Peacetime

by Robert Edric

  ‘She worries where she’ll go.’

  ‘Where would any of you go?’ he said.

  ‘You say that as though it would be a problem,’ she said. She set her cup down.

  ‘Would you move into town?’

  ‘I’d keep going until I reached somewhere worth living,’ she said. ‘It can’t all have been bombed to rubble.’

  ‘A lot of it was,’ he said. ‘It’s going to be a long time before a lot of people get back on their feet.’

  ‘But they are building it all again?’

  ‘Of course they are.’ A month earlier, he had been in London, living in the home of his dead parents.

  She considered this for a moment. ‘So what you’re saying is that it’s the people like us who are at the bottom of the list for getting new houses.’

  ‘Not necessarily. It’s just that—’

  ‘Just that nobody cared much about us before the war and nobody cares much about us now.’

  There was nothing he could say to her. The crockery rattled in her hand and she separated the two pieces to stop this.

  ‘I probably know as little as the rest of you,’ he said. He slapped his hand on the charts. ‘All I know for certain is that the new Coastguard Station has to be built. Beyond that …’

  After several minutes, she said, ‘I know,’ and nothing more.

  They listened to the machinery and the shouting of the men beneath them.

  ‘The house is going to be crowded when your father comes home,’ he said eventually, watching closely for her response.

  She considered this before answering him. ‘No more crowded than it was before,’ she said.

  It occurred to him that the house contained only two bedrooms, and that she shared one of these with her small brother, that she had shared it as a girl upon her father’s departure, and that she shared it with him still.

  He considered all this without speaking, and when he next looked at her, she was watching him closely.

  ‘What?’ he said.

  She said nothing, and he thought for a moment that she had seen something through the window behind him which had attracted her attention.

  ‘You don’t have to pretend,’ she said eventually.

  ‘Pretend about what?’

  ‘About him.’ She meant her father.

  ‘What am I pretending?’ he said.

  ‘That he isn’t in an Army prison and that he wasn’t sent there because he tried to run away.’

  ‘How long have you known?’ he said.

  She shrugged.

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘Nobody told me. They didn’t need to. You only have to listen to what they say to each other. You can hear people whispering through those walls. I’ve known for about a year. I was there when they came for him. She said they’d just come to give him a lift back to his camp, but I saw how they held him and watched him. She said it was nothing, and at first I believed her. I went on believing her because it seemed the best thing to do.’

  ‘And afterwards?’

  ‘It stopped making sense. I looked on a map to find out where he was. She never went to see him.’

  ‘Perhaps it wasn’t allowed.’

  ‘What, not even after the war was over?’

  ‘She has no idea,’ he said.

  ‘That I worked it all out? I sometimes even think that she’s convinced herself he’s still off serving like an ordinary soldier somewhere.’

  ‘It can’t have been easy for you,’ he said.

  The remark surprised her, as though her own feelings on the matter had never before been thought worthy of consideration or even remark.

  ‘Why don’t you tell her that you know?’

  She pursed her lips and feigned indifference, but he saw by her eyes that this pretence only masked her uncertainty.

  ‘She might appreciate knowing that you know. You might be able to share—’

  ‘I don’t want to share anything with her. She’s had years to tell me. It was up to her. She’s the one who went on pretending.’

  Mercer remained silent, allowing this sudden and uncontainable outburst to clear the room. She sat shaking in her seat.

  ‘And besides,’ she said. ‘It’s too late. He’ll be back in a few weeks. She’s had years to tell me. How is she going to do it now? What would be the point of it all?’

  He sensed then, in those few remarks, that this unwillingness to enter her mother’s confidence, or to take the woman into hers, was some uncertain form of punishment: she was deliberately keeping herself apart from the woman; deliberately withholding from her the support and reassurance her confession and confidences might bring. This understanding was quick in coming, and he was careful to keep it from her.

  ‘You and your father always got on well together,’ he said.

  ‘She tell you that, did she?’

  He could not tell her that he had heard it from Jacob Haas.

  ‘I think so. Or perhaps it’s just an impression I got from you.’

  ‘He used to take me places with him when I was a girl. She was bad after Peter was born, never the same. She was in hospital for a long time. Peter came home, but she stayed. He said she was staying away deliberately, that there was nothing wrong with her, that everything was on his shoulders. And when she did finally come back to us, it was different. He said Peter was a mistake, an accident, and that everything had been ruined. Peter was sick a lot, in and out of hospital. We had visitors, a nurse or something, who used to come and take him away with her. He kicked up a fuss at that and told her once that if she ever let Peter out of her sight again he’d kill her. He didn’t mean it – it was just what he used to say.’

  ‘Were the other women able to help her?’

  ‘Some of them. It was me, mostly. She told me to look after him. I was nine when he was born.’

  ‘You must have resented the intrusion.’

  She looked at him as though he had spoken to her in another language. ‘Is that what I did?’

