A Son of War

by Melvyn Bragg

  If it were possible for him to stiffen further as the waltz continued its numbered torture, he did. Externally in a state approaching cramp, internally practically liquefied with humiliation.

  ‘There we are,’ said Ellen when it finished. ‘Bow to your partner. That’s me. Take her back to her chair. We’ll sit over there next to Colin. That was fine,’ she said valiantly but instantly qualified the lie, ‘for a first time. For somebody your age.’

  ‘Very good for a first time out,’ said Sadie, unprompted.

  ‘Fred Astaire,’ said Colin, ‘started like that. That’s what your mammy wants.’

  The band struck up a quickstep.

  ‘Well,’ said Sadie, nipping her cigarette, ‘it isn’t boogie-woogie but it’s all we’ve got.’ Colin slid into her arms and they criss-crossed the floor with scissor steps, neatly swerving around equally expert couples who turned the dingy, underlit, barely furnished, brown and cream peeling-painted basement into a dazzle of dancing, precise, exhilarated, their imaginations transforming the meagre music of Johnnie King and Tom Pattinson into Glenn Miller or Tommy Dorsey, spinning the basement of the Congregational church into a ballroom in Manhattan.

  The older ladies, some with their coats on, danced with each other, just as nimbly, just as neatly, but with less obvious ambition. No children were up, which was a relief for Ellen. Joe had been much less able than she had expected. She bought him a bottle of cherryade.

  The Dashing White Sergeant, the Three Drops of Brandy and other country communal dances that Sadie executed in a sardonic spirit, unloosed a whooping wildness in Colin and one or two of the others, and the skipping and swinging easiness got Joe into it much less self-consciously.

  She tried him with the military two-step then let him play with other children until the interval

  While the adults restored themselves on tea and biscuits, the play of the children became wilder. There was another boy, about Joe’s age, and several girls older than them. The emptied floor became their playground. They launched themselves at it and managed to skid quite effectively. They rapidly fabricated an interior version of chasey, which roamed even on to the stage itself until someone called them down. An old cap appeared and served as a ball which the girls flicked between themselves, denying it to the two boys who dashed about in an uncoordinated frenzy. Joe was like a will-of-the-wisp, an imp, quite enthralled, flushed with excitement at the play, the girls, the baiting. Colin’s longing to be part of it had made him increasingly agitated and when the cap flew in his direction, he grabbed it and sailed into the game, announcing, ‘The boys is outnumbered!’

  The play became more violent.

  Ellen maintained the calm level of gossip with Sadie and other friends, despite Colin.

  Joe did not know if he was proud that a grown-up was so involved in their game and especially proud that it was Colin. There was a streak of that feeling but there was also something else, tugging it down, an embarrassment.

  Colin’s greater height, reach, speed and even commitment made him the star. He taunted the little girls to ‘Come and get it,’ holding out the cap at tempting length and at the last minute snatching back his hand or passing it, generally, to Joe.

  The girls began to lose interest and abandon the game. Colin’s enthusiasm frothed higher. The band, Ellen noticed and was thankful, began the trudge back to their instruments. She finished her tea.

  When she looked around, both Joe and Colin were gone.

  Johnnie King announced, ‘Take your partners, please, for a valeta.’

  The valeta was another easy one. Ellen got off her seat and peered around the room. A faint but persistent high but weak pitch of screaming galvanised her and she was at the door and up the short flight of stairs into the small cloakroom where she saw Joe on the floor, his face feverish, red, disordered, his body kicking convulsively, helpless piping screams and feeble pleas of No! No! No, as Colin knelt over him and tickled him, savagely, gleefully.

  ‘Stop it!’

  Colin appeared not to hear but kept kneading at the boy’s tummy. ‘This is what you like! This is what you like! This is what you like!’

  Ellen caught a glimpse of Joe’s eyes - pleading, frantic - his tongue rolled out, his head twisting side to side but with no rhythm, just trying to evade.

  Ellen took hold of Colin’s shoulder and pulled him away. His upturned look was almost a snarl of disappointment.

  Joe trembled still and for a few moments he thrashed like a landed fish. ‘There we are,’ Ellen said, kneeling beside him, putting her arm under his head. ‘There we are. It’s all right. It’s all right.’

  The panting began to subside, the shivering lessened.

