Goodbye for Now

by M. J. Hollows

  He left the building as quickly as possible. He no longer wanted to be a part of this. He had other duties to attend to.

  *

  George stormed down the trench, barging one private out of the way. He didn’t say sorry, he just kept on walking. He wiped a hand across his cheek, smearing more mud across his face. Tears threatened to fall, but he wouldn’t let them. He was angry, not upset. He couldn’t allow himself to be upset.

  ‘Woah, what’s got into you?’

  Corporal Owens grabbed him by the arm, arresting his charge. George almost lashed out, but he caught himself; he liked the man.

  ‘What happened up there, George? What happened?’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘He’s what’s made you so angry? You look like you’re about to go off and fight the Germans all by yourself.’

  ‘I’ve thought about it.’

  ‘Come on now, sit down or something. Tell me what happened.’

  George sat on a small ledge in the mud by the side of the communication trench and breathed. After a minute or so, he was calm enough to relate to Owens what Tom had said.

  ‘I don’t suppose he was trying to be rude, George.’ He gave him that fatherly look which George was fond of, showing that despite it all Owens still cared. ‘He was just trying to make it easier on you.’

  ‘Easier?’

  ‘Yes, easier. He’s probably scared witless. He didn’t want you to have a difficult goodbye. Not amongst all of this. He wasn’t trying to be rude, and I’m sure that he certainly cares about you. Probably too much, if truth be told. Arguing with you, well that was just his way of making sure that you left the room, and that you didn’t try and do anything drastic to try and save him.

  ‘You see, he wanted to make it easier on you, by making you angry at him, and, if only for a short while, by making you hate him.’

  George put his head in his hands, covering his face with fresh mud. He didn’t care about the mud, he just wanted to shut the outside world out. He didn’t understand what was happening, and too much had changed. He wanted to run away, but knew he wouldn’t get very far. For the first time he could see why Tom had run. It was an instinct, left over from their days as wild animals. George could feel the same sensation now, and it was only his self-pity that stopped him from bolting.

  Owens pulled George’s arm away, revealing his face.

  ‘Come now, George. Let’s get back to work fixing these trenches. It’ll take your mind off things. Best to keep busy.’

  Owens hauled him up with a hand under George’s armpit. He gave him a pat on the back, and together they forced their way through the muddy trench back to their section.

  *

  George sat and forced his back against the wall of the trench, feeling the cool wet earth behind him, and closed his eyes. The morning sun coming over the horizon lit the back of his eyelids an angry red, but it was the mere effort of closing them that was calming and relaxing. He didn’t close them for sleep, but to tempt his mind to somewhere else, anywhere else but here. Somewhere birds sang, unaware of the war that was going on around them. It was amazing that they were still here despite the devastation to their habitats.

  A shot rang out in the distance. It reverberated around the nearby trenches and across no man’s land, an eerie power in the still quiet of the morning air.

  George couldn’t be sure if it had been one shot of a sniper picking up a target, or the shots of the firing squad ending his oldest friend’s life. Gunfire was always present in the trenches, echoing through the morning gloom.

  It was about the right time, he told himself.

  A single tear fell down his cheek.

  He hadn’t cried for another man since Fred had died, and that was right at the beginning, when it still affected him. Every time since, he had just become more and more numb, until now. Now he had lost everything, and he shed a tear for Mrs Adams who had lost the only thing left in her life worth living for. He knew the news would devastate her. But she would have to know at some point. He vowed then, if he ever got home, he would be the one to tell her about her son. To tell her that he wasn’t a coward, that none of them were. This war had done strange things to all men, and Tom had been brave for signing up in the first place. They had never expected it to be an adventure, that was a lie they told themselves, but none of them, not one, was a coward, despite what the army said. He would fight now to prove them wrong, to live out the war and tell everyone what had happened to them so that they might understand the horror of this war.

  That determination was all he had left.

  Chapter 35

  A heavy clang awoke Joe from his troubled sleep with a start. He rolled over onto his side and looked in the direction of the sound to see a warder placing a tray in the middle of the floor. The warder nodded at Joe and withdrew. Joe hadn’t seen that particular warder before, but he supposed there must be a whole staff to guard the inmates that he wasn’t yet familiar with. He doubted he ever would be either. Whole shifts would come and go and he might only ever see a fraction of them. As for being familiar, he didn’t ever expect that he might strike up anything like familiarity with a warder. The only ones he’d had any close encounter with so far had seemed to despise him as the coward they thought he was.

  He took another look at the tray without moving. Brown slop sat in one embossed section, that had small pieces of what Joe guessed was meat floating in it. It reminded him of his mother’s Scouse, but without looking as rich, or as appetising. A dark brown sliver of bread lay on the other side of the tray. He neither felt like eating, nor felt like moving at this moment in time. The food wasn’t drawing him. Instead he rolled back over, clutching his arms around his body again and tried to sleep.

  He didn’t know how long he lay there, rolling and flitting, unable to find any perfect kind of sleep. Either from the cold, or from having too much free time to think and letting his mind run wild, he never found anything approaching normal sleep. Sounds came and went, at times he thought he was snoring, at others all seemed silent. It was an unusual experience, each shiver dragging him from the precipice of sleep.

