The Golden Lion

by Pamela Haines

  His own work at the foundry: ‘There’s a war on,’ and for a while, stretches of an hour here or there, the pain would be dulled, because he had to think so furiously of other matters. But although he could lose himself for a little, none of it meant anything to him now. He did not suppose that, generally, he was a success. The Honours list would never have his name, he was unlikely to be Mayor or even on the Council. He did not care enough. He’d always done a day’s work as honourably as he knew how, and then come home to Betty and Jan – and Gwen. If that wasn’t success, why care? Why worry, when they were so happy?

  Back home now there was a meal to face. Jan was away in the Lakes with a schoolfriend. The billetee was working late. As he came in, Mrs Scriven, the housekeeper, was preparing to leave. The wireless was blaring. ‘It’s a hap hap happy day…’ She had made him some vegetable soup to be reheated. There was a plate of sandwiches under a glass cover. He poured himself a whisky and sat down in the chair opposite Gwen’s.

  Time passed. Nine o’clock. Ten. Eleven. Soon it would be all right to go up to bed.

  ‘O that ‘twere possible, After long grief and pain

  To find the arms of my true love, Round me once again.’

  He prayed each night not to wake in the morning. His leg hurt more than for many years. Perhaps something had gone wrong.

  But a bad leg would not release him, a bad leg only became worse. Death would not come so easily.

  7

  They heard about the Italian surrender on the evening of September 8th. Guy had just joined General Clark’s Fifth Army in Sicily as part of 10 British Corps. They were to invade the Italian mainland early the next morning. For a few stupid moments he thought: Now we shan’t have to go.

  Operation Avalanche. They were bound for the sandy beaches around Salerno: their aim, to fight their way as quickly as possible up to Naples. Guy had visited Salerno on his 1937 Grand Tour. Accompanied by Aunt Eleanor and her brother Basil, he’d stayed two nights at the Montestalla Hotel. He remembered little – narrow medieval alleys, some tree-lined squares, and always, up behind, the mountains.

  Quarter to four in the morning. They were crammed together in the assault craft. Guy, and Randall Furness (lieutenant in another platoon and discovered to have read Italian at Cambridge while Guy did the same at Oxford) and Miller – that same Miller he’d hated so at St Boniface’s and who had now turned up suddenly in his unit.

  ‘Just what you’d expect of the Wops,’ he was saying. ‘Jacking it in like that. If we’re to have them as allies now, God help us.’

  Randall said, ‘They’ll be an occupied country now like half of Europe – though when I heard, I thought, Christ, we needn’t go in after all. Then I remembered Jerry –’

  ‘Ditto,’ Guy said. ‘Spirit thinks its willing, but the old unconscious lies in wait.’

  ‘The Krauts’ll be the ones lying in wait,’ Miller said, ‘don’t worry.’

  Earlier he’d said, ‘Dennison. Not sure I’d have recognized you – but the name clinched it.’

  Guy had thought: I’ve no trouble remembering that face, that voice. Fighting Miller.

  He had said, ‘Miller, yes. St Boniface. ’28, ’29. Frankly I hated your guts.’ He remembered his frightening anger, fists in face, wishing Miller dead. Here now was this pale, small-eyed, spotty young man.

  ‘If I remember rightly,’ Miller said, ‘I ragged you and you went for me. And got a black mark –’

  Tired memories. A lifetime away. ‘St Boniface. Ghastly place …’

  ‘Perhaps I was a bit rough,’ Miller said, piggy-eyed, ‘but I was right about Italians. General, of course – not particular, Dennison. Pretty poor lot.’

  The engines throbbed, the boat throbbed, rising and falling on the waves. How to tell fear from seasickness? All around him his men, some cheerfully, some miserably, threw up their insides. Vomit covered their boots. ‘In this campaign, don’t ask who’s got guts,’ Randall said sardonically. ‘Some are busy losing theirs the old-fashioned way.’

  Guy, kitted out: trousers, one pair long, tropical; shirt, one tropical; one cap, service dress; one pair boots and gaiters. His stomach heaved to the rhythm of the craft. The sea shook with the huge naval shells fired by the destroyer’s escorts. The air shook. He was sweaty with nerves.