  ‘He likes being tickled,’ said Colin, now on his feet and defiant.

  Ellen ignored him. Colin could not bear that. 'I wasn’t hurting him! He likes it.’

  ‘There we are. It’s all right now. It’s all right.’

  Joe sat upright and looked around as if quite suddenly called out of a profound sleep.

  ‘He won’t do it again,’ said Ellen, very clearly, talking to Joe. ‘He’ll never, ever, never do it again. Will you, Colin? It’s all right now. We’ll see you back inside, Colin. I’m sure Sadie wants another dance.’

  'It was just a game, Ellen.’

  She did not look round.

  Joe was a little groggy when he got to his feet and still occasionally sucking in a deep breath which seemed to pain him. His clothes were in extreme disarray and Ellen helped tranquillise both of them by spending time carefully reassembling them.

  It was not an option to leave immediately. The rebuke to Colin and the gossip that would flow would help no one. She took a much subdued Joe back into the hall where the floor was mercifully full with a robust military two-step. Ellen steered Joe across to the refreshments corner and coaxed half a cup of lukewarm tea into him and a cream biscuit was found.

  She nursed him through the next couple of dances and if anyone asked she said, ‘A bit tired.’ Sadie came, saw, and went, with tact, taking a subdued and furtive Colin with her.

  ‘By special request,’ said Johnnie. ‘Take your partners for the St Bernard’s waltz.’

  Sadie, Ellen concluded, rightly.

  ‘Think you can do it this time?’

  Joe nodded. The close and loving attention of a rare and concentrated quality had made him dreamy, soft-boned, suggestible. Perhaps because of that, he was ‘Great. Different again,’ Sadie pronounced, after the waltz was over. He swung into it, the three steps to the side, two forward, two back, even the twirling of his mother: only the actual waltz eluded him but even here he looked better because Ellen allowed herself to cheat and held him an inch or so from the floor so that he floated ‘one-two-three, one-two-three’. He would make a dancer.

  They left soon after that, which was acceptable.

  ‘I’ll give him lessons,’ said Sadie, linking the boy’s arm as they walked down Water Street. ‘ “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, Joe?’

  Sadie led, Joe joined in. They marched to their song. Ellen and Colin walked behind them, both silent.

  They found Mr Kneale and Leonard in the kitchen, which boasted three tables - the biggest for the family, the middle-sized for the two regular lodgers, the smallest one in case an overnight arrived.

  In a surprise move, Mr Kneale had begun to take some of his evening meals downstairs. Breakfast was still commanded in the heights of the two-roomed eyrie he occupied in a state now tacitly accepted as permanent. He showed no inclination to re-marry: one wife, he had confided to Leonard, though very pleasant, had been sufficient. And there was a certain sentiment clinging to the status ‘widower’ of which the senior history teacher was not unaware. Breakfast, delivered up by Ellen’s replacement, was another satisfying distinction. In the evenings, though, he had begun to come down, if not for meals, then after the meals, drawn by the company of Leonard.

  Each of them had an overriding preoccupation. The ultimate nuclear war for Mr Kn
eale, the evil of socialism for Leonard. Neither of them, for corresponding reasons - reticence, politic position in the town, bone-bred caution - was given to public argument. Yet their preoccupations would not be denied. The gentleman factor came into it. Mr Kneale’s membership of that caste, in Wigton and undoubtedly in wider worlds, was not to be questioned. Leonard, though without the developed education, was a fair match for wealth (and, after all, Mr Kneale lodged in his house), dressed with equal care especially in the matter of clean collars and burnished shoes, and had that detached air about him, as unmistakable as a Masonic handshake. He was, also, a mason.

  Grace would sit like an umpire though never called on to make a decision. They were more encounters than conversations. Each would listen politely enough to the other’s spiel and take only slight exception because to take too much time would delay the presentation of his own case. But it had its own vigour: it was becoming addictive. They had to try quite hard to pretend that they welcomed the intrusion of Ellen and Colin and Sadie and Joe. Sam arrived soon afterwards and took a cup of tea.

