Caught, Back, Concluding

by Henry Green

  ‘Yes, it’s about the best band in London. Now go on, darling, do go on.’

  She put her hand in his. ‘You mustn’t hurry me,’ she said, ‘just when I’m getting a little bit tipsy, it’s not fair, I won’t be rushed, d’you hear? Well, to get back to our precious officer in charge. Have you ever thought about them, the Regular Firemen, I mean? The older ones are getting about twice as much money as they’ve ever had. Peewee had no chance of promotion before the war. He’s told me so. Now this has come along, and there he is.’ She stopped.

  ‘There you are then,’ Richard echoed Piper.

  She took her hand away. ‘Oh look at that couple, darling,’ she giggled, ‘dancing over by that darkie waiter. D’you think she’s pretty? No you can’t, you mustn’t. Where was I? Yes, d’you think Prudence, or whatever her name is, really lovely, honestly? Because our Peewee does. It makes me a bit worried for him. No, he’s not ready for girls like her yet.’

  Here again she stopped. To help her, he said, the dolt, ‘I don’t know that it’s for anyone, man or woman, to judge for anyone else.’

  ‘But don’t you see this war is Peewee’s great chance. There’s all you amateurs have joined. What’s going to happen? The Regulars will promote themselves, none of you will get a look in, a man of his age with his experience may end anywhere, quite high up, honestly, if the war lasts long enough.’

  ‘If there are no raids,’ he said, ‘as there have been none, they may quite likely turn away every Auxiliary who can’t stand on his head on top of a ladder without having been trained how. And then Mr Pye will revert back to what he really is, an ordinary fireman. In that case,’ he went on, ‘not to mention myself, men like old Piper, who are utterly past it, will be altogether out, and a good thing too, if what you say about him is right.’

  Drink had made Roe rather more intelligent.

  ‘Darling,’ she said, ‘you should pay greater attention to what your pretty Ilse tells you.’ He made a face. ‘No, I was only teasing,’ she said. ‘You are so sweet. We shall have plenty to do when the time comes. But, even if Peewee does go back to what he was, just think of what he is now and what he used to be, pedalling back home on a byke to that sister, after his spell of duty. And now I know she’s nuts I see it’s ever so much more dangerous. Even if she raved and stormed every night she must have been a habit.’

  Richard thought the evening was not going right, or fast enough.

  ‘A bad habit,’ he said, ‘or, anyway, one that didn’t pay.’ If they had any more of Pye their going out together tonight would be ruined.

  ‘I say,’ he went on for obvious reasons, ‘tell me, is there any man dancing here you would like to go to bed with? I mean on the floor at the moment,’ he added, so as not to seem too direct.

  ‘Yes, there is, not counting you,’ she added with a look at him, and went on, ‘that one over there, with the girl that’s dressed as if she was in diamonds fathoms under the sea, oh dear she’s much too lovely. But think of my Peewee in this place, just think.’

  He could not make up his mind if she was only being polite. To gain time he said:

  ‘Pye here, never.’

  ‘Why yes, he comes most evenings, and it’s so bad for him, stirs up all his boring political views while actually he enjoys the place madly. But he’s finding it terribly expensive.’

  ‘He’s never paid for anything here, don’t you worry,’ Richard said, still wondering if she meant what, deaf as he was, he thought he had heard her say about himself, ‘I know all about the only time he did come, which was the night we were mobilised. He got the proprietor to stand him three star brandy for two hours, then left, cursing the rich.’

  ‘That was the beginning, yes, but it’s Prudence now, didn’t you know? Every night that he’s on duty. But thank God not when he’s on leave yet.’

  Richard became speechless. She went on to give convincing details but he was wallowing behind.

  ‘Pye comes here with her?’ he asked, dumbfounded.

  ‘Every single night. When you think he’s in the watchroom.’

  Not that he minded, Richard told himself, not that anything made any difference. So that was how Prudence knew he was married, it confirmed the night they had had gin at the substation. So Pye saw her every night. He felt excited and jealous.

  At this moment all the lights went out. A blue lime was turned, sizzling, on to the small stage. To have what little he that minute had he leaned over, in pitch dark, and kissed Hilly on the mouth. Her lips’ answer, he felt, was of opened figs, wet at dead of night in a hothouse.

