The Fledgeling

by Frances Faviell

  Frances Faviell

  The Fledgeling

  ‘I can’t go back. I’d rather die—I’d rather be dead.’

  NEIL COLLINS is going AWOL from his National Service – for the third time. Twice he has served time for previous desertions and been sent back, despite being hopelessly unsuited to military life. This time, terrorized by a bullying fellow soldier determined to escape himself, Neil intends to make his escape a permanent one. He heads to London, to the dreary, claustrophobic rooms where his twin sister, Nonie, and their dying grandmother live, periodically invaded by prying neighbours, a little girl who has befriended Mrs Collins, a curious social worker, and other uninvited visitors.

  The Fledgeling (1958) traces the single day following Neil’s desertion, and its impacts on Neil, Nonie, the tough-as-nails Mrs Collins, and others. Each of the characters comes vividly alive in Faviell’s sensitive and observant prose. At times containing all the tension of a thriller, at others a profound drama of familial turmoil, Faviell’s third and final novel is dramatic, compelling, and emotionally wrenching. This new edition features an afterword by Frances Faviell’s son, John Parker, and additional supplementary material.

  ‘A writer of unusual skill and delicacy in suggesting nuances of feeling and of character’ ORVILLE PRESCOTT

  ‘She writes with a sharpness of outline which would not shame Simenon.’ J.W. LAMBERT, Sunday Times

  FM8

  FOR

  HENRY MAXWELL

  There grows

  No herb of help to heal a coward heart.

  From Bothwell, Act 2, A. C. SWINBURNE

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page/About the Book

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Review slip

  Afterword by John Parker

  About the Author

  Furrowed Middlebrow Titles

  A Chelsea Concerto – Title Page

  A Chelsea Concerto – Chapter I

  Copyright

  CHAPTER I

  ‘NOW’, urged Mike, ‘now. Make your way in that direction, where I’m pointing . . . you’ll strike the bleeding road about two miles on . . . you’ll easily get a lift to Doncaster and from there you can get others on. Quick! while there’s none of the other blighters in sight. Go on! I’ll be seeing you. . . .’

  The sun blazed down on the shelterless moors, where they had been dropped from army lorries to find their way back to camp as a map-reading exercise. The lad whom Mike was addressing was slight, very fair, and delicate in appearance. His khaki uniform was too large for his shoulders and his fair almost girlish complexion was mottled now with the heat.

  ‘No, Mike, I’m too bloody scared. If they come back this way I’ll be spotted. They’re always on the look-out for me—they’ve confiscated my civvies. It’s not safe to try it in uniform—it’s too risky.’

  ‘Don’t tell me what I know already, you yellow bastard! You’ll be O.K.—if you do as I say. Get off now. Don’t hurry—walk at a steady pace as if you’re making for a given point. You’re trying to make your way back by the route allotted to our group. Go on now. Don’t waste time. Get going . . . you miserable little runt. I’ll cover for you—and I’ll answer for you like I said.’

  He stood over the younger lad with an attitude so menacing that the mottled red patches on the boy’s hot skin began paling with fear.

  ‘Go on!’ urged Mike. ‘Everyone knows you’re incapable of reading a map or using a compass. I’ll fix it for you . . . I’ve done it before. You get going now and you do what I said. Understand? Get everything okey doke before I turn up. Don’t you let me down. I’m taking the bleeding risks for you . . . Ninny . . . blast you!’

  The boy thus addressed, swallowed, and drew a breath before he answered. Then his words came out with a desperate rush, as if he had forced himself to utter them. ‘I don’t want to go, Mike. I’ll make some blunder. I haven’t got the nerve.’

  ‘You don’t need any bloody nerve for this. An idiot could get away now. They’re all walking about with their bleeding little noses turned towards our home-from-home camp. No other thought in their little minds—but to get back quick and report safely to our Mummy sergeant.’

  ‘I don’t want to do it,’ repeated the lad wretchedly.

  ‘Listen, Ninny! You’re going—and quick. If you don’t you know what’ll happen to you. Now—bugger off—and keep your nose towards your old grandmother and that Tarzan with the lorry . . . Understand?’ He gave his reluctant companion a shove in the direction he had indicated. ‘Go on. There’s not a soul in sight. I’ll catch up with the other buggers—they’re over there by those bushes. . . .’

  ‘Suppose they ask where I am?’

  ‘Oh use your head, you clot. What d’you think I’ll say? Ninny’s run home to grandma? I’ll manage to put ’em off—like I always do. You get going!’

  The youth whom he called ‘Ninny’ and whose name was Neil Collins took a last desperate look round, then turned an imploring one on Mike Andersen whose dark eyes, smiling but at the same time threatening, had never left his face.

  ‘All right,’ he mumbled, ‘I’ll do it.’

  ‘You’ll not only do it—you’ll do it as I told you. Remember? Now scarper!’

  The boy mumbled something, and turning, began walking in the direction indicated by Mike. He was hot and terrified at what he was about to do. Resentment and anger boiled in him at Mike’s power over him. He despised himself for obeying, for falling in through craven fear with this man’s plans for his escape. That Mike, who had no home, was using him as a means of effecting his own escape he was perfectly well aware. He had found out long ago that Mike had only cultivated his friendship for that purpose.

