War Crimes for the Home

by Liz Jensen

  —Yes, she says. —It sometimes does. (Voice all weak and faint.) —Fancy another beer? she says, getting up all of a sudden and smoothing her frock. —I’m that parched.

  She is gone a long time, and when she comes back with the two bottles from the ice-box she looks shaky and has put on more lipstick.

  —You have to look to the future now, Gloria, she says. —Find yourself a man. There’s a friend of Ron’s called Izzi, he’s coming soon. You’ll like him, he has some stories to tell.

  I don’t say nothing, so she gets out two Lucky Strikes from a pack and hands me one.

  —It’s a good life here. I wouldn’t go back to England for the world. I’ve turned my back on it, I have. Nothing left for me there.

  —Except family, I say.

  —Well of course, she goes quickly. —I didn’t mean it like that. We take a few drags and then she can sense me about to ask her more stuff so she laughs quickly and says —They’ve got these things called tea-bags. First time I had a cup of tea in a lunch-room, they gave some hot water and one of these bags. I just ripped the bag open to get the tea out.

  I don’t say nothing so she laughs again and then starts singing, low.

  Smoke smoke smoke that cigarette.

  Puff puff puff and if you smoke yourself to death,

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

  She wants me to join in, like in the good old days, but I am not giving her that pleasure so she has to finish the chorus all alone in her cracked-up voice.

  You gotta have another cigarette . . .

  I have never seen my sister so unhappy.

  After that little talk she knew it was war, a different kind of war than the one we’d lived through in England, a worse kind of war, a female one where another woman’s the enemy. She started guarding him like a hawk, always one hand on him somewhere – on his arm, touching his knee if they were sitting, or just a finger sometimes smoothing a collar or flicking off an invisible speck. Her hands all over him, showing me he was hers, see. Property of. Still had that mouth. Our mum’s mouth. But harder now, less pouty. You could see in a few years it would start to sag at the sides with this disappointment she was beginning to learn all about, that she always had brewing in her because she always wanted the thing she didn’t have.

  Me? I’d learned it already, hadn’t I.

  Learned the worst, had a small taste of the best, even though it was only a joke as it turned out, and a bit of a sick one, a bit of a dirty one.

  Hang on to love, I used to think.

  Now I thought: it’s not love you grab, it’s any kind of a future, any kind you can make out of what’s left of yourself.

  And him? The great movie-star, Mr GI Joe, one Yank and they’re off? Mr Oversexed, Overpaid and Over Here?

  Well. It wasn’t about love, was it. Not any more. We were beyond that now, weren’t we.

  Marje wouldn’t rest till we had all got together and met Izzi. Izzi, he was an Italian American, and he was famous because he and some others survived eighty-three days on a raft in the ocean after their ship was torpedoed. He was going round the whole of America giving public talks about it, and that’s why he was in Chicago. He and Ron knew each other because they were Ninety-Day Wonders together when they enlisted. We took a cab to a bar with pinball machines and flashing lights, and soon we were halfway to being blotto, the four of us, because there was that much tension between me and Marje and Ron.

  He was good to look at, Izzi. And I flirted with him of course, but only to see what it would do to Ron. The more he talked about the raft, the more I flirted, but discreet-like, just enough for Marje to think I fancied him and Ron to notice. There were seven to begin with on that raft. They lived on some rations at first, till they ran out and they had to trap rainwater and kill fish and birds using their bare hands, or spears made of scissors.

  —Things just went from like bad to very bad, real quick, says Izzi. —We had two knives to start with, but we lost both of ’em in no time. One got knocked off the side when we was catching a fish, the other one . . .

  As he talked I slid closer to him on the seat, and Ron frowned. He wasn’t happy about it, but what could he do? He was a married man, he’d made his bed, and he’d have to lie in it. But the thing about that bed was, I had a feeling it wasn’t as hot as it once was. Depressed and aggressive, Marje said. Can concussion do that to you? Maybe it can, but so can other stuff.

  Izzi was still talking about his friend.

