Day (11 page)

Circling in from the north-west came a single Lanc, big-chinned, blunt as a whale and open-armed and singing. When you heard them like that, far off, you could think they were trying to speak, words hidden underneath the roar, and if you could only work them out, you would understand everything, you would be saved. Except you were always too near to your own, half deafened with her, and someone else's Lanc would never quite talk for you. So you'd never know.

Alfred watched her, listening. She would land now, air-tested, and wait for the night. They'd all wait for the night.

drop

It was enough to make you laugh.

‘Vasyl.'

It made Alfred laugh, anyway.

‘Vasyl. Is there something with which I can help you?'

The Ukrainian was halted beside a bunk, his hand lifting the mattress – as if any bloody fool would hide something under a mattress. Wasn't even Alfred's mattress, the man was just snooping, chancing it.

‘Vasyl?'

He must have hoped to sneak in and ferret about while most of the bods were required to go vaulting over the horse, or pretend to be occupied in choral singing – the film people were keen on singing, because it suggested high morale. Alfred hadn't fancied vaulting or the choir and so he'd disappeared. He did remember how to disappear. He'd been doing some sneaking of his own and had noticed Vasyl going where respectable Displaced Persons shouldn't be.

‘Mr Alfred. Good morning.' A little temper showed in his face, fear and the press of appetite. ‘We haven't talked for some time, yes? I come to find you.' He'd been looking for the Luger, naturally, not Alfred. ‘I am so happy if you are well. You
are
well? You have suffered no more fainting.' Chap like him, he wouldn't let a Luger go.

Then again, neither would Alfred: they weren't so common as they used to be. ‘No more fainting. No.' Strolling in slowly, carefully, getting a good, firm thump with every footfall. ‘Perfect health. Must be the fresh air and exercise – does a body good. I'm
bostin
. Thank you kindly for having asked.'

That'll fox you, you little bastard – you've never been bostin in your life. Don't know what you've missed.

Vasyl flitted his hands down at his sides and made himself bland, irreproachable – which was still very far from bostin. ‘You have a good place here. Comfortable?' He backed up a step, couldn't help himself, as Alfred made sure to seem angry, keen.

‘Oh, this isn't
my
hut. I'm next door.' Both aware this is a lie. ‘They do take care of us quite nicely, though.' Then Alfred let the silence lap out between them and liked that his hands felt restless and his spine alert.

Took me a long while, cocker, but I learned how to fight in the end and slow learning is deep, the best kind, and we didn't quite finish our business together, did we?

Vasyl was still unsteadied and rushing in to fill the pause. ‘You know, I have thought that I might actually want to buy that . . . that old pistol from you. I have some money – not much. English pounds.'

You don't want to buy a bloody thing. You want that little knife of yours stuck in me – aerate my ribs. Can't say I have any very good reason to stop you. Still, I'm in a funny mood, these days. I might not fancy having you do me damage, or else I might mind finding out how little I'd notice. I have trouble feeling, you see – a complicated propos-ition, damaging someone who doesn't feel. They might not be afraid of what you'll do.

‘Don't want to sell it, though, Vasyl, old chum. I like my gun. Wouldn't be without it. So sorry. No thanks. Have you seen everything you wanted?'

Inside we could be in trouble, outside we could be safe – don't know which I'd prefer.

‘American dollars.'

And who would miss me? Best not ask. Depressing answer.

‘I have a sentimental attachment to it, old man. We can't be parted now.' Alfred ridiculously happy simply because his life has started banging through his forearms, is thick and impatient in his neck – the thought of risk waking him – and also because the Luger is perfectly hidden, he hasn't lost the knack.

Time was, I could have hidden you anything. Dummy cashes, hollows behind hollows: food, equipment, history, memory – I'd tuck it away. Once laid a whole false trail of wire for the joy of seeing Köllhoffer snuffle it out and pry and tug and follow it clear round the room until that beautiful last moment when he pulled back a piece of board and found only the end of the wire attached to nothing but a piece of shit. Didn't improve his temper, that. Got his one hand filthy. Remember he wiped it clean across one completely innocent fellow's breast pocket, which was uncalled for. No shouting, though. It was the shouting I couldn't stick.