  As the churned up sea sent water over the bows of the craft, he shut his eyes, and thought of death. Six months now since the sea had claimed Andy. Gone down with his ship. Nevermore, Guy had thought, nevermore. Andy, the only person he had been able to write to after that doctor had told him about Maria, in that innocent world of eighteen months ago (Guy the soldier, who had never heard a shot fired in anger). Later that summer he had spent a week at Andy’s home, both of them on leave, before Andy changed ships.

  Andy’s little sister had been there – not so little now. ‘Sh, sh, here comes Sheila,’ the family said. So neat, so fair, so English. Seen last in 1939 on her way back to convent school: navy blue mackintosh, gym tunic and striped tie, blue velour hat with elastic band, lisle stockings and navy lace-ups.

  And here she was again, but grown up now. Sh sh Sheila. Quiet but vivacious. About to join up, to become a WAAF. They went riding together on his last morning while Andy slept in. He asked her then if she would write to him.

  They kissed, Sheila leaning against a tree. Their horses were tethered. Her lips had been very sweet. He did not dare to think of touching her body. Sh sh Sheila, not for touching. His hands, so warm, so ready to explore, to satisfy, mustn’t be allowed their freedom. He held them pressed hard against the grainy tree trunk.

  ‘I’ve never had a boyfriend,’ she said. ‘Not one that counted – There was this man at the Young Farmers …’ She giggled. ‘I go sometimes to dances at the RAF base. But it’s always someone different brings me home. Safety in numbers, the school chaplain used to say.’

  And so they had begun to write to each other. She proved a chatty, warm, spontaneous companion on paper. She wrote not as she talked, but much, much better. Words she would never have spoken glided easily from pen to paper. That she loved him, he felt certain. The words, unspoken, were there loud and clear in those letters from her heart. Tiny writing, even smaller when reduced to an airgraph, crowded the page. She surprised him. He suspected she surprised herself.

  They met only once again before he left for Tunisia. She had been stationed in Lincolnshire. An awkward meeting: two days that had gone too quickly. Holding hands in a cinema. The long closed-mouth kiss. She smelled, and tasted, of lily of the valley and soap. ‘Your kisses are wonderful,’ she told him. ‘Like I said in the last letter – I have them in my dreams. Honestly.’ Ah, my dear, he thought. And is that all?

  ‘I feel like someone in a film. They kiss like that, don’t they? Like us?’ Sh sh Sheila, in her neat sky blue uniform with the lace-up shoes and the peaked-cap – almost the convent girl again.

  And then Andy was lost. It was she who had written to tell him. She had told Guy she wanted to cry in his arms. How happy Andy would be, she said, that they had each other.

  He carried her letters about. Her photograph. Last thing at night, he thought of her. So if it wasn’t love it was something very like it. Sh sh Sheila. ‘Pray for me,’ she had said. Her sudden little pieties: in her letters, an account of how many decades of the rosary she’d managed after camp lights out – interspersed with memories of his kisses.

  In her latest she had written, ‘There’s a special sort of kissing – one of the girls said something I didn’t understand, but it’s to do with souls. I’m sure you’ll know – or could find out. Whatever it is I expect we’ll want to do it …’ And another time: ‘I think honestly, Guy, everything is all right in Time of War whatever the priests say. The nuns told us if you die in battle you go straight to Heaven – a complete plenary indulgence, isn’t that marvellous?’

  ‘This place is lonely but very beautiful,’ she wrote from the far north of Scotland. ‘I have lots of time to think of all the things
I love about you, Guy.’

  Love. Yes, she had used that word. He thought perhaps he also had used it once or twice. He did not regret it. And yet he felt always as if, having seen a door open somewhere, he’d gone through it in curiosity, only to hear it slam behind him. Why? After all, it had been he who’d said, ‘When the war’s over we’ll do this, that…’ He had not mentioned marriage, but the notion was there for anyone to see. For Sheila to see.

  As the craft drew nearer to the coast, the mountains reared blue-black in the early morning light. In marching order, they stood to. Seeing his men, their misery and their seasickness put aside, he prayed, ‘God, don’t take too many of them.’

  And then suddenly it was as if giant electric lights … The scene was illuminated. German searchlights. A waiting enemy, just as Miller had said. The screaming and whining of mortars, and the white foam as they exploded around the assault crafts. Then a massive jolt forward as the craft hit the beach.

