Day (30 page)

‘So they dig their graves and then when they're finished, you can begin. Or you take them to the Umschlagplatz, or you do whatever must happen – and whatever happens, it happens to them. And you watch how they cry and how they are so nice to each other and polite – as if it matters, as if it ever matters.

‘It's like this – you kiss your wife, I take away her face – which one of us is more sensible? You hold on to her hand when she can't feel and then I stop you feeling – which one of us is more sensible? You care about your daughter – I train my dog to fuck your daughter – you still care – which one of us is more sensible?

‘I understand people – they hold blood. That's all they are: they're things to hold blood.

‘The first time, I was covered in them when I went home. They splash up on you when you hit them and then I had to lift them into the carts – that rotten stink – shit and piss – and the fear – sweetish smell, a little like the way they'll be when they rot – clings – you only get it when they're terrified, like they sweat themselves out through their skin. Escape. And then the blood. I was –'

‘Cunt.' Driving your head in hard against Vasyl's. ‘You cunt.' Knocking him on to his side and then punching him, stamping him low. ‘You cunt.' The bloodsmell everywhere, the old slither and clog in your breathing, over your tongue. ‘You cunt.' Holding Vasyl's one arm bent behind his back. ‘Cunt.' Your other hand keeping the grip under Vasyl's chin, ready to twist, break the neck, very ready. Only the ghost of blood is slippy inside your hands, is making you doubt them.

And Vasyl reads you and bucks, writhes, a nasty desperation in him. He gets loose just enough to tilt his face and catch your eye, upset the rhythm you were trained to. You both breathe hard. Both warm and still alive and fighting. He moves with your force on his arm, gives quickly, pushing with his feet, and rolls hard away from you and now he's almost free and you're snatching at each other in the dust. He doesn't seem to be reaching for his knife and you wish he would because then you could use it on him. Self-defence.

‘Two types.'

You break fast, stand up before Vasyl can manage to and then you rush a kick, clip him in the balls and like the way he twitches after that and whines in the sand. You try for his head, but he's hedgehogged round now, elbows beside his ears and you can't get him. You dodge left and try for his spine.

‘Two types.'

But he's quick, rolling again, grabs for your feet.

‘Two types.'

And he won't shut up. ‘Two types.' And he catches you, makes you fall.

‘Two types. Of cunt. Their type. Our type.'

But he doesn't move on you, so you have the chance to scramble up. And there he is, standing too – holding himself steady against the hut wall, leaning, blood on his mouth – real blood, not a memory – real, out-loud blood – and he's looking at you. ‘Our type. We kill their type.'

This makes you start a lunge in again, but there are hands that pull you back – two fellows behind you who are stopping this, the big lads from Gad's hut, wanting to lead you off, tugging you backwards. They are telling you calm things that you can't hear.

Vasyl keeps on looking at you. ‘This isn't the shit they taught us. This is the real truth – we don't die. People like you and me, Alfred. It's the other ones that die. We kill them.'

‘There are other things, you know, to consider.'

‘He's a fucking murderer.' The afternoon's heat shutting against Alfred, while he started to ache. ‘He's a fucking –'

‘But we have other matters to discuss.' This from the fat man who'd been chasing the cricket ball. He was now holding Alfred's starboard elbow, steering him back to the phoney concert hall.

Gripping his other elbow was Gad. ‘Johnnie's right. We've other things to talk about, Day. If you're interested. We thought you would maybe get interested when you heard.'

‘I'm not.' Alfred dug back his heel, brought them all to a stop. ‘I'm not interested. I wasn't even a digger then. You're both –'

‘Daft laddie.' Gad stepped to the side and was chuckling, shaking his head. ‘Not the tunnel.'

The fat man kept Alfred's arm, but was sniggering, too – the pair of them beyond wire-happy: simply insane.

‘Not the tunnel. We've not the time for that.' Gad coughed and straightened himself, became more circumspect. ‘But we do have possibilities. If you were to need them.'

‘I don't know what you mean . . . and it's nearly time. The break's nearly over – we should get back. And I'm . . .'

