Good Hope Road: A Novel (30 page)

‘Oh, I’m right glad to see you doing better, Major!’ the landlady exclaimed the following morning. ‘You’ve been so ill.’

‘It was just a cold,’ the Major muttered, embarrassed by the attention.

‘Yes, a cold
and
a fever
and
the chills like you would not believe,’ she said. ‘Be sure you bundle up now,’ she fussed. ‘Don’t pay the sun no mind, you need to keep your chest nice and warm.’

‘Yes, yes,’ the Major mumbled. ‘Thank you for your concern, it’s very kind.’ Raising his hat to her, he edged quickly out the door and stood blinking in the sunlight. ‘Women!’

‘Nursemaids, the lot of them.’ Jim solemnly agreed.

The Major glared at him and then his lips twitched. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘our Ellie advised me once that I should wear my socks – ones that I’d worn all day long, mind you – around my neck as I slept.’ He chuckled. ‘Said it would help if I felt a sore throat coming on. The socks needed to be flush against my windpipe, or else it wouldn’t work.’

The unexpected and easy banter between them, coupled with the prospect of Madeleine’s visit, made Jim light-hearted enough that he whistled all the way to the flats. The Major glanced at his son, amused, but made no comment.

The camp showed little evidence of attrition. The rows of ramshackle shelters still stretched in every direction. Heat rose sharply from the sun-baked flats, dust devils in the wake of the rusty, beat-up cars that sputtered in and out. A veteran wearing a pair of overalls fashioned out of an oilcloth advertisement for hot dogs was patching up his lean-to; his neighbour sat hunched over a fistful of crooked nails, patiently hammering them straight with the aid of a rock. Long lines snaked outside the makeshift post office and the green flaps of the Salvation Army tent were pinned open to reveal a lending library set up for the men. The strains of a ragtime band sounded from somewhere among the shacks. They stopped by the registration tent where the ever ebullient Connor bounded up to greet them.

‘Major!’ A wide grin split his face. ‘Boy, am I glad to see you’re doing fine.’

‘It was just a cold, Connor,’ the Major said, a touch of asperity in his voice. He hesitated, tapping the end of his cane on the ground. ‘How are things around here? Morale?’

‘Good, real good. Some days being better than others. Folks have been mighty decent about sending us supplies and stuff, but sometimes it’s just bread and coffee the whole day.’ A shadow crossed his face. ‘Rooster Curtis is missing though. Disappeared some time yesterday and ain’t nobody seen him since.’

Jim and the Major both glanced involuntarily at the mess kitchen and the large, wood-fired stove.

The Major cleared his throat. ‘How long do you boys intend staying?’

‘Till they pay us our bonus, I reckon,’ Connor said simply. ‘In a lot of ways, it’s like being back in the army. The goddamned reveille in the morning, same bad chow, and ain’t enough of it either. Some old timers gotten so settled in, they think they’re back in uniform – keep stopping by the registration tent for passes to leave the camp and asking where they should register for furlough.’ He laughed and shook his head. ‘This is home now. The boys around here, we . . .’ He dug his hands in his pockets, looking almost boyish as he searched for the words. ‘We’re buddies,’ he said finally. ‘We just sort of fit together, and we ain’t been fitting in too much, not since we been back.’

‘Yes, well, combat has a way of doing that, doesn’t it,’ the Major said flatly. ‘Once you’ve served together, dodged your share of bullets – it’s hard to figure out civilians after that.’

Jim glanced at his father in surprise.

‘Angelo?’ the Major asked. ‘He still around too?’

‘He sure is. Come on and I’ll show you what he’s been up to.’ Connor led them through the camp, talking all the way.

Jim followed, listening with only half an ear.
It’s hard to figure out civilians
. It had never before occurred to Jim to think of his father and the other veterans as being somehow altered by their experience into a breed apart. He looked about the camp, trying to picture it through his father’s eyes. A group of veterans, in threadbare trousers and BVD undershirts, were huddled around a hand-crank gramophone, listening to ‘Cohen on the Telephone’.

‘Hello, I’m Cohen . . . COHEN . . . I’M COHEN . . . No, I ain’t
goin
’, I’m sitting here! Hello!’

They were mouthing the words aloud, obviously knowing the entire routine by heart, but cracking up all the same over each farcical mix up.

‘This is your tenant COHEN . . . YOUR TENANT COHEN . . . No, not LIEUTENANT Cohen!’

Did these men, his father, Connor, all see themselves as irrevocably changed, marked in some invisible way by the war?

The Major paused beside a sapling that someone had planted. Next to it was a sign: ‘If Congress has its way, we’ll get shade before we get our bonus.’ Talking all the while with Connor, he brushed the dried leaves away from the sapling, crumbling them absently between his fingers before dropping them to the ground.

An image rose in Jim’s mind, of his father pottering about in the apple orchard back home, happiest when he was alone with his trees. He recalled how anxious the Major became at the prospect of meeting anyone unfamiliar. That curmudgeonly reticence, he realised with a jolt, had been nowhere in evidence all the days they had been in Washington.

