War Crimes for the Home

by Liz Jensen

  It’s so romantic the whole dance-hall’s fainting with it, people hugging and swaying and snogging all around us.

  —Did you miss me?

  —Dumb question, honey. Sure I missed ya.

  His voice is slopping around a bit, and part of the squeezing my waist is to stay upright.

  And now that you’re gone, dear, this letter I pen,

  My heart travels with you till we meet again.

  Keep smiling, my darling, and sometime we’ll spend

  A lifetime as sweet as that lovely weekend.

  —Thanks for looking after Marje, I go. —I don’t know how she’d have coped without you.

  —She’s your sister, hon, he says, as the music fades. —Anything for a sister of yours.

  —Funny, she looks even more like me with her hair that way.

  It’s true, she’s done her hair to look just like mine. It’s flattering but it bothers me too, being copied like that.

  —Sure you’re not a bit gone on her, too?

  —Hey. You’re my gal, hon! You’re my cutie!

  The way we were holding each other – Vera Lynn was just starting up – I couldn’t see his face but I felt it go hot and we both knew he hadn’t answered my question.

  —Let’s go, I said, dragging him away from the bloody bluebirds and the bloody white cliffs of Dover, cos I wanted him nowhere else just then but in my bed.

  Marje was on night duty. Back at her place again I made him stand there while I looked at him. I couldn’t believe how sexy he was, even though he was drunk and couldn’t stand straight. We were going to take our time.

  —Watch, I said, and I took off my clothes for him, and stood there in front of him with nothing on, and the gas fire glowing blue against the wall, and my love glowing for him. I longed for him, I wanted him to take me.

  Slowly, then faster.

  —What’s the matter? I go.

  —Nothing’s the matter, hon, he says, rolling his look all over my body, and liking what he saw, which was good tits and curves in all the right places, I had nothing to be ashamed of, I was a looker. And you could see his scar in the firelight, and his thing growing hard again, and so I went up to him because I just had to touch it, it seemed like such a marvel.

  —Nothing’s the matter, he goes again, everything’s fine, hon, you’re so sexy, you know that? You’re a swell kid, Gloria.

  He was hard as a piece of thick rope, and so drunk he was reeling about, but I didn’t care, and I didn’t care that he didn’t have a French letter neither. We were on the floor by now, and his bare chest was making me melt, the sight of it like geography. The muscles on his arms. I ran my tongue across him, I wanted that thing of his inside me.

  His eyes were shut.

  —I’m going to marry you, honey, he said.

  Ah.

  I had to shut my eyes so that what he said would echo straight down to my heart. I loved him, I loved him. I ran my tongue further down till I had him in my mouth. He groaned and said lots of things I couldn’t hear properly, dirty ugly things, crying out. In my head I blocked my ears to that, and thought about love. I’m going to marry you, honey.

  Then I sat on him, wet, and slid up his legs and put him in me. We rocked. Slowly, then faster, till I was ready to die with how good it was, and when he started to speak I nearly slapped a hand over his mouth, cos I didn’t want to hear no more ugly words. But it wasn’t ugly.

  —You’re coming to Chicago with me, hon.

  When he said Chicago he went right in, deeper than he had ever been before, and the word went in with it.

  —Are you coming to Chicago?

  —Yes. I am, I am.

  America was all one place to me, I never thought to look at a map, Chicago sounded like the flicks. Like it was made of gold.

  —You try and stop me, I said, and then I locked my mouth on his mouth and my Zedorro Moment was a big swoop, and all the shuddering and shouting I did made him cry out too, a big yelp of man’s rage.

  And then he cried. He cried and cried, these loud rude sobs, and there was no comforting him, and when I tried to, he pushed me away. Hard.

  When I woke up in the early morning Ron wasn’t there and the first thing I saw opening my eyes was the bruise on my arm where he’d shoved me. I could hear voices down the hall, so I wrapped myself in a sheet and went over barefoot on the cold floor and there he was in his underwear, arguing with Marje in a big whisper but not loud enough for me to hear the words. She must’ve just come in from her shift, cos she looked done in and her hair was all frazzled. It shocked me he was just in his underwear like that but maybe he got up to use the lav and she came in. When I made a noise they both turned very fast and said, Hi Gloria, at the same time.

