War Crimes for the Home

by Liz Jensen

  —You got a fella then?

  Melanie laughs, sleepy.

  —Plenty.

  —Marje always used to say you have to grab love where you can and hang on to it. You only live once.

  —Got a joke for you, Gran.

  —I know it.

  —How d’you know you know it?

  —Cos I have told you all the jokes, you know I have. Last few days I have done my whole blinking collection for you.

  That is true. I have. She likes a joke, this girl, she likes a laugh. Unlike her mum.

  —I have told you them all, and you ain’t hardly told me a single one I don’t know already. So what’s it about?

  —Alzheimer’s.

  —See? Told you. Know it, the punchline is, At least I don’t have cancer. Been there, done that, little Miss Muffet.

  —Different one, she says, you’ll see. Ready?

  Well, I can’t resist a joke, can I.

  —Man’s worried about his wife so he takes her to the doctor, doctor examines her, says he needs to speak to the husband alone. Says to the husband, Right. The diagnosis is very bad. Your wife has either got Alzheimer’s or Aids, and I don’t know which. Oh God, says the man. How can I find out? Well, says the doc after he has done a bit of thinking. You take her into the woods and leave her there. And if she makes her way home –

  —Don’t fuck her!

  Knew it, see.

  But she is not so bad, this girl what calls me Gran. She reminds me of someone I knew. Silly girl, bit thick, but not so bad.

  It’s still dark, but there’s the beginning of grey beyond the black. The fish is flitting about, they are grey. In their dark tank. Maybe we slept.

  —OK, Gran, she says yawning. —Why don’t you just tell me the truth, and get it over with? I mean the whole truth.

  —What for? When’s the truth ever done anyone any good?

  —For Mum’s sake. And Hank’s. And Calum’s. For posterity.

  —Posterity? What kind of a word is that?

  —It’s me. And my kids, if I have them. It’s you. It’s how you’re remembered.

  —Is that a fact. And what makes you think I give a monkey’s about all that?

  —I know you do.

  —You know wrong.

  —Look. Gran.

  —Don’t call me that!

  —Gloria. Whatever. You’re . . . not all bad.

  —What are you buttering me up for?

  —I meant it. I mean it.

  —Like hell.

  I pick off this bit of wool from my skirt. It’s bluey, sort of mauve, nice colour.

  —Certain bits of the past is lost property, I’m afraid, I tell her. —Skedaddled. Missing presumed dead.

  She just gives me a look. One of those looks, you know the ones.

  —Don’t blame me you’re here, I tell her. —Blame Mister Hitler. Sex was everywhere. It came with death. And rationing.

  And love, I think, but I don’t say that. What would she know about love? Love was what you grabbed and hung on to, way past hope, way past reason. Or sometimes it just came zinging at you from nowhere, like a hand grenade someone threw. Bong! And you’re a goner, they can scrape you off the floor after that.

  —Tell her, says Doris.

  Another bit of wool coming loose on this skirt, I need some new clothes, I do, a trip to Marks and Spensive, and suddenly all I want is some peace.

  —Go on then, help yourself to my beeswax. Be my bloody guest, young madam. But if you don’t like what you hear, don’t come crying to me, because where I am, I’m way past caring.

  Doris is still there, but fainter now, all underwatery. Just the outline of her, rippling like she’s drowned.

  —Tell her what happened, she says in her little underwater voice. —Tell her about Hank.

  So I do this big sigh, comes from right deep inside, and I begin.

  —I went there in a boat, I tell the Melanie girl. —A ship, more like. The Liverpool Lady, it was called. Not that there was any ladies in Liverpool.

  She looks puzzled.

  —Where did you go?

  She is thick and all.

  —America! Where else?

  I can hear her breath draw in.

  —Say that again?

  —I went to America. Read my lips.

  —But you – I thought you – we thought you –

  —Made it up. Didn’t you.

  I can hear her breathing some more.

  —Yes, she goes, her voice a bit shuddery beneath the moon. —We did. We thought you made it up.

