1919 (6 page)

“Open your mouth.” One of them put a heavy hand on Joe's jaw. “Sergeant, shall we take out the fillin's? 'E's got two or three fillin's in the back of 'is mouth.” The man behind the desk shook his head. One of the men stepped out of the door and came back with an oiled rubber glove on his hand. “Lean hover,” said the other man, putting his hand on Joe's neck and shoving his head down while the man with the rubber glove felt in his rectum. “Hay, for Chris' sake,” hissed Joe through his teeth.

“All right, me lad, that's all for the present,” said the man who held his head, letting go. “Sorry, but we 'ave to do it . . . part of the regulations.”

The corporal walked up to the desk and stood at attention. “All right, sir . . . Nothin' of interest on the prisoner's person.”

Joe was terribly cold. He couldn't keep his teeth from chattering.

“Look in his slippers, can't you?” growled the inspector. Joe didn't like handing over his slippers because his feet were dirty, but there was nothing he could do. The corporal slashed them to pieces with his penknife. Then both men stood at attention and waited for the inspector to lift his eye. “All right, sir . . . nothin' to report. Shall I get the prisoner a blanket, sir? 'E looks chilly.”

The man behind the desk shook his head and beckoned to Joe, “Come over here. Now are you ready to answer truthfully and give us no trouble it won't be worse than a concentraytion camp for duraytion. . . . But if you give us trouble I can't say how serious it mightn't be. We're under the Defence of the Realm Act, Don't forget that. . . . What's your name?”

After Joe had told his name, birthplace, father's and mother's names, names of ships he's sailed on, the inspector suddenly shot a question in German at him. Joe shook his head, “Hay, what do you think I know German for?”

“Shut the bugger up. . . . We know all about him anyway.”

“Shall we give him 'is kit, sir?” asked one of the men timidly.

“He won't need a kit if he isn't jolly careful.”

The corporal got a bunch of keys and opened a heavy wooden door on the side of the room. They pushed Joe into a little cell with a bench and no window. The door slammed behind him and Joe was there shivering in the dark. Well, you're in the pig's a.h. for fair, Joe Williams, he said aloud. He found he could warm himself by doing exercises and rubbing his arms and legs, but his feet stayed numb.

After a while he heard the key in the lock; the man in khaki threw a blanket into the cell and slammed the door to, without giving him a chance to say anything.

Joe curled up in the blanket on the bench and tried to go to sleep.

He woke in a sudden nightmare fright. It was cold. The watch had been called. He jumped off the bench. It was blind dark. For a second he thought he'd gone blind in the night. Where he was, and everything since they sighted the Scilly Island lights came back. He had a lump of ice in his stomach. He walked up and down from wall to wall of the cell for a while and then rolled up in the blanket again. It was a good clean blanket and smelt of lysol or something like that. He went to sleep.

He woke up again hungry as hell, wanting to make water. He shuffled around the square cell for a long time until he found an enamelled pail under the bench. He used it and felt better. He was glad it had a cover on it. He began wondering how he'd pass the time. He began thinking about Georgetown and good times he'd had with Alec and Janey and the gang that hung around Mulvaney's pool parlor and making pickups on moonlight trips on the
Charles Macalister
and went over all the good pitchers he'd ever seen or read about and tried to remember the batting averages of every man on the Washington ballteams.

He'd gotten back to trying to remember his highschool games, inning by inning, when the key was put into the lock. The corporal who'd searched him opened the door and handed him his shirt and pants. “You can wash up if you want to,” he said. “Better clean up smart. Orders is to take you to Captain Cooper-Trahsk.” “Gosh, can't you get me somethin' to eat or some water. I'm about starved. . . . Say, how long have I been in here, anyway?” Joe was blinking in the bright white light that came in from the other room. He pulled on his shirt and pants.

“Come along,” said the corporal. “Can't ahnswer no question till
you've seen Captain Cooper-Trahsk.” “But what about my slippers?” “You keep a civil tongue in your mouth and ahnswer all questions you're harsked and it'll be all the better for you. . . . Come along.”