  —First he went deaf, then he went blind. We had no protection from the sun, and we weren’t eating practically nothing. And then he got this like, paranoia? He thought we were all hiding the fresh water from him. But there wasn’t no fresh water. We were all just lying there half dead, waiting for the rain with our mouths hanging open. And in the morning he was dead.

  Marje slaps her hand over her mouth.

  —He wasn’t, she goes.

  —Let the guy talk, goes Ron. He gives her a look that I wouldn’t like to get if it was me, a look that says, You silly cow.

  —He sure was, goes Izzi. And he wasn’t the only one. (I slide even closer to Izzi.) —We pushed him off the raft and watched him sink down. Jeez, that was a sight. His hair kinda floating behind him as he went down, it made you realise he was going somewhere peaceful. After that we kept talking about what food we’d eat when we got ashore. What meals we’d have.

  Banana custard, I’m thinking. Steak-and-kidney pie. Jam roly-poly.

  —I’d have spaghetti bolognese, says Marje out loud, and Ron gives her another bad look, and she takes a big swig of her drink and flashes him an angry look back.

  —Then we all started having these hallucinations, goes Izzi. —I kept thinking we were next to land, and all I had to do was swim to it. Then I kept seeing a lunch-room. Kept wanting to walk in there and order everything on the fuckin’ menu.

  Ron’s looking at me watching Izzi, I can feel his eyes on me. So I keep smiling harder and harder at Izzi, encouraging his story along, which is now about how this man Maddox who was on board, his hallucinations were so good that when he talked about them, the others started believing in them too.

  —He saw like these mountains of hamburgers. Hershey bars. And he saw his cute wife, and he saw chocolate cake and he saw a church hall full of people. Then he went deaf and blind and he died too, and man, we just cried and cried.

  —Oh my God, says Marje. —What a sad story. And Ron looks at her again like she is a lump of shit.

  —But sometimes we laughed, you know. And sometimes we’d sing or tell stories or jokes.

  Jokes, I think. I will ask him to tell me some of them later, I will. Maybe in bed. Ron is thinking the same thing because he is looking at me very intent, he knows how I love to hear a joke, he knows how that’s one of the things I most like doing in bed, telling jokes and hearing them. And taking cocks in my mouth.

  —Just stupid little things would make us laugh, says Izzi. —Like sharks chasing shoals of fish, or birds behaving stupid. Then Dutch, he found snails stuck to the bottom of the raft, and boy, we were so goddamn happy. One of the happiest days of my life, man. Imagine that. Imagine discovering you could eat live sea-snails being a happy moment!

  I didn’t have no war like Izzi’s war, or any man’s war, I thought. The war I had, it was my little war, a woman’s war, a nobody’s war. There were millions of us living that war, thousands of girls like me in Bristol, or like Marje or like Iris. We never had to float on no raft or eat sea-snails or watch Maddox go to the bottom of the sea with his hair, or get hit in the cockpit by shrapnel and make a tourniquet while we was holding the joystick. We queued for potatoes and we went to the flicks and we heard bombs fall so often it was background noise, you didn’t even bother to stop what you were doing when the Moaning Minnies started up, you just go on with your business, even if you was bombed out again and again and again like Mrs Blathershite O’Malley. My war, it was a tiny little war compared to
some. But mine stayed with me, and the things it made me do, they stayed with me too, but hidden.

  Marje has gone to the Ladies’ Room and Izzi has gone to order more drinks and Ron is still looking at me, his eyes haven’t left me all evening. He is jealous, there is jealousy burning up in him, thinking of what me and Izzi are going to do together later.

  —You’re still a swell kid, he says.

  —I haven’t changed, I tell him. —I waited for you. I thought you’d come back.

  —I know, hon, he says. —It all happened real fast. I crashed the plane coming home, see, I was gonna write you from the hospital –

  —Stop, I murmur. Because in comes Marje, her eyes are red.

  —I want to go home, she says to Ron. —Will you take me home, Ron? Now, please?

  He sighs, narked.

  —OK, Marje. How about you, Gloria? he goes.

  —Oh I think I’ll stay here and have another drink with Izzi, I tell him. —Swap a few jokes.

  Because it gives me pleasure to make him jealous, make him picture my body tangled up with Izzi’s on a motel bed.

