Day (33 page)

Fucking Germans, of course.

You understand. Whatever they do, it can't surprise you: you'll always understand.

Dulag Luft: that should be where you're taken, but you don't think you're there. This wouldn't happen there. They don't say where you are and you can't see. There's only this room and the other.

You haven't been processed, or given a number, or given shoes. There's only this room and the other.

You haven't told anyone you've lost your hat, the one Joyce made you and there's no time to cry about it. There's only this room and the other.

They say you're not a
terror Flieger
– because nobody heard your plane – because nobody saw your plane – because nobody found your parachute – because you are not in full uniform – because they were expecting someone who is not a
terror Flieger
and what they expect has to be right. Which only means they're stupid, but you can't tell them that. They don't think you're really aircrew and they don't believe your name, or you serial number, or your rank. You tell them all three, in any case. Whenever they ask. Whatever they ask. But you do not stop them believing that you are something else, something wrong.

It took a long time to get here and people were not kind and did not ever believe you and so you stay here – back in what you understand. There's only this room and the other.

I always was wrong. And nothing my father liked better than the ways I could be wrong: sayin things I shouldn't, lookin arrim funny, actin daft, actin saft – I was made inside me to be wrong. And yo knock that out, yo fuckin knock that out of a boy, yo bate him till he doe feel it and yo knock im right.

Tastes of salt, my fuckin father. Tastes of fuck you. Tastes of I'll fuckin watchyer, I'll watchyer fuckin die and hear yo squeal.

There's only this room and the other. Here is where you get it wrong, in this little space, like a box, and damp brick walls with whitewash on them. You have to stand here. This is the room where you stand. Until they tell you not to. Sometimes with your hands above your head. Shoulder hurts, something bad with your shoulder. Sometimes with your hands down by your sides. Shoulder hurts, either way. It doesn't matter, the important thing is to stand and never lean, never brush the walls, never touch them so the whitewash comes off, because then when they come back to check you they see how you've done wrong and then they take you to the other room.

The other room is where it's your fault you get a beating.

And when I'd hit him, when I tried to hit him, keep her safe, that's when I was a bad boy, made him hurt her. I'd hit him and he'd bate her. Then he'd bate me.

But I knew better than him what I deserve.

I know better than them.

Sometimes rubber truncheons, sometimes leather with a sting in them, a kind of echo once they've hit. Sometimes you don't see. Not interested.

Fucker with a ring, he punched me, cut me – my lip's all swole and bad now.

But I understand. It ay that I doe understand.

If there's no whitewash on you, they beat you, anyway. That's your fault, too, because you can't tell them what they'd like.

Fucker with the ring calls me Alfred, like no one ever does – except her sometimes, except her – an he has a officer's voice an he says he wants to help me, but he wants to help hisself.

I understand.

I'm wrong, so he has to bate me.

He's wrong, so he has to bate me.

They'm wrong, so they have to bate me.

I unnerstan.

I'm running this. I own it. I'm getting what I deserve.

There's only this room and the other, which is why it's hard to tell the time. You don't how many hours or days you've been here, how long you have to stand until you fall now and then and they come and lift you up and beat you or give you a cigar-ette you can't smoke but you try to and the fucker talks about cricket which you never follow and then you don't please him and sometimes they don't have to hit you at all before you make sounds these noises and curl up and want to be asleep only a tiny piece in the space it takes for them to pick you up you could rest a while stretch the seconds.

Stretch a second with your hand.

They're starting to think you're maybe soft, honest – which makes them beat you differently.

Showing cheek, trying to prove them wrong, when I'm the one who's wrong and that's the way I'll be for ever.

While you stand, there's this crying you do sometimes – when you think you won't look nice for her any more. Don't think her name and then they won't have it. They see names in your face and then they try to smack them out.

Yo cor ave em, though – or me. I was made to be bate. I was made for gunnery and batin. Yo cor find me this way, norrall the way down ere, in where I stop.