  ‘Oh darling,’ he said, low and false, ‘the months I’ve waited to do that.’

  ‘Sweet,’ she said.

  In the steep purple left behind by that beam of intense blue light casting on the famous coloured lady, who had begun to sing, a shiny film of dark blue, so that he might have been looking through Christmas cracker paper, he took Hilly’s right arm and began to stroke the soft inside of it, which he could not see, nor tried to, watching as he was, as though in stained glass window light, the singer sing of what goes on at all times. He was rapt, lips still wet from hers, while the fingers of his right hand, toying with her arm, passed under his the softness of her skin. There was no trace of Dy left.

  As she stood there, gently telling them in music, reflecting aloud, wondering in her low, rich voice, the spot light spread a story over her body and dazzled her cheeks to bend and blend to a fabulous matching of the mood in which she told them, as she pretended to remember the south, the man who had gone, as she held all theirs with her magnificent eyes guardedly flashing, slowly turning from one couple to another, then again dropping her voice, almost sighing, motionless, while beads of sweat began to come like the base of a tiara on her forehead as she told the audience that he could see only as the less dark below her and whose clouded heads, each one, drew nearer to a companion’s in this forced communion, this hyacinthine, grape dark fellowship of longing. The music floated her, the beat was even more of all she had to say, the colour became a part, alive and deep, making what they told each other, with her but in silence, simply repeatedly plain, the truth, over and over again.

  She was beginning the last bars. Hilly opened herself, enfolded his fingers in her hand. ‘Let no one breathe a word, nobody say anything,’ she uttered in prayer, voiceless. Her eyes filled with tears. The stage grew impossibly brilliant. She shut her eyes and settled down, not, as she told herself, for long, to love Dickie.

  During the applause he kissed her once more. She was empty, she was nothing. It was such ages since she had felt like it. She thought she made her mouth a sort of loving cup. She said to herself, ‘If you go on like this, my girl, in a minute you’ll actually snore.’ She had snored once, with intensity, when kissed. Accordingly she pulled herself together, patted her back hair, began to get out lipstick. They might put the lights on. With several other men Richard called for an encore. She hoped they got it.

  When she had done, and the lights went up, the singer stood revealed as what she was not, a negress with too wide a smile. The same with Hilly. As he looked at her he thought it wild that the touch of the unseen inside of her arm should have been so, and saw her not as she was.

  Richard found it natural to put this next question immediately, and had no pang of jealousy when he asked:

  ‘Then has Pye slept with Prudence?’

  ‘Of course,’ she said, to be on the safe side, and looked at him. Actually she had no idea, but she was not going to risk saying that Prudence had done less.

  His wife was away. For no reason except this looking answer, and with a rush of excitement that made him feel sick, he was suddenly sure this must mean that Hilly, who had not yet been asked, would go to bed with him that night.

  When Mrs Howells got to Doncaster she found the son-in-law Ted had come to meet her.

  ‘’Ere I is, Ted,’ she said forced, very different from the way she had pictured it, ‘but where I’m to find me a bed for the
old bones I don’t know,’ she put in at once.

  ‘Well, mother, we’ll ’ave to ask.’ He had a careless way with him.

  ‘Lucky for Brid she’s got a roof over ’er ’ead,’ Mrs Howells answered.

  ‘Ah,’ he said.

  She thought he looked better back in the army, more of a man.

  ‘You look stronger than you did, Ted. ’Ow’s the chest? Would you be coughin’ easier?’

  She smiled. He smiled back. He gave her no reply.

  ‘Well, I don’t know,’ she said, ‘but I could do with a nice cup of Rosie Lee.’

  ‘Ah.’ He looked helpless about.

  ‘This way then,’ she said, and at that started off for the buffet quick, ‘gawd love a duck, ’urry or it’ll be all gone.’ She carried Brid’s case she had borrowed. He pushed along behind, medium sized, clumping, blank in khaki.

  As she fussed a way for them through the crowd, regardless, knocking knees right and left with the case she carried, she said to herself it was awkward as much as to be seen with him, the useless good for nothink.

  Once inside, however, he did manage to get them two cups, hot, not the same as at home but still tea, and there was sugar.

  ‘What would they charge for this?’ she began.

