Day (26 page)

‘Wha—?'

I missed.

Listened as the brick hit cobbles. It scared him – there was this flurry of cloth and movement and his voice breaking out from him, weak, before he could stop it.

‘Wha—?'

I was laughing. No sound but laughing. Aching wide smile. Pass the other brick to my right hand, draw back, let it go, let the fucking world go, let the fucking bastard go, throw your heart, aim it, because that will kill him – your heart, yourself, that makes the kill.

Soft impact. Caught the body somewhere. Not the head.

‘Ay, now. Yo . . . Wachyo doin? Ay?' While the fucker's moving, ­stumbling. ‘Ay? Yo do —' So you need to follow, go in, finish this. ‘See . . .' Then he tries a laugh, to be mates with whatever has hurt him. ‘Hello? . . . 'sonly me, though.' A clumsy scuffle of feet as he darts, tries to catch you where you're not. ‘Just old Arthur . . . Ah –'

And a noise you don't understand, a thud and a drag after and then something hitting water, thrashing in water, fighting up for air.

Fell in the canal, day he? Didn't realise we'd been standing on the bridge – either that, or he didn't realise enough. Tipped himself up and went over the wall, dropped in the cut. Not really deep enough to drown you. Not unless you're drunk and heavy and frit with the shock of it and your feet held in the mud. Then you'd need help to get out. You'd want saving.

‘Ay. Hay!' Wallowing din he was getting up – you mithered because someone else might hear and come. ‘I know yo'm there.' Another crash as he punches at the water. ‘Helpme?'

‘No.'

Stepping methodically across the road until you kick one of the bricks. You launch it down. You hear it hit him.

‘Wha—?'

Speaking quietly. ‘No. I won't help you.' You feel for the other brick.

‘Who?'

The churning in the canal frantic now, but also weakening. It has something defeated about it. A man trying to stand taller than he is and failing. A man not breaking free.

‘Yo?'

You think he knows you. You would like to think he knows you now.

His voice has become tired and thin.

‘Yo.'

He doesn't complain when the second brick hits. You have the range now.

Then there are only noises.

Took him a while. I like that it took him a while.

Alfred leaned over the bridge and listened and listened beyond the last trace of movement, the settling of waves against the bank, the return of stillness and reflections, stars.

The dim shape, the one that used to matter, came to rest against the brickwork to the left. Alfred watched in case it moved again.

What might have been an arm seemed to reach for him when he didn't quite look at it.

There was a moment when the head appeared to turn, to shake mildly and Alfred expected eyes, the mouth to open and call him by name. But that didn't happen because the dead stay dead.

Stayed at the bridge a good while – until I heard footsteps – couple of ARP
s.
Told them good evening, but they hardly saw me – the first of my disappearing. A good gunner always knows how to disappear. A good prisoner always knows how to disappear. A good killer always knows how to disappear. The wardens were sharing a cigarette, talking about a dog race, swinging along. One of them said he was cold.

I was hot and life in me to walk all night, for ever. Went for miles. Such miles.

He'd woken next to Joyce with the sweat of the canal bridge on him, that permanent strange hurt. Remembering a railway station, catching the earliest train to Birmingham.

So he'd kissed her.

No mother, no father, that makes you a finished man – free. So you can kiss whoever you'd like.

She'd grumbled awake and then seen him.

Never understand yourself until someone looks at you like that, finds their joy in you like that.

Or you'll never be more mistaken.

Fuck her.

Fuck her.

Fuck her.

Holding his head in his arms while the phoney barracks slips towards the day.

Lost every letter she sent me before the camp, don't have a word of her left from any time when I was free.

drop

Ivor listening, but also making toast as you talk.

‘I was trying to find the place where it happened, but I couldn't remember the street. I thought it was Dean Street, but when I went over there, I wasn't sure . . . It all changes.'

