by Henry Green
They had been in the wrong house.
There was a yell. ‘Still.’ The Auxiliaries stopped dead. This gave them time to see two red appliances, manned by Regulars, drawn up behind. These Regulars were standing idly by, bored. The man who had shouted said next with vicious scorn, ‘Why don’t you git out of it?’ Another enquired, ‘Do yer mas know yer out?’ At that Pye shoved his head out of a window. There was no more smoke. His face was green. ‘A preventer,’ he hissed to the Auxiliaries, ‘and may God in his mercy strike every man of you cissies dead, you cloud of butterflies.’
A preventer was taken up. It appeared that he had caught a can, in other words that he had been held to ridicule and worse inside, by the high officer Trant, for entering the wrong house. The fire was out. It had been extinguished by one old lady on her ownsome. She came down. She complained at the number of pumps in attendance. She may have had it in mind she would be made to pay. When she disappeared, the Regular who had yelled said to them in anguish, ‘For Christ’s sake piddle off out of it.’ And, in their upset, the Auxiliaries did an unforgivable thing, they obeyed. They drove away. As a result, Pye and Chopper had to walk all the way back to the station, a full sub officer and a fireman, shamefully, Chopper carrying the pole with a hook on the end which is a preventer, right along three streets, every foot of the way on foot.
Pye was never the same.
Three hours later, when he came into the kitchen to fetch his dinner, he was still talking just on the fringe of this subject. He had not yet had time to begin to go properly into it. ‘And what about the occurrence book?’ he was whining. ‘Would you propose to book me pump back, because you must surely know by now that everything must be booked out and in, book me pump back without me? But what do they know? Nothing,’ he said to the cook Eileen, then noticed Mary was crying. He paid no attention, but did not forget.
Later in the day he gave the station five turn-outs in three hours, that is to say, he gave them five false alarms. He put the bells down five separate times and on each occasion they had to drive out, turn round outside in the traffic, and bring the pumps back in again. After this it was not surprising that, while they did not claim they had done brilliantly at their first fire, the men considered their two officers had also lost their heads.
All day Mary Howells had done hardly any work. For hours she sat at the cain and abel in the kitchen, at that vast yellow kitchen table which the previous tenants had found too large to take away. Round her the cook grouped and regrouped various heaped dishes of veg. Meals had to be prepared for hungry men whatever the weather outside, or the weather in that meteorological disturbance which constitutes women’s feelings. Cups of tea innumerable were poured poor Mary as she dripped and cried. And one by one the plates, brown enamelled trays, colanders piled high with the brown earth’s fruits were taken from her, untouched, to be prepared by Hilly and Eileen.
For she mourned the fruit of her own body, what had, so to say, been grafted on her by Howells, but which in the fullness of time, when ripe, had dropped away alive, with a live life of its own she did not comprehend, to be grafted by a stranger with this helpless bundle that in spite of the process was part of Mary’s flesh and blood, this baby that bore a strange name; this it was she mourned, not for the marriage, the flowering, the development or for that its mother had borne, all these being in the course of nature, but she mourned the mother, her own daughter, that she had come back.
Just as she got up to get ready to go home, for, in spite of anything that Eileen or Hilly could say, she would not make her way back before the usual time, just as she had taken the last cup, had dried her eyes for the last time, and said yet again she would never forget, ever, and never disremember the sight of Brid standing at the door, then, exactly, Pye came in. He had not forgotten. He came to suggest she might want to stay away a few days. With remarkable tenderness he described how he could cover her absence up so that, if she took no more than a few days off, she would lose no pay because he would see to it that the authorities did not get to know she had been absent from the station. Unfortunately for him she was too upset to understand. If he had said straight out he would let her have a paid holiday she would have understood. For what she confusedly had in mind was to visit the military camp in Doncaster where her daughter’s husband was serving. But she did not hold with discussion at any time, with a male, of a plan she meditated which might have serious results. She held it to be unlucky. Besides she did not mean to discuss her private affairs with Mr Pye, whom she already disliked. But in any case she had not properly heard. She imagined he must suppose she was ill. Years of working for a harsh employer, a large corporation, had bred great wariness in any situation requiring her to admit her health at sixty was not that of a woman forty years younger. So she said, ‘No thank you,’ and that she was perfectly well in herself.
