Neil looked anxiously at the clock by his grandmother’s bedside. It was almost eleven.
‘Give me till four. Nonie can set the alarm and you can come with me to get the lorry, Neil.’
‘No. I’ll meet you on the corner somewhere. It’s safer.’ Neil was thinking again of Mike. He would have to slip out the back way to avoid him. But suppose Mike should come before then?
‘I’ll come with you and see you off,’ said Nona.
‘Come along and get some sleep,’ said Charlie, putting his arms round her.
She said, quickly, ‘No. I’ll sleep in here a while. I’ll curl up on the end of Gran’s bed.’
Charlie looked mutinous. ‘No. That’s not in the bargain. You’ve been sleeping here long enough. You sleep where you belong.’
Nona looked at the old woman but she got no help from that quarter. Her grandmother stared stolidly at her and in those intelligent old eyes Nonie saw that she realised perfectly well what was going on in her granddaughter’s mind. She would have to sleep with Charlie—after she had said that everything between them was washed up because of Jackie. She would have to capitulate—because of Neil and because of her grandmother. Charlie would insist on his pound of flesh. If he were sacrificing his moral scruples by picking locks and taking a lorry without proper authority to please her, then she would have to forget Jackie with the laughing eyes and the bikini. She felt the crumpled photograph now in her pocket as she hesitated. ‘I’d rather stay here with Gran, then I can give Neil some food before he goes off. I’ll wake you with a cup of tea, Charlie.’
‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘If you don’t come in with me now there’ll be no lorry.’
He stared at her and his look was challenging.
‘So that’s it,’ said Nona, slowly. ‘When I suggested that you were trading Neil’s lorry ride with me for Jackie just now you denied it.’
‘Are you coming or not?’ shouted Charlie.
‘I’ll follow you in one minute. I must have a word with Neil about everything.’
‘If you’re not in our room in ten minutes the bargain’s off,’ said Charlie. ‘I’m a man of my word. If I say a thing I mean it.’
‘I’ve told you I’m coming,’ said Nona, quietly.
When the door was closed she went over to her grandmother. ‘He’s hateful, hateful!’ she said, fiercely.
‘Do as he wants now,’ soothed her grandmother. ‘And get your brother away. You can get your own back afterwards. There’s a hundred ways a woman can do that with a man.’ She kissed her granddaughter, stroking the pale face and noticing the shadows under her eyes.
‘I’ve lost my job,’ said Nona, suddenly. ‘I’ve packed it in a week from today.’
‘I thought you liked it there. What’s happened?’
‘I cheeked the manager; he was unfair. Then he tried to make me take back the notice by bribing me with a tin of salmon for you. I ought to have taken it. I ought. I’m a selfish pig!’ She suddenly burst into tears. . . . ‘What’s the matter with everything, Gran? It’s all so dirty . . . the world’s horrible.’
‘It’s how you look at it. Stop crying now, Nonie, and get some sleep. I’ll wake Neil. What is he to wear?’
‘He’d better wear his slacks and a jersey and that old tweed jacket . . . hadn’t he?’
‘I’m not going like this!’ said Neil.
‘No one suggested you should,’ retorted his grandmother. ‘It’s a criminal offence for a man to wear women’s clothes in the streets. But you’ll keep them on until it’s time for you to go. There’s been so many unexpected callers here today that there’s no knowing who’ll come in the night. I wouldn’t be surprised if Linda’s mother didn’t come back again. I do hope that child’s found.’
Nonie went into the kitchenette and put a tray ready for breakfast. She came in, kissed her grandmother and then put her arms round Neil. . . . ‘Don’t look so frightened. Don’t. There’s nothing to fear. Nothing. Just do as I tell you and you’ll be all right. In Ireland no one will bother you.’
‘But it’s difficult to get work there,’ said Neil, anxiously. ‘There’s a lot of Irish chaps joined up because they couldn’t get work over there.’ He was suddenly overcome with fear at the thought of a strange place.
‘Your Great-aunt Liz will help you. I’ll write a note to her. Give me a piece of paper and a pen, Nonie.’ Nonie handed her a small writing block and a ball-point pen.
