INDIFFERENT HEROES

by MARY HOCKING

  The GI reacted with the wild uncontrol of a wounded animal. As he struggled to free himself from the restraining hands of his comrades, Alice was reminded of how her beloved dog. Badger, had reacted when a kitten had been introduced into the family – a betrayal which had roused him to a frenzy of fear and fury. Reason was as irrelevant to the GI as to Badger. The man’s desperation would have been comic had it hot been so frighteningly intense.

  The landlord said to the Negro, ‘Get out. Go on. Both of you. I’m not having any more trouble in here.’ The Negro, a tall, quiet man, wore his humiliation with a fortitude which added to his stature. His girl was more strident. She made her exit screaming at the GIs, ‘I wouldn’t dirty myself with any of you . . .’

  Crocker had come out of the gents and had taken in something of the situation, though not Alice’s part in it. ‘There’s a table back there,’ he said. ‘You get out of the line of fire. I’ll manage this.’ Alice sat down beside Felicity and Stowe. Felicity said, ‘A bit overdone, don’t you think? Even for an At. A cook-steward, I expect.’ Alice was full of admiration for the courage of a girl who could take on so many hostile men. She herself felt weak at the knees.

  Stowe said, ‘The Americans should keep all this feuding for their own country.’

  When Crocker returned to the table, the GI came with him. ‘You seem to have made a conquest,’ Crocker said indifferently. ‘He wants a word with you.’

  The GI stood looking down at Alice, shaking his head reproachfully. ‘You shouldn’t interfere in things you don’t understand.’ His rage had subsided, and his expression was that of a well-meaning man who is continually confronted with people who do not understand him. The fact that he was one of life’s failures was already etched on the earnest, wrinkled brow. ‘If you had any idea what this is all about, you’d know you British are really responsible.’

  ‘Us!’

  Crocker frowned at Alice. ‘Easy does it.’

  The GI raised an admonishing finger. ‘Who shipped them over in the first place, tell me that?’

  Stowe said to Alice, ‘Humour him. He’s just a crank.’

  ‘I reckon the time’s come when you should take them back.’ He had the gentle, persuasive manner of a door-to-door salesman peddling an unmarketable commodity. Crocker found him amusing. ‘In fact, I’m not sure they don’t already have some scheme for you to take them back.’

  ‘And the Red Indians, too, I expect,’ Felicity said.

  ‘No, no.’ This made him more mournful than ever. ‘The Red Indians belong, whether we like it or not.’

  Crocker said, ‘So, Geronimo stays.’

  ‘I favour the Red Indians having certain rights,’ he said seriously. ‘But the blacks were shipped over by you British.’

  ‘You’ve got a problem there,’ Stowe said peaceably. ‘We all sympathize with you, old chap.’

  Alice said, ‘I don’t.’

  His eyes implored her understanding; they were dark and un-fathomably sad as a chimpanzee’s. ‘Look, sister, you have a class system here in England that’s like nothing I ever came across before. You put up barriers and create reservations to keep your own people separate.’

  ‘What nonsense!’ Felicity exclaimed. ‘People just know their place, and what is expected of them. It isn’t something that has to be imposed, it happens naturally.’ She looked at the GI with disfavour, and added, ‘Bred in the bone.’

  He paid no attention to her, but continued to press for Alice’s conversion with all the evangelical zeal of his Pilgrim forefathers. ‘Our problem is quite different. The blacks aren’t the same as us. I’m not saying they’re not human, but they are way down the evolutionary scale. You can’t turn back. Even Darwin knew you can’t turn back.’

  Barney Crocker said to Alice, ‘What did you do to start this?’

  ‘I just offered to buy him a drink.’ Alice wished she didn’t sound so placatory when talking to Crocker.

  ‘Who? Not the Sambo, for Pete’s sake!’ As she said nothing, he raised his eyebrows. ‘Really? You are one very silly little girl.’ He turned to the GI. ‘Come on, my friend. You’ve made your point and we all agree with you.’ He looked imperiously at Alice, who remained stubbornly silent. He said to the GI, with an edge to his voice, ‘The English are an easy-going people, but most of us know tolerance can be stretched too far. I’ll buy you a drink, and that’s an end to it.’