Pye felt slighted. He was that sort of a man. And the day’s events had not helped.
Pye was discouraged. He knew now, for the first time, the sense of impotence which goes with authority, the feeling that those he commanded did not care. He had never before had to give orders, beyond the few shouted words at drill. In his ignorance he could not say what he felt. So it was unlucky for him, as he came back from the kitchen, that he found Piper on guard at the door of the appliance room.
This old man did not look his best. As usual his knees were bent, the trousers he wore were ingrained with sand, his tunic sagged from work hollowed shoulders, the medal ribbons were awry and that leathern jaw was covered by forty-eight hours of grey bristle.
‘See here, Piper,’ Pye said, ‘there’s ’igh officers go floatin’ around in great ’igh powered cars. They come looking for what, why for trouble. When I enter the station I don’t ’ave to look, I know it’s there. Smarten up. We’re in a service, not dustmen working for the council. You’re an old soldier, give us a break. Sweet Jesus, what ’ave I done to deserve it?’
Piper said afterwards, ‘’e didn’t ’alf give me a canin’, oh dear,’ and thought no more. He was past that stage when he was able to remember any small incident which had gone against himself. But Pye could not put the substation out of mind. Unused to having men under him he assumed at any little bit of trouble that they were trying to get him down. And he had had big trouble. Trant had said, the words still rang out about his head, ‘Well Pye, while you was visitin’ every other bedroom along this street, the fire was still behind that winder all the smoke was coming from. And it went on so until the old cow what was in the ’ouse put it out with a saucer full of water. Also, another thing, guard that tongue of yours before the public.’ For all he knew Trant might write out a report, in which case there would be an inquest at Headquarters on the fire. And it had been said to him before another sub officer. He could not shut his mind. He had the bells put down for work. He set all hands to clean out the appliance room a second time.
In their ignorance the men thought it was Piper had upset him.
Mary, highly dramatic in the black-out at having decided on action, stumbled home to Brid. She pictured at the back of her eye the descent she was going to make on this camp the rotten, good-for-nothing, lying ’ound her son-in-law hung out in. She saw a long straight road as dark as this she walked and herself making her way, collected, down along it. It was blue cold. She wore her coat and the warm gloves. Up in the sky giant silent trumpet searchlights swung like they were to herald angels. At the end lights twinkled from a thousand buildings. Soldiers always keep a rotten black-out. For sure, being as he was, they must crime him for showing a light out of that window behind which he would even now be waiting for the visit that was coming, the runt, the bastard. Great whited monuments, like the tomb in Whitehall, began to line the roadway. From under the first a sentry challenged her. It could very likely be his air-raid shelter. She caught the bayonet’s flash. ‘Who goes there?’ he would say. And then she could tell him. ‘A mother,’ was all she would reply. Yes, he must know, that had a mother of his own.
‘Pass mother.’ And the next. ‘Who goes there?’ ‘A mother, like you have of your own.’ ‘Pass.’ ‘Who goes there?’ ‘A mother,’ right until she was at the gates where that miserable twister would be waiting, froze with his conscience, wiping his white hands, the ponce.
The next day, she was going north. And, it so happened, Pye had a summons he could not ignore, to visit his sister that same day at the asylum.
As he lay in bed on duty, his head by another telephone, a myriad anguished conversations held, unheard by him, within the black, shining, idle handle, he felt he could not sleep and managed to forget the station only to fall to worry over the visit waiting tomorrow. He had not seen her from the time he put her there. He had never called at one of these places. He thought of it as by night, for the black-out, at that period, was at the back of all their minds.