‘You get along next door. I’ll wake you at four,’ she said to Neil. ‘And you too, Nonie. Leave me now, I’m all right for the night.’
Nonie went reluctantly. She had lingered hoping that Charlie would have fallen asleep. ‘I’ll put the catch down on the door then?’ she asked as she was about to close it.
‘Yes, lock it. Goodnight, my darling,’ said her grandmother, ‘don’t fret. It’ll all come out in the wash . . . you’ll see.
‘Neil,’ she called sharply. ‘Come here.’ And when he stood at the foot of the bed she said. ‘Listen. Don’t think that fear is going out of your life. Your life will be one long fear. Yes! far worse than any you’ve known up till now. If you stray over the border into Northern Ireland they can get you, and if you set foot on this soil they can arrest you. Understand? You’ll never lose the feeling that you’re not safe. Are you willing to feel terror every time you pass a policeman? Every time you come face to face with an army sergeant? Are you?’
‘Yes. I am.’
‘Then you’re braver than I thought you were,’ said his grandmother, drily. ‘I should have thought that it would take far less courage to go back. You know what to expect there—you’ve no notion what being on the run will be like.’
‘You were so decent, Gran, agreeing to let me hide here—and when I came through your window this morning. Why have you changed? Now you’re trying to make me go back.’
‘Perhaps seeing your father tonight. He’s never faced up to reality. You don’t want to, either. And perhaps, Nonie. I’ve never realised until tonight how unselfish Nona is. She loves Charlie—you can’t know what that is—you’ve never loved yet—oh, don’t interrupt me, you’ve that to come. Nonie loves Charlie with a terrible devouring love—and yet she’s risking her whole happiness to help you get away. Do you realise that? Do you? Are you worth it?’ She took his face between her old hands and looked searchingly at him as if she would penetrate the man behind the mask, ‘Are you, Neil?’ They stared at one another, then the boy lowered his head and said wretchedly, ‘No. You know damn well I’m not.’
‘You could be,’ said the old woman, sighing. ‘That’s what puzzles me so. What’s made you so jumpy—like this? You’ve never been spoiled, never been ill-treated. You were sent away from the bombs in the War. It’s a puzzle.’
‘I don’t see why there has to be a reason,’ he muttered, sullenly. ‘We can’t all be heroes like Len. I was born frightened I suppose. I know I’m a coward and I’m ashamed. But what’s the good? It’s like some chaps up at the camp being bed-wetters—being ashamed doesn’t stop it.’
‘Being on the run is a terrible life—don’t make any mistake about it. Life’s full enough of kicks wherever you are, but desertion invites a double load.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ he said, resentfully, but he said it without conviction, and his grandmother said sighing:
‘You’re no more cut out for a deserter than you are for a soldier. Both take some kind of character and it seems you’ve neither. God help you, Neil, I don’t know how you’ll end up.’
‘If I could grow another skin or another body to fit into this one. . . .’ he said, smiling ruefully, ‘I’d be fine.’
‘You make me desperate for you. If only I could give you some courage—just one burst of it would help.’
‘I’ll be all right once I’ve got away. They make a chap into a drivelling idiot with their bullying. Once they start I go round in circles trying to find out who I am.’
‘If you’re set on Ireland there’s one thing you’d
best forget, and that’s your army number. I can’t get over how you came out with it last night when your father was asking you who you were. I’m going to write a line now to my sister. It must be thirty years or more since I’ve seen Liz. She was a bonny girl . . . with yellow hair like Nonie’s.’ She said ‘Nonie’, but her eyes were on her grandson’s as she said it, and her glance went from the sweater and the jeans to Nonie’s plimsolls. The boy did not miss the look as he turned to go.
‘I’d fight if anyone was to hurt you or Nonie. I’m not all that yellow,’ he said, awkwardly. ‘But I hate being forced into khaki and being made a fool of just so that some bloody sergeant can raise a laugh.’
‘Oh go and sleep,’ said his grandmother, impatiently. You’ll need it. After tonight there’ll be no one to watch for you . . . you’ll have to sleep with one eye open.’
She heard him moving about in the tiny room behind the bed, heard the cot groan and the springs creak as he lay on it, then he was quiet.