When he followed the corporal down the same corridor he'd come in by all the English tommies stared at his bare feet. In the lavatory there was a shiny brass tap of cold water and a hunk of soap. First Joe took a long drink. He felt giddy and his knees were shaking. The cold water and washing his hands and face and feet made him feel better. The only thing he had to dry himself on was a roller towel already grimy. “Say, I need a shave,” he said. “You'll 'ave to come along now,” said the corporal sternly. “But I got a Gillette somewheres. . . .”

The corporal gave him an angry stare. They were going in the door of a nicely furnished office with a thick red and brown carpet on the floor. At a mahogany desk sat an elderly man with white hair and a round roastbeef face and lots of insignia on his uniform. “Is that. . . ?” Joe began, but he saw that the corporal after clicking his heels and saluting had frozen into attention.

The elderly man raised his head and looked at them with a fatherly blue eye, “Ah . . . quite so . . .” he said. “Bring him up closer, corporal, and let's have a look at him. . . . Isn't he in rather a mess, corporal? You'd better give the poor beggar some shoes and stockings. . . .” “Very good, sir,” said the corporal in a spiteful tone, stiffening to attention again. “At ease, corporal, at ease,” said the elderly man, putting on a pair of eyeglasses and looking at some papers on his desk. “This is . . . er . . . Zentner . . . claim American citizenship, eh?” “The name is Williams, sir.” “Ah, quite so . . . Joe Williams, seaman. . . .” He fixed his blue eyes confidentially on Joe. “Is that your name, me boy?”

“Yessir.”

“Well, how do you come to be trying to get into England in wartime without passport or other identifying document?”

Joe told about how he had an American A.B. certificate and had been on the beach at B.A. . . . Buenos Aires. “And why were you . . . er . . . in this condition in the Argentine?” “Well, sir, I'd been on the Mallory Line and my ship sailed without me and I'd been painting the town red a little, sir, and the skipper pulled out ahead of schedule so that left me on the beach.”

“Ah . . . a hot time in the old town tonight . . . that sort of thing, eh?” The elderly man laughed; then suddenly he puckered up his brows. “Let me see . . . er . . . what steamer of the Mallory Line were
you travelling on?” “The
Patagonia
, sir, and I wasn't travellin' on her, I was a seaman on board of her.”

The elderly man wrote a long while on a sheet of paper, then he lifted Joe's cigarbox out of the desk drawer and began looking through the clippings and photographs. He brought out a photograph and turned it out so that Joe could see it. “Quite a pretty girl . . . is that your best beloved, Williams?” Joe blushed scarlet. “That's my sister.” “I say she looks like a ripping girl . . . don't you think so, corporal?” “Quite so, sir,” said the corporal distantly. “Now, me boy, if you know anything about the activities of German agents in South America . . . many of them are Americans or impostors masquerading as Americans . . . it'll be much better for you to make a clean breast of it.”

“Honestly, sir,” said Joe, “I don't know a thing about it. I was only in B.A. for a few days.” “Have you any parents living?” “My father's a pretty sick man. . . . But I have my mother and sisters in Georgetown.” “Georgetown . . . Georgetown . . . let me see . . . isn't that in British Guiana?” “It's part of Washington, D.C.” “Of course . . . ah, I see you were in the navy. . . .” The elderly man held off the picture of Joe and the two other gobs. Joe's knees felt so weak he thought he was going to fall down. “No, sir, that was in the naval reserve.”

The elderly man put everything back in the cigarbox. “You can have these now, my boy. . . . You'd better give him a bit of breakfast and let him have an airing in the yard. He looks a bit weak on his pins, corporal.”

“Very good, sir.” The corporal saluted, and they marched out.

The breakfast was watery oatmeal, stale tea and two slices of bread with margarine on it. After it Joe felt hungrier than before. Still it was good to get out in the air, even if it was drizzling and the flagstones of the small courtyard where they put him were like ice to his bare feet under the thin slime of black mud that was over them.

There was another prisoner in the courtyard, a little fatfaced man in a derby hat and a brown overcoat, who came up to Joe immediately. “Say, are you an American?”

“Sure,” said Joe.