As usual he pictured himself involved in argument. He imagined he was asking the bus conductor, ‘What’s the nearest you go to the Hospital, mate?’ ‘Cows Pasture.’ ‘And where would that be, chum?’ ‘Where we turn off to the right.’ ‘Is that the only turn you take right-’anded?’ ‘No, that it’s not.’ ‘Then do I ’ave to wait till I see them eatin’ grass on me left before I know this is where I gets off?’ ‘Ah, it’s all built over now, you would never recollect it for the place you ’ad known.’ ‘But see ’ere, chum,’ he would object, ‘I ain’t never been this way before, and I can’t say I’m sorry, be logical, ’ow am I goin’ to tell?’ ‘Why, I’m going to call out to yer when we gets there, ain’t I?’ ‘You never said you was.’ ‘I allus were.’ ‘Then that’s different.’
After he had passed through a high wall, he saw himself groping to a vast pile that was raised black against him, for by now it was night and no gleam could escape into the darkness from this tiered tomb which shut those inside from the sky. He found he was under a large hall of bars that cast over him a zebra light. Dry, striped men with yellow surgeon’s dress asked his business. For some time they would not admit they kept a Pye. After he had shown his fireman’s pass, the letters he had, and the summons they had sent, one of them was away a long time. Then, from above, he heard her cry low, ‘Bert.’ Looking up, he could see Amy on the third floor of the cage, hanging to bars like they do in pictures, dressed all in yellow. Lying along his bed he groaned as Richard would, full length on the railway carriage seat coming back from his first leave, in six weeks’ time.
As he pictured her she was pale, hair unbrushed, streaked with dirt, who had always been so fresh. ‘Amy,’ he called, ‘but we can’t speak like this.’ ‘Excuse me,’ he said to the one expressionless man who now remained, ‘we can’t speak like this, in public, shouting top and bottom to each other. This lady’s my sister.’ ‘Them’s the regulations, Mr Pye.’ ‘But man, it’s not human.’ ‘Sorry, there it is.’ ‘But, by God, this ain’t right.’ ‘You know what they are, you’re in a service, Mr Pye, an’ they won’t have it.’ ‘But she’s as sane as you and me, they put ’er inside, it wasn’t nothing to do with myself, I signed, but they made me do it.’ ‘Now don’t get excited,’ this man said in a meaning tone. He pulled a stethoscope out of his breast pocket. ‘Bert,’ Amy called to him in the same low, warning voice. ‘Is there any history in your family, Mr Pye?’ ‘’Istory, what d’you mean, ’istory? I’ve twenty years service an’ what I am and what I’m not is on my record card up at Headquarters.’ The dry yellow-coated man at that instant turned into a Fire Brigade Superintendent, wet through, in full rig, dripping water. He said to Pye, ‘I’ll take your number,’ at which Pye woke up, turned over, and fell this time into dreamless sleep.
The next day he said to Chopper, ‘I got to go on private business, mate. Cover me till roll call, till I’m on leave.’ It was his leave day, he would be off at ten, but he had been told he must see her doctor at the asylum. To be there on time he had to get away a bit early. He did not dare ask the main station, Number Fifteen, for permission. He did not want it known that he was going to see his sister.
Up at Number Fifteen, Trant’s wife, as he left his quarters, promised him pork pie for dinner. This put Trant in mind of his sub officer who had made them a laughing stock the previous day, running about like a chicken that had its head cut off, with his Auxiliaries like a herd of sodding geese. ‘I wonder,’ he said to himself. He rang Pye up.
‘Sub officer Pye is not here, sir, he has just gone out inspecting hydrants.’
‘Tell him to ring me when he gets back.’
Pye was travelling. He could not be reached. A second time Trant rang up, on this occasion not five minutes before the roll was called at ten. He was informed Pye was busy on a private trunk call in the telephone box outside.
When Trant rang a third time, fifteen minutes after ten, it was to be told Pye had just that moment gone on leave, and that he must have forgotten, because Mr Trant’s message had been given him.
Chopper rang up Pye’s neighbours. ‘Soon as ever ’e gets back tell ’im to ring me quick,’ he said, ‘or ’e’ll find trouble for ’isself.’