Vasyl coughed: a small, courteous noise. ‘There is anything else I could . . . obtain for you? As a trade? Certain objects have been thrown away by men who have a bad conscience. But these can be located.'

‘I can't think what you mean, Vasyl.'

‘Medals, perhaps.' Disappointed when this doesn't interest. ‘A knife. The special type –'

‘You're rather a fan of knives, aren't you?' Alfred walking forward in a way that troubles Vasyl, begins to back him towards the door, shrinking the time he has left to manage a deal.

‘Perhaps you might suggest. I would enjoy to help you.' His neat English breaking down.

‘And how do you think you could help me?'

Vasyl firming suddenly, halting, a genuine, hard surprise in him and Alfred not quite prepared and too close.

‘You know you shouldn't be unkind to me, Mr Alfred. This heath is not a safe place.'

Which is when Alfred decided that he would drop his palms, cuddle them into each other as if he could hurt no one. He sank, tucked his head forward and met Vasyl's look, stilled him without a touch. ‘You know, when you'd been aircrew for a while, you could tell things. You'd see a man take his seat in the briefing room, or pet his dog, or pass by a doorway, perhaps, and this kind of heaviness would spread inside you, unmistakable, and even the very first time you'd understand – they were dead. They were already dead. The following morning, someone would say, or in a few days we'd hear, but everything would be settled long before. I could tell.'

Vasyl uneasy while he hears this, not sure if you're crazy, if he should laugh. And you may be crazy – after all, you're mainly thinking that
stilled
is a lovely verb, old-fashioned. You bite on, though, keep at him. ‘So do you want me to tell you?'

He's puzzled here, unsettled. ‘To tell me?'

‘I can say if you want me to, Vasyl. As a favour. I can say if I see when you're dead. Or do you think I can see it now?'

He flickers his eyes to the side, glances down, and then winds out a smile when he raises his head again, but you have him worried. ‘This is superstition. I am not so interested in this. Children's stories.'

‘Well, if you're not interested, we'd better just go and have lunch – it is time.' You take his arm and it's easy to move him, his thinking elsewhere, not in his limbs. ‘But I was never wrong. You might want to consider that, old man. I never got it wrong.'

And you steer him down the steps and into the sunlight which is harsh today, bitter on the skin, and he twitches round to you, but then reconsiders, shrugs out of your grip and hurries away.

It isn't true, of course – I could be wrong. There were times when I didn't know.

And then all of those mornings when I wouldn't quite face my reflection while I shaved. In case I saw.

Should have joined the navy – could have grown a beard.

And what's so different now? – Messing about with your top lip, trimming and fussing. Anything rather than meet your own eye.

Vasyl ducking himself round hut seventeen and out of your line of sight. There is nothing of death about him, naturally, beyond the sense that he's been too much in its company.

‘Certain objects.' Ar, I'm bloody sure you could get me certain objects. Selling off your iron cross, is that it?

And for a breath the camp snaps shut and the uniforms are serious and your hands are sliding and your stomach hollows and if you walk back to your hut it will be older, it will be the way it was, and her picture will be on the wall right where you put it: Joyce looking out to the left and hugging her knees and you'll wish again the sadness in her face is for your sake. The last photograph you had left of her – you couldn't tear it up.

Then the sand veers off under your feet and you have to lean over, drop, sit straight down for fear of fainting.

They're ringing the bell for lunch and someone runs past you, and someone else laughs, but after that there is more and more quiet and you're left to yourself, as far as you can tell, and so you close your eyes and lie out flat, the ground rushing beneath you. Your spine tingles and you wonder if this isn't an echo you're reading, if so many bombs haven't changed the earth, haven't left it always shivering and taken away its rest.

This gives you the idea that you would be wise to get yourself better fixed, more reliably attached to the surface. You're tired of flying, you don't want to face any more of it for now, but who can be sure that you might not be shaken loose, made airborne.