I can hear yo. I can feel yo. But yo ay gorra chance to see me. I bin down in the glory hole, I bin, shut in. Yo cor hurt me where I bin. So fuck yo.

There's only this room and the other.

You try to stand the way the air force taught you, be a credit to the service and yourself.

There's only this room and the other.

You don't do it very well.

drop

They threw him back eventually – he was too small a fish. And the Luftwaffe guards came and took him and wouldn't quite meet his eye, because he was embarrassing – the way he had made himself be treated. They gave him a number and a tag, cutlery and a dixie, a blanket and a Red Cross parcel, all of his very own to keep. But the best was getting dressings on his shoulder his face and his feet and then socks and then the chance to scrum in when they threw down a load of boots and he wasn't ashamed to dig and shove to find a pair that fitted and would last – he wasn't ashamed by anything, not even of shuffling into the camp that first evening and seeing men look away from him, just the way the Luftwaffe had.

Because there is a difference between being in a prison and being a prisoner. And, for a while, Alfred had liked to be a prisoner. He was grateful and obedient and quiet and would only look, every now and then, at the Germans – real Germans there, alive and moving about, as if they were people and not what the newspapers had told you, as if they were people and not what had hurt you, as if they were people and not what had hurt your friends. Here they were, the Germans – something to start a flinch in you, although you fought that – chatting and standing guard, sneaking cigarettes, being tired and lazy and officious, angry, jolly, boorish, sly.

You could have worn them away with watching.

You could have gone mad with shaking and not sleeping and needing to weep.

But Ringer saved you.

Yes, our kid – it was Ringer that saved you and not the other way around.

Not the way you seem to remember it, but that's the way it was.

The other chaps had taken to leaving Alfred alone: he was, they could only observe, an almighty bore and his nightmares were trying their patience. And Alfred had taken to watching the Germans, staring at the Germans, in ways that were trying
their
patience. And then Ringer arrived.

Whatever you were watching, you'd see Ringer: the great, bobbing head, the height of him as he shambled about across the sand, that daft helmet perched up above the placid face and the half-soaked smile. There was nothing to fear in Ringer's smile.

‘You all right then, boy?' Ringer leaning over Alfred and then crouching to sit a little way off, unhurried, bony knees folded up to his chin. ‘I'd say you was all right.' And there was a rush in Alfred's head that wanted to keep on checking, following the Germans, seeing what they'd do, but something about Ringer tugged at him, slowed his breath and turned it milky and peaceable. Alfred wanted to walk on, but he didn't.

Ringer glanced up at the empty sky and sniffed. ‘Going to rain.' Then he glanced up at Alfred. ‘Prob'ly.' He smiled again and nodded, started tapping with one foot in a way that meant something to him, that made him nod in time.

Alfred stood, kept on standing, until he began to shiver and to think of the whitewash and the room.

‘You're all right, you know. I can see in you you're all right.'

A tiredness spreading in Alfred when he heard that and a sweet weight bringing him to his knees and setting him with his hands down on the ground, before he could shake his head and laugh, scramble himself round to sit and laugh, reach out to Ringer and shake his long, wide hand and hold on and laugh.

The shivering worse as he let the sound kick out, but Ringer gripped him tight, crushed his palm, ‘Something knocked the air from you, is all,' until Alfred had shaken and squawked to a standstill and the pair of them were left crouching, hand in hand – the idiot and the madman.

Things weren't so bad after that.

drop

It was going to be a long night – and their last. Gad and a few other bods had convinced everyone that a genuine farewell concert was required, a real send-off to close the fake prison and send the fake prisoners home.

The trouble was, they'd got too many volunteers. Almost everyone had a bit of something they'd like to recite – ‘Boots, Boots, Boots', ‘The Green Eye of the Little Yellow God', ‘Albert and the Lion': there was a chap who'd been on destroyers and wanted to play the penny whistle, four would-be pianists, any number of singers with any number of songs, a photographic analyst who blew across the tops of bottles and a chap who'd been something at Myingyan – he did bird calls from home and abroad. Even a few of the Ukrainians had promised unpronounceable offerings. And, of course, there were the Good Germans – one couldn't very well exclude them.