  Neil had a bad reputation in the draft. He had already twice deserted and served sentences for it. Mike had soon ascertained that Neil had a home in London to which he had on both occasions gone for refuge. He had extracted every detail about the Collins’ household from Neil. He knew it as well as if he had been there. He had soon decided that the younger lad should make a fresh attempt at escape—and this time with his help he would not be sent back—they would both get safely away to Ireland where Neil had an old aunt.

  The opportunity had come sooner than he had expected. A month ago Neil’s elder brother had been killed in Cyprus, and there had been a lot of publicity about it. He had been doing his National Service as he and Neil were now doing theirs, and he had been shot in the back by a guerilla rebel while trying to lift his already badly wounded officer on to his shoulders to carry him to safety. In spite of the shot he had managed to drag the officer—covering him with his own body—to safety before he himself had died.

  Mike had urged Neil to ask for compassionate leave, although the lad himself knew that it would be refused him. When it was refused, Mike had worked steadily on the injustice of the whole thing, trying to fan the spark of resentment still burning in the young brother even after two heavy sentences for absence without leave. It had been hard work, for Neil had apparently given his word to his old grandmother to stick his service out to the end without any more d
esertions. The brother’s death—‘murder’ Mike had called it—had come as a boon. He had not hesitated to use it as a whipping stone for every supposed injustice and every bit of trouble in the camp. He had persuaded Neil to fall in with his plans by sheer persistence and by methods peculiar to his own unpleasant nature. He had established a hold over this weakling which delighted the sadistic side of his character. Lately, he had begun to suspect that others in the camp were noticing it. In fact he had been tackled on the subject by several men whom he described as the ‘classy’ lot who would soon leave to become officers because of their previous training in their public schools’ cadet corps. He had put them off—he was an adept at lying and at wriggling out of every duty and chore; but because he was amusing and could make the sergeant laugh—often at another chap’s expense—he was not unpopular. When he had taken up with young Collins the friendship had not gone unnoticed. Mike Andersen was tough—he could knock most people out in a fight—he was afraid of no one—or so it seemed, certainly not of Authority which he regarded as something to be pitied and made fun of but not openly defied.

  He watched Neil walking slowly away across the rough heather-covered moor towards the road. ‘Make for the telegraph wires!’ he shouted after him. Ninny was such a fool that he was quite capable of missing the road and ending up lost on the moor. And yet—he had twice gone off on his own. He must have some guts. Lately he had been displeased to find that Ninny was becoming more obstreperous and he had been forced to use more unpleasant methods to induce obedience. When he was quite sure that the rapidly decreasing stature of Neil’s figure meant that the boy was a sufficient distance away, he turned and began hurrying after the other two fellows in their group.

  Neil trudged on dispiritedly. He had no heart in what he was doing. He turned over in his mind the possibility of changing his mind and returning to the camp. It wouldn’t matter how late he arrived there—they would put that down to his general incompetence. He didn’t know how many miles away the camp was. They had all been driven for what seemed a long time in lorries and dropped in separate groups at various desolate spots. He turned round to look at Mike Andersen, but he had disappeared. Far away he could see two groups of khaki-clad figures making their separate ways across the huge expanse of moor, but Mike and the other two belonging to his group had vanished.

  He could see what looked like telegraph wires now . . . about a mile ahead. The heat-wave was marked every morning by a thick haze over the moor, and it was difficult to see. He made for the direction which Mike had indicated would bring him on to the main road. He thought that the main road would be dangerous, but Mike had urged him not to be so dumb. If he were seen, all he had to say was that somehow he had got lost during the exercise and that he had been trying to make his own way back to camp. And this was exactly what he was now turning over in his mind. Should he do that? Should he wander about for a time, then get on to the main road and ask for a lift back to the camp from some passing car or lorry? He sat down on a clump of heather to think it out. If only he dared! He did not want to go through with this thing. He had suffered enough in the glass-house. Another desertion would mean, if he were caught—and he had no confidence that he would get away—a whole year’s sentence in a civil jail.

  Mike had enlarged on the injustice of that, too. Several fellows from their draft were serving sentences now in civil jails. Mike had pointed out that in a country supposed to be famed for its freedom and which invited and received refugees from countries which did not enjoy this privilege, it was a scandal that lads should be thrown into prison with common criminals merely because they had run away from conscription. None of this was new to Neil, whose father had been in the habit of enlarging upon the same subject to his family on the somewhat rare occasions when he visited them. He had enjoined both his sons to refuse to do their National Service—or to leave the country so that they would not be called up. As he had offered no help, either financial or otherwise, to either of them in achieving this, they had taken no notice of his long involved speeches.