  ‘Is that why you want to punish her now – by pretending not to know about your father?’

  She locked her hands and smiled. ‘I’d never thought of it like that,’ she said, but she made it clear to him that even if this were true – which he doubted – then she was thinking of it now, and savouring all she imagined.

  ‘I don’t believe you could be so deliberately cruel,’ he said. He held her gaze to convince her that he meant this, and to allow her a course out of her forced and malicious reverie.

  The smile fell from her face. ‘A plus b plus c,’ she said. ‘It’s never really that simple, is it?’

  ‘Not in my experience.’ He ran his hand over the charts. ‘To read all the books, you’d imagine that the fastest, shortest route between two fixed points was always a straight line.’

  He sensed that she appreciated this deeper understanding between them, and the opportunity to explore further her own imperfect assessment of the situation and how she felt.

  He refilled their cups, but by then the tea was lukewarm and neither of them drank it.

  They were interrupted several minutes later by the voices of two men shouting up the stairs demanding to see him. He told her to wait where she sat while he went down to them.

  There was a problem with an excavator. A buried concrete platform had been uncovered where none was marked on the charts. He asked them to explain where this was, what work it held up, and then told them to smash through it. They complained at the extra work. They wanted him to accompany them to the site and see for himself, but he refused, telling them he was busy in the tower.

  The men left and he went back up to her. She told him she had to leave.

  ‘You can always come back,’ he told her.

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I was sent to ask you if you wanted to come and have something to eat with us one night.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘I told her you’d make an excuse, or that if you did come, it would only be because
you felt obliged.’

  ‘Tell your mother I accept with pleasure.’

  ‘I knew that’s what you’d say.’

  ‘Then you were right, weren’t you.’ He saw immediately how he had been manipulated by her, and how this simple invitation had been made to stand for so much more.

  ‘I’ll tell her you’ll come in a few days, shall I? You’ll need to check your social diary.’ She held out her hand to him and he took it. Grasping his, she said, ‘You don’t have any spare cigarettes, do you?’

  ‘For your mother?’

  She made it clear to him that this was not her intention. ‘Of course for my mother. You didn’t think I’d want them for myself, did you?’ She released her hold on him.

  A pack on the table contained only two or three and he gave this to her. ‘I’m giving you these for her.’

  ‘Of course. There, you’ve said it now.’ She took them from him. And then she picked up the box of matches which lay beside them and loudly counted three from it.

  She descended the stairs, and he followed her down.

  At the door, she paused and looked outside before leaving.

  7

  The gun platforms had been installed at Fleet Point during the spring and summer of 1940, when the threat of invasion, albeit elsewhere, had seemed most likely. The blueprints for this work, and the plans and documents accompanying these, were forwarded to Mercer several months prior to his own arrival. He was surprised to see how substantial the structures were, and how much additional work had been undertaken to protect them from the sea. No one can have truly believed that this part of The Wash coast was ever under threat of invasion, but one of the documents suggested that a diversionary assault might be launched here precisely because it would be considered so unlikely. Additionally, this same anonymous report suggested, coastal shipping in the North Sea, increasingly valuable now that the Atlantic was blockaded, might be protected by the guns from any marauding craft this far north. Mercer considered this a far more valid reason for the guns being sited there, but saw, too, how instrumental this deceit of invasion was in getting the work carried out. There was no mention in the report of how that same endangered and unarmed shipping might be protected to the north of the guns’ range, where they would be exposed and unprotected for at least a further hundred miles until reaching the mouth of the Humber.

  He had studied these charts closely and had based his own plan of work upon them. The underlying map was sixty years old – old enough to show everything that existed at Fleet Point long before the necessity for the guns arose. The houses were marked, as was the abandoned Light. Where the airfield now stood there had been only open pasture, and where the road followed the line of the coast only a track was marked.

  There had been some earlier construction work there during the previous war, but this had been abandoned before it was completed. Several large, circular platforms had been built, and the track of a small-gauge railway laid outwards from them, but the former had never been complemented by any artillery, and the sleepers and rails of the railway – presumably to supply ammunition to the guns – had never been added to the reinforced line of their base. It was clear to Mercer that these earlier foundations, long since buried and lost, were a considerable distance from where he was currently working, and so he was able to ignore them.

  The tower, of course, was not marked on this earlier map, and it was not until he arrived to inspect the site in the company of the Trinity House men that he saw the structure and understood how useful it might be to him. His original intention had been to occupy one of the empty houses, but someone quickly pointed out to him that this would place him too closely among the people living there. The tower, on the other hand, would afford him both the proximity and the distance he required.

  The Army planners had drawn up their blueprints quickly and crudely. The forms and dimensions of their platforms, defences and ancillary buildings were uniform and easily duplicated, using local contractors under military supervision wherever the Ministry of Works men were in short supply. The reinforced concrete beneath the guns had been poured to a depth of six feet, those beneath the other buildings to half that depth. The buttresses, connecting walkways and sea-defences had been constructed less solidly. Someone, Mercer guessed, knew the place well and so knew how short-lived these were likely to be, especially where the walls were built close to the tide line.

