At the Break of Day (21 page)

In the station yard there were lorries backed up with their tailboards down. They heaved their cases into these now and Sid lit a cigarette, his hand shaking.

A Corporal pacing backwards and forwards glanced at his millboard, then shouted at Nigel to ‘get his bleeding legs working and hurry over’. Then he turned.

‘Put that ruddy fag out, you ruddy nig.’

Jack turned, and his eyes met those of the Corporal.

‘Got anything to say, nig?’ the Corporal shouted at Jack. ‘Got any comments to make, any suggestions you would like me to send back to Mother?’

Jack shook his head as Sid stubbed out the half-smoked cigarette, put it back in his packet.

‘You see,’ the Corporal shouted, stabbing a finger at Jack and Sid, ‘we don’t like dirty ’abits in the Army. We don’t like people bringing their nasty little ways in with them. Put that bleeding fag over there, in that bin.’

He pointed towards a bin fastened to a lamppost over by rusty railings near to the station entrance.

Sid stumbled towards the tailboard, jumped down, ran across, and picked out the cigarette from the packet, but his hands were shaking so much that they all fell into the bin. He reached down, then saw the Corporal, looked again at the cigarettes, and ran back, pushing himself up and into the truck.

‘You’d better get yourself back down and go and fetch those cigarettes, hadn’t you? You forgotten there’s shortages? Or maybe Mummy lets you have hers.’

Sid moved to the tailboard again, hunched down beneath the lorry roof. He ran back, picked the cigarettes out, brought them back. They were stained, dirty, smelling of old fruit.

The Corporal nodded and turned, calling, ‘Come along please, Mr Sanders, Mr Nigel Sanders, or Nanny will be cross. Come along. Don’t be afraid. You’re only leaving civilisation behind. You’re not humans any more, you’re nigs.’

Sid was shaking and Jack felt anger drown his fear as when the Billeting Officer in Somerset had separated two sisters, sending one to the town, the other to a village. There was nothing any of the children could do. There was nothing he could do now. Nigel hoisted himself up and the lorry rumbled away from the station yard.

They drove into the camp and a wooden barrier fell behind them. Jack felt trapped, lost, but so did the others, he could tell from their faces, even Nigel. They passed bleak married quarters, barracks, squares, huts, black stencilled notices, and then they stopped, jumped out, listened to the shouts of the Corporal, watched the spittle on his chin, the red cheeks which reddened, the eyes which narrowed.

They were lined up, their suitcases still in their hands. They were marched, out of step, to their barracks. They left their cases, turned, marched to the quartermaster’s stores.

There were counters, Corporals shouting, battledress, beret, boots – some that fitted, some that did not.

‘What a shame, poor little boy wants Mummy to change them? Tough shit. Wear ’em.’

More kit was slapped down and they stuffed it into drab-green kitbags, collected their mattresses, which they draped over their heads, then hauled the bag and blankets to the barracks. Heard a siren. Reported to the cookhouse for tea as their Lance-Corporal ordered. Were sent back for wearing civilian clothes. They changed. The Lance-Jack laughed, standing in the corridor to his room. They were too late for tea. Jack felt anger come again but it mingled with strangeness, fear, loneliness, all of which he had felt before in Somerset. Rosie had felt it too. Little Rosie.

They marched back again to the barracks, to the thirty wire-framed beds, to the windows which were nailed down and unopenable. To the stove which would have been too small to heat Grandpa’s shed, to the tall metal lockers beside each bed, to the stone floor which struck chill into them, although it was August and hot.

They were given pen and paper to write to their families.

‘To say that you’re having a lovely time,’ the Lance-Jack said, walking up the centre of the room, looking them up and down. They were hungry, lying on their beds in prickly khaki, feeling in their pockets for change to go to the Naafi.

Jack wrote home, saying he was having a lovely time, saying his clothes would be sent back, saying it was just like being evacuated and that had turned out all right, hadn’t it? No problems, he wrote.

He wrote to Rosie, saying that he loved her, that he would be home for two days at the end of basic training, in two months, that she must look after Maisie, please, and Lee, and herself. Please.