  Immediately he noticed a coolness between Colin and Ellen. He also saw that Joe was beat, though gamely trying to disguise it to squeeze every extra moment from this holiday treat. And Sadie was supporting not only Joe but Colin, equally, puzzling to Sam who sipped and entertained Leonard at least with gossip and news of the winners at Carlisle Races. He touched on the latter with delicacy: it was not acknowledged by Grace that Leonard gambled.

  Sam conveyed the information Leonard wanted inside a general description of the race meeting. Leonard sipped at his tea thoughtfully after calculating that it had been a poor day.

  ‘We should all go to Carlisle pictures,’ said Sadie.

  'I see Margaret Lockwood is appearing,’ said Mr Kneale, wistfully, of the actress celebrated for her ‘quiet English beauty’. ‘She has rather a look of the late Mrs Kneale. About the eyes.’

  ‘Give me the Yanks.’ Sadie’s loud voice jarred with Grace. 'There’s Ava Gardner and Jane Russell, both of them’s in Carlisle as well. They knock spots off Margaret Lockwood.’

  ‘That cleavage,’ said Colin of Jane Russell, shaking his head.

  'I want to see it.’ Sadie grinned and her new false teeth shone in the bright electric light. 'I want to make sure it isn’t falsies.’

  ‘Ava Gardner for me,’ said Ellen, and Sam was pleased. He too liked the idea of Ava Gardner. The Hollywood legend of the savage girl from the poverty of remote mountains whose female force had burst her chains had captured his imagination too.

  ‘We should organise a trip,’ said Mr Kneale. ‘A picture-trip. Rather unusual’ He was pleased with his suggestion and his fine plump little hands conducted his words and paused for a response from the players before him.

  ‘Great!’ Sadie was in first. ‘Jane Russell for me. And for you, Colin.’ She wanted to save him the hypocrisy.

  ‘Margaret Lockwood!’ said Mr Kneale, all but putting his hand up.

  ‘Seconded,’ said Leonard, who looked at Grace. ‘By both.’

  ‘I’m not going to Ava Gardner on my own.’ Ellen looked at Sam.

  The outing would have to be on the Saturday. The last day of the Races. Henry had already told him that many of the bookies stayed on, found a pub, treated all round, money flowed, said Henry, and it was ‘bookmaker talk, bookmaker talk, bookmaker talk wherever you looked’. He always attended and by now they were used to his tonic waters. Attendance, he gave Sam to understand, was a responsibility, ‘good business practice’. Sam had been looking forward to the company of the rather eccentric, loud-spoken bookies with whom he had shared a plot of legalised gambling land for the week of Carlisle Races.

  ’I can come if it’s late afternoon,’ he said, wanting to please Ellen.

  ‘Late afternoon is perfect,’ said Mr Kneale.

  ‘Joe can come with me and Sadie,’ said Colin. ‘Can’t you, Joe?’ He turned to the room, crossed the index and middle finger of his right hand and held it in the air. ‘We’re like that, me and Joe, aren’t we, Joe?’

  Sam noticed that Joe’s reluctance to reply was far from his usual anxious jump to comply with Colin’s rather bullying demands. ‘I think he won’t be much bothered either way,’ he said. ‘How about coming to the Races with me? You can do bits of jobs, then we’ll go and meet your mammy and see Ava Gardner.’

  Joe nodded, privileged and unaware that in Ava Gardner an icon of obscurely understood sexual fascination was about to beam into his life from the screen of the City Cinema in Carlisle. Ellen looked relieved,

  ‘We can all assemble for afternoon tea,’ said Mr Kneale. I’ll be guided by Ellen where we take that - and then we can arrange a suitable meeting point for later on, probably the bus station, even though might you take the car, Leonard?’

  ‘Tell them what SHAZAM means,’ Colin demanded, abruptly. ‘He can just rattle it off. What it stands for. Can’t you, Joe? Tell them what it means.’

  But a newly discovered splinter of resistance made Joe hesitate and he looked to Ellen.

  ‘He’s tired, Colin. We’d best go now.’

  She was not cold but Colin could not bear any abatement of her warmth.

  ‘He tells Colin! Tell them about the football matches at school, Joe. Tell them about the goals!’

  Grace and Ellen exchanged looks of muted anguish but there it was. Mr Kneale was a little perplexed and Leonard, as often happened when Colin was in a loud mood in the evening, found it was time for bed. At the mention of goals, Joe’s head had sunk to his chest like the head of a bird dropping to sleep. By this ploy he hoped to avoid Sam’s glance.