  —You two having a row? I asked.

  —No, snaps Marje. —It’s nothing.

  —Just shooting the breeze, says Ron. —Sleep well, Marje.

  And he turns to join me, and we go back to bed for one last bit of fooling around before it’s time to say goodbye.

  He’s off on another mission, a long one this time, and he can’t tell me what or where, or whether it’s from Manston or some other place, and won’t look me in the eye, so I know he’s scared, scared of dying, and who can blame him, and I’m scared too. I cried my eyes out at leaving him, and at leaving Marje, too, cos she looked worse that morning than she did after she heard the news about Dad and then Bobby.

  —You’ll always be my sister, she said. —No matter what happens.

  —And you’ll always be mine, I go, wondering what she means. Has she had a premonition or something?

  —Don’t get killed on me, Marje. You drive those ambulances safely now. You watch out for them time-bombs, OK?

  —Don’t worry, she says, I plan to stay alive. Start a new life one day.

  —You’ll find someone, I go. —Look at you, you’re gorgeous. I can just see you starting a new life.

  The sight of her mouth, which is Mum’s mouth, makes me want to cry more.

  —Ron always says we could be twins, she goes.

  Funny, but that does a strange thing to me, making me go hot and then cold, so cold I am freezing and numb, and the feeling won’t go away, even when I’m waving to her from the train, even when it’s pulling back into Temple Meads, even when I get home and into my own bed and listening to Mrs O’Malley yelling at her brats through the wall.

  I haven’t told her Ron’s asked me to marry him. It’s too soon after Bobby, and too private – like one of the dirty things he whispers in my ear when we’re having it away. But when I think about it – the way he said Chicago while he was –

  My heart shakes, my insides swoop, I get this lurching low-down feeling that is happiness or panic.

  Them black holes in space is the most peaceful places on earth. All that nothing crammed into a hole. I would like to eat one of them holes, or have one of them holes eat me. No room for nothing but nothing then, squash out all the other stuff that comes in, squash it back under the mud down the bottom of the lake.

  Yes, I will eat one of them holes one day, I will. Or maybe I will ask one of them holes to eat me.

  Don’t mind which.

  I brought you a lavenderball, says Hank’s Wife, handing me this little oily wooden marble. —You put it under your pillow to help you sleep, or in with your underwear.

  —What’s wrong with a nice bit of muslin with seeds in it?

  —Hank’s off on the rigs again, she says, fishing about in her handbag.

  —Is this one of them three-in-a-bed love triangles then? I go, because here comes the Jill woman who might be a Witness.

  —Gloria! she says, still fishing about.

  —Well, that’s what it looks like from here.

  There’s a new one, too: a teenage girl with a nose-stud and a slutty tattoo on her arm, holding Calum’s hand. Anyone’d think this was one big happy family.

  —Talking of which, could you get me and Ed some baby oil?

  The lady ca
lled Jill has come and sat the other side of me and so has the slutty girl, and they’re all looking at each other puzzled.

  —Hello, Gloria, goes the Jill woman, deciding not to kiss me but taking my hand and squeezing. —I’ve brought my daughter Melanie to meet you.

  —Hello, goes Melanie, looking at me like I’m something the cat sicked up.

  —Watch out for my bones, I tell the Jill woman, who won’t let go. —Don’t crush them, woman!

  She looks like I’ve slapped her, and the teenager smirks.

  —I’ll get you some baby oil, she says, but I’ll have to write it down or I’ll forget. I’ve a memory like a sieve.

  —Join the club, I say.

  I mean it to be friendly, but the look she gives me then, it ain’t such a nice one, I can tell you.