  ‘Thruppence.’

  ‘Oh – isn’t it dreadful really. All that! Oh dear. ’Ere,’ she said and pushed over a tanner she had grappled with difficulty from her old purse. He pocketed it without comment. He had made tuppence out of her.

  On the way up she had decided she would come straight out about Brid the first moment. But now he was across the table she did not have the heart.

  ‘Ah, that’s nice,’ she said, laying the cup back in its saucer as though it was porcelain, ‘most likely Brid’s pourin’ one for ’erself this minute. Though wasn’t the train late! It’s terrible really.’ She looked about.

  She saw there were too many crowded in on either side to be confidential. This made her think here was a chance, which might not come again, to ask after lodgings. It was not as if Ted could look out for her. The party next them seemed just the thing.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Mrs Howells said, ‘but could you put me right? Would you ’appen to be h’acquainted with any place I could lodge for the evenin’? I’ve come north to see me son-in-law ’ere, my girl’s boy.’

  This made Ted squirm.

  ‘You’ll never, not in Doncaster you won’t, not this night or any night in the year, packed tight as pilchards we are in this town I should know,’ the unknown lady said, ‘none better. It’s a hole, that’s what it is, you have me sympathy,’ she ended with hidden delight.

  ‘You don’t say, oh dear.’ Mary went on, ‘This dreadful war, really. It’s all on account of the rich, they started it for their own ends. Now everything’s topsy turvy.’

  ‘You up for long, Mrs?’ Sitting a bit farther off at the round table the man who asked this looked respectable. He was white-haired, and lived with a sister, he explained. Work was taking him away that night for eleven days. The sister was next him, she hardly spoke, but in a few minutes everything was arranged, Mrs Howells could spend the night there for rather less than she had meant to pay. Relief led Mary to explanations, which made Ted squirm again.

  ‘Yus,’ she said, ‘I’m in the WAFS in London, a real cockney I am, ’ardly ever been out of the old place, an’ I ’ave to wear trousers, though I’m not that sort. What my ’usband would say if ’e was alive I can’t imagine,’ she said, knowing full well. Within half an hour they were off in a bus to the address; within the hour Mary had taken Ted to a free house for a bite to eat and a drop of the other. She entered into a long, careful, surprised description of the living room they had just left. She could not bring herself to mention Brid.

  ‘Busted up everythin’,’ she said over a glass of port, paying for his, and at last getting nearer it, ‘but it won’t never come to nothink, mark my words, I wasn’t born yesterday, I’ve seen two of the things, this is my third war, an’ the last wasn’t no picnic let me tell yer. Ted,’ she went on, leaving off because she was inquisitive by nature, and seldom got away, so that the fresh scenes, the small differences on either side, were too distracting, ‘Ted,’ she said, ‘I don’t like this place, some’ow it’s not ’omely, I couldn’t live ’ere, never. Why look, that man’s ’avin’ gin in ’is pint. If anyone did that in the Running ’Orse, corner of Maypole Street, the customers would break the old place down for strugglin’.’

  They never got any nearer to Brid but the once, when he opened his mouth for almost the first time to tell her he must get back to camp. Then she did say ‘Ted, Brid’s sick.’ Two tears took a dog’s leg course down her lined cheeks. He said nothing at all. He left. She sat on, found another woman from London, and was well away by closing time.

  The next day she went back to town without seeing Ted again.

  When she landed home she found Brid had taken everything in the two rooms the girl could lay claim to, like the clock her auntie May said she would leave and never did, so that they had had to carry it out of the house when she died, and had put all in the old trunk which she had locked up, Brid, her own daughter had. This so upset Mary that she did not go to work at the substation for two days more. When she did report on, she was told Pye had posted her adrift.