  He hauled the GI towards the bar, but the man twisted out of his grasp and came back to Alice. ‘Do you go out with them? Look, I have to know. That girl – she was trash – but you, do you go out with them?’ He gazed at her as though civilization was in the balance – which perhaps, for him, it was. The others waited impatiently for Alice to make her peace.

  Alice’s mouth was dry. ‘No. But then . . . I don’t go out with just any white man, either.’ The truth was, she had felt embarrassed when she danced with a Negro; she would have made any excuse rather than go out with one. As Crocker hauled him away again, she said in a rush, ‘And she wasn’t trash. It was true, what she said – they’re good enough to fight for you.’

  This was too much for the GI’s comrades. They decided to rescue him from Crocker. The marine was a hard-trained man, and he reacted quickly. Several of the GIs landed on the floor, and one of them came up with a piece of broken glass. A party of sailors, who had been drinking quietly in a corner, ignoring what was going on, now noticed that two Wrens were present. Never must it be said that the Navy failed to defend its own. They weighed in purposefully.

  There followed a scene which was the staple ingredient of every Western and common to much farce. In the cinema, it would be greeted with applause or laughter. But here, witnessed in the raw, without benefit of cutting or shift of angle, the sight of so many able-bodied men mindlessly slugging away at one another, was sickening. Stowe alone stood back from the fray. An expression of mild disdain on his patrician face, he said, ‘Allow me to escort you ladies . . .’ He was hit on the temple by a flying chair, and sank gently between Alice and Felicity, lying at their feet rather as Alice had imagined him when she first saw him. A sailor grabbed hold of Felicity, and pushed her towards the side of the room where there was a small window. He was joined by several of his mates, and between them they managed to get the two Wrens out of the window.

  Alice landed neatly, but Felicity twisted her ankle, fell and gashed a knee. ‘How you could get yourself involved with that dreary little lunatic, I simply don’t know!’ she fumed at Alice. ‘I only hope someone sorts him out, maundering on in that hectoring way.’ She accepted Alice’s handkerchief and bound it round her knee. ‘I expect he comes from some little mid-West town which sprouted up a hundred or so years ago, where they think civilization started with the Declaration of Independence.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to get involved with him.’

  ‘My dear, you were shovelling away like a stoker, feeding his fire. And just look at that . . .’ She pointed to where a van was speeding up the road. ‘The Military Police! I hope you’re satisfied.’

  ‘I didn’t mean . . .’

  ‘Why do you take things so seriously? At the best of times it makes you a bit of a bore. On occasions like this, it’s positively dangerous.’ She limped off towards the van, which had stopped outside the inn. ‘Some awful little American had a brainstorm,’ she informed the first of the MPs to emerge. ‘And there is an Army officer badly injured in there. We came here together. You must help me to get him out.’

  Alice sat on a bench. Near by several ATS girls were leaning against an army truck. She had wrecked their evening, and they regarded her with dislike. She wished she could sort her feelings out as easily. She was angry for the Negro; yet sorry for the GI who, within his own racial group, would probably be just as downtrodden. She felt guilty about Felicity and a little afraid of Barney Crocker. Why couldn’t she have given vent to her feelings as the ATS girl had done? Oh, for the days of childhood, when heroes and villains were readily identifiable, and one’s
response to them uncompromised by ambiguity!

  An ambulance had arrived. Several sailors and GIs were being herded into the van by the military police. Barney Crocker accompanied them, looking masterful. No doubt he had imposed his version of events on the MPs and was now on his way to see that injustice was meted out. Two men appeared carrying a stretcher. Felicity limped beside them. She waited until the stretcher had been lifted into the ambulance and then climbed in. Alice hurried over to the ambulance.

  ‘There’s no room for you, Alice,’ Felicity said firmly. ‘And, anyway, you must get back to Plymouth and explain all this. I rely on you to think something up. You’re so good at thinking.’ She shut the door in Alice’s face.

