by David Black
He was on his way to see Louis the bookseller, because he needed someone to talk to. In the past he’d only have had to head to the wardroom; there’d always been a friend there, who you knew would understand. But that wasn’t a luxury available to captains. Yes, he could walk in to the Tenth’s wardroom without being invited; all that protocol bollocks didn’t apply this close to the enemy. But what he could talk about there was another matter. Anyway, last night he hadn’t recognised any of the submarine officers in just now. Oh, they’d been a rowdy, friendly lot, but he’d been too tired to work out any new rules. So today, he’d gathered some unofficial “presents” for Louis, and set off.
That Louis’ bookshop had survived was entirely down to the fact that it was in a basement. All around the tenements had been randomly smashed, some to huge, towering rubble mounds, others just flattened. But outside Louis’ shop there were still the little steps down into the tiny entrance and Louis’ front door. The glass was gone, replaced by a bedsheet tacked to the hole. He’d originally had a sheet of hardboard up, but kindling and wood for fires was so scarce on the island he had taken it down himself and burned it before someone else stole it and got the benefit. Outside, he kept the entrance neatly swept clear of rubble so you could see it was still there.
Through the door was a cave lit by shafts of sunlight, the shelves retreating into the dust-motey gloom like Harry remembered, and at the far end, like a Buddha in his shrine, sat the same round, bald figure in the storeman’s brown overall that he remembered too – Louis, reading with his half-glasses perched on the end of his nose.
When Harry had entered the shop, and Louis had finally looked up, his face had been a picture: it had taken a few moments for the old fellow to realise who he was seeing, but when he did, he’d cranked himself to his feet, his arms as wide as his smile.
They sat in a nook now, behind the final shelf stack so they would be unseen, even from the door. On the table was the contents of Harry’s gasmask sack, and two chipped white coffee cups, still steaming. There was a brown paper bag half filled with real coffee, a folded scrap of newspaper filled with sugar, a shaved sliver off a bigger soap bar and two old half Scotch bottles, one filled with spirit for Louis’ tiny stove and the other with pusser’s rum, all illegally liberated from the base stores and all luxuries long denied the island’s civilian population.
There had also been a tin of cigarettes among the contraband: 50 Capstan Navy Cut. Louis was savouring the smoke from one, with his eyes half shut, when he asked, ‘And how is Miss Katty? I take it you’ve been to see her before you came here. If you haven’t, I suggest you report sick to your naval psychiatrist.’
Of course Harry had been to see her, but he didn’t feel like explaining further.
‘She’s a very nice girl, who needs her friends,’ said Louis. ‘I like her, and not for the obvious reasons.’
‘You like her?’ said Harry. He had no idea Louis knew her; of her, yes, but personally?
‘Uh-huh,’ said Louis. ‘She’s been coming here from time to time since you left, to ask for the books you recommended. What did you do? Give her an improving list?’
‘I gave her no list,’ said Harry, momentarily lost as to how this could be.
‘I’m pleased to hear it,’ said Louis with mischievous smile. ‘How very un-gallant that would’ve been … suggesting such a beautiful young woman wasn’t quite well read enough for you.’
Harry smiled in return, knowing he was being practised upon.
‘On the other hand,’ continued Louis, ‘It is always good to talk about books. They tell us there is nothing new in the human experience, nothing someone before has not enjoyed, or endured. It’s comforting to know, especially if you talk about books with a woman. It lets both your minds meet and engage. As well as your other bits, of course.’ Another glinty, knowing smile, ‘And she must have listened to you, when you talked of books. How flattering for you, Harry.’
Harry smiled back, took another sip of coffee, and tried to conceal the confusion he felt, forced to consider that he had been capable of exerting such influence on Katty as to convert her into a bibliophile.