  —It took ten days to get there. Nowadays you hop on a plane and you’re there in a flash, aren’t you. Well, we had ten days of being seasick and chucking up our dinner.

  —But why? Why did you go?

  I can’t answer that for a minute, and we sit there in the dark for a while, listening to the clock tick.

  —Maybe I had this thing driving me.

  —What thing? What happened, Gran? What happened?

  The clock ticks some more in the dark, and I fall asleep or something, and maybe I dream the rest or maybe I tell her, and as the story rolls on, the light begins to creep in, the darkness is thinning out, turning from black to grey to light grey, and gulls is out there, you can hear them squawking and flying away over the blue skies, smiling at me, blue days all of them gone, nothing but blue skies from now on, what I would do to fly.

  What I would do to fly.

  It was my Balham client, Mr Loomis, gave me the money. He felt sorry for me, with my only relative being a sister who was abroad, because my mum and dad was dead and so was my husband, all I had in the world was Marje. Mr Loomis was rich, he was in property, he was building London after the bomb damage. Giving it a makeover, so where there was rubble and misery once, there is fresh blocks of flats with spanking new toilets.

  —I’m in the business of sweeping the past under the carpet, he says to me. —Where it belongs. I believe in fresh starts, I do. No one wants to remember London like that.

  His wife was blown to bits in a raid. He is a good man.

  —Just have a nice time, he says, handing me this wad of cash, looks like fivers and tenners. —And then come back and tell me all about it. You’re a good girl, Gloria. You’ve given me the best sucking off I ever had and I’ve had a few in my time, darling. So come on. Accept a talent bonus, sweetheart. I don’t like to see you sad.

  —Were you scared?

  —Course I was. I started regretting it as soon as I got on board the ship, but I can’t swim so that was that.

  Ten days of chucking up my dinner and crying in the cabin, and when we docked in New York the harbour was steaming and the Statue of Liberty rose up from the water, green as green. Thousands of us came off the gangplank banging suitcases and bags and waited for hours in Immigration till finally we were through to the streets, jam-packed with people – men in suits, men in overalls, old ladies, women with prams, girls with high heels and little swinging handbags.

  —What was it like?

  —Foreign. Like landing on the moon.

  Ron’s moon, is what it was. They all spoke like him, he weren’t a foreigner here. That night I stayed in a cheap hotel with a girl called Josie I met in the Immigration queue, who came from Hull and had one leg shorter than the other and a special shoe. She’d come to look for her GI in St Louis, she said. He hadn’t written but she knew he was alive. I told her I’d come to see my sister because I didn’t want to get started on my story, did I. It wouldn’t cheer her up none. I didn’t sleep a wink because she was crying and there was creepy-crawlies scuffing about with long waving-about feelers and flat brown shells. Next morning we went to a diner and ordered eggs, and the cook said, Sunny-side-up or over-easy? And we laughed, thinking he was taking the mickey till he explained it was two different ways of frying them. Then we went to the Greyhound Bus Station and when the ticket man said, Where to, ladies, she said, St Louis, single, and I said, Chicago. The same.

  When w
e hugged goodbye and said good luck, I thought: poor girl, she is going to need it. And I sat on a bench eating a hot dog while I waited for my bus. It tasted good but I could hardly swallow because of the fear and the wishing I hadn’t come and the little voice saying, Don’t go to Chicago, Gloria, let sleeping dogs lie. Go back to London and live your life and let them two live theirs.

  —Are you serious about all this? she goes, opening some gum and popping it in her mouth. I can smell the hot mint of it. —You really went there? You’re not just –

  —Making it up? Well, yes. Course I am. It’s all a load of cobblers and I am telling it you just for the blinking fun of it because old folks gets bored stuck in Homes with only tropical fish and half-dead people to look at. Silly cow.

  —Sorry, Gran.

  —Should think so too. If Ed was alive I know what I’d be doing now, and it don’t involve raking over the past, that’s for sure.

  She chews some more and sighs.

  —So you went to Chicago.