  —Sure, says Ron slowly, still looking at me all intense. —You have yourself a nice time, Gloria. You come home safe whenever you’re ready. OK? You look after Gloria here for me, Izzi? Nice seeing ya, pal.

  But his eyes, they hurt.

  In the bar some more people come and join me and Izzi, and the conversation turns to a baseball team called the Yankees and the jukebox is playing and I’m all bubbles like I can be sometimes, telling jokes and funny stories and looking happy. But underneath I’m itching to see Ron again. Itching, aching, dying. Face all hot, heart all maimed still, the wound open and alive and only one way to heal it.

  So when the bar closes Izzi offers me a lift back to Ron and Marje’s place, and when we say goodbye he don’t insist on nothing, just gives me a peck on the cheek, he is a good Italian boy what goes to church. Plus he never does come up with any decent jokes, they’re all jokes I’ve already heard from Ron.

  —It’d be nice to see you again some day, Gloria, he says. —I’m here another week.

  I let myself in and wait downstairs in the dark of their living-room with no noise but the clock ticking on the wall. The kitchen door’s open and a bit of light comes through to where I am, just enough to see by. I lie on the sofa, waiting.

  He comes down into the kitchen at three o’clock, with no clothes on, just a towel round his waist. Sees me, goes to the ice-box and gets out a root beer.

  —You have a nice evening with Izzi, Gloria?

  —Yes thanks.

  —He’s a good guy.

  —He brought me home.

  I get up and go over to him, and watch as he takes a swig. In the silence I can hear him swallow and the beer going down his throat. The towel hides most of his scar, so you can just see the last couple of stitches. He swings round all of a sudden, angry.

  —You make out in his car? (His voice is cracked.) —Did ya?

  —Is that your business?

  He looks at me, his eyes hurting again.

  —I guess not, Gloria. Just curious. Sorry, hon.

  There’s a long silence and he swigs more beer, looking at me. His chest, it’s beautiful like it always was, and his tummy, it’s still flat like geography.

  —And did you fuck Marje when you came back? I whisper.

  He looks away.

  —Gloria. Don’t.

  —Why not? You should, she’s your wife. You should fuck her every day.

  He puts down the beer and moves towards me.

  —Look at you, Gloria. (His hands on my hips, settled there where they belong.) —You’re so beautiful. Jeez, I missed you, sweetheart.

  —Did you?

  —Sure I did. And you missed me. You think you can hide it?

  His gravelly voice that used to make me melt, but now it’s slurred from the beer. And then we’re kissing, kissing and kissing – the longest kiss we ever had, that’s full of wanting and violence. It starts there by the ice-box but before long it brings us to the floor, it is so strong, there is no resisting and no wanting to neither. And then we’re down on the floor and he’s tearing at my buttons and when he finds what he wants – the two of them (Aah, he goes, I missed these, honey, I so missed them) and he is in my arms again and I am in his and this is where we are meant to be.

  And we have gone back in time to how it was before, before the war came along, and when he’s in me – aah, where he belongs – the way he moves inside me brings the old happy loving times sweeping in, on and on it goes, the past all whooshing back, this is how it’s meant to be, and I start crying because it’s the most beautiful bloody thing that ever there was in the entire bloody world.

  And then when it’s over he pulls out and we lie there kissing on the floor. Don’t even bother getting up. What for. Just stay there all night, doing it. Doing it again and again, making up for all that lost time.

  —How could you do it to me?

  —I don’t know, hon. I don’t know. She was there. She was unhappy.

  —And now she’s here. And still unhappy.

  —Unhappy?

  —You both are. Look at you. ‘Marry in haste, repent at leisure’ – you two could be a walking advertisement for it. You ballsed it up, Ron. And there’s no going back. No wonder you get depressed and aggressive. It’s not concussion that’s to blame. It’s Marje.

  He’s still a talker. But the things he talks about is sadder, like the best part of his life is gone for ever. He’s grounded now, my airman. No more blue skies.

