sake. More took their place.

  His gun was hot. Tom was firing. There were tracers in the air. Flashes from grenades were bright against the snow. Still they came. On up the hill. And he wasn’t killing men, he was killing ducks. Ducks which flipped back up, no matter what he did.

  They were closer now, scrambling where he had scrambled, firing, blowing their bugles. The Sergeant was behind them. They were much closer.

  ‘Stand your ground,’ the Sergeant shouted, but they were so close. He would see their faces soon. They were at the first barricade, leaping over, shooting, stabbing, killing. This was real, for Christ’s sake. People were dying. There were screams and groans all round and there was sweat on his face, dripping on to his coat. But he was cold. How could he sweat?

  The Sergeant screamed, ‘The buggers are through. Over here, you two.’

  They crouched and ran back to the next fox-hole. Jack lay down, fired again, heard Tom do the same. It was cold, for Christ’s sake. The ground was cold but the Chinese were coming on, falling, dying. Jack fired, Tom lobbed grenades, but more came.

  ‘Where the hell are they coming from?’ It was Tom. He was standing, his body exposed. Jack pulled him down.

  ‘Keep firing.’ His mind was cool now. It was Tom’s hands that were shaking, not his. There was no hate, no love. Just the gun, just the Chinese, and they were closer. For God’s sake, they were so damn close.

  ‘You’ve got to hold.’ The Lieutenant was behind them, his breath short. He was shouting. ‘Got to hold, let Hill 16 complete their manoeuvre. Then we can go, if we have to. But hold.’

  John was with them now. They dug their knees in deeper. It didn’t matter that it was cold. They wanted to live. They held for five hours.

  At 0300 hours the Sergeant slapped Jack on the back, took over the Sten.

  ‘Get out now, over there.’ He was pointing to where other men were leaving, stumbling and running, while others still fired, still fought. Jack took his rifle, crouched, ran. Tom was with him, passing him a Luger he had taken from a fallen soldier.

  The Chinese were breaking through. They were fighting. He saw arms lifted, guns and knives which twisted and plunged. Tom turned, his head down, his gun up.

  ‘Get out, Jack!’ His voice was faint against the noise but Jack heard him, stopped.

  ‘Come on, Tom. Your wife. Get home.’ He grabbed him, pulled him, turned him and they ran on together.

  They skidded down the hill, ducking and weaving, looking forward, behind, to the side. There were others, friends and enemies. A Chinese lunged for Jack, he dodged, drove home the rifle butt, felt the jolt through his body, but they went on, down the slope, slowing, easing, creeping at the base, sidling off to the side of the road, but there were more and they were firing and Jack felt a punch high up in his arm.

  He turned. Tom was down too. There was blood on his chest, on his stomach. He had been shot four times. His mouth was open, his eyes too. He was dead. Snow was already settling. He was warm and Jack took him in his arms, tried to lift him, carry him home to his wife, away from all this, because he had been in too many wars.

  But the punch had been a shot and he could only move one arm and the pain was beginning now. He tried to drag Tom, but he had no strength and so he had to leave him, there, in the snow, alone but not alone for there were other dead around him.

  Jack felt the anger and the pain rage and he screamed, ‘Rosie.’

  The Sergeant was there then, pulling, dragging him towards the road where tanks were retreating. He shoved Jack up on to the body of one.

  ‘Hang on or you’ll die. Hang on, son.’

  There were others clinging, hurting, panting, and he did cling on but not for long because the road was blocked by blazing vehicles and a tank which had lost its track.

  He dropped to the road. His coat was too heavy. It dragged at him. He pushed at the tank with the other men but there was too much fire from the hills each side and behind them and so he walked, and another man took his rifle, struggling on ahead.

  They passed a soldier on fire from burning phosphorus. How could he burn with so much snow? The flames were so bright. How could he burn when it was so cold? Jack felt as though his head were bursting.

  ‘Shoot me,’ the American was screaming. Jack shook his head, stumbled on. Christ, that could have been him. Oh Christ. Dad, where are you? Rosie. He stopped, turned back.

  ‘Shoot me,’ the man whimpered now, holding out a blackened claw. ‘Shoot me.’

  The snow was still falling. The man carrying his rifle had gone, walking on, not waiting. There was just this man here, crying, burning. There was no war, no firing, just the two of them, and one was dying, slowly, and his whimpers seemed so very loud.

  Jack did shoot him, with the Luger. The whimpering stopped but pain blossomed in Jack and he cried as he walked because he had shot a man with a blackened, burning body and he would never be free of the smell or the sight of it.

  Many others straggled back as the days went by. The UN were in retreat again. He didn’t mind the pain in his arm. He didn’t mind the throbbing, it was better than being dead. Tom was dead and he had a wife. Jack had no one and he was glad. There was too much pain in loving. Tom’s wife would know that now. There was always too much pain. He was glad it took all his strength to put one foot in front of the other. He was glad it took all his mind to breathe in and out. In and out because he didn’t think of Rosie, or the burning man, or Tom.