Pye, unaware, arrived at the hospital with no difficulty. There were signposts pointing the way at every turn after he left his bus. He found matters simpler, but more horrible than he had dreamed.
The porter kept an occurrence book, same as they have in the Brigade. Then there was the paper he was made to sign, in which he undertook not to give anything to the patient. He read this carefully. To make doubly sure there was a list. Even toothbrushes were put down as dangerous, forbidden. What hurt could the sad, deluded females do with a toothbrush? But he signed. Being new to promotion, he put ‘Sub Officer, London Fire Brigade’ beneath his signature. And, because he was a careful, law-abiding man, he gave up the present he had brought his sister, a comb with rose briars painted on the top.
The interview was so painful he could remember hardly any of it after. The room upset him. All in green, ceiling and all, the walls upholstered like an eiderdown, nothing but two armchairs on the floor. Amy had spoken rather quiet. When he tried to move his chair, padded outside and in to match the walls, so as to hear her better, also for old sake’s sake to hold her hand, he found to his horror that it was bolted to the boards. She had talked sensible at first, said the food was good and all that, and then, towards the end, she went a bit wandering, asking when he was going to bring her child. But it had all been so strange that he was ready next day to reject any version left him of what she may have said. In a week’s time, if he had had anyone to talk over his trouble, and there was no one, he would have insisted that she spoke no different from another.
Pye was a simple man. He had been wrought up by the outbreak of war. In the bus on the road back he cried part of the way, called himself wet. Then he forgot.
The moment Pye reached home from the asylum his neighbours gave him the message. He rang Chopper at once. As soon as he had been told he felt certain it was Richard had given him away. ‘It might be that soft savoury Roe’s put the squeak in,’ he said.
‘Why surely no one would do that, skipper, surely not?’
‘Don’t know so much, Chop. Got to keep our eyes skinned, mate.’
Chopper was delighted with the expression. From that day Richard was known as Savoury, after the Row of this name, along which, in Chopper’s home town, expensive tailors used to measure the well-breeched for their suits.
‘I know what I’d call ’im, but then I can’t, I’m a gentleman,’ Chopper greeted Pye next morning, on his return from leave.
‘Who are you referrin’ to?’
‘Why Savoury, of course.’
‘’Oo?’
‘You called ’im that yourself. Roe.’
‘Oh ’im. I’m not so sure now. It might be that simple old answering sod Piper. What’s ’is name, that spy Trant has up at Number Fifteen, Osborn, uses the King’s Arms, doesn’t ’e, which is in the same street the miserable old ’ermit lives, ain’t it? But what’s Trant done? Posted me adrift? Yet you booked me out on leave in the occurrence b
ook? Did you? At ten, same as the rest on my watch? Well, that’s all right then,’ I don’t think, he muttered under his breath. ‘I’ll get Hilly to say she was taking me round the ’ydrants. An’ you might slip out right away before you go on leave. Try and find one that’s defective so as I can report it. I’ll spin some yarn or other about that phone.’
Roll was called and, as the cooks did not usually attend, it was only when Eileen sent over to say Mrs Howells had not turned up that Pye knew she was what is known as adrift, that is to say absent without leave, a major crime. He sent for Hilly. He was shorter with her than she had ever known. But she would not discuss Mary’s affairs. She would not say where Mary was.
Because Pye was new to authority, he resented the fact that the whole station did not come to him with its troubles. Before the war, when promotion had been out of reach and he had had his dreams of the figure he would cut if he had his deserts and somehow, impossibly, attained the rank he felt was his due, that is, his present rank, he had imagined himself a father to the men, knowing about their children, even settling differences between husband and wife. And here was a case in which he had chanced his arm. He had offered to cover her, as much as to put his head into a noose, without even asking Mary to take him into her confidence. He blurted it out, saying:
‘She’s stabbed me in the back.’
Hilly wondered if she would lose her temper.
‘Honestly, I don’t understand you.’
‘You don’t understand me, eh? You know General Orders? Or you should. Where any member of the Service is sick they must acquaint the officer in charge. Else they’re adrift.’