  Confusion of battle. Staggering, pushing forward, stumbling in the waist-high water. Bullets whipping the air, whipping up the loose sand. Shrapnel whizzing by. And the noise: great 8 mm shells screaming their way, overhead – aimed at the armada out at sea.

  I am my mother’s son. He fell. Then he was up again and running forward. Now down again, and crawling. And always the noise and confusion. Light-headed still with fatigue and seasickness. Pressing forward … There was Randall, alive still. How long to survive? Shall I see nightfall? Heat of the early morning sun. Heat of battle. Helmeted warrior, the sweat trickling down his face, his neck.

  Fighting, still only a few hundred yards from the water. And now a concerted attack by the waiting Germans. An armoured car coming towards them and as they crouched, turning its gun on them.

  More troops landing. The beach crowded with jeeps, trucks, ambulances. A jeep in flames. Sea spray and sand, blasted on to everything.

  Rubble, smoke. Above them now, a brilliant blue sky. I am my mother’s son. Why had he ever thought that wrong? What mattered was to stay alive. Today. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. I love her, he thought. Behind them was the crowded sea, crowded still with ships. Aimed at the fleet, the shells screamed over their heads.

  Later that day, slowly, they made their way inland through an area of low trees and thick vines, under a blazing sun. Day’s end – and he was still alive. The third night, he slept in a real bed in a deserted farmhouse. The bedside drawer was full of black-bordered burial cards: photographs, tender inscriptions – grandfathers, grandmothers, uncles, babies … The worn bedlinen was embroidered and lovingly darned. Someone’s home. He thought of Maria.

  I am my mother’s son. Probably he could live with the revelations. He had after all, almost died with them.

  Ten days later they went behind the lines to rest, a few miles south of Salerno. There were orchards laden with fruit. The weather stayed extremely hot.

  They lay on their backs, arms for pillows, gazing up at the sky. Miller, Randall, and Fletcher and Young, two others from Guy’s outfit. Discarded apple cores lay about them. Fletcher munched.

  ‘Redder than a drunk’s nose, this apple,’ he said, ‘but the texture’s wrong. Mealy. Give me Beauty of Bath, green and pink and misshapen.’

  ‘At least they’re free, available, and don’t come out of a tin –’ Randall said.

  ‘Like Miller hopes the popsies will be when we get to Napoli. Free and available, that is.’

  ‘Clap hands, clap hands –I wouldn’t really,’ Young said. ‘Even a Boy Scout might be unlucky …’

  ‘How can you tell good-time girls from good girls?’

  ‘Good girls won’t be available,’ Miller said. ‘Anyway, ask Dennison here. Dennison knows something about it. He’s Italian.’

  ‘Done a recce, have you, Dennison?’ Fletcher asked.

  ‘Not exactly. A visit in ‘37 as a stripling. Accompanied by a maiden aunt and a Jesuit priest.’

  ‘Really – no escaping at night? No secret assignations?’

  ‘Not a thing. A good boy.’

  ‘He still is,’ Miller said. But not unkindly.

  Randall said, ‘Do we honestly need floosies this moment? Peace, no guns, rest. Enough surely … God knows it’ll start up again soon enough.’

  Fletcher whistled, When the lights go on again all over the world.’ Damned tune. Had it on the brain all day.’

  ‘When we get to Naples,’ Young said, ‘there’s Capri to see. Capriot excitements –’

  ‘ ’Twas on the Isle of Capri that I met her,’ sang Miller. His singing voice was nasal. He quizzed Guy, ‘Did the maiden aunt and the Jesuit take you there?’

  ‘They did, actually.’

  ‘… Now it’s goodbye to the isle of Capri… I only remember the last line. And the first. Sung in the most revolting manner, I recall – all sentiment – by Eddie Sabrini. Dance band crooners, don’t they make you want to spit?’

  ‘I used to rather like him,’ Guy said.

  I am my mother’s son. (He wished now suddenly, passionately, that he might not die violently as had his father.)

  ‘Eyetie, wasn’t he, with a name like that?’ said Miller. ‘He’ll have been put behind bars for sure. Ever hear his records now?’