  ‘What I can’t stomach, Arthur,’ she said to old Piper as she boiled him an egg on the side, extra for his supper, when no one could see, ‘what I can’t rightly seem to get into me mind, is me own daughter, my gel, doin’ a thing like that after I’d taken ’er in. ’Uman nature’s ’ardly understandable, I should know, that ’as lived in the one street these twenty years, married and a widder, but to go an’ do what she’s done is downright unnatural, is that right or isn’t it? I couldn’t believe me own eyes. “Why Brid,” I says, “where’s the mirrer,” thinking per’aps she’d broken the thing, “whatever’s ’appened,” I says, “and the clock an’ the bit of a jar I keep me pins in, you thief,” I said, forgettin’ meself, “you’ve pledged ’em.” “They’re mine, mum,” she says. I wasn’t goin’ to arguify with ’er. “You tell me what you’ve done with ’em this minute,” I said, and, to cut a long story short, in the finish I found them all locked away in me trunk like I told you. I don’t know. The trouble there is in this world. Sometimes I feel as if I should go crazy. And it come over me at the time, very queer it was, ’ow this trouble was on the way, like, not a day before she walked in. Children, they say, is the salt of life. Our parents looked on their children to ’elp at the end. But nowadays it’s wars every generation, so it’s not as if a woman, rich or poor, can call ’er child ’er own. An’ with the marvels they speak about science, there’s more deadly sickness now than ever we see in our young days, Arthur. On top o’ that there’s the worry. Sometimes I feel me head goin’ round and round. For she can’t go h’out to work, not in the state she’s in. The expense! An’ I’ve got to see about ’er allotment, or whatever they call it in the army these days. She can’t do nothin’ for ’erself. Some mornin’s I’m afraid to leave ’er with the baby. If it wasn’t for the neighbours I wouldn’t honest.’

  She came to a stop.

  ‘So there you are then,’ Piper said, gloomy.

  At that instant, in great haste, on leave, and for only the second time, Richard tumbled into bed with Hilly. The relief he experienced when their bodies met was like the crack, on a snow silent day, of a branch that breaks to fall under a weight of snow, as his hands went like two owls in daylight over the hills, moors, and wooded valleys, over the fat white winter of her body.

  ‘But I told ’im, Arthur, you should’ve been there to ’ear. I said to ’im, I says,’ she went on, imagining every word, ‘“You’re no good to no one, and I got a daughter, I ’ave, ’oo you took, an’ when you’d used what you wanted you sent ’er back,” I says, “more shame to yer, call yerself a man,” I said. ’E went white, Arthur, even if ’e didn’t say nothink. But I wouldn’t spare ’im. “Yus,” I sa
id, “yus, you ’as your pleasure of a gel, and then what,” I says, “why, you want another dish. The best won’t do for yer but you’ve got to ape them as can afford it, the rich with their filthy cases every day in the paper.”’

  ‘Every day in the paper,’ Piper echoed.

  ‘Oh I told ’im, Arthur, told ’im proper. I said all ’e’d done to get in the army was to be after those ATS girls, pretendin’ ’e was doing what ’e did for king an’ country, then when ’e ’ad a child it was too much trouble, “you lazy bastard,” I says, “that’s got no right to call yourself a man.” Only since I been back I can’t but wonder if I done right. Oh dear. To think of it. Locking up me things in me own box, an’ then makin’ out I was robbin’ ’er. It’s all ’is fault, though, I’ll swear blind to that.’ Saying this, her face settled to a look of a grim, bleak horizon, and she fell silent.

  There was a long pause while Arthur ate his egg and drank tea. When he finished he said, ‘That was very tasty, very sweet.’ He scrunched the eggshell up in his fist, dug in the garbage bin, and buried it so that no one should see that an egg had been eaten. Yet he put the egg-cup back on the dresser dirty with dried egg meat, exactly as it was. He wiped his hands. And he sawed at his mouth. He sucked his teeth. Then he said:

  ‘First things first, what’s Mr Pye goin’ to do?’

  ‘What do I care?’ she broke out. ‘Arthur, I’m telling you as true as I’m standin’ ’ere, I don’t care so much I could laugh right in ’is face. If I don’t give satisfaction I can get me a job of work with me bucket same as I ’ave done these many years I’ve brought Brid up alone. But there’s times,’ she said, ‘you wish the old days was back. The money was less, but they did look after us.’

  As with the return of summer, a beginning warmth ran in their limbs where they lay together, on leave, in naked bed. Richard fetched a great sigh. What he had now, and had only held before when drunk, was so much to his contentment that he wanted nothing more. The small warm movements of her were promises she made, and which she was about to fulfil. He had no further questions. He had the certainty of her body in his arms. He grew hot.