  The handbag-fishing is over, cos Hank’s Wife has found what she was after, which is some wooden bits of train-track for the boy. I’m watching telly which is about a South American general, he’s a mass murderer, and there’s a lot of argy-bargy over how out to lunch he is. There’s a man saying he’s not as bad as some people would have you believe. Then there’s someone got tortured says would you like to look at my scars, he’s all tizzed-up and emotional, look, if you will permit I will show them to you now and he starts pulling open his shirt and the interviewer’s trying to stop him but before you know it there’s his chest scrazzed with wounds like he’s been whipped.

  —What do you say to that, he says. —Not as bad as some people would have you believe?

  —Bloody hell, change the channel will you, goes Ed. —I haven’t had my pills yet.

  —He should be hanged, says Noreen.

  —By the neck, says Ed.

  —He’s forgotten what he did, goes the Jehovah’s Witness woman. —If he’s forgotten –

  She’s talking daft, you can tell she’s a loony with those staring eyes.

  —Mum, goes Melanie. —What are you talking about? You think he should get away with it? Do you know how many people disappeared under Pinochet?

  —Where’s Rubber-Lips, anyway? I say, to change the subject.

  But when we finally find the remote control under Ed’s cushion and then get the right channel, it turns out Marty Lone’s in hospital. He’s taken a blinking ruddy overdose.

  —We’re all praying that he’ll pull through, says his agent. —He’s been under a lot of stress. Marty’s someone who’s always worked hard and played hard.

  That’s when I remember the punchline to that joke of Hank’s. And don’t ask me why, but I feel the need to yell it. Cheer everyone up.

  —At least I haven’t got cancer!

  BOILING SOAP

  —Is she still sleeping?

  —Or dead. Yoo-hoo, are you dead, Gran?

  —Melanie!

  —Well? Come on, Mum, would it honestly bother you?

  —Yes! It certainly would! She’s not getting out of it that easily.

  —But what I don’t get is, how d’you know she’s lying?

  —I never said she was lying. What she’s doing is not telling the truth. It’s not always the same thing. It’s a cover-up. Like Watergate, not that you’d know about Watergate.

  —Daughtergate!

  —You could call it that.

  —But why? Why should she go to such lengths? Loads of people gave away their babies after the war. It’s not exactly news.

  —I don’t know. But when you’ve spent your life –

  —Believing in The Missing Link –

  —You can laugh, but if it was you –

  —Shh! She’s waking up.

  No I’m not. I’m boiling up my soap in this big iron pot, it’s about the only one left, the rest has gone to make aeroplanes and we’re permitted one per household so I’m leaning over it reading a letter from Marje, trying not to inhale the stink. This letter, it don’t say nothing much, like all her letters since she went to London. It’s written in the ambulance while she’s parked by a heap of rubble somewhere. Her nurse friend Helen just got married, she says. To a bloke Marje helped pull out of a bombed-out block of flats in Whitechapel. He’d spent three years fighting the Jerries and got injured, lost half a foot. The explosion made him deaf in one ear too but it didn’t put Helen off, even with all the offers she got from GIs, cos when they met in the hospital where she was working, and Marje brought him in all covered in blood and brickdust, it was love at first sight. And you can’t fight love, Marje says. You have to grab it where and when you can, and if Helen and John are happy together after all they’ve been through, and can make a life together, good luck to them. This love-grabbing idea is becoming quite a belief of hers, I’m thinking. This stuff about taking it with both hands and holding on to it for all you’re worth, it’s –

  But I lose track: suddenly, out of the blue, the fumes must be getting to me because there’s this vomity feeling welling up, and I go hot and cold.

  Something bad has happened, says this little voice inside me. Don’t breathe in the smell. His plane’s been shot down. Hold your breath, Gloria. No, he’s still here, he’s alive, cos I can feel him as close as if he’s standing right behind me in the room, stirring the soap with me, breathing in the terrible smell, the worst odour in the world, that makes you want to –

  Oh shit and triple shit, there’s no stopping it.

  I’m retching so bad I don’t have time to put Marje’s letter aside, I’m chucking up all over it, and all down my pinny and on to the floor and into the soap-pan, cos that smell don’t half make you puke.