‘Mm-hm.' Ivor with his back to you, busy: a slice of small bread caught inside this huge wire frame he's made for toasting – he extends it to the gas fire and waits. ‘That's London for you.' This always produces bad toast – scarred by the frame and with a peculiar flavour. But now you're both used to it. Prefer it.

‘The night it happened, it was after . . . I'd . . .' Not wanting to talk about playing inside a long day of leave: fat summer hours that you could taste and going to the pictures with Joyce, walking in London with Joyce, in brief and acceptable ways, touching Joyce, being cautious – except in the pictures – being terrible in the pictures – your hand hunting up for her stockings and then the gold feel of her skin and catching the fur of her for a moment – all of this she gives you.

Had to stop before somebody noticed.

And she could touch me – I didn't mind it – liked it. Of course. I was hers. Of course. But she never seemed to want too much that way.

Almost the last time I saw her.

So much waiting in those weeks – odd delays, odd bits of leave, unexpected – the seemingly endless hanging about.

It would be Hamburg next, but we didn't know it: Hamburg and Hamburg and Hamburg. But we didn't know it, not yet.

And twenty-three trips done and everything getting scrubbed, seized up.

But she stopped me thinking of it.

Still seven ops to go, as if they were dogging along behind me and we'd never meet.

But Joyce stopped me from thinking of that.

Joyce had to fire-watch in the evening, so you were set off drifting in the city by yourself, her scent on your collar, your fingers, the heat of her in the smile you couldn't help, in your chatting to strangers, in your very happy happiness. ‘I ended up just wandering, you know.'

‘Just wandering in Soho . . . How unlike a serviceman.' Ivor flipped an overly complicated hinge – design not his strong point – and started abusing the raw side of the bread. ‘You want this slice?'

‘No, you can have it. I'm full.'

But you're not full, never can be – you're only sickened, tickle-stomached over Joyce. Wanting to feed the whole time till you're sick, but then you'll remember you miss her and that's the end of it, can't face your bash. So she keeps you near your fighting weight. As near as you get.

The shop's back room was blue with the charring of more than half a loaf. It had been a quiet morning. Nothing to do but toast. No one in and Alfred with the books all to himself, he liked that – patrolling the perimeter, lining the spines up level with the edges of the shelves. ‘Anyway, I'd met up for a pint or two with Dickie Molloy and Miles and then they'd beetled off – romance to organise elsewhere. And I felt like a walk. Too much energy – needed exercise.'

And you knew the roof she watched from. You thought you would go and be where she might see you, or might possibly just sense that you were near.

‘I was by myself again and I went out in the street and there was this brown type, a commando.'

The man had come up to Alfred, very serious. ‘You have know-ledge of the working of bombs? I am trained in bombs.' Perhaps a French accent, foreign anyway, and once you were close enough you could see that he wasn't right somehow, that you should leave him be.

‘I know about bombs. Yes. Cheer-o, mate.' And Alfred quick to get past him, but then skipping into a doorway and looking out. The commando slewing through the warmish dusk and finding another airman, the only other passer-by – closing on him, patting his shoulders, shaking his hand, the privacy of the street clamping narrowly around them, shades running into shades and breeding, night coming in.

Then the commando breaks away, fumbles in his pack, hands bigger, complicated with something when they emerge. There's a moment when the hollow fretting of London beyond you fades and he raises his arms, looks about him in a way you understand, a way that makes you crouch before you think. He throws something, the thickening blackout taking it, slowing it, waiting.

And then a pounce of noise and flame, the heart of it nodding at you, knowing you as it strips your hiding place, scoops it out with light. Incongruous burst of water, a type of rain – the explosive hit a water tank – and a shatter of windows while the commando folds his arms and nods and the RAF man half dances over to him, claps him on the back.

They hug for a moment and then caper, laugh at what they've done. Then they stroll on arm in arm and you have to follow, track them because

I didn't know why.

Thinking they might do worse and that I'd stop them.

No.