It was silent now in Charlie and Nonie’s room too. While she had been talking to Neil she had heard their voices, Charlie’s shouting, then a little scream from Nonie. But it was not a serious scream, only one of protest. But now it was silent . . . as it was outside. The rain dripped, making a strangely mournful little tune as the gutters emptied. A little wind rustled the loose papers in the road outside. Someone went by whistling a popular tune. A siren sounded eerily from the river. A girl’s voice called, ‘Goodnight and thanks ever so. . . .’ Young Sally from next door, nice girl, thought the old woman smiling. And now it was quite quiet except for the rain. The old woman heaved herself up on one elbow, took up the pen. ‘Liz, my dear sister,’ she wrote laboriously. ‘It is a long time since we met, and it seems to me that it’s doubtful if we will ever meet again, for I am ill with a disease from which one does not get better.’ She put down the pen as she wrote this, and her thoughts went back to her childhood. She lay a long time thinking of those early days . . . there had been good people in those Homes, kindness in some and a strict aseptic impartial treatment in all of them. Only one thing had been lacking and that they had never had from their parents and so did not consciously miss. She and Liz had twice been in the same Homes. Little Agnes had been sent to different ones. The two boys had been put into training ships and with them she had completely lost touch. Strange that a State which aimed to take the place of delinquent parents should separate families like that. She had heard that nowadays it tried to keep them together whenever it was possible. But she did not feel strongly about keeping the children of one family together herself. Children grew up and married. They separated naturally and often did not meet again for years—if at all. On the whole she thought that an upbringing with strangers was of more direct use in adult life than one sheltered and cherished in a family. The old woman had no illusions about anything. They had been lost at the age of eight, when she had been put in a Home for the third time and told that this time her parents would never get her back.
A clock struck twelve. She sighed. There were four hours to go. She set the alarm clock beside her very carefully and put a handkerchief under the bell. It might look suspicious if old Mr. Evans or Mrs. Danvers heard it go off at four. She took up the pen again and began to write about Neil. . . . ‘I’m afraid he is very like his father must have been,’ she wrote. ‘For, unlike Len and Nonie, he doesn’t seem to have any sense of responsibility to anyone or anything. He seems content that the world shall give him everything he needs without him giving anything at all. And yet he’s not a bad boy, Liz. If only they would not try to make a soldier out of him. . . . Help him, please Liz, if it’s only for the sake of the old days when we were left so often to fend for ourselves. . . .’
She signed the letter ‘Your loving sister, Bunch’, smiling a little at her foolishness as she added her childhood nickname. Putting it in an envelope she wrote on it in large letters ‘Mrs. Elizabeth Maguire’, and laid it with a sigh by the alarm clock. She put out the light by the bedside and lay back on her pillows. She would not take her tablets tonight. She must wake as soon as the clock went off.
No pain. Heavenly to have no pain. Rain, rain . . . it dripped monotonously and continuously. . . . ‘Rain, rain, go to Spain . . .’ they had sung as children . . . and when it snowed ‘Old Mother picking her geese, selling her feathers a penny a piece. . . .’ One rhyme after another went through her mind. It must have been signing herself ‘Bunch’ like that, she thought, brought back all those funny old rhymes and games. . . . What was it they had played in the Home where she and Liz had been together? ‘Farmer’s wife is dead, farmer’s wife is dead’ . . . that was it. They all stood in a circle and the farmer had to choose a new wife. Then the wife chose a child, the child a nurse, and the nurse a dog. Then the last round went ‘We all pat the dog . . . we all pat the dog . . .’ and the unfortunate child chosen to be the dog got thumps and smacks from everyone in the game. She remembered how they used to play it and arrange that Jean usually got chosen as dog. No one had liked Jean. She snooped and told tales. The children loved to get their own back in the game.
‘Farmer’s wife is dead. . . .’ She chuckled as she saw again the concrete playground in front of the Home and the circle of children in their white pinafores with the Housemother standing watching or, if it were pleasant weather, sitting some way off reading a woman’s magazine.