  Eventually he rolled over, determined to give up on the concept of sleep. He was tired, oh so tired, but he felt that he’d had enough of that pallet, and his faculties were returning to him through the fog of his mind. He had no idea how long he had slept; without a clock to go by, he didn’t even know what time of day it was. He sat up on the bed and leaned back against the wall. Pale light shone through the bars, casting a slight shadow across the floor.

  A tray still sat on the floor in the middle of the room where the warder had left it. Only this appeared to be a different tray. The dimensions were a little different, but enough that Joe could tell the difference, and the food on top was a different colour than before. A pang of hunger hit him as a sharp pain in his stomach. He felt like he hadn’t eaten in weeks, but it couldn’t have been that long?

  At that moment the door to the cell opened. Joe caught a glimpse of outside his cell. A warder, the one he hadn’t recognised who had brought him his food before, stepped inside.

  His head was at an angle, regarding Joe as a mother or teacher might regard an unruly child. Joe felt ashamed, sat on his pallet in only his underwear. It was worth noting that sitting anywhere else like that may very well have had him in a not so dissimilar cell. The indecency was quite a shock to him, and he could feel the warder’s eyes judging him. What a pathetic man he had become.

  Other men had done far worse for their principles. Some had even died, he had to remind himself, but it was so difficult to remember such things when the cold was like a bayonet in his brain.

  After what felt like a very long time, but was in fact only seconds, the warder sighed when he saw the tray at his feet.

  ‘You can’t keep letting your food go cold,’ he said, still looking at the tray. His voice was soft and calm, again reminding Joe of a teacher. He didn’t need to raise his voice like the other warders he had met, an
d there were no outward signs of aggression from the man. He picked up the tray and moved it outside of the cell, out of sight.

  ‘You’ll have to eat at some point. You can’t go on starving yourself. It will do no good.’

  Joe didn’t answer. He didn’t disagree with the words, but he was feeling too weak to even lift his head. How could he explain that he had fallen into a dark state of slumber and melancholy, and had somehow missed the food? They might be assuming that he was on some kind of hunger strike, but that wasn’t it.

  ‘Look at you,’ the warder said, continuing as if Joe was unwilling to walk. ‘You’re shivering and malnourished. None of this will do any good, you know?’

  He patted a hand on the uniform which still sat on the pallet next to Joe, untouched. The warder stared at the wall, thinking, then without another word walked out of the cell.

  The door was left open and Joe arched his head to see more of the prison. He had seen little of it in his time here. He was worried that the four walls of the cell were all he would see for the remainder of the war, and it was already beginning to drive him mad.

  He wanted to run. He didn’t know where he would run to, but he had the impulse all the same. He almost laughed at the idea of running naked through the prison. He had been running his whole life, from one thing or another. He had always run from the responsibility of his actions. He shook his head, trying to regain focus. Had the prison cracked him? Was he wrong all along? No. He couldn’t believe that. Despite what he did and what he meant to the world, taking another life was always wrong, and this war was the pinnacle of that. In here, all he had left was his principles, he wasn’t about to throw them away for that little.

  So why did he want to run away? Was it just that primitive fight or flight reflex? He stood up from the pallet, and took a step forward. He realised for the first time how weak he was, and his body almost collapsed underneath him as he stumbled closer to the door.

  The warder returned and regarded him again, perhaps wondering where Joe thought he was going. He didn’t enquire, thinking better than to ask an obvious question. He had left the door to the cell open after all.

  ‘Er… take these.’ He handed Joe a pile of folded grey cloth. ‘Don’t tell anyone I gave it to you.’

  ‘I c… couldn’t, even if I wanted to,’ Joe scoffed, then felt guilty. He didn’t want the warder to feel he was ungrateful, so he tried to smile. Instead his teeth chattered together as a sudden shiver took hold of him.

  ‘Well, quite,’ the warder said. ‘Probably best that I didn’t tell you my name. They… the others that is… they still want you to put on that uniform. Whatever their opinion, it isn’t right to force a man to freeze to death. I’ll dispose of the khaki, as long as you promise to put that on, and not say a word to anyone, should they ask.’

  ‘I p… p… promise.’ It was hard for Joe to get the words out through his chattering teeth. It made him feel a fool, and a child for not being able to control himself, and he clamped down on his jaw. He walked back to the pallet and put the uniform down. He dressed quicker than he had ever done before, pulling the trousers on and tying them, then putting on the grey woollen jacket. He did it all with his back turned to the warder, for some reason feeling the need to hide this act of dressing from him as much as possible. Even though he had spent how long now in his underwear, he was still determined to have some decency, and some kind of standards. They could think whatever they wanted about his objection, but he was determined to be as smart and well presented as possible.

  ‘Better?’ the warder asked when he was dressed.

  Joe nodded, already feeling warmer than he had done in a long time. The wool didn’t make much difference, but it was a more than welcome difference, and he no longer felt as exposed.