  They passed blazing villages, and always the enemy was close behind and to the sides of them in spite of the US airstrikes. There were mortar bombs arcing through the freezing sky. They walked with refugees, then passed a burned out field hospital. A jeep came, doling out hot chow. ‘Hurry up. For Christ’s sake, hurry up,’ the Corporal said, ladling hot cereal and powdered eggs into their helmets because they had no mess-kits any more.

  The firing was as close as it had been before, but no closer. Why was the Corporal panicking? He wasn’t dead. It was all the others that were dead. Jack dropped his helmet. He was hot, so hot. The food spilled on his boots, into the churned snow.

  He sank to the ground. It wasn’t cold as it had been when he was shooting the ducks on the hill.

  Jack felt the jerking of the jeep, the rattle of the train, and it was like the one that had taken them hop-picking and he knew he must think, he must write to Rosie. But what would he say? He didn’t know. He was too tired. Too hurt.

  The field ambulance carried him from the train to the ship. A stretcher took him from the ambulance to the gangway. The Medical Officer and Wardmaster lifted the blanket, looked at his shoulder. He screamed as they touched him.

  ‘No gangrene. Those maggots have done a good job,’ the Medical Officer said, not looking at Jack, just at his arm. The Wardmaster wrote medical instructions on a label which he tied to Jack’s wrist. He was sick of labels. They had tied one to him when he went to Somerset. He wasn’t a parcel, he was a person. Rosie hadn’t liked hers either. But he wouldn’t think of that.

  He was carried on a stretcher by South Koreans to the ward on the
water line, one deck below the air-conditioned quarters for those seriously injured. They didn’t see a doctor on the trip to Japan. There were too many operations needed. Too many amputations because of gangrene.

  Jack wouldn’t think of the maggots which had been cleaned from his wound. He couldn’t bear to think of them in his body. He lay and listened to the throb of the engines, felt the vibration in his wound, his arm which was hot and swollen. He talked to the others as they limped, or sat, arms bandaged, heads bandaged, but they all had their limbs, they all had their lives. Tom hadn’t any more and soon his wife would know.

  Love hurt.

  It was hot. So damn hot. He sat up, but he had no strength, so he lay again. It had been so cold up there on the hill and as they ran away. Pyongyang was burning now. The UN troops were scorching the earth, burning the supplies, stopping the enemy from gaining anything. They were retreating to the 38th parallel. How much further would they go back? Would it all have to be done again?

  The trip took three days because the channels could not be guaranteed free of mines and the heat grew worse. The wards were over the main generators. The portholes were secured when at sea.

  There were no washing facilities. They were dirty, they were in danger of dehydrating. There were large jugs of water and lime-juice and the boy next to Jack poured him some because he couldn’t stand. The ship’s engines were so loud. They throbbed in his head, in his wound. All over his body.

  He was given more penicillin. He knew there were more maggots but he must wait until Japan to have them scraped away.

  An American died and the boy next to Jack told him that they were going to store the body in ice which had to be replenished every two hours, because the Americans returned the corpses to their homeland. Jack turned away from him. They took too many things back to their homeland. They had taken his mother, his brother.

  They drew into Osaka and Jack thought that perhaps it was better that Tom was dead, not here with him, because these were the people who had beaten and struck him. These were the people he had hated. As Jack hated Ed. Did he hate Rosie?

  The dead went off first, covered with the flag of their country, while the band played. Then the wounded, but not the walking wounded yet. They waited but when it came to their turn Jack still couldn’t walk. He was carried on a stretcher and shared an ambulance with a man who had been burned but Jack wouldn’t look because he had shot a man with burns. He had been an American. He had pleaded to die.

  Jack felt the gun in his hand again. He had shot him. He had looked into a man’s face and killed him. Seen the agony go from his eyes, but the light too. An American had asked that of him. An American had taken his mother. An American had kissed Rosie’s breasts, and as the ambulance drew away from the docks towards the hospital he knew he still couldn’t write to her.

  CHAPTER 15

  Rosie walked into the hotel when Jack left, lifting her head and ignoring the gaze of the woman behind Reception, taking her key, climbing into the bed which had not been aired. There was frost on the inside of the panes. He had left her, goddamn him. God damn him. And now she was crying.

  Jeeps passed, their headlights flashing into the room, across the ceiling, lighting up the pictures which hung from thin chains. She couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t cry. She could scarcely breathe. She lay with her hands on her breasts where she could still feel his mouth.

  She wanted to go from the bed, out into the town, to the camp, find him, make him love her, make him push his hate away, her anger, her pain, but she stayed, watching the sky through the window, feeling the throbbing between her legs which had become an ache by the morning. There were drops of blood on the sheet. She sponged them. Each breath hurt. She didn’t speak as she paid for her room. She didn’t nod. She couldn’t.

  At the station were the same kiosks selling rolls and newspapers, but she bought nothing, not even tea, and she didn’t turn as the train took her away from him. But everything was dark.

  She took a Tube and bus and then walked to Middle Street. She walked slowly. She put one foot in front of the other carefully because she ached inside, and she was going home and there was no point to it. And he might come running up behind her, catch her arm, pull her round. Tell her he was wrong. He was sorry. He loved her. But he didn’t. And still it hurt to breathe.