Louis, however, read the confusion on his face with ease. They had become good, if unlikely. friends during Harry’s last time on Malta, this old man and the young sailor. And even though many months had passed, and a lot of war, Louis decided it was good to see there was still something left of the innocent, ardent spirit in the lad. ‘It is because you’re an only child,’ Louis said, eventually. ‘Only children never really understand the effect they can have on other people.’
‘What’s she been reading?’ asked Harry, as much to get the subject off him.
‘Oh, let me see … Far From the Madding Crowd … Wuthering Heights, she really enjoyed that … The Scarlet and the Black … the odd Margery Allingham … How is your father doing these days?’
Harry had talked about his father before, and often. Louis had listened, often with some sympathy, and sometimes with more for one side than the other. So Louis knew about his father’s anger, his medal, his hatred of war and his damaged soul. When Harry had recounted his father’s rants against war’s evil and man’s stupidity and inhumanity, Louis had smiled. When he’d recounted his father’s fury at him, his son, for being in this war – his rage and contempt and hurt – Louis had frowned and laid his hand on his shoulder. Now Harry found himself telling Louis about his father and the children – the little tribe of evacuees that had descended on the Gilmour household and transformed it in ways Harry had found hard to comprehend when he’d returned.
‘They climb all over him,’ Harry said, ‘And he doesn’t seem to notice. Especially the youngest one, Meg. She has her fingers in his ears and up his nose, playing with his glasses, pulling his whiskers, pretending to read his books or the paper when he’s trying to read them, and he doesn’t complain. He never did that with me. I wouldn’t have dared. And now all he does is chuck her under the chin and kiss her head. It’s the same with the other two, the boy and the girl; they get away with murder and the older girl is practically a teenager. The house is filled with their friends. He even has them putting on plays … which he even writes with them—’
‘And he’s a lot calmer, now,’ Louis interrupted.
‘And he’s a lot calmer,’ said Harry. Then, after a pause, ‘So calm, he actually talked to me. Can you believe that?’
And this was it: what he hadn’t told anyone. What had been burning in him since that evening in his father’s study, after he’d decided he’d put up with his father’s distance long enough, after he’d thought to himself, If these children can get away with it ...
‘Ah,’ said Louis. ‘You talked. What did you talk about?’
Harry leaned forward and emptied a slug of the rum into the coffee remaining in Louis’s chipped china cup, and smiled a wan, wry, knowing smile at him. ‘Enough for both of us to learn something,’ said Harry, as he leaned back to begin the story he’d been dying to tell, not just to anyone, only to someone who’d understand.
One night after the children had gone to bed, and his mother was reading Meg a story, he’d poured two whiskies and walked into his father’s study without knocking. His father was sat in a corner on his old leather chesterfield chair, shadowed on the edge of the light from two candles burning on his desk. The room and his father had both looked ancient.
‘I put his whisky beside him on the edge of his desk, and sat down at the other end,’ said Harry, leaning back looking up at the stack of books like a barricade round him and Louis. ‘He didn’t say a word, just looked at me. Then I said, “I know about war now.” He didn’t say anything, but he leaned forward for his glass, and took a sip. Between that, and the absence of a rant … I took it as permission, and I started telling him a story. One I haven’t told you before. About Nicobar and the three troopships off the coast of Tunisia. About what I saw when Malcolm Carey gave me my look through the periscope.’
And Harry re-told
the story.
He hadn’t been able to work out what he was looking at, at first, when Carey had stood back from the periscope and gestured to him, “After you”. All around there was the glittering on the blue, blue Mediterranean’s wave caps, light caught in prism as the sun rose in a cloudless sky. And in the distance there were ships, a huge bit of one, in the process of sinking, so far away it was already almost gone into the curve of the near horizon, so low was the perspective of his eye. But closer in, it was as if the ruffle on the surface of the slow swell had been smothered so that the water was no longer blue, but the colour of sand, like a huge thin blanket had been casually thrown. And then he’d known what he was looking at: men. Afrika Korps soldiers. Thousands of them. The spillage from a troopship already on its way to the sea bed, all in the act of drowning before his eyes. And he’d done all that. He’d set up the shots. Gave the orders. Made it happen. And hadn’t he done a good job.
