War Crimes for the Home

by Liz Jensen

  —Well, memory’s a funny thing, ain’t it. It don’t always work the way you think, you ask the Great Zedorro.

  —The Great Zedorro? she goes. —Who’s he?

  —He hypnotised me once.

  —Where?

  —In Bristol. Ron took me to see him. He put a bowl of oranges on my tummy. I was a human rod of iron and they cheered like mad. My picture was in the paper, I’ve got it somewhere. You want to see it? Me and him and the Slut Fairy.

  —You said you left Bristol after the baby was born, she goes. —Which baby was that?

  Is she stark raving bonkers?

  —Well, Hank of course, I only had the one, didn’t I. And I had my hands full with him, all on my own.

  She does this gulp.

  —Two, she says. —Actually.

  —Pardon? Two actually what?

  —I said two. You had two. Actually. Two babies, Gloria.

  She looks even more like Marje when her mouth goes down at the sides like that.

  There’s this long pause, and I watch the gulls outside, thinking: two babies?

  —You’ve got yourself in a muddle, dear.

  She doesn’t like that idea. Look at her, twisting up her pretty scarf. There’s another of these long silences, we’re getting good at them. Then whoosh, something’s blown a gasket cos she’s stood up and knocked the chair over.

  —You’re doing it on purpose! Hank warned me about this! Admit it! There’s nothing wrong with your memory, you just don’t want to think about it, do you?

  Not as ladylike as she looks, is she? She has one hundred per cent lost it here, if she was a child of mine I would thrash her bum.

  —Think about what? I go, because I genuinely have no frigging idea, do I, and it is beginning to seem a bit laughable.

  —About me! How can you just sit there and – pretend you’ve forgotten who I am!

  What’s she on about? A woman turns up. Knows Hank. Might be his mistress, if he’s taken to older women. Might be a religious type, you can never tell. Might even –

  Uh-oh. Now I’ve got it! This big laugh comes out, I can’t help it.

  She thinks I’m her blinking mum!

  —But I don’t have a daughter! I tell her. I’m still laughing.

  —You’re the one who said daughter, she says slowly, shaking. —Not me.

  —Someone’s been leading you up the garden path, love. I never wanted a daughter! A daughter’s the last thing I wanted!

  I’m still laughing, which don’t make her no happier. I’m laughing so loud that old Ed starts playing with himself in his sleep, and Mrs Manyon comes up looking like the grim reaper. But before anyone can say something to calm her down, which is what’s needed, the Jill woman’s stormed out of the day room like a bloody kid. Crying! Has she lost it or what?

  That’s when I know she’s not a Jehovah’s Witness. She’s just an ordinary impostor like the fish at Gadderton Lake.

  Mrs Manyon’s watching her go, all puffed-up and full of outrage. And even though I can’t see it on her face, I know that Doris thinks I’m in the wrong as well.

  So I’ve got the whole ruddy world against me now. I try to remember a joke a man told me, it had a mushroom in it, a mushroom that goes into a bar. But the punchline’s disappeared, and when I wake up it’s dark and I’m the only one there and my face is wet like I’ve been rained on in my sleep like garden furniture and there is a man on TV talking about black holes in space.

  Iris comes to visit us at the factory, with her missing arm, which is in fact a missing arm and shoulder. Meaning that, instead of looking like a woman, she looks like three-quarters of one.

  —We are honoured, goes Mr Simpson, to welcome Iris today, and I think we can all agree she is a very brave girl to come back here and urge you to carry on the good work, because the war effort’s more important than it ever was, eh, Iris?

  But Iris is a ghost, she is. All she does is swing round slowly like she’s on castors. She nods her head but you can see she don’t recognise none of us, in our turbans. Even out of them I’d bet she couldn’t, look at her, her face is like a lump of uncooked bread-dough someone’s chucked against the wall, sagging its way down. Not the person she was, not even three-quarters of the person she was. More like a quarter. We all go very quiet and then someone drops a lid that clangs and she nearly jumps out of her skin. Maisie Fielding starts to giggle, and there’s some coughing and then at last – it feels like a year goes by – Mr Simpson has the nous to start clapping and we all clap and clap and clap like fury, as if we could clap her out of there, clap her up into the air and out of the window, and she just stands there with her coat-sleeve hanging loose and her shoulder gone like a big chunk out of a rectangular block of cheddar, and the tears starts pouring down her face and Mr Simpson says, Thank you, ladies, thank you, Iris, and leads her very gently away.