Thinking they seemed like me. Thinking they'd show me what I'd be. Thinking I should understand the flicker of infinity that's showing round their heads.

Behind you the street they've harmed begins to squeal and clamour. You feel fresh glass creak underfoot.

When they reach a junction at New Oxford Street the two men step into the road and then lie down. They settle and stretch. You cannot tell if they are tired or if they would like to be hit now by something, maybe a fire tender heading for Dean Street, an ambulance.

You see a warden approach them, careful. He tips his tin hat just a little forward as he crouches down and you know he is thinking of blast damage, of trying to shield his head. The commando, still reclining, chats to him, hands illustrating something that sweeps and darts. You cannot hear them, even when you pass close by, because they are talking very softly.

‘I don't know what happened after that.'

‘Somebody cleared up the mess. That's what always happens. I've told you before.' Ivor seated at the table, cracking his black toast into pieces without the benefit of a plate.

‘Somebody like a noble pacifist fireman.'

Ivor grinned and leaned forward, set his angle so he could face you with his scar, the bad eye drooping as usual – as if it was drunk and sly. ‘Now that you mention, we were quite remarkably good at clearing up. One colleague who shall be nameless cleared up bottles and bottles of hazardous Scotch and dangerously scattered items of jewellery and I think, once, several gross of loaded powder compacts.'

‘It's true what they say – war is hell.'

‘Apparently so. He dropped through a roof one night and straight down into a warehouse of burning sugar.' The toast sounds like clinker when he bites it, talks through a mouthful. ‘His coffin smelled of toffee.' The margarine – grey to begin with – is filthy with fragments.

‘Well, it would.'

You can take a lot of nonsense from Ivor because of how he looks at buildings – the same way you do.

Walk anywhere and you'll catch yourself calculating out from where the first cookie would fall and blast the buildings open, let the incendiaries in to lodge and play. Difficult to pick where you should live – too near a bridge and you've had it, too near a railway junction, too near a railway station, too near a factory, too near a harbour, an airfield, a prison, a port, a tunnel, a dam, a power plant, a refinery, a river, a road, a canal, a forest, a mountain, your neighbour who's dead already and his house on fire.

Wooden floors and wooden roof beams: they'd mean you would be lost, your attic blazing down at you as soon as the tiles were off. Narrow streets and the flame would jump, would feed, would eat your shadows. Your stores of coal and petrol, your broken gas mains, they would burn and serve your enemies, the ones who were trying to kill you. Books and papers would forget themselves and turn to fuel, just like your furniture, your pets, your clothes, your hair.

And so you see targets beside targets: nothing but targets and ghost craters looping up from the earth, shock waves of dust and smoke ringing, crossing. You feel the aerial photograph staring down at you where you stand, waiting to wipe you away. You always are a target under naked air.

And sometimes you dream of the men and the bombs and the targets all learning from each other, testing and perfecting, changing – except that they really stay the same – are built around numbers and burning, which is to say, around death.

But you don't talk about death.

You only ever say you have knowledge of the working of bombs.

‘You got any?' Ivor swaying his mug back and forth as if this would produce more tea, shake it out of the corners in some way.

‘Got any what?'

‘Toffee. I could just fancy a toffee. Or a Pontefract cake. How many Pontefract cakes to a coupon?'

‘Do I look like a fucking confectioner?'

He taps his fingers lightly against his good cheek. ‘No.' And then tilts his head again, squints at you like a starling – some type of bird anyway, an ugly type of bird. ‘What you look like is browned off. What's up?'

‘Nothing.'

‘Shouldn't tell lies – they blacken the tongue. My mother said so and she was always right.'

‘Thought you got all your advice from your nanny.'

‘I think you're confusing me with someone else.'

And he's right – the accent, the height of him – you're not an idiot, you have realised – there are days when you want to confuse him with someone else.

He winks his bad eye, the thickened lid, smiles in the way that he does when he knows he's right.