  ‘I’ll teach him to dance,’ said Sadie, standing up. ‘He could be as good as Colin.’ Ellen was grateful for the rescue. ‘You can stand on my feet, Joe - that’s how you learn to waltz, stand on my feet and we go “one-two-three, one-two-three”,’ and Sadie twirled around the kitchen, cheap in her clothes, worn in appearance, barren in so many hopes, dancing like a movie star, healing the room, dancing as lightly as a drifting leaf.

  It was near midsummer’s night and though it was ten o’clock, the pubs’ last call time, the chip shops preparing for the final rush of the day, it was still as light as many a winter afternoon.

  Sam had hoisted Joe on to the crossbar of his bicycle but he walked it up King Street and Ellen did the same. There was an unspoken agreed unwinding. A few men trickled out of the pubs and no one was passed by without a word.

  Ellen took advantage of being away from Colin and Sadie and Grace to sink into her own rather disturbing reflections. Sam let her alone and asked Joe, ‘What about those goals - Colin’s football matches and the goals?’

  Joe looked frightened and Sam was there in one.

  ‘We used to have a kickabout at school as well,’ he said. ‘Sometimes we could get hold of an old tennis ball that Miss Keys - she was the headmaster’s daughter - she used to give us when it was no good for tennis. What about you?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe, trying to speak while holding his breath. ‘A tennis ball.’

  ‘A stone would do,’ said Sam. ‘Anything we could kick.’

  He pulled a yard or so ahead of Ellen as they passed the Fountain - at this time of a weekday, ungarlanded with the guardians of the town’s daily history. ‘You know what happens to boys who tell lies? Even lies they don’t mean to tell? Lies that are harmless?’ He neither looked at Joe nor waited for an answer but put some toughness in his tone although he did not raise his voice. ‘They get so they can’t tell the truth about anything and then nobody believes a word they say and so nobody’ll have anything to do with them. They just get left out.’ Like Colin, he wanted to say, but he checked himself to save confusing the boy and to stopper the anger that threatened to possess him whenever he concentrated on Colin.

  Still he did not look at the boy, allowing him to collect himself the quicker for being unobserved. They were in West Street now, alongside the splendidly columned front of the Mechanics’ Institute, j
ust become the premises of the British Legion; the billiard tables the best for miles around. ‘OK?’ To Ellen. She nodded. ‘Hold the middle of the handlebars.’ To Joe.

  He swung on to the bike and settled his arms around Joe, who swivelled his body to the front. They pedalled easily, Sam and Ellen, well used to keeping close, good times in the cycling club before the war, well over a hundred miles on many a Sunday, once, a bit of a holiday, six of them into North Wales with two tents and full provisions.

  ‘So that about this SHAZAM, then?’ Sam asked.

  ‘It’s how Billy turns into Captain Marvel’ Joe grabbed the chance to make amends. He swung round to talk to his father and wobbled on the crossbar.

  ‘Steady.’

  It’s a magic word.’ When Billy said it, that was. His own attempts had met with no success. It’s the first letters of names.’

  ‘Go on then.’

  The mild wind from the west, from the sea no more than ten miles away, tanged their faces as they cruised past Wigton Hall before the swoop down the hill, over the bridge and then the shallow climb to Greenacres.

  ‘S is for Solomon. He’s wisdom. H is for Hercules. He’s strength. A is for Atlas. He’s … stam-ina. Z is for Zeus,’ pronounced Zus. ‘He’s power. A is for Achilles,’ Archieless. ‘He’s courage. M is for Mercury. He’s speed. See? SHAZAM’s all of them put together.’

  ‘Do you know any of those fellows, then?’

  He had not only been let off. He was being appreciated for showing-off with something he had learned by heart merely because the names sounded so gaudy and grand.

  ‘Solomon’s in the Bible. He says he’ll split up the baby. But he doesn’t because the real mammy says he can’t.’

  ‘That’s right.’ They were gliding down the hill, two bikes, the three of them, no effort, no pedalling, the spokes disappearing in the speed, the illusion of no weight, borne aloft, the drag of the body all gone in those moments, no weight in the world.

  ‘Race Mammy,’ said Joe, as they crossed the bridge.