She and Liz had always stood next to one another on Empire Days, when they hoisted the Union Jack and saluted it. Liz and she were twins . . . like Nona and Neil. Silly names both of them . . . Nona and Neil. Outlandish and pretentious. Her own name, Jane, and her sister’s, Elizabeth, were not grand enough for Edward. He had chosen Nona for the girl and, after a long search, Neil for the boy. Why he should have bothered so much about naming these off-spring had puzzled his mother, after showing no further interest whatsoever in his first-born beyond naming him Leonard when his wife had wanted George.
She lay very still now, wondering at her freedom from pain. How warm and comforting and lovely it was to be able to breathe and move one’s arms without the Monster attacking. He’s gone to sleep himself, she thought drowsily . . . after all, even a Monster must sleep sometimes.
A clock struck one in the distance . . . one deep stroke . . . ‘one for a wish . . . one for a wish . . .’ a wish for her grandson . . . she couldn’t hear a sound from the next room. He slept lightly as Nonie did. . . . A wish for him. What? That he should get safely to Ireland? Or that he would somehow as if by a miracle be given the courage to go back and face the hundred and twelve days in a civil gaol, which this third desertion could mean? She was unable to decide . . . the effort tired her more than writing the letter had done. But she knew in her heart the wish for the latter was really a prayer—her prayer. The rain was soothing with its steady regular drip. She sighed gratefully, free from the embrace of the Monster. She knew suddenly that there was most definitely a hereafter. Why, she couldn’t tell. I must tell Josh . . . get Edward to send him round again, she thought sleepily, and she found herself repeating again and again, ‘Let him go back . . . let him go back . . . let him go back. . . .’ and knew that it was as a prayer which could be answered that she said it. She sighed again, shifted to a more comfortable position and slept.
CHAPTER XVI
ALISON, walking blindly and without direction, away from her sister’s flat was arrested only by the bright lights of an espresso café and was aware suddenly of an aching ravenous hunger. She had been sitting weeping by the telephone, still in the Japanese kimono, when Janet had called her begging her to come over immediately. Janet had been angry because their mother had ordered her a washing machine for her twenty-fifth birthday and not the fur coat which she craved.
Oblivious to the distress in Alison’s voice, she had insisted on her sister dressing and going over to her. The visit had ended disastrously with Alison rushing away from a flood of angry criticism. Janet, in one of her most spiteful moods, had loosed upon Alison a flood of r
esentment about the dreary monotonous domestic life she led with her penniless composer husband and her two babies. She envied Alison her independence, her set hours of work, her leisure for reading, theatres and music while making fun of what she called Alison’s frustrated virginity. Alison’s distraught air, so unlike her usual calm competent self, had at last forced itself upon Janet and she had asked her what was wrong.
She had immediately taken Rodney’s part in the quarrel, and Alison, caught off guard, had told her about Neil Collins and the moral problem which the situation presented to the welfare worker.
‘You’re mad to quarrel with Rodney White,’ Janet had cried. ‘He’s got plenty of money—and a car—and you’re almost thirty. Come down to earth. There’s no such thing as the moonshine mother taught us to recognise as love. There are no romantic dances with programmes and little gold pencils as she had—there’s the cooking-stove—sink, the dustbin—and the bed!’
Alison had been disgusted. Janet’s home had been, as usual, an untidy uncomfortable muddle with the babies howling and Nigel vainly trying to compose on the hire-purchase piano. Janet’s real reason for summoning Alison emerged during the quarrel. She was pregnant again, and wanted Alison to help her to obtain an abortion with which the elder sister had indignantly refused to have anything to do. Janet had furiously called her a prude, and old-fashioned in spite of her training in modern psychology, and had returned to the subject of Rodney White and Neil Collins. ‘It’s nothing to do with you’ she had insisted, and when Alison had again repeated that it was her duty to report the boy to the police she had fetched and drawn Nigel into the argument. He had been as incredulous as his wife.
‘Oh, for Chrissake, Alison, aren’t you supposed to be full of the love of humanity? No wonder Rodney was furious. I saw enough misfits when I was in the Army. Who the hell are you to pass judgment on any kid? There’s no nationalism or patriotism taught in the schools now. It’s all internationalism—how can you reconcile that with conscription?’
The Fledgeling Page 17