  8

  Every Friday evening now, Eleanor gave supper to Dr McIntosh. She had been doing it since just after Eric’s death, eight months ago. She had visited his surgery because she couldn’t sleep (‘An old family friend … a great shock …’) ‘Do you eat properly?’ he’d asked, ‘it’s very important for morale.’ Eleanor said that of course she did. Her housekeeper had left to work in a factory, and she now cooked for herself and usually for Rosie.

  ‘Then you’ll eat better than I do, on black Friday.’ He explained how his housekeeper always visited her old aunt on Fridays. The replacement she had found: ‘She’s a widow lady. I pity her good husband when he was with her – a cast-iron stomach he must have had. Och, it’s an experience, and I’ve not the courage to say, “Away with ye, I’ll do it myself.”’

  ‘Let me invite you,’ she’d said, ‘come and have a good meal at Park Villa this very Friday.’ She pressed him to accept, seeing selfishly in the effort of entertaining him a distraction from the pain, the vacuum that Eric’s death had left.

  Now, in the December of 1943, she no longer worried so much about Guy – in Naples, where he’d been seconded together with his friend Randall Furness, making use of their Italian. There was much to be done there, she could not imagine it an easy posting, and although the British and Americans held the city there was danger still from German bombs. But because he was not fighting up through Italy, she relaxed a little. Yet since Eric’s death, her days and nights were anxiety-filled. Of course he was elderly, of course she had known he might at any time die – but that it should have been so sudden. To have seen him for the last time like that. Oh, Eric, she had thought over and over, if you had known how much I loved you. (Eric, who had loved Dulcie, but who had not married her when he was free.)

  In Heaven there was no marriage or giving in marriage. She and he would meet again there. But she could not wait – it was now she wanted to see him. The short distance from Park Villa to Moorgarth, that was as far away as she could bear. Their talks together over the years about Guy and his future. The gratitude, spoken and unspoken, for what she had done for this, his first grandson … Realizing he had gone for ever, she found herself night after night sleepless yet exhausted. As long as he lived, had she not hoped that in the end? (No, she told herself, I did not.)

  And so, although beginning as distraction from sorrow, the first meal she had cooked had been so to Dr McIntosh’s liking, had given so much pleasure, that she had asked him again. Before long it had become a ritual. With the wartime dispensation from abstinence for Catholics, she was able to save and cook him the best of her meat ration. Vegetables from the garden, homebottled fruit, honey from her bees.

  They talked. And talked. Gradually she heard his life-story, from babyhood i
n Stirling through school, medical school, happy marriage, widowhood, and heart attack … He talked easily about himself. She could not.

  The fifth Christmas of the war approached. About ten days before, she had the idea of having her hair permanently waved. Or rather Maria had. Maria, whose thick black hair, winged now with grey, went easily into any style, looking at Eleanor’s bun (first put up in 1903 and never altered since, except perhaps to grow more severe), had said, ‘Why not a perm, Eleanor? Had you ever thought of a perm?’

  Eleanor argued with her. Such an irrevocable step – and if she didn’t like the result? But looking quickly in the glass that evening (she never lingered), she had ‘seen’ suddenly a halo of curls and wondered, perhaps?

  ‘Dear Guy,’ she wrote, ‘your old aunt is about to have her hair permed! Having managed to miss Marcel waves, bobs, shingles, etc., after all these years I am about to be dashing. Shall I send you a photograph? I go into Whitby on Thursday morning to have it done …’

  She sat in the cubicle, fastened to the permanent wave machine, worrying about frying. She was scarcely over the shock of seeing her fine grey-brown hair lying like a mat at her feet. The girl who cut it talked non-stop about her fiancé who was due home on leave that weekend – and about Bevin Boys, the conscripts who were to be sent down the mines instead of into the Forces.

  She was amazed and shocked by her appearance when, rinsed, washed, set and dried, she was confronted by a head of tight curls. Whether it suited or not, she could not reconcile the change. For the first time in many years now, she thought: What would Mother say?

  Outside was a damp, gloomy day, an icy wind blowing off the North Sea as she walked along the harbour towards the station. Unusually she was not wearing a hat because she had not wanted to flatten the new curls.

  Back at Park Villa there was the usual disorder and mess. Rosie had a third baby now. Before Eleanor had been able to make any comment about this fresh, third pregnancy, Rosie had told her that this time it was her husband’s. ‘He visited – that time you was away two nights. They flew him in. Special flight…’