  What war does to you is this. If you are a woman you are not out there having a crack at Jerry, are you. You are in a factory like Iris or driving ambulances or making tea in shelters or working as a land girl pulling up frozen beets with bare hands, and you are waiting to hear that your man’s been killed, and getting the comfort of a little peach syrup once in a while, to make up for the youth you’ve lost and the coffee that’s made of Spam and acorns and dead rats. And if you have a boyfriend who is a GI when D-Day comes along, watch out for some heartbreak cos he might never come back, and realising that, it’ll be like one of them pilotless flying bombs when the rocket motor cuts out and it starts falling in slow motion to hit some poor bastard, no ack-ack to warn them, no nothing, because the thing’s a robot, don’t have no human heart guiding it down, don’t have no rhyme or reason to the violence and where it hits. It’s just random, and random things is worse than stuff that’s planned.

  * * *

  At last I get a weekend in the Big Smoke, that I haven’t been back to since I was a kid. A whole two days to escape Mrs O’Malley’s blathershite and the factory and the soap-boiling, and trekking out to Yatton to buy potatoes: a night to see Marje and then the next night, if he can swing it, a night with Ron. Marje is still crying herself to sleep every night, she says in her letters, even though Ron takes her out when he gets R and R, to cheer her up. They’ve been to the Scala a few times, had dinner in an Italian restaurant once with her flatmate and some pals. But most of the time she just drives her ambulance and cries, because she keeps thinking she sees Bobby.

  Yesterday was terrible. And I was so sure it was him! He was crossing Ardle Street and as soon as I saw him, I didn’t hesitate, I swerved and followed him, driving down the wrong side of the road. I swear, Gloria, I nearly ran him down! But it wasn’t him of course, it was some other man who went foul-mouthed on me, cursing and yelling, and I stalled the ambulance and so I was stuck there with him bawling me out. A whole crowd gathered. I was so embarrassed. I completely lost my poise.

  Her flatmate Helen’s away visiting her parents: there’s a coke fire and wet clothes hanging up to dry above it, getting blackened from the soot, and a table all jumbled up with teapots and newspaper and –

  —Been going out with a Yank then? I go.

  —What? she says, like I’ve slapped her.

  —Them Lucky Strikes.

  She laughs, all flustered, and picks up the packet from the table.

  —Oh they’re Helen’s. She’s got a GI. I can’t believe some of these American names! He’s called Chuck, this bloke. But she’s had a Buddy and a Leeroy too. He was black.

  —Who?

  —Leeroy. The white GIs and the black ones, they don’t mix. They hate each other. You know what Buddy did when he heard Helen had been out with Leeroy?

  —What?

  —He dumped her.

  —Why?

  —Cos he was black. He made her promise she hadn’t slept with Leeroy.

  —And had she?

  —Course she bloody well had. And he knew it, so he dumped her. She’s got a Canadian on the side, so she’s well stocked w
ith Viceroy. Shall we nick a pack? She won’t mind, she’s not really a smoker, she just collects them. Or d’you prefer the Luckies?

  She is in a right state of fidgetyness, she is.

  Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette . . . she sings, lighting hers and then mine. She’s trying to be cheerful, but her voice is all cracked with the strain of it.

  Puff puff puff and if you smoke yourself to death,

  Tell Saint Peter at the Golden Gate that you hates to make him wait,

  You gotta have another cigarette . . .

  It’s Tex Williams.

  We sit there smoking and drinking tea, the blackened clothes dripping into the bath in the next room, singing verses of ‘Smoke Smoke Smoke’ and arguing about the words to it because we can’t remember them all.