He remembered thinking right then of Jurgen Secker, the young Luftwaffe leutnant he’d met while interned on Majorca, and who, in a saner world – a better world – should’ve have become his friend. And he knew he was looking at thousands of Jurgen Seckers, each one with his boots and webbing dragging him down, water filling their lungs, no more waiting underneath a lamplight for Lili Marlenes, and how all the appel strudels und Auntie Trudls waiting at home for them, would wait in vain.
‘I told my father I was just like all young lads, dreaming of one day distinguishing myself at something,’ said Harry, now looking back at Louis. ‘Some skill … achievement … to make him proud … make people remember me. And then I told him what it felt like to realise that something turned out to be that I was good at killing people.’
There was a silence. Louis said nothing, so Harry continued.
‘He didn’t say anything at first. Then something shocking happened. Tears started trickling down his old, raddled cheeks. Not many, but I’d never thought of my father crying, ever. When he did start talking, I didn’t realise it at first. It was like he came in, in mid-sentence. As if he’d been talking to himself for a long time about something, and suddenly decided to start saying it out loud.’
Harry was back in the dancing shadows from the candles.
‘… you never did meet Bert Mitchell. How could you? You weren’t even born,’ his father was talking, like he was recounting some anecdote from his youth he’d told a hundred times before. ‘Lovely chap. Older than me of course. Married. Even had children. I still remember the photograph. Can’t remember how many though. Memory plays tricks like that. He was a real Quaker, not a fellow traveller like me. And we … understood each other, right from the start. We became inseparable.
‘He hated war too. But he wasn’t like me. By then I didn’t care anymore. Bert though, he was willing to risk his life to pull everyone out he could. Yet he missed his family. Ached to go home to them. He even cared about me, for all my blaspheming ways. He used to say, “Aye, ah hear ye. But God looks into a man’s heart and knows the truth of him.” All that caring in one wee man. And all his pal had to say was, “I don’t give a fuck.” That’s what I used to say to him. That and, “You stick with me, buster. And stick close! Then you’ll be okay. Cos the guns are kind to the careless. And because I don’t give a fuck.” So when I said we understood each other, that’s what I meant. And he did. Stick close.
‘It was just another Hun stonk. And we were in a hole, hiding from it. Grinning like schoolkids, because we knew we were safe. Because the guns were kind to the careless.’
And at that, Harry’s father had looked up and met his gaze. And when Harry saw into his father’s eyes, the man looked saner than Harry had ever remembered.
‘One second I was joking with him,’ his father had continued, ‘and the next … I was wearing him,’ and he’d gestured as if he were wiping something from his shirt front.
And then Harry was looking at Louis again. ‘I didn’t say anything, and neither did he for quite a while,’ said Harry. ‘Then my father said, “So why do you still love it? War?” And I got up and left the room.’
‘He said you still loved war?’ said Louis.
‘He knew,’ said Harry. ‘I told him my war story, and he told one of his, not because he wanted us to share the same knowledge. Because he knew we didn’t. Because he’s right.’
He left a long pause right then, which Louis chose not to fill.
Then, as if he’d been wrestling with something, Harry at last spoke, ‘Look at me. I command one of the King’s submarines, in time of war, and it is the most exciting thing I have ever done in my entire life. At sea, on patrol, I have never felt so alive. Ever. And my father could see it. He knew. The tone of my voice? My choice of words? I don’t know how.’