  She entered the house before Norah and Harold returned from work. The fire was banked. There was a faint heat. She dropped her coat on the floor, her bag too. She dragged the tin bath from its nail on the yard wall.

  She smelt the gas before it lit, she heard it hiss as it heated the water in the boiler, she saw the steam beating up to the ceiling, layering the room, clouding the window.

  She tipped the water into the bath, poured in cold. There were only two inches. She poured in more cold. Then she peeled off her clothes, leaving them where they fell. It didn’t matter that the water was cold. She barely noticed, but she knelt in it, feeling the ridges of the bath on her knees, heaping the water into her cupped hands, splashing it over her body, between her legs, because she had to remove the smell of him or she would die, from anger and from loss.

  She splashed again and again, wetting her hair, her body, her arms, her legs, everything. Soaping, rinsing, crying because they had loved but it had not been as she had dreamed. They had loved, but there had been hate, and love without tenderness, only pain. And he might have gone for ever and she didn’t know how this had happened. She didn’t know how her world could change like this. She didn’t know how she could love someone as much without them loving her back.

  She dropped her head to her arms, and sniffed. Then to her legs. There was none of him left. Would that help the minutes, the hours, without him? She would not think of longer, of for ever. Now there were more tears, racking sobs which dug deep into her chest and still it was difficult to breathe.

  She dressed in fresh clothes, dragged the bath to the yard, tipped the water down the drain. She washed her clothes, hung them on the line where they dripped. She set out the candy she had brought back for Norah on the kitchen table. She hung the scarf she had brought for Harold on the chair and looked at the shirt which had been for Jack, the blouse which had been for Maisie, the car which had been for Lee.

  She carried round the bourbon which she had bought for Ollie and left it on the doorstep. What did it matter if he drank it all too quickly? What did anything matter? There was only anger, only pain.

  Norah came back at six-thirty and Harold too.

  ‘You’re back then. So, how’s lover boy? Ollie said you’d gone up there. He said you know all about Maisie’s man. Bet Jack didn’t like that.’ Norah shrugged out of her coat, nodded towards the candy. ‘It’ll make me fat.’

  Rosie made tea, slicing up the tin of ham she had brought back, boiling potatoes, cutting tomatoes into quarters. She put a fruit cake that Nancy had made on a plate in the centre of the table.

  She couldn’t eat but she made herself put food in her mouth. She made herself chew until the plateful was finished because Norah was watching.

  ‘So, Jack’s volunteered?’ Norah was smiling, looking at Harold who pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose.

  ‘Yes,’ Rosie said, and felt Jack’s weight on her body, inside her, but she wouldn’t cry, not now. Not here.

  ‘Left you, has he?’

  ‘He’s going to Korea. For a while. Only for a while.’ Rosie took her plate to the sink. Washed it, dried it. She could smell the soda but not him. At least she could not smell him.

  ‘Have you still got your job?’ Norah was wiping her plate with bread she had torn off the loaf.

  ‘Leave the girl alone,’ Harold said as he stood up, leaving his plate for Norah to clear, moving to Grandpa’s chair, opening his paper, stretching his legs out.

  Get out of my grandpa’s chair, Rosie wanted to shout, but he had been kind. For a moment he had been kind. She stood with her back to the sink. She had given Lee’s present to his friend, who had been pla
ying footie in the alley. He was lonely, he had said.

  ‘Don’t know why you don’t get yourself a live-in job.’ Norah pushed a crust that was too large into her mouth.

  ‘This is my home, for as long as I need it. Don’t you ever goddamn forget that. I have a right to be here.’ Rosie moved to the back door, lifting her coat off the hook, putting it round her shoulders. ‘I’m going out.’

  ‘Where to, now Jack has gone?’

  Rosie turned the handle, opened the door, walked out into the cool of the evening and the fragrance that still hung on the air from the last of the roses. She didn’t answer. She didn’t know. Jack wasn’t there, nor Maisie, nor Lee. What was there, without them all?

  As she passed the yellow rose she stooped, smelt its scent, touched its petals, picked it, held it to her cheek. It was soft, fragrant. Some things never changed.

  She walked to the rec. She sat on the swings and heard the laughter of their childhood. She leaned against the chains. His hands had held these. She pushed lightly, her feet rocking against the ground. He had to come back. In spite of everything. He was her life. He must see that. He must see that she couldn’t have stopped Maisie. One day his mother would have had to live her own life. Or could she have stopped her? Perhaps she could.

  She pressed her forehead against the chain, hard, rocking sideways now, crushing the rose, the stem with its thorns, but nothing helped the pain then, or that night or any night, or the anger.

  Nothing helped the panic which caught and held her, pushing her up from the bed, making her walk, rubbing her hands up and down her arms at the thought that he might never want to hold her again. He might never want to look at her smile. How could all that love go, so quickly? How could all that love be pushed aside by hate? How could such anger and pain live inside her too?

  The next morning she walked to see Mrs Eaves and thought she saw his head amongst the crowd. But it wasn’t him and the pain was too sharp and she turned, looked in the tobacconist’s window and cried but the tears didn’t make anything better.