  Neil, sitting now, a lone small figure in that vast landscape, could not bring himself to go on or to turn back. He simply could not make a decision. He wanted it made for him—and there was no one there to make it. The vision of Mike, and the influence of those strange dark eyes was still strongly with him, and in spite of the heat he shivered. He was terrified of Mike. He knew that now. At first he had liked him, admired him for the ease with which he got out of every difficulty and got over every obstacle. That he did so at the expense of other men did not dawn on Neil for some time, neither did the reason for Mike’s friendship with him. When it did, it was too late—he was already too deeply in the older lad’s toils.

  Should he go on towards the road and get a lift to Doncaster? Or should he sleep a bit in the sun and then make his way back to camp making some excuse for having got separated from the others? What would Mike do if he did this? The prospect was too frightening . . . some of the things which Mike could force him to endure were still vivid in his mind. He remembered the day when he had first discovered that Mike was only making use of him. It had been during a pause in an exercise. The troops had all been lying or sitting about on just such a piece of moor as this. He and Mike had been a little apart from the others near them. It was then that Mike had first put to him the plan for both of them to get away to Ireland. It had been so audacious that Neil had refused immediately. Mike had said nothing at first, but later in the day, during another pause, he had said quietly. ‘You just listen to me. You’ve seen for yourself that I can make people do what I want them to do. Haven’t you? Well, how will you like it if I use my power—call it what you will. Suppose I were to use it to encourage the chaps to ridicule you even more than they do now? I could you know.’

  Neil had been aghast at the vision which this threat conjured up; he stared unbelievingly at Mike. This was his one and only friend. The one person who had stood up for him, fought for him, and in a thousand unobtrusive small ways smoothed his thorny path at the camp and made it easier for him to endure. The very thought of Mike joining the ranks of those whose delight it was to make his life there unbearable was an unthinkable nightmare.

  ‘You’re joking, Mike,’ he had said feebly. But the tightly-closed lips and the now hard, unsmiling eyes of a new Mike denied anything in the nature of a joke. Mike meant what he said.

  It was from that day that he knew suddenly that he was afraid of Mike Andersen—more afraid of him than of any of the petty daily miseries which his so-called friend helped him to endure. ‘I don’t want to quit again,’ he had said stubbornly. ‘I did fifty-six days at Colchester the first time. The C.O. talked to me. He made me see how stupid it was. I had to opt whether I’d do the fifty-six days he gave me or go up for court martial. He was decent about it.’

  ‘Why did you do it again then?’

  Neil had been silent for some time, and then at last he had said, ‘Nona, my twin, was getting married. I was mad. I can’t stand the fellow she’s married.’

  ‘You got a hundred and twelve days for that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Mike had looked curiously at him. ‘Catch me doing a stretch like that—I’d take damned good care they didn’t get me.’

  ‘My grandmother gave me away to the police,’ said Neil.

  ‘I’d have killed her for it, Old Judas!’

  ‘She has strict ideas on duty and keeping the law and all that.’

  ‘You’re a fool, Ninny!’

  Neil’s heart had sunk. It was the first time that Mike had used the name by which he was generally known to his tormentors. ‘The old girl’s almost dead, isn’t she? And your brother’s dead and buried. And for what? A bloody medal which the family can hang up in a case? You know we’re due to get shipped to Malaya, don’t you? D’you want to get stuck out there? It’ll be quite another matter getting away from that dump.’

  ‘I’d like to see Malaya,’ Neil had said, obstinately. ‘Only I may not
go. I’ve got a bad record here.’

  ‘You’re just the sort they send there. Get rid of all the rubbish quickly. Got to have some cannon fodder—time hasn’t come yet for guided missiles only. Look at your brother—killed the first few weeks, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well you don’t want to bleed your bloomin’ guts out in the bloody jungle, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, then. You listen to me.’

  ‘It’s no good, Mike. I don’t want to desert again.’

  ‘Not want? Not want? Who said so? I’ve got plans for us both my dear Ninny—and they include you. In fact you’re indispensable to their success.’

  Mike had said no more but he had got to work in various ways, and soon Neil’s life became a nightmare. He shivered now as he lay there on the dry heather even at the remembrance of it. Even now, had it not been for this terrible fear of Mike he would have gone back. He might get some punishment for getting separated from the others—that was all. But it was the thought of what Mike would do to him should he dare turn up again at the camp which prevented him from turning round and going back. Suppose he went to the C.O. and told him about Mike? He had contemplated this on several occasions. But the thought of what would happen to him afterwards if his tormentors and Mike became aware of his treachery had made him desist.

  No, there was nothing to be done—but to desert. But he was not going to desert with Mike. A future with him was unthinkable. He would get to London and Nonie would help him to double-cross Mike somehow. She must. Len was gone—buried in Cyprus—Nonie would have to help him now. She could influence their grandmother. The old woman was rapidly becoming more and more helpless and was almost bedridden now. She depended on her granddaughter entirely. Nonie would have to persuade her. His decision made, he got up and started walking rapidly in the direction of the telegraph poles. It was surprisingly hot and his battle-dress was horribly thick and irritating to his sensitive skin. He took off the jacket and walked in his shirt. It was further than he thought and he was thirsty and tired. Walking on the clumps of heather and scrub was not easy. At last he reached the road and sat down on the edge to mop his face and neck.