He paused again, then, ‘I can’t tell you how many times I’ve asked myself: Is this going to be the defining passage of my life? And answer it by pleading with God, whom I don’t even believe in, Please don’t let it be so. Please let me grow up to be a better man than just a sinker of ships and killer of sailors. But the problem is, I’m good at it. Very good. This is not me being pleased with myself. It’s a fact. I can hit things. The bottom of the sea is littered with the evidence. And I love it. God help me. … is that all the rum I brought?’ and distracted, he poured the last charge into Louis’ coffee. ‘And they give me medals for it too. I’ve got loads now. I should be proud. You’re not meant to say you’re proud though, because this is the Royal Navy and that would be just too … vulgar. But I’m not proud of them. I’m frightened of them. They’re like big padlocks on me, chaining me to this war, and to these deeds of mine … forever.’
Louis hadn’t appeared to be listening; he’d been rummaging behind one of the cabinets next to his desk. Harry stared at him, half offended, half curious, until Louis leant up again at last, clutching a long-necked bottle with a crude cork in it, and filled with a clear liquid.
‘Arak,’ said Louis. ‘I have a secret seam.’ And in a single deft movement he uncorked the bottle and proceeded to pour some into two chipped glass tumblers that had come up in his other hand. ‘I was listening,’ he said.
****
On the dghaisa, going back, Harry gazed at the stars reflected on the oil-flattened harbour water. It was amazing what light there was, in a clear night sky. The man rowing was just a silent presence behind him, if you didn’t count his grunting as he bent to his single oar. Ten cigarettes out of the tin Harry had brought for Louis had paid his fare, and had gone a long way to dampening the dghaisaman’s surliness. It reminded Harry of something he had remarked upon to Louis, about just how surly the islanders had become these days. He remembered his friend’s reply with a smile. ‘Can’t you guess? He hates you. You’re English for heaven’s sake!’ Louis had said, exasperated. ‘Everybody hates the English! Don’t you know that? … Until, of course, they need someone they can depend on.’
Sitting in the dghaisa Harry found himself laughing at that again, for all the reasons you’d expect.
Louis had had lots to say about other things, too. As if to prove he had been listening to Harry’s ramblings about war and what it was doing to him, he’d pointed out how actually pleased he was that Harry was good at, “hitting things”, regardless of his father’s opinions.
‘Sometimes, in the onward, headlong rush of history what is “good” and what is “bad” can get thrown into pretty stark relief, Harry,’ he had said. ‘No room for shade or nuance. And right now, right here, me and everybody else on this tiny archipelago of rock need people like you to stop us from being swallowed by evil. In fact, everybody in the whole world right now needs people like you to be good at what you do. When it’s all over, if you survive, then there will be plenty of time for the questioning and the self-doubt. In the meantime, those of us standing in the beast’s path can’t afford you that luxury—’
‘… so just shut up,’ Harry had interrupted, ‘and get on with it. That’s what you’re saying?’
‘Un-improve
ably put,’ Louis had said.
‘Because there’s nobody else here to do it,’ said Harry.
And Louis had riposted, ‘Even better!’
Harry found himself laughing again, this time at himself. Get it back in the box, he told himself, shut the watertight hatch and dog it. Plenty of time later to debate the finer points.
Back at Lazaretto, there were still several dark bodies in various attitudes of recline on the wardroom gallery furniture when Harry shakily ascended the steps en route to his cabin. He couldn’t make out faces from the pale smudges he could see, but when one shouted, ‘Harry!’ he knew one of them was Shrimp.
‘Where were you this afternoon?’ asked Shrimp, when Harry had picked his way over, ‘People were looking for you. Sit down and have a drink. John!’ he called, for the steward. And Harry, who felt like his back teeth were already floating, did as he was told, thinking to himself, No COs in the wardroom, unless invited, is a tradition the Tenth need’s to reinstate!
John didn’t ask Harry what he wanted; there was only gin.
‘Flannel wanted to have a word with you about breaking his boat!’ called one indistinguishable face, glass raised. Except it wasn’t a glass, as nearly every single one of them had been smashed at some time or other during the bombing. It was another product from the periscope shop’s production line – the bottom end of a beer bottle, its glass etched in a circle, placed in hot water then neatly sheared. They were the height of style now, in nearly every hostelry still open.
