by David Lodge
There were lots of bomb-sites in the streets around. You weren’t supposed to go on them, though the big boys did. There might be unexploded bombs and if you trod on one it would go off and kill you. The big boys went on the bomb-sites looking for shrapnel. Timothy found a piece of shrapnel one morning on the way to school. It was lying in the gutter and when he picked it up it was still warm. It was heavy in his hand and rough to the touch, like the pumice stone in the bath when it was dry. Jean Collins tried to make him throw the piece of shrapnel away, but he kept it even though she pinched him. The piece of metal, warm and rough and heavy in his hand, excited him strangely: a piece of the war that had fallen out of the sky. He began to collect shrapnel. You were supposed to collect it to give to the Government, to make new shells; but Timothy kept the pieces he found, in a cardboard box under his bed.
He went to the parish school. He was a bit frightened at first – some of the boys were rough and the teachers shouted and hit the naughty children – but it was better than being a boarder at the convent. Gradually he came to feel at ease in the violent, overcrowded playground. The thing he disliked most was being bossed about by Jean Collins. She took him to school and brought him back and was supposed to look after him because his mother was working on the ration books. Sometimes when she was cross she would say that Hitler would catch him one day and do horrible things to him. He didn’t believe her but he didn’t like her to say it. Hitler was the head of the Germans. He had started the war. He was a nasty man with a black moustache. Another name for Germans was Nazis, which sounded like Nasties, so it was a good name.
One day Timothy went with his mother and father to see a film about Hitler. It was supposed to be a funny film, making fun of Hitler. The man strutted about and shouted and screamed and spluttered and everybody in the cinema laughed, but Timothy laughed a little bit after the others, for he was secretly frightened. He couldn’t feel sure that it was just a man dressed up to look like Hitler, because he looked so real, and all the other people and the places in the film looked real. Not real, exactly, but like a dream or a nightmare which you thought was real until you woke up. After that he sometimes dreamed of Hitler and woke up crying in the night with the black-and-white pictures of Hitler still flickering before his eyes like the film.
One day in the school playground some big boys chased Jean Collins, pulling up her skirt from behind and shouting:
– Blue knickers! Blue ones! Jean Collins’ face went all red and she cried and all the big boys laughed and Timothy laughed too, he was pleased to see Jean Collins being bullied for once. But the Headmaster had seen it all from his window and next day the big boys were caned, and Timothy crept about the school in fear and trembling in case the Headmaster had seen him laughing.
When he was seven he made his first Holy Communion. Before that you had to make your First Confession. You went into a little dark place at the side of the church, like a cupboard, where there was a wire mesh and one of the Fathers was sitting behind it and you told him your sins and he forgave you, only it was Jesus really. Then your soul was washed clean of the stains of sin and was bright and shining. Sins were things like telling lies or cheeking your parents or missing mass on Sundays. There were also sins of impurity. Miss Marples never explained properly what sins of impurity were but he knew it was doing rude things, like the drawings some of the big boys did in the lavs, or pulling up Jean Collins’ skirt to see her knickers. Timothy was glad he hadn’t done any of these things, because it would be awful to have to tell them in confession.
He tried not to think of what he had done with Jill, when they had looked at each other in her bathroom, and when they touched each other in the bunk in the shelter. He could never tell that to the Father. The Father wouldn’t tell anyone, and he wasn’t supposed to know who you were, because it was dark in the confessional and you whispered. But suppose he recognized your voice, even though you were whispering, or peeped through his curtain and saw you kneeling with the other boys and girls and counted to know when it was your turn? He tried to think of how he would tell the Father about himself and Jill, but his insides felt funny just thinking of it. He couldn’t. But you were supposed to confess all the sins you could remember before you made your First Communion, or it was sacrilege, which was the worst sin of all.
He slept badly the night before his First Confession, and dreamed the Hitler dream. Lying awake in the Morrison shelter, as the room slowly got light, he decided he would confess a sin he hadn’t done to make up for not confessing about Jill. He invented a sin about stealing some money from his mother’s handbag, though he had never stolen anything in his life, ever. The Father said:
– How much was it, my child?