As he, Sid and Nigel walked to the Naafi and bought a sandwich and a beer, he thought of Elsie, the fat farmer’s wife in cords who had lit an oil lamp each evening so that he would not be afraid of the shadows in the old farmhouse. The smell of it had eased into his room from the landing. The others were silent too, sipping their beer which dripped on to the formica table. Their thoughts were elsewhere too.

They bought boot polish before they returned to their billet and all night long they bulled their green-corroded brasses, rubbing with emery paper for hours. Their hands grew cramped and stiff, their necks too, from bending. There were Woodbine stubs in the tin ashtrays on the two tables, there was a sourness in their mouths, a loneliness in their eyes which were heavy-lidded, tired, unsure. And always there was the radio playing, but there was no jazz.

Sam, from Liverpool, brought out a candle and a spoon, and heated the handle, rubbing it over the dimples of the boots, squeezing out the oil, rubbing away the waterproofing with it, but who cared? It would make them shine.

He showed them how to spit, then rub the polish which they had all bought in the Naafi round and round. It produced a shine. A bloody shine, and so they all did the same or ironed their boots. They laughed and swore and said they weren’t afraid of the Lance-Jack, or the Corporal, or the Sergeant, but they were. Finally at 0400 hours, they slept, though the radio still played through speakers controlled by the Lance-Jack. In their sleep they rocked to the rhythm of the train, to the lurching of the truck, to the voice of the Corporal.

They were woken at 0530 hours. The Sergeant screamed ‘Wakey Wakey’, and thumped his swagger stick along the end of each bed, swearing, tipping every other metal locker over, standing over the spilled contents, calling them whores who had turned the place into a bordello, telling them their kit would be stacked properly or they wouldn’t live long.

Jack shaved in cold water, and dabbed at the cuts which ran red. He thought of Butlins but he didn’t smile. Hi-di-bloody-hi, he thought. His eyes were red and sore, his hands and shoulders ached and he hadn’t even dreamed of Rosie in that brief hour of privacy, he had been too tired.

Nigel’s face was without cuts. He had no need to shave. The cat calls followed him out but he flicked his towel over his shoulder and smiled, walking away, giving a royal wave. They had to fold their sheets and their blankets just right. Put back the lockers, just bloody right.

Then they were out, into air which smelt sweet, into a summer day where birds sang, and Jack had forgotten for hours that anything pleasant existed. They marched with knife, fork and spoon held in one hand behind their backs as the Corporal ordered them to, but were screamed at because they were not swinging the other arm. No one had told them.

‘You should have known,’ he screamed again.

They marched, out of step, into the cookhouse, drinking sweet thick tea, eating greasy tinned tomatoes, and bacon, then tipping the remains into slop bins whose putrid smell reached out into the steamy hall. They moved along, sluicing their cutlery in the lukewarm tank. Bits clung to the forks and the knives.

Then back to the barracks and the lavatories. The floors were swept, the windows polished. Jack took the ablutions instead of Sid because Sid was shaking and pale. He had called out for his mother just before dawn.

Jack handed him his window cloth, and with Sam from Liverpool hurled buckets down the clogged stinking pans so that the inspecting officer wouldn’t complain, wondering all the time how this mad-house could be allowed to exist.

They had their hair cut, the shears pulling and scraping far up their necks. They had a medical inspection in the afternoon, sitting on benches in a building which stank of urine and disinfectant and gleamed with green and white paint. They all passed and all groaned.

That night they blancoed their webbing, pressed their clothing, ironing over a sheet of brown paper which had been wetted with a shaving brush. They breathed in the pungent smell of steam and scorched paper, feeling the heat on their faces, their heads already bursting with the ache of tiredness. There were only two irons between the thirty of them. The night was endless. The music blared. Sid slept and Jack pressed his then wrote to Maisie asking her to send spare pyjamas and underpants so that he could keep the Army issue ready at all times for inspection.

He wrote to Rosie, sitting on the floor because the bed was laid out for inspection. He told her that all he could smell was scorched, damp, brown paper, all he could hear was cursing, all he could feel was the ache of tiredness. The ache of missing her.

‘God, I’m bushed,’ groaned Nigel.

They spent the last hour of the night on the floor, to avoid messing up their beds, Sid and Nigel too. They were scared, Jack was scared, of the Sergeant with the swagger stick and eyes like bullets and for the second night he was too tired to dream of Rosie.