  The driver of the ambulance said to Alice, ‘Sorry, Jenny. I’ve stretched a point as it’s her fiancé, but I daren’t take you as well.’

  Alice walked into the street. There was a signpost but the place names had been blotted out. She called to the ATS girls, ‘Which is the way to Bodmin?’ They pointed, and then relented. ‘You can have a lift with us when our blokes come out.’

  When Alice arrived at Bodmin station, the last train had gone. She spent the night in the waiting room with several sailors and a very drunk Scots soldier. She arrived at Plymouth at ten in the morning, and at half-past ten she was explaining her difficulties to First Officer. Although she incurred no punishment, she was left in little doubt that in First Officer’s view she lacked those qualities so essential to leadership – judgement and initiative.

  On the whole, Alice thought this a fair assessment. Hers was not the authority which, steadfast in the face of oppression, can reduce those around to shamefaced silence. Nor did she possess that lucidity of expression, that powerful emotional integrity, which leaves no unbiased onlooker in any doubt as to the tightness of a cause. It seemed rather to be her fate that, given a cause to espouse, her voice should rise a nervous couple of notches; and her mind fail to extract from the turmoil of her emotions that one statement which would incisively demolish all argument. She wished Ben had been there. Dear Ben! He was always so trenchant.

  Felicity returned in good spirits, which First Officer’s coldness failed to dispel. She told Alice that she was unofficially engaged to Rodney Stowe. When the next batch of trainees went to do their officer training, Alice and Felicity were not among them.

  Alice wrote to Ben, ‘You are so right about Daddy being passionate. Why is it we are made to feel we should admire people who are restrained, who guard their speech as if nothing must come out that hasn’t passed a fitness test; and lock their emotions away in some little private chamber, like jewels so precious they must be kept in a vault!

  ‘As for Ceylon, sadly . . .’

  Chapter Thirteen

  Autumn 1944-Spring 1945

  France was all but free. Paris had been liberated in August. Daphne and Irene had celebrated in a Kensington restaurant to the strains of ‘The Last Time I saw Paris’ soulfully rendered by Judy Garland. Daphne suspected that Peter was in Paris. About Angus’s whereabouts she had no information.

  ‘I thought you might have heard?’

  ‘Good Heavens, no!’ Irene spoke as if she could imagine nothing more unlikely.

  Daphne did not probe, perhaps saw no reason to. She enjoyed the company of her friends, but had no wish to learn the intimate details of their love lives.

  ‘Yesterday I visited a friend of Peter’s who is in hospital,’ she said. ‘Ivor Ritchie. He went over on D-Day, and said it was the most fantastic experience of his life. Then, a few weeks later, he was on a special mission that ran into trouble. His companions bought it; he was the lucky one, and only lost a leg.’

  ‘Let’s hope he will always think himself lucky.’

  ‘Oh, he will! There is nothing mean-spirited about him. One meets some marvellous people, don’t you think? It makes me quite ashamed. I meant to do so much; and I’ve had a dull war.’

  ‘You’ve married a man who sounds anything but dull.’

  ‘I just wish he wasn’t my proxy on this occasion. Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not complaining. But can you imagine how it must have felt, these last months? Like Agincourt.’

  Irene nodded. ‘I’m glad I’ve lived through these last days. That feeling won’t come again in a hundred years. It’s what’s going to happen afterwards that worries me.’

  ‘So long as we don’t start talking about a land fit for heroes, and all that sanctimonious cant that went on after the last war. Men coming back knee-deep in self-pity.’

  Irene stilled the retort which came to her lips, remembering Daphne’s father. He was never mentioned now, but she sometimes wondered whether some of Daphne’s remarks might not be addressed to him.

  She raised her glass. ‘Here’s to a safe homecoming for all husbands and lovers!’ At least Daphne could not quarrel with that.

  But she underestimated her friend. ‘Peter wouldn’t want that. If things go badly, he’d sooner come home on his shield. Here’s to a victorious homecoming!’