Timothy had not expected this question and said one pound, which was the first sum that came into his head. The Father seemed to think this was a lot of money and talked to him for a long time about how wicked it was to steal, until Timothy got quite frightened and wished he hadn’t said it was so much money. But anyway, he thought afterwards, he had surely made up for not confessing about Jill, and he made his First Communion without worrying too much.
His sister Kath came home, because she had left school. She was seventeen. Timothy was shy with her at first, because it was a long time since he had seen her. She was very fat. When she walked about in her bedroom upstairs the things on the dining-room sideboard rattled and his father would lift his head from his newspaper and say:
– My God, she’ll come through the ceiling one of these days. Never mind, we can claim it as war damage.
The back bedroom looked different now with Kath’s photos of her school-friends and postcards of film stars, and it smelled of scent. She had lipstick too, though she wasn’t supposed to use it. One day he looked through the crack between the door hinges of her room and saw her putting lipstick on her face in front of the mirror. He supposed that she washed it off before she came downstairs, though it seemed funny to wear lipstick when nobody was looking at you.
After she had been at home for a little while, Kath started to go to work. She went up to the City with his father, every morning on the train, to work in an office. There was a woman in charge of her office called Miss Harper, who Kath called the Old Battleaxe. Kath wanted to join the W.A.A.F.s, the girls’ Air Force, when she was eighteen, but his mother and father didn’t want her to, and there were big rows in the dining-room after he had gone to bed, which usually ended with Kath stomping upstairs to her room and slamming her door. Timothy was on his sister’s side. If he were grown up himself he would be a pilot and fly a Spitfire and shoot down lots of Germans.
His model planes were his favourite toys. Uncle Jack gave them to him. A friend of his in the Air Force made them out of wood, painted with camouflage markings and red, white and blue circles on the wings. He had Spitfires, Hurricanes and Wellington bombers. The top of the Morrison shelter was his airfield. There was a dark brown sideboard in the front room which he had never liked because of its stiff drawers and sharp corners, so he called it Germany and sent his Wellingtons to bomb it. Uncle Jack was a tail-gunner in a Wellington now. He came to see them after he had finished his training and he was quite excited. He said he was looking forward to giving the Jerries a bit of their own medicine. It was Kath’s eighteenth birthday and she asked Uncle Jack didn’t he think she should join the W.A.A.F.s, and that started another row. Uncle Jack didn’t say anything at first, but after dinner he said to Timothy’s father that he thought Kath ought to be allowed to join the W.A.A.F.s if she really wanted to, because it was more useful than working in an office. Timothy’s father sighed, and said:
– Well, I suppose you’re right, Jack. All right, then.
Then Kath threw her arms round his neck and kissed him, and then she did the same to Uncle Jack, and then his mother came in from the kitchen and cried a bit, and Uncle Jack said:
– As long as you don’t think it’s going to be like Worrals.
Kath said she didn’t read that stuff
any more. The next day she went to the place where you joined the W.A.A.F.s, but she wasn’t allowed to join up because she failed the medical. She came home and cried for three days and nights and then she went back to work at the same office, and everything went on as before, only duller.
Kath was sulky and not much fun. Uncle Jack didn’t come and see them any more. His mother said it was because his station was a long way away, but one day she told him that Uncle Jack was missing. Missing meant his plane hadn’t come back from a raid. But probably Uncle Jack had jumped out of the plane with his parachute on and been taken prisoner. When the war was over he would come back to England. Timothy felt sorry for Uncle Jack being a prisoner in Germany. He thought it must be like being a boarder at the convent, all on your own and being afraid you would never go home again.
For the war went on and on. His mother and father often talked about pre-war, but Timothy found it difficult to remember what it was like. He could remember going to the seaside and eating a banana which was gritty because he had dropped it in the sand. That must have been pre-war because you couldn’t get bananas any more. And he remembered a Christmas tree with lights on it in a shop window, and that must have been pre-war because it was dark and the lights were shining out on to the pavement, so there couldn’t have been a blackout. His parents talked a lot about pre-war at Christmas time, and the things you used to be able to get to eat: bananas and oranges and grapes and figs and dates, and as much mincemeat as you liked, without points. All these things would come back after the war. But the war went on and on.