Alfred's elbow was gently lifted and the fat man started him walking again. ‘You're in a bit of a state, old man. I'd go in and take a seat at the back, I should say. And I'd imagine you'll have a fearful black eye tomorrow.'

And the need to turn, finish it with Vasyl, but the two men snibbed him in, closed their arms across the small of his back. The other pair, the giants, dawdled watchfully behind. Binns, the huger of the two, winked at Alfred.

Gad murmured, ‘A new start, Day. Are you telling me you wouldn't like one?'

‘This time next week, Day, you could be somebody else.'

‘Away and free.'

The pair of them muttering nonsense at him.

‘Would you not like to be somebody else?'

They halted him, then stepped aside, let go of him as scuffles and lines of men began to thicken round them, heading back to the filming. Alfred feeling exposed now, at risk without the press of his escorts against him.

Gad shielded his eyes and pointed to nothing in the sour blue of the sky. ‘I've wanted it since '45. I've wanted it since I realised the best I'll ever be in civilian life is a clerk in a shipping office in Kilbowie Road. I outrank the manager. I outrank everyone there. They did nothing. I had a good war. And what did I get? Lease Loan up the spout and tatties on the ration.' He spoke in the proper, casual tone for a man observing a bird in flight, an interesting cloud formation. ‘It's either this, Day, or I'll go down to the fucking docks one evening.' He spoke as if this was just chatting, was nothing of importance. ‘And I'll climb up a crane and launch myself off. I've picked the crane already. That's all there is for me back home.'

‘He's right, Day.'

‘Right about
what
?'

Stragglers were running by them now, and Alfred knew – was almost interested by knowing – that if they weren't careful they would be late.

‘We have the papers, Day. Black market. Europe's still a bloody mess. Nip out of here when the film buggers aren't quite looking . . .'

The fat man nodded. ‘Start again before it all settles down and we've still a chance that nobody will notice. There's just enough time. We thought you might like that. To be someone else.'

‘We have a spare set of papers.'

‘You give it some thought, Day. And let us know. Fast, though. Not long to go.'

Alfred stood in the heat. He gave it some thought.

drop

Lignite, phosphorous, carbon, liquid oxygen: these are substances that follow their own nature, that are true. But let, for example, the phosphorous touch you and it would burn you to the bone – its true self is a harmful thing and so you keep it closed away.

Trip twenty-six.

You keep it closed away.

Trip twenty-seven.

You keep it closed away.

Closed, but not hiding – how would you hide yourself from yourself: where could you go, alone inside yourself? – and twenty-six and twenty-seven, they are a part of what owns you,
is
you, of what occupies you now.

So no hiding. It's only a question of cohabitation, of letting the harmful things live in you, move where you are naked, of feeling them look and smile, but never listening when they speak. And you are a brave boy, always tried to be a brave boy, which means you'll manage this, press on regardless.

The Tuesday and the Thursday of that one hot week – you know about them, all about them, but you keep your mind down on the ground, in their beginnings – sticky inside your turret while you prepared, sun finding you through the Perspex, making the metal nervy, talkative around you, forcing a sweat. You wanted the high cool then, the mission reeling on ahead, the man you could be with your crew and nowhere else.

That's simple to remember and allowed.

For the rest of it, if you're pushed, you'll skip to the end of the week and being with Molloy on the Friday evening. He's sitting hunched in the open window of the Duck's Head, leaning his back against the frame, right foot tapping on the seat of an elderly bench, left leg hanging down over the sill and into the little garden where sweet peas are flowering in among the real peas. Which means that the national drive for increased fruit and vegetable production smells of summer and of women and normal life.

By the bar some fellows you don't know, have taken care not to know so terribly well, are singing.

‘We are the Air-Sea rescue, no fucking use are we,

The only times you'll find us are breakfast, dinner and tea.

And when we sight a dinghy, we cry with all our might:

Per Ardua ad Astra – up you, Jack, we're all right.'