  The warder picked up the khaki uniform.

  ‘Good. I’ll take care of this and with luck, you’ll never see its like again.’

  He went to walk away, but hesitated.

  ‘Look,’ he said, and Joe was struck with how young he was. He must have been about the same age as Joe, in his early twenties, but the marks and lines on his face suggested a much older man. ‘I’m not saying I completely agree with what you’re doing.’

  He moved to the door, to see if anyone else was nearby, his brow furrowed. He came back to Joe and the expression on his face changed to something softer, as if a decision had been made and he had relaxed. He let out a deep breath.

  ‘I don’t completely agree, but I do admire what you are doing. There are a lot of criminals and cowards in here, and you’re not one of them. I know a coward when I see one, and I’ve met lots of men with no principles. The reason I took this job was my principles, to make sure people were obeying the law. I don’t feel I need to do that with you. You’re no threat to me whatsoever. By your own admission you’d never hurt another man. So throwing you in here is just cruel, and I’ll never understand that.’

  He shook his head and grumbled at himself.

  ‘I’ve probably said too much. But, well, you need to look after yourself in here. These other men, they’re all criminals and thugs. There are even murderers in here. Some of them are ex-army, or troublemakers. They won’t like you, and they won’t like what you stand for. So you just stay out of their way, all right?’

  Joe nodded, not knowing what he could say to appease the warder. He was overcome by this simple act of kindness, by his admission that Joe wasn’t wrong. It was helping his conviction, but it also threatened to bring a tear to his eye. He sniffed it away, trying to pass it off as another shudder of cold.

  ‘I will try and look out for you, but I can’t do much in front of the other warders. If they notice anything is wrong, I could lose my job. I’ve got a family back home, just as I’m sure you have. They need feeding, and I need this job. But I will do what I can. I’ll bring you some paper so that you can write to your family. Not much mind, but I’m sure they’ll be dying to hear from you.’

  Joe knew that wasn’t true. His family wanted nothing to do with him after he had refused to sign up. ‘Thank you,’ was all he said, unable to meet the warder’s gaze. His words were a whisper, a croak from a small voice, like the first conversation of the morning, but actually caused by the humility and sorrow in his thoughts.

  He realised then, with a pang of guilt, that he hadn’t written to George in quite some time. What would he think? Would his brother think that he had forgotten him? George must be in some horrible place, far worse than this. At least Joe had a roof over his head to keep the rain out. If this warder could get him some paper and something to write with, George would be the first person he would write to. Then he would write to Anne, but what would he say? What could he say to her that he hadn’t already?

  He noticed then that the warder had left something else for him on the bed. A bundle of letters was tied up with string, and with what little strength Joe had, he pulled the string open and ripped open the first letter. It was from his mother, telling him of the usual stuff from home, as if he hadn’t left. There were several more from her, and he devoured them all, soaking up the words as if he hadn’t read for a long time. The last one was from Anne, and he couldn’t open it quick enough. He missed her more than anyone, and both delight and dread filled his mind as he started reading it. He wondered why she hadn’t been to see him, but the answer was clear: she too was in prison, where she had been incarcerated for protesting. It didn’t say where, it was a simple letter as it was perhaps all she had been allowed to write. He read it a few times to make sure. She finished off by saying that she missed him and signed it with all her love.

  ‘Now you’re properly dressed,’ the warder said, breaking Joe from his thoughts. ‘Perhaps it would be a good idea if you joined the other prisoners for some food. You look like you desperately need something to eat.’

  ‘I think… I think that would be good.’

  ‘Remember, not a word about anything I said to you before.’

  The warder led Joe
out of the cell, a surprisingly strong grip reaching around his arm, long fingers joining up.

  *

  The canteen, or so Joe likened it, was a large room on the ground floor of the prison, in what could only be described as an annex. High windows filled the room with a filtered light that splayed dark shadows across the benches and the tables were arranged in lines. Some prisoners already sat at the tables, most of them in the dark spots, talking quietly amongst themselves. Some of them glanced in his direction as he passed, now on his own as the warder had left him.

  He joined the queue of waiting prisoners that led to where the food was being given out from great metal troughs. All the men waited, with impatient tapping of their feet or shuffling. Joe didn’t expect conversation, he was just happy to be out of his cell. The dining hall wasn’t much warmer, but the open air was far more welcome, and it felt a vast expanse compared to his cell. He moved along the queue, breathing in the air and the smell of warm food, patient.

  There were no trays for the food, they could be used as weapons, or for some other insidious task that Joe could only wonder at. Instead, small zinc bowls were used to portion out the food. He took an empty one and moved along. The man the other side of the counter lifted the ladle and dished up a serving of the brown sludge. It splattered over the bowl and dripped down its sides, spotting Joe’s hands. The soup made his stomach rumble in anticipation. At least it was edible, he told himself. Hunger had a strong way of making things palatable. Some of his school meals had been little better than this.

  He picked up a spoon and turned to leave the queue. As he turned he hit an object behind him and the soup splashed across the front of his prison uniform and onto the man that had been standing behind him.