  The yellow cab stopped by a little wooden house. A shack, it was, somewhere on the outskirts of the city, nowhere near the middle like I’d hoped. Hadn’t known what to expect but it wasn’t this. I knew it was the right place because of the Dynamo petrol station next to it, Ron’s dad’s petrol station where Ron’s dad worked and Ron used to work too. The house, it was a rectangle, reminded you of a big matchbox. Not a pretty one neither, just a very ordinary one. Chicago. When he first said Chicago, it sounded like the flicks, it sounded like gold, but now I can see it is just a place where plain people live and have fights like anywhere else.

  So this is where she’s ended up, I think, dragging my suitcase into the porch. Well. No great shakes.

  That makes me feel better, gives me the courage to ring the bell. Then once I’ve rung it I start trembling like a leaf of course, hoping she’s out, hoping she’s in, hoping for Ron and not her to be there so we can be the two of us alone, hoping for I don’t know what cos I am that mixed-up in myself. Heart pounding.

  Door opens, and it’s her.

  Good old betraying two-faced Marje.

  She still looks just like me – that’s my first thought. My face, but not as pretty, and our Mum’s mouth. I should’ve had that mouth, she don’t deserve it. She don’t deserve nothing.

  —Gloria! she goes, in this whisper, so small you can’t hardly hear it. Her whole face slumps, caves in, like I’ve whacked her full on with my fist. —My God. What are you doing here? Her voice has gone a bit American.

  —Pleased to see me, are you? I go. I’m whispering too, and gulping back this big gulp.

  We stand there for a long time just looking. Her at me, and me at her, like one person looking at themselves in the mirror, because I can feel my face slumping too, and feel the same bad things she’s feeling welling up wild and hot like blood from a gash. Then again like someone in a mirror, our faces twist at the same time, and we both start crying and throw ourselves into each other’s arms, hitting each other one minute, hugging each other the next, hitting, hugging, kissing, wanting to scratch and bite like two dogs fighting or mating. On and on, and we’re screaming stuff too, and choking on the words, don’t know what we’re screaming exactly but it ain’t pretty, oh no not nice at all, it is cruel things that comes from hate, the kind of hate you get at home, from people you loved.

  And after a bit of this we both stumble to the floor, howling and howling and hugging and howling, the two of us in the hallway with the door wide open for all to see.

  And then in he comes, must be from the garage next door, yelling.

  —What the heck? And he drags us both inside, saying what the hell’s going on here, can someone please explain what the fuck’s going on, Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Gloria, Marje, Gloria, Gloria, oh Gloria, oh Marje.

  But he wasn’t part of what was going on there. It was between me and Marje.

  It didn’t stay that way, of course.

  He was not happy to see me, not one bit. Nor was she. Worst thing that could have happened, I was. But a while later, after we’d all calmed down a bit and Marje and I had stopped crying, I went to their bathroom for a wash and brush-up, and while I was in there they must’ve had a talk, because after that they did a good job of pretending.

  In the kitchen they have a thing called an ice-box.

  He goes and gets out three root beers and opens them. We swig straight from the bottle till it makes me queasy.

  —I was invalided out, see, Gloria, says Ron. —That’s why I came back early.

  —We got married as soon as he was out of hospital, goes Marje. —Got permission from his CO, and came straight here.

  They are both speaking fast, like they have agreed to tell me what wasn’t in the letter, get it over with, all the gory details.

  —I crashed the plane coming home after a mission. Just after D-Day. Both wings were hit and I was lucky to get her home at all. I still don’t know how the fuck I got out of the wreck, I had concussion real bad, lost my balance. That’s why they sent me back, doc said it could come again any time. My head still ain’t right.

  —Yes. He gets depressed and aggressive, says Marje. Bitter, she sounds. —Don’t you, Ron?

  —Yeah, he goes. —Depressed, mostly. But sometimes aggressive too, yeah.

  —What year was this? asks the slutty one. —That you went to America?

  —Oh. 1946, I think. The date was round about June 17, 1946.

  —How long did you stay?

  —Oh. Only a few minutes.