Molloy has a pint, but isn't drinking: holds a cigarette, but isn't smoking – he's only peering down at his shoe where it's out in the sunlight. You hold his beer hand and tilt it, steal a sip out of his glass. He does grin when you lift your head and swallow, but this seems to leave him weary.

He catches your ear between his forefinger and thumb, nips it vaguely, ‘Ah, Little Boss, Little Boss. You'll have the shirt off my back.'

‘Won't.'

‘And why not, it's a good shirt. Really very close to being almost new.'

‘Wouldn't fit me.'

He nods as if he has a headache. ‘That's so, that's quite precisely so. I'd forgotten your problem of being a dwarf.' He tries to smile again.

And you would not hurt him or insult him by saying he ought to cheer up, because he has a right to be exactly as he is. It's best maybe to stay with him quietly, drink your own pint and listen to the sprogs up by the bar: now they're singing about a blackout tart who'll do anything for butter. You imagine the song might have made you laugh a while ago, when you were younger.

‘D'you hope?' Molloy quiet, his face to the garden. ‘Despair being a sin, so you mustn't indulge it. But what would you hope? Do you?'

Feeling the dark that you have in your spine, that follows you, creeps out when you're not careful. It wakes, blinks. ‘I don't know.' You shouldn't talk in ways that make it spread. ‘I mean,' but you have to help your friend, ‘I try doing neither. Not the despair and not the hope.'

‘You prefer to be dead, so.'

‘When I'm with –'

‘I know. It's different then. If you've love. Then you give it all the engines can stand while you're with her. But in this, where we are, where they have us be . . .'

Molloy with two missions left before he can go – one less than you when one less is a large consideration – both of you so near, too near, and you're sure this should not be mentioned: the terrible idea that sometimes mouths inside your head.

I might live.

And the way it drives along your muscles and cramps them tight: the way it could crowd in your thinking when you need your space, when you need to watch and keep your crew from harm: the way it makes you feel afraid.

I really could live.

The way it always feels like it's a joke at your expense.

‘I don't know with the hope thing.' Molloy clearing his throat and facing you. ‘I supposed that I ought to ignore it. If it was there then it would sustain me, but I wasn't to touch it, or to consider it, or check on it. Because in our position . . .' He doesn't seem worried: more baffled, exhausted. ‘I supposed I was a person of
this
world and
this
world was what concerned me. But I was all wrong, d'you know?' He smiles very gently and draws on what's left of his cigarette. ‘I believed –' He flicks the butt outside and takes your hand. ‘Are we friends?'

‘Of course.'

‘Friends enough that I won't offend you, because I don't mean to offend you.'

‘Yes.' Although you're not sure, you mostly would like him to be quiet and not trouble himself so much and not trouble you.

But Molloy keeps a hold of your fingers. ‘I'd thought –' He coughs out a type of laugh. ‘I'd thought that I didn't believe – all of the training, the way they make you think – the training when I was boy, not here: the angels and dispensations and penances . . . they sent me to the Latin School, you know, with expectations . . . ones I didn't share . . . and so much beating, years of it – d'you see the thumb on me? That one.'

He held out his right hand and its slightly twisted thumb, grinned at it sourly.

‘Miss Mahon – never knew when she should stop. And the whole pack of them at work for gentle Jesus. Gentle Jesus and the proper declension of Irish verbs. There would have been other ways I could have learned.' Again the grin and a turn of his hand, examining it. ‘And I
did
learn – that I didn't believe. But there I'm wrong – I'd only
thought
that I didn't believe any more. But it was always here – the idea that if I do what's right, then in the end I shall be forgiven and dwell in the mind of God. Maybe a little Purgatory for a while – and that would be only fair.' He shook his head. ‘I thought I was past all of that, but truly I'd only changed my mind about what it was right to do, made myself a little room to breathe. The rest, it was still there – the hope of heaven. And that's a hope you don't even notice, because of it being so old. It's really almost as old as yourself and however you happen to think and the mercy of the way your mother smelled when she used to hold you and you were small enough to be good. You don't notice while it's still there – the old hope. Oh, but when it's gone.'