  Then Mrs Bloody O’Malley only has to come along, just as I’m dribbling out the last bit where I’ve staggered out to the back yard.

  —Don’t think I don’t know what you’re suffering from, you dirty girl, she calls at me. —You little whore, you’ve the morals of a slut.

  I don’t know what she’s on about though, do I, I’m that bloody clueless.

  The hens are pecking at my sick. Cos hens, they’ll eat anything.

  The little girl from Gadderton, she’s here every night now. She sits on the end of the bed and strings her beads. Don’t say nothing. There’s a thing I’ve noticed. She’s stringing them on to each other like billy-o, but the string never gets any longer. I could strain my head trying to work this out or I could just say bollocks, and leave it. So that is what I am doing. Saying bollocks to the mystery of her blinking beads. Outside it’s blowing a gale round the corners of the block like the windy city of Chicago. I’ve got the TV on in my room, sound down low, it’s some sex thing, that’s what they show in the middle of the night, bottoms heaving away like the clappers, you forget the energy you had. But we’re not watching, me and the little girl.

  We are ignoring each other instead.

  Not so easy for me because tonight the little cow is different. Sometimes she is dressed like someone’s told her she is a ruddy princess but today she is a mess again, just like the first time at Gadderton, smeared in mud, and dripping water and pond-weed. Next to her there’s a raggedy mush of parachute that was once clean and white. It gave me a shock at first but I’m not letting on. It’s just to get my attention and I’m not giving her that pleasure, not even complaining about the mess.

  —Remember that fish I caught? I say at last above the slap and tickle on the telly. —Remember that fish I caught when we first met, the Hallelujah? I bashed its head till it was pulp.

  She turns her head a bit then, looks at me with those teenager eyes. Nods, like she knows already. Bored. Couldn’t give a monkey’s, could she? Lady Muck, with her chequebook. Something missing, my arse.

  In the morning the bed’s dented again where she sat and there’s a trace of pond-weed and a smear of mud and a smudge of blood like she’s had the curse and leaked.

  IS NOT A CRIME

  You know what Ron used to say? He used to say, When the shit hits the fan, that’s when you gotta keep a tight asshole.

  —I had this copied, Hank says, thought you might like it, to give your mem
ory a jog, and he gives me this photo again, the same one he showed me before.

  —Why should I want to give my memory a jog at my age? I go. —Bloody hell, forgetfulness isn’t a crime as far as I’m aware.

  —Can be, he says. —If it’s done on purpose.

  And he gives me a not very nice look and buggers off, leaving it on the little table next to the bed, gets back to his tangled love life. The picture shows this woman looks familiar, with a little brat.

  Unless bowels move regularly, your child will be weakly, peevish, dull and stunted.

  —You take it, I tell the nurse who’s Welsh and a foreigner so it’s like a double curse. That’ll be you in a few months. All alone with a screaming kid, you’ll need to give it syrup of figs every day to get its bowels moving, you’ll be a slave to them bloody bowels.

  —Xena Warrior Princess in minute, Gloria, she says. —You favourite programme, I think, no? You want I switch channels?

  And now that you’re gone, dear, this letter I pen,

  My heart travels with you till we meet again.

  Keep smiling, my darling, and sometime we’ll spend

  A lifetime as sweet as that lovely weekend.

  This letter I pen, my arse.

  There were girls at the factory, they got beautiful letters from their husband or their boyfriend or a man they met at a dance or in the pub. Long letters, and some of them had a pressed flower in that he’d picked on an airfield or somewhere. Me, I wasn’t one of them girls. There’d be weeks go by, and I thought: all this time he’s got, I know he has spare time, he could be writing to me, not drinking with his mates yakking about planes. But all I get is these little scraps, written in capital letters, like he hasn’t learned how to do joined-up writing, and there’s always this little twinge of disappointment there when I see how thin the envelope is. One sheet only, and never more than one side of the page. No pressed flowers, just something once that looked like a shred of tobacco but might have been old snot.

  Me? I could write him a whole book every night, I could. But because he don’t, I don’t, or at least I keep them short, shorter than they could be.