And you're crazy at this point, you know that: bomb-happy, wire-happy, round the bend: but this means that your problem's solution ought to be bomb-happy, too.

You start with breathing, heaving in great slabs of dusty air and jamming them down beneath your ribs, but this barely makes you heavier. Exhaling is difficult and you want to shout instead, so you permit that, allow a round, dark noise to push out of your mouth. This improves matters. You shout more loudly and discover it beds your skull down slightly.

And this is an old problem, you recognise it, remember – when you'd landed, taken those final bumps, engines off, the silence roaring at you, then you'd start to be unsteady, too light. You'd leave your guns safe, disconnect your oxygen, your intercom, you'd run through the drill and then let yourself out of the turret, swing round in the space that was no space and slide feet first over the tail spar, work yourself back, land on your feet by the stink of the Elsan toilet, your legs clumsy under you when you stand in the fuselage, duck through the door and step off down the ladder, climbing out to the friendly ground and the morning: the day: the true beginning of the day reached in the moment when you're walking, walking solid ground – flying boots connecting oddly with the concrete, giddy, still stunted a little in that Lancaster crouch, a deaf rush in your head and only the weight of your gear between you and rising clear away. You would have no substance and you would hope this was only joy, only the peace and the ache and tired delight of being here again, but maybe that wasn't the truth, maybe you were gone already.

It did scare you: the thought that you hadn't made it, weren't moving alongside your crew, that you were caught in the dream beyond your death and would turn lighter and lighter until you were lost completely.

You'd have to sleep and wake again before you believed in yourself. Or sometimes there'd be nothing for it but to sing.

‘And did those feet in ancient time'

Pluckrose peering round at you that morning.

‘Walk upon England's mountains green'

Balancing the whole of yourself as you push on, drifting up when you step while the words are shaking out of you, so loud that you can hear, and he's nodding, and you can see the way his mouth is yelling, must be braying out the next line with you. Tone-deaf, Pluckrose, but it doesn't bother you.

‘And was the holy lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen'

The pair of you bellowing, looking for pastures and Pluckrose bolting into a run, you following, airborne in spasms, but sinking, settling, and the last of the Benzedrine burning out through your legs.

‘Bring me my spears, oh clouds unfold

Bring me my chariot of fire'

And that's too much, too sharp against your job, against the burning you remember tumbling open under your feet, and so you halt and bend over and catch your breath, your living breath. Feeling ashamed of something, of all of the breaking you have done – it must prove you're alive.

And singing ‘
Jerusalem
' weighed you down like armour plate.

So Alfred stretched his spine against the bared ground of the phoney camp and yelled out the old words, the imagined country.

‘And was the holy lamb of God

On England's pleasant pastures seen'

He shouted it up, over and over: the bow, the arrows, the chariot, all of the kit: he repeated it word for word, for comfort, for steel in his bones.

The only thing I care to recall from that fucking school – when Mr Colear caught me singing in the class, thought I was getting above myself, showing off, when I'd only been singing, hadn't meant anything by it. But he sent me to the head and he hurt me.

Alfred aware of small sounds around him, of men coming back from their meal, hearing him, pausing, men being near.

‘I will not cease from mental fight

Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand'

He wasn't mithered, there was nothing they could do to him.

And they thought it would be a funny punishment if they made me sing the whole thing at assembly. They were wrong, though – I wasn't mithered then, either. I just sang.

But I think I didn't ever go back to school after that.

Alfred stopped when his throat was sore and he was thirsty. He sat up slowly and then opened his eyes, glanced round at the men standing. One of the film people started to clap, but nobody joined him, so he stopped, folded his arms. Alfred stood, as heavy as he needed to be and fairly balanced. He brushed off his trousers. The men waited, as if there was something they wanted, or that he might know, but none of them would face him, not exactly, they wouldn't entirely admit he was there, and he didn't suppose he would have enough voice left for telling the whole bloody shower to bugger off.