  As Irene had no quarrel with that, they drank to it.

  By November, the Germans were still in the Ardennes. The sound of gunfire could be heard continuously in the small town where Angus Drummond waited in vain to meet a German informer, about whose reliability there were doubts. The German was either dead, detained, or had been warned away.

  Angus was usually good at waiting. Perhaps because he had not enjoyed his own life, he was able to absorb himself in the small affairs of his adopted lives. His unhappy home life served him well in other ways. He reacted coolly in danger – its effect on him was that of delayed shock, so that he went on functioning with an appearance of complete normality in circumstances in which others might have panicked. It sometimes seemed he had concealed his feelings for so long that he himself was no longer sure what they were.

  He had been very successful in his original mission to investigate the activities of rival Resistance groups in a sensitive region. He was convinced he had been right in recommending that the Communist-organized group was the more likely to be effective. After that, he had successfully carried out other missions. Thanks to the many times in his life when he had wished himself invisible, he had developed a gift for not drawing attention to himself. Now, with a minimum of disguise, he had come to this small town, where he was accepted as the brother-in-law of the chemist, a morose widower with few close friends. Angus had seen pictures of the man whose identity he had assumed; and of his wife, child, house, dog. He was well-rehearsed in all aspects of the man’s life. The chemist assured him there was no danger that enquiries at the man’s home would find his brother-in-law there. He had indeed started out on a visit to the chemist. Angus did not know what his fate had been. Nor was he curious.

  One matter did arouse his curiosity.

  The chemist’s house was down a rough track which led to a farm. It was an isolated place with only a few outhouses and a dilapidated old stone house in sight. From his bedroom window, Angus looked across the track to the old house. Since he arrived, there had been a lot of rain. Then one morning when he woke, the skies had cleared. Raindrops still hung in the grass and the black branches of trees glistened; the ruts in the track were full of yellowish water. But the sun was out. The door of the old stone house swung on rusty hinges. There was no one there – he had been told that the house was unoccupied. But the movement of the door, the shift of light and shadow, gave a momentary illusion of life within. He had imagined the house to have been empty for years; but now he saw that only a few slates were missing from the roof, and none of the shutters hung loose from the cobwebbed windows.

  ‘Who lived in that house?’ he asked the housekeeper when the chemist had left to open his shop. The woman, though as taciturn as her employer, was less grudging of information; and for some reason, he wanted this particular information. He was sure she knew everything that went on here, in this house, and in the town.

  She was a dark, dour, middle-aged woman, with the eyes whi
ch can sometimes go with such looks, suggesting that resentment fuels an inner fire. Angus was never sure where her loyalties lay. It seemed unlikely that it was patriotism which motivated her, and he did not think she had any great affection for her employer.

  As she answered him, her eyes went to the place at table where the chemist usually sat. She spoke as though he was there to be defied, or taunted.

  ‘They were Jews. They had connections with important people in Paris who thought they would be safer here. The farmer let them have the house. I expect their wealthy friends made it worth his while.’

  Angus accepted the statement without surprise. It had long seemed possible to him that our obsessions can alter life, take control of events. ‘Something happened to them?’

  ‘The Germans were becoming suspicious. Someone thought it necessary to create a diversion.’

  ‘They were betrayed?’

  She shrugged her shoulders and turned towards the stove, where she was making soap from pig’s fat. ‘They would have been caught anyway. It bought time, when time was needed.’

  He took the crockery to the sink, and began to wash it. ‘But it shocked you?’

  ‘No.’ The suggestion angered her. ‘They put all our lives in danger, just by being there. Someone used them to advantage, that is all.’

  He said nothing, guessing she would interpret his silence as dissent and that, with her temperament, she was more likely to respond to this than any probing. He was right. Perhaps the chemist, too, answered her by silence.

  ‘They belonged here no more than the Germans.’ He had been mistaken if he thought she would need to defend her attitude. The single statement seemed to her to be justification in itself. ‘He has become a Communist. It is all he thinks about now. Before the war, no one thought of such things. Communists, Germans, Jews – what are they to us?’