  The guns themselves had been stripped down and taken away in the autumn of 1944. They had seen little action. A log of their deployment was contained in Mercer’s files. They had saved little shipping and sunk no enemy vessels. Every single page of the logs showed up the tedium and emptiness of the lives of the men stationed there.

  The block-house built for these crews was the most substantial of the ancillary structures, but the bulk of this had already been demolished prior to Mercer’s arrival, the work having been carried out at the same time as the guns were removed. Its sand-filled foundations stood several hundred yards to the landward side of the tower. On the map, a road had been projected between this and the gun platforms, but there was no indication of this on the ground, and again Mercer guessed that it had been omitted from the work by someone who knew the place better than the planners.

  In addition to the guns, a number of winch platforms were constructed to the north of the site, from which barrage balloons were once intended to be deployed.

  It had been immediately clear to Mercer how much of this earlier work he himself might now completely disregard, turning his attention only to those few structures which lay within the boundary of the new Station and its surrounding yards. The past here was either quickly buried by the sand or drawn away by the sea, and the previous works of man were never mistaken for anything other than the temporary marks and blemishes they were.

  Following his first visit to the place, Mercer had returned alone several days later to walk the ground and to assess better what lay ahead of him. The expectations of the Trinity House men were not unreasonable, but everything they now demanded of him was founded upon their preparations for the distant future, rather than any close understanding of the recent past within which the work was about to start.

  The men accompanying him on that first occasion had seemed surprised by how many people had gathered to watch their arrival and departure, keeping their distance for the duration of the visit.

  In the summer of 1943, a bomber returning to the airfield had crash-landed close to one of the gun emplacements, cracking its revetments and putting the gun out of action for eight weeks, during which time there was no call upon it. The revetment was repaired, but the work seemed a waste to Mercer. Two months later, a distant vessel was fired upon and hit at the mouth of the Freeman Channel. The boat was not sunk, but was driven away and never again seen. It was referred to in the gun’s log as a probable E-boat, but the tone of the accompanying report made it clear to anyone who read it that a great deal of uncertainty surrounded the episode. Too much was made of the isolated incident. The same empty, horizon-scanning days stretched away on either side of it; the arrival of every lorry and every aircraft droning distantly overhead was still meticulously noted.

  8

  Approaching the tower, he saw two men waiting there for him. Imagining that they might have been two of the men of the place, his first instinct was to conceal himself from them, but as he came closer he saw that the man standing closest to the tower door was Jacob Haas.

  Mercer watched them for a moment.

  The man waiting further back seemed anxious. He constantly looked around him as he waited, and he particularly watched in the direction of the houses. He called to Jacob and gestured to him to leave the tower, but Jacob ignored these entreaties and went on knocking and shouting for Mercer.

  Mercer eventually called to attract his attention. Jacob saw him and came towards him. The second man followed close behind. He was almost a foot taller than Jacob, and with close-cropped blond hair.

  ‘We c
ame to see you,’ Jacob said simply. He took several of the charts Mercer carried.

  The three men turned back towards the tower.

  ‘This is Mathias Weisz,’ Jacob said, introducing the second man, who immediately put out his hand.

  Once inside the tower, each man put down what he carried and they climbed to the upper room unencumbered.

  Mathias, Jacob told Mercer, was one of the German prisoners of war employed at the airfield. ‘He expressed a desire to remain, and because, before the war, he worked as a horticulturalist, they found him work breaking up concrete.’

  ‘My father was the true horticulturalist – fruit and roses – I merely copied what he did and then waited far too long to get away from him and his gardens and greenhouses,’ Mathias said.

  ‘Are you still, officially, a prisoner?’ Mercer asked him.

  Jacob laughed. ‘Tell him.’

  ‘Until a year ago I lodged with a local farmer, a tenant. He died and the farm went to another man who did not want me working there – he had lost a son in Belgium – and so I went back, voluntarily, to the camp I had been in before the farm.’

  ‘I told him he should have seduced the farmer’s daughter and then applied for the farm himself,’ Jacob said.

  The remark clearly embarrassed Mathias. ‘And then be forced to explain myself to the tens of thousands of men who were coming home and looking for work? I don’t think so.’

  ‘Tell him the rest,’ Jacob said.

  ‘And then the Authorities came looking for somewhere to house their – your – workers and so once again I found myself homeless. There were fewer than a hundred of us remaining by then, each of us tied up in the bureaucracy that moved us slowly towards our release. Most of us were sent to Southampton to await our repatriation there. Those of us who expressed an interest in staying and who were prepared to work were again investigated and questioned. There are eighteen of us at the airfield. Most, like myself, were already living with or working for an English family prepared to vouch for them.’