  —Let’s go out tonight, says Marje. —Go to one of them Bottle Clubs. You bring them stockings I gave you?

  —No.

  I don’t tell her this, but I’m saving them for my wedding.

  —OK, you paint my legs, I’ll paint yours.

  So we dress up and swab our legs with old tea that Marje keeps in a special pot, and do the line on each other’s legs with brown ink, except mine’s wobbly, it keeps getting snafued and Marje gets cross and washes it off and makes me start again.

  We end up in Half Moon Street, jitterbugging with GIs, and putting back the gin and limes and them with their bourbons. We’re soon a bit blotto. We’re swaying in the corner between dances when two GIs come up to us. They’re each holding out one stocking.

  —You want the other, gals? says one.

  I don’t know what he’s on about until Marje slaps his face.

  —Oversexed, overpaid and over here! she snaps, and storms off. —Come on, Gloria, let’s get out of here! She’s quicker on the uptake, being the clever one.

  I follow, but as soon as we’re on the street the Moaning Minnie goes off.

  —If it’s got our name on it, says Marje, still stomping along all angry on her platforms.

  —No, let’s go in somewhere, I go.

  The stocking thing, it’s left a bad taste, and I don’t want that to end the evening. So we duck into this little downstairs pub on Windmill Street. It’s so smoky you can’t see a thing to begin with, and the music’s loud. But then we get used to it, and I look at Marje, and Marje looks at me, and we make a face and burst out laughing, cos we can’t believe our luck. These are the best-looking bloody Yanks you’ve ever seen. And we’re almost the only women in the room. Just us and the bar-girl.

  —Now we’re talking, I yell in M’s ear over the noise, but already I’m noticing there’s something funny about this place, because none of them hardly looks at us. Not what we’re used to, two blonde good-lookers like us, though one is twenty per cent better-looking than the other, which is me.

  —Let’s put on that new lipstick of yours, I go to Marje, thinking a touch of red’ll do the trick. —Find the Ladies.

  We squeeze through, and come out to some steps.

  —Got it on the black market, Marje says, pulling out the lipstick from her handbag. —Bloke says it’s made of some kind of lubrication stuff they use in tractor engines.

  —Yum yum, I say, hope we don’t get blisters, and am about to tell her this joke I heard one of Mrs O’Malley’s brats telling, about a talking horse, when I stop and grab her arm.

  —My God! she whispers. Cos she has seen it too.

  Two full-sized, hulking grown men in uniform, standing on the steps –

  Snogging.

  Locked together, they are, kissing each other’s bloody faces off. One has his hand in the other one’s hair, his big hairy hand that has a wedding ring on the finger. It’s like their mouths is glued together.

  Bloody hell. So we just stand there for a bit, till Marje gets the giggles and we have to run out screaming our heads off with laughter.

  —Fairies! she’s shrieking. —It’s a fairy club!

  Outside we stumble our way through the blackout, and you can hear the bombs falling.

  —There’s these two fairies, I tell her. —They’re setting up house together. (I’ve just remembered this joke, Maisie at the factory told it me.) —And there’s one up a step-ladder, and he’s hanging up pictures on the walls and the other one’s helping, and the one on the ladder, he does a little fart. And the other fairy goes, Oh, why talk of love when there’s work to be done?

  Marje laughs a bit, but not much. The fairies, they’re bothering her.

  —Fighting men shouldn’t be fairies, she says. —Grownup, good-looking men like that. Bloody hell, they were in uniform! Men’s uniform! Don’t they know there’s a war on?

  We walk on a bit more and she tells me about her Wren friend who says there’s a lot of lesbians there and the WVS is riddled with them, she’s seen girls snogging too, and squishing each other’s tits, and soon we’re cheered up and singing the chorus of ‘Smoke Smoke Smoke’ again, because it’s the only bit we can agree on. When we’re worn out from that, we go along in silence for a while, arm in arm, stumbling around the bomb-craters in our silly shoes.

  The darkness makes it easier to talk, and there’s stuff I want to ask her but she’s so twitchy, it’s like walking on eggs. But finally I do it.