Kath gave Timothy an atlas one Christmas. There was a map of the world spread over the first two pages, and Great Britain and all the countries in the British Empire were coloured pink. Britain was very small but there were a lot of pink countries and some of them were very big. Germany was a small yellow country and Italy was a small green country. When he looked at the size of the pink countries, and of America and Russia, the war didn’t seem quite fair, though he didn’t like to think about that. We were fighting Japan, too, but that was another small country. Germany and Italy and Japan had started the war, so it was their own fault if they got beaten, but it was taking a long time to beat them. Timothy liked to do paintings of races – car races, aeroplane races and boat races. Each car, plane or boat had a little flag to show what country it belonged to. The picture showed the end of the race, and the order was always the same: England was first, America was second, Russia was third, France was fourth, Italy fifth, Germany sixth and Japan last. Sometimes Germany and Japan crashed or sank and didn’t finish.
One day Kath brought home an American airman called Rod whom she had met at a dance. He was sun-tanned and his uniform was very smooth and soft, not like Uncle Jack’s which was rough and hairy. Rod had chewing gum called Juicy Fruit in great long strips which he gave to Timothy. The strips were so big that you only needed half a piece at a time. He had a big loud laugh that showed his white teeth, and he called Timothy Junior and his father Sir. The second time Rod came to their house he brought milk chocolate for Timothy and his mother and cigarettes for his father. Timothy liked Rod and was glad the Americans were fighting on the same side as England. But Rod didn’t come to see them any more. There was a big row about it which he heard from the landing when they thought he was in bed. His father shouted at Kath that she wasn’t to go out with a married man, and she ran upstairs almost before he had time to scuttle back to bed, and slammed the door of her room.
Then one day Kath left home. She went to work for the American Army as a secretary in a place called Cheltenham. His mother and father didn’t want her to go but she pestered them till they agreed. She wrote them letters saying she was having a great time and the Americans were very nice to work for and she was getting all kinds of things to eat that you couldn’t get in the shops. His mother said she would get fatter than ever. His father said the Yanks knew how to look after themselves. Kath was working in the Chaplains’ Department, and his mother said that was a comfort anyway. Kath said she couldn’t say anything more about her work because of security. That meant spies and so on, and Timothy was rather impressed.
Some time after Kath went to Cheltenham there was D-Day. Everybody was very excited and they had the wireless on all day at home. His father said the war would soon be over, and Timothy said, Good-oh, because Uncle Jack would come home. But that night when he went to bed his mother said Uncle Jack wouldn’t be coming home. They had known all along that Uncle Jack had been killed when his plane was shot down, but they hadn’t told Timothy because he was too young. But now he was getting to be a big boy and must understand that people got killed fighting in wars, which was why they were very terrible things. And he must say a prayer every night for the repose of Uncle Jack’s soul, like he did for Jill and her Mummy. Timothy felt as if he wanted to cry but couldn’t. But he was full of hatred for the Germans because they had killed the nicest man he had ever known.
Then the buzz-bombs started, and it was more like the beginning of the war again than the end. The buzz-bombs were like aeroplanes, only they had no pilots and they went very fast, so it was difficult to shoot them down. Their proper name was V. 1s, but they were called buzz-bombs because they buzzed as they flew overhead and when they stopped buzzing you knew that there would be a big explosion just afterwards. One fell on a Woolworth’s not far away and killed a lot of people, and his father said it was getting too dangerous for Timothy and his mother to stay in London, so they went back to Blyfield again. Not to Mrs. Tonks this time, but to another house that belonged to Mr. Barwood. He was an old man whose wife had died and he let them live in his house for nothing because Timothy’s mother cooked for him and cleaned the house.