“My name's Zentner . . . buyer in restaurant furnishings . . . from Chicago. . . . This is the tamnest outrage. Here I come to this tamned country to buy their tamned goods, to spend good American dollars. . . . Three days ago yet I placed a ten tousand dollar order in
Sheffield. And they arrest me for a spy and I been here all night yet and only this morning vill they let me telephone the consulate. It is outrageous and I hafe a passport and visa all they vant. I can sue for this outrage. I shall take it to Vashington. I shall sue the British government for a hundred tousand dollars for defamation of character. Forty years an American citizen and my fader he came not from Chermany but from Poland. . . . And you, poor boy, I see that you haf no shoes. And they talk about the atrocious Chermans and if this ain't an atrocity, vat is it?”

Joe was shivering and running round the court at a jogtrot to try to keep warm. Mr. Zentner took off his brown coat and handed it to him.

“Here, kid, you put that coat on.” “But, jeez, it's too good; that's damn nice of you.” “In adversity ve must help von anoder.”

“Dod gast it, if this is their spring, I hate to think what their winter's like. . . . I'll give the coat back to you when I go in. Jeez, my feet are cold. . . . Say, did they search you?” Mr. Zentner rolled up his eyes. “Outrageous,” he spluttered . . .“Vat indignities to a buyer from a neutral and friendly country. Vait till I tell the ambassador. I shall sue. I shall demand damages.” “Same here,” said Joe, laughing.

The corporal appeared in the door and shouted, “Williams.” Joe gave back the coat and shook Mr. Zentner's fat hand. “Say, for Gawd's sake, don't forget to tell the consul there's another American here. They're talkin' about sendin' me to a concentration camp for duration.” “Sure, don't vorry, boy. I'll get you out,” said Mr. Zentner, puffing out his chest.

This time Joe was taken to a regular cell that had a little light and room to walk around. The corporal gave him a pair of shoes and some wool socks full of holes. He couldn't get the shoes on but the socks warmed his feet up a little. At noon they handed him a kind of stew that was mostly potatoes with eyes in them and some more bread and margarine.

The third day when the turnkey brought the noonday slum, he brought a brownpaper package that had been opened. In it was a suit of clothes, shirt, flannel underwear, socks and even a necktie.

“There was a chit with it, but it's against the regulaytions,” said the turnkey. “That outfit'll make a bloomin' toff out of you.”

Late that afternoon the turnkey told Joe to come along and he put on the clean collar that was too tight for his neck and the necktie and
hitched up the pants that were much too big for him around the waist and followed along corridors and across a court full of tommies into a little office with a sentry at the door and a sergeant at a desk. Sitting on a chair was a busylooking young man with a straw hat on his knees. “'Ere's your man, sir,” said the sergeant without looking at Joe. “I'll let you question him.”

The busylooking young man got to his feet and went up to Joe. “Well, you've certainly been making me a lot of trouble, but I've been over the records in your case and it looks to me as if you were what you represented yourself to be. . . . What's your father's name?”

“Same as mine, Joseph P. Williams. . . . Say, are you the American consul?”

“I'm from the consulate. . . . Say, what the hell do you want to come ashore without a passport for? Don't you think we have anything better to do than to take care of a lot of damn fools that don't know enough to come in when it rains? Damn it, I was goin' to play golf this afternoon and here I've been here two hours waiting to get you out of the cooler.”

“Jeez, I didn't come ashore. They come on and got me.”

“That'll teach you a lesson, I hope. . . . Next time you have your papers in order.”

“Yessirree . . . I shu will.”

A half an hour later Joe was out on the street, the cigarbox and his old clothes rolled up in a ball under his arm. It was a sunny afternoon; the redfaced people in dark clothes, longfaced women in crummy hats, the streets full of big buses and the tall trolleycars; everything looked awful funny, until he suddenly remembered it was England and he'd never been there before.

He had to wait a long time in an empty office at the consulate while the busylooking young man made up a lot of papers. He was hungry and kept thinking of beefsteak and frenchfried. At last he was called to the desk and given a paper and told that there was a berth all ready for him on the American steamer
Tampa
, out of Pensacola, and he'd better go right down to the agents and make sure about it and go on board and if they caught him around Liverpool again it would be the worse for him.