  —What’ll you do, Marje? I mean, you’ve been going out. I mean like tonight – I know it wasn’t much, but it’s not the first time, is it? So there’s going to come a time when you can imagine life without – you know.

  I don’t say the name Bobby, it might set her off, so I just leave it hanging, and she don’t reply. There’s this long silence, and I’m beginning to wonder if she’s so blotto she didn’t hear a word I said.

  —You’ve got to grab love with both hands when it comes along, Gloria, she says finally, her voice all slurry with the booze, passing me the fag. —I don’t think you understand that. You might be my sister but let’s face it you’re none too bright.

  —So you’re always telling me, I go, a bit stung. —But I’m bright enough to be following your advice this time.

  —How’s that?

  —Cos that’s what I’m doing with Ron. I’m grabbing and I’m holding on.

  But then I feel sorry for her again cos I think: how must that make her feel, with bits of Bobby scattered all over Munich?

  But it don’t seem to register.

  —Grab it with both hands, she says, and hold on to it. No matter what.

  And I can feel the tightness in her arm that’s linked to mine, and feel these shudders running through her which must be to stop herself from crying, and I think how lucky I am to be seeing Ron tomorrow.

  I thought it would be easy with him, but it wasn’t. He’d changed, war changes you, it’s stupid to think it don’t. Drink changes you too.

  He’d already had a few by the time he turned up, you could tell from his walk – that same cocky walk but with a swagger to it that he wasn’t all in control of. I felt this squeeze of love when I saw him in his uniform, a big squeeze on my heart like the first time he stood on our doorstep, before we went to see the Great Zedorro. I felt faint with it, and then I felt I was melting away in the heat of him, and it was to do with him being a GI too, a pilot who risked his life for us and might still die, which made me feel ill. And feel like giving him everything. Whatever he wanted from me I would give him. It weren’t no sacrifice. If there was two of me I’d have said, have us both.

  —Gloria, he goes. —My beautiful sweetheart. My honey, my babe.

  And he takes me in his arms.

  But straightaway I know he’s different. Not a different man, and not two men exactly – but the same man with different things inside him, some of them mucky and strange.

  For once he didn’t tell me any stories about what he’d been doing, and how many hits he’d scored.

  —This fuckin’ war’s just gotta end soon, he says, and there’s this clapped-out sound to his voice, hoarse and hot. —All I want’s to stay alive and get the hell out soon as I can, back to Ch
icago, back to pumping gas and fixing automobiles. Jeez, I’ve lost so many buddies to them fuckin’ Germans. You stop giving a shit about guys after a while. Don’t get too close to ’em, cos you might lose ’em. I’ve had it up to here, man.

  He’s got his crazed look, like someone’s told him bad news. The war, I say to myself, the war’s told him the bad news – no, the war’s rammed it right in his face, that strangers kill each other in cold blood. Who’d be a man?

  The war isn’t a game for him no more, it isn’t no fun, he’s seen too many deaths which is what’s making him nervy and angry enough to scare me. There’s hardly time to get to the bedroom – he half drags me – and it’s over in no time, before we’ve even got our clothes off, still standing up and all, up against the dresser so you can see his backside humping away in the mirror.

  Well.

  It’s OK, I s’pose, cos we both know that later when we do it again we’ll be taking our time. And he’ll say loving things, not angry crude things, like fuck and bitch, I know it.

  After, he opens another bottle of bourbon and we do some drinking, half-naked on the bed, and share ciggie after ciggie, lighting the next one from the last, because he seems to need to smoke a whole pack, lost in a cloud of smoke.

  —Say, cutie, he says after he’s put out the last stub in the coffee cup. —Let’s go to the Mayflower. Get us some chow. Do some jivin’.

  And I don’t want to say no, because he is the one risks his life every day, not me, so off we go to Marble Arch and eat fish and chips and swarm around with everyone, packed it is, all drunk and flirting and smooching. The jitterbugging’s finished and we’re dancing our slow one.

  You had to go, the time was so short,

  We both had so much to say.

  Your kit to be packed, your train to be caught,

  Sorry I cried but I just felt that way.