  —Life sure is different now. Jeez, you come back here, you got no wings no more, man. You’re back workin’ in Pop’s garage all day for jack shit, just one of them little ants again. Up there you was something else, you know, hon? Up there you had this vision, I’m tellin’ ya. Down here you got no vision except what’s right bang in front of ya. And that ain’t so pretty, I tell ya.

  —So why did you go off with Marje? I can’t stop asking him this, I am like a dog at a bone, won’t let it drop.

  —I told ya. She was there, hon. She needed me real bad, after Bobby. We got kinda close. And – well. Man needs a woman, too.

  —Doesn’t need to marry her, when he’s sposed to be marrying her sister.

  He frowns.

  —Was I?

  And my heart sinks right down. What a bloody fool you are, Gloria. He can’t remember it, can he. He was too drunk.

  It was just one of the things he said.

  I am hungry, I am. So hollow, I could eat a horse.

  —If we was in Chicago now we could go into one of them diners and order breakfast. Pancakes and maple syrup, I’d have, and some of them eggs over-easy. And American coffee instead of acorns and rats and Spam.

  —Acorns and rats and Spam? she goes, all sleepy. —What are you on about, Gran?

  —Here’s a good one. Want to hear a good one?

  —Go ahead.

  —OK, there’s Jesus, right. He’s been crucified and he’s dead. Anyway, three days later, Doubting Thomas is down by the Sea of Galilee fishing, and up walks Jesus and says, Hi there, Thomas. And Thomas says, But, Jesus, you’re supposed to be dead! I came back to life, says Jesus. But Doubting Thomas don’t like the sound of this, that’s where the Doubting part of his name comes from, see. Prove it’s you, he says. Prove to me that you’re really Jesus rose from the dead and not an impostor. OK, says Jesus, what d’you want me to do? Well, the real Jesus used to do miracles, says Doubting Thomas. The real Jesus, he could walk on water. Righty-ho then, says Jesus, I will walk on water for you, just watch. And he hitches up his robes and he starts walking out on to the Sea of Galilee. Oh my God! goes Thomas. It is Jesus after all! But just then he notices that Jesus is getting a bit lower in the water – in fact he’s starting to sink. Oh no! So Thomas dives in and swims out to Jesus, who’s nearly drowning, and does his life-saving bit and hauls him back on to dry land. Oh Jesus, he says, I am so sorry I made you do that, I am s
o sorry I doubted you! That’s OK, says Jesus. But tell me, says Thomas, how come you started to sink? Well, says Jesus. I didn’t have these bloody holes in my feet last time, did I?

  She likes that one she does, because she’s laughing and waking up. Jokes, they’re like the past, they are. They pop up out of the blue, you don’t expect them. But jokes usually cheer you up and the past, you can’t count on it to do that, can you.

  Marje is getting twitchier every minute of course, as you’d guess, because after that night in the bar with Izzi and what happened after, we’re barely bothering to hide it. Her getting a taste of her own medicine, I should coco. And of course one day we’re at it – on their bed this time, no shame, us, no talking about it neither, it’s all just biology between us now, and in she comes, back early from work.

  Brave, I’ll give her that. She watches for a long time. Seeing how it’s done.

  Must have been standing there at the door for ages before we notice her, her face is frozen, her mouth sagging down. Then she starts yelling stuff, and Ron leaps off me and grabs his pants and pulls them on sharpish. I don’t do nothing though, do I, I just lie there starkers thinking: big deal, sis. It’s only what you did to me, in London. Because she is pretty much dead to me by then, isn’t she.

  —Did you stay in touch? says the girl.

  —She wrote me an evil letter. Then nothing for a few years. He wrote to me when she got cancer, but she didn’t die from it. They’d had a couple of children by then. After that I got a card once a year, signed by both of them. I never replied. They were both dead, see. She said we’d always be sisters, but we weren’t.

  —So after she caught you and Ron – you left?

  —Walked straight out there and then. Hitched a car ride with Izzi back to New York. We were through. Anyway, by then I’d got what I wanted, hadn’t I.

  —What did you want?

  She is slow on the uptake, isn’t she.

  —I wanted what I got. I wanted the thing I came back with.

  You can see her pale face now in the light, her little nose-stud glinting. She don’t get it, does she.