It all began to make sense – his father’s equanimity over having to stay an extra week in Washington, his eagerness to get to the camp as soon as he was well. Jim examined the limping figure ahead, a pang of jealousy going through him at the effortlessness with which his father was conversing with Connor.

As if on cue, the Major looked back. A small, quick smile as he gestured for Jim to catch up, before turning back to his conversation. The brief flare of resentment melted away. Jim’s expression softened as he took in the relaxed way his father seemed to hold himself here, the easy command of his bearing, the animation in his face was that of a man at last back among his own.

They walked to a small clearing in the middle of the camp where a coffin lay on the ground, roomy enough that a small-boned man could sit up inside. ‘Tombstone Bonus’ it said on the side. In smaller script, an explanation below: ‘The Government says they will pay our bonus in 1945. By then, most of us will be dead.’ There was a stovepipe affixed to the top of the coffin and a gaggle of tourists were lining up to deposit twenty-five cents each for the privilege of peering down at the ‘entombed’ doughboy.

Connor banged on the side of the coffin. ‘Hey, Angelo! Look who’s here to see you!’

A sepulchral voice floated towards them. ‘Colonel Patton?’

‘No, but I’ve got a Major with me,’ Jim said, amused, as Angelo flung open the lid.

Connor pointed out the small patch of land off to one side, where wooden crosses had been painted white and staked into the ground. On each hung a rough hewn RIP, addressed to those congressmen especially opposed to the Bonus Bill. Knots of tourists wandered about, gawking at the names.

‘There’s fewer tourists now than there were in June and earlier this year,’ Connor admitted. A group of veterans kitted out in the tatty remnants of army coats and boots and with stomachs sucked in as best they could, marched before another small crowd. ‘The men do mock drills for a bit of cash, we’ve got five rodeo riders that came up with the Texas outfit . . .’ Connor’s voice trailed away, a sudden look of doubt upon his face.

‘They’re all ways to earn money, and there’s no shame in that,’ the Major said quietly.

‘No. No, there isn’t,’ Connor echoed, his eyes fixed on the men. His face brightened. ‘Some folks been selling subscriptions to the
BEF News
. A dollar for every twenty subscriptions, and
twenty-five thousand
copies being sold daily, can you believe it? There’s other things too – a baseball match, us against Chief Glassford’s police force, an “all camps” boxing exhibition – that last one netted us three thousand dollars.’

The Major nodded. He pointed with his cane towards the street signs planted in the alleyways, each named after a state. Pennsylvania for the men from Philly and the steel towns, New Jersey, Ohio, Arkansas, New York . . . He cleared his throat, tapping his cane on the ground.

‘That sign over there, for Louisiana. Anyone here from the French Legion?’

‘You already asked me about the French Legion, remember, Major? When you first got here.’

A group of children came rollicking around the corner. ‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’ Connor yelled good-naturedly as they all but slammed into the three of them. The children disappeared down an alley, whooping as they chased after a ball, their little brown-haired mutt barking excitedly alongside.

‘So who do you know from Louisiana anyway?’ Jim asked as they headed back to their rooms.

The Major looked out over the river. ‘Someone I knew a long while ago,’ he said, his voice distant. ‘It’s not important.’

All at once, Jim remembered the name his father had called out in his fever. ‘Who’s Henry, by the way?’

The Major stumbled, righting himself with his cane. ‘What did you say?’

‘Henry?’ Jim said doubtfully. ‘It sounded like that anyway. You said the name in your sleep.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ the Major said stonily.

They walked on in silence, the easy camaraderie between them turned cold and gelid in an instant.

‘For fuck’s sake!’ Pulling out his pocket square, the Major pressed it against his suddenly twitching, watering eye.

27 July 1932

emarkable,’ Madeleine murmured, as she walked beside Jim. He glanced surreptitiously at her yet again, taking in the smattering of freckles across the pale skin, the upward tilt at the corners of her bow-shaped mouth. The separation of the past weeks made the magnitude of his attraction to her all the more unsettling. ‘You should see the dugouts further in. Some of the men didn’t bother with fixing themselves shacks, just tunnelled dugouts for themselves like they did in France.’

‘No, that’s not it.’ Her eyes travelled over the rows of washing that hung behind the shacks. The items were unfailingly modest – a tattered towel, a shirt or two, a pair of trousers, the sun picking out patches of shine on the faded fabric, but she noticed how neatly they were hung. ‘It’s the men themselves.’

Madeleine had demanded to be taken to the camp as soon as she’d arrived in DC. Her mother, having fallen victim to a monstrous headache after the journey, was only too relieved to be able to draw the curtains and sleep.

She’d pressed her lips to his impetuously in the elevator of the hotel as the operator coughed into his white glove. Jim grinned, half embarrassed. ‘This might not be the sort of place to do that.’

She held his face in her hands. ‘
Every
place is the sort of place to do this,’ she declared. She’d kissed him again, and he’d felt himself hardening in response.

She’d chattered all the way to Anacostia, her face resting against his arm. When he stopped the truck, she looked about her in surprise. ‘So, where’s the camp?’

‘Close. Come on.’ He took her upstairs to their rooms, secure in the knowledge that the landlady and her brother were in their grocery store downstairs, and that the Major was already at the camp.