  There’s a patch of silence and the moonlight glows like radiation.

  —America’s a long way to go just for a few minutes, she says.

  —It may’ve been longer. I can’t remember. A week, perhaps. A month.

  —A year?

  —No, definitely not a year. Just a few minutes. That’s what it seemed like.

  —So now you’re here, says Marje, her face creaking with brightness, we’ll make the most of it. I’ll show you round town. Oh, there’s so much to see! We can all go to a baseball game. She can meet some of our friends, can’t she, Ron? I bet Izzi would like her – didn’t you say he was coming over from New York next weekend?

  Her voice is all breakable, she is all breakable, she is like glass, and glass is scared of being smashed and she knows me, she knows I can be someone that smashes. So watch out, Marje. Marje, who, the very first time she met him, went and put on lipstick pretending it was for sending lipstick kisses in a letter to Bobby. But that was bollocks, the lipstick was for Ron and she’d made her mind up then and there that she was going to have him, and Bobby being killed was a blessing for her.

  Marje had a job. Nursing. She was trained now, she worked in this hospital in the city, took the tram there. Chicago. It used to sound like the flicks. But real life’s never the same, is it. I didn’t see much of it, but I saw enough to know it wasn’t like I thought. But then nothing is. The women, they all wore flowers in their hair, it was the fashion that summer, and they dressed in bright colours, with little jackets and sleeveless dresses. And the toilet paper! It wasn’t like Bronco, it was soft, it was a pleasure to wipe your arse with it.

  As for Marje – oh, quite the happy wife, she was, on the surface. But you could tell something was wrong, and I began to wonder how long it would be before the cracks started to show, because Marje is someone always wants what she don’t have, but with marriage you’ve made your choice, haven’t you, and you don’t move on after that. That’s the thing she couldn’t see yet, but I could, I knew her. Her mouth, it turned down at the sides more than it turned up. Her mouth gave things away that the rest of her didn’t.

  I knew the time would come when I’d be alone with Ron. From the minute I saw him, and this look went between us, I knew.

  Marje knew too of course, because she wasn’t stupid. I was the stupid one, remember.

  Ron is working in his dad’s garage, and me and Marje are on the verandah, it is a sweltering day. The cars drive by flashing
in the sun, Louis Armstrong is on the radio. You could be happy here if you didn’t have things on your mind. Things such as, your sister nicked your man.

  —Remember the day I first introduced you to Ron?

  She looks away.

  —Not really, she says. —Can’t say I do.

  —He came to the house, to take me on a date. He brought a tin of peaches.

  —Canned peaches? You can buy them any day here. Just stroll down to the grocery store, pay a dollar, they’re yours.

  —It was the same day Iris got her arm blown off. Remember that? I ask her.

  —What? she goes, looking shocked. —Iris? You’re kidding! Was I there?

  —No, you were wearing orange, so you’d done the night-shift. But you heard it, you heard the bang.

  —Did I? I can’t remember. What happened to her? How is she?

  —Dead. I wrote to you. She topped herself.

  —You never.

  —I did. You losing your memory or what?

  She looks blank for a minute and then she laughs.

  —Must be. Because I’m happy. I forget all the bad times. It all seems so long ago, the war. Best forgotten anyway.

  You know what this is all about. She is forgetting stuff on purpose, she is. Forgetting Ron’s first visit, forgetting the bang she heard when Iris was blown up, and very soon of course she will forget that Ron was my boyfriend before she nicked him. She will start to believe that he was hers right from the start, and maybe even that there was no Bobby.

  —Are you still in touch with Bobby’s mum? I ask.

  Because I’m curious, now that I’m getting this idea about Marje’s memory.

  —No, she says. —Didn’t seem no point. I’m in America now. Bobby’s dead. I won’t be going back. You have to leave the past behind, you know. She pulls down her sunglasses and looks out into the street. —Hot day. Never got this hot in England, did it?

  —Sometimes you can’t leave the past behind though, can you, I say. —Sometimes it takes a boat and then a bus and then a cab and it knocks on your door, don’t it, Marje?