Every day and every night the bombers flew over Blyfield on their way to bomb Germany. He would be in the garden, or in the field behind it, catching butterflies, and he would hear the distant hum of engines and drop his net and stare up at the blue sky, shading his eyes. Slowly the hum grew louder and louder until it seemed to fill the whole sky, but it was funny because you couldn’t see any aeroplanes at first. And then you would see one, high, high in the sky, a tiny silver speck; and once you saw one you would suddenly see them all, hundreds, it seemed, flying steadily in formation. Sometimes they ruled chalk-white lines of vapour behind them, and then they were easy to see. They were American bombers, called Flying Fortresses because they had so many gun turrets. The British bombers were mostly Lancasters and they had one turret fewer. He never saw a Lancaster because they flew at night, but he saw pictures of them and he heard them. The throb of their engines made his bedroom windows rattle. He also heard them coming back in the mornings before it was light, but they didn’t make so much noise then because they didn’t come back all together. And some didn’t come back at all, like Uncle Jack’s.
His father sometimes came down to Blyfield at weekends. Now they were getting V.2s as well as V.1s in London. V.2s were rockets and they were so fast that you couldn’t shoot them down. There wasn’t even time to sound an Air-Raid siren. All you saw was a flash in the sky and then the next second there was an explosion. Thank God Jerry didn’t get them before, his father said. He said they were well out of it, and he was glad Kath was in Cheltenham.
Then they had exciting news from Kath. She had missed sending her usual weekly letter and his mother was getting worried and thinking of trying to phone her, when they heard she was in Paris, which had been liberated only three weeks before. The American Army had wanted secretaries in France and they had asked for volunteers and Kath had volunteered without telling anybody. She said they hadn’t been told where they were going and they didn’t know it was Paris until the plane started circling and they saw the Eiffel Tower and then all the girls in the plane cheered, even the ones who had been sick. She said she was safe and well and it was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Timothy thought she was rather brave to go to France when they were still fighting the Germans there. Supposing the Germans s
tarted winning again and took her prisoner? He thought that his mother was worried about that too. She said she didn’t like to think of Kath in Paris all on her own, she was too young and they should never have let her go to Cheltenham in the first place. Every day his mother ran to the door as soon as the postman came to see if there was a letter from Kath. The letters were written on a single sheet of paper which folded over to make its own envelope. It was called V-Mail, and it had red stripes on the outside and a place for the Censor’s stamp.
The V on the V-Mail stood for Victory. Winston Churchill made the V for Victory sign with his fingers when they took pictures of him, and he held his cigar in the other hand. Everybody liked Mr. Churchill, and they called him Winnie, which was usually a girl’s name, but was short for Winston. Churchill was head of the British and Roosevelt was head of the Americans and Stalin was head of the Russians. The Russians were winning too, now, on the other side of Germany. Timothy had some comics about a little boy Cossack who played all kinds of tricks on the Germans as they were retreating.
Timothy went back to school at the convent where he had been before. Usually they didn’t take boys over seven, but as it was wartime they made an exception. It felt strange going back again, though the nuns he remembered best, Sister Teresa and Sister Scholastica, had left. It was boring being in a class of all girls except one other boy his age, but it was better than having to go to the village school. He feared the rough village boys, but at the same time he despised them. They had been in Blyfield all their lives, and they didn’t know anything, really. The war to them was just the odd V.1 being shot down and the bombers droning overhead. They had no idea what it was like in London, where there were bomb-sites and shelters and shrapnel in the streets. Timothy pined for the streets of London and the shops and the red buses and trams. East Grinstead, the nearest large town to Blyfield, wasn’t really very big, but Timothy liked going there with his mother on the Green Line bus. There was a hospital in the town for mending the skins of airmen who had been burned in plane crashes, and you often saw them walking about the streets in their bright blue hospital uniforms and white bandages. Sometimes they had bandages covering all their faces, with just holes for their eyes and mouths; and sometimes they had no bandages, and no faces, really – as if their faces had been made of wax, and melted. When they met these men on the pavement, his mother took his hand and hurried past. She said it was rude to stare at the poor men’s faces, and he supposed she was right; but it also seemed rude to walk past and look the other way. It was difficult to know what to do. He wondered which the men preferred.