The director, who had lately become rather fond of the older and nicely mysterious lady in charge of costumes, had given the enterprise his blessing, although only Jack from the film types had said he would like to take part.

So at five o'clock, they had settled down to eat, looking about themselves and finding they had almost all made the same decision to change out of their uniforms and make the best they could of their civvies. Shoes had been polished, hair fussed at, shirts ironed – they seemed to have become both less and more military and were quiet with each other, as if they were not quite who they'd thought.

Gad slipped in beside Alfred when they'd reached the pudding – a fine, celebratory treacle tart. ‘You're sure about this?'

‘Yes.'

‘Classic distraction, really. I'd never have stooped so low back in the old days . . .' Gad with the old sheen over him, pre-op nerves. ‘Gives us a twelve-hour start, if not more. I can do a lot with twelve hours.'

‘Good.' Alfred staring at his pudding.

‘You don't sound too happy, laddie.' Gad sucked at – of all things – a cigar, wanting to have a man-to-man chat. ‘If you have second thoughts, it's not -'

‘I'm fine.' Alfred kept his head down. ‘It'll be fine.'

‘D'you want that? Because it's a shame to let good treacle tart go to waste, you know.' There's a clear smell of drink about him.

‘You eat it, cocker. I've got no appetite.'

‘Nerves, eh?'

‘Something like that. And there's someone I want to speak to.' He reached and shook Gad's hand, ‘Nothing to worry you, just a thing I need to do,' and then left the table.

Across in a corner sat four guests from the DP camp, here to oversee their charges' cultural activities: two bank-clerk sorts with glasses, a bluestocking kind of woman and a younger chap with a trimmed beard. They'd been given a tablecloth from who knew where and their own jug of custard to save them from having to walk and ask for more.

‘Mr Fergusson?'

The bearded man glanced up, frowning. ‘Mm?'

‘Might I have a word?' Alfred unsure of how this would go and it was clear now that Fergusson liked his comforts, was thinking mainly of more custard and then the chance of booze. ‘You are Mr Fergusson?'

‘Yes . . . This isn't exactly –'

‘I wanted to talk to you about one of your DPs.'

‘Well, you can't.' A neat purse of the lips after this. ‘They're under our jurisdiction, no one else's.' Fergusson took another mouthful of tart, sighed when Alfred showed no sign of leaving. ‘Look, old man, if there's been some kind of pilfering, or bad blood, then you really should address your complaints to Mr Simms there.' He jerked his head towards one of the bank clerks. ‘But you're off tomorrow, as I understand, going home. So there hardly seems any point.'

‘I don't have a complaint.' Keeping the accent RAF, trying to be someone to respect, but knowing your jacket is worn and is cut down from one of Ivor's. ‘Not that kind of complaint.' Leaning closer so you'll make no fuss, because nobody ever wants a fuss. ‘One of your DPs is a criminal.'

At which Fergusson sniggers, wet crumbs on his tongue, in his beard. ‘Oh, they're all criminals.' He frowns, the way one ought to when addressing an idiot. ‘That's what we expect.'

‘I mean –'

‘I know exactly what you mean. You're talking about ancient history.'

‘Vasyl.' The others at the table not meeting your eye, the woman setting down her spoon. ‘Vasyl Mishchenko, but he –'

‘He's very probably not called anything like that and he's very probably not Ukrainian. We know.' As if he's explaining to a child. ‘But it doesn't matter whether he's a Ukrainian, or some kind of Balt, an Estonian, for example – if we send him back, the Communists will murder him. Do we want that? No, of course we don't. We can't have Communists thinking they can murder people just as they like, now can we.'

‘He said he was coming to London.'