They were right to be scared. The Sergeant tipped their pressed clothes, their lockers out on to the cold stone floor but they didn’t turn and look. They stood to attention at the foot of their beds, their faces set, their minds raw with anger, with despair, with the confusion of tiredness.

‘You’re a bloody shower,’ the Sergeant shrieked.

They had their injections that day then they polished the studs on the soles of their boots, the brasses again, the windows, the tables, the buckets, the floors. They polished the words off the lid of the boot polish tin, set it to one side for inspection and bought another for use.

They pressed the military frieze into sharp creases again. They covered everything in newspaper so that nothing would get dirty between the evening and the morning. They moved by numbers, they didn’t think, they didn’t feel, they didn’t dream.

‘God, I’m bushed, exquisitely bushed,’ Nigel groaned.

‘Go to sleep then,’ Jack murmured. ‘Give us all a break.’

The next day they drilled. The rifles were heavy, their shoulders were sore from them. They marched, they halted, they turned, they about-turned. Sid stumbled on the turn, every time. The Corporal swore. They stopped for a smoke break, Jack, Nigel and the others, but Sid was marched up and down, up and down, and still he stumbled and his face looked like the faces of the sisters who had been separated in Somerset, like Lee’s when his father turned from him.

Then they all marched, again and again, and their boots rubbed but they were not allowed to stop for lunch because Sid still couldn’t turn and that night Sam cursed Sid, and the others did too, and tipped him out of his bed and threw his locker over because the minutes had ticked away for tea break too, and still he had made mistakes.

‘Get out of it,’ Jack shouted and Nigel helped him push them away.

They picked up Sid’s things, turned their backs to his tears, giving him privacy, shielding him so that the others couldn’t see either. They were tired, dog tired, but they laid out their beds for inspection, then Sid’s, and walked him to the Naafi though their feet were raw and burned with each step.

‘Just a quick one,’ Jack said.

‘Builds up the sugar level,’ Nigel murmured, his lids drooping.

They bought Sid beer and listened as he told them that he got so worried he couldn’t think and it was then that he made mistakes and he didn’t think he could bear it.

They bought him more beer so that he would feel too ill to think and the next day he didn’t stumble or the next, or the next, and he bought them the beers those nights. But the next week the Corporal shouted at him, rode him, cursed him again until he stumbled on the turn again the next day and the beers in the evening didn’t help.

Jack watched as the boy’s hands began to shake, and the taunts began again as the whole squad was punished, missing lunch, missing tea. He watched as the light faded from Sid’s eyes and felt anger above his tiredness.

So when the Corporal lined them up and the Sergeant marched with clipped strides down the ranks, pointing his stick at Jack, he moved it to one side, his eyes hard like the Sergeant’s, his hands sweating with the fear he wouldn’t show. He didn’t want Sid to suffer any more.

He could cope. He was stronger, he was nineteen, a man. Much older than the sister who had been killed by a car when she ran away from the town to the village to see her Sarah. Much older than Lee who had been pushed aside by Ollie.

He was marched away, sworn at, cursed, pushed, his head yanked back by his short hair.

‘Got a nice little job for you,’ the Corporal said, his voice low, his lips thin. ‘You’re not going to know what day of the bleeding week it is when you’ve finished, sonny.’

He was handed scissors and spent the afternoon on hands and knees cutting the grass around the parade ground. The ants scrambled amongst the grass, the dandelions were acrid, their milk spilling white on to the ground. His thumb and finger were blistered. He changed hands. That thumb and finger became blistered too.

He changed again, the sun sharp on his neck. He could hear the Corporal, and the boots.

‘Forward march.

‘Halt.

‘Turn.

‘About turn.

‘Smoke Break.

‘Forward march.

‘Halt.

‘Turn.

‘About turn.’

His thumb and fingers were bleeding, he padded them with grass he had cut. It was cool but with each cut the pain dug deep.

He didn’t break for tea. He worked on until the ants and the sun had gone. And then in full kit, he doubled around the tarmacked square on blistered feet which bled warm blood into his boots. But Sid was left alone and that helped the pain of his hands and feet as he lay on the floor all night because there was an inspection in the morning.